Zal Yanovsky

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Zalman Yanovsky (December 19, 1945 – December 13, 2002) was a Canadian rock musician. Son of the political cartoonist Avrom Yanovsky, he played lead guitar and sang for the Lovin' Spoonful, a rock band which he founded with John Sebastian in 1964. According to Sebastian "He could play like Elmore James, he could play like Floyd Cramer, he could play like Chuck Berry. He could play like all these people, yet he still had his own overpowering personality. Out of this we could, I thought, craft something with real flexibility."^{[citation needed]}

One of the early rock and roll performers to wear a cowboy hat, and frilled "Davy Crockett" style clothing, Zal helped set the trend followed by such 1960s performers as Sonny Bono, Johnny Rivers and David Crosby.

Mostly self-taught, he began his musical career playing folk music coffee houses in Toronto. He lived on a kibbutz in Israel for a short time and was supposedly asked to leave after having driven a tractor through a building. He returned to Canada and teamed with fellow Canadian Denny Doherty in the Halifax Three. The two joined Cass Elliot in the Mugwumps, a group made famous by Doherty's & Cass's later group the Mamas & the Papas, in the song "Creeque Alley". It was at this time he met John Sebastian and they formed the Lovin' Spoonful with Steve Boone and Joe Butler.

In 1967, he left the U.S. and returned to his native Canada, due to a marijuana-related charge. In exchange for not being deported, Yanovsky gave the name of his dealer, and as a consequence was ostracised by the music community and asked to leave the United States by the Federal authorities. [1] In Canada, he recorded a solo album Alive and Well in Argentina (and Loving Every Minute of It). Buddah Records released the album in the U.S. in 1968, along with a single that did not appear on the album, "As Long As You're Here". The single (in which the B-side was the same track without vocals and recorded backwards) just missed the Billboard Hot 100, but fared a little better in Cashbox, peaking at #73. Kama Sutra Records reissued the album in 1971 with a completely different cover and inclusion of "As Long As You're Here". The album has hard rock and heavy metal influences, and features unusual sounds such as recordings of instruments being played in reverse.

After leaving the music business, he became a restaurateur, alongside his wife Rose Richardson, establishing in Chez Piggy restaurant in 1979 and Pan Chancho bakery in 1994, both in Kingston, Ontario. The success of Chez Piggy prompted the publication of a companion cookbook (The Chez Piggy Cookbook, Firefly Books, 1998) that was collected by fans. After Zal's death of congestive heart failure in December 2002, and his wife's death in 2005, their daughter Zoe Yanofsky took over the ownership of both eateries. She also completed and launched another cookbook that Zal was working on, The Pan Chancho Cookbook (Bookmakers Press, 2006).