September 28: Tuli

Tuli Kupferberg, co-founder of the Fugs and a beloved beat poet, songwriter, anarchist activist, and primitive cartoonist, was born in New York in a Yiddish-speaking household on this date in 1923. Kupferberg’s books included Beatniks; or, The War Against the Beats, 1001 Ways to Beat the Draft, 1001 Ways to Live Without Working, and Teach Yourself Fucking, a collection of sardonic cartoons. He and poet Ed Sanders formed the Fugs in 1964, a band described by the New York Times as “perhaps the most puerile and yet the most literary rock group of the 1960s, with songs suitable for the locker room as well as the graduate seminar.” Among the songs Tuli wrote for the band was “Morning, Morning,” later covered in handsome style by Richie Havens: “Morning, morning, feel so lonesome in the morning./ Morning morning, morning brings me grief.” He died at 86 in 2010. “Starshine, starshine,/chills the moon upon my cheek,/Starshine, starshine,/Darling, kiss me as I leave.” —Tuli Kupferberg Watch Part 1 of a Swedish TV documentary about The Fugs: