February a Bad Month for '50s Rock Artists

[jon]

Sirius/XM 50s on 5 DJ Norman Nite made the point in the last half hour that February is a bad month for '50s Rock artists. It is easy to forget "all the rest" with the spotlight shining so brightly on this week's anniversary of the death of Buddy Holly and fellow passengers on the ill-fated airplane on February 3, 1959.

He then featured a three song set of rarely heard Bill Haley songs, beginning with his version of Rocket 88, generally acknowledged as the first song of the Rock Era. Bill died on February 9, 1981, at only 55 years old.

I'll leave it open to others to name some of the other great '50s artists who died young in the month of February.

[Firedog]

Starting off with a #1 hit in 1961, Runaway, Del Shannon charted songs for the next 4-5 years including the Lennon/McCartney composition From Me to You. Like many North American artists, Beatlemania may have contributed to his fading popularity. He later joined some of the Rock and Roll tour shows. He ended his life with a gunshot to the head February 8, 1990 at the age of 55. Hats off to you, Del.

[another dog]

Yes, life was cut short for all to many R&R artists in February....... with causes unknown at this moment to me, I

know of the following left us in February...........

Linda McCartney, (wife of Paul), Andy Gibb, (the Bee Gees), Jim Croce, and Kyo Sakamoto.

Far to early for all of these great R&R greats. Maybe not in the 50's, but worth remembering.


A.D.

[yathink]

The artist formerly known as Kyu Sakamoto

[Neumann Sennheiser]

Best advice to singers, players and other famous entertainers; stay out of airplanes.
Croce, Holly, JP Richardson and Sakamoto, all killed in plane crashes and that's just for February.
Page through the rest of the calender year and you get a lengthy list.
Stevie Ray Vaughn, Patsy Cline, John Denver, Ricky Nelson, Otis Redding, Glenn Miller and most or all of the members of the bands Lynard Skynard, The Bar-Kays, Reba MacIntyre's band and Chase.

[Neumann Sennheiser]

Oh yeah, I inadvertently left off Richie Valens and also forgot to include country singers Jim Reeves and Hawkshaw Hawkins and Ozzy Osbourne tour guitarist Randy Rhoads (that was a weird one...in 1982 he was a passenger in a small private plane attempting a fly-by buzz of Ozzy's tour bus and died along with everyone else on board when the plane's wing clipped the roof of the bus).

[jon]

Best advice to singers, players and other famous entertainers; stay out of airplanes.

Glad that you didn't say "small planes" given the fact that Kyu Sakamoto died in the largest death toll in an airplane in history. In a Boeing 747-146SR.

Unfortunately, many of the passengers, including Kyu, likely died of exposure, not the crash itself, because of a bungled rescue operation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines_Flight_123