JERRY YESTER: ASHES HAVE TURNED and the Lovin' Spoonful offender has been sentenced

"He must be high on something" someone said
Though it never made The New York Times
In The Daily News, the caption read
"Save the life of my child!" 

Well...it didn't make the Daily News either. Or Rolling Stone. But it was big news on the website for the local Harrison, Arkansas newspaper. That's where Jerry was downloading, and apparently uploading, the child porn.

"Save the life of my child," could start with the parents:  well, that's all right mama, but you could save lives yourself by NOT taking nude pix of the kiddies and putting them on the Net. Right? 

Where does child porn come from? It comes, to a great degree, from parents exploiting their kids for profit. 

Mama, if you didn't have a litter of puppies and not be able to keep track of them, maybe your 12 or 14 year-old would not have been viewed by Mr. Yester. But let's only blame Jerry: 

Not being as rich and famous as Pete from The Who, Jerry couldn’t get away with “oh, it was research.” '

The question, since he was busted over a year ago (check his name on this blog for that story) was how long it would take for the wheel of justice to run him over. While he waited, banned from playing sappy music with Lovin’ Spoonful at county fairs, he turned up in a few local venues including a hotel. Here's Jerry along with Catherine Reed, performing in Eureka Springs, Arkansas back on November 15, 2018:  

Catherine starts off singing Paul Simon ("Kathy's Song" and "Slip Slidin' Away"), the latter starting off with some chicken impressions and laughs. Don't expect a Judy Henske here, just a smooth-voiced, affable folkie. 

There's slight irony when Jerry Yester is given a microphone for a duet on a song by Simon and Garfunkel's beloved Everly Brothers: "Bye Bye Love, Bye Bye Happiness. Hello Loneliness. I think I'm gonna cry." 

Hello loneliness: last month, a judge officially sent 74 year-old Jerry away for two years. Compare that with a hedge fund weasel named Epstein (now deceased) who also got busted in the Deep South, but had enough money to plea get away with ONE count of “soliciting an underage prostitute.” He got 13 months. He didn’t download, he fucked. Not only did he get a lighter sentence than Jerry Yester, he spent most of each day OUT of his cell, playing unsupervised games. 

Downloading underage porn IS a serious crime. It’s not victimless. It’s not just pictures. Those pictures came from somewhere, and some criminal types took them and profited from them. Some deranged parents may have been involved, too, pocketing the money for meth. Epstein had procurers hunting for 13-14 year old girls that the PARENTS allowed to be taken and used. Polanski, you might remember, found that "model" thanks to her mama.

Some idiots say "why spoil our fun, it's just pictures," but these aren't snapshots from a nudist magazine (ps, eBay bans nudist magazines due to pedophile interest). The young people in these images, certainly ones that aren’t mere poses, run the risk of being both emotionally and physically damaged. But let’s take a look at THIS: 

Here’s a maniac who got NO jail time for what amounts to obscene SCAT behavior. You feed your kids shit? Really? 

By the time the cops found out (they were busy checking on Internet porn downloaders?) the two kids were gaunt, emaciated, and half the weight of normal children their age. NO jail time for her; she just has to stay away from those kids now. Did she sashay out of court with a shit-eating grin?    

What a two-year sentence for Jerry Yester accomplishes, I’m not sure. That he’ll spend a few years risking getting beaten up for being a pedo? Maybe he's an "example" and some dirty old men will be scared about downloading. It would be nice to think so, but people like this have addict-personalities and can't stay away. Some might only do something worse, like pull an Aqualung and hang around a playground.

Yester’s career is already ruined, and when you’re kicked out of a group that doesn’t have John Sebastian and has few original members, and plays shit like “What a Day for a Day Dream,” you’ve sunk very, very low. He’s probably close to bankruptcy, considering how little royalties artists get thanks to download piracy and the official robbery from low-paying pricks like Spotify and YouTube. 

No, I have never met Jerry Yester. Judy Henske and Craig Doerge, yes. While social (disease) media would tell you that Yester's fame is drifting into Lovin' Spoonful, Jerry's real accomplishments are in songwriting, and in the two albums he made with Judy: "Farewell Aldebaran" and "Rosebud" (the latter being the name of the group they formed, which included Craig Doerge, who would replace Jerry as Judy's husband. No hard feelings...a few years ago, Judy and Jerry sang together to promote the re-issue of "Farewell Aldebaran.").

Below, pre-dating Jerry and Judy's folk-psych return to albums (via Frank Zappa's Straight label), here's a solo single from Jerry on ABC-Dunhill. "Ashes Have Turned" is credited to Judy Henske Yester - Jerry Yester,. (The flip side is not something they wrote). If you listen to it a few times it might just become catchy. You might even think, “Hmm, they could’ve resurrected this and stuck it on the "Rosebud" album, as its lush yet slightly sour harmonies aren't too different from “Le Soleil” and a few other tracks. 

Concluding the Paul Simon theme that has run through this entry, think about this line of his: "I wasn't such a Johnny Ace fan but I felt bad just the same." You don't have to be a Jerry Yester fan to feel bad about how twisted things can get when there's a strange, compelling and forbidden psychological need. 

ASHES HAVE TURNED - Jerry Yester, lyrics by Judy Henske - download, listen on line, no passwords, no sleazy foreign download service, no porn ads or malware


update:


According to an Arkansas website, which mentioned him between the report of a redneck chick biting part of her boyfriend's ear off, and a drunk attacking a store owner and running off with pizza-flavored bagels, Jerry was sentenced in July of 2019 to two years in prison, eligible for parole in a year. So, let's see what happens in July of 2020. If anything. A Freudian slip on the website had Yester "disturbing" porn, rather than "distributing" it....

The other criminals also in trouble the same time included...