Hank Champion

soumeya — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 02:14:53 +0000

Hank Champion is known as “The Chronicler.” Born of Terlinguan mining stock to a tyrannical father and dead mother, Champion began writing at an early age to escape the otherwise inevitable date with the chili trade. A small skin accident kept him out of school during his junior year, and he began the mimeographed, one pageTerlinguan Times. In May of 1969, its first and only issue ran a story about a nameless, corrupt sheriff who had just the week previously beaten his drunken father into the hospital. According to legend, promoted by Champion himself, he escaped in a stolen police car and landed, after a year or so, in Orange County, CA. There he began his writing and recording career. For the next ten years he wrote for the tiny mimeographed, one-page Orange County Times. He also began his gargantuan spoken-word recording career beginning with RCA’s spoken-word branch Speakeasy Records, then the small Cucumber Label, later Pickle. His singles include, “From Dud to Stud, From Zero to Hero,” “Broke Artist at Turn of Century,” “I Walk the Streets, Richest Man Who Ever Lived,” “History is a Lie & Time is a Whore,” and he shared publishing creds with John Fante and Charles Bukowski with the Black Sparrow collections, “I’m Trying to Sleep Here,” and “Wickets.”

100 Records » Spoken Word

Hank Champion