Winston Watusi Music Plus

Yes! It's Easter! The Jazz Festival is here.

Having written about it at length in the past weeks there seems no need to go over things again, except to say – get out and enjoy it. Sixty years is a pretty damn good effort. There's music everywhere during Easter, from funk to soul, blues to country, rock to K-Pop. There's also some jazz. Big bands, little bands, swing bands, bebop bands, mainstream bands, Dixie bands, you name it...

For more, go to: sunlive.co.nz These columns are under ‘Lifestyle/Music'; or just head to the festival website: jazz.org.nz And do check out some music.

With all that excitement this weekend let's step sideways and look back to March, during which I wrote about the deaths of guitarists David Lindley and Gary Rossington. But a full band's worth of musicians left us in March and I thought their passing merited a further nod.

Most famously, jazz sax player Wayne Shorter died, and so did Jim Gordon, a drummer I, and probably all of us, heard a lot of. He was with Eric Clapton's band Derek and The Dominoes and played on the original ‘Layla'. Gordon would have to be one of the only people whose Wikipedia description runs: 'an American musician, songwriter, and convicted murderer”.

Tragically, in 1983, in a psychotic episode associated with undiagnosed schizophrenia, Gordon murdered his mother and was sentenced to 16 years to life in prison. His mental health never improved, and he was still incarcerated in a mental facility at the time of his death.

Nashville man

Other less well-known musicians died in March. Here's another you might not have heard of but I bet you've heard: Michael Rhodes. Rhodes was a Nashville session bass player with the longest CV in Tennessee history. He played on albums by Alabama, Richard Marx, Kenny Rogers, Shawn Colvin, Rodney Crowell, Hal Ketchum, George Strait, Kenny Chesney, Toby Keith, Amy Grant and 21 others – and that's just between 2000
and 2002.

There was also J.J. Cale, Joan Baez, Buddy Guy, Joe Bonamassa, Larry Carlton, Stevie Nicks, Diane Schuur, Joss Stone, The Beach Boys, Beth Hart, Lionel Ritchie, EmmyLou Harris and dozens more... you get the idea. Helluva bass player!

And Keith Reid died. I bet you listened to Keith Reid's words a thousand times without knowing his name. Reid was that rarest of things: a fully-fledged and credited member of a band who never performed with them.

From the start and right up to, but excluding, their final (2017) album he got a full member credit with Procul Harum as their designated lyricist, crafting his impressionistic poetry for keyboard playing singer Gary Brooker's music. He was the guy who 'skipped the light fandango and turned cartwheels across the floor”. Fun fact: as a member of the band he never missed a gig, despite not actually playing.

Petty's mate

Here's another name you almost know, who died: Tom Leadon. He was a founding member of Tom Petty's original band Mudcrutch; and his brother, Bernie, was an Eagle.

Saxophone player Tony Coe has also left the building. He was mainly known in the British jazz scene but if, like me, you're a sucker for Scottish singer John Martyn's classic ‘Solid Air' album, doff your cap – that's Coe playing sax.

I don't know if anyone else has a soft spot for 1980s American punk label SST. The man who produced and engineered those recordings has died. He was known on the records as simply ‘Spot' – using all capital letters and adding a dot inside the O. His real name was Glenn Michael Lockett and we have him to thank for the glorious attack of the likes of Black Flag, the Minutemen, the Meat Puppets, and Hüsker Dü.

And one last obit. Someone finally came and took away Jerrold Laurence Samuels – better known to the world as Napoleon XIV. He was the man of course responsible for the 1966 hit ‘They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!' (which was backed with the same song played backwards). Go on, dial up YouTube and have a listen. You know you want to. It will make your world a better place...

Go on, dial up YouTube and have a listen. You know you want to. It will make your world a better place...

Derek and The Dominoes, Jim Gordon is second left.