Well past the half-century mark, the vast tide of popular music unleashed in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s is at last starting to ebb. The founders of the movement, the legendary musicians we've grown up with, are leaving us, one by one. It's the sunset of an era, accelerated this year by the loss of far too many all-time greats.
We can't help but note their passing. But our focus should be on their accomplishments: musical milestones that will continue to entertain and enlighten generations to come.
Note: while this article was originally published in the September 2016 issue of WiFi HiFi, sadly, there have been a number of new deaths since. This list has been updated accordingly.
Leonard Cohen
Full Name: Leonard Norman Cohen
Date of Birth: September 21, 1934
Date of Death: November 11, 2016
Number of Albums: 16 studio albums
Special Accolades: Companion of the Order of Canada, multiple Juno awards, Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
One of Canada's most prominent cultural exports of the 1960s, Leonard Cohen was born in Westmount, QC, became a published poet and novelist, then established himself as a fixture of the folk and rock music scenes over several decades. His long succession of sparse and sardonic albums spawned numerous hit songs, many of which were in turn covered by musicians in every genre. His music was also used to great atmospheric effect in films, such as Robert Altman's ground-breaking 1971 western McCabe & Mrs Miller. His song Hallelujah has been covered by other musicians more than 300 times.
In the mid-1990s, while retaining his Judaism, Cohen entered a Zen monastery. He returned to music in the early 2000s, and responsed to financial troubles by becoming more prolific than ever. With undiminished energy, he recorded his final album on a laptop, on his dining room table.
Best Demo: You Want It Darker. Cohen's last album is as strong as his first, the polished work of a singer-songwriter still very much at the pinnacle of his abilities. Though created as Cohen's health was failing, it's one of his most approachable works, offering a lively mix of moods and styles.
Photo courtesy of Leonardcohen.com
Leon Russell
Full Name: Claude Russell Bridges
Date of Birth: April 2, 1942
Date of Death: November 13, 2016
Number of Albums: approximately 40, including various collaborations
Special Accolades: 6 U.S. Gold Albums, several top-100 singles; inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2011.
Leon Russell was an imposing figure, with a piercing gaze, flowing white hair and long beard. His impact on the music business lived up to the image.
Russell's own albums were bluesy, sparked by his jazzy piano and twangy Southern vocals. But Russell's influence spread among musicians in multiple genres. His song Delta Lady was covered memorably by Joe Cocker in 1969, and in 1970, Russell organized Cocker's famous Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour. Russell's song This Masquerade brought George Benson a Grammy in 1976, and A Song for You has reportedly been covered no less than 40 different artists.
Over the years, Russell worked with musicians including JJ Cale, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bob Dylan, the Byrds, Herb Alpert and Elton John. He was involved extensively with the Rolling Stones, and appeared at George Harrison's famous Concert for Bangladesh.
Best Demo: Russell's last studio album, 2014's Life Journey, is a fitting encapsulation of his life's work, mixing blues and jazz standards with original songs, all showing off Russell's rasping voice and boogie piano..
Photo: Shelter Recording Company/Shelter Records [Public domain], via Wikimedia
Greg Lake
Full Name: Gregory Stuart Lake
Date of Birth: November 10, 1947
Date of Death: December 7, 2016
Number of Albums: 3 solo, 18 with ELP and other groups, many more live albums compilations
Special Accolades: UK top 10 single I Believe in Father Christmas.
Greg Lake was a formidable talent on his own, but remained best known for various collaborations. In 1969, he contributed haunting vocals and powerful bass (not to mention studio production) to King Crimson's genre-bending landmark album In the Court of the Crimson King. In the 1970s, he became an inseparable part of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, contributing the group's early hit track Lucky Man.
Starting in the 1980s, Lake found time for solo albums and tours, as well as collaborations like the group Asia, formed with former Crimson and ELP bandmates. In 2001, he toured with Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band.
Best Demo: Lush and explosively creative, In the Court of the Crimson King is well worth revisiting. But don't overlook Lake's solo work. A particularly good live showcase is the album Songs of a Lifetime, compiled from his 2012 tour.
1981 solo publicity shot, courtesy of Greglake.com
Mose Allison
Full Name: Mose John Allison Jr.
Date of Birth: November 11, 1927
Date of Death: November 15, 2016
Number of Albums: 32, plus several more as sideman
Mose Allison was a rare musician who combined virtuoso playing and brilliant composition with great humor. He made his mark in the late 1950s with dazzling jazz instrumentals, then went on to help popularize the blues in the 1960s. Over the years, he recorded a large number of pithy, thoughtful and frequently wryly ironic songs.
Allison was perhaps best known among other musicians. His compositions were covered by famous artists including Diana Krall, the Yardbirds, Elvis Costello and the Clash. The Who performed his song Young Man Blues in their famed Live at Leeds concert, and reputedly used it as a jumping-off point for their own 1960s anthem My Generation.
Best Demo: Allison's jazzy first album, 1957's Back Country Suite, remains an absolutely delightful recording, featuring some of his most scintillating piano work. The 1962 album I Don't Worry About a Thing shows Allison's rapid evolution as a singer and songwriter.
Photo by Michael Wilson
David Bowie
Full Name: David Robert Jones
Date of Birth: January 8, 1947
Date of Death: January 10, 2016
Number of Albums: 36
Special Accolades: Sold 140M records worldwide; awarded nine platinum, 100 gold and eight silver albums in the U.K., five platinum and seven gold in the U.S.
Memorable Industry Moments: Scoring a 1969 U.K. hit single with Space Oddity; dyeing his hair orange in 1972, and billing himself as Ziggy Stardust; appearance (as the titular alien) in the 1976 film The Man Who Fell to Earth.
The world was shocked in January at the passing of David Bowie, at the comparatively young age of 69. It really felt like the end of an era. Bowie was always such a flamboyant, iconic figure, since exploding on the music scene in the late 1960s with visionary albums like Space Oddity, Aladdin Sane and Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.
Bowie departed as he had lived, a true showman to the last. He broke a 10-year hiatus from studio recording with 2013's powerful album The Next Day. Then followed up with this year's "parting gift," Blackstar. It was as good an album as Bowie had ever made. He died just days after its release.
Best Song/Album for Audio Demo: Blackstar, 2016. Especially the title cut, for its eerie range of sounds, with alternating silences and crescendos.
Photo courtesy of totalblamblam@davidbowie.com
Prince
Full Name: Prince Rogers Nelson
Date of Birth: June 7, 1958
Date of Death: April 21, 2016
Number of Albums: 38
Special Accolades: Played himself in the 1984 film Purple Rain, with the accompanying album spending 24 weeks at #1 on the U.S. charts; sold over 100M records worldwide; inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2004.
Memorable Industry Moments: In 1993, he notably changed his stage name into an unpronounceable symbol. While some thought it was a publicity stunt, the move was reportedly made in protest of a contractual dispute with his record label.
Prince's departure was more sudden than Bowie's, and more shocking on account of his relatively youthful age of 57. Yet the circumstances were oddly fitting: Prince apparently boarded an elevator at his Paisley Park residence, and never got off. It wasn't the first time that his music was overshadowed by the circumstances of his personal life.
Prince's album releases remained frequent and consistently brilliant over several decades. He walked some of the same jazzy turf as Bowie, but strolled freely through almost every genre - sometimes within a single cut. His last few albums show a creator still enjoying his work, reveling in his ability to continually challenge our preconceptions.
Best Song/Album for Audio Demo: Plectrumelectrum, 2014. Working with backing band 3rdEyeGirl, Prince creates swirling, bombastic, electronic mayhem, ranging from tuneful to cacophonic. Guaranteed to melt down any stereo setup.
Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Records
George Martin
Full Name: Sir George Henry Martin
Date of Birth: January 3, 1926
Date of Death: March 8, 2016
Number of Albums: 50 (as producer)
Special Accolades: Academy Award in 1964 for scoring the music for A Hard Day's Night; multiple Grammy Awards, including for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Live and Let Die theme song, The Who's Tommy musical show album; inducted into Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1999; knighted in 1996.
Memorable Industry Moments: Flying officer with the Royal Navy; headed Parlophone records in the mid-1950s, working with comedians including Peter Ustinov and Peter Sellers; signed The Beatles in 1962.
While Bowie and Prince were the most visible losses to the music scene, the most historically-significant departure this year was that of a quiet, elegant British gent named George Martin. He wasn't a musician as such, but he was the one individual most qualified to bear the title of ‘fifth Beatle.'
It was Martin who first signed The Beatles to a label contract. And Martin, as producer, who helped evolve the dazzling sonic landscapes of their later recordings. In the process, he helped transform the pop music landscape as a whole.
Even beyond The Beatles, Martin's work was often groundbreaking. For example, he produced Shirley Bassey's rendition of Goldfinger, setting a thematic style that has persisted even to the latest James Bond films.
Best Song/Album for Audio Demo: The Beatles, Revolver, 1966. An album that introduced many new concepts in production. Note in particular the string backing on Eleanor Rigby, or reversed guitar on I'm Only Sleeping.
C A Management / Robert Essel
Merle Haggard
Full Name: Merle Ronald Haggard
Date of Birth: April 6, 1937
Date of Death: April 6, 2016
Number of Albums: 70
Special Accolades: Dozens of #1 country hits; Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (2006); Country Music Hall of Fame (1994).
Memorable Industry Moments: Merle's parents were ‘Okies' in the classic sense, having migrated to California from Oklahoma during the Great Depression. He was arrested repeatedly in the 1950s, and served time in San Quentin, but was eventually pardoned in 1972 by California Governor Ronald Reagan.
Back in the early 1960s, when Rock & Roll was coming into its own, Haggard was moving in a very different direction, helping to create what came to be known as the Bakersfield Sound of country music. Coming from a rough background, he was able to infuse his songs with emotion that went far beyond the usual country cliché.
It's a tribute to Haggard's talent, and to his lean and clean orchestrations, that even his earliest recordings don't sound dated today. His music was traditional and uncomplicated, but it came from the heart. That feeling still comes through in every cut.
Best Song/Album for Audio Demo: Sing Me Back Home, 1968. A sparse, sparkling recording, typical of Haggard's late-‘60s work with The Strangers. The title cut is a memorably heart-tugging ballad.
Photo by Danny Clinch
Glenn Frey
Full Name: Glenn Lewis Frey
Date of Birth: November 6, 1948
Date of Death: January 18, 2016
Number of Albums: 9 (Eagles), 6 (solo)
Special Accolades: Wrote most of the Eagles' back catalogue alongside his partner and the band's other lead singer, Don Henley; had several top-40 hits during his solo career that followed the breakup of the band in 1980; The Eagles inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.
Memorable Industry Moments: Worked with Bob Seger, Linda Ronstadt and Jackson Browne before forming The Eagles with Don Henley, Randy Meisner and Bernie Leadon.
Famed as lead singer of The Eagles, Frey contributed to a long string of hit albums, and to memorable singles including Take It Easy, Tequila Sunrise and Hotel California. The Eagles went through various splits and reunions, but as recently as 2007 showed that it had lost none of its prowess, with the superb album Long Road Out of Eden.
The Eagles are perhaps not remembered as a groundbreaking band, but in the 1970s, they offered a mellower counterpoint to emerging trends like heavy metal, disco and punk. While Frey saw great success with his solo career, he'll be best remembered as an integral part of The Eagles' liquid, effortlessly entertaining ensemble work.
Best Song/Album for Audio Demo: Long Road Out of Eden, 2007. A superb album, with modern production that perfectly brings out the distinctive Eagles smooth-rock sound.
Photo courtesy of www.eagles.com
Paul Kantner
Full Name: Paul Lorin Kantner
Date of Birth: March 17, 1941
Date of Death: January 28, 2016
Number of Albums: 15 (Jefferson Airplane), 15 (Jefferson Starship), 4 (solo)
Special Accolades: Several Top 10 singles, and #1 album Red Octopus, all with Jefferson Starship; Blows Against the Empire nominated for a Hugo, the highest award in Science Fiction; Jefferson Airplane inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.
Memorable Industry Moments: Jefferson Airplane was the first San Francisco band to sign to a major label. In 1984, rights to the "Jefferson" name were legally restricted to the original members.
As a co-founder of Jefferson Airplane and a masterful songwriter, Kantner helped forge the psychedelic West Coast sound of the 1960s. When he died in January, Kantner was one of a dwindling number of musicians who held the distinction of having performed at all the greatest musical events of the 1960s, including not just Monterey Pop (1966) and Woodstock (1969), but also Altamont (1969).
Kantner worked at various times with many San Francisco greats, in memorable one-off projects like Blows Against the Empire. When the Airplane broke up in the 1970s, he carried on to huge commercial success with Jefferson Starship, and contributed several excellent cuts to the sadly under-rated Jefferson Airplane reunion album of 1989.
Best Song/Album for Audio Demo: Baron von Tollbooth and the Chrome Nun, 1973. A killer album perfectly encapsulating the San Francisco sound, with impressive contributions from songwriter Robert Hunter and guitarist Jerry Garcia, of the Grateful Dead.
Tim Ellis, Creative Commons
Maurice White
Full Name: Maurice White
Date of Birth: December 19, 1941
Date of Death: February 3, 2016
Number of Albums: 23
Special Accolades: Earth Wind & Fire sold over 90M albums worldwide, won seven Grammys, and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2000.
Memorable Industry Moments: Continued to perform for seven years after developing Parkinson's Disease in the late 1980s, then continued to work with EWF and other acts.
Maurice White was a musician's musician. Founder, composer, producer, drummer, kalimba player and singer of the funk group Earth Wind & Fire, he created an effortless synthesis of funk, jazz, R&B and a few other things, soaring to the top of the charts and garnering many awards.
Through numerous personnel changes, and long travails with Parkinson's Disease, White steered the band to consistent chart-topping success - and found time to work on several side projects as well.
Best Song/Album for Audio Demo: That's the Way of the World (1975). It's all good, with a perfect mix of voices, horns and chugging drums.
Photo courtesy of Biography.com
Keith Emerson
Full Name: Keith Noel Emerson
Date of Birth: November 2, 1944
Date of Death: March 10, 2016
Number of Albums: 21 (solo), 18 (ELP)
Special Accolades: Brain Salad Surgery hit #2 in the U.K., and #11 in the U.S.
Memorable Industry Moments: Emerson, Lake & Palmer was noted for weird theatrics, like spinning a piano in the air. The band was said to use almost 40 tons of equipment on tour.
Emerson was best known as keyboard player with the progressive supergroup Emerson Lake & Palmer. Starting in the 1970s, he was part of a trend toward more instrumental, classically-influenced rock, culminating in his Piano Concerto No. 1, on the album Works Volume 1. Emerson also pioneered the use of synthesizers both in the studio and live performances.
Best Song/Album for Audio Demo: Brain Salad Surgery, 1973 (remastered in 2014). Emerson's Karn Evil 9 suite stretches the limits of both keyboard work and 1970s production.
The List Goes On...
Of the stars who've left us so far this year, some obviously shone bigger and brighter in the public eye. But other losses are equally important, though less visible.
Classical music doesn't breed many superstars. Instead, it's characterized by dedicated, creative individuals like Pierre Boulez (1925-2016), famed composer, innovator, and conductor of the New York Philharmonic, among other orchestras. He died in January, at the age of 90.
European Pressphoto Agency
Those who manage and produce the music are also too easily overlooked. One of the most remarkable was Australian-born Robert Stigwood (1934-2016), who managed acts including Cream, Eric Clapton and the Bee Gees. And also produced stage and film productions, including the smash hit Saturday Night Fever. Stigwood died in January, aged 81.
Oddly, we've lost no major female musicians this year. However, it is worth noting the passing of Signe Anderson (1941-2016), original vocalist with Jefferson Airplane, who appeared on the band's first album but left just before they hit it big. In a weird twist of circumstance, she died on the same day in January, and at the same age, as one-time band-mate Paul Kantner.
There was also one significant loss to the Canadian music scene. In the early to mid-1960s, Bobby Curtola (1943-2016) scored a remarkable 25 Canadian Gold singles and 12 Canadian Gold albums, and was one of the first Canadians to establish himself as a regular performer in Las Vegas. For these achievements, Curtola received the Order of Canada in 1998. He died in June, at the age of 73.
Today, Curtola's bubblegum hits, like Fortune Teller or Aladdin, sound a bit quaint. But after all these years, they can still get our feet tapping. And that's all that really counts.
Photo by Johanna Carlo
Each of the musicians we've lost this year was unique. Each of them helped to shape the musical landscape for generations to come. Their legacy will be enjoyed as long as there's a disc player working, or a streaming service operating - or an aspiring guitar player emulating their classic riffs.
Musicians come and go, but the music lives on.