The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (20 page)

It was on tour with Gaye in 1967, though, that Terrell learned the grave news of her physical condition. After collapsing on stage at Virginia’s Hampton-Sydney College, she was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour. Terrell continued to work until her death, recording her own (still greatly underrated) solo album,
Irresistible,
in 1968, but, following many operations, her health had deteriorated so profoundly that later duets with Gaye, such as ‘The Onion Song’ (1969), had to be rerecorded by writer/vocalist Valerie Simpson (of Ashford & Simpson). In her final months, Tammi Terrell was partially paralysed, blind and wheelchair-bound, her weight dropping to around 85 lbs. After her death, a month short of her twenty-fifth birthday, she was remembered by a devastated Marvin Gaye on his landmark 1971 album, the sombre and studied
What’s Going On?

See also
Marvin Gaye (
April 1984)

APRIL

Monday 13

Kid Thomas

(Lou Thomas Watts - Sturgis, Mississippi, 20 June 1934)

(The Rhythm Rockers)

Another prodigious practitioner of the harmonica, Lou Thomas Watts had moved to Chicago with his parents in 1941 and learned the instrument from bluesman Little Walter Smith; in lieu of the payment he didn’t have, ‘Kid Thomas’ traded his teacher the basics of drumming – his own early musical specialization! While still a boy, the increasingly wayward Thomas frequented adult environments, blowing the harp for the likes of Chicago greats Elmore James, Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley. By the late fifties he was recording for King-Federal, his raucous stylings often compared with those of Little Richard. The Kid’s reputation was fast growing out of hand, however, the young blues prodigy pulling stunts such as stealing cars so that he and his band might make their gigs.

Thomas eventually settled in Los Angeles in 1960, forming a new band, The Rhythm Rockers, and cutting sides with Muriel Records. Sadly, these achieved no commercial recognition, and he returned to the gardening business he had started when younger, a well-stocked Beverley Hills-based address book keeping the wolf from the door. On 10 September 1969, however, his van struck and killed a 10-year-old cyclist, who died shortly after. Thomas – whose driving licence had already been revoked – was arrested and charged with manslaughter. When the case was controversially thrown out of court, though, the boy’s father decided to take matters into his own hands. As the rest of the world was engaged in the unfolding drama of Apollo 13, Thomas waited outside a courtroom to face his licence aberration. Without warning, the bereaved parent appeared, pulled a gun from his jacket and shot the musician at close range. Kid Thomas died at 9.20 am at the Beverley Hills UCLA Medical Center – leaving a wife and his own young children.

JUNE

Thursday 11

Earl Grant

(Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 20 January 1933)

Briefly the hottest property in lounge/R & B, organist Earl Grant also played trumpet and drums, and possessed a voice so dusky but pure it was assumed in many quarters that he must be related to Nat ‘King’ Cole. The truth is that Grant had had to work hard at his delivery, studying music at three universities where his specialization in keyboards developed. Scoring a 1958 Top Ten US hit with the single ‘The End’, Earl Grant then managed a halfmillion seller with his debut album for Decca,
Ebb Tide
(1961). He also featured in a number of movies, including Henry King’s
Tender is the Night
(1962). On returning from a performance in Juarez, Mexico, Earl Grant was killed in a road accident as he passed through Lordsburg, New Mexico.

Tuesday 23

Grady Pannel

(Tupelo, Mississippi, 15 December 1949)

Electric Toilet

(The Herdsmen)

Wayne Reynolds

(Alfred Wayne Reynolds – Tupelo, Mississippi, 1949)

Electric Toilet

Lead vocalist and Wurlitzer/Moog-master Grady Pannel had been a member of The Herdsmen before he teamed up with guitarist Johnny Wigginton to form the psychedelic Tupelo-based Electric Toilet – named after Pannel’s penchant for flushing toilets while on the telephone to his pals. The band was completed with the addition of another guitarist, Wayne Reynolds, their pulsating sound augmented by the songwriting input of Dave Hall and Dickie Betts, the latter of The Allman Brothers Band.

Debut album,
In the Hands of Karma
(1969), was recorded for Nashville label Nasco, picking up airplay on Memphis radio as the band began to develop some momentum during 1969. However, this impetus was sadly stopped in its tracks by an auto crash as they embarked upon their first major tour the following year, the band’s U-haul trailer colliding with a fuel truck in New Albany. While two other passengers were injured, Pannel – who was engaged to be married – and Reynolds – who left a wife and children – died on their way to hospital. Pannel’s surviving sister Shaye White Graham tells
The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars
that their funeral drew a crowd of over 2,000.

With Electric Toilet effectively ending there and then, Hall changed musical direction somewhat, winning awards in gospel songwriting before his own passing in the early 2000s.

SEPTEMBER

Thursday 3

Alan ‘Blind Owl’ Wilson

(Boston, Massachusetts, 4 July 1943)

Canned Heat

A dark couple of months for US rock ‘n’ roll saw three of the key players at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival die in 1970 – beginning with the shock suicide of Canned Heat vocalist Alan Wilson, a living, breathing blues/roots fanatic who existed solely for the music and his vast record collection. Wilson, brought up in Arlington, was a guitar/harmonica virtuoso from his youth who became so hell-bent on mastering his craft that he even accompanied Son House on his comeback album,
Father of the Blues
(1965). Recruiting fellow blues-obsessive, the redoubtable Bob ‘The Bear’ Hite, Wilson began a jug band of his own in 1966, while at college in Los Angeles. In came ex-Mothers of Invention guitarist Henry ‘Sunflower’ Vestine (another blues aficionado), bassist Larry ‘The Mole’ Taylor and drummer Frank Cook. Thus Canned Heat (the name lifted by Hite from a 1928 Tommy Johnson tune) was born. Co-led by Wilson’s winsome falsetto and Hite’s giant, rasping bass, the young band wowed the fans at Monterey the following year, surprising many by becoming the first white blues act to score a chart hit, the evocative ‘On the Road Again’ (1968) – a Wilson-reworked blues standard. This was quickly followed by a big-selling second album,
Boogie with Canned Heat,
by which time Cook had been replaced on percussion by Mexican Adolfo ‘Fito’ de la Parra. More hit records followed in the shape of the anthemic ‘Going Up Country’ (1968) and – following a triumphant headlining performance at Woodstock – Wilbert Harrison’s more commercial ‘Let’s Work Together’ (1970), which very nearly gave the world the unlikely sight of the Heat at UK number one.

But beneath success and critical acclaim there lay turmoil. While Detroit guitarist Harvey Mandel stepped in for the errant Vestine (who would later rejoin the band), Alan Wilson’s health was causing the frontman concern. His bluesy nickname was no joke: Wilson’s sight was so heavily impaired that it caused him frequent bouts of depression, for which he often sought pharmaceutical relief. Shortly before his death, Wilson had been admitted to a psychiatric clinic, but to no avail: on 3 September 1970, his body was discovered in a sleeping bag outside Bob Hite’s California residence at Topanga Canyon, an empty bottle of tranquillizers by his side. Friends claimed he may have attempted suicide on at least three previous occasions. Canned Heat continued in various forms for the next thirty-plus years (Joe Scott Hill was Wilson’s immediate replacement), clocking up a remarkable thirty-six studio albums in that time, though Wilson’s original partner, Hite, died in his thirties
(
April 1981
), and Vestine later succumbed to one of the most rock ‘n’ roll deaths imaginable (
October 1997).