The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (224 page)

The nineties vogue for all things retro gave Robinson a new lease of life in her later career: her earlier hit was revamped by Gloria Estefan and she herself returned to the studio to cut a new album. This revival was unfortunately sent crashing by the news in 1998 that she had cancer, but Vicki Sue Robinson showed her tenacity, performing until the final curtain. She died at her home in Connecticut.

MAY

Wednesday 31

Johnnie Taylor

(Crawfordsville, Arkansas, 5 May 1937)

The Soul Stirrers

(The Highway QCs)

(The Melody Makers)

(The Five Echoes)

Brought up by his grandparents, the hugely influential Johnnie Taylor trained his voice as a boy by singing in church near his Arkansas home. His rich tones gained Taylor a place in local gospel quartets, most notably the Chicago-based Melody Makers and Soul Stirrers – the latter the celebrated unit that featured a young Sam Cooke in its roster. Taylor and Cooke became close friends, Taylor taking over as lead vocalist when Cooke switched to secular music. Taylor made a similar move in 1961, recording for Cooke’s SAR record label – but his friend’s death (
Pre-1965)
resulted in a devastated Taylor needing to find another label. With Stax, Taylor was an R & B sensation, four of his singles attaining number one in the chart – though it wasn’t until the disco boom of 1975–6 that he reached the summit of Billboard’s pop listings. ‘Disco Lady’ was an extraordinary, haunting record that earned the first ever platinum disc, eventually shifting over 2 million copies.

Known as ‘The Soul Philosopher’, Taylor showed great diversity in his career, covering gospel, soul, R & B, disco and even a touch of blues in his later recordings for Mississippi label Malaco. Johnnie Taylor’s extravagant lifestyle was probably mainly to blame for his death, from a heart attack at Charleton Methodist Medical Center, Dallas.

JUNE

Friday 30

Rik L Rik

(Richard Brian Elerick - Los Angeles, California, 30 September 1960)

F-Word

(Negative Trend)

(Electric Frankenstein)

(The Celestials)

Yet another member of the early California punk alumni to die young, Rik L Rik had blazed his own personal trail, aged sixteen, as singer with F-Word back in 1977. The group’s main claim to fame was that their live album
Like It or Not
(1978) could be said to be the first LA punk album to be released. When this project inevitably imploded, Rik joined Negative Trend – the group that were to become the fabled Flipper. Unfortunately, the singer left before this, working his way through a number of newwave units, including Electric Frankenstein, for whom he was performing as late as 1997: Rik was due to record with The Celestials at the time of his death, from brain cancer. Rik L Rik was apparently working for a funeral director at the end of his life.

See also
Will Shatter (
December 1987)

JULY

Saturday 1

Cub Koda

(Michael Koda - Detroit, Michigan, 1 October 1948)

Brownsville Station

(The Del-Tinos)

Now remembered for a rock standard, the versatile Cub Koda was cutting records as early as 1963. Having learned drums as a boy, he graduated to the guitar, forming high-school trio The Del-Tinos when just fifteen. The group recorded a few singles (mainly covers) during their three-year lifespan, after which Koda moved on to a couple of other units before emerging in Brownsville Station at the end of the decade. This next three-piece – based in Ann Arbor – also featured vocalist Michael Lutz and drummer Henry Weck. Within a few years, Station’s brand of over-driven rock had become popular (think BTO, Steppenwolf, etc). Their national breakthrough came at the start of 1974 with the singalong ‘Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room’ – a Billboard Top Five hit that earned them a gold disc and charted in most countries across the world. One of the classic bad-boy anthems, the song has been covered many times – a 1985 mangling by Motley Crue is one of the better-known examples. Interestingly, this was not the direction desired by Koda, who preferred to tone down his band’s output – until the lack of hits prompted a disbanding in 1979. Koda was well respected for his awesome knowledge of rock ‘n’ roll, R & B and the blues. He was also a much-published writer who contributed to
Discoveries
music magazine for more than two decades. After a sabbatical from music, Koda returned in 1995 with a solo album that finally produced another hit in ‘Random Drug Testing’.

Just three months before his death, Cub Koda was still working, a further solo disc was out and the usual merry-go-round of promotion and touring meant that his calendar was chockfull until the end of 2000. However, all of this came to an abrupt halt when Koda died due to complications arising from kidney dialysis at around 2.45 am on 1 July.

‘A short white kid makes a record that gets played on the radio and sells a million. How can
that
be a curse?’

Cub Koda

Saturday 15

Paul Young

(Wythenshawe, Manchester, 17 June 1947)

Sad Café

Mike & The Mechanics

The SAS Band

(Various acts)

Although less recognizable than his namesake, Paul Young probably enjoyed more critical acclaim and almost certainly possessed the better white soul voice. But, until the last few weeks of the seventies, Young’s first ‘name’ act, Sad Café -Ian Wilson (guitar), Ashley Mulford (guitar), Vic Emerson (keyboards), John Stimpson (bass) and David Irving (drums) - were best known for the lurid sleeve photographs for their albums
Fanx TaRa
(1977) and
Misplaced Ideals
(1978). Prior to success, Young could have been spotted as early as 1962, fronting Johnny Dark & The Midnights before spending time with beat unit The Toggery Five and then Gyro, the band in which he met Wilson. However, after what seemed an eternity in the pub-rock doldrums, it finally happened for Young with Sad Café’s winsome (and 250,000-selling) ‘Every Day Hurts’ (1979). Further hits followed, including ‘My Oh My’ (1980) - a tune that out-Stoned even Jagger and Richards. Their time in the spotlight lasted little more than a year, though, as various attempts to recreate the drama of ‘Every Day Hurts’ fell on deaf ears. After disbanding Café, Young took a couple of years away from the business before returning as one of several singers to front Mike & The Mechanics, the AOR side project of former Genesis guitarist Mike Rutherford - which went on to outsell much of his previous band’s work. Although the albums
The Living Years
(1988),
Beggar on a Beach of Gold
(1995) and
Greatest Hits
(1996) all went gold, Young had some pretty stiff competition for lead voice from ex-Squeeze and Ace vocalist Paul Carrack – but nonetheless crooned the US Top Five All I Need is a Miracle’ (1986). Young also briefly reformed Sad Café and sang with The SAS Band.