The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (47 page)

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Katie Webster

She was the queen of swamp boogie, but full-throated Katie Webster (Kathryn Jewel Thorne) might have had her career curtailed by the tragedy that killed the legendary Otis Redding and most of The Bar-Kays (
December 1967)
. Her mastery of barrelhouse piano and earthy vocal prompted Redding to book Webster for his tours as early as 1964 - but her 1967 pregnancy prevented her being allowed to fly with his entourage three years later. Webster’s devastation turned to disbelief as news broke of the terrible air crash that had taken a soul-music great. Taking a career break after the tragedy (and the birth of her child), she returned to become a force in Europe during the eighties. Katie Webster eventually passed on from heart failure in 1999.

Lest We Forget

Other notable deaths that occurred sometime during 1976:

Tom Baird
(US keyboardist with sixties Pacific-Northwest act The Classics who went on to produce and arrange artists including Diana Ross; born British Columbia, 27/4/1943; boating accident, 25/2)

Anthony ‘Duster’ Bennett
(UK bluesrock singer/musician who worked with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and Fleetwood Mac; born Welshpool, 23/9/1946; car crash after he fell asleep at the wheel, 26/3)

Floyd Council
(US bluesman known as ‘Dipper Boy’ who also inspired the name Pink Floyd; born North Carolina, 2/9/1911; cardiac arrest, 9/5)

Count Ossie
(Jamaican leader of Mystic Revelation of Rastafari who recorded the original ‘Oh Carolina’ with Prince Buster; born Oswald Williams, St Thomas, 3/1928; car crash/crushed to death, 18/10)

Jesse ‘Lone Cat’ Fuller
(US blues guitarist; born Georgia, 12/3/1896; heart disease, 29/1)

Howlin’ Wolf
(highly influential US Delta-blues guitarist; born Chester Arthur Bennett, Mississippi, 10/6/1910; kidney failure, 10/1)

Johnny Will Hunter
(US drummer with Memphis band The Hombres, who charted in 1967 with ‘Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out)’, and The Cavaliers; born
c
1940; suicide by gunshot)

Jimmy Reed
(much-referenced US blues guitarist; born Matthias James Reed Leeland, Mississippi, 6/9/1925; respiratory failure exacerbated by epilepsy, 29/8)

Paul Robeson
(legendary US gospel singer and black rights activist; born New Jersey, 9/4/1898; stroke, after living in seclusion for ten years, 23/1)

Fred ‘Fudgie Kae’ Solomon
(US rock/R & B/funk bassist/singer with the popular Mandrill; born Manhattan, New York, 20/12/46; heart attack)

Victoria Spivey
(US blues singer; born Texas, 15/10/1906; internal haemorrhaging, 3/10)

1977

FEBRUARY

Saturday 26

Sherman Garnes

(The Bronx, New York, 8 June 1940)

Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers

(The Premiers)

Garnes was a lanky, basketball-loving
basso profundo
whose music career began when he met tenor Jimmy Merchant while the boys were ninth-graders at New York’s Edward W Stitt Junior High School. Both strong singers, they formed The Earth Angels before Garnes introduced Herman Santiago (second tenor) and Joey Negroni (baritone) into the mix, creating a quartet called The Premiers (also known at various times as The Coup de Villes and The Ermines). The band only became classic vocal troupe The Teenagers once streetwise young upstart Frankie Lymon – who only just qualified – had joined the fray. The Teenagers fast-tracked to major-league success (Garnes’s throaty ‘doom-a-de-doom’ kickstarts platinum 1956 ‘sig tune’ ‘Why Do Fools Fall in Love?’) but their time in the spotlight was predictably short. Garnes – who’d not even had the chance to complete his schooling –was offered litde more than $1,000 as a pay-off at the end of 1958.

Within ten years former Teenagers had seen their lead singer die prematurely of a heroin overdose (
February 1968).
By the end of the next decade two more would join him: long out of the music-business limelight, Garnes died while undergoing open heart surgery. Negroni survived him by just over eighteen months
(
September 1978).

MAY

Tuesday 3

Helmut Köllen

(Cologne, Germany, 17 April 1940)

Triumvirat

Contributing one of the year’s more organized departures, singer and guitarist Köllen committed suicide by carbon-monoxide poisoning, sitting in his garage listening to his band’s tapes on the car stereo. Köllen had made something of a name for himself in the Euro-prog market of the early to mid seventies; Triumvirat’s bestselling album was 1975’s
Spartacus [sic].
He left the following year, however, to pursue a less-successful solo career, which may or may not have led to his untimely demise in his home town.

See also
Doug Fieger (
February 2010)

Tuesday 10

Gene Mumford

(Eugene Mumford - North Carolina, 24 June 1925)

Billy Ward & The Dominoes

The Ink Spots

The Larks

(The Jubilators/Selah Jubilee Singers)

(Golden Gate Quartet)