The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (271 page)

See also
Sylvester (
December 1988)

OCTOBER

Friday 1

Bruce Palmer

(Liverpool, Nova Scotia, 9 September 1946)

The Buffalo Springfield

(Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)

(The Mynah Birds)

(Various acts)

Bruce Palmer has sometimes been passed off as a mere journeyman musician who happened to play with some of the era’s best rock artists: the truth is that the quiet spirit who dusted melodic bass lines with his back to the audience was more crucial a player than many of the bigger names about him. Toronto-raised Palmer served his apprenticeship with a variety of the city’s bands before recognition came his way. Among these were Robbie Lane & The Disciples (a band who later backed Ronnie Hawkins after he’d sacked The Hawks) and the legendary Mynah Birds. Playing in the latter placed him alongside the young Rick James (whom Palmer survived by just two months
(
August 2004)
and, for the first time, singer and guitarist Neil Young.

It was for his work with The Buffalo Springfield that Palmer is most noted, however. Palmer and Young – heading for Los Angeles in the latter’s black hearse – were shortly to encounter Stephen Stills (vocals/guitar), Richie Furay (vocals/guitar) and Dewey Martin (drums). Although steeped in folk, the band’s guitar-harmony-heavy approach came as a refreshing change to American rock fans tiring of the British sound by 1966. The Buffalo Springfield’s first two albums are gems, though Palmer almost didn’t get a lookin on the second: deported back to Canada after a marijuana bust in 1967, the musician sneaked back across the border disguised as a businessman to save his band from the more mundane contributions of bass sessionists. With his drug intake (and obsession with mysticism) on the rise, however, Palmer’s second deportation proved the last straw for members of The Buffalo Springfield, who then replaced him with the less gifted but more reliable Jim Messina (later of Poco). Bruce Palmer’s history after this becomes more chequered: still favoured – as a musician, at least – by past bandmates, he played bass briefly as an unnamed member of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, issuing a solo album, the mystical
The Cycle is Complete
(1971), after further drug problems caused him to be ditched a second time. Longtime admirer Young later plucked Palmer from obscurity for his
Trans
project ten years later – though this time, it was alcoholism that dogged his work. Inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, Palmer died from a heart attack at his home in Toronto.

‘Bruce was the soul of the whole thing. His bass-playing was like nothing I’d ever heard before.’

Neil Young

Golden Oldies #21

Cordell Jackson

(Cordell Miller - Pontotoc, Mississippi, 15 July 1923)

Affectionately known in her latter years as ‘The Rockin’ Granny’, Cordell Jackson was the remarkable woman who played the men at their own game during rock ‘n’ roll’s earliest days. Describing herself - correctly - as ‘the first female to write, arrange, accompany, record, engineer, produce and distribute her own music’, Jackson had striven for some time to get her guitar tunes recorded at Sun Records, eventually founding her own label in 1956. The company (pointedly named Moon Records) didn’t generate many million-sellers, but became a good stable for smaller country and rockabilly acts.

After languishing for many years in obscurity, Cordell Jackson gained new recognition via cover versions of her music performed by Alex Chilton and Tav Falco. Pretty soon, a new generation was to witness the unlikely combination of Jackson duelling with former Stray Cat Brian Setzer in a Budweiser commercial. Aged eighty-one, she died following a lengthy illness on 14 October 2004, but not before having started her own website.

Golden Oldies #22

John Peel

(John Ravenscroft - Heswall, Cheshire, 30 August 1939)

When the news broke of the death of John Peel, the outpourings of grief weren’t
quite
in the same league as those for Princess Diana, but, suffice to say, the old dame didn’t fare badly. And rightly so - he was probably the most significant figure over the past few decades when it came to the development of contemporary music. After National Service, his early career had taken the then John Ravenscroft to the USA where he brazened his way into the courtroom for the arraignment of Lee Harvey Oswald following the assassination of JFK. Peel gained entry in the guise of a reporter for the
Liverpool Echo,
the court authorities seemingly buying his borderline Scouse accent, which also came in handy in landing ‘Mr Ravencroft’ [sic] the role of ‘official Beatles correspondent’ for first KLIF radio in Dallas, then KOMA in Oklahoma City. Further exploits (and a shortlived marriage) preceded Peel’s return to Britain and pirate Radio London, where, as host of
Perfumed Garden,
he acquired the name that was to last for the remainder of his days.

Being one of the original disc jockeys on Radio One’s roster in 1967 was pretty much all Peelie shared in common with the likes of Tony Blackburn and Pete Murray. While the daytime gang dictated the placing of the average and the asinine in the nation’s charts, Peel’s late-night show proudly championed Captain Beefheart, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Kevin Ayers, The Sex Pistols, Joy Division/New Order, Billy Bragg (who, in 1983, famously bribed the DJ with a mushroom biriani to play his tape), Napalm Death and The White Stripes - alongside the most obscure reggae sides and, of course, The Fall, who were to record some twenty-four of the man’s legendary sessions.

John Peel also made numerous shows for other BBC stations, becoming, as he grew older, something of a genial curmudgeon, the witty spokesman for middle-class family woe. Then, in a 2002 countdown, Peel was remarkably (or perhaps unsurprisingly, depending upon one’s standpoint) voted in at forty-three in the BBC’s ‘100 Greatest Britons’ poll. Despite this, the constant reshuffling of his BBC Radio One show was to cause Peel considerable stress, according to his great friend and fellow presenter Andy Kershaw - who broke down when interviewed on television following Peel’s passing on 25 October 2004. The latter had been holidaying with his wife Sheila in the Inca city of Cuzco in Peru when he suffered a sudden heart attack while dining - all a far cry from Peel’s own prediction that he’d perish in a car crash while trying to read an artist’s name on the back of a cassette.

Many of those artists - now, of course, successful musicians - were among the thousand or so attending Peel’s funeral, among them Jack and Meg White (The White Stripes), Jarvis Cocker (Pulp) and Feargal Sharkey, formerly of The Undertones, whose ‘Teenage Kicks’ had remained Peel’s favourite track since its release in 1978. But, now that Peel is gone, just how the next breed of mavericks is to make itself heard remains anyone’s guess …

John Peel: See, even the great hang posters of their heroes

‘Perhaps it’s possible John can form some kind of nightmarish career out of his enthusiasm for unlistenable records.’

R H J Brooke, Peel’s oh-so-perceptive housemaster at Shrewsbury School, 1956

NOVEMBER

Monday 1 Mac Dre

(Andre Hicks - San Francisco, California, 5 July ‘970)