Any Major Dude With Half A Heart

The month was overshadowed by the death of Amy Winehouse. But the Grim Reaper took some people on whom greater attention would not have been wasted. For example, Chic’s keyboard man Raymond Jones died at the age of 53 of pneumonia; the same illness that took fellow Chic member Bernie Edwards 15 years ago. Also departing on the soul train this month was Fonce Mizell, who with his brother Larry produced acts such as L.T.D., Taste of Honey, The Blackbyrds, Brenda Lee Eager and The Rance Allen Group, and on his own produced that golden run of Jackson 5 singles from 1969-71.

The 1960s rock band The Grass Roots lost its second member this year: after Rick Coonce’s death in February, lead singer Rob Grill passed away. I was also saddened to learn of the death of America’s Dan Peek, whose compositions Lonely People and Don’t Cross The River formed part of the soundtrack of my youth.

The most bizarre death this month is that of Facundo Cabral’s. The 74-year-old Argentinian singer-songwriter was shot dead in Guatemala on July 9, apparently in an assassination attempt on a concert promoter. He had a tough life: at the age of 9 he supported his mother and sibling after the father walked out; in 1978 his wife and infant daughter died in a plane crash; he was a cancer survivor and almost blind. Sample Cabral line: “Every morning is good news, every child that is born is good news, every just man is good news, every singer is good news, because every singer is one less soldier.”

I was also sad to learn of the death, after a fall, of German Schlager singer Bernd Clüver, who was a cut above the usual gang of bowtied squares in the genre, and who in 1976 virtually sabotaged his career when he wrote a song about homophobia, which was banned on West German radio.

Finally, Alex Steinweiss died. We all have plenty of his invention: the album cover. In 1939 he pitched the idea of illustrated record sleeves to his superiors at Columbia Records. They accepted his proposal, and record sales shot up immediately. Steinweiss mostly designed artwork for classical records. Read more at www.soundfountain.org.

Oh, and if you play the saxophone, congratulations on not dying in July.

Christy Essien-Igbokwe, 52, Nigerian singer, on June 30
Christy Essien-Igbokwe – Seun Rere (1981) Read more…

This series has noted a couple of hundred musicians’ deaths. Not many have caused me so much sadness as that of Gil Scott-Heron. Never mind that the man was a drug addict, and that he once wrote a homophobic song. He was a poet, and he set his poetry to glorious music. He was the Bob Dylan of the ghetto. I hope that with his dying breath, Scott-Heron appreciated the fact that astronauts were just then making a final journey and the US president has introcuded health care reform he was demanding in Whitey On The Moon).

As a soul fan, I noted with particular sadness the passing of jazz-funk guitarist Cornell Dupree, who played that opening riff of Aretha Franklin’s version of Respect, and also backed favourite acts like Bill Withers and Marlena Shaw.

We tend to mourn deaths by suicide, though that of Gramy-winning songwriter, screenplsy writer and director Joseph Brooks, who wrote the much-loathed You Light Up My Life, leaves us at best with mixed feelings: he killed himself while under indictment for a series of “casting couch” rapes (the details of which are nauseating). Not a very nice guy at all, it seems.

David Mason, 85, English trumpeter who played the piccolo solo on The Beatles’ Penny Lane, on April 29
The Beatles – Penny Lane (1967) Read more…