Although his heyday was at the height of the mellow singer/songwriter era, he didn’t fit into the long haired hippie style of the time. He dressed conservatively, kept his hair combed and well above the collar and he played the tenor banjo instead of an acoustic guitar.
A Daisy A Day hit the upper reaches of both the pop and country charts in 1973. He placed other songs in the country charts including Bill Jones General Store, The Biggest Parakeets In Town and The Next Door Neighbor’s Kid.
The astronauts on the Apollo 17 lunar mission brought along a copy of Daisy A Day making it the first song ever played on the moon!
A native of New York, Strunk moved to Maine in 1960 and became a Maine folk hero of sorts. Many of his songs were about the characters and places of his adopted state. He ran for a Senate seat there in 1970 and reportedly lost by only one one vote.
Strunk’s music falls into the early seventies folk/country style. Think a mellower John Denver. (Yes, I know, that seems impossible.) He was a good songwriter with a lot of humorous story songs and nostalgia for a simpler time. The production often tips his music into MOR territory with an over use of strings and backing vocals and his banjo is too often buried in the mix. Despite these drawbacks, Strunk’s song craft and humor still manage to shine through.
Sadly, Jud Strunk is all but forgotten today. Amazingly, none of his studio albums have ever been released on CD and you won’t find any available on any music streaming services either. You can still pick up used vinyl copies on Amazon, e-Bay and Discogs for a couple bucks and there are some videos of him performing live on YouTube. He is well worth checking out.
Strunk, a licensed pilot, died in a plane crash on October 5th 1981. He suffered a heart attack just after take off. He was 45 years old.
Written by Casey Redmond
October 3, 2020
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