The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars by Jeremy Simmonds Read Free Book Online

fresh line-up, Johnny Kidd & The New Pirates were on the road again in October 1966 when tragedy – or, more truthfully, a skidding lorry – struck. The recently married Kidd was travelling in the tour van to an engagement when he was killed in the crash on the M1 near Radcliffe, just outside Bury, Lancashire. The remainder of the band, all of whom survived the accident, continued touring as The Pirates, and bass-player Nick Simper went on to join Deep Purple in the seventies.
    See also Alan Caddy ( August 2000); Mick Green (Golden Oldies #104)
    Wednesday 26
    Alma Cogan
    (Alma Angela Cohen - Stepney, London, 19 May 1932)

    If there weren’t many British pop and rockabilly acts around during the fifties, female artists were in even shorter supply. But Alma Cogan was one such artist who positively thrived in this era, her voice equally at home in both adult and teenage markets. Brought up in Worthing, Sussex, Cogan attended art school, though it was her singing that caught the attention of Ted Heath (the bandleader) before HMV gave her an opportunity to record in 1952. Cogan’s stage presence was also quickly noted, earning her a residency on the BBC radio show Take It from Here. The singer’s soon-widely-recognized love of garish clothing would be acknowledged in her first hit record, the Top Five ‘Bell Bottom Blues’ (1954), which began an impressive run of twenty-two chart successes, culminating with ‘Dreamboat’, a chart-topper from 1955. Cogan’s hits – which had pretty much descended into pop novelties by the start of the next decade – dried up by 1961, as acts such as the younger Helen Shapiro began to come through. There was still the staple cabaret circuit, which she pursued for several years, and it was at one such date in Sweden in the autumn of 1966 that Cogan mysteriously collapsed. Rushed to hospital, the 34-year-old vocalist was diagnosed with throat cancer; within weeks she was admitted to the Middlesex Hospital, where, shortly thereafter, she passed away.

Lest We Forget
Other notable deaths that occurred sometime during 1966:
Henry Booth (US tenor vocalist with R & B acts The Royals - alongside Jackie Wilson - and The Midnighters; born Alabama, 7/3/1934; believed shot dead during a fight)
Bill Gillum (US bluesman; born William McGinlay Gillum, Mississippi, 11/9/1904; shot in the head during an argument in Chicago, 29/3)
Mississippi John Hurt (US bluesman; born Mississippi (obviously), 3/7/1893; heart attack, 2/11)
Helen Kane (US singer/writer/actress/costumier, best known as the Queen of Boop-boop-a-doop and a likely influence on Marilyn Monroe; born New York, 4/8/1903; unknown, 26/9)
Harry C McAuliffe (US country/crossover singer known as ‘Big Slim the Lone Cowboy’; born in West Virginia, 9/5/1903; unknown, 13/10)
Lucius Millinder (influential US jump-blues bandleader; born Alabama, 8/8/1900; liver failure, 28/9)
Jessie Mae Robinson (US blues singer/songwriter whose tunes have been recorded by Dinah Washington, Bing Crosby, Louis Jordan and T-Bone Walker, among others; born Call, Texas, 1/10/1919; illness, 26/10)
Billy Rose (US songwriter/composer who wrote ‘Does the Spearmint Lose Its Flavour?’ among other such delights; born William Rosenberg, New York, 6/9/1899; contracted pneumonia in Jamaica, and died 10/2)
Will Shade (US bluesman and part of The Memphis Jug Band; born Will Brimmer, Mississippi, 5/2/1898; pneumonia, 18/9)
Carter Stanley (US bluegrass singer with The Stanley Brothers; born Virginia, 27/8/1925; cirrhosis of the liver, 1/12)
Washboard Sam (US bluesman; born Robert Brown, Arkansas, 15/7/1910; heart disease, 6/11)
Slim Willet (US country guitarist/writer whose ‘Don’t Let the Stars (Get in Your Eyes)’ was a chart-topper for Perry Como in 1953; born Texas, 1/12/1919; heart failure, 1/7)

1967
    JANUARY
    Tuesday 27
    Luigi Tenco
    (Cassine, Italy, 21 March 1938)

    Luigi Tenco wanted success, whatever the cost, but he was a troubled man who suffered at the hands of the