The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (90 page)

Players as diverse as Dr John, Allen Toussaint and Harry Connick Jr have all paid tribute to one jazz/blues pianist whose unique style inspired them: James Booker. Mastering the piano by the time he was eight years old, Booker (‘JC’ to his friends) was always likely to become one of the genre’s more wayward characters. Aged ten, he was dragged thirty feet by a speeding ambulance in a horrific accident, and very nearly lost his leg; as it was, the eight fractures he received left him with a limp for the rest of his days, while the misplaced administration of painkilling morphine by the vehicle’s paramedics prefaced a later drug dependency. A year on, The Piano Prince of New Orleans had his own gospel slot on WMRY, while at just fourteen, Booker – with his band, The Rhythmaires – became the youngest musician ever to record on Imperial. One of the prodigy’s first jobs was to record Fats Domino’s piano parts so that the constantly touring star need only add his own vocals. In fact, Booker’s mimicking of the styles of top R & B pianists was so uncanny that Chess even employed him to tour as Huey ‘Piano’ Smith. Booker took time out from recording (after difficulties over his age and contracts) to enrol, in 1960, at university in Baton Rouge. However, his drug use became greater and he soon returned to work to support the habit. Throughout the sixties, James Booker recorded with a plethora of top-notch singers and musicians – Little Richard, Wilson Pickett and B B King among them – before a move to New York’s Atlantic Records hooked him up with Jerry Wexler, King Curtis and Aretha Franklin, who recorded Booker’s own ‘So Swell When You’re Well’. Much of the time, though, the pianist was far from ‘well’ – around this time, he lost an eye after getting a beating from some producers he had tried to defraud, though for the flamboyant and openly gay Booker, it was merely an excuse to wear a series of elaborate, glittery eyepatches on stage.

A promising partnership with Dr John was, however, curtailed by Booker’s increasing drug use; the rogue musician then allegedly conned money from the bands of Fats Domino, Joe Tex and even Marvin Gaye before disappearing to New Orleans. Drugs were now a major part of his life, and he was imprisoned for heroin possession for six months in 1971. Although he played sessions for big names like Ringo Starr and The Doobie Brothers, Booker’s better days were slipping into the past. Live, he was still a wondrous experience, but his lifestyle promoted a seizure in 1982 that sounded alarm bells to everyone bar himself. Booker then took the unlikely step of taking a day job as a filing clerk to make ends meet, but he was already on borrowed time. Although doctors had told him that his liver had suffered irreparable damage, Booker took a critical dose of low-grade cocaine which prompted heart and lung failure. James Booker sat unattended for half an hour at Charity Hospital, New Orleans, before staff discovered that the one-time keyboard wizard was already dead.

Badfinger before tragedy: Gibbins, Molland, Ham and Evans

Wednesday 23

Tom Evans

(Liverpool, 5 June 1947)

Badfinger

(The Dodgers)

Protégés of The Beatles, Badfinger must have felt in 1970 that they’d backed a winner signing to The Fab Four’s new Apple imprint. Starting out as The Iveys, Tom Evans (rhythm/bass) and his co-founder, singer and pianist Pete Ham, issued a number of flop singles before Paul McCartney’s ‘Come and Get It’ (1970) changed their fortunes, released under the new name of Badfinger. As The Beatles themselves fell apart, Badfinger appeared to slot into the gap they had left with a series of transatlantic hits, also supporting solo Beatles on their albums. The hits, however, did not last beyond 1972. Legal wrangles between Apple and Badfinger’s management meant that royalties from chart success did not reach the writers, ie, Ham and Evans – the partners could only look on in disbelief as ‘Without You’ (a track from the group’s second album) became an international multiplatinum success for Harry Nilsson. This situation became too much for Pete Ham: the group’s founder first quit the line-up and then, tragically, committed suicide in his garage studio (
April 1975).
Tom Evans was distraught at the death of his close friend and Badfinger disbanded, after which Evans and another bandmate, Bob Jackson, joined The Dodgers – though this was not to last. Having trained as an engineer years earlier, the guitarist cut his losses and returned for a few years to technical drawing – only to reform Badfinger with early collaborator Joey Molland, though two albums (around the turn of the eighties) were badly received.

‘There was no lasting nastiness in Tom, just an ever-growing sadness in the situation he found himself in. Just like Peter [Ham], he was quite a sensitive guy who was easily worn down by the negative pressures put on him.’

Bob Jackson, ex-Badfinger

Depressed by the continuing royalty disputes which had dogged the band’s earlier career (and which had by now caused a massive rift with Molland), Tom Evans emulated his late colleague by hanging himself from a tree in his garden in Weybridge, Surrey. It is widely believed that Evans had also recently been diagnosed with a malignant throat tumour. Like Ham, he left a widow and child.

See also
Mike Gibbins (
October 2005)

DECEMBER

Sunday 18

Jimmy Nolen

(Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 3 April 1934)

James Brown

(The Johnny Otis Show)

(Maceo & All The King’s Men)

An innovator of R & B/funk guitar, Jimmy Nolen, with his distinctive ‘chopped’ seventh and ninth chords, was an influence on many who followed, including Sly Stone, Chic’s Nile Rodgers, most P-Funk practitioners and arguably even Jimi Hendrix, not to mention a slew of rock acts who adopted funk rhythms at the beginning of the eighties. Nolen – one of nine siblings brought up on an Oklahoma farm – grew up listening to T-Bone Walker, which persuaded him to ditch his violin lessons and take up the guitar instead. At nineteen, he joined blues singer Jimmy Wilson’s band on tour, and then settled in Los Angeles. Nolen’s work could be heard on The Johnny Otis Show Top Ten hit, ‘Willie and the Hand Jive’ (1958). The ambitious Nolen then fronted his own unit, eventually impressing James Brown sufficiently that the ‘Godfather’ recruited him in 1965. Perhaps the best-remembered example of Nolen’s work is one of the first recorded with Brown – the classic ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag’ (1965). Despite a two-year break touring with sax-player Maceo Parker, Nolen stayed loyal to Brown and his various incarnations until he died from a heart attack at the age of forty-nine.

Tuesday 27

Walter Scott

(Walter Notheis Jr - St Louis, Missouri, 7 February 1943)

Bob Kuban & The InMen

Here’s an interesting one: lead singer of one-hit-wonder act from the sixties enjoys national hit about marital infidelity – only to fall foul of similar real-life scenario.

Bob Kuban’s band The InMen had been a going concern for a short while before the arrival of singer ‘Sir’ Walter Scott appeared to be the last piece of the jigsaw. His dynamic vocal style gave the band an edge, and, in 1966, the eight-strong St Louis pop act appeared to have cracked the big time with the infectious hit ‘(Look out for) The Cheater’: the song, which warned of the dangers of having an affair, took the band high into Billboard’s Hot 100. For some reason, Scott decided fame wasn’t for him and walked away from it to front a local band, touring covers throughout the seventies. Success wasn’t to be repeated for The InMen, so perhaps it was the right move, though Scott and Kuban reconciled to perform once again for the TV cameras early in 1983 – which worked so well that the pair began planning for a twentieth anniversary reunion for the whole band the following June. By now Scott was divorced from his unfaithful wife, JoAnn.