Chuckles Palaina is an enigma, a puzzle, a myth.

Fierce yet gentle, somehow both child and old man.  He told me he ran opium from Armenia to the Ukraine in the dark days of the USSR in the early 1980's.  "There wasn't alot of... creativity going on in those places" he says, touching his chin:

"There was this ancient man, (was he a sage or a decrepit old pervert?) I met in the Caucasian Mountains where I was hiding from Russian anti-narcotics agents.  He sat in a little grotto beneath some over-hanging cliffs.  He was staring at cave drawing's he'd found there.  I asked him what he was doing, he said he was practicing the banjo, and he pointed to a banjo-case lying by a small smouldering campfire. 'but there is a problem' said the old man.'What is that?' I asked.  'I only have one hand' and he held up a rotton gangrenous stump of an arm.  He then laughed and ran out of the shallow cave leaving me with his instrument.  I kneeled down and opened the latches, and there it lay, and it was so normal for me to hold it.  Like it was created to lay in my arms.  Leaning how to play it, on the other hand, has been hell."

Chuckles Palaina carreer started when he recorded the seminal smash hit "Don't Ever Touch the Donkey" which was a hit on St. Louis radio in the late 1970's.  Or not.  The problem with Mr. Palaina is that he often tells stories that contradict each other. When confronted with this he wiggles his eye brows and claims that it's alll intentional, as he know that he will be considered a more interesting individual following his death if his personal history is a mish-mash of flagrant hyperbole.  A modern Baron Munchausen, he is.

But this doesn't stop us from loving him.  Everywhere he goes he brings smiles and tears of delight to those around him.  Sometimes he annoys people, however, when he laughs nervously after everything he says.  This bothers everybody.  But we forgive him, because afterall, who among us is perfect?

Some people who know Mr. Palaina have things to say about him.