The Gale Hill Radio Hour

Music Greats We Lost in 2023 with Sheldon Zoldan, Part 1

• Kate Jones • Season 3 • Episode 78

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Sheldon Zoldan is  the creator of the Song of the Day project, daily music-related stories and yearly tributes to musical titans who passed away. In this episode, we present the first 20 of music greats who left us in 2023, beginning with Jeff Beck.

Most of the links go to YouTube videos, while the others take you to some of Sheldon's once-a-week posts on the website of WGCU, the NPR station in southwest Florida where he lives.

Here is a list of the tributes and featured songs in this episode. They're in chronological order according to the date of each person's passing. In the audio, the tributes are separated by original music created by sound engineer and musician Mike Villegas.

1. Jeff Beck, Jan. 10  "Beck's Bolero"
2. Lisa Marie Presley, Jan. 12  "Lights Out"
3. Robbie Bachman, Jan. 12, and Tim Bachman, April 28 "Roll On Down the Highway"
4. David Crosby, Jan. 18  "Déjà Vu"
5. Barrett Strong Jan 28 "Money (That's What I Want)"
6. Burt Bacharach, Feb. 8 "Walk On By"
7. David Jolicoeur, Feb. 12 "Me Myself and I"
8. Huey “Piano” Smith, Feb. 13 "Rockin' Pneumonia and Boogie Woogie Flu"
9. Wayne Shorter, March 2  "Footprints"
10. Gary Rosington, March 5 "What's Your Name"
11. Jim Gordon, March 13 "Layla"
12. Bobby Caldwell, March 14 "What You Won't Do for Love"
13. Clarence “Fuzzy” Haskins, March 17 "I Got A Thing, You Got A Thing, Everyone Got A Thing"
14. April Stevens, April 17 "Deep Purple"
15. Harry Belafonte, April 25 "Day-O"
16. Gordon Lightfoot, May 1 "If You Could Read My Mind"
17. Pete Brown, May 19  "Sunshine of Your Love"
18. Ed Ames, May 21 "Rag Mop"
19. Tina Turner,  May 24 "Nutbush City Limits"
20. Cynthia Weil, June 1 "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling"

Sheldon sends his Song of the Day stories to an email list of subscribers. To get on the list, all you have to do is email shzoldan@comcast.net with the subject line ADD ME TO SOTD.

This is Kate Jones. Thank you for listening to The Gale Hill Radio Hour!

The show is available in Apple and Google Podcasts, Spotify and other podcast directories. Also on Substack and YouTube; Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.







Kate 00:15

Hello, and welcome to The Gale Hill Radio Hour.

This is Kate Jones here with Sheldon Zoldan, the researcher and writer behind Song of the Day, a project of music-related stories sent out to a list of subscribers. With each story, there’s a YouTube link to the featured song.

Every Friday, one of these stories gets spotlighted on NPR’s WGCU in Southwest Florida, where Sheldon lives.

Out of his Song of the Day project, Sheldon began writing tributes to artists and other important figures in the music industry who passed away in a given year. 

In 2022, Sheldon wrote tributes to 43 musical greats and shared them with Gale Hill Radio listeners. There are a great many from 2023 as well.

So, Sheldon, thank you for coming back to share your latest tributes. They’re really interesting.

Sheldon 01:20

Thank you. It’s always a pleasure and it’s fun to talk to you.

Kate 01:25

Absolutely, same here.

As we did last year, let’s cover these in two parts to do justice to everyone featured. Shall we get started?

Sheldon 01:36

Sounds good.

If there was a Mount Rushmore for rock guitarists, Jeff Beck’s face would be chiseled on it. Beck is considered one of the best rock guitarists ever.

Beck died in England on January 10 from bacterial meningitis. He was 78.

Beck never wrote a number one hit. His gift was what he could do with his guitar.

None of his bands lasted long. He replaced Eric Clapton in the Yardbirds in 1966 and played on two of their biggest hits, “Shapes of Things to Come” and “Heartful of Soul.”

He left less than two years later. He formed the Jeff Beck Group, which included Rod Stewart, and Ron Wood, who went on to join the Rolling Stones. The group had two successful albums, but the band disbanded after the second album.

He put together other bands that came and went. He sometimes recorded solo albums.

The New York Times obit summed up his lack of being a big rock star by using his quote from a 2018 Rolling Stone interview.

“I’ve never made the big time, mercifully,” Beck said. “When you look around and see who has made it huge, it’s a really rotten place to be.”

Beck recorded our Song of the Day, “Beck’s Bolero,” in 1966 while still with the Yardbirds. Jimmy Page, a future Led Zeppelin member, and Keith Moon, the drummer for the Who, played on the song, which had no lyrics.

It wasn’t released until 10 months after Beck recorded it. The recording reached number four in England, but it didn’t break Billboard’ Hot 100 in the U.S.  

The song ended up on Beck’s solo album “Truth” in 1968. The album reached number 15 on the Billboard album chart.


Lisa Marie Presley had to carry her famous last name the way Atlas was condemned to hold up the heavens on his shoulders for eternity. Her christened name wasn’t Lisa Marie Presley The Only Child Of Elvis Presley, it only seemed like it.

She carved out a life of her own as a singer and songwriter, but she was never too far away from the paparazzi and the gossip columnists.

Presley died of cardiac arrest January 12 in Los Angeles after being rushed to the hospital. She was 54.

Presley was 5 when her parents divorced and 9 when her dad died. She was 33 when she released her first album, “To Whom It May Concern.”

The album was a hit. It reached number five on Billboard’s 200 album chart. Presley wrote all the melodies and all but one of the lyrics.

“Lights Out” was the first single released from the album. The lyrics start out talking about her dad’s death. It reached number 18 on Billboard’s Adult Top 40.

She co-wrote 10 of the songs on her second album, “Now What.” It reached number nine on Billboard’s 200 album chart.

Through technological magic she sang duets with her dad on “In the Ghetto” and “Don’t Cry Daddy.”

Presley’s life outside a music studio produced more publicity than her music. She married four times. 

She had two children with her first husband, Danny Keough. They were married for six years, but they remained friends until she died. 

Her marriage to actor Nicolas Cage lasted four months. Her most famous marriage was to Michael Jackson. Their marriage lasted two years.



2023 was a year of sadness for the Bachman family.

Robbie Bachman died January 12 in Vancouver, British Columbia. No cause of death was given. He was 69.

Brother Tim died of cancer April 28 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He was 71.

“I’ve lost my three brothers in the past couple of years,” Randy Bachman, the founding member of Bachman-Turner Overdrive, told the Canadian Press. “My heart is heavy.”

Robbie, Tim and Randy Bachman, along with Fred Turner, joined forced in the early 1970s. Robbie played drums and Tim guitar.

Robbie joined Randy in Brave Bell in 1971. Tim joined a year later, and they changed became Bachman-Turner Overdrive, sometimes known as BTO, in 1973.

They had five Top 40 albums, six U.S. Top 40 singles and 11 Top 40 singles in Canada between 1973-76.

Tim left the group in 1974; Robbie left in 1977. Neither left on good terms with Randy.

Robbie battled Randy over the name, giving the band permission to continue as BTO but not Bachman-Turner Overdrive. He and his brother never reconciled their differences, though they played together at a couple of award ceremonies.

Tim made his own headlines. He was accused twice of sexual assault against a minor. The first time he was found not guilty, and the second case was dropped.

Tim and Robbie wrote a few songs for the band. Our Song of the Day, "Roll On Down the Highway," co-written by Robbie and Turner, was the most successful.

They wrote it for a Ford commercial, but the automaker didn’t use it, so they turned it into a hit. The song reached number 18 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart in the U.S. and number four in Canada.



David Crosby defied death and defined folk rock. Crosby was a co-founder of the Byrds in the mid-1960s and Crosby Stills Nash and Young later in the decade.

Crosby died January 18 in Los Angeles. His wife said he died after a long illness, however friends said he died in his sleep after a short bout with Covid-19. He was 81.

Crosby was as troubled as he was talented. He was kicked out of the Byrds because of his political diatribes and disagreements over what songs to use on their fifth album.

He’d already started playing with Steven Stills and Neil Young when he met Graham Nash and they formed Crosby Stills & Nash. Young would join later.

They became one of the most popular groups of the early 1970s. Crosby turned to a solo career during the band’s long hiatuses.

Crosby’s drug use, mostly cocaine and heroin, grew during the 1970s and '80s. He was arrested in Texas in 1982 for possession of cocaine. He continued to abuse drugs for the next three years while fighting to stay out of prison. He lost all is appeals and spent eight months in a Texas prison in 1985. He said being in prison forced him to become sober and saved his life.

Crosby survived a liver transplant in 1994, hepatitis C, diabetes and several heart issues.

Crosby wrote dozens of great songs. He wrote Our Song of the Day, “Déjà vu,” for the “CSNY” album. The song idea came to him during his first sailing trip.

“It’s as if I had done it before. I knew way more about it than I should have,” he said in a 2019 book about CSN&Y.



Barrett Strong had one hit as a singer, but he didn’t care. He was happy writing songs that others turned into classics.

Strong, along with his writing partner Norman Whitfield, wrote “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” “War,” “Ball of Confusion,” “I Wish It Would Rain,” “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” and “Just My Imagination” for Motown artists the Temptations, Smoky Robinson and Marvin Gaye.

Strong died January 28 in San Diego, California. No cause was given. He was 81.

Strong started singing and playing the piano in Detroit with his sisters. He met many of the black artists of the day, who would visit his sisters.

He had just turned 20 when he signed on with Barry Gordy, who had just started Motown. The Song of the Day, "Money (That's What I Want),"  became Motown’s first hit record, a million seller, reaching number two on Billboard’s R&B chart and 23 on the Hot 100 in 1960. It also gave Gordy the money needed to expand Motown.

Strong said he wrote the song. He created the piano opening while riffing to Ray Charles’ “What I Say.”

What he didn’t know was his name was removed from the writing credits. Gordy and Janie Bradford are the two writing credits. Gordy claimed his name originally was on the copyright because of a clerical error.

Money might have been what he wanted, but he didn’t get it. His name was added in 1987 and then taken off again in 1988.

The Beatles recorded the song in 1963 and the Flying Lizards had a hit with it in England where it reached number five on the charts.



Burt Bacharach was more than prolific, he was damn good. More than 1,000 artists sang his songs. Seventy of his songs became Billboard Top 40 hits.

Bacharach died February 8 in Los Angeles. He was 94.

Bacharach made music for seven decades. One of his earliest jobs was Marlene Dietrich’s accompanist for her night club act. He wrote some country hits in the early 1960s, including “Story of My Life” and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.”

He and Hal David hooked up in the late 1950s. They wrote more than 100 songs together in the early 1960s. They wrote 39 straight songs that reached the singles chart over the next decade. They discovered Dionne Warwick in 1961. Bacharach and David quit their collaboration after disagreements led to lawsuits. Warwick filed a lawsuit saying they abandoned her.

Carole Bayer Sager became his new writing partner and wife. They wrote several hits, including Warwick’s, “That’s What Friends Are For.”

Bacharach and David were a hot commodity when it came to writing for the movies. They won two Oscars for “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” including “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.” The song reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Bacharach wrote the music and David wrote the lyrics for our Song of the Day, “Walk on By,” for Warwick in 1964. The song was the first time Bacharach used two baby grand pianos in a studio recording.

The song was supposed to be the B-side to “Any Old Time of Day.” Influential New York deejay Murray the K would only play the B-side. He thought it was the hit.

He was right. The song revived Warwick’s career. It reached number six on Billboard’s Hot 100.



The obit for David Jolicouer was as much an obit about the hip-hop group he helped create, De La Soul.

The publicist for the group confirmed his death on February 12 but didn’t say when or how he died. Jolicouer talked in recent years about his battle with congestive heart failure. He was 54.

Jolicouer and two high school friends created the rap trio. He took on the name Trugoy the Dove. Trugoy was yogurt spelled backward, his favorite food. He also was known as Plug and Dave.

The trio was unlike most of the rappers at the time. They wore colorful flowered shirts and their songs were whimsical and positive, unlike the rap of N.W.A and Public Enemy.

They were an immediate success. Their first album, “3 Feet High and Rising,” came out in 1989 and reached number 24 on Billboard’s 200 album chart.

Our Song of the Day, “Me, Myself and I,” was a single from that album. It was the trio’s most successful single. It reached number one on Bilboard’s R&B chart and 34 on the Hot 100 singles chart.

De La Soul never recreated their early success, partly because of legal issues. The group would  use samplings in their songs, snippets from other recordings. The group the Turtles filed a lawsuit against them and settled out of court.

Their music was hard to find because streaming services wouldn’t make it available because of copyright issues. The trio finally reached a settlement where their catalogue would start streaming March 3, a month after Jolicouer died.



There was a good reason why Huey Smith’s nickname was “Piano.” He played a mean New Orleans boogie-woogie style.

Smith was part of the colorful New Orleans music scene for decades, leading bands, writing songs and recording a few hits.

Smith died February 13 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He was 89.

Smith taught himself how to play piano as a child He wrote his first song when he was 8 years old. He started playing in New Orleans’ black clubs when he was 15.

He signed a record deal in 1957 and put together his own band, Huey “Piano” Smith and His Clowns.

They recorded our Song of the Day, "Rockin' Pneumonia and Boogie Woogie Flu," that same year. In his biography, he said he loved playing with words, using puns and slang. Walking pneumonia and the Asian flu were sweeping the U.S. when he wrote our Song of the Day.

The song only peaked at number 52 on the Billboard Hot 100, but it would live on through other artists. Johnny Rivers had an international hit with it in 1973 when it reached number six on the Billboard chart.

“Don’t You Just Know It” did even better a year later when it reached number nine on the chart.

But his life was as much blues as it was boogie-woogie. He didn’t receive the royalties he deserved through bad business deals and unscrupulous record companies.

He wrote and recorded “Sea Cruise,” in 1959, but his version wasn’t released until 1971. Instead, his record company gave the song to white singer Frankie Ford. The song sold over a million copies and reached number 11 on the singles chart.

He filed for bankruptcy twice. He moved to Baton Rouge in 1980, leaving the music business for good.



Wayne Shorter attracted nicknames as a teenager. He was called the Newark Flash and Mr. Gone, but Shorter was no more a flash or somebody who disappeared. He influenced jazz for seven decades.

Shorter died March 2 in Los Angeles. No cause was given. He was 89.

Shorter grew up in Newark, New Jersey. He loved comic books, science fiction and music. He learned to play the clarinet when he was 16. He switched to the tenor sax a few years later.

He graduated from New York University with a degree in music education. His first post-graduate job was with Art Blakely’s Jazz Messengers. He became the group’s musical director and wrote several compositions.

He left four years later to join Miles Davis’ Second Great Quintet, where he started playing the soprano sax. He stayed for six years, but while working with Davis he also recorded his own albums with Blue Note Records. He also branched out, playing on 10 Joni Mitchell albums and with Carlos Santana.

He was an original member of the Weather Report. It stayed together in various forms for 15 years, experimenting with electronics and ethnic music.

He stayed busy during the 21st century, creating his own quartet. He recorded his final album in 2018. The album came with a comic book he wrote.

Shorter recorded our Song of the Day, "Footprints," for his 1966 “Adam’s Apple” album. Miles Davis recorded the song the same year for his “Miles Smiles” LP.

Kuvo.org said the song is often mistaken for a jazz waltz. “Footprints incorporates what is possibly the first use of systemic, African-based cross-rhythm,” it says.

The composition is considered a jazz classic.


Gary Rossington loved baseball. His goal was to play for the New York Yankees. Then he heard the Rolling Stones and went after a different field of dreams.

He ended up playing in some of the largest stadiums in the country, not as a baseball player but as one of the original members of Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Rossington, the last original member of the band, died March 5 in Milton, Georgia. He was 71.

There wouldn’t have been Lynyrd Skynyrd without baseball. He met Ronnie van Zandt and Bob Burns when they were on opposing baseball teams in 1964. They began jamming together and liked what they heard. They changed the band’s name to Lynyrd Skynyrd in 1969.

Rossington suffered as much tragedy as he enjoyed success. He survived a serious car crash in 1976 when he hit a tree while under the influence of drugs and alcohol. The band got a hit song out of the accident, “That Smell,” about how Rossington was under the influence at the time of the accident.

He was one of 20 survivors when the plane carrying the band to a concert crashed. Six people died, including van Zandt. Rossington became addicted to pain pills he used after the crash.

Rossington continued playing with Lynyrd Skynyrd until his death, as well as forming several of his own bands.

Rossington and van Zandt wrote the Song of the Day, "What's Your Name." It’s based on a true story, when the band got kicked out of a bar in Miami after one of the roadies got into a fight. The only difference was the song said it happened in Boise, Idaho, not Miami.

The song reached number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100.



Jim Gordon was a thief, a murderer and one hell of a drummer. Gordon played with some of the most successful artists of the 1960s and ’70s. He received a writing credit for our Song of the Day, “Layla.”

Gordon died March 13 in the California prison system medical facility. He was 77.

Gordon started playing professionally in 1963, when he was 17. He became a studio drummer, playing with a group of session musicians known as the Wrecking Crew.

He played on the Beach Boys’ classic album “Pet Sounds.” He played with Dave Mason, the Byrds, George Harrison, Helen Reddy, Traffic, Joe Cocker and Eric Clapton.

He became a member of Derek and the Dominos with Clapton. Clapton noticed a piano section Gordon was playing one day and asked him if he could incorporate it into “Layla.” Gordon said he could. What he didn’t tell Clapton was he didn’t write it; his girlfriend Rita Coolidge did. Gordon received a writing credit for the song, which meant he shared in the publishing riches to one of Clapton’s most popular songs.

Gordon was on the A list of studio players despite his increasingly erratic behavior. He talked about hearing voices. His doctor misdiagnosed the problem, blaming it on alcohol. He wasn’t diagnosed with schizophrenia until after he killed his mother.

He struck his mom several times with a hammer in June 1983, He then stabbed her to death. He said he heard voices telling him to kill her.

He was found guilty of murder and sentenced to a California prison from 16 years to life. He was denied parole several times. He never attended a single parole hearing.



Bobby Caldwell was an anomaly. He was worshipped in Japan though he wasn’t Japanese.

He sounded Black even though he was white.

He had a reaction to an everyday antibiotic that eventually killed him.

Caldwell died March 14 in New Jersey, after suffering for six years from a bad reaction to Levofloxacin.

Caldwell was only 17 when he started writing songs and playing in bands. He had his most success as a solo artist.

He recorded his first album, “Bobby Caldwell,” in 1978 for a record company that mostly released music by African Americans. The company kept Caldwell’s face off the album because it didn’t want people to know he was white. Fans were surprised when they saw him in concert.

“What You Won’t Do For Love” originally wasn’t on the album, but his manager thought it was lacking a hit tune. Caldwell wrote the song with Alfons Kettner.

It became his signature song, and his only song to make it into Billboard’s Top 40, peaking at number nine.

Nobody was sure why he was so popular in Japan. Caldwell toured there often.

Caldwell’s world began falling apart just before he was scheduled to go to Japan. He went to an urgent care in January of 2017 because he had a runny nose and sore throat.

He took Levofloxacin the doctor prescribed. He couldn’t walk by the seventh day. He lost feeling in his fingers and could barely play the piano or guitar. The drug had caused nerve damage.

He was able to fight through the pain and continue touring until the pandemic cancelled all concerts. He would never play on stage again.



There was nothing fuzzy about Clarence Haskins, only his nickname.

Fuzzy Haskins was a founding member of the Parliaments and then became part of the combined Parliament-Funkadelics, one of the most influential bands of the 1970s.

Haskins died March 16 in Grosse Point Woods, Michigan from diabetes complications. He was 81.

Haskins got his musical start in the late 1950s when he and George Clinton started a doo wop group in a barbershop in Plainfield, New Jersey. Clinton named the group the Parliaments after a popular cigarette of the day. He later changed it to Parliament.

The Parliament were a successful group doing R&B and soul when they went on tour in 1970 backed by a five-member musical group called the Funkadelic.

They morphed into the Parliament-Funkadelic or P-Funk. They had a split personality, two groups with the same members. When they played more soulful, rhythm and blues they were the Parliament. When they turned to psychedelic rock they were the Funkadelic.

Haskins was a showman on stage. Sometimes he would dress in long johns for live performances and gyrate with the microphone stand. 

He wrote or co-wrote many of the Funkadelic’s songs in the early 1970s. He wrote our Song of the Day, "I Got A Thing You Got A Thing Everyone Got A Thing," for the Funkadelics’ first album.

The song reached number number 30 on Billboard’s Hot Soul’s Song chart.

Haskins left P-Funk in 1977 for a solo career, but eventually returned to play with several members of Funkadelic.

Parliament-Funkadelic were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997



It didn’t matter if she was singing alone or with her brother, April Stevens made hits.

Stevens died April 17 in Scottsdale, Arizona. She was a couple weeks shy of her 94th birthday.

Stevens was born Caroline Vincinette LoTempio, before changing her name. It didn’t take her long to record her first hit. She was only 22 years old when she recorded Cole Porter’s “I’m in Love Again.” The song reached number six on the singles chart in 1951. Her next two songs reached number 10 and 27.

Her song “Teach Me Tiger,” in 1959 only reached 86 on the charts but caused a stir because some radio stations thought the lyrics were too sexual. Times changed NASA played the song in 1983 to wake up astronauts on a shuttle mission.

Stevens had her biggest hit with her brother, Nino Tempo. They recorded Our Song of the Day, "Deep Purple," in 1963, and it reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in November and won the Grammy for Best Rock and Roll song.

Peter DeRose wrote the music in 1933. Mitchell Parish added lyrics in 1938. Bing Crosby had a big hit with it.

Stevens and Tempo recorded it in 14 minutes. The song was supposed to be the B-side, but radio stations liked it better than the A-side single.

Tempo didn’t have a chance to memorize the words, so Stevens would recite the words and then her brother would sing them. The producer liked how it worked and kept it.

The duo had a couple of more hits in the 1960 and early ’70s, but Stevens retired from the music business by the 1980s.



Harry Belafonte acted. Harry Belafonte sang. But Belafonte was more than an entertainer. Two stories tell how important he was to the civil rights movement.

Belafonte died April 25 in New York City of congestive heart failure. He was 96.

Belafonte grew up in poverty, first in Jamaica and then Harlem. He decided he wanted to become an actor after watching plays at the American Negro Theatre.

He spent the 1950s building his singing and acting careers. He spent time in the 1960s singing, acting and fighting for civil rights.

In the 1960s, when Johnny Carson, host of the “Tonight Show,” would go on vacation he would have a guest host. Belafonte took that role during a week in February 1968.

He was the first African American to host a late-night show. His guest list was varied. It included politicians, civil rights leaders, actors, singers and comedians. Many were black. Many of the discussions were about the issues of the day.

The week was a ratings success. You can watch a documentary about the week on Peacock. It’s called “The Sit-in.”

The second story took place in 1968 when singer Petula Clark touched Belafonte’s arm while they were singing on her television special. Such a simple gesture created a firestorm.

First, Doyle Lott, the advertising manager for the Plymouth Division of Chrysler, sponsor of the show, didn’t want a black man as guest. Then, came the touch. Lott stormed out of the taping, demanding the song be reshot. NBC backed the director, and it ran with the touch.

Our Song of the Day came off Belafonte’s album “Calypso” in 1956. The album popularized calypso. “Day-O,” a Jamaican folk song, became his signature song. It reached number five on the Billboard Hot 100.



Biographer Nicholas Jennings so eloquently summed up singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot’s career.

“His name is synonymous with timeless songs about trains and shipwrecks, rivers and highways, lovers and loneliness,” Lightfoot’s biographer wrote.

Lightfoot died May 1 in Toronto, Canada. No cause of death was given, but he was fighting serious health issues for several years. He was 84.

Lightfoot already was a star in Canada and well known among U.S. singer/songwriters when he broke through with a hit in the States.

He had his first hits in his home country of Canada in 1962. Canadian folk singers Ian and Sylvia and U.S. folkies Peter, Paul & Mary started covering his songs in the mid-1960s, and others followed. Judy Collins, Bob Dylan, Marty Robbins and Elvis Presley among others began singing his songs.

He finally hit gold in the U.S. in 1970 with our Song of the Day, “If You Could Read My Mind.” It sold more than a million copies in the U.S. and reached number five on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Lightfoot was an admitted serial philanderer, and it was a theme in many of his songs. Our Song of the Day is him reflecting on his divorce from his first wife.

He had his biggest U.S. hit, “Sundown,” in 1974. The single and the album of the same name reached number one in the U.S.

“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” a song about the sinking of the freighter (and a previous Song of the Day), reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1976.

Lightfoot never had the same success in the U.S, but he never stopped touring and making albums. He played his final concert October 30, 2022.



Songwriters are poets who put their words to music. Pete Brown was one of those.

He was a counterculture British poet before he turned to songwriting in the 1960s. He wrote the lyrics for most of the songs on Cream’s albums.

Brown died May 19 in Hastings, England of cancer. He was 82.

Brown was part of England’s beat poet scene in the early 1960s. He even shared the stage at Royal Albert Hall with American poet Allen Ginsberg.

He began to merge his poetry with music, forming the First Real Poetry Band. That led him to his collaboration with Cream, the supergroup made up of Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce.

He and Bruce hit it off. They would write together until Baker died in 2014.

Brown wrote the lyrics for “White Room” and “Sunshine of Your Love,” their most successful songs in the U.S. “White Room” reached number six on Billboard’s Hot 100 in 1968. Our Song of the Day reached number five the same year.

Bruce started writing the music for “Sunshine of Your Love,” after attending a Jimi Hendrix concert. Brown got the idea for the opening line, “it’s getting near dawn and lights close their tired eyes,” while looking out the window during an all-night session.

The band broke up in late 1968, but Brown kept writing songs. He formed several bands and decided to sing his own songs.

When he wasn’t writing songs, he wrote screenplays and an autobiography. He never stopped working. He left behind an unfinished album.



Ed Ames was most famous for playing Mingo on the series “Daniel Boone” and for the tomahawk toss on the “Tonight Show,” but he was a talented singer, too. Ames had several hits with his brothers in the 1940s and ’50s.

Ames died May 21 in Los Angeles from Alzheimer’s disease complications. He was 95.

He and three brothers began singing together around Boston. They had their most success after moving to New York City. Our Song of the Day, "Rag Mop," and “Sentimental Me" were the brothers’ first hits.

Western swing bandleader Johnnie Lee Willis and steel guitarist Deacon Anderson wrote and recorded it in 1949. The Ames Brothers’ version was more successful. The song reached number one on the Billboard charts in 1950 and stayed there for 14 weeks.

The brothers stayed together until the early 1960s when Ames decided he wanted to try acting. He was best known for playing Mingo, a part-English and part-Indian sidekick to Daniel Boone.

He was telling Johnny Carson on the “Tonight Show” in 1965 how he learned to throw a tomahawk. Carson challenged him to toss it at a cardboard cutout of a cowboy.

Ames tossed the tomahawk, and it landed in the middle of the cowboy’s crotch. The audience went crazy, and Carson, milked it for everything he could.

Carson’s ad-libs, “I didn’t even know you were Jewish" (he was) and “Welcome to Frontier Bris.”

Ames started moonlighting as a singer, with mixed success, in the mid-’60s. “My Cup Runneth Over” was his most successful song, reaching number eight on the Billboard Hot 100.

 

Anna Mae Bullock could sing. Anna Mae Bullock could dance. But the name Tina Turner sounded more appropriate for the woman who would be known as the Queen of Rock 'n’ Roll.

Turner died May 24 in Zurich, Switzerland after a long illness. She was 83.

Turner grew up as Anna Mae Bullock in Nutbush, Tennessee and St. Louis, Missouri. She met Ike Turner in St. Louis when she was 18. He was the bandleader for the Kings of Rhythm. They soon became the Ike and Tina Turner Review.

Ike Turner changed Anna Mae’s name in 1960 without even telling her. He trademarked the name, so if she left, he could still use the name Tina Turner.

They married two years later and spent the 1960s making hits. Behind closed doors Ike Turner tormented Tina mentally and physically.

Tina Turner decided to try her hand at songwriter in the early 1970s, after their popularity cooled off. Our Song of the Day, "Nutbush City Limites," was the first song she wrote. It’s about her memories of the town she grew up in.

The song reached number 22 on Billboard Hot 100 chart in the U.S. but rose to number four in England. It would be one of Ike and Tina’s last hits and one of the few songs she would write.

She left Ike in 1976. She said she got no money, only the right to use her stage name.

Turner in 1980s made one of the great musical comebacks ever. She had hit songs, filled concert venues, wrote books, starred in movies and had movies made about her.

She sold out 84 shows in Europe and North America during her final tour.

She played her final concert in May 2009.



The songs sound familiar, but maybe the name of the person behind them is not. 

Cynthia Weil co-wrote some of the most popular songs of the 20th century with her husband, Barry Mann. They are songs that have become pages in the Great American Songbook.

Weil died June 1 in Beverly Hills, California. No cause was given. She was 82.

Weil joined forces with Mann in early 1960s New York City. They were part of a group of young songwriters that included Carole King, Neil Sedaka and Neil Diamond.

The list of Weil-Mann songs span decades and genres, from “Broadway,” by the Drifters, “We Gotta Get Out of This Place,” by the Animals, “Walkin In The Rain,” by the Ronettes, “Kicks,” by Paul Revere and the Raiders, “Here You Come Again,” by Dolly Parton, “Blame It On The Bossa Nova,” by Eydie Gormet and even the title song to the movie “Christmas Vacation.”

The Righteous Brothers owed Weil and Mann their careers. The husband-wife team wrote their two number one hits. They wrote our Song of the Day, "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling," in 1964 and “Soul and Inspiration” in 1966.

Phil Spector asked them to write “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” and he produced it. The song is considered one of the greatest ever.

Broadcast Music Inc., the music rights company, in 1999, selected it as the most-played song on the radio and television for the 20th century, with 9 million airplays. It would grow to 15 million by 2011.

It was the most played song annually until 2019, when it was overtaken by “Every Breath You Take.”


Kate 47:28

This is Kate Jones with The Gale Hill Radio Hour. If you enjoyed these tributes to those who made music we love, please check out Part 2 and share the episodes with your music-loving friends. Until next time, thank you for listening.



 

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