The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (204 page)

Thursday 14

Rudy West

(Newport News, Virginia, 25 July 1933)

The Five Keys

The Five Keys were the result of many months of practice by two sets of Virginian brothers – Ripley Ingram (octave tenor); Raphael Ingram (second tenor); Bernie West (bass/baritone); and Rudy West (first tenor). The quartet had begun as the gospel-flavoured Sentimental Four, landing a contract with Capitol (via Aladdin), and changed the name to something more upbeat as they converted to a more secular style with the addition of another tenor, Edwin Hall. A hit in live performance, The Five Keys – who then lost Raphael Ingram to the draft, gaining occasional lead Maryland Pierce, baritone/second tenor James ‘Dickie’ Smith and guitarist Joe Jones – managed numerous R & B chart entries, including three crossover hits, beginning with ‘Ling Ting Tong’, between 1954 and 1957. At the end of this period, Rudy West left the group to marry, and his subsequent recording career faltered. West, employed as a US postal worker until retirement, underwent cancer treatment before dying from a heart attack at home in Chesapeake. The day’s other big event meant that he received only a small notice in the newspapers.

Ripley Ingram died three years before West, while occasional singer Ulysses Hicks collapsed and died as early as January 1955, as the group went on tour.

Golden Oidies #7

Frank Sinatra

(Hoboken, New Jersey, 12 December 1915)

There’s little one can say that hasn’t been said several thousand times over about Ol’ Blue Eyes. The son of a part-time abortionist, Frank Sinatra grew up to become the western world’s most touted singer/actor/music entrepreneur and eventually a character larger than any of his chosen
métiers.
Sinatra first recorded in 1939, joining Tommy Dorsey’s band before embarking on his illustrious solo career in 1942. In the US, Sinatra racked up twenty-six gold albums (for a soloist, a record surpassing even that of Elvis Presley); in Britain, his signature tune, ‘My Way’, spent 122 weeks on the listings. As a solo artist with Columbia, Sinatra appealed to the bobby-soxer pre-rock ‘n’ roll set; his movies then afforded him the tack-on bad-boy image as he grew in stature and began hanging with the infamous Rat Pack. Sinatra’s sometimes wild private life led to many murmurings about connections to the Mafia - a detail not missed in Kitty Kelley’s unauthorized 1986 biography.

Frank Sinatra continued to perform live until just three years before his death from a heart attack on 14 May 1998. He was reportedly buried with a miniature of Jack Daniel’s, a pack of Camel cigarettes and an assortment of US candy.

JULY

Friday 17

Marc Hunter

(Taumarunui, New Zealand, 7 September 1953)

Dragon

With his bass-playing younger brother Todd, Kiwi Marc Hunter founded Dragon – a melodic rock unit which became one of Australia’s biggest acts during the late seventies. Singer Hunter was just twenty years old when his band signed to Vertigo, the prog label issuing two records in quick succession. In the progressive field, Dragon were swamped by bigger international names, the albums
UniversalRadio
(1974) and
Scented Gardens for the Blind
(1975) somewhat ignored, prompting the Hunter brothers to relocate from Auckland to Sydney. With the line-up now stable – Hunter, Hunter, Paul Hewson (keyboards), Robert Taylor (guitars) and Neal Storey (drums) – (or so they thought), Dragon signed with CBS and acceptance seemed just a fiery breath away. But theft of the band’s equipment was followed by the harrowing drug-related death of Storey in 1976 – and Dragon appeared to be back at square one. The group rallied, though, scoring big-selling albums and huge domestic hits such as ‘April Sun in Cuba’ (1977, number two) and ‘Are You Old Enough?’ (1978, number one). With success came the downside: despite the sobering experience of a few years before, both Marc Hunter and Hewson developed crippling heroin habits. The increasingly volatile lead singer then pretty much blew Dragon’s position as Australia’s biggest band during a 1978 US tour, expected to break the act there. A well-built frontman, claiming to have little fear of hostile audiences, he almost caused a riot when the band opened for Johnny Winter in Texas, calling the crowd ‘faggots’ (Winter reportedly bet with his band on who would shoot Hunter first). The following year, Todd Hunter was put in the embarrassing position of having to sack his wayward brother.

Hunter trod a solo path for a while after, racking up moderate Aussie hits with ‘Island Nights’ (1979) and ‘Big City Talk’ (1981), until, in order to stave off debts, Dragon reformed in 1982, to lesser effect. The band overcame a second heroin-related death – that of departed songwriter Hewson (
January 1985)
– to continue in a more AOR vein into the nineties, the irrepressible Hunter ever at the fore. Unlike Storey and Hewson, Marc Hunter survived his years of heroin abuse, but in 1997 was diagnosed with throat cancer, which rapidly took over his system. After a final live appearance at his own benefit concert, Hunter died in July, leaving a widow and three children. Some 700 mourners attended his Sydney funeral.

Sunday 26

‘Chico’ Ryan

(David Allen Ryan - Boston, Massachusetts, 9 April 1948)

Sha-Na-Na

The Happenings

(Bill Haley & His Comets)

Sha-Na-Na were a well-established rock/doo-wop revival act well before the arrival of singer and bassist ‘Chico’ Ryan in 1973. His credentials were impressive: apart from playing with hit-making New Jersey beat group The Happenings in the early seventies, Ryan had also toured with rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Bill Haley on one of the kiss-curled singer’s many nostalgia tours – frequently upsetting the main man by refusing to wear official Comets gear. During the seventies and beyond, Sha-Na-Na almost became a caricature of themselves, a novelty act par excellence. Biker-jacketed, slick-haired Ryan had the requisite look as the group became Johnny Casino & The Gamblers for megamovie
Grease;
they then secured their own television variety series in the US (a sort of brilliantined
Hee Haw).
At the age of fifty, ‘Chico’ Ryan suffered a mysterious accident in Nevada, and died in a Boston nursing home.

See also
Vinnie Taylor (
April 1974); Danny McBride (
July 2009). Later bass singer Reggie Battise has also died.

SEPTEMBER