Charles Connor RIP + others

It's time to catch up on some of the music deaths that I've become aware of recently. The most recent is that of drummer Charles Connor at the age of 86. His 16 bar intro to Little Richard's 'Keep A Knockin'' is one of the most exciting pieces of drumming in rock and roll. Born in New Orleans, Charles joined Little Richard's band The Upsetters in 1953, having previously played with the likes of Professor Longhair, Smiley Lewis and Guitar Slim and his hard driving drum style is said to be the inspiration for Richard's 'a-wop bop-a loo-mop, a-lop bam-boom' at the start of 'Tutti Frutti'. Charles was interviewed in one of the conference sessions at the Ponderosa Stomp in 2017 (pictured above) under the heading 'Make It Sound Like A Train'. He said that he had been on the road with Shirley and Lee when Little Richard saw them in Nashville and invited him to join the Upsetters. He visited Australia with Little Richard when he gave up secular music temporarily and Sam Cooke took over the band. He also played with Jackie Wilson and James Brown, who said that Charles 'put the funk into the rhythm'. Later Charles formed his own version of the Upsetters and reunited with Richard briefly in 1990 performing 'The Girl Can't Help It' on stage in Sweden.

Another music great who has died, aged 91, is Willie Winfield, who was the founder, lead singer and permanent fixture with doowop group the Harptones. Their best known songs included 'A Sunday Kind of Love' (1953), 'Why Should I Love You?', 'Life is But a Dream', 'The Shrine of St. Cecilia' and 'What Will I Tell My Heart' in 1961. I saw Willie with the Harptones at the Long Island Doowop Festivals of 2016 and 2017 when they sang the group's biggest hits. In 2016 , when they were joined on stage by MC Bobby J singing bass, I reckoned they were the act of the day. 'Sunday Kind of Love' was sublime.

There has been much media coverage of the death at 72 of Dusty Hill, who was the bass player and singer with Z Z Top and one of the band's trademark bearded front men. Originally from Dallas, he played with his brother Rocky and future Z Z Top member Frank Beard in local bands including American Blues. Rocky left and Dusty and Frank joined with Billy Gibbons to form the rock band Z Z Top, who released their first single, 'Salt Lick' in 1969. The band went on to have enormous success in the rock scene with albums such as 'Tres Hombres', 'Fandango', 'Tejas' and 'El Loco'.

One death that I missed earlier in the year was that of American teen pop star and actor Johnny Crawford, aged 75. He was a member of the Mouseketeers and was just 12 when he got an acting role in 'The Rifleman' TV series. Recording for Del-Fi he had hits in 1962 and 1963 with 'Cindy's Birthday', 'Rumors'. 'Your Nose Is Gonna Grow' and 'Proud'. After his pop career fizzled out he returned to acting and appeared in several movies in the sixties and seventies.