The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (362 page)

‘Wear long underwear, stay warm and be a good boy!’ These were the dying words of Huey Long’s mother - and he appeared to take her at her word. The last-surviving original Ink Spot finally rejoined her in that great barbershop in the sky on 10 June 2009 - aged 105.

Originally a banjo player, Long began his lengthy music career in the mid-1920s with Frank Davis’s Louisiana Jazz Band, the musician then switching to the guitar after moving to Chicago, Illinois. Long caught the ear of Ink Spots founder Bill Kenny, who gave him a berth with the innovative vocal quartet in 1944.

After more than four decades as an Ink Spot, Long relocated to New York to teach music, before ‘retirement’ (he was already well into his eighties) to his beloved Texas. Huey Long, who died of natural causes (in so becoming by some distance the oldest entrant into
The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars),
is affectionately remembered via his daughter Anita’s Houston museum. This homely emporium was set up to honour both her father and The Ink Spots, who now tally no fewer than twenty-nine deceased members (
Dead Interesting 2005).

Thursday 11

Jeff Winfield

(Queens, New York, 1 November 1948)

The Left Banke

(Various acts)

Although not long with ‘baroque ‘n’ roll’ innovators The Left Banke, former Peter & The Wolves guitarist Jeff Winfield was an original member in place as the band enjoyed commercial success.

The Steve Martin-fronted Left Banke fused Beatlesque harmonies with some unusual string/flute arrangements to create their sound, the public initially falling in love with the winsome 1966 45s ‘Walk Away Renee’ (US Top Five – a song that also became a major hit in 1968 for The Four Tops) and ‘Pretty Ballerina’, (US Top Twenty). Teenage songwriter and keyboardist Michael Brown (Michael Lookofsky) had, for some reason, composed both songs about the girlfriend of Left Banke guitarist Tom Finn. While Finn got to grips with this, Winfield missed out on the studio sessions, playing only on live renditions of these hits: the musician (along with drummer Warren David-Schierhorst) then found himself dismissed from the band by manager/producer Harry Lookofsky, who happened to be the songwriter’s father. While The Left Banke began to fall into disarray – and eventually fade from the public eye – Winfield moved to San Francisco where he found employment at a postal depot, later indulging in one of his passions by working in record retail.

Jeff Winfield remained a talented guitarist and songwriter, and although he wasn’t to record any more of his own work, he produced the songs of others into the nineties. The musician was hospitalised for many months with pneumonia before dying from the disease at the age of just sixty.

Friday 12

Andy Hughes

(Harrow, Middlesex, England, 11 November 1965)

The Orb

Andy Hughes maintained a low public profile all through his music career, but is widely respected for his work, in particular with Middlesex act, The Orb, whose 1990s releases were among the most influential of the decade in British electronic music.

Something of a ‘genius’ in music terms, Hughes started seeing his teenage obsession with all matters electronica pay off right away, as he landed prominent production, remixing and engineering credits with British artists. Among the variety of acts that benefited from Hughes’s touch were Neneh Cherry, Working Week and Mica Paris. On top of this, Hughes became a dab hand at designing fit-for-purpose studios (south London’s popular Bunk Junk & Genius – a base used by David Bowie – being a case in point). All of this brought him to the attention of former roadie Alex Paterson, a man whose Orb project had been turning heads for a couple of years by the time the pair started working together. Hughes initially operated purely as an engineer for The Orb, but stepped in for live work as required, leading to his involvement on a fuller-scale basis once the group had signed with Island. Although still mainly the band’s producer – such as on the UK Top Twenty albums
Orbis Terrarum
(1995),
Orblivion
(1997) and the much-delayed
Cydonia
(2001) – Hughes was effectively a full-fledged Orb member because of the largely technological nature of their product. While these works were perhaps not as acclaimed as earlier Orb output (such as 1992’s charttopping
UF Orb), Orblivion
spawned an unexpected British Top Five hit with ‘Toxygene’ (1997).

But by the last album, Hughes had moved on (after a departure from The Orb in 2001 that has been described as ‘acrimonious’); however, he remained very much in demand for his services, working with techno artists like Moby, Basement Jaxx and Powder Productions. Hughes – who had sufficiently rebuilt bridges with The Orb to work on their 2007 album
The Dream
– passed away from liver failure at King’s College Hospital, London.

Golden Oldies #95

Bob Bogle

(Wagoner, Oklahoma, 16 January 1934)

The Ventures

To list every band or artist to have cited The Ventures as influence would likely take up the rest of this chapter. After all, the California surf-rock wizards weren’t known as ‘the band that launched a thousand bands’ for nothing: indeed, Gene Simmons (Kiss) and Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter (Steely Dan/The Doobie Brothers) were early fanclub subscribers. Like their British instrumental counterparts The Shadows, the group inspired an entire generation of guitarists. They weren’t as consistent commercially, but The Ventures were altogether darker and edgier.

In 1958, masonry worker and guitarist Bob Bogle met fellow axe-enthusiast Don Wilson by chance, the former looking for a used car, the latter’s father owning the chosen dealership. Initially as The Versatones, Bogle (lead) and Wilson took their guitars around most of the Pacific Northwest, playing the bars and clubs to mixed response. The Ventures (as they were now known) remained unfazed by rejections, forming their own Blue Horizon label and issuing a first single, ‘Cookies and Coke’, in 1959. When this vocal affair and its follow-up failed to impact, Bogle and Wilson recruited bassist Nokie Edwards and eventually drummer Mel Taylor (replacing second drummer Howie Johnson). The group then hit upon recording purely instrumental numbers - to immediate effect. The Johnny Smith tune ‘Walk, Don’t Run’ was first picked up by local radio, and then by the Dolton label (who, paradoxically, had previously turned the group down). The song thus became a massive national hit, achieving Billboard number two (just behind Elvis’s ‘It’s Now Or Never’) and the British Top Ten, shifting some two million units worldwide as it did so. The Ventures then completed a fine calendar year with two more Top Forty entries in ‘Perfidia’ (also UK Top Five) and ‘Ram-Bunk-Shush’. With further single releases proving somewhat hit or miss, however, The Ventures hit upon the idea of issuing ‘themed’ albums and compilations, something that the group became extremely adept at, charting over forty times in this manner throughout their enduring history. (For good measure, the group’s cover of television theme ‘Hawaii Five-O’ was to give them another Top Five pop hit in 1969.)

The Ventures remained an enormously popular live act across the world, the mainly consistent core of Bogle, Wilson, Edwards and Taylor touring well into the eighties. (The latter sadly passed away during a 1996 tour of Japan, to be replaced almost immediately by his son, Leon.) Bob Bogle retired from live work five years before his death from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in Vancouver, Washington on 14 June 2009: this made him the third member of The Ventures to have passed on, Johnson having died in 1987. Don Wilson continues to tour with the band.

Golden Oldies #96

Sky Saxon

(Richard Marsh - Salt Lake City, Utah, 20 August 1937
*
)

The Seeds

(Various acts)

As Little Richie Marsh, the man who was to put down a timeless marker in garageland began his singing career in the unlikely guise of ‘teenage heart-throb’, playing the club circuit as a soloist throughout his early twenties. However, it was the inspiration of rawer-edged guitar bands such as The Rolling Stones and Bobby Fuller Four that encouraged the vocalist/bassist to pursue a rock ‘n’ roll path. Marsh thus formed The Electra-Fires and - changing his own name to the more esoteric moniker with which he was to make himself known - Sky Saxon & The Soul Rockers.