The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (220 page)

Curtis Mayfield: Somehow held it together right to the end

A period of lesser activity was brought to a dramatic halt at an outdoor concert in Brooklyn during August 1990. In front of thousands, a horrific accident involving a fallen lighting rig left Curtis Mayfield paralysed from the neck down. Although this appeared to have ended Mayfield’s composing (‘I can’t just reach over and grab my guitar – that’s the worst thing!’), the artist found it within himself to forge ahead. In 1996, he returned with the enjoyable
New World Order
– his vocals were painstakingly recorded before diabetes added to escalating health complications. Already quadriplegic, Mayfield had to have a leg amputated a year before his death. Finally, having slipped into a coma, he passed away the day after Christmas 1999. A twice-inducted member of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame (both with The Impressions and solo), Mayfield was survived by his mother, his wife and no fewer than ten children and seven grandchildren.

Lest We Forget

Other notable deaths that occurred sometime during 1999:

Boxcar Willie
(muchloved US country ‘hobo’; born Cecil Travis Martin, Texas, 1/9/1931; leukaemia, 12/4)

Mark Gibbons
(UK keyboardist with Glasgow indie rockers The Yummy Fur - the first band of Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos and Paul Thomson; suicide - meanwhile, bassist Mark Leighton, believed to have died four years later, remains alive and well)

Bob Herbert
(UK impresario who helped put together Bros, then The Spice Girls with his son Chris, later topping even this by managing Five; born Essex, 4/2/1942; car crash in bad weather, 9/8)

William ‘Hammy’ Howell
(largely unsung UK keyboardist with rock revivalists The Darts, who remarkably scored three #2 hits during 1978; born London, 24/10/1954; heart failure, 13/1)

Buddy Knox
(admired US rockabilly singer with The Rhythm Orchids, who hit #1 in 1957 with ‘Party Doll’; born Texas, 20/7/1933; cancer, 14/2)

Eddie Kurdziel
(US guitarist with cult newwave survivors Redd Kross, also with Fuzz Bubble; born Pennsylvania, 25/9/1960; accidental heroin overdose, 6/6)

Guy Mitchell
(hugely popular US pop crooner who went to #1 four times in Britain, most notably with ‘Singin’ the Blues’ in 1956; born Al Cernik, Michigan, 27/2/1927; complications following surgery, 1/7)

Anthony Newley
(consummate UK singer/entertainer who scored numerous pop hits including two 1960 chart-toppers, ‘Why’ and ‘Do You Mind?’; born London, 24/9/1931; renal cancer, 14/4)

Doug Sahm
(wily singer/guitarist who posed as British nobility to land The Sir Douglas Quintet the US/UK hit ‘She’s about a Mover’ - father of Meat Puppet Shandon; born Texas, 6/11/1941; heart attack, 18/11)

Frankie Vaughan
(muchloved UK pop/cabaret heart-throb who scored hits including 1956’s ‘Green Door’ and 1957’s ‘Garden Of Eden’; born Francis Abelsen, Liverpool, 3/2/1928; heart condition, 17/9)

Christopher Zimmermann
(German touring bassist with industrial-metal act Rammstein; the DC-9 in which he was a passenger exploded on take-off in Mexico, 9/11)

2000

JANUARY

Saturday 8

Joe Dan Petty

(Macon, Georgia, December 1947)

Grinderswitch

Grinderswitch are probably best known in the UK for their ‘Pickin’ the Blues’ (for three decades the theme music for BBC disc jockey John Peel’s influential radio show) but in the States the Southern rockers have a further history. But, despite recording seven albums between 1972 and 1982, the group – Dru Lombar (vocals/guitar– who died in 2005), Larry Howard (guitar), Joe Dan Petty (bass), Stephen Miller (keys) and Rick Burnett (drums)– were never premier leaguers like Lynyrd Skynyrd, though they had connections with The Allman Brothers, for whom Petty later worked as a guitar technician.

Unfortunately, the misfortune and catastrophe long associated with the latter bands were to afflict Grinderswitch in 2000. Petty, who had received his pilot’s licence just a year before, was airborne in his Beechcraft 23 with fellow pilot Ronald Turpin when a dodgy fuel line caused them to seek a premature landing. On attempting this, the craft collided with a Cessna 172 as it approached Georgia’s Herbert Smart Airport: Petty and Turpin were killed at around 2.45 pm when the Beechcraft then careered into foliage before bursting into flames. As with Stephen Canaday some months before
(
September 1999),
it was unclear which man had been piloting the aircraft.

Thursday 20

Ray Jones

(Oldham, 22 October 1939)

(Billy J Kramer &) The Dakotas

The Dakotas were originally Ray Jones’s band, not Billy J Kramer’s: the bassist had formed the four-piece in Manchester during 1960, their guitar-led style reminiscent of The Shadows, or perhaps the surf music just beginning to emanate from across the Atlantic. The Dakotas – Jones, Pete Maclaine (vocals), Mike Maxfield (guitar), Robin McDonald (guitar) and Tony Mansfield (Tony Bookbinder, drums – brother of Elkie Brooks) – scored an early hit with ‘The Cruel Sea’ (1963), before a meeting with the influential and persuasive Brian Epstein changed the course of events for the band. With Maclaine sidelined (he formed his own less successful unit The Clan some time thereafter), The Dakotas were relocated to Liverpool as backing musicians to upcoming star (and British Rail worker) Kramer. Despite immediate success in this formation, Jones was impressed neither by Kramer nor the disparity in earnings between star and band. After a remarkable run of hits during 1963–4– which included UK number-one hits ‘Bad To Me’ and ‘Little Children’– the bassist’s time with the group was finally called by Epstein in July 1964.

Ray Jones quit the industry in 1967, turning to psychiatric nursing for the remainder of his career. He is believed to have passed away from a heart attack.

FEBRUARY

Friday 4

Doris Kenner-Jackson

(Doris Coley - Goldsboro, North Carolina, 2 August 1941)

The Shirelles

Although they weren’t the first to be formed, The Shirelles were undeniably the earliest girl group to create waves in an erstwhile male-dominated pop industry. The four teenagers who made up The Poquellos (as they were initially called) were Doris Coley (who had recently moved with her family from North Carolina), Addie ‘Micki’ Harris, Beverley Lee and Shirley Owens (later Alston-Reeves), a quartet of high-school friends from Passaic, New Jersey, who had penned a prize-winning ditty, ‘I Met Him on a Sunday’, which so impressed local label owner Florence Greenberg that she became the girls’ manager. Within two years, The Shirelles had topped the US charts with ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow?’ (1960), clearing a route for The Chiffons, Crystals, Ronettes and Shangri-Las to follow. After repeating the feat with ‘Soldier Boy’ (1962), The Shirelles turned to more mundane matters, such as marriage and, in Coley’s case, raising a family – which led to her departure from the group in 1967.