My buddy Edward Earl Cook died from Covid earlier today. Under the name Schmoovy Schmoov, he played keyboards and sang with Digital Underground during their fifteen minutes of fame in late 80s/early 90s.
The following is mosty lifted from the Music of our Lives draft we did here last year.
I met Earl when I was 23. He was a local kid a couple years younger who worked in my department. We bonded immediately over music and because we were the two coolest guys in the office. His real name was Edward but he called himself Earl for some reason. I started calling him Sherm for some reason and for the only time in a lifetime of trying to pin nicknames on friends, it stuck. Everybody called him Sherm and Earl even started calling other people Sherm. He became a good friend of the future Mrs. Eephus and me and he stood up at our wedding.
A couple years later, Earl started doing some music with a friend of his named Greg. Greg was a hilarious dude who knew a lot about music. The few times he hung out at our place, he made some very interesting selections from my record collection. Earl had toyed around with a synthesizer for years but didn't have any great musical talent. Time went on and Earl talked about his music but not really incessantly. He didn't seem to be treating it anymore seriously than he did anything else; his stage name was Schmoovy Schmoov for God's sake. His playing was still mostly chords and weird sounds. But his crew put out a record and to be honest, I had my doubts. In the late 80s, there weren't as many guys trying to sell rap cassettes on Market Street as there would be later but there still were some. And every brother made an effort to pitch their music to Mrs. Eephus. Well, we listened to the record and you can guess the punchline. The record was Doowutchyalike and I was floored.
The Underground blew up with Sex Packets. Earl quit work and joined the circus with them for a while. We still saw him but not as frequently as before. Earl wasn't big on babies so our friendship took a hit when we had ours and we ended up on the woman's side of the deal when Earl and his girlfriend split up. He eventually moved to Atlanta and kept running the Schmoovy Schmoov hustle. We reconnected via social recently--he'd refound Jesus along the way so most of what he sent me was scripture passages. The last time we conversed was after the passing of Greg/Shock G earlier this year.