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Felix Pappalardi




Pappalardi was also the bassist and founding member of American hard rock band Mountain , a band born out of Atlantic Records asking him to work with The Vagrants . Mountain's "Mississippi Queen" is still heard regularly on Classic Rock radio stations.

Pappalardi studied Classical Music at the University Of Michigan . Upon completing his studies and returning to New York , he was unable to find work and so became part of the Greenwich Village folk music scene where he made a name for himself as a skilled arranger. From there he moved into record production, initially concentrating on folk and folk-rock acts for artists such as The Youngbloods and Joan Baez . However, it was Pappalardi's late-1960s work with Cream that established his reputation. He contributed instrumentation for his imaginative studio arrangements and he and his wife, Gail Collins Pappalardi , wrote the Cream hit "Strange Brew" with Eric Clapton .

Pappalardi was forced to Retire because of partial Deafness , apparently from his high volume shows with Mountain. He continued doing studio work and released a solo album and an album with Creation .

Pappalardi died on April 17 , 1983 in his uptown Manhattan Apartment from a Gunshot wound at the age of 43. See the article on Gail Collins Pappalardi for the circumstances of his death.

He was known for playing a Gibson EB-1 violin Bass through a set of Sunn Amplifier s that, he claimed, once belonged to Jimi Hendrix .



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