The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (426 page)

A Lancashire lad from birth, Keith Hartley adopted more of a ‘London’ spin on his given name as he enjoyed acclaim during the sixties and seventies. In 1963, Hartley experienced good fortune when Ringo Starr (Richard Starkey) left beat group Rory Storm & The Hurricanes in order to join The Beatles: Hartley was Starr’s replacement on drums. Although Storm’s band weren’t to reach the heights of some of their rival Merseybeat combos, he used the experience as a platform upon which to build a decent career in the UK music scene.

The genial percussionist played behind John Mayall and also with The Artwoods before forming his own Keef Hartley Band - a group that earned musical (and celluloid) immortality by playing at Woodstock in 1969. The KHB released five studio albums up until 1972 (beginning with that year’s
Halfbreed),
all of which sold moderately well in the US. Only
The Time is Near
(1970) flirted with the UK Top Forty. Adopting the ‘Big’ identity, Hartley’s group continued to prove a box-office hit on both sides of the Atlantic. After the band’s split, Hartley issued his own solo recording - 1973’s
Lancashire Hustler
- an album that also featured several other names soon to make it big, such as Jess Roden (vocals), plus Robert Palmer and Elkie Brooks, formerly of Vinegar Joe. (Two years later, the drummer recorded with the lesser-received band Dog Soldier.) Hartley had a lower profile during the eighties and nineties, but revamped his Big Band with a new line-up in the millennium, the group issuing their first album in over three decades,
Not Foolish, Not Wise
(2003).

Keef Hartley - who four years earlier had published a rollicking autobiography entitled
Halfbreed (A Rock & Roll Journey That Happened Against All the Odds)
- died on 26 November 2011 following surgery at a Preston hospital.

See also
Rory Storme (
September 1972); Gary Thain (
December 1975); Johnny ‘Guitar’ Byrne (
August 1999); Robert Palmer (
September 2003)

Golden Oldies #157

J Blackfoot

(John Colbert - Greenville, Mississippi, 20 November 1946)

The Soul Children

(The Bar-Kays)

Richly toned singer John Colbert earned his distinctive nickname as a boy, known as he was for walking the streets of Greenville, Mississippi, barefoot. Indeed, Blackfoot’s early life was beset with problems, the singer finding himself banged up for car theft and, on release, having to sing on street corners for change.

In this guise, however, he was spotted by David Porter at Stax, who attempted to groom the raw young talent as a new lead singer for The Bar-Kays - the tragic group wherein several previous members had perished alongside Otis Redding in an aeroplane crash
(
December 1967).
Although this placement resulted in a great number of live performances, Blackfoot (as John Colbert) was headhunted within six months to front The Soul Children, an act hastily assembled to fill the gap left when Sam & Dave departed for Atlantic. Despite the ‘manufactured’ nature of the group, The Soul Children - Blackfoot, Norman West, Anita Louis and Shelbra Bennett - became a popular live attraction that also performed well on the R & B charts with their ‘relationship’-flavoured tunes. Hits included ‘The Sweeter He Is’ (1969, US R & B Top Ten), ‘Hearsay’ (1972, US R & B Top Five) and a Top Forty pop hit with ‘I’ll Be the Other Woman’ (1974, US R & B Top Three). (The Soul Children were in good studio company, most of their recorded output featuring instrumentation by Booker T & The MGs and the upwardly mobile Isaac Hayes.)

J Blackfoot opted for a solo career after the group split in 1979, his best effort being 1983’s ‘Taxi’ which scored another R & B Top Five placement and gave him a minor US and UK pop hit. After many years out of the spotlight, J Blackfoot reunited with The Soul Children in 2007. He was shortly thereafter diagnosed with cancer, which was to end his life in Germantown, Tennessee, on 30 November 2011.

DECEMBER

Golden Oldies #158

Howard Tate

(Macon, Georgia, 13 August 1939)

Of a similar vintage to J Blackfoot was Howard Tate, a powerful-voiced former gospel tenor who’d already cut a series of obscure sides for Mercury and Cameo Parkway by the time he was discovered by Jerry Ragovoy at Verve Records. A number of Tate’s blues-drenched recordings were big hits on the R & B listings, Ragovoy’s ‘Ain’t Nobody Home’ (1966), the viagra pre-empting ‘Look at Granny Run, Run’ (1966) and ‘Stop’ (1968) all finding Top Twenty berths here, and securing him support slots to big names like Marvin Gaye. In his albums, Tate showed the breadth of his abilities by writing many of his own compositions and covering less-likely musicians such as Bob Dylan and Robbie Robertson.

After the hits dried up, however, Howard Tate’s life took a downward spiral. The singer first lost his teenage daughter in a 1976 house fire, then developed an addiction to drugs, finally winding up in a homeless shelter after his marriage failed. A big-hearted man, Tate pulled himself back up during the nineties and worked as a counsellor to a generation of drug-dependents that presumably had little clue about the man’s past. In 2001, however, Tate was rediscovered and urged out of retirement to play a series of live shows. These included the 2004 Roskilde Festival, at which he wowed audiences again more likely there to see acts such as The Wu-Tang Clan.

As a result, the artist went back into the studio to record further collections such as
Blue Day
(2008). Howard Tate’s health had not been at its peak since before the days of his addiction however, and the singer died in New Jersey on 2 December 2011 after a short battle with multiple myeloma and leukaemia: he survived Jerry Ragovoy by just four months
(
Golden Oldies #140).