RIP Munetaka Higuchi (November 30, 2008) Loudness

Munetaka Higuchi
December 24, 1958 – November 30, 2008

Munetaka Higuchi was the original drummer of the Japanese heavy metal band, Loudness.  From the very beginning he was considered as a young talent, many bands wanted Munetaka to play with them. That’s why besides his own band, during his high school years Munetaka played in seven bands. But the talented drummer wasn’t happy with this situation, he wanted to spend his time in only one band. That’s when future bandmate Akira Takasaki came along and they formed Lazy.  When he and Akira got into hard rock and heavy metal, they formed Loudness in 1981. During his first stint with Loudness, he released his first solo album, Destruction, in 1983. He left Loudness in 1992 and not only he resumed his solo career in the late-1990’s, he also got into side projects, including Sly, Bloodcircus, Rose of Rose, and the Rock ‘n’ Roll Standard Club Band. In 1997, with a “band” called “Munetaka Higuchi & Dream Castle”, he released the album Free World. The band featured many famous musicians from the jazz and rock/metal spheres, like Steve Vai, Stanley Clarke, Billy Sheehan, Ty Tabor, Terry Bozzio, T. M. Stevens, Ronnie James Dio, Richie Kotzen and others. The album was released on the 21st of February 1997 in Japan.  He returned to Loudness in 2001. He is often mentioned not only as one of the leading Japanese drummers but a rock/metal artist overall.   On April 14, 2008 it was announced that he was diagnosed with Hepatocellular carcinoma, a type of liver cancer. On November 30, 2008 Munetaka passed away from his illness. He was 49 years old. – Wikipedia

Thanks to Craig Rosen from Number1Albums for the info.

On This Date (November 30, 1996) Tiny Tim

Tiny Tim (Born Herbert Khaury)
April 12, 1932 – November 30, 1996

Tiny Tim was born Herbert Khaury, and gave his birth date as April 12, 1932. The son of a Lebanese father and Jewish mother, he grew up in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, and was a loner, eventually dropping out of high school. His interest in American popular music (chiefly from the 1890s to the 1930s) began at a young age, as did his desire to be a singer, and accordingly he learned guitar and ukulele. His first performances — under the alias Larry Love — took place in the early ’50s, and according to legend, he debuted at a lesbian cabaret in Greenwich Village called the Page 3, where he became a regular. Khaury performed at small clubs, parties, and talent shows under a variety of names; his parents tried to discourage him at first, but relented when they saw that not every gig ended in ridicule.  By the early ’60s, he had gained a cult following around the thriving Greenwich Village music scene, particularly after he began to incorporate bizarre renditions of contemporary songs into his repertoire. He finally settled on the name Tiny Tim after the character in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (according to some accounts, it was suggested by a manager accustomed to working with midgets). Tim’s appearance in the film You Are What You Eat led to a booking on the hugely popular comedy series Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. He was an instant sensation; whether or not he was seen as an object of ridicule, no one had ever seen anything like him. He appeared several more times on Laugh-In, and became a frequent guest on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, also performing on the Ed Sullivan and Jackie Gleason variety shows. His eccentric personality became as well-known as his music: he was obsessed with bodily cleanliness, and his distaste for sex seemed logical when paired with his gentle, asexual demeanor. A hot commodity, Tim signed a record deal with Reprise and issued his debut album, God Bless Tiny Tim, in 1968. His signature rendition of “Tip-Toe Through the Tulips” became a hit, and the LP sold over 200,000 copies. Striking while the iron was hot, Tim recorded a follow-up, Tiny Tim’s Second Album, which was released at the end of 1968. Its follow-up, an album of children’s songs titled For All My Little Friends was released in August of 1969. On December 17 of that year, Tim married his girlfriend, 17-year-old Victoria Budinger (known as Miss Vicki, in typically respectful Tim fashion), on the Johnny Carson show. The couple later had a daughter, Tulip, but mostly lived apart, and divorced after eight years. Following his wedding, Tim continued to perform around the country, including some lucrative gigs in Las Vegas; unfortunately, many of his business associates took advantage of his naïveté, leaving him with few savings from his run of success.  By the early ’70s, perhaps due to simple familiarity, America’s fascination with Tiny Tim had waned. Even after the TV appearances and high-profile gigs dried up, Tim kept plugging away, performing whenever and wherever he could. He recorded steadily for a series of mostly small labels throughout the 70’s and 80’s.  He remarried in 1984 to 23-year-old Miss Jan. They lived apart most of the time and the marriage lasted until 1994. Tim joined a circus for 36 weeks. In the late ’80s, he moved to Des Moines, IA. In 1992. In August of 1995 he married for a third time to Miss Sue, and he moved to Minneapolis.   During the mid-’90s, Tim raised his public profile with appearances on the Conan O’Brien and Howard Stern shows; however, in September of 1996, he suffered a heart attack while performing at a ukulele festival in Massachusetts. Upon his release from the hospital, Tim resumed his concert schedule, but sadly, on November 30, he suffered another heart attack in Minneapolis while performing “Tip-Toe Through the Tulips,” and died an hour later.  – From tinytim.org

On This Date (November 30, 2000) Scott Smith / Loverboy

Scott Smith
February 13, 1955 – November 30, 2000

Donald Scott Smith, born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, was the original bassist for the Canadian rock band Loverboy, best known for the 1982 hit single “Working for the Weekend”, although their U.S. Top Ten hits were “Lovin’ Every Minute of It” in 1985 and “This Could Be the Night” in 1986.  Smith originally studied guitar, and at the age of twelve moved to bass. He was majoring in English at the University of Manitoba when he received a call from Paul Dean in Vancouver inviting him to join the band known today as Loverboy. On November 30, 2000, he was sailing with two friends off the coast of San Francisco near the Golden Gate Bridge, when a freak 26-foot wave swept him overboard in shark infested waters. A four-hour search was conducted in vain. Experts say Smith could not have survived more than two and a half hours in waters that cold. He was 45. – From wikipedia

RIP Bill Drake (November 29, 2008) Pioneer Radio Programmer

Bill Drake
1937(?) – November 29, 2008

Bill Drake, who set the tone at hundreds of pop stations with a radio format that placed music — rather than disc jockeys — at the center of the broadcast, has died. He was 71. Drake died Saturday of cancer at West Hills Hospital in the San Fernando Valley, his domestic partner Carole Scott said. He was 71. At the height of his career as a radio programming consultant in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Drake championed a streamlined format that came to be known as “Boss Radio,” which made announcers’ personalities secondary to the Top 40 hits they were spinning.  Under Drake’s guidance, radio stations such as KGB in San Diego, KHJ in Los Angeles and KFRC in San Francisco shot to the No. 1 slots in their markets by promising more music and less chatter.  Drake, whose given name was Philip Yarbrough, was born Jan. 14, 1937, in southwest Georgia and began his professional radio career as a disk jockey and later program director at WAKE in Atlanta.  His name was changed to Drake because the station wanted a name that rhymed with the call letters, according to a biography on Drake’s Web site. – Associated Press

Thanks to Craig Rosen at Number1Albums for the info.

On This Date (November 29, 2001) George Harrison

George Harrison
February 25, 1943 – November 29, 2001

As lead guitarist for the Beatles, George Harrison provided the band with a lyrical style of playing in which every note mattered. Harrison was one of millions of young Britons inspired to take up the guitar by British skiffle king Lonnie Donegan’s recording of “Rock Island Line.” But he had more dedication than most, and with the encouragement of a slightly older school friend — Paul McCartney — he advanced quickly in his technique and command of the instrument. Harrison developed his style and technique slowly and painstakingly over the several years, learning everything he could from the records of Carl Perkins, Duane Eddy, Chet Atkins, Buddy Holly, and Eddie Cochran. By age 15, he was allowed to sit in with the Quarry Men, the Liverpool group founded by John Lennon, of which McCartney was a member; by 16, he was a full-fledged member of the group.  The Beatles finally coalesced around Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and drummer Ringo Starr in 1962, with Harrison established on lead guitar. The Beatlemania years, from 1963 through 1966, were a mixed blessing for Harrison. The Beatles’ studio sound was generally characterized by very prominent rhythm guitar parts, and on many of the Beatles’ early songs, Harrison’s lead guitar was buried beneath the chiming chords of Lennon’s instrument. Additionally, he was thwarted as a songwriter by the presence of Lennon and McCartney; the quality and proliferation of their output left very little room on the group’s albums for songs by anyone else. Despite these problems, Harrison grew markedly as a musician between 1963 and 1966, writing a handful of good songs and one classic (“If I Needed Someone”), and also making his first acquaintance of the sitar, an Indian instrument whose sound fascinated him.   In 1966, Harrison finally seemed to find his voice with two of his songs on the Revolver album, “Taxman” and “Love You Too.” In the wake of the group’s decision to stop touring, Harrison’s playing and songwriting grew exponentially. The period from 1968 onward was Harrison’s richest with the Beatles. He displayed a smooth, elegant slide guitar technique that showed up on their last three albums; and he contributed two classic songs, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and “Here Comes the Sun,” along with “Something,” which became the first Harrison song on the A-side of a Beatles single.   Although never known as a strong singer, Harrison’s vocals were always distinctive, especially when placed in the right setting; for his first solo record following the group’s 1970 breakup, All Things Must Pass, Harrison collaborated with producer Phil Spector, whose so-called “Wall of Sound” technique adapted well to Harrison’s voice. All Things Must Pass and the accompanying single “My Sweet Lord” had the distinction of being the first solo recordings by any of the Beatles to top the charts following their breakup. Unfortunately, Harrison was later successfully sued by the publisher of the 1962 Chiffons hit “He’s So Fine,” which bore a striking resemblance to “My Sweet Lord.”   Harrison followed All Things Must Pass with rock’s first major charity event, The Concert for Bangladesh, which was staged as two shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden in 1971 to help raise money for aid to that famine-ravaged nation. The second of the two all-star shows was released as a movie and a live triple album. Harrison’s next studio album, Living in the Material World, initially sold well, but its leaner, less opulent production lacked the majestic force of All Things Must Pass, and it lacked the earlier album’s mass appeal. Subsequent Harrison albums from the 1970s into the ’80s always had an audience, but — except for Somewhere in England (1981), released in the wake of the murder of John Lennon with the memorial song “All Those Years Ago” — none seemed terribly well crafted or executed. During this same period, Harrison embarked on a successful career as a movie producer with the founding of Handmade Films.   In 1987, Harrison made a return to the top of the charts with his album Cloud Nine, which featured his most inspired work in years, most notably a cover of an old Rudy Clark gospel number called “Got My Mind Set on You,” which reached number one on the charts. In 1988, Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, and Roy Orbison formed the Traveling Wilburys, who released two very successful albums. It was also around this time that Harrison appeared with his former bandmate Ringo Starr, Dave Edmunds, Rosanne Cash, and the Stray Cats’ Lee Rocker (who was born the year the Beatles made their first recordings) in a superb live-in-front-of-the-cameras rockabilly performance accompanying Harrison’s one-time idol Carl Perkins; which was subsequently released on video cassette and laser disc. All of this success heralded a short-lived re-emergence for the musician out of private life, resulting in a 1991 tour of Japan that yielded a live album (Live in Japan). Harrison had hated concertizing since the harrowing days of the Beatles’ international career, and had done one poorly received concert tour in the mid-’70s; he seemed more comfortable in 1991, and the album performed moderately well, driven by the presence of his then-recent hits.   He withdrew into private life after that, devoting himself to his life with his second wife and their son, and only re-emerged before the public when necessary, such as defending the Beatles’ copyrights in court cases.  In 1999, Harrison was assaulted in his home and seriously injured by a deranged fan, but he recovered and in 2000 he began work on remastering and expanding his classic All Things Must Pass album. The reissue of that album at the outset of 2001 heralded an unusually public publicity campaign by Harrison, who accompanied its re-release with an interview record that anticipated the eventual reissue of the rest of his catalog. Harrison had been treated for throat cancer in the late ’90s, but in 2001 it was revealed that he was suffering from an inoperable form of brain cancer. At the time of his death on November 29, 2001, The Concert for Bangladesh album had been announced for upgraded reissue in January of 2002, and a DVD of the film was in release internationally. – Bruce Eder (allmusic)