The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (354 page)

John Martyn continued to record a series of varied, eclectic sets into the nineties, however he was shortly to suffer a long, difficult period of health issues that were sadly not to desist. A ruptured cyst in his right leg necessitated its amputation as he recorded the album
On the Cobbles
(2004 – this period was documented in the excellent BBC television documentary
Johnny Too Bad).
At the start of 2008, Martyn was deservedly given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the channel, his sixtieth birthday signalling the issue of a retrospective box set by Island in September.

Unfortunately, Martyn’s immune system was failing him, the musician having been in declining health for some years. Martyn had been awarded the OBE just weeks before his passing away from pneumonia.

Golden Oldies #87

Hank Crawford

(Benjamin Ross Crawford Jr - Memphis, Tennessee, 21 December 1934)

The Rhythm Kings

US R & B songwriter and saxophonist Hank Crawford - he earned the nickname thanks to a resemblance to revered sax-man Hank O’Day - graduated from his local choir to play behind future giants B B King and Ike Turner in an early incarnation of the pre-rock ‘n’ roll Rhythm Kings. While at Tennessee State University in Nashville, ‘Little Hank’’s own rock ‘n’ roll/blues quartet attracted a curious and impressed Ray Charles, the R & B giant promptly hiring him to play baritone, then alto sax for the next five years. (Crawford also held down an auspicious role as Charles’s musical director during this time.)

Crawford left Charles’s band to continue recording for Atlantic: a prolific artist, he issued twelve albums in a decade fronting his own seven-piece combo. The fluid saxophonist went on to sign with the Kudu label, issuing music in the jazz/fusion genre into the 1980s, an era very receptive to crossover grooves.

Throughout a lengthy and industrious career, Crawford composed, arranged and performed with and for the likes of Etta James, Lou Rawls and B B King, in the eighties signing to Milestone and working with Dr John, among others. Crawford - who recorded some two dozen studio albums in his career - suffered a stroke in 2000, complications of which are believed responsible for his death at home in Memphis on 29 January 2009.

See also
Ray Charles (
Golden Oldies #20); Lou Rawls (
Golden Oldies #31); Ike Turner (
Golden Oldies #59). Another former Ray Charles saxophonist, Leroy Cooper, passed away two weeks ahead of Crawford. Etta James died early in 2012.

Golden Oldies #88

Dewey Martin

(Walter Milton Dwayne Midkiff - Chesterville, Ontario, 30 September 1940)

The Buffalo Springfield

(Various acts)

Journeyman percussionist Dewey Martin left the beat groups of his native Ontario (which included Sir Raleigh & The Coupons, a band that cut four singles for A&M) to man the traps of a number of significant US country and pop acts in his early career: the newly renamed drummer played briefly behind Patsy Cline, The Everly Brothers and Roy Orbison, among others, cutting his teeth at the very top.

After tenures with The Modern Folk Quartet and The Dillards, Martin showed more than enough skill to impress fellow countryman Neil Young on auditioning for his new folk-rock act, The Buffalo Springfield, in 1966. The band’s life was not to be a long one (mainly due to the members’ inter-personal problems - Young and bassist Bruce Palmer were in and out of the line-up), though Springfield still issued three fine albums in a little over two years. By contrast, Martin’s position was such that he also contributed vocals on tracks like ‘Good Time Boy’ (from 1967’s
Buffalo Springfield Again,
the group’s best record). The story goes that the drummer also turned main songwriter Stephen Stills onto LSD, which saw Buffalo Springfield moving in a more psychedelic direction by 1968. The notoriously volatile unit, however, broke up for good at the end of that year (Stills starting a new act with David Crosby and Graham Nash - and sometimes Young). Martin’s subsequent attempts to keep the name alive suffered as a result of further, constant line-up ructions that disallowed any kind of stability for ‘New Buffalo’.

‘He can feel the music–you don’t have to tell him.’

Neil Young, on Dewey Martin

Martin formed yet another group, Medicine Ball (with some help from Palmer), but despite a number of attempts to stay in the public eye - including recording sessions with Elvis Presley’s band - he retired from the industry for many years to work as an auto mechanic. The call was enough, however, for Dewey Martin to return during the eighties with Pink Slip (a band that also featured The Byrds’ bassist, John York), The Roberts-Meisner Band and - finally - Buffalo Springfield Revisited.

Having toured yet another version of his classic band in the early nineties, Martin eventually retired from the business. The drummer - who was believed to have died from natural causes on 31 January 2009 - was found the following day by a roommate at his home in Van Nuys, California.

Former Dillards Mitch Jayne and Doug Dillard died in August 2010 and May 2012 respectively.

FEBRUARY

Wednesday 4

Lux Interior

(Erick Lee Purkhiser - Stow, Ohio, 21 October 1946)

The Cramps

Theirs was a world of sci-fi schlock, b-feature drive-ins and flea-market cross-dressing – and at their fore was an outlandish front man to dish it all up. Put simply, minus Lux Interior, the entire psychobilly scene probably couldn’t have existed, and without The Cramps – the key band to emerge from California’s mid-seventies garage scene – there’d likely be no Jesus & Mary Chain, no Queens of the Stone Age, no White Stripes … who knows?

Although he was already a fan of Alice Cooper and budget horror, the young Erick Purkhiser must’ve taken some pretty strong LSD to conceive this multi-headed monster. However, the wannabe trash-culture mouthpiece got lucky in that he stumbled upon perhaps the one person in the entire universe who could’ve helped him visualise his acid-laced dreams. Sometime during 1972, Purkhiser picked up distinctively attired hitchhiker and kindred spirit Kristy Wallace, the (soon-to-be) couple discovering that they were set to attend the same classes on ‘shamanism’. They grew closer, married, and, as Lux Interior (Purkhiser took his distinctive alias from a car ad) and guitar-slinging Poison Ivy Rorschach (it’s one of those ink-blot tests), fast became the creative nucleus of The Cramps. Eighteen months existing as ‘shamen’ seemed to help, too.

Punk started to emerge at exactly the right time for The Cramps, the band likely the first to spot a connection and meld the ‘newer’ style with their surf-tinged, rockabilly roots. Wending their way across to New York in 1975, The Cramps – classically Interior, Rorschach, Bryan Gregory (Greg Beckerleg – guitar) and Nick Knox (Nick Stephanoff, ex-Electric Eels – drums) – became favourites at CBGBs, alongside Blondie, The Ramones and Television.
Songs the Lord Taught Us –
the first of fourteen riff and innuendo-laden albums for a variety of companies – emerged on IRS in 1980, to be followed by such tempting works as
Psychedelic Jungle
(IRS, 1981),
Smell of Female
(Vengeance, 1983) and
A Date With Elvis
(Big Beat, 1986). This was a band best enjoyed live: a near-naked Lux winding his stilettos across the stage in contrast to the ice-cutting, nonplussed sexuality of Ivy is not a visual experience that the many who witnessed it are ever likely to forget.