Musician Obituaries

[Njaco]

Thought I would start a thread on musicians that we love who have died. Maybe a sticky? Anyway, I got this idea because of the recent death from Boston lead singer and then this.....

Quiet Riot singer dies at 52 - CNN.com

Quiet Riot singer dies at 52

CNN) -- Kevin DuBrow, the lead singer of the 1980s heavy metal band Quiet Riot, has died, CNN has confirmed. He was 52.

DuBrow died at his home in Las Vegas, Nevada, according to TMZ.com. The Clark County coroner's office was examining the body to determine the cause of death, according to TMZ.

"I'm at a loss for words. I've just lost my best friend," Quiet Riot drummer Frankie Banali told CNN. "Out of respect for both Kevin and his family, I won't comment further. There's going to be a lot of speculation out there, and I won't add to that. I love him too much."

Quiet Riot hit the top of the charts with its 1983 album, "Metal Health," considered by some sources as the first heavy metal album to hit No. 1. The album was driven by the group's cover of Slade's "*** on Feel the Noize," which hit the Top 40.

The band's other hits included "Bang Your Head (Metal Health)" and another Slade cover, "Mama Weer All Crazee Now."

The band formed in the mid-1970s behind DuBrow and guitarist Randy Rhoads, who later joined Ozzy Osbourne's band and died in a tour accident. After several years, during which time the band disbanded, regrouped and built an audience, everything came together for "Metal Health," which put Quiet Riot in the vanguard of the Los Angeles heavy metal movement.

But the band's rushed follow-up, "Condition Critical," didn't do as well, and DuBrow started taking shots at other L.A. bands, such as Motley Crue and Ratt, according to Allmusic.com. Within a few years, the band had mutinied (leaving DuBrow at a hotel in Hawaii while other members returned to California, Allmusic's Eduardo Rivadavia observes) and taken on a new lead singer. The bad blood prompted a lawsuit from DuBrow.

By the 1990s tempers had calmed and the band got together again, putting out a live album in 1999 and a new studio set, "Guilty Pleasures," in 2001. The group's most recent album, "Rehab," came out last year.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Yeap I read about that last week. I was allways a fan of Quiet Riot.

 

[Thorlifter]

I'm saddened when I person dies so young, but I didn't care for the band. Bang Your Head was ok, but the rest was average at best, IMO.

RIP

 

[Heinz]

8thDec

RIP Dimebag!

RIP Lennon!

Two legends.

 

[Njaco]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/a...71dd379b3dfeff&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

By JON PARELES
Published: February 28, 2008
Buddy Miles, the drummer in Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsys and a hitmaker under his own name with the song "Them Changes," died on at his home in Austin, Tex. He was 60.

Mr. Miles suffered from congestive heart failure, his publicist, Duane Lee, said, according to Reuters. Mr. Lee said he did not know the official cause of death.

Mr. Miles played with a brisk, assertive, deeply funky attack that made him an apt partner for Hendrix. With his luxuriant Afro and his American-flag shirts, he was a prime mover in the psychedelic blues-rock of the late 1960's, not only with Hendrix but also as a founder, drummer and occasional lead singer for the Electric Flag. During the 1980's, he was widely heard as the lead voice of the California Raisins in television commercials

George Allen Miles Jr., whose aunt nicknamed him after the big-band drummer Buddy Rich, was born in Omaha and began playing drums as a child. He was 12 years old when he joined his father's jazz group, the Bebops. As a teenager he also worked with soul and rhythm-and-blues acts, among them the Ink Spots, the Delfonics and Wilson Pickett. By 1967, he had moved to Chicago, where he was a founding member of the Electric Flag.

That band included a horn section and played blues, soul and rock; it made its debut at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and released its first album in 1968. But the Electric Flag was short-lived. Mr. Miles formed the Buddy Miles Express, and its first album, "Electric Church," was produced by Hendrix, whom he had met when both were sidemen on the rhythm-and-blues circuit. Mr. Miles appeared on two songs on the Hendrix album "Electric Ladyland." When Hendrix disbanded the Jimi Hendrix Experience and replaced his trio's British musicians with African-Americans, Mr. Miles joined him in the Band of Gypsys along with Billy Cox on bass.

On the last night of the 1960s, a New Year's Eve show, they recorded "Band of Gypsys," an album that included "Them Changes." Mr. Miles also worked in the studio with Hendrix, and appears on "Cry of Love," released after Hendrix died in 1970.

He re-recorded "Them Changes" with his own band, and it became a hit and a blues-rock staple; Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood performed it on Monday at Madison Square Garden. Through the 1970s, Mr. Miles made albums with his own bands. He also made a live album with Carlos Santana in 1972, and sang on the 1987 Santana album "Freedom." During his career he appeared on more than 70 albums and worked with musicians including Stevie Wonder, David Bowie, Barry White and George Clinton.

He was imprisoned on drug-related convictions during the late 1970's and early 1980's, but when he emerged, advertising recharged his career. He sang the lead vocal for the California Raisins, whose Claymation commercials were so popular that they led to a string of albums by the fictional group. Two of them, "California Raisins" and "Meet the Raisins," shipped a million copies. Mr. Miles also produced and performed commercials for Cadillac and Harley Davidson.

He and Mr. Cox recorded a live album, "The Band of Gypsys Return," in 2004. Mr. Miles continued to perform even after suffering a stroke in 2005. Survivors include his partner, Sherrilae Chambers.

 

[Heinz]

RIP man.

True legend.

 

[Njaco]

NJ.com

LONDON (AP) - "Dave Clark Five" lead singer Mike Smith died from pneumonia Thursday, his agent said. He was 64.

Smith died at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital outside of London less than two weeks before he and his band mates were due to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, Margo Lewis said.

Smith provided vocals, keyboards, and song-writing for The Dave Clark Five, one of many British rock acts whose music swept across the United States in the 1960s during the so-called "British Invasion."

The Beatles were the best remembered. But between 1964 and 1966, one British hit followed another across the Atlantic, with bands such as The Rolling Stones and The Animals conquering America's charts.

The "Dave Clark Five" claimed a string of U.S. billboard hits, including "Because," "Glad All Over," and "I Like it Like That." The band made 12 appearances on the "Ed Sullivan" show, a record for any British act.

The group's antics were captured in John Boorman's 1965 documentary "Catch Us If You Can," which followed Smith and his band mates through the English city of Bristol.

The "Dave Clark Five" was due to be inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall on March 10, a ceremony Lewis said Smith was trying to attend despite being paralyzed from the waist down following a spinal injury in 2003.

"We're very unhappy about the whole situation - it's sad," Rock and Roll Hall of Fame President Joel Peresman said. He said the ceremony would go ahead as planned, but that there would be "a little extra significance this year."

Smith is survived by his wife, Charlie.

Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press

 

[pbfoot]

Jeff Healey
Legendary Toronto blues guitarist and old-style jazz aficionado Jeff Healey died yesterday in Toronto's St. Joseph's Hospital after a lifelong battle with a rare form of cancer – retinoblastoma – that blinded him in his first year. He was 41.

"Discovered" in a Toronto club in 1982 by Texas blues guitarist, the late Stevie Ray Vaughan, Healey astonished music fans with his outrageous technique. Self-taught by age 4, he laid the electric guitar across his lap and played it in much the same way as a pianist manipulates a keyboard.

Though he specialized in blues-based rock and sold more than a million copies of his Grammy-nominated 1988 debut album See the Light – released after a cameo performance in the Hollywood movie Road House with Patrick Swayze – Healey's real passion was vintage American jazz.

Healey hosted a long-running CBC Radio series, My Kinda Jazz, before moving the program to Toronto's Jazz-FM station, relying solely on his personal collection of 35,000 rare and obscure 78 rpm recordings and an encyclopedic knowledge of the music and personalities he featured in the show.

Healey also played trumpet and clarinet, and in the past decade recorded three albums of vintage jazz with Jeff Healey's Jazz Wizards, including It's Tight Like That.

Healey was an internationally known star who shared stages with B.B. King and Vaughan, and recorded with George Harrison, Mark Knopfler and blues legend Jimmy Rogers.

At the time of his death Healey was planning to release his first rock/blues album in eight years, Mess of Blues, recorded in studios in Toronto, in concert in London, England, and at the popular Entertainment District club that bore his name, Jeff Healey's Roadhouse. It goes on sale in Europe March 20, and in Canada and the U.S. April 22.

"Jeff was an amazing colleague and as a musician and a personality, in a league of his own," the Jazz Wizards' drummer Gary Scriven said last night. "It was always game on for him. His generosity and sense of humour lasted till the end. He was brave without ever being dramatic. In a word, Jeff was inspirational."

In 2007 Healey underwent surgery to remove cancerous tissue from his legs and both lungs. Radiation and chemotherapy failed to halt the spread of the disease, as did alternative homeopathic treatment in the U.S. this year.

Despite his illness, Healey continued to perform across Canada with both his blues band and jazz ensemble, and had scheduled a tour of Germany and the U.K., including an appearance on BBC's Jools Holland Show, in April, his publicist said.

"I'm so sad to hear this news," award-winning Canadian guitarist and music producer Colin Linden said on the phone from New York. "There was a quality of genius in the way Jeff harnessed that distinctive technique. He was such a natural musician."

Veteran Toronto guitarist Danny Marks, who fronts the Jeff Healey Band at the Roadhouse on Tuesday nights, said "Jeff was a tremendous musician and always so kind. He always knew the odds were against him, but it never ruined his sense of humour. I used to love to watch him having fun – he'd throw his head back and laugh like a little child."

 

[Njaco]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/arts/music/03diddley.html#

Bo Diddley, a singer and guitarist who invented his own name, his own guitars, his own beat and, with a handful of other musical pioneers, rock 'n' roll itself, died Monday at his home in Archer, Fla. He was 79.

The cause was heart failure, a spokeswoman, Susan Clary, said. Mr. Diddley had a heart attack last August, only months after suffering a stroke while touring in Iowa.

In the 1950s, as a founder of rock 'n' roll, Mr. Diddley — along with Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and a few others — helped to reshape the sound of popular music worldwide, building on the templates of blues, Southern gospel, R&B and postwar black American vernacular culture.

His original style of rhythm and blues influenced generations of musicians. And his Bo Diddley syncopated beat — three strokes/rest/two strokes — became a stock rhythm of rock 'n' roll.

It can be found in Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away," Johnny Otis's "Willie and the Hand Jive," the Who's "Magic Bus," Bruce Springsteen's "She's the One" and U2's "Desire," among hundreds of other songs.

Yet the rhythm was only one element of his best records. In songs like "Bo Diddley," "Who Do You Love," "Mona," "Crackin' Up," "Say, Man," "Ride On Josephine" and "Road Runner," his booming voice was loaded up with echo and his guitar work came with distortion and a novel bubbling tremolo. The songs were knowing, wisecracking and full of slang, mother wit and sexual cockiness. They were both playful and radical.

So were his live performances: trancelike ruckuses instigated by a large man with a strange-looking guitar. It was square and he designed it himself, long before custom guitar shapes became commonplace in rock.

Mr. Diddley was a wild performer: jumping, lurching, balancing on his toes and shaking his knees as he wrestled with his instrument, sometimes playing it above his head. Elvis Presley, it has long been supposed, borrowed from Mr. Diddley's stage moves; Jimi Hendrix, too.

Still, for all his fame, Mr. Diddley felt that his standing as a father of rock 'n' roll was never properly acknowledged. It frustrated him that he could never earn royalties from the songs of others who had borrowed his beat.

"I opened the door for a lot of people, and they just ran through and left me holding the knob," he told The New York Times in 2003.

He was a hero to those who had learned from him, including the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. A generation later, he became a model of originality to punk or post-punk bands like the Clash and the Fall.

In 1979 Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon of the Clash asked that Mr. Diddley open for them on the band's first American tour. "I can't look at him without my mouth falling open," Mr. Strummer, star-struck, said during the tour.

For his part Mr. Diddley had no misgivings about facing a skeptical audience. "You cannot say what people are gonna like or not gonna like," he explained later to the biographer George R. White. "You have to stick it out there and find out! If they taste it, and they like the way it tastes, you can bet they'll eat some of it!"

Mr. Diddley was born Otha Ellas Bates in McComb, Miss., a small city about 15 miles from the Louisiana border. He was reared primarily by Gussie McDaniel, the first cousin of his mother, Esther Wilson. After the death of her husband, Ms. McDaniel, who had three children of her own, took the family to Chicago, where young Otha's name was changed to Ellas B. McDaniel. Gussie McDaniel became his legal guardian and sent him to school.

He was 6 when the family resettled on Chicago's South Side. He described his youth as one of school, church, trouble with street toughs and playing the violin for both band and orchestra, under the tutelage of O. W. Frederick, a prominent music teacher at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Gussie McDaniel taught Sunday school. Ellas studied classical violin from 7 to 15 and started on guitar at 12, when a family member gave him an acoustic model.

He then enrolled at Foster Vocational School, where he built a guitar as well as a violin and an upright bass. But he dropped out before graduating. Instead, with guitar in hand, he began performing in a duo with his friend Roosevelt Jackson, who played the washtub bass. The group became a trio when they added another guitarist, Jody Williams, then a quartet when they added a harmonica player, Billy Boy Arnold.

The band, first called the Hipsters and then the Langley Avenue Jive Cats, started playing at the Maxwell Street open-air market. They were sometimes joined by another friend, Samuel Daniel, known as Sandman because of the shuffling rhythms he made with his feet on a wooden board sprinkled with sand.

Mr. Diddley could not make a living playing with the Jive Cats in the early days, so he found jobs where he could: at a grocery store, a picture-frame factory, a blacktop company. He worked as an elevator operator and a meat packer. He also started boxing, hoping to turn professional.

In 1954 Mr. Diddley made a demonstration recording with his band, which now included Jerome Green on maracas. Phil and Leonard Chess of Chess Records liked the demo, especially Mr. Diddley's tremolo on the guitar, a sound that seemed to slosh around like water. They saw it as a promising novelty and encouraged the group to return.

By Billy Boy Arnold's account, the next day, as the band and the men who were soon to be their producers were setting up for a rehearsal, they were idly casting about for a stage name for Ellas McDaniel when Mr. Arnold thought of Bo Diddley. The name described a "bow-legged guy, a comical-looking guy," Mr. Arnold said, as quoted by Mr. White in his 1995 biography, "Bo Diddley: Living Legend."

That may be all there is to tell about the name, except for the fact that a certain one-string guitar — native to the Mississippi Delta, often homemade, in which a length of wire is stretched between two nails in a board — is called a diddley bow. By his account, however, Mr. Diddley had never played one.

In any case, Otha Ellas McDaniel had a new name and the title of a new song, whose lyrics began, "Bo Diddley bought his babe a diamond ring." "Bo Diddley" became the A side of his first single, in 1955, on the Checker label, a subsidiary of Chess. It reached No. 2 on the Billboard singles chart.

Mr. Diddley said he had first heard the "Bo Diddley beat" — three-stroke/rest/two-stroke, or bomp-ba-domp-ba-domp, ba-domp-domp — in a church in Chicago. But variations of it were in the air. The children's game hambone used a similar rhythm, and so did the ditty that goes "shave and a haircut, two bits."

The beat is also related to the Afro-Cuban clave, which had been popularized at the time by the New Orleans mambo carnival song "Jock-A-Mo," recorded by Sugar Boy Crawford in 1953.

 

[Njaco]

Whatever the source, Mr. Diddley felt the beat's power. In early songs like "Bo Diddley" and "Pretty Thing," he arranged the rhythm for tom-toms, guitar, maracas and voice, with no cymbals and no bass. (Also arranged in his signature rhythm was the eerie "Mona," a song of praise he wrote for a 45-year-old exotic dancer who worked at the Flame Show Bar in Detroit; this song became the template for Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away.")

Appearing on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in 1955, Mr. Diddley was asked to play "Sixteen Tons," the song popularized by Tennessee Ernie Ford. Without telling Mr. Sullivan, he played "Bo Diddley" instead. Afterward, in an off-camera confrontation, Mr. Sullivan told him that he would never work in television again. Mr. Diddley did not play again on a network show for 10 years.

For decades Mr. Diddley was bitter about his relationship with the Chess family, whom he accused of withholding money owed to him. In her book "Spinning Blues Into Gold," Nadine Cohodas quoted Marshall Chess, Leonard's son, as saying, "What's missing from Bo's version of events is all the gimmes." Mr. Diddley would borrow so heavily against projected royalties, Mr. Chess said, that not much was left over in the final accounting.

Mr. Diddley's watery tremolo effect, from 1955 onward, came from one of the first effects boxes to be manufactured for guitars: the DeArmond Model 60 Tremolo Control. But Mr. Diddley contended that he had already built something similar himself, with automobile parts and an alarm-clock spring.

His first trademark guitar was also handmade: he took the neck and the circuitry off a Gretsch guitar and connected it to a square body he had built. In 1958 he asked Gretsch to make him a better one to the same specifications. Gretsch made it as a limited-edition guitar called "Big B."

On songs like "Who Do You Love," his guitar style — bright chicken-scratch rhythm patterns on a few strings at a time — was an extension of his early violin playing, he said.

"My technique comes from bowing the violin, that fast wrist action," he told Mr. White, explaining that his fingers were too big to move around easily. Rather than fingering the fretboard, Mr. Diddley said, he tuned the guitar to an open E and moved a single finger up and down to create chords.

As his fame rose, his personal life grew complicated. His first marriage, at 18, to Louise Woolingham, lasted less than a year. His second marriage, in 1949, to Ethel Smith, unraveled in the late 1950s. He then moved from Chicago to Washington, settling in the Mount Pleasant district, where he built a studio in his home.

Separated from his wife, he was performing in Birmingham, Ala., when, backstage, he met a young door-to-door magazine saleswoman named Kay Reynolds, a fan, who was 15 and white. They moved in together in short order and were soon married, in spite of Southern taboos against intermarriage.

During the late 1950s Mr. Diddley's band featured a female guitarist, Peggy Jones (stage-named Lady Bo), at a time when there were scarcely any women in rock. She was replaced by Norma-Jean Wofford, whom Mr. Diddley called the Duchess. He pretended she was his sister, he said, to be in a better position to protect her on the road.

The early 1960s were low times. Chess, searching for a hit, had Mr. Diddley make albums to capitalize on the twist dance craze, as Chubby Checker had done, and on the surf music of the Beach Boys. But soon a foreign market for his earlier music began to grow, thanks in large part to the Rolling Stones, a newly popular band that was regularly playing several of his songs in its concerts. It paved the way for Mr. Diddley's successful tour of Britain in the fall of 1963, performing with the Everly Brothers, Little Richard and the Rolling Stones, the opening act.

But Mr. Diddley was not willing to move to Europe, and in America the picture worsened: the Beatles, the Stones, Bob Dylan and the Byrds quickly made him sound quaint. When work all but dried up, Mr. Diddley moved to New Mexico in the early 1970s and became a deputy sheriff in the town of Los Lunas. With his sound updated to resemble hard rock and soul, he continued to make albums for Chess until his contract expired in 1974.

His recording career never picked up after that, despite flirtations with synthesizers, religious rock and hip-hop. But he continued apace as a performer and public figure, popping up in places both obvious, like rock 'n' roll nostalgia revues, and not so obvious: a Nike advertisement, the film "Trading Places" with Eddie Murphy, the 1979 tour with the Clash, and inaugural balls for two presidents, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

His last recording was the 1996 album "A Man Amongst Men" (Code Blue/Atlantic), which was nominated for a Grammy. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 and in 1998 was inducted into the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame as a musician of lasting historical importance.

Since the early 1980s Mr. Diddley had lived in Archer, Fla., near Gainesville, where he owned 76 acres and a recording studio. His passions were fishing and old cars, including a 1969 purple Cadillac hearse.

The last of Mr. Diddley's marriages was to Sylvia Paiz, in 1992; his spokeswoman, Ms. Clary, said they were no longer married. His survivors include his children, Evelyn Kelly, Ellas A. McDaniel, Tammi D. McDaniel and Terri Lynn McDaniel; a brother, the Rev. Kenneth Haynes; and 15 grandchildren, 15 great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren.

Mr. Diddley attributed his longevity to abstinence from drugs and drinking, but in recent years he had suffered from diabetes. After a concert in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on May 13, 2007, he had a stroke and was taken to Creighton University Medical Center in Omaha. On Aug. 28 he suffered a heart attack in Gainesville and was hospitalized.

Mr. Diddley always believed that he and Chuck Berry had started rock 'n' roll, and the fact that he couldn't financially reap all that he had sowed made him a deeply suspicious man.

"I tell musicians, 'Don't trust nobody but your mama,' " he said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine in 2005. "And even then, look at her real good."

 

[evangilder]

RIP Bo. There are some that will never be replaced, and Bo Diddley was one of those

 

[pbfoot]

RIP Bo. There are some that will never be replaced, and Bo Diddley was one of those

a pioneer whose rifs still are the basis for some bands

 

[Njaco]

Robert Hazard, Philly rocker, dies at 59 | Philadelphia Inquirer | 08/06/2008

By Michael Klein

INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Robert Hazard, 59, the Philadelphia-bred rock troubadour who wrote the pop anthem "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," died unexpectedly Tuesday night after surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, his widow, Susan, confirmed today. Mr. Hazard, who lived with his wife and two teenage sons in the Adirondacks and in Vero Beach, Fla., last month had canceled a planned fall tour without explanation.

Robert Hazard and the Heroes, born out of the late-1970s punk movement, were a fixture on the local bar scene through the mid-1980s.

One night in a motel in Delaware, Mr. Hazard sat in a bathtub and in 15 minutes wrote "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," a sprightly pop tune covered in 1983 by Cyndi Lauper. Labeled a feminist anthem, it shot to No. 1. Miley Cyrus' remake is included on her new album, Breakout.

In an autobiography from 2003, Mr. Hazard - born Robert Rimato - acknowledged that his father was an opera singer. "Obviously, I didn't follow in his footsteps, but did learn a bit about music appreciation," he wrote. "I started singing and writing songs about about age 10. I didn't really play guitar till much later. In my teens I would audition at coffee houses like the Second of Autumn and the Edge" in the Philadelphia area. "I never got a job, but learned about acoustic music by hanging out at these places listening to Eric Andersen, Chris Smither, Jimmy Webb, and other great song writers and poet guitar players."

From his first marriage, he had a daughter, Corrina. With Susan, whom he married in 1986, he had sons Rex and Remy. The couple own an antiques shop near their home in Old Forge, N.Y.

In his autobiography, Mr. Hazard recounted his big break in 1982:

"One night, we were playing a little joint called J.C. Dobbs on South Street. Kurt Loder was in town to review the opening of a world tour by another band called the Rolling Stones, who were playing at JFK Stadium that same night. After the Stones concert, Kurt stopped into Dobbs for a beer. I stayed up talking with him till 5 o'clock in the morning. The next month, there was a two-page spread in Rolling Stone magazine, pictures and all, raving about the band. Soon after that, we were signed to RCA Records."

The Hazard song "Escalator of Life" charted soon after.

In more recent years, he delved into country, forming a band The Hombres. He said his favorite shows were what he called "the stripped-down acoustic concerts I did with my buddy Michael Pilla. I thought these were the most rewarding and the most appreciated by my audience."

Memorial services were incomplete today, though Susan Hazard said something would be planned for next week in his hometown.

from Wiki.....

Robert Hazard (born Robert Rimato, died August 5, 2008), was a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, musician, probably best known for composing and recording the song "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" which Cyndi Lauper covered, turning the song into a best-selling hit. He also composed the 1980s New Wave and MTV hits, "Escalator of Life" and "Change Reaction", which he performed with his band, Robert Hazard and the Heroes, which was popular in the Philadelphia club scene during the '80s. These songs appeared on the five song EP Robert Hazard, released in 1982. Hazard's first major label album, Wing of Fire, was released by RCA Records in January 1984.

Hazard was son of an opera singer. He was profiled in a 1981 Rolling Stone article by Kurt Loder. In the piece, Loder describes Hazard's musical history as a musician "...who started out as a Dylan-era folkie, then spent eight years singing country western. 'I just love country music,' he explains -- which of course explains nothing, least of all the two years he subsequently spent with a reggae band...or his current electro-pop approach, which owes little to any of the above".

His final recordings were country albums, beginning with The Seventh Lake (2003) and continuing with Blue Mountain (2004). In 2007, Rykodisc signed Hazard and released his album, Troubador.

Hazard died August 5, 2008 at age 59 after surgery for pancreatic cancer at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.[2]

 

[Njaco]

Soul legend Isaac Hayes dies - CNN.com

(CNN) -- Soul singer and arranger Isaac Hayes, who won Grammy awards and an Oscar for the theme from the 1971 action film "Shaft," has died, sheriff's officials in Memphis, Tennessee, reported Sunday. Relatives found Hayes, 65, unconscious in his home next to a still-running treadmill, said Steve Shular, a spokesman for the Shelby County Sheriff's Department.

Paramedics attempted to revive him and took him to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after 2 p.m., the sheriff's department said. No foul play is suspected, the agency said in a written statement.

Hayes was a longtime songwriter and arranger for Stax Records in Memphis, playing in the studio's backup band and crafting tunes for artists such as Otis Redding and Sam and Dave in the 1960s. He released his first solo album in 1967, and his 1969 follow-up, "Hot Buttered Soul," became a platinum hit.

In 1971, the theme from "Shaft" topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks and won an Academy Award for best original theme song. The song and the movie score also won Grammy awards for best original score and movie theme.

Hayes won a third Grammy for pop instrumental performance with the title track to his 1972 "Black Moses" album.

From the late 1990s through 2006, Hayes provided the voice of "Chef" for Comedy Central's raunchy animated series "South Park," as well as numerous songs. The role introduced him to a new generation of fans, but he left after the show lampooned his own religion, the Church of Scientology.

He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002. In a CNN interview at the time, Hayes credited his success to "adjusting and constantly evolving, expanding and trying to stay as young as I can."

The new generation of popular musicians, he said, "could use a little more substance like we had in the day." "They're standing on our shoulders. Some of them don't realize [it] because they sample me so much," he said.

Hayes credited his role on "South Park" with expanding his fan base, and said that he had almost passed on the job.

"I started to walk out. I thought it was a Disney thing. I [had] never heard of this thing," he said. But his agent persuaded him to tape some episodes. "Toward the opening I started having trepidations -- 'Oh my god, what have I done? I've ruined my career.' But when it aired, the ratings went through the roof," he said.


A 1992 visit to the royal family in Ghana was a life-changing experience for Hayes, he said.

"I went back on speaking engagements and encouraged African-Americans to go to Africa [to] interact socially, culturally and/or economically," he said.

Isaac Hayes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[pbfoot]

LONDON – Richard Wright, a founding member of the rock group Pink Floyd, died Monday. He was 65.

Pink Floyd's spokesperson Doug Wright, who is not related to the artist, said Wright died after a battle with cancer at his home in Britain. He says the band member's family did not want to give more details about his death.

Wright met Pink Floyd members Roger Waters and Nick Mason in college and joined their early band, Sigma 6. Along with the late Syd Barrett, the four formed Pink Floyd in 1965.

The group's jazz-infused rock and drug-laced multimedia "happenings" made them darlings of the London psychedelic scene, and their 1967 album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, was a hit.

In the early days of Pink Floyd, Wright, along with Barrett, was seen as the group's dominant musical force. The London-born musician and son of a biochemist wrote songs and sang.

The band released a series of commercially and critically successful albums including 1973's Dark Side of the Moon, which has sold more than 40 million copies. Wright wrote The Great Gig In The Sky and Us And Them for that album, and later worked on the group's epic compositions such as Atom Heart Mother, Echoes and Shine On You Crazy Diamond, a tribute to former member Barrett.

But tensions grew between Waters, Wright and fellow band member David Gilmour. The tensions came to a head during the making of The Wall when Waters insisted Wright be fired. As a result, Wright was relegated to the status of session musician on the tour of The Wall, and did not perform on Pink Floyd's 1983 album The Final Cut.

Wright formed a new band Zee with Dave Harris, from the band Fashion, and released one album, Identity, with Atlantic Records.

Waters left Pink Floyd in 1985 and Wright began recording with Mason and Gilmour again, releasing the albums The Division Bell and A Momentary Lapse of Reason as Pink Floyd. Wright also released the solo albums Wet Dream (1978) and Broken China (1996).

In July 2005, Wright, Waters, Mason and Gilmour reunited to perform at the Live 8 charity concert in London – the first time in 25 years they had been onstage together.

Wright also worked on Gilmour's solo projects, most recently playing on the 2006 album On An Island and the accompanying world tour.

 

[Njaco]

By MICHELINE MAYNARD
Published: October 17, 2008 New York Times

DETROIT — Levi Stubbs, the gravelly-voiced, imploring lead singer of the Motown group the Four Tops, who stood out in 1960s pop classics like "Reach Out, I'll Be There," and "Bernadette," died on Friday at his home here. He was 72. His death was confirmed by the office of the Wayne County Medical Examiner. No cause was given. Mr. Stubbs had had a series of illnesses, including a stroke and cancer, that forced him to stop performing in 2000, although he briefly participated in the Four Tops' 50th-anniversary concert in 2004, which was broadcast on public television.

Formed while its original members were in high school, the Four Tops were one of the most successful groups of the 20th century. They had more than 40 hits on the Billboard pop charts, including their first No. 1 single, "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)" in 1965.

Hugely popular abroad as well as in the United States, the group became a linchpin of Motown Records, the Detroit label started by Berry Gordy Jr., and was second only to the Temptations, with whom it was often compared, in popularity among its male artists. In 1990 the Four Tops were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Unlike the Temptations, whose members regularly changed, the Tops exhibited extraordinary loyalty, with the original four remaining together for more than 40 years. In fact, they began their singing career almost a decade before joining Motown in 1963.

In 1953 Mr. Stubbs, a student at Pershing High School in Detroit, and his friend Abdul Fakir, known as Duke, attended a birthday party at which they met two other founding members of the group, Renaldo Benson, known as Obie and Lawrence Payton, who were students at Northern High School. (Mr. Fakir, who continues to perform with the Tops' current lineup, is now the last surviving member.) Originally calling themselves the Four Aims, they were rechristened the Four Tops in 1954 and signed with Chess Records, the Chicago rhythm and blues label, in 1956.

It was clear from the beginning that Mr. Stubbs, with his booming, rough-edged baritone, would be the lead singer, Mr. Fakir said in a 2004 interview. Yet many of his songs were written in a tenor range that pushed his voice higher and made it sound urgent and pleading. Mr. Stubbs and the group did not plan a pop career, but began as jazz singers. Leaving Detroit in the mid-1950s, they headed for New York, bouncing around the nightclub circuit.

The four singers shared a studio apartment and rotated three daytime suits among them; whoever had the more important appointment got first pick, Mr. Fakir recalled. The Tops added choreography to their act, but were advised to drop it when they toured with the jazz balladeer Billy Eckstine, who told them to master their singing. In 1963 Mr. Stubbs and the other Tops appeared on the "Tonight" show, then hosted by Jack Paar, singing a jazz arrangement of "In the Still of the Night." Mr. Gordy, who saw their performance, told his staff to sign them up, and assigned the songwriting team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland to shape their sound and deliver them a hit song.

It took a year before the group recorded "Baby, I Need Your Loving," followed by their first No. 1 hits, "I Can't Help Myself" in 1965 and "Reach Out" in 1966. "We didn't know what bag to put them in," Mr. Dozier said in 2004. The three songwriters concluded that Mr. Stubbs's booming voice should be most prominent, backed by the Tops' harmonies; layered with vocals by a female group, the Andantes; and supported by the Motown studio band known as the Funk Brothers.

The combination worked.

"Stubbs's bold, dramatic readings of some of Holland-Dozier-Holland's choicest material set a high standard for contemporary soul in the mid-'60s," the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame said when the Tops were inducted. Snappily dressed, even offstage, the Tops toured extensively throughout the United States and around the world, recording more hits like "It's the Same Old Song" and "Standing in the Shadows of Love."

In 1971 the group joined the Supremes to record a cover version of the Ike and Tina Turner song "River Deep — Mountain High." But by then, relations with Motown were strained, and the group left the label after Mr. Berry moved it to Los Angeles. The Tops continued to record during the 1970s and '80s, often touring with the Temptations. Their biggest post-Motown hit was "Ain't No Woman Like the One I've Got," in 1973.

Levi Stubbles was born in Detroit on June 6, 1936, a cousin of the soul singer Jackie Wilson. His younger brother, Joe, sang with the Falcons and the Contours, two rhythm and blues groups.

Mr. Stubbs is survived by his wife of 48 years, Clineice; five children, Deborah, Beverly, Raymond, Kelly and Levi Jr.; and 11 grandchildren.

Mr. Stubbs took on a side project to become the voice of a man-eating plant, Audrey II, in the 1986 musical film "Little Shop of Horrors," and also was the voice of Mother Brain, an evil character on the cartoon show "Captain N: The Game Master," from 1989 to 1991.

By 1995, Mr. Stubbs's health had begun to fail, forcing him to curtail his performances. Mr. Payton died in 1997, and Mr. Benson in 2005. Mr. Fakir has continued singing with Mr. Payton's son Roquel; a former Temptation, Theo Peoples; and Ronnie McNair, a veteran Motown singer.

Before his death, Mr. Benson said in an interview that he was saddened by performing without Mr. Stubbs and Mr. Payton.

"It's like having one body with two limbs missing," he said.

 

[Njaco]

WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. – Doug Fieger, leader of the power pop band The Knack who sang on the 1979 hit "My Sharona," died Sunday. He was 57.

Fieger, a Detroit-area native, died at his home in Woodland Hills near Los Angeles after battling cancer, according to The Knack's manager, Jake Hooker.

Fieger formed The Knack in Los Angeles 1978, and the group quickly became a staple of Sunset Strip rock clubs. A year later he co-wrote and sang lead vocals on "My Sharona."

Fieger said the song, with its pounding drums and exuberant vocals, was inspired by a girlfriend of four years.

"I had never met a girl like her — ever," he told The Associated Press in a 1994 interview. "She induced madness. She was a very powerful presence. She had an insouciance that wouldn't quit. She was very self-assured. ... She also had an overpowering scent, and it drove me crazy."

"My Sharona," an unapologetically anthemic rock song, emerged during disco's heyday and held the No. 1 spot on the Billboard pop chart for six weeks, becoming an FM radio standard.

It became a pop culture phenomenon, parodied by Weird Al Yankovic and others and sampled by rap group Run DMC.

In 1994, "My Sharona" re-entered the Billboard chart when it was released as a single from the soundtrack of the Ben Stiller film "Reality Bites."

"My Sharona" gained attention again in 2005 when it was reported that George W. Bush had the song on the presidential iPod.

Their songs, about young love and teenage lust, included the hits "Good Girls Don't," "She's So Selfish" and "Frustrated."

The Knack continued to release albums and tour through the mid-2000s but they never replicated the success they enjoyed with their first two albums, "Get the Knack" and "... But the Little Girls Understand."

Fieger battled cancer for six years. In 2006 he underwent surgery to remove two tumors from his brain.

He is survived by a sister, Beth Falkenstein, and a brother, attorney Geoffrey Fieger of Southfield, Mich., who is best known for representing assisted suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian.

A Los Angeles memorial service for friends and family is being planned.

___
The Knack lead singer Doug Fieger dies - Yahoo! News

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Summer of 79' that's all you heard on the radio, at least around LA. RIP Doug...

 

[vikingBerserker]

Dam, that stinks.

 

[Njaco]

Published: Saturday, June 18, 2011, 10:39 PM Updated: Sunday, June 19, 2011, 12:42 AM By Tris McCall/The Star-Ledger

He was the spirit of the E Street Band, and the oaken staff that Bruce Springsteen leaned on. Clarence Clemons — the Big Man with the big horn — died yesterday of complications from a stroke he suffered last weekend. He was 69.

"Clarence lived a wonderful life," Bruce Springsteen said in a statement last night. "He carried within him a love of people that made them love him. He created a wondrous and extended family. He loved the saxophone, loved our fans and gave everything he had every night he stepped on stage."

News of Clemons' death was first reported last night on nj.com, The Star-Ledger's real-time news website.

"He was the kahuna of surf and soul and a man that had love in his heart and, always, a smile on his face. He was my brother — my musical brother," said original E Street Band drummer Vini "Mad Dog" Lopez.

Lopez last saw Clemons when he guested at an E Street Band show in Philadelphia, in 2009. "I was in the dressing room with him, and we were laughing and talking about golfing," said Lopez.

There have been many charismatic figures in the E Street Band, but none had the personal gravity of Clemons, the group's Bunyanesque saxophonist. Springsteen himself acknowledged this, always introducing Clemons last at concerts. It's Clemons' big shoulder that Springsteen was looking over lovingly on the famous cover of his "Born to Run" album. As his bandleader beamed at him, Clemons, black-hatted and bold, turned toward the camera and blew his sax.

Clemons seemed to be a character out of a storybook — or better yet, a widescreen movie about the triumph of a romantic gang of rock 'n' roll renegades. Wildly popular among fans of the E Street Band, he was the sort of larger-than-life figure to whom legends accrued. Recognizing this, Clemons and Springsteen did much to play up those legends: "Big Man: Real Life and Tall Tales," Clemons' 2009 autobiography written with Don Reo, combined genuine reflections with fiction in an attempt to capture the mythical quality of the musician.

Springsteen's oft-told story of his initial meeting with Clemons felt biblical: With a lightning storm raging outside, the Big Man tore the door off an Asbury Park club, strode onstage, and made magic. (Springsteen would later immortalize this meeting in "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out," a song on "Born to Run.") Was this embellished? Most likely. But reality never seemed quite big enough to accommodate Clemons.

"Mere facts," wrote Springsteen in the preface to Clemons' book, "will never plumb the mysteries of the Big Man."

MINISTER'S SON

Born in Norfolk, Va., Clemons was the son of a Baptist minister who had no love for raucous rock 'n' roll. But at the age of 9, his family gave young Clarence an alto saxophone — and soon he discovered his lung power was formidable. By young adulthood, he excelled at music and athletics and earned a football scholarship to the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. Injuries suffered in a car accident prevented the young lineman from trying out for the Cleveland Browns. From then on, Clemons dedicated himself to his horn. Clemons called his instrument "a vehicle to move my spirit around."

"I don't think it's only my saxophone," Clemons told All Access Magazine in 2008, "it's who I am. My spiritual guide … told me that my purpose in life was to bring joy into the world. He didn't know about my music, he didn't know who I was. He saw my heart, he saw my soul, and he saw my determination for this life."

On the tenor saxophone, Clemons developed a style that was considerably more than the sum of his influences: party-ready King Curtis, brassy Junior Walker, skronking Earl Bostic. Clemons could be tough, raspy and percussive, but as a carrier of melody, his shoulders were broad. After playing with a number of Asbury Park outfits in the early '70s, Clemons joined the as-yet-unnamed E Street Band in 1972. Along with bassist Garry Tallent, Lopez, organist Danny Federici, pianist Dave Sancious and Springsteen himself, Clemons was an original member of the group.

He was also the oldest, and it's no exaggeration to suggest he was often treated as the in-house big brother. His saxophone became a pillar of the E Street sound, and helped anchor Springsteen's storytelling in blues, jazz and gospel traditions.

"That night we first stood together," said Springsteen of Clemons during his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction speech in 1999, "I looked over at C and it looked like his head reached into the clouds. And I felt like a mere mortal scurrying upon the earth, you know. But he always lifted me up. Way, way, way up. Together we told a story of the possibilities of friendship, a story older than the ones that I was writing and a story I could never have told without him at my side."

BEAUTY AND DRAMA

Clemons' solos on songs like "Jungleland" and "Born to Run" were quintessential rock 'n' roll sax rides — things of beauty and drama unmatched by efforts of thousands of imitators. But Clemons also took his support role seriously. On "Spirit in the Night," his graceful passages were part of a thick tapestry of sound. On "Hungry Heart," the E Street Band's first Top 10 hit, his baritone sax tugged at the bottom of the track like taffy on the sole of a sneaker.

That wasn't the only time Clemons swapped his trademark tenor for a baritone. In the early '70s, he kept another tool in his shed: a lilting soprano saxophone; on more recent tours, he covered the top end with a pennywhistle. Reeds weren't all he did — with the E Street Band, Clemons also proved himself an able percussionist and an enthusiastic backing vocalist, too.

With his instantly identifiable tone and passion for all varieties of popular music, Clemons was often in demand as a session musician. When E Street activities slowed in the '80s and '90s, Clemons had no difficulty finding work. He played on scores of records, including Aretha Franklin's "Who's Zooming Who," Twisted Sister's "Come Out and Play" and Roy Orbison's comeback "King of Hearts." In 1989, he joined the inaugural version of Ringo Starr's All-Starr Band, where his charismatic stage presence and playful attitude fit in perfectly.

When Lady Gaga attempted to resurrect the glory of '80s stadium rock on her recent album "Born This Way," she called in Clemons.

"The universe is there to give you what you want," Clemons told All Access about his multifaceted success. "You just need to be there to get it."

Clemons also released five solo albums under his own name. "Hero," a 1985 set produced by Narada Michael Walden, gave him a hit duet (with Jackson Browne): "You're a Friend of Mine," a song, ironically, about the relationship between Clemons and Springsteen. Even on his solo sets, the sax player could not elude the shadow of the Boss.

For two years, Clemons operated Big Man's West, a rock venue in Red Bank that became something of a clubhouse for the E Street team and affiliated acts. Springsteen himself appeared at Big Man's close to 20 times. Although the club closed its doors for good in 1983 for financial reasons, its existence helped revive the Shore sound. Many of the musicians who'd rock the Garden State (and beyond) during the late '80s took the stage at Big Man's, including Jon Bon Jovi and John Eddie.

Stone Pony founder Butch Pielka warned the saxophonist about the perils of running a rock club.

"He offered me some advice in the beginning, like, 'Get out of the business,' " Clemons told The Star-Ledger this year. "My accountant agreed with him: 'Just consider that you had a party for two and a half years, and invited all your friends, and you picked up the tab.' That's what it was like."

STILL THE BIG MAN

Clemons' celebrity never quite faded. But in recent years, a series of debilitating ailments kept him out of the limelight. The Big Man was felled by multiple spinal surgeries and knee replacements. Undeterred, he continued to blow from his wheelchair. ("He's always on time, he's always in pain," wrote Don Reo in "Big Man.") The musician lived long enough to see "Who Do I Think I Am?," a documentary about his life, air at the Paramount Theatre in his beloved Asbury Park this April. Hobbled by his health problems, he nevertheless took the stage at the Paramount and answered questions and signed autographs, smiling all the while.

Under the stagelights, surrounded by those who loved him, Clemons was in his element. Pushing 70, he rehabbed hard, hoping for a chance to join the E Street Band on tour in 2012.

He told Rolling Stone magazine in February that as long as he had a mouth, a brain and a pair of hands, he would keep on playing. Nobody who saw Clemons perform would ever have doubted it: his dedication was total. The saxophone was a conduit for his spirit, he assured us, and that spirit was a colossus.

Far beyond the boardwalk of Asbury Park, those big notes will keep echoing.

Staff writer Jay Lustig contributed to this report.