Macamba0, Author at - Page 6 of 8

Posted on November 11, 2015February 28, 2018 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Tommy Tedesco 11/1997

November 10, 1997 – Tommy Tedesco (session guitarist) was born on July 3rd 1930 in Niagara Falls. It took him almost 30 years to make his way to the West Coast, but once there he became one of the most sought after studio musicians between the 1960s and the 1980s. Although Tedesco was primarily a guitar player, he also played the mandolin, ukulele, and the sitar as well as 28 other stringed instruments (though he played all of them in guitar tuning!).

Guitar magazine described him as the most recorded guitarist in history, having played on thousands of recordings, including the Beach Boys, Everly Brothers, The Association, Barbra Streisand, Elvis Presley, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Zappa, Sam Cooke, Cher, and Nancy and Frank Sinatra. He recorded with most of the top acts in the Los Angeles arena. TV themes include Bonanza, The Twilight Zone, Green Acres, M*A*S*H, Batman, and Elvis Presley’s ’68 Comeback Special. Continue reading Tommy Tedesco 11/1997

Posted on October 12, 2015July 13, 2018 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Glen Buxton 10/1997

October 19, 1997 – Glen Edward Buxton was born on November 10, 1947. He became an American guitarist for the original Alice Cooper band. In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked Buxton number 90 on its list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. In 2011, he was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Alice Cooper band.

Born in Akron, Ohio, Buxton moved to Phoenix, Arizona and in 1964, while attending Cortez High School, made his debut in a rock band called The Earwigs. It was composed of fellow high school students Dennis Dunaway and Vincent Furnier (Alice Cooper). They were popular, and changed their name to The Spiders in 1965 and later to The Nazz in 1967. In 1968, to avoid legal entanglements with the Todd Rundgren-led Nazz, Buxton’s band changed their name to Alice Cooper.

Continue reading Glen Buxton 10/1997

Posted on March 13, 2017February 14, 2025 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Luther Allison 8/1997

luther allison, blues giant August 12, 1997 – Luther Allison (blues great) was born on August 17, 1939 in Widener, Arkansas. He was the 14th of 15 children, the son of cotton farmers. His parents moved to Chicago when he was in his early teens, but he had a solid awareness of blues before he left Arkansas, as he played organ in the church and learned to sing gospel in Widener as well. Allison recalled that his earliest awareness of blues came via the family radio in Arkansas, which his dad would play at night. Allison recalls listening to both the Grand Ole Opry and B.B. King on the King Biscuit Show on Memphis’ WDIA.

Although he was a talented baseball player and had begun to learn the shoemaking trade after high school, it wasn’t long before Allison began to focus more of his attention on playing blues guitar. Allison had been hanging out in blues clubs all through high school, and with his brother’s encouragement, he honed his string-bending skills and powerful, soul-filled vocal technique.

Continue reading Luther Allison 8/1997

Posted on November 10, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Iz Kamakawiwo’ole 6/1997

June 27, 1997 – Israel “Iz” Ka’ano’i Kamakawiwo’ole was born on May 20, 1959 in Honolulu, Hawaii, three months before the Hawaiian Islands would become America’s 50th state. In Hawaiian his last name translates to “the fearless eye, the bold face”. Notable Hawaiian musician Moe Keale was his uncle and became a major musical influence. He was raised in the community of Kaimuki, where his parents had met and married. He began playing music with his older brother Skippy and cousin Allen Thornton at the age of 11, being exposed to the music of Hawaiian entertainers of the time such as Peter Moon, Palani Vaughn and Don Ho, who frequented the establishment where Kamakawiwoʻole’s parents worked. Hawaiian musician Del Beazley spoke of the first time he heard Israel play, when, while playing for a graduation party, the whole room fell silent on hearing him. Israel continued his path as his brother Skippy entered the Army in 1971 and cousin Allen parted ways in 1976 for the mainland.

A Biography by his closest friend.

In his early teens, he studied at Upward Bound (UB) of the University of Hawaii at Hilo and his family moved to Mākaha. There he met Louis “Moon” Kauakahi, Sam Gray and Jerome Koko. Together with his brother Skippy they formed the Makaha Sons of Niʻihau. A part of the Hawaiian Renaissance, the band’s blend of contemporary and traditional styles gained in popularity as they toured Hawaii and the continental United States, releasing fifteen successful albums. Kamakawiwo’ole’s aim was to make music that stayed true to the typical sound of traditional Hawaiian music. During that time period, the songs that many people associated with Hawaii, typically, were not traditional-sounding songs.

The Makaha Sons of Niʻihau recorded No Kristo in 1976 and released four more albums, including Kahea O Keale, Keala, Makaha Sons of Niʻihau and Mahalo Ke Akua. In 1982, Kamakawiwoʻole’s brother, Skippy, died at age 28 of a heart attack related to obesity. In that same year, Kamakawiwoʻole married his childhood sweetheart Marlene. Soon after, they had a daughter whom they named Ceslie-Ann “Wehi”.

The group became Hawaii’s most popular modern traditional group with breakout albums 1984’s Puana Hou Me Ke Aloha and its follow-up, 1986’s Hoʻola. Kamakawiwoʻole’s last recorded album with the group was 1991’s Hoʻoluana. It remains the group’s top-selling CD.

In 1990, Kamakawiwoʻole released his first solo album Ka ʻAnoʻi, which won awards for Contemporary Album of the Year and Male Vocalist of the Year from the Hawaiʻi Academy of Recording Arts (HARA). Facing Future was released in 1993 by The Mountain Apple Company. It featured his most popular song, the medley “Somewhere over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World”, along with “Hawaiʻi 78”, “White Sandy Beach of Hawaiʻi”, “Maui Hawaiian Sup’pa Man”, and “Kaulana Kawaihae”. The decision to include a cover of Somewhere Over the Rainbow was said to be a last-minute decision by his producer Jon de Mello and him.

Facing Future debuted at #25 on Billboard magazine’s Top Pop Catalogue chart. On October 26, 2005, Facing Future became Hawaii’s first certified platinum album, selling more than a million CDs in the United States, according to figures furnished by the Recording Industry Association of America. On July 21, 2006, BBC Radio 1 announced that “Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World (True Dreams)” would be released as a single in America. Facing Future became the best-selling Hawaiian album of all time.

In 1994, Iz, nicknamed Bruddah Iz was voted favorite entertainer of the year by the Hawaiʻi Academy of Recording Arts. E Ala E released in 1995, featured the political title song “ʻE Ala ʻE” and “Kaleohano”, and N Dis Life (1996) featured “In This Life” and “Starting All Over Again”.

In 1997, Kamakawiwoʻole was again honored by HARA at the Annual Nā Hōkū Hanohano awards for Male Vocalist of the Year, Favorite Entertainer of the Year, Album of the Year, and Island Contemporary Album of the Year. He watched the awards ceremony from a hospital room.

Alone in Iz World (2001) debuted at #1 on Billboard’s World Chart and #135 on Billboard’s Top 200, #13 on the Top Independent Albums Chart, and #15 on the Top Internet Album Sales charts.

Throughout his life, Kamakawiwoʻole was morbidly obese and at one point weighed 757 pounds (343 kg; 54.1 st) standing 6-foot-2-inch (1.88 m) tall (body mass index = 97.2). He endured several hospitalizations because of health problems caused by his weight. Beset with respiratory, heart, and other medical problems, he died at the age of 38 in Queen’s Medical Center at 12:18 a.m. on June 26, 1997.

The Hawaiian state flag flew at half-staff on July 10, 1997, the day of Kamakawiwoʻole’s funeral. His koa wood coffin lay in state at the state capitol building in Honolulu. He was the third person in Hawaiian history to be awarded this honor, and the only one who was not a government official. Approximately ten thousand people attended the funeral. Thousands of fans gathered as his ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean at Mākua Beach on July 12, 1997. Scenes from the funeral and scattering of Kamakawiwoʻole’s ashes were featured in official music videos of “Over the Rainbow” released posthumously by Mountain Apple Company. As of October 2016, the two videos as featured on YouTube have collectively received over 279 million views.

Posted on November 5, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Lawrence Payton 6/1997

June 20, 1997 – Lawrence Payton (the Four Tops) was born on March 2, 1938 in Detroit, Michigan.

At age 15 he became a founding member of The Four Tops, founded in Detroit, Michigan as The Four Aims. The four members -Lawrence, Levi Stubbs, Abdul “Duke” Fakir, and Renaldo “Obie” Benson- met at a party in Detroit in 1953 and the next year began singing around town as the Four Aims. To avoid confusion with the Ames Brothers, they soon changed their name and in 1956 signed a recording contract with Chess Records in 1956, with the help of Payton’s cousin, Roquel Davis, who joined the group as a songwriter.

For Chess they recorded the song, “Kiss Me Baby” but it was a flop and went onto record with the Red Top and Riverside Record Labels. In 1960 they signed with Columbia and had a better success with jazz and pop music.

In 1963 they recorded with Berry Gordy’s Motown Label, and released the album, ‘Breaking Through.’ Gordy later put them back into R&B material and put them with Motown’s Holland-Dozier-Holland writing team.

After a full decade the group had numerous hits including “Baby I Need Your Lovin’,” a Top Ten hit in 1964, “Ask The Lonely,” a hit in 1965, “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugarpie, Honeybunch),” #1 in the spring of 1965, “It’s The Same Old Song,” a Top Five hit in 1965, “Reach Out, I’ll Be There,” one of their finest singles ever, released in 1966, “Standing In The Shadows Of Love,” a Top Ten hit in 1967, “Bernadette,” a Top Five hit in 1967, “7 Rooms of Gloom,” a Top Twenty hit in 1967, “You Keep Running Away,” a Top Twenty hit in 1967, and two 1968 hits, “If I Were A Carpenter” and “Walk Away Renee.”

In 1970 they joined producer Frank Wilson and they recorded a pop standard of Tommy Edward’s, “It’s All In The Game” and a ballad with ‘the Supremes’ entitled, “River Deep, Mountain High” in 1971.

In 1972 they left Motown and joined ABC-Dunhill, teaming up with Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter, and released, “Keeper Of The Castle” a Top Ten hit, and “Ain’t No Woman (Like The One I’ve Got)” a smash hit that was their last Top Five Pop hit. In 1973 they recorded the theme song for the film, “Shaft In Africa” and released the song, “Catfish” in 1976. In 1981 they signed with the Casablanca Record Label and released, “When She Was My Girl” a Top Ten hit. In 1983 they rejoined Motown and in 1988 left and signed with Arista Records, where they recorded, “Indestructible” a Top 40 Pop hit, which was their last.

They remained together for over four decades, having gone from 1953 until 1997 without a single change in personnel and they helped define the Motown Sound of the 1960s.

After their hey days, the Four Tops worked steadily, performing in Las Vegas showrooms, small clubs and large arenas, emerging occasionally with a hit record, such as “When She Was My Girl” in 1981. Among their performing venues in Southern California were Humphrey’s on Shelter Island in San Diego, the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts and several clubs in Los Angeles, where they recorded with ABC-Dunhill records.

In 1990 they were inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame.

Lawrence was the one who created the smooth, sharp jazz – pop hamonies for the group on their many hits such as “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)” and “Reach Out I’ll Be There”. Levi Stubbs, the group’s over-shadowing popular lead singer, said that Payton was crucial to the Tops because “he was responsible for the harmony.”

Payton died in June 1997 of liver cancer at the age of 59. He was later replaced by Theo Peoples.

Posted on November 4, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Bobby Helms 6/1997

June 19, 1997 – Robert Lee “Bobby” Helms was born on August 15, 1933 in Helmsburg near Bloomington, Indiana.

Though his name is unfamiliar to most, Bobby Helms rules the airwaves every year around December 25th. His single “Jingle Bell Rock” first became a hit in 1957, and it reappeared on the charts four of the following five years to become an all-time Christmas classic. Before he was pigeonholed, though, Helms had a successful country career with two number one hits to his credit.

Helms first performed on his father Fred’s Monroe County Jamboree, singing while brother Freddie played guitar. The Helms Brothers, as they were billed, became a regional attraction. Bobby later cut a single called “Tennessee Rock and Roll,” but then returned to Bloomington to appear on the Hayloft Frolic television show. While on the program, he was encouraged to go to Nashville to sing background vocals on an Ernest Tubb session. Tubb recommended him to Decca Records, and the label signed him in 1956. His debut single, “Fraulein” initially flopped in January 1957 but then hit number one on the country chart in April. (The song also hit the pop Top 40 in July of 1957.) In October, Helms released another number one, “My Special Angel,” which stayed four weeks at the top and crossed over to number seven on the pop charts.

Helms’ next recording was “Jingle Bell Rock”; though Decca released it only two days before Christmas 1957, the single still peaked at number six on the pop chart. It took five years for the song to become a second million-seller for Helms. It reached No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 and spent 21 weeks in the chart.
The record gained gold disc status. Accounts that Helms wrote and recorded the song with Hank Garland seem to be apocryphal—ASCAP and Allmusic list the writers of the song as Joseph Beal, Joseph Carlton, James Ross and James Boothe.
Two 1958 singles – “Just a Little Lonesome” and “Jacqueline” – hit the country Top Ten but flopped elsewhere, though a reissue of “Jingle Bell Rock” made the pop Top 40. The country single “Lonely River Rhine” hit the Top 20 in 1960, but subsequent new material from Helms had little success. (Decca reissued his Christmas hit each year from 1960 to 1962 with diminishing returns.)

Helms toured throughout the ’60s and recorded two albums for Kapp in 1966, I’m the Man and Sorry My Name Isn’t Fred — a nod either to brother Freddie or father Fred. Two years later, he released All New Just for You on the Little Darlin’ label. Several singles placed modestly on the country charts during 1967-1968, including “He Thought He’d Die Laughing” and “So Long.” The 1970 Certron single “Mary Goes ‘Round” was his last hit, but Helms recorded Pop-a-Billy for MCA as late as 1983.

Helms spent most of his later years living just outside Martinsville, Indiana, until his death from emphysema and asthma at the age of 63 on June 18, 1997.
He was portrayed by actor Brad Hawkins in the 2007 film Crazy.
Another record by Helms was “Schoolboy Crush”, which was a hit in the UK. It was released in the USA on June 23, 1958 on Decca. The same song was then covered by UK teen star Cliff Richard about the same time as the UK release.

Posted on November 1, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

John Wolters 6/1997

June 16, 1997 – John Christian Wolters was born on April 28th 1945 in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey.

He became part of the already established country rock band Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show in 1973, when Jay David left the band, and stayed until 1985, when the band split up.

The band had a global smash with “Sylvia’s Mother” and a top-10 hit with “The Cover of the Rolling Stone” before Wolters replaced their original drummer on Fried Face (1974). In 1976 Dr. Hook (by then they had dropped the rest of their moniker) had a top-10 hit with a cover of Sam Cooke‘s “Only Sixteen” and a #11 hit with the title track of A Little Bit More.

Dr. Hook had several more hits including, the top-10 singles “Sharing the Night Together” (1978) and “When You’re in Love With a Beautiful Woman” (1979) as well as the top-five “Sexy Eyes” (1980).

The band had more than 35 gold and platinum LPs in Australia and Scandinavia, where they toured to large crowds until their 1985 split.

He died at age 52 of liver cancer in San Francisco, California on June 16, 1997.

Posted on October 13, 2016February 13, 2025 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Ronnie Lane 6/1997

June 4, 1997 – Ronald Frederick “Ronnie” Lane (The Small Faces) was born on April 1, 1946 in Plaistow, a working class area in the East End of London, England.

He described his father, a truck driver, as a “saint”, who would work a long work day and then return home to nurse his wife and two sons, all of whom were diagnosed with M.S. at differing points in their lives. Doctors assured Lane as a child that the destructive disease was not necessarily inherited, although he found out later in his life that he had indeed inherited it.

After leaving school at the age of sixteen, Lane met Kenney Jones at a local pub, and they formed a group they named The Outcasts. Initially playing lead guitar, Lane quickly switched to bass. When shopping for a Harmony bass guitar, Lane visited the J60 Music Bar in Manor Park, London, where he met Steve Marriott, who was working there. Lane bought his bass guitar and went to Marriott’s house after work, where Marriott introduced him to his Motown and Stax collection. Lane and Marriott set out to form a band, recruiting friends Kenney Jones and Jimmy Winston, who switched from guitar to organ. Marriott was chosen to be the frontman and singer. (by 1966 Winston was replaced by Ian “Mac” McLagan as the band’s keyboardist). The name the Small Faces came from the fact that all band members were less than 5′.5″ tall.

Lane and Marriott began writing hit song after hit song, including “Itchycoo Park”, “Tin Soldier”, Lazy Sunday” and “All or Nothing”. At least a dozen successful songs credit Lane, and their concept album Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake, they later evolved into one of the UK’s most successful psychedelic acts before disbanding in 1969 when Steve Marriott left to pursue a solo career but ended up in Humble Pie with Peter Frampton.

Lane then formed the Faces with McLagan, Jones, Ronnie Wood and Rod Stewart in 1969. He shared primary songwriting duties with Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood, composing, or co-composing, many of their best-loved pieces and taking a central role during the recording of their fourth and final album, Ooh La La, particularly, as the band’s front man Rod Stewart focused on his own solo career. Unhappy due to poor reviews of the album and Stewart’s lack of commitment, Lane quit in 1973, making his last appearance at the Sundown Theatre in Edmonton, London, on 4 June. He was replaced by Tetsu Yamauchi but tellingly, the group made no further studio albums following Lane’s departure and split in 1975. After which Ronnie, Ian and Kenney were joined by Ronnie Wood (guitar) and Rod Stewart (lead vocals), both from The Jeff Beck Group, and the new line-up was renamed Faces.

Ronnie left Faces in 1973 to form his own band, Ronnie Lane’s Slim Chance. The same year they recorded the hit singles “How Come” and “The Poacher”, then the album “Anymore For Anymore”, showcasing his own blend of UK rock, folk, and country music.

During the recording of Rough Mix, (lauded as contender for best album of the year by many critics, but the label did not promote it and sales were lackluster), Lane’s multiple sclerosis was diagnosed. Nonetheless he toured, wrote and recorded (with Eric Clapton among others) and in 1979 released another album, See Me, which features several songs written by Lane and Clapton. Around this time Lane travelled the highways and byways of England and lived a ‘passing show’ modern nomadic life in full Gypsy traveller costume and accommodation.

In 1983 his girlfriend Boo Oldfield contacted Glyn Johns with a view to organizing a concert to help fund Action for Research into Multiple Sclerosis. Johns was already arranging Clapton’s Command Performance for Prince Charles so they decided to book the Royal Albert Hall for a further two nights and host a benefit concert. The resulting ARMS Charity Concerts. featured Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts, Ronnie Wood, Kenney Jones, Andy Fairweather-Low, Steve Winwood, Ray Cooper, James Hooker, Fernando Saunders, Chris Stainton, Tony Hymas, Simon Phillips and others. With the addition of Joe Cocker and Paul Rodgers they all toured the US. It was during this time that Rodgers and Page started the band, The Firm.

Ronnie and his Family moved to Texas in 1984, where the climate was more beneficial to his health, and continued playing, writing, and recording. He formed an American version of Slim Chance. For close to a decade Ronnie enjoyed his rock status in the Austin area and even toured Japan.

His health continued to decline, and his last performance was in 1992 at a Ronnie Wood gig. Also in the band that night was Ian McLagan.

In 1994 Ronnie and his wife Susan moved to the small town of Trinidad, Colorado. Jimmy Page, Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood continued to fund his medical care because no royalties from the Small Faces’ work was forthcoming until Kenney Jones and Ian McLagan were eventually able to secure payments, by which time Steve Marriott had died in a house fire and Lane had also died.

Lane succumbed to pneumonia, in the final stages of his progressive multiple sclerosis, on June 4, 1997 and was buried in the Masonic Cemetery in Trinidad, Colorado. He was 51. An album of live BBC recordings was about to be released to raise money for his care when he died.

For his work in both Small Faces and Faces, Lane was inducted posthumously into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012.

Posted on May 4, 2015February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Jeff Buckley 5/1997

May 29, 1997 – Jeff Buckley was born in California’s Orange County on November 17, 1966 and died in a tragic drowning accident in Memphis on May 29, 1997. He had emerged in New York City’s avant-garde club scene in the 1990’s as one of the most remarkable musical artists of his generation, acclaimed by audiences, critics, and fellow musicians alike. His first commercial recording, the four-song EP Live At Sin-é, was released in December 1993 on Columbia Records. The EP captured Buckley, accompanying himself on electric guitar, in a tiny coffeehouse in New York’s East Village, the neighborhood he’d made his home.

By the time of the EP’s release during the fall of 1993, Buckley had already entered the studio with Mick Grondahl (bass), Matt Johnson (drummer), and producer Andy Wallace and recorded seven original songs (including “Grace” and “Last Goodbye”) and three covers (among them Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”, Benjamin Britten’s “Corpus Christi Carol”) that comprised his debut album Grace. Guitarist Michael Tighe became a permanent member of Jeff Buckley’s ensemble and went on to co-write and perform on Grace’s “So Real” just prior to the release of the album.

In early 1994, not long after Live At Sin-é appeared in stores, Jeff Buckley toured clubs, lounges, and coffeehouses in North America as a solo artist from January 15-March 5 as well as in Europe from March 11-22. Following extensive rehearsals in April-May 1994, Buckley’s “Peyote Radio Theatre Tour” found him on the road with his band from June 2-August 16. His full-length full-band album, Grace, was released in the United States on August 23, 1994, the same day Buckley and band kicked off a European tour in Dublin, Ireland; the 1994 European Tour ran through September 22, with Buckley and Ensemble performing at the CMJ convention at New York’s Supper Club on September 24. The group headed back into America’s clublands for a Fall Tour lasting from October 19-December 18.

On New Year’s Eve 1994-95, Buckley returned to Sin-é to perform a solo set; on New Year’s Day, he read an original poem at the annual St. Mark’s Church Marathon Poetry Reading. Two weeks later, he and his band were back in Europe for gigs in Dublin, Bristol, and London before launching an extensive tour of Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Belgium, and the United Kingdom which lasted from January 29-March 5. On April 13 1995, it was announced that Jeff Buckley’s Grace had earned him France’s prestigious “Gran Prix International Du Disque — Academie Charles CROS — 1995”; an award given by a jury of producers, journalists, the president of France Culture, and music industry professionals, it had previously been given to Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel, Yves Montand, Georges Brassens, Bruce Springsteen, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Joni Mitchell, among other musical luminaries. France also awarded Buckley a gold record certification for Grace.

From March 5 through April 20, Buckley and his band rehearsed for an American spring tour with gigs running from April 22-June 2. From June through August, Jeff and company toured the United Kingdom, France, Denmark, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and Switzerland. The band took off for Down Under to play six Australian shows between August 28-September 6, 1995. In November 1995, Buckley played two unannounced solo shows at Sin-é.He performed songs including the new “Woke Up In A Strange Place” on Vin Scelsa’s “Idiot’s Delight” show on WXRK-FM on December 17 and celebrated New Year’s Eve 1995-96 with performances at New York’s Mercury Lounge and Sin-é.

Jeff Buckley and his touring ensemble went back to Australia, where Grace had earned a gold record certification, for the “Hard Luck Tour,” which ran from February 9-March 1 of 1996. Drummer Matt Johnson left the group after the final Australian show. The posthumous album Jeff Buckley-Mystery White Boy brings together some of the high points from Jeff’s 1995-1996 live performances. The DVD/home video release Jeff Buckley-Live In Chicago documents, in its entirety, Jeff’s concert at The Cabaret Metro in Chicago on May 13, 1995.

In May of ’96, Jeff played four gigs as a bass player with Mind Science of the Mind, a side-project of Buckley’s friend, Nathan Larson of Shudder To Think. In September ’96, Buckley played another unannounced solo gig at his old favorite haunt Sin-é. December of 1996 found Jeff Buckley embarking on his “phantom solo tour”; designed to experiment with new songs in a live setting (as in his Sin-é days), these unannounced solo gigs throughout the Northeast U.S. were played under a succession of aliases: the Crackrobats, Possessed By Elves, Father Demo, Smackrobiotic, the Halfspeeds, Crit Club, Topless America, Martha & the Nicotines, and A Puppet Show Named Julio.

At midnight on February 9, 1997, Jeff Buckley debuted his new drummer, Parker Kindred, in a show at Arlene Grocery on New York’s Lower East Side. He also played a couple of solo gigs in New York during the first months of 1997: a gig at the Daydream Cafe (featuring band members Mick Grondahl and Michael Tighe as “special guests”) and a solo performance February 4 as part of the Knitting Factory’s 10-Year Birthday Party.

Buckley and his band had recorded intermittently — with Tom Verlaine as producer — during Summer/Fall 1996 and early winter 1997 in New York and in February 1997 in Memphis. After the conclusion of those sessions, Jeff sent the band back to New York while, during March and April 1997, he remained in Memphis and continued to craft his work-in-progress, making various four-track home recordings of songs to present to his bandmates. Some of these were revisions of the songs recorded with Verlaine, some were brand new compositions, and some were surprising cover versions. The new lineup debuted Buckley’s new songs at Barrister’s in Memphis on February 12 and 13. Beginning March 31, Jeff began a series of regularly scheduled Monday night solo performances at Barrister’s. His last show there was on Monday, May 26, 1997. The night Buckley died, he was on his way to meet his band to begin three weeks of rehearsals for my sweetheart, the drunk; producer Andy Wallace, who’d helmed the boards on Grace, was to join them in Memphis in late June to record his new album.

On the evening of May 29, 1997, Buckley’s band flew to Memphis intending to join him in his studio there to work on the newly written material. That same evening, Buckley went swimming in Wolf River Harbor,[108] a slack water channel of the Mississippi River, while wearing boots and all of his clothing, and singing the chorus of the song “Whole Lotta Love” by Led Zeppelin.[109] Buckley had gone swimming there several times before.[110] A roadie in Buckley’s band, Keith Foti, remained on shore. After moving a radio and guitar out of reach of the wake from a passing tugboat, Foti looked up to see that Buckley had vanished. Despite a determined rescue effort that night, Buckley remained missing. On June 4, two locals spotted his body in the Wolf River near a riverboat, and he was brought to land.

Buckley’s autopsy showed no signs of drugs or alcohol in his system and the death was ruled as an accidental drowning.

In addition to his Columbia Records releases, Live At Sin-é and Grace, Jeff Buckley has appeared as a guest artist on several other recordings. He can be heard singing “Jolly Street,” a track on the Jazz Passengers 1994 album In Love. He contributed tenor vocals to “Taipan” and “D. Popylepis,” two recordings on John Zorn’s Cobra Live At The Knitting Factory (1995). On Rebecca Moore’s Admiral Charcoal’s Song, Buckley plays electric six-string bass on “If You Please Me,” “Outdoor Elevator,” and “Needle Men” (on which he also plays drums). He both plays guitar and sings backup vocals on Brenda Kahn’s “Faith Salons,” a key track on her Destination Anywhere album (released 1996). Patti Smith’s critically acclaimed Gone Again album features Buckley adding “voice” to the song “Beneath the Southern Cross” and “essrage” (a small fretless Indian stringed instrument) to “Fireflies.” On kicks joy darkness, a various artists’ spoken word tribute to beat poet Jack Kerouac, Jeff Buckley performed on “Angel Mine”; Jeff plays guitar, sitar, and mouth sax (adding words at the poem’s conclusion) on the track. Buckley can be heard reading Edgar Allan Poe’s “Ulallume – A Ballad,” on Closed On Account Of Rabies (Poems & Tales by Edgar Allan Poe) on Mouth Almighty/Mercury Records. He sang “I Want Someone Badly” (Epic) for Shudder To Think’s soundtrack to First Love, Last Rites. Sandy Bell, a friend of Buckley’s during his L.A. days, released the resurrected track “Hollywould” in 2000, which she co-wrote and recorded with Buckley.

An ardent enthusiast for a myriad of musical forms, Jeff Buckley was an early champion among young American musicians for the work of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the world’s foremost Qawwali (the music of the Sufis) singer. Buckley conducted an extensive interview with Nusrat in Interview magazine (January 1996) and wrote the liner notes Nusrat’s The Supreme Collection album, released on Mercator/Caroline records in August 1997. On May 9, 2000, Columbia Records released Jeff Buckley-Mystery White Boy, an album of live performances, and Jeff Buckley-Live In Chicago, a full-length concert (available on DVD or VHS) recorded live at The Cabaret Metro in Chicago on May 13, 1995, in the midst of Jeff’s “Mystery White Boy” tour.

As stated, following the release of Grace on August 23, 1994, Jeff and his group spent much of 1994-1996 performing around the world on the Unknown, Mystery White Boy, and Hard Luck tours. The May 2000 release of Jeff Buckley – Mystery White Boy brought together, for the first time, some of the high points of those shows. Produced by Michael Tighe (guitarist for Jeff’s band throughout their international touring and the recording of Grace) and Mary Guibert (Jeff’s mother) and Jeff Buckley-Mystery White Boy provides an evocative cross-section of Jeff’s repertoire: previously-unreleased Buckley compositions, electrifying live interpretations of songs from Grace, and obscure and marvelous cover choices. The recordings heard on Jeff Buckley-Mystery White Boy have been hand-picked from scores of concert tapes by Mary Guibert and the members of Jeff’s band who played such a large role in helping Jeff realize his musical vision.

Posted on May 5, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Harold Melvin 3/1997

March 24, 1997 – Harold Melvin (The Blue Notes) was born on June 25, 1939 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

He became one of the driving forces behind Philadelphia soul, leading his group the Blue Notes. The group formerly known as The Charlemagnes took on the name “The Blue Notes” in 1954, with a lineup consisting of Harold as lead singer, Bernard Wilson, Roosevelt Brodie, Jesse Gillis, Jr., and Franklin Peaker.

The 1960 single “My Hero” was a minor hit and 1965’s “Get Out (and Let Me Cry)” was an R&B hit.

In 1970, Harold recruited Teddy Pendergrass as the drummer for his backing band. When that same year Teddy took over as lead singer from John Atkins, he became the undeniable superstar of the group, until his departure and subsequent death. The group had a string of hits “If You Don’t Know Me By Now”, “I Miss You”, “The Love I Lost”, and “Don’t Leave Me This Way”, and socially conscious songs such as “Wake Up Everybody” and “Bad Luck” which holds the record for longest-running number-one hit on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart. (eleven weeks).

After Pendergrass left in 1976 for a solo career, Melvin continued to tour with various lineups of Blue Notes until suffering a stroke in 1996. Melvin died on March 24, 1997 at the age of 57. Lawrence Brown died of a respiratory condition on April 6, 2008 at age 63. In addition, three former members of the group would die during the year 2010. First, Teddy Pendergrass died of respiratory failure on January 13, 2010 at age 59, after having previously dealt with colon cancer. Six months later, original member Roosevelt Brodie, who was the second tenor for the original Blue Notes, died July 13, 2010 at age 75 due to complications of diabetes. And just five months later in that year, Bernard Wilson died on December 26, 2010 at age 64 from complications of a stroke and a heart attack. Pendergrass’ predecessor, John Atkins, died of an aneurysm in 1998. David Ebo, who succeeded Pendergrass, died of bone cancer on November 30, 1993 at age 43. Lloyd Parks is still living and is the sole survivor of the original Blue Notes.

Posted on April 7, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Jermaine Stewart 3/1997

March 17, 1997 – Jermaine Stewart was born on September 7, 1957 in Columbus, Ohio. In 1972 he and his family moved from Ohio to Chicago, where he started in show business by joining a local dance group.

From there he went on the road with the ‘Chi-lites’ and the ‘Staple Singers,’ then to the television shows “American Bandstand” and “Soul Train.” In the early 1980s he joined the group ‘Shalamar’ as a backup singer and dancer, from which he launched his own solo career.

First singing backup for the group ‘The Temptations’ and on ‘Culture Club’s’ hit “Miss Me Blind,” with the help of Mickey Craig from Culture Club he got his first record deal with Clive Davis Arista records. His first single, “The Word Is Out,” was released in 1984, followed by “I like It” and “Get Over It” (a single was only released in Europe). e had a string of hits including “The Word Is Out”, “Frantic Romantic”, and “Versatile”. Also his singles “Get Lucky”, “Don’t Talk Dirty to Me” and “Is It Really Love” found European success, especially in Germany.

In 1991 he released “We Don’t have To Take Our Clothes Off,” a song that reached Number 5 on the Top 50 Pop Charts. In the 1990s Jermaine Stewart battled the disease AIDs. He was working on a new album when he passed away in March 1997.

Stewart died of AIDS-related liver cancer on March 17, 1997 at age 39 in the Chicago suburb of Homewood, Illinois

Posted on February 8, 2016June 19, 2018 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Brian Connolly 2/1997

February 9, 1997 – Brian Connolly was born on October 5th 1945 in Govanhill, Glasgow. Whilst the true identity of Brian’s father was never officially made public, his mother was a teenage waitress named Frances Connolly who left him in a Glasgow hospital as an infant whilst he was possibly suffering from meningitis. He was fostered, aged two, by Jim and Helen McManus of Blantyre and took their family name. In his earliest years Connolly was also affectionately known as “snowball” referring to his almost white blonde hair. In a radio interview, Connolly reported that singing was a large part of growing up since there was no television, and that he was regularly called upon to sing for family and friends. Connolly has credited the Everly Brothers as being his earliest musical influence. After inadvertently discovering his lineage he eventually reverted to the name Connolly. Numerous sources have incorrectly asserted that he was a half-brother of the late actor Mark McManus (who found fame in the title role of detective series “Taggart”) but they were not related ( Mark “Taggart” McManus was actually the nephew of Brian’s foster father)

Continue reading Brian Connolly 2/1997

Posted on May 24, 2015February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Randy California 1/1997

January 2, 1997 – Randy Craig Wolfe aka Randy California was born on 20 February, 1951.

Jimi Hendrix gave him the name Randy California, to distinguish him from Randy Texas, who also played in Jimi’s backing band the Blue Flames, during his 1966 New York stint. His real name was Randy Craig Wolfe and he was lead guitarist and one of the founders of the Psychedelic Rock Band “Spirit” who gained worldwide recognition for songs like “Fresh Garabage”, “Mechanical World” and ‘Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus’ which introduced us to Mr. Skin.

Continue reading Randy California 1/1997

Posted on December 29, 2015February 13, 2025 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Townes vanZandt 1/1997

January 1, 1997 – John Townes Van Zandt better known as Townes Van Zandt was born on March 7, 1944 in Fort Worth into a wealthy family. He was a third-great-grandson of Isaac Van Zandt (a prominent leader of the Republic of Texas) and a second great-grandson of Khleber Miller Van Zandt (a Confederate Major and one of the founders of Fort Worth). Van Zandt County in east Texas was named after his family in 1848. Townes’ parents were Harris Williams Van Zandt (1913–1966) and Dorothy Townes (1919–1983). He had two siblings, Bill and Donna. Harris was a corporate lawyer, and his career required the family to move several times during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1952 the family transplanted from Fort Worth to Midland, Texas, for six months before moving to Billings, Montana.

At Christmas in 1956, Townes’s father gave him a guitar, which he practiced while wandering the countryside. He would later tell an interviewer that “watching Elvis Presley‘s October 28, 1956, performance on The Ed Sullivan Show was the starting point for me becoming a guitar player… I just thought that Elvis had all the money in the world, all the Cadillacs and all the girls, and all he did was play the guitar and sing. That made a big impression on me.” In 1958 the family moved to Boulder, Colorado. Van Zandt would remember his time in Colorado fondly and would often visit as an adult. He would later refer to Colorado in “My Proud Mountains”, “Colorado Girl”, and “Snowin’ On Raton”. Townes was a good student and active in team sports. In grade school, he received a high IQ score and his parents began grooming him to become a lawyer or senator.

The University of Colorado at Boulder accepted Van Zandt as a student in 1962. In the spring of his second year, his parents flew to Boulder to bring Townes back to Houston, apparently worried about his binge drinking and episodes of depression. They admitted him to the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, where he was diagnosed with manic depression. He received three months of insulin shock therapy, which erased much of his long-term memory. Later, his mother claimed her “biggest regret in life was that she had allowed that treatment to occur”. In 1965 he was accepted into the University of Houston’s pre-law program. Soon after he attempted to join the Air Force, but was rejected due to a doctor’s diagnosis that labelled him “an acute manic-depressive who has made minimal adjustments to life”. He quit school around 1967, having been inspired by his singer-songwriter heroes to pursue a career in playing music.

His music doesn’t jump up and down, wear fancy clothes, or beat around the bush. Whether he was singing a quiet, introspective country-folk song or a driving, hungry blues, Van Zandt’s lyrics and melodies were filled with the kind of haunting truth and beauty that you knew instinctively. His music came straight from his soul by way of a kind heart, an honest mind, and a keen ear for the gentle blend of words and melody. He could bring you down to a place so sad that you felt like you were scraping bottom, but just as quickly he could lift your spirits and make you smile at the sparkle of a summer morning or a loved one’s eyes — or raise a chuckle with a quick and funny talking blues. The magic of his songs is that they never leave you alone.
Despite his warm, dusty-sweet voice, as a singer Van Zandt never had anything resembling a hit in his nearly 30-year recording career — he had a hard enough time simply keeping his records in print. Nonetheless, he was widely respected and admired as one of the greatest country and folk artists of his generation. The long list of singers who’ve covered his songs includes Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson (who had a number one country hit with “Pancho and Lefty” in 1983), Emmylou Harris, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Nanci Griffith, Hoyt Axton, Bobby Bare, the Tindersticks, and the Cowboy Junkies.

Van Zandt was a Texan by birth and a traveler by nature. His father was in the oil business, and the family moved around a lot — Montana, Colorado, Minnesota, Illinois, among other places — which accounted for his sometimes vague answers to questions of where he “came from.” Van Zandt spent a couple years in a military academy and a bit more time in college in Colorado before dropping out to become a folksinger. (Van Zandt often returned to Colorado in subsequent years, spending entire summers, he said, alone in the mountains on horseback.)

Van Zandt moved to Houston and got his first paying gigs on the folk music circuit there in the mid-’60s. He played clubs like Sand Mountain and the Old Quarter (where in 1973 he recorded one of his finest albums, Live at the Old Quarter, released four years later), and he met singers such as Guy Clark (who became a lifelong friend and frequent road partner), Jerry Jeff Walker, and blues legend Lightnin’ Hopkins, who had a large influence on Van Zandt’s guitar playing in particular.

Another Texas songwriter, Mickey Newbury, saw Van Zandt in Houston one night and soon had him set up with a recording gig in Nashville (with Jack Clement producing). The sessions became Van Zandt’s debut album, For the Sake of the Song, released in 1968 by Poppy Records. The next five years were the most prolific of Van Zandt’s career, as Poppy released the albums Our Mother the Mountain, Townes Van Zandt, Delta Momma Blues, High, Low and in Between, and The Late Great Townes Van Zandt. These included such gems as “For the Sake of the Song,” “To Live’s to Fly,” “Tecumseh Valley,” “Pancho and Lefty,” and many more that have made him a legend in American and European songwriting circles.

Van Zandt moved to Nashville in 1976 at the urging of his new manager, John Lomax III. He signed a new deal with Tomato Records and in 1977 released Live at the Old Quarter, a double album — and the first of several live recordings — that contained many of his finest songs. In 1978 Tomato released Flyin’ Shoes; the long list of players on that album included Chips Moman and Spooner Oldham.

Van Zandt didn’t record again for nearly a decade, but he continued to tour. He moved back to Texas briefly, returning again to Nashville in the mid-’80s. During the early ’80s, both “If I Needed You” and “Pancho and Lefty” became country radio hits. In 1987, Van Zandt was back in business with his eighth studio album, At My Window, which came out on his new label, Sugar Hill. By this time, Van Zandt’s voice had dropped to a lower register, but the weathered, somewhat road-weary edge to it was as pure and expressive as ever. Two years later, Sugar Hill released Live & Obscure(recorded in a Nashville club in 1985), and two more live albums (Rain on a Conga Drum and Rear View Mirror) appeared on European labels in the early ’90s. In 1990, Van Zandt toured with the Cowboy Junkies, and he wrote a song for them, “Cowboy Junkies Lament,” which appeared on the group’s Black Eyed Man album (along with a song the Junkies wrote for him, “Townes Blues”).

Sugar Hill released Roadsongs in 1994, on which Van Zandt covered songs by Lightnin’ Hopkins, Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones, and others, all recorded off the soundboard during recent concerts. At the end of that same year, Sugar Hill released No Deeper Blue, Van Zandt’s first studio album since 1987. Van Zandt recorded it in Ireland with a group of Irish musicians. Van Zandt sang every song but only played guitar on one.

Van Zandt continued writing and performing through the 1990s, though his output slowed noticeably as time went on. He had enjoyed some sobriety during the early 1990s, but was actively abusing alcohol during the final years of his life. In 1994 he was admitted to the hospital to detox, during which time a doctor told Jeanene Van Zandt that trying to detox Townes again could potentially kill him. A year and a half after the release of No Deeper Blue,Van Zandt died unexpectedly on January 1, 1997; he was 52 years old. Posthumous releases included collections like Last Rights: The Life & Times of Townes Van Zandt and Anthology: 1968-1979, as well as albums like 1998’s Abnormal and the following year’s Far Cry From Dead, which featured previously unreleased songs.

Townes Van Zandt was 52 years 9 months 25 days old when he died on 1 January 1997. Cause; lifelong alcohol abuse.

The early 2000s saw a resurgence of interest in Van Zandt’s music and enigmatic life; three book projects and two films entered production, and features on the musician appeared in such tastemaking rags as Mojo. But perhaps the greatest gem was the discovery of a collection of Van Zandt demos dating from 1966, a full two years before his proper debut. The ten previously unreleased recordings were issued by the Houston imprint Compadre in April 2003 as In the Beginning…. Included in the release were liner notes written by John Lomax III.

Posted on December 12, 2015February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Tiny Tim 11/1996

November 30, 1996 – Tiny Tim was born Herbert Khaury, and gave his birth date as April 12, 1932. The son of a Lebanese father and Jewish mother, he grew up in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, and was a loner, eventually dropping out of high school.

His interest in American popular music (chiefly from the 1890s to the 1930s) began at a young age, as did his desire to be a singer, and accordingly he learned guitar and ukulele. His first performances — under the alias Larry Love — took place in the early ’50s, and according to legend, he debuted at a lesbian cabaret in Greenwich Village called the Page 3, where he became a regular. Khaury performed at small clubs, parties, and talent shows under a variety of names; his parents tried to discourage him at first, but relented when they saw that not every gig ended in ridicule.

By the early ’60s, he had gained a cult following around the thriving Greenwich Village music scene, particularly after he began to incorporate bizarre renditions of contemporary songs into his repertoire. He finally settled on the name Tiny Tim after the character in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (according to some accounts, it was suggested by a manager accustomed to working with midgets). Tim’s appearance in the film You Are What You Eat led to a booking on the hugely popular comedy series Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.

He was an instant sensation; whether or not he was seen as an object of ridicule, no one had ever seen anything like him. He appeared several more times on Laugh-In, and became a frequent guest on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, also performing on the Ed Sullivan and Jackie Gleason variety shows. His eccentric personality became as well-known as his music: he was obsessed with bodily cleanliness, and his distaste for sex seemed logical when paired with his gentle, asexual demeanor.

A hot commodity, Tim signed a record deal with Reprise and issued his debut album, God Bless Tiny Tim, in 1968. His signature rendition of “Tip-Toe Through the Tulips” became a hit, and the LP sold over 200,000 copies. Striking while the iron was hot, Tim recorded a follow-up, Tiny Tim’s Second Album, which was released at the end of 1968. Its follow-up, an album of children’s songs titled For All My Little Friends was released in August of 1969.

On December 17 of that year, Tim exchanged vows and tungsten wedding bands when he married his girlfriend, 17-year-old Victoria Budinger (known as Miss Vicki, in typically respectful Tim fashion), on the Johnny Carson show. The couple later had a daughter, Tulip, but mostly lived apart, and divorced after eight years. Following his wedding, Tim continued to perform around the country, including some lucrative gigs in Las Vegas; unfortunately, many of his business associates took advantage of his naïveté, leaving him with few savings from his run of success.

By the early ’70s, perhaps due to simple familiarity, America’s fascination with Tiny Tim had waned. Even after the TV appearances and high-profile gigs dried up, Tim kept plugging away, performing whenever and wherever he could. He recorded steadily for a series of mostly small labels throughout the 70’s and 80’s.

He remarried in 1984 to 23-year-old Miss Jan. They lived apart most of the time and the marriage lasted until 1994. Tim joined a circus for 36 weeks.

In the late ’80s, he moved to Des Moines, IA. In 1992. In August of 1995 he married for a third time to Miss Sue, and he moved to Minneapolis.

During the mid-’90s, Tim raised his public profile with appearances on the Conan O’Brien and Howard Stern shows; however, in September of 1996, he suffered a heart attack while performing at a ukulele festival in Massachusetts. Upon his release from the hospital, Tim resumed his concert schedule, but sadly, on November 30, he suffered another heart attack in Minneapolis while performing “Tip-Toe Through the Tulips,” and died an hour later at age 64.

Posted on September 18, 2015February 13, 2025 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Tupac Shakur 9/1996

September 13, 1996 – Tupac Amaru Shakur or Tupac Shakur was an American rapper and actor with a net worth of US$40 Million mostly earned since he died. He started his career as a roadie, backup dancer and became one of the best-selling music artist in history, who sold over 75 million of his albums worldwide as of 2010. He ranked at number two in the list of The Greatest MCs of All Time and Rolling Stone named him the 86th Greatest Artist of All Time. He made his debut in the film, “Nothing But Trouble” in 1991. Five years later he was dead.

Shakur was shot several times in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada at the intersection of Flamingo Road and Koval Lane on September 7, 1996. He died as a result of multiple gunshot wounds on September 13, 1996. Continue reading Tupac Shakur 9/1996

Posted on March 12, 2017February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Mel Taylor 8/1996

August 10, 1996 – Mel Taylor (the Ventures) was born in Brooklyn, New York, on September 24, 1933, the first child of Grace and Lawrence Taylor. His mother”s family was Russian/Eastern European Jewish, and his father”s family was from the Tennessee/North Carolina area, with English, German, Dutch and Cherokee roots.

His early years were spent in Brooklyn but, in the summer of 1939, his father took him back to the family home in Johnson City, TN, for the first of many visits. His father, grandfather and uncles all played guitar or banjo, and Mel became used to music being an integral part of his life. Back in New York, he joined the Police Athletic League and excelled in the 100-yard dash. He also developed a lifelong passion for the Dodgers baseball team.

Mel’s interest in the drums began early, too. His mother remembered him banging on pots and pans with knitting needles, then drumsticks. In school, he joined the drum and bugle corps, and marched in the Macy’s parade. His inspiration came from big bands and especially Gene Krupa, whom he heard on the radio and whose style he began to copy.

In his early teens, Mel moved permanently to Tennessee where he attended high school. After trying out for the football team, he found he preferred marching in the band instead. He joined the Navy at the age of 17 and, after basic training in the Great Lakes region, was posted to Pensacola where he was assigned to a crash crew for the Navy pilots’ training facility.

After leaving the Navy, Mel returned to Tennessee where he started playing music on local radio and TV shows. His younger brother, Larry Taylor (later bass player with Canned Heat), remembers that Mel played rhythm guitar and sang back-up on a rockabilly TV show in Johnson City with Eddie Skelton. He later played drums with Joe Franklin”s group, and even appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show — or rather his arm did, as that was all anyone could see of him when the show aired! He also played guitar and sang on his own (very) early morning radio show, as “Mel Taylor and the Twilight Ramblers”.

Mel moved his family, including 4 small children, out to California in 1958. During the day, Mel worked LA Grand Central Market, as a meat cutter – a trade he had learned in Tennessee. By night however, he played drums in clubs around the L.A. area and became quite sought after. Soon he was able to quit his day job, and graduate to session work in the recording studios. His early credits include “The Monster Mash” with Bobby “Boris” Pickett, “The Lonely Bull” with Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass (for which he was paid $10!), various cuts with Buck Owens, and many more. He also became house drummer at the famous Palomino Club in North Hollywood.

In the late 1950″s and early 1960″s everyone in the music business frequented the Palomino – and often sat in with the house band, so Mel had the opportunity to meet and play with many hit artists. One night in 1962, The Ventures came to the Palomino after doing a TV show in Hollywood, but without their drummer, so Mel obliged and played “Walk Don”t Run” with the group.

Later, The Ventures asked him if he would be interested in joining them, as their original drummer was unable to travel. Shortly thereafter, they called Mel in to do some recording and, a few months later, to go on the road with them. From 1963 on, Mel became known as The Ventures” drummer, recording and performing with them for more than 32 years, traveling all over the US, to Europe and to Japan, where The Ventures” annual tour was considered a major cultural event.

He released a solo album in the late 1960s and formed his own band called Mel Taylor & The Dynamics in the late 1970s

In July 1996, while on tour in Japan with The Ventures, Mel was diagnosed with pneumonia, but subsequently a malignant tumor was found in his lungs. He continued to play until August 1, so that a replacement drummer could be found for the balance of the tour. On August 2, Mel returned to Los Angeles for further testing, but the cancer was so fast-moving that, after less than 10 days at home, he died very suddenly on August 11 at the age of 62.

Posted on December 19, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

John Panozzo 7/1996

July 16, 1996 – John Anthony Panozzo (Styx) was born on September 20, 1948 in the Roseland/Pullman neighborhood, on the south side of Chicago, Illinois, with his fraternal twin brother, Chuck (born 90 minutes apart).

At age 7, the twins took musical lessons from their uncle in which John took an interest in drums and percussion. They attended Catholic school and eventually they were part of a three-piece band in which John played drums and Chuck played guitar. They would play weddings at age 12 and were paid $15 apiece.

Then, in 1961, John, Chuck, and their neighbor, Dennis DeYoung, formed a band called The Tradewinds in which John played drums, Chuck played guitar, and Dennis played the accordion and sang. They played local gigs at bars and began gaining popularity as a garage band on the city’s South Side. In 1968, Chuck switched to bass and they added guitarists/vocalists James “J.Y.” Young and John Curulewski, changing their name to TW4. The band signed to Wooden Nickel Records and changed their name to Styx, after the Greek name for the mythological river of the dead.

At first Styx struggled to get recognition outside their native Illinois. In 1975, “Lady”, a ballad culled from their second album, started to pick up nationwide airplay and eventually became a Top Ten US hit three years after its original release.

Suddenly promoted into a bigger league, the outfit signed to A&M Records and replaced Curulewski with the guitarist Tommy Shaw, who became one of their main writers with Young and De Young. The Panozzo brothers acted as a more than capable rhythm section for this hard-working band who didn’t flinch at doing 110 gigs in six months (this punishing schedule would later take its toll).

At the height of their fame in the late Seventies and early Eighties, Styx were prime exponents of the much-maligned power ballad and pomp-rock genres. As such, they have forever been lumped together with acts like Asia, Boston, Foreigner, Journey, Kansas, Reo Speedwagon and Toto whose songs dominated American radio and the Simon Bates Our Tune and Golden Hour slots.

Styx undoubtedly became one of the prototypes and inspirations for the parodic Rob Reiner movie Spinal Tap with their elaborate shows based around concept albums like The Grand Illusion, Cornerstone and Paradise Theater (all platinum records). In 1979, following hit singles such as “Lorelei”, “Mademoiselle”, “Come Sail Away” and “Renegade”, a US survey by Gallup revealed the scary fact that, while punk and new wave were ruling the UK, Styx was the most popular rock band with American teenagers.

At the end of that year, the De Young ballad “Babe” became an American no 1 and a million-seller. Having also conquered Canada, Styx could at last turn their attention to overseas territories. In 1980, “Babe” duly entered the British Top 10 and the group played the Hammersmith Odeon in London.

The band may have over-reached itself with the ambitious Kilroy Was Here, which attempted to blend rock and theatre while dealing with the state of the nation, but their singles (“Mr Roboto” and “Don’t Let It End” in 1983) still secured high placings in the US charts.

However, after the obligatory double live album Caught in the Act, the now feuding components of Styx took an exten-ded break. De Young and Shaw both launched solo careers, the latter eventually joining veteran gonzo- rocker Ted Nugent in the Damn Yankees supergroup.

In 1990, the other four Styx members recruited Glen Burtnik to replace Shaw and hit the comeback trail with their Edge of the Century album. The following year, on a wave of patriotism fuelled by the Gulf War, their “Show Me the Way” single (not the Peter Frampton song of the same title) became an anthem and a US Top 10 hit.

Years of excessive drinking began to take a toll on Panozzo’s liver. In the mid-1990s, as Styx was about to embark on its first tour with the classic line-up since 1983, John fell seriously ill and began battling cirrhosis of the liver, eventually dying of gastrointestinal hemorrhaging and cirrhosis on July 16, 1996. He was 47 years old.

The band dedicated their 1996 Return to Paradise tour to him, and Tommy Shaw, who had earlier replaced Curulewski, wrote the song “Dear John” as the band’s final tribute to their drummer and friend.

Posted on December 18, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Chas Chandler 7/1996

July 17, 1996 – Bryan James “Chas” Chandler (the Animals) was born in Heaton, Newcastle upon Tyne in Northumberland England on December 18, 1938.

After leaving school, he worked as a turner in the Tyneside shipyards. Having originally learned to play the guitar, he became the bass player with The Alan Price Trio in 1962. After Eric Burdon joined the band, the Alan Price Trio was renamed The Animals and became one of the most successful R&B bands ever.

The hulking bassist (Chandler stood six-foot-four) was on all of the Animals’ recordings from their first sides in 1963 through late 1966, when the nucleus of the original group disbanded.
Chandler’s bass lines were rarely given critical attention but some, including the opening riff of the group’s 1965 hit “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” and “It’s my life” subsequently received praise. Chandler was also the most prominent of the group’s backing vocalists and did occasional songwriting with Burdon. In 1966, despite commercial success, Chandler became disillusioned with the lack of money, recalling that, “We toured non-stop for three years, doing 300 gigs a year and we hardly got a penny.”

However during his final tour with The Animals, Chandler was advised by Keith Richards’ girlfriend, Linda Keith, to go see an up-coming guitarist, Jimmy James, who was playing with the Blue Flames at the Cafe Wha in New York’s Greenwich Village.

Chandler was especially impressed by Jimmy James’s performance of the Tim Rose song “Hey Joe”, offered to be his manager and invited him to London. James asked Chandler if he could introduce him to Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, and his “Yes” clinched the deal. His move across the Atlantic was made possible with the help of Animals manager Michael Jeffery, who suggested that he revert to his actual name Jimi Hendrix, and later suggested naming the band the Jimi Hendrix Experience. In Britain, Chandler recruited bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell as the other members of the Experience.

His enthusiasm fueled Hendrix during the early days. While engineers such as Eddie Kramer, George Chkiantz, and Gary Kellgren were also important to capturing the Experience’s sound in the studio, Chandler was invaluable in helping to select and refine the material. Also he, unlike many producers, had been on the other side of the glass booth; his previous experience in the studio as a member of a top group no doubt helped earn Hendrix’s respect and prepare both of them for the challenge of making the best records possible.

He was also instrumental in introducing Hendrix to Eric Clapton. It was through this introduction that Hendrix was given the opportunity to play with Clapton and Cream on stage. It was Chandler’s idea for Hendrix to set his guitar on fire, which made national news when this idea was used at a concert at the Finsbury Astoria Theatre and subsequently at the Monterey Pop festival. Hendrix’s sound engineer Eddie Kramer later recalled that Chandler was very hands on with the first two Hendrix albums, adding that “he was his mentor and I think it was very necessary.”

Increasingly frustrated at Hendrix’s hectic lifestyle and progressively more time-consuming dallying in the studio, however, Chandler ended his association with the Experience in the middle of the Electric Lady land sessions in 1968, claiming they were self-indulgent. He left management services in the hands of Jeffery in the following year.

Chandler’s role in Hendrix’s career is soften underestimated by biographers, particularly those who insist on viewing Hendrix as a genius manipulated by virtually everyone around him. Chandler risked almost all of his resources to launch Hendrix’s career, funding the “Hey Joe” session before Hendrix had a contract, letting Hendrix live in his flat when the pair arrived in London, and even letting the guitarist use the flat for rehearsal at the outset.

Chandler kick-started Hendrix’s songwriting by insisting that Jimi write the B-side to “Hey Joe,” although Hendrix had written little or no songs previously and wanted to do a cover tune (Chandler also wanted to make sure Hendrix got some publishing royalties). Partially as a result of the books in Chandler’s apartment, particularly the science fiction ones, Hendrix’s lyrics took on a poetic and cosmic influence. Most importantly, Chandler was able, at least at first, to keep the Experience focused and productive in the studio. Had he been able to continue working with the group as he had in 1966 and 1967, there’s reason to believe that Hendrix’s final records, and indeed final years of his life, would have been more coherent and productive as well.

During the two year Hendrix era, Chandler also did a little production for the Soft Machine, another group in the Jeffery/Chandler stable. He produced the A-side of their first single (1967’s “Love Makes Sweet Music”) and co-produced their debut album in 1968 with Tom Wilson; Soft Machine bassist Kevin Ayers went on record with his dissatisfaction with that record’s production, although he targeted Wilson for most of the blame.

But Chandler’s major financial coup would be as producer, and eventually manager, of Slade, the glammy British hard rock group that was perennially on the British charts in the ’70s. Chandler had found the group after forming a production company with rock entrepreneur Robert Stigwood, who allowed Chandler to buy the management rights to the band for 5,000 pounds in 1972.
Chandler then managed and produced Slade for twelve years, during which they achieved six number one chart hits in the UK.

He then went on to manage and produce the English rock band Slade for twelve years. During this time, Chandler bought and ran IBC Studios, which he renamed Portland Recording Studios, after the studio address of 35 Portland Place, London and ran it for four years until he sold it to Don Arden.

In 1977, Chandler played and recorded with The Animals during a brief reunion and he joined them again for a further revival in 1983, at which point he sold his business interests, in order to concentrate on being a musician. During the early 1990s, he helped finance the development of Newcastle Arena, a ten-thousand seat sports and entertainment venue that opened in 1995.

Chandler died while undergoing tests related to an aortic aneurysm at Newcastle General Hospital on 17 July 1996, only days after performing his final solo show. He was 57.

When Jimi Hendrix set fire to his guitar, Chas Chandler was ready with the lighter fuel. When Slade were desperate for a new image, Chandler dressed the band up as skinheads.

When Chandler quit The Animals and swapped his caftan for a suit, he swiftly became one of the most respected and successful managers and producers of the rock age.

He discovered Jimi Hendrix, but it was his energy and commitment that helped turn a shy young American backing guitarist into a dynamic performer and a rock legend. Their mutual regard was based on trust and friendship. When their partnership eventually broke down, Chandler found it a bitter blow. But just before Hendrix died in September 1970, he called upon his old manager once more for help and guidance. Chas Chandler was a man that anxious artists knew they could trust.

Posted on December 14, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Jonathan Melvoin 7/1996

July 12, 1996 – Jonathan David Melvoin (Prince, the Smashing Pumpkins) was born on December 6th 1961 in Los Angeles, California. He was the brother of twins Susannah and Wendy Melvoin of Prince and the Revolution, and son of Wrecking Crew musician Mike Melvoin. He first learned to play drums at the age of five and was described by friends and relatives as a musician who could play anything.

His parents divorced when he was 14, and he moved with his mother from California to New York City and eventually to Conway, N.H.

As keyboard player and drummer; he performed with many punk bands in the ’80s such as The Dickies, and also made musical contributions to many of Susannah and Wendy Melvoin projects, as well as Prince and the Revolution’s album “Around the World in a Day”.

He was also a member of The Family, a Prince side project which produced the original recording of “Nothing Compares 2 U” and made musical contributions to many Wendy & Lisa projects, as well as to Prince and the Revolution’s album Around the World in a Day. He also played drums on Do U Lie? from the 1986 Prince & the Revolution album Parade. At the time of his death he was the (already fired) touring keyboardist for The Smashing Pumpkins during their worldwide tour for the album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.

In 1994, Melvoin, who worked between gigs as an emergency medical technician, and his wife, Laura, bought a home in Kearsarge, N.H., and prepared for the birth of their son Jacob August in the spring of 1995.

On July 12, 1996 Melvoin died in New York City at age 34 from a potent mixture of alcohol and heroin (specifically a substance known as Red Rum) in Manhattan’s Regency Hotel. Smashing Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, present at the scene, tried but failed to revive him. There is much mystery and speculation about what actually took place. Chamberlin was allegedly advised by 9-1-1 operators to put Melvoin’s head in the shower in an attempt to revive him until paramedics arrived.

Melvoin was pronounced dead at the scene. Chamberlin was subsequently fired from the band and criminally charged. According to the band, there had been previous overdoses by both of them. Melvoin had already been fired, but was continuing to tour with The Smashing Pumpkins until the end of the tour leg. Melvoin’s replacement was Dennis Flemion of The Frogs. His last gig with the Pumpkins was at the Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland.

The Smashing Pumpkins were not invited to Melvoin’s funeral. Several songs were inspired by his death, including the Sarah McLachlan song “Angel”, the Wendy & Lisa song “Jonathan” (as Girl Bros.), and Prince’s “The Love We Make” from the album Emancipation.

Posted on October 19, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — 1 Comment

Alan Blakley 6/1996

June 11, 1996 – Alan Blakley (the Tremeloes) was born on April 1st 1942 in Bromley, Kent, England. Being a teenager in the mid fifties in England with so many new music influences (Skiffle, blues, rock and roll), a young lad learned to play an instrument, or 3 in Alan’s case.

Drummer, rhythm guitarist, keyboardist, he became a founding member of the Tremeloes with fourteen UK and two U.S. Top 20 hit singles to their name. The band first got together in 1958, when they were all in their mid-teens. In the original line-up Alan was on drums, with Brian Poole as vocals and guitarist, Alan Howard playing saxophone and Graham Scott on guitar. Alan very soon took over on guitar to leave Brian as front man – singer.

By 1961, a few line-up changes and Alan now on keyboards, they had turned professional. The original quintet consisted of lead vocalist Brian Poole, lead guitarist Rick West (born Richard Westwood), rhythm guitarist/keyboardist Alan Blakley, bassist Alan Howard and drummer Dave Munden.

On New Year’s Day, 1962, Decca, looking for a Beat group, auditioned two promising young bands: Brian Poole and the Tremeloes and a somewhat similar combo (also heavily influenced by Buddy Holly) from Liverpool, the Beatles. Decca chose Brian Poole and the Tremeloes over the Beatles, reportedly based on location – the Tremeloes were from the London area, making them more accessible than the Liverpool-based Beatles.

As Brian Poole and the Tremeloes they first charted with a version of “Twist and Shout” in 1963, quickly followed by their chart topping “Do You Love Me” making them the first south of England group to top the chart in the beat boom era.

In 1964 they made tours of South Africa and Australia, followed by a film A Touch of Blarney. When Brian Poole left the band for a solo career in 1966, Alan took over the leadership and the hits kept coming with among others “Even the Bad Times Are Good”; “(Call Me) Number One”; “Me And My Life”; ” Hello World “; “Suddenly You Love Me”; “Helule Helule”; “My Little Lady”; “Silence is Golden” and “Here Comes My Baby”. The latter two also entered the Top Twenty of the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, in addition both tracks sold a million copies globally, each earning gold disc status, as did “Even the Bad Times Are Good”. A

lan wrote or co-wrote many of the Tremeloes songs and after their decline, he produced records for other acts, including The Rubettes, Bilbo and Mungo Jerry. In 1983 the original quartet reformed and made a cover version of the Europop hit “Words”

He died after battling cancer on June 11, 1996 at 54.

Posted on May 17, 2018May 17, 2018 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Jim Ellison 6/1996

June 20, 1996 – James ‘Jim’ Ellison (Material Issue) was born on April 18, 1964 in Chicago, Illinois. As a teenager Jim was inspired by the likes of David Bowie, the Who, and Sweet to seriously take up guitar playing. Then while attending Chicago’s Columbia Art College he formed the powerpop band Material Issue in an effort to form a group that would merge the pop hooks of the Beatles, Cheap Trick and Big Star with a modern rock edge.

He soon got his wish, as he hooked up with fellow students Ted Ansani (bass, vocals) and Mike Zelenko (drums), forming Material Issue in 1986. With the group causing a local buzz from the get-go, Ellison also formed his own independent record label around this time, Big Block Records, which he ran out of his bedroom in Addison, Illinois. Continue reading Jim Ellison 6/1996

Posted on October 10, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Don Grolnick 6/1996

June 1, 1996 – Don Grolnick was born September 23, 1947 in Brooklyn and grew up in Levittown, New York, where he began his young musical life playing the accordion, but later switched to piano.

His interest in jazz began as a child when his father took him to a Count Basie concert, and soon after they also saw Erroll Garner perform at Carnegie Hall.

He went on to study at Tufts University with a major in philosophy, but his interest in music remained. After he left Tufts, Grolnick remained in Boston and teamed up with his boyhood friend Stuart Shulman on bass and guitarist Ken Melville to form the jazz rock band Fire & Ice.

They opened for bands such as B.B. King, The Jeff Beck Group and the Velvet Underground at Boston clubs like the Boston Tea Party and The Ark. This was Grolnick’s first foray into rock and blues as a performer, and he began to write within the medium as well.

As a session musician/pop pianist/composer/arranger he became most noteworthy for his work with artists such as Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, Steely Dan, David Sanborn, Roberta Flack, Carly Simon, Billy Cobham, JD Souther, Marcus Miller, Bob Mintzer, Dave Holland and Bette Midler.

Grolnick moved back to New York in 1969 where he joined Melville in the jazz fusion band “D” (1969-1971), which also provided backup for Andy Warhol superstar Ultra Violet. He also played on albums by the Brecker Brothers and Ten Wheel Drive. He was a member of the groups Steps Ahead and Dreams, both with Michael Brecker.(1975)

Even though Grolnick played in rock bands and blues groups while a teenager, he was always interested in jazz. He worked with the Brecker Brothers (starting in 1975), and in the early ’80s with Steps Ahead. He had long been a busy session musician often utilized by pop singers. In the 1980s, Grolnick appeared in many settings including with Joe Farrell, George Benson, Peter Erskine, David Sanborn, John Scofield, Mike Stern, and the Bob Mintzer big band. Don Grolnick is heard at his best on his Hip Pocket debut Hearts and Numbers (1986), and on his two Blue Note albums, which have been reissued as a double-CD.

Don Grolnick was a subtle and rather underrated pianist throughout his career, but his flexibility and talents were well known to his fellow musicians.

Grolnick died on June 1, 1996 from non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. He was 48 years old.

Posted on September 20, 2016July 13, 2018 by Macamba0 — 1 Comment

Johnny Watson 5/1996

May 17, 1996 – Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson was born on February 3rd 1935 in Houston Texas. His father John Sr. was a pianist, and taught his son the instrument. But young Watson was immediately attracted to the sound of the guitar, in particular the electric guitar as played by T-Bone Walker and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown.

His grandfather, a preacher, was also musical. “My grandfather used to sing while he’d play guitar in church, man,” Watson reflected many years later. When Johnny was 11, his grandfather offered to give him a guitar if, and only if, the boy didn’t play any of the “devil’s music”. Watson agreed, but later said “that was the first thing I did, play the devil’s music”. A musical prodigy, he played with Texas bluesmen Albert Collins and Johnny Copeland.

Continue reading Johnny Watson 5/1996

Posted on April 29, 2015February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Bradley Nowell 5/1996

May 25, 1996 – Bradley James Nowell was born February 22, 1968 and was the founding frontman/guitarist of the ska rock group Sublime. He tragically did not live to see the success of the band’s best-known album, Sublime, having overdosed on heroin in 1996 before it was released.

He truly could have become a legend.

The story of Sublime is full of sad, strange twists, but this is perhaps the strangest: Since frontman Brad Nowell overdosed before his band became a phenomenon, before he had a chance to become a bona fide rock star, his death has been oddly free of the mythic impact of so many rock star flameouts.

Sublime’s success has come as a slow-building surprise, rather than in a rush of mourning, and it’s been based on the sweet funk Nowell cooked up during his too-short 28-year love affair with punk, hip-hop, reggae and whatever other music he could lay his hands on. Bradley Nowell died on May 25, 1996, in a San Francisco hotel room, after shooting up some heroin that was much more potent than the brown Mexican tar he was used to. His death came seven days after his wedding to Troy den Denkker, who’d given birth to their son, Jakob, 11 months earlier; it was two months before the release of Sublime, the album that would make his band famous. The heroin death of the Smashing Pumpkins’ touring keyboard player, Jonathon Melvoin, got more attention in the press. In fact, plenty of Sublime fans don’t even know that Nowell is gone. “We still get lots of letters for him,” says Brad’s father, Jim, who handles his son’s estate. “I have a boxful of them in my office.”

At least a boxful. By April 1997, a little less than a year after Nowell’s OD, Sublime had entered Billboard‘s Top 20, and the album’s first single, the breezily grooving, mostly acoustic hip-hop toaster “What I Got,” went to No. 1 on the Modern Rock chart. And that was only the beginning. Throughout 1997, Sublime produced hit after hit, and the album has sold more than 2 million copies to date. The follow-up to “What I Got” was the reggae-tinged ballad “Santeria”; then came the shuffling ska of “Wrong Way” and the dance-hall-flavored “Doin’ Time,” which Nowell constructed around the melody of the Gershwin standard “Summertime.”

Eighteen months after Nowell’s death, Sublime sold about 40,000 records every week; in November, MCA released Second-Hand Smoke, a collection of early songs, unissued material, remixes and alternate takes. Sublime’s surviving members recently inked a deal to release at least three more albums of archival material over the next few years. Incredibly, the band that was no longer a band became perhaps the biggest American rock act of 1997.

These are a few of the things Brad Nowell loved: surfing; eating; drugs; his dog, Louie; his son, Jakob; his wife, Troy; and music – maybe music most of all. He grew up gifted and musically inclined: His mother was a singer with perfect pitch, and his father liked to strum folk songs on the guitar. At Christmas, the acoustic guitars would come out and Brad would spend hours playing and singing with his father, grandfather and uncle. He devoured sounds, and could pick out a tune on the guitar after hearing it once. By the time he was 13, he’d started his own band, Hogan’s Heroes.

Nowell was 10 when his parents split up. He lived with his mom, Nancy, for four years before moving back to his dad’s house in Long Beach, Calif., in 1981. He was a smart kid who got good grades and had the brains to make his younger sister, Kellie, do his homework whenever he didn’t want to. “He was probably twice as intelligent as I am,” she says, “but he just wasn’t real school-minded.” Guidance counselors had a name for what was wrong with kids like Brad who failed to live up to their obvious potential – attention-deficit disorder – and a drug for it, too: Ritalin.

Unlike the wealthier, whiter suburbs of Orange County, where Brad’s mom lived, Long Beach is a funky old port town of 450,000, with affluent bayside communities – Belmont Shore and Naples – and Latino, African-American and Southeast Asian neighborhoods farther inland. With cheaper rents than Hollywood and lots of available space, Long Beach had a thriving art underground in the ’80s, as well as a music scene in which punk, surf and hip-hop cultures clashed and blended freely.

Nowell was a master at melding these sounds into something new. From Sublime’s earliest recordings, his combination of ska, dub, punk, funk, rap, reggae and heavy metal seemed less like a synthesis than a natural byproduct of Long Beach’s youth culture. Though there were few local clubs to play, house parties could bring a couple hundred bucks every weekend – enough to buy all the beer, pot and gasoline the band needed. In 1990, one semester before graduating from California State University Long Beach with a degree in finance, Nowell dropped out to devote all his time to the band. By then, Sublime were well-known up and down the coast; from San Diego to Santa Barbara, beach towns were their turf.

In photographs from this period, Nowell looks like the prototypical SoCal surf rat: sun-bleached hair, wraparound shades and Hawaiian shirts. With his round face and easy smile, the cherubic singer gave off an air of bemused calm. But behind the mellow exterior, Nowell was troubled. “There was always a part of him that wasn’t satisfied,” says his widow, Troy Nowell. Sitting on the patio of Nowell’s dad’s house, overlooking the calm waters of Alamitos Bay, she recalls her three-year life with Brad. “As happy as he was 80 percent of the time, there was 20 percent that could not be made happy, and it ate him up.”

Nowell battled with his addiction for most of the time Troy knew him, kicking when his record deal with MCA was in the offing, in 1994, and again when Troy got pregnant a year later. But friends say he could never be comfortable without the drug. Troy blames the Ritalin he was given as a child for having created his craving for drugs, but she blames something else as well: “He wanted to be a rock star. He said it was very rock & roll, you know. Perry Farrell and Kurt Cobain and all those guys did drugs, and Brad wanted to see what it was like. Then they honestly begin to think that they write better music! I mean, Robbin’ the Hood [Sublime’s second album] was written when Brad was at his worst of being strung out. It’s a great album, but it’s all about his heroin abuse: ‘Now I’ve got the needle/I can shake but I can’t breathe/Take it away and I want more, more/One day I’m gonna lose the war.’ ”

Sublime were a party band. They played house parties, beach parties, frat parties; and if there wasn’t a party, they brought one with them. They were, people will tell you, lovable, but they were also, the same people will attest, out of control. They loved to get fucked up, they loved to fuck things up, and they had many ways of doing it. Sometimes Nowell hocked the band’s instruments before a gig in order to pay for his habit. Other times, the band would party too much on the day of a major gig and squander a golden opportunity. For instance: June 17, 1995 – Sublime are invited to play the KROQ Weenie Roast in Los Angeles alongside Bush and Hole, at a time when they have nothing more than two indie albums and a hot local single, “Date Rape.” They print up 40 backstage passes for their friends, family and dogs. By the end of the day, Nowell’s beloved Dalmatian, Louie, has bitten a record exec’s little girl, and one of their pals just missed puking on MTV’s Kennedy while she was interviewing the band.

Here’s the latest variant: In September 1997, Eric Wilson and Bud Gaugh – Sublime’s bassist and drummer – fly to New York for the MTV Video Music Awards. The band has been nominated for best alternative video. The duo’s been drinking for most of the evening, and by the time their category comes up, Gaugh is melted into his seat and Wilson is sucking down a vodka tonic at the lobby bar.

MCA reps corral them just before they win, and they’re shoved onstage, followed by Troy Nowell and Marshall Goodman, the group’s DJ. Dazed in the spotlight, Gaugh performs a little jig and mumbles a few thank-yous to friends and family. Then, the hulking Wilson holds up the band’s shiny statuette, raises a fist and incongruously blurts out, “Lynyrd Skynyrd!” Gaugh, realizing that his band mate’s comment might need clarification, adds, “for writing the tune ‘Workin’ for MCA.'” In the midst of this stoned spectacle, Goodman comes to the rescue, pointing out very soberly, “This is all for Bradley Nowell – peace.”

A month later, Wilson and Gaugh are in more familiar environs – sitting with their girlfriends around a picnic table at Long Beach Sport Fishing, a tackle shop, seafood restaurant and boat-charter operation that looks like it’s been perched on this rusty waterfront since long before oil refineries dotted the landscape. Wearing wraparound sunglasses, a loose T-shirt, shorts that reveal several tattoos, and a fresh buzz cut, Gaugh is itching to explain his and Wilson’s onstage blunders back in New York.

“It all started with the tequila,” Gaugh begins. The day before the show, the drummer had been fishing with his girlfriend in Cabo San Lucas, a party town at the tip of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, and he purchased an $85 bottle of tequila as a gift for his dad. But by the time he met up with Wilson the next day in New York, the bottle looked too good to save. So the two decided to “have a little victory shot,” as Gaugh puts it. “We thought, ‘Fuck it, even if we don’t win, let’s drink this shit.’ So by the time we got onstage, man, we were wasted.” He gazes out at the fishing boats swaying by the docks. “I guess we forgot to thank a couple of people.”

Wilson, clutching a jet-fueled margarita, shudders at the memory. “See, we were already pretty buzzed back at the hotel when I said to Bud, ‘You know, if we win, we should say “Lynyrd Skynyrd!”‘ Bud had mentioned something about the song they did about working for MCA. So when we actually got up there, I was so flabbergasted that I just go, ‘Lynyrd Skynyrd!’ That’s all I could say.”

The conversation drifts to memories of Sublime’s early days. “It was [the most] fun for us when we were traveling around in a van and crashing on people’s floors,” Wilson says wistfully. These days, Wilson and Gaugh start most mornings with a bong hit and continue smoking well into the night. Wilson’s thrashed two-story Victorian house in Long Beach is their headquarters and the practice space for their new band, the Long Beach Dub All-Stars. It has the feel of a college hangout, with a revolving cast of characters lounging on the couches and chairs, beer bottles covering every flat surface, bongs on the end tables and three Rottweilers that bark viciously and gnash their teeth at newcomers.

Wilson and Gaugh whose families lived across an alleyway from each other, have been friends since childhood, when they first started playing music together and surfing at nearby Seal Beach. When punk bands like the Minutemen came to town, Gaugh and Wilson were always at the edge of the stage. (In fact, the Minutemen lyric “punk rock changed our lives” was sampled as the first line on Sublime’s 1992 debut, 40 Oz. to Freedom.)

Wilson’s dad, Billy, a drummer who toured with big bands in his youth and played on a cruise ship during the Depression, was Gaugh’s drum teacher. Though Billy Wilson was much older than the parents of Eric’s friends, he was also much cooler; it was he who introduced his son to marijuana. “He got into it while he was hanging out with all those jazz cats, I guess,” Eric says of his dad. “He smoked now and then, and to hide the odor he carried around a little bottle of Binaca.”

Wilson played trumpet for a while but says he sucked at it and switched to guitar and then bass. When he was in sixth grade, he met Nowell. The two began playing music together before Nowell took off for Santa Cruz, to start college at the University of California. During one of Nowell’s breaks from school, Wilson introduced him to Bud Gaugh, and the three started jamming together. After recording several DIY cassettes and selling them at shows, Sublime went into a Long Beach studio in 1992 to record 40 Oz. to Freedom. The album, which the band released on its own label, Skunk, did well on a word-of-mouth basis.

But by then Nowell had begun experimenting with hard drugs, and by the time Sublime began work on the followup, Robbin’ the Hood – most of which was recorded in a Long Beach crack house – his addiction was out of control. Gaugh attempted to reach out to his band mate – though often in destructive ways. “I felt like kicking his ass,” recalls Gaugh, who himself had been hooked on speed and heroin for years. “I mean, I’d been there and was still struggling with it. So I was all things that I could be to him during that time. I tried to be his conscience; I tried to be his nurse. I even tried to be his drug buddy; I mean, we got loaded together a couple of times.”

Nowell met Troy in 1993, at a Sublime show in San Diego. “We were just friends at first and we stayed friends for a long time,” she says. “It wasn’t until ’95 that we started seeing each other.” As Nowell alienated his friends, family and band mates, Troy was the one person who was there for him to talk to. “He’d already promised everybody that he would stop doing it and had asked for help,” she says. “People would help him and then he’d hurt them. So when I came along, I hadn’t been fooled by him yet.”

The prospect of signing to a major label was a big deal for Nowell, so when Sublime began talking with MCA, in 1994, he was determined to really clean up. “He decided on his own that he wanted to go to rehab,” says Troy. “He knew he had to get clean before the MCA thing could happen.” Nowell did get clean for a while, but in February 1996, when the band traveled to Austin, Texas, to begin recording Sublime at Willie Nelson’s Pedernales Studio with producer Paul Leary of the Butthole Surfers, Nowell went back to heroin more vigorously than ever. “They’re the sweetest bunch of guys, [but] it was chaos in the studio,” Leary says. On good days, they’d show up at 9 a.m. with margaritas in one hand and instruments in the other and go to work; on bad days, they nearly burned the place down. “There were times where someone had to go into the bathroom to see if Brad was still alive,” he says. Nowell’s drug use became so intense that Leary sent him home to Long Beach before the record was completed. “It took him three days to get back on his feet,” Jim Nowell recalls. “It was the worst I’d ever seen him.”

The skies above Long Beach are clear today, and Troy Nowell is sprawled on a lounge chair on the back patio of her in-laws’ house, a modest yellow-paneled, two-story home in a well-kept neighborhood. She has long, blond-streaked hair and is dressed in black running shorts and a white baby tee that partially exposes a rose tattoo on her right arm. When she speaks, her voice has a coarse, cigarette-wrecked edge. “Did you see the tattoo on my back?” she asks, turning to reveal a pair of Chinese characters. “The top one means ‘to be in mourning,’ and the bottom one means ‘husband.'” She laughs and lights another Marlboro as 2-year-old Jakob runs around in a tiny T-shirt with Big Kahuna scrawled across the front. “He was very bad at the grocery store this morning,” she says. “He’s acting much better now, aren’t you, Jake?” Jakob nods vigorously, and you can see Brad in his face and Troy in his half-moon eyes. “Sometimes Jake will say something that I want Brad to hear so bad,” she says, “but he can’t, because he’s gone.”

Troy den Denkker was born and raised in a San Diego household where drugs and alcohol were always around. Her mother was hooked on speed throughout Troy’s childhood, and her father was a biker who held frequent parties at the house. “They were wonderful people,” Troy stresses. “I loved them all. I mean, they were real.” Troy will look you straight in the eye and tell you exactly why she was attracted to Brad Nowell. “I love drug addicts,” she says. “I went to see that movie Boogie Nights the other night, and, you know, I knew all those people. When it was over, I turned to my girlfriend and that’s just what I said: ‘I love drug addicts.’ I guess they’re just the kind of people I’m used to being around. They’re great; they’re crazy.”

Troy, who is studying to be a substance-abuse counselor, says she and Brad spent a lot of time talking about his problems. “I was very understanding,” she says. “And Brad was so open about it. He used it as a way of getting attention. That’s the sick thing about heroin addicts. They’re like, ‘Take care of me.’ They’re like puppy dogs. And I guess I wanted to take care of him.” She was also more than ready for him to clean up when he decided to go back to rehab in 1995, soon after Troy found out she was pregnant.

“In the beginning I was real accepting of his behavior, but then there was much more at stake,” she says. “We’d bought this beautiful house, we had our beautiful son, we were about to get married and it was driving me crazy. I felt like I didn’t have anyone to turn to. His whole attitude was, ‘Look at everything we’ve got – I can have a reward every now and then.’ He wanted to reward himself. It was like, ‘I’m not hurting anyone, I’m just doing it this one day.’ ”

But one day turned into a week, and pretty soon Brad was in trouble again. “It scared the hell out of me,” Troy says. “And the thing that was so horrible is that when he would get high, he’d be so euphoric and so happy. I was like, ‘Why can’t you be this happy when you’re not on it?’ ” She pauses and looks away. “It got really ugly,” she finally says, “and that tore him up.

“You know, the one thing that gave me the most peace after Brad died,” she continues, “was when his first love, Eileen, came to me and said, ‘He did everything that he wanted to do, and he went to sleep. He was tired and went to sleep.’ The way she put it was exactly true. Brad was so tired – he really was. He was tired of letting everyone down, of letting himself down; he was tired of trying to stay clean, tired of everything.”

Even though Nowell died too soon to experience his band’s success, for Troy his death was like the final chapter in a long, exhausting journey. “Brad had accomplished everything he wanted,” she says. “He always wanted to have a baby: ‘We gotta have a kid,’ he said. He wanted to get his family back, ’cause he had hurt them so bad with his drug use. And he did. He wanted to get this album written, and he wanted it to be the best one he ever wrote. And he did. He wanted his band to have glory. And they did.”

She lights another cigarette. “I’m not saying that it’s OK that Brad died, because it’s not OK. So many things have happened that I wish he could see – Sublime being nominated for awards and their videos being on MTV all the time and their songs played on the radio. Or things will happen with me, and Brad’s the first person I want to tell, ’cause we were best friends. I want to see his reaction to all this. What’s OK is [that] there’s no more struggle, no more war. That struggle took up a lot of our energy and our time, and it was horrible. He’s at peace now.”

Jim Nowell and his second wife, Jane, are flipping through a photo album that shows Brad from birth through his teen and college years, his emaciated drug years, and his wedding, a Hawaiian-themed extravaganza in Las Vegas, when he had filled out again and gotten some color back in his face. Jim, a burly, affable guy, was a contractor until he retired to manage Sublime’s affairs. Last Fourth of July, he and Jane threw a big backyard barbecue and invited Brad’s old posse. The Long Beach Dub All-Stars jammed most of the afternoon. When they got around to playing Brad’s songs, Jim and Jane were shaken and had to go inside – they didn’t want their grief to spoil anyone’s good time.

The first time she met Brad, says Jane, she was astonished at his good behavior. “I remember telling Jim, ‘Gee, you did something really good with this kid. I’ve never seen a boy who is so polite and interested in his elders.’ Even when he got into his teens, he would always offer his chair to you.” She loved Brad from day one, helping him through his best years as a student and musician, as well as his worst years as a drug addict. Jane defended her stepson’s decision to get a tattoo – even when his father opposed it. “It was kind of like an Aztec design that went from his knee to his ankle,” she says, remembering the day he came home with it. “Well, Jim’s sitting here looking at it, and he says to Brad, ‘So, how long is that thing going to be on there?'”

“I said, ‘It does wash off, doesn’t it?’ ” Jim adds.

Jane laughs. “Brad and I just look at each other because we’re thinking, ‘He’s kidding,’ you know. And then we look at Jim and we see that he’s not kidding. So I go, ‘Jim, that’s not the wash-off kind of tattoo.’ And Jim goes, ‘It’s not?’ I mean, it was a huge tattoo!” To prove her loyalty to her stepson, Jane hikes up her pant leg and shows me her own new tattoo. It’s the image of the sun from the cover of 40 Oz. to Freedom.

There’s a party going on at Eric Wilson’s house, which is on the edge of one of Long Beach’s more unsavory neighborhoods. Wilson and the Dub All-Stars are jamming on an old Skatalites tune when Jim Nowell drops by for a visit. Before long, Nowell picks up an acoustic guitar and joins in, playing and singing. As the group moves from the Skatalites to a silly version of “Puff the Magic Dragon” and then to a free-form Dead-like jam, everyone in the house – including a gangly couple who’d been playing pool in the front room, a couple of dudes just back from a beer run, and Opie Ortiz, a shirtless tattoo artist who had earlier been working on a customer – packs into the room, listening intently to the deep, warm croon of the elder Nowell’s voice.

At one point, Wilson, hunched over his upright bass in a Surf and Sail tank top and mismatched sneakers, turns to Nowell and smiles. “Hey, Jimbo,” he says, “play some of those real old songs that you know. How ’bout ‘Minnie the Moocher’?” Over the next hour, the group runs through a set of pop, folk and country hits, like “Ain’t She Sweet?” “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” and “Okie From Muskogee.” By the end, the blue-collar cool of this posse of tattooed skate-punks has turned to blissful, drunken, giddy exuberance.

Then, suddenly, the mood turns wistful. “Hey, Jimbo,” asks Jack Maness, who’s been playing acoustic lead guitar, “what about ‘Sunny’?” He is referring to the old Bobby Hebb song that Jim and Brad used to play together at backyard parties at the Nowells’ home. “I remember one day Brad said to you, ‘I wanna do it like this, Dad,’ and you told him, ‘Yeah, son, but this is how it goes.’ ”

Everyone in the room erupts in laughter. The kind of laughter that brings tears. It’s a laughter that has positively conjured the ghost of Brad Nowell – right here, right now, in the wee hours of an October morning in Long Beach. It’s a few moments before Wilson’s gregarious girlfriend, Kat Rodriguez, breaks the silence: “Now, that’s Brad for you – in a nutshell,” she says. “He was going to do things his way or no way. That’s why no band will ever sound like Sublime.”

This story is from the December 25th, 1997 issue of Rolling Stone.

Posted on May 23, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Bernard Edwards 4/1996

April 18, 1996 – Bernard Edwards was born October 31, 1952 in Greenville, North Carolina, but grew up in Brooklyn, New York City.

In 1972, he and Nile Rodgers formed the Big Apple Band and in 1976 they united with drummer Tony Thompson to form Chic together with singer Norma Jean Wright. They had hits such as “Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)”, “I Want Your Love”, “Everybody Dance”, “Le Freak”, and “Good Times”.

Those productions with Norma Jean Wright, Sister Sledge, Sheila and B. Devotion, Diana Ross, Johnny Mathis, Debbie Harry and Fonzi Thornton led to more hits such as “Saturday”, “He’s The Greatest Dancer”, “We Are Family”, “Spacer”, “Upside Down”, “I’m Coming Out” and “Backfired”. In the song “We Are Family,” Kathy Sledge gives Edwards a brief shout-out, singing “Yeah, come on Bernard, play…play your funky bass, boy!”. As a lone songwriter/producer, he gave Diana Ross her Top 15 hit, “Telephone” off of her 1985 platinum “Swept Away” album

After Chic’s breakup in 1983, he released a solo album the same year, and in 1985 he was instrumental in the formation of the supergroup Power Station. He followed this by producing Robert Palmer’s hit album Riptide and continued to produce artists throughout the 1980s and 90s including Diana Ross, Adam Ant, Rod Stewart, Air Supply, ABC and Duran Duran.

Bernard teamed up with Nile Rodgers again for the Chic reunion in the early 1990s and released the album Chic-Ism in 1992. In 1996 they were invited to play in concert at the Budokan Arena in Tokyo. Although he felt very ill before the concert he managed to perform, which sadly was to be his very last performance.

On October 31, 1996, back in his Tokyo Hotel room, he died from what was determined to have been pneumonia. He was 43 years old.

His bass line from Chic hit “Good Times” has become one of the most copied pieces of music in history, and had a huge influence on musicians of many genres when released and was the inspiration for “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen.

On September 19, 2005, Edwards was honored posthumously for his outstanding achievement as a producer, when he was inducted into the Dance Music Hall of Fame at a ceremony held in New York.

Posted on April 7, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Terry Stafford 3/1996

March 17, 1996 – Terry LaVerne Stafford was born on November 22, 1941. A native of Hollis, Oklahoma, he is best remembered for his 1964 hit song, ‘Suspicion.’ The song, written by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, and originally recorded by Elvis Presley, became Stafford’s only hit song and a Top Ten single. He sounded uncanningly like Elvis.

Stafford grew up in Amarillo, Texas, and then moved to Los Angeles, California, after high school, so that he could pursue a music career. Stafford began performing at social events and local dances, until he got his break in 1964, to record the single, ‘Suspicion.’

The song was remastered by a local Disc Jockey and the song was released, going to number three on the pop chart. Although he was never able to duplicate his first success, he did have a Top 30 with his follow-up recording, ‘I’ll Touch A Star.’ He later turned to acting and writing, he appeared in the film, “Wild Wheels,” and wrote the song, ‘Big In Vegas,’ for country singer Buck Owens.

In 1973, Stafford signed with the Atlantic Record Company and released a country album entitled, “Say, Has Anybody Seen My Sweet Gypsy Rose,” with the title track landing on the Top 40. He also the wrote the song, ‘Amarillo By Morning,’ which was later a major hit for country singer George Strait. In 1974, after a year or so with the Atlantic Record Label, Stafford left music. Stafford’s other recordings include, ‘If You Got The Time,’ ‘Am I Fooling Myself,’ ‘Kiss Me Quick,’ ‘For Your Love,’ ‘Pocket Full Of Rainbows,’ ‘Hoping,’ ‘Sospeto,’ and ‘Soldier Boy.

Stafford passed away in Amarillo, Texas, on March 17, 1996, from the effects of liver problems at age 54.

Posted on April 12, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Joseph Pope 3/1996

March 16, 1996 – Joseph Pope (The Tams) was born on November 5th 1933 in Atlanta, Georgia.

The band formed in 1960, and took their name from the Tam o’shanter hats they wore on stage. By 1962, they had a hit single on Arlen Records. “Untie Me”, a Joe South composition, became a Top 20 on the Billboard R&B chart. The follow-up releases largely failed until 1964, when “What Kind of Fool (Do You Think I Am)”, reached the Top 10 on the US Billboard Hot 100. The song spent three weeks at number one on the Cash Box R&B chart. Many of their popular hits were written by Ray Whitley.

“Hey Girl Don’t Bother Me” was also a modest US hit the same year. The Tams had only one further major US hit (in 1968) when “Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy”, peaked at #26 on the US R&B chart, and subsequently made the UK Top 40 in 1970.
Their 1965 recording “I’ve Been Hurt” was their biggest regional hit (based on sales and airplay) prior to 1980.
The group reached the Number one slot in the UK Singles Chart in September 1971, with the re-issue of “Hey Girl Don’t Bother Me”, thanks to its initial support from the then thriving UK Northern soul scene. The song also went to number one in Ireland, making them the first black soul group to top the Irish Charts.

The group didn’t chart again until 1987, when their song “There Ain’t Nothing Like Shaggin'” reached #21 in UK, propelled by a regionally-popular dance known as the Carolina shag, which featured heavily in the subsequent 1989 film, Shag. However, the track was banned by the BBC because the word “shag” means “to have sexual intercourse” in colloquial British English.
Still quite popular in the Southeastern United States, they continue to record new music and perform at well-attended concerts. In 1999, they were featured performers with Jimmy Buffett on his CD, Beach House on the Moon, and also toured with him around the country.
American singer-songwriter Tameka Harris, born in 1975, is the daughter of Dianne Cottle-Pope and Charles Pope.

For decades two separate lineups of the group continued to perform and record. One lineup, called ‘The Original Tams with R. L. Smith’, features original member Robert Lee Smith, and the other lineup was under the leadership of Charles Pope, the brother of co-founder Joe Pope.

Joe died on March 16, 1996 at the age of 62 and Charles Pope died from Alzheimer’s disease on July 11, 2013, at the age of 76.

Posted on February 15, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Brownie McGhee 2/1996

February 16, 1996 – Walter Brownie McGhee was born on November 30, 1915 in Knoxville, Tennessee and grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee.

As a child of about four he contracted polio, which incapacitated his leg. His brother Granville “Sticks” or “Stick” McGhee, who also later became a musician and composer of the famous song, “Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-dee,” was nicknamed for pushing young Brownie around in a cart. His father, George McGhee, was a factory worker known around University Avenue for playing guitar and singing. Brownie’s uncle made him a guitar from a tin marshmallow box and a piece of board. McGhee spent much of his youth immersed in music, singing with local harmony group the Golden Voices Gospel Quartet and teaching himself to play guitar. He also played five string banjo, ukulele and studied piano. A March of Dimes-funded leg operation enabled McGhee to walk.

At age 22, Brownie McGhee became a traveling musician, working in the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and befriending Blind Boy Fuller, whose guitar playing influenced him greatly. After Fuller’s death in 1941, J. B. Long of Columbia Records had McGhee adopt his mentor’s name, branding him “Blind Boy Fuller No. 2.” By that time, McGhee was recording for Columbia’s subsidiary Okeh Records in Chicago, but his real success came after he moved to New York in 1942, when he teamed up with Sonny Terry, whom he had known since 1939 when Sonny was Blind Boy Fuller’s harmonica player. The pairing was an overnight success; as well as recording, they toured together until around 1980. As a duo, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee did most of their work from 1958 until 1980, spending 11 months of each year touring, and recording dozens of albums.

Despite their later fame as “pure” folk artists playing for white audiences, in the 1940s Terry and McGhee also attempted to be successful black recording performers, fronting a jump blues combo with honking saxophone and rolling piano, variously calling themselves “Brownie McGhee and his Jook House Rockers” or “Sonny Terry and his Buckshot Five,” often with Champion Jack Dupree and Big Chief Ellis. They also appeared in the original Broadway productions of Finian’s Rainbow and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

During the blues revival of the 1960s, Terry and McGhee were very popular on the concert and music festival circuits, occasionally adding new material but usually remaining faithful to their roots and their audience.

Late in his life, McGhee began appearing in small film or TV roles. With Sonny Terry, he appeared in the 1979 Steve Martin comedy The Jerk. In 1987, McGhee gave a small but memorable performance as ill-fated blues singer Toots Sweet in the supernatural thriller movie, Angel Heart. In his review of Angel Heart, critic Roger Ebert singled out McGhee for praise, declaring that he delivered a “performance that proves [saxophonist] Dexter Gordon isn’t the only old musician who can act.” McGhee appeared in a 1988 episode of “Family Ties” titled “The Blues, Brother” in which he played fictional blues musician Eddie Dupre, as well as a 1989 episode of Matlock entitled “The Blues Singer.”

Happy Traum, a former guitar student of Brownie’s, edited a blues guitar instruction guide and songbook for him. Using a tape recorder, Traum had McGhee instruct and, between lessons, talk about his life and the blues. Guitar Styles of Brownie McGhee was published in New York in 1971. The autobiographical section features Brownie talking about growing up, his musical beginnings, and a history of the early blues period (1930s onward).

One of McGhee’s final concert appearances was at the 1995 Chicago Blues Festival.

McGhee died from stomach cancer in February 1996 in Oakland, California, at age 80.

Posted on October 16, 2015February 13, 2025 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Shannon Hoon 10/1995

October 21, 1995 – Richard Shannon Hoon was born on September 26, 1967 and raised in Lafayette, Indiana. After graduating from McCutcheon High School in 1985 he joined and fronted two local bands Styff Kitten and Mank Rage. He also composed his first song at this time titled “Change”.

Several years later he relocated to Los Angeles where he met musicians Brad Smith and Rogers Stevens and they formed the band Blind Melon, and in 1991 got a recording contract with Capitol Records.

In LA he also met up with Axl Rose of Guns ‘n’ Roses, a high school friend of his half-sister Anna, who was recording the albums Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II. Hoon sang backing vocals on several of the tracks, including “The Garden” and “Don’t Cry”. Axl Rose also invited him to appear in the video for “Don’t Cry”.

In 1992, Blind Melon released their self-titled debut album, it sold poorly until the single “No Rain” was released in September of 1993 and the album went quadruple-platinum.

In 1994, they recorded their second album ‘Soup‘, which was released in 1995. They went on tour to promote the album, which sadly was Hoon’s last album and tour.

Shannon Hoon was found dead on the band’s tour bus; tragically he had died from a heart attack, due to a cocaine overdose, while in New Orleans on October 21, 1995 at age 28.

Posted on March 24, 2017February 13, 2025 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Sterling Morrison 8/1995

August 30, 1995 – Holmes Sterling Morrison (The Velvet underground) was born in East Meadow, Long Island on August 29th 1942. He had two brothers and three sisters. His parents divorced when he was young and his mother remarried. He first met future Velvet Underground drummer Maureen Tucker during childhood, through her brother Jim, who attended Division Avenue High School in Levittown, New York with Morrison. Originally playing trumpet, Morrison switched to guitar after his trumpet teacher was drafted.

While studying English, he visited his childhood friend Jim Tucker at Syracuse University, he met Lou Reed, a friend of Tucker’s and a fellow English student. Before Reed graduated in 1964, they met again in New York City in 1963. By this time, Reed had met John Cale and was interested in starting a band, so when they encountered Morrison, he was invited to join.

Reed, Cale, Morrison and original percussionist Angus MacLise constituted the original line-up of the Velvet Underground, taking the name from Michael Leigh’s sadomasochistic novel of the same name. Reed sang and played guitar, Morrison played guitar, Cale played viola, bass and keyboards and MacLise was playing bongos, hand drums, tabla, tambourines and the cimbalom, but when the group were offered $75 (US$700 in 2020 dollars) for a gig at Summit High School in Summit, New Jersey, MacLise abruptly quit because he refused to play for a specified time or conform to the notion of when to start and stop playing and also viewed accepting money for art as a sell-out. With no time to audition a replacement drummer, the group turned to Maureen Tucker to replace him, initially for that one show, but she soon became a permanent member and her rhythms would be an integral part of the band’s music, despite the initial objections of Cale.

Morrison primarily played guitar on the band’s first two albums, although when Cale, the band’s nominal bassist, played viola or keyboards in the studio or on stage, Morrison often filled in on bass. Some songs (including “Heroin” and “Sister Ray”) had Reed and Morrison on their usual guitars while Cale played viola and Vox Continental organ respectively, with no bass guitar.

There were at least three songs where Cale played both piano and bass while Reed and Morrison played guitars and these were “I’m Waiting for the Man”, “Femme Fatale” and “White Light/White Heat” and two songs where Cale played both viola and bass with Reed and Morrison on guitars: “Here She Comes Now” and “The Black Angel’s Death Song”, the former of which saw Cale doubling on piano. Although Morrison was a proficient bassist (as exemplified by his performances on “Sunday Morning”, “Venus in Furs”, “All Tomorrow’s Parties” and “Lady Godiva’s Operation”), he disliked playing the instrument.

After Cale left the group in 1968, Morrison usually exclusively played guitar; however, photographic evidence indicates that he continued to play bass onstage for certain songs if Doug Yule, Cale’s replacement, was occupied with organ. During the Cale era, there was no established “lead” or “rhythm” guitar hierarchy in the Velvet Underground; both Reed and Morrison traded roles regularly. From the third album on though, Morrison almost always took the role of lead guitarist as Reed concentrated more on his singing and rhythm playing. Additionally, Morrison frequently sang backing vocals and the occasional lead vocal spot (he recited many verses of Reed’s poetry in “The Murder Mystery” and sang one line in “I’m Sticking With You”).

Morrison repeatedly remarked that “Venus in Furs,” from the band’s debut album, was his personal favorite of all of The Velvet Underground’s songs, as he felt that the group had achieved with that one track, to a greater degree than any other, the sound the band had in mind.

– Although Reed was the main writer, there has been some conjecture that both Morrison and Cale made more songwriting contributions than is specified in the credits as Morrison later told Victor Bockris, “Lou really did want to have a whole lot of credit for the songs, so on nearly all of the albums we gave it to him. It kept him happy. He got the rights to all the songs on Loaded, so now he’s credited for being the absolute and singular genius of the Underground, which is not true. There are a lot of songs I should have co-authorship on, and the same holds true for John Cale. The publishing company was called Three Prong because there were three of us involved. I’m the last person to deny Lou’s immense contribution and he’s the best songwriter of the three of us. But he wanted all the credit, he wanted it more than we did, and he got it, to keep the peace.” Nevertheless, Morrison got co-writing credits on “European Son”, “Here She Comes Now”, “The Gift”, “Sister Ray”, “Chelsea Girls”, “Hey Mr. Rain”, “Ride into the Sun”, “Foggy Notion”, “Ferryboat Bill”, “I’m Gonna Move Right In”, “Coney Island Steeplechase” and “Guess I’m Falling in Love” and he also co-wrote the title track with Reed to Nico‘s debut solo album.-

In 1970, when the band was back in New York City to play an entire summer’s engagement at Max’s Kansas City, Morrison seized the opportunity to complete his English undergraduate degree at the City College of New York; along with Tucker, he remained in the Velvet Underground as lead guitarist after Reed left the band in acrimonious circumstances in August 1970. About a month after Lou Reed left the band in August 1970, he tried to convince Morrison to start a new band together, but Morrison turned him down, still angry at Reed for various reasons, and not confident that a new band could immediately attain the stature of the one Reed had just left.

Morrison did continue with the Reed-less Velvets for a while, touring and even doing a couple of unreleased recordings with them for Atlantic in late 1970. However, he left in 1971, teaching English at the University of Texas at Austin, and then working as a tugboat captain.In 1971, however, he began graduate studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where he would earn a PhD in medieval literature (with a dissertation on the four signed poems of Cynewulf) in 1986. Morrison’s last performance with the band was on August 21, 1971 at Liberty Hall (Houston, Texas). When it was time for the band to return to New York, Morrison packed an empty suitcase and accompanied them to the gate of their departing plane, before finally telling them he was staying in Texas and leaving the band, the last founding member to quit.

Morrison then began to work on Houston tugboats as a deckhand to supplement his income in the mid-70s; when he was forced to relinquish his teaching assistantship some years later, he was licensed as a master mariner and became the captain of a Houston tugboat, a vocation he pursued throughout the 1980s.

After leaving the Velvet Underground, Morrison’s musical career was primarily limited to informal sessions for personal enjoyment, though he played in a few bands around Austin, Texas, most notably the Bizarros. Morrison’s tenure in the capital of Texas made him a well-loved and admired member of the local music community as well as an influential voice. During John Cale’s renaissance in the late 1970s, Morrison occasionally sat in with his former bandmate on stages such as the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin. From the mid-1980s on, however, he occasionally recorded or performed with Reed, Cale, and Velvet Underground drummer Maureen Tucker, who had by then started a solo career. Morrison was part of her touring band for most of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

In 1992, the core Velvet Underground line-up of Reed, Cale, Morrison and Tucker decided to reform for a tour and possible album. Morrison argued that Doug Yule, who had replaced Cale in 1968, should be included to fill out the sound, but Reed and Cale vetoed him. The band extensively toured Europe in 1993, alternatively as headline act or supporting U2. Morrison’s playing held up well, and his performances were generally agreed to be top-notch. But by the end of the tour, relationships had soured again and plans for a US tour and MTV Unplugged album were scrapped. He also collaborated with John Cale on the score for the film “Antarctica” and was a guest on rock recordings like Luna’s “Bewitched.”

The European tour turned out to be the last for the Velvet Underground. Morrison joined Maureen Tucker’s band for a tour in 1994, and later that year was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Early in 1995 he was a featured performer with the Hudson Valley Philharmonic, but sadly he passed away on August 30, 1995, one day after his 53rd birthday.

Upon their induction in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, Reed, Cale and Tucker performed a song entitled “Last Night I Said Goodbye to My Friend,” which was dedicated to Morrison.

Posted on March 22, 2017February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Ronnie White 8/1995

August 26, 1995 – Ronald Anthony ‘Ronnie’ White (The Miracles) was born on April 5, 1939 in Detroit, Michigan. White began his friendship with fellow Miracles co-founder Smokey Robinson when they were kids. The pair started singing together when White was 12 and Robinson was 11 as the duo Ron & Bill. They were soon joined by a third boy, Pete Moore, and in 1955, the trio formed a quintet called The Five Chimes, with two other boys.

After the inclusion of Bobby Rogers and his cousin Emerson “Sonny” Rogers, the group changed its name to the Matadors, and changed their name again to The Miracles after Claudette Rogers, of the sister group the Matadorettes, replaced “Sonny”.

The quintet soon began working with Berry Gordy following a failed audition with Brunswick Records and soon found fame after signing with Gordy’s Motown label under the Tamla subsidiary. White helped Robinson compose several hit singles including The Miracles’ “My Girl Has Gone” and “A Fork in the Road” and is known as the co-writer and co-producer of The Temptations’ signature song, “My Girl” and also co-wrote the same group’s “Don’t Look Back”. He also co-wrote Mary Wells’ “You Beat Me to the Punch” and Marvin Gaye’s “Ain’t That Peculiar”. White would later win awards as a songwriter from the BMI. He also helped to bring a then unknown Stevie Wonder, his 11 year old neighbor, to Motown after overhearing him playing with White’s cousin; Wonder was signed immediately afterwards.

In 1966, The Miracles briefly retired from the road to work as staff songwriters and executives for the label, but soon complained of not getting paid, and returned to perform on the road the following year, in 1967. After Smokey and Claudette Robinson and long-time guitarist Marv Tarplin left the group in 1972, the group carried on with Billy Griffin as their new lead singer, scoring two more hits with Motown including the number-one smash, “Love Machine”, before leaving Motown in 1977 for Columbia Records. The group disbanded in 1978 after Pete Moore opted for retirement and Billy Griffin returned to his solo career.

White and Bobby Rogers revived the Miracles in 1980 with Dave Finley and Carl Cotton, calling themselves “The New Miracles”. This lasted until 1983, when White faced personal struggles following the death of his first wife, Earlyn Stephenson, who died from breast cancer that year. White announced a retirement shortly afterwards and the Miracles again disbanded. White and Rogers revived the Miracles again in 1993. From his marriage to Earlyn, he fathered two daughters, Michelle Lynn and Pamela Claudette. He later fathered a son, Ronald Anthony, II.

His only granddaughter, Maya Naomi, was born to Pamela after his death. White’s first born daughter, Michelle, succumbed to leukemia at the age of 9. White would later fight his own battle with leukemia and died, August 26, 1995, at the age of 57.

Ronnie can be seen performing with the Miracles on the 2006 DVD release: Smokey Robinson & The Miracles:The Definitive Performances 1963-1987 and in The T.A.M.I. Show (1964).

In 1987, Smokey Robinson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist. Controversially, Ronnie White and the other original members of The Miracles, Bobby Rogers, Marv Tarplin, Pete Moore and Claudette Robinson, were not. However, The Miracles, including White, would later be retroactively inducted into the Hall of Fame by a special committee in 2012, alongside Smokey Robinson.

He was posthumously awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame on March 20, 2009 along with the other original members of The Miracles.

Posted on March 21, 2017May 7, 2025 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Doug Stegmeyer 8/1995

August 25, 1995 – Douglas Alan ‘Doug’ Stegmeyer was born on December 23rd 1951 in Flushing Queens, New York.

Doug along with high school friend Russell Javors, Liberty DeVitto and Howard Emerson, formed the band Topper, performing songs that Russell wrote. The band soon became noticed by Billy Joel, and when Joel found he needed a bassist on his Streetlife Serenade tour, he asked Doug. Continue reading Doug Stegmeyer 8/1995

Posted on November 22, 2014July 13, 2018 by Macamba0 — 3 Comments

Jerry Garcia 8/1995

August 9, 1995 – Jerry Garcia was the frontman/guitarist for the most famous psychedelic jamband in the history of Rock and Roll: the Grateful Dead.

Jerome John Garcia is born on August 1, 1942 in San Francisco, CA to Jose Ramon “Joe” Garcia and Ruth Marie “Bobbie” Garcia, joining older brother Clifford “Tiff” Ramon. “My father played woodwinds, clarinet mainly. He was a jazz musician.”

In 1947 a wood chopping accident with his older brother at the Garcia family cabin causes Jerry to lose much of the middle finger on his right hand at the age of five. That winter, Jerry’s father drowns while on a fishing trip.

Continue reading Jerry Garcia 8/1995

Posted on November 30, 2016May 29, 2018 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Wolfman Jack 7/1995

July 1, 1995 – Wolfman Jack was born Robert Weston Smith on January 21st 1938 in Brooklyn, New York.

He got his big break when he became a “gofer” at Paramount and began his radio career in 1960 at WYOU in Newport News, Virginia, where he developed his first radio name, Daddy Jules, a tribute to the influence that black DJs had on him in his formative years such as Dr. Jive, Jockey Jack, Professor Bob and Sugar Daddy. He was a fan of disc jockey Alan Freed, the ultimate deejay of New York radio, who helped to turn African-American rhythm and blues into Caucasian rock and roll music. Freed originally called himself the Moondog after New York City street musician Moondog. Freed both adopted this name and used a recorded howl to give his early broadcasts a unique character. Continue reading Wolfman Jack 7/1995

Posted on April 3, 2015February 13, 2025 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Rory Gallagher 6/1995

June 14, 1995 – William Rory Gallagher was an Irish blues-rock multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and bandleader. Born in Ballyshannon, County Donegal on March 2, 1948 and raised in Cork. His father was employed constructing a hydro electric power plant on the nearby Erne river.

Gallagher recorded solo albums throughout the 1970s and 1980s, after forming the band Taste during the late 1960s. He was a phenomenally talented guitarist known for his charismatic performances and dedication to his craft. Gallagher’s albums have sold in excess of 30 million copies worldwide. Gallagher received a liver transplant in 1995, but died of complications later that year in London, UK at the age of 47. Continue reading Rory Gallagher 6/1995

Posted on March 12, 2016February 13, 2025 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Ingo Schwichtenberg 3/1995

March 8, 1995 – Ingo Schwichtenberg (Helloween) was born May 18th 1965 in Hamburg, Germany. At the age of 14 he took some clarinet lessons with the encouragement of a music teacher at school and started playing folk music in the school’s band. During this period he also had his first approach to a drum kit. “As the drummer in my group was very bad, I could not stand it and I sat in front of the kit and played as I liked ” he said ” I think I was fifteen… I knew I was going to play it seriously since then”.

His father Heinz bought him his very first drum kit and he started practicing by himself. During the same year he met a young guitarist called Kai Hansen who played in a new born band called “Gentry”. The boys became good friends immediately and Kai asked Ingo to join the band because they needed a drummer. ( “Gentry” was made up of: Kai Hansen – guitars, Markus Grosskopf – bass guitar, Piet Sielck – vocals, Ingo Schwichtenberg – drums). Right after that the band was renamed to “Second Hell”. Ingo remembered: “I was a rock’ n’ roller with long hair and with a leather jacket. (laugh) As others in the same age wore tidy clothes, I may have been seen very different from them, but there was no bad relationship with them”.

1982-1983: The band changed their name into “Iron Fist” and the line-up was finally completed by Michael Weikath on second guitar. While playing in “Iron Fist”, Ingo did different jobs in order to gather as much money as possible for buying himself a new professional drumkit (a Yamaha): he worked at an office for two years ( which he really disliked a lot!) and then he worked also in a huge Hamburg market. “Though it was a hard job starting from 6 o’clock in the morning, I learned a lot of things there. I think it was good for me to have done it”.

1984: After watching the movie “Halloween”, Ingo came up with the idea to rename the band “Helloween” and the “a” was replaced with an “e”. The band started a mini tour around all the small clubs in Hamburg and took part on the sampler “Death Metal”. At that time his family was very supportive to him, so Ingo was encouraged to go ahead with music. “As the album cover was the illustration of a disgusting man who was disemboweled, my father frowned: “…On this album?!?”, and he was looking at it suspiciously (laugh). But listening to “Metal Invaders” and “Oernst Of Life”, he seemed to be pleased with the melody and said: “Keep going!”. At the end of the same year, Helloween finally signed their first contract with Noise Records.

1985: In March “Helloween” the first mini-LP was released. “When we made our mini album, “Helloween”, it was the first recording. So, “this is the mixer! This is the recording mic! Wonderful!! We were excited!” said Ingo smiling. Then, on November 18th the band released “Walls of Jericho”, the first full-length album that laid the basis of modern power metal with its unique speed’n’ thrashy touch. The album gathered the metal audience’s approval and got also lots of positive reviews from all over Europe.

1986: November. While touring all over Europe, Kai found some difficulties in singing and playing guitar at the same time. Ingo confirmed: “Kai wanted to devote himself to be a guitarist. So sooner or later we needed a singer, a front man”. So they recruited the 18 year-old prodigy singer Michael Kiske and started working on their third effort. “When he joined, he was eighteen years old, but I thought he himself knew he was a talented man and he knew well what he should do”.

1987-1988: “Keeper of the Seven Keys Part. I” finally saw the light on February 1987, putting Helloween on a higher level of popularity and received overwhelming feed-backs from all over the world, including U.S.A and Japan.
After touring Europe ( with Overkill) and U.S.A. ( with Armored Saint and Grim Reaper), in 1988 the band released the second part of the Keeper’ s concept, ” Keeper of The Seven Keys Part II” . The album went gold in Germany and Asia, and reached #108 on the U.S. Billboard Chart as well… and the whole heavy metal world fell in love with the Pumpkins!

1989: On January 1st Kai left Helloween and formed a new project called Gamma Ray. It’s well known that Ingo never recovered from his good friend’s departure… The guys found in Roland Grapow ( from Rampage) a brand new guitarist that fit with the band not just only as a musician but as a friend as well. Talking about Roland’s joining Ingo said : “The rapid growth of Roland is amazing. Because before joining Helloween, he was a car repairman. [..] Suddenly he had a call from Weiki : “Why don’t we play together in Helloween?” .
With this new line-up, Helloween embarked on their second U.S.A. tour. During this period, the guys decided to break up their contract with Noise and signing with EMI Records, but things didn’t exactly go as they were expecting and they plunged soon into a real mess… Noise filed a lawsuit against Helloween which went on for a longtime.

1990: At the end of the legal battle Helloween lost and the band had to pay a huge amount of money to Noise Records. In addition they were not allowed to perform or release any kind of material except for Europe and Japan. This bitter experience left its mark on the whole band, especially on Ingo who remembered: “1989 was a terribly bad time for the band and for me. I had never experienced such hard days before”. During those days Ingo was dying to play drums so, together with Markus, he took part as special guest in a German metal band called Doc Eisenhauer which released the album “Alles im Lack” (1992) and did also a few concerts in some pubs around Hamburg. The beginning of the 90’s were also crucial for Ingo’s health because he started giving some signs that something was going wrong with his mind…

1991: After two years of silence, Helloween finally released “Pink Bubbles Go Ape” but only in Japan and U.K. The album didn’t receive many positive reviews by fans and critics. This was one of many reasons that brought some tensions between the guys about what kind of musical direction the band should take.

1992-1993: After reaching an agreement with EMI and Noise, “Pink Bubbles Go Ape” was finally released in Germany and rest of Europe as well (April 1992). One year later it was the turn for “Chameleon”. Even though it contained some very good tracks, the album was harshly criticized and became the most disappointing work of Helloween’s whole career. Inner tensions grew, meanwhile Ingo’s health situation became really serious: he seemed to be sunk in a deep state of depression, his behavior was characterized by strange and crazy episodes and, in addition to that, he was heavily into drugs ( cocaine and hashish) and drank a lot, starting a dangerously vicious circle that he couldn’t get out of. However, Helloween went on tour to promote “Chameleon” and his conditions kept up worsening. ” We started to notice something was wrong with him when we were on tour, with all that road pressure” remembers Weiky ” Ingo had a strange behavior… he did strange things and we noticed something seriously wrong with him. We lived with him and we could see his changes”.

And the situation took a turn for the worse: during a show in Hiroshima, Ingo collapsed on stage and was immediately hospitalized. During some therapies and treatments they found out that Ingo suffered from hereditary schizophrenia. The whole band didn’t know what to do with him, but one thing was clear: he couldn’t be part of the band anymore until he recovered from drugs and alcohol abuse and took his medications against schizophrenia seriously; so after a six hour telephone call with Weikath, in which he explained why they had made that hard and painful decision, Ingo was asked to leave Helloween. Schwichtenberg’s replacement in the band was Uli Kusch.

Talking about Ingo’s mental disease as well as his drug and alcohol addiction, Weiky said ” … He was destroying his own brain and he didn’t notice it! The problem was that he didn’t know how many damages he was doing. How could we let him go through the stress of a new album and a new tour? “. Unfortunately it seemed that Ingo never accepted his fate and he didn’t trust doctors, so he didn’t take his medications regularly: “Ah, it’s all crap what they tell me. Why should I take medications? I have to heal myself somehow,” he used to say.

1995: After his ejection from the band, Schwichtenberg slid further and further into his schizophrenic episodes. Everybody knows how the story ended. On march 8, 1995 Ingo committed suicide by jumping in front of a subway train. It happened two and a half months before his 30th birthday. ” If he could have lived a life with a wife, children and a house in the fields, he would certainly have had a better chance to be better” said Weiky. “The stress in our careers is terrible, sometimes I think I’m lucky surviving all this. Imagine how all that damaged Ingo! To be honest, I think that he took much more than his condition would allow”.

His friend Kai Hansen had dedicated the song “Afterlife” from Gamma Ray’s Land of the Free to him. As well, Michael Kiske made a tribute to Schwichtenberg with the track “Always”, from his first solo album Instant Clarity. Also the song Step Out of Hell from Helloween album Chameleon is written by Roland Grapow about Schwichtenberg’s problems with drugs and drinking.

Posted on March 8, 2016February 13, 2025 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Vivian Stanshall 3/1995

March 5, 1995 – Vivian Stanshall (Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band) was born Victor Anthony Stanshall on 21 March 1943 in Shillingford, Oxfordshire.

Stanshall family moved to the Essex coastal town of Leigh-on-Sea. He attended Southend High School for Boys until 1959. As a young man, Victor Stanshall (known as Vic) earned money doing various odd jobs at the Kursaal fun fair in nearby Southend-on-Sea. They included working as a bingo caller and spending the winter painting the fairground attractions. To set aside enough money to get through art school (his father having refused to fund this), Stanshall spent a year in the merchant navy. He said he was a very bad waiter, but became a great teller of tall tales

He was best known for his work with the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, for his exploration of the British upper classes in Sir Henry at Rawlinson End (as a radio series for John Peel, as an audio recording, as a book and as a film), and for acting as Master of Ceremonies on Mike Oldfield’s album Tubular Bells.

How do you explain The Bonzo Dog Band to people who have never heard of The Bonzo Dog Band? More complicated, how do you explain Vivian Stanshall?

The Bonzo Dog Band were one of the premier Outrageous/Spoof Rock bands of the 1960s. Alumni included members who eventually became members of Monty Python’s Flying Circus and more recently The Rutles. In between, they offered some of the enduring classics, such as Can The Blue Men Sing The Whites? The Intro and The Outro, Canyons Of Your Mind, I Am The Urban Spaceman – and on and on. One of their classic songs, Death Cab For Cutie, was featured in The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour movie and eventually became the name of another band of admirers who later made the rounds.

So you kind of know who they are – even if you can’t put your finger exactly on how.

Formed in the early 1960s, the Bonzo Dog Band took to reworking songs of the 1920s and 1930s as their model. They quickly gained a reputation as one of the most outrageous bands to perform on stage, and were subsequently hugely admired by everyone from Paul McCartney to Steve Winwood. Vivian Stanshall’s association with The Who’s Keith Moon became the stuff of legend and Stanshall was later credited as the Narrator on Mike Oldfield‘s legendary Tubular Bells. And that doesn’t begin to tell the whole story.

The Bonzos, including Viv, were all art students who formed the band originally as a sort of Twenties-style jazz band which eventually turned into a hilariously anarchic revue. They were the darlings of the college circuit, but quickly became accepted on the rock scene, where they supported such bands as Cream. They went to San Francisco with the Byrds and won a dedicated American following. Armed with robots and dummies, the band’s show became ever funnier and more elaborate. Stanshall’s Elvis Presley impersonations and mimed striptease routine were brilliantly done, and they endeared him not just to their regular audience, but to many starts of the rock fraternity. Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Joe Cocker, and Steve Winwood were just some of Viv and Bonzo’s greatest fans.

But the strain of touring and the lack of money contributed to turn what had been fun into hard work and misery. On one famous trip to Ireland on a package show that included Yes and the Nice, the band found themselves expected to play on a football pitch near an abattoir, with only an old electric kettle flex for the band’s power supply. When it blew up on the first attempt to use it, Stanshall chased his manager across the pitch shouting “De-bag the rotter!”

Eventually Stanshall stunned the band and their followers by announcing their break-up after a gig at the Lyceum Ballroom, in London, in January 1970.

It was naturally expected that Stanshall, regarded by many as a genius, would embark on a consistently productive solo career. Yet his life after the Bonzos was mixture of frustrations and disappointments, mixed with some notable successes. In a sense his thunder was stolen by the more organized and better-disciplined Monty Python team. Stanshall, despite his occasional outburst of aggression, seemed to suffer from a lack of self-confidence and often tried to take on more work than he could comfortably accomplish.

Like most of the rock musicians of the Sixties, he became a heavy drinker, enjoying the company of friends like Keith Moon. They set out on many wild forays, perhaps the most notorious being when they dressed up as Nazi officers and headed for the East End, where they caused some shock and dismay. But drinking bouts invariably led to Stanshall’s gaining a reputation for unreliability, and even the most sympathetic radio and record producers began to find him too much of a wayward genius to handle.

One of his most loyal friends and assistants was Glen Colson, who had played drums with the Bonzos during their last tour dates. The Bonzos were managed by Tony Stratton-Smith, of Charisma Records, and were later handled by Gail Colson, Glen’s sister. “It was around that time I got to know him. I was terrified of him, he was such a powerful personality. But he got on very well with my father, as they had both been in the Navy, and would talk about those days.”

Stanshall heard Colson practicing his drums and invited him to join the Bonzos to take over from Legs Larry Smith, their regular drummer. “I went out on the road with them. It was after he had shaved off all his hair and told the audience at the Lyceum he was breaking up the band. Nobody knew what he meant and my sister explained they still had some dates to do to pay off their bills. I hung out socially with Viv and he became like a teacher. He was a complete rogue as well. It’s strange – there were two sides to him. There was the very personal, friendly guy and the public side. There was a song he wrote called `Ginger Geezer’, on his album Teddy Boys Don’t Knit, and that’s how I remember him – a big ginger geezer!”

After the Bonzos, Stanshall worked on a variety of projects, acting as the master of ceremonies on Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells and also writing lyrics with Steve Winwood, for whom he composed “Arc of a Diver”. His most successful solo project was Sir Henry at Rawlinson End, a bizarre tale, narrated on record and at live appearances by Stanshall in his best BBC Home Service manner. This was later turned into a film starring Trevor Howard. “Vivian had a wonderful voice and he could have earned millions doing voice-overs; but he didn’t really want to sell out,” Colson says. There was a follow-up album called Sir Henry at Ndidis Kraal on Demon Records. Viv claimed that he didn’t remember making it.”

Stanshall recorded two solo albums which have recently been discovered by a new generation of admirers: Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead (1974), and Teddy Boys Don’t Knit (1981). There was also a Bonzos reunion album on which he appeared, Let’s Make Up And Be Friendly, released in 1972. During the early Eighties while living on a boat moored in Bristol, with his American wife Pamela, he worked on a stage project called Stinkfoot.

As a surreal humorist Stanshall has been rated alongside Peter Cook, and in the view of his admirers he had the potential to become a successful as John Cleese, if he had not succumbed to personal problems, including excessive drinking and bouts of depression.

“He was an all-rounder who worked in different fields of art, but in the last 10 years he could never actually finish anything,” Colson says. “Most recently he was working on a feature film called Loch Ness, doing the voice-overs, and he had signed to Warner Brothers to do another Sir Henry album. He also had some 25 songs recorded which I hope will be put on another solo album.”

Stanshall remained a wayward rebel, once holding a reporter captive for three hours, until he would listen to his favorite early rock ‘n’ roll records like Link Wray‘s “Rumble”. He needed a producer to channel his energies, but always wanted to remain his own boss, having suffered too many perceived indignities in his early experience of the music business.

“He wanted to be really good at everything,” Colson says, “the best actor, musician, poet and painter, and it frustrated him that he couldn’t be best at everything. He was great friends with Stephen Fry, and they were rather similar in their outlook. But he didn’t have many friends in show business, as he was very intimidating. He had an agent, but never wanted to be a rich star. He just wanted to be himself.”

After The Bonzos called it a day in early 1970, Vivian Stanshall along with ex-Bonzo’s Dennis Cowan and Ruger Ruskin Spear formed the short-lived Big Grunt in March of that year.

A band that defied description, but achieved major cult status over their relatively short period of existence. Originally put together as a take-off on the 20’s craze in the 60’s, and known as the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, they quickly morphed into more of an art-school band run amok and replaced the Doo-Dah with Da-Da and eventually just became known as The Bonzo Dog Band.

Though they may not be familiar to some today, you might hear aspects of them via Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which shared the involvement of Neil Innes and Vivian Stanshall, the Bonzo’s co-founders and musical brains behind the Pythons.

Neil Innes provided the melodic music and the happy Beatly-type face of the Bonzos, but Vivian provided a sense of danger and fascination, which came to the fore during the band’s first album, ‘Gorilla’, in 1967, which featured such cuts as ‘Jollity Farm’. ‘Look Out There’s A Monster Coming’, ‘Mickey’s Son and Daughter’ and the delightfully subversive ‘I’m Bored’. Vivian’s posh vowels and droll delivery livened up the songs and made them different to the mop-top popular music or the dreary psychedelic epics of the time.

On 5th March 1995 this wonderfully weird singer, musician, wit, poet, artist, mystic, songwriter and all-round ‘definitely not normal’ Vivian Stanshall (1943-1995) left our world for somewhere far more colorful, wild and magnificent, victim to a house fire. Vivian Stanshall was found dead on the morning of 6 March 1995, after an electrical fire had broken out as he slept in his top floor flat in Muswell Hill, North London.

Posted on February 22, 2016February 13, 2025 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Melvin Franklin 2/1995

February 23, 1995 – Melvin Franklin was born David Melvin English in Montgomery, Alabama on October 12th 1942.

His biological father was the preacher of the English family’s church in Mobile, who, according to his mother, impregnated her through non-consensual relations. Following David’s birth, Rose English married Willard Franklin and moved to Detroit, her grandmother insisting young David be left behind in her care. David English finally moved to Detroit with his mother and stepfather in 1952 at age ten.

Taking on his stepfather’s surname for his stage name as a teenager, David English—now Melvin Franklin—was a member of a number of local singing groups in Detroit, including The Voice Masters with Lamont Dozier and David Ruffin, and frequently performed with Richard Street. Franklin often referred to Street and Ruffin as his “cousins”.

A young Otis Williams befriended 16 year old Melvin and invited him to become the bass singer in his group called The Distants. Melvin remained with Otis and Elbridge Bryant when they, Paul Williams and Eddie Kendricks formed The Elgins in late 1960. In March 1961, the Elgins signed with Motown records under a new name “The Temptations”. He had a fondness for the color blue, and so he was nicknamed “Blue” by his friends and fellow singers.

Best friends for over thirty years, Melvin and Otis were the only two Temptations to never leave the group. He was one of the most famous bass singers in black music, over his long career, his deep vocals became one of the group’s signature trademarks.

Melvin sang some featured leads with the group as well, including the songs “I Truly, Truly Believe”, “The Prophet” and Paul Robeson’s “Ol’ Man River”. He performed with the Temptations from 1961 till he fell ill in late 1994 than lapsed into a diabeteic coma and died 6 days later from a brain seizure on Feb 23, 1995 at the age of 53.

Posted on November 23, 2015February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Richey Edwards 2/1995

Richey_james_edwards_live February 1, 1995 – Richard “Richey” James Edwards, the former co-lyricist and rhythm guitarist of the Welsh rock band Manic Street Preachers was officially ‘presumed dead’ on November 24, 2008 after he disappeared without a trace on Feb 1st 1995. He was born on December 22nd 1967.

He was known for his politicized and intellectual songwriting which, combined with an enigmatic and eloquent character, has assured him cult status like Eddie of Eddie and the Cruisers, and he is frequently cited as one of the best lyricists of all time.

As a musician however he had little to no value to ad to the band. He was a weirdo that I can’t give to much credit, except for his quality as a lyricist. Self mutilation under the disguise of needing attention, whether with cigarette burns or razorblades, to proof that you’re real has little to do with musical expressions, but are the signs of a very disturbed individual.

“When I cut myself I feel better,” he stated on more than one occasion.

He suffered severe bouts of depression in his adult life and was open about it in interviews: “If you’re hopelessly depressed like I was, then dressing up is just the ultimate escape. When I was young I just wanted to be noticed. Nothing could excite me except attention so I’d dress up as much as I could. Outrage and boredom just go hand in hand.”

“Gets to a point where you really can’t operate any more as a human being – you can’t get out of bed, you can’t…make yourself a cup of coffee without something going badly wrong or your body’s too weak to walk.”

If you want to read more about this freak try https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richey_Edwards

Posted on November 14, 2015February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — 1 Comment

Dino Valenti 11/1994

November 16, 1994 – Dino Valenti was born Chester “Chet” William Powers Jr on October 7, 1937 in Danbury CT to Carnival entertainment parents. He became known by the stage name “Dino Valenti” and as a songwriter he was known as Jesse Oris Farrow in the Greenwich Village folk music scene. His first claim to fame came after he wrote the famous 1960s song “Get Together”, the quintessential 1960s love-and-peace anthem.

In first years of the 1960s, he performed in Greenwich Village coffeehouses such as the Cock ‘n’ Bull/Bitter End and the Cafe Wha?, often with fellow singer-songwriter Fred Neil, and occasionally with Karen Dalton, Bob Dylan, Lou Gossett, Josh White, Len Chandler, Paul Stookey (Peter, Paul and Mary) and others. He influenced other performers including Richie Havens, who continued to perform some of Powers’ early “train songs”. Powers was prevented from acquiring a cabaret license due to an earlier arrest, a requirement that was beginning to be imposed on Village entertainers at the time.

Moving west was the only route left for him, and upon arriving there, he became a member of the band Big Sur in the LA area and later received greatest acclaim as the lead singer of San Francisco psychedelic rock group Quicksilver Messenger Service.

He played in an early line-up of the Quicksilver Messenger Service when John Cipollina, David Freiberg, and Jim Murray all joined this group in 1964. He later rejoined the group as its lead singer and main songwriter. He was busted for marijuana and amphetamines on several occasions and unfortunately had to sell the publishing rights to his greatest composition GET TOGETHER, to pay for legal defense.

In 1970 he tried with fellow bandmate Gary Duncan to start a band called “the Outlaws” which however went nowhere. Back in the Quicksilver fold he wrote eight of the nine songs on the group’s next album, Just for Love (August, 1970), six of them under the pseudonym of “Jesse Otis Farrow”. He remained the primary songwriter on their next album, in December, What About Me?. Despite occasional personnel changes the band released Quicksilver (1971) and Comin’ Thru (1972) before calling it quits. The 2-LP Anthology was issued in 1973 and a tour and album, Solid Silver, appeared in 1975.

Dino underwent brain surgery for an AVM (arteriovenous malformation) in the late 1980s. In spite of suffering from short-term memory loss and the effects of anti-convulsive medications, he continued to write songs and play with fellow Marin County musicians. His last major performance was a benefit at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall on July 27 sometime in the late 80s.

He died unexpectedly at his home in Santa Rosa, California on November 16, 1994, although his younger sister mentioned on his website that Dino was getting bored with life around him and was ready for something new. “The night he died, he called a lot of people…some of whom he hadn’t talked to in quite a while. It’s my understanding that it was all casual conversation, no revelations, or profundity, or theatrics, but more like he was saying hello one final time. I think, just as the Phoenix knows, he knew that his time was at hand, and being the “Gypsy soul” that he was, must have felt that such an event was about to take place. I think, too, that he grew weary of his “home” on this planet, and he felt he had done the best he could here, and was ready to try something else – see the next place, meet the next people, and move on. After all, Dino was a carnie.

Posted on November 6, 2015July 13, 2018 by Macamba0 — 1 Comment

Fred “Sonic” Smith 11/1994

fredsonicsmith November 4, 1994 – Fred “Sonic” Smith was born on September 13, 1949 in West Virginia, but raised in Detroit.

As a teenager, he lived for music with speed, energy with a rebellious attitude and formed a rock group Smith’s Vibratones, before joining up with his old school pal, Wayne Kramer to form MC5, short for Motor City Five. This influential band released 3 albums before their break up in 1972, Kick Out the Jams in 1969, Back in the USA in 1970, and High Time in 1971. After the band broke up Fred went on to form Sonic’s Rendezvous Band, which released one single, “City Slang”.

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Posted on September 20, 2015July 13, 2018 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Danny Gatton 10/1994

October 4, 1994 – Danny Gatton was without a shadow of a doubt the most underrated guitar virtuoso the US ever produced…so far. He fused rockabilly, blues, rock, jazz, and country to create his own distinctive style at a mind boggling speed.

Born in Washington DC on September 4, 1945, he began his career playing in bands while still a teenager and began to attract wider interest in the 1970s while playing guitar and banjo for the group Liz Meyer & Friends. He made his name as a performer the 1980s, both as a solo performer and with his Redneck Jazz Explosion, in which he would trade licks with virtuoso pedal steel player Buddy Emmons over a tight bass-drums rhythm which drew from blues, country, bebop and rockabilly influences.

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Posted on September 19, 2015February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Nicky Hopkins 9/1994

September 6, 1994 – Nicky Hopkins was born on February 24, 1944 in Perivale, Middlesex to the NE London. He began playing the piano at age 3. As pianist, organ player Nicky recorded and performed on an amazing amount of noted superstar British and American popular music recordings of the 60s and 70s as a session musician.

At the start of the 60s he started out as the pianist with Screaming Lord Sutch’s Savages, after which he joined The Cyril Davies R&B All Stars. Due to suffering from Crohn’s disease he mainly focused on studio work in London. He worked extensively for leading UK independent producers Shel Talmy and Mickie Most and performed on albums and singles by The Kinks, The Move, Cyril Davies, Jon Mark, The Who, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Donovan, John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, Jeff Beck, Art Garfunkel, the New Riders of the Purple Sage, Carly Simon, McGuinness Flint, Bill Wyman, Harry Nilsson, Peter Frampton, the Easybeats, David Bowie, Dusty Springfield and Cat Stevens and many, many others.

Between 1965 and 1968 hardly a week went by without a record release featuring Nicky on keyboards.

In 1967, after turning down an offer from Led Zeppelin, he joined The Jeff Beck Group, formed by former Yardbirds guitarist Jeff Beck, with vocalist Rod Stewart, bassist Ronnie Wood and drummer Micky Waller, playing on their influential LPs Truth and Beck-Ola.

After two years of gruelling schedules he settled in the warm climate of Southern California where helped define the “San Francisco sound”, playing on albums by Jefferson Airplane, New Riders of the Purple Sage, and Steve Miller Band. He briefly joined Quicksilver Messenger Service and performed with Jefferson Airplane at the Woodstock Festival. In 1968 he played piano with the Swedish psychedelic group Tages on the single “Halcyon Days”, produced in Abbey Road Studio.

Nicky joined the Rolling Stones live line-up on the 1971 Good-Bye Britain tour, as well as their 1972 North American Tour and the early ’73 Winter Tour of Australia and New Zealand. He recorded a few solo albums but remained one of the most important rock ‘n’ roll session musicians of his time.

Nicky sadly died on September 6, 1994 at age 50 in Nashville, Tennessee, of complications from intestinal surgery necessitated by his ailment.

With a discography that runs from Ella Fitzgerald to Frank Zappa, few others can boast such a wide range of credits and a presence on so many important records. As Nils Lofgren said, ‘Nicky wrote the book on rock’n’roll piano’.

Posted on December 14, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Eddie Boyd 7/1994

July 13, 1994 – Eddie Boyd (Blues Musician) was born on November 25th 1914 near Clarksdale, on Stovall’s Plantation, Mississippi. He moved to Memphis where he formed his Dixie Rhythm Boys, after which he relocated to Chicago in 1941.

In the ’50s he wrote and recorded the hit songs “Five Long Years”, “24 Hours”, and “Third Degree”. In 1965 Eddie toured Europe with Buddy Guy’s band as part of the American Folk Blues Festival.

Later he toured and recorded with Fleetwood Mac and John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. Tired of racial discrimination he experienced in the United States, he first moved to Belgium, where he recorded with the Dutch band, Cuby and the Blizzards, then in 1970 he settled in Finland. He continued to record 10 more blues albums, and played at his last blues concert in 1984. After which he performed only gospel music.

He died in Helsinki, Finland on July 13, 1994, just a few months before Eric Clapton released a chart-topping blues album that included Eddie’s “Five Long Years” and “Third Degree”. He was 79.

Posted on April 28, 2015July 9, 2018 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Kristen Pfaff 6/1994

August 1994 – Kristen Pfaff (Hole) One of the mourners at Kurt’s Seattle memorial was Kristen Pfaff, a member of Courtney Love’s band, Hole, and a former girlfriend of fellow member Eric Erlandson. Two months after Kurt’s death, in 1994, Pfaff died of a heroin overdose in the bath tub at her Seattle apartment, just like Jim Morrison. She was also 27, the third member of the Seattle music community to die at that age within a year.

She was a bass guitarist and a founding member of the Minnesota group Janitor Joe, and more famously, Hole.

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Posted on October 13, 2016February 12, 2025 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Lek Leckenby 6/1994

June 4, 1994 – Derek ‘Lek’ Leckenby (Herman’s Hermits) was born on 14 May 1943 in Leeds, West Yorkshire. He’d taken up guitar as a boy, inspired by the early British rock & roll boom, but also by his love of American R&B — especially the music of James Brown — and he made his debut at the Oasis Club in Manchester in 1962, at age 17. He was asked one night by drummer Barry Whitwam to sit in with a group called the Heartbeats, and was immediately drafted as their lead guitarist — at the end of that semester, his poor performance on his exams at Manchester University, where he’d been studying civil engineering, caused him to turn more directly to music.

He then founded his own group the Wailers, with Barry Whitwam, which played local clubs, before they merged with Noone to form the Heartbeats. He played on many of the band’s early hits and composed songs with band. He is credited with arranging the band’s first big hit, “I’m into Something Good”. His skills on guitar and dobro are heard on releases such as the LP A Whale of a Tale and the later singles, such as “Ginny Go Softly” and “Heart Get Ready for Love”.

A world-wide fascination with the British pop heroes of the Swinging Sixties has ensured that many of the original groups have been able to enjoy a working music career into the Nineties, long after their hits dried up. Such was the case with Herman’s Hermits and their lead guitarist, Derek ‘Lek’ Leckenby. Even though Peter Noone, the original ‘Herman’ and lead singer with the Hermits, had long since left, the group had the rights to the name and carried on touring, playing such hits as ‘I’m Into Something Good,’ ‘Mrs Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter’ and ‘No Milk Today’ to hordes of insatiable pop nostalgia fans.

Herman’s Hermits were one of Britain’s hottest exports to the United States in the wake of the Beatles’ success, and the winsome Noone’s cheeky charm ensured they won a fanatical teenage following. The Manchester band was born when Noone met Leckenby in 1963 and they decided to merge groups into an outfit called the Heartbeats. Noone, who had been to drama school, was already a celebrity, having appeared in early editions of Granada’s Coronation Street.

The Heartbeats were spotted by the producer Mickie Most, after he was alerted by their managers Harvey Lisberg and Charlie Silverman. The band was signed to EMI and Noone was renamed ‘Herman’ after a television cartoon character he resembled (actually called Sherman). Herman’s Hermits were born. Their first hit, ‘I’m Into Something Good’, topped the UK charts for two weeks in 1964. It was the start of an extraordinary dual career, during which the Hermits were hailed as successors to the Beatles in the United States, but regarded as just one of many chart-breaking pop groups at home.

Leckenby played lead guitar on the road, with Keith Hopwood (rhythm), Karl Green (bass) and Barry Whitwam (drums). However it was later claimed that the Hermits were edged out of the studios by top session men of the day, such as Jimmy Page and Big Jim Sullivan. They supposedly played most of the guitar parts on records, with bass added by John Paul Jones, who later joined Page in Led Zeppelin. However Leckenby later refuted these allegations, writing to rock journalists to insist that he had played on the hits.

In 1970 the band enjoyed their last hit together, ‘Lady Barbara’, before Noone quit to go solo. They got back together for a reunion concert at Madison Square Garden, New York, in 1973 but thereafter Noone severed ties with his old colleagues. He was not entirely happy when they toured on the strength of their name and past hits. But for Leckenby it was a perfectly legitimate and sensible option. He had never known any other life since his student days and saw no reason why he should give up. There was no point in wasting energy trying to establish a band under his own name and the good will towards the memory of Herman’s Hermits ensured they always had an audience.

The Seventies proved a tough time, but by the mid-Eighties there was a boom in nostalgia that helped revive not only the Hermits but many other Sixties bands like Wayne Fontana & the Minder Benders and the Searchers. As middle age beckoned, the erstwhile teenage heart throbs found themselves once again playing to huge stadium-sized audiences.

Leckenby had a very dry, laid-back Yorkshire sense of humor and at the height of the Hermits’ fame, could be relied on to keep a sense of proportion about their success. He wasn’t above taking the rise out of Noone, when the chief Hermit got above himself. After the break-up with Noone, the Hermits continued touring the United States first with the singer Garth Elliott, and later with Rod Gerrard (rhythm guitar and lead vocals), Keith Roberts (bass and lead vocals), the original Hermit Keith Hopwood (guitar) and Barry Whitwam (drums).

‘They never stopped working,’ recalls Mike Neil of The Beat Goes On, a fanzine which specializes in Sixties artists. ‘They spent a lot of time in America playing at state fairs and nostalgia shows. And they had only just got back from the States when ‘Lek’ died. They were due to go back for another tour in the autumn. Derek was a very good guitarist and he was greatly admired for the way he kept the band going. It was true a lot of people paid to see them expecting to see Peter Noone as Herman, but the Hermits always managed to win them over. ‘Lek’ was a very nice guy and he had a very positive, professional attitude.’

Hal Carter, the band’s agent and also manager of the Swinging Blues Jeans, says: ‘They supported the Monkees on their revival tour and they were playing to audiences of 15,000. Their show consisted of all the famous hits. On one big pop package with bands like Slade, the Equals and Suzie Quatro in Germany last year, they played to 25,000 people a day.‘

Derek Leckenby was 51 when he died on June 4, 1994 from non-Hodgkin Lymphoma.

The band carried on ‘in Lek’s honour’, Carter said. ‘He was the driving force in the band. If he had quit touring when he first got cancer, he could have probably lived a lot longer, but he loved playing and that’s all he wanted to do. It shortened his life because of the amount of traveling he had to do, but it was preferable to sitting at home doing nothing. When he got into hospital the first thing he did was arrange to get Keith Hopwood to send in for him, and the band went off to Germany to play without him, on his instructions. He said: ‘You mustn’t let anybody down.’ ‘

Although he suffered hair loss because of chemotherapy, and was in considerable pain, he never told his music business colleagues about his illness. ‘He would never discuss it with anybody,’ Carter says. ‘He didn’t want to be a burden to anybody and just wanted to go on making music. He was a true Sixties original.’

Posted on September 29, 2016February 12, 2025 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Eric J Gale 5/1994

May 25, 1994 – Eric J. Gale (jazz and session guitarist) was born on September 20, 1938 in Brooklyn, New York. His grandfather was English, and Gale had relatives in Venezuela and Barbados. Eric’s father always managed to keep him safe. Growing up, Eric spent his holidays visiting family in the UK, which allowed him to look at the world through a different perspective. He was fluent in Spanish, German, and French.

Gale began playing guitar at the age of 12. Although he majored in chemistry at Niagara University, Gale was determined to pursue a musical career, and began contributing to accompaniments for such stars as Maxine Brown, the Drifters, and Jesse Belvin.

While he was recording in Jamaica, Roberta Flack called Gale and begged him to come back home to New York to help her with the Killing Me Softly (1973) album. Gale was reluctant, so she flew the band members to him instead. After some persuading, they ended up returning to the United States and recorded Flack’s global hit.

He soon began to attract the attention of King Curtis and Jimmy Smith, who began recommending him for studio work. He became known first as a session musician in the 1960s, eventually appearing on an estimated 500 albums. Among the many artists he recorded with were Aretha Franklin, Bob James, Paul Simon (Gale plays a supporting role in the 1980 film One-Trick Pony, written by and starring Simon), Lena Horne, Quincy Jones, Bob Marley, Nina Simone, Peter Tosh, Grover Washington, Jr., Herbie Mann, Esther Phillips, Joe Cocker, Carly Simon, Van Morrison, Al Jarreau, Dave Grusin and Billy Joel. He also had played in Aretha Franklin’s stage band.

Gale also played guitar on hundreds of pop, jazz, and blues recordings, including those of the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Aretha Franklin, Carla Bley, Mose Allison, Marvin Gaye, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Hodges. Over the course of his 30-year career, he released many solo albums and remained a regular fixture in New York clubs and recording studios.

Eric Gale was 55 years old when he died of lung cancer on May 25, 1994

Posted on November 22, 2014July 4, 2018 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Kurt Cobain 4/1994

April 5, 1994 – Kurt Cobain. (Nirvana) A very talented and very troubled rock grunge frontman, Kurt Cobain became a rock legend in the early 1990s with his band, Nirvana. He committed suicide at his Seattle home in 1994. Kurt Cobain was born February 20, 1967, in Aberdeen, Washington. In 1988, he started the grunge band Nirvana. Nirvana made the leap to a major label in 1991, signing with Geffen Records. Cobain also began using heroin around this time. Nirvana’s highly acclaimed album In Utero was released in 1993.

On April 5, 1994, in the guest house behind his Seattle home, Cobain committed suicide. Continue reading Kurt Cobain 4/1994

Posted on August 29, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Lee Brilleaux 4/1994

April 7, 1994 – Lee Brilleaux (Dr. Feelgood) was born Lee John Collinson on May 10, 1952 in in Durban, South Africa. At 13, he moved with his family to Canvey Island, the oil refinery community in the Thames Estuary, United Kingdom.

Lee co-founded Dr. Feelgood in 1971, with the guitarist Wilko Johnson and went on to co-found the Stiff record label in 1976, and the band’s own record label Grand Records. Their breakthrough 1976 live album, Stupidity, reached No.1 in the UK albums chart and their Top 10 hit single “Milk and Alcohol” charted in 1979.

The band’s name was reputedly derived from an old Johnny Kidd and the Pirates record, ‘Dr Feelgood and the Interns’, a cover of an original song by the Atlanta blues pianist Willie Perryman.
Johnny Kidd and the Pirates were something of an influence on the early Dr Feelgood, especially on the stage act of Wilko Johnson, who modelled himself on the Pirates’ guitarist Mick Green. Johnson’s guitar slinging was a significant image reflecting the pub-rock character for which Dr Feelgood will be remembered. Brilleaux and Johnson developed a frantic act, often charismatically dressed in dark suits and loose ties, shabby rather than smart. The rough, and almost ruthless, edge which ran through his vocal and harmonica style reflected the character and philosophy of the band.

Dr Feelgood evolved from a conscious decision to react against the rock of the mid-Seventies. A rougher sound than the blues groups of the London Sixties, Brilleaux’s band was probably closer to the reality of the street. Brilleaux was known as a hard- drinking, hard-living man. Dr Feelgood almost certainly influenced a range of early punk groups and similar, such as the Clash, Eddie and the Hot Rods and more significantly the Boomtown Rats.

In the early years Dr Feelgood provided backing for Joe Meek’s protege Heinz (the ex-Tornadoes guitarist) but the growth of their cult following and rave reviews resulted in their being signed up by United Artists and their pursuing an individual direction. In 1975, after releasing a medley of live rock songs, they produced their debut LP, Down by the Jetty, recorded in mono ‘to reflect the band’s raw, basic R & B sound’.
Dr Feelgood made a successful transition from club appearances to concert tours, many of which were a sell-out. However, they were never able to transfer and capture the energy and atmosphere of their live act to the recording studio. Their No 1 album in 1976, Stupidity, was recorded live, ‘live’ was always best. Brilleaux went on to co-found the Stiff record label in 1976, with a loan from the singer/songwriter John Hiatt, and the band’s own record label Grand Records.

In 1977 the American producer Bert de Couteaux was brought in to supervise their studio album Sneakin’ Suspicion. The title track was their first No 1 hit. Shortly afterwards Johnson left the band after a row concerning the recording of the album Be Seeing You. Ironically, Johnson’s resignation occurred in the wake of Dr Feelgood’s pre-occupation with the Sixties Patrick McGoohan television series The Prisoner (about an agent who resigns his post without giving a reason). Johnson’s departure left Lee Brilleaux without a foil for his live performance, and the band lost a talented writer.

In the Eighties the band continued to perform regularly, sometimes achieving almost 300 gigs a year. By 1984 Brilleaux was the last remaining original member. The album Brilleaux 86 featured songs by Johnny Cash and he returned to recording for the Stiff label.
Brilleaux’s last performance was at the Dr Feelgood Music Bar in Canvey Island in January 1994. Another recording, Down at the Doctors, was released as a tribute.

He died from throat cancer on 7 April 1994 at age 41. Every year since Lee’s death, a special concert, known as the Lee Brilleaux Birthday Memorial, is held on Canvey Island.

Posted on May 1, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Dan Hartman 3/1994

March 22, 1994 – Dan Hartman was born on December 8, 1950 near Pennsylvania’s capital, Harrisburg, in West Hanover Township, Dauphin County. He joined his first band, The Legends, at the age of 13. His brother Dave was also a member of the band. He played keyboards and wrote much of the band’s music, but despite the release of a number of recordings, none turned out to be hits.

He subsequently spent a period of time backing the Johnny Winter Band. He then joined the Edgar Winter Group (Edgar Winter was Johnny Winter’s younger brother), where he played bass, wrote or co-wrote many of their songs, and sang on three of their albums. He wrote and sang the band’s second biggest pop hit, “Free Ride”, in 1972. The ballad “Autumn” on Edgar’s LP They Only Come Out at Night was a regional radio hit in New England.

Upon launching a solo career in 1976, he released a promotional album titled Who Is Dan Hartman and Why Is Everyone Saying Wonderful Things About Him? It was a compilation disc including songs from Johnny Winter and the Edgar Winter Group. His second release, Images, was his first true album and featured ex-Edgar Winter Group members Edgar Winter, Ronnie Montrose and Rick Derringer and guests Clarence Clemons and Randy Brecker.

From October 21 until November 5, 1977, blues legend Muddy Waters used Hartman’s recording studio in Westport, Connecticut. Hartman ran the recording board for the sessions, produced by Johnny Winter, which created the album I’m Ready.

In late 1978, Hartman reached No. 1 on the Dance Charts with the disco single, “Instant Replay”, which crossed over to No. 29 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1979 and also reached the Top 10 on the UK charts. Musicians Hartman worked with on the associated album included Vinnie Vincent and G. E. Smith. This was followed by his second chart topper, 1979’s “Relight My Fire“, which featured friend Loleatta Holloway on vocals. This song later became the theme for the NBC talk show Tomorrow and in 1993 became a hit single for British boy band Take That featuring Lulu. There was also a cover version of “Instant Replay” recorded by the British duo Yell!, a top 10 hit in January 1990.

He was back on the charts again with the single “I Can Dream About You“, which was featured on his album of the same name I Can Dream About You as well as the Streets of Fire soundtrack in 1984. The tune reached No. 6 on the U.S. charts, and (on re-release in 1985) No. 12 in the UK. Hartman was featured as a bartender in one of the two videos that were released for the single, which received heavy rotation on MTV. “I Can Dream About You” is sung within the movie Streets of Fire by a fictional vocal group called The Sorels, whose lead singer is played by Stoney Jackson; the actual vocal was performed by Winston Ford.

In 1984, Hartman also performed “Heart of the Beat” under the band name 3V with Charlie Midnight for the soundtrack of Breakin’, directed by Joel Silberg and, in 1985, scored a third Number 1 single on the Dance Music charts, “We Are the Young”. The single “Second Nature” also charted during this period. Also in 1985, Hartman’s song “Talking To The Wall” was featured on the soundtrack to the film Perfect starring Jamie Lee Curtis and John Travolta.

In 1985 and 1986 Hartman worked on what was planned as his subsequent studio album, White Boy; he wanted the album to have a darker and more mature sound than his previous work. The album was completed in 1986, but the record label, MCA, thought it was too dissimilar to Hartman’s previous work, especially “I Can Dream About You”, and refused to release it. White Boy was never been released, though some test pressings of the album were made that are now held by collectors, and some of the songs from the album are available on the internet. One song from the album, “Waiting to See You“, was used in the 1986 film Ruthless People and its accompanying soundtrack album, and was subsequently released as a single.

In 1988, Hartman co-wrote the song “Why Should I Worry?” with Charlie Midnight, for the Walt Disney Animation Studios film Oliver and Company.

During the next decade he worked as a songwriter and producer, and collaborated with such artists as Tina Turner, Dusty Springfield, Joe Cocker, Bonnie Tyler, Paul Young, James Brown, Nona Hendryx, Holly Johnson, Living in a Box, the Plasmatics and Steve Winwood. Hartman produced and co-wrote “Living in America”, a No. 4 hit for James Brown which appeared on the soundtrack of 1985’s Rocky IV. The song was the last of Brown’s 44 hit recordings to appear on the Billboard Top 40 charts. The track also appeared on the Hartman produced album Gravity.

In 1989 he released his last studio album New Green Clear Blue, an instrumental new age-styled album. In 1991, Hartman recorded “(That’s Your) Consciousness” for the soundtrack to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. In 1994, the album Keep the Fire Burnin’ was posthumously released – a compilation featuring remixes of earlier hits and previously unreleased material. The album spawned two singles; “Keep the Fire Burnin'” – a duet featuring Halloway – and “The Love in Your Eyes“.

Hartman died at his Westport, Connecticut home of an AIDS-related brain tumor on March 22, 1994. Hartman had never been married and had no children. A closeted homosexual, he kept his HIV status a secret, even after friend and sometime collaborator Holly Johnson, formerly of the band Frankie Goes to Hollywood, announced his own HIV status in 1993.

Sales of Hartman’s solo recordings, group efforts, production, songwriting and compilation inclusions exceed 50 million records worldwide.

Hartman’s version of “Free Ride” was featured in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie the year after his death. In 2006, 12 years after his death, “I Can Dream About You” was featured in the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories and “Relight My Fire” was also featured in the video game Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony.

Posted on February 20, 2016February 12, 2025 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Papa John Creach 2/1994

February 22, 1994 – Papa John Creach (Jefferson Airplane) was born in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania on May 28th, 1917.

At age 18, he began playing violin in Chicago bars when the family moved there in 1935, and eventually joined a local cabaret band, the Chocolate Music Bars. Moving to L.A. in 1945, he played in the Chi Chi Club, spent time working on an ocean liner, appeared in “a couple of pictures”, and performed as a duo with Nina Russell.

In 1967, Creach met and befriended drummer Joey Covington. When Covington joined the Jefferson Airplane in 1970, he introduced Creach to them, and they invited him to join Hot Tuna. Though regarded as a session musician, he remained with the band for four years, before leaving in 1974 to join Jefferson Starship and record on their first album, Dragon Fly. Creach toured with Jefferson Starship and played on the band’s hit album Red Octopus in 1975. Around 1976, Creach left to pursue a solo career. Despite this, he was a guest musician on the spring 1978 Jefferson Starship tour.

A year later, Creach renewed his working relationship with Covington as a member of the San Francisco All-Stars, as well as with Covington’s Airplane predecessor, Spencer Dryden, as a member of The Dinosaurs. He also continued occasional guest appearances with Hot Tuna, and was on stage at the Fillmore Auditorium in 1988 when Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen of Hot Tuna reunited with Paul Kantner and Grace Slick for the first time since Jefferson Airplane disbanded.
In 1992, he became one of the original members of Jefferson Starship – The Next Generation and performed with them until he sadly succumbed to pneumonia and congestive heart failure on February 22, 1994.

Papa John Creach suffered a heart attack during the ’94 Northridge California earthquake on January 17th. This led to him contracting pneumonia, from which he died a month later. He was 76 years old.

Posted on June 8, 2015February 12, 2025 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Harry Nilsson 1/1994

January 15, 1994 – Harry Edward Nilsson III aka Nilsson was born on June 15, 1941 in Brooklyn New York. His paternal grandparents were Swedish circus performers and dancers, especially known for their “aerial ballet” (which is the title of one of Nilsson’s albums). His father, Harry Edward Nilsson Jr., abandoned the family when young Harry was three. An autobiographical reference to this is found in the opening to Nilsson’s song “1941” and “Daddy’s Song”.

Because of the poor financial situation of his family, Nilsson worked from an early age, including a job at the Paramount Theatre in Los Angeles. When the theatre closed in 1960, he applied for a job at a bank, falsely claiming he was a high school graduate on his application (he only completed ninth grade). He had an aptitude for computers however, which were beginning to be employed by banks at the time. He performed so well the bank retained him even after uncovering his deception regarding being a high school graduate. He worked on bank computers at night, and in the daytime pursued his songwriting and singing career. His uncle John, a mechanic in San Bernardino, California, helped Nilsson improve his vocal and musical abilities.

By 1958, Nilsson was intrigued by emerging forms of popular music, especially rhythm and blues artists like Ray Charles. He had made early attempts at performing while he was working at the Paramount, forming a vocal duo with his friend Jerry Smith and singing close harmonies in the style of the Everly Brothers. The manager at a favorite hangout gave Nilsson a plastic ukulele, which he learned to play, and he later learned to play the guitar and piano. In the 2006 documentary Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin’ About Him?), Nilsson recalled that when he could not remember lyrics or parts of the melodies to popular songs, he created his own, which then led to writing original songs.

His uncle John’s singing lessons, along with Nilsson’s natural talent, helped when he got a job singing demos for songwriter Scott Turner in 1962. Turner paid Nilsson five dollars for each track they recorded. (When Nilsson became famous, Turner decided to release these early recordings, and contacted Nilsson to work out a fair payment. Nilsson replied that he had already been paid – five dollars a track.)

John Lennon and Harry Nilsson — Playing in the grass with John Lennon

Nilsson went on a steady track upwards to success with songwriting credits that included names like Phil Spector, Glen Campbell, Fred Astaire, the Monkees, the Shangri-Las, the Yardbirds, but did not give up his bank job until late 1966. With special admiration for his work from the Beatles and especially John Lennon, Nilsson’s name became household. (When John Lennon and Paul McCartney held a press conference in 1968 to announce the formation of Apple Corps, Lennon was asked to name his favorite American artist. He replied, “Nilsson”. McCartney was then asked to name his favorite American group. He replied, “Nilsson”.

Nilsson acquired a manager, who steered him into a handful of TV guest appearances, and a brief run of stage performances in Europe set up by RCA. He disliked the experiences he had, though, and decided to stick to the recording studio. He later admitted this was a huge mistake on his part.

Yet within a couple of years, he started making records with casual disregard for how things were done. He made albums that jumped from style to style, and from era to era. He made an album of 1940s standards long before anyone else thought of it (eat your heart out Rod Stewart!). And he was a hard-drinking artist who rarely played live.

His real breakthrough came in 1971 when he recorded Badfinger’s “Without You” with reached Billboard No.1 for 4 weeks.
Close friends with John Lennon who produced his album “Pussycats” in 1973, he also maintained an apartment in London that became a tragedy chamber with a curse as Mama Cass Elliott was found dead there in 1974 at age 32 from heart failure and the Who drummer Keith Moon four years later also at age 32 from an overdose of Clomethiazole, a prescribed anti-alcohol drug.

Nilsson was profoundly affected by the death of John Lennon on December 8, 1980. He joined the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and overcame his preference for privacy to make appearances for gun control fundraising. He began to appear at Beatlefest conventions and he would get on stage with the Beatlefest house band “Liverpool” to either sing some of his own songs or “Give Peace a Chance.”

After a long hiatus from the studio, Nilsson started recording sporadically once again in the mid to late 1980s. Most of these recordings were commissioned songs for movies or television shows. One notable exception was his work on a Yoko Ono Lennon tribute album, Every Man Has A Woman (1984); another was a cover of “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” recorded for Hal Willner’s 1988 tribute album Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films. Nilsson donated his performance royalties from the song to the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.

His career took several turns before he passed away but it was always interesting and it rarely repeated itself.

Harry Nilsson passed away on January 15, 1994 at his California home from heart failure at age 52.

Posted on December 14, 2015February 12, 2025 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Michael Clarke 12/1993

December 19, 1993 – Michael Clarke was born Michael James Dick in Spokane Washington on June 3, 1946. His father was an artist and his mother was a musician. Clarke ran away from home when he was 17 years old and hitchiked to California to become a musician. In legend, Clarke was said to have been discovered by Byrds’ founder David Crosby while playing bongos on a beach. Reality is that he was discovered by singer-songwriter Ivan Ulz, in North Beach, San Francisco, who introduced him to group members who would become The Byrds in 1964.

Clarke was not an accomplished musician prior to joining The Byrds and his only previous musical knowledge was rudimentary piano lessons he received in his youth. He had never played drums and, after joining The Byrds, not having a drum set, practiced on a makeshift kit of cardboard boxes and a tambourine, but he did have real drumsticks. According to Roger McGuinn, Clarke was hired by McGuinn and Gene Clark (no relation) for his resemblance to Rolling Stones’ guitarist Brian Jones. Actually he had Brian Jones’ hair and facial features and Mick Jagger lips)

Clark was the least talented of the five members that were on the Byrds’ 1965-1967 5 album recordings, as unlike the others, he did almost no songwriting. His drumming was basic and, for the most part, appropriate for the Byrds’ needs, although he was sometimes replaced by sessionmen. Still, he fit in well with the band visually, and proved that his drum skills were not marginal via subsequent hitches in the Flying Burrito Brothers and Firefall, along with session work for several of the ex-Byrds’ solo projects.

Like all of the Byrds, he had little experience playing electric rock & roll music when the band, at that time called the Jet Set, formed in 1964. At least the other four members had a good deal of professional experience as acoustic folk musicians; Clarke didn’t even have that.

Clarke’s strength as a drummer however should be illustrated by his jazz-oriented playing on The Byrds’ “Eight Miles High”, on the Fifth Dimension album. It has sometimes been written that session musicians played much of the music on the Byrds’ early recordings, but with the exception of the “Mr. Tambourine Man” single (on which McGuinn was the only one to play an instrument), research has indicated that the group did in fact play their own instruments in the studio. Suspicion has been directed at Michael Clarke as the least talented of the Byrds’ musicians, but even numerous bootleg tapes have his voice coming in loud and clear with comments and responses as the Byrds work out arrangements. The best of his drum work is certainly contained on “Eight Miles High,” where he pushes the band with a relentless, jazz-like verve, especially during the guitar solo.

In August 1967, during the recording sessions for The Notorious Byrd Brothers album, Clarke walked out of The Byrds and was temporarily replaced by session drummers Jim Gordon and Hal Blaine. Clarke had become dissatisfied with his role in the band and didn’t particularly like the new material that the songwriting members of the band were providing. However, Clarke continued to honor his live concert commitments with the band, appearing with them at a handful of shows during late August and early September 1967. Clarke returned from his self-imposed exile in time to contribute drums to the song “Artificial Energy” in early December 1967, but was subsequently fired from the band by McGuinn and bass player Chris Hillman once The Notorious Byrd Brothers album was completed.

After a year hiatus with a trip to Hawaii, he was back in the studio for a stint with Dillard and Clarke, followed by several years with the Flying Burrito Brothers after their first album, a reunion album with the Byrds, a numbers of years with softrockers in Firefall. In the early 80s he joined Jerry Jeff Walker. After that time he joined ex-Byrds singer Gene Clark for a series of controversial shows billed “A 20th Anniversary Celebration of the Byrds.” Many clubs simply shortened the billing to “the Byrds,” and the pair soon found themselves involved in acrimonious court battles with Roger McGuinn, David Crosby, and Chris Hillman over usage of the group’s name. The Byrds set aside their differences long enough to appear together at their induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in January of 1991, where the original lineup played a few songs together.

Michael continued to tour with a group called “Byrds Celebration”, but his health declined as his drinking accelerated.

He died from liver failure due to more than three decades of heavy alcohol consumption on Dec 19, 1993 at the age of 47.

Posted on December 2, 2015February 12, 2025 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Doug Hopkins 12/1993

December 5, 1993 – Doug Hopkins was born on April 11, 1961 in Seattle, WA but raised in Tempe, Arizona. It’s unknown when exactly the Hopkins family arrived in Arizona, but the family lived in suburban Tempe. Little is published about Doug’s younger days, prior to attending McClintock High School. As a senior, Hopkins picked up an acoustic guitar and began taking lessons. An instructor encouraged him to change to bass, on account of his large hands. Doug’s interest in music kept him busy, often practicing the guitar on a Friday night rather than going to parties. Doug successfully graduated McClintock in 1979, even after a gym short incident resulting in a two week suspension during his senior year.

After High School, Doug briefly studied music at Mesa Community College, before becoming disenchanted with the emphasis on classical music. Following this, he enrolled at Arizona State University, studying Sociology.

Doug’s first foray into music was playing for bass for a little known cover band in Fountain Hills. At the time he was largely into classic rock. Stories of Doug engaging in strong arguments about music are peppered throughout his life. One of the more notable instances of this was around this time with McClintock pal Bill Leen. In the late 70’s and early 80’s the pair would argue the validity of classic rock vs. punk rock, with Bill championing the latter genre. Eventually Doug saw the value to punk rock and put it to Bill that they should start a punk band. Doug decided that he’d teach Bill to play bass, and he’d pick up the guitar again. The fact that neither of them could play all that well, instruments worried them too much. There was born Moral Majority, Doug’s first serious original band, with neighbors Alan Long and Jim Swafford on drums and vocals respectively.

True to the punk genre, there was not much musical training between the bunch, but the punk rock power chords, reminiscent of many 70’s punk rock bands was a perfect backdrop for Doug’s interest in literature and his intelligence was expressed through his clever lyrics, often targeting political and social issues. After months of practicing and playing living room gigs with family and friends as spectators, Moral Majority secured a position opening for then local heroes The Jetzons.

Moral Majority dissolved towards the end of 1981, and by the beginning of 1982 Doug had started a new band, The Psalms. Throughout his life, each new band often showcased a genre shift from the last. With The Psalms, Doug put to bed punk rock and moved towards a new wave sound. The Psalms were able to pick up where Moral Majority left off, opening for the Jetzons, and later more high profile spots opening for the likes of Billy Idol. During the bands two or so year tenure they received a reasonable amount of local press, and released a single and an EP with some help from Ed Reilly. Six months into the band Doug began to experiment with keyboards and synthesizer, teaching singer Jim Swafford to play guitar to devote more time to those instruments. A decision that he later regretted towards the end of the Psalms. The Psalms disbanded in early 1984. The same year Doug graduated from Arizona State University.

With both his studies and The Psalms behind him, Doug started putting together his next band in early 1985. Despite having jammed with former Psalm band mates through 1984, the line up of Algebra Ranch was made up of new players, including Damon Dorion from the newly defunct Jetzons. Algebra Ranch are cited as the band in which Doug grew significantly as a writer and honed in on the jangly pop sound and style which a few years later would become the trademark of the Gin Blossoms. Around this time he was working on future hit songs such as Hey Jealousy and Found Out About You. The latter of which was inspired by an ex-girlfriend who put him in a hospital with a shattered cheek bone, with a Tai-Kwondo kick to the head at an R.E.M concert the same year. Despite the advancing in his song writing and arrangement craft with the Algebra Ranch material, Doug’s on stage antics and unserious manner saw the band only last about a year before breaking up.

The following year, Doug teamed up again with Jim Swafford to form the Ten O’Clock Scholars. Although the band held on to some Algebra Ranch songs, and their set lists were virtually a blue print for the early Gin Blossoms, working with this singer David McKay gave this band more of a folk slant than any of Doug’s previous work. After a few months of jamming, the band dissolved when Doug up and left for a recording contract in L.A, but was soon picked up in Portland after David McKay convinced the rest of the band to move to Portland. On arriving in Portland, Doug garnered a spot with a local cover band to help pay the bills along side Scholars gigs. Despite local television exposure, the gigs were hard to come by for the Scholars, and by the end of 1986 the band had broken up and members had returned to Phoenix.

Doug’s next project would become his most famous band. The Gin Blossoms formed in late 1987, and soon became local favorites in Tempe, Arizona. After some lineup changes, a trip to Austin’s South By South West and independent cassette release, the band was signed to A&M Records in 1990. The band achieved local success with the recording of their A&M debut Up and Crumbling in 1991, and the following year started recording their follow up record in Memphis. During the recording sessions, tensions rose within the band and label as Doug was reported to be “moody, homesick and unproductive” and drinking heavily throughout the time in Memphis. The situation came to a head when he was sent back to Phoenix and soon learnt that he’d been fired from the band.

Back in Phoenix, Doug was a local celebrity and had no problem putting together new bands. The first of which was The Eventuals, with Marc Norman and Brian Blush, both Hopkins fans who have been quoted as saying he inspired them to become musicians. Blush and Hopkins had become friends years earlier when the underage Blush attempted to sneak into Long Wongs, caught by Doug who told him to buy him a beer or he was going to shanghai his ass out of the bar. The Eventuals were short lived, only ever playing one gig together.

Soon after Doug, hooked up with Lawrence Zubia to form the Chimeras. The Chimeras, with a solid lineup of musicians paired with Doug’s writing skills garnered a near immediate local following and played showcases like South By Southwest. By early 1993, the Gin Blossoms album New Miserable Experience was starting to find footing, and the success of his former band fueled Doug’s song writing desire for revenge, as well as increase his inner turmoil and self destructive behavior. Despite the impressive following and arsenal of songs that could rival the Gin Blossoms, in April 1993 while performing at the KUKQ Birthday Bash festival, Doug fumbled a solo and promptly quit the band after the set. While the next day he asked to rejoin the band, his inner turmoil was obvious to the band who denied the request, although Hopkins and the Zubias remained good friends.

For the latter part of 1993 Doug continued playing with local musicians, however his depression worsened as the Gin Blossoms success continued to grow. In November 1993 he received a gold record for sales of Hey Jealousy, which hung on his wall for 2 weeks until he smashed it. Concerns for his well being by friends and family escalated, and Chimeras band mate Lawrence Zubia took to checking on him daily. On Dec 5, 1993, a week after Doug smashed the gold record, Lawrence found that he’d taken his life in his Tempe apartment at the age of 32.

“I told him I was sorry I couldn’t make him happy,” Hopkins’ sister, Sara Bennewitz, remembers of her last conversation with him Thursday. “He just said, ‘I was born unhappy.’

“I told him I loved him and that I knew I wouldn’t see him again. He patted my hand and said goodbye.”

Hopkins’ sister, Sara, told The Associated Press that this was Hopkins’ sixth suicide attempt in 10 years.

Doug’s death hit the Tempe music community hard, with former band mates Lawrence and Mark Zubia turned their Sunday night set into an impromptu wake. A memorial service was held in Tempe a few days later. Immediately following the service, Robin Wilson of the Gin Blossoms was approached by a women with a relaying a message from Doug – that he had poured sugar in their tour van’s gas tank, causing the van to breakdown and the band miss that night’s show.

Doug’s musical legacy lives on, with his songs still being heard on radio, and performed by the Gin Blossoms. Over the years, many band mates have recorded and performed cover versions of his songs, as well as songs in tribute to him.

Posted on December 2, 2015May 29, 2018 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Frank Zappa 12/1993

December 4, 1993 – Frank Vincent Zappa was born on December 21, 1940 in Baltimore, Maryland with an Italian, Sicilian, Greek and Arab ancestry. With his dad employed as chemist/mathematician in the Defense industry, the family often moved to the extent that he attended at least 6 high schools. He began to play drums at the age of 12, and was playing in R&B groups by high school,

Zappa grew up influenced by avant-garde composers such as Varèse, Igor Stravinsky and Anton Webern, as well as R&B and doo-wop groups (particularly local pachuco groups), and modern jazz. His own heterogeneous ethnic background and the diverse social and cultural mix in and around greater Los Angeles in the sixties, were crucial in the forming of Zappa as a practitioner of underground music and of his later distrustful and openly critical attitude towards “mainstream” social, political, religious and musical movements. He frequently lampooned musical fads like psychedelia, rock opera and disco. Television also exerted a strong influence, as demonstrated by quotations from show themes and advertising jingles found in his later works. Continue reading Frank Zappa 12/1993

Posted on December 1, 2015February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Peter Wood 12/1993

December 1, 1993 – Peter Wood was born on April 9, 1950 in Middlesex, and brought up in Egham, Surrey. He became one of those talented music performers that have contributed to a massive amount of hits and superhits, but never really became famous, outside of the industry.

After the initial years of picking up an instrument and growing to become prolific, in his case it was piano and later all types of keyboards, he became a member of the rockband Quiver when he replaced Cal Batchelor. Later they teamed up with the Sutherland Bros and became part of the Sutherland Bros and Quiver. Wood had a longterm musical relationship with Al Stewart and cooperated with him on the famous 1976 album “Year of the Cat” for which song he received co-songwriter credits.

In that same year he worked with Joan Armatrading -who I consider one of the great singers of that decade- on her self-titled album, that catapulted her into stardom.

Also in 1976 he briefly joined a band called Natural Gas (incl. Joey Molland after the breakup of Badfinger) which recorded one album with famous New York producer Felix Pappalardi. The next couple of years saw him work closely with Al Stewart, and through his frequent collaborations with former Quiver bandmate Tim Renwick, in 1980 he joined Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, becoming one of the original members of the “surrogate band”, who featured in Pink Floyd’s The Wall live shows in 1980 and 1981 and he can be heard on the live album Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980–81.

After this he moves to New York where he works with Cyndi Lauper, Jonathan Kelly, Tommy Shaw, Carly Simon and Bob Dylan and in 1984 joins for an album stint with the Lou Reed Band. In the late 1980s we see him back with Al Stewart and Cindy Lauper and in 1990 he joins Roger Waters in his epic Live Show – The Wall- Live in Berlin, followed by the historic Guitar Legends Festival in Seville Spain in 1991.

Sadly he passed away from the injuries of a fall in his New York home on Dec 1, 1993 at age 43.

Posted on November 24, 2015February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — 1 Comment

Albert Collins 11/1993

Nov 24, 1993 – Albert Collins was born on October 1, 1932 in Leona Texas. The blues guitar came to him through his cousin Lightnin’ Hopkins, who lived in the same town and often played on family gatherings. Although initially a student of piano, he became the bluesmaster who played an altered tuning. Collins tuned his guitar to an open F minor chord (FCFAbCF), and then added a capo at the 5th, 6th or 7th fret. At the age of twelve, he made the decision to concentrate on learning the guitar after hearing “Boogie Chillen'” by John Lee Hooker.

In the early days Collins worked as a paint mixer and truck driver to make ends meet. In 1971, when he was 39 years old, Collins worked in construction, since he couldn’t make a proper living from his music. One of the construction jobs he worked on was a remodeling job for Neil Diamond. This type of work carried on right up until the late 1970s. It was his wife Gwen that talked him into returning to music. Continue reading Albert Collins 11/1993

Posted on October 12, 2015July 13, 2018 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Criss Oliva 10/1993

October 17, 1993 – Christopher “Criss” Michael Oliva was lead guitarist and co-founder of the heavy metal band Savatage, born in Pompton Plains, NJ on April 3rd 1963. In 1976 the Oliva family moved to Dunedin, Florida and it was here that Criss and his brother Jon formed a band Avatar, in 1978.

But in 1983 as success was looming on the horizon, they had to change their name and decided on Savatage. Under that name they released their first two albums, Sirens in 1983 and The Dungeons Are Calling in 1985. Savatage continued to flourish, releasing a further 6 albums after signing with Atlantic Records in 1985.

The band toured relentlessly, with Criss winning critical acclaim, his biggest dream was for Savatage’s 1991 album Streets: A Rock Opera to achieve platinum status. Streets was Savatage’s biggest mainstream success, and Criss enjoyed the exposure the record gave the band, allowing new fans to be found for their music.

Continue reading Criss Oliva 10/1993

Posted on March 7, 2017February 12, 2025 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Randy Jo Hobbs 8/1993

August 4, 1993 – Randy Jo Hobbs was born on March 22nd 1948 in Winchester, Indiana.

Already fronting his own band the Coachmen at age 17, he soon joined brothers Rick (later known as Rick Derringer and Randy Zehringer, a Union City Indiana garage band called The McCoys (originally Rick and the Raiders) from 1965 to 1969 during which time their hit “Hang On Sloopy” became a global hit. The song sold some 6 million copies and was the McCoys entry in the big league, opening up for giant acts of the era like the Rolling Stones. When the song’s popularity ran out of steam, they became the house band for a popular New York hotspot called Steve Paul’s The Scene where they were introduced to Texas guitar God in the making Johnny Winter. Lacking more hits the band soon turned into backing guitar phenomenon Johnny Winter in the seventies.

As a band the McCoys called it quits in 1973 and Hobbs stayed a while longer with Johnny Winter but later played in brother Edgar Winter’s White Trash from until around 1976. White Trash was comprised of Southern musicians, one of which was another guitar giant, Ronnie Montrose. This led to Randy playing with a later version of Montrose, on the ‘Jump on It’ album, released in 1976.

Earlier Randy had played bass with Jimi Hendrix on some 1968 live sessions which were later released unofficially as Woke Up This Morning and Found Myself Dead in 1980 and New York Sessions in 1998, and officially as Bleeding Heart in 1994. At this time he unfortunately developed a huge heroin dependency that ultimately would cause his demise in 1993

In 1978 he also played bass on Rick Derringer’s album with Dick Glass, “Glass Derringer”.

Drug abuse took a toll on Randy Hobbs, and ultimately consumed his career as a musician. A front man can stumble out onto the stage and sleepwalk through the set, but an out-of-control side player is done for. Randy Hobbs was fired from Johnny Winter’s band and returned to Randolph County where he lived out his life.

Randy Jo Hobbs was found dead in a Dayton hotel room on August 5, 1993 – Rick Derringer’s birthday. The cause was heart failure. He was 45.

Posted on December 27, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Richard Tee 7/1993

July 21, 1993 – Richard Tee was born Richard Ten Ryk on November 24th 1943 in Brooklyn, New York, where he spent most of his life and lived with his mother in a brownstone apartment building.

Tee graduated from The High School of Music & Art in New York City and attended the Manhattan School of Music. Though better known as a studio and session musician, Tee led a jazz ensemble, the Richard Tee Committee, and was a founding member of the band Stuff. In 1981 he played the piano and Fender Rhodes for Simon and Garfunkel’s Concert In Central Park.

Tee played with a diverse range of artists during his career, such as Paul Simon, Carly Simon, The Bee Gees, Barbra Streisand, Roberta Flack, Aretha Franklin, Donny Hathaway, Peter Allen, George Harrison, Diana Ross, Duane Allman, Quincy Jones, Bill Withers, Art Garfunkel, Nina Simone, Juice Newton, Billy Joel, Etta James, Grover Washington, Jr., Eric Clapton, Kenny Loggins, Patti Austin, David Ruffin, Lou Rawls, Ron Carter, Peter Gabriel, George Benson, Joe Cocker, Chuck Mangione, Tim Finn, Peabo Bryson, Mariah Carey, Chaka Khan, Phoebe Snow, Doc Severinson, Leo Sayer, Herbie Mann and countless others. He also contributed to numerous gold and platinum albums during his long career and joined the band Stuff led by bassist Gordon Edwards. Other members of the band included guitarist Cornell Dupree, drummer Chris Parker and later adding guitarist Eric Gale and drummer Steve Gadd to the line up.

After a 16-year relationship with Eleana Steinberg Tee of Greenwich, Connecticut, the couple was married in Woodstock, New York, by New York State Supreme Court Justice Bruce Wright. The couple moved to the Chelsea Hotel in 1988, and later to Cold Spring, New York.

Tee died of prostate cancer on July 21, 1993 in Cold Spring, New York at the age of 49. He is buried in the Artist Cemetery in Woodstock, New York.

Posted on September 25, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Duncan Browne 5/1993

May 28, 1993 – Duncan Browne was born March 25th 1947. As a boy, Duncan Browne intended to follow his father, an Air Commodore (British equivalent of a one-star Air Force general), into the Royal Air Force, but his poor health even as a youth precluded this as a possibility.

Instead, he chose to pursue his interests as an actor — he played the clarinet and studied music theory, but wasn’t possessed to consider a career in music until, at age 17, he saw Bob Dylan in an appearance on a BBC drama called The Madhouse on Castle Street, during the American folk-rock star’s first tour of the U.K. It was Dylan’s guitar playing rather than his singing that served as Browne’s inspiration and entryway to rock music. “Most people find that odd,” he recalled in a 1991 interview from his home in London, “but I was interested in the way he tuned and played his guitar, especially on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.” In response, he bought a Yamaha acoustic model and taught himself to play in a technique that was heavily classically influenced.

He then spent some time busking around London and later traveled across Europe on 30 pounds borrowed from his father, before entering the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. During his three years there, in addition to studying drama, he kept up with his guitar playing and developed a greater command of music theory — which he’d begun studying as a teenager — and formed a folk-rock trio called Lorel. They were later signed to Andrew Oldham’s Immediate Records and cut one single, ironically enough an original song that had the bad luck to use as its source the same Bach-originated tune that Procol Harum had utilized for “A Whiter Shade of Pale”.

Immediate saw no point in releasing the single, and the trio soon dissolved. Browne was able to salvage his own career out of the debacle, however — he had done some arranging for other acts on the label and Oldham was impressed with what he’d seen, and wanted a solo album from him. He turned to a former student friend of his, David Bretton, to serve as lyricist, and the two composed a dozen songs together. The resulting album, Give Me Take You, was one of the jewels of the Immediate Records catalog, a quietly dazzling work that embraced elements of folk, rock, pop, and classical, all wrapped around some surprisingly well-crafted poetry and Browne’s stunning voice.

Over the decades, it has been compared to the best work of Paul McCartney and the Moody Blues, and also to such albums as Astral Weeks by Van Morrison, while Richard Goldstein of The Village Voice has described it as an example of “Pre-Raphaelite Rock,” a reference to the Renaissance revival movement in art, formed in England in the mid-19th century.

Despite its many virtues, the album died a commercial death, largely as a result of its being released just at the point when Immediate’s financial underpinnings were beginning to collapse. Both Browne and Give Me Take You did get some notice in England, and especially from his fellow musicians — “Keith Emerson [of the Nice] heard my work on Give Me Take You,” he recalled in 1991, “and rang me up to ask if I would arrange [the choir and accompaniment on] “Hang on to a Dream.” I enjoyed working with the Nice — we would support each other when we toured together, and Keith asked me at one point if I was interested in replacing their guitarist, Davy O’List, as the fourth member of the band. I think by the time that happened though, he was in the process of putting together the group that eventually became Emerson, Lake & Palmer.”

Those who heard it tended to love Give Me Take You, and Browne probably could have gotten some concert work from the release, but for a certain degree of confusion as to who he was, owing both to Immediate’s slipshod publicity operation and the design of the album jacket — the triple superimposed image of Browne, coupled with the multiple overdubs on many of the songs, led some promoters to think that Duncan Browne was a trio of some sort. When the company’s collapse came in 1969-1970 — with Oldham, trying in the final days to raise money from any and every source, actually presenting Browne with a bill for 2,000 pounds (about $6,000) to cover the recording cost of the LP — Give Me Take You was buried under the rubble of Immediate Records. It resurfaced briefly in the mid-’70s on the Canadian-based Daffodil label and then disappeared until the early ’90s; for years, as with most of the Immediate library, the master tapes to Browne’s work were missing, lost in storage in some forgotten vault.

Browne went on to record a single for Bell Records’ British unit (an unusual label that also recorded the not-dissimilar Amazing Blondel during this same period), and had a short but more substantial liaison with Mickie Most’s RAK label in 1972, where he issued a single, “Journey,” with its extraordinary Spanish guitar figure, that went top 20 in 1972 and was voted “most unusual single of the year”. A self-titled solo album that was a direct stylistic follow-up to his Immediate LP followed. Neither did well enough to justify more recording at the time, and Browne spent the next several years as a session musician, working on a pair of albums by Colin Blunstone and one album by Tom Yates.

In 1973 he decided to transfer his classical technique to electric guitar, during which period he met Peter Godwin. They worked together for two years in Paris and London on the prototypical songs, sound and style of what was to become “Metro”. Duncan’s only album with Metro was released in 1976 on Logo Records. Suddenly, Browne was near the cutting edge of music again, and in addition to his work with Metro he released a pair of solo albums, The Wild Places and Streets of Fire, which were also issued on Sire in the early ’80s. This was as close as Duncan Browne ever got to rock stardom, his records sought after in locales like New York’s East Village and played on American college radio stations. Creem magazine critic Janis Schact pegged him as the voice that was “about to launch [a thousand romances] into the 1980s.”

Despite some beautiful and surprisingly hard-rocking music that was sort of new wave melodic, however, there wasn’t enough interest or activity to sustain this phase of Browne’s career. By the middle of the eighties, Browne had moved into the field of film and television scoring, and worked on Jonathan Miller’s series Madness, among other productions. He was pleasantly surprised at the outset of the 1990s when the CD boom led to new interest in his 1960s and 1970s rock efforts — Browne was gratified, in particular, to learn that Sony Music Special Products was preparing a CD reissue of Give Me Take You in the United States.

Alas, he was stricken with cancer in the early ’90s, and died on May 28, 1993 at the age of 46.

In the years since, most of his catalog, including his early-’80s solo albums, was re-released and Browne’s music may well have had a larger following in 2002 than it ever did in the 1960s and 1970s.

In the 1990’s, battling cancer, Duncan had begun working on his first album of new songs in well over a decade. But tragically, Duncan would not see the completion of “Songs of Love and War”. The task of completing the album fell to Nick Magnus, who with the help of Colin Blunstone and Sebastion Graham-Jones, put the finishing touches on a haunting and beautiful collection of songs. The album was released on Nic Potter’s Zomart label in 1995.

Duncan Browne’s songs have been covered by Patti Smith, Ian Matthews, Barry Manilow, Colin Blunstone, John English, and particularly successfully by David Bowie.

I guess you have to be in a particular mood, but I loved the achingly beautiful song by Duncan Brown titled Niña Morena.

Posted on June 7, 2025June 8, 2025 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Mick Ronson 4/1993

Mick Ronson (46) – guitar with David Bowie/ Bob Dylan – was born May 26, 1946 in Kingston upon Hull, England. He was the first son of George and Minnie Ronson and had two younger siblings, Maggi and David. As a child he practiced to play classically piano, recorder, violin, and (later) the harmonium. He initially wanted to be a cellist, but moved to guitar upon discovering the music of Duane Eddy, whose sound on the bass notes of his guitar sounded similar to that of the cello, according to Ronson.

The City of Hull was a musical hub in those early days and he joined his first band, The Mariners when he was 17. While Ronson was working with The Mariners, another local Hull group– The Crestas–recruited him on the advice of The Mariners’ bassist John Griffiths. With Ronson on board the Crestas gained a solid reputation, making regular appearances at local halls: Mondays at the Halfway House in Hull, Thursdays at the Ferryboat Hotel, Fridays at the Regal Ballroom in Beverley, and Sundays at the Duke of Cumberland in North Ferriby, the typical circuit of those days.

Winding his way through several local and regional bands such as The Voice, The Wanted, The Rats. The last group played the local circuit, and made a few unsuccessful trips to London and Paris.

In 1967 The Rats recorded the one-off psychedelic track “The Rise and Fall of Bernie Gripplestone”at Fairview Studios in Willerby and can be heard on the 2008 release, Front Room Masters – Fairview Studios 1966–1973. In 1968, the band changed their name briefly to Treacle and booked another recording session at Fairview Studios in 1969, before reverting to their original name. Around that time, Ronson was recommended by Rick Kemp (Steeleye Span) to play guitar on Michael Chapman‘s critically acclaimed Fully Qualified Survivor al

bum that came out in 1970.

In March 1970, during the recording sessions for Elton John‘s album Tumbleweed Connection, Ronson played guitar on the track “Madman Across the Water“. The song, however, was not included in the original release, but became the title for Elton John’s 4th studio album with Davey Johnstone doing the guitar parts. . The recording featuring Ronson was released on the 1992 compilation album, Rare Masters, as well as the 1995 reissue and 2008 deluxe edition of Tumbleweed Connection.

Early in 1970, Rats’ drummer John Cambridge went back to Hull in search of Ronson, intent upon recruiting him for a new David Bowie backing band called The Hype. He found Ronson marking out a rugby pitch, one of his duties as a Parks Department gardener for Hull City Council. Having failed in his earlier attempts in London, Ronson was reluctant, but eventually agreed to accompany Cambridge to a meeting with Bowie. Two days later, on 5 February, Ronson made his debut with Bowie on John Peel‘s national BBC Radio 1 show.

The Hype played their first gig at The Roundhouse on 22 February with a line-up that included Bowie, Ronson, Cambridge, and producer/bassist Tony Visconti. The group dressed up in superhero costumes, with Bowie as Rainbowman, Visconti as Hypeman, Ronson as Gangsterman, and Cambridge as Cowboyman.

Soon after Ronson started recording and touring with David Bowie as guitarist with the Spiders of Mars, Bowie’s backing ensemble. They now included Trevor Bolder, (later Uriah Heep) who had replaced Visconti on bass guitar, and keyboardist Rick Wakeman, were used in the recording of Hunky Dory. The departure of Visconti meant that Ronson, with Bowie, took over the arrangements, while Ken Scott co-produced with Bowie. Hunky Dory featured Ronson’s string arrangements on several tracks, including “Life On Mars?“.

That band, minus Wakeman, became known as the Spiders from Mars from the title of the next Bowie album. Again, Ronson was a key part of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, providing string arrangements and various instrumentation, as well as playing lead guitar. Ronson’s guitar and arranging during the Spiders from Mars era provided much of the underpinning for later punk rock musicians. Bowie and Ronson followed Ziggy Stardust with Aladdin Sane, David’s first #1 album and 1973 covers album Pin Ups.. Mick was increasingly highlighted on these records, and his stinging, razoring guitar on ‘Panic in Detroit’, ‘Cracked Actor’ and ‘The Prettiest Star’ was astonishing.

Producer Ken Scott:

“Is David Bowie talented? Absolutely. Is David Bowie worthy of the adulation often heaped upon him? Sometimes. Would everyone know his name if not for his pairing with Mick Ronson? Quite possibly not. Ronno was the major part of the team that brought David to the forefront of modern music. He made my job as an engineer and producer so much easier and enjoyable. I can only speak for myself, but I know the five records we did together would have been nowhere near as good without the personality and unbounded talents Mick Ronson brought to the studio everyday.”

In the early 70s Bowie and Ronson collaborated with a number of other artists. Together hey produced Lou Reed’s seminal Transformer album, and while David received most credit for this he later acknowledged that Mick made a massive contribution to the sessions playing guitar and piano. Reed later admitted that Mick’s arrangements and influence was stronger than David’s (“Ronson was an incredible guitar player”, said Reed. “A great producer and great arranger. A lovely man.”)

Bowie and Ronson also produced Lulu, scoring a hit with “The Man Who Sold The World”.

Lulu: “Mick Ronson was the first guitarist who ever accessed and combined a pop/rock and punk ethic in his guitar playing. His style was totally unique to the day. I loved working with Mick in the studio. He was not a diva, he was a kind and gentle soul.”

In 1972 Ronson provided a strings-and-brass arrangement for the song “Sea Diver” on the Bowie-produced All the Young Dudes album for Mott the Hoople. Ronson appeared on the 1972 country rock album Bustin’ Out by Pure Prairie League, where he undertook string ensemble arrangements.

Years later in 1994 a year after Ronson’s death Bowie said in an interview:

“Mick was the perfect foil for the Ziggy character. He was very much a salt-of-the-earth type, the blunt northerner with a defiantly masculine personality, so that what you got was the old-fashioned Yin and Yang thing. As a rock duo, I thought we were every bit as good as Mick and Keith or Axl and Slash. Ziggy and Mick were the personification of that rock n roll dualism.”

On July 3, 1973 however, David Bowie shocked his fans at a gig in Hammersmith, London, by saying it was the last show he would ever do. It was a fantastic bit of showbiz – really, it was only the end of his Ziggy Stardust character, not the last show for David Bowie – but it did mark the end of the road for the Spiders From Mars, the backing band that had transformed Bowie from a struggling Dylan-influenced one-hit wonder into the most exciting glam rock star of the 70s. Read the story here.

After leaving Bowie’s entourage, Ronson released three solo albums over the years. His solo debut, 1974’s Slaughter on 10th Avenue, featured a version of Elvis Presley‘s “Love Me Tender”, as well as Ronson’s most famous solo track, “Only After Dark“. Between this and the 1975 follow-up, Ronson had a short-lived stint with Mott the Hoople, after which Ronno took off for the States.

In late ’75 Ronson met Bob Dylan in New York’s Greenwich Village, and shortly afterwards Dylan invited Mick to join his touring band. Ronson thought Dylan “sang like Yogi Bear” but joined The Rolling Thunder Revue for eight months, playing with Joan Baez, T-Bone Burnett, Joni Mitchell, Roger McGuinn, with whom he developed a great friendship and Bob Neuwirth. He even performed a ‘solo’ number in Dylan’s set, Is There Life on Mars? But then, after he temporarily became part of Bob Dylan’s “Rolling Thunder Revue” tour in 1976, Ronson became a long-time frequent collaborator with Mott’s former leader Ian Hunter, commencing with the album Ian Hunter (UK No. 21) and featuring the UK hit “Once Bitten, Twice Shy”, including a spell touring as the Hunter Ronson Band.

In 1976 Ronson helped Kinky Friedman on his album Lasso From El Passo, and produced and played on Roger McGuinn’s solo record Cardiff Rose. Roger McGuinn:

“After Rolling Thunder was over, I went back to California and decided it was time to record my fourth solo album. I invited Ronson to produce me, using Guam as the studio band. That became the Cardiff Rose album – it was one of my favorites. Mick did a stunning job as a producer, perhaps best illustrated on the song Jolly Roger. Mick made the track into a great seafaring song. I don’t know how, but he went out and found wind sounds and creaking noises for the ship’s timbers and assembled the whole thing. He literally was an audio artist. Absolutely brilliant.”

Looking back on his two RCA albums, Ronson felt that his management had tried to turn him into a David Cassidy-type figure. Cassidy he was not, but he was happy to work with the pop idol, playing sparkling guitar on Cassidy’s hit single Gettin’ It In The Street.

David Cassidy:

“Mick Ronson was a far greater musician and a far greater person than anyone was allowed to know. I loved him and admired his uniqueness, and was privileged to have worked with him.”

In 1977 he played live with Van Morrison and Dr John in Europe (but, contrary to popular opinion, did not contribute to the sessions for Morrison’s A Period Of Transition), assisted Roger Daltrey on his album One Of The Boys, produced an album for Topaz, played with Philip Rambow, played on a Benny Mardones album [Thank God For Girls], and provided guitar on several cuts for John Cougar Mellencamp’s album Chestnut Street Incident. Mick later played a major role on American Fool, rescuing a song Mellencamp had rejected – helping make a worldwide hit.

Mountain drummer Corky Laing started writing with Ian Hunter, and the duo recorded with Mountain bassist Felix Pappalardi and Ronson (Mick joked the new band was to be called Mott The Mountain’) and then John Cale. The first set of recordings found posthumous release as The Secret Sessions.

In the late 70s and early 80s Ronson worked on albums by Rue Morgue, David Johansen, Ellen Foley and on Meat Loaf’s Deadringer album.

David Johansen: “Me and Ronson met at the Gramercy Park Hotel when Bowie came over. We both enjoyed a cocktail. When Mick moved to New York we’d hang out, and he produced a record for me called In Style. Mick had, like, frosted hair and manicured nails and all that jazz – he was one of the cats. On his birthday I gave him a fine sharkskin suit which was very hip at the time. He asked: ‘What do you want me to do with this?’ I said: ‘Wear it – you’ll look good.’ And with his thick Hull accent Mick said: ‘I don’t give a fook how I look!’ To me, that’s funny. What a great human being. I dug him like crazy.”

In 1981 Mick recorded and toured the US with ex-Rolling Thunder man T-Bone Burnett as support to The Who. He’d turned down a far more lucrative offer to play liv

e with Bob Seger.

Ian Hunter: “Ronson went on the road with T-Bone for $100 a week, sleeping on people’s floors. The alternative was $2,500 a week with Bob Seger, but Mick didn’t like the music and C, F and G. I really admired him for that. Suzi (his wife) however had a fit!”

Feeling out of place in the 80s music scene, at one point Ronson thought of giving up music completely and becoming a chef. He ran barbecues at Ian’s home and was affectionately known as The Great Marinator. Ronson could never relate to the technique-heavy fretboard gymnastics of the hairband 80s, so he continued working with artists such as Steve Harley and Lisa Dalbello.

In 1987 Ian Hunter toured Canada with The Roy Young Band, and the following year Ian invited Mick to join him for live work. The duo cut the album YUI Orta, billed for the first and only time on record as Hunter Ronson. The record was notable for Mick’s tear-jerking instrumental Sweet Dreamer. Ronson’s 80s collaborations were numerous and included Slaughter And The Dogs, Dead Fingers Talk, Los Illegals, The Visible Targets, The Midge Ure Band, Kiss That, Lisa Dominique, The Melvilles, Andi Sexgang, Funhouse, The Fentons, The Phantoms, Ian Thomas, David Lynn Jones. The Тоll, Lennex and Perfect Affair. He also jammed with Duran Duran’s John and Andy Taylor.

Ronson also assisted Swedish duo EC2 (Carola Westerlund and Estelle Milbourne), and moved to Stockholm in 1990 to live with Carola Westerlund. The couple had a son, Joakim (Kym). During ensuing recording sessions with Randy Vanwarmer in Sweden in 1991, Mick started to experience significant back pain. He returned to London, where he was given the earth-shattering news that he was suffering from inoperable and terminal liver cancer and had only months to live. In typical style, Ronson remained focused on fulfilling a series of Scandinavian live dates with Graham Parker, and was determined to beat the disease.

Ronson’s output and collaborations remained prolific. He worked with Johan Wahlstrom, Ian Hunter, Leather Nun, Dag Finn, The Sonic Walthers, Dalbello and Casino Steel, produced Morrissey’s acclaimed Your Arsenal album and recorded again with Bowie. In addition, Ronson had been writing new material, and suddenly a third solo album (originally titled To Hull And Back) became his remaining lifeblood.

Mick’s last recorded work was with hard rockers The Wildhearts. Ronson also reunited one last time with Ian Hunter and David Bowie, in April 1992, at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert. Mick played on All The Young Dudes and Heroes. Joe Elliott and Phil Collen of Def Leppard provided backing vocals on …Dudes.

After the Freddie Mercury Tribute, Mick’s health deteriorated desperately.

According to Ian Hunter, Mick was sick for 23 hours a day, then the other hour he’d be on the phone telling everybody how wonderful he felt. But then when I moved in with him towards the end I saw what he was doing. The morphine would come down to a point where he’d be totally sane, and then he would pick up the phone and he was telling everybody how wonderful he felt. He wanted everyone not to worry about him. The first thing out of his mouth was: ‘How are you?’

He was a warehouseman, car mechanic and municipal gardener – but boy could he play guitar (and piano, recorder, violin, bass and drums). Mick Ronson became the undisputed king of glam rock guitarists, ace arranger and prolific producer on countless sessions from David Bowie and Lou Reed to John Mellencamp and Morrissey. He toured with Bob Dylan and was lifelong sideman to Mott The Hoople legend Ian Hunter. He was band leader of the Bowie’s Spiders From Mars, and produced and played with dozens of other artists ( Morrissey, Slaughter & The Dogs, The Wildhearts, The Rich Kids, Elton John, Johnny Cougar, T-Bone Burnett and many others such as Lou Reed, Pure Prairie League, David Cassidy, Topaz, Roger McGuinn, Roger Daltrey, John Cougar Mellencamp, Ellen Foley, Rich Kids …) often more for pleasure than for self-acclaim or financial reward. He was considered to be the finest British guitarist to emerge since the days of Clapton and Beck.

Mick Ronson died April 29, 1993 from liver cancer at the age of 46.

Posted on May 23, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Steve Douglas 4/1993

April 19, 1993 – Steve Douglas Kreisman was born September 24, 1938 and grew up in Los Angeles, where he studied trumpet, trombone and violin and taught himself to play the saxophone at age 15. After serving briefly in the Navy in the Drum and Bugle Corps, Douglas began his musical career recording and touring with Duane Eddy in the ’50s.

His first job as a session saxophonist was with Phil Spector as one of “Phil’s Regulars,” a group that included Sonny Bono on percussion, Glen Campbell on guitar and Leon Russell on keyboard.

He played the blues with Duane Eddy and the Rebels at the Apollo Theater in Harlem in 1958, and with Elvis Presley on the set of the film “Girls, Girls, Girls!” in the early 1960’s.

Douglas played on albums by the Beach Boys and toured with Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton. He was one of the most sort after session musicians in L.A, a member of The Wrecking Crew, who worked with Phil Spector, Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys. He can be heard on records by Duane Eddy, Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, BB King, Ike & Tina Turner, Bobby Darin and so many others.

Over the years, he played with Sam Cooke, B. B. King, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand and Stevie Wonder. He also worked on the soundtracks for such movies as “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

The ’70s and ’80s saw Douglas performing with Bob Dylan, Mink Deville, Mickey Hart, Ry Cooder, and even the Ramones on the Phil Spector production End of the Century.

Anyone who has listened to classic rock radio has heard the sax playing of Steve Douglas. As a result of his contributions, Steve Douglas was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2003.

Douglas died of heart failure on Monday April 19, 1993 at a Hollywood recording studio during a recording session with Ry Cooder.

He was 55 and lived in Petaluma, Calif.

Posted on February 24, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Toy Caldwell 2/1993

February 25, 1993 – Toy Talmadge Caldwell Jr (Marshall Tucker Band) was born in Spartanburg, SC on November 13, 1947.

He began playing guitar before his teen years with his younger brother Tommy Caldwell. He developed a unique style of playing, playing the electric guitar using his thumb rather than a pick. Toy played basketball and football in high school with friends George McCorkle, Jerry Eubanks, and Doug Gray. While very involved in sports, the boys eventually became interested in music including jazz and blues. By the age of sixteen, Caldwell was passionate about music, sports, and his other obsession, motorcycles. He also enjoyed hunting and fishing.

Like a good old southern boy, Caldwell decided to serve his country and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. In 1966, he reported for recruit training at Parris Island, South Carolina. After being wounded in Vietnam in September 1968, he was evacuated for two weeks, but then returned for duty. Caldwell was discharged in 1969 and once again began playing music with his high school buddies. The Spartanburg chapter of the Marine Corps League is named the Hutchings-Caldwells Detachment in honor of Toy, his brother Tommy and another Marine, Pvt Nolan Ryan Hutchings who was killed during the Iraq Invasion in 2003.

Toy was a founding member and lead guitarist of the Marshall Tucker Band which formed in 1973. He was a member of the band from 1973 to 1983 and wrote almost all of their songs. He later formed the Toy Caldwell Band and released an eponymous CD in 1992; the record was later renamed “Son of the South” by Southern rock luminary, Toy’s personal friend, Charlie Daniels. In addition to his guitarist role, he occasionally performed lead vocals for Marshall Tucker Band, including on one of the band’s best-known hits, “Can’t You See.”

He was the older brother of co-founder and bass guitarist Tommy Caldwell, who was killed at age 30 in an automobile accident on April 28, 1980, and to Tim Caldwell, who on March 28, 1980, one month prior to Tommy’s death, was killed at age 25 in a collision with a Spartanburg County garbage truck on S.C. Highway 215

Toy Caldwell was 45, when he died on 25 February 1993 from cardio-respiratory failure due to cocaine ingestion.

Posted on February 17, 2016February 12, 2025 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Patrick Waite 2/1993

February 18, 1993 – Patrick Waite was born on May 16, 1968 in the Birmingham area of England. His father had moved from his native Jamaica to England in 1966.

At age eleven he became a founding member of Musical Youth, a British-Jamaican pop/reggae band. The group originally formed in 1979 at Duddeston Manor School in Birmingham, England and featured two sets of brothers, Kelvin and Michael Grant, plus Junior and Patrick Waite.

The latter pair’s father, Frederick Waite, was a former member of Jamaican group The Techniques, and sang lead with Junior at the start of the group’s career in the late 1970s.
They were quickly signed to MCA Records and by that time, founding father Frederick Waite had backed down, to be replaced by Dennis Seaton, a kid their own age, as lead singer.

In 1982 they released there first and only hit. The pro-marijuana song called, “Pass The Dutchie” was based on “Pass The Kouchie” by ‘The Mighty Diamonds.’ The song sold over 5 million copies, but none of their future releases would gain as much attention as this one had. They went onto sing backup for Donna Summers until the career began to sour, eventually leading to the disbanding of the band in 1985.

An interview in England from March 2003 reveals that Musical Youth was Doomed from the start, in an industry that has claimed many legends, unprepared for great wealth, adoration and royalty theft. Here is that interview with singer Dennis Seaton and keyboard player Michael Grant.

Next Car & Van Rental sits opposite a council estate in Halesowen, a small town near Birmingham. It’s not the best area, but it’s not the worst either. The walls of the forecourt are spiked with broken glass. Inside, co-owner Steve Cooke offers a pulverizing handshake, the internationally recognized signal of a provincial businessman on the up. His partner, Dennis Seaton, is charming, yet seems faintly sheepish about being interviewed.

Next Car & Van Rental is a long way from the Grammy awards, where Seaton was nominated best newcomer the night Michael Jackson picked up eight gongs for Thriller, and from Los Angeles, where he was briefly top goalscorer on Rod Stewart’s celebrity expat Sunday league team. But it’s also a fair distance from signing on or delivering sacks of rice, which Seaton also did when his 15 minutes of fame ran out. Today, few of his customers know he was ever famous. “People aren’t going to rent a car from me because I used to be the singer in Musical Youth,” he says.

Musical Youth’s 1982 single Pass the Dutchie sold 5m copies. They broke America. They were the first black artists to be played on MTV – beating Michael Jackson by several months. But their stardom never transcended its era. Seaton’s tales are thick with dimly remembered names. They were regulars on Razzmatazz, Tyne Tees’s unlamented pop show. They worked on a film with The A Team’s Mr T. Irene Cara, singer of Fame and Flashdance, guested onstage. Throw in a commentary by Stuart Maconie and some footage of people wearing deely boppers and you’ve got yourself a BBC2 nostalgia show.

What started out as a jaunty celebration of multi-cultural British youth ended as a cautionary tale about the perils of naivety in the music industry. Like all tales from rock’s dark side, it involved drugs, mental instability, lawlessness, financial wranglings and premature death. In this tale, however, the people who got in trouble, went mad and died had barely hit puberty at the height of their success.

Eating lunch in a gaudy Birmingham leisure complex, keyboard player Michael Grant is aware that Musical Youth has become a byword for child stardom’s misery. “Black artists get ripped off, child stars get ripped off,” he says. “We were doomed from the start, really.”

Grant is the only surviving member of Musical Youth who still has a successful musical career. Remixes by his production team, 5am, have graced singles by Mariah Carey, Busta Rhymes and Kelly Rowland. He manages a gospel duo called Nu Life and has recently produced an indie band, River Deep. “I want to produce the next Oasis album,” he says hopefully.

Courteous to a fault, he is nevertheless noticeably angrier about Musical Youth’s demise than Seaton. The singer retains a curious ebullience even when accusing the music industry of racism. Perhaps that’s the legacy of being the frontman, spending your early teens grinning good-naturedly on gormless kids’ TV shows and in gormless pop magazines.

Grant was nine years old in 1979, when he and his guitarist brother Kelvin, then seven, joined Musical Youth. They had formed at the behest of a family friend, Freddie Waite, once a singer in Jamaican vocal trio the Techniques. Waite had left the band in 1966, emigrated to England and ended up in Nechells, in inner-city Birmingham. Waite encouraged his sons, Patrick and Junior, to take up bass and drums respectively. When the Grant brothers joined them, they became his backing band.

“We used to do a lot of pubs and clubs with this 35-year-old man when we were between the ages of seven and 12,” says Grant. “This old guy next to a bunch of kids! Kelvin’s hands were so small they could only just reach around the fretboard of his guitar. It was odd, but we got a favourable reaction. We could play our instruments.”

Reggae is a famously obtuse genre. It makes stars out of the most unlikely people. Freddie Waite and Musical Youth were certainly weird, but no weirder than, say, King Stitt, Jamaica’s cross-eyed, toothless, facially disfigured DJ. Outside reggae circles, however, Freddie Waite and Musical Youth were just too peculiar. An A&R man spotted them performing in Coventry, and offered them a deal – on one condition. “He said, you need a singer your own age,” Grant chuckles. “We held an audition and Dennis was the only one to turn up. It was pretty embarrassing.”

Musical Youth signed to MCA records in 1982. “We would have been excited if we knew what it meant,” says Grant. “We thought it was par for the course – why shouldn’t we get a record deal? We didn’t really understand.”

“The Fun Boy Three tried to talk to us about the business,” remembers Seaton. “But we were asking them questions like, ‘Are you going out with Bananarama?'”

Musical Youth’s first single for MCA was a version of the Mighty Diamonds’ Rastafarian anthem Pass the Kouchie, with the lyrics and title famously altered to avoid any reference to marijuana. Driven by Kelvin Grant’s exuberant toasting – a kind of Jamaican proto-rapping, then entirely alien to a British pop audience – Pass the Dutchie entered the charts at number 26 on September 25. The next week it leapt to number one. It was a hit across Europe. It reached the top 10 in America. They recorded with Donna Summer. Michael Jackson took a shine to them. “I was one of those kids that’s been in his bedroom,” says Grant indignantly, “and nothing untoward happened.”

The money was rolling in. Everyone except Seaton moved away from their council estate homes. “We had to set up our own companies,” he remembers. “We had to get accountants and sit in board meetings. I would ask questions, but I was 15 and I felt like I was bothering them.”

In some ways, it’s surprising Musical Youth’s success lasted so long. In a market reliant on high visibility to keep fickle audiences interested, Musical Youth were restricted by guidelines protecting child performers. “We could only work 42 days of the year, and we were trying to compete against guys that toured for 18 months solid,” says Grant.

In addition, once the excitement surrounding Pass the Dutchie died down, Musical Youth found themselves trapped in a musical no-man’s land, between frivolous teen pop and the sombre, grittily political world of reggae. They had honed their skills in Birmingham’s notoriously tough black clubs and recorded sessions for the John Peel show, but their age meant they would inevitably be viewed as a novelty, aimed not at serious music fans but children. “We were seen as a novelty, not just because of our age, but because of the colour of our skin,” says Grant. “There weren’t any role models around our age, there weren’t any black kids on TV, so we were setting a lot of trends.”

The disparity showed in the songs Dennis Seaton penned with Freddie Waite. They awkwardly attempted to graft the language with which Rastafarian artists prophesied Babylon’s imminent collapse on to juvenile concerns. Pass the Dutchie’s follow-up, The Youth of Today, suggested its protagonist was “under heavy manners”, a phrase coined by Jamaican premier Michael Manley, when he introduced martial law in 1976. It wasn’t the first time the term had been re-appropriated by a reggae song (fire-and-brimstone Rasta Prince Far-I beat them to it) but it was presumably the first time it had been used to describe a child’s frustration at being unable to “buy a little bike”. The B-sides of their second top 10 single Never Gonna Give You Up further encapsulated their dilemma. One was a bass-heavy band original called Rub N Dub. The other was the theme to Jim’ll Fix It.

Their record label was keen to capitalise on their US success. In America, Pass the Dutchie had become the biggest-selling reggae single in over a decade – testament both to the band’s commercial appeal and the fact that Americans didn’t buy many reggae records. “We started doing R&B because they wanted to make it accessible to America,” says Grant. “Even then, at 13, I was thinking, this isn’t what I want. We weren’t really in a position to argue. I should have been more assertive in hindsight, but I was a child. I had no influence on my career. To say we were manipulated is an understatement. We were led by everybody and anybody.”

It was to prove a disastrous miscalculation. Different Style limped to number 144 in America. In Britain, too, the novelty had worn off: 18 months after Pass the Dutchie, Musical Youth’s chart career was over. Its failure shocked their label, which hurriedly sent them – with their families – to Barbados for a massively expensive recording session with reggae star Eddy Grant. “My parents realised the money was running out, that we didn’t look as happy,” remembers Grant. “Nobody from the record company and the management came to explain to my parents about what was going on. Towards the end of Musical Youth, they got solicitors involved. Now, looking back, it was an absolute nightmare.”

“It became the Grants versus the Waites and Dennis Seaton was caught up in the whole thing. The parents thought their career wasn’t being planned or controlled properly,” says David Morgan, who became Seaton’s manager in the late 1980s. “I think they thought they could do better themselves, but they had no knowledge of the business. When MCA saw this internal squabbling, they were pretty dismayed. Then when the label discovered the amount of money Eddy Grant had charged them, and heard what he’d done, that was pretty much the kiss of death.”

While the families and their respective lawyers battled with each other, the behaviour of both Waite brothers was becoming unpredictable. “Junior was showing signs of mental problems,” says Grant. “Stuff that should have been water off a duck’s back he was taking really seriously. If you asked him why he hadn’t shaved, he’d go beserk, ‘Why are you criticising me? Why don’t you mind your own business?’ Patrick was like that as well. I just thought, ‘We don’t need this.'”

The reasons behind their decline are still mysterious. One band associate solemnly claims Patrick Waite’s problems stemmed from an incident in which he had “fallen over and bumped his head”. Seaton thinks they had something to do with the Waite family’s relocation from the estates of Nechells to Edgbaston. “They moved to this swanky apartment, a well-to-do area. That changed them because they were in surroundings that they weren’t used to. My family stayed in Nechells, my mum bought her house there. It keeps you grounded.”

More prosaically, the Waite brothers had developed drug problems. Seaton and Grant profess ignorance as to precisely what drugs. “Obviously, we knew that he was smoking weed because we were his friends, but this other stuff, we had no idea,” says Seaton. “When I hear now what people are like on speed, I think that’s what it must have been. When Patrick left school, he was spending a lot of time in this pub that his dad owned, so I suppose he must have got it there. It wasn’t until we got out on the road that we realised he was going off the rails.”

Patrick Waite’s erratic behaviour came to a head on a final, disastrous trip to Jamaica in the spring of 1985. “He completely lost it onstage,” Grant remembers. “He was totally spaced out, didn’t know where the hell he was, playing all kinds of crap. His dad ran onstage, took his bass off him and took him off the stage.”

Waite was hospitalised, and the rest of Musical Youth left Jamaica without him. Back in England, they were dropped by MCA and broke up in June, spurred by Seaton’s decision to leave: “The day before my 18th birthday, I became a Christian, and from that day everything changed. For the last four years, I’d lived, breathed, slept and shit Musical Youth. The decision to leave wasn’t planned. I didn’t even particularly want to be a solo artist. I just wasn’t happy.”

Neither was Michael Grant. “After the band broke up, I read this article in one of the tabloids saying Musical Youth were has-beens. I was 16 years old. All my friends are leaving school, going into jobs, starting their lives, doing all that sort of thing, and you read this article saying you’re a has-been. I didn’t do anything for a couple of years. I got involved with different bands, but it didn’t bring me any peace.”

His brother, just 14 when the band split, was equally distraught. “He got bored and restless and didn’t have anything to do. Kelvin didn’t want to go back into the music industry, didn’t want to go back down that road. He felt a bit burned by the experience. He’s still trying to find some direction.”

Today, Kelvin Grant is a virtual recluse; the brothers seldom speak. Various attempts to reform Musical Youth during the late 1980s floundered, usually because of the Waites’s unpredictability. Seaton tried his hand at a solo career. Despite songwriting help from Stevie Wonder, his 1989 album Imagine That flopped. Two years later, he was back in Birmingham, driving a delivery van. “I had to sign on when the money ran out. People were looking at me and laughing, but I had to do it.”

The Waite brothers’ lives unravelled far more dramatically. Patrick Waite began making local newspaper headlines as a petty criminal. Grant thinks his crimes had little to do with poverty. “Suddenly, there’s no rehearsals, you’re not going around the world any more. I think he was just bored out of his mind.” In 1987, he was jailed for four months for reckless driving, credit-card fraud and assaulting the police. In 1990, he was jailed again, for robbing a pregnant woman at knifepoint. Shortly after his release, he was arrested again, for marijuana possession. “I had words with him,” remembers Seaton. “I was trying to tell him it affected all five of us, that it was tarnishing whatever reputation the band had left. Every time he appeared in the papers it wasn’t Patrick Waite, it was Musical Youth. That was the last conversation I ever had with him.”

While awaiting trial in February 1993, Patrick Waite collapsed on February 18 and died at his uncle’s, the victim of heart failure brought on by a rare virus. He was 24 years old.

At the time of his death, he was sharing a flat with his mother, sister and Junior, whose mental condition had worsened. “He just got more and more withdrawn,” says Seaton. “I suppose he had a breakdown. He used to sit at home all day watching Aswad videos. He was like a guy that retires, doesn’t have anything to do. It’s bound to affect you.” Junior Waite was eventually sectioned. Today, he is still under medical supervision, in the care of his mother.

By the late 1990s, Musical Youth had passed into history. The sound of Pass the Dutchie became a sort of musical shorthand for a less manufactured era of pop. In 1998, Seaton’s former manager David Morgan heard it on the soundtrack of 1980s-themed romantic comedy hit The Wedding Singer. “I rang Dennis and said, ‘You must be earning a lot of money. He said no. The members of Musical Youth had not received any royalty accounting from their record label since 1986, which was diabolical. Just the use on The Wedding Singer earned about £20,000.”

It took him two and a half years to sort through Musical Youth’s business affairs.”Where there’s a hit, there’s a writ,” said Universal’s spokesman, when Morgan launched a £2m claim for unpaid royalties, damages and interest on the money owed Musical Youth. “I sent something like 10,000 letters,” he sighs. “They tried to wear me down by ignoring me.” In December 2002, MCA/Universal settled out of court. Morgan cannot divulge exact figures but claims “it amounts to close on a seven-figure sum. In the end, the record company were embarrassed about it.”

In addition, he has convinced the label to release a Musical Youth compilation. Seaton and Grant plan to promote it with some club dates and a 1980s package tour. “Everyone remembers Musical Youth,” says Seaton. And indeed they do. Ever since Frankie Lymon, the teenage singer of Why Do Fools Fall in Love? overdosed on heroin in 1968, child stars whose careers go horribly wrong have exerted a morbid fascination. It may be that their stories confirm the public’s worst instincts about the music industry. It may be something to do with the gulf between the chirpy records children invariably make and the reality of their lives: child stars rarely sound like Joy Division or Nirvana, signposting doom in their music. Or it may be simple nostalgia for a more innocent era. “I still get emails from Holland,” smiles Seaton. “People saying we changed their life.” Then his telephone rings, and he arranges to pick up a Mercedes hatchback from a nearby industrial estate.

Their recordings include “Children Of Zion,” “Rockers,” “Youth Of Today,” “Sixteen,” “Yard Stylee,” “Air Taxi,” “Blind Boy,” “Mash It The Youth Man, Mash It,” “Young Generation,” “Mirror Mirror,” “Heartbreaker,” “Never Gonna Give You Up,” “Schoolgirl,” “Shanty Town,” “She’s Trouble,” “Watcha Talking ‘Bout,” “Incommunicado,” “No Strings,” and “Tell Me Why.”

They received a Grammy Award nomination for Best New Artist at the Grammy Awards of 1984. Their follow-up to “Pass the Dutchie”, “Youth Of Today”, reached number 13 in the UK Singles Chart, and early in 1983, “Never Gonna Give You Up”, climbed to UK number 6. Minor successes with “Heartbreaker” and “Tell Me Why”, were succeeded by a collaboration with Donna Summer on the UK Top 20 hit, “Unconditional Love”.

“To be honest we all had no preconceived ideas on how fame would be handled because it was only ever about playing as many gigs as possible. Obviously hindsight is a wonderful thing but we were dealing with unknown territory of musical success on a world stage but yes there are some aspects of our new found fame could have been handled much better.”

In 2001, the band reformed, but the set of shows scheduled for the Here & Now tour of that year were cancelled due to the 9-11 attacks. Sadly, and according to your website, original band members Freddie ‘Junior’ Waite has since suffered a nervous breakdown, Kelvin Grant also suffers from psychological problems, and Patrick Waite died in 1993 at age 24 from heart problems!

Says Seaton: “Kelvin was supposed to come on the road with me but due to his erratic behaviour I decided to just work with Michael as he was more interested than Kelvin. It was ashame that the tour got cancelled but it spurred Michael and myself to carry on and do some live shows together because that’s what we started out doing. We have now toured the West coast of America, Slovenia some live shows in Netherlands and Germany. Things took a natural course for the band and subsequent events haven’t helped but then that’s ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’ as they say!”

Posted on December 18, 2015February 12, 2025 by Macamba0 — 2 Comments

Eddie Hazel 12/1992

Dec 23, 1992 – Eddie Hazel was born in Brooklyn, New York on April 10, 1950 but grew up in Plainfield, New Jersey because his mother, Grace Cook, wanted her son to grow up in an environment without the pressures of drugs and crime that she felt pervaded New York City. Hazel occupied himself from a young age by playing a guitar, given to him as a Christmas present by his older brother. Hazel also sang in church. At age 12 he participated in backyard jams, which resulted in Nelson McGee and Hazel forming the Wonders who played around Plainfield in the mid sixties. By early 1967 Hazel’s reputation on guitar had taken him to work with producer George Blackwell in Newark.

In 1967 The Parliaments, a Plainfield-based doo wop band headed by George Clinton, had a hit record with “(I Wanna) Testify“. Clinton recruited a backing band for a tour, hiring Nelson as bassist, who in turn recommended Hazel as guitarist.

Continue reading Eddie Hazel 12/1992

Posted on December 14, 2015July 13, 2018 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Albert King 12/1992

December 21, 1992 – Albert King was born Albert Nelson on April 25th 1923 in Indianola, Mississippi, the same town where B.B. King grew up. However, on his Social Security application in 1942, his birthplace was entered as “Aboden, Miss.,” likely based on his pronunciation of Aberdeen. King, who gave his birth date as April 25, 1923, was raised primarily in Arkansas. As a child, he sang with his family’s gospel group at a church where his father played the guitar. When King was eight, his family moved to Forrest City, Arkansas and he would pick cotton on plantations in the area. Around that same time, King bought his first guitar, paying only $1.25. His first inspiration was T-Bone Walker.

King began working as a professional musician when he joined a group called In the Groove Boys in Osceola, Arkansas, in the late Forties. Continue reading Albert King 12/1992

Posted on November 12, 2015February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Ronnie Bond 11/1992

ronnie_bond November 12, 1992 – Ronnie Bond was born Ronald James Bullis on May 4, 1940, the week before Nazi Germany invaded the Lowlands and brought the war to England. Born in Andover, Hampshire, he was a founding member of the rock band, The Troggs, originally called The Troglodytes.

They had a series of hits in the UK, Europe and the USA including “Wild Thing”, which was written by Chip Taylor (James Wesley Voight) Actor Jon Voight’s brother and Angelina Jolie’s uncle, “Anyway That You Want Me”, “Love Is All Around”, “I can’t control myself” and “With a Girl Like You”.

The Troggs Billboard Hot 100 chart topper “Wild Thing” is ranked #257 on the Rolling Stone magazine’s list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and was an influence on garage rock and punk rock. Many of their hits have also been successful as covers, such as Jimi Hendrix with Wild Thing, Wet Wet Wet and REM with “Love Is All Around”, and Spiritualized with “Anyway That You Want Me”.

Iggy Pop, The Buzzcocks and The Ramones are amongst punk bands who cited the Troggs as an influence. Ronnie also released a solo single “Anything For You” in 1968 and a solo hit single titled “It’s Written On Your Body” which remained in the UK charts for five weeks in 1980.

Ronnie Bond transitioned on Nov 12, 1992 at age 52 under non-disclosed circumstances, but former band bass player Pete Staples had this to say about Ronnie Bond: “Ronnie was a good heavy drummer and had a very good voice, possibly the best in the group. His frustration could be heard by the continued use of the F word. Underneath the drink and the frustration was a very kind bloke.”

Posted on March 16, 2017February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Tony Williams 8/1992

August 14, 1992 – Samuel Anthony “Tony” Williams was born on April 5th 1928 in Roselle, New Jersey. His family moved to California in the 1940s.

The Platters formed in Los Angeles in 1952 and were initially managed by Federal Records A&R man, Ralph Bass. The original group consisted of Alex Hodge, Cornell Gunter, David Lynch, Joe Jefferson, Gaynel Hodge and Herb Reed, who joined the group after he was discharged from the Army in December 1952. Reed created the group’s name.

In June 1953, Gunter left to join the Flaires and was replaced by tenor Tony Williams, a parking lot attendant, recommended by his sister Linda Hayes, an R&B singer, Williams became the group’s lead vocalist. The group then released two singles with Federal Records, under the management of Bass, but found little success. Bass then asked his friend music entrepreneur and songwriter Buck Ram to coach the group in hope of getting a hit record. Ram made some changes to the lineup, most notably the addition of female vocalist Zola Taylor; later, at Reed’s urging, Hodge was replaced by Paul Robi. Under Ram’s guidance, the Platters recorded eight songs for Federal in the R&B/gospel style, scoring a few minor regional hits on the West Coast, and backed Williams’ sister, Linda Hayes. One song recorded during their Federal tenure, “Only You (And You Alone)”, originally written by Ram for the Ink Spots, was deemed unreleasable by the label, though pirated copies of this early version do exist.

Despite their lack of chart success, the Platters were a profitable touring group, successful enough that the Penguins, coming off their #8 single “Earth Angel”, asked Ram to manage them as well. With the Penguins in hand, Ram was able to parlay Mercury Records’ interest into a 2-for-1 deal. To sign the Penguins, Ram insisted, Mercury also had to take the Platters. Ironically The Penguins would never have a hit for the label.

Convinced by Jean Bennett and Tony Williams that “Only You” had real potential, Ram had the Platters re-record the song during their first session for Mercury. Released in the summer of 1955, it became the group’s first Top Ten hit on the pop charts and topped the R&B charts for seven weeks. The follow-up, “The Great Pretender”, with lyrics written in the washroom of the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas by Buck Ram, exceeded the success of their debut and became the Platters’ first national #1 hit. “The Great Pretender” was also the act’s biggest R&B hit, with an 11-week run atop that chart. In 1956, the Platters appeared in the first major motion picture based around rock and roll, Rock Around the Clock, and performed both “Only You” and “The Great Pretender”.

The Platters’ unique vocal style had touched a nerve in the music-buying public, and a string of hit singles followed, including three more national #1 hits and more modest chart successes such as “I’m Sorry” (#11) and “He’s Mine” (#23) in 1957, “Enchanted” (#12) in 1959, and “The Magic Touch” (#4) in 1956.
The Platters soon hit upon the successful formula of updating older standards, such as “My Prayer”, “Twilight Time”, “Harbor Lights”, “To Each His Own”, “If I Didn’t Care”, and Jerome Kern’s “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”. This latter release caused a small controversy after Kern’s widow expressed concern that her late husband’s composition would be turned into a “rock and roll” record. It topped both the American and British charts in a Platters-style arrangement.

The Platters also differed from most other groups of the era in other ways because Ram had the group incorporated in 1956. Each member of the group received a 20% share in the stock, full royalties, and their Social Security was paid. As group members left one by one, Ram and his business partner, Jean Bennett, bought their stock, which they claimed gave them ownership of the “Platters” name. A court later ruled, however, that “FPI was a sham used by Mr. Ram to obtain ownership in the name ‘Platters’, and FPI’s issuance of stock to the group members was ‘illegal and void’ because it violated California corporate securities law.”

Tony Williams and the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990 and into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in its inaugural year of 1998. The Platters were the first rock and roll group to have a Top Ten album in America. They were also the only act to have three songs included on the American Graffiti soundtrack that fueled an oldies revival already underway in the early to mid-1970s: “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”, “The Great Pretender”, and “Only You (and You Alone)”.

From 1955 until Williams left the group in 1960, The Platters had four No. 1 hits and 16 gold records, including “My Prayer,” “Harbor Lights,” “Twilight Time,” “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” and their biggest seller, “The Great Pretender.”

The group continued to perform without Williams, while he pursued a solo career.

Tony Williams passed away on August 14, 1992 from emphysema and lung cancer. He was 64 and had been earlier that year toured Thailand and other Asian countries, performing with his wife and son.

Posted on May 25, 2015February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Jeff Porcaro 8/1992

August 5, 1992 – Jeffrey Thomas “Jeff” Porcaro was born on April 1, 1954. He was not only a founding member of the hugely popular band “Toto”, he was also a highly sought after session drummer, by many regarded as the most in demand studio drummer in rock from the mid-’70s to the early ’90s. He has worked on hundreds of the most successful albums from that era and contributed to thousands of sessions.

At age 17 he became the drummer for Sonny and Cher’s Touring Band at the height of their popularity. He toured with Boz Scaggs and recorded with Steely Dan before he and his brothers, together with Steve Lukather and David Paich formed.

Porcaro was one of the most recorded session musicians in history, working on hundreds of albums and thousands of sessions.Even while with Toto, he was still a highly sought after session musician. He collaborated with many of the biggest names in the music business, including Boz Scaggs, Paul McCartney, Dire Straits, Donald Fagen, Steely Dan, Rickie Lee Jones, Michael Jackson, Al Jarreau, George Benson, Joe Walsh, Joe Cocker, Stan Getz, Sérgio Mendes, Lee Ritenour, Christopher Cross, James Newton-Howard, Jim Messina, Barbra Streisand, Diana Ross, Eric Carmen, Eric Clapton, Miles Davis, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Larry Carlton, Michael McDonald, Seals & Crofts, and David Gilmour.

Porcaro had contributed drums to four tracks on Michael Jackson’s Thriller, as well as played on the Dangerous album hit “Heal the World”. He also played on 10cc’s …Meanwhile (1992).

He died unexpectedly at home on August 5, 1995.The Los Angeles County Coroner’s office listed the cause of death to be a heart attack from atherosclerosis induced by cocaine use, not from an allergic reaction to the pesticides as presumed immediately after his death and stated by Toto in the band’s official history. The official cause of death reported by the coroner has long been the subject of intense debate, with Porcaro’s family, friends, and Toto bandmates claiming that while he did occasionally use cocaine, he was by no means a heavy drug user nor was he an addict. Most of the people that knew him state that the coroner’s report is wrong, and that he died of a combination of undiagnosed heart disease and organophosphate poisoning caused by the insecticide he was spraying on the day he died.

In a podcast recorded with I’d Hit That in late 2013, Steve Lukather spoke about Jeff Porcaro’s death:

Steve Lukather: I spoke to him the day he passed…he said, ‘yeah, man I’ll see you this weekend and we’ll have a BBQ at the house and we’ll go clean up the yard’…and that’s when he got poison on himself and it turns out he had a bad heart anyway. He had two uncles that died when they were 40 years old from heart disease so it was genetic…this whole drug thing that came out its so insidious, and I hate the fucking fact cause he was never the bad drug guy…he’d be the guy going “what are guys staying up all night, you idiots”…in the early ’80s and late ’70s early ’80s it was crazy man, we’re not gonna deny any of it, but by the time he passed it was never, I don’t know, people just love to roam the dirty laundry as Henley wrote you know…and you read these Wikipedia shit, that’s right there, it’s like does anybody ever do homework on these facts…he just had a genetic predisposition…this whole thing with his arms hurting and all this, he was always, ‘my arms, my muscles’, it wasn’t his muscles, it was the fact that the blood was not getting to the extremities, he had hardening of the arteries at 38 years old.

Interviewer: How long was he complaining of the pain in the arms?

Steve Lukather: Years, it was debilitating to the point where touring became difficult for him.

A memorial concert took place at the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles on December 14, 1992 with an all-star lineup that included Boz Scaggs, Donald Fagen, Don Henley, Michael McDonald, David Crosby, Eddie Van Halen, and the members of Toto. The proceeds of the concert were used to establish an educational trust fund for Porcaro’s sons.

Porcaro’s tombstone is inscribed with the following epitaph, comprised by lyrics from Kingdom of Desire track “Wings of Time”: “Our love doesn’t end here; it lives forever, on the Wings of Time.”

Posted on December 9, 2016July 9, 2018 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Stefanie Sargent 6/1992

June 27, 1992 – Stefanie Sargent (7 Year Bitch) was born in Seattle, Washington on June 1, 1968. Raised in Seattle (she graduated the Summit K-12 Alternative School at age 16).

She then worked various jobs – making pizza in particular – traveled up and down the West Coast and played music. She became a familiar figure in the Seattle music scene in the late 1980s and early 1990s, after and became well recognized as the original guitarist for 7 Year Bitch.

She first played with Selene Vigil-Wilk (vocals), Valerie Agnew (drums) and Lisa Orth (guitar) in the band Barbie’s Dream Car. When their bassist left for Europe they recruited Elizabeth Davis, and changed the name of the band to 7 Year Bitch. Lisa Orth was no longer in the band at this point, and Stefanie became the sole guitarist for 7 Year Bitch. Their first concert was a benefit at the OK hotel with the Gits, DC Beggars and several other bands.

Continue reading Stefanie Sargent 6/1992

Posted on September 22, 2016February 12, 2025 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Ollie Halsall 5/1992

May 29, 1992 – Ollie Halsall was born Peter John Halsall on March 14th 1949 in Southport, England.

Halsall started out playing drums and the vibraphone (an instrument on which he became extraordinarily proficient) before taking up the guitar in 1967. By 1970, as a member of the cult-favorite band, Patto, he had evolved into one of the world’s most sensational players. That he never got that recognition can only be explained by the fact that the world had a number of top players already in the marketing line up and there was only so much promotional effort made available by the record companies.

Other guitar gods that didn’t make the Super Stardom Line Up of those early days- but should have- were in my opinion Jan Akkerman from the Dutch prog band Focus, Eddie Hazel with Parliament-Funkadelic who died 7 months after Ollie, Chicago’s Terry Kath, Jimi Hendrix favorite guitar player at the time, and April Lawton from Ramatam.

Continue reading Ollie Halsall 5/1992

Posted on May 17, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Johnny Shines 4/1992

April 20, 1992 – Johnny Ned Shines was born April 26th 1915 in Frayser, Tennessee and grew up in Memphis from the age of six. Part of a musical family, he learned guitar from his mother, and as a youth he played for tips on the streets and local “jukes” of Memphis with several friends, inspired by the likes of Charley Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lonnie Johnson, and the young Howlin’ Wolf. In 1932, he moved to Hughes, AR, to work as a sharecropper, keeping up his musical activities on the side; in 1935, he decided to try and make it as a professional musician.

Shines had first met Robert Johnson in Memphis in 1934 when he was 19, and he began accompanying Johnson, who was 23, on his wanderings around the Southern juke-joint circuit, playing wherever they could find gigs; the two made their way as far north as Windsor, Ontario, where they appeared on a radio program. After around three years on the road together – which made Shines one of Johnson’s most intimate associates, – the two split up in Arkansas in 1937, and never saw each other again before Johnson’s death in 1938.

In his early days, Shines was one of the top slide guitarists in Delta blues, with his own distinctive, energized style; one that may have echoed Johnson’s spirit and influence, but was never a mere imitation.

After splitting up with Johnson, Shines continued to play around the South for a few years, and in 1941 decided to make his way north in hopes of finding work in Canada, and from there catching a boat to Africa. Instead, when he stopped in Chicago, his cousin immediately offered him a job in construction, and Shines wound up staying. He started making the rounds of the local blues club scene, and in 1946 he made his first-ever recordings; four tracks for Columbia that the label declined to release. In 1950, he resurfaced on Chess, cutting sides that were rarely released (and, when they were, often appeared under the name “Shoe Shine Johnny”). Meanwhile, Shines was finding work supporting other artists at live shows and recording sessions.

From 1952-1953, he laid down some storming sides for the JOB label, which constitute some of his finest work ever (some featured Big Walter Horton on harmonica). They went underappreciated commercially, however, and Shines returned to his supporting roles. In 1958, fed up with the musicians’ union over a financial dispute, Shines quit the music business, pawned all of his equipment, and made his living solely with the construction job he’d kept all the while.

Shines did, however, stay plugged into the local blues scene by working as a photographer at live events, selling photos to patrons as souvenirs. Eventually, he was sought out by blues historians, and talked into recording for Vanguard’s now-classic Chicago/The Blues/Today! series; his appearance on the third volume in 1966 rejuvenated his career.

Shines next cut sessions for Testament (1966’s Master of the Modern Blues, Vol. 1, a couple with Big Walter Horton, and more) and Blue Horizon (1968’s Last Night’s Dream), which effectively introduced him to much of the listening public. The reception was much greater this time around, and Shines hit the road, first with Horton and Willie Dixon as the Chicago All-Stars, then leading his own band. In the meantime, his daughter died unexpectedly, leaving Shines to raise his grandchildren; concerned about bringing them up in an urban environment, he moved the whole family down to Tuscaloosa, AL.

He was vastly under-recorded during his prime years, even quitting the music business for a time, but when rediscovered in the late ’60s, he recorded and toured steadily for quite some time. During the early ’70s, Shines recorded for Biograph and Advent, among others, and enjoyed one of his most acclaimed releases with 1975’s more Delta-styled Too Wet to Plow (for Tomato). He also taught guitar locally in Tuscaloosa in between touring engagements. Despite his own generally high-quality work, Shines was a fascinating figure to many white blues fans simply because of the mythology surrounding Robert Johnson, and he was interviewed repeatedly about his experiences with Johnson to the exclusion of discussing his own music and contemporary career; which understandably frustrated him after a while. However, that didn’t stop him from rediscovering his roots in acoustic Delta blues, or including many of Johnson’s classic songs in his own repertoire; in fact, during the late ’70s, Shines toured and recorded often with Robert Jr. Lockwood, a teaming that owed much to Johnson’s legacy if ever there was one. Unfortunately, in 1980, Shines suffered a stroke that greatly affected his guitar playing, which would never return to its former glories, his voice however remained a powerfully emotive instrument, and helped by some of his students, he continued to tour America and Europe.

In the early ’90s, Shines appeared in the documentary film Searching for Robert Johnson, and he also cut one last album with Snooky Pryor, 1991’s Back to the Country, which won a Handy Award. Shines’ health was failing, however, and he passed away on April 20, 1992, in a Tuscaloosa hospital.

He may have been best known as a traveling companion of Robert Johnson, but his own contributions to the blues have often been unfairly shortchanged, simply because Johnson’s cross roads legend casts such a long shadow.

He died from heart complications on April 20, 1992 at the age of 76.

Posted on January 9, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Jerry Nolan 1/1992

January 14, 1992 – Jerry Nolan was born May 7th 1946 in Brooklyn New York. Nolan joined The New York Dolls in the autumn of 1972 to replace Billy Murcia, who had died of asphyxiation in a failed attempt to revive him from a drug overdose while on tour in England, early in the band’s career. The Dolls got a record deal with Mercury Records in 1973. Nolan also was a childhood friend of Peter Criss (KISS’ original drummer) who auditioned for The New York Dolls at the same time. He previously played with Wayne (Jayne) County’s “Queen Elizabeth”, Billy Squier’s “Kicks” and was the only male member of Suzi Quatro’s Detroit-based band Cradle. Jerry was drumming for the power trio “Shaker”, a New York band that frequently opened for the Dolls, when he was recruited to replace Billy. Nolan played on the Dolls’ first two albums (New York Dolls and Too Much Too Soon).

After much internal fighting and a short stint under the helm of future Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, Nolan left the Dolls together with Johnny Thunders in the spring of 1975. The two then placed a call to bassist Richard Hell, formerly of the Neon Boys and Television, to form The Heartbreakers. Soon, Walter Lure was brought into the fold and Hell was replaced by Billy Rath.

In 1976, The Heartbreakers were invited to tour with the Sex Pistols on their infamous “Anarchy in the U.K.” tour which also included support from The Clash and The Damned. Soon after the tour, The Heartbreakers took up permanent residence in London and played many shows throughout 1976–1977. Nolan quit the band soon after they released their only studio album, L.A.M.F. in October 1977 because he felt the album was poorly mixed. Nolan still continued to play with The Heartbreakers, but as a “hired drummer” until the end of 1977.

In early 1978, Nolan joined The Idols led by Steve Dior and Barry Jones. The Idols with ex-Chelsea bassist Simon Vitesse recorded four demos in London for Track Records and then toured America later in the year with Arthur Kane on bass. The Idols also released a single including “You” b/w “The Girl That I Love” in 1978 on Ork Records. Nolan also filled in on drums for Sid Vicious’ ill-fated New York City solo performances in September 1978 along with Arthur Kane and Steve Dior also backing up Vicious. Mick Jones from The Clash also joined Vicious’ backing band filling in on guitar on the last live date. The live recordings from these shows can be found on Sid Sings.

The Idols continued to play shows up and down the east coast but broke up in 1979, the last line up consisting of Jerry Nolan, Steve Dior, Barry Jones, Arthur Kane, and Walter Lure. Nolan later joined back up with Steve Dior and Barry Jones in their next band, The London Cowboys in the early 80’s which also included Glen Matlock from The Sex Pistols. Jerry didn’t play drums on The London Cowboys two albums Animal Pleasure (1982) and Tall in the Saddle (1984), but he did play drums on their live album On Stage (1986).

While touring with Johnny Thunders in 1982, Nolan met Charlotte (Lotten) Nedeby, whom he soon married. Nolan took up residence in Sweden, off and on, through the 1980s. In Sweden playing drums and singing lead vocals he recorded a solo single with the Teneriffa Cowboys of an unreleased Heartbreakers’ song, “Take A Chance With Me” and a new song, “Pretty Baby” released in 1982 on Tandan Records. Other songs recorded with the Teneriffa Cowboys throughout 1982–1983 include Chuck Berry’s “Havana Moon” which was released on “Sword – The Best in Scandinavian Rock” album in 1985 on Sword/Tandan Records and “Countdown Love” which was released on a posthumous split single with Johnny Thunders in 1997 on Sucksex Records. The other co-singer and guitarist of Teneriffa Cowboys, Michael Thimren (who also occasionally played with Johnny Thunders from 1983–1988) contributed the songs “Lickin’ My Boots” and “Notorious Liar” along with other unreleased songs from the 1982–1983 period. Also in 1983, Nolan recorded a single with the Swedish band Pilsner playing drums and singing lead vocals on “I Refuse (To Live in the U.S.A.)” and “Sleep With You”. He was also a member of the short-lived Ugly Americans with fellow ex-Doll Sylvain Sylvain. Johnny Thunders also moved to Sweden with his girlfriend, Susanne, and their collaboration continued periodically, until Thunders’ death in 1991.

Nolan outlived his long-time friend by only a few months. During that period he was working on a recording project with singer/songwriter/guitar Greg Allen and bassist Chicago Vin Earnshaw. In late 1991, while Nolan was being treated for bacterial meningitis and bacterial pneumonia at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York, he suffered a stroke and went into a coma from which he never recovered. He spent his final weeks on a life support system and died on January 14, 1992 at age 45.

Posted on January 13, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Dee Murray 1/1992

January 15, 1992 – Dee Murray (Elton John band) was born in Gillingham, Kent, England on 3 April 1946. Before joining Elton John as his touring sidemen, Murray and drummer Nigel Olsson were members of the Spencer Davis Group in 1969. In Murray’s musician bio in the program book for 1982’s “Jump Up!” tour, Murray recalled when he first took up the bass guitar during his high school years: “Someone put this heavy thing over my shoulder and said, ‘Here, you play this!'”

Murray quickly established a solid reputation on the instrument. In the Classic Albums documentary on Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, producer Gus Dudgeon lauded Murray’s musical ability, and said he hadn’t heard a bassist quite as good as him.
Murray and Olsson joined John as his road sidemen in 1970, and first appeared on disc with John on “Amoreena” from the 1970 album Tumbleweed Connection, though they were first featured on the live album 17-11-70. While they were John’s constant touring band mates, his record company only allowed them to play on just one track per studio album. As of Honky Château in 1972, however, John exerted some of his skyrocketing popularity at the time, and convinced his record company to allow Murray and Olsson to also become full-time recording members of his band. Along with fellow new recruit Davey Johnstone on guitar, Murray and Olsson played on John’s hit albums, including the milestone album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, singles, and world tours for several years.

In 1975, after recording Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, Murray and Olsson were released from the band because John wanted to achieve a different sound. He said at the time “The band always rattled along. I want it to chug”.
Murray and Olsson continued working together as session musicians in Los Angeles. They played on Rick Springfield‘s first United States album, Wait for Night (1976). In 1977, Murray briefly joined Procol Harum on a North America tour promoting their last 1970s album, Something Magic, although he never recorded with the group.

Between 1978 and 1979, Murray worked as part of Alice Cooper’s backing band. According to music site AllMusic.com, Murray played on Cooper’s hit album “From the Inside,” and joined Olsson backing the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir on his solo album “Heaven Help the Fool” in 1978.

Other artists he worked with during the 1970s and early 1980s include Yvonne Elliman (her Night Flight album contained the hit single “If I Can’t Have You,” composed by the Bee Gees), Shaun Cassidy, Allan Clarke, Bernie Taupin, Kiki Dee, Stefanie Gaines, Barbi Benton and Jimmy Webb.

Murray and Olsson returned to tour and play sessions with John, starting with “21 at 33” in 1980. He and Olsson backed John during his landmark concert in New York City’s Central Park before more than 400,000 fans on the Great Lawn on 13 September 1980, and appeared on The Fox in 1981. Murray went on to contribute all the bass tracks on Jump Up! in 1982, and joined Olsson and guitarist Davey Johnstone for the Jump Up! Tour, followed by albums and tours for Too Low for Zero (1983) and Breaking Hearts (1984). The group then disbanded, reuniting once more to record backing vocals on Reg Strikes Back in 1988.
In the 1980s, Murray played on numerous Nashville sessions for artists such as Michael Brown, Lewis Storey, Beth Nielsen Chapman and John Prine, amongst others.

He was a talented musician whose gift for melody, placement, and an understated, yet profound technique, plus his standout work as a backing vocalist, puts him in an elite class among rock bassists. He died after a long brave battle with skin cancer from a stroke at age 45 years on 15 January 1992.

Posted on January 27, 2016May 29, 2018 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Willie Dixon 1/1992

January 29, 1992 – Willie Dixon was born July 1st 1915 in Vicksburg, Mississippi. His mother Daisy often rhymed the things she said, a habit her son imitated. At the age of seven, young Dixon became an admirer of a band that featured pianist Little Brother Montgomery. He sang his first song at Springfield Baptist Church at the age of four. Dixon was first introduced to blues when he served time on prison farms in Mississippi as an early teenager.

He later learned how to sing harmony from local carpenter Leo Phelps. Dixon sang bass in Phelps’ group The Jubilee Singers, a local gospel quartet that regularly appeared on the Vicksburg radio station WQBC. Dixon began adapting poems he was writing as songs, and even sold some tunes to local music groups. By the time he was a teenager, Dixon was writing songs and selling copies to the local bands. With his bass voice, Dixon later joined a group organized by Phelps, the Union Jubilee Singers, who appeared on local radio. Continue reading Willie Dixon 1/1992

Posted on January 20, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Champion Jack Dupree 1/1992

January 21, 1992 – William Thomas Dupree best known as Champion Jack Dupree was arguably born on July 4, 10, or 23, in the years 1908, 1909, or 1910. What is not argued is however that New Orleans was the place he was born. His father was from the Belgian Congo, his mother was part Black and Cherokee.

He was orphaned at the age of 2 and sent to the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs, also the alma mater of Louis Armstrong, where he taught himself piano and later apprenticed with Tuts Washington and Willie Hall, whom he called his ‘father’ and from whom he learned “Junker’s Blues”.

He was also “spy boy” for the Yellow Pochahantas tribe of Mardi Gras Indians and soon began playing in barrelhouses and other drinking establishments.

His life of traveling took him to Chicago, where he worked with Georgia Tom, and to Indianapolis, where he met Scrapper Blackwell and Leroy Carr. In Detroit he met Joe Louis, who encouraged him to become a boxer. So he fought in 107 bouts, winning Golden Gloves and other championships and picking up the nickname ‘Champion Jack’, which he used the rest of his life.

He returned to Chicago at aged 30 and joined a circle of recording artists, including Big Bill Broonzy and Tampa Red, who introduced him to the record producer Lester Melrose, who claimed composer credit and publishing on many of Jack’s songs. Dupree’s career was interrupted by military service in World War II. He was a cook in the United States Navy and spent two years as a Japanese prisoner of war.

After the war his biggest commercial success became “Walkin’ the Blues”, which he recorded as a duet with Teddy McRae. This led to several national tours, and eventually to a European tour.

He was accompanied on guitar by Larry Dale, on his best known album, ”Blues from the Gutter” in 1959 whose playing inspired Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones. He was also noted as a raconteur and transformed many of his stories into songs. “Big Leg Emma’s” takes its place in the roots of rap music as the rhymed tale of a police raid on a barrelhouse.

Dupree’s playing was almost all straight blues and boogie-woogie. He was not a sophisticated musician or singer, but he had a wry and clever way with words: “Mama, move your false teeth, papa wanna scratch your gums.” He sometimes sang as if he had a cleft palate and even recorded under the name Harelip Jack Dupree. This was an artistic conceit, as Dupree had excellent, clear articulation, particularly for a blues singer. Dupree would occasionally indulge in a vocalese style of sung word play, similar to Slim Gaillard’s “Vout”, as in his “Mr. Dupree Blues” included on The Complete Blue Horizon Sessions album.

He sang about life, jail, drinking and drug addiction; although he himself was a light drinker and did not use other drugs. His “Junker’s Blues” was also transmogrified by Fats Domino into his first hit, “The Fat Man”. Dupree’s songs included not only gloomy topics, such as “TB Blues” and “Angola Blues” (about Angola Prison, the infamous Louisiana prison farm), but also cheerful subjects like the “Dupree Shake Dance”: “Come on, mama, on your hands and knees, do that shake dance as you please”.

Dupree moved to Europe in 1960, first settling in Switzerland and then Denmark, England, Sweden and, finally, Germany. During the 1970s and 1980s he lived at Ovenden in Halifax, England and a piano used by Dupree was later re-discovered at Calderdale College in Halifax.

Dupree continued to record in Europe with Kenn Lending Band, Louisiana Red and Axel Zwingenberger and made many live appearances, all the while still working as a cook specializing in New Orleans cuisine. In later years he recorded with John Mayall, Mick Taylor, Eric Clapton and The Band.He returned to the United States from time to time and appeared at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

He died in Hanover, Germany of cancer on January 21, 1992 at age 82.

Posted on November 24, 2015February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Eric Carr 11/1991

November 24, 1991 – Eric Carr Eric “The Fox” Carr was born as Paul Caravello on July 12, 1950 in Brooklyn New York. He grew up typically post war American and by the time he was 15, while still in high school, he began playing with a string of bands mostly performing covers of Top 40 songs.

In 1970, Caravello joined the band Salt & Pepper, which started as a cover band playing music from multiple genres; the band was named that because half of the members were black and half were white. In 1973 the band changed their name to Creation, now performing disco music.

Tragedy struck in 1974 when a fire broke out during a discothèque gig at Gulliver’s restaurant in Port Chester, New York, killing dozens of people including the band’s keyboardist and lead singer. Caravello escaped and was credited with saving another person, one of the band’s female singers. It was determined that the fire had been started by a thief in an adjacent building hoping to cover his tracks.

Carr would go on with the band until 1979. They enjoyed some success, performing as an opening act for established names such as Stevie Wonder and Nina Simone. The band broke up in late 1979. He later described the band as “like my family basically for nine years.”

In December 1979, Caravello successfully auditioned for a four-piece rock ‘n’ roll cover band called Flasher. After three weeks of rehearsals, they started playing at clubs. At this point he had become discouraged about his musical future after so many years trying to make it without a break, and considered settling down with a non-musical career.”…we were making real (lousy) money – something like $10, $7 a night, whatever it was it was. Really, really terrible. Just by contrast, I used to make $15 a night when I was like 16 years old, and here I am almost 30 years old, and I’m making like $7 a night! So I wasn’t doing better, obviously – I was going in reverse, you know!

Flasher played the club circuit in New York City and Long Island for several months, before their keyboard player, Paul Turino quit; they then continued as a power trio, with the three sharing vocal duties. They played songs by Joe Jackson, Van Halen, Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix, among others.” Bookings diminished, and Caravello handed in his resignation in May 1980. At that point, he considered quitting music, having reached the age of 30 without any real success. Shortly afterwards, he had a chance meeting with Turino in a club in Queens; Turino told Caravello about Peter Criss’ departure from Kiss, and urged Caravello to audition to become Kiss’ drummer.

He did and was the last drummer to audition. A significant advantage for Caravello may have been his relative anonymity, as it was important for the band to maintain the mystique surrounding the members. Said Paul Stanley, “It was really important to us that we got somebody who was unknown… We didn’t want somebody who last week was in Rod Stewart’s band or in Rainbow.” The press release announcing the induction of Caravello into Kiss deducted three years from his actual age in part to confuse those seeking information about his true identity, but also to help create an identification with Eric – a young fan chosen out of the crowd to be the new KISS drummer.

His Kiss persona, was first made up as “The Hawk,” but later adopted the persona of “The Fox”, he was also part of the band’s stage makeup removal of their live on MTV in 1983. He also played guitar, bass guitar, piano and sang background vocals, he sung lead vocals on “Black Diamond” and “Young and Wasted” live with Kiss. He sang lead on the remake of “Beth” in the studio on the album Smashes, Thrashes & Hits.

In 1989 he sang lead vocal on a self-penned, studio track titled “Little Caesar,”. His last live performance with Kiss was November 9, 1990 in New York City, at Madison Square Garden. He succumbed from heart cancer one year later,on November 24, 1991 at age 41.

Posted on October 26, 2015May 29, 2018 by Macamba0 — 1 Comment

Freddie Mercury 11/1991

November 24, 1991 – Freddie Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara on September 5th 1946 on the island of Zanzibar off the coast of Tanzania in East Africa. He spent time in a boarding school in Bombay (now Mumbai), India, where he studied piano and it was not long before this charismatic young man joined his first band, the Hectics. He was of Indian Parsi descent and his early childhood was in India, which gave him the title “Britain’s first Asian rock star.“

After moving to London with his family in the 1960s, Mercury attended the Ealing College of Art where he befriended a number of musicians including future bandmates, drummer Roger Taylor and guitarist Brian May. Following graduation, he joined a series of bands and sold second-hand clothes in the Kensington Market in London, as well as had a job at Heathrow Airport. In April 1970, he joined with guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor who had previously been in a band called SmileIn 1969, Mercury joined up with a group called Ibex as their lead singer. He played with a few other bands before joining forces with Taylor and May in the early 70s. They met up with bassist John Deacon in 1971, and the quartet—who Mercury dubbed Queen—played their first gig together in June of that year. Continue reading Freddie Mercury 11/1991

Posted on January 28, 2016February 11, 2025 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Mort Schuman 11/1991

November 2, 1991 – Mort Shuman was born November 12, 1936 in Brooklyn, New York City, of Polish Jewish immigrants and went to Abraham Lincoln High School, subsequently studying music at the New York Conservatory. He became a fan of R&B music and after he met Doc Pomus the two teamed up to compose for Aldon Music at offices in New York City’s Brill Building.

Their songwriting collaboration saw Doc write the lyrics and Shuman the melody, although occasionally they worked on both. Their compositions would be recorded by artists such as Dion, Andy Williams, Bobby Darin, Fabian, The Drifters, and Elvis Presley, among others.

Their most famous songs include “A Teenager in Love”, “Turn Me Loose”, “This Magic Moment”, “Save The Last Dance For Me”, “Little Sister”, “Can’t Get Used to Losing You”, “(Marie’s the Name) His Latest Flame” and “Viva Las Vegas”.

With the advent of the British invasion, they moved to London where they penned songs for a number of British musicians. After the partnership with Doc Pomus ended in 1965, Shuman moved to Paris, France where he wrote songs for the French rocker Johnny Hallyday. He also wrote and sang many songs in French, such as Le Lac Majeur, Allo Papa Tango Charlie, Sha Mi Sha, Un Eté de Porcelaine, Brooklyn by the Sea which became great hits in France.

One of his hits in the early 1970s was “(Il Neige Sur) Le Lac Majeur”. He also wrote a couple of hits in the UK (including one for The Small Faces, “Sha-La-La-La-Lee” written with Kenny Lynch), as well as a musical, Budgie (lyrics by Don Black). With the Welsh songwriter Clive Westlake, he wrote “Here I Go Again”, which was recorded by The Hollies. Billy J. Kramer enjoyed success with another Shuman song, “Little Children”.

In 1968, Shuman had teamed with Eric Blau and adapted the French lyrics of songs by the Belgian composer Jacques Brel used as the basis of the successful off-Broadway production Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. Some of the songs from the show were subsequently recorded by Scott Walker, including “Jackie” and “Mathilde”. Shuman appeared in both the stage revue and the 1975 film adaptation. This was followed the next year with work on the soundtrack of the film Sex O’Clock U.S.A., which is notable for featuring one of the earliest known gay songs, “You’re My Man,” while another one of his compositions from the soundtrack, “Baby Come On” (billed under the Sex O’Clock U.S.A. name during its chart run) become a modest hit on Billboard’s Disco chart, peaking at number 37 in July 1977. He also did many collaborations with the French singer Mike Brant.

Mort Shuman was elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1992.

Shuman died from complications due to a liver operation on November 2, 1991 at age 54, 8 months after his former songwriting partner Doc Pomus.

Posted on March 23, 2017February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Vince Taylor 8/1991

August 27, 1991 – Vince Taylor was born Brian Maurice Holden on July 14, 1939 in Isleworth, Middlesex, England. When he was seven, immediately after WWII, the Holdens emigrated to America and settled in New Jersey where his father found employment. According to Wikipedia, around 1955, his sister, Sheila, got married to Joe Barbera, of Hanna-Barbera Cartoon Productions. As a result of this, the family moved to California, where Taylor attended Hollywood High School. As a teenager, Taylor took flying lessons and obtained a pilot’s license. (note: this seems to need further research, since Joe Barbera (creator of the Flintstones and Tom & Jerry a.o.) was married to his high school sweetheart with whom he had 4 children until 1963!!)

At age 18, impressed by the music of Gene Vincent and Elvis Presley, Taylor began to sing, mostly at amateur gigs. Barbera, his brother-in-law, acted as his ‘manager’, in his late forties at that time. When Barbera went to London on business he asked Taylor to join him. In London, Taylor went to the 2i’s Coffee Bar on Old Compton Street in Soho, where Tommy Steele was playing. There he met drummer Tony Meehan (later of the Shadows) and bass player Tex Makins (born Anthony Paul Makins, 3 July 1940, Wembley, Middlesex). They formed a band called the Playboys. Whilst looking at a packet of Pall Mall cigarettes he noticed the phrase, ‘In hoc signo vinces’. He decided on the new stage name of Vince Taylor.

His first singles for Parlophone, “I Like Love” and “Right Behind You Baby”, were released in 1958, followed several months later by “Pledgin’ My Love” backed with “Brand New Cadillac”, (the latter track featuring guitarist Joe Moretti, who later featured on “Shakin’ All Over” with Johnny Kidd & The Pirates). Parlophone was not satisfied with the immediate results and severed the recording contract. Taylor moved to Palette Records and recorded “I’ll Be Your Hero”, backed with “Jet Black Machine”, which was released on 19 August 1960.

On 23 April 1960 ABC-TV screened the first edition of their new weekly rock and roll TV show, Wham! The first show featured Taylor with Dickie Pride, Billy Fury, Joe Brown, Jess Conrad, Little Tony, and Johnny Kidd & The Pirates.

However, his unpredictable personality, although dynamic on stage, caused several arguments within the band, and the Playboys fired Taylor and changed their name to ‘The Bobbie Clarke Noise’. The ‘Noise’ was contracted to play at the Olympia in Paris in July 1961. The top of the bill was Wee Willie Harris.[3]

Despite his sacking Taylor remained friendly with the band and he asked if he could come to Paris too. He dressed up for the sound check in his trademark black leather stage gear, and added a chain around his neck with a Joan of Arc medallion, which he had bought on arrival at Calais. One version of the story says he gave such an extraordinary performance at the sound check, that the organizers decided to put Taylor at the top of the bill for both shows. As a result of his performance at those two shows, Eddie Barclay signed him to a six-year record deal on the Barclay label.

During 1961 and 1962, Taylor toured Europe with Clarke’s band, once again called Vince Taylor and his Playboys. Between gigs they recorded several EPs and an album of 20 songs at Barclay Studios in Paris.
By the end of 1962, Vince Taylor and the Playboys were the top of the bill at the Olympia in Paris. Sylvie Vartan was the opening act.

Despite his on-stage rapport with the Playboys, the off-stage relationship faltered. As a result, the band once more broke up. Taylor played several engagements backed by the English band the Echoes (who also backed Gene Vincent whenever he played the UK), but he still presented the band as the Playboys.

In February 1964, a new single “Memphis Tennessee”, backed with “A Shot of Rhythm and Blues”, was released on the Barclay label. The Playboys were Joey Greco and Claude Djaoui on guitars, Ralph Di Pietro on bass, and Bobbie Clarke on drums. The group was under contract to the Johnny Hallyday orchestra.

Hallyday was drafted into the French Army, and Clarke again joined Taylor and they started up ‘The Bobbie Clarke Noise’ along with Ralph Danks (guitar), Alain Bugby of The Strangers (bass), Johnny Taylor, ex lead singer for the Strangers (rhythm guitar), and “Stash” Prince Stanislas Klossowski de Rola (percussion). Managed by Jean Claude Camus, the band embarked on a triumphant tour of Spain and then co-topped the bill with the Rolling Stones during the Easter week-end of 1965 at the Olympia in Paris.

The band then disbanded and Taylor, undergoing problems with drugs and alcohol abuse, joined a religious movement. Danks left to play guitar with Three Dog Night, and later Tom Jones, Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan. Stash, a close friend of the Rolling Stones, would later produce the Dirty Strangers album featuring Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood. Clarke replaced drummer Don Conka for several studio sessions with the original line up of the band Love. He also played with Vince Flaherty and his band The Invincibles, Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix, and the first incarnation of Deep Purple before forming a group, Bodast, with Steve Howe and Dave Curtis. In 1968, Bodast recorded an album for MGM Records, opened for the Who, and were the backing band for Chuck Berry at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

Meanwhile, Clarke was involved in a comeback for his friend Taylor, a one-month tour across France, billed as ‘Vince Taylor and Bobbie Clarke backed by Les Rockers’. Eddie Barclay gave a new chance to Taylor who recorded again and performed intermittently throughout the 1970s and 1980s, until his death.

During his career, Taylor wrote and recorded many songs, among them his hit in Europe, “Brand New Cadillac” which has been covered by many other artists including the Clash on their 1979 album London Calling. Taylor lived in Switzerland late in his life, where he worked as an aircraft mechanic. He said it was the happiest time of his life.

Taylor died from cancer in August 1991, at age 52. He was buried in Lausanne, Switzerland.

(52)

Posted on October 10, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

David Ruffin 6/1991

June 1, 1991 – Davis Eli ‘David’ Ruffin (The Temptations) was born January 18, 1941 in the rural unincorporated community of Whynot, Mississippi, 15 miles from Meridian, Mississippi. He was the third born son of Elias “Eli” Ruffin, a Baptist minister, and Ophelia Ruffin (born Davis). Ruffin’s father was strict and at times violently abusive. Ruffin’s mother died ten months after his birth in 1941; and his father married Earline, a schoolteacher, in 1942. As a young child, Ruffin, along with his other siblings (older brothers Quincy and Jimmy, and sister Rita Mae), traveled with their father and their stepmother as a family gospel group, opening shows for Mahalia Jackson and The Five Blind Boys of Mississippi, among others. Ruffin sang in the choir at Mount Salem Methodist Church, talent shows and wherever else he could. In 1955, at the age of 14, he left home under the guardianship of a minister and went to Memphis, Tennessee, with the purpose of pursuing the ministry.

But at the age of 15, he went to Hot Springs, Arkansas with the jazz musician Phineas Newborn, Sr. They played at the Fifty Grand Ballroom and Casino. He continued to sing at talent shows, worked with horses at a jockey club, and eventually became a member of the The Dixie Nightingales.

He also sang with the Soul Stirrers briefly after the departure of Johnnie Taylor. He met and came under the guardianship of Eddie Bush and Dorothy Helen who took David to Detroit, Michigan and introduced him to Gwen Gordy Fuqua, Berry Gordy’s sister, and Billy Davis.

In 1957, Ruffin met Berry Gordy, Jr., then a songwriter with ambitions of running his own label. Ruffin lived with Gordy’s father, a contractor, and helped “Pops” Gordy do construction work on the building that would become Hitsville USA, the headquarters for Gordy’s Tamla Records (later Motown Records) label. Ruffin’s brother Jimmy would eventually be signed to Tamla’s Miracle Records label as an artist.

Ruffin also worked alongside another ambitious singer, Marvin Gaye, as an apprentice at Anna Records, a Chess-distributed label run by Gordy’s sister Gwen Gordy Fuqua and his songwriting partner Billy Davis. Asked about Ruffin in the Detroit Free Press in 1988, Gordy Fuqua said: “He was very much a gentleman, yes ma’am and no ma’am, but the thing that really impressed me about David was that he was one of the only artists I’ve seen who rehearsed like he was on stage”. According to Ruffin, both he and Gaye would pack records for Anna Records.

Ruffin created music as both the vocalist and drummer in the Voice Masters, a doo-wop style combo and eventually started recording at Anna Records, and recorded the song “I’m in Love” b/w “One of These Days” (1961), with the Voice Masters, a group which included future Motown producer, Lamont Dozier. Other group members included members of The Originals: Ty Hunter, CP Spencer, Hank Dixon and (Voice Masters and The Originals founder) Walter Gaines. (At one time, The Voice Masters also included another future Temptations member, Melvin Franklin, one of numerous people David would claim as a cousin). Ruffin did sign to Anna Records as a solo artist, but his work in that time was unsuccessful.

Ruffin eventually met an up-and-coming local group by the name of The Temptations. His older brother Jimmy went on a Motortown Revue tour with the Temptations, and he told David that they needed someone to sing tenor in their group. David showed interest in joining the group to Otis Williams whom he lived very close to in Detroit. In January 1964, Ruffin became a member of the Temptations after founding member Elbridge “Al” Bryant was fired from the group. Ruffin’s first recording session with the group was January 9, 1964. Though both David and Jimmy were considered, David was given the edge, thanks to his performance skills. These were displayed when he joined the Temptations on stage during the label’s New Year’s Eve party in 1963.

At Motown he started as a background singer, joining The Tempations in 1963, while also working at the Ford Motor Company.

In Nov ’64, songwriter/producer Smokey Robinson wrote a single especially for him to sing lead on. That song, “My Girl”, became the group’s first #1 single and its signature song, and elevated David to the role of lead singer and front man during the group’s “Classic Five” period as it became later known.

In the late 1967/68’s tensions grew on account of his cocaine addiction, tardiness and he was sacked from the the group, but was legally forced to continue with Motown as a solo artist. His first solo single “My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me)” reached the US pop & R&B Top Ten.

His final Top Ten hit was 1975’s “Walk Away From Love”.

After being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989 with the other Temptations, Ruffin, Kendrick, and Dennis Edwards began touring and recording as “Ruffin /Kendrick/ Edwards: Former Leads of The Temptations”. Sadly the project was cut short, when David Ruffin died on June 1, 1991 from a drug overdose at age 50.

After a successful month-long tour of England with Kendricks and Edwards, David Ruffin died on June 1, 1991, in a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, hospital of “an adverse reaction to drugs” – namely cocaine. Although the cause of death was ruled an accident, Ruffin’s family and friends suspected foul play, claiming that a money belt containing the proceeds from the tour ($300,000) was missing from his body.

Known for his unique raspy and anguished tenor vocals, David was ranked as one of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time by Rolling Stone magazine in November 2008.

Posted on September 29, 2016February 11, 2025 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Gene Clark 5/1991

May 24, 1991 – Harold Eugene Gene Clark was born November 17, 1944 in Tipton, Missouri, the third of 13 children in a family of Irish, German, and Native American heritage. His family moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where as a boy of 9 he began learning to play the guitar and harmonica from his father. He was soon playing Hank Williams tunes as well as material by early rockers such as Elvis Presley and the Everly Brothers. He began writing songs at the age of 11. By the time he was 15, he had developed a rich tenor voice, and he formed a local rock and roll combo, Joe Meyers and the Sharks. Like many of his generation, Clark developed an interest in folk music because of the popularity of the Kingston Trio. When he graduated from Bonner Springs High School, in Bonner Springs, Kansas, in 1962, he formed a folk group, the Rum Runners. Inspired by the Kingston Trio and playing with several folk groups he began working with the New Christy Minstrels. They hired him, and he recorded two albums with the ensemble before leaving in early 1964 after hearing the Beatles.

He moved to Los Angeles, where he met fellow folkie and Beatles convert Jim (later Roger) McGuinn at the Troubadour Club. In early 1964 they began to assemble a band that would become the Byrds. Longing to perform his own songs in the sixties and now turning to a more rocky genre, they started assembling a band that would, in time, come to be known as the Byrds. Even though the Byrds gained initial fame with newly arranged cover of Bob Dylan songs, Gene became the Byrds’ dominant songwriter in the mid sixties, penning most of their best-known originals, including “Feel a Whole Lot Better,” “Here Without You,” and “Eight Miles High,” and was one of the group’s strongest vocal presences.

He initially played rhythm guitar in the band, but relinquished that position to David Crosby and became the tambourine and harmonica player. Bassist Chris Hillman noted years later in an interview remembering Clark,

“At one time, he was the power in the Byrds, not McGuinn, not Crosby—it was Gene who would burst through the stage curtain banging on a tambourine, coming on like a young Prince Valiant. A hero, our savior. Few in the audience could take their eyes off this presence. He was the songwriter. He had the ‘gift’ that none of the rest of us had developed yet…. What deep inner part of his soul conjured up songs like ‘Set You Free This Time,’ ‘I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better,’ ‘I’m Feelin’ Higher,’ ‘Eight Miles High’? So many great songs! We learned a lot of songwriting from him and in the process learned a little bit about ourselves.”

A management decision gave McGuinn the lead vocals for their major singles and Bob Dylan songs. This disappointment, combined with Clark’s dislike of traveling (including a chronic fear of flying) and resentment by other band members about the extra income he derived from his songwriting, led to internal squabbling, and he left the group in early 1966. He briefly returned to Kansas City before moving back to Los Angeles to form Gene Clark & the Group with Chip Douglas, Joel Larson, and Bill Rhinehart.

After leaving The Byrds he released 2 solo albums “Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers” and “The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark” before rejoining The Byrds just for a short time. Although he did not achieve commercial success as a solo artist, Clark was in the vanguard of popular music during much of his career, prefiguring developments in such disparate subgenres as psychedelic rock, baroque pop, newgrass, country rock, and alternative country.

With the future of his solo career in doubt, Clark briefly rejoined the Byrds in October 1967, as a replacement for the recently departed David Crosby, but left after only three weeks, following an anxiety attack in Minneapolis. During this brief period with the Byrds, he appeared with the band on the television program Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, lip-synching the group’s current single, “Goin’ Back”; he also performed “Mr. Spaceman” with the band. Although there is some disagreement among the band’s biographers, Clark is generally viewed as having contributed background vocals to the songs “Goin’ Back” and “Space Odyssey” for the forthcoming Byrds’ album The Notorious Byrd Brothers and was an uncredited co-author, with McGuinn, of “Get to You”, from that album.

In 1968, Clark signed with A&M Records and began a collaboration with the banjo player Doug Dillard, guitarist Bernie Leadon (later with the Flying Burrito Brothers and the Eagles), bass player Dave Jackson and mandolin player Don Beck joined them to form the nucleus of Dillard & Clark. They produced two albums, The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark (1968) and Through the Morning, Through the Night (1969).

The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark was an acoustic adventure in country rock; it included the songs “Train Leaves Here This Morning” (covered in 1972 on the album Eagles) and “She Marked the Sun” (covered by Linda Ronstadt on her 1970 album Silk Purse. Through the Morning, Through the Night was more bluegrass in character than its predecessor and used electric instrumentation. It also included Donna Washburn (Dillard’s girlfriend) as a backing vocalist, which contributed to the departure of Leadon and it marked a change to a traditional bluegrass direction, which caused Clark to lose interest. The song was used in Quincy Jones’s soundtrack of the 1972 Sam Peckinpah movie The Getaway. This song, along with “Polly” (both from the second Dillard & Clark album), was also covered by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss on their 2007 album Raising Sand. Both albums by Dillard & Clark fared poorly on the charts, but established them as pioneers of country rock and newgrass crossovers.

The collaboration with Dillard rejuvenated Clark’s creativity but greatly contributed to his growing drinking problem. Dillard & Clark disintegrated in late 1969 after the departures of Clark and Leadon. Clark, along with Leadon, Jackson and Beck provided backup on the debut album of Steve Young, Rock Salt & Nails, released in November 1969.

In 1970, Clark began work on a new single, recording two tracks with the original members of the Byrds (each recording his part separately). The resulting songs, “She’s the Kind of Girl” and “One in a Hundred”, were not released at the time, because of legal problems; they were included later on the album Roadmaster. In 1970 and 1971, Clark contributed vocals and two compositions (“Tried So Hard” and “Here Tonight”) to albums by the Flying Burrito Brothers.

Frustrated with the music industry, Clark bought a house in Albion, California, near Mendocino, married a woman named Carlie and fathered two sons (Kelly and Kai) while subsisting in semiretirement on his still-substantial Byrds royalties throughout the early 1970s, augmented by income from the Turtles’ 1969 American Top Ten hit “You Showed Me”, a previously unreleased composition by McGuinn and Clark from 1964.

He was now ready to cut some solo work. A strong, primarily acoustic set, the album White Light sold poorly in America but was an unexpected hit in the Netherlands. Clark’s next album, Roadmaster, combined new material with the unreleased 1969 tracks cut with the Byrds; while it was a strong album, A&M chose not to release it and it was initially released only in Holland. Clark left A&M just in time for the Byrds to cut a reunion album with their original lineup; Clark contributed a pair of fine songs to the project, “Full Circle” and “Changing Heart,” but most of the album sounded uninspired and the reunion quickly splintered.

In 1974, Clark signed to Asylum Records and cut the polished but heartfelt No Other. Clark, however, had hoped to release the set as a double album, which did not please labelhead David Geffen, and the album stalled in the marketplace without promotion. In 1977, Clark returned with a new album, Two Sides to Every Story, and put his fear of flying on hold to mount an international tour to promote it.

For his British dates, Clark found himself booked on a tour with ex-Byrds Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman; audiences were clearly hoping for a Byrds reunion and while the three men had planned nothing of the sort, they didn’t want to let down their fans and played a short set of Byrds hits as an encore for several dates on the tour. This led the three men to begin working up new material together once they returned to America, and in 1978, they began touring as McGuinn, Clark, and Hillman. After a well-received acoustic tour, the trio signed a major deal with Capitol Records and released their self-titled debut in 1979. However, the slick production (designed to make sure the group didn’t sound too much like the Byrds) didn’t flatter the group, and the album was a critical and commercial disappointment. Clark soon became disenchanted with the project, and on their second album, 1980s City, the billing had changed to Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman, with Gene Clark. By 1981, Clark had left and the group briefly continued on as McGuinn/Hillman.

After splitting with McGuinn and Hillman, Clark stayed on the sidelines of music for several years, assembling a band called Flyte that failed to score a record deal. Clark finally re-emerged in 1984 with a new band and album called Firebyrd; the rising popularity of jangle-rockers R.E.M. sparked a new interest in the Byrds, and Clark began developing new fans among L.A.’s roots-conscious paisley underground scene.

Clark appeared as a guest on an album by the Long Ryders, and in 1987, he cut a duo album with Carla Olson of the Textones called So Rebellious a Lover. So Rebellious was well-received and became a modest commercial success (it was the biggest selling album of Clark’s solo career), but Clark began to develop serious health problems around this time; he had ulcers, aggravated by years of heavy drinking, and in 1988, he underwent surgery, during which much of his stomach and intestines had to be removed.

Clark also lost a certain amount of goodwill among longtime Byrds fans when he joined drummer Michael Clarke for a series of shows billed A 20th Anniversary Celebration of the Byrds. Many clubs simply shortened the billing to the Byrds, and Clarke and Clark soon found themselves in an ugly legal battle with Roger McGuinn, David Crosby, and Chris Hillman over use of the group’s name. The Byrds set aside their differences long enough to appear together at their induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in January of 1991, where the original lineup played a few songs together, including Clark’s “Feel a Whole Lot Better.”

A period of abstinence and recovery followed until Tom Petty‘s cover of “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better”, on his album Full Moon Fever (1989), yielded huge royalties to Clark, who quickly began using crack cocaine and alcohol. Consequently Clark’s health continued to decline and on May 24, 1991, not long after he had begun work on a second album with Carla Olson, Gene Clark died, with the coroner declaring he succumbed as a result of “natural causes” brought on by a bleeding ulcer.

He was only 49.

Posted on May 13, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — 1 Comment

Johnny Thunders 4/1991

April 23, 1991 – Johnny Thunders was born on July 15, 1952 as John Anthony Genzale Jr. in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York

His first musical performance was in the winter of 1967 with The Reign followed by a gig at Quintano’s School for Young Professionals with “Johnny and the Jaywalkers”, under the name Johnny Volume.

In 1968 he began going to the Fillmore East and Bethesda Fountain in Central Park on weekends. His older sister, Mariann, started styling his hair like Keith Richards. In late 1969 he got a job as a sales clerk at D’Naz leather shop, on Bleecker Street in the West Village, and started trying to put a band together. He and his girlfriend, Janis Cafasso, went to see the Stones at Madison Square Garden in November 1969, and they appear in the Maysles’ film, Gimme Shelter.

In London, after the Isle of Wight Festival, the following summer, his girlfriend Janis fell sick and they flew home. Back in NYC from the UK, toward the end of 1970, he started hanging out at Nobodys, a club also on Bleecker Street in the West Village. It was near there that he met future Dolls Arthur Kane and Rick Rivets. (Dolls bass guitarist, Arthur Kane, later wrote about Thunders’s guitar sound, as he described arriving outside the rehearsal studio where they were meeting to jam together for the first time: “I heard someone playing a guitar riff that I myself didn’t know how to play. It was raunchy, nasty, rough, raw, and untamed. I thought it was truly inspired…” Adding, “His sound was rich and fat and beautiful, like a voice.) Johnny joined their band “Actress” which later, after firing Rivets and adding David Johansen, Sylvain Sylvain and Billy Murcia, became the New York Dolls. At this time he changed his name to “Johnny Thunders”, inspired by a comic book hero.

After the Dolls he formed The Heartbreakers touring the US and UK, releasing one official album, L.A.M.F., in 1977. The group relocated to the UK, where their popularity was significantly greater than it was in the U.S., particularly among punk bands. In late 1979 Johnny began performing in a band called Gang War and recorded a number of solo albums beginning with So Alone in 1978. The notoriously drug-fueled recording sessions featured a core band of Johnny, bassist Phil Lynott, drummer Paul Cook, and guitarist Steve Jones, with guest appearances from Chrissie Hynde, Steve Marriott, Walter Lure, Billy Rath, and Peter Perrett of The Only Ones.

The CD version of the album contains four bonus tracks, including the single “Dead or Alive”. After its release, Thunders and Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious played in the Living Dead for a short time.

He died on 23 April 1991, primarily from methadone and alcohol poisoning, although doctors had diagnosed leukemia in him earlier in the year. He was 38 years 9 months and 8 days old.

Posted on May 17, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Steve Marriott 4/1991

April 20, 1991 – Steve Marriott (Small Faces and Humble Pie) was born in London on January 30th 1947. He started singing and performing, by busking at local bus-stops for extra pocket money. His father Bill was an accomplished pub pianist and the life and soul of many an ‘East End’ night. Bill bought Marriott a ukulele and harmonica which Marriott taught himself to play. Marriott showed an early interest in singing and performing, busking at local bus-stops for extra pocket money and winning talent contests during the family’s annual holiday to Jaywick Holiday camp near Clacton-on-Sea.

At the age of 12, he formed his first band with school friends Nigel Chapin and Robin Andrews, called ‘The Wheels’, later the ‘Coronation Kids’.

In 1960, his father Bill spotted an advertisement in a London newspaper for a new Artful Dodger replacement to appear in Lionel Bart’s popular musical Oliver!, based on the novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens, at the New Theatre (now called the Noël Coward Theatre) in London’s West End, and without telling his son, applied for him to audition. At the age of thirteen, Marriott auditioned for the role. He sang two songs, “Who’s Sorry Now” by Connie Francis, and “Oh, Boy!” by Buddy Holly. Bart was impressed with Marriott’s vocal abilities and hired him. Marriott stayed with the show for a total of twelve months, playing various boys’ roles during his time there, for which he was paid £8 a week. Marriott was also chosen to provide lead vocals for the Artful Dodger songs “Consider Yourself”, “Be Back Soon,” and “I’d Do Anything,” which appear on the official album to the stage show, released by World Record Club and recorded at the famous Abbey Road Studios. In 1961 the Marriott family moved from Strone Road to a brand new council flat in Daines Close, Manor Park. Continue reading Steve Marriott 4/1991

Posted on May 1, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Dave Guard 3/1991

March 22, 1991 – Dave Guard was born October 19th 1934 and along with Nick Reynolds and Bob Shane, was one of the founding members of The Kingston Trio. He spent his early years first in San Francisco, and then his junior high school and high school years in Honolulu, pre-state Hawaii. Guard grew up hearing the soft vocal melodies and strummed guitars of Hawaiian music. He was particularly attracted to the unique rhythmic sounds of finger-picked slack-key ukulele and guitar music masterfully performed by the many of his neighbors and beach boys.While an undergraduate at Stanford, Dave started a pickup group with Nick Reynolds and Bob Shane.

He called his group Dave Guard and the Calypsonians. He kept the group together after Reynolds and Shane left, changing the name to The Kingston Quartet.

In 1956 a publicist in the area, Frank Werber, offered his services to Guard and his bandmates, including Reynolds at the time. Werber’s offer, however, was contingent upon replacing Gannon and Bogue, and shortly thereafter, both left the group. Guard and Reynolds contacted former Calypsonian member Shane (who was performing part-time in Honolulu) asking him to join the reconstituted group. In 1957, back again as a trio as in their previous college days, they changed its name to The Kingston Trio.

With material gathered from a variety of sources, under Guard’s musical arrangements and direction, the Kingston Trio quickly became a success. Guard, Shane and Reynolds worked well together. In addition to developing the characteristic “Kingston Trio sound” of the group’s two guitars and a banjo, success came to the group from Guard’s musical arrangements and renditions of folk and Irish ballads, Shane’s talent for style and performance along with an innate knowledge of what pleased audiences, and Reynolds’ management of the group’s logistics.

Under contract with Capitol Records, the Trio became a huge commercial and influential success with hit songs such as “Tom Dooley,” “A Worried Man,” “Hard Travelin’,” “Tijuana Jail,” “Greenback Dollar,” “Reverend Mr. Black,” “Sloop John B.,” “Scotch And Soda,” “Merry Minuet,” “M.T.A.”, “Zombie Jamboree”, “Hard, Ain’t It Hard,” “Three Jolly Coachmen,” and “Raspberries, Strawberries”.

In the following years Guard was aware that among the Kingston Trio, he was the only one who could read music and who had some understanding of music theory; his partners basically played by rote, and the three of them sang in simple three-part harmony. With help from the Trio’s bassist and musicologist David “Buck” Wheat, Guard embarked on a self-education program of learning more about harmony, and becoming more and more disenchanted with what appeared to him to be a lack of willingness or effort to “improve” on the part of his partners.

By late 1960, Guard’s frustration and discontent with his partners, combined with an alleged embezzlement of the group’s finances, had reached a point where he no longer wanted to work with Reynolds and Shane. Giving his partners notice that he intended to leave the Trio, and unwilling to cause the group he had founded to disband, Guard agreed to stay on with the Trio until his personal commitments were completed, and until Shane and Reynolds were able to find a suitable replacement for him. By early 1961 Shane and Reynolds had found a replacement for Guard. After a reportedly acrimonious meeting with Shane, Reynolds, and the Trio’s business manager over the future of the Trio, Guard quit the group. The group continued to perform for another six years as the Kingston Trio before disbanding in 1967, with John Stewart taking Guard’s place.

In 1961, shortly after leaving the Trio, Dave formed a new group, The Whiskeyhill Singers, They toured and released an album and were asked to perform several folk songs on the Academy Award winning soundtrack of How the West Was Won. Their voices can be heard on “The Erie Canal”, “900 miles”, “The Ox Driver”, “Raise A Ruckus Tonight”.

Dave performed solo on the tracks “Wanderin'” and “Poor Wayfarin’ Stranger”. In late 1962 he moved to Sydney, Australia. There he hosted a national TV variety show called Dave’s Place. Until his return to the United States in 1968. Through the ’80’s he continued to do solo performances, along with several “reunions” of the old Kingston Trio.

In 2000 The Kingston Trio was inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame. He died from lymphatic cancer on March 22, 1991 at age 56.

Posted on April 30, 2016May 29, 2018 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Leo Fender 3/1991

March 21, 1991 – Clarence Leonidas “Leo” Fender was a Greek-American inventor, born on August 10th 1909. He founded Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company, now known as Fender Musical Instruments Corporation, and later founded MusicMan and G&L Musical Products (G&L Guitars). His guitar, bass, and amplifier designs from the 1950s continue to dominate popular music more than half a century later.

When designing “The Strat”, he asked his customers what new features they would want on the Telecaster. The large number of replies, along with the continued popularity of the Telecaster, caused him to leave the Telecaster as it was and to design a new, upscale solid body guitar to be sold alongside the basic Telecaster instead. Continue reading Leo Fender 3/1991

Posted on March 29, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — 1 Comment

Doc Pomus 3/1991

March 14, 1991 – Doc Pomus was born Jerome Solon Felder on June 27th, 1925 in Brooklyn, New York, he was a son of Jewish immigrants. Having had polio as a boy, he walked with the help of crutches. Later, due to post-polio syndrome, exacerbated by an accident, Felder eventually relied on a wheelchair.

Big Joe Turner turned him onto the Blues and using the stage name “Doc Pomus“, teenager Felder began performing as a blues singer. His stage name wasn’t inspired by anyone in particular; he just thought it sounded better for a blues singer than the name Jerry Felder. Pomus stated that more often than not, he was the only Caucasian in the clubs, but that as a Jew and a polio victim, he felt a special “underdog” kinship with African Americans, while in turn the audiences both respected his courage and were impressed with his talent. Gigging at various clubs in and around New York City, Pomus often performed with the likes of Milt Jackson, Mickey Baker and King Curtis. Continue reading Doc Pomus 3/1991

Posted on January 3, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Steve Clark 1/1991

January 8, 1991 – Stephen Maynard Steve Clark was born on April 23rd 1960 in Sheffield, England. From a very early age, he showed an interest in music with one such example being his attendance at a concert held by Cliff Richard and the Shadows aged 6. At 11, he received his first guitar from his father, a taxi driver, on the condition that he learned to play. Clark studied classical guitar for a year before one day he discovered Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin at a friend’s house.

When Clark left school his first employer was an engineering firm called GEC Traction where he worked as a lathe operator under a 4 year apprentice contract while first playing in a local band, Electric Chicken. Around that time, he met Pete Willis (Def Leppard’s original guitarist/founder). Clark asked for a spot in the band and joined Def Leppard in January 1978. According to Joe Elliott in Behind the Music, Clark auditioned for Def Leppard by playing all of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird” without accompaniment. It was Steve who threatened to quit, right as they started out, unless the band stopped rehearsing and actually went out and played. Singer Joe Elliot went out and scored them a gig that paid the princely sum of £5.

While a guitarist for Def Leppard, he contributed substantially to the band’s music and lyrics. Clark and Pete Willis shared lead guitar duties, and Clark was nicknamed as “The Riffmaster” according to the band’s lead vocalist Joe Elliott in VH1’s Classic Albums series featuring Def Leppard’s Hysteria. When Willis was asked to leave (ironically for drinking), guitarist Phil Collen was recruited into the band.

Steve Clark made some telling contributions to the success of a band that has gone on to sell 100 million albums. He contributed both music and lyrics for the bands first four albums including the worldwide hit albums Pyromania and Hysteria. Musically, according to the other band members in interviews, he was more likely to contribute riffs and guitar parts, although he did write all the music for some of the bands songs, including ‘wasted’ on the bands debut album On through the night.

Clark and Collen quickly bonded, becoming close friends and leading to the trademark dual-guitar sound of Def Leppard. He and Clark became known as the “Terror Twins,” in recognition of their talents and friendship.

Part of their success as a duo was attributed by Collen (on the BBC’s Classic Albums show) to their ability to swap between rhythm and lead guitar, often both playing lead or both doing rhythm within the same song. Lead singer Joe Elliott told the same program that Clark was not a technician, he was a guitarist who wore his instrument a few notches too low, and his style was a key part of the band’s chemistry. Elliott referred to Clark as the “creative one” and Collen as a “total utter technician”.

Whereas Collen quit drinking alcohol during the 1980s in pursuit of a healthier lifestyle, Clark never managed to escape his addiction to alcohol.

And as time went on all was not well with Steve Clark the person, despite the money, fame and travelling the world. He developed a drink problem, and suffered it seems with bouts of depression. Not a happy drunk either according to many, this would often push him over the edge with his mood swings. He began to suffer with shakes when trying to play because of his alcohol abuse, which upset him, and he would storm off and have a drink, taking things full circle. Rehab was attempted and failed, and as a last resort Clark was given, unofficially, six months off the band. He never went back.

The night before his death Clark promised girlfriend Janie Dean he was only popping out for ten minutes and definitely wasn’t drinking. Four hours later he arrives back to their Chelsea ad smashed with one of his drinking buddies in tow. Dean had pleaded with him not to drink and take prescription drugs, which he was taking for cracked ribs, the result of one of his other drunken nights out.

The next morning on January 8, 1991, Janie Dean showed an interior decorator around their plush London pad, not knowing that her boyfriend, Def Leppard’s Steve Clark was lying dead on the Sofa. She hadn’t bothered to wake him as after he rolled up drunk the night before. After all ‘nothing woke him after a night on the drink’ she later commented. A couple of hours later she realized the horrific truth, finding him blue in the face with blood coming out of his mouth. Screaming ‘wake up’, it was left to the interior decorator, still in the house, confirmed he was dead. Steve Clark then became, sadly, probably Sheffield biggest Rock n Roll casualty.

His autopsy report stated that he had died from an overdose of codeine and Valium, morphine and a blood alcohol level of .30, three times the British legal driving limit. There was no evidence of suicidal intent.

He had already contributed to half of the songs on the band’s 1992 album Adrenalize prior to his death, which was released in 1992.

Steve Clark was 30 years 8 months 16 days old when he died on 8 January 1991.

In 2011, Collen revealed in an online series of web videos that both he and Clark began working on what would become the song, “White Lightning”, during the recording sessions for the 1992 album, Adrenalize. Completed after Clark’s death, the song ironically described in great detail the effects of Clark’s alcohol and drug addictions.

Posted on August 31, 2014February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — 1 Comment

Allen Collins 10/1990

October 20, 1990 – Larkin Allen Collins Jr. was one of three lead guitar players in the Southern Rock guitar army Lynyrd Skynyrd. He survived the tragic crash that killed Ronnie van Zant and Stevie Gaines, but succumbed to chronic pneumonia 13 years later. Collins, just 12 years old joined Ronnie van Zant and Gary Rossington to form Lynyrd Skynyrd in the summer of 1964. Even though his life was littered by personal tragedies and illness, he gained super stardom recognition for co-writing many of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s monster hit songs, including Freebird, That Smell and Gimme Three Steps.

Lynyrd Skynyrd History.com says the following about Allen Collins:

Long considered one of rock’s premier guitarists, Allen Collins served as heart to Ronnie VanZant’s soul in Lynyrd Skynyrd. Allen’s unique, firy guitar playing and powerful songwriting helped insure Lynyrd Skynyrd’s place in rock and roll history.

Born at St. Lukes Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida on July 19, 1952, Allen (delivered by Doctor Owens) weighed in at 7 pounds, 14 ounces. Allen’s mother, Eva remembers her son as full of energy and enthusiasm — even before Allen could walk he moved constantly. From his earliest days Allen loved cars — especially race cars — and his favorite summer activity was going to Jacksonville Raceway every Saturday night to watch Leroy Yarborough race. The Collins family first started attending the races when Allen was eight years old and Allen, sitting as high in the stands as possible, would laugh and holler as he pretended to be racing his own car. This early fascination lasted throughout Allen’s life — he later collected an entire fleet of collectible and performance cars that was one of his proudest possessions.

In 1963, Allen lived in Jacksonville’s Cedar Hills area when an older friend received a guitar for his birthday. Allen was hooked. Allen’s parents had recently divorced and times were tough for Allen, his sister and mother. His mother, already working all day at the cigar factory, took a second job at Woolworths in the evenings. As soon as she had saved enough money, she surprised Allen by taking him down to Sears and ordered his first Silvertone guitar and amplifier. Despite no training aside from a few tips from his step-mother and friend, Allen picked up the guitar easily and quickly formed his first band — The Mods.

Together with singer Ronnie VanZant and guitarist Gary Rossington, Allen Collins formed the nucleus of Lynyrd Skynyrd in 1964 by learning what they could from each other and listening to the radio. This early band, first called My Backyard, then the Noble Five also included drummer Bob Burns and bassist Larry Junstrum. Finding a place to practice proved difficult and the choices were limited to the carport at Bob’s house, Ronnie’s backyard, where they were sure to get a full meal or Allen’s living room which usually included Eva’s famous cakes and candies. After several years of practicing, performing and personnel changes, Skynyrd, like any decent group of fledgling rock stars, started gigging the notorious one-nighters.

In 1970, Allen married Kathy Johns. Allen included his band mates in his wedding party, but Kathy worried that their long haired appearance would disturb her parents. Solving the problem required everyone tucking their rock and roll image under wigs for the wedding ceremony. The wedding reception played host to a piece of rock and roll history – one of the first public performances of “Freebird” complete with the trademark extended guitar jam at the end. Allen’s family grew with the birth of his daughter Amie followed quickly by Allison. Times were very difficult since Allen’s musical career barely brought in enough to support the young family. Despite coming close several times, Lynyrd Skynyrd just kept missing that elusive big break.

In 1973, however, things finally started coming together for Lynyrd Skynyrd. During a week-long stint at Funochio’s in Atlanta, the band was discovered by the renown Al Kooper. After signing a record deal with MCA subsidiary Sounds of the South, Skynyrd entered the studio with Kooper producing. The result — Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd — started the band on its rise to fame with standards like ‘Gimme Three Steps’, ‘Simple Man’, and the incendiary, guitar-driven classic, ‘Freebird’.

Gold and platinum albums followed a string of hit songs like ‘Sweet Home Alabama’, ‘Saturday Night Special’, ‘Gimme Back My Bullets’, ‘What’s Your Name?’, and ‘That Smell’. Over the four years Skynyrd recorded, the memories gradually turned into legends. Opening the Who tour. “Skynning” Europe alive. 1975’s Torture Tour. Steve Gaines. One More From The Road. The Knebworth Fair ’76.

By October 20, 1977, Skynyrd’s songs had become radio staples. Their latest album, Street Survivors, had just been released to critical and popular acclaim. Their ambitious new tour, just days underway, saw sellout crowds. Then it all fell away at 6000 feet above a Mississippi swamp.
At 6:42 PM, the pilot of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s chartered Convair 240 airplane radioed that the craft was dangerously low on fuel. Less than ten minutes later, the plane crashed into a densely wooded thicket in the middle of a swamp. The crash, which killed Ronnie VanZant, guitarist Steve Gaines, vocalist Cassie Gaines, road manager Dean Kilpatrick and seriously injured the rest of the band and crew, shattered Skynyrd’s fast rising star as it cut a 500 foot path through the swamp. Lynyrd Skynyrd had met a sudden, tragic end.

After several years of recovery, the crash survivors felt the time was right for another try. Gary Rossington and Allen Collins had performed at a few special jams, and slowly began planning a new band. Over the next few weeks they signed on Skynyrd survivors Billy Powell and Leon Wilkeson and other local musicians, although the choice of a lead vocalist for the new band remained a perplexing one. Realizing any singer would be faced with inevitable comparisons with Ronnie VanZant, Allen and Gary chose Dale Krantz, a gutsy, whiskey-voiced female backup singer from .38 Special. This change set the Rossington Collins band apart as they entered the 1980s.

The Rossington-Collins Band debuted in June 1980 with the Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere album. Kicked by such songs as ‘Getaway” and ‘Don’t Misunderstand Me’ the album sold more than a million copies and the band toured to enthusiastic, sellout crowds. However the band’s 1981 follow-up effort stumbled in the marketplace despite being well-received critically.

Tragedy struck Allen’s life again just as the Rossington Collins Band started. During the first days of the stressful debut concert tour, Allen’s wife Kathy passed away forcing the tour’s cancellation. Coupled with the lingering effects of losing his friends in the plane crash, Kathy’s death devastated Allen. However, the pull of creating music was too strong for Allen to walk away from. Even when Gary Rossington and Dale Krantz quit the Rossington Collins Band, Allen continued on forming the Allen Collins Band in 1983. Allen originally wanted the name Horsepower for his band, but shortly after completing the new album’s artwork they learned that name was already used. Their one release, Here, There and Back, met with considerable fan approval, but little support from MCA Records which dropped the band shortly after the album’s release.

Once again tragedy struck Allen in 1986. Driving near his home in Jacksonville, Allen crashed his car in an accident which killed his girlfriend and left him permanently paralyzed from the waist down. The injuries also limited the use of his upper body and arms. He later plead no contest to DUI manslaughter.

During the 1987 Lynyrd Skynyrd Tribute tour Allen served as musical director — selecting the set lists, arranging the songs and setting the stage. However, remaining on the sidelines while his band took center stage proved painful for the guitarist. Part of Allen’s sentence from his car wreck, called for him to use his fame and influence to warn kids of the dangers of drunk driving. Allen used the Tribute tour to go on stage and let his fans know the reason why he couldn’t play with Skynyrd — a powerful, sobering message few fans will forget.

In 1989, Allen developed pneumonia as a result of decreased lung capacity from the paralyzation. He entered the hospital in September where he passed away on January 23, 1990.

Allen Collins – Rossington Collins Band One Good Man

Posted on September 19, 2015February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Tom Fogerty 9/1990

September 6, 1990 – Thomas Richard “Tom” Fogerty (November 9, 1941 – ) was born in Berkeley California and became best known as the rhythm guitarist for Creedence Clearwater Revival and is the older brother of John Fogerty the band’s lead singer/songwriter. He was a founding member of the band that sold 30 million albums in the United States alone and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.

Tom played on all but one of their albums: Creedence Clearwater Revival-1968, Bayou Country-1969, Green River-1969, Willy and the Poor Boys-1969, Cosmo’s Factory-1970, and Pendulum -1970, producing such hits as “Proud Mary”, “Bad Moon Rising”, “Down on the Corner”, “Green River”, “Fortunate Son”, “Travelin’ Band” and “Who’ll Stop the Rain”.

Tom left the CCR in 1971, the year before the band split. During the few years of the life of CCR, Tom sang backing vocals and wrote songs, but only one of his songs (“Walking on the Water”) was recorded. This lack of opportunity, along with festering, long-standing animosity with his brother, led him to leave the band in 1971.

He began a solo career and worked with the likes of Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders, and old band mates Stu Cook and Doug Clifford. Tom’s 1974 solo album Zephyr National was the last to feature the four original band members of CCR. A few of the songs sound much in the Creedence style, particularly the aptly-titled “Joyful Resurrection”. All four members did play on the song, but John recorded his part to the mix separately.

At the October 1980 reception for Tom’s marriage to Tricia Clapper, all four members of CCR reunited and performed for the first time in a decade. They took the stage once more for a final time at a school reunion three years later.

He died on September 6, 1990 from complications from AIDS acquired during blood transfusions needed for a tuberculosis infection.

In just four top years, CCR released 17 Top 40 Chart Hits, including many two-sided hits. Virtually their ENTIRE singles catalog are still played regularly on both Oldies Radio and the Classic Rock Stations: SUZIE Q (#9, 1968), PROUD MARY (#2, 1969), BAD MOON RISING (#2, 1969), GREEN RIVER (#2, 1969), DOWN ON THE CORNER (#3, 1969), FORTUNATE SON (#6, 1969), TRAVELIN’ BAND (#2, 1970), WHO’LL STOP THE RAIN (#2-B, 1970), UP AROUND THE BEND (#2, 1970), LOOKIN’ OUT MY BACK DOOR(#1, 1970) and HAVE YOU EVER SEEN THE RAIN (#3, 1971) are all radio staples. Lesser known hits, B-Sides and LP cuts like BORN ON THE BAYOU, LODI, COMMOTION, RUN THROUGH THE JUNGLE, SOMEDAY NEVER COMES, SWEET HITCH-HIKER, I PUT A SPELL ON YOU and their version of I HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE also continue to receive a fair amount of airplay. In fact, percentage-wise, they may be the most-represented band on the radio when you consider how many songs get played in relationship to their total career output. But CCR wasn’t just a singles band … in that same four year period, they released seven albums worth of new material. GREEN RIVER and COSMO’S FACTORY both went to #1 and were triple and quadruple platinum sellers respectively. Their self-titled debut LP, BAYOU COUNTRY, WILLY AND THE POORBOYS, PENDULUM and MARDI GRAS rounded out the string of hit LPs. In 1969 and 1970, they outsold THE BEATLES. In their four year career, they had seven gold albums (with sales of over 25,000,000) and ten gold singles (with sales of around 12,000,000!)

Posted on January 22, 2025January 22, 2025 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Stevie Ray Vaughan 8/1990

Stevie Ray Vaughan 8/1990 (35) (known as SRV) was born October 3, 1954 in Dallas Texas and playing music gave an almost instant meaning to his life. He was real close to brother Jimmie, possibly as a result of his father’s alcohol induced mood swings and him being the primary recipient of his father’s violence.

For his seventh birthday, Vaughan received his first guitar, a 3 string toy guitar from Sears with a Western motif. After short dabbles in drums and the saxophone, initially inspired by his elder brother, Jimmie, Stevie took up guitar playing. Learning by ear he diligently committed himself, following along to songs by the Nightcaps, particularly “Wine, Wine, Wine” and “Thunderbird”. Later he listened to blues artists such as Albert King, Otis Rush, and Muddy Waters, and rock guitarists including Lonnie Mack, as well as jazz guitarists such as Kenny Burrell. In 1963, he received his first electric guitar, a Gibson ES-125T, as a hand-me-down from brother Jimmie and subsequently turned into a force of nature on the instrument.

He honed his chops starting in 1965 at the age of 12 with the Chantones. Their first show was at a talent contest held in Dallas’ Hill Theatre, but after realizing that they could not perform a Jimmy Reed song in its entirety, Vaughan left the band and briefly joined the Eclectic Marshmellows. When his bother Jimmy left home in 1967, Stevie found little support from his parents for his guitar obsession and decided to take a job out of the home at a burger joint where he cleaned dishes and threw out the garbage for $.70 an hour. When he landed in a barrel of grease one day, he quit and decided to commit his life to music and the guitar.

Here is a possibly shortened version of his apprentice years in the music business. In 1967, only 14 years old he joined the Brooklyn Underground, playing professionally at local bars and clubs. Then in May 1969 he joined the Southern Distributors for an 8 months period after which he moved on to Texas Storm, which also featured his brother Jimmy and Doyle Bramhall. This turned out to be only 2 months. By the spring of 1970 he joined Liberation, a 12 piece band. But by fall that same year he moved on to Lincoln while also doing session gigs for an outfit called Cast of Thousands. In late January 1971, feeling confined by playing pop hits with Liberation, Vaughan formed his own band, Blackbird. After growing tired of the Dallas music scene, he dropped out of school and moved with the band to Austin, Texas, which had more liberal and tolerant audiences. There, Vaughan initially took residence at the Rolling Hills Club, a local blues venue that would later become the Soap Creek Saloon. Blackbird played at several clubs in Austin and opened shows for bands such as Sugarloaf, Wishbone Ash, and Zephyr, but could not maintain a consistent lineup. Late in the fall of that year it was time to move on to join a band called Pecos. But by the time the summer came along he had moved on to Deryk Jones Party. The summer of 1972 was set aside for another Blackbird episode while occasionally guesting for an outfit called Orchrist. Blackbird #3 crossed his road for the first time with later bass player of Double Trouble, Tommy Shannon. Krackerjack was the next outfit on his roster for the fall of 1972. Stump lasted only about a month, before Stevie Ray joined Marc Benno and the Nightcrawlers. Marc Benno left and Stevie Ray gave the band another shot through parts of 1974. A band called Doug Sahm honed Stevie’s technique until the spring of 1975, when Paul Ray and the Cobras got a chance to enjoy his guitar playing. A bit more challenged Stevie Ray stayed until September 1977. In addition to playing with the Cobras, Vaughan jammed with many of his influences at Antone’s, including Buddy Guy, Hubert Sumlin, Jimmy Rogers, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and Albert King. In the fall of 78, when he formed Triple Threat Revue, which became his “home” until spring 1978. Southern blues sensation Lou Ann Barton fronted the outfit on vocals. In June 1978 the time had arrived for Stevie Ray Vaughan to rename the band to Double Trouble from an Otis Rush song, later to become Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble.

Stevie played with over 20 bands during his career, starting as early as 11 years old. The first known live recording of him was in 1969, when he sat in with Marc Benno’s band “Jomo”. His first studio recording came with Cast of Thousands,in 1971, when they recorded 2 tracks for the A New-Hi compilation album.

In early October 1978, Vaughan and Double Trouble earned a frequent residency performing at one of Austin’s most popular nightspots, the Rome Inn.

During a performance, Edi Johnson, an accountant at Manor Downs, noticed Vaughan. She remembered: “I’m not an authority on music—it’s whatever turns me on—but this did.” She recommended him to Manor Downs owner Frances Carr and GM Chesley Millikin, who was interested in managing artists and saw Vaughan’s musical potential. After Barton quit Double Trouble in mid-November 1979, Millikin signed Vaughan to a management contract. Vaughan also hired Robert “Cutter” Brandenburg as road manager, whom he had met in 1969. Addressing him as “Stevie Ray”, Brandenburg convinced Vaughan to use his middle name on stage.

On December 5, 1979, while Vaughan was in a dressing room before a performance in Houston, an off-duty police officer arrested him after witnessing him using cocaine near an open window. He was formally charged with cocaine possession and subsequently released on $1,000 bail. Double Trouble was the opening act for Muddy Waters, who said about Vaughan’s drug abuse: “Stevie could perhaps be the greatest guitar player that ever lived, but he won’t live to get 40 years old if he doesn’t leave that white powder alone.” Vaughan was sentenced with two years’ probation and was prohibited from leaving Texas. Along with a stipulation of entering treatment for drug abuse, he was required to “avoid persons or places of known disreputable or harmful character”; he refused to comply with both of these orders. After a lawyer was hired, his probation officer had the sentence revised to allow him to work outside the state. But the incident later caused him to refuse maid service while staying in hotels during concert tours.

In October 1980, bassist Tommy Shannon attended a Double Trouble performance at Rockefeller’s in Houston. Shannon, who had played with Stevie Ray in Blackbird, was playing with Alan Haynes at the time, participated in a jam session with Vaughan and Layton halfway through their set. Shannon later commented: “I went down there that night, and I’ll never forget this: it was like, when I walked in the door and I heard them playing, it was like a revelation. ‘That’s where I want to be; that’s where I belong, right there.’ During the break, I went up to Stevie and told him that. I didn’t try to sneak around and hide it from the bass player Jackie Newhouse—I didn’t know if he was listening or not. I just really wanted to be in that band. I sat in that night and it sounded great.” Almost three months later, when Vaughan offered Shannon the position, he readily accepted.

Although popular in Texas at the time, Double Trouble failed to gain national attention, partly because of Vaughan’s inability to travel beyond Texas at that time. The group’s visibility improved when record producer Jerry Wexler recommended them to Claude Nobs, organizer of the Montreux Jazz Festival. He insisted the festival’s blues night would be great with Vaughan, whom he called “a jewel, one of those rarities who comes along once in a lifetime”, and Nobs agreed to book Double Trouble.

Vaughan opened his first day performance with a medley arrangement of Freddie King’s song “Hide Away” and his own fast instrumental composition, “Rude Mood”. Double Trouble went on to perform renditions of Larry Davis’ “Texas Flood”, Hound Dog Taylor’s “Give Me Back My Wig”, and Albert Collins‘ “Collins Shuffle”, as well as three original compositions: “Pride and Joy”, “Love Struck Baby”, and “Dirty Pool”. The set ended with a mixture of boos and from the audience.

People‘s James McBride wrote about his performance:

He seemed to come out of nowhere, a Zorro-type figure in a riverboat gambler’s hat, roaring into the ’82 Montreux festival with a ’59 Stratocaster at his hip and two flame-throwing sidekicks he called Double Trouble. He had no album, no record contract, no name, but he reduced the stage to a pile of smoking cinders and, afterward, everyone wanted to know who he was.”

According to road manager Don Opperman: “the way I remember it, the ‘ooos’ and the ‘boos’ were mixed together, but Stevie was pretty disappointed. Stevie just handed me his guitar and walked off stage, and I’m like, ‘are you coming back?’ There was a doorway back there; the audience couldn’t see the guys, but I could. He went back to the dressing room with his head in his hands. I went back there finally, and that was the end of the show.” According to Vaughan: “it wasn’t the whole crowd [that booed]. It was just a few people sitting right up front. The room there was built for acoustic jazz. When five or six people boo, wow, it sounds like the whole world hates you. They thought we were too loud, but shoot, I had four army blankets folded over my amp, and the volume level was on 2. I’m used to playin’ on 10!” The performance was filmed and later released on DVD in September 2004.

On the following 2 nights, Double Trouble was booked in the lounge of the Montreux Casino, with David Bowie in attendance on the first night and Jackson Browne on the second. Browne jammed with Double Trouble until the early morning hours and offered them free use of his personal recording studio in downtown Los Angeles. In late November the band accepted his offer and recorded ten songs in two days. While they were in the studio, Vaughan received a telephone call from David Bowie, who had met him after the Montreux performance, and he invited him to participate in a recording session for his next studio album, Let’s Dance. In January 1983, Vaughan recorded guitar on six of the album’s eight songs, including the title track and “China Girl”. The album was released on April 14, 1983, and sold over three times as many copies as Bowie’s previous album. Double Trouble did an encore at the Montreux Jazz Festival 1985, this time as headliners.

Now that Europe had experienced Stevie Ray Vaughan, just like with Jimi Hendrix (England), Joe Bonamassa (NorthSea Jazz Festival) and several other guitar slingers, the doors also opened in America. After Montreux Epic Records signed the band to a record contract and Bowie asked Stevie Ray to join him for his Serious Moonlight Tour, as he realized how essential Stevie Ray’s contribution to the album was. After some back and forth, Stevie Ray however turned the proposition down and said: “I couldn’t gear everything on something I didn’t really care a whole lot about. It was kind of risky (reputation-wise, but I really didn’t need all the headaches. Besides, they only offered union rates.” Although contributing factors were widely disputed, Vaughan soon gained major publicity for quitting the tour. The following May he demolished the stage of the Bottom Line in New York City, opening for Canadian rocker Brian Adams. The New York Post claimed that the stage had been “rendered to cinders by the most explosively original showmanship to grace the New York stage in some time.”

Still as Double Trouble, the band recorded its debut album in less than a week at Jackson Browne’s studio. Texas Flood, was released in the summer of 1983, a few months after Bowie’s Let’s Dance appeared. On its own, Let’s Dance earned Stevie quite a bit of attention, but Texas Flood was a blockbuster blues success; receiving positive reviews in both blues and rock publications, reaching number 38 on the charts and crossing over to album rock radio stations. Stevie and Double Trouble set off on a successful tour and quickly recorded their second album, Couldn’t Stand the Weather, which was released in May of 1984. The album was more successful than its predecessor, reaching number 31 on the charts; by the end of 1985, the album went gold. Double Trouble added keyboardist Reese Wynans in 1985, before they recorded their third album, Soul to Soul. The record was released in August 1985 and was also quite successful, reaching number 34 on the charts.

Although his professional career was soaring, Stevie was sinking deep into alcoholism and drug addiction. Despite his declining health, he continued to push himself, releasing the double live album Live Alive in October of 1986 and touring extensively.

Late in 1986 Stevie collapsed whilst on tour in Germany and was rushed to hospital, where he was warned, that if he didn’t clean up, he would be dead very soon. The rest of the tour was cancelled and then followed time in rehab, before emerging clean and sober, and ready to work again.

The band undertook a US tour in 1987, completing 65 gigs, a somewhat mediocre total by his normal standards.

Stevie performed a number of concerts in 1988, including a headlining gig at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and wrote his fourth album. The resulting record, In Step, appeared in June of 1989 and became his most successful album, peaking at number 33 on the charts, earning a Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Recording, and going gold just over six months after its release.

In the spring of 1990, Stevie recorded the album Family Style with his brother Jimmie, which was scheduled for release in the autumn of that year.

In the late summer of 1990, Stevie and Double Trouble set out on an American headlining tour, with Joe Cocker. The highlight of the tour was two nights with Eric Clapton, Jimmy Vaughan, Buddy Guy and Robert Cray at Alpine Valley, East Troy, Wisconsin on 25th and 26th August 1990.

After the second show, which climaxed with an encore of Sweet Home Chicago, with everybody on stage, most of the entourage headed to board four chartered helicopters to take them back to the Windy City and a good night’s rest. Clapton later recalled how foggy the early morning of August 27 was.
“I didn’t want to fly at all. I was wiping condensation off the windows and thinking: ‘We’re all gonna die.’ Then they took off and above the weather was clear sky and starlight.”

Stevie was on a flight with three of Clapton’s crew. In the early hours it was reported they never landed in Chicago. In fact their pilot had taken off and crashed into a ski run on the side of a mountain after 42 seconds. Stevie Ray Vaughan was dead at 35.

When his brother Jimmie went to identify Stevie’s body, he had to so by recognizing his distinctive silver jewelry.” Shannon and Layton sat in their hotel room and wept. They’d gone into Stevie’s room hoping he’d be there, but the bed was still made with chocolates on the counterpane and the alarm radio was playing The Eagles’ Peaceful, Easy Feeling.

At Stevie’s funeral the mourners included Stevie Wonder and Dr. John, who sang “Amazing Grace” and “Ave Maria” while Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Nile Rodgers, Eric Clapton and ZZ Top wept in the Laurel Land Memorial chapel. Stevie’s marble and bronze headstone simply gave his dates, his name and the inscription that says ‘Thank you… For all the love you passed our way.’

But a strange thing happened at that last gig. Those who knew Stevie said he played with a halo of light around him. His guitar tech Rene Martinez remembered him giving everyone a huge hug and telling them how much he loved them. He had an aura about him, like a premonition.

Stevie Ray Vaughan brought physicality and soul to guitar playing, and he brought it in spades. The soul came through the speaker. The physicality was there for all to see. To watch him play, there were occasions in which SRV would throttle the guitar as though it were an arm wrestling contest at last orders in a Nantucket alehouse. His strings were the stuff of legend – Gauge 13s? No, 14s; 17s! Heck, some might argue he used piano wire. Either way, he went down the heavy-gauge route and had the dexterity to manipulate them as though they were dental floss. This, the fire in his belly, and the tone-gussying Tube Screamer playing mediator between Fender Strat and amp give him a range of dynamics that few, if any, players could match.

And yet, there was a tenderness to his playing. There are many who argue that his cover of Jimi Hendrix’s Little Wing eclipses the original. Opinions like that are always up for debate. What is not-up-to-debate is that Vaughan, left an over-sized impression on guitar culture in a short space of time. Just like Hendrix. – Total Guitar, chosing Stevie Ray Vaughan as the Number 1 Blues guitarist of all time

As a guitarist myself I feel that Stevie Ray brought more to the table than virtuosity. His whole being was music, which resulted in an endless flow of ideas, executed to perfection on his guitar. He could go on and on creating tasty licks, riff, melodies and raw mind blowing arpeggios, while seemingly never having to think about it. Ask any good or great guitarist about their fear of soloing and you’ll get always the same answer: Running out of ideas! Stevie Ray never ran out of ideas. they just floated into each other, channeled by his charismatic persona and fingers that instinctively knew where to go on the fretboard, far beyond just muscle memory.

Posted on January 23, 2017February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Bobby Day 7/1990

July 27, 1990 – Bobby Day was born Robert James Byrd on July 1st 1928 in Fort Worth, Texas.

An African American rock and roll and R&B singer and keyboardist in Texas in the 1940s, Day moved to Los Angeles, California, at the age of 15. As a member of the R&B group the Hollywood Flames he used the stage name Bobby Day to perform and record. He went several years with minor musical success limited to the West Coast, including being the original “Bob” in the duo Bob & Earl.

In 1957 Day formed his own band called the Satellites, following which he recorded three songs that are seen today as rock and roll classics. Despite the similarity in personal and group names, this is not the Bobby Byrd that sang with, and was the founder of, the Famous Flames, the vocal group with which James Brown first began his career.

Day’s best known songwriting efforts were “Over and Over” made popular by the Dave Clark Five in 1965, and “Little Bitty Pretty One” popularized by Thurston Harris in 1957, Clyde McPhatter in 1962, and the Jackson Five in 1972. However, Day is most remembered for his 1958 solo recording of the Billboard Hot 100 No. 2 hit, “Rockin’ Robin”, written by Leon Rene under the pseudonym Jimmie Thomas. It sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold record. “Rockin’ Robin” was a song covered by Bob Luman at Town Hall Party on October 28, 1958, The Hollies in 1964, Gene Vincent in 1969, Michael Jackson in 1972, and by McFly in 2006.

In 2012-2013, his uncharted recording, “Beep-Beep-Beep”, was the musical soundtrack for a Kia Sorento television commercial shown nationwide in the U.S.

Day died of intestinal cancer on July 27, 1990 at the age of 62.

Posted on January 16, 2017February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Brent Mydland 7/1990

July 26, 1990 – Brent Mydland was born in Munich, Germany on October 21, 1952, the child of a U.S. Army chaplain. The family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area when he was just one and he spent most of his childhood living in Antioch, California, an hour east of San Francisco. He started piano lessons at age six and had formal classical lessons through his junior year in high school. In an interview he commented that: “my sister took lessons and it looked fun to me, so I did too. There was always a piano around the house and I wanted to play it. When I couldn’t play it I would beat on it anyway.” His mother, a graveyard shift nurse, encouraged Mydland’s talents by insisting that he practice his music for two hours each day. He played trumpet from elementary till his senior year in high school; his schoolmates remember him practicing on an accordion, as well as the piano, every day after school.

“In my late teens I went and saw a lot of groups, and thank God I did, because the era didn’t last much longer.” When asked if he had musical aspirations in high school he admitted to wanting to originally be “a high school band teacher or something, I played trumpet in the marching band … then my senior year I got kicked out of the marching band for having long hair … they told me “sorry we’ll lose points for your long hair”, so that was the end of my band career. I gave up the trumpet and concentrated on the keyboards.” Brent graduated from Liberty High in nearby Brentwood, California, in 1971.

Of his early musical experiences Mydland has stated: “Late into high school I got into playing rock ‘n’ roll with friends and it was like I had to start from the beginning almost, because if I didn’t have a piece of music in front of me I couldn’t do much. I changed my outlook on playing real fast after that. I think dope had something to do with that.”

Influenced by rock organists such as Lee Michaels, Ray Manzarek and Goldie McJohn of Steppenwolf. Mydland was in a series of local bands. In the late 1960s he bought the first albums by Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, and during this interview he stated that he was in a band “where I used to sing “Morning Dew” and we did “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl” too.”

When asked if that scene, which was based heavily on extended jams, had influenced him musically at all he said: “For a while, yes, but I could never find people that could make that kind of music sound good. We’d jam along and then. It’s nice to have people who add to it and change it instead of “Ok, I’ve got my part”; that gets boring really fast”.

He went on to state that: “In senior year I got together with a guitar player; he knew a drummer and bass player who were both pretty good. We were serious about it for about six weeks or so and then it kind of fell apart. I ended up living in a quonset hut in Thousand Oaks, California, writing songs and eating a lot of peanut butter and bread and whatever else was around. In one of the bands, I played with a guy named Rick Carlos and he got a call from John Batdorf of Batdorf & Rodney asking him to come to L.A, to play with them. A couple months later they were looking for a keyboard player who could sing the high parts, so I went down there and joined the band. I got to do a tour with them which was great experience. Then after that fell apart John and I put together Silver; Silver lasted about two years. We put out an album on Arista and were going to do a second but Clive Davis, Arista’s president, kind of choked it”.

“After Silver I bummed around L.A for about six months and then hooked up with Weir through John Mauceri, who I’d played with back in Batdorf & Rodney, and I joined the Bob Weir Band. With Bobby, at first, I’d say to him: “Well, should I play this instrument on this song, or this other instrument?” And he’d say, “I don’t care. Why not play one this time and the other the next time if you feel like it.” It loosened me up a lot and it got me more into improvisation. I liked it a lot.” So much so that he had no apprehension to join the biggest jamband of the all, when he replaced Keith and Donna Godcheaux on the keyboard for The Grateful Dead.

After two weeks of rehearsals, he played his first concert with the band at the Spartan Stadium, San Jose, on April 22.

Mydland quickly became an integral part of the Dead owing to his vocal and songwriting skills as much as his keyboard playing. He quickly combined his tenor singing with founder members Weir and Jerry Garcia to provide strong three-part harmonies on live favourites including “I Know You Rider”, “Eyes of the World” and “Truckin'”. He easily fit into the band’s sound and added his own contributions, such as in Go to Heaven (1980) which featured two of Mydland’s songs, “Far From Me” and “Easy to Love You”, the latter written with frequent Weir collaborator John Perry Barlow. On the next album, In the Dark (1987), Mydland co-wrote the defiant favorite “Hell in a Bucket” with Weir and Barlow; he also penned the train song “Tons of Steel”.

Built to Last (1989) featured several more of Mydland’s songs: the moody “Just a Little Light”, the environmental song “We Can Run”, the live performance driven “Blow Away” and the poignant “I Will Take You Home”, a lullaby written with Barlow for Mydland’s two daughters.

Mydland wrote several other songs that were played live but not released on any studio albums, such as “Don’t Need Love”, “Never Trust A Woman”, “Maybe You Know”, “Gentlemen Start Your Engines”, and “Love Doesn’t Have To Be Pretty”; the latter two written with Barlow. He also co-wrote “Revolutionary Hamstrung Blues” with Phil Lesh collaborator Bobby Petersen, although the song was performed live only once.

His high, gravelly vocal harmonies and emotional leads added to the band’s singing strength, and he even occasionally incorporated scat singing into his solos. Mydland’s vocals added colour to old favorites such as “Cassidy”, “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo”, “Ramble on Rose”, the Band’s “The Weight”, and even wrote his own verse for Willie Dixon’s “Little Red Rooster”. He sang lead on many covers, including Traffic’s “Dear Mr. Fantasy”, the Beatles’ “Hey Jude”, and the Meters’ “Hey Pocky Way”.

Brent was also a capable songwriter whose credits include “Hell In A Bucket,” “Tons Of Steel,” “Just A Little Light,” “Blow Away” and the tender “I Will Take You Home.” “He could take something and turn it into a fully scored, well-thought-out, harmonically structured masterpiece in about a minute and a half,” songwriting partner John Perry Barlow told the New York Times. “Brent could pick his way through anything immediately, which meant he had the special requirement it was going to take to walk into the Dead overnight. He was musically central to the band, but he was so good at what he did that he was able to become fundamental to everything that the band was doing musically without it being immediately apparent to the audience.”

Mydland’s voice and approach was also on display for a number of covers the Dead performed during his time in the group such as “Dear Mr. Fantasy,” “Hey Pocky Way” and “Gimme Some Lovin’.” The keyboardist died just days after the Grateful Dead completed Summer Tour 1990 at The World in Tinley Park, Illinois on July 23, 1990. The encore that night was the Dead’s recently debuted cover of “The Weight” by The Band. All of the Dead’s vocalists sang lead for one verse of “The Weight.” Brent’s verse ends and the final words he sang as lead vocalist were “I gotta go, but my friends can stick around.”

The keyboardist who had been with The Grateful Dead for 11 years, longer than any other keyboardist, died of a drug overdose at his home in Lafayette, California, on July 26, 1990. He was 38. He was known mostly as a drinker, but in his later years he turned to hard drugs as he was struggling to cope with family issues and severe depression.

Watch the eerie and emotional performance of “The Weight” from July 23, 1990.

• In 1994, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Grateful Dead.

• After joining the Grateful Dead, Mydland played in Bob Weir’s Bobby and the Midnites during 1980 and 1981.
• In 1982, he recorded and mastered a solo studio album, but it was never released.
• In the Summer of 1985, he performed with fellow band member Bill Kreutzmann in their band Kokomo’ along with 707’s Kevin Russell and Santana’s David Margen.
• Also in 1985, he performed at the Haight Street Fair with Weir, John Cipollina, and Merl Saunders, among others.
• In 1986, Mydland formed Go Ahead with several San Francisco Bay area musicians, including Bill Kreutzmann, also former Santana members Alex Ligertwood on vocals and David Margen on bass, as well as guitarist Jerry Cortez. The band toured during the time Jerry Garcia was recovering from a diabetic coma, and also briefly reunited in 1988.
• He also did numerous solo projects and performances, as well as duo performances with Bob Weir numerous times throughout the 1980s, with Weir on acoustic guitar and Mydland on grand piano.
• Brent had a love for Harley Davidson motorcycles, and was an avid rider. A Harley which was owned by Mydland was featured on a 2013 episode of Pawn Stars.

Posted on October 13, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Jim Hodder 6/1990

June 5, 1990 – Jim Hodder was born on December 17, 1947 in in the small Long Island hamlet of Bethpage, New York in 1947. He graduated from Plainedge High School in the Plainedge Union Free School District in 1965 and relocated thereafter to the Boston area, where he became active in the local music scene.

As drummer and lead vocalist, he joined the Boston-based psychedelic rock group The Bead Game, named after Hermann Hesse’s novel The Glass Bead Game. The group built a local following before attracting the attention of Avco Records and producer Gary Kannon, later known as Gary Katz. Their first album, Baptism, was cancelled, though it would receive a posthumous release in 1996 with a limited run.

In 1970 they appeared in the film The People Next Door in which they performed two songs, and soon thereafter recorded the album Easy Ridin’ as part of the collective Freedom Express. 1970 also saw the release of the band’s only proper album, Welcome, on Avco/Embassy. This album showcased a late psychedelic/early progressive crossover sound, and featured Hodder singing lead vocals on all tracks.

In 1972, Hodder accepted an invitation from Katz and Boston guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter to relocate to Los Angeles and join Steely Dan, a new group built around songwriters Donald Fagen and Walter Becker with whom the two were working. He made the move with his girlfriend Kathi Kamen Goldmark, later a successful author and musician. He barely knew the other band members prior to beginning tracking for their first records.

Hodder acted as the group’s drummer, but was also given occasional lead vocal duties thanks to Fagen’s insecurities as a vocalist. He sang lead on “Dallas”, the A-side on their initial two-song single, and the “Midnite Cruiser” cut on their debut album, Can’t Buy a Thrill. The band soon embarked upon extensive touring in the wake of their early commercial success. Hodder’s drumming featured on the entirety of the follow-up album, Countdown to Ecstasy, a band-focused effort recorded the following year after the group’s sound had cohered on the road.

Jim Hodder, “percussionist, bronze god, pulse of the rhythm section,” was the original drummer for Steely. Burly, with large hands, Hodder brought a syncopated, pert style to the music. He exemplified “tasty,” a common term then used among musicians to describe one who was creative but not overly flashy. His drumming seemed part BJ Wilson from Procol Harum, part Bobby Colomby from Blood, Sweat & Tears, and part Ringo. He wed lots of straight 8th notes on the hi-hat with snappy tom fills. An attention to detail is apparent from his articulate press rolls on “Dirty Work” to the rags-style bossa groove he played on “Do It Again.”

“Bodhisaitva,” the first song on Countdown to Ecstasy, kicks off with snare drum/hi-hat blasts from Hodder. Along with the rest of the band, Hodder’s playing reflects a new looseness and confidence. Instead of striking a closed hi-hat with the tip, more of a swinging bash is employed, using the shank. He’s more aggressive, playing Richie Hayward-ish fusion on the sci-fi “King of The World”.

Like Idris Muhammad or Herbie Lovelle from the l960s Prestige-era jazz recordings, Hodder maintained a snakey, slinky touch. He was still playing rock, but with a jazzer’s approach. His drums were tuned a bit lower; and the cymbals seemed to ring more, matching the Indian flare of “Your Gold Teeth” or the country twang of “Pearl Of The Quarter.” However, by 1974 this was it for Hodder as far as Steely Dan was concerned. Though a strong drummer and timekeeper, he lacked the definitive personality that might have kept him on Becker and Fagen’s first-call list.

Nonetheless, Countdown is the album that set the course for Steely Dan. They continued to refine and redefine their music with each successive album, becoming more exacting and demanding with the performances and the overall sound, while writing more stunning compositions.

Hodder continued working as a session musician. He played drums on Linda Ronstadt’s 1974 single “You’re No Good”, and tracks on the 1976 albums Nine on a Ten Scale by Sammy Hagar and Sibling Rivalry by The Rowans. He later appeared as the sole drummer on David Soul’s Playing to an Audience of One and Rocky Sullivan’s 1984 Caught in the Crossfire record.

Jim Hodder drowned in his swimming pool on June 5, 1990. He was 42.

Posted on October 11, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Stiv Bators 6/1990

June 4, 1990 – Stiv Bators was born Steven John Bator on October 22, 1949 in Youngstown , Ohio.

As the frontman for the Dead Boys, Stiv Bators terrorized audiences with his snotty, in-your-face punk rock style. But after the Dead Boys, Bators embarked on a musical journey that saw him touch upon new wave (the Wanderers), goth rock (the Lords of the New Church), and power pop (during a brief solo career), as well as a fling with movie acting. Born Steve Bator on October 22, 1949, in Youngstown, OH, Bators took a liking to garage rock and proto-punk early on — a story he liked to tell is that it was he who handed Iggy Pop the jar of peanut butter that he smeared across his chest and threw around while walking on the audience during the Stooges’ televised infamous 1970 rock festival in Ohio (additionally, Bators befriended the Ramones during the quartet’s first Ohio performance). As a result of his interest in the burgeoning punk movement, Bators hooked up with friend/guitarist Cheetah Chrome and others to form the short-lived local outfit Frankenstein. Sensing that there was little chance of launching a successful music career in Ohio, Bators convinced a handful of fellow local musicians (Chrome, guitarist Jimmy Zero, and drummer Johnny Blitz) to relocate to New York City in 1976, resulting in the formation of the Dead Boys.

The ploy worked, as the Dead Boys not only became an instant part of the CBGB’s punk scene, but they also enlisted the club’s owner, Hilly Kristal, as their manager, and signed a record deal with Sire. By specializing in a heavily Iggy Pop-influenced live show (which included Bators flailing himself around until he was battered and bloody, and faux-hanging himself on stage), the group built a buzz, which only intensified after the release of its 1977 debut, Young Loud & Snotty. Despite a promising start, the group would quickly disintegrate — issuing only one more album that failed to replicate the debut’s fire, 1978’s We Have Come for Your Children, before splitting up.

In the wake of the Dead Boys’ split, Bators decided to try shedding his wild man image by reinventing himself as a new waver, as he demoed power pop material and issued several singles via the Bomp! label (later collected on the 1994 L.A., L.A. compilation). In 1980 his full-length solo debut, Disconnected, was released; it saw Bators mix his new power pop direction with his punk roots. But rather than fully embark on a solo career, Bators opted to return back to a band, as he formed the Wanderers with ex-Sham 69 members Dave Parsons (guitar), Dave Tregunna (bass), and Rick Goldstein (drums). The group issued only one album, the schizoid concept album Only Lovers Left Alive, which forsake its members’ punk past in favor of a sterile production and ambitious futuristic storyline. With punk fans still scratching their heads as to the career path Bators had embarked on since his Dead Boys days, the singer decided to give acting at try, with a bit part in the hilarious 1981 John Waters-directed movie, Polyester. Seven years later, Bators made a memorable cameo appearance as “Dick Slammer”, lead singer of “The Blender Children”, in the offbeat comedy, Tapeheads, starring John Cusack and Tim Robbins.

A union with ex-Damned guitarist Brian James followed soon after, resulting in the formation of the Lords of the New Church. And once more, the group didn’t sound like what you’d expect from a pair of punk veterans, as they specialized in goth rock (reminiscent of Bauhaus). The Lords became notorious for their live shows. A devotee of Iggy Pop, Bators had developed a fearless reputation in his Dead Boys days and continued such antics with The Lords, the most famous being the time he reportedly hanged himself during a show. Bator’s stunt went awry and he was pronounced clinically dead for several minutes. Unlike his other post-Dead Boys musical projects, the Lords lasted longer, as they issued a trio of albums during the early ’80s — 1982’s The Lords of the New Church, 1983’s Is Nothing Sacred?, and 1984’s The Method to Our Madness .

In December 1985 Bators flew to New York with his best friend Michael Monroe to work on Artists United Against Apartheid music video.

The late ’80s saw Bators briefly work with ex-Hanoi Rocks singer Michael Monroe, appear in another movie, 1988’s Tapeheads, and the Sun City music video, plus sporadic reunion gigs with the Dead Boys. Having relocated to Paris, France, little was heard from Bators subsequently, although it became known in later years that he attempted to form a punk rock supergroup featuring ex-New York Dolls guitarist Johnny Thunders and ex-Ramones bassist Dee Dee Ramone. But besides a few rehearsals, nothing ever came of the union.

On June 4, 1994 Bators was struck by a taxi in Paris during a bank holiday. He was taken to a hospital but reportedly left before seeing a doctor, after waiting several hours and assuming he was not injured. Reports indicate that he died in his sleep as the result of a concussion. Bators, a fan of rock legend Jim Morrison, had earlier requested that his ashes be spread over Morrison’s Paris grave at Pere Lachaise Cemetery and his girlfriend Caroline complied.

In the director’s commentary of the film Polyester, which starred Bators, the director and producer John Waters stated that Bators’ girlfriend Caroline confessed to him that she snorted a portion of Stiv’s ashes to be closer to him.

Posted on October 9, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — 1 Comment

Richard Sohl 6/1990

June 3, 1990 – Richard Arthur Sohl (Patti Smith Group) was born May 26th 1953 in Queens, New York City. He grew up in a Seventh Day Adventist family that encouraged music. Still in his late teens he became a classical piano player in a world of New York Proto Punk, Punk rock and rock and ultimately became best known for his work as songwriter, pianist and arranger with the Patti Smith Group.

This is what guitarist Lenny Kaye said about Richard Sohl in an interview in 1996:

What about a piano player for the stage show. Do you see yourself eventually finding someone to replace Richard Sohl?

“Well, as you know Richard Sohl passed into the great beyond, and he was always our perfect piano player. So when the right person comes along… We don’t just want someone to put organ pads underneath the songs. We want someone who will help us move forward creatively, in the same way that Richard did. You know when it was just me, Richard and Patti, there was a real immediacy to the work we did. Richard was the right person.

Patti told us a funny story about the time you were auditioning piano players. When Richard Sohl first walked in, you said, “D.N.V” right away, because he looked liked the young boy, Tadzio, from Visconti’s Death in Venice.

Yeah, he had that stupid sailor suit on, and he was just so like, “I’m beautiful, I know it, I’ll play some great piano.” “Okay, sure!” and then he’d go roomn, wramn, wramn.

Sohl also played with genre greats like Iggy Pop, Nina Hagen and Elliott Murphy. Richard Sohl well known as the keyboardist of the Patti Smith Ggroup was a soul of many creative and sensitive faces and facets of expression that occupied a space in the New York City Punk/Music scene. Richard Sohl in the Patti Snith Group has still to derive proper recognition from that association where Patti Smith has continiously derived profit and benefit from her association with others much like Andy Warhol those others have seemingly derived little benefit from her.

He died on June 3, 1990 of a heart attack while vacationing on Fire Island, New York.

More telling than anything of the little information I could find on Richard Sohl are the wonderful words from Elliot Murphy:

“But so much of the finesse came from Richard Sohl whose piano playing was so modest, so classically composed, so right. Richard didn’t like synthesizers and didn’t care to learn; preferred to travel light. I only heard of his sad passing months after he died; didn’t know who to call or write. We met in ’73 or ’74 at a party and spent many nights in the photo-booths of Times Square with friend Steven Meisel and Geraldine. Later, he found his place with Patti Smith and finally (again) with me; countless nights at Tramps and some memorable European tours – Montreuz Jazz Festival ’83, on the beach in Sete and an infernally hot Italian summer – from Milano to the boot… Oh, Richard, we miss you… And whenever I play LAST CALL, I think of you smiling at that terrible upright at Tramps, seemingly asleep at the keys while I braved it through my sob story.”

“People hear songs, music but to the musicians who write the songs, play the music; we hear time, places, faces, sometimes too much to bear as Richard Sohl’s stunning piano intro to THE STREETS OF NEW YORK brings it all back…where? Not home, anymore. But someplace else, even closer to the heart.
I didn’t know it for a few years later, but this album was my swan-song to New York City where I spent fifteen years searching for the soul of a city and finally gave up intent upon finding my own, at last.”

Posted on April 17, 2025April 17, 2025 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Emily Remler 5/1990

Emily Remler was born September 18, 1957 in Manhattan, New York and raised in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. Remler began playing guitar at age ten. Her first guitar was her brother’s cherry-red Gibson ES-330, the guitar she would use for most of her professional career. She listened to pop and rock guitarists like Jimi Hendrix and Johnny Winter. She learned simple folk tunes, Beatles songs, and Johnny Winter solos note-for-note, but it was just a hobby. She wasn’t serious yet and had other interests, like sculpture and drawing. Remler was sent to a private boarding school in Massachusetts to finish high school. She graduated high school early, at 16, and applied to music and art schools. She got accepted to one of each: the Berklee College of Music and the Rhode Island School of Design. She had to decide: music or art? She chose music.

She told an interviewer for Down Beat magazine in 1985, “I was so frustrated with art. I couldn’t get it the way I wanted it. Music, at least you get more chances and a little more time and have the companionship of the other musicians.”

She wasn’t that good when she got to Berklee, and jazz was an alien art form to her. Miles Davis and John Coltrane were not on her radar. But Berklee was a diverse place, and jazz was more than Coltrane and Miles. She heard Paul Desmond, Pat Martino, and Wes Montgomery. That was more her speed—she loved it and became hooked.

Remler finished a two-year degree and graduated at age 18. She still wasn’t much of a guitarist (at least that’s what she said in interviews) but she’d learned a lot about music, including harmony, reading, and keeping time.

“My teacher told me that I had bad time. I rushed. I went home crying. Crying. But I bought a metronome. I worked with the metronome on two and four. I practiced with that thing and nothing else behind me,” she said in the same 1985 Down Beat interview. She worked hard at it, and eventually great time—her ability to swing—became a hallmark of her playing.

Her boyfriend at the time, guitarist Steve Masakowski, was from New Orleans, and they decided to move there. But she wanted to spend the summer practicing in New Jersey first, so she rented a room on Long Beach Island for eight weeks and worked on chord theory and soloing. She quit smoking. She lost weight. That’s where she learned how to play.

When Remler moved to New Orleans in the fall, she got to work. Reading music got her a lot of gigs: hotel shows, weddings, anniversary parties, rhythm and blues gigs, jazz gigs, and all-night jams with the old-timers on Bourbon Street. She gigged with Wynton Marsalis and Bobby McFerrin. She backed up singers. She played in blues and jazz clubs, working with bands such as Four Play and Little Queenie and the Percolators before beginning her recording career in 1981. She also supported big names when they came to town: Robert Goulet, Rosemary Clooney, Nancy Wilson. Wilson took her on the road and brought her to the Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall. Remler was a big fish in a small pond, and because she could play and read, she was a first-call player in New Orleans.

She put together a quartet, and worked, but she only lasted another year there before moving back to New York, but she always valued her New Orleans time—it made her into a musician and helped her find her voice. “In New York, it’s very serious. In New Orleans everybody jumps up and down,” she told Down Beat in a 1982 interview. “There’s an R&B kind of feeling. I sort of stole that rich culture and applied it to my own music. If I had stayed in Boston, I’d be playing ‘Giant Steps’ like a madman—like everybody else.”

When Herb Ellis came to town, Remler had to meet him. She had guts and ambition and was able to finagle a meeting.

“I asked her to play something for me, and when she did, I couldn’t believe what I heard,” Ellis said. A few years later Ellis told People Magazine, “I’ve been asked many times who I think is coming up on the guitar to carry on the tradition and my unqualified choice is Emily[Remler].”

He got her an engagement at California’s Concord Jazz Festival, requesting that she join him on a bill called “Guitar Explosion” that also featured such virtuosos as Barney Kessel and Tal Farlow. For Remler it was the beginning of a promising career — one that New Orleans couldn’t contain. Within a year, she had amicably ended her relationship with Masakowski and gone back to New York.

Remler’s return to New York however became a struggle; in New Orleans she was a big fish in a small pond, but like so many aspiring players, here she was a small fish in a big pond. Yet it had an additional layer of difficulty for her. “There are so many bandleaders who have told me face to face that they couldn’t hire me because I was a woman,” she remarked. “So many instances where I wasn’t trusted musically and they handled me with kid gloves.” Remler used the adversity as motivation to get so good that they’d have to hire her.

She landed a job accompanying vocalist Brazilian Bossa nova phenomenon Astrud Gilberto, and began introducing herself to guitarists she heard around town. One was John Scofield, who in 1980 introduced Remler to Clayton, in town from L.A. They jammed together. “She knocked me out,” Clayton says. “I said, ‘Are you gonna be around in a couple months? Because we’re gonna do a Clayton Brothers recording, and it’d be great if you could join us!’ And her eyes widened, and she said, ‘Yeah!’” Remler flew out to California that June to play on the album It’s All in the Family. On the date she again met the president of Concord Jazz Records, Carl Jefferson, whom she’d impressed two years earlier at the Concord Jazz Festival. He signed her to record an album of her own for what was at the time a guitar-centric label. Back in New York she founded the Emily Remler Trio and recorded her first album as a band leader. Firefly gained positive reviews, as did Take Two and Catwalk. She participated in the Los Angeles version of Sophisticated Ladies from 1981 to 1982 and toured for 3 years with Brazilian jazz phenomenon Astrud Gilberto.

From there things moved quickly. The album, Firefly, placed her in the august company of pianist Hank Jones, along with bassist Bob Maize and drummer Jake Hanna. On the strength of Firefly, Jefferson extended her contract for three additional albums. Remler was a headliner at the Berlin and Newport Jazz Festivals, and on a Hawaiian jazz cruise. In a column for the Los Angeles Times, jazz critic Leonard Feather named her 1981’s “Woman of the Year.

She was featured in the music trade magazines, and in the spring of 1982, Remler crossed over into People magazine, where she uttered her most famous quote: “I may look like a nice Jewish girl from New Jersey. But inside I’m a 50-year-old, heavyset black man with a big thumb, like Wes Montgomery.”

“The pieces are rapidly falling into place for Emily Remler,” Feather wrote, and this was true for her both professionally and personally: Remler met and married the Jamaican jazz pianist Monty Alexander in ’81.

In New York, she had been leading her own trio. When it came time to make her third record for Concord, she had enough clout and confidence to insist that the full quartet make the date. The result was 1983’s acclaimed Transition, which marked an increasing focus on her own compositions and a step away from bebop conservatism.

That progress continued with Catwalk, released in early 1985. It was Remler’s first collection of entirely original compositions, many of them flavored with Latin, Brazilian, Indian and African polyrhythms. “This is the best thing I’ve ever done,” she pronounced in an interview shortly after its release.

Critics agreed. So did guitar great Larry Coryell, who heard Catwalk upon its release. “I … was impressed,” Coryell wrote in his 2007 memoir, Improvising: My Life in Music. “Emily was creative, smart, swung like crazy and had a time feel that was just about the best I had ever heard from any guitarist, male or female.”

Coryell and Remler would soon record a duets album, Together. They hit the touring circuits, playing international festivals as well as clubs and guitar workshops. They also had a brief romance—a new partnership augmented by the dissolution of another. After two and a half years, her marriage to Monty Alexander had ended in divorce. It was, perhaps, a harbinger of more difficult times to come.

In 1985 she won Guitarist of the Year in Down Beat magazine’s international poll, and performed in that year’s guitar festival at Carnegie Hall.

When asked how she wanted to be remembered she remarked, “Good compositions, memorable guitar playing and my contributions as a woman in music…but the music is everything, and it has nothing to do with politics or the women’s liberation movement.”

But by the end of 1986, Remler had had enough. She quit New York and moved to Pittsburgh, becoming an artist-in-residence at Duquesne University and studying at the University of Pittsburgh with Bob Brookmeyer. At night she worked the local clubs. She continued playing festivals and freelancing on records. But as she kept honing her craft, she also went into drug rehab therapy, hoping to beat not only her addiction but the demons that hid behind it.

It seemed to be working. In the spring of 1988, she even moved back to New York, taking an apartment in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. She made a bebop record, East to Wes, with Hank Jones, bassist Buster Williams and drummer Marvin “Smitty” Smith, and took some straight-ahead gigs recording behind pianist David Benoit and vocalist Susannah McCorkle.

She had some less conventional ideas brewing as well. Remler began experimenting with the cutting-edge electronics of the day, including a guitar synth—less Montgomery than Metheny. In 1989, she signed a deal with Houston-based Justice Records to release her newly recorded This Is Me, an album that included her passions for the jazz-guitar tradition and for Brazilian and African rhythms, but pushed hard in the direction of crossover jazz-pop.

She never got to see where the new direction would take her. Remler was on a tour of Australia when she was found dead in her Sydney hotel room. The official cause of death was heart failure, with no mention of drug involvement. The jazz world knew better.

Remler bore the scars of her longstanding opioid use disorder, which is believed to have contributed to her death. On May 4, 1990, she died of heart failure at the age of 32 while on tour in Australia.

She took something with her besides her musical gift. “She always had a weakness for the party life, and maybe overdoing it with substances and things like that,” former boyfriend Masakowski said. “When we were first together, it was a very healthy lifestyle. I even got her to quit smoking. But then I think she started playing with the more party-oriented types of groups, and it started to deteriorate.”

Posted on April 3, 2016February 21, 2019 by Macamba0 — Leave a comment

Andrew Wood 3/1990

March 19, 1990 – Andrew Wood was born in Columbus, Mississippi on January 8th 1966. Raised on Bainbridge Island, Washington, he was the youngest of three children; brothers Kevin and Brian. Wood and his brothers were exposed to various music by their parents, who also supported their children when they were learning how to play instruments. Wood became a fan of acts such as Elton John, Queen, Aerosmith, and Kiss.

In 1980, at the age of 14, Wood formed Malfunkshun with his brother Kevin, recording their first demo tape in April 1980. Drummer Regan Hagar joined soon after with the band, playing shows in Seattle, Washington.[2] Each member adopted onstage alter egos, with Andrew becoming Landrew the Love Child, Kevin becoming Kevinstein, and Hagar becoming Thundarr. Unlike most grunge groups in Seattle, Malfunkshun were influenced by glam rock with Wood described as “a hippie, glammed-out rock & roll god, equal parts Marc Bolan and Jim Morrison,” with his look and vocal style influenced by frontmen such as Freddie Mercury, Paul Stanley, and Marc Bolan. By 1985, Wood had started to rely heavily on drugs to help with his “rock star” persona, and entered rehab the same year.

Malfunkshun recorded a number of demos in 1986, two of which, “With Yo’ Heart (Not Yo’ Hands)” and “Stars-n-You”, were included on the “legendary” Deep Six compilation album released by C/Z Records the same year. The band continued to play shows in Seattle, opening for Soundgarden, The U-Men, and Skin Yard. However, in 1988, Malfunkshun disbanded.

Although the band never released an album and were also turned down by Sub Pop for “not [being] grunge enough,”Malfunkshun, along with Green River, are often cited as “founding fathers” of the Seattle’s grunge movement.

Wood and Hagar began playing with Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament of Green River, which disbanded in 1988, performing, on occasion, as the cover band Lords of the Wasteland. Former Green River guitarist Bruce Fairweather was added to the lineup, while former 10 Minute Warning and Skin Yard drummer Greg Gilmore replaced Hagar, forming Mother Love Bone the same year.

The band soon signed a deal with PolyGram, and, through their own subsidiary label Stardog, issued a six-song EP, Shine, in 1989. John Book, of Allmusic, stated that the EP “contributed to the buzz about the Seattle music scene.” The band spent the rest of the year touring, including shows supporting The Dogs D’Amour, and recording their debut album. With high expectations of the album, Wood checked himself into rehab due to his struggle with heroin addiction, hoping to get clean for the release of album, staying there for the remainder of the year.

In 1990, the band continued to play shows in Seattle, waiting for the release of their album, Apple.
On March 16, 1990, Wood was found in a comatose state by his girlfriend, having overdosed on heroin. Wood was taken to Harborview Hospital and placed on life support. Despite being responsive, Wood had suffered a hemorrhage aneurysm, losing all brain function. On March 19 physicians suggested that Wood be removed from life support.

The album Apple was released posthumously later in the year, receiving positive reviews. David Browne of The New York Times wrote that “Apple may be one of the first great hard-rock records of the 90s” and that “Wood could have been the first of the big-league Seattle rock stars.”

In the year following his death, Wood’s former roommate Chris Cornell of Soundgarden wrote two songs, “Reach Down” and “Say Hello 2 Heaven”, in tribute to his late friend. Cornell then approached Gossard and Ament about releasing the songs as singles before collaborating on an album. Adding drummer Matt Cameron, future Pearl Jam lead guitarist Mike McCready, and future Pearl Jam lead singer Eddie Vedder, they formed Temple of the Dog in 1990 to pay tribute to Wood, releasing one self-titled album in 1991.

Fellow Seattle band Alice in Chains dedicated their debut album Facelift to Wood. The song “Would?”, included in their second album Dirt, was written about Wood and other singers who had died as a result of drugs. In the liner notes of Alice in Chains’ Music Bank box set collection, Jerry Cantrell said of the song:
“I was thinking a lot about Andrew Wood at the time. We always had a great time when we did hang out, much like Chris Cornell and I do. There was never really a serious moment or conversation, it was all fun. Andy was a hilarious guy, full of life and it was really sad to lose him. But I always hate people who judge the decisions others make. So it was also directed towards people who pass judgments.”

In 1992, PolyGram reissued both Shine and Apple as the compilation album Mother Love Bone, while the song “Chloe Dancer/Crown of Thorns” was included on the soundtrack to the film Singles. The same year, Los Angeles band Faster Pussycat wrote the song “Mr. Lovedog”, from the album Whipped!, in tribute to Wood. Bradley Torreano of Allmusic stated that the song “offered a sad elegy to another charismatic figure in the metal world.”

Seattle rockers War Babies, which briefly featured Mother Love Bone’s Jeff Ament on bass, dedicated the song “Blue Tomorrow” off their eponymous 1992 debut album to Wood.

In 1993, Seattle post-grunge band Candlebox released their self-titled debut featuring the single “Far Behind,” which was written in memory of Wood.

Wood’s former band mate Stone Gossard compiled Malfunkshun recordings From 1986-87 and released the studio album Return to Olympus through his Loosegroove Records label in 1995.

In 2005, director Scot Barbour completed production on the documentary Malfunkshun: The Andrew Wood Story. The film documents Wood’s music career as well as his family background. The film premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival. In October of the same year, the film was screened at the FAIF Film Festival in Hollywood, California. The film was released in 2011 on DVD as part of a 2CD+DVD set entitled “Malfunkshun: The Andrew Wood Story” including the Return to Olympus album, a bonus CD including many interviews and demos, and the movie on the DVD disc.

He died of a heroin overdose coupled with a cerebral hemorrhage on March 19, 1990 at age 24.