Tag: 82

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Lou Christie 6/2025

Lou Christie (82) was born Lugee Alfredo Giovanni Sacco on February 19, 1943, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He won a scholarship to the Moon Area High School, he studied music and voice, served as student conductor of the choir and sang solos at holiday concerts. His teacher, Frank Cummings, wanted him to pursue a career in classical music, but Sacco wanted to cut a record to get on American Bandstand. At age 15 he met and befriended Twyla Herbert, a classically trained musician 20 years his senior, who became his regular songwriting partner and wrote hundreds of songs with him over the next 40 years until her death in 2009.  In 1962 they penned “The Gypsy Cried,” which he recorded on a two-track recorder in his garage. The single became a local phenomenon, and was eventually licensed for national release by the Roulette label, peaking at number 24 on the pop charts in 1963.

“I never worked with anyone else who was that talented, that original, that exciting,” Christie told Goldmine magazine in 2005. “She was just bizarre, and I was twice as bizarre as her.”

Still as Sacco he performed with several vocal groups and between 1959 and 1962 released several records on small Pittsburgh labels, achieving a local hit with “The Jury” by Lugee & The Lions (a group consisting of Sacco, Twyla Herbert’s daughter Shirley, and two others) released on the Robbee label. After graduating from high school in 1961, Sacco relocated to New York City and worked as a session vocalist.

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Brian Wilson 6/2025

Brian Wilson (82) – The Beach Boys – was born June 20, 1942 in Inglewood, California, the first child of pianist Audree Korthof and Murry Wilson, a machinist who later pursued songwriting part-time. Wilson, along with his siblings, suffered psychological and sporadic physical maltreatment from their father. His 2016 memoir characterizes his father as “violent” and “cruel”; however, it also suggests that certain narratives about the mistreatment had been overstated or unfounded.

From an early age, Wilson exhibited an aptitude for learning by ear. His father remembered how, after hearing only a few verses of “When the Caissons Go Rolling Along“, young Wilson was able to reproduce its melody. His father Murry was a driving force in cultivating his children’s musical talents. Wilson undertook six weeks of accordion lessons, and by ages seven and eight, he performed choir solos at church. His choir director declared him to have perfect pitch. One of Wilson’s first forays into songwriting, penned when he was nine, was a reinterpretation of the lyrics to Stephen Foster‘s “Oh! Susannah“.

At age 12, his family acquired an upright piano, and he began teaching himself to play piano by spending hours mastering his favorite songs. He learned how to write manuscript music through a friend of his father. Wilson sang with peers at school functions, as well as with family and friends at home, and guided his two brothers in learning harmony parts, which they would rehearse together. He also played piano obsessively after school, deconstructing the harmonies of the Four Freshmen by listening to short segments of their songs on a phonograph, then working to recreate the blended sounds note by note on the keyboard.

I got so into The Four Freshmen. I could identify with Bob Flanigan‘s high voice. He taught me how to sing high. I worked for a year on The Four Freshmen with my hi-fi set. I eventually learned every song they did.

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Sly Stone 6/2025

Sly Stone (82) – Sly and the Family Stone – was born Sylvester Stewart on March 15, 1943 in Denton, Texas, before the family’s move to Vallejo, California, in the North Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. He was the second of five children born to K.C. and Alpha Stewart, a deeply religious middle class couple, raising their children on music. Sylvester was identified as a musical prodigy. By the time he was seven, he had already become proficient on the keyboards, and by the age of eleven, he had mastered the guitar, bass, and drums as well.

As a teenager he had settled essentially on the guitar and joined a number of high school bands. One of these was the Viscaynes, a doo-wop group in which Sylvester and his friend Frank Arellano—who was Filipino—were the only non-white members. The fact that the group was integrated made the Viscaynes “hip” in the eyes of their audiences, and would later inspire Sylvester’s idea of the multicultural Family Stone. The Viscaynes released a few local singles, including “Yellow Moon” and “Stop What You’re Doing”; during the same period, Sylvester also recorded a few solo singles under the name Danny Stewart. With his brother, Fred, he formed several short-lived groups, like the Stewart Bros. After high school Stone studied music at the Vallejo campus of Solano Community College.

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Mike Pinder 4/2024

Mike Pinder (82) – The Moody Blues –  was born in Erdington, Birmingham on 27 December 1941. His father, Bert, was a coach driver and his mother, Gladys (née Lay), was a barmaid. As a child, he had an affinity for rocket ships and outer space which earned him the nickname “Mickey the Moon Boy”. These interests would be recurring themes throughout his career as a song writer. (Mickey the Moonboy. In 1995 Mike got a personal tour at NASA and a treasured memento.)

He was a member of several bands in Birmingham in his teenage years, among them the Checkers, who won first prize of £50 in a talent competition. In his first band, rock’n’roll combo El Riot and the Rebels, Pinder played support to the Beatles in 1963 in a show at Tenbury. As a member of the short-lived Krew Kats, he played for two months in clubs in Hamburg where the Beatles had played.

Between 1962–63, Pinder worked for 18 months as a development engineer, responsible for testing and quality control, at Streetly Electronics in Streetly, Birmingham, a factory manufacturing the first models of Mellotron in the UK. In May 1964 he left Streetly Electronics to co-found The Moody Blues with Ray Thomas, Denny Laine, Clint Warwick and Graeme Edge. Continue reading Mike Pinder 4/2024

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David LaFlamme – 8/2023

Violin for It's a Beautiful DayDavid LaFlamme (It’s a Beautiful Day) was born in New Britain, Connecticut, on May 4, 1941, the first of six children of Adelard and Norma (Winther) LaFlamme. His mother was from a Mormon family in Salt Lake City, and when he was eight years old, the family moved to Utah to be near her family. He spent his early years in Los Angeles, where his father was a Hollywood stunt double, before settling in Salt Lake City, where his father became a copper miner. David was about 5 when he got his first violin, a hand-me-down from an aunt back in Connecticut, whose daughter never took to the violin.

“I began fooling around with it on my own and taught myself to play ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,’” he said in a 1998 interview. Formal training followed and in Salt Lake City in later years, he won a competition to perform as soloist with the Utah Symphony Orchestra.

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Reggie Young 1/2017

Reggie Young (82) was born on Dec. 12, 1936, in Caruthersville, Missouri and raised in Osceola, Arkansas. Young first picked up a guitar in the 1950s. From the start, he never wanted to be a frontman. “I was a little shy,” he said prior to the release of his solo album. He discovered that he could make himself useful by fitting into virtually any music situation that came his way and joined a rockabilly band called Eddie Bond and the Stompers, who cut a single in Memphis in 1956 called “Rockin’ Daddy.” Released on the Mercury label, it became a regional hit.

Toward the end of the 1950s, Young became the go-to guitarist for Elvis Presley’s former bassist Bill Black in the latter’s own group, Bill Black’s Combo. Just as they scored their first big hit—“Smokie—Part 2,” on Memphis’ Hi Records, in late ’59—with stardom looming, Young was drafted into the Army and stationed in Ethiopia, far from the rock and roll revolution back home. When he came home he joined up with the Combo again, in time for the group to open for the Beatles on their first American tour in 1964. Continue reading Reggie Young 1/2017

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Leonard Cohen 11/2016

leonard-cohen-marianne-ihlenNovember 7, 2016 – Leonard Norman Cohen was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada on September 21, 1934 and raised in the English-speaking Westmount area. His father, who had a clothing store passed away when Leonard was 9.

In high school he was involved with the student council and studied music and poetry. He became especially interested in the poetry of Federico García Lorca, after whom he named his daughter (Lorca) with artist/photographer Suzanne Elrod.

Even though poetry and writing were his first interests, he learned to play the guitar as a teenager and formed a country–folk group called The Buckskin Boys. Although he initially played a regular acoustic guitar, he soon switched to playing a classical guitar after meeting a young Spanish flamenco guitar player who taught him “a few chords and some flamenco.” Continue reading Leonard Cohen 11/2016

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Rod McKuen 1/2015

Rod McKuenJanuary 29, 2015 – Rod McKuen was born on April 29th, 1933 in Oakland, CA. He ran away from home at the age of 11 and drifted along the West Coast, supporting himself as a ranch hand, surveyor, railroad worker, rodeo cowboy, lumberjack, stuntman and radio disk jockey.

He went on to become one of the best-selling poets in the USA during the late 60s and throughout his career. He produced a wide range of recordings, which included popular music, spoken word poetry, film soundtracks and classical music. His songs include “Jean”, “Seasons in the Sun”, “The Loner”, and “I Think of You”.

He earned two Academy Award nominations and one Pulitzer nomination for his music compositions. In the early 1960s, he moved to France, where he first met the Belgian singer-songwriter and chanson singer Jacques Brel. He was instrumental in bringing the Belgian songwriter to prominence in the English-speaking world.

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Peggy Lee 1/2002

Peggy Lee21 January 2002 – Peggy Lee was born Norma Deloris Engstrom on May 26th 1920 in Jamestown, North Dakota, the seventh of eight children. Her father was Swedish-American and her mother was Norwegian-American. Her mother died when Peggy was just a four year old toddler. Afterwards, her father married her step-mother Min Schaumber, who treated her with great cruelty while her alcoholic but loving father did little to stop it. As a teenager she developed her musical talent and took several part-time jobs so that she could be away from home to escape the abuse of her step-mother.

Lee first sang professionally over radio in Valley City, North Dakota. She later had her own series on a radio show sponsored by a local restaurant that paid her a salary in food. Both during and after her high school years, Lee sang for small sums on local radio stations. Radio personality Ken Kennedy in Fargo, North Dakota, changed her name from Norma to Peggy Lee. Miss Lee left home and traveled to Los Angeles at the age of 17. Continue reading Peggy Lee 1/2002

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Frank Sinatra 5/1998

Frank SINATRAMay 14, 1998 – Frank Sinatra  was born on December 12, 1915

American singer and actor; arguably the most important popular music figure of the 20th century, his only real rival for the title being Elvis Presley. He began his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, he became a successful solo artist in the early to mid-40s, being the idol of the “bobby soxers.”

His professional career had stalled by the 1950s, but it was reborn in 1954 after he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for his performance in From Here to Eternity. He signed with Capitol Records and released several critically lauded albums, In the Wee Small Hours, Songs for Swingin’ Lovers, Come Fly with Me, Only the Lonely and Nice ‘n’ Easy. Continue reading Frank Sinatra 5/1998