October
1st
1708: John Blow (59) British
composer and organist of Westminster Abbey and writer of over 100 anthems.
He also wrote for the king and was appointed Composer to the Chapel
Royal (He died at his house in Broad Sanctuary, and was buried in the
north aisle of Westminster Abbey).
1975: Al Jackson Jr (39) American drummer
with the legendary Stax band, Booker T and the MG's. He started out
in his fathers band at the age of 5. He later began playing in Willie
Mitchell's band and the Ben Branch Band. In the 1960s he was a founding
member of the group, Booker T. & The MG'S.
Al was called "The Human Timekeeper" for his drumming ability,
he designed the groove and thats what the band played to.
Their many hits include "Green Onions," "Hip Hug-Her,"
"Hang 'Em High," and "Time Is Tight" accompanying
such greats as, Otis Redding, Rufus Thomas, Wilson Pickett, William
Bell and Al Green. (tragically, Al was murdered
after confronting an intruder in his home) b.
November 27th 1935.
1983: Freddy
Martin (76)
American bandleader and tenor saxophonist (lingering illness?).
1986: Andy McVann (21) drummer in Soul
of Socialism, an early incarnation of The Farm(car crash during a police
chase).
1992: Harry
Ray (45) American lead singer
with The Moments and Ray,Goodman & Brown;
The Moments had a total of 27 R&B chart hits, but his biggest hit
came with Ray,Goodman
& Brown's "Special Lady".
He was strongly involved in writing & producing much of their material
as well as performing, production and writing duties for All-Platinum's
other artists. He recorded
a duet with Sylvia Robinson "Sho Nuff Boogie", although it
was billed as Sylvia & the Moments) in 1973.(died
suddenly from a stroke)
b. Dec 15th 1946
1999: Lena Zavaroni (35) UK singer,
guitarist, she
suffered badly from anorexia since the age of 14
(after a tragic short life, she died from pneumonia three weeks after
an operation for leukotomy).
2004: Bruce Palmer (58)
Canadian bassist; brought
up in Toronto, Canada, Bruce began playing music at age 10. He played
in the Mynah Birds with a young Rick James, which would eventually include
fellow Canadian Neil Young. Mynah Birds auditioned for Motown Records
but split when James left the band. He went on to co-found Buffalo Springfield
in April 1966 in Toronto with Young, Stephen Stills, Dewey Martin and
Richie Furay. Over just 19 months in 1967 and '68, the group established
itself as a folk/country/rock pioneer, producing the transcendent political
anthem "For What It's Worth". Bruce left Buffalo Springfield
in January 1968, replaced by Jim Messina, but the band was finished
shortly thereafter. He went on to release a 1971 solo album for Verve,
"The Cycle is Complete," featuring James on percussion. In
1982, Bruce reteamed with Young
(heart attack)
b. September 9th
1946... read
more
2005: Paul Pena (55)
US multi-genre singer, songwriter, pianist, and guitarist, who performed
Mississippi Delta blues, jazz, flamenco, folk, rock and roll and Tuvan
throat-singing he died in his San Francisco, California apartment after
a long battle with diabetes and pancreatitis).
October 2
1971:
Bola de Nieve/Ignacio Jacinto Villa (60) Cuban
singer-pianist and songwriter; he studied at the Mateu Conservatoire
of Havana and worked as a chauffeur and played piano for silent films
until his friend Rita Montaner took him on as an accompanist in the
early 1930s taking him to Mexico. Ignacio stayed in Mexico and developed
an original performance style as a pianist and singer. He was an elite,
sophisticated cabaret stylist known for ironic patter, subtle musical
interpretation, with a repertoire that included songs in French, English,
Catalan, Portuguese and Italian. He toured widely in Europe and the
Americas, and his friends included Andres Segovia and Pablo Neruda
(?) b. September
11th 1911.
1976: Quentin "Butter"
Jackson (57)
American jazz trombonist
born in Springfield, Ohio; in his early career he worked with Cab Calloway
and was in the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Later he did notable work with
Charles Mingus, Kenny Burrell, and others.(?)
b. January 13th 1909.
1981: Hazel Scott (61)
West
Indian jazz and classical pianist and singer;
born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago and raised in New York City
from the age of four. She performed extensively on piano as a child,
then trained at the Juilliard School. She appeared in the production
Priorities of 1942 and performed numerous times at the famed Carnegie
Hall. She was known for improvising on classical themes and also played
boogie-woogie, blues, and ballads. Her
album Relaxed Piano Moodson the Debut Record label with Charles Mingus
and Max Roach, is the album most highly regarded by critics today. Hazel
was the first coloured lady to have her own TV show, The Hazel Scott
Show, which premiered on the DuMont Television Network on July 3rd 1950.
However, due to her public opposition
to McCarthyism and racial segregation, the show was canceled, the final
broadcast was September 29th 1950. Hazel also appeared in numerous films,
including 'Something To Shout About', 'I Dood It', 'Broadway Rhythm',
'The Heat's On' and 'Rhapsody in Blue' (?)
b. June 11th 1920.
1989: "Cousin Joe" Pleasant/Pleasant Joseph (81)
American blues vocalist and guitarist
().
1994:
Harriet
Nelson/Peggy
Lou Snyder
(85)
American
singer and actress, born in Des Moines, Iowa; by 1932, she was performing
in vaudeville when she met the saxophone-playing bandleader Ozzie Nelson,
who hired her to sing with the band, under the name Harriet Hilliard.
They married three years later. Harriot
also went on to have a respectable film career and as a solo performer,
as well as her work with the band. She is also well known for her role
on the long-running sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.
(Sadly
Harriet died of congestive heart failure)
b. July 18th 1909.
1998: Gene Autry (91) US
singer, guitar,
actor; America's singing cowboy
(lymphoma).
October 3
1966: Dave Lambert
(49) jazz singer,
drums; Gene Krupa's Orchestra, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross,
Buddy Sterat, Charlie Parker. (hit by a car while changing a tyre).
1967: Woody Guthrie (55)
US folk singer, guitarist, noted for his identification with the common
man, and for his abhorrence of fascism, politicians, hypocritical people
and economic exploitation. (Huntington's Chorea disease).
2000: Benjamin Orr/Benjamin
Orzechowski (53)
American bassist and vocalist; born
in Lakewood, Ohio, he learnt to play many instruments including the
guitar, drums,
bass, and keyboards. He dropped
out of High School to join a local band The Grasshoppers as lead singer
and guitarist. They were the house band on the syndicated TV show Upbeat
produced by WEWS-TV in Cleveland. In 1970 he moved to Columbus, Ohio,
where he met Ric Ocasek and formed a musical partnership that would
continue through to the end of his life. Along with lead guitarist Jas
Goodkind, they formed a folk band called Milkwood. The group released
one album, How's the Weather? in 1972. By the mid 1970s he was working
in a Boston night club band, Cap'n Swing, whose members included future
Cars leader Ric Ocasek and guitarist Elliot Easton. After the group
broke up in 1975, the three of them joined up with keyboardist Greg
Hawkes and drummer David Robinson to form The Cars in 1976. After several
top hits and multi-platinum albums with The Cars, he released his only
solo project The Lace in 1986. Ben continued to work with The Cars for
one more album before their breakup in 1988, after which he recorded
tracks with guitarist John Kalishes. From 1998 until his death in 2000,
he performed with three bands, including his own band "ORR",
The Voices of Classic Rock, and Big People (pancreatic
cancer) b.
September 8th 1947.
2007:
Elfi von Dassanowsky (83)
Austrian-American singer, pianist and film producer.
A
piano prodigy at 5, she attended the Vienna Institute of the Blessed
Virgin Mary (known as the "Englische Fräuleins") and
became at age 15, the youngest woman admitted to Vienna's Academy of
Music and Performing Arts to that date to be trained as an opera singer
and concert pianist as the protégé of concert pianist,
Emil von Sauer. In 1946, she made her opera debut in Mozart's "Marriage
of Figaro" and her wide soprano to mezzo range gained her rapid
fame in leading roles in throughout Central Europe. She is one of the
few women in history, and one of the youngest, at age 23, to co-found
a major film studio--Belvedere Film Vienna. As creative producer she
helped revitalize Austrian cinema and discover such major European film
talent as Nadja Tiller and Gunther Philipp. Elfi initiated musical theater
groups, was announcer for Allied Forces Broadcasting and the BBC, toured
Central Europe in a one-woman-show and gave master classes in voice
and piano, often to refugees who could not gain entry into music academies.
In Hollywood in the early 1960s, she resisted
becoming a starlet and preferred to remain behind the camera in an industry
that did not yet accept women in the leading production role she had
in Europe. She worked as a noted vocal coach for director Otto Preminger
on such films as "In Harm's Way" and "The Cardinal".
In 1999, Elfi re-established Belvedere Film with her son as a LA-based
production company and served as Executive Producer of the award-winning
dramatic short film, "Semmelweis," the spy-comedy "Wilson
Chance," and the documentary "The Archduke and Herbert Hinkel."
Dassanowsky was honored for her pioneering work by Austria, by the cities
of Los Angeles and Vienna, as well as by the State of California which
declared February 2nd 1996, "Elfi von Dassanowsky Day." She
was named a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Letters of France,
and she received the Austrian Film Archive's Lifetime Achievement Medal
and the UNESCO Mozart Medal, among many other awards (heart
failure) b. February 2nd 1924.
2009: Robert Kirby (61) British
born keyboard player and arranger of string sections for rock and folk
music; he studied at Caius College, Cambridge where with fellow students
he sang in a group called 'The Gentle Power of Song'. By 1978 Robert
had already
had recorded arrangements for over 40 albums.
Also from 1975-1978 he was one of the two keyboard players for Strawbs,
touring the UK and internationally, and getting some composing credits
on the albums Deep Cuts, Deadlines and Burning for You. He did some
further arranging for Strawbs with Baroque & Roll in 2001, Déjà
Fou in 2004 and 2009's Dancing to the Devil's Beat. He is best known
for his work on the Nick Drake albums, Five Leaves Left and Bryter Layter,
but has also worked with Elton John, Ralph McTell, Paul Weller, Elvis
Costello and the dutch band Flemming. In July 2005, Robert conducted
an 18-piece orchestra in Manhattan's Central Park for a show of Drake's
music, using his original scores (?)
b. April 16th
1948.
October 4
1948:
Jan
Savitt/Jacob Savetnick (41)
Russian
arranger, bandleader, violinist, and vocalist; he was invited to joined
the Philadelphia Orchestra when was only nineteen. His band The Top
Hatters was formed in 1937 and began touring the following year. Their
songs include "720 in the Books" "It's A Wonderful World"
and his theme songs "Quaker City Jazz" and "From Out
Of Space". He was one of the first of the Big Band leaders to feature
an African American vocalist (?)
b. September 4th 1907.
1970: Janis
Joplin (27) US
blues singer fronting the Big Brother and The Holding Company; she lived
fast and died young, an American icon and souvenir of the 1960s (Tragically
died at the Landmark Hotel, Hollywood after an accidental heroin overdose).
1982:
Glenn Gould (50) Canadian
pianist, composer and
winner of 4 grammies, who
became one of the best-known and most celebrated classical pianists
of the twentieth century. He was renowned as an interpreter of the keyboard
music of Johann Sebastian Bach. His playing was distinguished by a remarkable
technical proficiency and a capacity to articulate the polyphonic texture
of Bachs music. In 1982 he was inducted
into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.
(?) b.
September 25th 1932.
1990: Alyn
Ainsworth (66) English singer and dance band conductor born
in Bolton. At the age of 14, Herman Darewski recognised
his singing talent and signed
him up to tour with his dance band. When his voice broke he learnt to
play the guitar and soon joined Oscar Rabin's orchestra where he both
played with the band and did musical arrangements, they also broadcast
on the radio. Alyn turned down an offer from Val Parnell to conduct
the London Palladium Orchestra and chose in 1951 to join the BBC Northern
Variety Orchestra, first as arranger, then as conductor. In the very
early 60s he was signed up by Granada TV to replace Peter Knight as
presenter of "Spot the Tune". In 1965 he conducted the orchestra
at the Royal Command Performance at the London Palladium for the third
time.
He was also the musical director for the BBC's anniversary programme
Fifty Years Of Music broadcast in 1972
and he conducted in the Eurovision Song Contest five times, 1975, 1976,
1977 for Belgium, 1978 and 1990. (?) b.
August
24th 1924.
1994:
Danny Gatton (49)
American
guitarist; born in Washington DC, he began his career playing in bands
while still a teenager. He began to attract wider interest in the 1970s
while playing guitar and banjo for the group Liz Meyer & Friends.
He made his name as a performer the 1980s, both as a solo performer
and with his Redneck Jazz Explosion, in which he would trade licks with
virtuoso pedal steel player Buddy Emmons over a tight bass-drums rhythm
which drew from blues, country, bebop and rockabilly influences. He
also backed Robert Gordon and Roger Miller. He contributed a cover of
"Apricot Brandy", a song by supergroup Rhinoceros, to the
1990 compilation album Rubáiyát. Danny was ranked 63rd
on Rolling Stone magazine's 100 Greatest Guitarists of all Time in 2003
and on May 26th, 2010, Gibson.com ranked Gatton as the 27th best guitarist
of all time. (suicide)
b. September 4th 1945.
1999: Arthur Stewart "Art" Farmer (71)
American
jazz trumpeter and flugelhorn player,and also played flumpet, a trumpet-flugelhorn
combination designed for him by David Monette. Born in Council Bluffs,
Iowa worked as a musician from the mid-1940s onwards, based in Los Angeles,
he played in the bands of Benny Carter and Jay McShann among others.
He
joined Lionel Hampton's orchestra around 1953, with fellow trumpeters
Clifford Brown and Quincy Jones. Later relocating to New York, he worked
with Gigi Gryce, Horace Silver, Gerry Mulligan, George Russell, Jones
and Oliver Nelson among others. He also formed "The Jazztet"
with the composer and tenor sax player Benny Golson. Art moved to Europe,
ultimately based in Vienna, where he performed with The Kenny Clarke-Francy
Boland Big Band, and also recorded extensively as a leader throughout
his later career. With Golson he revived 'The Jazztet' in the 1980s
for a number of engagements, with the original trombonist Curtis Fuller
returning to the group (?)
b. August
21st 1928.
2005: Mike Gibbins
(56) Welsh
drummer; he was a founding member the Iveys, later renamed Badfinger,
after "Badfinger Boogie", an unused title for a Lennon-McCartney
composition. He helped form The Iveys in 1965 and his powerful playing
helped push the Iveys to a new level of proficiency and by the end of
the year the group was being booked as an opening act for local appearances
by the likes of the Who, the Yardbirds, the Moody Blues, and the Spencer
Davis Group and was a popular attraction on the London club scene. They
signed with Apple and changed their name to Badfinger, and broke through
to the British and American Top Ten with the Paul McCartney-composed
"Come and Get It." The group followed this up in 1970 with
their LP masterpiece No Dice, scoring a hit with the now pop classic
"No Matter What" which featured the ballad "Without You".
Mike and the band backed George Harrison's solo masterpiece "All
Things Must Pass", and also serving as the backing unit at George's
Concert for Bangladesh. He was one of two members of the group left
behind following a pair of tragic suicides, and he led reorganized versions
of "Badfinger" into the 1980s and beyond. (died
in his sleep at home in Florida) b.
March 12th 1949.
2009: Mercedes Sosa (74) Argentinian
folk singer; born in San Miguel de Tucumán, in northwestern Argentina,
her roots were in Argentine folk music, she became one of the preeminent
exponents of nueva canción. Mercedes became known as La Negra
by her fans for her long, jet-black hair, and was best known as the
voice of the "voiceless ones". In a career spanning nearly
six decades, as well as working in South America, she toured in both
the US and Europe and released 70 albums from "La Voz de la Zafra"
in 1959, "Canciones con Fundamento" in 1965 and Yo No Canto
Por Cantar in 1966, to the release of Éxitos Eternos in 2005,
La Historia del Folklore in 2007, Cantora 1 and Cantora 2 both in 2009
(Mercedes
died from an aggravation of her preexisting kidney disease)
b. July 9th 1935.
October 5
1940:
Silvestre Revueltas Sánchez (40)
Mexican
composer, violinist and conductor; born in Santiago Papasquiaro in Durango,
he studied at the National Conservatory in Mexico City, St. Edward's
University in Austin, Texas and the Chicago College of Music. In 1929
became assistant conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico,
a post he held until 1935. He did much to promote contemporary Mexican
music. He wrote film music, chamber music, songs and a number of other
works. Among his orchestral music are a number of symphonic poems with
Sensemayá: Chant for the Killing of a Snake (1938), based on
a poem by Nicolás Guillén, the most famous. He appeared
briefly as a bar piano player in the movie ¡Vámonos con
Pancho Villa! in 1935, for which he composed the music. When shooting
breaks out in the bar while he is playing "La cucaracha",
he holds up a sign reading "Se suplica no tirarle al pianista"
(Please don't shoot at the piano player!). He went to Spain and worked
for the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War, but upon Francisco
Franco's victory, returned to Mexico to teach. He earned little, and
sadly fell into poverty and alcoholism (He
died of pneumonia in Mexico City on the day his ballet El renacuajo
paseador, written four years earlier, was premièred)
b.
December 31st 1899.
1961:
Booker Little Jr (23) American jazz trumpeter and composer
born in Memphis, Tennessee. He studied at the Chicago Conservatory from
1956 to 1958 and worked with leading local musicians such as Johnny
Griffin. After which he moved to New York where he met up with drummer
Max Roach and multi-instrumentalist virtuoso Eric Dolphy. From '58 to
'61 he recorded four albums with Max Roach and two albums with
Eric Dolphy in '60 and '61.
He also recorded with the John Coltrane Quartet, Frank Strozier, and
Abbey Lincoln as well as four albums as a leader of his Booker Little
Quartet. Booker is considered to be one of the first trumpet players
to develop his own sound after Clifford Brown. (Sadly
he died prematurely of complications resulting from uremia, kidney failure)
b.
April 2nd 1938.
1981: Jud Strunk/Justin Strunk Jr (45) American
singer-songwriter and comedian; he learnt to play the banjo as a boy
and began entertaining locals. He went on to to appear on national television
network shows such as Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In and The Tonight
Show Starring Johnny Carson. In
1973, he wrote and recorded the song "A Daisy a Day," which
made the Billboard Top 20 on both the country and pop music charts.
He also wrote and recorded three humorous songs that made it into the
country music charts, one of which continues to be played on the Dr.
Demento show, is "The Biggest Parakeets in Town". He also
toured with the Andy Williams Road Show (Jud was
a private pilot and owned a 1941 Fairchild M62-A. Tragically, he suffered
a heart attack while taking off in the aircraft at the Carrabassett
Valley Airport in Maine and was killed instantly along with his passenger,
local businessman Dick Ayotte) b. June
11 1936
1985: Brian Keenan (42) US drummer born in New York, he also
lived in Conisbrough near Doncaster, Yorkshire, England, and Ireland
as a child. He was a member of The Chambers Brothers from 1965 to 1971,
also played with the pre-"Doo Wah Diddy Diddy" Manfred Mann
group in England. Back in the USA Brian's group, The Losers, was the
house band at Ondine, the first discotheque in New York City. (heart
attack).
1986: Emanuel
"Manny" Sayles (79)
American jazz banjoist and guitarist, he played
violin and viola as a child in Florida, then taught himself banjo and
guitar. Relocating to New Orleans he joined William Ridgely's Tuxedo
Orchestra, after which he worked with Fate Marable, Armand Piron, and
Sidney Desvigne on riverboats up and down the Mississippi River.
In 1929 he participated in recordings with the Jones-Collins Astoria
Hot Eight. 1933 sees Manny in Chicago lead his own band, played in the
house band at the Jazz Ltd. club and recording with Roosevelt Sykes
and others. Over
the years he played with many including Sweet Emma Barrett, Punch Miller,
the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, played and toured japan with George
Lewis, and also recorded with the likes of Peter Bocage, Kid Thomas
Valentine, Earl Hines, and Louis Cottrell, Jr.. He recorded extensively
as a leader in the 1960s for GHB, Nobility, Dixie, and Big Lou ()
b. January 31st 1907.
1992: Eddie Kendricks (52) lead singer with The Temptations, he
is noted for his distinctive falsetto singing style (lung cancer).
1995: Marcel Neville King (38) English
singer born in Manchester, he was the youngest member of "The Sweet
Sensation", a band formed in Manchester in 1973 which came to notice
after appearing on the ITV talent show New Faces. Under the guidance
Tony Hatch the band signed to Pye Records. Their second single release
"Sad Sweet Dreamer" was a UK No.1 hit in October 1974, also
reaching No.14 on the Billboard Hot 100 the following spring. Their
follow up "Purely by Coincidence" reached No.11 in the UK
singles chart in January 1975. In 1977 they entered into A Song For
Europe in an attempt to represent the United Kingdom at the Eurovision
Song Contest. Their song "You're My Sweet Sensation" ended
in 8th place. Marcel launched a solo career in 1985 recording the single
"Reach for Love" in 1991. (cerebral
haemorrhage) b. January 4th 1958
2004:
Rodney Dangerfield/Jacob Cohen (82) American comedian
and actor, best known for the catchphrases "I don't get no respect"
or "I get no respect" and his monologues on that theme. He
wrote songs for the cartoon "Rover Dangerfield", appeared
on TV's Johnny Carson's Tonight Show over 70 times and was in the movies..
Natural Born Killers and Caddyshack. His comedy album, No Respect, won
a Grammy Award. One of his TV specials featured a musical number, "Rappin'
Rodney, which soon became one of the first MTV music videos (Complications
after a heart surgery. He underwent surgery Aug 25th 2004 to replace
a heart valve. He later fell into a coma and never recovered)
b. November 22nd 1921.
2009: Mike Alexander (32) British
bassist born in West Ham, London; In 2000, he joined Matt Drake and
Ben Carter in a metal covers band, before they formed the band Evile
in 2004. They recorded an EP "All Hallows Eve" the same year
and a demo "Hell Demo" in 2006. Soon after, the band signed
to Earache Records, and released their debut album, "Enter the
Grave" worldwide 2007. Mike, who endorsed Hartke amplifiers and
cabinets and Dunlop bass strings, and Evile had released their second
album Infected Nations, earlier this year, 2009 (died
in Sweden during a European tour in support of their new album)
b. June 22nd 1977.
October 6
1762: Francesco Manfredini (78)
Italian Baroque composer, violinist, and church musician; he became
musical director at St. Philip's Cathedral in his home town of Pistoia.
Much of his music is presumed to have been destroyed after his death;
only 43 published works and a handful of manuscripts are left ().
1978: Johnny O'Keefe (43) Australian
pioneering rock and roll
singer of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. He had his own one-hour live TV
show "Six O'Clock Rock", featuring many local artists. Born
in the eastern Sydney suburb of Bondi Junction, in September 1956 Johnny
and his friend Dave Owen, an American-born tenor sax player formed Australia's
first rock'n'roll band, The Dee Jays. He
also became the first Australian pop star to chart, with his third release,
"I'm the Wild One." which was covered in 1987 by Iggy Pop
as "Real Wild Child". He was also the first Australian rock'n'roll
performer to tour the US. In his twenty-year career, he released over
50 singles, 50 EP's and 100 albums. Johnny's last public appearance
was on Seven Network's Sounds program, taped on 30 September 1978. (Tragically
died from a heart attack induced by an accidental overdose of prescribed
drugs) b. January 19th 1935.
1985: Nelson Riddle (64)
American bandleader, arranger
and orchestrator whose long career spanned from the 1940s until the
1980s, He began taking piano lessons at the age of eight and trombone
lessons at aged fourteen. After his graduation from Ridgewood High School,
he spent his late teens and early 20s playing trombone in and occasionally
arranging for various local dance bands, culminating in his association
with the Charlie Spivak Orchestra. In 1943, he joined the Merchant Marine,
serving at Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, New York for roughly two years.
During this time he continued working for the Charlie Spivak Orchestra
and he studyed orchestration under his fellow merchant marine, composer
Alan Shulman. After his enlistment term ended, Nelson travelled to Chicago
to join the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra in 1944; he remained the orchestra's
third trombone for eleven months until drafted by the United States
Army in April, 1945.
In
1946 he moved to Hollywood to pursue his career as an arranger. For
several years he wrote arrangements for multiple radio and record projects.
He went on to form his own orchestra providing
jazzy big-band style arrangements to accompany such as Frank Sinatra,
Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, Judy Garland, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald,
Shirley Bassey, Matt Monro, Linda Ronstadt and many others. (liver
ailments)
b. June 1st 1921.
1999: Amália da Piedade Rodrigues (79) Portuguese singer,
actress. She was known as the "Queen of Fado" and was most
influential in introducing fado to the world outside of Portugal. She
was unquestionably the most important figure in the genres development
(died in her home at Lisbon, in Rua de São Bento which is now
a museum).
2006: Claude
Luter (83)
French clarinet player, soprano saxophone;
best known for being an accompanist to Sidney Bechet when he was in
Paris, but he also worked with Barney Bigard and French writer and musician
Boris Vian ().
October 7
1959:
Mario Lanza/Alfredo Arnold Cocozza (38) Legendary
American
tenor and Hollywood movie star who enjoyed success in 1940s and 1950s.
His voice was considered by some to rival that of Enrico Caruso, whom
Lanza portrayed in the 1951 film The Great Caruso. He was able to sing
all types of music. His career covered opera, radio, concerts, recordings,
and motion pictures. He was the first artist for RCA Victor Red Seal
to receive a gold disc and the first artist to sell two and half million
albums. A highly influential artist, Mario has been credited with inspiring
successive generations of opera singers, including Plácido Domingo,
Luciano Pavarotti, Leo Nucci and José Carreras. (died in Rome
from a pulmonary embolism) b. January 31st 1921.
1964:
Jasper Taylor (70)
US drummer, born in Texarkana, Arkansas; he
performed in Wild West revues and minstrel shows in his teens, touring
the American South and Mexico. He played on washboard, drums, wood blocks,
and xylophone. As a xylophonist he collaborated with W.C.
Handy, and later played with Jelly Roll Morton. In
1917 he moved to Chicago, where he was based out of for most of his
career. Jasper played in the 365th Infantry Band in France during World
War I, and played with Handy, Will Marion Cook, the Chicago Novelty
Orchestra, and Clarence Williams in the late 1910s and early 1920s.
Later in the 1920s he worked with Dave Peyton and Fess Williams.
Shortly
before his death he led his own Creole Jazz Band
(?)
b.
January 1st 1894.
1966: Johnny Kidd/Frederick Heath (30)
English
frontman and singer with Johnny Kidd & the Pirates; he had hit songs
from the late 1950s to the mid 1960s. Their first single was the raw
"Please Don't Touch", reaching No. 25 on the UK singles charts
in 1959, this song has since been covered many times, most successfully
by Motörhead. His most famous song as a composer was "Shakin'
All Over" which was a No.1 UK hit in 1960. Kidd's own version didn't
chart outside of Europe, but two cover versions did: The Guess Who topped
the Canadian charts and hit No.22 US with their 1965 version of "Shakin'
All Over", and in Australia, Normie Rowe topped the charts with
it later the same year. It
was also covered by The Who on the classic Live at Leeds album and Iggy
Pop covered it on his solo album "Avenue B". Johnny
and his band are remembered for appearing onstage in pirate costumes,
complete with eye-patches and he was one of the pre-Beatles British
rock and rollers to achieve worldwide fame (car
crash; near
Radcliffe, Manchester, while on tour)
b. November 23rd
1935
1966:
Smiley Lewis/Overton Amos Lemons (53)
New Orleans R&B singer (stomach cancer).
2000:
Dennis Sandole (87) American guitarist
sharing the stage with such acts as Tommy Dorsey and a highly respected
sessionist, appearing on numerous film soundtracks and records by Billie
Holiday and Frank Sinatra, among others (died in his Philadelphia, PA,
home).
2009: Steve Ferguson (60)
American guitarist, born in Louisville, KY, he first
formed a group called the Merseybeats with
his
high school friend,
pianist Terry Adams, before the two moved Miami,
Florida,
where the pair helped found the band NRBQ, short for New Rhythm and
Blues Quartet (originally Quintet),
with singer Frank Gadler, drummer Tom Staley and bassist Joey Spampinato
in 1967. Soon they relocated to the northeastern US, living in Park
Slope, Brooklyn, where they gained attention in local clubs. In the
spring of 1969, NRBQ was the opening act for a 3-band program at "The
Fillmore East" with 2nd act Joe Cocker the headline act The Jeff
Beck Group, with lead singer Rod Stewart (Steve
died after a long battle with cancer)
b. November 22nd 1948
...read
more
October 8
1772:
Jean Joseph de Mondonville (60)
French composer, violinist. Violinist of the Royal Chapel and Chamber,
Paris ().
1834: François-Adrien Boïeldieu (58)
French composer. The most significant composer in France in the early
decades of the nineteenth century, he wrote comic operas that were among
the best-known and most-performed of his day (cancer of the larynx).
1953:
Kathleen Mary Ferrier CBE (41) English contralto singer,
born in Higher Walton, Lancashire. She later moved with her family to
Blackburn, Lancashire. She excelled in the music of Mahler, of Bach
and of Handel. Her recitals often included songs by Schubert, Schumann
and Brahms, and towards the end of her career she sang Chausson's Poème
de l'amour et de la mer. However, she is perhaps best remembered for
her interpretations of British folk songs, including "Blow the
wind southerly". She
also sang regularly in the Netherlands, and in France, Germany, Italy
and Scandinavia. She paid three visits to North America in 1948, 1949
and 1950 and sang at each of the first six Edinburgh International Festivals.
Benjamin Britten wrote several works specifically for her, including
Lucretia in The Rape of Lucretia, Abraham and Isaac (also written for
Peter Pears), and part of the Spring Symphony. Among other composers
who wrote specifically for her were Lennox Berkeley, Arthur Bliss and
Edmund Rubbra. She worked with many famous conductors, including Bruno
Walter, John Barbirolli, Malcolm Sargent, Clemens Krauss, Otto Klemperer,
Herbert von Karajan, Eduard van Beinum and also with Benjamin Britten.
She also worked with other famous singers such as Isobel Baillie, Elisabeth
Schwarzkopf, Julius Patzak and Peter Pears. Kathleen was especially
remembered for her brave performances during her final illness. (Sadly
lost to breast cancer) b. April 22nd
1912
1955: Iry LeJeune (26) American accordionist born in Pointe
Noire, Louisiana, he was one of the best selling and most popular Cajun
musicians in the mid to late 1940s into the early 1950s. His
recordings and repertoire remain influential to the present day. He
was among a handful of recording artists who returned the accordion
to prominence in commercially recorded Cajun music and dance hall performances.
In 1948 Iry met fiddler Floyd LeBlanc, together they traveled to
Houston, Texas where they recorded "Love Bridge Waltz" and
"Evangeline Special" with Virgil Bozeman's Oklahoma Tornadoes
supporting. This disc was the turning point in his career and for Cajun
music. Iry eventually assembled a band, the Lacassine Playboys, which
at one time or another featured Crawford Vincent or Robby Bertrand on
drums, Alfred "Duckhead" Cormier on guitar, Wilson Granger
on fiddle, R. C. Vanicor on steel guitar and occasionally Shuler on
guitar.(Iry
and fiddler J. B. Fuselier were returning home after playing at a dance
at the Green Wing club in Eunice when they got a flat. They were trying
to change the tyre when a driver sped past at about 90mph, hitting Iry,
killing him and knocking his body into a field) b.
October 28th 1928.
1977:
Giorgos Papasideris (75) Greece country singer, composer
and lyricist; born on Salamis Island, Greece, after leaving elementary
school, he spent his entire career working professionally in the field
of traditional Greek folk music and Arvanite folk music, producing many
popular recordings. In
Alonia, a district
of Salamis City his birthplace, there is a bust in memory of him. (heart
attack) b. September 14th 1902.
1986: Emmanuel "Manny" Sayles (78) American jazz
banjoist and guitarist ()
2008:
Gidget Gein/Bradley Stewart (39) US
bassist; born in Hollywood, Florida and was taught to play guitar by
a catholic priest. He grew up with his friend
Brian Hugh Warner and their personalities
expressed themselves through fun ideals in Gidget Gein and Marilyn Manson.
They formed the band and
came on south Florida music scene as
Marilyn Manson & the Spooky Kids, and began
to work with musician-producer Trent Reznor.
They dropped the Spooky Kids from the band name in 1992. Sadly, Gidget
was going out of control as his drug habit increased and he was dropped
from the band in 1993. He did a stint in New York forming the band Gidget
Gein and the Dali Gaggers with guitarist Al B. Romano which featured
various fun displays of degenerate art and post-punk styled songwriting.
Before the release of the Dali Gaggers only album Confessions of a Spooky
Kid, he headed back to Florida to try to kick his drug addiction. He
left Florida in 2004 taking his now extensive art collection with him,
and began to execute art and fashion shows in Hollywood, California,
under the organised name Gollywood
(heroin overdose) b. September 11th 1969.
October 9
1941:
Helen Morgan (41) American
singer, guitarist and actress who worked in films and on the stage.
She
toured extensively in vaudeville and
made a big splash in the Chicago club scene in the 1920s. She starred
as Julie LaVerne in the original Hammerstein
and Kern's musical Broadway
production of Show Boat in 1927 as well as in the 1932 Broadway revival
of the musical, and appeared in the first two of its subsequent film
adaptations, in 1929 and in 1936, becoming firmly associated with the
role.
Another notable success was the title role of Hammerstein and Kern's
musical, Sweet Adeline in 1929.
She also appeared and sang in many films including Applause, Glorifying
the American Girl, Roadhouse Nights, The Gigolo Racket, Manhattan Lullaby,
Frankie and Johnnie, You Belong to Me, Marie Galante, Sweet Music to
mention a few.
Helen was portrayed in
the 1957 biopic The Helen Morgan Story. (cirrhosis
of the liver) b.
August 2nd 1900.
1973:
Sister Rosetta Tharpe
(58) American
pioneering gospel singer, songwriter and recording artist;
born Rosetta Nubin in Cotton Plant, Arkansas,
she began performing at age four, billed as "Little Rosetta Nubin,
the singing and guitar playing miracle".
Rosetta attained popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with a unique mixture
of spiritual lyrics and early rock and roll accompaniment. She became
the first great recording star of gospel music in the late '30s and
also became known as the "original soul sister" of recorded
music. On October 31, 1938, Rosetta recorded for the first time, four
sides with Decca Records backed by "Lucky" Millinder's jazz
orchestra. Her records caused an immediate furor: many churchgoers were
shocked by the mixture of sacred and secular music, but secular audiences
loved them. Songs like "This Train" and "Rock Me",
which combined gospel themes with bouncy up-tempo arrangements, became
smash hits among audiences with little previous exposure to gospel music.
In April / May 1964, she toured the UK as part of the "American
Folk Blues and Gospel Caravan", alongside Muddy Waters and Otis
Spann, Ranson Knowling and Little Willie Smith, Reverend Gary Davis,
Cousin Joe and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee;
pianist Cousin Joe Pleasant
accompanied her on stage. Many musicians, from Elvis Presley and Jerry
Lee Lewis to Isaac Hayes and Aretha Franklin to Sean Michel and The
Noisettes have cited her as an influence. The Noisettes
released the single "Sister
Rosetta (Capture the Spirit)" in 2007, the same year Alison Krauss
and Robert Plant released a duet album Raising Sand, Track No.7 of that
album is titled "Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us". (Her
performances were curtailed by a stroke in 1970, after which she lost
the use of her legs. Rosetta sadly died after a second stroke, on the
eve of a scheduled recording session) b.
March 20th 1915
1978: Jacques Brel (49) French
singer, songwriter; major influence on English-speaking writers and
performers including Leonard Cohen and David Bowie, while translations
of his songs were recorded by a wide range of performers from the Kingston
Trio to Frank Sinatra. (cancer).
1988: Clifton 'Cliff' Gallup (58)
American electric guitarist, who played rock and roll in Gene Vincent's
band The Blue Caps in the 1950s. He played on 35 tracks with Vincent,
including his biggest hit "Be-Bop-A-Lula", and established
a reputation as one of the most technically proficient guitarists in
early rock and roll. He left the band in '56, returning only for some
more studio sessions that same year for the second Gene Vincent &
The Bluecaps LP. In the mid 1960s Clinton made a solo album for the
local Pussy Cat record label in Norfolk, 'Straight Down the Middle',
in a more mellow instrumental style akin to Chet Atkins and Les Paul.
He played guitar up until the day he died. He last played in Norfolk
with a group called the H-Lo's 48 hours before his death (heart
attack) b. June 17th 1930.
1999: Milt
Jackson (76) American vibraphonist; born in Detroit, he very
was an expressive player, he differentiated himself from other vibraphonists
in his attention to variations of dynamics and rhythm. He was particularly
fond of the 12-bar blues at slow tempos. He preferred to set the vibraphone's
oscillator to a low 3.3 revolutions per second for a more subtle vibrato.
Milt was discovered by Dizzy Gillespie, who hired him for his sextet
in 1946 and also kept him for larger ensembles. He quickly acquired
experience working with the most important figures in jazz of the era,
including Woody Herman, Howard McGhee, Thelonious Monk, and Charlie
Parker. From the mid-70s to the mid-80s, Jackson recorded for Norman
Granz's Pablo Records, including the classic Jackson, Johnson, Brown
& Company (1983), featuring Jackson with J. J. Johnson on trombone,
Ray Brown on bass, backed by Tom Ranier on piano, guitarist John Collins,
and drummer Roy McCurdy. He also guested on recordings by many leading
jazz, blues and soul artists, such as B.B. King, John Coltrane, Wes
Montgomery, and Ray Charles (?)
b. January 1st 1923.
2003: Carl Fontana (75)
American jazz trombonist, born in Monroe,
Louisiana, he learned jazz music from his father Collie, a saxophonist
and violin player, and first performed with his father's band while
in high school. He attended at University of Louisiana Monroe for two
years, then transferred to Louisiana State University, receiving his
degree in Music Education in 1950. From 1951 he joined up with Woody
Herman, after
three years he joined Lionel
Hampton's big band in 1954. In early 1955 he played briefly with Hal
McIntyre before joining Stan Kenton's big band later in the year. He
recorded three albums with Kenton and also worked with fellow trombonist
Kai Winding during this period. In 1966 he toured in Africa with Herman's
band, but he primarily performed with house orchestras in Las Vegas
during the 1960s, particularly Paul Anka's band and the bands backing
Sammy Davis Jr., Tony Bennett, Wayne Newton, and the Benny Goodman orchestra.
In the 1980s, he appeared regularly on National Public Radio's Monday
Night Jazz program. And although he recorded on more than 70 albums
over his long career, his first true record as a headliner did not appear
until 1985 when Uptown Jazz released The Great Fontana, his first release
as a solo headliner. He toured internationally now and then with various
stars, but because he rarely recorded under his own name and toured
only occasionally after 1958, he is significantly less famous among
mainstream jazz fans, although very well-known amongst his fellow musicians.
(sadly alzheimer's disease took him away) b.
July 18th 1928.
2003: Don Lanphere (75)
jazz saxophonist; ranked with some
of the top jazz musicians of his time before he was 20, recording with
such bebop trumpet legends as Fats Navarro and Max Roach in the late
1940s and early 1950s. He played gigs with Woody Herman and Charlie
Parker and with big-ticket big bands such as Artie Shaw's. (liver failure).
2007: Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge (38) American
rock musician with the video art and music group Psychic TV; they released
fourteen live albums in eighteen months, enough to earn them a record
in the Guinness Book of World Records (undiagnosed
heart condition which is thought to have been connected with her long-term
battle with stomach cancer. Lady Jaye collapsed and died in the arms
of her heartbroken "other half" Genesis Breyer P-Orridge).
2009: Russell Allen "Rusty" Wier (65)
American singer-songwriter from Austin, Texas; Rusty's
career started the early 1970s and covers multiple music genres. He
is most famous for his composition "Don't It Make You Wanna Dance"
which was a small hit for him, but has been covered by, among artists,
Jerry Jeff Walker, Chris LeDoux, John Hiatt, Barbara Mandrell, and Bonnie
Raitt whose version of the song was a country hit when it was included
on the Urban Cowboy soundtrack. Rusty was inducted into the Austin Music
Awards Hall of Fame in 2002. (cancer)
b. May 3rd 1944.
2009:
Zambo
Cavero/Arturo
Cavero Velásquez (68) Afro
Peruvian singer, who enjoyed international fame and considered by many
Peruvians a symbol of the Afro Peruvian identity or Peruanidad. He
specialized in interpreting, traditional songs from authentic and original
rhythms of Perú, some of his best interpretations are songs that
were composed by the notable Peruvian composer Augusto Polo Campos,
other comes from a profound Afro-Peruvian traditional Música
criolla which is actually Afro Peruvian music.
(died
in Rebagliati Hospital in Lima,
from complications of sepsis)
b. November 29th
1940.
October
10
1964:
Eddie Cantor/Edward Israel Iskowitz (72)
American
vaudeville performer, dancer,
comedian,
singer, actor, and songwriter. Familiar to Broadway, radio and early
TV audiences, he was regarded almost as a family member by millions
because his top-rated radio shows revealed intimate stories and amusing
anecdotes about his wife Ida and five daughters. His eye-rolling song-and-dance
routines eventually led to his nickname, Banjo Eyes. His eyes became
his trademark, often exaggerated in illustrations, and leading to his
appearance on Broadway in the musical Banjo Eyes in 1941
(heart attack) b.
January 31st 1892.
1978: Ralph Marterie (63) Italian trumpet player , big-band
leader (?).
1979:
Paul
Paray (93) French
conductor, organist and composer,
born Le Tréport
and in 1911, he won the Premier Grand Prix de Rome for his cantata Yanitza.
After WW1, Paul was invited to conduct the orchestra of the Casino de
Cauterets, which included players from the Lamoureux Orchestra. This
was a springboard for him to conduct this Orchestra in Paris. Later
he was music director of the Monte Carlo Orchestra, and president of
the Concerts Colonne. He made his American debut with the New York Philharmonic-Symphony
Orchestra in 1939. In 1952, he was appointed music director of the Detroit
Symphony Orchestra, conducting them in numerous recordings for Mercury
Records' "Living Presence" series. He also was a National
Patron of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity
(?) b. May
24th 1886.
2002: Teresa Graves (54) African-American
actress and singer; born in Houston, Texas, Teresa began her career
singing with The Doodletown Pipers, before turning to acting and became
a regular in Our Place in 1967, Turn On in 1969 and then the Rowan &
Martin's Laugh-In. She appeared in a number of films before her pivotal
role in the 1974 television movie Get Christie Love! from
which Teresa
is credited as the first African American woman to play the lead in
a police film and TV show. In
1983, she retired from show business to devote her time to the religion
(died in a fire at her home)
b.
January 10th 1948.
2003: Eugene Istomin (77) American
classical pianist, born in New York City he was famed for his work in
the piano trio, with Isaac Stern and Leonard Rose, known as the Istomin-Stern-Rose
Trio, with whom he made many recordings, particularly of music by Beethoven,
Brahms and Schubert. He also played with them in orchestral music, with
conductors such as Eugene Ormandy, Bruno Walter and also as a soloist.
He went on to win the Leventritt award, the Philhadelphia Youth Award,
a Grammy Award in 1970 and received the French Legion d'Honneur in 2001
(liver cancer) b.
November
26th 1925.
2005: Nick Hawkins (40) guitarist
with Big Audio Dynamite aka Bad (heart attack).
2009: Luis
Aguilé (73) Argentine
singer and songwriter; he started his career in Argentina, before relocating
to Spain in 1963, where he had a successful musical career, both as
a songwriter and singer. In
the 1980s, he was the musical assessor of the Televisión Española
multidisciplinary contest "1,2,3 Responda Otra Vez".He has
more than 700 songs to his name but maybe best known for his worldwide
hit song '"Cuando Sali de Cuba" ("When I Left Cuba").
Back in 1990, Luis Aguilé created the music and lyrics of the
anthem of CF Monterrey. It is considered one of the best soccer anthems
in the world. He has also worked as a music producer and author, mainly
on children's books and novels. He has been finalist twice for the Premio
Planeta of Spanish Novel (stomach cancer)
b.
February
24th 1936.
2009: Stephen Gately (33) Irish
pop singer and actor, born in Dublin, along with
Ronan Keating, he was one of two lead singers in the boy band Boyzone.
The band was put together in 1993 by manager Louis Walsh and thier 1994
debut single "Working
My Way Back to You" reached No.3 in the Irish charts;
this was followed by 17 top ten hits in the UK singles charts, which
included 6 chart toppers. They released 3 albums Said And Done, A Different
Beat, and Where We Belong, all of which reached the No.1 spot in the
UK. After the success of Boyzone, the band decided in 2000 to move on
to solo projects. Stephen was the first with his debut solo single titled
New Beginning and later a debut solo album of the same name. The album
included "Bright Eyes" which he recorded for the soundtrack
to the new TV version of Watership Down. He also became the voice of
one of the characters, 'Blackavar', which was created to look like him.
Stephen also took to the stage appearing
in a various stage productions,
which included the lead role in Bill Kenwright's new production of Amazing
Technicolor Dreamcoat and he appeared on many television
programmes. In 2008, he rejoined his bandmates as Boyzone
reformed for a series of concerts and recordings
(died suddenly while on holiday
in Mallorca, the cause of death has yet to be determined)
b. March
17th 1976.
October 11
1963: Édith Piaf/Edith Giovanni Gassion
(47) French singer and actress;
one of the most popular French singers of the 1940s and '50s, internationally
famous for her husky, mournful voice and her songs of loneliness and
despair (lost her battle with cancer).
1984: Tex
Williams/Sollie Paul Williams (68)
American Western swing guitarist and singer, born in Ramsey, Illinois.
He
is best known for his talking blues style; his biggest hit was the novelty
song, "Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette)", which held
the number one position on the Billboard charts for six weeks in 1947.
"Smoke" was the No. 5 song on Billboard's Top 100 list for
1947, and was No.1 on the country chart that year. It can be heard during
the opening scenes of the 2006 movie, Thank You for Smoking (sadly
died of pancreatic cancer) b.
August 23rd 1917.
1993: Jess Thomas (66) US Wagnerian
tenor, born in San
Francisco, CA. As a child
he took part in various musical activities and later studied at the
University of Nebraska and Stanford University. Jess made his operatic
debut in 1957 for the San Francisco Opera performing in Der Rosenkavalier
as the Haushofmeister. He went on to be awarded the Wagner medal at
Bayreuth, Germany in 1963. His many appearances in North America and
Europe between the late 1950s and early 1980s included 15 seasons in
109 performances of 15 roles at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City
(?) b. August
4th 1927.
1996: Renato
Russo/Renato
Manfredini Jr
(36) Brazilian
punk rock bassist and songwriter born in Rio de Janeiro. At the age
of 15, he suffered from epiphysiolysis, a disease that paralyzed his
legs for two years. Renato had to have a platinum implant, which earned
him the nickname "Six Million Dollar Man". During
the years of 1978 and 1979, he was the bass player with the punk rock
band Aborto Elétrico / Electric Abortion. Renato wrote many songs
during this period, that would later become hits of a later band Capital
Inicial. In
1982, the band broke up and developed into two bands Legião Urbana,
they became widely famous in Brazil, with protest songs at first, then
songs about love, spiritualism, family and sex. The other band formed
was Capital Inicial recording seven albums from 1982 to 1996. Renato
played in both bands writing many of the songs. In the 90s he released
two solo albums, with English and Italian songs
(Sadly
died of an AIDS related illness) b. March
27th 1960.
2007: Werner von Trapp (91) Austrian-born
musician and singer, member of the Trapp Family Singers who inspired
The Sound of Music.(?)
October 12
1956: Don Lorenzo Perosi (83) Italian
composer; the most significant Italian composer of sacred music at the
turn of the twentieth century ().
1971: Gene Vincent/Vincent Eugene Craddock (36)
American singer born in Norfolk, Virginia, a pioneer of rock 'n'
roll and rockabilly. His 1956 top 10 hit with his Blue Caps, "Be-Bop-A-Lula,"
is considered a significant early example of rockabilly. Other hits
included "Race With The Devil", "Bluejean Bop",
"Lotta
Lovin'", "Bluejean
Bop" and "Woman
Love". Vincent also
became one of the first rock stars to star in a film, 'The Girl Can't
Help It' together with Jayne Mansfield. On April 16, 1960, while on
tour in the UK, Gene , Eddie Cochran, and songwriter Sharon Sheeley
were involved in a high-speed traffic accident in a private hire taxi.
Gene broke his ribs and collarbone and further damaged his weakened
leg, Sharon suffered a broken pelvis, but tragically Wddie Cochran,
who had been thrown from the vehicle, suffered serious brain injuries
and died the next day. He was the first inductee into the Rockabilly
Hall of Fame upon its formation in 1997. The following year he was inducted
into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and has a star on the Hollywood
Walk of Fame at 1749 N. Vine St. He is a member of the Rock and Roll
and Rockabilly halls of fame (he sadly died from
a ruptured stomach ulcer while visiting his father in California)
b. February 11th 1935.
1978: Nancy Spungen (20)
American paranoid schizophrenic girlfriend of Sex Pistol's
Sid Vicious. Nancy left home at age 17 and moved to New York City. She
followed bands such as Aerosmith, The New York Dolls and The Ramones.
In 1977, at the age of 19, she moved to London, allegedly to win over
Jerry Nolan of the New York Dolls and The Heartbreakers, but met The
Sex Pistols instead. When lead singer Johnny Rotten rejected her, she
pursued bassist Sid Vicious and they soon moved in together.During a
tumultuous 23-month relationship, Nancy and Sid became addicted to heroin
and other drugs. Sid was already an abuser of multiple drugs before
he met Nancy, but many sources claim she introduced him to heroin; other
sources claim that he had begun to use speed with his mother at an early
age and then got into heroin after meeting Nancy. (she
was found sprawled on the bathroom floor of their hotel room clad in
a black bra and panties. She had bled to death from a single stab wound
to the abdomen, later traced to a knife owned by Sid Vicious. Sid died
of an overdose while on bail before he could be tried for murder)
b. February 27th 1958.
1985: Ricky Wilson (32) American self-taught
guitarist born in Athens, Georgia, he was the original guitarist and
a founding member of the B-52's along with his sister, Kate Pierson,
Keith Strickland and Fred Schneider. They played their first gig in
1977 at a Valentine's Day party for friends. The band's quirky take
on the New Wave sound of their era was a combination of dance and surf
music set apart by the unusual guitar tunings used by Ricky. He
also played the guitar on the song "Breakin' In My Heart"
on the 1979 self-titled album by Tom Verlaine (died
prematurely from complications due to aids)
b. March 19th 1953.
1989:Carmen Cavallaro (76) American
pianist born in New York, who established himself as one of the most
accomplished and admired light music pianists of his generation. In
1933, he joined the jazz band of Al Kavelin, where he quickly became
the featured soloist. After four years he switched to a series of other
big bands, including Rudy Vallee's in 1937. He also worked briefly with
Enrico Madriguera and Abe Lyman.
Starting
his own band, a five-piece combo, in St. Louis in 1939, his popularity
grew and his group expanded into a 14-piece orchestra, releasing some
19 albums for Decca over the years
(Sadly
passed to cancer) b.
May 6th 1913.
1997: John Denver (53) US singer
songwriter (killed when the light aircraft he was piloting crashed into
Monterey Bay, California).
2001: Dan Del Santo (50) American steel
guitarist, guitarist, singer-songwriter; having made his presence felt
on Texas' outlaw country scene during the late '70s, he had left country
music by the mid-'80s and launched an Afro-Cuban band, the Professors
of Pleasures. Latin music remained his prime genre as he went on to
host a third-world music show for an Austin-based radio station. Dan
relocated to Oaxaca, Mexico, where he formed new band, Perros del Sol,
and continued to perform his original songs in the Spanish language
(esophageal bleeding) b. September
4th 1951
2002: Ray Conniff (85)
American trombonist, strings, orchestra director; after serving
in the U.S. Army in World War II, where he worked under Walter Schumann,
he was hired by Mitch Miller, then head of A & R at Columbia Records,
as their home arranger, working with several artists including Rosemary
Clooney, Marty Robbins, Frankie Laine, Johnny Mathis, Guy Mitchell and
Johnnie Ray. He wrote a top 10 arrangement for Don Cherry's "Band
of Gold" in 1955, a single that sold more than a million copies.
Among
the hit singles he backed with his orchestra (and eventually with a
male chorus) were "Yes Tonight Josephine" and "Just Walkin'
in the Rain" by Johnnie Ray; "Chances Are" and "It's
Not for Me to Say" by Johnny Mathis; "A White Sport Coat"
and "The Hanging Tree" by Marty Robbins; "Moonlight Gambler"
by Frankie Laine; "Up Above My Head," a duet by Frankie Laine
and Johnnie Ray; and "Pet Me, Poppa" by Rosemary Clooney.
He also backed up the albums Tony by Tony Bennett, Blue Swing by Eileen
Rodgers, Swingin' for Two by Don Cherry, and half the tracks of The
Big Beat by Johnnie Ray. Between
1957 and 1968, he had 28 albums in the American Top 40, the most famous
one being Somewhere My Love (1966). He topped the album list in Britain
in 1969 with His Orchestra, His Chorus, His Singers, His Sound, an album
which was originally published to promote his European tour (Germany,
Austria, Switzerland) in 1969. He also was the first American popular
artist to record in Russiain 1974 he recorded Ray Conniff in Moscow
with the help of a local choir. He sold about 70 million albums worldwide
and continued recording and performing until his death (passed away
after falling down and hitting his head) b. November
6th 1916.
2005: Baker
Knight (72) American
songwriter, singer and guitarist, born
in Birmingham, Alabama and attended the University of Alabama, where
he wrote music in his spare time. In 1956 he founded a rockabilly group,
The Knightmares, releasing their debut single, "Bop Boogie to the
Blues", that same year. Baker moved to Hollywood in 1958, he wrote
the song "Lonesome Town"and other hits for Rick Nelson. He
wrote "Just Relax", which he released as a solo single in
1959, with Cochran on guitar. He also wrote the song "The Wonder
of You" followed by songs for Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, West
Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, Ernest Ashworth, Hank Williams, Jr.,
Jerry Lee Lewis, Dave & Sugar, and Mickey Gilley among others. Baker's
last solo release was "If Only", in 1977 (?)
b. July 4th 1933.
2006: Al Thompson (59) former Motown
drummer, longtime drummer for Gladys Knight & The Pips, Stevie Wonder,
Natalie Cole ().
2009: Dickie Peterson (63) American
singer and bass guitarist born in Grand Forks, ND;
although his first instrument had been drums
he has played electric bass since the age of thirteen,
citing Otis Redding as an influence to his music.
He moved Davis CA, then to San Francisco in the early 60s. After playing
in the band Andrew Staples & The Oxford Circle, he helped form the
power trio Blue Cheer, with himself as lead singer/bassist, Leigh Stephens
as
guitarist and Eric Albronda
on the drums, Eric was soon replaced by Paul Whaley. Their first hit
in 1968 was a cover version
of Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues" from their debut album
Vincebus Eruptum. The single peaked at No.14 on the Billboard Hot 100
chart, and the album peaked at No.11 on the Billboard 200 chart. Dickie
spent much of his last two decades based in Germany, playing with Blue
Cheer and other groups including
Mother Ocean in the early 2000s,
the Hank Davison Band and as an acoustic duo with Hank Davison under
the name "Dos Hombres" (liver cancer) b.
September 12th 1946.
2009: Ian Wallace OBE (90)
British bass-baritone opera and concert singer, he made his operatic
debut with the New London Opera Company at the Cambridge Theatre, London,
in 1946, as Schaunard in La bohème. Throughout the 50s, he was
a feature at Glyndebourne, specializing in basso buffo roles, notably
Dr Bartolo in The Barber of Seville. In the 1960s and 1970s he was closely
associated with Scottish Opera. From the early 1960s to the 1980s, he
performed a one-man show, featuring operatic excerpts, ballads and comic
songs. He was particularly noted for his performances of the music of
Flanders and Swann, and "The Hippopotamus" became his signature
tune. He also acted occasionally on TV and in films, including Tom Thumb,
made in 1958. Ian
was well known for having been a panellist throughout the 27-year run
of the radio panel game My Music, not missing a single episode of more
than 520 that were broadcast (died after long
illness) b. July
10th 1919.
October 13
1974: Ed Sullivan (73)
TV host, band leader. Famous for introducing new musical acts on his
TV show, The Ed Sullivan Show (cancer).
1987: Kishore Kumar/Abhas Kumar Ganguly (58)
Indian film playback singer and actor
who also worked as lyricist, composer, producer, director, screenwriter
and scriptwriter. Kishore sang in many Indian languages including Bengali,
Hindi, Marathi, Assamese, Gujarati, Kannada, Bhojpuri, Malayalam and
Oriya. He can be heard solo or collaborating with other artists on hundreds
of tracks. Kishore also starred in many films including New
Delhi, Aasha, Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi, Half Ticket, and Padosan (?)
b. August 4th 1929.
2000:
Britt Woodman (80)
American jazz
trombonist best known for his work with Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus;
he first worked with Phil Moore and Les Hite. After service in World
War II he played with Boyd Raeburn before joining with Lionel Hampton
in 1946. In the 1950s
he worked with Duke Ellington. As a member of the Duke's band he can
be heard on The Complete Porgy and Bess, Such Sweet Thunder, Ella Fitzgerald
Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook, Black, Brown, and Beige and Indigos
albums. In
1960 he moved on from Ellington to work in a pit orchestra. Later he
worked with Mingus and can be heard on the 1963 album Mingus Mingus
Mingus Mingus Mingus. In the 1970s he led his own octet and worked with
Toshiko Akiyoshi (?)
b. June 4th 1920
2001: Peter Doyle (52) singer, songwriter.
New Seekers (throat cancer).
2009: Al Martino/Alfred Cini (82) American
singer and actor; after servicing in the US Navy in WW II, including
being a part of the Iwo Jima invasion where he was wounded, inspired
by Al Jolson and Perry Como, he started his singing career, performing
in local nightclubs for a time, before moving to New York in 1948. He
went on to win first place on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts television
program, thanks to a rendition of Como's "If," this led to
a recording contract with the Philadelphia based independent label,
BBS. Al had a string of hit singles and albums that stretched from the
early 1950s all the way into the mid 1970s. His single "Here in
My Heart" was No.1 in the first ever UK Singles Chart, published
by the New Musical Express on November 14, 1952, putting him into the
Guinness Book of World Records, it remained in the top position for
nine weeks. One of his most successful hits was "Spanish Eyes",
achieving several gold and platinum discs for sales. As well as his
singing career, Al played the role of Johnny Fontane in the 1972 film
The Godfather, as well as singing the film's theme, Speak Softly Love
(Love Theme from The Godfather). He played the same role in The Godfather
Part II and The Godfather Part III, as well as The Godfather Trilogy:
1901-1980 (died at his home in Springfield, Pennsylvania,
6 days after his 82nd birthday) b. October
7th 1927.
October 14
1959:
Alphonse Trent (54) American
jazz pianist; he led one of the most fabled
of the territory bands, an outfit that recorded just eight titles, but
was legendary. He led his first band in the early '20s, and in 1924
he played with Eugene Cook's Synco Six. He then took over leadership
of the band, which played until 1934, playing mostly in the American
South and Midwest, as well as on steamboats. He left music in the mid-1930s
but returned with another band in 1938. His sidemen included Terrence
Holder, Alex Hill, Stuff Smith, Snub Mosley, Charlie Christian, Sweets
Edison, Mouse Randolph, and Peanuts Holland (?)
b. August 24th 1905.
1977: Bing Crosby/Harry Lillis Crosby (74)
US singer, actor; singer of "White
Christmas", starred in the "On the Road" films with Bob
Hope (He died of a heart attack on a golf course in Spain, having just
completed the 18th hole).
1985: Emil Gilels (77) Soviet pianist;
first Soviet artist to be allowed to travel extensively in the West.
After the war, he toured Europe starting from 1947 as a concert pianist,
and made his American debut in 1955 playing Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto
No. 1 in Philadelphia (he was killed accidentally by the Russian doctor
after a medical check-up).
1990: Leonard Bernstein (72) Composer,
pianist, conductor, the first conductor born in the United States
of America to receive world-wide acclaim, and is known for both his
conducting of the New York Philharmonic, and his multiple compositions,
including West Side Story, Candide and On The Town (emphysema).
1998: Frankie
Yankovic (83) singer, accordian; America's
undisputed Polka King, the first polka artist to score a million-selling
single with 1948's "Just Because", the first to perform on
television, and the first to win a Grammy for Best Polka Album (he suffered
a fall at his home and a died a few days later).
2006: Freddy Fender/Baldemar Huerta (69)
American
singer, songwriter and guitarist; Texas Tornados, Los Super Seven, solo.
The first and biggest pioneer in Tex
Mex music, one of the most important musicians in Tejano Music History,
he is documented as The First American Hispanic and Hispanic Rock &
Roll Recording Artist In Anglo Latino Musical History. He
made himself a guitar at the age of six, at 10 he was singing on local
radio stations and winning talent competitions. Then at 16, he joined
the Marines for three years. After his discharge, he started playing
Texas honky tonks and dance halls. His big break came with Falcon Records
in 1957, when he recorded Spanish versions of Elvis Presley's "Don't
Be Cruel" and Harry Belafonte's "Jamaica Farewell." The
recordings both reached No1 in Mexico and South America. He signed with
Imperial Records in 1959, renaming himself "Fender" after
the brand of his electric guitar, and "Freddy", well.. because
it sounded good with Fender.In 1974, he recorded "Before The Next
Teardrop Falls" and on April 8, 1975, it reached the Number One
spot on Billboard's pop and county charts, the first time in history
an artist's first single reached Number One on both charts. With its
success, he won the Academy of Country Music's best new artist award.
Throughout his long career Freddy has appeared on 18 TV shows, in 8
films, 11 videos, and countless soundtracks, commercials, shows, tributes
and is a triple Grammy Award winner. He won his first shared Grammy
with the Texas Tornados, in 1990 for best Mexican-American performance
for "Soy de San Luis", his second shared Grammy came in with
Los Super Seven in the same category in 1998 for "Los Super Seven".
Then in year 2002 he won his own Grammy for Best Latin Pop Album in
2002 for "La Musica de Baldemar Huerta." (lung
cancer) b.
June 4th 1937.
2007: Big Moe/Kenneth
Moore (33) American rapper
born in Houston, known for a softer and slower style than other Houston
rappers, including a mixture of rapping and singing that he called "rapsinging"
as well as for his music that celebrated codeine-laced syrup as a recreational
drug. He began his career free styling on DJ Screw's mix tapes before
being signed to Wreckshop Records, releasing his debut album, City of
Syrup in 2000 (died after suffering a heart attack
one week earlier that left him in a coma) b.
August 20th 1974.
2009: Johnny Jones (73) American R&B
guitarist and bandleader; born in Nashville, he moved to Chicago in
the '50s. He shared an apartment with harmonica player Walter McCollum.
Together they formed a small group, working regularly with Junior Wells
and Freddy King. Johnny moved back to Nashville in the early 1960s to
become a session musician and formed a band the Imperial Seven. Johnny
and Jimi Hendrix once faced off in a legendary guitar duel at the city's
Club Baron in the early 1960s and also appeared alongside Jimi on the
regional TV music series 'Night Train,' where Johnny played in the House
Band.
Around 1964, he assumed leadership of the King Casuals, the band
founded in 1962 by Jimi Hendrix and bassist Billy Cox in Clarksville,
he replaced Hendrix. They recorded
a portfolio of singles in later years. The most recent recording with
his band was the 2001 solo release, Blues Is In the House. After which
he traveled and played in the UK three times, the last being in the
spring of 2009.
In the early 2000s, he
and other players on the Jefferson Street scene were held in the spotlight
by the Night Train to Nashville: Music City Rhythm & Blues, 19451970
exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum and its accompanying
double-album (Johnny was found dead in his apartment)
b. ??.1936
October
15
1964:
Cole Porter (73)
American
singer, multi-musician, composer, songwriter born in Peru, Indiana,
U.S. He e
learned the violin at age 6, the piano at 8, and wrote his first operetta
at 10. Cole wrote songs both words and music for over 30 stage and film
musicals. His works include the musical including "Kiss Me, Kate",
"Du Barry Was a Lady", "Gay Divorce" "Anything
Goes", "Paris",
"Fifty Million Frenchmen", "Can-Can",
and
"High
Society".
He has written songs persifically for greats such as Fred Astaire and
Gene Kelly among many others. Writing
and composing songs such as
"Begin the Beguine", "I Get a Kick Out of You",
"I've Got You Under My Skin", "In the Still of the Night",
"Night
and Day", "At Long Last Love", "From
Alpha to Omega", "You
Never Know", "Let's Misbehave", "From Now On",
"My Heart Belongs to Daddy". He was one of the greatest contributors
to the Great American Songbook and Cole is one of the few Tin Pan Alley
composers to have written both lyrics and music for his songs
(kidney failure) b. June 9th 1891
1980:
Bobby "Lester" Dallas (50)
American
lead singer with the Moonglows, born in Louisville.
Lester and high school classmate Harvey Fuqua started singing at parties
as a duo in the 40s. They formed The Moonglows in 1951, originally calling
themselves the Crazy Sounds, but were renamed by disc jockey Alan Freed
as the Moonglows. They also cut some recordings as the Moonlighters.
Their first major hit was the No.1 R&B "Sincerely" for
Chess in 1954, which reached number 20 on the pop charts. They enjoyed
five more Top Ten R&B hits on from 1955 to 1958, including "Most
of All," "We Go Together," "See Saw," and "Please
Send Me Someone to Love," as well as "Ten Commandments of
Love." The different styles defined the Moonglows two lead singers,
Harvey Fuqua favoured the up-tempo R&B/rock numbers while Lester
sung more of the romantic ballads. (Cancer) b.
January 13th 1930.
1999:
Terry Gilkyson (83)
US singer, lyricist, composer; he wrote and recorded "The
Cry of the Wild Goose," which became a hit song for Frankie Laine
in 1950, as well as the 1953 hit song "Tell Me a Story" recorded
by Jimmy Boyd and Laine. In the 1956, he formed a group called The Easy
Riders with Richard Dehr and Frank Miller, having a major hit with "Marianne"
selling in excess of one million copies, earning a gold disc. The three
also wrote "Memories Are Made of This," which became a popular
song in several versions, including an adaptation for the 1956 Hungarian
Revolution. Terry
also appeared in, as well as wrote songs for, the 1951 Western film
Slaughter Trail. In the 1960s, he left the group to work for the Walt
Disney Studios, writing music both for movies and the television series
The Wonderful World of Disney especially "The Scarecrow of Romney
Marsh." In 1968 he was nominated for an Academy Award for "The
Bare Necessities" from the movie The Jungle Book (died
in Austin, Texas, while visiting family)
b. June 7th 1916.
2004:
Dave Godin (68) UK Writer, Critic.
Founder of the record labels, Soul City and Deep Soul - He coined the
term, Northern Soul. (lung cancer).
2008: Edie Adams (81)
US singer, Broadway and television; starred on Broadway in Wonderful
Town in 1953 and in Li'l Abner in 1956, and played the Fairy Godmother
in Rodgers & Hammerstein's original 1957 Cinderella broadcast. She
also played "Miss Olsen" in the 1960 film The Apartment. In
2003, as one of the last surviving headliners from the all-star movie,
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, she joined actors Marvin Kaplan and
Sid Caesar at 40th anniversary celebrations of the movie (pneumonia
and cancer) b. April
16th 1927.
2008: Frankie Venom/Frank Kerr (51) Canadian lead
vocalist and founding member with the
punk rock pioneers, Teenage Head, founded at Westdale
High School in Hamilton, Ontario in 1972. (natural causes)
b. ??
October 16
1945: James Vincent Monaco (60) Italian-born
American composer of popular music; he worked as a ragtime player in
Chicago before moving to New York, writing songs for musicals, Al Jolson,
Judy Garland, Bing Crosby and others (?).
1959: Minor
Hall/Ram Hall (62)
American
jazz drummer born in Sellies, Louisiana;
after
studying at New Orleans University until 1914, Minor began playing with
Kid Ory. He played in various New Orleans bands such as the Superior
Band, then moved to Chicago in 1918. He took his brother, Tubby Hall's
spot in Lawrence Duhe's band briefly before serving in the U.S. Army
during World War I, he rejoined in 1921. In 1926 he played with Jimmy
Noone, and then moved to California for an extended run with Mutt Carey's
Jeffersonians from 1927 to 1932. He played in the Winslow Allen band
in the 1930s, but took a hiatus from music for part of the decade, and
served briefly in the Army again in '42. In 1945 he rejoined Ory in
his Creole Jazz Band and became one of his most longstanding members,
remaining with Ory's ensemble until 1956, when he retired through poor
health. Minor recorded extensively with Ory and also did some recording
with Louis Armstrong in the 1940s (?)
b. March 2nd 1897.
1969:
Leonard Chess/Lejzor Czyz (52) The
founder of the Chess record label, played a pivotal role in the birth
of the Chicago electric blues movement of the postwar era, launching
the careers of legends. In the 1950s, Chess Records' commercial success
grew with artists such as Little Walter, The Moonglows, The Flamingos
and Chuck Berry, and in the '60s with Etta James, Fontella Bass, Koko
Taylor, Little Milton, Laura Lee and Tommy Tucker, as well as with the
subsidiary labels Checker, Argo and Cadet. As the 1960s progressed,
Chess's recording enterprise branched out into other genres including
gospel, traditional jazz, spoken word, comedy, and more (heart
attack) b. March 12th 1917.
1973: Gene Krupa (64)
American jazz & big band
drummer born
in Chicago, Illinois. Many
consider him to be one of the most influential drummers of the 20th
century, particularly regarding the development of the drum kit. Many
jazz historians believe he made history in 1927 as the first kit drummer
ever to record using a bass drum pedal. Others, however, believe this
was done earlier by Baby Dodds. His drum method was published in 1938
and immediately became the standard text. He is also credited with inventing
the rim shot on the snare drum. The 1937 recording of Louis Prima's
"Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing)" by Benny Goodman and His
Orchestra featuring Gene on drums was inducted into the Grammy Hall
of Fame and Gene was the first drummer inducted into the Modern Drummer
Hall of Fame in 1978. Sal
Mineo starred as Gene Krupa in the Columbia Pictures movie The Gene
Krupa Story in 1959. (leukemia
and heart failure)
b. January 15th 1909.
1982: Jakov Gotovac (87)
Croatian composer, conductor of classical
music. He is the author of the most famous Croatian nationalist opera,
the comic Ero s onoga svijeta "Ero the joker",
which has been performed on all continents except Australia, and translated
into nine languages, with its libretto written by Milan Begovic. It
has been performed in more than 80 theatres in Europe alone .
In his works, he represents the late national romanticism, with national
folklore being the main source of ideas and inspiration (?)
b. October
11th 1895.
1983:
George Liberace
(72) American musician and television
performer, born
in Menasha, Wisconsin, he was the elder brother and business partner
of famed US entertainer Liberace, Wladziu Valentino Liberace. He appeared
regularly on his brother's syndicated TV show in the 1950s as violin
accompanist and orchestral arranger (died
of leukemia in Las Vegas, Nevada) b. July
31st 1911.
1986:
Arthur Grumiaux (65) Belgian violinist,
also proficient in piano, born in Villers-Perwin. He begin music studies
at the age of only 4, and trained on violin and piano with the Fernand
Quintet at the Charleroi Conservatory, where he took first prize at
the age of 11. Arthur's playing was included on over 30 recordings.
The titles on these releases favour the compositions of Bach, Beethoven,
Brahms, Mozart, and Schubert, but he also including works by Corelli,
Ravel, Debussy and Franck. In addition to his solo work, he recorded
Mozart quintets with the Grumiaux Ensemble, and various selections with
the Grumiaux Trio. His successful performance career led up to royal
recognition, and in 1973 he was knighted baron by King Baudouin for
his services to music, thus sharing the title with Paganini.
(He
struggled with diabetes, his heavy recording schedules and concert performances,
sadly he died of a sudden stroke while in in Brussels)
b. March 21st 1921
1990: Art Blakey/Abdullah Ibn Buhaina (71)
US jazz drummer; one of the inventors of the modern, bebop style
of drumming. He was known as a powerful musician and a ferocious groover.
He is undoubtedly one of the most influential jazz musicians ever; his
brand of bluesy, funky hard bop was and still remains profoundly influential
on mainstream jazz. As a teenager he was playing the piano full-time,
leading a commercial band, before teaching himself to drum.After which
in the 1940s, Blakey was a member of bands led by Mary Lou Williams,
Fletcher Henderson, and Billy Eckstine.
In 1947 Art organized the Seventeen Messengers, a rehearsal band, and
recorded with an octet called the Jazz Messengers. Over the years the
Jazz Messengers served as a springboard for young jazz musicians such
as Donald Byrd, Johnny Griffin, Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard,
Keith Jarrett, Chuck Mangione, Woody Shaw, JoAnne Brackeen and Wynton
Marsalis. Art made a world tour in 19712 with the Giants of Jazz
including Dizzy Gillespie, Kai Winding, Sonny Stitt, Thelonious Monk
and Al McKibbon. Up to the 1960s Art also recorded as a sideman with
many other musicians including Jimmy Smith, Herbie Nichols, Cannonball
Adderley, Miles Davis, Grant Green, and Jazz Messengers graduates Lee
Morgan and Hank Mobley, amongst many others. However, after the mid-1960s
he mostly concentrated on his own work as a leader (lung
cancer) b.
October 11th 1919.
2001: Etta Jones (72) US jazz
singer; critical success and relative commercial obscurity earned her
a reputation in her lifetime as a "jazz musician's jazz singer",
a highly underrated singer who rarely received the recognition she so
richly deserved. Her first recordings "Salty Papa Blues,"
"Evil Gal Blues," "Blow Top Blues," and "Long,
Long Journey" were produced by Leonard Feather in 1944, featuring
her in the company of clarinetist Barney Bigard and tenor saxophonist
Georgie Auld. Her last recording, a tribute to Billie Holiday, was released
57 years later on the day of Jones' death. Only one of her recordings,
her debut album for Prestige Records "Don't Go to Strangers"
in 1960 was a big success with sales of over a million copies. Etta
had three Grammy nominations, for the Don't Go to Strangers LP in 1960,
Save Your Love for Me in 1981, and My Buddy in 1999. In 2008 the album
Don't Go to Strangers was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame (cancer)
b. October 25th 1928.
2005:
David Reilly (34)
US singer, songwriting, multi-musician, production partner in the electro-rock
band God Lives Underwater /GLU (complications of a coma brought on by
pain medication for an abscessed tooth).
2006: John Thomas Johnson (71)
American orchestral tuba player.
He performed on more than 2,000 film soundtracks, most notably John
Williams' Jaws score, in which he played a high-register tuba solo as
the melodic theme for the shark (cancer and kidney failure).
2007: Todor "Toe" Proeski (26)
Macedonian singer songwriter; a regurlar at the Eastern European festivals
and represented Macedonia at the Eurovision Song Contest 2004. He was
called "Elvis Presley of the Balkans" Todor also held humanitarian
concerts throughout the Republic of Macedonia. He was awarded with the
Mother Theresa Humanitarian Award and in 2003 he became a Regional UNICEF
Ambassador.(died near Nova Gradika, Croatia, as a passenger in
a car accident when the airbags failed to activate).
October 17
1849: Frederic Francois Chopin (39)
Polish composer,
pianist; a child prodigy, performing in elegant salons & beginning
to write his own pieces at the age of 8. He went on to compose 3 piano
sonatas, 5 rondos, 4 scherzos, 4 ballades, 17 polonaises, including
one with orchestral accompaniment and one for cello and piano accompaniment,
58 mazurkas, 20 waltzes, 3 écossaises, 26 preludes, 4 sets of
variations, including Souvenir de Paganini, 4 impromptus, 21 nocturnes,
27 études (twelve in the Op. 10 cycle, twelve in the Op. 25 cycle,
and three in a collection without an opus number), 2 concertos for piano
and orchestra, Opp. 11 and 21. He also composed a fantaisie, an Allegro
de concert, a barcarole, a berceuse, a bolero, a tarantella, a contredanse,
a fugue, a cantabile, a lento, a Funeral March, and a Feuille d'album.
Chopin's other works include a krakowiak for piano and orchestra; fantasia
on themes from Polish songs with accompanying orchestra, a trio for
violin, cello and piano; a sonata for cello and piano, a Grand Duo in
E major for cello and piano with Auguste Franchomme on themes from Giacomo
Meyerbeer's opera Robert le diable, and 19 Polish songs for voice and
accompanying piano. (Chopin sadly died of tuberculosis
in Paris) b. March 1st 1810
1972: Billy Williams (61) US
singer, born in Waco, Texas; he had a highly successful cover recording
of Fats Waller's "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter"
in 1957. His trademark hook for his songs was to shout "Oh, Yeah"
at the end of lyrics. He was the lead singer of The Charioteers between
1930 and 1950, after which he formed his own Billy Williams Quartet
with Eugene Dixon, Claude Riddick and John Ball. Many appearances on
TV followed, especially on Your Show of Shows with Sid Caesar. By the
early 1960s he had lost his voice due to diabetes. He subsequently moved
to Chicago and worked as a social worker until his death (?)
b. December
28th 1910.
1991: Tennessee Ernie Ford (72) American
singer and television performer; his booming baritone voice is best
known for his grim coal-mining song "Sixteen Tons." He was
born in Bristol, Tennesee, sang in the school choirs and played the
trombone. In 1937 he worked as an announcer for WOAI in Bristol which
he left to attended the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. He held radio
jobs in Atlanta and Knoxville between 1939 and 1941. In 1946 he went
to live in San Bernardino, California and landed an announcers
job with KXLA in Pasadena. His comical Tennessee Ernie character bless
your pea-pickin little heart caught the ear of disc jockey-TV
host Cliffie Stone, who made him a regular cast member of LAs
Hometown Jamboree country music television and radio shows. He sang
at the Grand Ole Opry in 1950, and in 1953 he became the first country
singer to appear at Londons prestigious Palladium. His album "Great
Gospel Songs" won a Grammy in 1964. Ernie has been awarded three
stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, for radio, records and television.
He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1984 and was inducted
into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1990. (liver disease) b.
February 13th 1919.
1996: Chris
Acland (30) UK drummer; he played in bands such as The Infection
and Panic, before becoming a founder member of the London-based shoegazing
and britpop band, Lush. They went on to release three albums and several
singles and EPs (Lush had just completed a tour
and music festival appearances, and two days after bandmate Anderson
announced a desire to quit the band, Chris committed suicide by hanging
himself in his parents' house in Burneside, Cumbria. His bandmates were
devastated and disbanded after a long period of mourning)
b. September 7th 1966.
2000:
Jokke/Joachim Nielsen (36) Norwegian singer, guitarist;
he was the frontman and guitarist of the Norwegian rock band Jokke &
Valentinerne, which he formed in 1982 with his long time partner May-Irene
Aasen on drums and Håkon Torgersen on bass. The band went on to
become one of the most popular bands in Oslo's underground rock scene.
Their first album "Alt kan repareres"(Everything can be repaired)
was released in 1986. Much of the band's lyrics were about alcohol,
societal underdogs, misfits and so-called anti-heroes, Jokke himself
had a reputation of frequently getting drunk on stage. In 1992, he created
a scandal when he received Spellemannprisen, the Norwegian equivalent
of the Grammy awards, visibly drunk and/or under the influence of drugs
(drug overdose) b.
September 8th 1964.
2001: Jay Livingston (86) Songwriter,
piano, composer; he earned three Academy Awards for Best Song during
the 1940s and '50s ().
2002: Chuck Domanico (58) US
bass player; West Coast sessionist; worked with
Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Carmen McRae, Joni Mitchell, Taj Mahal,
Diane Schuur, Natalie Cole, Manhattan Transfer, Chet Baker, Shelly Manne,
Oliver Nelson, John Klemmer, Roger Kellaway, Barney Kessel, Art Pepper,
and many more.(lung cancer).
2002: Bashful Brother Oswald/Pete Kirby/Beecher
Ray Kirby (90) American singer, guitar, banjo and fiddle
player born in rural Sevier County, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains.
By his teens, he was playing for square dances. It was at one such party
that he met a Hawaiian guitarist named Rudy Waikiki. Impressed Beecher
bought his first resonator guitar. He visited the Chicago World's Fair
in 1933, playing in clubs and gaining a following. Breecher moved to
Knoxville, Tennessee in 1934. Taking the stage name Pete Kirby, he played
resonator guitar with local bands, including Roy Acuff's Crazy Tennesseans,
later to become the Smoky Mountain Boys. It was with Roy that he became
introduced as Bashful Brother Oswald. He joined the Grand Ole Opry with
Acuff's band on New Year's Day 1939 and stayed with the band until Roy's
death in 1995. He was also a sort after session player; his session
work included working with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band on Will the Circle
Be Unbroken, an album that paid tribute to the old-time, traditional
country musicians of Nashville, Tennessee. For nearly 60 years, he was
one of the most influential and talented resonator players in country
music (died at his home
in Madison) b. December 26th 1911.
2002: Derek Bell M.B.E. (66) oboist,
hammer dulcimer, harpist; BBC Northern Ireland Orchestra and Chieftains,
he was the only member of the band to wear a tie at every public performance.
(cardiac arrest following minor surgery).
2004: Uzi Hitman (52) Israeli singer,
songwriter, composer and TV personality (heart attack).
2007: Teresa Brewer/Theresa Breuer (76)
American pop and jazz singer who grew up in Toledo, Ohio; she was
one of the most popular female singers of the 1950s with hits such as
"Dancin' with Someone",
"Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall", "Choo'n Gum",
"Ricochet", "Baby, Baby, Baby", "Bell Bottom
Blues", "Our Heartbreaking Waltz", "Pledging
My Love", "Tweedle Dee" and "Rock Love", "A
Tear Fell" and "Bo Weevil". Teresa re-emerged as a jazz
vocalist in the 1980's and 1990's recording a number of albums including
tribute albums to Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, and Irving Berlin and
recorded with such jazz greats as Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Dizzy
Gillespie and Bobby Hackett. Over her career, she recorded around 600
song titles (sadly died of a neuromuscular disease)
b. May 7th 1931.
2007: Clarence "Tater" Tate (76) Bluegrass
fiddle player and bassist, a member of Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys
and over the course of a 60-year-plus career, he lent support to many
of the leading figures in the genre, from Bill Monroe to Jimmy Martin
(long struggle with lung cancer).
2008: Levi Stubbs/Levi Stubbles (72) American lead vocalist
with The Four Tops; he began his professional singing career with friends
Abdul "Duke" Fakir, Renaldo "Obie" Benson and Lawrence
Payton to form the Four Aims in 1954. Two years later, the group changed
their name to the Four Tops. The group began as a supper-club act before
finally signing to Motown Records in 1963. As an actor, he provided
the voice of the carnivorous plant "Audrey II" in the movie
version of the musical Little Shop of Horrors in 1986 and the voice
of Mother Brain in the animated TV series Captain N: The Game Master
in 1989 (complications of cancer and stroke)
b. June 6th 1936... read
more
2009: Carla Boni/Carla Gaiano (84) Italian
singer; Carla started a long association on Rai, the Italian State Radio
and television network, as a singer in 1951. In 1953 she won the Festival
della canzone italiana with Flo Sandon, singing "Viale d'Autunno".
In 1955 Carla won the "Festival di Napoli" with the song "'E
stelle 'e Napule ", singing with her husband Gino Latilla and Maria
Paris. During her career of over half a centry, she formed a band with
her husband Gino Latilla, Nilla Pizzi and Giorgio Consolini, called
the Flabby band, in which she sang a new version of Mambo Italiano (died
in Rome, after a long illness) b.
July 17th 1925.
October 18
1944: Orwill "Hoppy" Jones (39) jazz
cello player, bass singer in the Ink Spots where he was an important
and the stablising member, after his unexpected and sudden death the
band split (collapsed on stage and died after being taken home. It turned
out that he had been having cerebral hemorrhages for over a year).
1994: Lee Allen (68)
saxophonist; played 4 decades on dozens of hits and many hundreds
of sides, by artists including Fats Domino, Lloyd Price, Little
Richard, Stray Cats and the Blasters ().
2000: Julie London/Gayle Peck (74) US
actress and singer who was known for her smoky, sensual voice, born
in Santa Rosa, California, she moved with her parents to LA at the age
of 14. She began singing in public in her teens before appearing in
a film. She was discovered by talent agent Sue Carol, her early film
career did not include any singing roles. She
recorded 32 albums in a career that began in 1955 with a live performance
at the 881 Club in Los Angeles. Billboard named her the most popular
female vocalist for 1955, 1956, and 1957. She recorded 100's of songs
including 'Don't Worry About Me', 'Motherless Child', 'A Foggy Day',
and 'You're Blasé', "Hot Toddy," "Daddy",
"Desafinado", Yummy Yummy Yummy", "Go Slow"
and "Cry Me a River". Her last recording was the classic "My
Funny Valentine" for the soundtrack of the Burt Reynolds film Sharky's
Machine in 1981. Primarily remembered as a singer, Julie also made more
than 20 films and played many roles in programs made for TV
(stroke)
b.
September 26th 1926.
2006: Anna
Russell née Anna Claudia Russell-Brown (94)
EnglishCanadian singer and comedienne. She
was educated at St Felix School at Southwold, Suffolk, at Harrogate
College and in Brussels and Paris and also studied at the Royal Academy
of Music. Anna gave many concerts in which she sang and played comic
musical sketches on the piano. Among her best-known works are her concert
performances and famous recordings of The Ring of the Nibelungs (An
Analysis), a humorous 30-minute synopsis of Richard Wagner's "Der
Ring des Nibelungen", and on the same album, her parody "How
to Write Your Own Gilbert and Sullivan Opera" (In
her last years, she moved to Australia, in Rosedale near Batemans Bay,
New South Wales, where she died)
b. December 27th 1911
2007: Lucky
Philip Dube (43) South
African reggae musician, born in Ermelo, formerly of the Eastern Transvaal,
now of Mpumalanga; while at school he joined a choir and formed his
first musical ensemble, called The Skyway Band. It was here too he discovered
the Rastafari movement. At the age of 18 Philip joined his cousin's
band, The Love Brothers, playing Zulu pop music known as mbaqanga. He
went on to
become South Africa's biggest selling reggae artist,
recording 22 albums in Zulu, English and Afrikaans
in a 25 year period. In 1989 he won four OKTV Awards for "Prisoner",
won another for "Captured Live" the following year and yet
another two for "House Of Exile" the year after.His 1993 album,
Victims sold over one million copies worldwide, and in 1995 he earned
a worldwide recording contract with Motown. His album Trinity was the
first release on Tabu Records after Motown's acquisition of the label.
(Brutally killed in the the Rosettenville suburb of Johannesburg, shot
dead by carjackers; 3 men were tried, found guilty and sentenced to
life in prison) b. August 3rd 1964.
2008: Dave McKenna (78) American
jazz pianist; known for his "three-handed swing", and was
the leading proponent of solo piano style. Started with Boots Mussulli
and Charlie Ventura in the 40's,
worked with many of top swing and Dixieland musicians including Woody
Herman. Gene Krupa, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, Eddie Condon, Bobby
Hackett but became primarily a soloist after 1967 (lung cancer)
b. May 30th
1930.
2008: Dee Dee Warwick/Delia Mae Warrick (63)
American
soul singer; born in Newark, New Jersey, she started out singing with
her sister Dionne Warwick and their aunt Cissy Houston in the New Hope
Baptist Church Choir in Newark, NJ. The trio formed the Gospelaires
who often performed with the Drinkard Singers. At
a performance at the Apollo Theater in 1959, the Warwick sisters were
recruited by a record producer for session work and Dionne and Dee Dee
Warwick, along with Doris Troy, subsequently became a prolific New York
City area session singing team. Dee Dee who is also cousin of singer,
Whitney Houston is best-known for her hits during the 1960s, including
the No.13 R&B hit "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me", also she
was a two time Grammy nominee for "Foolish Fool" and "She
Didn't Know" (died after long illness)
b.
Sept 25th 1945.
October 19
1988:
Son House/Eddie James
House Jr (86) American
blues singer and guitarist, a pioneer of an innovative style featuring
strong, repetitive rhythms, often played with the aid of slide guitar,
and his singing often incorporated elements of southern gospel and spiritual
music. Born in Riverton, Mississippi, but raised in Tallulah, Louisiana,
at 15 he began a preaching career. Son became more and more drawn to
the blues,
inspired by the work of Willie Wilson by his mid 20s he had taught
himself guitar. He
began playing alongside his
good friend Willie Brown, Charley
Patton, Robert Johnson and Fiddlin' Joe Martin around Robinsonville,
MI, and north to Memphis, Tennessee, until 1942.
His first recordings were for Paramount in Grafton Wisconsin in 1930;
My Black Mama, Dry
Spell Blues, Preachin'
The Blues and an unreleased version of Walking Blues. Lyrically and
musically they were masterpieces. He recorded again in the very early
40s including The
Jinx Blues, Levee
Camp Blues, Government Fleet Blues, Shetland Pony Blues, Fo'Clock Blues
and Camp Hollers. When his dear friend and
musical partner Willie Brown died, Son totally gave up playing
guitar and left his music life behind. Luckily in the 60s he was tracked
down by blues afficianodos Dick Waterman, Nick Perls and Phil Spiro.
Al Wilson of Canned Heat helped Son back into saddle and soon he was
again playing professionally. Over
the next 10 years he appeared at all the world top festivals, Newport
Folk Festival, the New York Folk Festival, the Montreux Jazz Festival
to mention a few. He
toured extensively in the US and Europe and
in 1965 he recorded some powerful tracks, Death Letter Blues, Preachin'
Blues, Grinnin' In Your Face and more. In the summer of 1970, while
touring Europe,
a recording of his London concerts was released by Liberty Records.
Sadly
Son's health deteriorated, in 1974 he was forced to retired. He later
moving to Detroit, where he remained until his death. Son
was an important influence on the likes of Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf,
Robert and Tommy Johnson. A seminal Delta blues figure, he remains influential
today, with his music being covered by blues-rock groups such as The
White Stripes and slide
player John
Mooney has combined Son's Delta style with power trio Rock and New Orleans
R&B to carry Son's tradition into the 21st Century.
Several of Son's songs were also featured in the 2006 film soundtrack
"Black Snake Moan" (Son
sadly died from cancer of the larynx) b.
March 21st 1902.
1989:
Alan Murphy (35)
English rock session guitarist, famed for his collaborations with Kate
Bush playing
on her tour of the Europe & UK in 1978. Both a live video and EP
were released with material taken form this tour. He also contributed
to her albums Never for Ever, The Dreaming, Hounds of Love and the single
"Rocket Man".and
Go West. He performed with Fusion Orchestra in 1975. He was an in demand
session musician, playing with many
artists, including Go West,
Long John Baldry, Joan Armatrading, Mike and the Mechanics, Amii Stewart,
Scritti Politti, So and Miquel Brown. In 1988 he joined the group Level
42 as a full time band member and played with them until his death (weakened
by the AIDS virus, he died of pneumonia) b.
November 28th 1953.
1995: Don Cherry (58) African-American
jazz cornetest; he became well known in jazz in 1958 when he performed
and recorded with Ornette Coleman, first in a quintet with pianist Paul
Bley and later in what became the predominantly piano-less quartet which
recorded for Atlantic Records. Don
also co-led the Avant-Garde session which saw John Coltrane replacing
Ornette
Coleman in the Quartet. He also recorded and toured with Sonny Rollins,
was a member of the New York Contemporary Five with Archie Shepp and
John Tchicai, recorded and toured with Albert Ayler and with bandleader
and composer George Russell. His first recording as a leader was Complete
Communion for Blue Note Records in 1965. The band included Coleman's
drummer Ed Blackwell as well as saxophonist Gato Barbieri, whom he had
met while touring Europe with Ayler. Don also ventured into the developing
genre of world fusion music, incorporating influences of Middle Eastern,
traditional African, and Indian music into his playing. He had studied
Indian music with Vasant Rai in the early seventies. From 1978 to 1982,
he recorded three albums for ECM with "world jazz" group Codona,
consisting of himself, percussionist Nana Vasconcelos and sitar and
tabla player Collin Walcott (died
in Málaga, Spain, due to liver failure caused by hepatitis)
b.
November 18th 1995.
1997: Glen Edward Buxton (49) American
lead guitarist and founder member of the Alice
Cooper Band. In 1964, while at Cortez High School in Phoenix, Arizona,
he co-founded a rock band called The Earwigs, along with high school
students Dennis Dunaway and Vincent Furnier. They changed their name
to The Spiders in 1965, then to The Nazz in 1967, to avoid legal entanglements
with the Todd Rundgren-led "Nazz", Glen's band changed their
name to Alice Cooper in 1968.
He
co-wrote o classic songs like "School's Out", "Elected,"
"I'm Eighteen", and "10 Minutes Before the Worm"
and is credited as lead guitarist on 7 albums by the Alice Cooper band,
including the chart-topping Billion Dollar Babies. Throughout the late
'70s and '80s, he maintained a low profile, playing only occasional
club gigs with obscure bands like Shrapnel and Virgin. In 2003, Rolling
Stone magazine ranked Glen number 90 on the "100 Greatest Guitarists
of All Time" (pneumonia) b.
November 10th 1947.
2007:
LaLa Brown/Yolanda
Brown
(21)
American R&B singer and protégé of Lyfe Jennings.
She was an up and coming young artist, best known for her Top 10 R&B
hit single S.E.X.
(La La & her producer, JeTannue Clayborn, were found dead in their
Milwaukee Loud Enuff Productionz recording studio, both had gunshot
wounds and had been dead at least a day before being discovered)
b. May 20th 1986.
2008: Gianni Raimondi (85)
Italian operatic tenor, particularly associated with the Italian composers;
he made his debut there in 1948, as Ernesto in Donizetti's Don Pasquale,
going on to perform world wide. Disappointingly he made few studio recordings,
given the length of his career and the sheer number of internationally
distinguished opera houses where he sang (?) b.
April 17th 1923.
2008: Gail Robinson (62) US operatic
soprano who sang with many of the world's leading opera companies during
the 1970s and 1980s. She was a winner in the Metropolitan Opera National
Council Auditions which started her professional career (complications
from rheumatoid arthritis) b. August 7th 1946.
2009: Paul Lagos (?) American drummer
with the psychedelic folk band Kaleidoscope. He also played with the
Johnny Otis Band and with John Mayall's "USA Union" tour and
featured on the album. Paul formed Pure Food and Drug Act in the early
'70s (heart attack?) b.????
October
20
1977: Ronnie Van Zant (29) US
singer; lead vocalist, primary lyricist, and
a founding member of the Southern Rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd. He was the
oldest brother of .38 Special founder and vocalist Donnie Van Zant and
current Lynyrd Skynyrd lead vocalist Johnny Van Zant. Born and raised
in Jacksonville, Florida, Ronnie formed Skynyrd
late in the summer of 1964 with friends and schoolmates Allen Collins,
Gary Rossington, Larry Junstrom, and Bob Burns. Lynyrd Skynyrd's name
was inspired by a gym teacher the boys had in high school, Leonard Skinner,
who disapproved of students with long hair. Their fan base grow rapidly
throughout 1973, mainly due to their opening slot on The Who's Quadrophenia
tour in the United States. Their debut self titled album produced the
hit Freebird, the track achieved the No. 3 spot on Guitar World's 100
Greatest Guitar Solos. Their second album in 1974, Second Helping, featured
their most popular single, "Sweet Home Alabama", a tongue
in cheek response to Neil Young's "Alabama" and "Southern
Man". (Died in a plane crash. Four
band members were killed along with the pilot, Walter McCreary and co-pilot,
William Gray when the band's rented plane, a Convair 240, ran out of
fuel and crashed into a swamp in Gillsburg, Missouri)
b. Jan 15th 1948.
1977: Steve Gaines (27)
US
guitarist and vocalist with the Lynyrd Skynyrd band. Born in Seneca,
Missouri and raised in Miami, Oklahoma. He began playing guitar after
seeing The Beatles in concert as a teenager. He played with RIO
Smokehouse, The Ravens, Rusty Day, Detroit and Crawdada, before joining
the Lynyrd Skynyrd band, replacing guitarist Ed King in 1976. His skills
were a major contribution to the band, as proven on the 1977 album Street
Survivors.
(same aircrash as above)
b. Sept 14th 1977.
1977: Cassie Gaines (29) US
singer and older sister of Steve Gaines. Cassie
was a member of the female gospel vocal trio The Honkettes, who in 1975
became the backup singers for Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd (air
crash as above) b. Jan 9th 1948.
1977: Dean Kilpatrick (?) Assistant
road manager of the Lynyrd Skynyrd band
(air crash as above)
b. ????
1983: Merle Travis (65)
US country music singer, songwriter;
his lyrics often discussed the exploitation of coal miners. (died of
a massive heart attack at his Tahlequah, Oklahoma home).
1984: Albert "Budd" Johnson (73)
American tenor saxophonist; made his recording debut while working
with Louis Armstrong's band in 1932-1933, but is more known for his
work with Earl Hines. It is contended that he led Hines to hire "modernists."().
1992: Werner Torkanowsky (66) German
conductor in both the concert hall and opera house; he
was born in Berlin, Germany, and raised on a kibbutz in Israel, and
relocated to the United States in 1948 to study the violin. From 1954
to 1958, he studied conducting under Pierre Monteux. Following his debut
with the Ballets Espagnoles, he became Music Director of Jerome Robbins's
"Ballet USA." In 1959, Werner made his debut with the New
York City Opera, with Gian Carlo Menotti's The Medium. He went on to
conduct many major orchestras, including those in Israel, New York,
Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and Detroit, as well as at
the Spoleto Festival (?)
b. March 30th 1926
1997:
Henry "The Sunflower" Vestine
(52) American guitar player born in Takoma
Park, Maryland; at an early age he accompanied his father on canvasses
of black neighborhoods for old recordings, Henry became an avid collector,
eventually coming to own tens of thousands of recordings of blues, hillbilly,
country, and Cajun music. Throughout the early to mid 1960s Henry played
in various musical configurations and eventually was hired by Frank
Zappa for the original Mothers of Invention. But Henry is known mainly
as a member of the band Canned Heat. He was with the group from its
start in 1966 to July 1969. In later years he played in local bands
but occasionally returned to Canned Heat for a few tours and recordings.
In
2003 Henry was ranked 77th in Rolling Stone magazine list of the "100
Greatest Guitarists of All Time" (died from
heart and respiratory failure in a hotel outside Paris after the band
had completed a tour of France) b.
December 25th 1944.
2005:
Shirley Horn (71)
American jazz singer, pianist; she collaborated
with many jazz greats including Miles Davis, influencing each other;
Dizzy Gillespie, Toots Thielemans, Ron Carter, Carmen McRae, Wynton
Marsalis and others. She was most noted for her ability to accompany
herself with nearly incomparable independence and ability on the piano
while singing. She was nominated for nine Grammy Awards during her career,
winning in 1999 for Jazz Vocal Album for "I Remember Miles",
a tribute to her friend and encourager. Preferring
to perform in small settings, as with her trio, she recorded with orchestra
too, as on the 1992 album "Here's to life", which is highly
rated by her fans, the title song being generally considered as her
signature song. A video documentary of Shirley's life and music was
released at the same time as "Here's To Life" and shared its
title. She was officially recognized by the 109th US Congress for "her
many achievements and contributions to the world of jazz and American
culture", and performed at The White House for several U.S. presidents.
Shirley was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree from the Berklee
College of Music in 2002. She was awarded the National Endowment for
the Arts Jazz Masters Award in 2005., the highest honors that the United
States bestows upon jazz musicians (She
had been battling breast cancer and diabetes when she died from complications
of a massive stroke) b.
May 1st 1934.
2007: Paul Raven (46) English rock
bassist born in Wolverhampton, best known for his work in the seminal
punk-goth-metal-electronic group Killing Joke, playing with them through
its most commercially successful period, appearing on the 'Fire Dances',
'Night Time' and 'Brighter than a Thousand Suns' albums, before leaving
during the recording of 1988's 'Outside the Gate', rejoining in time
for 1990's 'Extremities, Dirt & Various Repressed Emotions'. He
later played in the alternative rock/ industrial rock bands Prong and
Ministry. His early musical career included stints in Neon Hearts and
the 1982 glam rock band, Kitsch. (heart attack)
b. january 16th 1961.
2009: Liam Maher (41)
UK singer, who fronted the
baggy band Flowered Up, which he helped form in
Camden, London in 1989 along
with keyboardist Tim Dorney, guitarist Joe Maher, bassist Andy Jackson,
drummer John Tovey, and Barry Mooncult, who wasn't really a member of
the band but danced on-stage with a giant flower around his neck. The
band appeared on the covers of both NME and Melody Maker before releasing
the club anthem
'It's On' in the summer of 1990, which was followed up with 'Phobia'
that autumn; both reached the Top 40 on the U.K. charts. Flowered Up
were best known for their Top 20 single 'Weekender', the 12-minute,
55-second track being their highest charting single.
They
released their only album 'A Life With Brian' in 1991 and the band split
in 1994. Liam signed up to Alan McGee's Poptones record label in 2001,
but the deal fell through before anything was released. Flowered
Up,
reunited
in 2005 for several gigs with Happy Mondays
(details of Liams
death not yet released) b. ????
October
21
1965: Bill Black (39) US:
bass and double bass player
with Elvis Presley, also bandleader of
The Bill Black's Combo (died four months after surgery to remove a brain
tumour).
1969: Jack Kerouac (47)
beatnik writer; considered by some as the King of the Beatniks as well
as the Father of the Hippies (cirrhosis of the liver).
1990:
Jo
Ann Kelly (46)
English blues singer and guitarist favouring
delta style rather than
rocking out with a heavy band behind her, but with a huge voice, and
a strong guitar. Born
in Streatham, South London . She
established a musical partnership with the British blues musician Tony
McPhee, and appeared on two McPhee compiled albums for Liberty Records,
"Me And The Devil" in 1968 and "I Asked for Water, She
Gave Me Gasoline" in 1969. At the end of the 1960s, with an album
on a major record label in the United States, both Johnny Winter and
Canned Heat tried to recruit Jo Ann into their ranks. However, she stayed
and played the UK's nightclub scene, and participated in many musical
projects with her brother Dave Kelly and performed on the European circuit,
with the guitarist Pete Emery or in bands, including the Terry Smith
Blues Band (In 1988, Jo Ann began to suffer from headaches. In 1989
she had an operation to remove a malignant brain tumour,
she seemed to have recovered, but
the
following year she tragically collapsed
and died
after touring again with her brother)
b. January 5th
1944.
1995:
Maxene Andrews (79)
US high harmony singer in The Andrews Sisters; all sissters were born
in Minnesota. Throughout their long
career, the sisters sold over 75 million records and
became the best-selling female vocal group in the history of popular
music setting records that remain unsurpassed to this day. The sisters
charted with
113 Billboard hits,
46 of these reaching Top 10 status. They were inducted into the Vocal
Group Hall of Fame in 1998. Maxene started a solo career in 1979 releasing
the album 'Maxene: An Andrews Sister'
in 1990. Her last performance was
on October 8th 1995, in the show 'Swing Time Canteen', at New York City's
Blue Angel Theatre. (?)
b. January
3rd 1916.
1995: Richard Shannon Hoon (28) American
singer, songwriter and guitarist; born and raised
in Lafayette, Indiana, after
graduating from McCutcheon
High School he fronted two
local bands Styff Kitten and Mank
Rage. He also composed his first song at this time "Change".
He relocated to LA where
he met musicians Brad Smith and Rogers Stevens and they formed the band
Blind Melon, and soon had a recording contract with Capitol Records.
He also met up with Axl Rose of Guns 'n' Roses, who were recording their
albums Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II. Richard sang backing
vocals on several of the tracks, including "The Garden" and
"Don't Cry". Axl also invited him to appear in the video for
"Don't Cry". In 1992, Blind Melon released their self-titled
debut album, it sold poorly until the single "No Rain" was
released in September of 1993 and the album went quadruple-platinum.
In 1994, they their second album 'Soup', released in 1995. They went
on tour to promote the album, which sadly was Richard's last album and
tour (found dead on the band's tour bus
of a heart attack, due to a cocaine overdose, while in New Orleans)
b. September 26th 1967.
2003: Elliott Smith (34) Folk-punk
singer, songwriter; Heatmiser/solo (suicide).
2007: Paul Fox (56)
British guitarist, singer; a founder member
of the UK punk band, The Ruts. When the original lead singer Malcolm
Owen died of a heroin overdose the band continued with Paul on vocals,
renaming themselves Ruts DC. After the break-up of the band in the early
1980s, he joined a London rock band called Dirty Strangers,
who recorded two albums, on which The Rolling Stones guitarists, Keith
Richards and Ron Wood, both guested on. He went on to form Choir Militia,
in 1983. This band soon folded after which he worked with Screaming
Lobsters in 1987 and Fluffy Kittens from 1991 to 1994, retaining hard-core
fan interest. From this point on his musical career was combined with
carpentry, but he cut singles with the Chelsea Punk Rock Allstars in
1997, and ska legend Laurel Aitken in 2000. Paul
revived the Ruts name and songs in 2006, touring with a line up known
as Foxy's Ruts (lung cancer) b.
April 11th 1951.
2007: Lance Hahn (40) US guitarist and frontman with
punk band J Church (kidney disease)
2008: Peter Levinson (74) US
music industry biographer; he spent nearly fifty years in the music
industry as a promoter and representative for stars such as Count Basie,
Artie Shaw, Woody Herman, Lalo Schifrin, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Chuck
Mangione, Dave Brubeck, Rosemary Clooney, Erroll Garner, Stan Getz,
Peggy Lee, Bill Evans, Dexter Gordon, Maynard Ferguson, Pete Fountain,
Art Garfunkel, Bud Shank, Phyllis Diller, George Shearing, Chick Corea,
Jim Hall, Benny Carter, Charlie Byrd, Louie Bellson, Dee Dee Bridgewater,
Jack Lemmon and Mel Torme.
His
publicity work also extended into television and film. He
contracted amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 2006, which prevented him
from speaking; he used a type-to-speech computer and continued writing
(he died after a fall at his home in Malibu, California)
b. July 1st 1934.
2009: Clinton Ford/ Ian George Stopford Harrison
(77) British
singer who had his first taste of chart success in 1959, with a cover
of the Red Foley penned song "Old Shep", his next chart entry
was "Too Many Beautiful Girls" in a trad jazz style, followed
by his biggest hit, a rendition of the 1935 George Formby song "Fanlight
Fanny". This led to an album that reached No.16 in the UK Albums
Chart in May 1962. After touring for a while with Kenny Ball & His
Jazzmen, he returned for a stint at Liverpool's Cavern Club, to find
that the market for trad jazz and country n western styled novelties
had been replaced by the beat music of a certain local band called The
Beatles.
He was though, in great demand on BBC Radio programmes, such as Saturday
Club where a live singer was required, to sing standards and also covers
of current hit songs. His final UK hit "Run To The Door" was
issued on the Piccadilly Records label in
1967 (died
after a long illness in the Isle of Man where he had been living for
many years) b. November 4th 1931.
2009: Sirone/ Norris Jones (69) American
jazz bassist and composer, he worked in Atlanta late in the 1950s and
early in the 1960s with "The Group" alongside George Adams;
he also recorded with R&B musicians such as Sam Cooke and Smokey
Robinson. He moved to New York in the middle '60s, where he co-founded
the "Untraditional Jazz Improvisational Team" with Dave Burrell.
He also worked with Marion Brown, Gato Barbieri, Pharoah Sanders, Noah
Howard, Sonny Sharrock, Sunny Murray, Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, and
Sun Ra. In
1971 he co-founded the Revolutionary Ensemble with Leroy Jenkins and
Frank Clayton, also in the 1970s and early 1980s Sirone recorded with
Clifford Thornton, Roswell Rudd, Dewey Redman, Cecil Taylor, and Walt
Dickerson. In the 1980s, he was member of Phalanx, a group with guitarist
James "Blood" Ulmer, drummer Rashied Ali, and tenor saxophonist
George Adams, before relocating to Germany in 1989, where he lived the
remainder of his life (died in Berlin, Germany)
b. September 28th 1948.
October
22
1935: Komitas Vardapet (66)
Armenian priest, composer, choir leader,
singer, music ethnologist, music pedagogue and musicologist. Regarded
as the founder of modern Armenian classical music. The music academy
in Yerevan is named him. There also exists a worldwide renowned string
quartet named after Komitas (rumors of earlier schizophrenia or venereal
disease and stress that he never fully recovered, he died in a psychiatric
clinic in Paris, France) b. September
26th or October 8th 1869.
1943: Leon Roppolo
(41) American
jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, guitarist born in Lutcher, Louisiana,
upriver from New Orleans. He was
a prominent early jazz clarinetist, best known for his playing with
the New Orleans Rhythm Kings. He also made some recordings with Original
Memphis Five and California Ramblers musicians in New York in 1924 as
well as working with other New Orleans bands such as the Halfway House
Orchestra, with which he recorded on saxophone. Leon's compositions
include the jazz standards "Farewell Blues" and "Milenberg
Joys", "Gold Leaf Strut" or "Golden Leaf Strut",
"Tin Roof Blues", and "Make Love to Me" (tertiary
syphilis) b. March
16th 1902.
1958: Jay Perkins ()
bass guitarist; worked with his
brother Carl Perkins (brain tumour)?
1969: Tommy Edwards (47) vocalist,
pianist, and composer; most remembered
for his 1958 Billboard No. 1 "It's All In The Game"(died after
suffering a brain aneurysm in his hometown of Richmond, Virginia).
1973: Pablo Casals/Pau Casals i Defilló
(96) Spanish
Catalan cellist and later conductor. He made many recordings throughout
his career, of solo, chamber, and orchestral music, also as conductor,
but he is perhaps best remembered for the recording of the Bach Cello
Suites he made from 1936 to 1939. In
1897 he appeared as soloist with the Madrid Symphony Orchestra, and
was awarded the Order of Carlos III from the Queen. In 1899, Casals
played at The Crystal Palace in London, and later for Queen Victoria
at Osborne House, her summer residence, accompanied by Ernest Walker.
On November 12 and December 17, 1899, he appeared as a soloist at Lamoureux
Concerts in Paris, to great public and critical acclaim. He toured Spain
and the Netherlands with the pianist Harold Bauer in 1900-1901; in 1901-1902
he made his first tour of the United States; and in 1903 toured South
America and on January 15th 1904, Pablo was invited to play at the White
House for President Theodore Roosevelt, These are just a few hi-lites
from his long career. Pablo was an ardent supporter of the Spanish Republican
government, and after its defeat in 1939, he vowed not to return to
Spain until democracy had been restored, sadly he did not live to see
the end of the Franco dictatorial regime. He was posthumously honoured
by the Spanish government under King Juan Carlos I which, in 1976, issued
a commemorative postage stamp to Pau Casals in honour of the centenary
of his birth and in 1989 he was awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement
Award
(Pablo died in San Juan, Puerto Rico) b.
December 29th 1876.
1986: Jane Dornacker (39)
Albuquerque-born actress, keyboardist, songwriter, weather reporter;
founded the all-woman rock group Leila and the Snakes. (helicopter crash
during a live traffic report for WNBC radio in New York. Listeners heard
her terrified voice screaming "Hit the water, hit the water"
as the helicopter from which she and pilot Bill Pate were reporting,
fell from the sky and crashed into the Hudson River).
1989: Ewan MacColl/James 'Jimmie' Miller (74)
UK folk singer, songwriter, socialist, actor, poet, playwright,
record producer and the father of the late Kirsty MacColl. In 2001,
The Essential Ewan MacColl Songbook was published, with the words and
music to 200 of his songs ().
2005: Franky Gee (42) US singer
with German Europop
band Captain Jack (suffered a cerebral
hemorrhage while walking with his son in Palma, Mallorca, Spain. He
went into a coma and subsequently died five days later).
2009: Don Lane/Morton
Donald Isaacson (75)
American-born
Australian entertainer, talk show host and singer. He began his working
life as a nightclub performer and singer, uappearing at many clubs in
Hawaii, Los Angeles and New York. He appeared on one episode of the
Ed Sullivan program in the late 1950s as one half of a double act. He
was drafted into the U.S. Army in the early 1950s and was commissioned
as an officer serving in the artillery. He later toured for two years
entertaining the troops.
He worked alongside Johnny Carson, Sammy Davis, Jr., Wayne Newton and
others. Lane also played Professor Harold Hill in the Las Vegas production
of The Music Man. He relocated to Australia where
Don
became a multi-award winner including 1966: Most Popular Male and Most
Popular Live Show (Tonight with Don Lane); 1967: Most Popular Male and
Most Popular Live Show (Tonight with Don Lane); 1968: Best Male Personality
and Best Show (Tonight with Don Lane); 1969: Best Male Personality and
Best Show (Tonight with Don Lane); 1970: Best Male Personality and Best
Local Show (Tonight Show with Don Lane); 1974: Most Popular Male and
Most Popular Show (The Don Lane Show); and he recieved 4 National Logie
awards:Gold
Logie; Most Popular Male Personality; Victoria: Most Popular Male; and
Most Popular Show (died
from dementia caused by Alzheimer's disease) b.
November 13th 1933.
October 23
1950:
Al Jolson/Asa Yoelson (64) American
singer, songwriter, blackfaced minstrel, comedian, born in Seredius,
Lithuania, then a part of the Russian Empire.
His career lasted from 1911 until his death in 1950, during which time
he was commonly dubbed "the world's greatest entertainer.
Between 1911 and 1928, Jolson had nine sell-out Winter Garden shows
in a row, more than 80 hit records, and 16 national and international
tours. Yet by some, he's best remembered today for his leading role
in the first, full length, talking movie ever made, The Jazz Singer,
released in 1927. Hits many hits include: Rock-A-Bye Your Baby With
A Dixie Melody, I've Got My Captain Working for Me Now, Swanee, Avalon,
California, Here I Come and I'm Sitting on Top of the World. Numerous
well-known singers were influenced by his music, including Bing Crosby,
Judy Garland, and Bob Dylan, who once referred to him as "somebody
whose life I can feel (sadly
he died of a massive heart attack, Broadway lowered it's lights for
ten minutes in Al's honor) b.
March 26th 1886.
1964: Bill Daniles () drummer with
Buddy and the Kings (all four members of US band Buddy and the Kings
were killed when their hired Cesna Skyhawk piloted by Bill Daniles,
crashed nose first killing all on board. They were on their way to a
gig in Harris County. Singer with the group Harold Box had replaced
Buddy Holly in The Crickets after Buddy's death in a plane crash).
1964:
Harold Box () Singer with Buddy and
the Kings :-
as above.
1968: Naima Wifstrand (78) Swedish
film actor, operetta singer, troubadour, director and composer. She
studied music and singing in Stockholm at the Swedish Royal Academy
of Music and in 1910 she went to London and further trained for Raymond
von zur Mühlen. After her studies she was one of the most acknowledged
operetta singers in Scandinavia. She worked at Oscarsteatern, Sweden's
foremost operetta and musical stage, 1913-1918 and for years to come
toured Sweden and Scandinavia. Her big break-through came as Countess
Stasi in Emmerich Kálmán's operetta Die Csárdásfürstin
in 1916. She worked in the 1920s mainly at the opera houses in Oslo
and Copenhagen. For many years she lived in London where she also performed
with troubadour-songs alone along with her guitar. A curiosity here
is that when the first attempts at broadcasted television took place
in Britain Wifstrand actually became one of the first "TV-stars",
so to speak, as she appeared on TV already in the 1930s and performed
a number of songs.
She had a big acting career and was internationally most notable for
strong supporting parts in her later years in a number of Ingmar Bergman-films
(?) b.
September 4th 1890
1978: Maybelle Carter (69) American
country musician, best known as a member of the historic Carter Family
act in the 1920s and 1930s and as a member of Mother Maybelle and the
Carter Sisters. She was a member of the original Carter Family, formed
in 1927 by her brother-in-law, A. P. Carter, who was married to her
cousin, Sara, also a part of the trio. It was perhaps the first commercial
rural Country music group. Maybelle was the guitarist and also played
autoharp and banjo; she created a unique sound for the group with her
innovative 'scratch' style of guitar playing, also called Carter Family
picking, where she used her thumb to play melody on the bass and middle
strings, and her index finger to fill out the rhythm. Maybelle was inducted
as part of The Carter Family in the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1970.
In 1993, her image appeared on a U.S. postage stamp honoring the Carter
Family. In 2001 she was initiated into the International Bluegrass Music
Hall of Honor, and ranked No.8 in CMT's 40 Greatest Women of Country
Music in 2002. In 2005, she was portrayed by Sandra Ellis Lafferty in
the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line (?)
May
10th 1909
1984: James Petrillo (92) leader
of the U.S. musicians union; in his youth Petrillo played the trumpet,
he finally made a career out of organizing musicians into the union
starting in 1919 ().
1999: Bobby Willis ()
manager and husband of Cilla Black
(cancer).
2003: Tony Capstick (59)
UK comedian, actor, singer and broadcaster (heart attack).
2002:
Adolph Green (87) American lyricist and playwright who, with
long-time collaborator Betty Comden, penned the screenplays and songs
for some of the most beloved movie musicals, particularly as part of
Arthur Freed's production unit at MGM, during the genre's heyday. They
shared a unique comic genius and sophisticated wit that enabled them
to forge a six-decade-long partnership that produced some of Hollywood
and Broadway's greatest hits. Their first Broadway effort was On the
Town, a musical romp about three sailors on leave in New York City.
At MGM they
wrote the screenplay for Good News, starring June Allyson and Peter
Lawford, The Barkleys of Broadway for Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire,
and then adapted On the Town for Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly, and the
classic Singin' in the Rain. Among their other credits are the Mary
Martin version of Peter Pan for both Broadway and television, a streamlined
Die Fledermaus for the Metropolitan Opera, and stage musicals for Carol
Burnett, Leslie Uggams, and Lauren Bacall, among others. Their many
collaborators included Garson Kanin, Cy Coleman, Jule Styne, and André
Previn. These are just a few of which they wrote for the screen, stage
and television. In 1958, they appeared on Broadway in A Party with Betty
Comden and Adolph Green, a revue that included some of their early sketches.
It was a critical and commercial success, and they brought an updated
version back to Broadway in 1977. They received the Kennedy Center Honors
in 1991 and were nominees for 12 Tony Awards and winners of seven (he
died at his home in Manhattan)
b. December 2nd 1914.
2004: Robert Merrill (87) American
operatic baritone; In his early radio appearances as a crooner he was
sometimes billed as Merrill Miller. While singing at bar mitzvahs and
weddings and Borscht Belt resorts, he met an agent, Moe Gale, who found
him work at Radio City Music Hall and with the NBC Symphony Orchestra.
With Toscanini conducting, he eventually sang in two of the famous maestro's
NBC broadcasts of famous operas, La traviata with Licia Albanese, in
1946, and Un ballo in maschera with Herva Nelli, in 1954. Both of those
broadcasts were eventually released on both LP and CD. His 1944 operatic
debut was in Verdi's Aida at Newark, New Jersey, with the famous tenor
Giovanni Martinelli, then in the later stages of his long operatic career.
Relatively late in his singing career, he became known for singing "The
Star-Spangled Banner" at Yankee Stadium. He first sang the national
anthem to open the 1969 baseball season, and it became a tradition for
the Yankees to bring him back each year on Opening Day and special occasions.
In honor of Robert's vast influence on US vocal music, on Feb 16th 1981
he was awarded the prestigious University of Pennsylvania Glee Club
Award of Merit; the National Medal of Arts in 1993 and in 1996 he was
presented with The Lawrence Tibbett Award from the AGMA Relief Fund,
honoring his fifty years of professional achievement and dedication
to colleagues (died at home in New Rochelle, New
York, while watching Game 1 of the 2004 World Series between the Boston
Red Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals) b.
June 4th 1917.
2009:
Sohrab Fakir Khaskhely (75) Pakistani
folk singer,
playing the yaktaro, a single stringed instrument and chappar, wooden
clappers. He started singing with his uncles at eight years old and
went to Khan Sahab Khety Khan in Rohri for more musical education. He
sung his first song, Kadhy Kadam Kaya Khan Bahar Ker, at shrine of Kush
Khair Muhammad. and
started his career on Radio Pakistan, Khairpur with the famous song
Raag . Sohrab went on to become the greatest Sindhi folk singer in his
style of music. Sadly, a paralytic stroke had recently left Saaiin Sohrab
voiceless. He spent some of his final days at a Sufi shrine in Sindh
(kidney disease)
b. ??.??.1934
October 24
1986: Johnny Dyani (40)
South African jazz double bassist and pianist who played with such musicians
as Don Cherry, Steve Lacy, David Murray and Leo Smith. ()
1989:
Sahib
Shihab/Edmond Gregory (64)
American
jazz saxophonist;
first
played alto sax professionally for Luther Henderson at age 13, before
studying at the Boston Conservatory and playing with trumpetist Roy
Eldridge. In the mid forties he played lead alto with Fletcher Henderson.
During the late 1940s, he played with Thelonious Monk and also found
time to appear on many recordings by artists including Art Blakey, Miles
Davis, Kenny Dorham, Benny Golson, Tadd Dameron and on John Coltranes
first full session as leader for Prestige, First Trane. In the early
50's he played with Dizzy Gillespie's big band and switched to baritone.
In 1959, he toured Europe with Quincy Jones, after getting fed up with
racial politics in USA, he relocated to Scandinavia, where he worked
for Copenhagen Polytechnic, and wrote scores for television, cinema
and theatre. In
1961, he joined The Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band remaining a
key figure for 12 years. In the 1966 Eurovision Song Contest, he accompanied
Lill Lindfors and Svante Thuresson for the Swedish entry Nygammal Vals.
In 1973, he returned to the United States working as a session man for
rock and pop artists and also doing some copywriting for local musicians.
He spent his remaining years between New York and Europe and played
in a successful partnership with Art Farmer (?)
b. June 23rd
1925.
2001: Kim Gardner
(53) English rock bassist born in
Dulwich, London; in 1964 Kim and friend Ron Wood together with Tony
Munroe, Ali McKenzie and Pete McDaniels formed The Thunderbirds. Changing
their name to The Birds they released several singles, including No
Good Without You Baby and "Leaving Here". After which
Kim and Ron joined the Mod band The Creation. In 1968 Kim joined up
with Tony Ashton and Roy Dyke to form Ashton, Gardner & Dyke, a
jazz- rock band and had the hit single "Resurrection Shuffle".
He was also a member of Quiet Melon with Rod Stewart. Kim
relocated LA in 1974 and spent the rest of the 1970s as both a touring
musician and session musician. During this time he played on twenty-seven
albums for such artists as Jackie Lomax, George Harrison, Bo Diddley
and Eric Clapton and toured with bands including Pacific Gas & Electric.
In 1982 he opened a pub in Hollywood, The Cat and Fiddle where he also
desplayed his art work. In the mid 1980s he was a member of Ian Wallace's
Tea Bags group Kims last recording was a collaboration with Mitch
Mitchell of the Jimi Hendrix Experience with guests including Bruce
Gary, Mick Taylor, Carmine
Appice, Jackie Lomax, Brian
Auger and Ivan Neville (cancer) b.January
27th 1948.
2008: Premasiri
Khemadasa (71) Sri
Lankan musician and composer; a Maestro with a mission known as "Khemadasa
Master" is one of the most influential composers in Sri Lankan
music. Exploring the various styles of music around the world he endeavored
to develop a unique style of music. He combined Sinhala folk tunes,
Hindustani music, Western music and many other streams of music in his
compositions while adapting them to fit contemporary music (died
while receiving treatments at a private hospital)
b. January 25th 1937
2008: Merl Saunders (74)
American multi-genre pianist and keyboards born in
San Mateo, California, favored the Hammond B-3 console organ. He came
to notice in the 1970s when he began collaborating with Jerry Garcia,
with whom he had begun playing in 1971 at a small Fillmore Street nightclub
called the Matrix. Merl went on to lead his own bands, as Merl Saunders
and Friends, playing live dates with Garcia, Mike Bloomfield, David
Grisman, Tom Fogerty, Vassar Clements, Kenneth Nash, John Kahn and Sheila
E. He has worked with musicians Paul Pena, Bonnie Raitt, Phish, Miles
Davis, and B.B. King, and also recorded with The Dinosaurs, a "supergroup"
of first-generation Bay Area rock musicians (complications
from a broken hip) b. February 14th 1934.
October 25
1980:
Virgil Fox (68)
American organist;
known especially for his flamboyant "Heavy Organ" concerts
of the music of Bach. These groundbreaking events appealed to audiences
in the 1970s who were more familiar with rock 'n' roll music, and were
staged complete with light shows. His many recordings made on the RCA
Victor and Capitol labels, mostly in the 1950s and 1960s, have been
re-mastered and re-released on compact disc in recent years
(prostate cancer).
1985: Gary Holton (33) Actor and singer
(drug overdose).
1990: Ikey Robinson (86) jazz &
blues banjoist, singer ().
1991: Bill Graham (60)
American rock concert promoter, who flourished from the 1960s until
his death. (helicopter crash hitting a 200' utility tower in Sonoma
County, California).
1992: Roger Miller (56)
American singer, songwriter, musician and actor, best known for his
honky tonk-influenced novelty songs. His most recognized tunes included
the chart-topping country/pop hits "King of the Road", "Dang
Me" and "England Swings", all from the mid-1960s Nashville
Sound era. Roger won an outstanding 11 Grammy Awards, as well as winning
Broadway's Tony award for writing the music and lyrics for Big River,
which won a total of 7 Tonys including best musical in 1985. He was
voted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1973 and the Country
Music Hall of Fame in 1995. His 11 Grammy Awards held the record as
the most won by any artist until Michael Jackson's 1982 album Thriller.
In Erick, Oklahoma where he grew up, a thoroughfare was renamed "Roger
Miller Boulevard" and a museum dedicated to him was built on the
road in 2004 (cancer)
b. January 2nd 1936.
1993: Howie Blauvelt () American
bassist with Ram
Jam and with Billy Joel in the Hassles (heart attack)?
1998: Warren Wiebe (45)
American
vocalist and session artist from San Diego. After playing bass with
several bands, he was discovered by David Foster and Burt Bacharach
in Los Angeles in 1987. He did the duet "Listen to Me" with
Celine Dion for the movie of the same name. It was never officially
released. He
was one of several lead vocalists who contributed to the 1991 charity
record "Voices That Care". He is also famous for performing
the song "Human Touch", a ballad which was used as one of
the ending theme songs for the 1996 anime After War Gundam X
(?) b.
July 18th 1953.
2000:
William Martin () Drummer, Sam The
Sham & the Pharaohs (heart attack)?
2002: Sir Richard Harris (70)
actor, singer, producer (Hodgkin's disease).
2003: Robert Strassburg (88) American
conductor, composer, musicologist and music educator of the twentieth
century. His studies in music were completed under the supervision of
such leading composers as Igor Stravinsky, Walter Piston and Paul Hindemith
with whom he studied at Tanglewood. His formal academic studies were
completed at the New England Conservatory of Music and Harvard University
where he obtained a fellowship in composition. He also completed a doctorate
in Fine Arts at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles. As a musicologist
Dr. Strassburg is regarded as a leading authority on the compositions
of the composer Ernest Bloch (?)
b. August
30th 1915.
2004: John Peel /John Robert Parker Ravenscroft
OBE (65) BBC's longest serving
radio DJ; known for his eclectic taste in music and his honest and warm
broadcasting style, John was a popular and respected DJ and broadcaster.
He was one of the first to play reggae and punk on British radio. His
significant influence on alternative rock, Pop, British hip hop and
dance music is acknowledged ... READ
MORE ... (sadly died of a heart attack while on holiday in
Peru) b.
August 30th 1939.
2008: Muslim Magomayev (66)
Azerbaijani operatic and pop
singer; started as a baritone opera singer earning fame in Rossini's
"Barber of Seville"; his arias from Puccini's "Tosca",
Hajibeyov's "Koroghlu" and "Shah Ismayil". In the
mid 60's he became a pop idol for several generations of music lovers
in the USSR. He also wrote several film soundtracks, acted in films
and hosted TV and radio broadcasts devoted to prominent musicians of
the 20th century (died after a long illness with
heart disease)
b. August 17th 1942.
2009: Heinz-Klaus Metzger (77) German
music critic and theorist, he studied piano under Carl Seemann in Freiburg
and composition under Max Deutsch in Paris. In the 1960s, he was one
of the first European commentators on John Cage, and spokesman of the
movement called compositional Anarchy, which resulted in the so called
Kölner Manifest of 1960, and serving as a copy editor of the magazine
Collage in Palermo. From 1965 until 1969 he worked as a music critic
for the Zürcher Weltwoche (Zürich world weekly). In 1969,
he founded, together with his partner, composer and conductor Rainer
Riehn, the 'Ensemble Musica Negativa', where they embraced the performance
of radical new music. From 1977 to 2002 Metzger and Riehn founded, edited,
researched, and provided texts criticism for the musicology series "Musik-Konzepte"
(The concepts of music), Munich text+kritik-edition; for this they received
the Deutscher Kritikerpreis (German critics prize) in 1983. Also, they
edited the two first volumes of the Kompositionen von Adorno
(?) b.
February 6th 1932
October 26
1952: Hattie
McDaniel (57) US singer, actress; best remembered for her
Academy Award-winning role of Mammy in Gone with the Wind, but she had
a big singing career too, touring with the Showboat company and others
(cancer).
1966: Alma Cogan (34) UK singer (stomach
cancer).
1994:
Wilbert Harrison (65)
American singer, pianist, guitarist, harmonica player,
born
in Charlotte, North Carolina, began performing in a calypso-based style
releasing 2 singles "This Woman Of Mine" and "Letter
Edged In Black" before moving to Newark, New Jersey, where he had
his first Billboard No.1 record in 1959 with the song "Kansas City".
The song was written in 1951 and was one of the first credited collaborations
by the team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. His next No.1 hit came
in 1969 with "Let's Stick Together." His other hits included,
"C.C. Rider" "Stagger Lee" "My Love" "Girls
On Parade" "Clementine" "My Babe" "New
York's World Fair" and "Until The Real Thing Comes Along"
and his last hit, "My Heart Is Yours" in '71 although Wilbert
continued to perform for many years (?)
b. January
5th 1929.
1995: Gorni Kramer/Kramer Gorni (81)
Italian accordian, double bass player, bandleader,
composer, songwriter;
he learnt the accordian as a child, then studied double bass at the
Conservatory in Parma and obtained his diploma in 1930. He started working
as a musician for dance bands, then in 1933, aged 20, he formed his
own jazz group. In 1949 Gorni Kramer started working for Garinei and
Giovannini, a very famous duo of impresarios who produced musical comedies.
Writing music for their shows was his main activity for the following
ten years. Their most successful productions were Gran Baldoria, Attanasio
cavallo vanesio, Alvaro piuttosto corsaro, Tobia candida spia, Un paio
dali. He went on to be one of the most famous Italian songwriters,
musicians and band leaders of the 20th Century and he wrote over a thousand
songs (died
in Milan) b. July 13th
1913.
1996:
Scott Murray/Murray Schaff
(69) US
sax player and singer with Murray Schaff and his Aristocrats in the
50's, known as a very uninhibited act in show business. Later had his
own trio and bands under the name of Scott Murray, he also owned
the Open End nightclub in New York City in the 60's (?).
1999: Hoyt Wayne
Axton (61)
American country music singer-songwriter, and a film and television
actor born in Duncan, Oklahoma. His mother, Mae Boren Axton, co-wrote
the classic rock 'n' roll song "Heartbreak Hotel", which became
the first major hit for Elvis Presley. Hoyt became prominent in the
early 1960s, establishing himself on the West Coast as a folk singer
with an earthy style and powerful voice. Since he first appeared on
TV in The Story of a Folksinger in 1963, he has appeared in many films
and TV productions. As well as singing his own songs, a lott of his
songwriting efforts became well known by other artists throughout the
world, including Jealous Man", "Della and the Dealer",
"The Pusher", "Snowblind Friend", "No-No Song"
"Joy to the World" (which many know better by its opening
lyric, "Jeremiah was a bullfrog!"), "Lion in Winter",
"When the Morning Comes"and "Greenback Dollar".
(sadly died after a series of heart attacks)
b. March 25th 1938.
October 27
1949: Ginette Neveu (30) French
violinist; a violin virtuoso who dazzled audiences in her Europe and
UK with her performances, and listeners around the world with her recordings.(Ginette
and her brother boarded a plane for an America tour. The plane crashed
in the Azores, with no survivors).
1980: Steve Took (31) UK drummer, percussion,
bass, piano and harmony vocals; Tyrranosaurus Rex (choked on a cherry
stone, after some magic mushrooms had numbed his throat).
1990: Xavier Cugat/Francisco d'Asís Javier
Cugat Mingall de Bru y Deleufo (90)
Spanish violinist, band
leader of Catalan origin who spent his formative years in Havana, Cuba;
one of the pioneers of Latin-American dance music. During his eight
decade long career, Xavier
helped to popularize the tango, the cha-cha, the mambo and the rhumba.
In the late 1920s, as sound began to be used in films, he put together
another tango band that had some success in early short musical films.
By the early 1930s, he began appearing with his group in feature films.
He took his band to New York for the 1931 opening of Waldorf Astoria
Hotel, for 16 years he helmed the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel's Orchestra.
He shuttled between New York and Los Angeles for most of the next 30
years, alternating hotel and radio dates with movie appearances (He
died in Barcelona, his band continued to perform under the direction
of dancer, musician and vocalist Ada Cavallo) b.
January 1st 1900.
2000: Walter Berry (60)
Austrian bass-baritone opera singer;
He
studied voice at the Vienna Music Academy and made his debut at the
Vienna State Opera in 1947 ().
2000: Winston Grennan (56) Jamaican
drummer, famous session player from 1963 to 1973 in Jamaica and in New
York City through the 1970s and '80s. He has toured and recorded with
Bob Marley to Marvin Gaye to to Dizzy Gillespie to The Rolling Stones
and dozens in between. He appeared in the film 9 1/2 Weeks in 1985,
with his Ska Rocks band, which he assembled in the 1980's and which
stayed active in various incarnations until his death. (cancer)
b. September 16th 1944.
2002: Tom Dowd (77)
Producer, engineer. Engineered numerous jazz dates by Ornette
Coleman, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, the Modern Jazz Quartet and
Ray Charles, among others; a producer for Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart,
Lynyrd Skynyrd, Chicago, MeatLoaf and the James Gang. (emphysema).
2004: Claude Helffer (82) French
pianist born in Paris, noted particularly for his advocacy of 20th-century
music.
During the War he entered the élite École polytechnique
and fought for the Resistance. After the War he studied theory and composition
with René Leibowitz. He made his début in Paris in 1948
and from 1954 appeared regularly in the concerts of the Domaine musical.
Claude gave many premières of new works and was the dedicatee
of several notable works, including Erikhthon - Xenakis, 1974; Concerto
- Boucourechliev, 1975; Stances - Betsy Jolas, 1978; Concerto No. 1
- Luis de Pablo, 1980; Envoi - Gilles Tremblay, 1982; and Modifications
- Michael Jarrell, 1983. He gave master classes all over the world,
most notably at the Salzburg Summer Academy
(?) b. June 18th
1922.
2007: Ricky Parent (41) American
drummer; he spent his childhood in New Jersey and New York learning
to play the drums from the age of 5 on his Mickey Mouse drum kit. His
main main influence was John Bonham, others have included Buddy Rich,
Tony Williams, Terry Bozzio, and Simon Phillips. He relocated to LA
and got his first high profile gig with War & Peace, a band fronted
by Jeff Pilson. When Vince Neil left Motley Crue, Ricky was called on
to lay down some drum tracks for Vinces solo project, before he
joined Enuff Znuff. Ricky relocated to the bands home base
of Chicago becoming an official member in 1992 where he was a mainstay
of the group on stage and in the studio until 2004 when he took a leave
of absence after being diagnosed with cancer. Over thee years Ricky
has been involved in other bands and projects including a brief stint
with Alice Cooper as well as playing with Sass Jordan and Tod Howarth's
Frehleys Comet (cancer)
b. September 5th 1966.
October 28
1949: Ginette Neveu (30) French
violinist; a child prodigy, Ginette took lessons from her mother and
made her solo debut at the age of seven with the Concerts Colonne in
Paris. After studying under Line Talluel, later
Jules Boucherit at the Paris Conservatory, she completed her training
with instruction from George Enescu, Nadia Boulanger, and Carl Flesch.
She went on to sign a two year touring contract giving solo performances
at the leading concert halls of Germany, Poland, the Soviet Union, the
United States, and Canada. She was able to make her London debut in
1945 after WW11. Ginette gave her last concert on October 20, 1949.
(Ginette and her brother boarded an Air France
flight en route to another series of concert engagements. All 48 passengers
on board the flight, died when the plane flew into a mountain after
two failed attempts to make a landing at the São Miguel Island
airport in the Azores)*August 11th 1919.
1964: Heinrich Gustavovich Neuhaus (76) Soviet pianist and
pedagogue born in Elisavetgrad now Kirovohrad, Ukraine. In 1902 aged
14, he gave a recital in Elisavetgrad with the 11-year-old Mischa Elman
and in 1904 gave concerts in Dortmund, Bonn, Cologne and Berlin. After
which he studied with Leopold Godowsky in Berlin and from 1909 until
the outbreak of World War I at his master classes in Vienna Academy
of Music. He taught at the Moscow Conservatory from 1922 to 1964. He
was made a People's Artist of the RSFSR in 1956. His pedagogic book
The Art of Piano Playing (1958) is regarded as one of the most authoritative
and most widely used treatments on the subject (?)
b. April 12th 1888
1965: Earl Bostic (52) American
alto saxophonist born in Tulsa, he turned professional at age 18 when
he joined Terence Holder's 'Twelve Clouds of Joy'. He made his first
recording with Lionel Hampton in October 1939. He went on to form his
own bands which became important training grounds for up-and-coming
jazzmen with the likes of John Coltrane, Blue Mitchell, Benny Golson,
Stanley Turrentine, and Jaki Byard. His popular hits included "Flamingo",
"Harlem Nocturne", "Temptation", "Sleep"
and "Where or When", which showed off his characteristic growl
on the horn. (sadly died of a heart attack)
b. April 25th 1913.
1975:
Oliver Nelson
(43)
US jazz saxophonist; began learning to play the piano when he was six,
and started on the saxophone at eleven. From 1947 he played in "territory"
bands around Saint Louis, before joining the Louis Jordan big band from
1950 to 1951, playing alto saxophone and arranging. After six albums
as leader between 1959 and 1961 with such musicians as Kenny Dorham,
Johnny Hammond Smith, Eric Dolphy, Roy Haynes, King Curtis and Jimmy
Forrest, Oliver's big breakthrough came with The Blues and the Abstract
Truth, on Impulse!, featuring the tune "Stolen Moments," now
considered a standard. This made his name as a composer and arranger,
and he went on to record a number of big-band albums, as well as working
as an arranger for Cannonball Adderley, Sonny Rollins, Eddie Davis,
Johnny Hodges, Wes Montgomery, Buddy Rich, Jimmy Smith, Billy Taylor,
Stanley Turrentine, Irene Reid, Gene Ammons and many others and he led
all-star big bands between 1966 and 1975. Oliver also spent a great
deal of time composing music for television and films, including Death
of a Gunfighter, Ironside, Night Gallery, Columbo, The Six Million Dollar
Man, The Bionic Woman, and Longstreet, and producing and arranging for
pop stars such as Nancy Wilson, James Brown, the Temptations, and Diana
Ross (heart attack) b.
June 4th 1932
2001: Gerard Hengeveld (90) Dutch classical
pianist, music composer and educationalist; especially known for his
compositions of study material for piano. Other compositions include
two piano concertos, a violin sonata, and a sonata for cello. He was
an able interpreter and performer of the music of Bach for piano and
harpsichord. He gave regular concerts in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam,
some captured on record (?) b.
December 7th 1910.
2003: Oliver Sain (71) American
saxophone player, band leader, songwriter, producer, Archway studio
owner and all-around St. Louis music legend; exerted an influence on
the evolution of St. Louis soul and R&B that is rivaled only by
that of his close friend and infrequent collaborator Ike Turner. In
1949, he moved to Greenville, Mississippi to join his stepfather, pianist
Willie Love, as a drummer in a band fronted by Sonny Boy Williamson,
soon leaving to join Howlin Wolf where he acted as a drummer on
and off for the following decade. After returning from the US Army draft
he took up the saxophone. Oliver is credited with launching the career
of Little Milton, who became a vocalist is Olivers band, and discovering
Bobby McClure and Fontella Bass, who he originally hired as pianist
for Little Milton.
(sadly he died from a bone
cancer that had followed on from a previous bladder cancer he developed
in 1995) b. March 1st 1932.
FURTHER INFORMATION
From Sally Greenhouse
Oliver bore an astonishing family resemblance
to his beloved and doting Aunt, Addie Philips, who had migrated to St
Louis from a sharecropper's family in the Mississippi Delta in her teens.
Addie attended his gigs for decades , as one of his most faithful fans.Their
speaking voices, incredibly, were also incredibly similar.
In her nursing home room, back in Shelby Mississippi, where she had
to return after a major heart attack in her mid-70's, Addie had 3 framed
portraits on her wall: her mother, at 106 years of age; her nephew,
Oliver Sain, the son of her older
sister; and myself, whom she raised in Clayton, Missouri. He died 14
months after her passing, August 15, 2002. She, too, was an extraordinary
being.. Thankyou Sally
2004: Gil Mellé (72) American
artist, jazz musician and film composer,
Mellé played the tenor and baritone saxophone with George Wallington,
Max Roach, Tal Farlow, Oscar Pettiford, Ed Thigpen, Kenny Dorham and
Zoot Sims. In
the 1950s, his paintings and sculptures were shown in New York galleries
and he created the cover art for albums by Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk
and Sonny Rollins. As a film and TV composer, he was one of the first
to use electronic instruments, which he built himself, either alone
or as an added voice among the string, wind, brass, and percussion sections
of the orchestra and he was the first to compose a main theme for a
television series arranged entirely for electronic instruments - Rod
Serling's Night Gallery. His 125 film credits include My Sweet Charlie,
That Certain Summer, The Savage is Loose, The Andromeda Strain, The
Judge and Jake Wyler, several Columbo TV movies, Frankenstein: The True
Story, The Six Million Dollar Man, Night Gallery and Kolchak: The Night
Stalker (Heart
attack) b.
December 31st 1931.
2007: Porter Wayne Wagoner (80)
US country music singer; famous
for his flashy Nudie suits and blond pompadour. He was a featured performer
on ABC-TV's Ozark Jubilee and moved to Nashville, joining the Grand
Ole Opry in 1957. He introduced a young Dolly Parton to his long-running
television show, The Porter Wagoner Show which ran on syndicated television
from 1960 to 1981.. Together, "Porter and Dolly" were a well-known
duet team for many years. His 81 charted records include
two No.1 hit "Satisfied Mind"
and Misery Loves Company; and many top 10 hits including
I've Enjoyed As Much of This As I Can Stand; Sorrow
on the Rocks; Green Green Grass of Home; Skid
Row Joe; The Cold Hard Facts of Life; and The
Carroll County Accident. Among his hit duets with Dolly Parton
were a covers of Tom Paxton's "The Last Thing on My Mind";
"We'll Get Ahead Someday"; "Just Someone I Used To Know";
"Better Move it on Home"; "The Right Combination";
"Please Don't Stop Loving Me" and "Making Plans".
He also won three Grammy Awards for gospel recordings (lung
cancer) b.
August 12th 1927.
2007: Jimmy Makulis (72) Greek
singer
born in Athens; he became a successful
singer in his native Greece before moving to Germany in the mid 1950s.
In 1956 he had a hit with "Auf Cuba sind die Mädchen braun".
His biggest hit was "Gitarren klingen leise durch die nacht",
No.4 in 1959, and he continued to chart until 1964. He sang "Sehnsucht"
("Longing") representige Austria in the 1961 Eurovision Song
Contest. He relocated to the USA in 1965
livig and performing
in Las Vegas. He moved back to his native Greece in 1985, and in 1990
took part in the selection for that year's Greek Eurovision entry, finishing
fifth. He returned to Germany in the early 1990s (died
following heart surgery in an Athens hospital)
b. April 12th
1935.
2009: Taylor Mitchell/Taylor Josephine Stephanie
Luciow (19) Canadian singer, guitarist
and songwriter raised in Toronto; she had graduated from the Etobicoke
School of the Arts with a major in musical theatre and had released
an album 'For Your Consideration' in March 2009. Taylor performed in
the Winnipeg Folk Festival in July and had just started a tour of the
Maritimes on October 23rd 2009, and was to perform in New Brunswick,
Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. A few days before her death,
Taylor was nominated for a Canadian Folk Music Award for Young Performer
of the Year. (Taylor was attacked by two coyotes
while hiking on the Skyline Trail in the Cape Breton Highlands National
Park in Nova Scotia. Tragically, she later died in hospital from the
injuries) b. August
27th 1990
October 29
1953: William Kapell (31) American
classical pianist; critics considered him the most promising American
pianist of the post-World War II generation (Flying back to US from
his last performance in Geelong of his 37 concert tour of Australia,
the plane hit King's Mountain, outside San Francisco; all of the crew
and passengers were killed instantly).
1963:
Michael
Holliday/Norman Milne (37)
UK singer born in Liverpool who sang in
a very similar style to Bing Crosby. While working as a seaman in the
Merchant Navy, Michael entered a talent contest at Radio City Music
Hall in New York, which he won. This inspired him to seek a career in
show business. In 1951 he secured two summer seasons work as a
vocalist with Dick Denny's band at Butlin's Holiday Camp, Pwllheli,
Wales. He made his first TV appearance on The Centre Show on 22 July
1955, which was seen by Norrie Paramor, then head of A&R for EMI's
Columbia record label. He went on to have a long string of hits in the
in the UK, including two number one singles, "The Story of My Life"
in 1958 and "Starry Eyed" in 1960. (Michael
suffered badly from stage fright and had a nervous breakdown in 1961;
he committed suicide two years later) b.
November 26th 1924.
1969: George Murphy "Pops" Foster (77)
Bassist; Pops was one of the first important bassists and he kept the
tradition of slap bass solos alive into the late '60s. Foster was playing
in bands around New Orleans as early as 1906. He also played trumpet
& tuba (he died in San Francisco were in his later years
he had made his home).
1971: Duane Allman (24) American guitarist
born in Nashville, Tennessee; in 1960, Duane was motivated to take up
the guitar by the example of his younger brother, Gregg. They played
in several bands while in school before forming the Escorts which eventually
became the Allman Joys. In 1965, the Allman Joys went on the road, performing
throughout the Southeast and eventually based themselves in Nashville
and St. Louis. After a short stint with The Hour Glass, he was hired
by FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to play on an album with
Wilson Pickett's Hey Jude, 1968 album. Duanes work on that album got
him hired as a full-time session musician, and
was featured on releases by artists including Clarence Carter, King
Curtis, Aretha Franklin, Otis Rush, Percy Sledge, Johnny Jenkins, Boz
Scaggs, Delaney & Bonnie and jazz flautist Herbie Mann. He
was noted for his mastery of the slide guitar as well as intensity and
soulfulness on "standard" lead and rhythm guitar.
On
March 26th 1969, Duane on slide guitar and lead guitar and Gregg on
organ and vocals, formed The Allman Brothers band, along with Dickey
Betts, Berry Oakley, Butch Trucks and Jai Johanny "Jaimoe"
Johanson. Their debut album, The Allman Brothers Band, was recorded
in New York in September 1969 and released a couple months laterwas
follrd by intense touring, they
went on to become one of the most influential rock groups of the 1970s.
As
well as his work with his new band, Duane also did some work
with Eric Clapton's Derek and the Dominos and still worked occasionally
as a session musician. (Duane tragically died
in a motorbike accident, only months after their great success of At
Fillmore East and the release of the relating album. He lost control
of his Harley Sportster while trying to swing left, striking the back
of the truck or its crane ball) b. November
20th 1946.
1979:
Raymon "Tiki" Fulwood (34) American drummer; in
the late 1960s, he was the house drummer for the Uptown Theater in Philadelphia
when he met guitarist Eddie Hazel and bassist Billy Bass Nelson core
of the The Parliaments musical backing group, soon he replaced drummer
Harvey McGee. The group later became known as Funkadelic. He also played
drums in the Tyrone Davis band between stints with P-Funk, and later
was briefly employed by Miles Davis. He is a member of the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame, inducted in 1997 with fifteen other members of Parliament-Funkadelic
(stomach cancer) b. May
23rd 1944
1981: Georges Brassens (60) French
singer-songwriter, many of his songs have been translated into 20 languages
(cancer).
1986: Jerome Darr (75)
American guitarist; Washboard Serenaders/Buddy Johnson's band,
Jonah Jones and many others, he was also a very busy studio musician
().
1998: Paul Misraki (90) French composer
of popular music and film scores, born in Constantinople now Istanbul,
Turkey, he showed aptitude for music at an early age. He went to Paris
to study classical composition, and by the 1930s had become an established
jazz pianist, arranger and writer of popular songs; around this time
he began composing film scores, with his first known work being for
Jean Renoir's first sound film, On purge bébé, for which
he was uncredited. As a composer and lyricist of popular songs, his
first hit was 1934's "Tout va tres bien," and during his careers
in France, America and Argentina he wrote successful songs in French,
English and Spanish. Over the course of over 60 years, Paul wrote the
music to 130 films, scoring works by directors like Jean Renoir, Claude
Chabrol, Jacques Becker, Jean-Pierre Melville, Jean-Luc Godard, Henri-Georges
Clouzot, Orson Welles, Luis Buñuel and Roger Vadim.
For
his work, he was made a Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur
(died of
natural causes in Paris) b.
January 28th 1908.
2003:
Franco Corelli (82) Italian
tenor operatic singer; New York's Metropolitan Opera (He died in Milan,
having suffered a stroke earlier that year).
2008: Mike Baker (45)
American lead singer with the progressive metal band Shadow Gallery,
also performed guest vocals on the single "Day Sixteen: Loser"
from Ayreon's 2004 album The Human Equation. (heart attack) b.
September 2nd 1963
October 30
1522: Jean Mouton (63) singer, composer, teacher; he was
one of the most important motet composers of the French Renaissance
period, he was a court composer for a king. Of his music, 9 Magnificat
settings, 15 masses, 20 chansons, and over 100 motets survive (He died
in St. Quentin, France and is buried there).
1945: Xian Xinghai (40) Chinese composer.
Although he composed in all the major musical forms which includes two
symphonies, a violin concerto, four large scale choral works, nearly
300 songs and an opera, he is best known for his Yellow River Cantata
upon which the Yellow River Concerto for piano and orchestra is based.
During the Sino-Japanese War, '37-'45, he wrote vocal works that encouraged
the people to fight the Japanese invaders, including Saving the Nation,
Non-Resistance the Only Fear, Song of Guerrillas, The Roads Are Opened
by Us, The Vast Siberia, Children of the Motherland, Go to the Homefront
of the Enemy, and On the Taihang Mountains, among others. In 1938 he
became dean of the Music Department at Lu Xun Institute of Arts in Yan'an.
It is at this time that he composed the famous Yellow River Cantata
and the Production Cantata. In 1940 Xian went to the Soviet Union to
compose the score of the documentary film Yan'an and the Eighth Route
Army. In 1941 the German invasion of the Soviet Union disrupted his
work and he attempted to return to China by way of Xinjiang but the
local anti-communist warlord, Sheng Shicai, blocked the way and he got
stranded in Alma Ata, Kazakhstan. It was here that he composed the symphonies
Liberation of the Nation and Sacred War, and the suites Red All Over
the River and Chinese Rhapsody for winds and strings. Both the Xinghai
Conservatory of Music and the Xinghai Concert Hall in Guangzhou were
named after
him (Tuberculosis;
he developed pulmonary tuberculosis due to overwork and malnutrition.
After the war, he went back to Moscow for medical treatment but could
not be completely cured and died in a hospital nearby the Moscow Kremlin)
b. June 13th 1905.
1968: Malcolm Hale (27) lead guitar, trombone, vocals, Spanky And
Our Gang ( (died of carbon monoxide poisoning due to a faulty space
heater).
1984: Wells Kelly () Drummer, Orleans / Meat Loaf (heroin overdose).
2000: Steve Allen (78) American composer and pianist; also comedian
and writer instrumental in innovating the concept of the television
talk show. Allen is called the father of TV talk shows. (cardiac arrest
triggered by a minor traffic accident that occurred earlier that day).
1927: Bill
LeSage (73) UK
pianist, vibraphonist with the Johnny Dankworth Seven and others; part
of the first wave of British bebop musicians to emerge in the late 1940s,
and remained a lifelong devotee and highly skilled exponent of the form
throughout a long and distinguished career
(cancer).
2002: Jam Master Jay / Jason William Mizell (37)
US rapper, the founder and DJ of Run-DMC, prior to this he played drums
and bass in earlier garage bands. He founded the 'Scratch DJ Academy'
in Manhattan for children interested in DJing. In
1989, he established the label Jam Master Jay Records, which scored
a strong success in 1993 with the band Onyx. He also connected Chuck
D with Def Jam co-founder Rick Rubin. (murdered
by an assassin's single bullet at his recording studio in Queens, New
York)
b. January 21st 1965.
2003: Steve O'Rourke (63) manager
Pink Floyd (suffered a stroke and died while in Miami, Florida, USA).
2007: Linda S. Stein (62) American
former manager of the Ramones and others; left band management and became
a "real estate agent to the stars" (murdered in her apartment
by former personal assistant Natavia Lowery)
2007: Robert Gerard Goulet (73)
Grammy and Tony Award winning
American entertainer, born in Lawrence, Massachusetts. after his family
moved to Edmonton he attended the famous voice schools founded by Herbert
G. Turner and Jean Letourneau, and later became a radio announcer for
radio station CKUA. Upon graduating from Victoria Composite high school,
he received a scholarship to The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.
Robert rose to international stardom in 1960 as Lancelot in Lerner and
Loewe's hit Broadway musical Camelot. His long career as a singer and
actor encompassed theatre, radio, television and film (He
died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre of idiopathic
pulmonary fibrosis, a lung desease,
while awaiting a lung transplant) b.
November
26th 1933.
2008: Didier Sinclair
(43) French pioneer of french "FM", techno DJ,
music producer and artistic director of FG Dj Radio. He started out
on France's youth-oriented NRJ radio in 1982, and went on to score his
first recording success with the album "Groove2me" in 1999.
The
following year, his "Lovely Flight" became an international
hit, and Sinclair became a regular behind the turntables in big techno
clubs (died after a long illness)
b. 1966
2009: Norton Buffalo (58) American
singer-songwriter and blues harmonica player, born and raised in California;
after playing with such Bay Area groups as Clover, The Moonlighters,
and Elvin Bishop, he
joined the "farewell" European tour of Commander Cody and
His Lost Planet Airmen in early 1976, and was recorded on the band's
final live album We've Got A Live One Here!. Later in 1976 he joined
the Steve Miller Band's 'Fly Like an Eagle national tour and played
harmonica on the band's hit follow-up album Book of Dreams. His association
with the Steve Miller Band lasted over 30 years. By the late 1970s Norton
had formed his own band, The Stampede, recording two albums: Lovin'
in the Valley of the Moon and Desert Horizon. In the late 70s and early
80s he was a member of the Mickey Hart band, High Noon. He also worked
in films, appearing in 'The Rose', 'Heaven's Gate' and others. Throughout
his career Norton performed and recorded music often as a session musician,
and had appeared on 180 albums. He played harmonica on two tracks on
The Doobie Brothers' Grammy award winning 1978 album Minute By Minute.
He was also nominated for a Grammy in 1992 for "Best Country Instrumental
Performance" for the tune "Song For Jessica" from his
1991 Duet CD R&B with Guitarist Roy Rogers (lung
cancer) b. September 28th 1951.
October 31
1989: Roger Scott (46) UK radio DJ
(cancer).
1995: Erika Morini (91) Austrian
violinist born in Vienna, she made her début in Berlin, in 1917,
and her American début at New York on January 26th 1921 was one
of the musical sensations of the year, and since then she performed
in the United States often, both in recital and with the foremost orchestras.
She relocated to New York in 1938, and began spelling her first name
Erica. She made her first visit to London in 1923.
Erica
retired in 1976 (died in New York soon after the
theft of her Stradivari violin) b. January
5th 1904.
2000: Watanabe Kazuki
(19) Japanese
guitarist born in Shibuya, Tokyo. After playing some roles in a few
TV programs and a film, in 1997 as lead guitarist, he went on to form
and lead the band Raphael which was one of the visual kei bands in Japan.
They released their debut album "Lilac" on April 7th 1998.
This was followed by the release of four further albums. He also had
a side-project called Yuri Juujidan all their tracks were instrumental,
Watanabe died before he could put his voice to them (drug
overdose) b. April 7th 1981.
2003: Dr. Srinivasa Iyer (95)
Indian vocalist; one of the great Carnatic vocalists of the twentieth
century. He was the youngest recipient of the Sangeetha Kalanidhi awarded
by the Music Academy in 1947. He succeeded Harikesanallur Muthiah Bhagavathar
as Principal of the Swathi Thirunal College of Music at Thiruvananthapuram,
a post he held for 23 years, until the age of 55. He also became the
Chief Producer of Carnatic music at All India Radio, Madras from 1957
to 1960. In later life, he concentrated on concert performances and
tutoring youngsters. He gave public concerts even after the age of 90
(?) b. July 25th
1908.
2005: John "Beatz" Holohan (31)
American drummer raised in Long Island NY who gained his nickname from
80's rapper Big Daddy Kane. John worked as a band director for the Saint
John's University pep band and played in many bands although he is best
known for his work in the alternative rock group Bayside from 2004 until
his untimely death. His only release with Bayside was their 2004 self
titled album. (At approximately 3:13am in Cheyenne,
WY, after leaving their Boulder, Colorado show, Bayside's tour van hit
a patch of ice, skidded off the road, and flipped over, John tragically
died in the accident) b. March 15th 1974.
2008: Sir John Pearse (69) British-born
guitarist and folk singer; he wrote and presented the first ever series
of televised guitar lessons for the BBC, "Hold Down a Chord".
Moving
to the USA in '78, he designed products for the Martin Guitar Company
& co-founded Breezy Ridge Instruments, for the purpose of marketing
his line of guitar strings, guitar accessories, it became the vehicle
for his musical inventions and theories (passed
away peacefully in his sleep at his home in Germany)
b. 1939
2009: Chen Lin (39)
Chinese pop singer; she rose to stardom with her 1993 album entitled
I Can Never Understand Your Love, which reached the top of the Chinese
album charts selling 1.5 million copies. Chen also had several hit singles
including "I Choose What I Want" and "Give up Your Love"
(suicide by jumping from the ninth floor of an
apartment in Chaoyang District, Beijing) b. January 31st 1970.