Greg Kihn (75) – Greg Kihn Band – was born in Baltimore on July 10, 1949 to parents Stanley J. Kihn, a city Health Department inspector who fought in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II, and Jane (Gregorek) Kihn. Kihn’s early influence was the Beatles and their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
“Just about every rock and roll musician my age can point to one cultural event that inspired him to take up music in the first place: The Beatles on Ed Sullivan. If you were a shy 14-year-old kid who already had a guitar, it was a life-altering event… In a single weekend everything had changed. I’d come home from school the previous Friday looking like Dion Dimucci. I went back to class on Monday morning with my hair dry and brushed forward. That’s how quickly it happened.”
Wayne Kramer 2/2024 (75) was born Wayne Stanley Kambes in Detroit on April 30, 1948. He had a typically nomadic post-World War II upbringing. His parents divorced when he was young, and Kramer’s father, Stanley, effectively disappeared from his life. Raised by his mother and stepfather, the young Wayne sought solace in the seismic sounds of 50s rock’n’roll, apparently as a reaction to being abused by his stepfather and as a result turned to music as an outlet.
In the music of the era there was one pioneering figure in particular shaping the course of his future.
“Quite simply, Chuck Berry was the reason I played guitar,” Karmer enthused in the sleevenotes for Rhino’s The Big Bang! The Best Of The MC5. “When I heard that sound when I was nine years old, that was it. That was the sound of liberation, the sound of release and of power. And I mean the electric guitar. The sound of the amplifier was a huge part of it for me. That visceral spirit formed me and got me into bands.”
While in his early teens, Wayne found a fellow disciple in childhood neighbour and friend Fred Smith. Obsessed with their instruments, the two young guitarists played with a variety of local acts and sought out the hardest and most dynamic rock’n’roll records they could find (they took their cues from The Rolling Stones as well as Chuck Berry) before forming their own band in Lincoln Park-Michigan, christened MC5. Short for “Motor City 5”, the name reflected urban Detroit’s primary industry – the manufacture of automobiles.
By 1965, MC5’s classic line-up had solidified, with Kramer and Smith joined by bassist Michael Davis, drummer Dennis Tomich and vocalist Bobby Derminer. The latter was responsible for doling out more fitting stage names to his bandmates. Having rechristened himself Rob Tyner (after John Coltrane’s pianist McCoy Tyner), the afro-sporting singer invented Fred “Sonic” Smith for Smith, Dennis “Machine Gun” Thompson for Tomich and suggested Wayne adopt the surname “Kramer” instead of Kambes. Wayne did so, legally changing his name in 1965.
During the early years, MC5 gigged constantly in and around the US Midwest. In the same way that punk later connected with the disenfranchised, the group established a solid fanbase among North America’s working-class communities.
“In Detroit, we ruled,” Kramer later asserted. “Our fans were the blue-collar shop rats and factory kids, and they connected with the energy and release in the MC5’s live shows. But our band was generally despised outside of the industrial Midwest power-base cities of Cleveland, Chicago and Cincinnati – and the hundreds of small towns across Michigan, Ohio and Indiana.”
Prior to signing with Elektra, MC5 released a couple of singles – the first a crunching cover of Them’s I Can Only Give You Everything, issued on AMG Records in 1967, with the follow-up pairing two self-penned songs, Borderline and Looking At You, for the small A-Squared imprint. However, while the records sold well locally, MC5’s attitude didn’t go down well with the era’s studio personnel – with Kramer in particular butting heads with the technicians attempting to tame the group’s sound for record.
In The Big Bang sleevenotes, Kramer wrote, “I’d start working on my guitar tone and the engineer would say, ‘Turn that down, it’s distorted!’ I said, ‘That’s what I want!’, that the Motown sound is not what I do. I wasn’t looking for a tight sound, I have my own ideas. So we had an adversarial relationship with the recording process from the beginning.”
In another future portent of punk music, MC5’s radical socio-political stance also concerned the powers that be. Until he was controversially jailed for the possession of a minimal amount of marijuana in 1969, poet, visionary free-thinker and activist John Sinclair, managed the band, whose collective world view was influenced by the Marxism of the Black Panther Party and Beat Generation poets such as Allen Ginsberg. Black Panther founder Huey Newton inspired Sinclair, who died exactly two months after Wayne Kramer, to found the White Panther Party, whose ideas seemed radical to the era’s establishment, but now chime with modern-day beliefs surrounding ecology and human rights.
“The White Panther Party was an anti-racist, cultural revolutionary group,” Kramer wrote in his book The Hard Stuff. “It was a logical extension of our reefer-fuelled political ideas and it was done in the spirit of agitprop theatre. John [Sinclair] wrote up a ‘Ten-Point Programme’ to fight for a cleaner planet and for the freeing of all political prisoners.”
Fortunately, Elektra Records weren’t put off by MC5’s revolutionary spirit. After John Sinclair told the label’s director of publicity (and future Ramones co-manager) Danny Fields about the band on a US radio show, an intrigued Fields went to see MC5 play in Detroit and was impressed enough to sign the band to Elektra in the late summer of 1968. With thoughts turning to the group’s debut album, the two parties bucked industry trends by deciding that their first record, Kick Out The Jams, should be a recording of one of their concerts. “The live show was the central experience [of the MC5],” Kramer explained later. “That was who we were. We wanted to present that on record.”
Featuring several of the best MC5 songs, including Come Together, the Kramer-sung Ramblin’ Rose and the ferocious title track, the charged, raucous and aggressive Kick Out The Jams was taped at one of the band’s many rapturously received gigs at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom, on 31 October 1968. Now widely regarded as a landmark proto-punk record, the album captured MC5’s garage-rock blitz in all its glory, and it even cracked the Top 30 of the US Billboard 200, staying on the chart for an impressive 23-week run. Rolling Stone Magazine considers the album one of the 500 albums that defined Rock and Roll.
However, because of the title song’s infamously controversial opening exclamation – “Kick out the jams, motherfuckers!” – influential Detroit chain store JL Hudson’s banned the record and went on to remove all Elektra product from its shelves. In a series of events that seemed to presage the scenario which unfolded when EMI sacked Sex Pistols following their notorious Bill Grundy incident just seven years later, Elektra then decided to drop the MC5 – only for the band to immediately find a new home with Atlantic Records.
Though still featuring songs with socio-political content such as The American Ruse and the anti-war Human Being Lawnmower, MC5’s Atlantic debut, 1970’s Back In The USA, largely dialled back the polemics and concentrated on sharp, smart garage-pop anthems such as Tonight, Teenage Lust and High School. Overseen by producer and future Bruce Springsteen manager Jon Landau, the record had the mainstream in its sights, yet it only hit the outer reaches of the Billboard 200.
“Kramer was one half of the explosive twin-guitar attack that drove the Detroit band’s incendiary live performances, helping to set the stage and template for punk rock. They were at the heart of the band’s sound and the centerpiece of its notoriously loud and frenetic live performances. Wayne Kramer and Fred (Sonic) Smith teamed to provide the twin-guitar attack In ranking Kramer and Smith, together and separately, were of world class among the 250 greatest guitarists of all time. Rolling Stone said the two “worked together like the pistons of a powerful engine” to “kick their band’s legendarily high-energy jams deep into space while simultaneously keeping one foot in the groove.”
MC5 self-produced their third and final studio album, 1971’s High Time, with help from engineer Geoffrey Haslam. At least in the creative sense, the band were still hitting new peaks, as Kramer asserted in The Hard Stuff.
“We had enough excellent new material, and good ideas for how to go about recording it,” he wrote. “We finally had enough experience to know how to be creative in the recording studio. We could now combine the raw energy of Kick Out The Jams with the studio chops of Back In The USA, and have it sound like the MC5 on record.”
High Time undoubtedly contained some of MC5’s most imperious music. Sister Anne, Over And Over and Kramer’s Miss X all rank among the band’s finest work, while the brilliant, brass-enhanced Skunk (Sonicly Speaking) adroitly married high-octane proto-punk with the free jazz music both Kramer and Fred Smith admired so much. “We loved Sun Ra and Archie Shepp,” Kramer noted in The Big Bang’s booklet. “We didn’t see any other rock bands trying to work them in. Skunk pointed to the future of what the MC5 would look like. The problem was the MC5 was a band that didn’t have a future.”
Despite High Time’s quality and a burgeoning European following which took the band across the Atlantic for half a dozen tours, MC5 were consumed by a combination of personal issues and drug-related problems. They split after an ignominious final performance at their old stomping ground, Detroit’s Grande Ballroom, at the end of 1972, but by then Kramer – who was now gripped by a sizeable heroin habit – had other priorities.
The next few years were the worst of the guitarist’s life. Though he somehow kept performing with different musicians on Detroit’s club circuit, most of Kramer’s energies went into feeding his habit, which he maintained through drug-dealing and petty larceny until – after one deal too many – he ended up in prison in Lexington, Kentucky, where he did a three-year stretch starting in 1975.
Upon his release from jail, Kramer moved to New York City and restarted his career, touring with post-punk pop act Was (Not Was) and playing on the group’s first two albums, and forming the ill-fated Gang War with fellow heroin user Johnny Thunders. Keen to quit drugs for good, Kramer temporarily eschewed music, working as a carpenter in Manhattan before moving to the Florida Keys in the late 80s, where he continued woodworking and also built custom homes.
During the guitarist’s wilderness years, however, MC5’s music was repeatedly cited as an influence by younger generations of musicians. The process had started with the UK punk firebrands (“In England, they really liked Back In The USA – you can hear what The Clash, Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe got out of it,” Kramer noted in The Big Bang booklet) and it eventually led to Kramer’s stock rising in the US – so much so that Epitaph Records (home to Bad Religion, Rancid and The Offspring) offered him a solo deal. Relocating to Los Angeles, Kramer released three well-received albums for Epitaph, The Hard Stuff, Dangerous Madness and Citizen Wayne, and toured extensively during the mid-to-late 90s.
Succeeding in his quest to also quit alcohol in 1999, Kramer went on to enjoy distinctions in a variety of fields. He embarked upon a highly successful career scoring music for TV and film, with commissions ranging from HBO’s comedy series Eastbound & Down to Will Ferrell’s Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby. For the ITVS/PBS documentary The Narcotics Farm, Kramer provided narration in addition to a separate soundtrack album, Lexington.
In 2009, after he returned to performing and recording as a solo artist, he established Jail Guitar Doors U.S.A., a nonprofit that donates musical instruments to inmates and offers songwriting workshops in prisons, in partnership with his wife, Margaret, and the British singer-songwriter Billy Bragg. The name comes from “Jail Guitar Doors,” a song by the Clash that opens with a line about Wayne Kramer’s struggles with substance abuse and the law: “Let me tell you about Wayne and his deals of cocaine.” “The guitar can be the key that unlocks the cell,” Kramer told High Times in 2015. “It can be the key that unlocks the prison gate, and it could be the key that unlocks the rest of your life to give you an alternative way to deal with things.”
Kramer had a fruitful solo career with several album releases and movie credits. In 2018, he released his memoir “The Hard Stuff: Dope, Crime, the MC5, and My Life of Impossibilities,” which won him a Michigan’s Notable Book Award.
Kramer and the MC5’s Fred “Sonic” Smith, who died in 1994, were both among Rolling Stone’s 2010 list of all-time top 100 guitarists. They “funneled Sun Ra’s sci-fi jazz through twin howitzers. Together they staked out a vision for hard rock that felt ecstatic, giddy, boundless,” the outlet’s David Fricke wrote.
Even though MC5 did not achieve great commercial success, their influence lives on through generations of musicians who were inspired by the group’s attitude and sound. Led Zeppelin, The Clash and Rage Against the Machine are among bands influenced by the MC5.
When MC5 guitarist and co-founder Wayne Kramer passed away from cancer, aged 75, on 2 February 2024, the rock world was quick to pay tribute to one of modern music’s genuine trailblazers. Iconic figures ranging from Alice Cooper through to Slash from Guns N’ Roses weighed in with well-chosen words, while in an especially heartfelt testimonial, Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello even said that Kramer and MC5 “basically invented punk rock music.”
Kim Simmonds (Savoy Brown) was born Kim Maiden Simmonds on Dec. 5, 1947 in Caerphilly, Wales, to Henry Simmonds, an electrician, and Phyllis (Davies) Simmonds, a homemaker. As a child, he was drawn to the early rock ’n’ roll albums owned by his older brother, Harry, who later worked for Bill Haley’s British fan club. “My brother took me to see all the rock ’n’ roll movies,I grew up with all that: Little Richard, Bill Haley and, of course, Elvis.” By age 10 he had moved with his family to London, where his brother took him to jazz record stores that also sold blues albums. The singer and pianist Memphis Slim — one of the sophisticated blues guys that could keep one foot in the jazz world and one foot in the blues world became a favorite. Simmonds bought his first guitar at 13 and began imitating the blues licks on the records he loved. So intent was he on a music career that he never completed high school.
A chance meeting at a record shop in 1965 with the harmonica player John O’Leary led to the formation of what was initially called the Savoy Brown Blues Band. (The first word in the name echoed the name of an important American jazz and R&B label) The group’s initial lineup featured six players, two of them Black — the singer Brice Portius and the drummer Leo Manning — making them one of the few multiracial bands on the British rock scene of the 1960s. Continue reading Kim Simmonds – 12/2022
Wilko Johnson (Dr. Feelgood) was born John Andrew Wilkinson on 12 July 1947 in Canvey Island, Essex, UK. One of his earliest memories was of the 1953 floods, which hit low-lying Canvey badly and caused many deaths. His father, a gas-fitter, was “a stupid and uneducated and violent person”, according to his son, and died when Wilko was a teenager. Canvey became a romantic place in Johnson’s mind, with its lonely views of the Thames estuary overshadowed by the towers and blazing fires of the nearby Shell Haven oil refinery. Johnson and his contemporaries dubbed the area the Thames Delta, in homage to the Mississippi Delta, which spawned the blues musicians they admired. He first began playing the guitar after watching the Shadows on television, then later was inspired by Mick Green, guitarist with Johnny Kidd & the Pirates. Green’s knack for mixing up lead and rhythm guitar parts had a clear influence on Johnson’s technique. Wilko instinctively began to play left-handed, but forced himself to switch to right-handed. When he found that playing right-handed meant he could not hold a plectrum, he perfected a way of flicking his fingernails across the strings, which helped him to play the speedy, slashing rhythms that became his stock-in-trade. Continue reading Wilko Johnson – 11/2022
Ian McDonald (75) – King Crimson/Foreigner – was born on 25 June 1946 in Osterley, Middlesex, England, the son of Ada (née May) and Keith McDonald, an architect. He grew up in a musical family and taught himself the guitar. His music interests ranged from classical orchestra to dance bands to rock. At 15, he left school and began a five-year stint in the British Army as a bandsman. In 1963 he enrolled at the Royal Military School of Music at Kneller Hall, where he took clarinet and learned to read music. He later learned piano, flute and saxophone and taught himself music theory. His experience of playing with army bands gave him great musical adaptability as he had to learn many different musical styles such as show tunes, classical, jazz, and military marches. It was this that honed his style to what eventually became the beginnings of the Prog Rock movement.
After leaving the army, McDonald moved back to London, and began making music with his girlfriend, former Fairport Convention singer Judy Dyble. In May 1968 Ian McDonald placed an advert in Melody Maker which read: “Musicians wanted. Serious ones only.”
Among those who replied was guitarist Robert Fripp and drummer Michael Giles. It proved to be a seminal moment in prog rock that led to the birth of King Crimson. Blending elements of jazz, rock, proto-metal and symphonic music with avant-garde improvisation and complex time signatures, over the next few months the nascent group created a unique sound that was to change the face of popular music.
However, the relationship with Dyble ended and she left the band before they played their first gig in 1969, by which time McDonald, Fripp and Giles were joined by Greg Lake and lyricist Peter Sinfield.
King Crimson’s debut album The Court Of The Crimson King, was filled with McDonald’s multi-instrumental presence on flute, saxes, woodwind, vibraphone, various keyboards, and of course, arguably the album’s signature sound, the Mellotron. Alongside all of that technical virtuosity, built and honed during his stint as an army bandsman in the mid-1960s, Ian was blessed with an ability to write and compose, something he often did on guitar.
Three months after their first gig, they supported the Rolling Stones at their famous free concert in Hyde Park (with new guitarist . They stole the show, with The Guardian reporting that the Stones’ performance was “indifferent”, but that King Crimson were “sensational”. McDonald’s saxophone solo was a high point on their track “21st Century Schizoid Man“, and he went on to play this on their first album In the Court of the Crimson King.
The high point of the Hyde Park gig came when the entire audience of some 650,000 cheered McDonald’s blazing blitzkrieg of a saxophone solo during the band’s show-stopper 21st Century Schizoid Man. “I remember the hairs on the back of my neck rising as the roar from this huge crowd went up,” King Crimson roadie Richard Vickers remembered.
The album jump-started the progressive rock era, and paved the way for similar bands such as Yes and Genesis, Emerson, Lake, Palmer, Barclay James Harvest and the Moody Blues. McDonald composed 2 of the 5 album tracks, including the title track and “I Talk to the Wind” on which his jazzy flute solo is one of the album’s defining musical moments, and co-wrote the other 3 tracks with the other group members.
Yet within months, growing emotional friction within the group had led him to quit. Along with drummer Mike Giles, he left in the middle of King Crimson’s first US tour. “To keep the band together, I offered to leave instead,” Fripp said. “But Ian said that the band was more me than them.”. (McDonald later ).
McDonald later regretted his hasty decision and apologized to Fripp for leaving the band in 1970. “I was not quite ready for the attention we were getting and I wasn’t emotionally equipped to deal with what was going on,” he said. “I was away from home and it was a spontaneous decision. Perhaps I should have gone home and thought about it a little bit, but there you are.”
McDonald and Giles formed a duo that released one album titled McDonald and Giles, which featured an orchestral backing instead of a Mellotron as used with King Crimson.
Following McDonald And Giles the pair went their separate ways and McDonald’s next contribution to rock’n’roll history could not have been more different. If prog rock meant “taking different influences and expanding the basic combination of drums, guitar and bass”, as he put it, he promptly went back to just such basics when he turned up as a session player on T Rex’s 1971 glam-rock chart-topper Get It On, where he borrowed Mel Collins‘ baritone saxophone and, at the other end of the commercial spectrum, the free-jazz and rock ensemble opus, Septober Energy by Keith Tippett’s Centipede, underlining his view that all music had a value regardless of stylistic considerations. Production work beckoned including Canis Lupus by Darryl Way’s Wolf in 1973, and after his guest spot on King Crimson’s Red in 1974, he went on to produce Fruup’s Modern Masquerades in 1975 and American proggers’ Fireballet’s debut Night On Bald Mountain the same year.
There was a brief attempt to reunite with Fripp and King Crimson in 1974 but it led to nothing and after moving to New York City in 1976 McDonald became a founder-member of Foreigner. With a six-strong line-up of British and American musicians playing a classic, radio-friendly form of stadium rock, the band had huge hits with Feels Like the First Time, Cold As Ice and Hot Blooded. With Foreigner, McDonald played guitar as well as his woodwinds and keyboards.
He recorded three multi-platinum albums that made Foreigner one of the biggest-selling acts of the era before he was bounced out of the band by lead guitarist and main songwriter Mick Jones.
In 2002 McDonald teamed up with other King Crimson alumni in the 21st Century Schizoid Band, toured for three years and released several live albums.
He said of his chameleon career: “I just contribute to whatever situation I’m in and really it’s all the same to me. It’s music and I’ve been lucky to make it my life’s work.”
“One of the things I’ve always done when I’m recording a song is I ask myself, ‘Could I listen to this 500 times?’ So you have to be honest with yourself when you are making a record. All the while in the studio when we were recording the album I was thinking, ‘Will I still want to listen to this in 50 years’ time.’ So part of me was thinking 50 years ahead if you like.”
McDonald contributed saxophone and flute to several tracks on Judy Dyble‘s 2009 release Talking With Strangers. The album saw McDonald reunited with Fripp on the 20-minute “Harpsong”.
In 2017, McDonald, his son Maxwell and singer-guitarist Ted Zurkowski formed the band Honey West, which released an album Bad Old World in 2017, which he described as “an alt-country band with rock leanings”.
McDonald died from cancer at his home in New York City on Feb 9, 2022. He was 75 years old.
Rusty Young (75) – Poco – was born Feb 23, 1946 in Long Beach, California, but grew up in Denver, Colorado. He began playing lap steel guitar at age 6, and taught guitar and steel guitar lessons during his high school years at Jefferson High School, Lakewood, Colorado with George Grantham. By 16 or 17, he was keeping a schedule that would have left adult professionals panting. He taught lessons in a guitar studio in the afternoons and then played country music in bars until the wee hours of the morning. Then he would pack up and head to jam sessions, catching a few hours of sleep before it was time to go to high school. In 1966, he was surprised to get a call from a local rock band, the Boenzee Cryque. “Are you sure you want him?” Young’s mother apparently asked, “He’s in a country band you know.” Boenzee Cryque was about the most popular Denver rock band at the time and had done fairly well with several locally produced singles that were picked up by the psychedelic-obsessed Uni label. He worked with this band for two years, incorporating the pedal steel and utilizing some of his strange effects for the first time.
In the late 1960s, an acquaintance of Young’s, Miles Thomas, became the road manager for Buffalo Springfield. Richie Furay and Jim Messina needed a steel guitarist for the Furay ballad “Kind Woman” on their final album Last Time Aroundand after Thomas told Young about the opportunity, Young was hired. After Buffalo Springfield broke up Young and Randy Meisner (later of Eagles), Jim Messina (Loggins and Messina) and Richie Furay formed Poco with drummer George Grantham. Meisner quit a year later and was replaced with Timothy B. Schmit, who would also replace Randy later once again in Eagles. Along with Furay and Messina, Young became a founding member of Poco in 1968 upon the former band’s demise. Drummer George Grantham and bass player Randy Meisner rounded out the original Poco lineup.
“Richie had done country-rock with ‘A Child’s Claim to Fame’ and ‘Kind Woman’,” Young said in a 2014 interview. “That was the country part of the Springfield where Neil (Young) and Stephen (Stills) were way more rock ’n’ roll. You have to remember that in 1969, there weren’t synthesizers, so if you actually wanted a certain sound, you had to have a real musician playing. So that’s why I got involved — because I could play steel guitar and Dobro and banjo and mandolin, and pretty much all the country instruments except for fiddle. So I added color to Richie’s country-rock songs, and that was the whole idea, to use country-sounding instruments. Also, I pushed the envelope on steel guitar, playing it with a fuzz tone, because nobody was doing that, and playing it through a Leslie speaker like an organ, and a lot of people thought I was playing an organ, because they didn’t realize I was playing a steel guitar. So we were pushing the envelope in lots of different ways, instrumentally and musically overall.”
The band’s membership fluctuated over the years. After Furay left the group, Young took on more song writing responsibility, along with Paul Cotton andTimothy B. Schmit.
Young credited David Geffen for forcing him to become a singer-songwriter, after he’d initially only contributed a few songs to the band and never done any lead vocals on the early albums.
When it became clear that Furay was leaving to start up the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band, Young said, there was a meeting where Geffen “starts with Tim and says, ‘Now, Tim, you write songs and sing, don’t you?’ And Tim says, ‘Yes.’ So he says, ‘Well, don’t you worry about Richie leaving; you’ll be fine.’ And he looks at Paul, and he says, ‘You play guitar and sing and write songs, don’t you?’ And Paul says, ‘Yes.’ … Then he looked at me and George, and he looked me in the eye, and he said, ‘Now, you don’t sing, and you don’t write songs, do you?’ And I said, ‘No, I don’t.’ So he said, ‘Well, you’re in trouble.’ And that was the day I became a singer-songwriter, and if it weren’t for David Geffen saying that to me, it never would have happened, and I owe him greatly for that.”
Young is best known for writing the Poco songs “Rose of Cimarron” and “Crazy Love“. Actually Young wrote more than a dozen of the group’s most well-known songs.
“Crazy Love,” was named the No. 1 adult contemporary song of 1979. In a 2008 interview, Young said, “The only reason we’re talking now is ‘Crazy Love’. That was our first hit single. It’s a classic, and it still pays the mortgage.”
A reunion album in 1989, “Legacy,” brought Furay, Messina, Meisner and Grantham back into the Poco fold for a single project. The band was active until the end of the ’80s, but seemed to make less and less use of Young’s instrumental talents as the years went on.
Although based out of Nashville, Young avoided the recording session work that is the bread and butter of most pedal steel players in that area, due to the lack of space for experimentation. He could sometimes be heard playing solo at that city’s Bluebird Cafe in the ’90s and 2000s, but his main venture in the late ’90s was a trio with John Cowan and Bill Lloyd called Sky Kings. The group recorded an album for RCA Nashville in 1992 but the label shelved the record. Sky Kings then moved to Warner, releasing three singles in 1996, but their completed From Out of the Blue never saw release. Rhino Handmade would release the unheard Warner album in 2000, while Sony put out the RCA Nashville album as 1992 in 2014. Starting in the year 2000, a reunited Poco was Young’s main concern. The group released Running Horse in 2002 and toured steadily over the next decade — several live albums were released during this period and 2013’s All Fired Up.
In 2009, a handful of reunion shows saw Furay and Schmit returning, including an appearance at the Stagecoach Festival in California. Otherwise, the group carried on with Young as the sole remnant of the group’s original legacy.
In 2013, Young was inducted into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame. At the end of 2013, Young announced his, what turned out to be a short-lived, retirement and a desire to write his memoirs. However a few shows were booked into 2014 including three farewell shows in Florida. One of those shows was a performance in a recording studio in front of a live audience for a DVD document of the band’s live show. Young said there could be some one-offs in the future after that, but the band would not be actively touring as before. The final version of the band, which had Young backed by Jack Sundrud, Rick Lonow and Tom Hampton, was still performing more than 100 gigs a year.
The group celebrated its 50th anniversary reunion in 2017. Young released his first solo album, “Waitin’ For The Sun ” that same year. Young and Jack Sundrud wrote and recorded music for children’s story videos as the “Session Cats”. Young continued to do guest performances with former members of Poco and other country rock artists. Young then released new music “Listen to Your Heart”, in 2019 was released digitally and benefited a local Steelville, Missouri animal charity, Santana’s Hope for Paws (Friends of Steelville, MO Pound) Animal Shelter.
In 2020 Young reflected on his career saying, “I’ve been fortunate to have had a magical career. From the moment I was called to play on the Buffalo Springfield album, all through Poco, and now through my solo projects, things have just fallen into place. I’ve worked really hard to be the best I can be, and I think my music is the proof.”
Poco’s Rusty Young died on April 14, 2021 from a heart attack at age 75.
In a statement Blue Elan Records released, “It is with great sadness that we confirm the passing of Poco co-founder, Rusty Young, at the age of 75. Young suffered a heart attack last night. A beloved member of the Blue Élan Records family, Young was best known as the heart and soul of Poco – the band widely considered to be one of the founders of the classic Southern California country rock sound. Young was an integral member of the band throughout their influential six decade career.”
Ken Hensley, Uriah Heep, was born on August 24, 1945 in South-east London. He learned how to play guitar at the age of 12 from a Bert Weedon manual. His first gig was at The Mentmore Pen Factory, in Stevenage (September 1960). After that, he played with The Blue Notes, Ken and the Cousins and Kit and the Saracens (1962). In 1963, this band evolved into The Jimmy Brown Sound, and they recorded some now lost songs. At this time, Hensley’s first “professional” opportunity almost came about: they were to back Ben E. King on a British visit, but it never happened.
In early 1965, Hensley formed a band called The Gods, with the young guitarist Mick Taylor, well known later for his work with John Mayall and The Rolling Stones. Hensley wrote most of the material, sang and played the Hammond B3 organ as the band already had Taylor on guitar. The Gods’ line-up included, at one time or another, vocalist and guitar/bass player Greg Lake (later of King Crimson and Emerson, Lake & Palmer), bass player Paul Newton (later the first Uriah Heep bassist), drummer Lee Kerslake (later also of Heep), bassist John Glascock (later of Jethro Tull), and guitarist Joe Konas. In early 1968, they signed with Columbia Records and recorded two LPs and several singles.
Hensley also then played on a one-album side project of The Gods initially planned to become their third album, but was recorded and eventually released in 1969/1970 under the moniker Head Machine’s Orgasm. The album was produced by David Paramor (producer of “The Gods”) and both Hensley and Kerslake featured, along with John Glascock on bass, Brian Glascock on drums, and David Paramor on vocals, all under pseudonyms. Hensley played mostly guitar again, as in the beginning of his career. Although Paramor was credited as composer, the songs bear many of Hensley’s influences. The album was released before Hensley joined Toe Fat, and might almost be considered a prototype for the harder side of his future work in Uriah Heep.
The band eventually split but Cliff Bennett, from the Rebel Rousers, decided to move in a more “progressive” direction and asked The Gods to join him. Under the name Toe Fat they released two LPs, but only the first featured Hensley.
Paul Newton asked Hensley (Christmas 1969) to join forces in Spice, as they were looking for a keyboard player to make their sound less bluesy and more progressive, in keeping with the current trend. In January 1970, Spice changed its name into Uriah Heep. Also in the line-up were guitarist Mick Box and vocalist David Byron. With Uriah Heep, Hensley found a place to develop and showcase his songwriting and lyrical abilities as well as his keyboard and guitar playing.
The band’s “classic” line-up featured Hensley, Byron, Box, Kerslake and bassist Gary Thain. During his time with Heep (1970–1980), they recorded 13 studio albums, and the live album Uriah Heep Live – January 1973 along with many compilations and singles. Hensley also recorded his first two solo albums, Proud Words on a Dusty Shelf (1973) and Eager To Please (1975) during this time. He was supported mainly by Mark Clarke and Bugs Pemberton.
In 1980 Hensley left the band, unhappy with the musical direction they had chosen. After trying to put a new band together in the UK (Shotgun), he later moved to the US and played a few gigs in North America as The Ken Hensley Band. Around this time he released his third solo LP, Free Spirit (1980).
In 1982, Hensley joined Blackfoot, a hard rock Jacksonville, Florida-based band. With them, he recorded two albums (1983’s Siogo and 1984’s Vertical Smiles). Although the group had achieved some success, Hensley left after he was informed him of Heep vocalist David Byron’s death in 1985.
After 1985, Hensley lived in semi-retirement in St Louis, Missouri, making a few appearances with W.A.S.P., Cinderella and others. W.A.S.P.’s frontman Blackie Lawless stated that “Ken Hensley wrote the rule book for heavy metal keyboards as far as I’m concerned.” Hensley also owned “The Attic” Recording studio in St. Louis.
IIn 1997 Ken established The Upper Room Studios in St. Louis, Missouri where Ken was involved with several projects including A Glimpse of Glory, together with his band Visible Faith produced by Ken and engineered by chief engineer Bud Martin. In 1999, Hensley’s musical activities began to increase, besides his work with St Louis Music.
During the fourth Uriah Heep Annual Convention in London, May 2000, plans were made for a one-off concert by the so-called “Hensley/Lawton Band”. Hensley was joined by former Uriah Heep singer John Lawton, their first public collaboration since the latter’s departure from Uriah Heep in 1979. With them were Paul Newton (the band’s original bassist) and two members of Lawton’s band, Reuben Kane on lead guitar and Justin Shefford on drums. They played a set of old Uriah Heep classics and some of Hensley’s solo songs, and the concert was recorded for a CD release, followed by an extensive tour of Europe during Spring and Summer of 2001 culminating with a concert on 12 May in Hamburg, Germany, featuring a full orchestra and a new rendition of Heep’s old classic song “Salisbury”. After the tour, both Ken and John returned to their respective solo careers.
On 7 December 2001, both John Lawton and Ken Hensley appeared on stage with Uriah Heep during the annual Magician’s Birthday Party at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London. This concert was recorded and released as a CD/DVD.
Running Blind, his first studio effort in 21 years, was released worldwide in 2002 and followed by a world tour with his band called “Free Spirit”, that included Dave Kilminster (guitar), Andy Pyle (bass) and Pete Riley (drums).
After moving to Spain, Hensley released The Last Dance (with new songs), The Wizard’s Diary (Uriah Heep classics re-recorded in 2004) and Cold Autumn Sunday (Hensley’s solo songs re-recorded in 2005).
In September 2008, Hensley went on stage again with former Heep bandmates Lawton, Kerslake and Newton along with ex-Focus guitarist Jan Dumée, for the “Heepvention 2008” fans meeting.
Hensley continued to write and record a series of new albums, beginning with a collection of songs under the title of Love & Other Mysteries, recorded near his home in Spain and followed in 2011 by Faster, his first studio recording of new songs with his live band, Live Fire. A CD of one of his solo concerts was released by Cherry Red Records in 2013, shortly followed by a live CD recorded with Live Fire during a September/October tour. Trouble, an album of 10 new songs recorded with a revised Live Fire line-up, was released, again by Cherry Red, in September the same year.
In later years, Hensley and his wife Monica lived in the village of Agost near Alicante in Spain.
Hensley died on 4 November 2020, at the age of 75 following a short illness. He had finished an album titled My Book of Answers before his death, that was released on 5 March 2021.Ken Hensley wrote many of the Uriah Heep songs during his tenure from 1970 to 1980, performing guitar and lead vocals on a number of occasions.
Phil May (75) – Lead singer for the Pretty Things – was born Philip Dennis Arthur Wadey, later Kattner on 9 November 1944 in Dartford, Kent, England. He was raised by his aunt and uncle, whose surname was May. In childhood, he was sent back to live with his mother and stepfather, whose surname was Kattner, but later decided to change his name to May.
He formed the Pretty Things at Sidcup Art College in 1963 with guitarist Dick Taylor, a former bass player with an early incarnation of The Rolling Stones, when both bands were an integral part of the London blues-rock explosion. Keith Richards had also gone to Sidcup College and May, Taylor and the Stones’ then leader Brian Jones all shared a house.
With May as lead singer, the band became part of the British blues rock scene and quickly gained a recording contract. Initially an energetic R&B outfit, they had a string of hits in the mid-1960s, “Don’t Bring Me Down” (nr.10) and “I’m a Road Runner Honey”. Playing raw and visceral rhythm and blues, they threatened to upstage the Rolling Stones as the bad boys of rock in those early days, although they never reached a commercial successful level.
In the late 1960s, The Pretty Things started to branch out into psychedelia and May became a prominent counterculture figure, known for his claim of having “the longest hair in Britain”, drug-taking and bisexuality. The 1968 albumS.F. Sorrow, which was released on the Motown imprint Rare Earth, was regarded as the first rock opera album. The songs and lyrics were based on stories written by May, which were often composed while the album was being recorded. May later admitted that his usage of LSD had a major impact on the album, saying “”It was like a sharpening of the imagination for me. I don’t think S.F. Sorrow would have been impossible without it, but there’s a lot of acid in the imagery.” The album was not commercially successful at the time, but later became a cult favorite.
“We thought we were making something special. It was to give you an experience, so you move from cradle to grave with somebody’s life – which they give you in opera all the time,” says Phil May, the singer in The Pretty Things. “In some ways, that added bitterness to the pill when it was ignored.”
They influenced David Bowie, who references them in his song, Oh You Pretty Things, and covered Rosalyn and Don’t Bring Me Down on his 1973 album, Pin Ups. The likes of Jimi Hendrix, Aerosmith and Van Morrison were acolytes of the wild boys of pop, who enjoyed not only chart success but a phenomenal 55-year-long career.
May remained with the Pretty Things until they retired in 2018, following a final concert with guests including David Gilmour and Van Morrison. He was one of the band’s main lyricists. He was the primary lyricist for the album S.F. Sorrow.
This longevity was very much down to the controversial, enigmatic May. In many ways he proved to be the stereotypical pop star, but also a performer who came to define counterculture itself.
In 1976 a new group called the Fallen Angels, led by guitarist Mickey Finn, with Greg Ridley from Spooky Tooth and Humble Pie, Twink from the Pretty Things, and Bob Weston from Fleetwood Mac set out to record an album and for vocals recruited May. However, after they had recorded only eight partially complete songs, all except May abandoned the project. May recruited some more players to complete the album Phil May and the Fallen Angels, which was then only released in the Netherlands.
“Before Led Zeppelin, The Who, or even the Rolling Stones arrived on the scene … the Pretty Things were the acknowledged perpetrators of mayhem, outrage and general carnage. Musically and visually they were well ahead of their time.”
May loved the rock n’roll lifestyle and revelled in friendships with the likes of Jimi Hendrix, with whom he shared a bill on the Parisian student circuit, as well as girlfriends.
When chart success waned in the mid-Seventies, the band continued to tour, having joined Led Zeppelin’s Swansong label. “During our Led Zeppelin years, the Pretty Things played at an infamous LA venue called the Roxy and Iggy Pop came along,” May recalled. “The Stooges were massive fans of The Pretties and we used to hang out together. We thought he was going to sing. But he didn’t, he just ran from one side of the stage to the other and head-butted the wall.”
The Pretties sold fewer records but still packed venues. May continued to have immense fun. “Viv Prince, in his madness, once said to me, ‘We’re going out on a double date, you and me.’ I said, ‘Oh right. Who is it?’ He said, ‘Judy Garland, and she’s bringing somebody for you.’
“So we go down to a club called the Ad Lib, and we’re sitting around and the lift doors open and there’s Judy – a bit gone on the sauce already – and she’s got Rudy Nureyev on her arm. So I say, ‘Thanks, Viv. Is that what you call a double date?’ Everybody wanted to know who slept with whom, but I honestly can’t remember. Wish I could.”
Phil May died on 15 May 2020 at the age of 75 after suffering from complications following hip surgery after a cycling accident.
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 Ridleyand which Gary Wrightthen 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.
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 successand 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
January 23, 2017 – Marvell Thomas was born in Memphis Tennessee on August 22, 1941. The Thomas family is rooted in music and especially Memphis Soul. Legendary rock and roll pioneer Rufus (Walking the Dog) was his dad. His sisters Carla and Vaneese were much noted, especially Carla (the Queen of Memphis Soul) reached superstardom.
The eldest child of Rufus and Lorene Thomas, Marvell was born in 1941 and grew up in the shadow of Beale Street, where his father performed. “You could call it a second home,” Thomas said in 2011. “It was just three blocks from our house. I was a little kid, 5 years old, running up and down Beale Street all the time, much to my parents’ chagrin when they found out. Of course, I was there a lot legitimately too, when my father was hosting the talent show every Thursday night at the Palace Theatre.”Continue reading Marvell Thomas 1/2017
November 12, 2016 – Leon Russell was born Claude Russell Bridges in Lawton, Okla., on April 2, 1941. An injury to his upper vertebrae at birth caused a slight paralysis on his right side that would shape his music, since a delayed reaction time forced him to think ahead about what his right hand would play.
He started classical piano lessons when he was 4 years old, played baritone horn in his high school marching band and also learned trumpet. At 14 he started gigging in Oklahoma; since it was a dry state at the time, he could play clubs without being old enough to drink. Soon after he graduated from high school, Jerry Lee Lewis hired him and his band to back him on tour for two months.
January 15, 2015 – Kim Fowley was born into an acting family in Los Angeles on July 21st 1939 and attended the University High School at the same time as singers Jan Berry and Dean Torrence, Nancy Sinatra, Bruce Johnston, as well as actors Ryan O’Neal, James Brolin and Sandra Dee. In 1957, he was diagnosed suffering with polio but, and after realize from treatment became manager and publicist for a local band The Sleepwalkers which included Bruce Johnston, drummer Sandy Nelson and, occasionally, Phil Spector. In his early days he worked in various capacities for both Alan Freed and Berry Gordy. His first record as producer was “Charge” by The Renegades.
He also worked on occasion as a recording artist in the 1960s, with Gary S. Paxton, he recorded the novelty song “Alley Oop”, which reached No. 1 on the charts in 1960 and he was credited to the non-existent group The Hollywood Argyles.
June 19, 2014 – Gerald “Gerry” Goffin was born in Brooklyn, New York on February 11, 1939 and grew up in Queens. He enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve after graduating from Brooklyn Technical High School. After spending a year at the U.S. Naval Academy, he resigned from the Navy to study chemistry at Queens College.
While attending Queens College in 1958 he met Carol Klein, who had started writing songs under the name Carole King. They began collaborating on songwriting, with Carol writing the music and Gerry the lyrics, and…. began a relationship. Goffin had written the lyrics for a musical but needed someone to write the music. King didn’t like musicals; she liked rock ‘n’ roll. King was driven; Goffin went along. When King became pregnant, they married in August 1959, he was 20 and she was 17.
February 21, 2013 – Magic Slim was born Morris Holt on August 7, 1937 in Torrance near Grenada, Mississippi. The son of sharecroppers, he followed blues greats such as Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf to Chicago, claiming and developing his own place in the Chicago blues scene.
He gave up the piano and turned to guitar after losing his right pinky finger in a cotton gin accident at age 13. In 1955 he moved to Chicago with his friend and mentor Magic Sam. The elder, Magic Sam/Samuel Maghett let Morris play bass in his band, and gave him his nickname Magic Slim.
However, he soon returned to Mississippi to work and got his younger brother Nick interested in playing bass.
By 1965 he was back in Chicago and in 1970 brother Nick joined him in his group, the Teardrops. Slim’s recording career began in 1966, with the song “Scufflin'”, followed by a number of singles leading into the mid 1970s.
August 2, 2009 – Billy Lee Riley was born on October 5, 1933 in Pocahontas, Arkansas, and taught to play guitar by black farm workers.
After a four year stint he first recorded in Memphis, Tennessee in 1955 before joining Sam Phillips at Sun Studios. His first hit was “Flyin’ Saucers Rock and Roll” / “I Want You Baby” in early 1957 after which he recorded “Red Hot” /”Pearly Lee” released in September 1957 both backed by Jerry Lee Lewis on piano.
June 14, 2009 – Bob Bogle (The Ventures) was born on Jan 16, 1934 near Wagoner, Oklahoma. After leaving school at 15 he worked as a bricklayer in California.
In 1958, while working on different construction sites he met up with fellow mason worker Don Wilson in Seattle, the two formed a band called The Versatones. The duo played small clubs, beer bars, and private parties throughout the Pacific Northwest. They recruited bassist Nokie Edwards, Skip Moore on drums and changed their name to the Ventures.
March 2, 2003 – Hank Ballard was born John Henry Kendricks in Detroit, Michigan on November 18, 1927, but, along with his brother, Dove Ballard, grew up and attended school in Bessemer, Alabama after the death of their father.He lived with his paternal aunt and her husband, and began singing in church. His major vocal inspiration during his formative years was the “Singing Cowboy”, Gene Autry, and in particular, his signature song, “Back in the Saddle Again”. During the 1960s, Ballard’s cousin, Florence Ballard, was a member of the Detroit girl group The Supremes.
Ballard returned to Detroit in his teens and later worked on the assembly line for Ford Motor Company. In 1951, he formed a doo-wop group and was discovered by the legendary band leader Johnny Otis, and was signed to sing with a group called The Royals. The group changed its name to The Midnighters to avoid confusion with The “5” Royales.
Greg Kihn (75) – Greg Kihn Band – was born in Baltimore on July 10, 1949 to parents Stanley J. Kihn, a city Health Department inspector who fought in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II, and Jane (Gregorek) Kihn. Kihn’s early influence was the Beatles and their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
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.
January 23, 2017 – Marvell Thomas was born in Memphis Tennessee on August 22, 1941. The Thomas family is rooted in music and especially Memphis Soul. Legendary rock and roll pioneer Rufus (Walking the Dog) was his dad. His sisters Carla and Vaneese were much noted, especially Carla (the Queen of Memphis Soul) reached superstardom.
January 15, 2015 – Kim Fowley was born into an acting family in Los Angeles on July 21st 1939 and attended the University High School at the same time as singers Jan Berry and Dean Torrence, Nancy Sinatra, Bruce Johnston, as well as actors Ryan O’Neal, James Brolin and Sandra Dee. In 1957, he was diagnosed suffering with polio but, and after realize from treatment became manager and publicist for a local band The Sleepwalkers which included Bruce Johnston, drummer Sandy Nelson and, occasionally, Phil Spector. In his early days he worked in various capacities for both Alan Freed and Berry Gordy. His first record as producer was “Charge” by The Renegades.
February 21, 2013 – Magic Slim was born Morris Holt on August 7, 1937 in Torrance near Grenada, Mississippi. The son of sharecroppers, he followed blues greats such as Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf to Chicago, claiming and developing his own place in the Chicago blues scene.
August 2, 2009 – Billy Lee Riley was born on October 5, 1933 in Pocahontas, Arkansas, and taught to play guitar by black farm workers.
March 2, 2003 – Hank Ballard was born John Henry Kendricks in Detroit, Michigan on November 18, 1927, but, along with his brother, Dove Ballard, grew up and attended school in Bessemer, Alabama after the death of their father.
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