The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (4 page)

Johnny Ace: Make that one less for Christmas dinner …

The legendary Sam Cooke: He sent us - we sent him back too soon

Within days, a seven-member coroner’s jury ruled that the shooting constituted ‘justifiable homicide’ – and the case itself open and shut. Various details had been sketchy, many more glossed over from the start, prompting riots outside the motel and in other parts of the city. Why had Boyer fled with Cooke’s clothes? What had become of the considerable amount of money in his possession? Following her husband’s death, Barbara Cooke – perhaps controversially – chose not to pursue any further investigation, according to her, in deference to her young family; according to others, to protect long-term posthumous record sales, should the story become even less savoury. At her husband’s enormously attended Los Angeles funeral, Barbara showed up with his friend, singer Bobby Womack – and had dressed her new beau entirely from Cooke’s wardrobe. Although the full facts will never be unearthed, Sam Cooke’s is perhaps an appropriately murky saga to set us up for the battered pages to follow from rock’s diary of disasters …

Guide to Main Entries

MONTH

Day/date

Artist

(details of birth)

Band
^*

(Other main acts where artist appeared)
^*

Symbol - see below

The body of the text contains the artist’s biography and details of the story behind his/her death. Arrows within the text indicate connected artists (
past entry)
or (
future entry).
(Lest We Forget dates are in British format ie, date/month/year.)

*
if applicable

¹
At the time of her death, the bedridden Billie Holiday had been placed under house arrest for possession of narcotics. It is believed she had $700 strapped to her leg, the advance for her autobiography,
Lady Sings the Blues.

¹
Some (Stuart Sutcliffe’s mother among them) suggest that his death was actually promoted by a recent fall downstairs, belying the obvious fact that he’d experienced medical problems earlier than 1962. Others point to genetic disorders. Both beliefs are considerably less likely.

¹
Belvin, who had notified his family of the hostile reception he and other artists had encountered on the tour, had reportedly received at least six death threats from anti-black organizations. The truth behind the crash was fudged for ever, though, when it emerged that Shackleford may have fallen asleep at the wheel and indeed that another car had been involved – in which at least two passengers were also killed.

²
It was reported in the early nineties that Martin – dubbed ‘the man who killed Eddie’ – was
still
regularly being roughed up by Teds in his West Country home town.

¹
A Virginian country DJ was severely reprimanded for clumsily playing Cline’s ‘I Fall to Pieces’ in her honour following the break-ing news. Meanwhile, not-to-be-outdone country star Jack Anglin was killed in a car crash as he made his way to her funeral. Sometime Cline collaborator Benjamin Simpson died piloting his own light aircraft in December 2008.

²
Allsup opened a club in Texas named ‘The Heads-Up Saloon’ in tribute to his extreme good fortune that day.

¹
In 1980, Holly’s other retrieved belongings, his spectacles and poker dice, along with the Big Bopper’s watch, were returned to their families after turning up in an envelope at the county courthouse where they had remained for over twenty years. The glasses now reside in the Buddy Holly Center, Lubbock – which also contains artefacts like the public telephone from which all three deceased performers made final calls.

²
In the wake of Holly’s death, the next two Crickets’ singers also suffered horrific fatalities. His replacement for the tour, Ronnie Smith (born in 1935), hanged himself in October 1962; next, David Box (born in Sulphur Springs, Texas, on 11 August 1943) would die along with a later band in an air crash morbidly reminiscent of Holly’s, on 23 October 1964. (A man often touted as a future Cricket – he’d recorded both one of their songs and one of Holly’s – was garage rocker Bobby Fuller. He died in extremely suspicious circumstances
(
July 1966).)

³
Grammy-winning singer Lou Rawls died of cancer in the second week of 2006
(
Golden Oldies #31
).

¹
Boyer – who had told the police she was ‘unemployed’ – also attested that she had never visited the motel before. This was proven untrue, as evidence showed that she had used the joint regularly with her clients. She was also found to be in possession of a ‘black book’ containing the numbers of various Hollywood bigwigs, precipitating talk of a much-less-likely ‘set-up’ conspiracy.

1965

JANUARY

Wednesday 20

Alan Freed

(Johnstown, Pennsylvania, 15 December 1921)

The DJ widely believed to have coined the phrase ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ actually began as a jazz trombonist with a band called Sultans of Swing (thereby also providing a name for a much-later Dire Straits hit). Freed became the first broadcaster to break down the obvious barriers and play so-called ‘race’ music to a largely white audience when he took to the air full-time with an R & B show for the WJW station in Cleveland. Moving to the more upbeat WINS in New York, Freed – now restyled as ‘Moondog’ – exposed young teenagers to the likes of Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, while bravely refusing to play the white covers of black hits his programmers suggested. This forward thinking made him a sitting target for the prejudices of the era’s conservatives and racists.