Tag Archive: dead musicians
Bad Company‘s Brian Howe was born Brian Anthony Howe on July 22, 1953 and was an English rock singer and songwriter, best known for replacing Paul Rodgers as the lead singer of Bad Company. Brian Howe was born in Portsmouth, England in 1953. He sang with a local band called Shy, then joined White Spirit, replacing singer Bruce Ruff, but the band quickly collapsed, and Brian Howe never recorded an album with them. In 1983 Howe’s career was jump-started when singer-songwriter, guitarist, and political activist Ted Nugent recruited him to sing lead vocals for his “Penetrator” album and to front…
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Millie Small was a Jamaican singer and songwriter, best known for her 1964 recording of “My Boy Lollipop”, which reached number two in both the UK Singles Chart and the US Billboard Hot 100. Millicent Dolly May (Millie) Small (October 6, 1946 – May 5, 2020) was born in Clarendon, Jamaica, the daughter of a sugar plantation overseer and was one of seven brothers and five sisters. Millie’s music career began by winning the Vere Johns Opportunity Hour talent contest, at the age of 12. Wanting to follow a career as a singer, she moved to live with relatives Kingston,…
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David Paul Greenfield (March 29, 1949 – May 3, 2020) was an English keyboardist, singer and songwriter who was a member of rock band The Stranglers. Dave Greenfield was born in the south coast seaside resort of Brighton, UK. Prior to the Stranglers, he played in local progressive rock band ‘Rusty Butler’. The Stranglers are an English rock band who emerged via the punk rock scene and have had 23 UK top 40 singles and 17 UK top 40 albums to date in a career spanning four decades, the Stranglers are one of the longest-surviving and most “continuously successful” bands…
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Cady Groves (July 30, 1989 – May 2, 2020) was an American singer and songwriter from Marlow, Oklahoma. Cady Groves was born to Carol Pettit and Larry Groves and was the youngest of seven. After her parents divorced, she would turn on Christina Aguilera’s “Genie In A Bottle” and sing along from the inside of her closet, because she didn’t want any of her family members to hear her attempts to match Christina. One day, when her mother was outside cleaning the family’s pool in the backyard, Cady marched outside and told her mother she was going to be the…
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Troy Sneed (December 14, 1967 – April 27, 2020) was an American gospel musician. Troy Sneed was born Troy Lenard Sneed Jr. on December 14, 1967, in Perry, Florida. He played football in college at Florida A&M University, but an injury on the field put an end to his playing days. He joined the choir at the university, and after graduating he became teacher at Jax Beach Elementary School in Jacksonville, Florida. Troy Sneed married Emily Frances Ianson on July 2, 1993, and they started their own record label Emtro, which is a blend of their first names. Their label…
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Lee Konitz (October 13, 1927 – April 15, 2020) was an American jazz composer and alto saxophonist. He performed in a wide range of jazz styles, including bebop, cool jazz, and avant-garde jazz. Lee Konitz’s association with the cool jazz movement of the 1940s and 1950s included him playing in the legendary Miles Davis’s “Birth of the Cool” sessions, and working with pianist Lennie Tristano. He was one of only a few alto saxophonists of his era to retain a distinctive style, when Charlie Parker exerted a massive influence on most others. Like other students of Lennie Tristano, Lee Konitz…
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Ellis Louis Marsalis Jr. (November 14, 1934 – April 1, 2020) was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and was a jazz pianist and educator. Although he was active since the late 1940s, Ellis Marsalis Jr came to greater attention in the 1980s and 1990s as the patriarch of a musical family, with his sons Branford Marsalis and Wynton Marsalis rising to international acclaim. Ellis Marsalis Jr played saxophone during high school but switched to piano while studying classical music at Dillard University, where he graduated in 1955 before attending graduate school at Loyola University New Orleans. In the 1950s and…
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Adam Schlesinger (October 31, 1967 – March 31, 2020) was an American singer-songwriter, record producer, and guitarist who won three Emmy Awards, a Grammy Award, and the ASCAP Pop Music Award, and was also nominated for Academy, Tony, and Golden Globe Awards. Adam Lyons Schlesinger was the son of publicist Barbara (née Bernthal) and Stephen Schlesinger and grew up in Manhattan and Montclair, New Jersey. He attended Montclair High School and went on to Williams College where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy. He was a founding member of the bands Fountains of Wayne, Ivy, and Tinted…
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Wallace Roney (May 25, 1960 – March 31, 2020) was an American jazz trumpeter, born in Philadelphia. He was found to have perfect pitch at the age of four, and began his musical and trumpet studies at Philadelphia’s Settlement School of Music before going onto the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, in Washington, D.C, where he studied trumpet with Langston Fitzgerald of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. When he entered the Duke Ellington School, Wallace Roney had already made his recording debut at the age of just 15 with Nation and Haki Mahbuti, and at that time met, among others,…
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Joe Diffie (December 28, 1958 – March 29, 2020) was an American country music singer born into a musical family in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1958. After working as a demo singer in the 1980s, he signed with Epic Records’ Nashville division in 1990, and between then and 2004, Joe Diffie charted 35 singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, five of which peaked at number one. These were his debut release “Home”, “If the Devil Danced (In Empty Pockets)”, “Third Rock from the Sun”, “Pickup Man” (his longest-lasting number-one song, at four weeks) and “Bigger Than the Beatles”. In…
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