Tonight is Quentin Tarantino Night on American Idol, and we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the passing of Delfonics founder Randy Cain (left), considering the Delfonics figured so heavily into the most charming scenes of QT’s Jackie Brown. The Delfonics were one of the first Philadelphia soul bands, and the perfect harmonies and dramatic arrangements—courtesy of super-genius instrumentalist Thom Bell—were indicative of the Philadelphia sound to come, if a little lower budget.

The Delfonics’ first five records or so (all Bell-produced) are pretty impeccable, and yielded Top Ten hits like “La-La Means I Love You” and “Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)”, as well as many other R&B hits. Like a lot of classic soul acts, their legacy lived on through sampling of their work, in addition to the support of Mr. Tarantino.

“La-La Means I Love You”: The importance of this song can’t be understated. It was an early codification and legitimization of the Philly sound, and it would establish Thom Bell as a super-producer and architect of a city’s sound.

“Ready Or Not Here I Come(Cant Hide From Love)”: You might remember this one from Missy Elllot’s “Sock It 2 Me” and The Fugees’ “Ready Or Not.”

“I’m Sorry”: This has a solid, emphatic beat.

Cain left the Delfonics in 1971, moving on to help form Blue Magic (though he didn’t play on their fabulous song “Sideshow”) He returned to the Delfonics in 1999.

He was 63.

Randy Cain, 63, one of Delfonics founders [Philly.com]

A salute to hip-hop producer Tony D, who passed away over the weekend; during his career he crafted beats for the Poor Righteous Teachers and managed MC Serch. [Unkut via eskay]

A salute to hip-hop producer Tony D, who passed away over the weekend; during his career he crafted beats for the Poor Righteous Teachers and managed MC Serch. [Unkut via eskay]

A salute to hip-hop producer Tony D, who passed away over the weekend; during his career he crafted beats for the Poor Righteous Teachers and managed MC Serch. [Unkut via eskay]

A salute to hip-hop producer Tony D, who passed away over the weekend; during his career he crafted beats for the Poor Righteous Teachers and managed MC Serch. [Unkut via eskay]

A salute to hip-hop producer Tony D, who passed away over the weekend; during his career he crafted beats for the Poor Righteous Teachers and managed MC Serch. [Unkut via eskay]

Dan Seals, ’70s soft-rock one-hit wonder and ’80s country star, died on Wednesday after a struggle with mantle cell lymphoma. There aren’t too many second acts in popular music, but after one very big song (the No. 2 hit “I’d Really Love To See You Tonight”) and a few other top ten singles as “England Dan” with John Ford Coley, Dan Seals reinvented himself as a country star slowly building an audience, eventually topping the county charts eleven times before seeing his popularity slip away by the early nineties. The late eighties are largely overlooked as far as country music’s timeline goes, and largely for good reason as the popular music of that era would have confused and frightened the originators of the genre, but Seals’ biggest hit “Bop” is one of those songs that occasionally gets stuck in my head for an entire day. Buried among the synths and odd stylistic choices of the era are earnest, well performed vocals of a man who made the most of a second run at music fame. Several songs from both eras of his career are below the cut.

Dan Seals, “Bop”:

England Dan & John Ford Coley, “I’d Really Love To See You Tonight”:

Dan Seals, “Good Times”:

England Dan & John Ford Coley, “Just Tell Me You Love Me”:

Marie Osmond and Dan Seals, “Meet Me In Montana”:

Seals was 61.

Dan Seals, Singer of “Bop,” “Love on Arrival,” Dies at 61 [CMT]

At 5 p.m. yesterday, Pylon guitarist Randall “Randy” Bewley passed away, and my beloved hometown of Athens is a lot poorer for it. Randy contributed to our town in multiple ways, as a member of a legendary band, as an elementary school art teacher, and as a father of two, an all-around great guy by all accounts. To call him a unique talent would be an understatement. I will put this in as delicate manner as possible: Randy Bewley was not a good “traditional” guitar player. He was not the guy you’d call upon to cover a song straight up. He was not a “strum the chords” kind of guy. But make no mistake of it: Randy was an amazing guitar player, one of the handful of true artists out there whose tone and style of playing was immediately recognizable.

Pylon started, as many great (and Athens) bands do, before its members were truly comfortable with their instruments, and they were a better band for it, using the members’ lack of technical prowess as a raison d’etre. Their early success around Athens gained the interest of the B-52′s, among others, and that led them to an opening gig for Gang of Four in New York in 1980. The pairing makes complete sense, with both groups’ emphasis on punk rock/new wave that has a good beat that you can dance to, but I’ll go out on a limb here and say that Pylon’s music is more universal, preaching about (and against) things like literacy, dancing, conformity, and the general nature of being cool. Pylon was aggressive, minimalist, danceable, Southern, and androgynous. Randy fairly stabbed at his guitar, usually in spiky rhythm with Curtis Crowe’s relentless drumming. Add to that Michael Lachowski’s menacing monolithic bass bum bum bums and Vanessa Briscoe (Hay)’s primal howls, and, wow, what a rad band.

Coming up around the same time as R.E.M., the band’s influence and history on the Athens music scene can’t be understated–they practiced at the original 40 Watt location–but it goes much farther than that. I often see this sort of thing written about Pylon: “Though they never achieved R.E.M.’s level of success….”, but let’s be frank, how many bands do? Pylon, before their first of two break-ups, opened for the Talking Heads, R.E.M. (who covered “Crazy” and called them the Best Band in America once in Rolling Stone), Gang of Four, the B-52′s, and the entirety of U2′s first US tour! Not bad for a band of four UGA art students who just wanted a free trip to NYC out of the deal, as the legend goes.

The band left behind three albums—two of which are out-and-out monsters—and in the last eight years of the dance-punk-indietronica-whatever-you-wanna-call-it renaissance, Randy’s spiky rhythmic guitar style has been adopted by a legion of bands, whether they know it or not. Though Gang of Four is the most bandied-about influence given for bands like Hot Hot Heat, Franz Ferdinand, and the Rapture, I’d like to think that there is just as much Pylon in there as well, and certainly Vanessa Briscoe Hay’s superior yawps opened the door for a host of nontraditional female singers like Kathleen Hanna and Karen O. As their music became au courant again, Pylon reunited for a number of shows and small tours over the last few years, but their getting back together always had the good-natured feel of “why the hell not?” rather than a cynical cash-in. And, good God, the band had not lost a step. In fact, I would say two of the best shows I’ve seen in the last five years were Pylon shows, sweaty, wild affairs whose departing audience bore the Permagrin™ of a communal good time. It’s no surprise, then, that DFA latched onto them, reissuing Gyrate last year and Chomp in the coming months. Half of DFA’s catalog owes a great debt to Pylon, and it was nice to see James Murphy and Co. acknowledge that fact.

I didn’t know Randy super well. He performed in Vanessa Briscoe Hay’s newest project Supercluster, and they recorded and practiced at my house often because my roommate Kay played bass in that Athens supergroup. To be honest, I played the role of weird roommate who hung around in the shadows, fairly in awe at the talent convened in my kitchen, munching on the army of snacks the generous Vanessa brought with her to satiate her bandmates’ collective sweet/salt tooth. Randy was always a gracious, nice guy, and I eventually got up the nerve to talk to both him and Vanessa, and what little acquaintance I have had with them I count as one of the great treasures in my life. He had also joined Hannah Jones’ New Sound of Numbers project, now called Sound Houses, and his presence has transformed that band into a kind of monotonal This Heat/Silver Apples dance band that was becoming one of my favorites in town. He remained possessed of that singular guitar tone and style, for better or worse. I once heard Supercluster try to do some (for charity) Elton John covers in the other room, and it was a glorious mess. Randy refused to play nice with the chords, as unique in approach as ever, dismantling the songs and reshaping them in his image. Like I said, it was kind of a mess, but, in retrospect, he stayed true to the style he created, a committed musical nonconformist until the end. That’s the greatest compliment I could pay any musician, really.

Pylon, “Danger” (from Gyrate)

Pylon, “Cool” (at the Knitting Factory a couple of months ago)

Pylon, “Stop It (Rock and Roll No)”

Pylon [MySpace]

Rickey Wright

, music critic and all-around genius, died of a stroke in Seattle on Thursday. I didn’t know Rickey personally—I followed his byline and occasionally ran into him online in one way—but if you take just a few minutes to read about him today online, it’s easy to see how his death has affected people in the online music community.

Wright was an editor for Amazon for some time (that job brought him to Seattle), and his work appeared in publications like USA Today, the Village Voice, Blender, Harp, and the Seattle Weekly. He also won the 1999 Rhino Music Aptitude Test, a fact that seems somewhat trivial at first glance, but if you’ve actually seen the test or some of the people who have failed it miserably, you realize what a testament to his musical knowledge that accolade really is.

Besides all that, Wright just seemed like a good guy, opinionated and knowledgeable while remaining kind and friendly, even to those he might not ever meet face to face. Ned Raggett has a tribute to Wright that is far better than this brief one, and there is a Facebook group collecting memories and remembrances of Wright as well. Wright was 45.

Former Pilot Music Writer Rickey Wright Dies [Hampton Roads Pilot]

Ben Sisario’s obituary of Estelle Bennett, the original Ronette who passed away last week at age 67, is heartbreakingly well-written, shining a light on the torments that she suffered from, including anorexia and schizophrenia, in her post-Ronettes years. [NYT]

Ben Sisario’s obituary of Estelle Bennett, the original Ronette who passed away last week at age 67, is heartbreakingly well-written, shining a light on the torments that she suffered from, including anorexia and schizophrenia, in her post-Ronettes years. [NYT]

Estelle Bennett of the Ronettes was found dead in her New Jersey home on Wednesday. Although her sister Ronnie Bennett (later Spector) was the girl group’s star, Estelle and her cousin Nedra were undeniably part of its massive vocal presence on the group’s string of hits from 1963 to 1965, not to mention its tough-girl image. After the group broke up in 1966, Estelle recorded one solo single then retreated from the spotlight. While she chose not to perform with Ronnie and Nedra at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2007, she appeared in honor of the Ronettes’ induction, saying simply “I would just like to say, thank you very much for giving us this award. I’m Estelle of the Ronettes, thank you.” A few of the Ronettes’ classic tracks are below the cut.

“Is This What I Get For Loving You?”:

“I Can Hear Music”:

“You Came You Saw You Conquered”:

“(The Best Part Of) Breaking Up”:

Bennett was 67.

Estelle Bennett [Star Gazette]

Blossom Dearie, a jazz singer with an insousciant, kittenlike voice, passed away from natural causes over the weekend. Dearie’s career stretched from Paris cabarets to her establishing her own label, and her discography—which included a few tracks about grammar and multiplication tables that aired on ABC’s Schoolhouse Rock! in the 1970s—is about a mile long. She retired from performing in 2006, citing health reasons. A few selections from her career after the cut.

“Figure Eight”

“I’m Hip”

“Put On A Happy Face”

Dearie was 84.

Blossom Dearie, Cult Chanteuse, Dies At 84 [NYT]

Legendary steel guitar player Tom Brumley passed away Tuesday after a heart attack. The son of Albert E. Brumley, who wrote the classic spiritual “I’ll Fly Away”, Brumley’s clean style made him a hero within the steel guitar community.

If you enjoy steel guitar, it’s hard not to love Brumley, who spent nearly a decade in Buck Owens’ Buckaroos popularizing the Bakersfield country sound on such hits as “Act Naturally” and “I’ve Got A Tiger By The Tail.” After leaving Owens’ band, Brumley spend a decade with Rick Nelson’s Stone Canyon Band, including performing on the 1972 single “Garden Party.” Brumley then spent 1989 to 2003 as a staple in Branson, performing with with his sons in a steel guitar showcase. Outside of his regular gigs, Brumley was still a highly sought-after session player, performing on tracks by Rod Stewart, Waylon Jennings, Chris Isaak, Robbie Fulks, and Jonathan Richman.

Buck Owens, “Love’s Gonna Live Here”:

Don Rich and the Buckaroos, “Wham Bam”:

Jonathan Richman, “Since She Started To Ride”:

Brumley was 73.

Tom Brumley dies at 73; steel guitarist for Buck Owens and Rick Nelson [LA Times]
[Photo via TomBrumley.com]

Cramps frontman Lux Interior passed away yesterday morning in Glendale, Calif., from complications stemming from an existing heart condition. Interior, real name Erick Lee Purkhiser, founded the Cramps with his wife Poison Ivy (née Kristy Wallace) in 1973, and they quickly became fixtures of New York’s emerging punk scene after playing their first CBGB show in 1976; their deft combination of surf-rock melodies, rockabilly swagger, and horror-film iconography was hugely influential on a lot of bands that came in their wake. Lux Interior and Poison Ivy were the only two constant members of the band, which stopped touring in 2004. (A comprehensive timeline of the Cramps’ history is here.) A couple of videos after the jump.

“I Was A Teenage Werewolf”

“The Way I Walk” (Live at Napa State Mental Hospital)

“Bikini Girls With Machine Guns”

“Surfin’ Bird”

Interior was 62.

Cramporama [Noisezone Magazine]

Chameleonlike English folk singer John Martyn, perhaps most known for his work with echoplex guitar delays, has passed away. Born Iain David McGeachy, he was a member of the vibrant late-’60s/early-’70s English folk scene that spawned Nick Drake (a friend of Martyn’s), Jackson C. Frank, and Fairport Convention, among others. Though Martyn enjoyed acclaim, his career, like many of his peers, burbled just under the surface of the mainstream, even though his influence shows up in the work of guitar players like The Edge and Michael Brook, as well as a whole generation of self-loopers like Andrew Bird and Final Fantasy’s Owen Pallett.

At the same time that Robert Fripp was working with tape machines to create his guitar-delayed “Frippertronics,” Martyn experimented with running his acoustic guitars through Echoplex analog delay machines, in which signals are recorded on tape loops and spit back out delayed. This experimentation showed up on his seminal albums Bless The Weather, Stormbringer, One World, Solid Air and Inside Out, which were a break from his earlier, more traditional folk material. This relentless need to experiment traveled with him throughout his life; he dabbled in electronic music, reggae, and even trip-hop, with varying degrees of success. I am mostly familiar with his early-’70s work, as I found it more interesting than the early Joe Boyd/Nick Drake-y stuff like London Conversation. Now’s as good a time to delve further into the guy’s catalog.

This jazzy number was a fan-favorite and showcases his great vocal range and emotional delivery.

Eric Clapton covered this, but the original’s superior.

Martyn was 60.

John Martyn dies [Guardian]

Charlie Cooper, one-half of the Chicago electronic duo Telefon Tel Aviv, passed away last week. The duo, made up of Cooper and Joshua Eustis, released its third studio album, Immolate Yourself, last week; the two had been making music together since 1999. Cooper was 31. [Telefon Tel Aviv via The Daily Swarm]

Music biz veteran Gary Kurfirst passed away on Tuesday while vacationing in the Bahamas. While the name might not ring an immediate bell, Kurfirst was a jack-of-all-trades, starting up the New York Rock Festival when he was 20 (headliners: Janis Joplin, Hendrix, the Who, and the Doors). He signed Shirley Manson (and therefore Garbage) and also launched the Radioactive Records imprint for MCA, which released records from Live, Dig, Elysian Fields, the Ramones, and Black Grape. His most important work was done as a manager, and it’s impossible not to be staggered by Kurfirst’s eye for talent:

The Ramones
Talking Heads
Blondie
The B-52′s
The Eurythmics
Peter Tosh
Toots & the Maytals
Jane’s Addiction

In addition, Gary Kurfirst partnered with Chris Blackwell in the 70s to bring Tosh and Bob Marley’s music to America via Island Records. He produced both Talking Heads-related films Stop Making Sense and David Byrne’s True Stories. He and Blackwell were still managing artists like Mick Jones/Big Audio Dynamite, Tom Tom Club, and Ambulance, LTD at the time of his passing.

Seymour Stein had this to say of Kurfirst, which is super-high praise coming from a label person about a manager:

“Gary was brilliant in his ability to spot changes in music ahead of most people and had the courage to act on his instincts. Gary was tough, but not cutthroat in business. He could fight hard, but fair and never held grudges. Gary had great style. Certainly one of the best and most successful relationships I ever enjoyed with a manager, working together on Talking Heads, the Ramones or Deborah Harry. Can honestly say he will be surely missed.”

From Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz:

“Gary Kurfirst has been our manager since 1977. He never failed to take care of business for us. He protected us. He allowed Talking Heads to be Talking Heads while he took the blows that the music business dealt us. Together we suffered heartbreaks and celebrated great triumphs. Gary truly was the fifth Talking Head. We were very close friends and we will miss him terribly.”

Music Industry Veteran Gary Kurfirst Passes [FMQB]

Ron Asheton, guitarist for the legendary Stooges, was found dead in his Ann Arbor, Mich., home this morning. Asheton certainly performed with a number of acts between 1973 (when Raw Power, when he was bumped to bass guitar in the Stooges was released) and 2007 (when the Stooges reunited for The Weirdness), but in the end, what he was most known for was his songwriting and tough sounding guitar on the Stooges’ self-titled album and its followup, Fun House. Although I feel like I’m way too acquainted with frontman Iggy Pop, all I really ever knew about Asheton came from his contributions to his band’s records; even a recent interview with his hometown paper isn’t all that revealing, focusing on how the band reformed and the fact that they haven’t made it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. So, probably fittingly, I’ll remember Asheton in death the way I thought of him in life: through the music of the Stooges. A few selections are after the cut.

“TV Eye”:

“”Cool Time/No Fun” at Glastonbury 2007:

“I Wanna Be Your Dog”:

Asheton was 60.

Stooges’ guitarist Ron Asheton found dead in his Ann Arbor home [MLive.com]

“There are so many little dyings that it doesn’t matter which of them is death,” wrote esteemed poet/ author Kenneth Patchen. Yet the accrual of such dying over the course of a calendar year belies such “little”ness. As we nudge into the 21st century, the luminaries of the previous one begin to wane, the architects and innovators of prime American music forms: blues, jazz, folk, rock. The obituary page for 2008 may not feature so many marquee names, but the crucial people behind the stage—the gurus, the producers, the poster artists, the record executives, the session men—all continued to vanish as well.

We lost studio drummers like Earl Palmer and guitarist Robert Ward, Phil Spector’s engineer Phil Levine, jazz photographer William Claxton, Mothers of Invention drummer Jimmy Carl Black, Thelonious Monk saxophonist Johnny Griffin. Number groups diminished by one, be they the Count Five, the Four Tops, the Dave Clark Five, or the Kingston Trio. Here are a few of the folks-–some well-known, some never heard of— whose work and influence created a great resonance here and whose efforts will hopefully continue to reverberate in the generations to come.

Henri Chopin, French sound poet (Jan. 3)

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Beatles guru (Feb. 5)

Teo Macero, Miles Davis producer, original cut-n-paste producer (Feb. 19)

Joe Gibbs, legendary Jamaican reggae producer (Feb. 21)

Larry Norman, “Father of Christian Rock” (Feb. 24)

Steve “Static Major” Garrett, hip-hop songwriter (Feb. 25)

Buddy Miles, drummer (Feb. 26)

Mikey Dread, reggae producer, Clash collaborator (March 15)

Danny Federici, E Street bandsman (April 17)

Bebe Barron, electronic music composer (April 20)

Jimmy Giuffre, jazz reedman/composer (April 24)

Eddy Arnold, countrypolitan crooner (May 8)

Bo Diddley, guitar genius (June 2)

Natasha Shneider, keyboardist and singer (July 3)

Khia “K-Swift” Edgerton, Baltimore producer/DJ (July 21)

Robert Hazard, Philly new waver (Aug. 5)

Isaac Hayes, singer, songwriter, producer, Black Moses (Aug. 10)

Jerry Wexler, music journalist, Atlantic Records music producer, coined term “rhythm & blues” (Aug. 15)

Richard Wright, Pink Floyd keyboardist (Sept. 15)

Alton Ellis, Jamaican soul singer (Oct. 10)

Neal Hefti, trumpeter, small-screen composer (Oct. 11)

Levi Stubbs, gravel-voiced soul man (Oct. 17)

Yma Sumac, Peruvian songbird (Nov. 1)

Miriam Makeba, South African singer, exile, “Mama Afrika” (Nov. 10)

Mitch Mitchell, drummer (Nov. 12)

Odetta, Queen of American Folk Music (Dec. 2)

Davey Graham, pioneering UK folk guitarist (Dec. 15)

Eartha Kitt, singer, Catwoman (Dec. 25)

Delaney Bramlett, guitarist, songwriter, white bluesman (Dec. 28)

Freddie Hubbard, jazz saxophonist, sideman, small group leader (Dec. 29)

Obituaries