re: Endless Sleep - The Obituary Thread

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Hargus “Pig” Robbins, a member of Nashville’s A-team of session players who added keyboards and piano to albums by Dolly Parton, Bob Dylan, Kenny Rogers, Miranda Lambert, Ween, and many more, died Sunday. The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, who inducted Robbins into the Hall in 2012, confirmed his death. He was 84.

Robbins’ playing was all about the feel. Listen to the bluesy piano he dropped into Dylan’s “Pledging My Time” in 1966, the defining but never heavy-handed intro he played on Crystal Gayle’s 1977 “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue,” or the supple solo that Robbins added to Lambert’s “To Learn Her” on 2016’s The Weight of These Wings. It was that sense of providing exactly what the songs called for that made Robbins an in demand player up until the end of his life — Dolly Parton asked Robbins to play on a new album but his health wouldn’t allow it, Parton told Rolling Stone last year.

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The keyboard player with the barnyard nickname was born Hargus Melvin Robbins in Spring City, Tennessee, on Jan. 18, 1938. He earned the moniker “Pig” for how filthy he would become when he was playing at school. “I had a supervisor who called me that because I used to sneak in through a fire escape and play when I wasn’t supposed to, and I’d get dirty as a pig,” Robbins told the Country Music Hall of Fame. That school was the Tennessee School for the Blind — Hargus lost his sight at age 3 as a result of a knife accident.

He played on his breakout recording session in 1959, adding boisterous piano to George Jones’ “White Lightning.” From there, Robbins became a go-to member of Nashville’s A-Team, the rotating group of session players that included luminaries like guitarist Chet Atkins, drummer Jerry Carrigan, fiddler Johnny Gimble, bassist Bob Moore (with whom Robbins often recorded), and pianist Floyd Cramer, a key influence on Robbins.

Robbins would go on to play on scores of sessions. On Jan. 30, 1961 — 61 years ago today — Patsy Cline released “I Fall to Pieces,” featuring Robbins’ indelible notes. He’s also responsible for the intro to Charlie Rich’s 1973 ballad “Behind Closed Doors,” provided piano and keys throughout Parton’s 1971 Coat of Many Colors, and joined Dylan on 1966’s Blonde on Blonde. He even added country bona fides to Ween’s 1996 lark 12 Golden Country Greats, along with fellow session greats Charlie McCoy and Gene Chrisman.

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“His playing was always distinctive,” Kyle Young, CEO, Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum said of Robbins in a statement. “Pig’s left hand on the piano joined with Bob Moore’s bass to create an unstoppable rhythmic force, while the fingers on his right hand flew like birds across the keys. The greatest musicians in Nashville turned to Pig for guidance and inspiration.”

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Hargus lost his sight at age 3 as a result of a knife accident.

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What does it take to get this thread stickied?

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Procol Harum frontman Gary Brooker, who led the band throughout their 55-year history and co-wrote and sang their 1967 classic “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” died at his home from cancer on Saturday, Feb. 19. He was 76.

“His first single with Procol Harum, 1967’s ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale,’ is widely regarded as defining ‘The Summer of Love’, yet it could scarcely have been more different from the characteristic records of that era,” Procol Harum said in a group statement. “Nor was it characteristic of his own writing. Over thirteen albums Procol Harum never sought to replicate it, preferring to forge a restlessly progressive path, committed to looking forward, and making each record a ‘unique entertainment’.”

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while Brooker originally planned to retire from performing to work as a songwriter, he met lyricist Keith Reid and forged such a tight working relationship that the pair started a new group: Procol Harum. Their first single, “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” was inspired by Brooker’s love of classical musicians like Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel.

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Once he added in Reid’s lyrics, Brooker had a masterpiece on his hands that would reach Number One all over the world and turn Procol Harum in a major band almost overnight. Although the band never managed to land another hit of that magnitude, they maintained a large cult audience and worked steadily throughout the Sixties and Seventies, scoring occasional hits like “Conquistador” and “A Salty Dog.” In 1972, they cut the live album Procol Harum Live: In Concert with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra that helped bring the band back into the public eye.

While Procol Harum was often referred to as a progressive rock band, Brooker never felt comfortable with that label. “I’ve always rejected the idea of labeling groups or types of music,” he told Vintage Rock in 2019. “I don’t think Procol has ever fit into a particular pigeonhole, as we call them here, you know, in the filing cabinet. You don’t really know what to put them under. They come under ‘P’ — ‘Progressive?’ ‘Psychedelic?’ — and I say, ‘They come under ‘P’ and ‘P’ is for ‘Procol’.”

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Mike Rabon (April 16, 1943 – February 11, 2022) was an American musician. He was the lead guitarist and lead singer of the 1960s hit group The Five Americans, and was co-writer of the group's hits including "Western Union" and "I See the Light".

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Gary Brooker, Procol Harum

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