Endless Sleep - The Obituary Thread

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“The best songwriter I ever saw” — Steve Earle

Not known by every country, blues, and Americana fan, but cherished deeply by the ones who did, songwriter and performer Bap Kennedy took his cross-Atlantic enthusiasm for roots music and became one of the most well-respected musicians and songwriters by his peers ranging from Nashville to Belfast during his nearly 40-year career.

A diverse and accomplished songwriter, Bap Kennedy began his career in punk and rock bands such as Sellout and 10 Past 7 in the late 70’s and early 80’s, blowing out eardrums in his hometown of Belfast before heading to London to pursue music more seriously. It was there that Kennedy helped establish the band Energy Orchard that for nearly a decade was a mainstay of the London live scene, opening up for many of the touring artists passing through London in the day.

Bap Kennedy’s experience in Energy Orchard put him in contact with American artists such as Steve Earle, and opened up and entirely new influence of country and roots music that he would call upon after Energy Orchard disbanded in 1996. Shortly after the breakup, Bap set out to record a solo record, and Steve Earle signed on as producer and guru. Recorded in Nashville, Domestic Blues featured contributions from folks such as Jerry Douglas, Nanci Griffith, and Peter Rowan, and became a favorite among the burgeoning Americana crowd when it was released in 1998.

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Mose Allison, a pianist, singer and songwriter who straddled modern jazz and Delta blues, belonging to both styles even as he became a touchstone for British Invasion rockers and folksy troubadours, died on Tuesday at his home in Hilton Head, S.C. He was 89.

His death was confirmed by the singer and songwriter Amy Allison, his daughter.

Mr. Allison began his professional career as a piano player, at a time when his style — percussive and jaunty, carried along by a percolating beat — suited the sound of the jazz mainstream. In addition to leading his own trio, he worked with some of the major small-group bandleaders of the late 1950s, including the saxophonists Stan Getz and Gerry Mulligan.

But he found greater success, and a singular niche, as a singer of his plain-spoken, pungently observant songs, beginning in the early ’60s. For the next 50 years he worked almost exclusively as the leader of his own groups.

Mr. Allison used his cool, clear voice to conversational effect, with an easy blues inflection that harked back to his upbringing in rural Mississippi. Backing himself at the piano, he favored a loose call and response between voice and instrument, or between right and left hands, often taking tangents informed by the complex harmonies and rhythmic feints of bebop. His artistic persona, evident in his stage manner as well as his songs, suggested a distillation of folk wisdom in a knowing but unpretentious package.

He was especially revered by 1960s English rockers who idolized the blues, and who saw in his example an accessible ideal. John Mayall recorded “Parchman Farm,” Mr. Allison’s ironic adaptation of a prison blues; so did the English rhythm-and-blues singer Georgie Fame. Other songs by Mr. Allison found their way onto albums by the Yardbirds, the Kinks and the Clash. The Who based their world-beating anthem “My Generation” partly on his “Young Man Blues,” which the band also featured as the opening track on its 1970 album, “Live at Leeds.”

Mr. Allison’s tunes were covered almost as widely by his fellow Americans, including the blues artists Paul Butterfield and Johnny Winter, the country-soul singer Bobbie Gentry and, more recently, the jazz vocalist and pianist Diana Krall. The Pixies, a pace-setting alternative-rock band, named an album track “Allison” in his honor.

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Sixty years ago, Jim Lowe’s gold record "Green Door" knocked Elvis Presley out of the top spot on the Billboard charts. After the release of his hit record, Jim Lowe was heard on New York City's flagship radio stations for decades.

James Ellsworth (Jim) Lowe died on Monday morning at his home in East Hampton, on Long Island, New York, after a long illness. The native of Springfield was 93.

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Allsup, who was touring with Holly after the two met during a recording session in 1958, was initially supposed to be on the ill-fated, Holly-charted flight from Mason City, Iowa to Fargo, North Dakota. However, Valens, who suffered from a fear of flying, asked Allsup if he could take his spot on the plane.

"[Valens] asked me four or five times could he fly in my place. For some reason, I pulled a half dollar out of my pocket and flipped it. He said 'heads' and it came up heads," Allsup recalled of the February 2nd, 1959 flight. "So I went out to the station wagon and told Buddy. I said, 'I'm not going. Me and Ritchie flipped a coin. He's going in my place.' Buddy said, 'Cool.'"

Waylon Jennings also avoided the plane crash after giving his seat to J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson.

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Maggie Roche, one-third of family band the Roches, has died. Roche’s sister and bandmate Suzzy confirmed the news in the below Facebook note, saying she died after a long battle with cancer. She was 65. “She was a private person, too sensitive and shy for this world, but brimming with life, love, and talent,” the note reads. “I want to let you know how grateful she was to everyone who listened and understood her through her music and her songs. ... It’ll be hard for me to carry on without her.”

The Roches grew up in Park Ridge, New Jersey. In 1973, Maggie and sister Terre sang back-up on Paul Simon’s album There Goes Rhymin’ Simon. They were signed to Columbia Records as a duo and released their album Seductive Reasoning in 1975. Their younger sister Suzzy joined them to form the Roches. Their first self-titled album as a trio, produced by Robert Fripp, was released in 1979. The trio continued recording and performing until their final album Moonswept was released in 2007.

“Hammond Song” was listed on Pitchfork’s “200 Best Songs of the 1970s.”

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Rosalie Hamlin, the lead singer of Rosie and the Originals who recorded the early '60s one-hit wonder classic “Angel Baby,” has died at age 71.

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Rosie and the Originals were also was one of the opening acts for the Rolling Stones at a 1964 concert at San Diego's Balboa Park Bowl. The show's promoter told the San Diego Reader he paid Rosie and the Originals $500, but only $400 for the Stones.

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One of the biggest fans of “Angel Baby” was John Lennon. He recorded the song during sessions for his Rock N' Roll album, though his version wasn't released until his Menlove Ave. disc. During the introduction for the song, Lennon says, “This here is one of my all-time favorite songs. Send my love to Rosie, wherever she may be.”

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Bruce Langhorne (May 11, 1938 – April 14, 2017) was an American folk musician. He was active in the Greenwich Village folk scene in the 1960s, primarily as a session guitarist for folk albums and performances.

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Langhorne was born in Tallahassee, Florida, where his father taught at the Florida Agriculture and Mechanical College for Negroes. From the age of four, he lived with his mother in Spanish Harlem, in New York City. He learned violin, but lost most of three fingers of his right hand as a child when lighting a homemade rocket... He started playing guitar at the age of 17, and the loss of his fingers contributed to his distinctive playing style

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Langhorne worked with many of the major performers in the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s, including The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem, Joan Baez, Richie Havens, Carolyn Hester, Peter LaFarge, Gordon Lightfoot, Hugh Masekela, Odetta, Babatunde Olatunji, Peter, Paul and Mary, Richard and Mimi Fariña, Tom Rush, Steve Gillette, and Buffy Sainte-Marie. He first recorded in 1961, with Carolyn Hester, which is when he met Bob Dylan. He later said of Dylan: "I thought he was a terrible singer and a complete fake, and I thought he didn’t play harmonica that well... I didn’t really start to appreciate Bobby as something unique until he started writing." In 1963 he accompanied Dylan in 1963 on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, and in 1965 was one of several guitarists on the album Bringing It All Back Home.

The title character of Bob Dylan's song "Mr. Tambourine Man" was inspired by Langhorne, who used to play a large Turkish frame drum in performances and recordings. The drum, which Langhorne purchased in a music store in Greenwich Village, had small bells attached around its interior, giving it a jingling sound much like a tambourine. Langhorne used the instrument most prominently on recordings by Richard and Mimi Fariña. The drum is now in the collection of the Experience Music Project, in Seattle, Washington.

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Sylvia Moy, the Motown songwriter who helped pen Stevie Wonder hits like "Uptight (Everything's Alright)" and "My Cherie Amour," died Saturday at the age of 78.

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Marvin Gaye, then a Motown artist, discovered Moy while she was singing at a Detroit club in 1963. The label signed Moy to a dual songwriting/performing deal, although her talents were largely focused on penning songs for Motown's stable of artists, which included Little Stevie Wonder.

"Motown came forth with a recording contract for me, a management contract and a songwriter's contract — which shocked me," Moy told the Free Press in 2016. "Then I was told, 'Sylvia, we'll get to you as a singer. But in the meantime, we've got all these artists and they have no material. You're going to have to write.' I said OK. Because I was kind of shy anyway. And so that's what I started doing. I got into it, and the hits started coming."

A year after a 13-year-old Wonder topped the Hot 100 with "Fingertips" in 1963 – the youngest artist ever to accomplish that feat – the singer struggled to record another hit, and as his voice began to change, Motown's Berry Gordy debated terminating Wonder's recording contract. It was Moy who is credited with persuading Gordy to keep Wonder.

After dropping the "Little" from his name, Wonder, Moy and songwriter Henry Cosby teamed to write 1965's "Uptight (Everything's Alright)," which quickly became a hit for Motown's Tamla label and Wonder's first hit as a songwriter (even though he, at the time, credited his contribution as "S. Judkins," a nod to his father).

The resulting album, 1966's Up-Tight, also featured "Nothing's Too Good for My Baby," another track penned by the Wonder/Moy/Cosby team.

Over the next three years, Wonder, Moy and Cosby partnered for a string of Hot 100 hits like "I Was Made to Love Her," "Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Da-Day," "I'm Wondering," "My Cherie Amour" and Signed, Sealed & Delivered's "Never Had a Dream Come True," the final track the trio co-wrote together; a year later, the Jackson 5 covered the track.

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In addition to Moy's work with Wonder, she also co-wrote Motown/Tamla classics like Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston's "It Takes Two," the Isley Brothers' "This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You)" (a collaboration between Moy and the legendary Holland-Dozier-Holland tandem) and Martha and the Vandellas' "Honey Chile."

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