Marvin Pontiac

Outsider blues musician invented by artist, actor, composer, podcaster John Lurie for the 1999 album The Legendary Marvin Pontiac* ‎– Greatest Hits. He followed it up in 2017 with another release, Marvin Pontiac: The Asylum Tapes.

Lurie wrote Pontiac as a hipster's musical archaeological wet dream: outsider, person of color, troubled genius, went insane, never heard of but yet left a bunch of recorded material.

He was born in Mali in 1932, and killed by a bus in Detroit in 1977.

Real musicians on the album include: John Medeski, Billy Martin, G. Calvin Weston, Marc Ribot, and Tony Scherr. Lurie is a real saxophonist with band The Lounge Lizards.

External Links

• https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/john-lurie-emerges-out-of-nowhere-with-some-strikingly-resonant-fake-music
• https://www.discogs.com/artist/993646-Marvin-Pontiac
• https://riotfest.org/2018/04/john-lurie-marvin-pontiac-reissue/