Tupper Saussy's story is the stuff of Pynchon novels and Coen Brothers movies; his life and career seem uniquely pertinent to this fiscally focused conference. Lesser musicians may have squabbled with record companies or accountants over matters of commerce, but Saussy (1936-2007) gleefully challenged the Internal Revenue Service, the United States government and the very definition of "money" itself.
In the 1960's, Tupper Saussy was a jazz prodigy, an advertising genius, a Nashville socialite, a session man, a classical composer and a staff songwriter for Acuff-Rose. He jammed with Chet Atkins. He arranged for Roy Orbison. As the mastermind of the insanely-ambitious chamber-pop group The Neon Philharmonic, he created a Borges-inspired "phonograph opera," The Moth Confesses, that arrived two months before Tommy and spawned a hit single with "Morning Girl." In the 1970's and 80's, as his music career cooled, he became a restaurateur, an illustrator, a dramatist, a ghostwriter for one of the most notorious assassins of the 20th Century and a pivotal figure in the American income-tax resistance movement. In 1987, after a series of court battles, he became a federal fugitive who eluded capture by the FBI for over a decade by hiding in plain sight. He wrote a book that depicted the last 250 years of human history as a divinely ordained slow-motion conspiracy. He chased crop circles. He distrusted sugar. And then he began to write music again…
With sounds and pictures and video, I'll be telling the story of true American original, a tale in which I play a small role, along with Oscar Peterson, Dave Brubeck, David Halberstam, Ray Stevens, Kris Kristofferson, Mama Cass Elliott, Anita Bryant, Hall & Oates, Wesley Snipes and a bogus mentalist.
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