The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (15 page)

Wes Montgomery
(celebrated jazz/blues guitarist; born Indiana, 6/3/1925; heart attack, 15/6)

Syd Nathan
(US founder of R & B label King Records, the home of many early top vocal acts; born Ohio, 27/4/1904; heart disease/pneumonia, 5/3)

Ron Parr
(US garage-rock guitarist with The Rites Of Spring; he died serving in Vietnam, 30/4)

Phill Pill
(US showband pianist with Brandi Perry & The Bubble Machine; born California; ambushed and shot in Vietnam, 5/7)

George ‘King’ Scott
(US tenor with gospel acts The Hesitations and Five Blind Boys of Alabama; born Alabama, 18/3/1929; like Blind Boy Vel Taylor in 1947, he died from an accidental gunshot wound, 2/1968)

Johnny ‘Geechie’ Temple
(US bluesman whose ‘Big Leg Woman’ and ‘Gimme Some of that Yum Yum Yum’ suggest where his interests lay; born Canton, Mississippi, 18/10/1906; cancer, 22/11)

Benny Treiber
(US bassist with The Mind’s Eye, who were briefly produced by The Monkees, until Davy Jones removed him from the band; drowned when his boat capsized on McQueeney Lake, Texas)

Cathy Wayne
(Australian show singer; born Cathy Warne; shot on stage performing in Vietnam - allegedly by US fire)

Curt Willis
(US showband drummer with Brandi Perry & The Bubble Machine; blood loss following the ambush that killed Phil Pill, 5/7)

1969

MARCH

Wednesday 26

Dickie Pride

(Richard Knellar - Thornton Heath, Surrey, 21 October 1941)

The Cliftons

Dickie Pride – ‘The Sheikh of Shake’ – looked to be the latest in a long line of Larry Parnes success stories when picked out at just seventeen years of age. Pride had originally been spotted by Russ Conway in a pub in Tooting, South London; on witnessing his performance, Parnes signed him on the spot. Something of a handful on the road, Pride soon demanded alterations to the repetitive nightly set that Parnes insisted he perform. Within a couple of years, his increasingly maverick behaviour saw him dropped from Parnes’s popular touring showcases, wherein the likes of Billy Fury flourished. Although he still fronted a band called The Cliftons (with, at one point, future Rolling Stone Bill Wyman on bass), the rot had set in.

Once optimistically billed as ‘Britain’s answer to Little Richard’, Pride could buck the system no more: a dramatic plunge from the limelight to which he’d become accustomed saw him working as a storeman by the end of 1962 and gradually becoming addicted to various drugs. In 1967, Pride was referred to a mental hospital, where it was somehow ruled that he should undergo a lobotomy. At the start of 1969, he attempted an ill-fated comeback, but was found dead in his bed, having accidentally overdosed on sleeping tablets, leaving a widow and four-year-old son.

See also
Larry Parnes (
August 1989).

MAY

Friday 2

‘Benny’ Benjamin

(William Benjamin - Detroit, Michigan, 15 July 1925)

The Funk Brothers

William ‘Benny’ Benjamin was the house drummer at Motown, his distinctive rhythms backing dozens of the best-known records to emerge from the stable. Known also as ‘Papa Zita’, Benjamin had been an employee at Berry Gordy’s label before he was committed to vinyl as one of the original Funk Brothers, but despite playing on hits by The Supremes, Stevie Wonder, The Four Tops and Marvin Gaye, Benjamin remained unknown to those who bought the records. Struggling with a drink problem, he died of a stroke at home shortly after his premature retirement. Among other Funk Brothers, Benjamin’s main partners in crime were James ‘Jamie’ Jamerson (
August 1983)
and Earl Van Dyke (
September 1992).

See also
Robert White (
October 1994). Uriel Jones (
Golden Oldies #88). Other occasional Funk Brothers ‘Pistol’ Allen and Johnny Griffith both passed away in 2002, while sometime bandleader/pianist Joe Hunter passed on in 2007.

Tuesday 6

Don Drummond

(Kingston, Jamaica, 12 March 1932)

The Skatalites

Forming the seminal Skatalites with Roland Alphonso in 1963, instinctive talent Drummond wrote much of the ska group’s material and became recognized for his trombone sound – best recalled on the standard ‘Guns of Navarone’. Drummond, under the early guidance of influential producer Clement ‘Coxsone’ Dodd, went on to work with both Bob Marley & The Wailers and Toots & The Maytals.