The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (178 page)

DECEMBER

Sunday 10

Darren Robinson

(New York, 10 June 1967)

The Fat Boys

A unique act, Brooklyn’s The Fat Boys – first known as The Disco 3 – won a recording contract as a result of their performance at a 1983 talent contest at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. The band had a combined weight of over 750 lbs (54 stones/340 kilos), thus manager Charles Stettler and producer Kurtis Blow suggested the change of name.

An astonishing 60 per cent of this mass belonged to Darren ‘Buffy the Human Beat Box’ Robinson, who, with his size and uncanny repertoire of vocal effects, was clearly the group’s focal point. Alongside rapping compadres Mark ‘Prince Markie Dee’ Morales and Damon ‘Kool Rock-Ski’ Wimbley, Robinson enjoyed notable crossover pop success – particularly with the covers ‘Wipe Out!’ (1987, with The Beach Boys) and ‘The Twist (Yo Twist)’ (1988, with Chubby Checker), US Top Twenty hits, both of which came within an ace of topping the UK singles charts. A series of smaller hits and a couple of movie roles followed, but – as with the novelty doo-wop acts their shtick echoed – The Fat Boys were to have only a brief shelflife. The album
On and On
(an abortive 1989 attempt to harness the growing gangstarap vogue) harmed the group’s credibility, while even more damaging was Robinson’s charge of being accomplice to an underage sexual liaison. This blew up when a video, made at a party he’d attended, was seized by police following a girl’s complaint; although Robinson hadn’t been directly responsible for the occurrence, it led to The Fat Boys’ dissolution in 1992.

The Fat Boys - Robinson
(left
), Morales and Wimbley: May have had health issues

Ten days after a surprise reunion for the group, Darren Robinson sat on a couch entertaining friends again with his unwavering portfolio of sound effects. As he attempted to climb on to a stool, Robinson lost first his balance, then his breath, falling heavily and finally going into cardiac arrest. Attempts to revive him via mouth-to-mouth and CPR proved fruitless, and paramedics pronounced him dead at around 3 am. New York’s outsized clown prince of rap had passed away at just twenty-eight: never the fittest of human beings, Robinson had been suffering from respiratory influenza and was diagnosed lymphoedemic just weeks before.

Saturday 30

Clarence ‘Satch’ Satchell

(Cleveland, Ohio, 15 April 1940)

The Ohio Players

Originally the instrumental Ohio Untouchables, The Ohio Players were a seventies R & B group who embraced the burgeoning disco scene with relish, filling US dance floors with a number of mid-seventies smashes such as the number ones ‘Fire’ (1974) and ‘Love Rollercoaster’ (1975). (The latter became the centre of some controversy when the scream of a woman in the mix was rumoured to be the result of a genuine murder; it wasn’t, of course, but The Players waited until the record had run its course to explain this!)

Known by his stage moniker, ‘Satch’, Clarence Satchell survived polio as a boy to become the band’s main saxophonist and flautist. As The Players grew in stature, it was on Satchell’s insistence that the record sleeves featured lurid images of sparsely clad women – in spite of this, they still earned themselves a number of Grammy nominations. Clarence Satchell passed away in Dayton, Ohio, one of many 1995 victims of aneurysm, leaving five daughters and a son, and at least six grandchildren.

Fellow founder Ralph ‘Pee Wee’ Middlebrooks survived Satchell by two years, while blues singer/guitarist Robert Ward - a member of pre-Players band The Ohio Untouchables -passed away at Christmas in 2008.

Lest We Forget

Other notable deaths that occurred sometime during 1995:

Baltimora
(UK Europop singer best known for 1985’s ‘Tarzan Boy’; born Jimmy McShane, Derry, 23/5/1957; AIDS, 28/3)

Louise Dean
(UK singer with dance act Shiva, who’d just scored with ‘Work It Out’; born Yorkshire, 1971; hit by a drunk, uninsured driver in Huddersfield, she died from massive head injuries, 8/7)

Stephen David Harle
(British punk drummer with UK Decay; born 1961; died backpacking in India, 1/3)

Eddie Hinton
(respected US session man who recorded with the Muscle Shoals rhythm section and wrote hit songs like ‘Breakfast in Bed’; born Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 15/6/1944; heart attack, 28/7)

Billy Jones
(US country-rock guitarist with The Outlaws; born Michigan, 20/11/1949; suicide, 9/2 - three weeks before the overdose death of his bassist Frank O’Keefe)

Marcel King
(UK soul lead with Sweet Sensation who scored a #1 with 1974’s ‘Sad Sweet Dreamer’ - later a Factory label artist; born Manchester, 4/1/1958; brain haemorrhage, 5/10)

Sean Mayes
(illustrious UK keyboardist with Fumble who then played with David Bowie - he wrote
We Can be Heroes,
a revealing account of the latter’s 1978 tour; born London, 1945; AIDS, 12/7)

Paul A Rothchild
(revered US rock producer who shaped the sound of The Doors, Janis Joplin and Love, among others - father of Grant Lee Buffalo bassist Dan; born New York, 18/4/1935; cancer, 30/3)

Ruby Starr
(distinctive US vocalist and sometime member of Southern rock band Black Oak Arkansas; born Constance Mierzwak, Toledo, Ohio, 30/11/1949; cancer, 29/11)

Delroy Wilson
(noted Jamaican reggae vocalist; born Kingston, 5/10/1948; alcohol-related illness, 6/3)

Wolfman Jack
(legendary US DJ, originally ‘Daddy-Jules’; born Robert Weston Smith, Brooklyn, 21/1/1938; heart attack, 1/7)

1996

JANUARY

Tuesday 16

Richard Kermode

(Lovell, Wyoming, 5 October 1946)

Janis Joplin’s Kozmic Blues Band

Santana

(Various acts)

Richard Kermode was a jazz pianist who adopted rock ‘n’ roll, having mastered a number of instruments while he grew up in Buffalo. One of the many who took notice of this very gifted musician was Janis Joplin, who recruited Kermode ahead of her marvellous performance at Woodstock in 1969. Inevitably, The Kozmic Blues Band ceased to be after Joplin’s death (
October 1970),
but the keyboardist and soprano sax-player found session work with other San Francisco bands such as The Grateful Dead, before playing on three albums with Santana. He also recorded with Labelle and Malo. By the time of his early death from cancer, Kermode was living in Denver, having returned to his jazz roots.

See also
Leone Thomas (
May 1999); David Brown (
September 2000)