The victim was Lee Morgan, a trumpet prodigy from Philadelphia who began playing with Dizzy Gillespie when he was still a teenager. He went on to record and perform with jazz heroes of that era, including John Coltrane and Art Blakey. By the early '60s, Morgan was lost to narcotics, like too many "jazzbos" of his generation. He was saved from the grave by Helen More, a native North Carolinian who had fallen into the New York jazz scene as a fan and groupie.
Her Manhattan apartment was near several jazz clubs, and she used it as a nursing station to wean musicians off dope and get them back onstage. One of her projects was Lee Morgan. He pulled himself together with her help, and they went spent a decade living together, despite a 13-year age difference.
In the winter of 1971-72, Morgan was back on the junk and canoodling with another woman. On February 18, 1972, More went to confront him at Slug's, an East Village jazz joint. They argued between sets, and Morgan manhandled her outside, telling the doorman to keep her out.
Helen More slipped back in after Morgan's quartet began its late set, after midnight. She walked up to the stage, pulled a pistol and fired a shot that him squarely—and fatally—in the chest. He was still just 33 years old.
"I ran over there and said I was sorry," More later told an interviewer. "And he said to me, 'Helen, I know you didn't mean to do this. I'm sorry, too.'"
More was convicted of homicide but served only about five years in prison. She died in 1996.
As the writer Jerry Stahl put it a few years ago, "Jazz guys were way ahead of rock stars when it came to dying young."
And there are many ways to die young, as the following thumbnails show.
James "Shep" Sheppard, a doo-wop singer and songwriter, found a musical theme and stuck with it: I'm gone, I'm back, I'm here to stay.
Sheppard, born in 1936, grew up in St. Albans, Queens. He latched onto the R&B a cappella style of vocal harmonizing that blossomed in big cities in the 1950s. The Heartbeats, Shep's St. Albans band, had a hit (No. 5 on the R&B charts, No. 53 in pop) in 1957 with his tune "A Thousand Miles Away."
On February 1, 1961, his new band, Shep & The Limelites, cut a tune for Hull Records that would become a doo-wop signature: "Daddy's Home." Shep wrote the song and sang the lead, adding a famous coda that referred to his earlier hit: "I'm not a thousand miles away." The song hit No. 2 on the pop charts.
Sheppard wrote three other songs that cracked the Top 100, including "Our Anniversary," but great fame evaded him, and the British Invasion and Motown muffled doo-wop. Sheppard got caught up in lawsuits. The publisher of "A Thousand Miles Away" claimed a copyright violation for his "Daddy's Home" coda. As music became a hassle, Sheppard lost himself in more nefarious pursuits. Word got around the New York music scene that debt collectors were asking about him. On January 24, 1970, police were called to a car parked on the Long Island Expressway outside of New York City. Behind the wheel, police found the body of Sheppard, 33 years old, ventilated with bullets. It looked like a professional job—a hit. The killing was never solved.
You may not know the name Curtis Ousley, but old-school R&B fans will recognized his royal moniker: King Curtis. Born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1934, Ousley was inspired when he heard swinging R&B star Louis Jordan play the saxophone. His mother bought him one for his 11th birthday, and he never put it down. He moved to New York at 18, planning a career as a jazz player after blowing with the Lionel Hampton Band for a couple of years.
He ended up as a star sideman. He performed on a number of early rock 'n' roll hits, helping to create the percussive sax style of that era when he cut "Yakety Yak" with The Coasters. He released albums steadily throughout the 60s, some with his combo The Kingpins, Aretha Franklin's backing band.
The 1970s began well for King Curtis. In March 1970, he won a Grammy for best R&B instrumental for his work on Joe South's "Games People Play." In May, Aretha's cover of "Bridge Over Troubled Water," which featured an Ousley sax solo, topped the R&B charts. In June, he played the Montreaux Jazz Festival, and in July he recorded for John Lennon's LP "Imagine."
Then it all ended. At 11 PM on August 13, 1971, King Curtis was carrying an air conditioner into his brownstone on West 86th Street. According to the prevailing story, he shooed two junkies off his stoop. Insults were exchanged, and Juan Montanez, 26, pulled a knife and stuck the sax man in the chest. The big musician wrestled the knife away and managed to stab Montanez several times before the assailant fled. Ousley was rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, where he died. Coincidentally, Montanez had gone to the same hospital. Police put two and two together, and Montanez was arrested, convicted and imprisoned.
Jesse Jackson preached and Stevie Wonder performed at King Curtis' funeral. He was buried at Pinelawn Cemetery on Long Island, across the way from Count Basie and John Coltrane. He went into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, class of 2000.
Growing up in Chicago, Terry Kath may not have heard of Johnny Ace, the R&B star from Memphis, but they have something awful in common.
Ace, born John Alexander Jr. in 1929, became a Beale Street star as a hit-maker for Duke Records, beginning with his ballad "My Song" in 1952. He also worked as a sideman for Big Mama Thornton, and he was on tour with her in Houston on Christmas Day 1954. He had a bad habit of toying with his revolver when he had a gullet full of booze. So it was that night.
Bass player Curtis Tillman witnessed the incident backstage.
"I will tell you exactly what happened," Tillman told a magazine writer years later. "Johnny Ace had been drinking and he had this little pistol he was waving around the table, and someone said, 'Be careful with that thing.' And he said, 'It's okay! Gun's not loaded… see?' And he pointed it at himself with a smile on his face and 'Bang!' Sad, sad thing. Big Mama ran out of that dressing room yelling, 'Johnny Ace just killed himself!'"
History repeated itself nearly 25 years later.
Guitarist Terry Kath was a founding member of Chicago, the horn band from DePaul University that went on to sell more than 30 million records and chart nearly two dozen Top 10 songs. Kath contributed lead vocals to two of the group's biggest hits, "Color My World" and "Make Me Smile." But like so many rock stars with money and access to illegal substances, Kath developed the self-regulation problem. Like Johnny Ace, he liked to play with firearms at the wrong times.
On January 23, 1978, Kath was partying with friends in Los Angeles when he pulled out his 9mm pistol. A friend told him he ought not to play with guns.
"Don't worry," he said. "It's not loaded."
He raised the muzzle to his head, pulled the trigger and blew himself into the hereafter. Like Johnny Ace, Terry Kath was dead wrong.
Little Willie John, a sawed-off R&B singer born in Arkansas and raised in Detroit, had a big temper and a vast talent. He came from a musical family. His sister, Mable John, recorded for Tamla and Stax Records in the 1960s and was a member of the Raelettes, the backing vocalists for Ray Charles.
Her baby brother, seven years younger, was signed in 1955 by King Records, the old Cincinnati hillbilly label that evolved into a "race records" hit machine with artists such as Hank Ballard & the Midnighters, Ivory Joe Hunter, Joe Tex and Johnny "Guitar" Watson.
Little Willie John first made the R&B charts when he was just 18. Two songs he wrote and recorded in 1956 became hits—and jewels of the rhythm and blues songbook. The first was a yearning ballad, "Need Your Love So Bad." The second was "Fever," the ode to libido that Peggy Lee covered in 1958.
John earned royalties, but his label took more than its fair share, the usual story for R&B artists. He continued to tour nonstop into the early '60s and had minor pop hits with "Talk to Me, Talk to Me" and "Sleep."
America might not have been paying attention to Little Willie John's music, but he had the ear of four lads in Liverpool, England. In 1964, the Beatles recorded a cover of John's racy 1959 tune, "Leave My Kitten Alone." It might have been a huge payday for John had it gone on their "Beatles for Sale" album, as planned. But it was pulled from the record, probably because its double-entendre lyrics were too ribald for the band's clean-cut image. (The Beatles cover was finally released in 1995, with John Lennon joyously singing the lead.)
At the same time as this near-miss with fame and fortune, John was dropped by his record label. He was angry and often drunk, and he had a bit of a Napoleonic complex, picking fights with big men. While on the road in 1966, John got into an argument after a show in Seattle. He had a knife and used it efficiently on his foe. The singer was convicted of murder and sent away to prison at Walla Walla, Washington. On May 26, 1968, prison officials reported that John had died of natural causes—a heart attack at age 30. The cause of death is a subject of enduring suspicion. Some believe he was beaten by prison guards.
In 1996, John became yet another member of the early-death club elected to the rock hall of fame.
Jaco Pastorius could flat play his instrument, the Fender Jazz Bass guitar. It was the game of life that he didn't play so well.
Pastorius was born in 1951 near Philadelphia and raised in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. His father, Jack, was a big band musician, and his son followed him onstage. He played in teen rock bands but was drawn toward the mod musical fusion between pop and jazz. Pastorius was discovered by Bobby Colomby, drummer for Blood, Sweat and Tears, who was scouting jazz talent for CBS Records. In 1976, at age 25, Pastorius made a record for CBS that jazz fans viewed as an electric bass breakthrough. The LP, which featured Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and David Sanborn, led Pastorius to a seat with the fusion band Weather Report and a steady stream of studio work in pop and jazz.
Pastorius' behavior, always quirky, began to grow more extreme as he approached age 30. He quit Weather Report in 1981, and was diagnosed with manic depression the following year. It didn't help that he abused drugs and alcohol. His career nose-dived as Pastorius spent time in mental-health hospitals. Penniless, he was evicted from his New York apartment. In five years, he had gone from playing arena shows with Weather Report to homelessness.
On September 11, 1987, Pastorius attended a Santana concert in Fort Lauderdale. He managed to evade security and climb onstage, no doubt planning to sit in on bass. Instead, he was bum-rushed off the premises. Later that night, Pastorius showed up belligerent at the Midnight Bottle Club in the Lauderdale suburb of Wilton Manors. The bouncer, Luc Havan, ran him off. When he kicked in a glass door, Havan gave the rail-thin bassist a cruel beating. Pastorius, with severe head injuries, went comatose and died 10 days later. The bouncer pleaded to manslaughter and served about a year in prison.
The bassist was inducted into Down Beat magazine's Jazz Hall of Fame soon after his death. In 2008, Pastorius' beloved fretless Fender, which he called the "Bass of Doom," turned up in New York more than 20 years after it was lost to his mental illness. One of his admirers, bassist Robert Trujillo of the heavy metal band Metallica, bought the instrument and gave it to Pastorius' family.
For a time, it seemed as though rap and hip-hop music would kill itself off—musical genocide by band-on-band violence. Gangsta rappers read their press clips and believed them, the fatal mistake of fame. The violence seemed like a put-on, but the body count proved it was real.
One of the first big names to die was Tupac Shakur, who emerged as a rap star in 1992. On September 7, 1996, Shakur was shot four times as he was leaving the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, where he had watched Mike Tyson box Bruce Seldon. He died six days later.
Six months after the unsolved Shakur slaying, the Brooklyn-born rapper Chris Wallace, who performed as Notorious B.I.G., was shot and killed as he sat in his car after a music awards party in Los Angeles. It is assumed that Wallace played a role in the Shakur killing and was killed in retaliation.
After the murders, key figures in hip-hop held an anti-violence "summit." The message of peace, love and understanding didn't take.
In one front-page example, Jason Mizell, who rapped as Jam Master Jay and had been a member of the trailblazing trio Run-DMC, was gunned down on October 30, 2002, inside a recording studio in Jamaica, Queens. Mizell was the target of another retaliatory hit. Authorities fingered Kenneth McGriff, a notorious Queens crack dealer, who was said to have ordered Mizell's murder because the musician had aligned professionally with the rapper 50 Cent, who angered McGriff by rapping critically about his drug-dealing.
Other murdered rappers include Lamont "Big L" Coleman, 24, shot in Harlem on February 15, 1999; Raymond Rodgers, 27, who performed as Freaky Tah, shot in Queens on March 28, 1999; James Tapp, 25, who rapped as Soulja Slim, slain on November 26, 2003, in New Orleans; and Jason Johnson, 21, known by the misspelled handle Camoflauge, shot and killed in Savannah, Georgia, outside the office of his label, Pure Pain Records.
While they weren't rappers, brothers Roger and Larry Troutman have earned props from hip-hop artists and rate a place in that art form's pantheon of violent acts. The brothers from Hamilton, Ohio, were founders of the 1980s funk band Zapp. Larry sang through a synthesizer "talk box," giving the band a distinctive sound. Zapp had several hits, including "More Bounce to the Ounce," and is still widely sampled in hip-hop today.
On April 25, 1999, police found Roger Troutman, 47, shot to death outside his recording studio in Dayton, Ohio. Brother Larry, 54, was found dead in his car a few blocks away. Police said Larry Troutman shot his brother and himself—a murder-suicide, apparently over a business disagreement.
The Wailers, the backing band for reggae star Bob Marley, deserve a chapter of their own in the Caribbean division of the pop music morgue. After Marley's death from cancer in 1981, the Wailers proceeded to lose more members to violence than some combat platoons.
The first to die was percussionist Carlton Barrett. Born in Jamaica in 1950, he honed his craft in The Upsetters. He began playing with Marley in 1969 and is credited with creating the reggae "one-drop rhythm," in which beats are left out. Barrett was a songwriter, as well, with credits on Marley's 1974 LP, "Natty Dread," for "Talkin' Blues" and "Them Belly Full."
Barrett, 36, was shot in a love-triangle murder outside his Jamaica home on April 17, 1987. His wife, Albertine, and her lover were convicted of conspiracy for planning the hit. They served barely a year in prison.
A second former Wailer, Peter Tosh, was killed just a few months later. Tosh, born Winston McIntosh in Jamaica in 1944, joined Marley's band as a guitarist when he was a teenager. He went on to become a reggae star in his own right, recording for mainstream music giants Columbia and EMI.
On September 11, 1987, six months after Tosh won a Grammy for Best Reggae Performance, a home-invasion gang led by Dennis "Leppo" Lobban, an ex-con acquainted with Tosh, descended on the singer's residence. There was no cash in the house, and Tosh was beaten and finally shot by the frustrated Lobban. He was convicted of murder and was still in prison in Jamaica in 2011. (Coincidentally, Tosh was killed on the same day as bass player Pastorius.)
Twelve years later, on June 2, 1999, vocalist Junior Braithwaite was the third Wailer to die violently. He was visiting the home of a musician friend in Kingston when gunmen burst in and shot both men. The friend was the target of the killers, cops said. Braithwaite, 50, was simply in the wrong place.
The Jamaica Observer newspaper noted bitterly that the Wailers were the victims of homegrown violence, all "senselessly murdered by the very brothers they have spent their lives singing about and using their music to help."
The House of Freaks, a two-man band from Richmond, Virginia, was one of the more unique acts going in the mid-1980s. Guitarist-vocalist Bryan Harvey made his single instrument sound like two by playing a bass line and chord changes simultaneously, and percussionist Johnny Hott's kit could sound like an entire rhythm section. The Freaks were never superstars, but their Americana-inspired folk grooves made them popular with indie fans. They tried Los Angeles as they scored radio play from their album "Tantilla." Harvey rejected the L.A. music scene and retreated to Richmond, where he and his wife, Kathryn, were content to raise their two daughters, Stella and Ruby.
Kathryn ran a toy shop called World of Mirth, while Harvey continued to work in music, doing occasional live gigs with the funk band NRG Krysys. He played his last gig with the band at a Richmond hotel on New Year's Eve 2005.
At 2 PM on January 1, firefighters were called to the Harvey home in the Woodland Heights neighborhood by a neighbor who saw smoke. In the basement they found "the crime scene from hell," as a rescuer put it. The parents and their daughters, ages 9 and 4, were murdered—bound with tape and their throats slashed. The fire had been set to cover up the crimes.
Five days later, police got a tip that led them to a house south of Richmond. There officers found the bound and gagged bodies of Percyell Tucker, 55, his wife, Mary Baskerville-Tucker, 46, and her daughter, Ashley Baskerville, 21. Tucker and his wife had cuts to their neck, but each had suffocated from a duct-tape gag. Ashley suffered a particularly cruel suffocation. The killers had covered her head with a plastic bag and then sealed it with tape.
Police linked the Tucker and Harvey murders, and friends told detectives that Ashley Baskerville had been keeping company with two rough characters from Pennsylvania, Ricky Gray and his nephew Ray Dandridge, both 28.
Police found them in Philadelphia. Dandridge was two months out of prison, after a 10-year sentence in Virginia for a gun robbery. They immediately confessed. Gray told detectives, "I don't believe sorry is strong enough. None of this was necessary." The murders were robberies gone bad, he said. The two had also killed Gray's wife near Pittsburgh and committed several other felonies during their Virginia spree.
Gray was convicted of five counts of murder in 2006 and was sentenced to die for killing the Harvey girls. A month later, Dandridge pleaded guilty to murdering the Tuckers. He got life without parole in a plea bargain.
On 2008, the alt-country band Drive-By Truckers dedicated a song to the family: "Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife."
Over the years, musicians have seemed to be the victims of more than their share of puzzling deaths. Here are snapshots of a few of them.
On October 13, 1977, an intruder shot Shirley Brickley in her home near Philadelphia. You may not know the name, but you surely know her music. Brickley and three friends formed the vocal group The Orlons as high school students in Philadelphia. They helped create the bouncy Philly R&B sound with hits such as "Don't Hang Up," "South Street" and "Wah-Watusi." Brickley was 32 when she died. Her murder is unsolved.
Lenny Breau was a master finger-picking guitarist who emerged from the Canadian rock scene, inspiring Neil Young and Bachman-Turner Overdrive, among other acts. Breau, born in Maine, made a name in Toronto and had a moderately successful career as a solo recording act. Like so many musicians, he got lost in narcotics in the 1960s and '70s. On August 12, 1984, Breau was found dead in the rooftop swimming pool at his L.A. apartment complex. His wife, Jewel Taylor, tried to convince police that Breau had drowned, but an autopsy revealed that he had been strangled, then dumped in the water. The widow was a suspect, but police were never able to come up with evidence to charge her—or anyone else. In 2006, author Ron Forbes-Roberts published a book that portrayed Breau as the best guitarist you've never heard of.
A spouse was also eyed in the 2003 death of Elliott Smith, an indie rocker who found fame when his song "Miss Misery" was included in the soundtrack for the 1998 film "Good Will Hunting." Smith, born in Omaha, Nebraska, first gained notice in Portland, Oregon, for his work as a guitarist and singer with Heatmiser. He went solo in '94 and produced a series of recordings that featured his spooky, whispered vocals. Smith was afflicted by the rock musician's triple threat: depression, alcoholism and drug addiction. On October 21, 2003, as he neared completion of his sixth record, Smith, 34, was found in his Los Angeles apartment with two stab wounds to his chest. His girlfriend, Jennifer Chiba, told police the two had argued. She heard a scream, found Smith stabbed and pulled the knife out. She declined to say much more. Police found a farewell scrawled on a Post-It note. It read, "I'm so sorry—love, Elliot. God forgive me." The medical examiner said the stab wounds were "consistent with self-infliction." However, he wouldn't declare the death a suicide because Smith's name—Elliott—was misspelled with a single "t" on the note. He added that Chiba's removal of the knife and her unwillingness to speak with cops were "of concern." Chiba sued to get part of her dead rock star boyfriend's estate and royalties—to no avail, so far.
Bobby Bloom, born in New York in 1946, got his start in rock 'n' roll twisting knobs as a sound engineer for Buddah Records in his hometown. He began dabbling in songwriting with a partner, Jeff Barry, and they a scored credit on "Mony Mony" as well as silly tunes for the Monkees and others. In 1970, Bloom had a hit as a singer with the Calypso-inspired "Montego Bay." Four years later, suffering from depression, he was found shot to death in his Hollywood apartment. A handgun lay near the body. Police ruled it an accident while he was cleaning the weapon, but some had their doubts.
Texan Bobby Fuller and his band, the Bobby Fuller Four, scored a big hit in 1966 with their cover of Sonny Curtis' rebel anthem, "I Fought the Law." On July 18, 1966, Fuller was found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in his mother's car near his apartment in Los Angeles. Police called it a suicide. Others believe it was murder.
In 1956, Charles Fizer and three classmates from Centennial High School in Compton, California, formed a doo-wop group that evolved into The Olympics. In 1958, they scored a credit on a Top 10 pop hit with a delightful novelty tune, "(My Baby Loves the) Western Movies." The group fashioned a moderately successful career that waned in the early '60s, thanks to surf music and the British Invasion. On August 13, 1965, the third consecutive day of race riots in L.A.'s Watts section, the federal government sent in the National Guard. Charles Fizer was walking through Watts—he was said to be on his way to a rehearsal—when he was shot and killed by a Guardsman. He was 24 years old.
Don Myrick was a Grammy-winning sax player for Earth, Wind & Fire. He spent seven years with the band, from 1975 to 1982, and had a nice career as a studio session player and touring musician with artists such as Phil Collins and Carlos Santana. On July 30, 1993, a phalanx of cops armed with a narcotics-trafficking search warrant burst into his home in Santa Monica, California. During the raid, a twitchy cop mistook a plastic butane lighter that Myrick was holding for a gun. He fired a fatal shot that hit Myrick, 52, in the chest. The City of Santa Monica paid Myrick's wife and three daughters $400,000 to settle a wrongful-death suit.
They say that Bobby Ramirez, a drummer for Edgar Winter's band White Trash, died for his hair. The band was on tour with Uriah Heep in the summer of 1972. While in Chicago on July 24, someone made an insulting comment to Ramirez about his long hair. A fight ensued, and the drummer was found in the men's room of the club. His head had been stomped, and he never recovered.
In the early 1980s, Rhett Forrester was frontman for Riot, a hair band out of Brooklyn. Forrester spent several years with Riot, and then moved on, working with lesser-known groups before eventually returning to his native Georgia. On January 22, 1994, Forrester fell victim to a crime trend that was sweeping the country in the mid-90s: Carjackings. He was accosted in Atlanta by armed men who demanded his luxury vehicle. When he refused to give it up, he was shot and killed. No one has been brought to justice.
Gary Driscoll was a journeyman rock drummer who had several brushes with greatness, including stints with Ronnie James Dio in the Electric Elves and with Ritchie Blackmore, former lead guitarist of Deep Purple, in a band called Rainbow. The gigs didn't last, and Driscoll went on to other bands before finally resorting to day jobs. In June 1987, he was shot and killed at a home in Ithaca, New York. The murder, suspected to be related to narcotics, was never solved.
Al Jackson Jr., a legendary percussionist for Stax Records, had a reputation for keeping time better than a Swiss watch. Born in 1935, Jackson was a second-generation Memphis musician. His father led a swing band, and his namesake son joined him onstage when he still in short pants.
Jackson was invited to take a seat behind the Stax Records drum kit when two of the label's legends, Steve Cropper and Donald "Duck" Dunn, saw him at a club gig. Jackson became the first-call drummer for Stax and a member of the label's house band, Booker T & the MG's. His work is heard on Stax recordings by the likes of Rufus and Carla Thomas, Eddie ("Knock on Wood") Floyd, Sam & Dave and Otis Redding. Jackson also worked closely with Stax legend Al Green, sharing a writing credit on his 1972 hit, "Let's Stay Together."
On September 30, 1975, Jackson returned to his Memphis home after watching a broadcast of the Joe-Frazier-Muhammad Ali "Thrilla in Manila" boxing match. He stumbled into a home invasion. Jackson was shot five times in the back. His wife, Barbara, was tied up but left alive.
Memphis police got a tip that a bank robber out of Florida had been Jackson's killer. Ten months later, that suspect was killed in a shootout during a bank stickup in Seattle. The case was considered cleared, although his accomplice was never brought to justice.
Duck Dunn called Jackson "the backbone of Stax."
Dyke Christian & the Blazers are best known for their 1967 tune "Funky Broadway," an infectious dance tune that helped define funk. It was a Stax hit for Wilson Pickett.
Christian, born in Buffalo in 1943, never found great fame and fortune, but he scratched out a living as a touring musician. In 1966, Christian and his band got stuck in Phoenix, Arizona, unable to afford bus fare back to Buffalo. While idling his time away, Christian was inspired to write the simple lyrics for "Funky Broadway" and put them to a percussive soul beat. (The song is about Broadway Road in Phoenix, not about New York City's more famous Broadway.)
Christian penned several other tunes that became minor hits, including "We Got More Soul" and "Let a Woman Be a Woman, Let a Man Be a Man."
Five years after he was stranded there, he was back in Phoenix on March 13, 1971. He was accosted on the street by a man described as deranged. The man shot Christian, ending his life as it was just getting started, at age 27.
Christian's murder showed that you never know how or when you'll go. John Whitehead's time was up on May 11, 2004. Whitehead was another star from Philadelphia. He and his writing partner, Gene McFadden, were part of Gamble and Huff's Philadelphia International Records. They wrote "Back Stabbers," a No. 1 song for The O'Jays in 1972, and "Wake Up Everybody," a hit for Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes three years later. They had their biggest song in 1979 with the disco anthem "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now," which they recorded themselves. The tune, a Grammy nominee, sold more than 8 million copies.
At age 55, Whitehead could afford a slower-paced lifestyle. He and McFadden did an occasional casino gig, but he preferred to stay home in Philly close to his 11 children, in a rowhouse on Dallas Street. On that May evening, Whitehead and a nephew were playing shade-tree mechanic, working behind his house to replace an engine hose on a granddaughter's car. Two armed men suddenly approached and fired a barrage of shots. They apparently had had a beef earlier with Whitehead's nephew, who was wounded but survived. The Philly singer-songwriter was killed—collateral damage.
The shooting left an awkward legacy. Two separate women claimed that they were John Whitehead's legal widow.
But that's rock 'n' roll.
聚合中文网 阅读好时光 www.juhezwn.com
小提示:漏章、缺章、错字过多试试导航栏右上角的源