The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (324 page)

Controversy, however, surrounded the band’s hotly-anticipated second record
If Only You Were Lonely
(2006). Fearful that R & B artist Ne-Yo (whose own album was to be issued the same week) would pip them in the charts, Hawthorne Heights – or at least, street teams supposedly representing them – went on a questionable campaign to disrupt sales of the hip-hop artist’s album that included rearranging store displays and ‘hiding’ copies of their rival’s record. Despite gaining a Top Five Billboard slot as a result (Ne-Yo prevailed at number one), the band sued their label shortly after, claiming to have had no prior knowledge of these tactics.

‘Casey wasn’t involved in anything illegal, nor was he a substance abuser.’

Hawthorne Heights drummer Eron Bucciarelli

If this occurrence was damaging to Heights’ reputation, then the death of guitarist Calvert the following year was devastating to the group. After some tough times behind the scenes, Hawthorne Heights hit the road to try out new material – however, just one day into the tour, they were dealing with the sudden passing of their founding guitarist. Casey Calvert – who had undergone root canal surgery just before embarking – was dead from combined drug intoxication, the musician’s body found on the band’s tour bus just ahead of the soundcheck for a show in Detroit. It seemed that Calvert, already for some time on antidepressants, had been killed by the addition of a Vicodin painkiller to his system. Experts described such deaths in young people as ‘exceedingly rare’.

The bereft band soldiered on as a four-piece, patching up their damaged relationship with Victory, both parties perhaps feeling that more recent events had overshadowed the previous squabbling. Two further albums,
Fragile Future
(2008) and
Skeletons
(2010, via Wind-Up Records) emerged to lesser impact.

DECEMBER

Tuesday 4

Pimp C

(Chad Lamont Butler - Port Arthur, Texas, 29 December 1973)

Underground Kingz (UGK)

Fewer than two months had passed since Big Moe’s death
(
October 2007)
when Southern rap learned of the similar demise of another of its sons, Chad Butler – better known as Pimp C. The privately-educated artist had always wished to succeed in urban music, and the formation of Underground Kingz with Bun B (Bernard Freeman) enabled him to realise his aspirations.

Pimp C was still a teenager when UGK issued their first dabblings via the cassette-only
The Southern Way
(1988) and then the major-label debut
Too Hard to Swallow
(Jive, 1992) – the latter placing the duo onto the US Rap listings for the first time. Further records performed increasingly well, with
Ridin’ Dirty
(1996) falling just short of a million copies as it claimed a national Top Twenty slot. Fans weren’t disappointed by UGK’s familiar subject matter, with the region’s love of ‘purple drank’ (or ‘sizzurp’ as Pimp C preferred it) well represented within the lyrics.

Beginning in January 2002, the rapper served three years of an eight-year sentence for a parole violation in which he failed to complete his community service following an assault charge. Seemingly having spent most of his incarceration recording freestyles, Pimp C was freed on four years’ parole in 2005 – which, at the time of his death, he appeared to be taking more seriously. Six months after his release Pimp C issued a full solo album,
Pimpalation
(2006), which earned the star a national Top Five placing and a gold disc. In August 2007, the reunited UGK topped even this with a Billboard number one double-album with
Underground Kingz,
plus a hit single in ‘International Players Anthem (I Choose You)’ – which also made the UK Top Ten.

For Pimp C, this was to be his last artistic statement: on 4 December, the hip-hop artist was found dead in a Los Angeles hotel room. Like Big Moe just weeks before, it was an accidental overdose of promethazine and codeine that cost him his life. Pimp C already had a respiratory condition, thus the scene’s fondness for ‘sizzurp’ had put him at considerable risk. Bun B continued to pay homage to his former partner, with one final UGK album,
UGK4 Life,
arriving in 2009.

Another Bun B affiliate, O G Style (Eric Woods) died of a brain haemorrhage early in 2008.

Golden Oldies #59

Ike Turner

(Ike Wister Turner* - Clarksdale, Mississippi, 5 November 1931)

Ike & Tina Turner

The Kings of Rhythm

(Various acts)

His personal reputation having been put through the mill somewhat over the past few decades, it’s easy to forget just how influential Ike Turner actually was in rock ‘n’ roll.

A tough upbringing often saw him come to blows with his stepfather - plus he claimed to have sold moonshine and had sexual experiences as a child.

DJ and self-taught pianist/guitarist Turner’s first R & B unit, The Kings of Rhythm (an offshoot of his sprawling big band combo, The Tophatters), predated the field by some distance, formed as they were around 1948. This group impressed both B B King and then Sam Phillips, who signed The Kings to Sun Records, issuing the hugely influential ‘Rocket 88’ (1951, US R & B #1 - widely regarded as the ‘first’ rock ‘n’ roll record). Resentful of the fact that sax player and new front man Jackie Brenston was receiving all the credit for this success, Turner took his band north to St Louis, where they became one of the most highly regarded acts on the chitlin circuit. One of the reasons behind this was Turner’s brutal rehearsal and touring regimes, which often saw band members physically assaulted if their timing was off. (The leader also operated a strict ‘no alcohol/no drugs’ policy that was to resonate paradoxically in his later life.)

It was around this time that Ike Turner met Annie Mae Bullock, whom he initially allowed into the group as a backup singer. The new pairing - renamed Ike & Tina Turner - then found an unexpected hit in his ‘A Fool in Love’ (Sue Records, 1960, US #27; US R & B #2), Bullock by then having become Turner’s second wife. The R & B/soul-embracing Ike & Tina Turner Revue thus became a huge draw, the couple turning out intermittent classics like 1966’s ‘River Deep, Mountain High’ (which, despite reaching number three in the UK, surprisingly didn’t bother the US Top Forty), ‘Proud Mary’ (1971, US #4) and Tina’s sprightly ‘Nutbush City Limits’ (1973, US #22; UK #4). Turner’s often confrontational attitude, however, saw to it that he and Tina were forced to change labels almost as often as their underclothes during the sixties, before the duo finally settled with United Artists early the following decade.

This by now notorious ‘belligerence’ reached something of a head in 1976, with Tina walking out of their fourteen-year marriage after a violent incident ahead of a concert at the Dallas Statler Hilton. Following the couple’s divorce in 1978, Turner’s career was put into severe reversal by Tina’s damning revelations of continued domestic abuse (later to emerge as the 1986 autobiography
I, Tina
and subsequent movie
What’s Love
Got to Do with It?).
This, in addition to a number of petty felonies and his well-documented addiction to cocaine (to which he’d been introduced in 1960) saw Turner come very seriously off the rails by the late eighties. In 1990, the musician was sentenced to four years’ incarceration for attempting to sell the drug to an undercover cop three years previously. Turner was released on parole after seventeen months, during which time he claimed to have made a healthy income from peddling cigarettes, candy and coffee.

Tina’s safest move was to get behind Ike from the start

Turner’s music career enjoyed an upturn after considerable support from blues singer Jeanette Bazzell - the fourth of five spouses. With his work also muchsampled by the hip-hop community, Turner started to see the royalty cheques come in once more - most notably from Salt ‘n’ Pepa’s Top Five hit ‘Shoop’ (1993) - despite the artist claiming not to care for a form that owed much to his groundwork. Turner, by now well into his seventies, had been recording and performing with eclectic British act Gorillaz when he learned of his diagnosis with emphysema in 2005.

‘Sure, I’ve slapped Tina. There have been times when I’ve punched her to the ground. But I never beat her.’

Ike Turner, from his autobiography

Ike Turner died on 12 December 2007, at seventy-six years of age. Early the next year, it was revealed that the cause of his death was a combination of his deteriorating medical condition with cocaine toxicity - an overdose of the drug representing the significant factor in his passing. Turner’s funeral was held three days before Christmas, at the Refuge Church, Gardena, California. Among the speakers were Phil Spector, Little Richard and Solomon Burke: the surviving members of The Kings of Rhythm delighted the congregation with renditions of ‘Rocket 88’ and ‘Proud Mary.’

In 2010, the often controversial musician was posthumously honoured with commemorative plaques unveiled by the state of Mississippi. While his tendency toward abusive behaviour remains an area of some contention, Ike Turner’s considerable impact upon rock and R & B should never be underestimated.