On a Wild Nantucket Sleighride with Roy Bailey

Time to dream, and dream, and daydream again about Nantucket Island summers.

Happy Father's Day to my Dad, and here's a Nantucket reprise in honor of my parents spending the week now in Wauwinet...

In the Bailey Studio...

In the 1960's, one of Nantucket's great artists-in-residence was Roy Bailey, whose upstairs gallery above Miltimore's Dress Shop was on the corner of Orange Street and South Main Street, just up from where Mitchell's Bookshop now sits, and below Murray's Toggery.

Gorgeous

My parents knew Roy through some good mutual friends - natives, I'm obliged to point out - and collected a few of his pieces.

James Dean-esque and seductively dashing, Bailey was active in the art and performing arts community, and a regular in the Opera House, where a good martini could always be had, and a Coke at the bar would cost you $1 in 1968 (at the time, it was $.10 or .15 everywhere else on the island!).

Sixties island hoi-polloi would congregate in the Opera House after sailing, for evenings of tale-telling and tail-chasing.  It was a swinging scene among the yacht club set, up-and-comers, and Snopeses of all stripes.

Porters' Quarters, 59 Fair

At the time, we had a place on Fair Street, a short stroll away.

Now, if you read your Melville, you know that a Nantucket Sleighride is local (early 19th century) slang for the ride you and your (possibly doomed) friends took once the leashed harpoon you'd hurled found its mark in the whale's flesh and he took you for a long and rough ride, sometimes for hours... sometimes to the bottom of the sea.  Reference Captain Ahab.

Gentlemen of a certain age know well, also, that "Nantucket Sleighride" refers to a 5:50 rock classic (blended ballad/dirge and riff-rock roarer) from the 1971 album of the same name by monumental heavy/dinosaur band Mountain (alternately, to its 32-minute cousin from the live "Twin Peaks" album, much and painfully inferior).  As Mountain were preparing to release the great (I think their best) album Nantucket Sleighride, the band either selected - or commissioned anew - an etching by Bailey to illustrate the inner album spread.

I'd stared at this illustration ['Drawing of a Nantucket Sleighride'] many times - but only years later, after college, did I notice the attribution and realize it was ol' Roy who'd 'drawn' it.

"Three years sailing on bended knee ..."

So when in 1998 while biking into town now on Vestal Street I spotted Bailey's shingle, I hustled in to find him, aging and a bit brittle.

We introduced ourselves and chatted about the 'golden age' of Nantucket for ten minutes or so.  Then I revealed my real interest - to buy a print of the Nantucket Sleighride key art.

"Wow!" he shouted - "it's been years and years since anyone has even mentioned that piece to me!  I didn't think anyone remembered.  I barely remember it myself!"

Visit the Nantucket Whaling Museum

He did not have the print to sell - for all he knew, it had gone ages ago to Davy Jones' locker.  We reminisced and he let me know the connection had come about through a Nantucket fellow - "young man, don't remember his name now, but might have been a Coffin descendant" - who was friendly with the band and knew of their fascination with Nantucket, whaling, and the story of the whaleship Essex, all inspirations for the album.

Here is a nice Father's Day themed article about Roy Bailey.

Roy passed away in 2002 but he lives on in the memory of many a Nantucket "Golden-Ager' . . . as does this particular work of his in the hearts and minds of many I'd venture utterly unwitting rock fans of 40 years ago!!