Blues harmonica virtuoso Norton Buffalo died Friday October 30th, following a brief battle with lung cancer. Buffalo had been posting updates on his fight with the illness on his website, including information that the cancer was at an advanced stage and had spread to his brain.
Norton Buffalo played rock for years with the Steve Miller Band in the 70s, but had the ability to play many genres, with an emphasis on blues, rock and honky tonk. He toured this summer with Steve Miller and had many plans in the works when he learned he was sick. Norton was 58 years old.
Two years ago today, country music singer Porter Wagoner died at the age of 80, after a battle with lung cancer. Porter, known for his flashy style and his collaboration with Dolly Parton, hosted TV's The Porter Wagoner Show for 20 years.
I've posted a video of one of my favorite Wagoner songs. It's the story of a husband who comes home early to surprise his wife with a nice romantic bottle of champagne, but the whole thing goes terribly awry. He runs into another guy at the liquor store who says: "Her husband's out of town and there's a party..." (You know the rest.) This country song has it all: melodrama, pathos, alcohol, murder, and "The Cold Hard Facts Of Life."
Blue Cheer had a hit with "Summertime Blues" in 1968 and were the heaviest band to emerge from the San Francisco psychedelic scene (and are also credited as being the pioneers of heavy metal). "We’re just a power trio," Peterson said. "We play ultra blues, and it’s rock & roll. It’s really simple what we do." Peterson, who was 61, had held the band -which was named after a brand of LSD- together over the years, but had canceled a recent tour to get treatment.
Dickie Peterson was a supporter of medical cannabis and was the recipient of the High Times Doobie award.
Surf rock guitarist Dick Dale was born Richard Anthony Monsour on May 4, 1937, to a Lebanese father and a Polish mother in Boston, Massachusetts. Dale and his family moved to Orange County, California in 1954. It was there that he learned to surf and became interested in music.He soon learned to play the drums, the ukulele, the trumpet and finally the guitar. Among his early musical influences was his uncle, an oud player performing belly dance music. Much of his early music shows a Middle Eastern influence and he is often credited as one of the first electric guitarists to employ non-Western scales in his playing.
Dale, an amateur surfer, wanted his music to reflect the sounds he heard in his mind while surfing.Being left-handed, he was initially forced to play a right-handed guitar, much like Jimi Hendrix would do a few years later. However, he did so without restringing the instrument, leading him to effectively play the guitar upside-down.
Dick Dale's desire to create a certain sound would lead him to push the limits of his equipment: "Leo Fender kept giving Dale amps and Dale kept blowing them up! Till one night Leo and his right hand man Freddy T. (Freddy Tavares) went down to the Rendezvous Ballroom on the Balboa Peninsula in Balboa, California and stood in the middle of Four Thousand screaming dancing Dick Dale fans and said to Freddy, I now know what Dick Dale is trying to tell me. Back to the drawing board. A special 85 watt output transformer was made that peaked 100 watts when Dale would pump up the volume of his amp, this transformer would create the sounds along with Dale's style of playing, the kind of sounds that Dale dreamed of. But they now needed a speaker that would handle the power and not burn up from the volume that would come from Dale's guitar. Leo, Freddy and Dale went to the James B. Lansing speaker company, and they explained that they wanted a fifteen inch speaker built to their specifications. That speaker would soon be known as the 15" JBL -D130 speaker. It made the complete package for Dale to play through and was named the Single Showman Amp. When Dale plugged his Fender Stratocaster guitar into the new Showman Amp and speaker cabinet, Dale became the first creature on earth to jump from the volume scale of a modest quiet guitar player on a scale of 4 to blasting up through the volume scale to TEN! That is when Dale became the "Father of Heavy Metal" as quoted from Guitar Player Magazine. Dale broke through the electronic barrier limitations of that era!" [quoted from the official Dick Dale Web site.]
Surf rock became nationally popular in the United States briefly, but then British Invasion began to overtake the American charts in 1964. Dale continued performing live, but was soon set back by rectal cancer. He recovered, and retired from music for a time. In 1979, he almost lost a leg after being injured while swimming; a pollution-related infection made the mild injury much worse. As a result, Dale became an environmental activist and soon began performing again. Dick Dale is also an accomplished Horseman, Exotic Animal Trainer, Surfer, Martial Arts Expert, Archer, and Pilot.
"Well, first of all, let me say that I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years. It was one of those phobias that really didn’t pay off."
American singer-songwriter Warren Zevon would have been 62 years old today. Zevon was known for his dark, skeptically humorous songs.His most popular compositions include "Werewolves of London", "Lawyers, Guns and Money", "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" and "Johnny Strikes Up The Band".
Zevon's excessive vodka intake earned him the nickname "F. Scott Fitzevon," a reference to the American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose early, alcohol-fueled death Zevon seemed bent on repeating.
Warren Zevon released his breakthrough album, Excitable Boy, in 1978.The title song was about a juvenile sociopath's murderous prom night.
In 1982, after the disappointing commercial reception for his album The Envoy (which critics had called brilliant), Warren was dropped by his record label, which he discovered when he read about it in the Random Notes gossip column of Rolling Stone. The trauma caused him to relapse into serious alcoholism.Zevon retreated from the music business for several years, during which he finally overcame severe alcohol and drug addictions. It was during this period that Zevon collaborated with Bill Berry, Peter Buck and Mike Mills (R.E.M.) to form a loose side project called Hindu Love Gods. Occasionally, between 1982 and 2001, Zevon filled in for Paul Shaffer as bandleader on Late Night with David Letterman and later The Late Show with David Letterman.
Zevon described a lifelong phobia of doctors and said he seldom received medical assessment. Shortly before playing at the Edmonton Folk Festival in 2002, he started feeling dizzy and developed a chronic cough. After a long period of untreated illness and pain, Zevon was encouraged by his dentist to see a physician; when he did so he was diagnosed with inoperable mesothelioma (the same cancer that killed Steve McQueen). Warren Zevon died on September 7, 2003, aged 56, at his home in Los Angeles, California.
Setlist: Splendid Isolation Lawyers, Guns and Money Why Can't This Be Love? Banter and Dr. Babyhead intro Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead Banter Heartache Spoken Here Boom Boom Mancini Johnny Strikes Up the Band Play It All Night Long Desperados Under the Eaves [banter] Jole Blon [bamter] Instrumental intro to... > Poor Poor Pitiful Me > I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better The Indifference of Heaven [banter] Seminole Bingo Excitable Boy Roland Chorale > Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner Applause > banter Mr. Bad Example Werewolves of London > Mohammed's Radio
Frank Zappa, iconoclastic singer, composer, artist, electric guitarist, record producer, and film director, was born on this date 68 years ago.
Zappa was a highly productive and prolific artist and he gained widespread critical acclaim. Many of his albums are considered essential in rock history, and he is regarded as one of the most original guitarists and composers of his time; he remains a major influence on musicians and composers. He had some commercial success, particularly in Europe, and was for most of his career able to work as an independent artist. Zappa was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997. Zappa grew up influenced by avant-garde composers such as Varèse, Igor Stravinsky and Anton Webern, R&B and doo-wop groups.He frequently lampooned musical fads like psychedelia, rock opera and disco.
Most of Zappa's projects came to a halt in 1990, when he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer. The disease had been developing unnoticed for ten years and was considered inoperable. Frank Zappa died on Saturday, December 4, 1993 in his home surrounded by his wife and children. At a private ceremony the following day, Zappa was interred in an unmarked grave at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, Los Angeles.
Jimmy Carl Black, the original drummer for Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, passed away this past weekend after a bout with lung cancer. He was 70. Black, the self-proclaimed “Indian of the group", served with the Mothers from their acclaimed 1966 debut Freak Out! (a sneering farce about rock music and America as a whole) until Zappa’s 1970 album Weasels Ripped My Flesh. Black also played a noticeable role in the Zappa film 200 Motels, where he sang “Lonesome Cowboy Burt”. In his post-Mothers career, Black played in several bands, including a stint with Captain Beefheart, Geronimo Black (which Black fronted) and the Zappa tribute bands like the Grandmothers and the Muffin Men. Jimmy passed away peacefully Saturday (11/01/08).
A benefit for Black will be held November 9th at the Bridgehouse II in London.
Johnny Ramone invented punk-rock guitar out of hatred: He couldn't stand guitar solos.The former John Cummings of Queens, New York, played nothing but concrete block barre chords with the Ramones. Johnny's guitar style was a key part of the Ramones sound and was a major punk rock influence.His elementary attack was part of their essential simplicity, along with matching last names, two-minute songs, and uniforms of black leather and ripped denim. Johnny Ramone was infamous in the punk community as being one of a few conservatives.
