The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (120 page)

From the early eighties onwards, War were effectively a touring unit, their hit-making days behind them. While performing in August 1988 at the Talk of the Town nightclub in Vallejo, California, Papa Dee Allen suffered a cerebral haemorrhage, and died shortly afterwards.

OCTOBER

Sunday 9

Cliff Gallup

(Clifton Elwood Gallup - Norfolk, Virginia, 17 June 1930)

Gene Vincent & The Blue Caps

A lead guitarist of outstanding ability, Cliff Gallup lit up the early work of rock ‘n’ roll legend Gene Vincent with his fretwork. A member of Vincent’s Blue Caps – alongside Willie Williams (guitar), Jack Neal (bass), Dickie Harrell (drums) and occasional pianist Max Lipscomb – Gallup was picked to play on the singer’s debut single, ‘Woman Love’ (1956). It was, however, the B-side ‘BeBop-a-Lula’ that showed Vincent and the band at their best, and this quickly became a national smash. Gallup’s performances adorned this and other Vincent classics like ‘Blue Jean Bop’ and ‘Race with the Devil’ (both 1956), by which time the group were far bigger in Europe than in the US. Despite recording a sizeable catalogue of songs with the heart-throb, Gallup was by Vincent’s side for less than a year, finding the rigours of touring not to his taste. Replaced by Johnny Meeks, Gallup returned to his gospel-oriented roots and seldom strayed far from his home to play again. Vincent, who was disappointed to lose Gallup, did not enjoy the same level of success without him, and died in reduced circumstances some time after (
October 1971).

Following a 1988 booking at a Virginia Beach party, Cliff Gallup arrived home and promptly collapsed from a suspected cardiac arrest. He died later in hospital – almost seventeen years to the day after Vincent.

See also
Max Lipscomb (
March 1991); Willie Williams (
August 1999); Paul Peek (
April 2001). Further Blue Cap musicians to have died are Grady Owen (1999), Jerry Lee Merritt (2001), Juvenal Gomez (2002) and Jumpin’ Jack Neal (2012).

Tuesday 25

Johnnie Louise Richardson

(Johnnie Louise Sanders - Montgomery, Alabama,

24 June 1940)

Johnnie & Joe

The Jaynetts

The daughter of J&S Records boss Zelma Sanders, Johnnie Louise Richardson was brought up in the Bronx by a musical family. She cut a number of doo-wop-styled ballads with R & B act Johnnie & Joe (the ‘Joe’ was Joe Rivers) during the late fifties – all for her mother’s label. Many of their songs fared well on the R & B charts and seemed particularly popular with the Hispanic market: most notable was the extremely sentimental ‘Over the Mountain; Across the Sea’ (1957), which crossed over to Billboard Top Ten success for Chess. The duo’s voices blended well, though it was quickly stressed that there was no romantic involvement between them. With no further success, Richardson set about forming her own label, Dice, though her fortunes were not to change until she joined The Jaynetts, an all-female trio. Richardson sang on their
Sally Go ‘round the Roses
album (1963), though she missed out on singles glory with the hit title track, cut before she joined.

Johnnie Louise Richardson returned with a nostalgia version of Johnnie & Joe in 1982, releasing the acclaimed
Kingdom Of Love
album (1983). She died following an unexpected stroke at her label’s premises.

DECEMBER

Tuesday 6

Roy Orbison

(Vernon, Texas, 23 April 1936)

(The Wink Westerners)

(The Teen Kings)

(The Traveling Wilburys)

Roy Orbison was perhaps the first great songwriter to merge country and rock ‘n’ roll, the man behind the Ray-Bans overcoming introversion and extreme personal tragedy to create a legend – only to die prematurely himself.

The future star was born to Orbie Lee and Nadine Orbison, and chose to take his mother’s name as he embarked upon a career in music that would span three decades. Two longstanding myths about Roy Orbison are that he was albino or partially blind: neither is true, though Orbison’s heavy-rimmed eye furniture was a necessity brought about by myopia – a condition that initially alienated him from friends. (The change to shades came about after the singer left his spectacles on a plane in 1963.) Brought up in the (aptly named) border oil town of Wink, Orbison picked up a guitar early, writing his first song, ‘Vow Of Love’, at just nine years old. His Wink Westerners gave an indication of a formidable talent, though the band broke up because the singer believed rock ‘n’ roll success was unlikely. The muse would return, however. Orbison left North Texas State College a qualified geologist who’d studied alongside Pat Boone, but, like his colleague, he was ready to return to music. With a new band, the more youth-friendly Teen Kings, Orbison cut the song ‘Ooby Dooby’ in 1956 under Norman Petty (Buddy Holly’s producer) – and the track appealed to hot entrepreneur Sam Phillips. At Sun Records, though, the singer found himself way down in a pecking order that included Johnny Cash (who’d recommended him), Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley – and it became apparent that rockabilly was not suitable for his three-octave range. Orbison honed his songwriting skills at Nashville’s Acuff-Rose Music (The Everly Brothers were to record his ‘Claudette’, dedicated to the singer’s young wife), but it was at Monument that Orbison’s career really took off. Though a first single failed to register, his now-classic ‘Only the Lonely’ (1960) shifted a million copies on both sides of the Atlantic. The song– rejected by both Elvis and The Everlys – made US number two and UK number one, the first of a string of huge successes for an artist who quickly became one of the most popular in the world. ‘Running Scared’ gave Orbison his first US chart-topper the year after, while ‘It’s Over’ and ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’ (both 1964) also did the trick in the UK, where he was by far the most popular singer that year, outselling even Presley. Back at home, ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’ broke The Beatles’ stranglehold on the Billboard hit parade – just months after Orbison had toured Europe with Britain’s biggest group.

With his career hitting a glorious high by the mid sixties, Roy Orbison’s personal life paradoxically encountered an escalating series of catastrophes. In November 1964, the singer divorced Claudette Frady, whom he had learned was having an affair with their builder. Eighteen months later, Orbison remarried her, but the reunion was brief. The couple had long been motorcycle enthusiasts and, the star attraction at a Tennessee drag race meet, Orbison was left in shock when Claudette died in a collision with a truck. His ‘Too Soon to Know’ (1966), written as a tribute, subsequently became a big UK hit, though it strangely failed to sell in the US (presaging something of a downturn in his commercial fortunes). In 1968, when Orbison had just about come to terms with his grief, he was called home from a European tour: an explosion at the family home in Hendersonville, Tennessee had started a fire that killed two of his three sons; his older brother Grady Lee Orbison then died in a vehicle crash on the way to a Thanksgiving dinner with the singer in 1973. Somehow, Orbison managed to overcome such extreme personal loss, remarrying (German Barbara Wellhoner Jakobs – who died in December 2011) and finding a new audience in the eighties as his records (and those with hoary supergroup The Traveling Wilburys – with Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty) began to shift units again. It was a welcome relief after a decade that had seen the singer play to audiences of fewer than 150 (and undergo triple heart-bypass surgery) By now, though, Orbison had received accolades from almost all of his peers, and befriended younger artists like Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen and kd lang, and was inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall Fame in a 1987 ceremony.