The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (310 page)

Just months later, the versatile singer and musician was found dead at his Atkinson, New Hampshire home. Delp – who had fallen into depression and had attempted suicide on several previous occasions – had poisoned himself in a sealed bathroom via carbon monoxide emissions from two charcoal grills. Among a series of letters penned to his loved ones, Delp had also pinned the message
‘J’ai une ame solitaire’
(‘I have a lonely soul’) to his collar. He had been due to wed his third wife just a matter of months later. Instead, the date was chosen for a tribute concert featuring his former band mates that was held, appropriately enough, in Boston.

Golden Oldies #44

Luther Ingram

(Jackson, Tennessee, 30 November 1937)

(The Gardenias)

Something of a late developer in R & B music, Luther Ingram had to wait until his mid-thirties to score a major Billboard hit. Ingram had issued several early singles (including one as leader of The Gardenias), though without success; the change in his fortune came as the result of signing with Stax-affiliates KoKo in 1968. The rich-voiced singer scored a gold record for his ‘(If Lovin’ You Is Wrong) I Don’t Want to Be Right’ (1972), a number three hit on the Billboard Hot 100 which also topped the magazine’s R & B listings for a month. Although this wasn’t an original composition, Ingram was already enjoying a million-seller of his own in the shape of The Staple Singers’ ‘Respect Yourself,’ a tune co-written with Mack Rice that has since become an R & B standard. Although he was only to bag one further Top Forty hit - his career suffering as Stax went bankrupt in the mid-seventies - Ingram remained a popular live draw, working with and opening for The Isaac Hayes Movement during the later seventies and recording for the Profile label during the eighties.

Having suffered from diabetes and kidney disease for some years, Luther Ingram passed away from heart failure on 19 March 2007 in a Bellevue, Illinois hospital.

See also
Isaac Hayes (
Golden Oldies #73)

Golden Oldies #45

Johnny Martyn

(John Martyn Booker - London, 16 July 1934)

The Vipers Skiffle Group/The Vipers

A West End coffee-bar owner in the mid-fifties, Johnny Martyn would often whip out a guitar for an impromptu jam session with his pals and punters. Among them were the then-unknown Tommy Steele and fellow-guitarist Jean van den Bosch. The latter, Martyn, and local singer/guitarist Wally Whyton, whom Martyn met at a rival café, founded The Vipers Skiffle Group (later The Vipers). This fledgling outfit was completed by a rhythm section of Tony Tolhurst (bass) and John Pilgrim (washboard). A pre-Beatles George Martin noted their distinctive sound and produced early Vipers records for Parlophone. In 1957, the group secured a pair of UK Top Ten hits with ‘Don’t You Rock Me, Daddy-O’ and ‘The Cumberland Gap’ as the skiffle boom kicked in. Although The Vipers scored a (lesser) third hit with ‘Streamline Train,’ eventually Lonnie Donegan and his band became the genre’s darlings.

Sustaining a musical career thereafter proved hard for Martyn, who had been born with a club foot. The singer eventually returned to Vancouver (where he’d lived as a child), finding employment as a social worker until wheelchair-bound. His health having steadily declined, Johnny Martyn passed away in his adopted country, aged seventy-two: his death on 19 March 2007 saw him reunited in the great beyond with Whyton, who’d lost his battle with cancer ten years previously.

Monday 26

Cha Burns

(Charles Burns - Coatbridge, Scotland, 20 March 1957)

Fingerprintz

The Silencers

Adam & The Ants

Cha Burns was a talented guitarist who made something of a name for himself in Britain’s postpunk scene. Along with fellow Coatbridge singer and musician Jimmie O’Neill, Burns formed the new wave band Fingerprintz in 1979, a distinctive act that made its way onto John Peel’s influential radio programme – but, sadly, no further.

During a quiet time for Fingerprintz, Burns and sidekick Bogdan Wiczling (drums) joined Adam Ant’s new backing band, as the recently huge singer tried to consolidate a solo career. By 1985, Fingerprintz had mutated into The Silencers, a group with a more soaring sound that looked set to earn airplay and chart hits at a profitable time for Scots bands: an excellent debut single ‘Painted Moon’ (1987) boded well. In terms of live work, The Silencers performed admirably, earning support slots with David Bowie, U2, Simple Minds and (UK) Squeeze, yet it was only in Europe that the band made commercial headway, the rerecorded Fingerprintz ‘nearly-hit’ ‘Bulletproof Heart’ becoming an unlikely smash in France and Spain.

Cha Burns stayed with The Silencers for five albums, quitting the band in 2000. He’d long had a history of health issues, suffering a brain haemorrhage back in 1985: the guitarist’s diagnosis with lung cancer during 2006, however, prompted former band mates to organise a benefit concert in Glasgow, at which he made his last public appearance. Burns died at his adopted home in Prestatyn, Wales – just six days after his fiftieth birthday.

APRIL

Thursday 5

Mark St John

(Mark Norton - Hollywood, California, 7 February 1956)

Kiss

White Tiger

Although only briefly a member of Kiss, guitarist Mark St John featured on one of the recently-unmasked glam-metal band’s best-received albums. St John had previously gained a reputation as a fine guitarist via his stints as a session man and teacher to some of southern California’s best rock musicians.

Replacing Vinnie Vincent as Kiss’s lead guitarist in 1984, St John played on
Animalize,
the album that placed the former rock behemoths back on the Billboard Top Twenty (the previous album, 1983’s
Lick It Up,
having stalled just outside). Unfortunately for the musician, his studio practices caused a bit of friction within the band, and this difficulty was exacerbated by the guitarist developing a form of reactive arthritis known as Reiter’s Syndrome which caused his arms to swell up. Had it not been for his ill health, St John would surely have played on more than just the pair of gigs he performed with Kiss to promote the record. In the event, St John was fired from Kiss that December, and replaced by Bruce Kulick, who thereby became the band’s fourth lead guitarist in three years.

St John went on to form hard-rock outfit White Tiger with former Black Sabbath singer David Donato, the new band also featuring his brother Michael Norton on bass, plus drummer Brian James Fox. Despite the kudos his tenure with Kiss would have given him, St John saw his group play live just once, since White Tiger were dropped by their label soon after the 1986 release of an eponymous debut album. A revised version of St John’s band appeared with a second record,
Raw,
in 1999. (A return to session work in the interim even saw St John working with singer/actor David Hasselhoff.)

Having pared down his music work in recent years, Mark St John died suddenly in California from a cerebral haemorrhage.

See also
Eric Carr (
November 1991)

Golden Oldies #46

Lobby Loyde

(John Baslington Lyde - Longreach, Queensland, Australia, 18 May 1941)