The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (386 page)

Tuesday 23

Marva Wright

(New Orleans, Louisiana, 20 March 1948)

(Various acts)

‘Marvalous’ Marva Wright had been ‘Blues Queen’ to her loyal fans in New Orleans well before she belatedly became a household name. A one-time friend of blues/gospel legend Mahalia Jackson, Wright had been singing for thirty years before a record deal came her way. For her belated fame, she credited her mother–a respected gospel pianist and singer herself–for pushing her to improve her voice.

Wright was ‘discovered’ when working as a school secretary, the singer initially only having taken club bookings to bolster her family income. Her performances at the fabled Tipitina’s venue, however, became the stuff of legend, Wright covering everything from sombre gospel to bawdy, full-on blues workouts. Finally, she was invited into a studio for a first recording, ‘Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean’, (1989) by which time the singer was already into her forties. Recognition came to Wright for her debut album,
Heartbreak-in’ Woman
(Tipitina, 1990), which displayed her voice to good effect while perhaps not pushing the artist to the lengths of which she was clearly more than capable. (This nonetheless won the Louisiana Music Critics Association’s Album Of The Year and helped Wright to a highprofile performance during the 1991 Superbowl.) The follow-up
Born With the Blues
(1993) was more the ticket, a broader-ranging affair that was finally issued on a major label (Virgin) in 1996. Marva Wright was now in the big league, touring the world and regularly requested for performances by the likes of Allen Toussaint, Joe Cocker, Lou Rawls and her hero, Fats Domino. Her time at the top, however, was destined to be short.

The singer–not in the best of health for some time–suffered the first of several strokes in the early summer of 2009, passing away suddenly at her daughter’s New Orleans home just three days after her 62
^nd
birthday. According to her longtime manager, Adam Shipley, ‘Marva Wright truly was, and will remain, the Blues Queen of New Orleans.’

Golden Oldies #109

Johnny Maestro

(John Mastrangelo–Manhattan, New York, 7 May 1939)

The Crests

The Del-Satins

Johnny Maestro & The Brooklyn Bridge

In 1957, group founder J T Carter sought a powerful male lead to bolster his interracial act The Crests–and golden-voiced Johnny Maestro became the man to change the fortunes of the doo-wop-styled five-piece. A year into his tenure, The Crests (who at one stage also featured Patricia Van Dross, the elder sister of Luther) recorded a million-selling smash with ‘16 Candles’ (1958, US number two; US R & B Top Five), a tune that has become a perennial favourite, not to mention a doo-wop standard. Signed to Coed Records, The Crests went on to score further
Cash Box
hits with Maestro, most notably ‘Step By Step’ and ‘Trouble in Paradise’, both of which found Top Twenty berths in 1960. Their success, however, was mainly restricted to the tour circuit.

Maestro was encouraged to leave for a solo career shortly after the latter recordings, the singer bagging a trio of 1961 hits in ‘Model Girl’, ‘What a Surprise’ and ‘Mr Happiness’–which nonetheless featured his Crests pals’ supporting voices. Maestro went on to front New York harmony group The Del-Satins, previously a post-Belmonts backing group for singer Dion. The nucleus of this latest combo then merged with The Rhythm Method (who were probably happily rid of that name) to become Johnny Maestro & The Brooklyn Bridge in 1967. ‘The Bridge’ debuted on
The Ed Sullivan Show
in late 1968, the host famously mispronouncing Maestro’s name. However, in this guise the lead singer was to enjoy another huge-seller with the tremendous Jimmy Webb heartstring-tugger ‘The Worst That Could Happen’ (1968) which made US number three in the early spring of 1969. The popularity of this record accounted for much of the group’s ten-million record sales to 1972.

Although his band couldn’t repeat this success, Johnny Maestro continued to tour for many years with The Brooklyn Bridge before his death from cancer on 24 March 2010 at his Cape Coral, Florida home.

‘There were three blacks, one Puerto Rican … and I was the Eye-talian.’

Johnny Maestro remembers The Crests

Van Dross preceded her brother in death by several years, passing away from diabetes in 2003, while another Crest, Hal Torres, is also deceased. Long-serving Del-Satins and Brooklyn Bridge singer Freddie Ferrara passed away in October 2011.

Golden Oldies #110

John Ciambotti

(Mill Valley, California, 6 September 1942)

Clover

(Various acts)

A qualified chiropractor, John Ciambotti was originally more widely known as the bass guitarist with Bay Area country-rockers Clover. The band had had little success until hooking up with emerging UK musician and writer Elvis Costello, whom they backed on his highly regarded debut,
My Aim is True
(1977). Prior to this, Clover had issued three albums and countless singles on Fantasy and Mercury, without much recognition. The group, however, split into two in 1978, with later members including most of the line-up of eighties poprock heavyweights Huey Lewis & The News. Ciambotti meanwhile found his services in great demand from modern country artists including Lucinda Williams and Carlene Carter.

Surprisingly, having tired of the business, Ciambotti later turned down an opportunity to replace the departing Bill Wyman in The Rolling Stones, instead choosing to study medicine before instigating his own holistic practice in Toluca Lake, California. Dr John Ciambotti–who died in Glendale from an abdominal aneurysm on 25 March 2010– is survived by his daughter, the singer and musician Gia Ciambotti.

See also
Jeff Porcaro (
August 1992); Norton Buffalo (
October 2009). (Both were later contributors to Clover.)

APRIL

Thursday 8

Malcolm McLaren

(Stoke Newington, London, 22 January 1946)

(Various acts)

On this day ‘the man who invented British punk’ was no more. Entrepreneur, musical impresario and circus ringmaster Malcolm McLaren died in a Swiss hospital from mesothelioma, the news coming as a final, unwelcome shock to the many familiar with the man’s propensity for surprise. However, that first-line quote can be attributed to the man himself, for, in reality, McLaren was closer to an old-fashioned opportunist who simply happened to have his eye on the ball and his ear to the ground far more efficiently than most of his contemporaries. But this isn’t to say that McLaren was without talent: in addition to the above, he could also lay claim to being a successful musician, artist, designer and film-maker who knew how to keep his name sufficiently encamped in the public domain whatever the trends.

McLaren was brought up by his grandmother, herself the highly unconventional daughter of Portuguese diamond-dealers, his father (a World War II deserter) having left the family before the boy was three years old. While ‘efficient’ at school, McLaren baulked at the restrictions of conventional education. He first gained public notoriety as a nomad art student (McLaren was registered with at least five different colleges) who presented himself as part of the Situationist movement alongside his friend Robin Scott (later the ‘M’ of ‘Pop Muzik’ fame): the duo’s variety of public stunts ‘for social change’ greatly influenced McLaren’s career. Then, in 1971, McLaren opened the Chelsea, London alternative clothes shop
Let It Rock,
which, managed with his girlfriend, the designer Vivienne Westwood, was renamed
Sex
in 1974. The shop is now recognised as the original meeting point for The Sex Pistols. Before he sprang the Pistols on the world, however, McLaren had talked himself into managing The New York Dolls, styling America’s ‘glam-punk Rolling Stones’ to his own whim–which ultimately saw them dressed as transgender Maoist Red Guards. Needless to say, this wasn’t to America’s taste, but the group’s lack of commercial success bothered Malcolm McLaren not a jot. He’d watched, he’d listened and he’d taken note. By 1975, the would-be svengali was sufficiently influenced by the US punk scene to create his own ‘showband’ in the UK. Which he then did, to extraordinary effect.