The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (94 page)

Joey Vann

(Joseph Canzano - Jersey City, New Jersey, 3 April 1943)

The Duprees

The Utopians

Joey Canzano and his Utopians appeared to be just one more set of melodic mouths until they combined their strengths with those of The Elgins, another popular Italian-American unit from the New Jersey area. Canzano – better known as Joey Vann – and co-singer Tom Bialoglow hooked up with the latter group’s Joe Santollo and Mike Amato, and The Parisiens (as they were originally named) were born. Less a rock ‘n’ roll act than ‘entertainers’, the renamed Duprees’ speciality was to remake oldies with their own flourishes – at which they became very expert. Under the guidance of Coed Records’ George Paxton and Marvin Cane, the group notched up a series of US Hot 100 entries, including the Top Ten ‘You Belong to Me’ (1962).

Vann, the obvious focal point of the Duprees, had ambitions of his own, however, and broke free from the band in 1964. He issued a solo single on Coed, ‘My Love, My Love’ (1965 – ironically a bigger hit when issued by The Duprees, who’d replaced him with Michael Kelly), but failed to make much of an impact. Despite a reversal of fortunes with cabaret work during the seventies, Vann was largely forgotten by the time of his unexpected, early death from a heart attack.

See also
Joe Santollo (
June 1981). Another founder member, Mike Arnone, has also passed on.

MARCH

Sunday 25

Tom Jans

(Yakima, Washington, 9 February 1949)

We know few details about the life of folk musician Tom Jans, though his musical influences appear to be rich: his grandmother, for example, was a longtime member of a well-known Western jazz band called The Rocky Mountain Five. For his own part, Jans made his mark in the San Francisco folk scene, becoming as well known for his professional/personal relationship with Mimi Fariña (Joan Baez’s sister) as for his music. Regardless, he produced four solid albums for recording giants A&M and CBS, two of which,
The Eyes of an Only Child
(1975) and
Dark Blonde
(1976), are widely considered gems. In his career, Jans also collaborated with several respected names, including Hoyt Axton, Lowell George and Kris Kristofferson. In more recent years, Tom Waits has paid homage to the singer.

In late 1983, however, Jans was involved in a serious motorbike crash that caused extensive damage to his kidneys – from which he never really recovered. Depressed, and more and more dependent on painkillers, he was found dead in his Santa Monica home, probably from an overdose.

See also
Mimi Fariña (
July 2001)

APRIL

Sunday 1

Marvin Gaye

(Marvin Pentz Gay Jr - Washington, DC, 2 April 1939)

(The Marquees)

Marvin Gaye was a keen chess-player. America’s most celebrated soul artist of his era scrutinized each move to the nth degree – what he should do next, or indeed which route might bring him maximum reward. Throughout his life, though, Marvin Jr’s main opponent was his namesake – the man who gave him life and the one individual who could second-guess his challenger’s game. And at the end, Gaye made the fatal error of presenting his key adversary with the crucial piece with which to defeat him.

Starved of a normal father–son relationship, Gaye finally grew to despise Marvin Gay Sr, an apostolic minister whose main ambition appeared to be the control of the wife and household he believed were his possessions. Marvin Jr, the eldest of two sons, was the main focus of Marvin Sr’s jealousy and wrath, considered a ‘faggot’ for choosing show business over non-secular music – and then resented for making a success of this choice. The flaws in his father were obvious: the God-fearing man who decreed hard work and decried indulgence privately drank to pass the many days he spent without employment. Gaye’s love and affection for his long-suffering mother, Alberta, was therefore stronger than it might have been under other circumstances: he vowed to improve her life – particularly in light of her stories of family abuse as she grew up. As a child, she had witnessed
her
father pull a gun on her mother.

Rumours of his father’s fascination with cross-dressing and his own struggle with his sexuality saw Gaye change the spelling of his name as he manoeuvred himself a discharge from the US air force in 1957. Soon after, Gaye abandoned the church choir to join DC doo-wop group The Marquees, his first non-secular foray. This vocal troupe were overseen by Gaye’s friend guitar-great Bo Diddley, though soon appropriated by Harvey Fuqua as his new Moonglows unit. Singer and entrepreneur Fuqua became Gaye’s first proper mentor, in 1959 taking a talent he felt had real potential out of the group and with him to Detroit, launching Gaye’s extraordinary career. From this move another significant figure in Gaye’s life emerged, in the shape of Motown founder Berry Gordy. Gordy initially used Gaye as a session man with the label’s only real stars thus far, The Marvelettes (as back-up singer) and The Miracles (as percussionist). But he wasn’t to wait long for a solo opportunity.

‘He wanted to die, but he couldn’t do it himself. He got his daddy to do it.’

Andre White, Marvin Gaye’s bodyguard

Gaye repaid Gordy by marrying his sister Anna – seventeen years the singer’s senior. This relationship was troubled from the start – it became apparent that Gaye found liaisons with the opposite sex hard to maintain: by his own admission, he was ‘old school’, expecting women to serve him and always emphasizing that he was the ‘provider’. As he became more and more in demand, though, Gaye’s attitudes towards women in general deteriorated. At times he worshipped the women he loved, marvelling over them like fine wines, at others his sexism and philandering spilled over into murkiness and misogyny. He was a serial user of prostitutes and pornography, and spoke openly about his masturbatory fantasies at a time when, well, one didn’t. Despite their having adopted a son, these extracurricular activities caused Gaye and Anna Gordy to split in 1975, and to divorce two years later.

Marvin and Tammi on US television in 1967: United - but not for long

Professionally, however, Marvin Gaye seemed to relate better to female partners. Marketed as the label’s ‘loverman’, Gaye was now encouraged to perform duets, considered essential ‘pop’ by a label that was keen to appeal to both black and white markets. The singer thus scored a brace of 1964 hits with Mary Wells and recorded ‘It Takes Two’ (1967) with Kim Weston. Gaye was no stranger to the charts on his own, either. After some six years cutting middling US hits, he finally landed a transatlantic number one with the timeless ‘I Heard It through the Grapevine’ (1968, seven weeks on top in the US), and also had a series of successes with his favourite leading lady, Tammi Terrell. Little could halt Gaye at this stage – or so it seemed. Terrell’s premature death (
March 1970)
was the hardest buffeting Marvin Gaye had taken since the physical beatings he had received as a child. The devastated singer took a lengthy sabbatical from the public eye, vowing never to record another girl/guy duet. He did cut an album with Diana Ross in 1974, but something in the man’s spirit had died along with Terrell. The record was not considered a success by Gaye, who felt threatened by the status of Motown and Gordy’s top girl (also the boss’s girlfriend), his mood and behaviour darkening further.