re: Endless Sleep - The Obituary Thread

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Mickey Jones (June 10, 1941 – February 7, 2018) was an American musician and actor. His career as a drummer had him backing up such artists and bands as Trini Lopez, Johnny Rivers, Bob Dylan, and The First Edition with Kenny Rogers. Jones had seventeen gold records from his musical career of over two decades. After the break-up of The First Edition in 1976, Jones concentrated on his career as a character actor, where he made many appearances on film and television.

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Quickly, however, the Kinmans began to move in another direction. "There were louder and faster bands who were pushing even farther into punk," Tony said. "That wasn't the kind of music we were interested in anymore. It was frustrating to write songs for a punk audience that didn't like them." Chip moved to New York for a time, and teamed up there with guitarist Alejandro Escovedo, whom he knew from the Nuns. Soon Tony joined them, they relocated to Austin, found Austin drummer Slim Evans through an audition, and Rank and File was born.

The group's 1982 album "Sundown" was declared the year's "best debut album by an American rock band" by The Times' pop music critic, Robert Hilburn.

The Austin Chronicle crowned Rank and File the country band of the year. Even those heaping praise on the group couldn't settle on what Rank and File was — just that they liked what they heard. "'Sundown' steps boldly from the new wave, punk and electro-pop styles that offer today's most appealing rock," Hilburn wrote, "yet it conveys much of the same driving spirit that fuels the most compelling new music …. The band injects its most invigorating songs with a charm and original vision that haven't been seen in rock-tinged country since Gram Parsons' early work with the Flying Burrito Brothers."

It was, in fact, a thoroughly punk move that came at a time when punk was adopting its own musical, political and sartorial formulas. It started to resemble the same rigidity that the genre's free-thinking originators rebelled against in other forms of music when they threw the rock rule book out the window and started bashing their guitars and drums at breakneck speed, volume and intensity.

"I think one of the most important things about this so-called 'new country' sound is its independence," Tony said in 1983. "Besides, country music has a long tradition of scaring away young blood. Remember what happened when Elvis tried out for the Grand Ole Opry in 1954 they told him he'd better not give up his day job."

Indeed, in rebelling against the rebels, the Kinmans added their names to a long list of proud California musical mavericks that included Buck Owens, the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield and the Flying Burrito Brothers.

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Journal entry by Lisa Kinman

Tony passed away this morning.

Last night he said, "Chip, if anyone asks what song meant the most to me, tell them "Way To Go"

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The author of early, critically acclaimed biographies of Elvis Presley and Jim Morrison, Jerry Hopkins, passed away today (June 3) in Camillian Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand, after a long illness. Hopkins, who lived in Bangkok with his wife and son, was 82.

Hopkins’ death was reported by the Bangkok Post and confirmed on his Facebook page.

Born Nov. 8, 1935, in Camden, N.J., Hopkins—whose full name was Elisha Gerald Hopkins—published 39 books in all, and more than 1,000 articles. He spent more than 20 years as a correspondent and contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine.

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In 1969, Hopkins took leave from Rolling Stone to author Elvis: A Biography, the first comprehensive biography of the singer, published in 1971. Hopkins began work on his Morrison biography, No One Here Gets Out Alive, following the singer’s death in 1971. The book, co-authored by Morrison’s assistant and confidant Danny Sugerman, was rejected by more than two dozen publishers before finally being published in 1980. The bio, the first of Morrison, became a best-seller and has been reprinted several times in different formats. The book was published in 23 countries (in 16 languages) in all; Hopkins’ website says it has sold more than four million copies.

Hopkins later wrote other books book on Elvis (including The Final Years), as well as titles on Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, Yoko Ono and other topics, including life in Thailand.

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Dominic Joseph "D.J." Fontana, the longtime drummer for Elvis Presley who helped pioneer the backbeat swing of rock and roll, died Wednesday, The Tennessean reports. He was 87.

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Fontana played with Presley for 14 years, accompanying him on over 460 cuts for RCA including rock and roll standards like "Blue Suede Shoes," "Heartbreak Hotel," "Hound Dog" and "Jailhouse Rock." Fontana was with Elvis during his landmark appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956, as well as his legendary "'68 Comeback Special." In 2009, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Known for his no-nonsense style of drumming, Fontana injected early rockabilly with the swing of big band music. At a time when many country and bluegrass groups were shunning drums altogether, Fontana's mere presence behind the kit was revolutionary in its own right.

Still, Fontana aimed to keep things simple in a way that complemented not just Elvis, but also his other bandmates, bassist Bill Black and guitarist Scotty Moore (Black and Moore died in 1965 and 2016, respectively). "I just learned how to stay out of their way and let them do what they had to," he said in 1987. "It sounded better to me that way."

Born in Shreveport, Louisiana, Fontana began playing drums in high school and was eventually hired as the in-house drummer on the long-running radio and television show, Louisiana Hayride. He backed an array of famed country artists, including Webb Pierce and Faron Young, on the show and met Elvis there in 1954.

At the time, Sun Records impresario Sam Philips had already paired Presley with Moore and Black, and the trio had already cut Elvis' debut single, "That's All Right, Mama."

In a 1984 interview with The Tennessean, Fontana recalled hearing Elvis' early songs, saying, "They sent Elvis' records from Memphis. I thought the sound was really incredible. It was really different… When Elvis, Scotty Moore and Bill Black came down as a trio, Scotty approached me about drumming with them. We ran through about two or three songs backstage, including 'That's All Right, Mama.'"

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In an interview with Massachusetts television station WGBH, Fontana recalled the first night he, Elvis, Moore and Black played together as the quartet that would go on to launch and define rock and roll. "Well, the first night people were polite, just kind of like the Grand Ol' Opry," he said. "But it was a country, older crowd, and I think what they did, they went home and told their kids, 'There's a boy down at the Louisiana Hayride you got to go see.' The next couple weekends we had nothing but kids, so that was the breaking point actually. The kids would scream and holler, crying and all that stuff. And I think that's what really got it started."

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Matt ‘Guitar’ Murphy, best known as one of the stalwarts of the Blues Brothers Band and a renowned sideman with Howlin’ Wolf, Memphis Slim, Muddy Waters, James Cotton and many others, has died. He was 88

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Murphy gained his biggest audience as a member of the band in the Blues Brothers movies, appearing as the beleagured husband of cafe owner Aretha Franklin, insisting that he was “the man” when Franklin objected to him re-joining the band.

He appeared in the 1978 film and its follow-up, Blues Brothers 2000 (1998). He also performed with the Blues Brothers Band until the early 2000s, when he was slowed by a stroke.

Murphy was born in Sunflower, Mississippi in December 1929, moving to Memphis with his family when he was a toddler. Matt Murphy and his brother, Floyd,” became a fixture on the Memphis blues scene when they were in their teens, and Matt moved on to pick up a legendary resume as a sideman for some of the greatest blues musicians ever. In the 1970s, he was best known as a sideman with harpist James Cotton before joining the Blues Brothers.

Murphy fronted his own band starting in 1982 and toured up until recently. He played a reunion show with James Cotton in 2010, and appeared at the April 2013 at Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival at Madison Square Garden in New York.

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Bluegrass mandolin legend Dean Webb, of the Dillards (aka The Darling Family on The Andy Griffith Show) fame from Salem, Missouri, passed away on Saturday, June 30, 2018. He was aged 81.

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Perhaps their biggest claim to fame though is their appearances on The Andy Griffith Show in which they performed musically as members of ‘the Darling Family,’ a fictitious name for a family of North Carolina mountain hillbillies. The Dillards, who were spotted by a member of Andy Griffith’s talent agency, made their first appearance on the show in October 1963, and in so doing introduced bluegrass music to many viewers who had never heard of the genre. The band made five more appearance on the show, the last of which was in 1966.

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Webb, playing what has been described as “some killer mandolin,” helped The Dillards to play a major part in modernising and popularising bluegrass music. They were among the first bands to electrify their instruments. Also, their influence up and down the west coast impacted the development of southern California folk rock and country-rock styles.

Individually, Webb’s mandolin playing influenced Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones’ decision to play the instrument.

His harmony singing and arranging skills were considerable, talents put to good use in helping the Byrds to sort out the complicated triad harmonies on Mr. Tambourine Man, their first major hit.

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When country music star Hank Williams left Shreveport to take on bigger opportunities in Nashville, he asked steel guitarist Felton Pruett to move along with him.

But Pruett, settled in Shreveport with a family, didn’t want to stray so far from home, his wife, Rita Pruett, said.

“We stayed here, and he worked and picked, and he told me later, ‘I’m glad we didn’t go to Nashville,’” she recalled. “He said, ‘I can still pick any time I want and work at the railroad.’ He was happy like that.”

Pruett, who played steel guitar in the area for more than 70 years, including for Hank Williams’ band and at the Louisiana Hayride, died Wednesday, Sept. 19, at the age of 89.

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