re: Endless Sleep - The Obituary Thread

quote:

---

FFS, Ruby was pushing 80 in 2004 - and their singing wasn't too bad, all things considered.

---

quote:

---

it’s not any better when my contemporaries get surgically altered to try to look younger than they are

---

quote:

---

Chick Corea, the virtuosic keyboardist who broadened the scope of jazz during a career spanning more than five decades, died on Tuesday from a rare form of cancer. A post on his Facebook page confirmed the news. Corea was 79.

---

quote:

---

Richie Albright, who manned the drum kit for Waylon Jennings since the Sixties and was essential to the Outlaw country trailblazer’s signature rock-based sound, died suddenly Tuesday in Nashville. He was 81. A rep for Shooter Jennings, with whom Albright toured up until 2017, confirmed Albright’s death to Rolling Stone.

An Oklahoma native, Albright joined Jennings’ backing band the Waylors in 1964 in Arizona, and the group developed a fan base at the Tempe nightspot J.D.’s. Jennings’ first album, in fact, was named after the club, Waylon Jennings At J.D.’s (Albright is credited as “Richard Albright”). The two men developed a strong bond and Jennings relied on Albright as both a musical guide and confidant. It was Albright — whom Jennings once referred to as “my right hand” — who added a four-on-the-floor rock beat to Jennings’ country-rock guitar, adding another component to the oft-imitated Outlaw country sound in the process.

---

quote:

---

In addition to playing with Jennings, Albright worked with luminaries like Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Jessi Colter, and Jennings’ son Shooter — whose middle name, Albright, was a nod to the drummer. As a member of Waymore’s Outlaws with the singer Tommy Townsend, Albright continued to play Jennings’ songs on the road, keeping alive the memory of the man he considered family.

In his 1996 autobiography Waylon, Jennings praised Albright as the catalyst for his enduring sound. “I’d turn around and look at Richie and we’d be going off on this tangent, jamming, letting the song carry us along, and a smile of satisfaction would spread across our faces,” he wrote. “I just knew musically we fit.”

---

quote:

---

Wimberley, Texas, February 13, 2021 — Rupert Neve, an innovator and business owner whose analog audio equipment designs have become an essential component in music recording, live sound production and home hi-fi systems, died on February 12, 2021 in Wimberley, Texas, due to non-Covid pneumonia and heart failure. He was 94.

Mr. Rupert Neve’s impact on the audio industry can hardly be overstated. It’s no exaggeration to say that millions of people worldwide listen to music every day that was produced using equipment incorporating Rupert’s designs somewhere in the process, from the vocal recording to the final mix, if not from beginning to end.

His designs, ranging from large-format mixing consoles to compact 500 series modules, are ubiquitous, and may be found anywhere from the largest production facilities to the most basic home studios. His audio hardware designs have also been reproduced as software plug-ins, making them available to anyone with access to a computer.

---

quote:

---

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — Bunny Wailer, a reggae luminary who was the last surviving founding member of the legendary group The Wailers, died on Tuesday [March 2] in his native Jamaica. He was 73.

Wailer, a baritone singer whose birth name was Neville Livingston, formed The Wailers in 1963 with late superstars Bob Marley and Peter Tosh when they lived in a slum in the capital of Kingston. They catapulted to international fame with the album, “Catch a Fire” and also helped popularize Rastafarian culture among better-off Jamaicans starting in the 1970s.

---

quote:

---

He was the third and last original Wailer. Marley died in 1981 of a brain tumor at 36 years old and Tosh was fatally shot in Jamaica in 1987 at 42 years old.

---

quote:

---

Here's one that got missed. He died in January

---

quote:

---

I never knew he was originally signed by Sam Phillips at Sun Records.

---

quote:

---

Neal Ford, frontman for the pioneering Houston rock band Neal Ford and the Fanatics, died Monday at age 78. Ford was a beloved and reliable music fixture in Texas, first drawing attention in the mid-1960s when his band struck a sweet spot amid the modern guitar pop of the British Invasion and the nascent sound of Texas psychedelia. Their music was infectious, frequently with an ominous vibe on the periphery, a spirited sound that Houstonians still speak of with reverence more than a half-century later.

“People in Houston loved them because they were ours,” says Bill Bentley, a music industry veteran from Houston. “They really created the path for everybody else. At one point they were THE band in town. They were a revolutionary band in Houston.”

The band’s 1967 album “Neal Ford & the Fanatics” yielded no Top 40 singles and the album made only a minor ripple outside of Texas. But Ford and the Fanatics were treated like royalty in their hometown at the time, one of the biggest draws – if not the biggest draw – in the city’s live music scene.

“Their harmonies were great and instrumentally they were just ripping, with tremendous power,” says producer Alec Palao, who created a Ford and the Fanatics anthology in 2013. “But a big part of why they were so popular at clubs and events in Houston was because of Neal’s showmanship. He was the guy who would get on the speakers and start dancing, doing flips and the things you had to do in those days to put on a show.”

---