re: Endless Sleep - The Obituary Thread

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Rosalie Hamlin, the lead singer of Rosie and the Originals who recorded the early '60s one-hit wonder classic “Angel Baby,” has died at age 71.

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Rosie and the Originals were also was one of the opening acts for the Rolling Stones at a 1964 concert at San Diego's Balboa Park Bowl. The show's promoter told the San Diego Reader he paid Rosie and the Originals $500, but only $400 for the Stones.

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One of the biggest fans of “Angel Baby” was John Lennon. He recorded the song during sessions for his Rock N' Roll album, though his version wasn't released until his Menlove Ave. disc. During the introduction for the song, Lennon says, “This here is one of my all-time favorite songs. Send my love to Rosie, wherever she may be.”

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Bruce Langhorne (May 11, 1938 – April 14, 2017) was an American folk musician. He was active in the Greenwich Village folk scene in the 1960s, primarily as a session guitarist for folk albums and performances.

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Langhorne was born in Tallahassee, Florida, where his father taught at the Florida Agriculture and Mechanical College for Negroes. From the age of four, he lived with his mother in Spanish Harlem, in New York City. He learned violin, but lost most of three fingers of his right hand as a child when lighting a homemade rocket... He started playing guitar at the age of 17, and the loss of his fingers contributed to his distinctive playing style

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Langhorne worked with many of the major performers in the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s, including The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem, Joan Baez, Richie Havens, Carolyn Hester, Peter LaFarge, Gordon Lightfoot, Hugh Masekela, Odetta, Babatunde Olatunji, Peter, Paul and Mary, Richard and Mimi Fariña, Tom Rush, Steve Gillette, and Buffy Sainte-Marie. He first recorded in 1961, with Carolyn Hester, which is when he met Bob Dylan. He later said of Dylan: "I thought he was a terrible singer and a complete fake, and I thought he didn’t play harmonica that well... I didn’t really start to appreciate Bobby as something unique until he started writing." In 1963 he accompanied Dylan in 1963 on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, and in 1965 was one of several guitarists on the album Bringing It All Back Home.

The title character of Bob Dylan's song "Mr. Tambourine Man" was inspired by Langhorne, who used to play a large Turkish frame drum in performances and recordings. The drum, which Langhorne purchased in a music store in Greenwich Village, had small bells attached around its interior, giving it a jingling sound much like a tambourine. Langhorne used the instrument most prominently on recordings by Richard and Mimi Fariña. The drum is now in the collection of the Experience Music Project, in Seattle, Washington.

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Sylvia Moy, the Motown songwriter who helped pen Stevie Wonder hits like "Uptight (Everything's Alright)" and "My Cherie Amour," died Saturday at the age of 78.

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Marvin Gaye, then a Motown artist, discovered Moy while she was singing at a Detroit club in 1963. The label signed Moy to a dual songwriting/performing deal, although her talents were largely focused on penning songs for Motown's stable of artists, which included Little Stevie Wonder.

"Motown came forth with a recording contract for me, a management contract and a songwriter's contract — which shocked me," Moy told the Free Press in 2016. "Then I was told, 'Sylvia, we'll get to you as a singer. But in the meantime, we've got all these artists and they have no material. You're going to have to write.' I said OK. Because I was kind of shy anyway. And so that's what I started doing. I got into it, and the hits started coming."

A year after a 13-year-old Wonder topped the Hot 100 with "Fingertips" in 1963 – the youngest artist ever to accomplish that feat – the singer struggled to record another hit, and as his voice began to change, Motown's Berry Gordy debated terminating Wonder's recording contract. It was Moy who is credited with persuading Gordy to keep Wonder.

After dropping the "Little" from his name, Wonder, Moy and songwriter Henry Cosby teamed to write 1965's "Uptight (Everything's Alright)," which quickly became a hit for Motown's Tamla label and Wonder's first hit as a songwriter (even though he, at the time, credited his contribution as "S. Judkins," a nod to his father).

The resulting album, 1966's Up-Tight, also featured "Nothing's Too Good for My Baby," another track penned by the Wonder/Moy/Cosby team.

Over the next three years, Wonder, Moy and Cosby partnered for a string of Hot 100 hits like "I Was Made to Love Her," "Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Da-Day," "I'm Wondering," "My Cherie Amour" and Signed, Sealed & Delivered's "Never Had a Dream Come True," the final track the trio co-wrote together; a year later, the Jackson 5 covered the track.

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In addition to Moy's work with Wonder, she also co-wrote Motown/Tamla classics like Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston's "It Takes Two," the Isley Brothers' "This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You)" (a collaboration between Moy and the legendary Holland-Dozier-Holland tandem) and Martha and the Vandellas' "Honey Chile."

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Red West, the longtime and sometimes critical confidante and bodyguard of Elvis Presley who became a successful film and television actor after the singer's death, died Tuesday night after suffering an aortic aneurysm at Baptist Hospital. He was 81.

Born in Bolivar, Tennessee, the athletic Robert Gene "Red" West befriended Elvis at Humes High School, where the 6-foot-2 redhead protected the smaller pre-fame Elvis from bullies on at least a couple of occasions, according to Presley lore. He worked for Elvis for some 20 years, occasionally taking small roles in such films as “Flaming Star” and writing or co-writing such memorable Elvis songs as the 1972 hit "Separate Ways," the holiday favorite "If Every Day Was Like Christmas" and the 1975 masterpiece of infidelity, "If You Talk in Your Sleep," recorded at Stax.

West also composed or contributed to songs recorded by other artists, including Ricky Nelson, Pat Boone and Johnny Rivers.

An ex-Marine, Golden Gloves boxer, karate instructor and genuine tough-guy-with-a-heart-of-gold (at least in his later years), West said it was his protective streak that motivated him to co-write "Elvis: What Happened?," a tell-all best-seller published only two weeks before Elvis' death on Aug. 16, 1977, that documented the singer’s drug dependency and unhealthy lifestyle,. West and his co-authors, fellow “Memphis Mafia” members and Elvis bodyguards Sonny West (a cousin) and David Hebler, assisted by Steve Dunleavy, a journalist, said the book was an attempt to encourage Elvis to give up his dangerous ways, but some outraged fans said the memoir was written out of spite, since the three men only a year earlier had been fired from Elvis’ employ by Elvis’ father, Vernon Presley.

As Elvis' friend, driver and bodyguard, West was among Presley's closest associates during the singer's meteoric rise, Army tour of duty, Hollywood stardom, late 1960s so-called comeback and 1970s decline. West's father, Newton West, died the same day as Elvis' mother, Gladys Presley, which only strengthened the men's bond. When Elvis was in the Army, West traveled to Germany to be nearer the singer, at Presley's request.

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Prior to being fired, West and some of Presley's other bodyguards had received criticism for what the reference book "Elvis: His Life from A to Z" describes as "heavyhanded tactics" involving "too much physical persuasion," in an attempt "to keep the weirdos away from Elvis." West always defended his work for Elvis, while Vernon Presley said the firings were an attempt to cut Presley's expenses.

Post-Elvis, West became a full-time actor, earning a regular role opposite star Robert Conrad in the late 1970s series “Black Sheep Squadron" (originally titled "Baa Baa Black Sheep"), about a squadron of World War II fighter pilots.

West's most famous role was in the 1989 Patrick Swayze cult classic “Road House,” but major critical acclaim eluded him until late in life, when he landed his first top billing and the first lead role of his career in the acclaimed independent drama “Goodbye Solo” (2008), which critic Roger Ebert labeled "a masterwork" and The New York Times called "a near perfect film."

“It took me 59 years to be an overnight success,” West told The Commercial Appeal, in a 2009 interview timed to the local release of the movie, in which he portrayed a taciturn old-timer contemplating suicide.

“I started out in this business as a stuntman, and it’s taken its toll on me,” West added. “I’ve had knee replacements, and I’ve got big calcium deposits in my neck from falling on my head so many times. So this is just in time.”

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(July 21, 2017) During the early days of soul music, there was no more prominent family than the Cooke family, led by the legendary Sam Cooke, and his younger brother, L.C. Cooke. They helped transform Gospel music, adding smoother touches and secular lyrics of love that developed an international and interracial audience to the music. We are sad to inform SoulTrackers tonight of the death of L.C. Cooke.

The Cooke brothers and two of their sisters began as child singers in the group The Singing Children. After that, the younger Cooke achieved some success as a member of The Magnificents, before joining brother Sam’s SAR label and scoring a modest hit with the song “The Wobble.” He also worked as a songwriter, being credited some of Sam Cooke’s big hits.

Sadly, brother Sam died just as he was working to develop L.C.’s solo career, and that career never took off. An album’s worth of material sat in the vaults for a half century, until released three years ago as The Complete SAR Recordings. We interviewed LC Cooke at the time of the release, and it was a wonderful group of memories he provided about such legendary performers as Little Richard, Jackie Wilson, Bobby Womack, and more.

While L. C. had continued to perform over the years, the 2014 release brought his career full circle and provided for a new generation of fans a taste of the magic that the Cooke family brought to Gospel, Pop and Soul music a half century ago.

L.C. Cooke’s death today also reminds us of that period, and of the special, unheralded talent of this great singer and songwriter. Rest in peace, Mr. Cooke.

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George Young, guitarist in the Sixties band the Easybeats and the co-producer on AC/DC's first five albums, has died at the age of 70.

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After emigrating from Scotland to Australia with his family as a teenager, George Young formed the Easybeats with four other European musicians, including Dutch guitarist Harry Vanda.

After a string of successful singles in Australia, the British Invasion-inspired Easybeats, along with the Bee Gees, were among the first Australian rock acts to have international impact as their single "Friday on My Mind," co-written by Young and Vanda, reached Number 13 on the Hot 100. Artists ranging from David Bowie (on Pin-Ups) to Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band (at a Sydney, Australia concert in 2014) covered the single.

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Easybeats

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Country music singer Mel Tillis, whose six-decade career included hits such as “I Ain’t Never” and “Coca Cola Cowboy” and who never let his stutter get in the way of him becoming a legend, died on Sunday, his publicist confirmed. He was 85.

Tillis passed away at Munroe Regional Medical Center in Ocala, Fla., his publicist Don Murry Grubbs said. The music legend is believed to have died from respiratory failure after he never recovered from intestinal issues he has been battling since 2016. He leaves behind his longtime partner, Kathy DeMonaco, his six children and six grandchildren.

Tillis recorded more than 60 albums and had 35 top ten singles in his decades-long career. His 1979 “Coca-Cola Cowboy” was one of his biggest hits, along with “Southern Rains” in 1980 and “I Believe in You” in 1978.

Tillis also appeared in television shows such as "Hee Haw" and "Hollywood Squares," as well as movies, including "Smokey and the Bandit 2." He also did commercial work for Wataburger, according to the Tennessean.

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Jon Hendricks, a jazz singer and songwriter who became famous in the 1950s with the vocal trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross by putting lyrics to well-known jazz instrumentals and turning them into vocal tours de force, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 96.

His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his daughter Aria Hendricks.

Although he was a gifted vocal improviser in his own right, Mr. Hendricks was best known for adding words to the improvisations of others.

He took pieces recorded by jazz ensembles like the Count Basie Orchestra and the Horace Silver Quintet and, using their titles as points of departure, created intricate narratives and tongue-in-cheek philosophical treatises that matched both the melody lines and the serpentine contours of the instrumental solos, note for note and inflection for inflection.

Mr. Hendricks did not invent this practice, known as vocalese — most jazz historians credit the singer Eddie Jefferson with that achievement — but he became its best-known and most prolific exponent, and he turned it into a group art.

Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, with Mr. Hendricks as principal lyricist and ebullient onstage between-songs spokesman, introduced the concept of vocalese to a vast audience. Thanks not just to his clever lyrics but also to the group’s tight harmonies, skillful scat singing and polished showmanship, it became one of the biggest jazz success stories of the late 1950s and early ’60s.

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