This is unseasonal I know but I’ve already featured the group’s two biggest UK hits, here and here. Taken from Phil Spector’s Christmas Album – actually named A Christmas Gift to You from Philles Records and the less said about Spector the better – it’s also one of The Ronettes better known songs and was their third biggest, no 15 in 1963.
The Ronettes: Sleigh Ride
Nedra Yvonne Talley (Ross): 27/1/1946 – 26/4/2026. So it goes.
Dave Mason, co-founder of the band Traffic, has died.
His career with Traffic was by no means smooth (and he later went on to play with various luminaries) but he wrote and sang their biggest UK hit, a No 2 in 1967.
Though he was a performer in his own right he is better known as a songwriter; perhaps best remembered for Wild Thing, a song The Troggs had a huge hit with and was then taken up by Jimi Hendrix. The Troggs later recorded Taylor’s very different Any Way That You Want Mebut in the meantime Taylor composed Angel of the Morning, brought to prominence by Merrilee Rush and later a hit in the UK for P P Arnold.
I must confess that until I read Taylor’s wiki page I hadn’t realised that he was a brother of actor Jon Voight (and therefore uncle to Angelina Jolie) nor that he had co-written I Can’t Let Go, a UK no. 2 for The Hollies in 1966.
The Hollies: I Can’t Let Go
James Wesley Voight (Chip Taylor): 21/3/1940 – 23/3/2026. So it goes.
The Alan Price Set was the band Price formed after he left The Animals. This wasn’t their first hit – that was the Randy Newman song Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear* – but it was the first which Price wrote.
The Alan Price Set: The House That Jack Built
*Edited to add: I just remembered The Alan Price Set released I Put a Spell on You and Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo which were both hits before Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear.
He was one of the most distinctive pop acts of the late 1950s and early 1960s before the advent of The Beatles overturned everything.
His many songwriting credits include Stupid Cupid, a 1958 hit for Connie Francis, and Love Will Keep Us Together (Captain and Tenille, 1975.) (Is This the Way to) Amarillo (1971) eventually became a big hit for Tony Christie – aided by Peter Kay’s video – in 2005.
Sedaka’s own hits include Calendar Girl, Little Devil, Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen, Breaking Up Is Hard to Do.
He kind of reinvented himself as a singer-songwriter in the 1970s with a more adult-oriented approach.
Here’s a live performance from 1975.
Neil Sedaka: Laughter in the Rain
This one was a hit for The Carpenters but this is a Sedaka performance-
Neil Sedaka: Solitaire
Though he had an earlier hit with I Go Ape this was the song which really announced him in the UK in 1959.
Founder member of Jethro Tull, Mick Abrahams, died on 19/12/25. He only played on Tull’s first LP This Was before leaving the band due to wanting to pursue more in the line of the blues than flautist, singer and main songwriter Ian Anderson.
This, from that LP, is a song he co-wrote with Anderson.
Jethro Tull: Beggar’s Farm
Abrahams went on to form the unforgettably named Blodwyn Pig. Their first single was Dear Jill.
Blodwyn Pig: Dear Jill
Michael Timothy (Mick) Abrahams: 7/4/1943 – 19/12/2025. So it goes.
