February 29, 2008

Music losses

Buddy Miles and Mike Smith both died this week. Miles played drums with Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsys and with Mike Bloomfield's Electric Flag, as well as with Carlo Santana. He was also the lead voice for the Claymation California Raisins, the sketch ads for the fruit in the 1980s.

Smith was the lead singer and keyboardist for The Dave Clark Five (Clark was the drummer). The band had a string of big hits in the 1960s, including "Glad All Over" and "Because." I always thought the latter was one of the prettiest ballads of the time, and I'm glad to see Avedon agrees with me. She dug up a performance of the song, too.

Hawai'i lost two of its greats as well: Auntie Genoa Keawe and Roy Kane. Auntie Genoa was legendary out here for her true falsetto and her impishness; here's a tribute to her on YouTube.

Kane was a slack-key guitar master and a very self-effacing man. He always had singers fronting with him because he didn't feel he knew the Hawaiian language well enough to sing it. Here's a link to Amazon where you can hear some clips of his music.

Posted by Linkmeister at February 29, 2008 09:28 AM | TrackBack
Comments

That Roy Kane is great stuff. It wouldn't surprise me if Ry Cooder had listened to him at some point.
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Posted by: Peter at March 1, 2008 10:10 PM