The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (84 page)

Another singer/songwriter with Robert Zimmerman connections, David Blue was part of the Greenwich Village set that had thrown up folk talents such as Phil Ochs. A mainstay of the area’s clubs and bars in the early sixties, Blue, with his politically charged polemic, was popular with the Dylan crowd, but, veering towards rock, he headed for San Francisco to hook up with Country Joe & The Fish – a political/trip band on the verge of turning ‘electric’ – under his real name. Blue/Cohen was with the band for its most creative period but quit just ahead of their momentous performance at Woodstock. David Blue returned to New York and to his folk roots via a stint with the onoff Blues Project, but aside from a highprofile tour with Dylan in 1976, Blue featured less and less in the seventies music scene, becoming an actor instead (he appeared in the 1978 movie
American Friend
and on television). Like his contemporary David Torbert, Blue died young from a heart attack – while jogging through Washington Square Park in New York City.

Tuesday 7

David Torbert

(San Francisco, California, 7 June 1948)

New Riders of the Purple Sage

Kingfish (Horses)

(New Delhi River Band)

(Mescaline Rompers)

Briefly with The New Delhi River Band and Mescaline Rompers in the late sixties, Dave Torbert created his small page of rock ‘n’ roll history by meeting Jerry Garcia at the tail end of the Haight-Ashbury love-in and joining his New Riders of the Purple Sage (named after Zane Grey’s novel), an offshoot of The Grateful Dead formed mainly to give Garcia an alterego group in which to experiment. Torbert was no also-ran, though; he was a more than decent bass guitarist who possessed a fine voice and could play blues harp. And it was plain that the New Riders were going to be more than just a sideline: often opening for The Dead, the band – sometimes Garcia and Torbert and always John Dawson (vocals/guitars/songwriting), David Nelson (guitars), Phil Lesh (bass) and Mickey Hart (drums) – became touted as the leading cosmic/psychedelic/country act of the time.

By 1971 the band had a recording contract and Torbert was a full-time member, taking over Lesh’s duties. With New Riders, Torbert played on five albums in three years – taking lead vocal duty on most of the second album,
Powerglide
(1972), which, like its follow-up,
Gypsy Cowboy
(1972), also featured a couple of his own songs. But he had been playing simultaneously with Kingfish (who cut their first record under the name Horses), and joined them full-time in 1974. Kingfish – which at one time also featured another ‘Deadhead’, guitarist Bob Weir – issued three albums before splitting; a fourth remained unreleased until years after Torbert’s death, which came from a completely unexpected heart attack at the age of thirty-four.

See also
Spencer Dryden (
January 2005); John Dawson IV (
July 2009). Clyde ‘Skip’ Battin and Allen Kemp have also passed away

Tuesday 21

Tomaz Hostnik

(Trbovlje, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, 1961)

Laibach

Yes, hardline industrialists Laibach began as long ago as 1980, formed in Trbovlje by Hostnik and Miran Mohar – as the musical ‘wing’ of their ‘New Slovenian Art’ movement, known as NSK. As if this weren’t enough, the pair were also currently serving with the Yugoslavian army. (The band’s name was what Ljubljana was known as under Nazi occupation.)

Military obligations prevented much happening for Laibach until 1982, when the group experienced a great deal: they played their first live performances and recorded for the first time in a studio. Laibach’s radical stance, however, provoked police scrutiny at a concert on 11 December in Zagreb; Yugoslavia was under communist rule and the group’s proStalinist stance had had authorities in a lather for some time. On this occasion they were under investigation for ‘apparent use of military expedients’ within their uncompromising stage act. It was to be Hostnik’s last appearance with the band. He was found hanged from a hayrack just ten days later (the Hostnik song ‘Apologia Laibach’ is believed by many to be a suicide note). Laibach are now enormously popular, particularly in the US, where the band has been embraced by the industrial metal fraternity and Tomaz Hostnik is seen as something of a deity.

Lest We Forget

Other notable deaths that occurred sometime during 1982:

Joe Bauer
(US jazz drummer and founder member of rock act The Youngbloods, who made US #5 with ‘Get Together’ in 1969; born Tennessee, 26/9/1941; brain tumour, 9/1982)

Billy ‘Butterball’ Bowen
(US vocalist with The Ink Spots; born Alabama, 3/1/1909; unknown, 27/9)

Tommy Bryant
(US bass with a later incarnation of legendary vocal act The Ink Spots; born Pennsylvania, 21/5/1930; unknown, 3/1)

August Burns
(US cellist with Sweetwater; having somehow survived a fall from a construction elevator while on a sabbatical in Germany, Burns contracted pneumonia and died after undergoing treatment)

Dallas Edwards
(US guitarist who played in Joey Rand’s touring version of Bill Haley’s Comets; drowned in a Daytona hotel swimming pool while on tour, 11/1982)

John Felton
(US bass singer/guitarist of California doo-wop combo The Diamonds; born
c
1934; his light aircraft crashed into Mt Shasta, also killing his wife and two others, 17/5)

Murray ‘The K’ Kaufman
(New York-based US rock ‘n’ roll DJ who became known as ‘the fifth Beatle’ following his friendship with the touring superstars; born 14/2/1922; cancer, 2½)

Marty Robbins
(US country/pop singer who charted many times, hitting US #1 with 1959’s ‘El Paso’; born Martin David Robinson, Arizona, 26/9/1925; heart attack, 8/12)

Warren Ryanes
(US baritone with ‘The Book of Love’ hitmakers The Monotones, alongside his younger brother John (who died ten years earlier); born New Jersey, 14/12/1937; unknown, 6/1982)

Lynne Taylor
(US folk/jazz singer who worked with Benny Goodman and Buddy Rich before topping the charts with ‘Walk Right In’ (1963) as one of The Rooftop Singers; born 1928; unknown)

George Clayton Weir
(US rock/pop keyboardist with Ron & The Starfires, who backed The Shangri-Las; born Muggins Willard, 31/10/1946; illness, Florida, 1/7)

1983

JANUARY

Wednesday 12

Reebop Kwaku-Baah

(Remi Kabaka - Lagos, Nigeria, 13 February 1944)

The Unknown Cases

Traffic

Can

(Various acts)

One of the first African musicians to enter European rock, Reebop Kwaku-Baah arrived in Britain during the sixties, where he taught his craft – percussion – and recorded with a number of African artists. While living in Sweden, Kwaku-Baah was contacted by Traffic’s Steve Winwood, one of a number of contemporary musicians impressed with what they’d heard; initially brought in to tour with the top psychedelic-pop act, Kwaku-Baah remained with Traffic for most of the seventies. His first solo effort,
Reebop
(1972), was recorded with Swedish musicians and released while he was still playing with Winwood. Others followed, the standout universally acknowledged to be 1977’s Moroccan-flavoured
Trance.
By now this influential rhythmist had featured on recordings by The Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton, though his best work was arguably with German progressive bands Can and Zahara.