The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (97 page)

But Esther Phillips’s health had been seriously attacked by her earlier drug abuse. Confined to a bed at Harbor Medical Center in Carson, California, Phillips died from liver and kidney failure at the age of forty-eight.

Ann Christy

(Christiane Leenaerts - Antwerp, Belgium, 22 September 1945)

The world lost another fine chanteuse that day. Ann Christy isn’t widely remembered outside her own country, yet this slight but powerful singer was deemed something of a goddess at home – and dubbed the ‘female Brel’. A shop girl with no real musical background, Christy made a career singing in clubs; she was Flemish, but chose to sing in French, which (as Jacques Brel himself learned) was not considered the done thing among traditionalists. However, tenacious Christy was performing on television within a year of starting out, and in 1965 joined The Adams, a popular orchestra, which featured her friend, and later husband, drummer Marc Hoyois. Nurturing a distinctive look with hippy bell-bottoms and sandals, Christy hit big in Belgium with
Le Garçon que j’aimais
(‘The Boy I Loved’, 1971), and then represented her country at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1975, though she finished a miserable fifteenth. It was clear, though, that Ann Christy was better than this suggests. In 1978, she even attracted the interest of Bob Dylan, who penned two songs for the singer (‘Walk out in the Rain’ and ‘If I Don’t be There by Morning’).

In 1980, Ann Christy secured another big hit with her version of ‘The Rose’ (from the Bette Midler movie vehicle) but was shortly thereafter diagnosed with cancer. With little payback for all her efforts, Christy died in relative poverty in a Brussels hospital.

Sunday 12

Lenny Breau

(Auburn, Maine, 5 August 1941)

Three

The Lenny Breau Trio

Although primarily known as a jazz-guitar improviser par excellence, Lenny Breau makes the cut here for his forays into blues, country and pop – and for the plainly mysterious nature of his death. Born to French-speaking country-performing Canadians, friend and mentor to rocker Randy Bachman (The Guess Who/Bachman-Turner Overdrive), who continues to champion Breau to this day, Breau nonetheless took a tangent into jazz, leading the acoustic act Three before cutting two albums of unique electric playing for RCA with his Winnipeg-based trio – completed by Ron Halldorson (bass) and Reg Kelln (drums). During the early seventies, Breau played largely as a sideman to Anne Murray (among others), before cementing his own fine solo work with a series of tours across Canada and the USA between 1974 and his death. Sometimes these were with former cohorts; at others alongside guitar greats like Chet Atkins, Buddy Emmons (pedal steel) and Phil Upchurch.

‘He knew more guitar than any guy that ever walked the earth.’

Chet Atkins

Lenny Breau’s lifeless body was found in the swimming pool of his Los Angeles apartment complex on the morning of 12 August 1984. The initial verdict was drowning, but it soon became apparent that the musician had been strangled. At the time, it was widely believed that Breau may have had gambling or drug debts – or even domestic issues – though nobody has ever been brought to task for his murder in over twenty years. He is survived by his musician son, Chet Breau, also an accomplished guitarist.

Breau’s frequent collaborator, Canadian guitarist Gaye Delorme, died in June 2011.

Tuesday 14

Norman Petty

(Clovis, New Mexico, 25 May 1927)

The Norman Petty Trio

Although a musician of some merit in his own right, Norman Petty will probably always be remembered as the man who exploited the talent of Buddy Holly. Petty (via a stint as a local DJ) brought his smalltime trio out of the tiny border town of Clovis – his wife, Vi, on the piano, Jack Vaughn on guitar, with Petty himself playing the organ. With little success forthcoming – bar the instrumental radio hit ‘Mood Indigo’ (1956) – Petty next concentrated on songwriting and helping to break local acts (such as Roy Orbison and The Rhythm Orchids) at his own studio. At this time, he was known for his magnanimity, charging musicians by the session as opposed to the hour. Between 1957 and late 1958, the young Buddy Holly – who had been dropped by Decca – recorded almost all his work at Norman Petty Studios. Petty was, after all, an innovative producer, and it was his reworked version of Holly & The Crickets’ ‘That’ll be the Day’ (1957) that went on to top the charts and sell a million copies. What rankles with folk nowadays is that Petty then demanded co-authorship of
all
The Crickets’ further songs, working a deal very favourable to himself. Indeed, after Holly’s untimely death (
Pre-1965)
– by which time the pair had parted company anyway – Petty overdubbed a number of old Holly songs for rerelease. (Paul McCartney’s securing of publishing rights from Petty in 1974 ensured that Holly’s widow received overdue benefit from her late husband’s success.)

Norman Petty had further success after the tragedy, and also returned to playing as keyboardist on hits by British group Brian Poole & The Tremeloes, before returning to the radio work of his youth. Petty died of leukaemia in a Lubbock hospital, just three months after the death of his former colleague Jack Vaughn. Violet Petty survived them by eight years.

SEPTEMBER

Wednesday 19

Steve Goodman

(Chicago, Illinois, 25 July 1948)

Prolific folk-rock musician Steve Goodman developed a following in both New York and Chicago – initially paying his bills by composing and singing jingles for radio commercials. In Chicago, he met songwriting giant Paul Anka, whose contacts helped get Goodman signed to Buddah in New York. Success came in 1974, with singer David Allen Coe’s recording of his ‘You Never Even Call Me by My Name’ becoming a sizeable country hit. Jingle-composing could now be shelved indefinitely.

Although his own musical achievements were more limited, Goodman – a folk musician in the storytelling tradition of Woody Guthrie – won acclaim for his songs, not least from Guthrie Jr (Arlo), who recorded Goodman’s ‘City of New Orleans’ after reluctantly agreeing to listen to it in a bar. Having suffered from leukaemia for almost a decade, Goodman collapsed on stage in 1982 – his illness was now public. The artist still found time to make two final albums before his unavoidable death, at the University of Washington Hospital, Seattle.

NOVEMBER

Thursday8

Tasha Thomas

(Jeutyn, Alaska, 1950)

Both a session vocalist and a rising star in her own right, New York-based disco diva Tasha Thomas worked with a broad array of talent, including Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, Carly Simon, Cat Stevens, Kiss and Esther Phillips – the last of whom she survived by just three months. Thomas’s early forays into music were as organist/singer with her mother’s Pentecostal church choir; she was first recorded as part of the back-up choir for Louis Armstrong’s ‘Wonderful World’ in 1968, and engaged more with the secular world throughout the seventies, appearing on over a hundred recordings. Thomas moved into the spotlight singing the part of ‘Auntie Em’ in the Broadway musical
The Wiz
– her consistent performances winning her record deals with Orbit, then with corporate giant Atlantic. In January 1979, Thomas’s ‘Shoot Me (With Your Love)’ became a radio hit, having caused a sensation across America’s dance floors during the disco boom of 1978.