The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (36 page)

But Rostill died before he could know the enormous success of his compositions. In November 1973, fellow Shadow Bruce Welch called at Rostill’s Hertfordshire home to work on new material. After getting no answer from his home studio, Welch and the bassist’s wife were horrified to discover that he had been electrocuted. One month later, his award-winning ‘Let Me be There’ gave Olivia Newton-John her first gold single in the USA, and further Rostill-penned hits ‘If You Love Me (Let Me Know)’ and ‘Please, Mr, Please’ each shifted nearly a million copies for her over the next couple of years.

See also
Tony Meehan (
November 2005); Jet Harris (
Golden Oldies #132).

DECEMBER

Thursday 20

Bobby Darin

(Walden Robert Cassotto - Bronx, New York, 14 May 1936)

Life was never going to be easy for Bobby Cassotto, aka Darin: in a series of twists that would keep the sharpest
EastEnders
viewer guessing, he discovered as an adult that the ‘mother’ who brought him up was actually his grandmother Polly, and his ‘sister’ Nina his mother – his father (a smalltime gangster, according to the singer) had died before he was born. Darin was so humiliated by these revelations that he offered his impoverished family almost no financial assistance once he’d hit the big time. As if all this weren’t enough, the singer had been stricken with rheumatic fever as a child, weakening his heart and leaving him in precarious health for the rest of his life. Darin somehow performed well at school. He was a versatile musician and realized quickly his dream to perform with a band, losing his ‘stigmatic’ Italian surname as he worked the New York clubs. With rock ‘n’ roll still somewhat in its infancy, though, he was pigeonholed by Decca (the first label to spot his talent): what followed was a sequence of banal ballads with a semi-quiff, carefully designed for the maximum commercial return. However, his arresting, self-penned ‘Splish Splash’ all but topped the US chart in 1958 – and a year later, the Kurt Weill standard ‘Mack the Knife’ did.

A unique artist, Darin tried acting – he won a Golden Globe Award in 1962 – and even political activism, to which end he recorded a pair of protest records following the assassination of Robert Kennedy, whose election campaign he’d supported. Darin’s devotion was so complete that he chose to sleep next to the coffin all night following Kennedy’s death.

Bobby Darin’s inconsistent health dictated his activity after his thirtieth birthday, though. In 1971, he underwent long-overdue corrective heart surgery, which enabled the star to continue working for a while, but, at the end of 1973, an attempt to repair a faulty valve proved one operation too many. Darin died during surgery, and his body – as requested – was left to the UCLA Medical Center. Lifelong fan Kevin Spacey played the singer in the 2000 biopic
Beyond the Sea.

Tuesday 25

Clayton Perkins

(Lloyd Clayton Perkings - Tiptonville, Tennessee, 1935)

The Perkins Brothers

Younger brother of the prodigious guitarist and songwriter Carl Perkins, bassist Clayton found himself in Carl’s shadow as the group they’d formed with third sibling, Jay, began to attract attention from Sun Records. Perkins was somewhat upstaged as he strummed his upright bass, but was nonetheless excited at the thought of appearing on national television as Carl’s ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ began to take off. In a twist of fate that was decisive for all three Perkins Brothers, a near-fatal car accident prevented them from making the trip to New York. With his career changing direction, moving into country music, Carl Perkins had no use for his brother and made the painful decision to fire the needy Clayton in 1963.

The bass-player never worked in music again. Depressed by the premature death of his brother Jay Perkins (
Pre-1965),
he fell into alcoholism and left his family behind. In generally poor health, Clayton Perkins was found in his bed on Christmas Day 1973, having apparently shot himself with a .22 pistol.

See also
Carl Perkins (
Golden

Oldies #5)

Wednesday 26

Lowman Pauling

(North Carolina, 14 July 1926)

The ‘5’ Royales

Although he is best known for his swooping bass vocals with doo-wop favourites The ‘5’ Royales, Lowman Pauling was also a very versatile and forward-thinking guitarist who used distortion techniques way before most rock acts – and is cited regularly by many as an influence. Known variously by the nicknames of ‘El’ or ‘Pete’, Pauling joined his father’s Carolina-based Royal Sons gospel quintet as a boy, making the transition to secular music and going on to score countless R & B chart entries (some sufficiently racy to create issue with his father) with The Royales during the 1950s. Although the vast majority of these were at least co-written by Pauling, ‘Dedicated to the One I Love’ twice became a million-selling tune for both The Shirelles (1961) and The Mamas & The Papas (1967). Well recognized for his guitar and songwriting skills, Pauling also found work with bigger R & B stars such as Sam & Dave.

In the middle of performing custodial duties at a Brooklyn synagogue the day after Christmas, Lowman Pauling collapsed and died suddenly from an epileptic seizure. Most of the various Royales have since joined him: Obadiah Carter, Gene Tanner, Eudell Graham and brother Clarence Pauling passed on in quick succession between 1994 and 1995, while frequent lead Johnny Tanner died in 2005.

Lest We Forget

Other notable deaths that occurred sometime during 1973:

Bruce Berry
(US roadie with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, commemorated alongside Danny Whitten in Neil Young’s ‘Tonight’s the Night’; several days’ partying with the band resulted in his overdosing on cocaine/heroin, 6/1973)

Rick Dey
(US garage bassist with The Furys, The Vejtables and The Wilde Knights - who recorded the oh-so-shocking ‘Beaver Patrol’; born 1948; overdosed on nitrous oxide, 5/11)

Leroy Fann
(US R & B bass-singer with the chart-topping Ruby & The Romantics; born Akron, Ohio, 9/11/1936; shot in New York City, 11/1973)

Larry Finnegan
(US rockabilly artist who scored a US #11 hit with ‘Dear One’ in 1962 and founded his own label; born John Lawrence Finneran, New York, 10/8/38; brain tumour, 22/7)

Jerome Green
(US singer/tuba- and maraca-player with Bo Diddley, influential to Mick Jagger; born 1934; unknown)