If you’re known by the company you keep, Mike Finnigan was Fortune 500 all the way. Starting in the late 60s, Mike’s inimitable touch on the Hammond B3 organ catapulted him to the top tier of touring and session players in rock, blues and pop.
Duffy Jackson was the son of jazz double-bassist and band leader Chubby Jackson. As a child, he played drums, making appearances with Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman and Buddy Rich before he finished high school. In 1971 he moved to Los Angeles, where he worked with Monty Alexander, Ray Brown, Herb Ellis, Lena Horne, Milt Jackson and Barney Kessel.
As far as we know, Al Schmitt was not born in a recording studio, but he was certainly raised in one. At 8 years old, he was riding the subway into Manhattan to visit the studio where his uncle Harry was mixing sessions for the likes of Bing Crosby, The Andrews Sisters and Les Paul. At age 19, he would end up engineering a Duke Ellington orchestra session when his boss was unavailable. Soon after in 1958, he moved to L.A. where, for the next sixty years or so, he would become the most decorated engineer in music history, earning more than 150 gold and platinum albums and winning twenty Grammy Awards.
To the eye, he was the least likely member of the Rolling Stones, yet to the ear, Charles Robert Watts was the living heartbeat of the world’s greatest rock ‘n roll band. A consummate drummer, he found his calling when he turned a banjo on its head. Originally a graphic artist, Watts began gigging as a student, seeking to emulate the jazz artists he idolized. When Mick, Keith and Brian Jones first recruited him, they had to pay Charlie extra as he was the band’s only working musician. Throughout the next five decades of constant touring, Watts maintained his dignified demeanor, and his reputation as a fastidious dresser, passing up the sex and drugs but never losing sight of the rock ‘n roll. He also never gave up his first love, jazz.
Rarely if ever has a band been defined by the bass lines of its best songs to the extent that the band WAR is defined by B.B. Dickerson. Cisco Kid, Slippin’ Into Darkness, Spill the Wine, Low Rider and The World is a Ghetto, to name a few, are songs that reverberate from the bottom up. In the 70s, and ever since, Dickerson’s syncopated grooves have been the foundation on which great parties are built and great memories are made. Sadly, in recent years, a legal conflict has meant that Dickerson and all but one of his bandmates toured under a pseudonym, the Original Lowriders. But by any name, when B.B. Dickerson left us at age 71, he took the party with him.
Bunny Wailer, was an inspirational singer-songwriter and percussionist. He was an original member of the Jamaican reggae group The Wailers along with Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. He was a 3-time Grammy Award winner, and is considered one of the longtime standard-bearers of reggae music.
The life of guitar virtuoso Pat Martino can be told in two chapters. Before 1980, he was a prodigy, who quit school at age 15, moved from Philadelphia to Harlem and became a prodigious session player. At 22, he recorded a landmark debut album. Then, at age 35, after suffering seizures, he experienced a brain aneurism and couldn’t remember his own name. This was chapter two. Over the next two decades, Martino would work to recover his speech and memory and remaster his instrument, reaching new levels of musical artistry and acclaim before finally succumbing to respiratory disease in November 2021. Pat Martino. No one ever worked harder to make music sound so effortless.
You might not have known his name, but his tone will always strike a chord. As a founding member of the L.A. band Poco, Rusty Young was responsible for putting the pedal steel guitar on the rock ‘n roll map and pioneering the Laurel Canyon sound that brought country and pop into harmony. When original songwriters Jim Messina and Richie Furay left the band in the early 70s, Young would step up to author several of the band’s biggest hits. He continued to perform with various versions of Poco until shortly before his death in April of 2021. Rusty Young has left us, but his sound will sustain.
Paul Cotton was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter who was a key member of the band Poco. Cotton’s best known song with the band is “Heart of the Night,” which was a major hit from the group’s Legend album. He also penned the song “Barbados.” Paul Cotton passed away in July 2021.
BJ Thomas will forever be famous for the lucky break he almost didn’t get. Composer Burt Bacharach was turned down by his top two choices to record a song for the soundtrack of a quirky western in 1969. But when Bob Dylan and Ray Stevens put up their umbrellas, Thomas would step in to ride “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” to the top of the US charts and a Best Song Oscar. Despite battles with drug and alcohol addiction, Thomas’s honeyed baritone would lead him to become a mainstay of the pop and country charts and, after recovery and a religious awakening, he would record a handful of gospel hits. In May 2021, lung cancer took Billy Joe Thomas from us, but thanks to his time here, many of us will never hear a rainstorm the same way.