Music Charts Magazine Obituaries 2013

Joey Covington of Jefferson Airplane

Joseph “Joey” Edward Covington (June 27, 1945, East Conemaugh, Pennsylvania – June 4, 2013, Palm Springs, California)was an American drummer, best known for his involvements with Hot Tuna and Jefferson Airplane.

A self-taught drummer since the age of 10, Covington (also known in his childhood as Joey Michno) helped found Blues-rock group Hot Tuna in 1969, alongside Jefferson Airplane members Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen, while the latter band was still in its beginnings.

However, the recordings he did for Tuna were unreleased and he eventually rejoined Casady and Kaukonen at the Airplane and featured on three studio albums, the first being Volunteers, as he replaced Spencer Dryden midway through the recording process. He wrote and sang the last hit for Jefferson Airplane, 1971’s “Pretty As You Feel”, featured on the Bark album.

Covington was well-known around the Palm Springs area as a talented musician who delighted his audience by playing free gigs whenever possible. His last performance was for a Marilyn Monroe celebration in Palm Springs June 1, 2013. Covington thrilled his audience and signed autographs following the performance.

Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joey_Covington

Marshall Lytle

Marshall Lytle

Marshall Lytle (September 1, 1933 – May 25, 2013) was an American rock and roll bassist, best known for his work with the groups Bill Haley & His Comets and The Jodimars in the 1950s.

Born in Old Fort, North Carolina, Lytle was a guitar player before joining Bill Haley’s country music group, The Saddlemen, in 1951. But Lytle was hired to play double bass for the group, replacing departing musician Al Rex, so Haley taught Lytle the basics of slap bass playing. Lytle, who was only a teenager at the time, grew a moustache in order to look a little older, and became a full-time member of The Saddlemen and, in September 1952, he was with the group when they changed their name to Bill Haley & His Comets. Soon after, Lytle co-wrote with Haley the band’s first national hit, “Crazy Man, Crazy” although he did not receive co-authorship credit for it (until 2002).

Lytle played on all of Haley’s recordings between mid-1951 and the summer of 1955, including the epochal “Rock Around the Clock” in 1954.

He played a late 1940s model Epiphone B5 upright double bass, purchased in October, 1951, for about $275. He used gut strings for the G and D strings while the A and E strings were wound. Lytle’s style of playing, which involved slapping the strings to make a percussive sound, is considered one of the signature sounds of early rock and roll and rockabilly. The athletic Lytle also developed a stage routine, along with Ambrose, that involved doing acrobatic stunts with the bass fiddle, including throwing it in the air and riding it like a horse.

In 2012, Lytle was inducted as a member of the Comets into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Lytle

 

 

 

Ray Manzarek – The Doors

Raymond Daniel Manczarek, Jr., known as Ray Manzarek (February 12, 1939 – May 20, 2013), was an American musician, singer, producer, film director and author, best known as a founding member and keyboardist of “The Doors” from 1965 to 1973. He was a co-founding member of Nite City from 1977 to 1978, and of Manzarek–Krieger from 2001 to his death.

From 1962 to 1965, he studied in the Department of Cinematography at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he met film student Jim Morrison. At UCLA, he also met Dorothy Fujikawa, whom he married. They have a son, Pablo. Forty days after finishing film school, thinking they had gone their separate ways, Manzarek and Morrison met by chance on Venice Beach in California. Morrison said he had written some songs, and Manzarek expressed an interest in hearing them, whereupon Morrison sang a rough version of “Moonlight Drive”. Manzarek liked the songs and co-founded the Doors with Morrison at that moment.

Manzarek occasionally sang for the Doors, including the live recording “Close To You” and on the B-side of “Love Her Madly,” “You Need Meat (Don’t Go No Further).” He also sang on the last two Doors albums, recorded after Morrison’s death, Other Voices and Full Circle. Additionally, he provided one of several guitar parts on the song “Been Down So Long.”

Read more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Manzarek

Gordon Stoker & Elvis, May 28th 1966 at the ‘How Great Thou Art’ session

Gordon Stoker lived to be 88 years old.  He died at his home in Brentwood, TN.

Stoker was a native of Gleason, Tennessee, where he grew up in a musical family.

1st there was the “Foggy River Boys”.  When Gordon Stoker replaced Bob Money as the pianist a new group was formed named the “Melodizing Matthews”.  The group was based in Springfield, Missouri. 

The Melodizing Matthews soon changed their name to The Jordanaires, after Jordan Creek in Missouri—not after the Jordan River, as many have thought.

Gordon Stroker was a tenor singer for the Jordanaires from 1951 to 2013.

Read more at:  http://www.jordanaires.net/