Jody Gibson plays guitar during a jam session with friends at Billy Goode's in Newport in April. Gibson died Wednesday at age 75. (Daily News file photo)
NEWPORT - Singer/musician Jody Gibson, 75, Newport's link to the folk era of Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, died Wednesday at his home at 207 Broadway after a battle with colon cancer.
Gibson performed for decades in Newport, whether singing shanties, Hank Williams songs or tongue-in-cheek protest tunes, such as "Tiptoe Through the Tourists." Gibson, born Joseph Paul Katzberg in Brooklyn, N.Y., was a one-of-a-kind presence on the local scene.
In his prime, Gibson was a burly plug of a man in a Greek fishing cap, so robust that neighborhood children sang the "Popeye" theme as he carried a duffel bag of clothes over his shoulder en route to the old Fifth Ward Laundromat on Thames Street.
Gibson knew hundreds of songs and held just as many opinions. "He was extremely honest, the most honest person I ever met," his wife, Donna, said Wednesday. "He never lied to his children about anything. He never lied to me. If you asked him a question, he gave you a direct answer. It might not be the answer you wanted, but he always gave you an honest answer."
While he is best known in this area as a musician, that only tells a fragment of the story. He served in the Air Force as an air traffic controller and was a Korean War veteran, earned a black belt in karate, taught martial arts to at-risk youngsters, worked as a sign carver, toiled aboard ships and as a boat builder.
He is a member of the Rockabilly Hall of Fame and recorded a single "Good Morning Captain" while serving in England in the Air Force, with George Martin - who later became the legendary Beatles producer - as his promotion man.
As a boy, Gibson roamed the Greenwich Village music scene, where he got to know Guthrie and Leadbelly. "He's really one of the last singers who played with those guys," said Newport blues singer/guitarist Paul Geremia.
By phone from California, where he is touring, Geremia said he went back to the mid-1960s with Gibson, opening for him at the old Tete-a-tete Club in Providence.
"I opened for Jody, I think it was in '64, and there was a snowstorm and Jody drove this old clunker and he gave me a ride to my parents' house or wherever the closest place was I could stay for the night," Geremia recalled. "We kept getting stuck and had to get out and push. Jody kept saying it was a bad theme."
Gibson often dropped by Geremia's Newport apartment in recent years to talk up some new crusade or invention. He liked to listen to Hawaiian guitar records, 78 rpm, that Geremia collects. "He didn't always come by at the most opportune time," Geremia said with a chuckle. "But you were always glad to see him. I really liked Jody. I'm very sad to hear he has passed away. I knew he was terminally ill but I didn't think it would be this soon. I had hoped to spend time with him when I got home."
On April 24, some of Gibson's family and best friends gathered at Billy Goode's to pay homage to him. Gibson had been suffering from colon cancer for more than two years and was typically blunt about the forecast.
"I don't have much time left," he said that night. "That's official."
Daughters Joyce and Kate Katzberg, both well-known Rhode Island singers, joined some of Gibson's best friends on tunes like "Hey, Good Lookin''' and "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" Donna Gibson sang "Jambalaya" and the night went on for hours. "This is music sharing, not just different people getting up and singing," Donna Gibson said.
Roger Sprung, a veteran of the New York music scene, came to town to perform with Gibson, with whom he played at the Black Pearl 30 years ago. Gracious Audette, who owned the Blue Pelican Jazz Club from 1982-91, also was there that night.
"It offered people a chance to provide a wonderful acknowledgement (of Gibson's life) and be able to participate in something memorable," Audette said.
Audette grew up in the Washington, D.C., area, and moved to Newport in 1978. She remembers Gibson driving a beat-up Volkswagen with some kind of protest message, perhaps targeting the new-money yachties, painted on the vehicle. "I knew once I met him that I was in a town full of characters," she said.
Gibson never cared whether his views were popular. In the Air Force, he caught heat for forming a mixed-race hillbilly band. In Newport in the 1980s, Gibson railed against "land speculators" he felt were trampling his adopted hometown.
In his kitchen on a day back then, he jumped to his feet and slammed his fist on the kitchen table to pound home a point. He felt racial prejudice was poison, that it kept people from building friendships: "You miss out on so much."
Jim McGrath went back to 1970 with Gibson, when Gibson worked on ships docked in Newport Harbor. At about that time, Gibson moved away from country music, McGrath said, and toward sea shanties.
"I remember seeing him and thinking, who the hell is this?" McGrath said.
And he remembers Gibson commuting to gigs at the old Stone Bridge Inn in Tiverton - not unusual for musicians. "The thing is, he used to ride his bike from Newport, with his banjo strapped to his back," McGrath said.
"You could go on all night with the stories," he said. "He was a brilliant guy with his wires in different directions."
McGrath, a singer in town since the 1960s, said Gibson's passing is sad for his friends and family, and a loss for the community as a whole. "We're going to miss him," McGrath said. "He was another one of those great characters we're not going to see again. The town's gotten so homogenized."
Donna Gibson saw a side of her sometimes-fiery husband less apparent to outsiders. She remembered Gibson as a gentle and kind soul, a generous person who went ashore in Newport years ago and lost his wanderlust.
"Jody lived all over the world," Donna Gibson said. "But he chose to settle in Newport. After all those years, he found his home in Newport."
