musical deaths

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Al Jarraeu
Born: March 12, 1940
American singer and musician. He received a total of seven Grammy Awards
and was nominated for over a dozen more. Jarreau is perhaps best known for
his 1981 album Breakin' Away. He also sang the theme song of the 1980s tele-
vision series Moonlighting, and was among the performers on the 1985 charity
song "We Are the World."

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Waylon Jennings
Died: February 13, 2002
Waylon Arnold Jennings was an American singer, songwriter,
musician, and actor. He is considered one of pioneers of the
outlaw movement in country music...During the 1970s, Jen-
nings drove outlaw country. With Willie Nelson, Tompall Glaser
and Jessi Colter he recorded country music's first platinum al-
bum, Wanted! The Outlaws...Later, he joined the country
supergroup The Highwaymen with Willie Nelson, Kris Kristof-
ferson, and Johnny Cash, which released three albums between
1985 and 1995...In 2001, he was inducted into the Country
Music Hall of Fame. In 2007, he was posthumously awarded
the Cliffie Stone Pioneer Award by the Academy of Country Music.

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Mike Bloomfield
Died: February 15, 1981
Michael Bernard Bloomfield was an American guitarist and
composer, born in Chicago, Illinois, who became one of the
first popular music superstars of the 1960s to earn his re-
putation almost entirely on his instrumental prowess, as he
rarely sang before 1969. Respected for his guitar playing,
Bloomfield knew and played with many of Chicago's blues
musicians before achieving his own fame and was instrumental
in popularizing blues music in the mid-1960s. In 1965, he
played on Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited, including the single
"Like a Rolling Stone", and performed with Dylan at that year's
Newport Folk Festival. Bloomfield was ranked No. 22 on Rolling
Stone's list of "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" in 2003 and
No. 42 by the same magazine in 2011. He was inducted into the
Blues Hall of Fame in 2012 and, as a member of the Paul Butter-
field Blues Band, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
in 2015.

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Leslie Gore
Died: February 16, 2015
Lesley Sue Goldstein, known professionally as Lesley Gore, was an American
singer, songwriter, actress, and activist. At the age of 16, she recorded the
pop hit "It's My Party", a US number one in 1963. She followed it up with ten
further Billboard top 40 hits including "Judy's Turn to Cry" and "You Don't Own
Me".

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Thelonious Monk
Died: February 17, 1982
Thelonious Sphere Monk was an American
jazz pianist and composer. He had a unique
improvisational style and made numerous
contributions to the standard jazz repertoire,
including "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk",
"Straight, No Chaser", "Ruby, My Dear",
"In Walked Bud", and "Well, You Needn't".
Monk is the second-most-recorded jazz
composer after Duke Ellington.

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Clyde Stubblefield
Died: February 18, 2017
American drummer best known for his work with James Brown. A self-taught
musician, he was influenced by the sound of natural rhythms around him. His
drum patterns on Brown's recordings are considered funk standards. He recorded
and toured with Brown for six years and settled in Madison, Wisconsin, where he
was a staple of the local music scene. Often uncredited, samples of his drum pat-
terns were heavily used in hip hop music. He was the recipient of an honorary doc-
torate in fine arts. In 2014, Stubblefield was named the second best drummer of all
time by LA Weekly. According to the LA Weekly, "Stubblefield is one of the most sam-
pled drummers in history, the man whose uncanny ability to deconstruct pop music's
simple 4/4 rhythms into a thousand different sly syncopations laid the foundation not
only for funk, but for most of hip-hop, as well."

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Bon Sott
Australian singer, songwriter and instrumentalist, best known for being the lead vocalist and lyricist of the Australian hard
rock band AC/DC from 1974 until his death in 1980.

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Ian Wallace
Died: February 22, 2007
English rock and jazz drummer, most visibly as a mem-
ber of progressive rock band King Crimson, as a mem-
ber of David Lindley's El Rayo-X and as Don Henley's
drummer. Wallace subsequently worked with Steve
Marriott's All-Stars and was invited to join Bob Dylan's
band in 1978 and accompanied Dylan during his tour
of Japan. Wallace's heavy drum style was the driving
force behind the pop-heavy album Street-Legal. He
toured again with Dylan in the early 1990s.

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Melvin Franklin
Died: February 23, 1995
American bass singer. Franklin
was best known for his role as
a founding member of Motown
singing group The Temptations
from 1960 to 1994.

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Johnnie Ray
Died: February 24, 1990
John Alvin Ray was an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. Highly popular
for most of the 1950s, Ray has been cited by critics as a major precursor to
what became rock and roll, for his jazz and blues-influenced music, and his
animated stage personality. Tony Bennett called Ray the "father of rock and
roll", and historians have noted him as a pioneering figure in the development
of the genre.

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Toy Caldwell
Died: February 25, 1993
The lead guitarist and main songwriter of the 1970s Southern Rock group The
Marshall Tucker Band. A founding member of the band, Caldwell remained with
the group until 1983. In addition to his role as lead guitarist, he was also the band's
steel guitarist and performed lead vocals including on one of the band's best-known hits,
"Can't You See."

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Vince Guaraldi
Died: February 26, 1976
Vincent Anthony Guaraldi was an American jazz pianist noted
for his innovative compositions and arrangements, and for
composing music for animated television adaptations of the
Peanuts comic strip. His compositions for this series included
their signature melody "Linus and Lucy" and the holiday stan-
dard "Christmas Time Is Here". He is also known for his per-
formances on piano as a member of Cal Tjader's 1950s en-
sembles and for his own solo career. His 1962 composition
"Cast Your Fate to the Wind" became a radio hit and won a
Grammy Award in 1963 for Best Original Jazz Composition.
He died of a sudden heart attack in February 1976 at age 47,
moments after concluding a nightclub performance in Menlo
Park, California.

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Frankie Lymon
Died: February 27, 1968
American rock and roll/rhythm and blues singer
and songwriter, best known as the boy soprano
lead singer of the New York City-based early rock
and roll group The Teenagers...The Teenagers' first
single, 1956's "Why Do Fools Fall in Love", was also
their biggest hit. After Lymon went solo in mid-1957,
both his career and that of the Teenagers fell into
decline. He was found dead at the age of 25 on the
floor of his grandmother's bathroom from a heroin
overdose. His life was dramatized in the 1998 film
Why Do Fools Fall In Love.

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Orrin Keepnews
Died: March 01, 2015
American jazz writer and record producer known for founding Riverside
Records and Milestone Records, for freelance work, and for his work at
other labels.

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Dusty Springfield
Died: March 02, 1999
Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien, known professionally as Dusty
Springfield, was an English singer and record producer whose career spanned
over five decades. With her distinctive mezzo-soprano sound, she was a
significant singer of blue-eyed soul, pop and dramatic ballads, with French
chanson, country, and jazz also in her repertoire. During her 1960s peak she
ranked among the most successful British female performers on both sides of
the Atlantic and her image – marked by a peroxide blonde bouffant/beehive
hairstyle, heavy makeup (thick black eyeliner and eye shadow) and evening
gowns, as well as stylised, gestural performances – made her an icon of the
Swinging Sixties...She is a member of both the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and
the UK Music Hall of Fame. International polls have lauded Springfield as one
of the finest female popular singers of all time.

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Norman Smith
Died: March 03, 2008
English musician, record producer and engineer. Smith
was the engineer on all of the EMI studio recordings by
the Beatles until the autumn of 1965, when EMI promoted
him from engineer to producer. The last Beatles album he
recorded was Rubber Soul, and Smith engineered the sound
for almost 100 Beatles songs in total. In early 1967, he began
working with a new group, Pink Floyd, producing their first,
second, and fourth studio albums: The Piper at the Gates of
Dawn, A Saucerful of Secrets, and Ummagumma. During the
sessions for the song "Remember a Day", drummer Nick Mason
became agitated that he could not come up with the right drum
part for the song. Smith, however, knew what he wanted with
the drums, so he played the part himself.

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Richard Manuel
Died: March 04, 1986
Richard Manuel was a Canadian composer, singer, and multi-instrumentalist,
best known as a pianist and singer in The Band...Manuel's singing alternated
between a soul-influenced baritone that drew frequent comparisons to Ray
Charles and a delicate falsetto. Though The Band had three vocalists sharing
lead and harmony parts, Manuel was sometimes seen as the group's primary
vocalist.

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Patsy Cline
Died: March 05, 1963
Patsy Cline was an American singer. She
is considered one of the most influential
vocalists of the 20th century and was one
of the first country music artists to cross
over into pop music. Cline had several major
hits during her eight-year recording career,
including two number-one hits on the Bill-
board Hot Country and Western Sides chart...
Since her death, Cline has been cited as one
of the most celebrated, respected, and in-
fluential performers of the 20th century. Her
music has influenced performers of various
styles and genres. She has also been seen as
a forerunner for women in country music,
being among the first to sell records and
headline concerts. In 1973, she became the
first female performer to be inducted into
the Country Music Hall of Fame.

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Lowell Fulson
Died: March 07, 1999
Lowell Fulson was an American blues guitarist and songwriter, in the West Coast
blues tradition. He also recorded for contractual reasons as Lowell Fullsom and
Lowell Fulsom. After T-Bone Walker, he was the most important figure in West
Coast blues in the 1940s and 1950s.

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Steve Lawrence, crooner who formed pop duo with wife Eydie, dies at 88


Steve Lawrence, a creamy-voiced pop crooner who popularized the standards “Go Away Little Girl” and “I’ve Gotta Be Me” and formed a crowd-pleasing act with his wife, Eydie Gormé, for more than five decades, died March 7 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 88.

The cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease, said his son David Lawrence.

Often billed as “Steve and Eydie,” Mr. Lawrence and his wife were a ubiquitous presence on records, television variety shows and in nightclubs from Las Vegas to the Catskills. Mr. Lawrence, with his boyish good looks and self-assured grin, and Gormé, with her raven bouffant and beaded, feathered dresses, projected an appealing playfulness. They would finish each other’s sentences and rib each other in their sharp-tongued repartee.

In their later years, Steve and Eydie were regarded as the last of the “tux and gown” acts, staunch interpreters of popular standards who eschewed rock and contemporary popular music. Their TV specials, such as their Emmy Award-winning “Steve & Eydie Celebrate Irving Berlin” in 1978, were often songbook-themed.

Among their best-remembered duets were “Make Yourself Comfortable” (1954); “We Got Us” (1960), a Grammy Award-winning album of jazz-pop-Tin Pan Alley standards; “I Want to Stay Here” (1963); and “I Can’t Stop Talking About You” (1963).


Meanwhile, each maintained a substantial solo career. Record companies tried to market Mr. Lawrence in a clean-shaven teen-idol image with early hits such as “Pretty Blue Eyes” (1959) and “Footsteps” (1960). Mr. Lawrence’s signature song was the million-selling Gerry Goffin-Carole King composition “Go Away Little Girl” (1962), in which the singer halfheartedly pleads with an attractive woman to stay away so that he will not betray his steady girlfriend. He also received a 1961 Grammy nomination for the hit ballad “Portrait of My Love.”


Together and apart, the couple’s presence on the charts began to wane amid rapidly changing musical tastes. But Mr. Lawrence soon found his forte as an interpreter cut from the Frank Sinatra mold with a series of albums produced by big band arranger Don Costa.

Mr. Lawrence premiered the standard “I’ve Gotta Be Me” from the 1968 Broadway musical “Golden Rainbow,” in which he and Gormé co-starred. The show ran for nearly a year despite middling notices, and the song was later recorded by Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr., among others.

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Ron "Pigpen" McKernan
Died: March 08, 1973
Ronald Charles McKernan, known as Pigpen, was an
American musician. He was a founding member of
the San Francisco band the Grateful Dead and played
in the group from 1965 to 1972.

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The Notorious B.I.G.
Died: March 09, 1997
Christopher George Latore Wallace, better known by his stage
names the Notorious B.I.G., Biggie Smalls, or simply Biggie, was
an American rapper and songwriter. Rooted in the New York rap
scene and gangsta rap traditions, he is widely considered one of
the greatest rappers of all time. Wallace became known for his
distinctive laidback lyrical delivery, offsetting the lyrics' often grim
content. His music was often semi-autobiographical, telling of hard-
ship and criminality, but also of debauchery and celebration.

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LaVern Baker
Died: March 10, 1997
American R&B singer who had several hit records on the pop chart in the 1950s
and early 1960s. Her most successful records were "Tweedle Dee" (1955), "Jim
Dandy" (1956), and "I Cried a Tear" (1958).

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Keith Emerson
Died: March 11, 2016
Keith Noel Emerson was an English keyboardist, songwriter, and record
producer...He was a founding member of Emerson, Lake & Palmer (ELP),
one of the early progressive rock supergroups. Emerson, Lake & Palmer
were commercially successful through much of the 1970s, becoming one
of the best-known progressive rock groups of the era...Emerson was widely
regarded as one of the top keyboard players of the progressive rock era.
AllMusic describes Emerson as "perhaps the greatest, most technically ac-
complished keyboardist in rock history".

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Charlie Parker
Died: March 12, 1955
Charles Parker Jr., nicknamed "Bird" or
"Yardbird", was an American jazz sax-
ophonist, band leader and composer.
Parker was a highly influential soloist
and leading figure in the development
of bebop, a form of jazz characterized
by fast tempos, virtuosic technique, and
advanced harmonies...Parker was an icon
for the hipster subculture and later the
Beat Generation, personifying the jazz
musician as an uncompromising artist and
intellectual rather than just an entertainer.

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Doc Pomus
Died: March 14, 1991
American blues singer and songwriter. He is best known as the lyricist of many rock and roll hits. Pomus was inducted into the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame as a non-performer in 1992, the Songwriters Hall of Fame (1992), and the Blues Hall of Fame (2012).

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Lester Young
Died: March 15, 1959
Lester Willis Young, nicknamed "Pres" or "Prez", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and occasional clarinetist. Coming to prominence while
a member of Count Basie's orchestra, Young was one of the most influential players on his instrument. In contrast to many of his hard-driving peers,
Young played with a relaxed, cool tone and used sophisticated harmonies, using what one critic called "a free-floating style, wheeling and diving
like a gull, banking with low, funky riffs that pleased dancers and listeners alike". Known for his hip, introverted style, he invented or popularized
much of the hipster jargon which came to be associated with the music.

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T-Bone Walker
Died: March 16, 1975
Aaron Thibeaux "T-Bone" Walker was an American
blues guitarist, singer, songwriter and multi-
instrumentalist, who was a pioneer and innovator
of the jump blues and electric blues sound. In 2018
Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 37 on its
list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".
Walker was posthumously inducted into the Blues
Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame in 1987.

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Alex Chilton
Died: March 17, 2010
American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and record producer, best known as the
lead singer of The Box Tops and Big Star...He is frequently cited as a seminal
influence by influential rock artists and bands, some of whose testimonials
appeared in the 2012 documentary Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me.