O/T The Music Thread

It's amazing Crosby is still around to make music.  He's sort of in that Keith Richards category in that your'e surprised he's still with us.   I'm listening to the record right now on Spotify, Crosby still has that great harmony voice that, along with Nash, fit so well on those CSN(Y) albums.   

I thought it was Joni Mitchell at first, until I remembered that she's had a lot of health issues that past couple of years and can't be recording new music. 

The two deaths below were of musicians that didn't fit my typical music profile, but I became fans of both regardless. There was something special there that to this day I'm unable to describe or explain. I just liked what they did...

No less sad for me are the days that Jim Croce died:

Death. On September 20, 1973, during Croce's Life and Times tour and the day before his ABC single "I Got a Name" was released, Croce and all five others on board were killed when their chartered Beechcraft E18S crashed into a tree during take-off from the Natchitoches Regional Airport in Natchitoches, Louisiana.

It was late at night on September 20, 1973. Singer Jim Croce had just finishes a concert at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches. He and five others boarded a Beechcraft plane, planning to take off and head to the next day's show in Sherman, Texas.



Tragically, the plane never made it much past the runway. In a mishap investigators described as pilot error, the chartered plane failed to clear a tree while taking off. All on board were killed, including Croce, guitarist Maury Muehleisen, comedian George Stevens, agent Kenneth Cortose, road manager Dennis Rast and pilot Robert Elliott.


Croce, 30, was at the peak of his popularity with a pair of top selling albums, "Don't Mess Around With Jim" and "Life and Times", and a mega-hit single, "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown".



Sadly, a few days after his death, his widow, Ingrid, received a letter he's mailed from the road. In it, he talked about he couldn't wait to get home from the tour. “Remember," Croce wrote, "It’s the first 60 years that count and I’ve got 30 to go. I love you.”

And the death of Harry Chapin:

There is speculation about the exact cause of Harry's death. He was driving on the Long Island Expressway on Thursday July 16, 1981 just after noon, in the left hand fast lane, at about 65 miles an hour, and then for an unknown reason, either because of engine failure or some physical problem (thought to be a possible heart attack) put on his emergency flashers near Exit 40 in Jericho, NY. He then slowed to about 15 miles an hour and veered into the center lane nearly colliding with another car at that point. He swerved back left, then back right again and this time went directly in front of a tractor-trailer truck owned by Supermarkets General. The truck could not brake in time and rammed the rear of Harry's blue 1975 VW Rabbit, rupturing the gas tank and causing it to burst into flames. This occurred at 12:29 p.m.

The driver of the truck, 57 year old Robert Eggleton of South Plainfield, NJ and another passerby were able to get Harry out of the burning car through the window and by cutting the seatbelts, before the car was completely engulfed. (the news reports showed the car and there was hardly anything left of it) He was taken by police helicopter to the hospital where ten doctors tried for 30 minutes to revive him. Ed Smith, a spokesman for the Nassau County Medical Center said that Harry had suffered a massive heart attack and "died of cardiac arrest" but there was no way of knowing whether it occurred before or after the accident. The news reports at first reported that he had died of a heart attack and then later said that death was caused by the impact which tore the artery away from the heart.

Supposedly the only initial means of identification on Harry was a gold pocket watch, but police were later able to make identification through a license plate check.

Sandy did win a $12 million decision in a negligence lawsuit against Supermarkets General even though Harry's driver's license was revoked at the time of the accident.

Having spent more than a decade and a half working with semi drivers (class A license) and straight truck commercial (class B license) regulations, my best guess is that either there was a mechanical defect on the vehicle or the driver’s log book was either not up to date, or finally that the driver may have been caught driving out of hours.

Neither one of those violations would have needed to have been found to have contributed to the accident for Sue Chapin to be able to win a law suit. The rules are very clear, yet transporters continually attempt to skirt them routinely. There’s a lot of wink-wink amongst drivers and their transportation managers as drivers attempt to make as much pay as they can and transport managers tend to have bonus-inducing budgets to keep for greedy company owners that want to complete product movement with understaffed fleets.

I’m happy to be out of that aspect of work. There’s a constant worry of personal fines, or even jail sentences that can be levied due to the actions of someone that can be hundreds of miles from you that could have an accident and finger-point at you to get the heat off themselves...

DOT investigators are merciless. It’s a close to the gestapo as you’ll find in America. No one in the government oversees them. That’s a good thing in some ways. Big rig driving is not easy and quite dangerous...

I could tell some tales...but...I’d rather talk about music.

I started the day here at the house of inger by playing a couple tunes each from Buddy Holly. Then Richie Havens followed by The Big Bopper.

I followed up with the album version of Don McClean’s American Pie, then I played a bit of Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix.

I wound up blue enough that I stopped without playing any Croce, Chapin, etc...

Even though he didn’t did under the same youthful tragedy that the others on the list did, I get blue realizing Joe Cocker is gone, too...

I recalled a quote someone got from Don McClean when they asked him what American Pie meant. He said, “It means i’ll Never have to work again in my life”...

They played four shows at the Chicago Theater in January, I'm disappointed that I couldn't make it to any of them. 

50th anniversary of one of the coolest photos in music history: