The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (129 page)

After a Sunday-evening performance, George Suranovich was rushed to hospital with chest pains and informed that he required bypass surgery. Although the surgery was routine, he collapsed from a massive heart attack a few nights later, and died at home. A number of bands played a concert in his honour some weeks later at Pittsburgh’s Graffiti nightclub.

See also
Ken Forssi (
January 1998); Bryan MacLean (
December 1998); Arthur
Lee (
August 2006). Early Love drummer Don Conka died in 2004 and later bassist Robert Ro%elle in 2010.

Saturday 24

Johnnie Ray

(John Alvin Ray - Dallas, Oregon, 10 January 1927)

Poor old croonin’ Johnnie Ray - he moved a million hearts in mono and rewrote the rulebook on how stars performed live. Often labelled ‘The Prince of Wails’, Ray was part Native American (Blackfoot), and thus cut quite a figure on stage. His wearing of a hearing aid was seen by more cynical folk as a ‘prop’ but in fact the singer had worn it most of his life, his deafness the result of a boyhood injury. Under the guidance of Al Green (not the singer but the entrepreneur who would later assist Jackie Wilson), Ray proved himself no slouch, writing his own material and working out his own inimitable stage routine. Backed by The Four Lads, Ray worked hard for a hit record and found one in spectacular style with the emotive ‘Cry’ (1951) - a record that spent eleven weeks at US number one. The heavy gospel influence of this record hoodwinked – accidentally it would seem – many black music fans into buying it at a time when markets were very split. ‘Cry’ clocked up a remarkable 2 million US sales. The gold records continued throughout the sixties, during which time the singer built up a massive European fanbase, and three of his singles – ‘Such a Night’ (1954), ‘Just Walking in the Rain’ (1956) and ‘Yes Tonight, Josephine’ (1957) – topped the British charts. The only blight on Ray’s career was his incursion into movie acting, which suggested that his emoting was better kept to his musical performances.

With his star fading at home amid rumours of homosexuality and drug use, Ray refocused on Australia, which he toured more often than any other star of the era, and, of course, the UK, where he remained a major draw into the seventies (though by now strictly on the oldies circuit). Johnnie Ray’s long affair with the bottle saw the singer succumbing to cirrhosis of the liver after a short stay at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

See also
Corrado ‘Connie’ Codarini (
Golden Oldies #110). Various other members of The Four Lads have also passed away.

Monday 26

Cornell Gunter

(Cornelius Gunter - Coffeyville, Kansas, 14 November 1936)

The Coasters

The Flairs (The Hollywood Blue Jays)

The Platters

(Various acts)

The Coasters, those undisputed clown princes of R & B, must have upset someone somewhere along the way. Early lead Cornell Gunter might well have been watching his back after the murders of saxophone legend King Curtis
(
August 1971
) and touring bass Nathaniel Wilson
(
April 1980),
but to little avail: in the third unrelated shooting incident, Gunter was to follow suit – apparently a victim of mistaken identity.

With a professional blues singer for a mother, fine tenor Gunter was given all the encouragement he could possibly require, and a move to Los Angeles in his youth put him in touch with The Platters, the classic vocal group formed at Fremont High School with fellow singers ‘Jody’ Jefferson and brothers Alex and Gaynel Hodge. The apparently snail-like pace of The Platters’ development, however, caused Gunter to jump ship to join The Flairs (a similarly styled doo-wop act that had begun as The Hollywood Blue Jays, taking the new name from the label that cut their first disc), on occasion drafting in his sister Shirley. The Platters, of course, went on to enormous success in Gunter’s absence. Gunter finally teamed up with The Coasters in March 1958, via stints with several other acts. He replaced founder member Leon Hughes, and within four months the band enjoyed a US number one with the enduring Yakety Yak’ (1958), one of several splendid Jerry Leiber- and Mike Stoller-penned songs that the group made their own. The follow-up, ‘Charlie Brown’ (1959), sold almost as many copies, while ‘Along Came Jones’ and ‘Poison Ivy’ (both 1959), gave the quartet further riotous Top Ten entries. Gunter left The Coasters just at the point of decline to play with Dinah Washington; he would, however, return with a Coasters line-up of his own.

The Coasters - Guy, Jones, Gunter, Gardner and Jacobs: The drinks were on them

Despite legal threats from H B Barnum – manager of the ‘original’ Coasters – Gunter, who had already toured a renegade Drifters line-up, was fronting The Fabulous Coasters by 1980. It was nonetheless a rocky road, highlighted (or rather lowlighted) by manager Patrick Cavanaugh’s murder of Wilson that year. Remarkably, Gunter’s Coasters survived this horrific event and played throughout the decade to enthusiastic fans. In 1990, though, the group’s catastrophic misfortune reared its head once more: after an engagement at the ill-named Lady Luck Hotel in Las Vegas, Gunter pulled up at an intersection in his 1978 Camaro. Witnesses reported a fierce exchange between the driver and a man waiting by the kerb. Suddenly, Gunter’s car was showered with bullets. Struck twice, Gunter attempted to speed away but the severity of his injuries caused him to drive into a wall – by which time the singer was probably already dead. Although one suspect was detained and then released, Cornell Gunter’s murderer has never been caught.