The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars: Heroin, Handguns, and Ham Sandwiches

By Jeremy Simmonds

The bible of music's deceased idols—Jeff Buckley, Sid Vicious, Jimi Hendrix, Tupac, Elvis—this is the ultimate record of all those who arrived, rocked, and checked out over the last 40-odd years of fast cars, private jets, hard drugs, and reckless living. The truths behind thousands of fascinating stories—such as how Buddy Holly only decided to fly so he'd have time to finish his laundry—are coupled with perennial questions, including Which band boasts the most dead members? and Who had the bright idea of changing a light bulb while standing in the shower?, as well as a few tales of lesser-known rock tragedies. Updated to include all the rock deaths since the previous edition—including Ike Turner, Dan Fogelberg, Bo Diddley, Isaac Hayes, Eartha Kitt, Michael Jackson, Clarence Clemons, Amy Winehouse, and many, many more—this new edition has been comprehensively revised throughout. An indispensable reference full of useful and useless information, with hundreds of photos of the good, the bad, and the silly, this collection is guaranteed to rock the world of trivia buffs and diehards alike.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press
• Release date: Nov 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781613745328

Book preview

JANUARY

Wednesday 20

Alan Freed

(Johnstown, Pennsylvania, 15 December 1921)

The DJ widely believed to have coined the phrase ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ actually began as a jazz trombonist with a band called Sultans of Swing (thereby also providing a name for a much-later Dire Straits hit). Freed became the first broadcaster to break down the obvious barriers and play so-called ‘race’ music to a largely white audience when he took to the air full-time with an R & B show for the WJW station in Cleveland. Moving to the more upbeat WINS in New York, Freed – now restyled as ‘Moondog’ – exposed young teenagers to the likes of Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, while bravely refusing to play the white covers of black hits his programmers suggested. This forward thinking made him a sitting target for the prejudices of the era’s conservatives and racists.

However, Freed proved a flawed individual, and this cost him dearly in his working life. Initially, problems were not necessarily of his own making: appearing in movies such as Rock around the Clock, the thirty-something appeared older than his years, alienating a large section of his young audience overnight as a result. Then, when he moved to television, Freed’s ABC Rock ‘n’ Roll Dance Party also ended abruptly after a scandal (which seems risible now) erupted when black singer Frankie Lymon ( January 1968) was caught on camera dancing with a white girl, outraging Southern station affiliates. Worse still, when a live event at the Boston Arena in 1958 ended in a riot, WINS cancelled his radio contract despite the fact that any charges of incitement against Freed were soon dropped. A year later, the even greater ‘payola’ (money for airplay) scandal displayed his dubious business practices openly and effectively ended Freed’s broadcasting career; he was found guilty on two counts of accepting commercial bribery a couple of years later and made ‘industry scapegoat’ for what pretty much everybody else in the game had been doing for years.

‘Live fast, die young, make a good-looking corpse.’

Alan Freed

Alan Freed: Payola was on the menu

An internal injury sustained in a car accident in 1953 returned to haunt Alan Freed – by 1965 a shadow of his former self and ostracized by many of his former acolytes. As he drifted from satellite town to satellite town in search of broadcasting work, Freed’s health began to fail. Virtually bankrupted by his legal debts and drinking heavily, he checked into a hospital in Palm Springs on 15 January 1965 – just as charges of tax evasion were levied against him. Freed died five days later from uraemia and cirrhosis of the liver before he could answer any of those charges. He went to the grave penniless – a far cry from just a few years before, when he had been able to claim thousands of dollars a day for his services.

Despite the (arguably heavy-handed) treatment Freed received towards the end of his life, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame Museum, which opened in 1986, was nevertheless situated in Cleveland in honour of one of its sons’ great achievements.

FEBRUARY

Monday 15

Nat ‘King’ Cole

(Nathaniel Coles - Montgomery, Alabama, 17 March (most likely) 1917)

Those rich, velveteen tones that seemed the aural equivalent of melting Bournville were actually the result of sixty smokes a day. His millions of fans may have thanked him for this concession to vocal gravitas, but his lungs did not: Nat Cole succumbed to cancer before he was fifty. Remembered as one of the twentieth century’s finest interpreters of a song, Cole was also a gifted pianist, playing ‘Yes, We Have No Bananas’ at the age of four to anyone who would listen. A few years on, Cole landed a residency with his older brother, Eddie, at the Panama Club, Chicago – and had not left his teens behind by the time they had recorded their first side. Promotion of his renamed ‘King Cole Trio’ by Lionel Hampton subsequently set Cole on a more upwardly mobile path, and before long Capitol were ready to offer a major-label contract. Their new charge was shortly the most successful artist the label had ever known, their premises on Hollywood and Vine thereafter referred to as ‘The House That Nat Built’. Cole could even claim the distinction of placing the first ever number-one LP on Billboard’s charts. If the King Cole Trio had been a success, Cole’s solo career, with the band now very much his back-up, was the stuff of legend: in the latter half of 1947, Cole recorded some eighty songs – more than most artists manage in a career. Many of these became hits, though the most sublime was surely Eden Ahbez’s ‘Nature Boy’, an uplifting minor chord air that stirs the soul to this day. It sat at number one for two months in 1948, while Cole was on honeymoon with his second wife, singer Maria Ellington. Cole hit 50 million sales sometime in 1960 – many recordings backed by The Four Knights (three of whom – Gene Alford, John Wallace and Clarence Dixon – have also since died) – and became the first black artist to front his own television showcase. During this time he would still periodically moonlight at the piano.

By 1964, Cole began to notice a sinister loss in weight as he toured with his band. This made him irritable, the change only too noticeable in this man of otherwise impeccable manner and mood. Always a heavy smoker, Cole was informed of a malignant tumour discovered in his lung; it was then only a matter of time. Following a walk on the beach with his wife early in 1965, Cole died quietly in his sleep – giving the lie to all the trade papers’ notices that he was ‘doing fine’.

MARCH

Monday 12

Fraser Calder

(Glasgow)

James Giffen

(Glasgow)

The Blues Council

With a vibrant British blues scene fragmenting in the early sixties, one of the most impressive (if shortlived) line-ups must have been that of Glasgow’s Blues Council. This hard-touring band revolved around noted saxophonist Bill Patrick, raw young guitarist Leslie Harvey (the latter doubtless encouraged by the already raucous lifestyle and reputation of his better-known brother, Alex), drummer Billy Adamson, sax-player Larry Quinn and pianist John McGinnis, and was completed by bassist James Giffen and singer and frontman Fraser Calder. Parlophone issued their dynamic debut single, ‘Baby Don’t Look Down’, to extensive local airplay in late 1964, and, as the year turned, all appeared rosy.

Theirs was very much a name known only in Scotland, though, and events sadly did not allow their reputation to spread further. On the way home from a gig in Edinburgh, the band’s tour van crashed outside Glasgow, killing Calder and Giffen instantly. Despite Patrick’s drafting-in of yet another saxophonist, Bobby Wishart, to the despondent survivors there was no way The Blues Council could continue, and before the summer they had gone their separate ways: Bill Patrick hooked up with The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, John McGinnis started Sock ‘Em JB and Les Harvey eventually joined Stone the Crows. For Harvey, however, the tragedy would prove merely a precursor to one of the most dramatic deaths in rock history, seven years later ( May 1972) .

See also Alex Harvey ( February 1982)

MAY

Tuesday 25

Sonny Boy Williamson II

(Aleck Ford ‘Rice’ Miller - Mississippi,

12 March 1905 (or 1908, or 12 December 1899))

As the title of his 1953 album suggested, Sonny Boy Williamson ‘II’ was always ‘clownin’ with the world’. With more front than a hundred wooden porches, the blues harmonica-player ‘borrowed’ his assumed name from that of contemporary blues harpist John Lee Williamson, towards the end of his life hoodwinking many into believing he was indeed the original ‘Sonny Boy’.

A gifted performer in his own right, Williamson was born into a sharecropper’s family, and lived the familiar bluesman’s life of a wandering minstrel, playing every juke joint in town, trying to scratch a living. It was, however, a regular Arkansas radiostation KFFA slot presenting King Biscuit Time (sponsored by King Biscuit flour) that made him a star locally and an influence on other Delta-blues players. Among his self-written pieces were ‘One Way Out’ (later a hit for The Allman Brothers) and ‘Nine Below Zero’. "When he signed, as late as 1950, to Lillian McMurry’s Trumpet label (and thereafter Chess), many of his minimalist harmonica workouts found their way on to disc at last. Williamson’s talent didn’t go unnoticed by the new breed either and, before he died, this excellent craftsman visited Europe and recorded with The Animals and The Yardbirds. (Such was Williamson’s history of telling tall stories, many back home refused to believe he had travelled to Britain, let alone played with its top rock musicians.)

Williamson returned to the USA to resume King Biscuit Time in 1964, his alcoholism now exacerbated by the tuberculosis he knew was killing him. Struggling not to cough up blood during his performances, he played an impromptu jam, now the stuff of folklore, with the group Levon & The Hawks (who went on to become Bob Dylan’s back-up unit The Band) just a fortnight before he passed away. Williamson’s failure to show up to present his radio show in May 1965 prompted KFFA to send someone to rouse him – but it was too late. Williamson had died in his sleep at his boarding house in Helena, Arkansas. Stonemasons wrongly engraved the date of death on Williamson’s headstone as ‘23 June’. Despite obvious discrepancies over his birth date, this is an error.

AUGUST

Saturday 14

Charles Fizer

(Shreveport, Louisiana, 3 June 1940)

The Olympics

One of the more versatile of the era’s slew of vocal quartets, The Olympics began in 1954 as The Challengers while still at high school in Compton, California. Initially, this group was moulded more in the style of The Coasters than the standard doo-wop unit, onstage schtick between members setting up novelty tunes such as their popular debut, US number-eight hit ‘Western Movies’ (Demon, 1958 – a witty number in which the narrator bemoans his girlfriend’s addiction to cowboy pictures), which also made the UK Top Twenty. The group’s first line-up comprised Walter ‘Sleepy’ Ward (who died in December 2006 – lead), Eddie Lewis (tenor), Walter Hammond (baritone) and – often at the heart of the operation – Charles Fizer (tenor/baritone), who joined following a talent contest. Fizer was certainly a larger-than-life character, finding himself in the hands of the law more than once in his short life; just as The Olympics were enjoying their biggest success he found himself on an enforced ‘sabbatical’ from the band when a prison sentence for drugs possession kept him away for a year (he was replaced by Melvin King).

Cut to 11 August 1965: days after masses of black music fans had chanted the positive slogan ‘Burn, baby, burn!’ at the Stax Revue in Watts, Los Angeles, the phrase itself was to take on a darker hue. As black brothers Marquette and Ronald Frye travelled into South Central in their 1950 Buick, they were stopped by a California Highway Patrol, who believed the driver to be intoxicated. With little apparent motive, the police hauled Marquette from the car and set about punching and kicking him and slamming him in his own car door; even the Fryes’ mother found herself handcuffed, slapped and hit when she attempted to intervene. Within an hour, South LA was in the middle of the most violent racial uprising it had ever witnessed, with Watts at the very epicentre. Following early altercations, the Los Angeles Times talked of ‘rocks flying, then wine and whiskey bottles, concrete, pieces of wood – the targets anything strange to the neighbourhood’.

By the weekend, Lyndon B Johnson described a ‘disaster area’, and the LAPD admitted that the situation was out of their control; there would inevitably be casualties as they stepped up attempts to regain the township. The majority of these would be innocents, in the wrong place at the wrong time, most of them black. One such was Charles Fizer. On 14 August, day three of the uprising, Fizer – very much a reformed character since his incarceration – was making his way innocently to an Olympics rehearsal when he was hit by National Guard bullets and died on the street. He was just one of thirty-four to die that week; Melvin King’s sister was another, on the very same afternoon. A further thousand were injured and four times that many arrested as Watts was razed to the ground over six days. A neglected suburb for years – and with a particularly poor record for police brutality – it lay desolate, a charred monument to years of oppression. Devastated by the events of 14 August, Melvin King played just one more performance before throwing in the towel with The Olympics. His replacement, Mack Starr, died equally tragically following a motorcycle accident in Los Angeles ( June 1981).

OCTOBER

Thursday 21

Bill Black

(William Patton Black Jr - Memphis, Tennessee, 17 September 1926)

Bill Black’s Combo

Scotty & Bill

Doug Poindexter & The Starlight Wranglers

Guitarist Bill Black was well situated to join up with the biggest star popular music had ever seen, though ironically his time as bass-player behind Elvis Presley proved far less lucrative – or artistically rewarding – than working with his own band, Bill Black’s Combo. Sam Phillips was fast to spot Black’s potential, prising him and guitarist cohort Scotty Moore away from his own hoedown act Doug Poindexter & The Starlight Wranglers before lining them up to record with the young Presley at Sun Records. Over four years, the pair cut some hugely influential sides with the King, ‘That’s All Right Mama’ (1954), ‘All Shook Up’ and ‘Jailhouse Rock’ (both 1957) among them. One problem, however, was the sharp practice of Colonel Tom Parker as Elvis’s star went supernova. Believing his charge to be a level above the others (and more than a little concerned at Black’s often commanding stage presence), Parker was not prepared to pay Scotty and Bill much more than a basic union wage. By 1958 the pair had cut and run. As frontman for Bill Black’s Combo, Black – strangely forgotten by many today – was as prolific as he was successful: in six years he recorded a remarkable fourteen albums, shifting 5 million units.

Early in 1965, Bill Black was diagnosed with a brain tumour. Devastated, and feeling his time was limited, he signed over responsibilities for the band to guitarist Bob Tucker (who would front them into the 1980s) before undergoing the first of three operations. On 8 October, after the third operation, Black slipped into a coma from which he did not recover, and died two weeks later at the Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis – the very same hospital at which Presley himself was pronounced dead, nearly twelve years later ( August 1977). Although visiting Black’s widow, Evelyn, and three children, a saddened Elvis Presley did not attend his former friend’s funeral, fearing that his presence would ‘turn it into a circus’.

DECEMBER

Thursday 9

Eddie Sulik

(Sagamore, Pennsylvania, 2 October 1929)

The Echoes

Rockabilly has never been noted as a genre for throwing up heart-throbs, but Eddie Sulik, with his immaculate hair, cleft chin and composed offcamera gaze when on photo duty, was surely one of the few. A comparative latecomer to fame, Sulik was, in his early career, one half of The Echoes, a popular Nashville vocal duo who scored a few minor hits with Columbia. A return to solo work and a seemingly endless schedule of club dates kept Sulik’s clear vocal tones in the public ear during the early sixties, his oeuvre drawn from rock ‘n’ roll, country, pop and Latin. His success was still fairly regional, but in 1965, a recording/publishing deal with guitar-giant Chet Atkins and Archie Bleyer of Cadence Records looked to be on the cards.

Eddie Sulik never made the meeting that would probably have changed his life. The night before the conference in New York City, Sulik was killed in an automobile crash near his home in Connecticut; the songs he had prepared on tape for Atkins and Bleyer remained unheard until released by Sulik’s son, Eddie Jr, as A Farewell Legacy some thirty-four years later.

Lest We Forget

Other notable deaths that occurred sometime during 1965:

Carl Adams (US rockabilly guitarist who played with three fingers after losing two in a shooting accident; born Louisiana, 7/11/1935; kidney failure, 25/2)

Dave Barbour (US guitarist/composer; born Long Island, New York, 1912; divorced from singer Peggy Lee, he had asked her to remarry four days before dying from an undiagnosed heart condition, 11/12)

Tom ‘Thumb’ Blessing (US rock ‘n’ roll saxophonist/guitarist with Pacific Northwest bands The Notions, The Newports and Tom Thumb & The Casuals; auto accident on the way to a gig)

Earl Bostic (US jazz/R & B saxophonist; born Oklahoma, 25/4/1913; heart attack, 28/10)

Dorothy Dandridge (popular US actress/singer; born Ohio, 9/11/1922; overdose - possibly suicide, 8/9)

Spike Jones (eccentric US comic/percussionist who formed The City Slickers and influenced the likes of The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band; born Lindley Armstrong Jones, California, 14/12/1911; emphysema 1/5)

Peter LaFarge (US folk singer/writer who worked with Johnny Cash and hung with the young Bob Dylan - he claimed to be of Native American extraction; born 1931; stroke or alcohol/pills overdose, 27/10)

Ira Louvin (US bluegrass singer with The Louvin Brothers; born Lonnie Ira Loudermilk, Alabama, 21/4/1921; having survived a near-fatal fight with his third wife, he died in a car crash, 20/6)

Todd Rhodes (US jazz/R & B pianist; born Kentucky, 31/8/1900; having already lost a leg, he died from complications arising from inept hospital treatment for his diabetes, 4/6)

Terry Thompson (US R & B/rock guitarist who penned ‘A Shot of Rhythm and Blues’ and played with the Muscle Shoals FAME Studio Rhythm Section; born Mississippi, 1941; alcohol/drug overdose, 10/11)

Harrison Verrett (US jazz guitarist and brother-in-law of Fats Domino; born Los Angeles, 26/2/1907; undisclosed, 10/1965)

1966

MARCH

Monday 7

Mike Millward

(Bromborough, Merseyside, 9 May 1942)

The Fourmost

(Kingsize Taylor & The Dominoes)

Millward – formerly of the intriguingly named Kingsize Taylor & The Dominoes – was singer/rhythm guitarist with early Brian Epstein discoveries The Fourmost. In an era overrun with quartets, the band underwent almost as many changes of identity as personnel: in their brief history they were known as The Blue Jays, The Four Jays and even the extremely clunky Four Mosts when it transpired that an American band had the same name. No matter, the group – Millward, Brian O’Hara (vocals/guitar), Billy Hatton (bass) and Dave Lovelady (drums) – enjoyed a number of Top Forty singles (the first two Lennon and McCartney songs) while Merseybeat was the hot phenomenon. The pinnacle for the group was the UK number-six hit ‘A Little Loving’ (April 1964) and an appearance alongside Liverpool contemporaries in the film Ferry across the Mersey. It was at this point that Mike Millward was diagnosed with throat cancer, which by and large put paid to his singing career. On recovery, Millward learned that he had leukaemia, which forced him into complete retirement. The most popular member of the group, Millward died at just twenty-three, and The Fourmost rapidly settled for a career as a cabaret turn, with the hits drying up. O’Hara fronted regular reunions for the group until his own unfortunate suicide ( June 1999).

APRIL

Saturday 30

Richard Fariña

(Brooklyn, New York, 8 March 1937)

Richard & Mimi Fariña

Described variously as ‘America’s least-known superstar’ or ‘a scattered mind with a death wish’, Richard Fariña had a short and eventful life. Born to a Cuban engineer and his Northern Irish wife, it was Fariña’s mother’s background that would become the source of his early interests: a visit to her homeland in 1953 saw him affiliate himself with the IRA. But, believing statistics were ‘not as much fun as stories’, Fariña became an archetypal anti-authority writer and musician, the dulcimer being his unlikely instrument of choice. A young man with opinions and wild oats to sow, Fariña made the ‘oppressive regime’ of his university’s segregation policy the target of early protests – his actions causing his suspension and high-profile police intervention. Ever a restless soul, Fariña dropped out of studies, short-term employment at an advertising agency and a doomed marriage to established musician Carolyn Hester. While performing in Greenwich Village, he met his second wife and ultimate musical collaborator, Mimi, a dance student, guitarist and 17-year-old sister of Joan Baez. The pair were immediately accepted into the folk community, debuting at the 1964 Big Sur Festival and shortly thereafter signing with Vanguard, who released an eponymous debut album (1965) and a rated follow-up, Reflections in a Crystal Wind, early the following year.

Now a respected poet, playwright, columnist and author, Fariña’s Been down So Long It Looks Like up to Me – a novel inspired by college experiences – was published in New York. It was clearly a time for celebration, especially as the day of the book launch in Carmel coincided with Mimi’s twenty-first birthday. Following the launch, a number of friends accompanied Richard and Mimi to her sister’s house for a surprise party; one of these was Willie Hinds, an inexperienced biker who sometime during the course of the evening offered Fariña a ride on his newly acquired Harley Davidson. As the pair reached 100 mph weaving through the rolling hills on the winding roads of Carmel, Hinds failed to make a bend, skidded and lost control of his bike. Hinds survived the wipe-out with minor injuries but Fariña was hurled across two fences into an embankment and died immediately.

See also Mimi Fariña ( July 2001)

JULY

Monday 18

Bobby Fuller

(Goose Creek, Texas, 22 October 1942)

The Bobby Fuller Four

The true spirit of rock ‘n’ roll lived and died in Bobby Fuller – but was the Texas-born guitarist the genre’s first genuine murder victim? When his mother, Lorraine, discovered her son’s lifeless corpse propped up against the steering wheel of her car, she noticed not just the acrid smell of blood but also the distinctive fumes of petrol.

Bobby Fuller (second left) with The Bobby Fuller Four: ‘The Law’ simply wasn’t interested

Like most young Texans, Fuller and his older brother, Randy, were fans of local-boy-made-good Buddy Holly and sought to emulate his success (if not his virtuosity) as soon as they could learn a few basic chords. This they would have achieved, had several events not put paid to The Bobby Fuller Four during their 1966 peak. All had begun well enough, with the teenage Fuller not only running a basic studio set-up in his basement but also graduating from music school; he made various recordings with independent labels before the local-airplay hit ‘King of the Wheels’ (1965) elevated him to the position of cult hero to the growing El Paso garagerock ‘n’ roll crowd. Settling on a Bobby Fuller Four line-up of himself as lead guitarist/vocalist, Randy Fuller (bass), Jim Reese (guitars) and Dwayne Quirico (the first of four short-term drummers, another of whom would be the studio-based Barry White – yes, that Barry White), the ambitious frontman relocated his band to the more happening LA. The result was a series of raunchy, stripped-down singles on Mustang, ‘Let Her Dance’, ‘Love’s Made a Fool of You’ and ex-Cricket Sonny Curtis’s seminal ‘I Fought the Law’ – a massive US hit at the beginning of 1966 and, of course, a much-covered standard for decades to follow. But fame was to be short-lived, recording sessions all but capsized by feuding between the two brothers. That summer, Fuller had pretty much made up his mind to dissolve the band and was due to meet with his musicians to tell them of his solo plans, but the meeting never took place. On the afternoon of 18 July, Lorraine Fuller’s missing Oldsmobile suddenly ‘turned up’ in a field next to her apartment on Sunset Strip, Hollywood. In it she found her son Bobby – missing for some fourteen hours – not just dead but in rigor mortis, badly beaten and doused in fuel. Rumours had abounded about Fuller’s mental state – he had recently become mildly depressed with the state of affairs with his band and his relationships (he had fathered a son whom he was not allowed to see) and had also experimented frequently with the then currently popular LSD – and the coroner returned a verdict of suicide by asphyxiation (the suggestion being that he’d ‘drunk’ the petrol), later changed to accidental death. A Hollywood police officer had, for some inconceivable reason, destroyed crucial evidence at the scene such as the gasoline canister. Although officials seemed keen to close the case as soon as possible, Lorraine and Randy Fuller were desperate to pursue what they felt was surely foul play. After all, the brothers weren’t strangers to murder: on a shooting trip in the early sixties, the Fullers’ halfbrother Jack had been gunned down by a purported ‘friend’. But despite apparent oddities in the case, the official statement of ‘no evidence to suggest foul play’ has never been altered. Randy Fuller’s continued pleas – even appearing on NBC’s Unsolved Mysteries series – have fallen on deaf ears ever since.

Johnny Kidd (with The Pirates): Could’ve had someone else’s eye out with that

SEPTEMBER

Thursday 1

Leroy Griffin

(New Haven, Connecticut, 5 April 1934)

The Nutmegs

Hailing from New Haven, The Nutmegs were the latest in a seemingly endless line of vocal groups from the area, but they did at least have the distinctive tones of Leroy Griffin at the helm. Griffin fronted the band (alongside his brother Sonny and, for a while, another singer bizarrely also named Leroy Griffin), which enjoyed big US R & B hits with ‘Story Untold’ and the best-known Nutmegs song ‘Ship of Love’ (both 1955) – the latter of which was only prevented from becoming a national pop hit when a simultaneous version emerged by The Crew Cuts.

Griffin’s death in September 1966 will forever remain mysterious. It seems that he and a work colleague had an altercation at a Koppers coke plant where Griffin still occasionally laboured to earn a living. Horrifically, Griffin either fell or was pushed into one of the factory’s giant furnaces, where he was quickly burned to death.

OCTOBER

Friday 7

Johnny Kidd

(Frederick Heath - Willesden, London, 23 December 1939)

Johnny Kidd & The Pirates (The Five Nutters)

Whether he was an influence on Adam Ant is open to conjecture, but Johnny Kidd was the first performer in British pop music to don the panto gear. An early skiffle convert, he formed his own band, The Five Nutters, while still a teenager. When rock ‘n’ roll kicked in, his interest in Lonnie Donegan et al dipped somewhat and he sought a new image – that of seventeenth-century buccaneer Captain William Kidd. The look presaged a name change, too, and had immediate appeal, particularly to HMV, who issued the first Johnny Kidd single, the excellent ‘Please Don’t Touch’ in May 1959. Its Top Thirty placing was a solid but not earth-shattering start, but the label’s next move – to sack the band and bring in experienced hands – was less effective, a series of covers by and large failing to dent the listings. Kidd’s co-written ‘Shakin’ All Over’ (1960), though, was a genuine ‘moment’ in pop-music history and is rightly viewed as the classic British pre-Beatles rock ‘n’ roll record; this infectious stop/start rocker duly took Kidd – now with The Pirates, including top guitarists Alan Caddy and Joe Moretti – to number one that summer. From this, the only direction for a working unit on the label payroll to go was likely to be downwards, and tunes that disappointingly pushed this distinctive band into a ‘Merseybeat’ direction were largely misses (1963’s ‘I’ll Never Get Over You’ a notable exception). Kidd was a hard-worker, however, and he and his group would still kick up something of a storm on their exhaustive live schedule, with occasional support from The Who – a band that has consistently cited him as an influence.

Alma Cogan: Her ‘ostrich look’ never caught on

With a fresh line-up, Johnny Kidd & The New Pirates were on the road again in October 1966 when tragedy – or, more truthfully, a skidding lorry – struck. The recently married Kidd was travelling in the tour van to an engagement when he was killed in the crash on the M1 near Radcliffe, just outside Bury, Lancashire. The remainder of the band, all of whom survived the accident, continued touring as The Pirates, and bass-player Nick Simper went on to join Deep Purple in the seventies.

See also Alan Caddy ( August 2000); Mick Green (Golden Oldies #104)

Wednesday 26

Alma Cogan

(Alma Angela Cohen - Stepney, London, 19 May 1932)

If there weren’t many British pop and rockabilly acts around during the fifties, female artists were in even shorter supply. But Alma Cogan was one such artist who positively thrived in this era, her voice equally at home in both adult and teenage markets. Brought up in Worthing, Sussex, Cogan attended art school, though it was her singing that caught the attention of Ted Heath (the bandleader) before HMV gave her an opportunity to record in 1952. Cogan’s stage presence was also quickly noted, earning her a residency on the BBC radio show Take It from Here. The singer’s soon-widely-recognized love of garish clothing would be acknowledged in her first hit record, the Top Five ‘Bell Bottom Blues’ (1954), which began an impressive run of twenty-two chart successes, culminating with ‘Dreamboat’, a chart-topper from 1955. Cogan’s hits – which had pretty much descended into pop novelties by the start of the next decade – dried up by 1961, as acts such as the younger Helen Shapiro began to come through. There was still the staple cabaret circuit, which she pursued for several years, and it was at one such date in Sweden in the autumn of 1966 that Cogan mysteriously collapsed. Rushed to hospital, the 34-year-old vocalist was diagnosed with throat cancer; within weeks she was admitted to the Middlesex Hospital, where, shortly thereafter, she passed away.

Lest We Forget

Other notable deaths that occurred sometime during 1966:

Henry Booth (US tenor vocalist with R & B acts The Royals - alongside Jackie Wilson - and The Midnighters; born Alabama, 7/3/1934; believed shot dead during a fight)

Bill Gillum (US bluesman; born William McGinlay Gillum, Mississippi, 11/9/1904; shot in the head during an argument in Chicago, 29/3)

Mississippi John Hurt (US bluesman; born Mississippi (obviously), 3/7/1893; heart attack, 2/11)

Helen Kane (US singer/writer/actress/costumier, best known as the Queen of Boop-boop-a-doop and a likely influence on Marilyn Monroe; born New York, 4/8/1903; unknown, 26/9)

Harry C McAuliffe (US country/crossover singer known as ‘Big Slim the Lone Cowboy’; born in West Virginia, 9/5/1903; unknown, 13/10)

Lucius Millinder (influential US jump-blues bandleader; born Alabama, 8/8/1900; liver failure, 28/9)

Jessie Mae Robinson (US blues singer/songwriter whose tunes have been recorded by Dinah Washington, Bing Crosby, Louis Jordan and T-Bone Walker, among others; born Call, Texas, 1/10/1919; illness, 26/10)

Billy Rose (US songwriter/composer who wrote ‘Does the Spearmint Lose Its Flavour?’ among other such delights; born William Rosenberg, New York, 6/9/1899; contracted pneumonia in Jamaica, and died 10/2)

Will Shade (US bluesman and part of The Memphis Jug Band; born Will Brimmer, Mississippi, 5/2/1898; pneumonia, 18/9)

Carter Stanley (US bluegrass singer with The Stanley Brothers; born Virginia, 27/8/1925; cirrhosis of the liver, 1/12)

Washboard Sam (US bluesman; born Robert Brown, Arkansas, 15/7/1910; heart disease, 6/11)

Slim Willet (US country guitarist/writer whose ‘Don’t Let the Stars (Get in Your Eyes)’ was a chart-topper for Perry Como in 1953; born Texas, 1/12/1919; heart failure, 1/7)

1967

JANUARY

Tuesday 27

Luigi Tenco

(Cassine, Italy, 21 March 1938)

Luigi Tenco wanted success, whatever the cost, but he was a troubled man who suffered at the hands of the critics as well as in his brief personal life. Tenco never knew his father, who died months before his birth, leaving his mother to bring up both Luigi and his older brother alone. He struggled to settle in his studies and early career before his love of singing drove him to form bands with his friends. Tenco was never the strongest vocal performer in the pop/jazz/ballad arena in which he worked, thus it was his more marked talent as a cantautore (‘singing author’) and arranger that eventually brought him some attention on the Italian music scene. Tenco was also classically handsome, his dark, moody charm eventually wooing former Miss Egypt and, by then, highly rated singer Dalida; in 1966, their mutual label RCA introduced the pair as potential duet partners. Tenco and Dalida fell hopelessly in love and decided on a unique performance for the upcoming San Remo Festival, an annual contest to determine Italy’s finest popular songs and writers: they were to perform together, each offering a version of the chosen ballad, Tenco’s own ‘Ciaoo, Amore, Ciad. The couple even announced an April wedding to garner maximum press interest. He was a passionate, ambitious newcomer; she a beautiful, talented songstress – how could they fail?

Well, the answer perhaps lies in Luigi Tenco’s misplaced self-belief. He had talent for sure, but his temperament and high opinion of his mediocre voice would ultimately cost him. While Dalida’s rendition of the song won her applause, Tenco’s did not; Tenco, Dalida and the song were eliminated in the first round. The by-now totally wired Tenco – who had drunk heavily and taken a number of tranquilizers before his performance – flew into a rage and, against Dalida’s wishes, began berating the judges as corrupt and the whole festival as meaningless. Unable to deal with such public rejection, Tenco snubbed the subsequent dinner, stormed back to their room at the Hotel Savoja and locked himself in. By 2.15 am Dalida, who had attended the celebrations, returned, concerned that she was unable to summon her lover. She found Tenco splayed out across the floor, with a gun at his side. An almost illegible note ‘explained’ his frustration at the world and his desire to ‘show them all’ – but Dalida wasn’t convinced by the handwriting. Why would Tenco take his own life because of what to her seemed little more than a setback? Until her own death, Dalida remained convinced that he had been the victim of a conspiracy; indeed, she was to suffer an extraordinary series of partner suicides, three of her lovers taking their own lives before, sadly, she too followed suit ( May 1987).

Popular Italian singer and 2002 San Remo Festival discovery Valentina Giovagnini died in a Siena car accident in January 2009.

FEBRUARY

Friday 3

Joe Meek

(Robert George Meek - Newent, Gloucestershire, 5 April 1929)

How a producer with the vision of Joe Meek made it happen in the staid world of late-fifties UK recording is nothing short of a miracle. That this maverick’s life ended in the shocking, dramatic way that it did is, however, more in keeping with the script.

One of three brothers brought up in rural Newent, Robert George ‘Joe’ Meek was not an outdoor type like his older siblings, preferring to spend time in a garden shed dabbling with wireless sets and gramophone equipment than climb trees. A boy with tastes that generally separated him from his peers, Meek – perhaps showing more business nous than at times during his adult life – would charge locals to watch him perform musical plays as a variety of characters, both male and female. The knock-on from these interests saw him engineering hit records at IBC for Lonnie Donegan (‘Cumberland Gap’) and Frankie Vaughan (‘Green Door’) by the age of twenty-five – despite being completely tone deaf. Wishing in vain to utilize effects such as homemade instrumentation, foot-stomps instead of bass drums and reverb in his records, Meek left IBC to become the first notable producer to lease his tapes to a variety of major labels. Few at this time realized he was recording many acts at his flat – merely a few rooms above a leather-goods outlet on North London’s Holloway Road. Despite this, a 1960 Top Ten hit with Michael Cox’s whimsical ‘Angela Jones’ on his short-lived Triumph Records was just a precursor to some extraordinary successes; British pop music was on the verge of major transformation and Meek was responsible for much of it in this pre-Beatles era. If the glorious ‘Johnny Remember Me’ by actor John Leyton was a pioneering 1961 effort that brought considerable attention, The Tornados’ 1962 communication-satellite overture ‘Telstar’ appeared to seal matters globally. This record was the first British hit to top the US chart – despite being dismissed by Germanborn bassist Heinz Burt as ‘crap’ on first playback. (It was later dubiously honoured as a favourite of Margaret Thatcher.)

The brilliant Joe Meek: Often a little behind with his rent

Joe Meek’s personal world was seldom functional, however. An unseemly incident and arrest for ‘importuning’ (the term then used for ‘soliciting’) broke the news of Meek’s sexuality to his family in 1963, although it had been an open secret within the industry for some time. A series of blackmail attempts by previous partners resulted, which only fired the latent paranoia of a man who was now experimenting with pills and hallucinogenics which intensified his belief that others were pilfering his gimmicks. One of his charges – Screaming Lord Sutch, whose schoolboy schlock-horror set pieces were ideal vehicles for the producer’s whims – was taken into a corridor to discuss business because Meek thought the entire flat had been bugged in his absence. In the event, none of Sutch’s records ever gave Meek a hit anyway, and it was French composer Jean Ledrut who threatened him with legal action, claiming he’d pilfered the melody for ‘Telstar’ (though Meek’s family were to win the legal battle for ownership of the song in 1968). It made little difference: Meek’s business acumen was virtually non-existent, and as the decade grew he was owed money, in debt and falling behind the twin stables of The Beatles/The Stones and their various coat-tailers. By 1967, a long, long time since his last major hit (The Honeycombs’ rousing 1964 number one ‘Have I the Right?’), Meek was fast becoming an anachronism in an industry that was picking up pace at frightening speed. His moods began to fluctuate wildly, and he was soon taking prescription medication for depression.

On the morning of the eighth anniversary of Buddy Holly’s death ( Pre-1965), Joe Meek was in a belligerent mood. He was standing in the kitchen of his flat, studying unopened letters, when studio assistant Patrick Pink – who Meek was set to record – arrived for the day’s activities. Meek finished his breakfast in silence before disappearing to the upstairs studio. Pink was shortly joined by Meek’s landlady, Violet Shenton, who, observing the studio hand’s plight, offered to ‘talk Meek round’ (she had frequently dealt with Meek in the past, usually by banging a broom handle against her ground-floor ceiling). This time, though, an argument – apparently about Meek’s rent book – began to escalate in the room above Pink’s head. As he moved to investigate, a gunshot rang out. Shenton fell from the doorway, down the staircase and into his arms: she had been shot in the back. In utter shock and bemusement, Pink had barely mouthed the words, ‘She’s dead,’ when a second shot stopped him in his tracks. He looked up to see his boss prone on the studio floor, a gun by his body. Joe Meek died instantly, while 52-year-old Violet Shenton died on arrival at hospital. Police at the scene were quick to charge first Patrick Pink, then Heinz Burt, the gun’s owner (and for many years the target of Meek’s attentions), who, having kept the weapon at the flat where he’d until recently been staying, had left his fingerprints all over it. Various lurid tales have been linked to Meek’s world during the last months of his life – including one truly horrific story of the Suffolk murder and mutilation of 17-year-old Bernard Oliver, a gay youth known to Meek, weeks before his death, though no fast connection was ever made. Before long, though, it became apparent to all that there was no third-party involvement in the events of 3 February – it was simply a tragic and unnecessary end to the lives of two people.

One of his last productions, The Cryin’ Shames’ ‘Nobody Waved Goodbye’ (1967), played at Joe Meek’s Newent funeral as 200 mourners did just that to a man who had given much to many in a brief but potent period for British culture.

DEAD INTERESTING!

THE DATE THE MUSIC DIED

On 3 February 1999 - the thirty-second anniversary of Joe Meek’s death (and the fortieth of Buddy Holly’s) - the Independent newspaper gathered together a number of his surviving colleagues and protégés for a photograph to illustrate an article on the producer. The dark spirit of Joe Meek had clearly been stirred again - within eighteen months at least five of the assembled cast were dead: Screaming Lord Sutch committed suicide ( June 1999); Heinz Burt died from motor neurone disease ( April 2000); composer Geoff Goddard suffered a heart attack in May 2000; RGM songstress Kim Roberts died two months later from heart problems ( July 2000) while Tornados’ guitarist Alan Caddy also died that summer ( August 2000). (Meek’s favoured bassist Tony Dangerfield also passed on in 2007.)

‘His suicide was a logical end to the pressure he put himself under.’

Geoff Goddard, composer of ‘Johnny Remember Me’

AUGUST

Sunday 27

Brian Epstein

(Liverpool, 19 September 1934)

Brian Epstein was both Jewish and gay, when to admit to either might have been to compromise oneself. But this apparent outsider – in his adult life the music world’s best-known impresario – was born into a middle-class background, relatively secure in a series of private schools while Europe waged war for a second time.

While on National Service, Epstein underwent cruel (though at the time compulsory) army psychiatric treatment for his homosexuality and the inevitable discharge – with all the stigma that entailed. Epstein’s restlessness and below-the-surface flamboyance saw him spend three terms at London’s RADA before returning to a more modest retail position at his father’s Liverpool furniture business. Seeking relief from such mundane activity, Brian Epstein opened a record section in the music department, which to the great surprise and delight of his father proved a big success – so much so that the young entrepreneur soon opened his own separate branch (North East Music Stores – later an enormous music-business empire). His new-found position won Epstein a record review column in new local paper Mersey Beat, although he used it mainly as an advertisement for the store, which, of course, was also conveniently positioned near Liverpool’s most ‘happening’ venue, The Cavern Club. Although he most likely knew of The Beatles before spending a lunchtime checking them out, Epstein met the band here on 9 November 1961, kick-starting the most famous story in popular music.

Brian Epstein was suddenly thrown headlong into an industry pretty much inventing itself around him. Perhaps a little harshly, he’s recalled just as often now as the man who mismanaged The Beatles, the group allegedly receiving almost no money for performances, records and licensing in the early days. Much of this may be true, but Epstein had soon become more than a manager, in the sense understood at the time: he oversaw The Beatles’ image, clothes, publicity and overall professionalism (which immediately prompted the sacking of drummer Pete Best and the poaching of Ringo Starr from Rory Storm & The Hurricanes) as the group began to make serious progress. At the start, much was based on trust – Epstein didn’t officially sign the band until almost a year after the Cavern gig, by which time they had (after numerous rejections) been picked up by George Martin at Parlophone, an otherwise spoken-word label. The Beatles agreed for Epstein to take 25 per cent of their earnings, which, had he lived longer, would have placed him among the wealthiest Svengalis in the world. As it was, a lack of appreciation for the importance royalties would play as the sixties progressed was to cost Epstein dearly.

Brian Epstein (far right) with The Beatles: Curtains for the manager?

‘After Brian died - we collapsed.’

John Lennon, 1970

However, during 1963–4 The Beatles became the biggest-selling group in Britain’s history, while Epstein’s expanding stable achieved a strike-rate which has never been matched: his new charges Gerry & The Pacemakers, Billy J Kramer & The Dakotas and Cilla Black managed seven number-one singles between them, while the all-conquering Beatles topped the charts six times on their own. In the USA, the Fab Four’s utter blitzing of the American market brought an unprecedented fifteen hit records in 1964 alone – six of which hit the summit. There would not be much let-up for the next three years, either. While The Beatles (particularly John Lennon and Paul McCartney) continued to build as the most potent creative force popular music had seen, Brian Epstein began to find himself losing control of the reins. His world was now a circus and he would turn to artificial means to deal with the increasing pressures of being ringmaster to such a phenomenon. On top of his growing substance use, the world’s best-known manager found himself in and out of clandestine relationships – generally with partners unlikely to forge anything else – at an alarming rate. His contract with the group due to end in 1967, Epstein had one last ground-break-ing creative card to play – to put The Beatles on at several US stadia, culminating with Candlestick Park in August 1966, thus pre-empting ‘arena’ rock by several years. This, however, had an unforeseen consequence: the band unanimously agreed after Candlestick Park to retire from exhausting live work – which left Epstein with little more to do for them. Alarmed that The Beatles might not re-employ him, Epstein merged NEMS with the Robert Stigwood Organization in January 1967. Although this made for a mighty stable of talent (Stigwood had Hendrix, Cream, The Who, The Bee Gees and The Moody Blues), it smacked of desperation to those who knew Epstein. The news was not well received by The Beatles, either.

Clearly now lost to a twilight world, Brian Epstein gave his last ever interview to the Melody Maker three weeks before he died. In it, he spoke of the desolation and loneliness he felt in his spiralling situation; his father, who had encouraged him from the start, had died just a week before, exacerbating his depression. He also admitted to recreational drug use and, as was widely known, that he was taking vast quantities of pills to sleep (Epstein often didn’t emerge until late afternoon, whether for work or to be present at Beatles’ sessions – the last one he attended was on 23 August 1967. Four mornings later, the butler and housekeeper at Epstein’s Belgravia home were unable to rouse him from behind his locked door. Forcing the bedroom door open, a quickly summoned doctor discovered Epstein’s lifeless body lying on his bed, surrounded by bottles of pills. There was no suicide note – although he had considered this solution in the recent past, as letters found by his assistant, Joanna Newfield, later corroborated – so a verdict of accidental death was returned by the coroner. Brian Epstein had overdosed on Carbitral at the age of thirty-two. The band that he had helped turn into world-beaters learned the shocking news in Wales, where they had an audience with the visiting Maharishi; they returned immediately, and Jimi Hendrix cancelled a show in London as a mark of respect. Epstein’s brother, Clive, made plans for NEMS.

A small service in Liverpool was not attended by the devastated Beatles – Epstein’s mother, Queenie (having only just buried her husband), decided on a small, family affair. Offering an ounce of light relief to an otherwise sombre occasion, a traffic delay holding up the hearse’s passage to the cemetery prompted Gerry Marsden to remark, ‘Trust Brian to be late for his own bloody funeral.’

See also Stuart Sutcliffe ( Pre-1965); MalEvans ( January 1976); John Lennon ( December 1980); George Harrison ( November 2001)

OCTOBER

Tuesday 3

Woody Guthrie

(Okemah, Oklahoma, 14 July 1912)

Woody Guthrie could always be guaranteed to find wry, witty and urbane words to accompany life’s tragedies, whatever form they might take; sadly, all accolades for his work were to be posthumous. He saw much of life’s downside when young: his older sister, Clara, died in a fire when he was a boy, his devoted mother became terminally ill and his father’s land dealings – in what had been one of the first of the oil-boom towns – went belly up. Guthrie hit the road for Texas in 1931, his guitar at his side (initially composing new words to old tunes), but found success a long time in coming as a musician. Guthrie’s broad array of creative talents – he made a living as a sign-writer – meant he could still just about support his young wife (and soon three children) as the Depression kicked in. However, just as workers had begun to fight their way out of this lean period, the Great Dust Bowl Storm of 1935 stripped them of homes and land, taking many lives as it travelled across the Great Plains. These days were recounted in Guthrie’s semi-autobiographical novel, Bound For Glory (1943).

Woody Guthrie was the archetypal wandering minstrel who developed a relationship with the open road, hitchhiking, stowing himself away and riding freight cars to find the action. When he arrived in California, the poor reception he got from insular types fearful of a post-storm influx of outsiders (and suspicious of an apparent Commie in their midst) only strengthened the resolve of a man fast becoming the first notable white protest singer. Another shift saw the restless Guthrie take his ‘songs of the people’ to New York, where he befriended the likes of Leadbelly ( Pre-1965), Pete Seeger and Cisco Houston and took up a distinctly ‘leftist’ stance – his ‘This Machine Kills Fascists’ guitar slogan was a prominent feature of the act. The limitations of New York radio caused the too-often-snubbed Guthrie to move on again, although he returned, after a stint in the navy, with a second wife and three more children – one of whom, Cathy, died tragically in another domestic fire when just four; another, Arlo, of course, followed him into the music business. (Ever restless, Guthrie would later marry a third time and father a seventh child.)

The last thirteen years of Guthrie’s life were spent in chronic ill health. Doctors offered conflicting diagnoses, though schizophrenia was suggested more than once. In fact, it was Huntington’s chorea – a degenerative disease that had seen his mother institutionalized thirty years earlier – that robbed this talent of virtually all his faculties and eventually took his life.

DECEMBER

Sunday 10

Otis Redding

(Dawson, Georgia, 9 September 1941)

(Various acts)

Ronnie Caldwell

(Memphis, Tennessee, 1948)

Carl Lee Cunningham

(Memphis, Tennessee, 1948)

Phalon Jones

(Memphis, Tennessee, 1948)

Jimmie King

(Memphis, Tennessee, 8 June 1949)

The Bar-Kays

The second ‘day the music died’ was a cold, foggy December afternoon in Wisconsin and – like Buddy Holly almost nine years before ( Pre-1965) – a groundbreak-ing stylist, equally at home with the gentle and the uptempo, was taken at the absolute height of his powers.

A minister’s son, Redding was singing gospel in Macon, Georgia, as a child, his voice already a powerful gift at five years old. Then, dropping out of his studies to help his financially strapped family, Redding earned a small amount of money singing with Little Richard’s Upsetters before taking the post of lead vocalist with Johnny Jenkins’s Pinetoppers (both much against his sick father’s devout preferences). The Pinetoppers were signed to Atlantic but recorded much of their material at the hallowed Stax-Volt Studios in Memphis, the label’s trademark call-and-response sound evident in their output; in spite of this coup, the hits were confined to Georgia. Redding’s own solo recordings – backed by Booker T & The MGs – included the US R & B hit, ‘These Arms of Mine’ (1962), originally mooted as a B-side. 1965 brought the splendid Otis Blue, an album full of Stax trickery that included the first classic Redding soul composition, ‘Respect’, which became a bigger hit for Aretha Franklin. His own crossover chart success still proved elusive at home – where he didn’t reach the Top Twenty until his death – though a couple of covers were picking up overseas interest. Redding’s rendition of ‘My Girl’ narrowly missed the UK Top Ten in 1965, while his 1966 version of ‘Satisfaction’ gained European airplay and was later rated by Mick Jagger as the best Stones cover he’d ever heard.

Although tragedy eventually made them world famous, little is known about the personal lives of the young men who made up the funky soul six-piece that backed Redding through his winter 1967 tour. Put together by Booker T & The MGs’ Al Jackson in Memphis a year before the tragedy, they began as The Imperials. Becoming The Bar-Kays (apparently a slang term for Bacardi, their preferred brand of rum), Jimmie King (guitars), Ben Cauley (trumpet), Ronnie Caldwell (organ), Phalon Jones (saxophone), James Alexander (bass) and Carl Lee Cunningham (drums) enjoyed a sizeable hit with the catchy, upbeat ‘Soul Finger’ during the summer of 1967. Their promising outlook was fused when the man who had wowed all at the Monterey Festival selected them as his next touring band.

Redding was, at this point, staying on a houseboat off Sausalito, near San Francisco, while he performed at the Fillmore Auditorium. As he sat gazing into the waters, he was inspired to write the timeless ‘Dock of the Bay’, taking the song to MGs’ guitarist Steve Cropper, who assisted him in completing the haunting piece. On 6 December, the track was committed to tape: Redding, however, was never to hear the final mix, an unrecorded final verse replaced by the song’s now-distinctive whistle.

Otis Redding believed in wise investment and, now a performer of some means, he had recently put his money into a ranch and a twin-engine Beechcraft H18. After a television special and three evening shows in Cleveland, hopping by plane over to Madison, Wisconsin, for the next leg of the tour seemed a good idea. Conditions, however, were worsening, with freezing fog descending, and it was suggested to Redding that he rethink the journey; the super-conscientious performer would hear none of it and so, early in the afternoon, the Beechcraft took to the skies with eight on board. Just three miles south of Madison’s Municipal Airport the plane began to lose power, and pulled up to circle and make another approach. Then – tragedy: at 3.28 pm, the craft went into a tailspin and plummeted into the icy depths of Lake Monoma, where it broke apart. With all on board exposed to the freezing water, it was sadly only a matter of time before they perished from the impact, drowning or hypothermia. Apart from Redding, Caldwell, Cunningham and King, the musicians’ valet, Matthew Kelly, and pilot Richard Fraser (both twenty-six) were also killed in the accident. The lone survivor pulled from the waters was Ben Cauley, who, unable to do anything for his colleagues, later described the trauma of hearing their calls of distress as they tried to swim to safety. The body of Phalon Jones was not recovered for several days. Cauley – along with Alexander, who hadn’t been on the plane – returned with a new line-up of The Bar-Kays in 1968.

Otis Redding: He fell short of the dock

One week later, Otis Redding’s Macon City Auditorium memorial attracted 4,500 visitors; Joe Tex, Sam Moore, Johnnie Taylor, Don Covay, Joe Simon, Percy Sledge and Solomon Burke were the soul luminaries selected as pallbearers. Redding, who was buried in the grounds of the family’s estate, the Big O Ranch, was commemorated by a bronze statue erected in Macon. ‘Dock of the Bay’ – like its 4-millionselling parent album – made Redding the latest in a line of posthumous chart-toppers within four months. The record stalled just short of the UK summit, but there was love for Redding in Britain as well, where he replaced Elvis Presley as ‘World’s Best Singer’ in a Melody Maker poll just after his death.

Friday 22

Rockin’ Robin Roberts

(Lawrence Fewell Roberts - New York, 23 November 1940)

The Wailers

Dynamic singer and performer Robin Roberts’s main claim to rock ‘n’ roll fame was a brief moment of improvised inspiration on an early version of the song that would become a pop-music staple: ‘Louie Louie’.

The version in question was that of The Wailers, a Seattle band who could claim to be not only one of the first garage acts to gain attention, inspiring The Sonics and The Kingsmen (whose rendition of ‘Louie’ is better known), but also direct ancestors to the city’s grunge scene of the early nineties. Originally an instrumental combo, The Wailers chanced upon former Little Bill & The Blue Notes’ leader Rockin’ Robin Roberts as he performed a capella atop a bench to passing visitors at the 1959 Washington State Fair. An immediate hit as their new singer, Roberts recorded the seminal track in 1961, adding the now-familiar R & B whoops that turned the song around. A lack of commercial interest, however, curtailed his involvement with the group; he continued his studies in Oregon but, having failed to gain a degree, he retired from music and joined the Marine Reserves.

The Wailers were a distant memory by 22 December 1967. Roberts – a passenger in a car travelling the wrong way on a San Mateo County freeway – was killed at 1.50 am when the vehicle collided with opposing traffic.

Five other members of The Wailers have since passed on. They are: Ron Gardner (sax, 1992), Rich Dangel (guitar, 2002), John Greek (guitar, 2006), Mark Marush (tenor sax, 2007) and Kent Morrill (keys, 2011).

Lest We Forget

Other notable deaths that occurred sometime during 1967:

Laverne Andrews (US pop/boogie-woogie singer with the popular Andrews Sisters; born Minnesota, 6/7/1915; cancer, 8/5)

Alan Avick (US guitarist who played alongside a pre-Blondie Chris Stein in psychedelic garage band First Crow to the Moon; leukaemia)

Bert Berns (revered US singer, songwriter and early Drifters producer who also founded Bang Records; born New York, 8/11/1929; sick during childhood, he died of heart failure in a New York hotel, 30/12)

Charles ‘Ty’ Brian (UK guitarist with Merseybeat act Rory Storm & The Hurricanes; born Liverpool, 1941; following

Reviews for The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars

[big_bang_gorilla · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Being a chronologically-arranged necrology of rock musicians, organized with major divisions for each year, and then each month. Very major figures get a longer spread. At the end of year, there's a grabbag of very short obituaries of lesser-knowns (supposedly) called "Lest We Forget". The world needed this book very badly, and it is basically done very well. There are inevitably a few problems with emphasis. There is far too much emphasis on reggae; most of them could have been relegated to the "Lest We Forgets" and there are very many major figures relegated to that catchall section. There are quite a few pop singers with full listings who have no measurable connection with rock (i.e., Matt Monro). Glad this was done, wish it could have been done perfectly.