The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (85 page)

An unusual character who did not believe in investment, Kwaku-Baah spent his not inconsiderable wealth, owning several expensive properties and automobiles by the time he died. His impetuousness did not end there, either: in 1973 Kwaku-Baah was imprisoned for three months for assaulting two police officers and a cab driver.

The drummer’s death from a cerebral haemorrhage while on stage in Stockholm stunned the music world. Reebop Kwaku-Baah’s final work had been the hypnotic, throbbing 1982 ‘ethno-dancefloor’ favourite ‘Masimbabele’ with The Unknown Cases – a single that was only released posthumously with his family’s permission.

See also
Chris Wood (
July 1983); Rie Grech (
March 1990); Michael Karoli (
November 2001); Jim Capaldi (
January 2005)

Friday 21

Lamar Williams

(Gulfport, Mississippi, 14 January 1949)

The Allman Brothers Band

Sea Level (We Three)

Lamar Williams became the latest casualty in the long-running saga that was The Allman Brothers Band. The tragic – and remarkably similar – deaths of celebrated founder Duane Allman (
October 1971)
and original bassist Berry Oakley (
November 1972)
had etched the group’s legacy deep in stone before the death of second bassist Williams added to the sad mystique of this truly original band.

Two months after Oakley’s passing, longtime percussionist ‘Jaimoe’ Johanny Johanson recommended a friend of his for the new role – that friend was Lamar Williams, an exVietnam veteran who specialized in traditional R & B. The album
Brothers and Sisters
(1973) was in mid-construction when Oakley rode out on his Triumph for the last time, and – with dark fortune – Williams’s input gave the band’s by-now-familiar sound a warmth it mightn’t otherwise have possessed. September/October 1973 saw a commercial high for the bereaved band, with the album topping the US charts for five weeks and the culled single ‘Ramblin’ Man’ very nearly emulating it, while another group standard, Dick Betts’s ‘Jessica’ (yes, the
Top Gear
theme) seemed cut from much the same cloth. While middle America embraced the easier-going, more radio-friendly sound, hardcore Brothers fans felt the music was not true to the roots of the uncompromising unit they’d grown to worship.

It was an Indian summer: with Betts and Greg Allman beginning solo careers, the band had started to fragment by 1976. Williams and band members Johanson and keyboardist Chuck Leavell (already recording as We Three) formed Sea Level with guitarist Jimmy Nalls – eventually pitching four albums of well-crafted jazz/R & B-tinged rock to Capitol. Williams and Leavell then astonished everyone by refusing to return to The Allman Brothers when the group made its inevitable comeback in 1979. This was Lamar Williams’s last major move: he had been diagnosed with cancer, believed to have been caused by exposure to Agent Orange while serving in Vietnam. He died at home in Los Angeles.

See also
Allen Woody (
August
2000)

Friday 28

Billy Fury

(Ronald Wycherley - Wavertree, Liverpool, 17 April 1941)

Billy Fury used his brief time well, particularly since bouts of crippling rheumatic fever (he was hospitalized at age six and again at sixteen) had damaged young Ron Wycherley’s heart. He shrugged off illness at seventeen to work the tugboats on the Mersey – thus exposing himself to the music arriving across the ocean as rock ‘n’ roll’s fire began to spread from the USA. Already a decent musician – he had learned both piano and guitar – Wycherley attempted to copy the slurred vocal of Elvis Presley, somehow impressing pop figurehead Larry Parnes. The months between October 1958 and May 1959 were extraordinary: hoping to offload two compositions on Marty Wilde, Wycherley was instead given a slot on Parnes’s ‘Extravaganza Show’, immediately electrifying the Birkenhead crowd and others with his dazzling appearance and his own songs – the latter something of a rarity then. The only aspect that jarred was his name, but Parnes had the solution to that: he already had Marty Wilde, Vince Eager, Duffy Power and Dickie Pride – so why not ‘Billy Fury’?

Fury’s enviable chart career began with his own ‘Maybe Tomorrow’ for Decca in February 1959, sparking a remarkable run of twenty-four Top Forty UK entries during the sixties – a figure matched only by The Beatles. (Oddly, Fury never managed a number one, though ‘Jealousy’ would miss by just one place.) But Fury’s medical history could not be ignored. In December 1971, a second heart attack saw the singer undergo major bypass surgery at just thirty. His ill health had already caused appearances to be cancelled, which proved seriously detrimental to his career. By this time Fury was with Parlophone, the hits having pretty much deserted him along with his health – and a four-year marriage to model Judith Hall also faltered in 1973. But all was far from lost: a revival in rock ‘n’ roll kitsch that year saw the likes of David Essex and Alvin Stardust score hits – and landed Fury a part in the former’s film vehicle,
That’ll be the Day.
Five Fury tracks also adorned a charttopping soundtrack album.