The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (3 page)

The late, great Rock ‘n’ Roll Trio - Johnny Burnette (centre), flanked by Paul Burlison (who died in 2003) and Dorsey Burnette
(
August 1979)

Likewise,
Patsy Cline
(born Virginia Patterson Hensley in Winchester, Virginia, on 8 September 1932) seemed fated. The Queen of Country had survived a head-on car crash just a year before, but on 5 March 1963, her lover/manager, Randy Hughes, decided they should travel from Kansas City to Nashville in his private Piper Comanche. Shunning sensible advice, Hughes flew Cline and fellow country stars Hawkshaw Hawkins and Cowboy Copas (his father-in-law) into a storm. With conditions worsening by the second, his hopelessly lost craft hit trees at Fatty Bottom, Tennessee. All on board perished; Patsy Cline, it is said, could only be identified by the back-upper-half of her torso.
¹
A year on, country lyricists gained yet more material with the death of
‘Gentleman’ Jim Reeves
(born in Panola County, Texas, on 20 August 1923). By all accounts a far more experienced pilot than Randy Hughes, Reeves nonetheless perished when his Beechcraft Debonair planted itself, him and road manager/pianist ‘Docky’ Dean Manuel in private land on 31 July 1964. A search party of 700 – mostly country singers – attempted to track down the aircraft, only to be beaten to it by a somewhat blunt Tennessee patrolman who described the scene as looking as though ‘someone had dumped a load o’ trash’.

There’s been little before or since, though, to match the dramatic end to the eighteen-month career of
Buddy Holly.
The true original of rock ‘n’ roll was, of course, killed alongside
J P ‘Big Bopper’ Richardson
and
Ritchie Valens
on 3 February 1959 – ‘the day the music died’ (or, perhaps more accurately, the end of rock ‘n’ roll’s age of innocence). Perversely, the chances are that Holly et al could have avoided pop music’s first, and most infamous, major disaster simply by mending a faulty heater in their tour bus. With a sharp north-easterly cutting through them, Holly (born Charles Hardin Holley in Lubbock, Texas, on 7 September 1936) and his new back-up musicians were wearying as the 24-city Winter Dance Party tour dragged on. Other artists on the mammoth bill included new sensation Valens (born Richard Valenzuela in Los Angeles, California, on 13 May 1941), old sensation the Big Bopper (born Jiles Perry Richardson in Sabine Pass, Texas, on 24 October 1930), The Crickets, with whom Holly had recently parted company, Dion & The Belmonts, and Frankie Sardo. Budget restrictions meant all the acts travelled in a rickety old bus, and on one occasion, when its heater broke down, passengers had to burn newspapers to keep from freezing in temperatures below –30° (Holly’s drummer, Carl Bunch, was hospitalized with frostbite as a result). After the 2 February performance at Clearlake, Iowa, Buddy Holly decided he’d had enough and announced his decision to charter an aircraft to the next venue in Fargo, North Dakota. He wanted to arrive in relative comfort, relaxed and with time to spare to launder clothes rendered filthy by the bus. The plane (yes, a 1947 Beechcraft) and pilot were duly hired, though the craft’s small capacity meant spaces were restricted. Holly’s idea, naturally, had been to cater for his own band, but with Richardson running a fever, bassist Waylon Jennings generously gave up his seat to the stocky performer, who was barely accommodated by the coach seating anyway. Holly quipped to his close friend, ‘I hope your ol’ bus freezes over!’, to which Jennings riposted, ‘Well, I hope your plane crashes!’ Both events
did
occur – and this apparently throwaway banter was to haunt Jennings until his death
(
February 2002).
Valens persuaded Holly’s guitarist, Tommy Allsup, to toss a coin for the remaining seat. ‘Heads’ it was: Valens won the seat, Allsup his life.
²

With fog and a blanket of snow following the harsh winds, the Beechcraft took off unsteadily just before 1 am. Visibility would have been poor as it climbed to an altitude of around 800 feet – there were subsequent rumours that the pilot, 21-year-old Roger Petersen, was insufficiently experienced with the craft’s instrumentation in such conditions – and it disappeared from the radar less than five miles out of Mason City Municipal Airport. Once the fog had cleared, at around 9.30, the wreckage of the aircraft was found fifteen miles away in a remote field belonging to farmer Albert Juhl, its right wing having apparently hit the ground, causing it to corkscrew out of control and break up. All three musicians were dead, having been thrown from the plane, itself now little more than a twisted ball of metal. The pilot, also deceased, had somehow remained inside the cockpit. All had suffered injuries so traumatizing that their bodies were virtually unrecognizable: Buddy Holly’s injuries included fractures to virtually every bone, his skull split in two by the impact. Holly’s personal effects retrieved included $193 in cash – from which the coroner reportedly helped himself to his $11.65 fee.
¹
The mercurial performer was buried in the City of Lubbock Cemetery, with more than a thousand mourners paying their respects to the young legend. However, they included neither the band members (offered bonuses to remain on the tour, though allegedly they never received the money), nor Holly’s shattered young wife, Maria Elena Santiago, who had also lost his unborn baby. An early indication of rock’s ability to brush aside such tragedy came with the immediate continuation of the Winter Dance Party, Fargo teenager Bobby Vee stepping into the breach on 3 February, and The Crickets somehow managed to complete the tour.
²
As for Farmer Juhl, for many years he’d be more than happy to show thousands of paying visitors the exact spot where ‘the music died’.

Rumour circulated briefly that a gunshot on board (possibly fired by Holly) might have killed the pilot, but this ludicrous theory has generally been dismissed due to lack of real evidence or, indeed, any motive whatsoever. But there again, what motive did R & B singer
Johnny Ace
have when he put a .22 handgun to his head and pulled the trigger on Christmas Eve 1954? Little more, it seems, than a desire to impress his girlfriend, Olivia, and blues singer ‘Big Mama’ Thornton, his guests backstage as he took a break from the Houston crowd. Olivia on his lap, he put the gun to his head and, chancing upon the one bullet in the chamber, proceeded to blow his brains out. Johnny Ace (born John Marshall Alexander in Memphis, Tennessee, on 9 June 1929) was certified dead on Christmas morning.

Cut to December 1964 – and the darkest tale of pop music’s nascent history. After his initial spate of international hits, soul’s first and brightest talent
Sam Cooke
narrowly escaped death with guitarist Cliff White and young singer Lou Rawls
³
in a 1958 car accident, which had killed their driver, Eddie Cunningham; just months later, his first wife, Dolores, had mysteriously committed suicide at the wheel of her own car. Though these distressing events led to a fracturing of his previously impeccable cool, the 1963 drowning of his baby son, Vincent, in the family swimming pool was to cripple Cooke. It came as relief to many that, back home for Christmas the year after, Sam Cooke (born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, on 22 January 1931) appeared to be in brighter spirits than he had been in months. On 11 December, he and producer Al Schmitt and Schmitt’s wife, Joan, sipped cocktails, waiting for dinner at Martoni’s restaurant in LA, when they were approached by a record-label PR – and a slim 22-year-old Eurasian woman called Elisa Boyer, initially thought by the party to be a young singer. (It transpired, of course, that she was in a somewhat different line of ‘entertainment’.) Their table ready, Cooke turned to pay for the drinks, giving Boyer an opportunity to observe the large amount of cash he had on his person – perhaps five thousand dollars. It became obvious that Cooke was taken with this girl, and he picked distractedly at his starter, disappearing from the table before his main course could be served. By 10.45 pm, Schmitt and his wife had written Cooke off but, spotting him in a private booth with Boyer, suggested that they all met later at PJ’s Club on Sunset Boulevard – by 1.30 am, Cooke hadn’t shown, and they headed home. Finally arriving at the nightspot, Cooke was intoxicated and brash, eventually threatening a man he felt was fraternizing too closely with Boyer; she, disturbed by his behaviour, allegedly then asked him to drive her home. Cooke obliged, though he was clearly in no condition to drive, frightening the girl further by putting his foot down and taking them on to the freeway in his Ferrari. At 2.35 am, the couple arrived at the Hacienda Motel in Figueroa Street, Watts, an inexpensive hostelry that (unlike many of its time) allowed black customers and – crucially – was known as a joint for working girls to take their clients. Equally crucially, Elisa Boyer – according to 55-year-old maître d’ Bertha Franklin (soon to become the significant figure in this unfolding tale) – seemed quiet and unconcerned as she and Cooke entered the establishment. (Indeed, she had waited alone in the car park as Cooke checked for an available room.) Franklin, having put two and two together, suggested the pair check in as husband and wife, and ‘Mr and Mrs Cooke’ repaired to their room. Although details of the rest of the night’s incidents have remained cloudy ever since, Elisa Boyer would insist that Sam Cooke had led her in against her will.
¹
She would also attest that he had locked her into their room, had physically restrained her and attempted to remove her clothing. Whether a sexual assault took place is uncertain – no examination of Boyer was ever made – though Cooke’s apparent desperation still allowed both to use the bathroom, from which Boyer claimed she attempted to climb out via a window. While Cooke was in the bathroom, she made good her escape via the room door, grabbing her own and Cooke’s clothes as she ran, first to Franklin’s connecting apartment and then, failing to rouse the manageress (in deep telephone conversation with the motel’s owner), out on to the street. Sam Cooke, believing Boyer to be hiding in Franklin’s apartment, arrived soon after in just his overcoat, wearing one shoe. When Bertha Franklin understandably refused him entry, Cooke barged the door down and, perhaps believing the maître d’ was in on the scam, demanded to know where Boyer was. The manageress now reportedly escaped his clutches and reached for the pistol she kept on her TV set for ‘such eventualities’. Firing three times at close range, she hit him between two ribs, the fatal bullet passing through his heart and both lungs. Cooke’s final words were, ‘Lady! You shot me!’ The police received two calls, from Elisa Boyer, still on the street and unaware of events since she fled, and from motel-owner Evelyn Carr, who had heard the entire fracas over the phone. But by the time LAPD law-enforcers had arrived at the motel, Sam Cooke was dead.