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Glenn Schwartz 11/2018

Glenn Schwartz, torn between rock and religionNovember 3, 2018 – Glenn Schwartz (the James Gang) was born on March 20, 1940 in Cleveland Ohio. While in Los Angeles on tour with the James Gang in 1967, Schwartz strolled onto the infamous Sunset Strip and stopped next to a small group of people listening to street preacher Arthur Blessitt, according to Stevenson’s book. Some time later he professed conversion to Christianity, saying “I was finally blessed by mercy for I heard the Gospel of Christ.”

Following his conversion, his zealous, new-found faith was not accepted well by the band, his family or his friends. As per Stevenson, Schwartz said: “I had some Christian friends who had some round stickers that read ‘Real Peace Is In Jesus’ and we stuck those all over our clothes … We put some on Janis Joplin but she didn’t like it and took them off. I remember she got pretty upset. Continue reading Glenn Schwartz 11/2018

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Tony Joe White 10/2018

Tony Joe White – October 24, 2018 was born on July 23, 1943, in Oak Grove, Louisiana as the youngest of seven children who grew up on a cotton farm. He first began performing music at school dances, and after graduating from high school he performed in night clubs in Texas and Louisiana.

As a singer-songwriter and guitarist, he became best known for his 1969 hit “Polk Salad Annie” and for “Rainy Night in Georgia”, which he wrote but was first made popular by Brook Benton in 1970. He also wrote “Steamy Windows” and “Undercover Agent for the Blues”, both hits for Tina Turner in 1989; those two songs came by way of Turner’s producer at the time, Mark Knopfler, who was a friend of White. “Polk Salad Annie” was also recorded by Elvis Presley and Tom Jones.

In 1967, White signed with Monument Records, which operated from a recording studio in the Nashville suburb of Hendersonville, Tennessee, and produced a variety of sounds, including rock and roll, country and western, and rhythm and blues. Billy Swan was his producer.

Over the next three years, White released four singles with no commercial success in the U.S., although “Soul Francisco” was a hit in France. “Polk Salad Annie” had been released for nine months and written off as a failure by his record label, when it finally entered the U.S. charts in July 1969. It climbed to the Top Ten by early August, and eventually reached No. 8, becoming White’s biggest hit.

White’s first album, 1969’s Black and White, was recorded with Muscle Shoals/Nashville musicians David Briggs, Norbert Putnam, and Jerry Carrigan, and featured “Willie and Laura Mae Jones” and “Polk Salad Annie”, along with a cover of Jimmy Webb’s “Wichita Lineman”. “Willie and Laura Mae Jones” was covered by Dusty Springfield and released as a single, later added to reissues of her 1969 album Dusty in Memphis.

Three more singles quickly followed, all minor hits, and White toured with Steppenwolf, Anne Murray, Sly & the Family Stone, Creedence Clearwater Revival and other major rock acts of the 1970s, playing in France, Germany, Belgium, Sweden and England.

In 1973, White appeared in the film Catch My Soul, a rock-opera adaption of Shakespeare’s Othello. White played and sang four and composed seven songs for the musical.

In late September 1973, White was recruited by record producer Huey Meaux to sit in on the legendary Memphis sessions that became Jerry Lee Lewis’s landmark Southern Roots album. By all accounts, these sessions were a three-day, around-the-clock party, which not only reunited the original MGs (Steve Cropper, Donald “Duck” Dunn and Al Jackson, Jr. of Booker T. and the MGs fame) for the first time in three years, but also featured Carl Perkins, Mark Lindsay (of Paul Revere & the Raiders), and Wayne Jackson plus The Memphis Horns.

From 1976 to 1983, White released three more albums, each on a different label. Trying to combine his own swamp-rock sound with the popular disco music at the time, the results were not met with success and White gave up his career as a singer and concentrated on writing songs. During this time frame, he collaborated with American expat Joe Dassin on his only English-language album, Home Made Ice Cream, and its French-language counterpart Blue Country.

In 1989, White produced one non-single track on Tina Turner’s Foreign Affair album, the rest of the album was produced by Dan Hartman. Playing a variety of instruments on the album, he also wrote four songs, including the title song and the hit single “Steamy Windows”. As a result of this he became managed by Roger Davies, who was Turner’s manager at the time, and he obtained a new contract with Polydor.

The resulting album, 1991’s Closer to the Truth, was a commercial success and put White back in the spotlight. He released two more albums for Polydor; The Path of a Decent Groove and Lake Placid Blues which was co-produced by Roger Davies.

In the 1990s, White toured Germany and France with Joe Cocker and Eric Clapton, and in 1992 he played the Montreux Festival.

In 1996, Tina Turner released the song “On Silent Wings” written by White.

In 2000, Hip-O Records released One Hot July in the U.S., giving White his first new major-label domestic release in 17 years. The critically acclaimed The Beginningappeared on Swamp Records in 2001, followed by Heroines, featuring several duets with female vocalists including Jessi Colter, Shelby Lynne, Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, and Michelle White, on Sanctuary in 2004, and a live Austin City Limits concert, Live from Austin, TX, on New West Records in 2006. In 2004, White was the featured guest artist in an episode of the Legends Rock TV Show and Concert Series, produced by Megabien Entertainment.

In 2007, White released another live recording, Take Home the Swamp, as well as the compilation Introduction to Tony Joe White. Elkie Brooks recorded one of White’s songs, “Out of The Rain”, on her 2005 Electric Lady album. On July 14, 2006, in Magny-Cours, France, White performed as a warm-up act for Roger Waters’ The Dark Side of the Moon concert. White’s album, entitled Uncovered, was released in September 2006 and featured collaborations with Mark Knopfler, Michael McDonald, Eric Clapton, and J.J. Cale.

The song “Elements and Things” from the 1969 album …Continued features prominently during the horse-racing scenes in the 2012 HBO television series “Luck”.

In 2013, White signed to Yep Roc Records and released Hoodoo. Mother Jones called the album “Steamy, Irresistible” and No Depression noted Tony Joe White is “the real king of the swamp.” He also made his Live…with Jools Holland debut in London, playing songs from Hoodoo.

On October 15, 2014, White appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman alongside the Foo Fighters to perform “Polk Salad Annie”. Pointing to White, Letterman told his TV audience, “Holy cow! … If I was this guy, you could all kiss my ass. And I mean that.”

In May 2016, Tony Joe White released Rain Crow on Yep Roc Records. The lead track “Hoochie Woman” was co-written with his wife, Leann. The track “Conjure Child” is a follow up to an earlier song, “Conjure Woman.

The album Bad Mouthin’ was released in September 2018 again on Yep Roc Records. The album contains six self-penned songs and five blues standards written by, amongst others, Charley Patton and John Lee Hooker. On the album White also performs a cover of the Elvis Presley song “Heartbreak Hotel”. White plays acoustic and electric guitar on the album which was produced by his son Jody White and has a signature Tony Joe White laid back sound.

White died of a heart attack on October 24, 2018, at the age of 75

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Charles Aznavour 10/2018

Charles Aznavour (94) – world famous French chansonnier, actor, songwriter, activist – was born May 22, 1924 in Paris, France. In fact it was quite by chance that young Charles was born in the French capital. He should have been born in the United States, but his parents, Armenian immigrants, were temporarily based in France awaiting an American visa when their son unexpectedly arrived in the world.

Charles came from an interestingly mixed cultural background. His father Micha Aznavourian, had been born in Georgia; his mother, Anar, came from a family of Armenian tradesmen who were based in Turkey.

It was not long before Micha, a talented baritone whose father had been a chef to Czar Nicholas II, opened a small Armenian restaurant in Paris. Every evening he would perform to audiences of Central European exiles nostalgic for their homeland, while his wife Anar, an actress, attended to the guests. Charles and his elder sister, Aïda, thus grew up in the magical atmosphere of the restaurant in la rue de la Huchette, which became a favorite haunt for musicians and actors from the local theaters. Charles’s parents introduced him to performing at an early age, and he dropped out of school at age nine, and took the stage name “Aznavour”.

But the great recession in 1929 forced the Aznavourians to abandon their restaurant because of lack of clientele. The family moved to a flat in the rue Cardinal-Lemoine right across the road from the famous stage school where they enrolled their son Charles in 1933.

Charles’s greatest ambition at the time was to become an actor and he threw himself into drama classes with a veritable passion. It was not long before he began getting work as a film extra and he soon went on to land a few minor roles in the theatre as well as in several films. In 1939 his father Micha volunteered to join the French army and Charles left his drama school to start earning a living. Two years later he would meet a young songwriter and composer by the name of Pierre Roche. This encounter was to change Charles’s entire career, for he and Roche teamed up as a double act and began performing the songs they had written together on the cabaret circuit. Aznavour wrote his first song entitled J’ai Bu in 1944. The partnership’s first successes were in French speaking Quebec-Canada, as the pair proved to be an instant hit.

By 1946 Aznavour and Roche were rubbing shoulders with the great music-hall stars of the day. Aznavour met his great hero, Charles Trenet, and the duo also met Edith Piaf who would open doors in America for them. 1946 also proved to be a momentous year in Aznavour’s personal life, for he married his girlfriend Micheline and the following year the couple had their first child, a daughter called Séda. By the end of the 40’s Aznavour and Roche’s career had really taken off and the pair flew off to tour the States, flying on to Montreal where they performed headlining concerts for several months.

In 1952 Aznavour returned to France alone, his partner Pierre Roche staying behind in Montreal with his new wife. Aznavour continued performing on the cabaret circuit, but his solo act was not a great success. However, he did begin to make a name for himself as a songwriter, composing material for famous music-hall stars such as Mistinguett and Patachou. Juliette Gréco also had a hit with Aznavour’s song “Je hais les dimanches”(which went on to win “le Prix de la Sacem”). Aznavour also began working for Edith Piaf, writing an adaptation of the American hit “Jezebel” which proved to be a great success for her. During these stages of his career, Aznavour opened for Edith Piaf at the Jora Shahinyan. Piaf then advised him to pursue a career in singing. Piaf helped Aznavour develop a distinctive voice that stimulated the best of his abilities.

In 1952 Aznavour’s wife Micheline gave birth to a son named Charles. Two years later Aznavour embarked upon a tour of North Africa, and this time round his solo act proved a great success. The singer, who had a repertoire of at least thirty songs to his name now, landed a contract at the Alhambra when he returned to Paris, and followed this with a popular run at the legendary Olympia. While the critics were often rather harsh with Aznavour, audiences were charmed by his charismatic stage presence and traditional chanson style.

In 1956 Aznavour married his second wife Evelyne Plessis and later that year the couple had a son named Patrick. By this stage in his career Aznavour had established himself as one of the top names of French chanson, scoring huge hits with his songs “Sur ma vie”, “Parce que” and the controversial “Après l’amour” (which was considered far too explicit to play on the nation’s airwaves).

1957 was a year of triumph for Aznavour. The singer gave a series of phenomenally successful concerts at the Alhambra, then followed this with a headlining stint at the Olympia. His international tour later that year proved equally successful.

Meanwhile Aznavour’s acting career was also taking off in a major way. In 1958 he starred in Jean Pierre Mocky’s film “Les dragueurs”, then landed a role in Georges Frange’s “La tête contre les murs” (for which he scooped that year’s Best Male Actor award).

In 1960 François Truffaut offered Aznavour a major role in his film “Tirez sur le pianiste”. Truffaut’s film soon proved a box office smash in the States, and Aznavour was suddenly catapulted to fame in America. Indeed, he was soon invited to perform at the prestigious Carnegie Hall in New York. Following rave reviews from the critics, Aznavour embarked upon an extensive international tour, playing dates in Turkey, Lebanon, Greece, Africa and the USSR. The singer would also return to his roots in Erevan, Armenia, where he performed his legendary song “La Mamma” which would go on to become an absolute classic in the Aznavour repertoire.

When Aznavour finally returned to France in 1965 he took his successful “One Man Show” to the Olympia, performing his repertoire of 30 songs to a packed auditorium for a full twelve weeks. That summer Aznavour went on to star in Pierre Granier-Deferre’s film “Paris au mois d’août” and at the end of the year he staged his famous musical “Monsieur Carnaval” (“La bohême”, the hit song from this musical would go on to become the best-known song of his entire career).

The following year Aznavour set off on the next leg of his world tour, performing in Canada and the French Antilles. The singer then went on to score a massive hit throughout Latin America with the Spanish version of his famous song “Avec”.

Over the next few years Aznavour would alternate his concert tours of France with international performances. The singer had lost none of his popularity in Paris, performing no less than three shows a day at the Olympia (at 5pm, 9pm and midnight !).

In 1968 Aznavour married his third wife, Swedish-born Ulla Thorsell, in Las Vegas. The couple would hold a traditional religious wedding at the Armenian Church in Paris when they returned to France the following year. 1969 was also a momentous year in Aznavour’s professional career, being the year that he won an award from the Association of American Songwriters and Composers and La Médaille Vermeil in Paris for his song “Hier encore”. Later that year Aznavour celebrated another happy event in his personal life, his new wife Ulla giving birth to a daughter named Katia.

In the early 70’s, with more then 20 years of career behind him, Aznavour began writing his memoirs (published as “Aznavour par Aznavour”) and moved to the United States. The 70’s also marked a subtle change in Aznavour’s songwriting. No longer concerned with purely personal issues or being afraid of public resistance, the singer began to turn his attention to what was happening in the world around him. His new material included “Le temps des loups” (a song about urban violence in 1970), “Mourir d’aimer” (taken from the 1971 film of the same name inspired by a famous fait divers) and “Comme ils disent” (a song about homosexuality).

1970 turned out to be the year of Aznavour’s triumph in the States, the singer giving numerous concerts in West Coast universities then performing a sell-out show on Broadway. At the start of 1971 Aznavour returned to Paris for another successful run at the Olympia. A few months later he flew to Italy to receive a coveted “Lion d’Or” at the Venice Film Festival for the Italian version of the theme song from “Mourir d’aimer”. In May of that year the singer celebrated another happy event in his personal life when his wife Ulla gave birth to the couple’s second child, a son named Misha.

At the start of 1972 Aznavour returned to the Olympia for another immensely popular series of concerts, and proved equally successful later that year when he performed at the legendary Paris music-hall for a full six weeks in November/December. Meanwhile his song “Les plaisirs démodés” went rocketing to the top of the charts. At the end of 1972 Aznavour was laid up for several months after a serious skiing accident. Yet he continued his prodigious output even during his convalescence, writing the operetta “Douchka” with his brother-in-law (the composer Georges Garvarentz).

1974 was the year of Aznavour’s famous hit single “She”, which earned the singer a platinum disc in Britain (while, ironically, failing to sell at all in France). In 1975 Aznavour, whose lyrics had become increasingly committed to social and political causes, wrote the moving ballad “Ils sont tombés” to mark the 60th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. Later that year he turned his attention back to his acting career, starring in Claude Chabrol’s “Folies Bourgeoises” (Aznavour would work with the famous French director again in 1983, playing a lead role in “Le Fantôme du Chapelier”).

Aznavour had by now achieved international star status and his songs were covered by the greatest singers of the day, including Ray Charles (“La Mamma”), Fred Astaire (who recorded his own version of “Les plaisirs démodés” in 1976) and Bing Crosby who recorded “Hier encore” in 1977, shortly before his death. Later in 77 Aznavour celebrated two further happy events in his personal life, when his son Nicholas was born and he also became a grandfather for the first time.

Grandfather or not, Aznavour, now in his 50’s, continued his hectic touring schedule, embarking upon another major international tour in 1978 and triumphing on Broadway once again.

The following year Aznavour devoted more time and energy to his acting career, starring in Volker Schloendorff’s legendary film “The Tin Drum” (which scooped the “Palme d’Or” at Cannes in 1979). In 1980 he concentrated his efforts on his singing career, performing several immensely popular concerts at the Olympia and embarking on a new series of international tours.

1983 was marked by Aznavour’s split from his record company Barclay. The singer would not sign another recording deal until two years later, when he signed with the Trema label who promised to re-release his early albums. The re-release of Aznavour’s early work in 1986 coincided with the release of the singer’s brand new album, entitled “Les Emigrants” – an extremely successful work which went on to sell 180,000 copies. Later that year the multi-talented Aznavour tried his hand at writing a film script for the first time, working on Paul Boujenah’s film “Yiddish Connection” (a film in which Aznavour also played one of the lead roles).

1987 was another year of non-stop touring, Aznavour embarking upon another immensely successful American tour with the American singer Pia Zadora. On his return to Paris, Aznavour performed in front of a packed auditorium at the Palais des Congrès before setting off on an extensive tour of the French provinces at the end of the year.

In 1988 Aznavour returned to the Palais des Congrès in Paris, performing his old hits and new material to rapturous applause. At the end of the year news reached Aznavour of a catastrophic earthquake in Armenia (Leninakan and Spitak), which had killed 50,000 people. Aznavour, who had always remained firmly attached to his Armenian roots, immediately launched a fund-raising campaign to help his stricken homeland. The singer founded “Aznavour pour l’Arménie”, a humanitarian association which was involved in sending food and clothes to the earthquake victims. At the start of 1989 Aznavour also teamed up with the Armenian-born film director Henri Verneuil to enlist the help of French singers, actors and musicians in their Aid for Armenia campaign. 90 French actors and singers ended up making a special single and video (“Pour Toi l’Arménie”) which sold over 1 million copies.

As a result of his committed fund-raising work UNESCO appointed Aznavour as their permanent ambassador to Armenia. That same year Aznavour flew to London to re-record his greatest hits, which were released as a special triple album.

Throughout the early 90’s Aznavour continued to devote a great deal of time and energy to his acting career, starring in a number of television and feature films. In 1991 he also published another book, “Des mots à l’affiche”, a collection of his song lyrics and other short texts. At the end of 1990 Aznavour performed a legendary concert with his lifelong friend Liza Minelli at the Palais des Congrès in Paris.

In 1992 Aznavour invested some of his earnings in buying the back catalogue of Raoul Breton’s music publishing company. Aznavour, who appointed himself as director of the Raoul Breton collection, thus went on to own the copyright to some of the most famous songs in French music history (including the work of some of the greatest French chanson stars such as Edith Piaf and Charles Trenet).

In 1994 Aznavour signed a new deal with EMI, authorising the re-release of his life’s recording work (i.e. over 1,000 songs, more than half of which the singer had written himself). This resulted in the ‘complete works’ of Aznavour being released as a series of 30 CDs in 1996. In October American music magazine “Billboard” paid tribute to the French star, featuring him on their cover (a rare feat for a French artist !)

In 1997 Aznavour was honored in France at the “Victoires de la Musique” awards ceremony, where record industry professionals voted him Best Male Singer of the Year. Later that year the French president Jacques Chirac paid tribute to the singer, making him an Officier de la Légion d’Honneur at an official ceremony in Paris.

Meanwhile Aznavour continued to record new material, releasing a new album entitled “Plus bleu” (named after a famous song he had written for Edith Piaf in 1951). Benefiting from the latest technology, Aznavour was even able to record a new version of the song as a ‘virtual’ duet with Piaf, mixing his vocals with original Piaf recordings.

On Saturday July 12 1997 Aznavour celebrated his 50 anniversary in the music business at the Montreux Festival in Switzerland. The singer opened the show with his legendary hit “Après l’amour”, then handed over to a number of famous jazz musicians (including Rachelle Ferrell, Bobby McFerrin and Manu Dibango) who performed cover versions of his most famous songs in French and English. Aznavour returned to the stage for the grand finale, giving a rousing performance of his classic “Emmenez-moi”.

The Farewell Concerts

Following a series of health problems and a major shake-up in a car accident, Aznavour decided to call a halt to his touring activities. Announcing his “retirement” from the live scene, the singer embarked on one last round of concerts, bidding farewell to his fans worldwide. In November 1999 Aznavour brought the house down when he bid adieu to fans in Quebec. Shortly afterwards, Aznavour announced that he would play his very final concerts in Paris in October 2000. But between Quebec and Paris the indefatigable French star is planning to squeeze in another 180 concerts! The word “retirement” did not sit well with him.

After trying his hand at operettas in the 60s, the singer has written a musical about the life of French painter Toulouse-Lautrec. “Lautrec” premiered at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London in April 2000 and, following good reviews in the UK, it may well end up on Broadway. Aznavour, who was responsible for both the words and music in “Lautrec”, claims he has discovered a new calling in life, declaring in a recent interview that he was “made to write musicals!

Aznavour returned to the forefront of the French music scene in the autumn of 2000, releasing an album entitled “Aznavour 2000” which features twelve bitter-sweet ‘chansons‘ in his usual style. Following the release of “Aznavour 2000”, the French chanson star announced he was to retire from the live scene and told reporters his current tour will be the last of his career. After playing a series of concerts in Switzerland and Belgium, Aznavour performed the first of his farewell concerts at the Palais des Congrès in Paris on October 24th, playing to a packed house. After performing at the Palais des Congrès until December 17th, Aznavour continued his farewell tour in 2001, playing a series of concerts all over France. Meanwhile, the singer was also busy in front of the cameras, playing a lead role in an Atom Egoyan film. On October 8th 2001, Aznavour received another prestigious award to add to his collection when President Jacques Chirac made him a “Commandeur de l’Ordre national du mérite” at a special ceremony at the Elysée Palace.

Aznavour continued to defend social and political causes throughout his career. In January 2001, the singer voiced his appreciation of the French government’s recognition of the Armenian genocide. In April 2002, when far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen made it through to the second round of the French presidential elections, Aznavour joined other celebrities in signing the “Vive la France” petition, urging members of the public to go out and “sing the ‘Marseillaise’ for the Republic” as a protest. Later that same year, “Ararat,” a film about the Armenian genocide made by Atom Egoyan (a Canadian director of Armenian origin), hit French cinema screens. Aznavour played a starring role in it. In April 2003, the singer also attended a special ceremony marking the erection of a commemorative statue in Paris in memory of the genocide victims.

In September 2003, Aznavour published his memoirs, “Le temps des avants” (Flammarion) then, three months later, went on to release a new album entitled “Je voyage.” The album, on which Aznavour’s daughter, Katia, provided guest vocals on the title track, featured a rich mix of styles, the singer salsa-ing on “Il y a des trains,” swinging on “Quelqu’un de different” and waxing fado lyrical on “Lisboa.”

After taking a short break to play a role in a TV adaptation of Balzac’s novel, “Le père Goriot” (filmed in Bucharest), Aznavour made a stage comeback in Paris. The singer celebrated his 80th birthday with a successful run at the ‘Palais des Congrès’ (16 April – 22 May 2004).

In the course of an impressively long career, spanning six decades, Aznavour wrote more than 1,000 and recorded a staggering 740 songs (including 350 in French and 150 in English, not to mention eight albums in Spanish and seven albums in German). In 1999, voters in an Internet poll organised by CNN and Time magazine nominated Aznavour as one of the top singers of the 20th century, alongside Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan. Judging by his on-going success, it looks like the French ‘chanson’ star may well triumph in 21st-century polls, as well!

The singer’s 80th birthday was marked in style with the release of a double album featuring the greatest hits of his career recorded as duets with French music stars including Florent Pagny, Line Renaud, Catherine Ringer, Nana Mouskouri, Corneille – and even American superstar Liza Minelli!

In 2005, Aznavour resurfaced on the French music scene with “Insolitement vôtre”, a studio album featuring songs from “Lautrec” (the singer’s musical based on the life of artist Toulouse-Lautrec which has never been staged in France). The album featured an impressive list of guest stars duetting with the great Charles. These included Annie Cordy, Serge Lama, Lio, the Cape Verdean singer Maria Andrade, Isabelle Boulay and his own daughter, Katia Aznavour.

Later that year, the director Edmond Bensimon paid his own cinematic tribute to the singer with “Emmenez moi”, a fictional film about the adventures of a Charles Aznavour fan. What’s more, Aznavour got to play himself in the film.

2006 was largely taken up with Aznavour’s farewell tour outside France. Even though the singer is still ridiculously sprightly for 80, the pressures of international touring were beginning to take their toll on him and he had decided to start calming things down. His international farewell tour included dates in Germany in February and concerts in North America in September (Montreal, Toronto, Washington, New York, Boston, Los Angeles, etc.).

On 30 September 2006, Aznavour performed a major concert in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, inaugurating the cultural season “Arménie mon amie” in France. The French president Jacques Chirac, who was on an official visit to Armenia at the time, and the Armenian president Robert Kotcharian were in front-row attendance. Warm-up acts at the mega-show included many of Aznavour’s closest friends such as Nana Mouskouri, Line Renaud, Danny Brillant, Isabelle Boulay, also Hélène Ségara and Michel Legrand (both of whom are themselves of Armenian origin). Aznavour has remained deeply attached to his homeland throughout his career and his compatriots have returned his love, adopting him as their national hero.

While Aznavour had once again, officially embarked upon his farewell tour, bidding adieu to fans outside France, the singer showed no sign of stopping his formidable recording career. Far from it, in fact. In October 2006, Aznavour flew out to Cuba to record a new album, spending an intensive ten-day period at the legendary Egrem Studio in Havana. Here, he worked with the renowned Cuban pianist and composer Jesus “Chucho” Valdès who took care of orchestration and arrangement on the album. Recording in the studio with Chucho’s quartet, the pair perfected twelve vibrant upbeat tracks alternating between cha-cha-cha, calypso, mambo and Latin jazz. Aznavour’s warm, generous vocals worked wonderfully well with this mix of Caribbean rhythms.

Aznavour’s new album, “Colore ma vie”, released in February 2007, featured a series of ‘songs with a message’. On a haunting ballad entitled “J’abdiquerai” (I’ll Abdicate), the singer railed against death, “that filthy whore”. Meanwhile, he proved he was also perfectly in touch with topical social issues, raising the subject of immigration and integration on “Moi, je vis en banlieue” (Me, I Live in the Suburbs) and the idea of accepting personal responsibility for environmental problems on “La terre meurt” (The Earth is Dying). Aznavour remained true to two of his favorite themes, evoking the three phases of love on “Avant, Pendant, Après” (Before, During and Afterwards) and paying tribute to his native Armenia on “Tendre Arménie.”

The singer paid homage to Armenia once again on 17 February 2007, taking to the stage at the Opéra Garnier in Paris for another fundraising concert on behalf of his homeland. The show, entitled “Aznavour et ses amis” (Aznavour and Friends), aimed at raising funds for “Jeunes Ambassadeurs pour l’Arménie” – an organisation which invites Armenian children studying French to spend time in France – featured appearances by a number of major music stars including Patrick Bruel, Florent Pagny, Grand Corps Malade and Bénabar.

In December 2008, Aznavour released a bumper double album of duets with international music stars. The two-volume album, “Duos” – based on an idea by the singer’s artistic advisor and personal manager, Lévon Sayan – fell neatly into two linguistic halves. Volume I featured duets of French hits while volume II revolved around songs in English, German, Spanish and Italian. A star-studded cast joined the famous French chanson crooner in the studio including Elton John, Sting, Laura Pausini, Herbert Grönemeyer, Johnny Hallyday, Paul Anka, Liza Minnelli, Nana Mouskouri, Josh Groban, Julio Iglesias, Carole King and the opera singer Placido Domingo. Aznavour also recorded three ‘virtual’ posthumous duets with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Edith Piaf.

In a career as a singer and songwriter, spanning over 70 years, he recorded more than 1,200 songs interpreted in 9 languages. Moreover, he wrote or co-wrote more than 1,000 songs for himself and others. Aznavour is regarded as one of the greatest songwriters in history and an icon of 20th-century pop culture.

He wrote the words: Yesterday when I was young, I knew the words to every song, which stayed in the forefront of my mind as a singer/guitarist growing older.

Between 1974 and 2016, Aznavour received around sixty gold and platinum records around the world. According to his record company, the total sales of Aznavour’s recordings were over 180 million units.

He started his last world tour at age 90 in 2014, never being able to retire from what he loved.

On October 1, 2018 French Chansonnier Charles Aznavour passed in his bath tub from cardiorespiratory arrest.

Tributes : When Bob Dylan was asked who some of his favorite musicians are, he stated, “I like Charles Aznavour a lot. I saw him in sixty-something at Carnegie Hall, and he just blew my brains out.”

Sting has stated that “To me he [Aznavour] is an icon. Not only as a singer, but as an actor, as a personality, as a master of ‘chanson’.”[94]

Aznavour was also highly regarded by Frank Sinatra, Celine Dion, Edith Piaf, and Liza Minnelli, with whom he performed and recorded. Minnelli has said of the singer, “He changed my entire life.”

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Otis Rush 9/2018

Otis Rush was born near Philadelphia, Mississippi on April 29, 1934 during the Great Depression, the son of sharecroppers Julia Campbell Boyd and Otis C. Rush. He was one of seven children and worked on the farm throughout his childhood. His mother regularly took him out of school so that he could add to the family income when the cotton was high and white landowners wanted extra labor.

Music was young Otis solace. He sang in gospel choirs and taught himself to play guitar and harmonica, playing on street corners. “This is where my soul came from. This is where my faith started.” He said of Neshoba County.

Determined not to spend his life in the cotton fields, he moved north to Chicago in 1949 at the age of 14, working in stockyards and steel mills and driving a horse drawn coal wagon, hanging out in the city’s blues clubs at night. Continue reading Otis Rush 9/2018

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Maarten Allcock 9/2018

Maarten Allcock (61) – multi instrumentalist with Fairport Convention and Jethro Tull,  was born on January 5, 1957 in North Manchester, England.

After an apprenticeship in folkclubs and dancebands, he ran away to join the Bully Wee Band, a Celtic folk group, which led on to an 11-year stint with folk-rock legends Fairport Convention, four years with rock band Jethro Tull and a session career which has included over 300 albums. A fretless bass player and guitarist, Maartin had an interesting youth.

After studying music at Huddersfield and Leeds he played on his first tour with Mike Harding in 1977. He moved to Brittany for a while, where he learned to cook. He then trained as a chef and worked in the Shetland Islands.

In 1981 he returned to music with The Bully Wee Band. After they broke up he toured in UK, Ireland and Europe with Kieran Halpin until he was invited to join the re-forming Fairport Convention as lead guitarist in 1985, touring extensively in UK, USA, Europe, Australia, Turkey, Hong Kong & Bermuda until 1996.

In 1988 he was asked to concurrently join Jethro Tull on keyboard, which he stayed with for four years, touring in North & South America, Western & Eastern Europe, Turkey and Estonia. In summer 1991 he also played keyboards for The Mission (known as Mission UK in the USA).

In October 1999 Maart, as his friends called him, recorded his second solo album, OX15, with guest appearances from Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, Indian girl singer Najma Akhtar and other past and present members of both Jethro Tull and Fairport Convention.

In 2000 Maart moved to mountainous Snowdonia in North Wales and studied Welsh at Coleg Harlech.

In 2002, Maart toured with Blue Tapestry, Kieran Halpin, Orchard (featuring Dave Swarbrick, Beryl Marriott and Kevin Dempsey) as well as performing with Gilly Darbey and touring the UK, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands with The (new) John Wright Band.

In 2003 there were eleven albums, 2 TV series and tours of Holland, Germany and Italy. Plus the Dave Swarbrick Fiddlecase Tunebook and the recording of the third solo album, ‘Serving Suggestion’.

In 2004 there was a Danish tour with John Wright, the Kieran Halpin Songbook Two, the Fairport Convention Songbook One v2.0, an album with Mairi Armstrong, a couple of Blue Tapestry gigs, Ralph McTell’s 60th birthday concert and a UK tour with Beth Nielsen Chapman. Also the setting up of Squiggle Records.

In 2005 there was more session work for Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens), albums with Miranda Sykes Band, Kieran Halpin, Ken Nicol, and Ian McCalman & friends, and Maart and his old chum Des Friel got two songs in a movie, Irish Jam, starring Anna Friel. Also Maart produced albums from top Welsh traditional band Crasdant and harpist Gwenan Gibbard. An educational DVD band came together as The Working Party and the new trio Swarb’s Lazarus was formed.

In 2006 Swarb’s Lazarus began touring and Maart married his wife Jan in Snowdonia. More production work for Sain Recordiau with Heather Jones, Sarah Louise and Robin Huw Bowen. Festival appearances with Gwenan Gibbard, Sarah Louise, The Paperboys, Swarb’s Lazarus, Fairport Convention with guest Glenn Tilbrook.

In 2007 there was some recording with Ralph McTell for the Steve Tilston boxset, two UK tours with Beth Nielsen Chapman, more recording and production work and ongoing dates with Swarb’s Lazarus.

In 2008 there was recording with Ian McCalman, gigs with Gwenan Gibbard, Netherlands and Belgium dates with Swarb’s Lazarus, recording with the late John Wright, a TV appearance with Heather Jones, and a lot of notation work, including work for Sain Recordiau and the start of the Dave Swarbrick Fiddle Tunes book. A lot of production work for Sain Recordiau too, including the debut album from young Welsh traditional band Calan and the second album for Gwenan Gibbard. There were a couple of visits to Rome and Barcelona for Jethro Tull Fan club conventions.
The Bad Shepherds was formed along with Ade Edmondson and Troy Donockley. After a few false starts including a week’s rehearsal in St. Lucia (Caribbean), the lineup finally came together with fiddler Andy Dinan and a lot of work started to come in for the band. In October Maart took part in Yr Arbrawf Mawr – The Big Experiment, a three day course in traditional music at Coleg Harlech. Another UK tour with Beth Nielsen Chapman followed in November and the year finished on the run up to Xmas with dates with The Bad Shepherds, who also started recording their album.

2009 started with a new album with Kieran Halpin, and a Burns Night supper in Stockholm for RBS with Mairi Armstrong. Most of the year was taken up with The Bad Shepherds, but Maart left at the end of the summer to concentrate on various other projects, including more production work for Sain Recordiau and transcription work for both Richard Thompson and Dave Swarbrick. In May Maartin Alcock was the subject of a half hour documentary on the BBC Radio Wales Arts Show, and he now has a monthly column in Acoustic magazine. In October, he was once again a guest of Rome-based Tull tribute act OAK.

2010 included two UK tours with Beth Nielsen Chapman, and a songbook of the new album, Back To Love, transcribed in time for the tour. More session work and a special concert of John Martyn’s music at Birmingham Town Hall with Danny Thompson, JM’s band and guest singers Eddi Reader, Beth Orton, Krystal Warren, Ian McNabb and Beverley Martyn.

Allcock later released several solo albums and worked as a multi-instrumentalist, session man and record producer on over 200 recordings by artists including Robert Plant, Beverley Craven, Judith Durham, Breton guitarist Dan Ar Braz (six albums), Ralph McTell, Dave Swarbrick, Cat Stevens, and Dafydd Iwan.

Maartin Allcock died in a Welsh hospital on September 16, 2018. He was 61 and had been suffering from inoperable liver cancer.

His approach to his terminal illness was serene and philosophical. After his diagnosis he wrote to fans: “I will go with dignity, good humour and good grace. “I just have to wait now for transport back to my own planet. I only came for the curry anyway.”

This year was meant to be my travel gap year. I was going to revisit friends and favourite places around the world before slowing down to enjoy the evening of my years. I made it as far as Madeira in January for some heat, a place I’d never considered before, but I loved it. Such a beautiful fragrant isle, truly a paradise.

A week after my return, I developed jaundice, and had to go to hospital. Scans and tests revealed that there were more sinister things happening inside me. Now the race is run and the final chapter has begun, and my liver cancer is terminal. I am in absolutely no pain or discomfort at this time. For the time being, to look at, you wouldn’t think there was much wrong with me. I am fully mobile, with energy, eating and sleeping well, and totally at peace with what the future holds. How long that future lasts is anyone’s guess, but I probably won’t make it to next summer. I shall play my final live performance at the Fairport Cropredy Convention this August, but I shall continue to make music while I draw breath. My main priority now is to finish the autobiography I began in January, and which now has an additional final chapter. I had no idea the deadline was so strict then.

So, do not be sad. I achieved everything I ever wanted to do from daydreaming in a council house in north Manchester to traveling the world with my heroes, playing to thousands and thousands of people, and getting paid for it. I have lived a lot, laughed a lot and loved a lot, and I shall leave this planet with eternal love and gratitude for my wife Jan, my three children Madeleine, Jered and Jane, and their mum Gill, and all of you who took any interest in this mad northerner. Thank you all so much. Be happy and shower the people you love with love.

What a giant of a man!

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Marty Balin 9/2018

Marty Balin (76) – Jefferson Airplane – was born Martyn Buchwald in Cincinnati, Ohio, on January 30, 1942. He was the son of Catherine Eugenia “Jean” (née Talbot) and Joseph Buchwald. His paternal grandparents had emigrated from Eastern Europe. His father was Jewish and his mother was Episcopalian. Buchwald attended Washington High School in San Francisco, California. As a child, Balin was diagnosed with what is now called autism.

In 1962, Buchwald changed his name to Marty Balin and began recording with Challenge Records in Los Angeles, releasing the singles “Nobody but You” and “I Specialize in Love”. By 1964, Balin was leading a folk music quartet named The Town Criers and along with the late guitarist Paul Kantner, co-founded Jefferson Airplane in 1965, recruiting vocalist Signe Anderson, who when left was replaced by Grace Slick.

Balin was the primary founder of Jefferson Airplane, which he “launched” from a restaurant-turned-club he created and named The Matrix and was also one of its lead vocalists and songwriters from 1965 to 1971. Balin was one of four Jewish members of the band, including bass player Jack Casady, drummer Spencer Dryden and guitarist Jorma Kaukonen. In the group’s 1966–1971 iteration, Balin served as co-lead vocalist alongside Grace Slick. Balin’s songwriting output diminished after Surrealistic Pillow (1967) as Slick, Paul Kantner, and Kaukonen matured as songwriters, a process compounded by personality clashes. 

Balin’s most enduring songwriting contributions were often imbued with a romantic, pop-oriented lilt that was atypical of the band’s characteristic forays into psychedelic rock. Among Balin’s most notable songs were “Comin’ Back to Me” (a folk rock ballad later covered by Ritchie Havens and Rickie Lee Jones), “Today” (a collaboration with Kantner initially written on spec for Tony Bennett that was prominently covered by Tom Scott), and, again with Kantner, the topical 1969 top-100 hit “Volunteers”. Although uncharacteristic of his oeuvre, the uptempo “3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds” and “Plastic Fantastic Lover” (both written for Surrealistic Pillow) remained integral components of the Airplane’s live set throughout the late 1960s.

Balin played with Jefferson Airplane at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and at the Woodstock Festival in 1969. In December 1969, Balin was knocked unconscious by members of the Hells Angels motorcycle club while performing during the infamous Altamont Free Concert, as seen in the 1970 documentary film Gimme Shelter. 

In April 1971, he formally departed Jefferson Airplane after breaking off all communication with his bandmates following the completion of their autumn 1970 American tour. He elaborated upon this decision in a 1993 interview with Jeff Tamarkin of Relix.

I don’t know, just Janis’s death. That struck me. It was dark times. Everybody was doing so much drugs and I couldn’t even talk to the band. I was into yoga at the time. I’d given up drinking and I was into totally different area, health foods and getting back to the streets, working with the American Indians. It was getting strange for me. Cocaine was a big deal in those days and I wasn’t a cokie and I couldn’t talk with everybody who had an answer for every goddamn thing, rationalizing everything that happened. I thought it made the music really tight and constrictive and ruined it. So after Janis died, I thought, I’m not gonna go onstage and play that kind of music; I don’t like cocaine.

Balin remained active in the San Francisco Bay Area rock scene, managing and producing an album for the Berkeley-based sextet Grootna before briefly joining funk-inflected hard rock ensemble Bodacious DF as lead vocalist on their eponymous 1973 debut album. The following year, Kantner asked Balin to write a song for his new Airplane offshoot group, Jefferson Starship. Together, they wrote the early power ballad “Caroline”, which appeared on the album Dragon Fly with Balin as guest lead vocalist.

Rejoining the band he had helped to establish, Balin became a permanent member of Jefferson Starship in 1975; over the next three years, he contributed to and sang lead on four top-20 hits, including “Miracles” (No. 3, a Balin original), “With Your Love” (No. 12, a collaboration between Balin, former Jefferson Airplane drummer Joey Covington, and former Grootna/Bodacious DF lead guitarist Vic Smith), Jesse Barish’s “Count on Me” (No. 8), and N. Q. Dewey’s “Runaway” (No. 12). Ultimately, Balin’s relationship with the band was beleaguered by interpersonal problems and his own reluctance toward live performances. He abruptly left the group in October 1978 shortly after Slick’s departure from the band.

In 1979, Balin produced a rock opera titled Rock Justice, about a rock star who was put in jail for failing to produce a hit for his record company, based on his experiences with the lawsuits fought for years with former Jefferson Airplane manager Matthew Katz. The cast recording was produced by Balin, but it did not feature him in performance.

In 1981, he released his first solo album, Balin, and in 1983 a second solo album, Lucky, along with a Japanese-only EP produced by EMI called There’s No Shoulder.

In 1985, he teamed with former Jefferson Airplane members Paul Kantner and Jack Casady to form the KBC Band. After the breakup of the KBC band, a 1989 reunion album and tour with Jefferson Airplane followed.

In 1989, he participated in a short-lived Jefferson Airplane reunion tour and returned four years later to Jefferson Starship, finally leaving for good in 2008.

Jefferson Airplane was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 and was presented with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016.

While on tour in March 2016, Balin was taken to Mount Sinai Beth Israel Hospital in New York City after complaining of chest pains. After undergoing open-heart surgery, he was transferred to an intensive-care unit to spend time recovering. In a subsequent lawsuit, Balin alleged that neglect and inadequate care facilities on the hospital’s part had resulted in a paralyzed vocal cord, loss of his left thumb and half of his tongue, bedsores, and kidney damage.

Balin died at his home in Tampa, Florida on September 27, 2018, at the age of 76.

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Ed King 8/2018

Ed King, guitarist for Lynyrd SkynyrdEd King, ( Lynyrd Skynyrd/Strawberry Alarm Clock) – September 14, 1949 – August 22, 2018 was born in Glendale California and a guitar prodigy from early on in his life. Not even 18 years old, he became a founding member of the Los Angeles band Strawberry Alarm Clock, remembered for their 1967 #1 single “Incense and Peppermints.”

King met members of the future Lynyrd Skynyrd when they were opening for Strawberry Alarm Clock in early 1968. When Strawberry Alarm Clock disbanded, he became an official member of Lynyrd Skynyrd in 1972, replacing Leon Wilkeson on bass when Leon had left the band briefly. When Wilkeson rejoined the band King switched to lead guitar turning Skynyrd into the “guitar army” band, famous for its guitar fireworks.

He helped write “Sweet Home Alabama” in 1974; the song became one of Skynyrd’s strongest hits and a staple of rock guitarists everywhere. It is King’s voice heard counting off 1-2-3 at the beginning of “Sweet Home Alabama.” Other songs that King wrote or co-wrote include “Poison Whiskey”, “Saturday Night Special”, “Whiskey Rock-a-Roller” and “Workin’ For MCA”. He appeared on the band’s first three albums, Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd, Second Helping, and Nuthin’ Fancy.

Ed King quit Lynyrd Skynyrd pretty much at the peak of their fame, mainly because he finally got fed up with Ronnie Van Zant’s mercurial ways.

Skynyrd had three guitarists — at that point, King and founding members Gary Rossington and Allen Collins — but King was an outsider from the start. All of the other band members had grown up in the same part of Jacksonville, Florida, while King wasn’t even a Southerner, but a native of Glendale, California. He was marvelously talented — that riff in “Sweet Home Alabama”? That was King’s creation — and he was valued for his abilities as both a musician and a songwriter, but he was never really “one of the gang”.

Of writing the song with bandmate Ronnie Van Zant, King claimed, “we wrote that song in half an hour, but it took us about a half a day to put it together. The song came real quick. I started off with that riff and Ronnie was sitting on the edge of the couch, making this signal to me to just keep rolling it over and over.”

In an interview shortly before his death from cancer in 2018, King pointed to the below photo as being illustrative of his place in the band — all by himself to the left, with the other guys all standing side by side:

In March of 1975, during a show in Ann Arbor, Michigan, King snapped two guitar strings while playing “Free Bird”, throwing off his performance. According to King, his guitar tech had not been around to change his strings because he had been thrown in jail, along with Van Zant, following an altercation with police.

Ronnie didn’t care why King’s strings broke; all he knew was that Ed had fucked up. He unleashed a torrent of verbal abuse on King, including such colorful pronouncements as “you don’t amount to a pimple on Allen’s ass”.

Following the incident, King said he returned to his hotel room, thinking “what the hell am I doing here?”, packed his belongings, and left without a word, leaving his bandmates to wake up the next morning to find out he was gone (and Rossington and Collins to scramble to rearrange the songs to make up for King’s absence).

About the decision to leave the band, King said “well, I was out of my mind for quitting. But it was the best thing I ever did. It just got a little too nutty for me. So, in the middle of the night, I just walked out. It had been a bad night the night before. I had gotten fed up with frankly all the violence. I had good reason to leave.”

King was ultimately replaced by Steve Gaines in 1976; Gaines would die in the 1977 plane crash that also killed his sister Cassie and Van Zant. King said he visited the cemetery after the crash to pay his respects, and it was then that he discovered that he and Steve had been born on exactly the same day: September 14, 1949. He felt he had dodged a huge bullet by quitting when he did.

King would later reconcile with the other band members, and rejoined them when they reformed Skynyrd in 1987, but had to leave the band due to to congestive heart failure problems in 1996. He had a heart transplant surgery in 2011. Both he and Gaines were among the band members inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006.

He died, presumably from cancer at his Nashville home on August 22, 2018.

Founding member of Lynyrd Skynyrd Gary Rossington released a message on Twitter: ” I’ve just found out about Ed’s passing and I’m shocked and saddened. Ed was our brother, and a great Songwriter and Guitar player. I know he will be reunited with the rest of the boys in Rock & Roll Heaven.”

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Aretha Franklin 8/2018

Aretha Franklin 8/2018 (76) was born on March 25, 1942 in Memphis, TN. Her father was a Baptist minister and circuit preacher originally from Shelby, Mississippi, while her mother was an accomplished piano player and vocalist. By age five she had moved with her family to Motor City Detroit.  As a child, young Aretha Franklin was noticed for her gospel singing at New Bethel Baptist Church, where her father was a minister.
Shortly after her mother’s death from a heart attack, Franklin at age 10 began singing solos at New Bethel Baptist Church. When Franklin was 12, shortly after giving birth to her first son, her father, a notorious womanizer, began managing her; he would take her on the road with him, during his “gospel caravan” tours for her to perform in various churches. He also helped her sign her first recording deal with J.V.B. Records. Franklin was featured on vocals and piano. In 1956, J.V.B. released Franklin’s first single, “Never Grow Old”, backed with “You Grow Closer”. “Precious Lord (Part One)” backed with “Precious Lord (Part Two)” followed in 1959.

These four tracks, with the addition of “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood”, were released on side one of the 1956 album, Spirituals. This was reissued by Battle Records in 1962, under the same title. In 1965, Checker Records released Songs of Faith, featuring the five tracks from the 1956 Spirituals album, with the addition of four previously unreleased recordings. Aretha was only 14 when Songs of Faith was recorded.

During this time, Franklin would occasionally travel with the Soul Stirrers. As a young gospel singer, Franklin spent summers on the gospel circuit in Chicago and stayed with Mavis Staples’ family. According to music producer Quincy Jones, while Franklin was still young, Dinah Washington let him know that “Aretha was the ‘next one'”.  Franklin and her father traveled to California, where she met singer Sam Cooke. At the age of 16, Franklin went on tour with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and she would ultimately sing at his funeral in 1968. Other influences in her youth included Marvin Gaye (who was a boyfriend of her sister), as well as Ray Charles and Sam Cooke, “two of Franklin’s greatest influences”. Also important was James Cleveland, known as the King of Gospel music, “who helped to focus her early career as a gospel singer”; Cleveland had been recruited by her father as a pianist for the Southern California Community Choir.

After turning 18, Franklin confided to her father that she aspired to follow Sam Cooke in recording pop music, and moved to New York. Serving as her manager, C. L. Franklin agreed to the move and helped to produce a two-song demo that soon was brought to the attention of Columbia Records, who agreed to sign her in 1960, as a “five-percent” artist (meaning she would receive 5% over all records sold!). Sam Cooke tried to persuade Franklin’s father to sign her with his label, RCA Victor, but she had already decided to go with Columbia. Berry Gordy had also asked Franklin and her elder sister Erma to sign with his Tamla label (Motown), but C.L. Franklin turned Gordy down, as he felt Tamla was not yet an established label. Franklin’s first Columbia single, “Today I Sing the Blues“, was issued in September 1960 and reached the top 10 of the Hot Rhythm & Blues Sellers chart.

But, as her Detroit friends on the Motown label enjoyed hit after hit, Franklin struggled to achieve crossover success. Columbia placed her with a variety of producers who marketed her to both adults (“If Ever You Should Leave Me,” 1963) and teens (“Soulville,” 1964). Without targeting any particular genre, she sang everything from Broadway ballads to youth-oriented rhythm and blues. Critics recognized her talent, but the public remained lukewarm until 1966, when she switched to Atlantic Records, where producer Jerry Wexler helped her to sculpt her own musical identity.

At Atlantic, Franklin returned to her gospel-blues roots, and the results were sensational. “I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)” (1967), recorded at Fame Studios in Florence, Alabama, was her first million-seller. Surrounded by sympathetic musicians, including a young Duane Allman) playing spontaneous arrangements and devising the background vocals herself, Franklin refined a style associated with Ray Charles—a rousing mixture of gospel and rhythm and blues—and raised it to new heights. As a civil-rights-minded nation lent greater support to black urban music, Franklin was crowned the “Queen of Soul.” Respect,” her 1967 cover of Otis Redding’s spirited composition, became an anthem operating on personal, sexual, and racial levels. “Think” (1968), which Franklin wrote herself, also had more than one meaning. For the next half-dozen years, she became a hit maker of unprecedented proportions; she was “Lady Soul.”
In the early 1970s she triumphed at the Fillmore West in San Francisco before an audience of flower children and on whirlwind tours of Europe and Latin America. Amazing Grace (1972), a live recording of her performance with a choir at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles, is considered one of the great gospel albums of any era. By the late 1970s disco cramped Franklin’s style and eroded her popularity. But in 1982, with help from singer-songwriter-producer Luther Vandross, she was back on top with a new label, Arista, and a new dance hit, “Jump to It,” followed by “Freeway of Love” (1985). A reluctant interviewee, Franklin kept her private life private, claiming that the popular perception associating her with the unhappiness of singers Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday was misinformed.
In 1987 Franklin became the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition, she received a Kennedy Center Honor in 1994, a National Medal of Arts in 1999, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005. While her album sales in the 1990s and 2000s failed to approach the numbers of previous decades, Franklin remained the Queen of Soul. In 2009 she electrified a crowd of more than one million with her performance of “My Country ’Tis of Thee” at the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama, and her rendition of Carole King’s “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” during the Kennedy Center Honors ceremony in 2015 was no less breathtaking. The documentary Amazing Grace, which chronicles her recording of the 1972 album, premiered in 2018.

Aretha Franklin, the “Queen of Soul” died August 16th, 2018, the same day that Elvis Presley “The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll” died 41 years earlier.

It is said that Aretha sang the soul from her experiences of becoming a mother at age 12 and then again 14. It is also known that she lived in violent marriages and as a result became alcohol dependent. Her life was often compared to Tina Turner’s life with Ike. A story published in Vanity Fair exposes this wonderful woman.

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Vinnie Paul 6/2018

Vinnie Paul (54) – drummer with metal band Pantera/Damageplan – was born March 11, 1964  in Abilene, Texas. His parents were Jerry, a country music songwriter and producer, and Carolyn Abbott. Abbott originally played the tuba after being assigned to it in school band class, but he was directed towards the drums by his father, who said there were no career prospects for a tuba player. His father bought him his first drum kit.

Paul formed Pantera in 1981 with his brother Dimebag Darrell and Terry Glaze on guitars, bassist Tommy D. Bradford, and vocalist Donnie Hart. Pantera recruited vocalist Phil Anselmo in 1987.

Pantera’s breakthrough album was Cowboys from Hell (1990, Atco Records). They went on to release four more studio records, a live album and a greatest hits compilation. A dispute between singer/frontman Phil Anselmo and the Abbott brother caused the band to slowly fall apart and after the informal breakup of Pantera in 2003, the Abbott brothers formed the heavy metal band Damageplan and recorded one album, New Found Power. Sadly Damageplan broke up after the on stage murder of Vinnie’s bother, lead guitar player Darrell on December 8, 2004.

After an 18-month hiatus, Vinnie Paul joined with the heavy metal supergroup Hellyeah, which also features vocalist Chad Gray and guitarist Greg Tribbett from Mudvayne, guitarist Tom Maxwell from Nothingface, and bassist Bob Zilla from Damageplan. He recorded six albums with Hellyeah, including 2016’s Undeniable and the final album “Welcome Home”.  In May 2019, it was announced that Hellyeah would tour for the first time since Abbott’s death to support the final album he recorded with the band.

Vinnie Paul died in his Las Vegas home on June 22, 2018 at age 54. A coroner’s report determined that his death was from complications of an enlarged heart and severe coronary artery disease.

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Matt ‘Guitar’ Murphy 6/2018

Matt ‘Guitar’ Murphy (88) – blues guitar great – was born on March 15, 1931 in Sunflower, Mississippi, and was raised and educated in Memphis, Tennessee, where his father worked at the famous Peabody Hotel. Murphy learned to play guitar when he was a child. Alongside his brother Floyd Murphy, he became a fixture on the Memphis blues scene when they were teenagers.

In 1948, Murphy moved to Chicago, where he joined the Howlin’ Wolf Band, which at the time featured Little Junior Parker. In 1952, Murphy recorded with Little Junior Parker and Ike Turner, resulting in the release, “You’re My Angel”/“Bad Women, Bad Whiskey”, credited to Little Junior Parker and the Blue Flames.
Murphy worked often with blues pioneer Memphis Slim, including on his debut album At the Gate of Horn (1959). Murphy recorded two albums and many singles with Chuck Berry and was also featured in works by Koko Taylor, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Buddy Guy, Etta James, and Otis Rush. He also performed with Willie Dixon. Freddie King is said to have once admitted that he based his “Hide Away” (1960) on Murphy’s playing.

He also gave a very memorable performance in 1963 on the American Folk Blues Festival tour of Europe with his “Matt’s Guitar Boogie”.

After years of session work in the late 60s and early 70s, Murphy joined the Blues Brothers band, which was based on a Belushi-Aykroyd sketch on “Saturday Night Live.” There, Murphy played alongside noted session musicians Donald “Duck” Dunn on bass, Steve Jordan on drums, Steve Cropper on guitar and Paul Shaffer on keyboards. The Blues Brothers’ album “Briefcase Full of Blues,” released at the height of the disco era on Atlantic Records, was a surprise No. 1 Billboard hit upon its release in November 1978, with its live, revisionist blues material. Murphy was an essential element of the album’s two Top 40 singles, “Soul Man” and “Rubber Biscuit.”

He recorded solo albums Way Down South in 1990 and the Blues Don’t Bother Me in 1996. Lucky Charm was Murphy’s third solo album, first released in 2000 with Roesch. It included contributions by his fellow Blues Brothers musicians Lou Marini and Alan Rubin, credited as The Blues Brothers Horns.

In the 1970s, Murphy associated with harmonica great James Cotton, recording over six albums. Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi attended one of their performances and subsequently asked Murphy to join the touring band of The Blues Brothers. Murphy appeared in the films The Blues Brothers (1980) and Blues Brothers 2000 (1998), playing the husband of Aretha Franklin. He performed with the Blues Brothers Band until the early 2000s.

He played the soul food chef and husband to waitress Aretha Franklin. The couple spar over his desire to reunite with his ne’er-do-well pals, Jake and Elwood Blues, who are on “a mission from God” to put their Blues Brothers band back together again to raise money for a Catholic orphanage in Chicago.

Murphy was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2012.

He died on June 15, 2018

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Mike Harrison 3/2018

Mike Harrison (75) – frontman with Spooky Tooth – was born on 30 September 1942 in Carlisle, in the NW Cumberland area of England.

He began his musical career with the Ramrods, a band originating from Carlisle in the historic county of Cumberland, the northern part of the ceremonial county of Cumbria. This was to develop the foundations of a career that led to him being notable as the lead singer of Spooky Tooth, a band that he initially co-founded, with Mike Kellie, Luther Grosvenor and Greg Ridley and which Gary Wright then joined. Harrison, Grosvenor, Ridley and Kellie had previously been in a Carlisle-based band called The V.I.P.’s, which also included Keith Emerson (Emerson, Lake and Palmer).

When Emerson left in early 1967 to co-found The Nice, the remaining band members changed the band’s name to Art and released one album in late 1967 on Island Records, titled Supernatural Fairy Tales, a psychedelic classic.  

Art lasted only that one LP, but, encouraged by label owner Chris Blackwell the band would soon take on a new member, keyboardist Gary Wright, and changed their name again, this time to Spooky Tooth. They  released four albums between 1968 and 1970, before breaking up for the first time. The band’s sound was considered to be particularly unique in that it involved two keyboard players, Harrison and Wright, whose singing style often involved alternating vocals, similar to the Righteous Brothers or Hall and Oates.

Spooky Tooth first broke up in 1970 and Harrison commenced a solo career in 1971, which was anticipated with The Last Puff, the band’s 1970 breakup album, billed as “Spooky Tooth, featuring Mike Harrison”. Harrison released two solo albums in 1971 and 1972.

In 1971, while still a member of Spooky Tooth, Harrison would issue his first solo album, simply titled Mike Harrison. It showed a different style from his work with Spooky Tooth and stands as one of his finest works. A second record, Smokestack Lightning, arrived the next year and saw him working with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. 

Harrison left  the second coming of Spooky Tooth following 1973’s Witness and a third solo effort, Rainbow Rider, was released in 1975. Spooky Tooth would issue one more album before calling it a day, though they would reunite, with Harrison involved, for one final album in 1999. 

Harrison had discovered that the royalties from his solo albums were being applied, without his knowledge or consent, to debts allegedly owed by Spooky Tooth to Island Records. 

Harrison decided to leave the music industry entirely, and remained largely inactive from 1975 until 1997. 

The reason for his extended departure from music was primarily financial. Beyond a weekly stipend from Island Records, during their active period band members received no further benefits, including royalties. Instead, debts were accumulated and considered to be owed to the record company. During his absence from the music scene, among other occupations, Harrison worked as a barman and drove meat and milk delivery trucks.

During the early 1990s Harrison developed a renewed interest in music, resulting in the recording of three songs with original members Mike Kellie, Luther Grosvenor and Greg Ridley in 1997. Recording continued in 1998, resulting in the release of Cross Purpose in 1999, the first Spooky Tooth album in twenty-five years, following the 1974 release of The Mirror, in which Harrison had not participated. He had left the band in 1973, following the release of Witness. Cross Purpose was also the first Spooky Tooth album to feature four of the five original members since Spooky Two, released in 1969.

In 1999, Harrison was also offered a regular monthly engagement with the Hamburg Blues Band. This led to the release of Touch in 2001. The album featured lyrics by Pete Brown, longtime collaborator with Jack Bruce, with music by the Hamburg Blues Band and vocals by Harrison.

A 2004 reunion and tour with original Spooky Tooth members Gary Wright and Mike Kellie, resulted in the release of the concert DVD Nomad Poets in 2007. And in 2006, Harrison’s fourth solo album, Late Starter, was released.

Harrison, Wright and Kellie continued to perform as Spooky Tooth during 2008, after which Kellie departed and Harrison and Wright continued as Spooky Tooth during 2009.

Harrison continued to perform on occasion after that time, until he died on 25 March 2018 in Carlisle at age 75 of undisclosed causes.

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Fast Eddie Clarke 1/2018

Fast Eddie Clarke (Motorhead/Fastway) was born on 5 October, 1950 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England. He got his first guitar in 1965 when his father had “a win on the horses”.

And a little later in that year when he turned fifteen years old, he had already been through several local bands, one of which was called The Bitter End. Of his “Fast” moniker, Clarke has said “I didn’t get the name Fast Eddie because of any sex thing, and it wasn’t even because I could play fast. It was just that I could play one note in a solo really fast,” referring to his skillful tremolo picking. He became a proficient guitarist, honing his chops with various other bands, playing local gigs until 1973, when he turned professional by joining Curtis Knight’s blues prog rock band, Zeus, as lead guitarist.

In 1974, the band recorded an album called The Second Coming at Olympic Studios. Clarke wrote the music to Knight’s lyrics on a track entitled “The Confession”.
Clarke also recorded the album Sea of Time with Zeus. Later, with guitarist friend Allan Callan, keyboard player Nicky Hogarth, and drummer Chris Perry, Clarke attended a recorded jam session at Command Studios in Piccadilly. As a result of the tracks from this session, the quartet secured a deal with Anchor Records, and called the band Blue Goose. With a recording contract secured, Clarke, Hogarth and Perry left Zeus to focus on their own project with Callan.
But Clarke soon formed another band with Be-Bop Deluxe bassist Charlie Tumahai, vocalist Ann McCluskie and drummer Jim Thompson. Called Continuous Performance, this line up lasted until early 1975, when their demo tracks failed to secure them a record deal and the band split up. Still out to secure a record deal, Clarke then formed a group with Nicky Hogarth from Blue Goose, bass player Tony Cussons and drummer Terry Slater. Their efforts to get a deal were also unsuccessful, and Clarke temporarily gave up the music industry.

While re-fitting a houseboat, he met drummer Phil Taylor, who had recently joined Motörhead. However, according to Lemmy Kilmister‘s authorized biography, it appears that Clarke was introduced to Lemmy by a receptionist at the rehearsal studio, Gertie, who was romantically involved with Clarke at the time.

So the threesome (Lemmy, Clarke, Taylor) are considered the classic Motörhead line-up and have the Motörhead, Overkill, Ace of Spades, Bomber, No Sleep ’til Hammersmith and Iron Fist albums plus a string of hit singles to their credit.

Eddie was a member of Motörhead for the most successful five years of their career following the release of the Chiswick album.

And then in 1982, whilst on tour in the US he was unexpectedly kicked out of the band over musical differences with Lemmy and Phil Taylor. Clarke himself later said:

“[Philthy] was the main instigator in my being excluded from the band. Notice I do not call it leaving, as it was not my choice. I had imagined dying onstage with Motörhead, so it was a blow when they didn’t want me in the band any longer.”

But soon after, Eddie got together with UFO bass player Pete Way to form Fastway, an amalgamation of their own two names. Added by ex-Humble Pie drummer Jerry Shirley and vocalist Dave King. Just as the band signed a deal with CBS Records, Way left the band to be replaced by former Taste bassist Charlie McCracken. CBS however had faith in Fastway and decided to sign them despite this setback. Fastway went on to record a total of nine albums over 25 years with Eddie Clarke the only permanent member of the band and with numerous contributions from amateurs and professional musicians.

Just like during the excessive rock and roll lifestyle during the Motorhead years, the candle kept burning on both sides and there was a price to pay.
By 1993 Clarke was being admitted to a hospital for quite a while. After a slow recovery, Clarke released a solo album, It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over, which blends Motörhead and Fastway styles. Lemmy also helped out on the album by writing and singing the track “Laugh at the Devil”. The double CD release, Fast Eddie Clarke Anthology, on Sanctuary Records showcased a collection of Clarke’s music spanning his career before and after Motörhead. It also marked a return to live performances with a re-formed Fastway, including an appearance in the UK at the Download Festival in summer 2007.

Eddie’s inspirational driving guitar-playing kept fans interested and Fastway toured and played festivals all over the world, but gradually sales spiraled down and “Dog Eat Dog” for the German Steamhammer label in 2011 was the band’s final album.

Eddie had a home studio and continued playing guitar and his final album was “Make My Day – Back To Blues” in 2014; a collaboration between Clarke and the keyboardist from Shakatak, Bill Sharpe. Clarke reunited with Lemmy on 6 November 2014 at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham to play the Motörhead track “Ace of Spades”.

Fast Eddie Clarke died on 10 January 2018, aged 67, in a hospital where he was being treated for pneumonia. He suffered from emphysema.

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Edwin Hawkins 1/2018

Edwin Hawkins was born in Oakland, California, on August 19, 1943. he began singing in his church youth choir while still a toddler, and by age five was playing piano; just two years later, he assumed full-time piano accompaniment duties for the family gospel group, making their recorded debut in 1957.
In May 1967, together with Betty Watson, he founded the Northern California State Youth Choir of the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), which included almost fifty members.  This ensemble recorded its first album Let Us Go into the House of the Lord at the Ephesian Church of God in Christ in Berkeley, California privately (on the Century 70 custom label), hoping to sell 500 copies. “Oh Happy Day” was just one of the eight songs on the album. The choir used this LP to raise funds to travel to the 1968 Youth Congress for COGIC in Washington, D.C. to compete in the Congress’ annual choir competition, representing the Northern California region. The choir finished in second place at the contest, and that was the first of many surprises coming their way. Upon their return to California, their LP found its way into the hands of a KSAN underground rock DJ in San Francisco who happened to pick “Oh Happy Day” to play on his station; the song became an instant hit.
Once “Oh Happy Day” received radio airplay in other parts of the U.S. and the ensemble learned of the song’s rising success, they began to contact people in the recording industry who helped them obtain a major contract. The ensemble signed with the newly created Pavilion label (distributed by Buddah), and released a second LP, entitled He’s A Friend of Mine, in 1969. But it was “Oh Happy Day” that rocketed to sales of more than a million copies within two months. The song crossed over to the pop charts, making U.S. No. 4, UK No. 2, Canada No. 2, No. 2 on the Irish Singles Chart, and No. 1 on the French Singles Charts, the Netherlands and the German Singles Charts in 1969.

It became an international success, selling more than 7 million copies worldwide, and Hawkins was awarded his first Grammy for the recording. His arrangement of the song was eventually covered by The Four Seasons on their 1970 album Half & Half. At this time the choir was rechristened the Edwin Hawkins Singers, although the featured voice on “Oh Happy Day” belonged to singer Dorothy Combs Morrison, who soon exited in pursuit of a solo career. Her loss proved devastating to Hawkins’ long-term commercial fortunes.

The choir’s second LP Top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 charts was the 1970 Melanie single “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain),” on which the label listed the performers as “Melanie with The Edwin Hawkins Singers”. The song peaked at No. 6 in the U.S. and Top 10 in a host of other countries.

Hawkins remained a critical favorite, and in 1972 the Singers won a second Grammy for Every Man Wants to Be Free. Recording prolifically throughout the remainder of the decade, in 1980 they won a third Grammy for Wonderful; a fourth, for If You Love Me, followed three years later. In 1982, Hawkins also founded the Edwin Hawkins Music and Arts Seminar, an annual weeklong convention that offered workshops exploring all facets of the gospel industry and culminating each year with a live performance by the assembled mass choir. Although Hawkins recorded less and less frequently in the years to follow, he continued touring regularly. In 1990, Hawkins, credited as a solo performer, had a number 89 hit on the R&B chart with “If at First You Don’t Succeed (Try Again)”.
In the 1992 movie Leap of Faith, Hawkins is the choir master for the gospel songs. In 1995 he toured extensively with the Swedish choir Svart Pa Vitt. His Music and Arts Seminar continued to grow as well, with the 2002 choir including members from the U.S., Europe, and Japan. Hawkins also recorded throughout the 2000s, releasing All the Angels in 2004 and Have Mercy four years later.

Edwin Hawkins was one of the originators of the urban contemporary gospel sound.  His arrangement of “Oh Happy Day”, which was included on the Songs of the Century list.

Hawkins died of pancreatic cancer on January 15, 2018, in Pleasanton, California, at the age of 74.

Altogether Hawkins has won four Grammy Awards and In 2007, Hawkins was inducted into the Christian Music Hall of Fame and attended the formal awards show in 2009.

The Edwin Hawkins Singers performance of “Oh Happy Day” at the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival appears in the 2021 music documentary, Summer of Soul.
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Preston Shannon 1/2018

Preston Shannon was born October 23, 1947 in Olive Branch, Miss., Shannon moved to Memphis at the age of 8. While his family was steeped in the culture and music of the Pentecostal church, it was blues and R&B that fired Shannon’s imagination.

Shannon first gained notice in the 1980s as a member of local group Amnesty while still working as a hardware salesman. His big break came after being discovered by soul singer Shirley Brown. Shannon’s distinctive vocals, often described as “a cross between Bobby Womack and Otis Redding”  and supple guitar playing, set him on the path professionally.

In the early-’90s, Shannon stepped out on his own, launching a long run as one of the featured acts on Beale Street. Over the next three decades, Shannon would cut a familiar figure in the clubs on Beale, serving as a kind of musical ambassador to the hundreds of thousands of tourists who would visit each year. His efforts would earn Shannon the nickname “The King of Beale Street.”

In the ’90s, Shannon also began his solo recording career. Signing with indie label Rounder Records in 1994, he released his critically acclaimed debut, “Break the Ice,” featuring contributions from the Memphis Horns.

In 1993, his own Preston Shannon Band played at the Long Beach Blues Festival in Long Beach, California. After being spotted leading his own band in Memphis’ Beale Street clubs, he signed to Rounder Records subsidiary, Bullseye Blues, and released his debut solo effort, Break the Ice in 1994.

After this followed the Willie Mitchell produced efforts, Midnight in Memphis (1996) and All in Time (1999). However, with no immediate follow-up available, Preston lost momentum.Shannon’s next effort, 1996’s “Midnight in Memphis,” was produced by Hi Records legend Willie Mitchell, who would prove a frequent collaborator. The pair reunited for Shannon’s 1999’s record “All in Time.” Shannon would release a number of lauded albums over the years, including his 2014 tribute to Chicago bluesman Elmore James, titled “Dust My Broom.”

Among the songs he wrote are “Beale Street Boogaloo” and “Midnight in Memphis“.He was born in Olive Branch, Mississippi and relocated with his family to nearby Memphis, Tennessee at the age of eight.

After moving to Title Tunes, he released Be with Me Tonight (2006).

Shannon played at Memphis in May in both 2008 and 2011. In February 2012, Shannon appeared on season two of The Voice, singing “In the Midnight Hour”.

He was a regular performer at B.B. King’s Blues Club in Memphis. Shannon’s most recent album release was Dust My Broom (2014).

Preston died of cancer on January 22, 2018 in Memphis, Tennessee, at the age of 70.

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Hugh Masekela 1/2018

Hugh Masekela (78) – Virtuoso Multi wind instrument player – was born on April 4, 1939 in KwaGuqa Township, Witbank, South Africa to Thomas Selena Masekela, who was a health inspector and sculptor and his wife, Pauline Bowers Masekela, a social worker. As a child, he began singing and playing piano and largely was raised by his grandmother, who ran an illegal bar for miners. At the age of 14, after seeing the film Young Man with a Horn (in which Kirk Douglas plays a character modelled on American jazz cornetist Bix Beiderbecke), Masekela took up playing the trumpet. His first trumpet, from Louis Armstrong, was given to him by Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, the anti-apartheid chaplain at St. Peter’s Secondary School now known as St. Martin’s School (Rosettenville).

“Father Huddleston… met my idol Louis Armstrong and told him about our band. Louis’s response was: ‘Well‚ I got to send them one of my horns‚’ and he did. What this did for the band was get us on the front page of every major newspaper and magazine in South Africa—a first for a black group,” he told TimesLive.

Huddleston asked the leader of the then Johannesburg “Native” Municipal Brass Band, Uncle Sauda, to teach Masekela the rudiments of trumpet playing. Masekela quickly mastered the instrument. Soon, some of his schoolmates also became interested in playing instruments, leading to the formation of the Huddleston Jazz Band, South Africa’s first youth orchestra. By 1956, after leading other ensembles, Masekela joined Alfred Herbert’s African Jazz Revue.

From 1954, Masekela played music that closely reflected his life experience. The agony, conflict, and exploitation South Africa faced during the 1950s and 1960s inspired and influenced him to make music and also spread political change. He was an artist who in his music vividly portrayed the struggles and sorrows, as well as the joys and passions of his country. His music protested about apartheid, slavery, government; the hardships individuals were living. Masekela reached a large population that also felt oppressed due to the country’s situation.

Following a Manhattan Brothers tour of South Africa in 1958, Masekela wound up in the orchestra of the musical King Kong, written by Todd Matshikiza. King Kong was South Africa’s first blockbuster theatrical success, touring the country for a sold-out year with Miriam Makeba and the Manhattan Brothers’ Nathan Mdledle in the lead. The musical later went to London’s West End for two years.

At the end of 1959, Dollar Brand (later known as Abdullah Ibrahim), Kippie Moeketsi, Makhaya Ntshoko, Johnny Gertze and Hugh formed the Jazz Epistles, the first African jazz group to record an LP. They performed to record-breaking audiences in Johannesburg and Cape Town through late 1959 to early 1960.

Following the 21 March 1960 Sharpeville massacre—where 69 protestors were shot dead in Sharpeville, and the South African government banned gatherings of ten or more people—and the increased brutality of the Apartheid state, Masekela left the country. He was helped by Trevor Huddleston and international friends such as Yehudi Menuhin and John Dankworth, who got him admitted into London’s Guildhall School of Music. During that period, Masekela visited the United States, got acquainted with fellow South African Miriam Makeba, who was befriended with Harry Belafonte. He attended Manhattan School of Music in New York, where he studied classical trumpet from 1960 to 1964. In 1964, Makeba and Masekela were married, divorcing two years later.

He had hits in the United States with the pop jazz tunes “Up, Up and Away” (1967) and the number-one smash “Grazing in the Grass” (1968), which sold four million copies. He performed at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 alongside Otis Redding, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Ravi Shankar, and Janis Joplin. He released over 40 albums during his five-decade career, and worked with artists such as Belafonte, Marvin Gaye, Paul Simon, and Stevie Wonder. He was subsequently featured in the film Monterey Pop by D. A. Pennebaker. In 1974, Masekela and friend Stewart Levine organized the Zaire 74 music festival in Kinshasa set around the Rumble in the Jungle (Muhammad Ali / George Foreman) boxing match.

He played primarily in jazz ensembles, with guest appearances on recordings by The Byrds (“So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star” and “Lady Friend”) and Paul Simon (“Further to Fly”). In 1984, Masekela released the album Techno Bush; from that album, a single entitled “Don’t Go Lose It Baby” peaked at number two for two weeks on the dance charts. In 1987, he had a hit single with “Bring Him Back Home”. The song became enormously popular, and turned into an unofficial anthem of the anti-apartheid movement and an anthem for the movement to free Nelson Mandela.

A renewed interest in his African roots led Masekela to collaborate with West and Central African musicians, and finally to reconnect with Southern African players when he set up, with the help of Jive Records, a mobile studio in Botswana, just over the South African border, from 1980 to 1984. Here he re-absorbed and re-used mbaqanga strains, a style he continued to use following his return to South Africa in the early 1990s.

In 1985 Masekela founded the Botswana International School of Music (BISM), which held its first workshop in Gaborone in that year. The event, still in existence, continues as the annual Botswana Music Camp, giving local musicians of all ages and from all backgrounds the opportunity to play and perform together. Masekela taught the jazz course at the first workshop, and performed at the final concert.

Also in the 1980s, Masekela toured with Paul Simon in support of Simon’s album Graceland, which featured other South African artists such as Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Miriam Makeba, Ray Phiri, and other elements of the band Kalahari, with which Masekela recorded in the 1980s. He also collaborated in the musical development for the Broadway play, Sarafina! and recorded with the band Kalahari.

In 2003, he was featured in the documentary film Amandla!: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony. In 2004, he released his autobiography, Still Grazing: The Musical Journey of Hugh Masekela, co-authored with journalist D. Michael Cheers, which detailed Masekela’s struggles against apartheid in his homeland, as well as his personal struggles with alcoholism from the late 1970s through to the 1990s. In this period, he migrated, in his personal recording career, to mbaqanga, jazz/funk, and the blending of South African sounds, through two albums he recorded with Herb Alpert, and solo recordings, Techno-Bush (recorded in his studio in Botswana), Tomorrow (featuring the anthem “Bring Him Back Home”), Uptownship (a lush-sounding ode to American R&B), Beatin’ Aroun de Bush, Sixty, Time, and Revival. His song “Soweto Blues”, sung by his former wife, Miriam Makeba, is a blues/jazz piece that mourns the carnage of the Soweto riots in 1976. He also provided interpretations of songs composed by Jorge Ben, Antônio Carlos Jobim, Caiphus Semenya, Jonas Gwangwa, Dorothy Masuka and Fela Kuti.

In 2006 Masekela was described by Michael A. Gomez, professor of history and Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at New York University as “the father of South African jazz.”

In 2009, Masekela released the album Phola (meaning “to get well, to heal”), his second recording for 4 Quarters Entertainment/Times Square Records. It includes some songs he wrote in the 1980s but never completed, as well as a reinterpretation of “The Joke of Life (Brinca de Vivre)”, which he recorded in the mid-1980s. From October 2007, he was a board member of the Woyome Foundation for Africa.

In 2010, Masekela was featured, with his son Selema Masekela, in a series of videos on ESPN. The series, called Umlando – Through My Father’s Eyes, was aired in 10 parts during ESPN’s coverage of the FIFA World Cup in South Africa. The series focused on Hugh’s and Selema’s travels through South Africa. Hugh brought his son to the places he grew up. It was Selema’s first trip to his father’s homeland.

On 3 December 2013, Masekela guested with the Dave Matthews Band in Johannesburg, South Africa. He joined Rashawn Ross on trumpet for “Proudest Monkey” and “Grazing in the Grass”.

In 2016, at Emperors Palace, Johannesburg, Masekela and Abdullah Ibrahim performed together for the first time in 60 years, reuniting the Jazz Epistles in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the historic 16 June 1976 youth demonstrations.

Masekela was involved in several social initiatives, and served as a director on the board of the Lunchbox Fund, a non-profit organization that provides a daily meal to students of township schools in Soweto.

Hugh Masekela died in Johannesburg on the early morning of 23 January 2018 from prostate cancer, aged 78.

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Billy Hancock 1/2018

Billy Hancock (71) – multi instrumentalist session player – was born November 4, 1946 in Washington, D.C., and raised in Alexandria, Virginia, where he lived most of his life. He attended George Washington High School in Alexandria, graduating in 1964.

He came from a musical family. His maternal grandmother Katie sang with Minstrel shows in black face accompanying herself on piano and harmonica. Two of his aunts Eileen and Anita were a singing duo in the 1940s who sang at two or three Washington DC radios stations on a regular basis. His paternal grandfather Mitchell (Mitch) Hancock played mandolin from about 1897 until 1902. He often played on River Boats in New Orleans and recorded for the Edison Label. Billy’s father worked for the Southern Railway and his mother worked for Waxie Maxie’s, a local record store chain, and other record stores. The records his mother brought home from work, primarily rhythm and blues from the late 1940s, played a large and influential role in his musical development.

Hancock began his career playing in bands around Washington, D.C., while still a teenager. After graduating from high school, he played with bands in Rhode Island and New York before returning to the Washington area. In 1968, he moved to Baltimore to attend the Peabody Conservatory, and continued to play in bands in the Baltimore area.

In the early 1970s, Hancock began a collaboration with Danny Gatton and they formed Danny and the Fat Boys with Hancock (bass, vocals), Gatton (guitars), and Dave Elliott (drums, vocals). In 1975, the group released American Music on a label owned by Hancock and his brother. The album’s title was taken from a rhythm and blues song Hancock had written. It was later re-issued on CD.

In 1978, Hancock recorded four rockabilly songs under the name Billy Hancock and the Tennessee Rockets for Ripsaw Records, a small independent label. He continued to record rockabilly for Ripsaw under that name for two years. Ripsaw released four singles during that time and licensed those and other titles to larger labels both in the U.S. and France. It is these rockabilly recordings for which Hancock is known internationally.

In 1983, Hancock recorded another rockabilly record, “Hey! Little Rock And Roller”, that was released in France on the Big Beat Label. Later that year, he returned to Ripsaw to record various rock and roll songs, six of which Ripsaw released in 1985. All of the Ripsaw material was later released on CDs by Finnish Bluelight Records.

Throughout his career, Hancock played in backing bands for prominent musicians, including Fats Domino, Gene Vincent, blues guitarist Roy Buchanan, rockabilly Charlie Feathers, the Clovers, Amos Milburn, and country musicians Dottie West and Jean Shepard. He co-produced and played guitar on Tex Rubinowitz’s rockabilly song “Hot Rod Man.”

In 2002, Hancock and his brother the television director, Dale Hancock founded Turkey Mountain Records, an independent record label. The label was formed to find and promote talented artists of all genres who, for whatever reasons, have been ignored by other record labels. Their Archival Series re-released material on artists of the past whose works have been unavailable until now. Turkey Mountain Records roster of artists included: Danny Gatton, The British Walkers (featuring Roy Buchanan), Bobbie (The Kid) Howard with Link Wray and The Ray Men, Charlie Feathers, The Fallen Angels and Billy Hancock himself.

In 2005, the Washington Area Music Association WAMA awarded Hancock a Special Recognition Award for his 40-plus years as a vocalist, musician, songwriter, producer, promoter, and label owner. In 2006, WAMA presented him two “Wammie” awards for 2005 Roots Rock Vocalist and Roots Rock Recording. In 2012, WAMA presented Hancock as one of “The Fallen Angels” a special recognition award.

In 2010, Hancock was inducted into the Southern Legends Hall of Fame. He was already a member of three other International Halls of Fame.Hancock was also the television host for American Music in Arlington, Virginia, where he interviewed and showcased songwriters, and a music historian.

He was also a member of the resurrected art rock group from the sixties, The Fallen Angels. On November 4, 2012 Hancock was inducted into The Northern Virginia Blues Society, Blues Hall of Fame in Mannassas, Va.

He appeared on more than 17 albums and he performed live primarily in the Washington, D.C., area, but also played regularly at European roots music festivals.

 Billy Hancock died on January 22, 2018 at the age of 71.

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Jim Rodford 1/2018

Jim Rodford (76) – bass player with Argent, the Zombies and the Kinks – was born July 7, 1941 in St Albans, Hertfordshire, England.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s he was a member of the Bluetones, the biggest band in St Albans at the time. Although he did not become a band member at this stage, Rodford was instrumental in helping his younger cousin Rod Argent form the Zombies in 1964. Rodford later joined the Mike Cotton Sound as a bass guitarist.
He played bass guitar for several British rock groups. He was a founding member of Argent, which was led by his cousin Rod Argent, and performed with them from their formation in 1969 until their disbanding in 1976. He was the bass guitarist for The Kinks from 1978 until they disbanded in 1996. In 2004, he joined The Zombies reunited, whom he had been closely associated with since the early 1960s, and remained a member until his death in 2018. He was also a member of The Swinging Blue Jeans and The Kast Off Kinks.

Along with Rod Argent, Rodford was one of the founding members of Argent. When Rod Argent quit the band, the remaining three members (Rodford, Bob Henrit, and John Verity) formed the short-lived band Phoenix. Two years later, Rodford joined the Kinks as bass guitarist in 1978 and played with them until their final disintegration in 1996. From 1999–2001 Rodford appeared in a band that ex-Animals guitarist Hilton Valentine formed, The Animals II, which also featured former Animals drummer John Steel, and keyboardist Dave Rowberry. Rodford continued with this band (which changed its working name to “The Animals and Friends” after Valentine left) until joining Argent and Colin Blunstone in the revival of the Zombies.

Rodford never played with the Zombies in the 1960s, despite having been closely involved with them. However, he began to play the bass guitar with the band’s reincarnation in the early years of the 21st century, with his son Steve on drums.

In 2008, Rodford joined the Kast Off Kinks, on the retirement of John Dalton, whom he had followed into the Kinks after Andy Pyle. In 2009, Jim Rodford regularly played in “The Rodford Files” along with Steve Rodford (Blunstone/Argent band) on drums, Russ Rodford on guitar, and Derik Timms (mOOn Dogs) on guitar, lap steel, slide and vocals.

In 2010, the original line-up of Argent reformed and resumed playing in concert. They mounted a short tour including gigs in Frome, Southampton, Wolverhampton, Leamington Spa and London.

Jim Rodford died after a fall from the stairs on 20 January 2018, at age 76.

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Dolores O’Riordan 1/2018

January 15, 2018 – Dolores O’Riordan (The Cranberries) was born Dolores Mary Eileen O’Riordan on September 6, 1971 brought up in Ballybricken, a town in County Limerick, Ireland. She was the daughter of Terence and Eileen O’Riordan and the youngest of seven children. She attended Laurel Hill Coláiste FCJ school in Limerick.

In 1990 O’Riordan auditioned for and won the role of lead singer for a band called the Cranberry Saw Us (later changed to the Cranberries). The band became a sensation as it released five albums: Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? (1993), No Need to Argue (1994), To the Faithful Departed (1996), Bury the Hatchet (1999) and Wake Up and Smell the Coffee (2001) and a greatest-hits compilation entitled Stars: The Best of 1992–2002 (2002), before they went on hiatus in 2003.

In 2004, she appeared with the Italian artist Zucchero on the album Zu & Co., with the song “Pure Love”. The album also featured other artists such as Sting, Sheryl Crow, Luciano Pavarotti, Miles Davis, John Lee Hooker, Macy Gray and Eric Clapton. The same year she worked with composer Angelo Badalamenti on the Evilenko soundtrack, providing vocals on several tracks, including “Angels Go to Heaven”, the movie theme.

In 2005, she appeared on the Jam & Spoon’s album Tripomatic Fairytales 3003 as a guest vocalist on the track “Mirror Lover”. O’Riordan also made a cameo appearance in the Adam Sandler comedy Click, released on 23 June 2006, as a wedding singer performing an alternate version of The Cranberries’ song “Linger”, set to strings. Her first single, “Ordinary Day”, was produced by BRIT Awards winner, Youth, whose previous credits include The Verve, Embrace, Primal Scream, U2 and Paul McCartney. O’Riordan made an appearance live on The Late Late Show on 20 April 2007.

Are You Listening? , her first solo album was released in Ireland in 4 May 2007, in Europe on 7 May, and in North America on 15 May. “Ordinary Day” was its first single, released in late April. The video for “Ordinary Day” was shot in Prague. In August “When We Were Young” was released as the second single from the album.

On 19 November 2007, she cancelled the remainder of her European Tour (Lille, Paris, Luxembourg, Warsaw and Prague) due to illness. In December she performed in a few small American clubs, including Des Moines, Nashville, and a well-received free show in Charlottesville, Virginia.

In 2008, O’Riordan won an EBBA Award. Every year the European Border Breakers Awards recognise the success of ten emerging artists or groups who reached audiences outside their own countries with their first internationally released album in the past year.

Dolores O’Riordan was known for her lilting mezzo-soprano voice, her emphasized use of yodeling and for her strong Limerick accent. In January 2009, the University Philosophical Society (Trinity College, Dublin) invited The Cranberries to reunite for a concert celebrating O’Riordan’s appointment as an honorary member of the Society, which led the band members to consider reuniting for a tour and a recording session. On 25 August 2009, while promoting her solo album No Baggage in New York City on 101.9 RXP radio, O’Riordan announced the reunion of the Cranberries for a world tour. The tour began in North America in mid-November, followed by South America in mid-January 2010 and Europe in March 2010. Also touring with the original members of The Cranberries was Denny DeMarchi, who played the keyboard for O’Riordan’s solo albums.

The band played songs from O’Riordan’s solo albums, many of the Cranberries’ classics, as well as new songs the band had been working on. On 9 June 2010 The Cranberries performed at the Special Olympics opening ceremony at Thomond Park in Limerick. This was the first time the band had performed in their native city in over 15 years.

She appeared as a judge on RTÉ’s The Voice of Ireland during the 2013–14 season. Dolores O’Riordan began recording new material with JETLAG, a collaboration between Andy Rourke of The Smiths and Ole Koretsky, in April 2014. They then formed a trio under the name D.A.R.K. Their first album, Science Agrees, was released in September 2016.

On 26 May 2016, the band announced that they planned to start a tour in Europe. The first show was held on 3 June.

On the Personal Note:

On 18 July 1994, O’Riordan married Don Burton, the former tour manager of Duran Duran. The couple had three children. In 1998, the couple bought a 61-hectare (150-acre) stud farm, called Riversfield Stud, located in Kilmallock, County Limerick, selling it in 2004. They then moved to Howth, County Dublin, and spent summers in a log cabin in Buckhorn, Ontario, Canada. In 2009, the family moved full-time to Buckhorn.

In August 2013, she returned to live in Ireland. She and Burton split up in 2014 after 20 years together, and subsequently divorced. She was raised as a Roman Catholic. Her mother was a devout Catholic who chose her daughter’s name in reference to the Lady of the Seven Dolours. Dolores admired Pope John Paul II, whom she met twice, in 2001 and 2002. She performed at the invitation of Pope Francis in 2013 at the Vatican’s annual Christmas concert.

In November 2014, O’Riordan was arrested and charged in connection with air rage on an Aer Lingus flight from New York to Shannon. During the flight she grew verbally and physically abusive with the crew. When police were arresting her after landing, she resisted, reminding them her taxes paid their wages and shouting “I’m the Queen of Limerick! I’m an icon!”, headbutting one Garda officer and spitting at another. Later she told the media that she had been stressed from living in New York hotels following the end of her 20-year marriage. The judge hearing her case agreed to dismiss all charges if she apologised in writing to those she injured and contributed €6,000 to the court poor box.

In May 2017, she publicly discussed her bipolar disorder, which she said had been diagnosed two years earlier. That same month, the Cranberries cited her back problems as the reason for cancelling the second part of the group’s European tour. In late 2017, O’Riordan said she was recovering and performed at a private event.

On 15 January 2018, at the age of 46, while in London for a recording session, Dolores O’Riordan died unexpectedly at the London Hilton on Park Lane hotel in Mayfair. The cause of death was accidental drowning in a bathtub, following sedation by alcohol intoxication.

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Eddie Shaw 1/2018

Eddie Shaw was born on March 20, 1937 in Stringtown, Mississippi. In his teenage years, Shaw played tenor saxophone with local blues musicians, such as Little Milton and Willie Love. At the age of 14, he played in a jam session in Greenville, Mississippi, with Ike Turner’s band. At a gig in Itta Bena, Mississippi, when the then 20-year-old Shaw performed, Muddy Waters invited him to join his Chicago-based band.

In Waters’s band, Shaw divided the tenor saxophone position with A.C. Reed. In 1972 he joined Howlin’ Wolf, leading his band, the Wolf Gang, and writing half the songs on The Back Door Wolf (1973). After the singer’s death in 1976 he took over the band and its residency at the 1815 Club, renamed Eddie’s Place. Shaw led the band on Living Chicago Blues Vol. 1 and Have Blues – Will Travel (1980) and recorded albums with different backing for Isabel Records, Rooster Blues, and Wolf Records.

Shaw’s own recording career started in the late 1970s, with an appearance on the Alligator Records anthology Living Chicago Blues (1978) and his own LPs for Evidence and Rooster Blues, and more recent discs for Rooster Blues (In the Land of the Crossroads) and Wolf (Home Alone).

Shaw’s many contributions to the blues included arranging tracks for The London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions (which featured Eric Clapton, Bill Wyman, Ringo Starr and others) and performing with blues notables, including Hound Dog Taylor, Freddie King, Otis Rush and Magic Sam (on his Black Magic album).

In 2013 and 2014, Shaw won the Blues Music Award in the category Instrumentalist – Horn. May 3 is Eddie Shaw Day in Chicago, by proclamation of Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Shaw died on January 29, 2018, at the age of 80.
One of his sons, Eddie “Vaan” Shaw Jr. (born November 6, 1955), joined the Wolf Gang and played on some of his father’s recordings. A disciple of Wolf’s protégé Hubert Sumlin who passed away on December 4, 2011, he has recorded two albums of his own – Morning Rain and The Trail of Tears.

Another son, Stan Shaw (born 1952), is a character actor based in Hollywood, California. (this made him father at the age of 15!)

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Ray Thomas 1/2018

Ray Thomas (76) -The Moody Blues- was born in Stourport-on-Severn, England on December 29, 1941.
His father taught him at the age of nine to play harmonica, and this sparked his interest in music. He joined the school choir a year later. He quit schooling at the age of 14, and briefly left music to work as a toolmaking trainee at Lemarks. By the age of 16 he had embarked on a search for a music band, and within two years had left his trade to pursue a career in music.

In the 1960s, Thomas joined the Birmingham Youth Choir then began singing with various Birmingham blues and soul groups including The Saints and Sinners and The Ramblers. Thomas began his true musical career with El Riot and the Rebels where he met future Moody Blues bandmate John Lodge. Mike Pinder also joined a couple of years later. On Easter Monday 1963 they opened for the Beatles at the Bridge Hotel, Tenbury Wells.
The band however broke up when Lodge went to college and Pinder entered the army. After his release, Thomas and Pinder began playing together again in the Krew Kuts, eventually bringing in Denny Laine, Graeme Edge and Clint Warwick to form the Moody Blues.
This original version of the band had an international monster hit in 1965 with their second single “Go Now” and followed with their debut album, The Magnificent Moodies but subsequent releases did not do well and, when Warwick retired from music and Laine left the group, they effectively disbanded.

In November 1966, a second version of the Moody Blues formed with the addition of Lodge and Justin Hayward and the head of Decca Records charged them with recording a rock version of Dvorak’s New World Symphony. While that project was never completed, it did set the band on the road to orchestral accompanied rock which came to fruition with their album Days of Future Passed.
Thomas began writing music for the band around this time with the new album including his songs “Another Morning” and “Twilight Time”. He would go on to write other group favorites including “Legend of a Mind”, “Dr. Livingstone, I Presume”, “Dear Diary”, “Are You Sitting Comfortably?” and “For My Lady”.

Between 1967 and 1972, the Moody Blues released seven albums that have gone on to become classics of progressive and orchestral rock including In Search of the Lost Chord, A Question of Balance, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour and Seventh Sojourn but, in 1974, they broke up, allowing Thomas to test the solo waters with the albums From Mighty Oaks (1975) and Hopes, Wishes and Dreams (1976).
The Moody Blues reformed in 1977 and continued to release albums but Thomas’ contributions began to diminish as they moved to a more modern sound in the 80’s. Ray did contribute to their albums during the 90’s but, due to failing health, Thomas stopped touring around the millennium and he left the band in 2002. Hayward and Lodge continued along with Edge, but somehow the magic’s been lost, if only the Moody Blues had all died in a plane crash, they’d be legendary today, living to old age kills your career.

But the Moodys not only had a long run, they also started their own genre, which could be labeled, “symphonic rock,” “art rock,” “classical rock”? They were not limited by trends, so they went their own way, and won. In spite of the fact that they could not be pigeonholed. The band could not be categorized. The band was not destroying hotel rooms. There was little personal mystery, few shenanigans, only music.

Ray Thomas’ contributions were overshadowed by the giants Justin Hayward and John Lodge became. Still he was the dignified guy who played the flute… But in hindsight, he was an integral member of the Moody Blues, and provided leavening no other member could, his compositions were not only for royalties, they added flavor.

Although Thomas most commonly played flute, he was a multi-instrumentalist, who also played piccolo, oboe, harmonica, saxophone, and, on the album In Search of the Lost Chord, the French horn. He frequently played tambourine and also shook maracas during the group’s R&B phase. The 1972 video for “I’m Just a Singer (In a Rock and Roll Band)” features Thomas playing the baritone saxophone, but it is unclear if he actually did play on the recording.

In October 2013, Thomas announced that he had been diagnosed with inoperable prostate cancer and was being treated with an experimental drug.

It is not sure if the Moody Blues will ever have a renaissance, they really haven’t even gotten their victory lap, but if you were a fan, and they were legion, the band holds a special place in your heart, there was no competition, they set your mind free, took you on an adventure, AND IT ALL SOUNDED SO GOOD!

Ray Thomas was not a footnote. The Moody Blues were not an also-ran. They were part of the fabric when music drove the culture and ruled the world. And in the eyes and ears of those who were there…

Ray Thomas, the singer and multi-instrumentalist for the Moody Blues, died from a heart attack on Thursday January 4, 2018 after a multi-year battle with prostate cancer. He was 76. He was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as a member of the Moody Blues, just a few months after his death.