The Cruelest and Saddest Deaths in Music History

Reminds me of the "death" of UK DJ Brian Mathews in 2017. He had worked for the BBC since the 50s or 60s and finally retired. But it was announced that he was dead. He complained about that, retractions were printed and many felt shamed - and then very shortly afterwards he died!

 

Country legend Webb Pierce battled a very painful form of cancer for a number of years, before perishing in 1991. Add the notion he allegedly had a drinking problem to the equation plus the insulting fact he was largely overlooked at the time of his death in favor of the modern country stars such as Billy Ray Cyrus.

 

Eric Dolphy, who was only 36. He died due to a diabetic coma in 1963. Some people say he was not treated properly at first because the doctors assumed he was just another jazz musician who had overdosed, but this is not confirmed. Anyway, he was a genius and left us too soon.

Booker Little, who was only 23. Already a stunning trumpet player, died of uremia in 1961 only a couple of months after the now legendary Five Spot recordings alongside Dolphy. A huge loss.

 

In the words of David St. Hubbins, too much f***ing perspective here.

 

If only someone had gotten him into rehab...

 

I don't have a wide knowledge of country - where should I start with Webb?

 

Yes, I knew Gouldman held Gold in the highest esteem (as did most people who worked with him, I believe). I’ll check Daylight out.

 

Apologies if she was mentioned elsewhere, but I just thought about Trish Keenan from Broadcast, which was an amazing indie band.

She died in 2011 from pneumonia.....died at a relatively young age and didn't appear to have any health issues so it was a surprising thing that someone so young would die that way. Her voice and their music is much missed.

Trish Keenan obituary

 

Dottie West was just starting to put her life back together after losing everything, including her home, to IRS debt and a divorce a year earlier. She was driving to an important comeback Grand Ole Opry gig when the car Kenny Rogers had given her broke down. Her elderly neighbor offered to give her a ride. Worried she'd be late to the gig, her neighbor hit the 30 mph elevated Opry exit ramp at 55 mph. The car pitched over the rail and plunged nose first to the ground below. Dottie didn't think she was hurt that badly, and insisted paramedics tend to her neighbor (who ultimately survived). She died five days and three surgeries later on the Vanderbilt Med Center operating table. There's still a cross beside the exit ramp where she crashed, put there by country music legend Jeannie Seely.

 

Tommy Keene

Died much too young.

 

Jack Lord said Tommy Keene......Died much too young.

i'll say...i designed Tommy's last 8-9 or so cd's for Second Motion and Not Lame Recordings, and I always loved collaborating with him and talking on the phone about what he wanted to see......i this i had talked with him on the phone not long before i heard from the owner of Second Motion Records on the night before Thanksgiving last year.....a super nice guy and a great talent, definitely taken too soon.....

 

Yes. I’ll be honest I hadn’t heard of him until trying to fill gaps in my Robert Pollard (Guided By Voices), they only did one album together ‘Blues & Boogie Shoes’ which is really enjoyable and one of RP’s better collaborations.

 

This reminds me, she was friends with Nick Talbot of Gravenhurst who also died tragically young. At 37, presumably suicide but still no official cause of death has been revealed. I guess they want to keep it private. He’d just reissued some older stuff with rarities, going by the sleeve notes there was more to come out, and he was about to go on tour. Very sad. I was introduced to his music just weeks before his death, so didn’t get to see him live sadly

 

So many musicians' deaths have hit me hard, but the hardest ones are of artists that I have a personal connection with... that I met when working at Maxwell's or whose paths I crossed in NYC clubland.

I remember reading an interview with Elliot Smith where he talked about having a favorite [secret] club where he liked to hang out and write, and that after spending a night in Manhattan he would walk home... through the subway tunnels.

One time I saw him sitting at the bar in The Cooler. He had pen in hand and a notebook on the table, nursing a drink. We made eye contact, but I moved on; I wasn't going to intrude when he was working at his "secret getaway." The Cooler was a very strange place, a basement club on West 14th Street in the meat-packing district with a bunch of interconnected subterranean spaces and a performance room that was maybe 15' x 25'. After hanging out for the evening, I can only assume that he walked along the 'L' tracks under the East River to get home to Brooklyn. The thought of that gives me the willies.

 

Only met Tommy the summer before he died -- really nice guy and a gentleman.

 

Has anyone mentioned `CHET BAKER` ?
Died after `falling` from a upper floor balcony, (rumor has it that he was thrown over the balcony by pushers (no pun intended), looking to collect).
What is it with jazz trumpeters?

 

James "J Dilla" Yancey
1974-2006

The music producer and rapper finished his last album, the instrumental album "Donuts", at his hopsital bed and it was released on his 32nd birthday, three days before he passed away from a rare blood desease called thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura and lupus.

 

Woody Shaw, my favorite Jazz trumpeter - so much talent and such sad times in his final years, dead at 44 after losing his eyesight and his left arm, crazy really. I learnt this only last year and think about it often. I play his music every day.

From wiki: By the late 1980s Shaw was suffering from an incurable degenerative eye disease and was losing his eyesight. A user of heroin throughout his adult life, Shaw was in extremely poor health when he returned to the U.S. from Europe in 1988—he needed a wheelchair at the airport.[6] Details of the accident are unclear, but on February 27, 1989, Shaw was struck by a subway car in Brooklyn, NY, which severed his left arm. Shaw suffered complications in the hospital and died of kidney failure on May 10, 1989.[5][7] He was 44 years old.

 

Tammi was raped at the age of eleven by three boys in her neighborhood- they were convicted of it. The incident changed her behavior, she had a reputation as being a bit promiscuous. She was linked to Sam Cooke as well, although I don't think that they ever actually did anything.

What Tammi Terrell needed after Brown and Ruffin was a friend, thankfully, Marvin Gaye was around for her. Of course, Tammi's illness and death could have very well started Marvin's downward spiral towards his eventual end.

 

If there was a 'winner', this would be it. She's still missed - especially at Christmas when the vibrant 'Fairy-Tale Of New York' promo is shown so frequently.

 

John Martyn.

 

The anniversary of her death is coming up - December 18.

 

It could have been worse, he could have been trapped in a semi-colon......

 

RE: Layne Staley

Ain't that the truth! Drug abuse is definitely an ugly life choice.

 

I went to The Cooler a few times, they had meat hooks hanging from the ceiling. As I recall it didn't even have a sign outside, you just opened a plain grey door and went down the stairs.