The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (9 page)

Lest We Forget

Other notable deaths that occurred sometime during 1966:

Henry Booth
(US tenor vocalist with R & B acts The Royals - alongside Jackie Wilson - and The Midnighters; born Alabama, 7/3/1934; believed shot dead during a fight)

Bill Gillum
(US bluesman; born William McGinlay Gillum, Mississippi, 11/9/1904; shot in the head during an argument in Chicago, 29/3)

Mississippi John Hurt
(US bluesman; born Mississippi (obviously), 3/7/1893; heart attack, 2/11)

Helen Kane
(US singer/writer/actress/costumier, best known as the Queen of Boop-boop-a-doop and a likely influence on Marilyn Monroe; born New York, 4/8/1903; unknown, 26/9)

Harry C McAuliffe
(US country/crossover singer known as ‘Big Slim the Lone Cowboy’; born in West Virginia, 9/5/1903; unknown, 13/10)

Lucius Millinder
(influential US jump-blues bandleader; born Alabama, 8/8/1900; liver failure, 28/9)

Jessie Mae Robinson
(US blues singer/songwriter whose tunes have been recorded by Dinah Washington, Bing Crosby, Louis Jordan and T-Bone Walker, among others; born Call, Texas, 1/10/1919; illness, 26/10)

Billy Rose
(US songwriter/composer who wrote ‘Does the Spearmint Lose Its Flavour?’ among other such delights; born William Rosenberg, New York, 6/9/1899; contracted pneumonia in Jamaica, and died 10/2)

Will Shade
(US bluesman and part of The Memphis Jug Band; born Will Brimmer, Mississippi, 5/2/1898; pneumonia, 18/9)

Carter Stanley
(US bluegrass singer with The Stanley Brothers; born Virginia, 27/8/1925; cirrhosis of the liver, 1/12)

Washboard Sam
(US bluesman; born Robert Brown, Arkansas, 15/7/1910; heart disease, 6/11)

Slim Willet
(US country guitarist/writer whose ‘Don’t Let the Stars (Get in Your Eyes)’ was a chart-topper for Perry Como in 1953; born Texas, 1/12/1919; heart failure, 1/7)

1967

JANUARY

Tuesday 27

Luigi Tenco

(Cassine, Italy, 21 March 1938)

Luigi Tenco wanted success, whatever the cost, but he was a troubled man who suffered at the hands of the critics as well as in his brief personal life. Tenco never knew his father, who died months before his birth, leaving his mother to bring up both Luigi and his older brother alone. He struggled to settle in his studies and early career before his love of singing drove him to form bands with his friends. Tenco was never the strongest vocal performer in the pop/jazz/ballad arena in which he worked, thus it was his more marked talent as a
cantautore
(‘singing author’) and arranger that eventually brought him some attention on the Italian music scene. Tenco was also classically handsome, his dark, moody charm eventually wooing former Miss Egypt and, by then, highly rated singer Dalida; in 1966, their mutual label RCA introduced the pair as potential duet partners. Tenco and Dalida fell hopelessly in love and decided on a unique performance for the upcoming San Remo Festival, an annual contest to determine Italy’s finest popular songs and writers: they were to perform together, each offering a version of the chosen ballad, Tenco’s own
‘Ciaoo, Amore, Ciad.
The couple even announced an April wedding to garner maximum press interest. He was a passionate, ambitious newcomer; she a beautiful, talented songstress – how could they fail?

Well, the answer perhaps lies in Luigi Tenco’s misplaced self-belief. He had talent for sure, but his temperament and high opinion of his mediocre voice would ultimately cost him. While Dalida’s rendition of the song won her applause, Tenco’s did not; Tenco, Dalida and the song were eliminated in the first round. The by-now totally wired Tenco – who had drunk heavily and taken a number of tranquilizers before his performance – flew into a rage and, against Dalida’s wishes, began berating the judges as corrupt and the whole festival as meaningless. Unable to deal with such public rejection, Tenco snubbed the subsequent dinner, stormed back to their room at the Hotel Savoja and locked himself in. By 2.15 am Dalida, who
had
attended the celebrations, returned, concerned that she was unable to summon her lover. She found Tenco splayed out across the floor, with a gun at his side. An almost illegible note ‘explained’ his frustration at the world and his desire to ‘show them all’ – but Dalida wasn’t convinced by the handwriting. Why would Tenco take his own life because of what to her seemed little more than a setback? Until her own death, Dalida remained convinced that he had been the victim of a conspiracy; indeed, she was to suffer an extraordinary series of partner suicides, three of her lovers taking their own lives before, sadly, she too followed suit
(
May 1987).

Popular Italian singer and 2002 San Remo Festival discovery Valentina Giovagnini died in a Siena car accident in January 2009.

FEBRUARY

Friday 3

Joe Meek

(Robert George Meek - Newent, Gloucestershire, 5 April 1929)

How a producer with the vision of Joe Meek made it happen in the staid world of late-fifties UK recording is nothing short of a miracle. That this maverick’s life ended in the shocking, dramatic way that it did is, however, more in keeping with the script.

One of three brothers brought up in rural Newent, Robert George ‘Joe’ Meek was not an outdoor type like his older siblings, preferring to spend time in a garden shed dabbling with wireless sets and gramophone equipment than climb trees. A boy with tastes that generally separated him from his peers, Meek – perhaps showing more business nous than at times during his adult life – would charge locals to watch him perform musical plays as a variety of characters, both male and female. The knock-on from these interests saw him engineering hit records at IBC for Lonnie Donegan (‘Cumberland Gap’) and Frankie Vaughan (‘Green Door’) by the age of twenty-five – despite being completely tone deaf. Wishing in vain to utilize effects such as homemade instrumentation, foot-stomps instead of bass drums and reverb in his records, Meek left IBC to become the first notable producer to lease his tapes to a variety of major labels. Few at this time realized he was recording many acts at his flat – merely a few rooms above a leather-goods outlet on North London’s Holloway Road. Despite this, a 1960 Top Ten hit with Michael Cox’s whimsical ‘Angela Jones’ on his short-lived Triumph Records was just a precursor to some extraordinary successes; British pop music was on the verge of major transformation and Meek was responsible for much of it in this pre-Beatles era. If the glorious ‘Johnny Remember Me’ by actor John Leyton was a pioneering 1961 effort that brought considerable attention, The Tornados’ 1962 communication-satellite overture ‘Telstar’ appeared to seal matters globally. This record was the first British hit to top the US chart – despite being dismissed by Germanborn bassist Heinz Burt as ‘crap’ on first playback. (It was later dubiously honoured as a favourite of Margaret Thatcher.)

The brilliant Joe Meek: Often a little behind with his rent

Joe Meek’s personal world was seldom functional, however. An unseemly incident and arrest for ‘importuning’ (the term then used for ‘soliciting’) broke the news of Meek’s sexuality to his family in 1963, although it had been an open secret within the industry for some time. A series of blackmail attempts by previous partners resulted, which only fired the latent paranoia of a man who was now experimenting with pills and hallucinogenics which intensified his belief that others were pilfering his gimmicks. One of his charges – Screaming Lord Sutch, whose schoolboy schlock-horror set pieces were ideal vehicles for the producer’s whims – was taken into a corridor to discuss business because Meek thought the entire flat had been bugged in his absence. In the event, none of Sutch’s records ever gave Meek a hit anyway, and it was French composer Jean Ledrut who threatened
him
with legal action, claiming he’d pilfered the melody for ‘Telstar’ (though Meek’s family were to win the legal battle for ownership of the song in 1968). It made little difference: Meek’s business acumen was virtually non-existent, and as the decade grew he was owed money, in debt and falling behind the twin stables of The Beatles/The Stones and their various coat-tailers. By 1967, a long, long time since his last major hit (The Honeycombs’ rousing 1964 number one ‘Have I the Right?’), Meek was fast becoming an anachronism in an industry that was picking up pace at frightening speed. His moods began to fluctuate wildly, and he was soon taking prescription medication for depression.