On a blue, windy morning in April, Robert Baldori, attorney-at-law, climbs into his black BMW for a drive to Hastings, Michigan, where he’s defending a family charged with growing and selling marijuana. Baldori doesn’t dress like a lawyer: his courtroom outfit, which he’s likely to wear two days in a row, consists of a wicker-colored sport coat, chinos that taper to a halt an inch above his crinkled loafers, and a richly cut white oxford with “BOOG” stitched on the cuff.
“My door exploded off its hinges,” Baldori wrote in an unpublished memoir of the bust. “Twenty-six screaming, howling, lawless madmen wearing ski masks, armed to the teeth with assault weapons, came crashing through it….They shoved gun barrels into my neck and ear….Of course, I wasn’t the least bit happy staring down the barrel of a gun in the hands of [a] nervous, pathological, and excitable young man….His exact words, the one with the gun to my head, still ring in my ears. ‘Don’t move or I’ll blow your fucking head off.’ He bellowed repeatedly, nervously, hysterically. ‘Don’t move, motherfucker!’”
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The narcs found 88 pounds of marijuana, $160,000 in cash, and an abundance of gardening equipment. Baldori maintains that he’d been preparing to go on vacation and was allowing his pal to use the house for a deal with a third party. (The pal later testified that he’d done five previous dope deals with Baldori.)
Baldori ended up pleading guilty to two misdemeanors–possession of marijuana and conspiracy to possess marijuana–and serving 30 days in a work-release program. In a newspaper interview following his return Baldori predicted that his reputation would take years to restore. Now that he’s living the life of a well-to-do north country bohemian, he can’t believe he ever thought that way. “It made me a local hero,” he says. “I have more law business than ever. They created this persona, and then everybody saw what happened, and so every time someone got busted, they’d call me and say, ‘I want you to do the same for me.’ They created an instant criminal practice for me.”
“Bob’s probably the most savvy and connected activist that we have going for us,” says Gregory Schmid, the Saginaw lawyer who wrote the Personal Responsibility Amendment. To get on the ballot the amendment needs 302,711 signatures by July 10. Schmid, a self-described “conservative Republican,” has assembled a coalition of libertarians and potheads for his crusade. Every head shop from Monroe to Sault Sainte Marie has Schmid’s petitions, and he spoke at a May 6 “Millennium Marijuana March” at the state capitol. Lansing drew both heads and straights that week: alarmed antimarijuana forces came to town for a two-day seminar titled “Training the Trainers: Putting the Brakes on the Legalization Movement.” And on Friday and Saturday, Tommy Chong did a pair of shows at Connxtions Comedy Club.
The Personal Responsibility Amendment would be bad for Baldori’s business, but he doesn’t care. “A lot of my practice is marijuana cases, and I’d be happy if they all went away.”
After that, whenever Berry came to the midwest, Baldori was behind him, pounding the piano on “Rock and Roll Music,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” and the rest of Berry’s classic repertoire. They played for tens of thousands at Wrigley Field and the Arie Crown Theater. They recorded two albums together: Back Home (1970) and San Francisco Dues (1971). The partnership continued even after Baldori became a lawyer: in 1998, Berry took him to the White House to play at the 30th reunion of President Clinton’s graduating class. (Boogie Bob posed with Clinton for a photo that now hangs on his office wall.) Berry was “the founder of rock and roll,” says Baldori. “Every date is a historical event for me.”
