Doug Easley

Doug Easley was born aboard an Icelandic whaling ship during a summer maelstrom that nearly took the lives of all on board. He was then abandoned at the Port of St. Arthur. He was soon spirited away to a monastery in Northern Italy where he was educated by Paulist monks. It was here that Doug was first introduced to the musical arts in the form of Gregorian chants of which he is a master.

When Doug was fourteen Abbot Rossini took Doug to Venice to see the famous Venetian Circus of Bernoulli Cardalini. Mesmerized by the skillful hijinks of the buffones (clowns) Doug plotted to sneak away from the Abbot by volunteering for the disappearing act during the circus' grand finale -- he never reappeared. Over the years with the circus, Doug cemented his reputation as one of Italy's finest clowns and was became known as Il Pfrofessore.

After a tragic clown car accident in 1978 in which his face was rendered inhospitable to clown noses, it seemed as though Doug's circus days were over. He retired to his native Iceland to recover and it was there that Doug was visited by an apparition that was either the ghost of Elvis, Napoleon or both. Regardless, the other-worldly message was clear--get to Memphis! Not one to tempt fate, Doug got on the next Greyhound to Memphis.

Memphis proved to be a good fit for Il Professorfe. His training in the musical arts proved invaluable to the burgeoning underground rock scene and his years in the circus prepared him for the characters of Midtown Memphis. At a fateful recording session on which Doug had been hired to sing background vocals he stumbled into the control room and thinking that the mixing console was a fancy microwave he began randomly punching buttons in order to heat up his favorite libation, hot apple cider. That session was Disco Duck and Doug had unwittingly engineered a number one hit and after that he became Memphis' most in-demand producer and engineer.

Throughout the eighties, nineties and naughties Doug would go on to work on records by Loretta Lynn, The White Stripes, The Ted Kennedys, Sonic Youth, Pavement, Elvis Parsley, Cat Power, Jeff Buckley, Townes Van Zandt, The legendary Ernestine and Hazel's House Band (who is available for your next party), Harlan T Bobo and I'm running out of breath. During a trans-European tour via golf cart Doug was reunited with Abbot Rossini and the Abbot confided that he had orchestrated the Venetian disappearance and that it was he who had appeared to him and not the ghost of Elvis, Napoleon or both. He had, however, held a flashlight up to his face for effect.