The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (321 page)

Tom Dawes passed away from a stroke following carotid artery surgery in New York City.

Sunday14

Big Moe

(Kenneth Moore - Houston, Texas, 20 August 1974)

Former high-school football star Kenneth Moore cut an imposing figure on stage, but was arguably more at home in the studio. Here, he began as a freestyler with Houston’s ‘Screwed Up Click’ – a group of experimental hip-hop artists who practiced the art of ‘screwing and chopping’ (slowing samples to around 60 bpm for melodramatic effect).

Under his alterego of Big Moe, Moore was the first of the gang to take his work to the national arena, his melodic flow more akin to singing than rapping. Recorded for Wreckshop, Moe’s first album,
City of Syrup
(2000), made an impact on the US R & B Charts; the record was an extended paean to his love of ‘purple drank’, the codeine/promethazine-infused mixture that had become the genre’s drug of choice – and influenced the semi-comatose nature of its sound. This obsession continued with
Purple World
(2002), which broke Big Moe into the upper echelons of the Billboard pop listings, the rapper inviting the epithet ‘The King of Purp’.

The 2000 death of DJ Screw, Houston’s Godfather of the screwed-down sound, from an overdose of ‘drank’ and prescription medication didn’t seem to stem Southern hip-hop’s use of the drug. However, ‘Leave Drank Alone’ – the final cut from his third album
Moe Life
(2003) – suggested that Moe, at least, was trying to kick the addiction.

During the first week of October 2007, Big Moe suffered a heart attack that left him in a coma from which he was never to emerge. Moe’s considerable size was cited as the main reason for his death, although there are many who believe that recreational codeine may have been a contributing factor. A final album,
Unfinished Business
(2008), was released as a tribute to the rapper’s life.

The dangers of ‘drank’ were rebroadcast just six weeks later with the death of Pimp C
(
December 2007).

Golden Oldies #56

Teresa Brewer

(Theresa Breuer - Toledo, Ohio, 7 May 1931)

With a style that embraced both the traditional and the new, Teresa Brewer was perhaps the first darling of pop music. Brewer was a child performer, learning to dance before she could sing (properly), but always drawn to the stage throughout her upbringing. It took a New York radio talent hour to bring Brewer to the attention of London Records, who issued her first recording ‘Copenhagen’ in 1950. It was, however, the b-side that made her a star, ‘Music! Music! Music!’ hitting the top spot in America and selling over a million copies.

‘With his “drank” Moe was like a kid with a lollipop. Maybe his death tells us it’s time to put the cup down.’

Houston rapper Crisco Kidd

Brewer - who was often given novelty songs that weren’t to her taste - became the most prolific female recording artist of the 1950s, and racked up further major hits including ‘‘Til I Waltz Again with You’ (1952, US number one), ‘Ricochet’ (1953, US number two) and ‘A Tear Fell’ (1956, US Top Five, UK number two) among over forty charting songs. Although the rock ‘n’ roll era was to see her popularity slide, Brewer could claim in some way to have pre-empted the genre with a few decidedly uptempo numbers of her own. After a lengthy hiatus, she returned with a more mature jazz-tinged repertoire during the eighties and nineties, though she still pleased loyal audiences with a few memories of yesteryear. In her career, the singer made over six hundred recordings.

Teresa Brewer died at her home in New Rochelle, New York on 17 October 2007 from a rare form of progressive supranuclear palsy.

Thursday 18

Lucky Dube

(Philip Dube - Ermelo, Transvaal, South Africa, 3 August 1964)

Lucky Dube (pronounced ‘Doo-bay’) was a man who saw his metier as a means to promote peace and change for the good: sadly, his enduring nickname was to echo grimly on the day that he lost his life.

His thousands of followers saw the singer as a rightful heir to the throne for many years vacant since the death of Bob Marley (
May 1981
). But, for Dube, music was initially a way to pay the bills, the South African singer choosing mbaqanga – a style of Zulu pop – as his genre. During the early eighties, the institutional racism of his country’s government pushed Dube toward reggae: the authorities countered this by banning
Rastas Never Die
(1984), his first mini-album.
Think About the Children
(1985), the singer’s official debut long-player, however, earned him a platinum disc in his homeland. By now, Dube’s voice was being heard outside of South Africa, and the 1989 hit ‘Together as One’ went on to become something of a global anthem for the anti-apartheid movement. Dube – who was the first South African musician signed to Motown – remained a popular international draw for most of the next two decades, making one of his last appearances at Johannesburg’s Live-8 event in 2005.

A life promoting the joy of a multi-cultural society was brought to a sudden, violent end in the Jo’burg suburb of Rosettenville, as Lucky Dube dropped two of his children at their uncle’s home. As the musician returned to his Chrysler 300C, he was set upon by a trio of gunmen in an attempted carjacking. In the struggle, he was shot dead. In April 2009, the three assailants – Sifiso Mhlanga, Mbuti Mabe and Julius Gxowa – were each sentenced to life imprisonment.

Dube’s longtime keyboardist Thuthukani Cele summed up the feelings of most who knew Lucky Dube: ‘I’m happy with the ruling even though it will never bring him back. We owe it to Lucky – and the world.’

Cousin and long-term associate of Lucky Dube, reggae/rap artist Moto Silumo (Obed Siluma) was shot dead in Johannesburgjust eight months later.

Yolanda ‘La La’ Brown

(Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 20 May 1986)

JeTannue Clayborn

(Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1985)

On the same day, another botched robbery took the lives of two up-and-coming R & B exponents – singer Yolanda ‘La La’ Brown, and her producer JeTannue Clayborn.

A promising performer, Brown had been singing professionally since the age of eleven, her career taking off following a vocal spot on the big-selling single ‘S.E.X.’ by Chester ‘Lyfe’ Jennings, which found a Billboard Top Forty berth and an R & B Top Five slot in 2006. (Far from being another ode to sleeping around, the song dealt with the pressures put upon teens to lose their virginity: Brown, herself a mother at sixteen, was the ideal mouthpiece for this message.)

In 2007, the eye-catching singer began a relationship with JeTannue Clayborn – better known to his cohorts as ‘Kool Aid’ – a 22-year-old producer who had set up his own studio, Loud Enuff Productionz, specialising in rap, R & B and gospel music. By the end of the year, both were dead.

Loud Enuff’s studio also doubled as the couple’s home while they worked together on a debut record for Brown. The premises, replete with expensive equipment, had been the target of a robbery during 2007, the singer also suggesting that she had received unidentified death threats in the week leading up to her slaying. Finally, on 19 October, Clayborn’s brother discovered the couple’s bodies some twenty-four hours after they had apparently been shot dead by an unknown intruder. In 2010, the still-unsolved case became the centrepiece of an edition of
America’s Most Wanted.
A year later, authorities were no nearer solving the atrocity.