Category: VOCALISTS

17 January 2012 – Johnny Otis was born Ioannis Alexandres Veliotes on December 28th 1921 in Vallejo, a predominantly black neighborhood in California.

Otis began playing drums as a teenager, when he purchased a set by forging his father’s signature on a credit slip. Soon after he dropped out of Berkeley High School during his junior year, Otis joined a local band with pianist friend ‘Count’ Otis Matthews called the West Oakland Houserockers. By 1939, they were performing at many of the local functions, primarily in and around the Oakland and Berkeley area, and became quite popular among their peers.

He then started out playing drums in a variety of swing orchestras, including Lloyd Hunter’s Serenaders, and Harlan Leonard’s Rockets, after which he founded his own band in 1945 and had one of the most enduring hits of the big band era, “Harlem Nocturne”. A true pioneering rhythm and blues singer, talent scout, disc jockey, composer, arranger, author, record producer, vibraphonist, drummer, bandleader, pastor, he was commonly referred to as the “Godfather of Rhythm and Blues”.

He discovered tenor saxophonist Big Jay McNeely, who then performed on his uptempo “Barrelhouse Stomp”. He began recording Little Esther and Mel Walker for the Newark, New Jersey-based Savoy label in 1949 and began releasing a stream of hit records, including “Double Crossing Blues”, “Mistrustin’ Blues” and “Cupid Boogie”; all three reached no. 1 on the Billboard R&B chart. Other of his hits included “Gee Baby”, “All Nite Long” “Mambo Boogie”, “Sunset to Dawn” and “Ma He’s Making Eyes At Me”.

In 1950, Otis was presented the R&B Artist of the Year trophy by Billboard. He also began featuring himself on vibraphone on many of his recordings. In 1951, Otis released “Mambo Boogie” featuring congas, maracas, claves, and mambo saxophone guajeos in a blues progression. This was to be the very first R&B mambo ever recorded.

Around the time Otis moved to the Mercury label in 1951, he discovered vocalist Etta James, who was only 13 at the time, at one of his talent shows. He produced and co-wrote her first hit, “The Wallflower (Roll With Me, Henry)”.

In 1952, Otis auditioned singer Willie Mae ‘Big Mama’ Thornton. He also produced, co-wrote, and played drums on the original 1953 recording of “Hound Dog” (he and his band also provided the backup ‘howling’ vocals). It was also co-written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, He had a legal dispute with the songwriting duo over the credits after he learned that Leiber and Stoller revised the contractual agreement prior to a new version of the song being recorded by singer Elvis Presley, which became an instant no. 1 smash hit. Claiming Leiber and Stoller illegally had the original contract nullified and rewrote a new one stating that the two boys (who were both 17) were the only composers of the song, Otis litigated. However, the presiding judge awarded the case to the defendants based on the fact that their signing of the first contract with Otis was ‘null and void’ since they were minors at the time.

One of Otis’ most famous compositions is the ballad “Every Beat of My Heart”, first recorded by The Royals in 1952 on Federal Records but then became a hit for Gladys Knight and the Pips in 1961. He also produced and played the vibraphone on singer Johnny Ace’s “Pledging My Love”, which was at no. 1 on the Billboard R&B charts for 10 weeks. Another successful song for Otis was “So Fine”, which was originally recorded by The Sheiks in 1955 on Federal and was a hit for The Fiestas in 1959. As an artist and repertory man for King Records he discovered numerous young prospects who would later become successful, including Jackie Wilson, Hank Ballard, and Little Willie John, among others.

In addition to hosting his own television show titled “The Johnny Otis Show”, he also became an influential disc-jockey in Los Angeles, hosting his own radio show in 1955.

In April 1958, he recorded his best-known recording, “Willie and the Hand Jive”, a clave-based vamp, which relates to hand and arm motions in time with the music, called the hand jive. This went on to be a hit in the summer of 1958, peaking at no. 9 on the U.S. Pop chart, and becoming Otis’ only Top 10 single. The single reached no. 1 on the Billboard R&B chart. Otis’ success with the song was somewhat short-lived, and he briefly moved to King Records in 1961, where he worked with Johnny “Guitar” Watson.

In 1969, Otis landed a deal with Columbia Records and recorded “Cold Shot!” and the sexually explicit Snatch and the Poontangs (which had an “X” rating), both of which featured his son Shuggie and singer Delmar ‘Mighty Mouth’ Evans.

A year later, he recorded a double-live album of his band’s performance at the Monterey Jazz Festival titled Johnny Otis Show Live at Monterey!  A portion of the performance was featured in the Clint Eastwood film Play Misty For Me.

Although Otis’ touring lessened throughout the 1970s, he started the Blues Spectrum label and released a fifteen album series entitled Rhythm and Blues Oldies, which featured 1950’s R&B artists Louis Jordan, Roy Milton, Richard Berry, and even Otis himself.

During the 1980s, he had a weekly radio show which aired Monday evenings from 8 to 11 pm on Los Angeles radio station KPFK, where he played records and had guest appearances by such R&B artists as Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.

Otis also recorded with his sons Shuggie on guitar and Nicky on drums, releasing a slew of albums, including The New Johnny Otis Show(1982), Johnny Otis! Johnny Otis! (1984), and Otisology (1985). In the summer of 1987, Otis hosted his own Red Beans & Rice R&B Music Festival in Los Angeles which featured top-name acts and hosted a Southern-style red beans and rice cook-off. He moved the festival site to the city of San Dimas, where it ran annually in association with the Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation for twenty years until 2006.

Otis and his family moved from Southern California to Sebastopol, California, a small apple farming town in Sonoma County. He continued performing in the U.S. and Europe through the 1990s, headlining the San Francisco Blues Festival in 1990 and 2000. In 1993, he opened The Johnny Otis Market, a deli-style grocery store/cabaret, where he and his band played sold-out shows every weekend until its doors closed in 1995. He was inducted to both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Blues Hall of Fame in 1994.

Aside from his many accomplishments, Johnny was held responsible for launching the career of the late Etta James Hawkins; who passed 3 days later in the same week. It is rumored that they had a long lovers relationship that produced singer Beyonce, who’s real rumored age would be 42.

Johnny Otis was 90 years old when he died of natural causes on 17 January 2012.

June 16, 2011 – Larry “Wild Man” Fischer was born November 6, 1944 in Los Angeles, California.

He was institutionalized at age 16 for attacking his mother with a knife and later diagnosed with severe paranoid schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Following his release from the hospital, he wandered LA singing his unique brand of songs for 10¢ to passers-by. Discovered by Frank Zappa, with whom he recorded his first album, Larry became an underground concert favorite, earning him the title “godfather of outsider music”.

Zappa was responsible for Larry’s initial foray into the business of music, an album called An Evening with Wild Man Fischer, contains 36 tracks of “something not exactly musical”.

Zappa and Larry remained close, until he threw a jar at Zappa’s daughter Moon Unit, barely missing her. Due to this falling out, Zappa’s widow Gail did not release An Evening with Wild Man Fischer until long after Frank’s death in the early 1990s.

Fischer’s story is a rather sad one, as he was by all accounts genuinely off his nut and never fully reaped the benefits of his cult musical status. Still, he had a Zelig-like ability to turn up all over the place: His debut album, An Evening With Wild Man Fischer, was one of the first albums released on Zappa’s Bizarre Records in 1969. He appeared on Laugh-In in the ’60s. When Rhino Records was just a retail store in the ’70s, they got Fischer to record a promotional jingle, “Go to Rhino Records,” and released it as their first single, thus launching what would go on to become one of the biggest novelty and reissue labels in the industry. In the ’80s, Fischer recorded albums with Barnes and Barnes and cut a single with legendary jazz singer (and George’s aunt) Rosemary Clooney. It’s fair to say the man rarely let his mental illness interfere with his productivity.

The Wild Man was re-decovered in 1999, Rhino released The Fischer King, a two-CD package comprising 100 tracks and a 20-page booklet, which sold out within weeks. In October 2004, he appeared on ABC-TV’s late-night show, Jimmy Kimmel Live! He sang “Monkeys vs. Donkeys” while tapping on a backwards acoustic guitar.

In 2005, Josh Rubin and Jeremy Lubin, premiered their documentary about Wild Man Fischer, entitled Derailroaded: Inside The Mind Of Wild Man Fischer, at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas.

Fischer didn’t release any new music since the 1980s and had apparently been holed up in an assisted-living facility in Van Nuys since 2004, where he was taking medication to control his mental illness. Unfortunately, the meds also dulled what he called “the pep,” his frequent manic episodes that were responsible for most of his musical outbursts.

Fischer died of heart failure at age 66 on June 16, 2011.

Obituary: Los Angeles attracts more than its fair share of wingnuts (like this guy), but the loss of Wild Man Fischer really is a blow to the city’s offbeat charm. No longer will Sunset Strip crawlers and UCLA students be able to “buy an original song for a dime” (a favorite Wild Man sales pitch when he was out busking) on their way to happy hour. Wild Man Fischer might be an acquired taste at best, but his is the kind of crazy that makes the world a richer place (even if it too often fails to enrich the person behind the craziness).

We’ll miss you, Larry.

June 12, 2011 – Carl Gardner (the Coasters) was born on April 29, 1928 in Tyler, Texas.  As a singer, his first major career success came with The Robins, a rhythm and blues group that had a big hit in 1955, “Smokey Joe’s Café”.

After leaving that group, in 1956 Gardner formed the Coasters with the Robins’ bass singer Bobby Nunn, Leon Hughes and Billy Guy. The Coasters became the musical vehicle for the songs of Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, who used rock ‘n’ roll to create a hilarious chronicle of American life, particularly American teenage life.

“Along Came Jones” satirized TV Westerns and “Charlie Brown” honored the original slacker. “Poison Ivy” may be the only pop hit ever to mention Calamine lotion, and “Searchin'” turned a routine love song into a pop culture drama by having the elusive girl pursued by contemporary TV stars like Sugarfoot and Paladin from “Have Gun Will Travel.”

Gardner took pride in the group’s ability to deliver tongue-in-cheek humor while still creating songs that sounded compelling on a car radio.

With the line-up that included new members Cornel Gunter and Will “Dub” Jones, the Coasters went on to produce several enduring classics of 1950s rock and roll music including “Yakety Yak”, “Charlie Brown”, and “Poison Ivy”. They also had a two-sided hit in 1957, “Youngblood” (on which Gardner sang lead) and “Searchin”.

At the 1987 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremonies, where the Coasters became the first vocal group inducted, he said he considered the group professional entertainers rather than the streetcorner singers who were popular in the late 1950s.

“People may have called it doo-wop or novelty music,” he said. “But we sang songs that lasted.”

Carl died at age 83 from congestive heart failure and vascular dementia on June 12, 2011.

Musings from Carl:

The flight home after last night’s performance had been successful, but had left me for some reason more stressed out than usual. You see I actually hate flying, but it sort of comes with the job. I still love to perform, but not as much as I have had to. However, I also like to eat good. I’m at the stage though where I find myself getting kind of bored, I’m also at the age. You know the age. It’s when you realize your eyes have seen it all and you are beginning to see it all over again. And yet you don’t really want to. But like I said, I gotta eat.
Thank God I’m back home now, safe and sound. Although it’s three o’clock in the morning, and I’m emotionally drained and weak I simply cannot sleep. I’ve wandered my way through the house, like some sort of Charlie Brown who was missing something. Something earned, something promised, but not yet delivered. So I sat myself down in my home office and for some reason began to think about a few of the unknown oddities in my career. Things like acid rocker Jimi Hendrix once backing my Coasters group, and Paul McCartney, cornering me years ago in some small club and bending my ear, saying that he and the other Beatles had enjoyed my work, and warning me that in the very near future I might just recognize some of their upcoming stuff as my own. I sat there in the dark, surrounded by the entrapments of businesses around the world. Fax machines, files, multiple phone lines, computers, publicity photos, bios, live answering service, and all the rest. I couldn’t help but wonder if Paul McCartney, or any of the others in the multitude of superstars I had the joy of meeting, ever experienced this same exact moment. A moment when you wonder what actually happened? You sort of peer back into the period of your life when you arrived at your peak. Then as your mind wanders through your heyday, you find yourself heading towards your present situation when you are just coasting.

I was a pioneer, until they changed the sound. And then they became the pioneers, until somebody like Michael Jackson came along and changed not only the sound, but also the rules on the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and everybody else. I’m trying hard not to be bitter here in the dark. After all, I am still the lead singer of the very first group to ever be inducted to the legendary ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME. But can I now pioneer the sound back on myself, like fellow Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Tina Turner has done? Like Little Richard and Ike and Tina Turner, at my million selling zenith my group was considered a “novelty act”, but unlike the others I ran a clean act. And that I feel has been one of the key ingredient of our continued success. Novelty acts have been notoriously hard to place without a current hit record. But despite that fact, I comfort myself here in the dark, that almost forty years into a career that people still want my type of act. And that’s something to be proud about.

I’m proud of the accomplishments in my career. The list of television performances that span the decades and include everything from the show biz staples of yesteryear, like the Ed Sullivan Show, several Dick Clark Shows, all the way up to the staples of today, Entertainment Tonight and even tabloid TV’s Inside Edition.

My concern appears as my group’s lead singer covers the scope from the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, all the way around the world to the London Palladium. Also, the New York “Fearsome Foursome”, the Apollo, Radio City Music Hall, Madison Square Garden and the Queen Mother of them all Carnegie Hall.

My lead vocals have been coveted by Hollywood in many movies including Stand By Me, and the Arnold Schwarzenegger – Danny DeVito blockbuster, TWINS. I have also several TV commercials to my credit.

I’ve tangled with the mob, broken the color barrier in Las Vegas, cursed out racist audiences who had come to hear “race music”, and at times carried a gun on stage. At times I got run off of stage, and right out of town. But yet and still I managed to sell over thirty million records on the National Record Charts, in my time. My group has often been ripped off by many claiming to be me, using my name with their voice and cashing my check. I steeled myself and stood up to it all. The glamour, the danger, the glory and the bullshit. In my weakest moment I still marched on.

Through all the ups and downs of a joyous and yet painful career, I have come out unlike many others. Still performing, still standing, still sane, and intact. The goal was to be rich and famous. And I became both, for a while. But in the end I have ended up coasting on the fame, and trying to see just who had gotten rich.

Now I know why I’m sitting here in my office in the wee hours of the morning staring down the dawn. I know what I’m missing. I know what I earned, I know what was promised, and I realize now with some bitterness what little I got. Granted it’s comfortable and not the nightmare and losing battle that many other artists of my time have endured, but it is not what was promised.

I’m a long way from my hometown of Tyler, Texas. Although I didn’t put Tyler, Texas on the map, the way the Branch Davidians put Waco, Texas on the map, that was never my original intention. All I ever wanted to do was sing, what I actually did was much more.

I never dreamed that so many problems and dangers came with being a star. And so little money, even though I’ve sold millions and millions of records. My story is wonderful given the circumstances, yet shocking given the outcome. Thank God, I’ve moved past the bitterness and anger that for years plagued me. With only faith and sheer determination I was able to overcome all of the horror, and begin to write about it.

This is my story, straight forward and explicit. My name is Carl Gardner, and I am lead singer and founder of THE COASTERS.

Unfinished! from Carl’s ‘BLACK GOLD TEXAS TEA’.

I never had any intention of staying in Tyler, Texas. Never in my life. My first thoughts were, “I ‘m going to be somebody in my time and get the hell out of here.” When I was ten years old, I knew I was ready. I had been singing since I was five and from the day I started singing I just felt that I was going to be a singer.

When I was coming up, black people didn’t dare do a thing. Most of them wouldn’t have even thought of it. Not at that time, and definitely not in that town. Tyler was a prosperous town located in hot and humid east Texas. It was extremely racially segregated during that time. You probably would have considered Tyler the deep south or even worse, called it Dixie. However, it did have one redeeming feature for some. Unlike Mississippi, Georgia, North and South Carolina, the state of Texas had gone and passed one good law for blacks. As I remember, that made it just a little different for us living there during those horrendous times of blatant racism and almost total segregation.

Strangely enough, the law had to do with food. As I recall, any colored person, as we were called at that time, could go right into any of our local restaurants and purchase food right at the counter. Mind you, we didn’t dare sit down and eat it there, but we could get it to go. An added bonus was you could also enter and leave by the establishment’s front door. In any other part of the south, if you would have been crazy enough to try something like this, you would probably have been murdered or worse, dragged through the streets and hung like a piece of fruit from a tree by your neck until dead. In that day, southern trees were known to bear strange fruit. Publicly, my father, Robert Gardner, was very much a gentleman. He never went down the street without a shirt and tie on. Some of the neighbors said he had a little spirit that lived in him that they called Uncle Tom. But the things that he did for white people in our town I didn’t think were terribly Uncle Tom-ish. He wore a hat everywhere he went, when he saw a white man or a white lady, he’d go over to them and say, “Good evening, ma’am. Good evening, sir. How are you today?” He tipped his hat to one and all, black or white. He was a hell of a gentleman. And even if he was Uncle Tom-ish in his ways, he fed his family. Sometimes he would embarrass me. He would go around to some of the rich people in town and say, “Good evening, Mr. Grayson. Nice day today. Don’t forget, it’s Christmas coming up. “And I used to get very angry with Dad when he would do things like this. But Mr. Grayson would say, “Bob, I won’t forget you. “Everybody called him Bob. When Christmas would come, Mr. Grayson would give him a twenty dollar bill. Some of his other white friends that he had been kind to would give him a ten, a twenty, and that was one way that he knew of getting money in that time and in that town.

Dad came from a family of an interracial heritage. My dad would often say he really didn’t know how old he was. Some of his family were so white in appearance that they were often mistaken for white people. I can remember his one cousin, Alice, that was so white looking that as a young child I was afraid to walk downtown with her. People of any color would always approach her as a white woman. Dad would often comment, it how he and his brothers and sisters had almost been born into slavery. When I asked my father what he meant by this, he began explaining to me what life on the plantation had been like for those in his family that were born before him. “Well, you know,” he’d start, “if you go back into our years of slavery, you’ll discover that many of the white slave owners would split their slaves into two groups. The lighter ones worked in and around the plantation house, thus earning themselves the title of “house niggers.” They were taught to serve the owners graciously and also to be gentlemen and ladies to the owners’ guests. They were trained in a very genteel manner and some received a very minimal education. The darker slaves were placed to work hard in the fields and were called “field hands” and received the roughest and cruelest of treatment from the master. He continued explaining to me how black people came in so many different colors and hues. He said, “Almost always, if you had a particularly good and sexy looking young black girl, or even a black boy, for that matter, working in the mansion, they would usually become the bed partners of either the master himself, his wife, his daughters or his sons, and sometimes both. More often than not, children were conceived from these various unions. These children would usually be very light in complexion and color. They would have the fortune of being raised within the plantation house itself instead of in the fields with the other slave children.” My Dad felt this is how his family had come to be so light in complexion.

May 7, 2011 – John Walker was born John Joseph Maus on November 12th 1943 in New York City from German parents who had fled from the Nazis and war-torn Germany, but moved to California in 1947.

He began learning saxophone, clarinet and guitar as a child, and by the age of 11 also began acting and appearing in TV talent shows. He had a role in a regular sitcom, Hello Mom, and small uncredited parts in the movies The Eddy Duchin Story (1956) and The Missouri Traveler (1958). He became a friend of Ritchie Valens, and was an honorary pallbearer at Valens’ funeral. In 1959 the family moved again, to Inglewood, where he made the acquaintance of David Marks and Dennis and Carl Wilson, helping to teach them guitar. He began using the name John Walker at the age of 17, because he was unhappy at how people pronounced his real name.

From 1957 onwards, he worked as singer and guitarist with his sister, as the duo John and Judy. They recorded several singles for the Aladdin, Dore, Arvee and Eldo labels between 1958 and 1962. In 1961, they formed a backing band and performed as John, Judy and the Newports, until the band split up after an engagement in Hawaii.

They then met Scott Engel, who had been playing bass in The Routers, and, with drummer “Spider” Webb, formed a new band, Judy and the Gents. Maus obtained an ID card in the name of John Walker, in order to perform in clubs around Los Angeles while under the legal age to do so. In 1963, Walker and Engel, with two other musicians, toured the Midwest as “The Surfaris”, although the group included none of the musicians who played on the Surfaris’ records. Walker also released his first solo record, “What a Thrill”, on the Almo label, with The Blossoms as backing singers.

After singing at local venues, John went on to form The Walker Brothers in 1964 along with bassist Scott Engel, and drummer Al “Tiny” Schneider. American singer, songwriter and guitarist,

Their song “Make It Easy On Yourself”, reached No.1 in the UK chart in September 1965. The following year they had their second UK No.1, “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore”, it was also their biggest hit in the US, where it made No.13 on the Billboard Hot 100.

In early ’68, The Walker Brothers split up and John began performing solo releasing a single, “Annabella”, and the album, ‘If You Go Away’. In 1974, he reformed The Walker Brothers and in 1975, they released an album, No Regrets and recorded two further albums together, Lines and Nite Flights.

In 2000, he set up his own record label and released a CD, You. He toured Britain again as part of a nostalgia package tour in 2004, and released an album, Silver Sixties Tour 2004.

He was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2010 and sadly dies from the disease on May 7, 2011 at age 67.

May 16, 2010 – Ronnie James Dio was born Ronald James Padavona  on July 10th 1942 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Dio listened to a great deal of opera while growing up, and was influenced vocally by American tenor Mario Lanza. His first and only formal musical training began at age 5 learning to play the trumpet.

During high school, Dio played in the school band and was one of the youngest members selected to play in the school’s official Dance Band. It was also during high school that Dio formed his first rock-n-roll group, the Vegas Kings (the name would soon change to Ronnie and the Rumblers, and then Ronnie and the Red Caps). Though Dio began his rock-n-roll career on trumpet, he quickly added bass guitar to his skillset once he assumed singing duties for the group.

Ronnie James Dio’s main interests were music and romantic fantasy literature, such as the works of Sir Walter Scott and the Arthurian legend. He always liked science fiction literature, spaceships, aliens and the like, as well as sports – that is probably because his father played softball for some local team when Ronnie was a child and the whole family went to watch the games.

“I’ve been a musician for as long as I can remember, but I never fancied myself a singer when I was young.” Having always wanted to be a performer, Ronnie’s main interest was sport. “…Though my first idea of performing was to play sports – A Sort of unrealistic goal for a guy who topped out at 5 foot 4 inches and 130 pounds.”

“I began playing the trumpet when I was 5 years old. It was baseball I really wanted to play, so I asked my dad if he’d buy me a bat. He said “No. You need a musical education” When he got me a trumpet, I said, “You can’t hit a ball with this thing!” I didn’t know why I had it. The next day I started music lessons – four hours of practice every day until I was seventeen.”

Ronnie himself credits his voice to that trumpet, he says that without the breathing exercises with trumpet he wouldn’t have his voice.

Explanations vary for how he adopted the stage name “Dio”. One story is that Dio was a reference to mafia member Johnny Dio. Another has it that Padavona’s grandmother said he had a gift from God and should be called “Dio”. (“God” in Italian.) Whatever the inspiration, Padavona first used it on a recording in 1960, when he added it to the band’s second release on Seneca. Soon after that the band modified their name to Ronnie Dio and the Prophets. The Prophets lineup lasted for several years, touring throughout the New York region and playing college fraternity parties

In late 1967 Ronnie Dio and the Prophets transformed into a new band called The Electric Elves and added a keyboard player. Following recovery from a deadly car accident in February 1968 (which killed guitarist Nick Pantas and put Dio and other band members in the hospital briefly), the group shortened its name to The Elves and used that name until mid 1972 when it released its first proper album under the name Elf. Over the next few years, the group went on to become a regular opening act for Deep Purple. Elf recorded three albums until the members’ involvement recording the first Rainbow album in early 1975 resulted in Elf disbanding.

Dio’s vocals caught the ear of Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore in the mid-1970s, who was planning on leaving them due to creative differences over the band’s new direction. Blackmore invited Dio along with Gary Driscoll to record two songs in Tampa, Florida on December 12, 1974.

Blackmore stated in 1983, “I left Deep Purple because I’d met up with Ronnie Dio, and he was so easy to work with. He was originally just going to do one track of a solo LP, but we ended up doing the whole LP in three weeks, which I was very excited about.” Being satisfied with the results, Blackmore decided to recruit more of Elf’s musicians and form his own band, initially known as Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow. They released the self-titled debut album Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow in early 1975. After that, Dio recorded two more studio albums (Rising and Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll) and two live albums (“Live in Munich 1977”) and (Live in Germany 1976) with Blackmore. During his tenure with Rainbow, Dio and Blackmore were the only constant members. Dio is credited on those albums for all lyrical authorship as well as collaboration with Blackmore on musical arrangement. Dio and Blackmore split, with Blackmore taking the band in a more commercial direction, with Graham Bonnet on vocals and the album “Down to Earth”.

Dio left Rainbow in 1979 and soon joined Black Sabbath, replacing the fired Ozzy Osbourne. Dio met Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi by chance at The Rainbow on Sunset Strip in Los Angeles in 1979. Both men were in similar situations, as Dio was seeking a new project and Iommi required a vocalist. Dio said of the encounter, “It must have been fate, because we connected so instantly.” The pair kept in touch via telephone until Dio arrived at Iommi’s Los Angeles house for a relaxed, getting-to-know-you jam session. On that first day the duo wrote the song, “Children of the Sea”, which would appear on the Heaven and Hell album, the first the band recorded with Dio as vocalist in 1980.

Three albums later Dio left that band in 1982 and formed the group Dio, but he had a brief reunion with Black Sabbath under the name Heaven & Hell a decade later. Dio continued to perform until his illness manifested itself.

His last public appearance was in April 2010 at the Revolver Golden Gods Awards when he accepted a vocalist of the year award for his work on the Heaven and Hell album. Dio appeared frail, but he was able to speak when accepting his award.

Widely hailed as one of the most powerful singers in heavy metal, he died on May 16, 2010 from stomach cancer. He was 67.