Tonight is Quentin Tarantino Night on American Idol, and we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the passing of Delfonics founder Randy Cain (left), considering the Delfonics figured so heavily into the most charming scenes of QT’s Jackie Brown. The Delfonics were one of the first Philadelphia soul bands, and the perfect harmonies and dramatic… More »
Dan Seals, ’70s soft-rock one-hit wonder and ’80s country star, died on Wednesday after a struggle with mantle cell lymphoma. There aren’t too many second acts in popular music, but after one very big song (the No. 2 hit “I’d Really Love To See You Tonight”) and a few other top ten singles as “England… More »
At 5 p.m. yesterday, Pylon guitarist Randall “Randy” Bewley passed away, and my beloved hometown of Athens is a lot poorer for it. Randy contributed to our town in multiple ways, as a member of a legendary band, as an elementary school art teacher, and as a father of two, an all-around great guy by… More »
Rickey Wright, music critic and all-around genius, died of a stroke in Seattle on Thursday. I didn’t know Rickey personally—I followed his byline and occasionally ran into him online in one way—but if you take just a few minutes to read about him today online, it’s easy to see how his death has affected people… More »
Estelle Bennett of the Ronettes was found dead in her New Jersey home on Wednesday. Although her sister Ronnie Bennett (later Spector) was the girl group’s star, Estelle and her cousin Nedra were undeniably part of its massive vocal presence on the group’s string of hits from 1963 to 1965, not to mention its tough-girl… More »
Blossom Dearie, a jazz singer with an insousciant, kittenlike voice, passed away from natural causes over the weekend. Dearie’s career stretched from Paris cabarets to her establishing her own label, and her discography—which included a few tracks about grammar and multiplication tables that aired on ABC’s Schoolhouse Rock! in the 1970s—is about a mile long. More »
Legendary steel guitar player Tom Brumley passed away Tuesday after a heart attack. The son of Albert E. Brumley, who wrote the classic spiritual “I’ll Fly Away”, Brumley’s clean style made him a hero within the steel guitar community. … More »
Cramps frontman Lux Interior passed away yesterday morning in Glendale, Calif., from complications stemming from an existing heart condition. Interior, real name Erick Lee Purkhiser, founded the Cramps with his wife Poison Ivy (née Kristy Wallace) in 1973, and they quickly became fixtures of New York’s emerging punk scene after playing their first CBGB show… More »
Chameleonlike English folk singer John Martyn, perhaps most known for his work with echoplex guitar delays, has passed away. Born Iain David McGeachy, he was a member of the vibrant late-’60s/early-’70s English folk scene that spawned Nick Drake (a friend of Martyn’s), Jackson C. Frank, and Fairport Convention, among others. Though Martyn enjoyed acclaim,… More »
Music biz veteran Gary Kurfirst passed away on Tuesday while vacationing in the Bahamas. While the name might not ring an immediate bell, Kurfirst was a jack-of-all-trades, starting up the New York Rock Festival when he was 20 (headliners: Janis Joplin, Hendrix, the Who, and the Doors). He signed Shirley Manson (and therefore Garbage) and… More »
Ron Asheton, guitarist for the legendary Stooges, was found dead in his Ann Arbor, Mich., home this morning. Asheton certainly performed with a number of acts between 1973 (when Raw Power, when he was bumped to bass guitar in the Stooges was released) and 2007 (when the Stooges reunited for The Weirdness), but in the… More »
“There are so many little dyings that it doesn’t matter which of them is death,” wrote esteemed poet/ author Kenneth Patchen. Yet the accrual of such dying over the course of a calendar year belies such “little”ness. As we nudge into the 21st century, the luminaries of the previous one begin to wane, the architects… More »
