The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (203 page)

See also
Jimmy McCulloch (
September 1979)

MAY

Golden Oldies #6

Tommy McCook

(Cuba, 4 March 1927)

The Skatalites

The Supersonics

Saxophonist Tommy McCook had the best start in life, attending the Alpha Cottage School in Kingston - a breeding ground for great musical talent as Jamaica began to find its feet in the industry. Originally a more jazz-influenced player who had mastered tenor sax and flute while living in the Bahamas, McCook became a pioneer in the world of ska as leader of Jackie Mittoo’s new band The Skatalites (the name suggested by McCook, apparently) in 1964. The Skatalites were inspired by the extraordinary work of trombonist Don Drummond but broke up as an indirect result of the latter’s incarceration (which preceded his dramatic death
(
May 1969).
McCook went on to front the more rocksteady-influenced Duke Reid session band The Supersonics, before recording mainly as a solo artist throughout the seventies. McCook then surprised the ska community by reuniting the surviving Skatalites in the US in 1983, issuing a brand-new album,
Return of the Big Guns
(1984).

Ten years later, The Skatalites embarked upon their first ever world tour - but by now Tommy McCook’s health was beginning to fail him. A heart attack having curtailed his live work, McCook eventually died on 4 May 1998 from a combination of pneumonia and heart failure at his home in Atlanta, Georgia.

See also
Jackie Mittoo (
December 1990); Roland Alphonso (
Golden Oldies #8); Singer Vic Taylor died in 2003. Lloyd
Knibb (
Golden Oldies #136). Sometime Skatalites Jackie Opel, Vic Taylor, Jah Jerry Haynes and Johnny ‘Dizzy’ Moore died in
1970, 2003, 2007 and 2008 respectively.

Thursday 7

Eddie Rabbitt

(Brooklyn, New York, 27 November 1941)

What the Judge never managed, the Rabbitt pulled off: the career of singer/songwriter Eddie Rabbitt really took off when Elvis recorded his ‘Kentucky Rain’ in 1970. He’d struggled as an artist since 1964, finally moving to Nashville, where he became a favourite on the country scene. Rabbitt’s own crossover success began as late as 1979 when he contributed the languid ‘Every Which Way but Loose’ to the Clint Eastwood movie of that name, but the following year he earned his biggest success with the Billboard number one ‘I Love a Rainy Night’ (1980), and scored another five Top Twenty hits over the next two years. Eddie Rabbitt’s subsequent career was lower key, and his heavy smoking eventually caused the lung cancer that was to shorten his life.

Saturday 9

Lester Butler

(Virginia, 12 November 1959)

The Red Devils

13

Here’s an odd one. Lester Butler was a white-hot guitarist/harmonicaplayer making his name on the circuit of his adopted LA with The Red Devils, the blues combo who gained sufficient notoriety to back R L Burnside, Johnny Cash and Mick Jagger (who, at one point, rated them as his favourite band). When The Devils folded in 1994, Howlin’ Wolf fan Butler began another, arguably even better combo called, simply, 13. The band – Butler (vocals/blues harp), Alex Schultz (ex-Mighty Flyers, guitar), Mark Goldberg (ex-Canned Heat, bass) and James Intveld (mainly drums) – looked set to outdo Butler’s previous group.

But it was not to be. On the night of 8 May, Butler was due to play a Hollywood gig with 13 when he dropped by the house of sometime drummer Bill Bateman with friends Glenn Demidow and April Ortega. The latter gave him a shot of heroin – too much, it transpired – and Butler’s friends then injected him three times with cocaine in a bizarre effort to reverse the effects. Without contacting emergency services, they then drove the now-comatose Butler to his gig – and proceeded to watch the rest of his band play without their leader, left ‘asleep’ in a van! The story gets stranger: the trio then removed Butler to Bateman’s home, from where, the following evening under cover of night, they took him to his own bed. Lester Butler’s body was discovered by another friend early on Sunday 10th. Demidow and Ortega were found guilty of manslaughter, and served five years between them.

See also
Johnny Cash (
Golden Oldies #16); R L Burnside (
Golden Oldies
#29)