There are whole sections of public libraries devoted to Vichy France. There are whole shelves in some university libraries set aside for literature on the Magnus effect. Theses on Guinea worm disease are written regularly, and there is substantial amateur interest in warrant canaries. Multitudinous YouTubers are standing by to regale you with tales of border disputes in the Sahara; the viscosity of bitumen piques the interest of thousands; and you can purchase entire books about the Great Vowel Shift.
But Vichy France is probably mistaken for a cold soup as often as it is recognised as a defunct country. If forced to guess, you might identify the Magnus effect as a development in professional chess rather than a physical phenomenon of relevance to baseball pitching. A Guinea worm, you might reasonably suppose, is something slimy that lives on the Atlantic coast of Africa; in fact it’s endemic only to four landlocked countries. And warrant canaries are not birds of any description. Bir Tawil is fascinating on paper, but in reality it’s a tiny scrap of sand with no population, no buildings, no surface water and no prospects. Bitumen is something mentioned in books far more often than in real life; and it has been more than three hundred years since we settled on the current pronunciations of ‘cat’ and ‘boy’ and, by and large, promptly stopped thinking about it.
It’s not that breakaway states of the 1940s and curveballs and water-borne parasites don’t matter: it’s that Jack Morris Kittel Jr does too, but no newspaper with nationwide or even statewide circulation ever published his obituary. If not a whole library, he deserves at least a write-up in a music magazine; if not a biographical podcast series, at least something more than an absolutely blank ‘About’ section on his Spotify page; and if not an online army of Kittel-Krazies with an annual Kittel-Kon, at least a little attention from some of the people who have stumbled upon and been touched by his recording of ‘Psycho’ over the last fifty years. Well, he was an American singer. His version of Leon Payne’s murder ballad was committed to vinyl in 1973. He died twenty-three years later. His sole studio album, released the following year, was issued by a record label so tiny it never put out another. Its other releases amount to precisely two EPs, and Belt Records has been dormant since 2002. Not much information, at least curated information, is available online about Jack. Search for an image of him and you are as likely to find photographs of Sanford Clark, another minor country singer, or Charles Whitman, a mass murderer whose 1966 killing spree was fictionalised in the film Targets two years later.
Meanwhile, there can be found online relatively detailed histories of Leon Payne, the ‘Blind Balladeer’ of Texan country music who had lost his sight by the time he was a young boy. Sources differ on the cause: the Texas State Historical Association and Texas Music magazine both claim that he was born blind in one eye and lost use of the other in a childhood accident; AllMusic has him down as blind from birth; and the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame dates the onset of blindness to infancy. You can also find out the circumstances under which he got his first guitar at the age of twelve, in 1929; where he was hitchhiking and why when he wrote ‘Lost Highway’ in 1948; and whether the lyrics to ‘Psycho’ were inspired by Whitman’s attack, Richard Speck’s murder of eight student nurses in Chicago two weeks earlier, or neither.
Even more thorough biographical information on Eddie Noack, who pressed the first recording of ‘Psycho’ in 1968, is at one’s fingertips. Bob Dylan called him and his version of the song ‘a bit of a cult favourite’ on his radio show in 2007. With little effort a fair knowledge can be gained of his Depression-era childhood, university education, success in talent contests, conscription and service in the Korean War, acquisition of a sausage dog named Biscuit, failed bid for stardom, music publishing career, and death in 1978 at forty-seven, although whether he died of a cerebral haemorrhage or cirrhosis of the liver is disputed.
Twenty-seven years after Jack Kittel’s death, the most complete published account of his life is probably the following obituary. It was printed in a newspaper local to Muskegon, Muskegon County, Michigan (almost certainly the Muskegon Chronicle); microfilmed by the Genealogical Society of Salt Lake City at the Herrick Public Library of Holland, Michigan on 5 January 2004; and made available online by the generous efforts of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
KITTEL, MR.
JACK M., Jr.
Husband of Sharon
New Era
(Formerly of Muskegon)Mr. Jack Kittel, Jr., 49, died unexpectedly Sat. afternoon, Sept. 28, 1996. He was born Oct. 19, 1946 in Muskegon, and lived most of his life here, before moving to New Era. He was a partner in the Saw Shop, was a U.S. Navy Veteran of Viet Nam, and was a member of the Broadway Bapt. Church in Muskegon. On June 12, 1977 he married the former Sharon Kelly. SURVIVORS include his Wife: Sharon of New Era; 5 Children: Jack Henry Kittel, Bruce VanDeWeg, Kelli VanDeWeg, Amanda Kittel, Kristin Kittel; 2 Grandchildren: Riley and Hayley VanDeWeg; his Mother: Mildred Kittel; 3 Sisters: Therese (& Morris) Ringelberg, Angela (& Wayne) Schierbeck, Judy (& Piete) Knooihuizen; his extended family: Rick Tyler, Faye Tyler, Russ and Deb Hall, Peggy Yack, Denise Delano, Marla and Kerry Bluhm, Scott and Glenna Tyler, Kevin Tyler; many Nieces, Nephews, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, and good friends. He was preceded in death by his father Jack M. Kittel, Sr. SERVICES will be 1:00 PM Wed. at the Broadway Bapt. Church, with Pastor Robert Evans officiating. Burial will be in St. Mary’s Cemetery.
Burial was indeed in St. Mary’s Cemetery. According to the Muskegon County Genealogical Society, it occurred on 2 October 1996. Above Jack’s name on the headstone it simply reads Husband. The inscription is In God’s Care.
The second most complete account of Jack’s life, which sheds some light on his unexpected death, might be the following blurb from the liner notes of his 1997 album, known both as Psycho and as Jack Forever, written by John Munson with research credited to one Sue Kittel:
‘Psycho,’ the title tune, is a dark, haunting, flawlessly performed country ballad that just could not be suppressed, and along with the memory of the artist who recorded it, has – once again – made a comeback.
The story of ‘Psycho’ and singer Jack Kittel begins in 1973 in Muskegon, Mich. It was there that Jack recorded the song written in the late ’50s by Leon Payne, a blind San Antonio street singer whose more conventional works have been performed by the likes of Elvis and Johnny Cash.
At first, radio stations wouldn’t play the newly pressed record, judging the lyrics too controversial. Then a Grand Rapids disc jockey gave it some air time on an “underground” show – and ‘Psycho’ became an instant hit. Soon the song, leased to an Atlanta-based label, was drawing the attention of other artists as well as national publications such as Zoo World, which described it as “a brilliantly grisly depiction of alienation taken to its ultimate extreme.”
On Sept. 28, 1996, Jack, who was living with his family in New Era, Mich., died at the age of 49 when his Jeep was struck by another vehicle – and less than two months later, his rendition of ‘Psycho’ surfaced in the movie Larger Than Life, a comedy in which Bill Murray enlists the aid of a deranged trucker as he struggles to transport an inherited elephant across the country. As the trucker becomes increasingly unhinged, Jack’s voice, coming from the radio, fills the cab – and movie theaters through America and the world.
Indeed, ‘Psycho’ – along with the talent of Jack Kittel – has proven ‘larger than life.’
Note that if John Munson and Sue Kittel are correct about the date of ‘Psycho’s’ composition, Payne could not have had either Charles Whitman or Richard Speck in mind when he composed the lyrics. This would also make Payne’s daughter Myrtie wrong in her claim, made to Nashville Scene in 2012, that her father wrote the song after a discussion with his steel guitar player Jackie White (who has the bad luck to be murdered along with his dance partner in the first verse) about Speck’s killing spree. It is probably safe to assume that Munson’s liner notes have the decade wrong.
If the composition date is wrong, what other Munsonian claims are open to question? The date of Jack’s death appears secure: his obituary agrees, as does the Michigan Death Index, 1971–1996, which places his death in Shelby, Oceana County, four miles outside New Era. The next day, 29 September, the Lansing State Journal ran the following item in its ‘Cops and Courts’ section, courtesy of the Associated Press:
Jack M. Kittel Jr., 49, of New Era died following a two-vehicle rollover accident in Oceana County’s Shelby Township at 12:18 p.m. Saturday. He was not wearing a seat belt.
And nearly twenty years later, on 27 September 2015, user George Redmon of the online Steel Guitar Forum had this to add:
Jack Kittle was tragically killed in an automobile accident several years ago. It occurred about a mile from my home. It was a very dangerous intersection. Cars would barrel through there 50 60 miles per hour. We knew it was just a matter of time. Sure enough someone ran the stop sign and killed him. Jack worked for the hardware company up here, and delivered LP Gas to me when I still had the farm. We petitioned the county to make it a 4 way stop. They argued with the state about the money. Anyway....it’s now a 4 way stop with a flashing red stop light. I miss not seeing Jack up around here. He stopped performing for the most part long before his untimely death. The nicest guy you’d ever want to meet.
Munson is right about Jack’s death, but the controversy to which he ascribes ‘Psycho’s’ limited airplay was probably its only commercial hope. According to an article in the 11 September 1974 edition of the Atlanta Journal – alongside listings for Coming of Angie, 69 Sunset Strip and The Devil in Miss Jones (‘Better than “Throat” ’) – the record label holding the ‘Psycho’ lease issued a notice:
GENERAL Recording Corp., the Atlanta company, claims that one of its new records is causing controversy at stations around the country. The recording is “Psycho,” and deals a man’s compulsion to commit murder.
The recording was done was Jack Kittel, who defends the grim story which the record tells. “Crimes are committed daily in our society ... you can’t overlook human actions, whether you want to or not.”
Such a transparent attempt to drum up publicity belies the single’s ‘instant hit’ status, as does the fact that the most prestigious accolade the song ever received, at least publicly, was inclusion in a list of the ‘top 10 flipped discs of all time’ in the Haywire Hall of Fame – which is not a hall of fame at all, but an abstraction of pop music writer Gene Sculatti’s for his book The Catalogue of Cool ($6.95, or it was in 1982).
Jack was musically active in the 1970s, but no hitmaker: the print marketing for his performances, along with his band Now Country, started with a whimper and ended shortly afterwards. Take for instance this notice, published in the Herald-Palladium of Benton Harbor, Michigan on 19 December 1975:
APPEARING IN PERSON
“Elmer Fudpucker, Sr.”
The Sex symbol of the SouthADULT HUMOR
Appearing at with HimJACK KITTLE
AND “THE NOW COUNTRY BAND”
Known for their Record “Phycho”TWO SHOWS - TONIGHT!
10:15 PM and 12:15
$5.00 Admission per PersonTHE RED CARPET
Dining Room & Lounge
A possible zenith of Jack’s music career had possibly come the previous month, on 2 November 1975, when the Grand Rapids Press ran the following notice with his name correctly spelled:
Tom T. Hall, the Hager Brothers and Jack Kittel, in concert. (L. C. Walker Arena, Muskegon, 8 tonight)
(Tom T. Hall would go on to great success as a country singer and songwriter. He wrote dozens of hits, placed on Rolling Stone’s ‘100 Greatest Songwriters’ list and earned induction into the Country Music, Bluegrass Music and Songwriters Halls of Fame.)
The other possible high-water mark was 25 March 1976, when, according to the Detroit Free Press in its issue of the 21st, daytime television viewers could tune into The Buck Matthews Show and see:
Dr. William K. Najjar, dentist who invented the “daily double” toothbrush (a toothbrush with dental floss on one end); Jack Kittel and “Now Country”.
Sadly, the greatest extent of Jack’s exposure came shortly after his death. The occasion was, as Munson notes, the release of a Hollywood movie with ‘Psycho’ on the soundtrack. Larger Than Life was a critical and commercial flop, but it caused a stir in Muskegon when Jack’s family discovered his song in it. On 7 January 1997, two months after its release, this piece from the Associated Press appeared in the Herald-Palladium:
MUSKEGON, Mich. (AP) – A cult country song recorded here more than 20 years ago is being used as background music in a movie starring Bill Murray. [...] Kittel, who died four months ago in a car accident, never knew about the song’s appearance in the film, The Muskegon Chronicle reported.
“This just boggles my mind,” said widow Sharon Kittel, who still has a 45 rpm copy of the original “Psycho” with Kittel’s name misspelled Kittle. “We had no idea it was part of this movie until someone told us about it.”
“Psycho” has been a bit of a local legend. In 1974 it climbed the West Michigan charts before the Australian band Beasts of Bourbon covered it. Elvis Costello included the song on his 1981 country album “Almost Blue.”
“It’s just sort of serendipitous,” said Frank Rogers, the man who arranged “Psycho” for Kittel and played all the instrumentation on the recording. “This song has nine lives. It keeps popping back in different situations.”
By this time Jack’s burgeoning career as a Saw Shop partner had kept his name out of the papers for twenty years. His service in the Vietnam War did attract some attention, but that was long before he recorded ‘Psycho.’ A piece in the 13 January 1966 Muskegon Chronicle, when Jack was nineteen, raises the possibility that his professional life started just as it ended – delivering liquid petroleum gas:
Fireman Jack M. Kittel, Jr., USN, son of Mr. and Mrs. Jack M. Kittel Sr., 883 Kampenga Ave., has reported for duty at the Naval Support Activity in Da Nang, Viet Nam. The center was established to meet increased requirements for support of operations in Viet Nam. Tasks include unloading ships and handling supplies from razor blades to roadgraders, aircraft fuel and lubricants, and provisions of all kinds, through the port of Da Nang and over beaches from the demilitarized zone in the north to Chu Lai in the south.
According to the Chronicle he was still in Da Nang on 11 June and still engaged in ‘Naval Supply Act’ duties. By 13 March 1967, however, Jack was back in the United States. Judging by the paper’s ‘World of Women’ page that day, 11 March had seen a special occasion:
Mr. and Mrs. Frank Bailey were masters of ceremonies for a reception Saturday evening at Viking Temple. The event honored Mr. and Mrs. Jack Kittel Jr. who were married in a 4 p.m. ceremony in the Bailey home, 525 Oscar St., North Muskegon.
The bride, who is a niece of the Baileys, is the former Miss Jacqueline L. Ludwig, daughter of the Homer Ludwigs, 34 Isabella Ave. Parents of the bridegroom are the senior Jack Kittels, 883 Kampenga St.
With her floor-length gown of satin the bride carried red roses and white carnations. She was attended by Miss Therese Kittel.
Richard Chasteen attended the bridegroom who is serving with the U.S. Navy, stationed at Mayport Naval Station, Florida.
Public records on Jacqueline Kittel, née Ludwig, are extremely scant: at the May 1950 census she was six months old and living in Muskegon with her parents, Homer and Lois; and on 28 May 1954, when she was four, the Chronicle reported her being struck by a car on Wood Avenue and requiring emergency treatment. Of her marriage to Jack it’s hard to say anything definite, but on 31 January 1968, Jack was back in Muskegon and placing this ominous notice in the same paper:
DEBTS–On and after this date I will not be responsible for any debts contracted by anyone but myself
JACK M. KITTEL JR.
1542 Peck St.
No longer in Da Nang, no longer in Florida, probably no longer in the Navy, Jack’s renunciation of other parties’ debts was likely a prelude to divorce, common at the time to discourage the extension of credit to imminently ex-wives in their husbands’ names. And indeed, on 1 December 1969, the Chronicle reported the issue of a marriage licence to Jack Morris Kittel Jr and Linda Joyce O’Brien, both already resident at 2771 Quarterline Road.
What became of Linda can be pieced together from a few sources. According to the United States Social Security Numerical Identification Files, 1936–2007, she was born Linda Joyce Schnick on 19 February 1950 to Leonard and Elaine Schnick of Muskegon. By July 1966 the Social Security system was recording her name as Linda Joyce O’Brien. Her marriage at sixteen to Mr. O’Brien produced a son, Rick. By late 1969 this marriage had ended, and after her marriage to Jack failed too she kept his name, going by Linda Joyce Schnick Kittel or variations thereof until it appeared on her tombstone in September 1980. She was thirty, and the second of Jack’s wives to suffer a car accident; unlike Jacqueline, she did not survive. According to her obituary in the Chronicle, she died of her injuries at Gerber Memorial Hospital in the neighbouring county of Newaygo. She was buried in West Hesperia Cemetery, Oceana County. By the time of her death Jack had been married to the former Sharon Kelly for three years.
What tempestuous turn of events led to Jack’s leaving Jacqueline and moving in with a young divorcée, or possibly a widow, before their legal union? And what emotional upheaval precipitated their divorce only a few years later? Did Jack go on to abandon her in favour of Sharon, or did Linda leave him? Did Jack visit Linda on her deathbed? Did he attend her funeral? Did he maintain a relationship with his former stepson? How did he come by two children named VanDeWeg? What happened to his first wife? Did she, or for that matter Linda, bear him any children? If we asked the same of Leon Payne or Eddie Noack, we might find answers. For Jack Kittel the trail goes cold. The truth can probably be found in Muskegon, but from a distance Jack is sinking into the pit that contains and awaits most history. Even before his death, the basic facts of his life were dropping out of public knowledge – the same Mormon volunteer who preserved his obituary microfilmed the following, from the same paper, the same day in 2004:
TYLER, MR.
WALDEN (BUCK)
MuskegonMr. Walden (Buck) Tyler, age 71, passed away Tues. afternoon, Oct. 31, 1995 [...] He is survived by 4 daughters [...]; 4 sons, Jack (Sharon) Kittel of New Era, Rick Tyler, Scott Tyler & Kevin Tyler all of Muskegon [...]
‘Psycho’ remains the clearest evidence of Jack’s existence. It doesn’t incorrectly identify his parents and it doesn’t leave you clutching at any of his family’s loose biographical threads. For those three minutes in 1973, we know where he was; we know what he was doing; we know what his voice sounded like; we even have a good idea what he was thinking. I’ve listened to that portion of his life – about 0.0001% of his forty-nine years – hundreds of times in the last eight months. I listened to his tale of murdering little Betty Clark for two hours outside on a cold night with a sack over my head. I gave myself a crick in the neck trying to stay in time with his confession to a dog’s murder while pretending to float in outer space. His accounts of somnambulant strangulation, surreptitious burials, slipping into insanity and accidentally breaking crockery ran over and over through my head while fighting to arrange five violent shadows on an uncooperative wall; while trying not to feel too self-conscious lugging equipment and props down a high street to a graveyard dressed as a cowboy in the middle of the day; while struggling to appear dead doing sit-ups; while crouching in wet bushes in what Husam and I hoped would look like the environs of Miller’s store; and while desperately suppressing the urge to blink in an effort to achieve a victim’s accusatory stare. I can’t think of another song for which it would have been such a pleasure to go to those pains. Thanks, Jack.
— Sam Pothier,
14 January 2024
Postscript. I visited Muskegon today. Jack’s tombstone in St. Mary’s Cemetery, which is scattered with other Kittels, was clean and unweathered. It’s been there longer than I’ve been on this planet. ‘Psycho,’ meanwhile, is older today than Jack ever was. Opposite his name on the stone, a blank space has been left – for whom I don’t know, but probably Sharon.
— S.P.,
16 May 2026
