The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (122 page)

See also
Ian Parkin (
July 1995)

Close!

John Lydon

(Sex Pistols/Public Image Ltd)

In February 2004, former Sex Pistol John Lydon revealed in an interview that he’d narrowly missed being on the 1988 Pan Am flight that exploded over Lockerbie - because his wife Nora had taken so long to pack. Said the singer, ‘We had a big row and took the next flight out - the minute we realized what had happened, we looked at each other and almost collapsed.’ Lydon also claimed that the incident prompted him to walk off the ITV reality show
I’m a Celebrity
-
Get Me out of Here!,
when staff would not tell him whether Nora’s flight to the Australian set had arrived safely.

Lest We Forget

Other notable deaths that occurred sometime during 1988:

John Banks
(UK drummer with, uh, Merseybeat act, The Merseybeats, whose biggest hit was 1964’s ‘I Think of You’; born Liverpool, 23/9/1943; illness, Tel Aviv, 20/4)

Fred Below
(popular US R & B drummer with The Four Aces/Jukes, Moonglows, Drifters, Bo Diddley and John Lee Hooker, among others; born Illinois, 16/9/1926; cancer, 14/8)

Cathy Carr
(US pop singer who hit US #2 with ‘Ivory Tower’ in 1956; born Angelina Helen Catherine Cordovano, New York, 28/6/1936; unknown, 1/11)

Tim Davis
(US drummer/singer/songwriter who co-founded The Steve Miller Band, playing on the group’s first five albums; born Janesville, Wisconsin, 29/11/1943; diabetes, 20/9)

Janet Ertel
(US bass with all-female ‘barbershop’ vocal act The Chordettes, whose biggest hit was 1958’s ‘Lollipop’; born Janet Buschman, Wisconsin, 1913; cancer, 22/11)

Son House
(hugely influential US blues guitarist who’d been incarcerated and barely played before he was thirty; born Mississippi, 21/3/1902; Alzheimer’s/ Parkinson’s disease, 19/10)

Gordon Huntley
(UK pedal-steel guitarist best remembered for his sublime contribution to Matthews Southern Comfort’s 1970 #1 ‘Woodstock’; born Berkshire, 1930; cancer, 7/3)

Howie Johnson
(US drummer with instrumental surf-rock band The Ventures, scoring with ‘Walk, Don’t Run’ in 1960; born Washington, 1938; unknown, 1/1988)

Memphis Slim
(much-lauded and prolific US blues pianist; born John ‘Peter’ Chatman, Tennessee, 3/9/1915; kidney failure in his adopted home of Paris, 24/2)

Jimmy Soul
(generically named R & B singer who topped the US charts with the novelty ‘If You Wanna be Happy’ in 1963; born James McCleese, New York, 24/8/1942; heart attack, 25/6)

Tenor Saw
(distinctive Jamaican dancehall singer; born Clive Bright, Kingston, 1½/1966; killed by a hit-and-run driver while allegedly selling cocaine in Texas, 8/1988)

Steve Walsh
(larger-than-life UK DJ who hit the Top Ten with ‘I Found Lovin’’ in 1987; born 1959; after a car accident in Spain broke his leg, he suffered a massive coronary during surgery, 3/7)

1989

JANUARY

Tuesday 17

Patti (McCabe) Barnes

(Patti McCabe - Lyndhurst, Ohio, 6 July 1939)

The Poni-Tails

The three Poni-Tails were from well-to-do backgrounds, Lyndhurst being one of Cleveland’s better neighbourhoods. The original line-up of this early all-female vocal group -Toni Cistone (lead), Laverne Novak (high harmonies) and Karen Topinka (low harmonies) - were students at Brush High School; McCabe was from nearby Regina. In 1957, The Poni-Tails’ likely first hit, ‘Your Wild Heart’, was effectively gazumped by Jay Layne’s superior version, and Topinka’s father pulled her out of the band in frustration. In stepped McCabe, and after a few further flops, the dream appeared to come true with ‘Born Too Late’ (1958) achieving transatlantic Top Ten status. But this memorable teen lament was to prove The Poni-Tails’ only hit as other acts with perhaps stronger voices took over. With no royalty deal secured (as was commonplace at the time), the still-teenage Poni-Tails cut their losses and returned to cosy domestic lives and conventional employment.

Patti McCabe (now Barnes) died of cancer early in 1989. Cistone and Novak reunited for one last blast at a nostalgia convention in Cleveland eight years later.

Thursday 26

Donnie Elbert

(New Orleans, Louisiana, 25 May 1936)

(The Vibraharps)

Donnie Elbert was a guitarist/vocalist whose soaring falsetto made him popular with Northern soul audiences towards the end of the sixties. By this time he had performed with R & B vocal group The Vibraharps, though disagreement over the group’s direction saw him leave in 1957, after just three releases. As a solo artist with the Deluxe and VeeJay labels, Elbert found himself in the frustrating position of selling large quantities of records in one area only: a prime example was 1960’s ‘Will You Ever be Mine?’ which shifted a quarter of a million records in Philadelphia without ever break-ing nationally. Finally, a remake of The Supremes’ ‘Where Did Our Love Go?’ (1971) took him into the Billboard Top Twenty – a touch ironic for an artist who had once turned Motown down, particularly when his only other chart entry was a Four Tops cover. Having worked for five years as an A & R man with Polygram Canada, Elbert died after suffering a stroke.

FEBRUARY

Wednesday 1

Paul Robi

(New Orleans, Louisiana, 20 August 1931)

The Platters

Former choir leader Paul Robi’s tenure as The Platters’ baritone did not begin until Svengali (and former jazz-band manager) Buck Ram took the wet-behind-the-ears vocal group off the hands of rival entrepreneur Ralph Bass. The group – formed by Los Angeles high-school singer David Lynch (second tenor) – was groomed by manager/voice coach Ram into a fine unit that would sell over 50 million records in its career. For Robi, a 1953 move to California couldn’t have been better timed; it was less lucky for previous baritone Alex Hodge, sacked by the group for allegedly attempting to sell marijuana to a policeman. Completed by Tony Williams (lead tenor), Herb Reed (bass) and female alto Zola Taylor, The Platters dominated the R & B vocal wars of the fifties, taking four of their songs to US number one – including the UK million-seller ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’ (1958) – and enjoying considerable success the world over. The bubble only burst when various members of the group, including Paul Robi, were found in a compromising position with several underage Cincinnati fans – after which they struggled to place on the charts, despite eventual acquittal. Robi was replaced by Nate Nelson in 1964.

Following this dip in fortunes, Paul Robi became very depressed and lost himself for some years to alcohol, before re-emerging with a ‘new’ Platters (one of at least four groups bearing the name) and touring successfully in New Zealand – much to the chagrin of Ram, who attempted to take out an injunction against the use of the name by former members of ‘his’ group. The singer, diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, won the dispute with Ram just before his death – and his widow was reported to have received $3.5 million.

See also
David Lynch (
January 1981); Nathaniel Nelson (
June 1984); Tony Williams (
August 1992). Early Platters Cornell Gunter (
February 1990) and Elsbeary Hobbs (
May 1996) have also died, as have manager/producer Buck Ram (1991) and later singers Randy Jones (2002) and Zola Taylor (2007).