Stealers Wheel weren’t just Gerry Rafferty’s backing band. Joe Egan, who has died, was his fellow front man and wrote many of their songs himself as well as co-writing their most famous hit Stuck in the Middle With You with Rafferty.

I have featured their work before with Benediction and Late Again.

This is one he wrote himself.

Stealers Wheel: I Get By

Joseph (Joe) Egan: 18/10/1946 – 6/7/2024. So it goes.

Just before I went away came the news that songwriter Richard Sherman had died. He and his brother Robert wrote some of the most well-known songs from the mid to late twentieth century in their work for Disney and others.

Consider the beautifully constructed Feed the Birds from Mary Poppins.

Julie Andrews: Feed the Birds

For me though their masterpiece is I Wan’na Be Like You (The Monkey Song) from The Jungle Book.

The best bit is of course when Baloo the bear comes in with his scat singing, starting at “Da zap dan roani” with the crowning glory of the whole sequence his ecstatic cry of, “Take me home , Daddy.”

Louis Prima, Phil Harris: I Wan’na Be Like You (The Monkey Song)

Richard Morton Sherman: 12/6/1928 –  25/5/2024. So it goes.

Another from Elkie Brooks. A bit different from Pearl’s a Singer.

On reflection this one’s a bit overproduced.

Elkie Brooks: Lilac Wine

This Top of the Pops performance seems a little more restrained.

I mentioned Richard Tandy’s passing a couple of weeks ago.

He was a mainstay of The Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) being Jeff Lynne’s right hand man in the group.

I note that the lyrics scrolling along the bottom of this video misrepresent the last vocoded words (which apparently Tandy voiced.) They are not “Mr Blue Sky” but instead “Please turn me over.”  Mr Blue Sky was the last track on side three of the album Out of the Blue.

Electric Light Orchestra: Mr Blue Sky

Richard Tandy: 26/3/1948 –  1/5/2024. So it goes.

Guitarist, singer and songwriter Dickey Betts of the Allman Brothers Band has died.

Among other songs he wrote perhaps the band’s most famous track, Jessica, used as the signature tune for the TV programme Top Gear.

Despite that tune’s lasting appeal the band never had a hit in the UK.

This, another of his compositions, was their biggest in the US.

The Allman Brothers Band: Ramblin’ Man

Forrest Richard (Dickey) Betts: 12/12/1943 – 18/4/2024. So it goes.

By force majeure another 1970s song. For Steve Harley has also left us.

I posted Cockney Rebel’s first single Sebastian here, their biggest hit Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me) – a storming no. 1 – here, and a later cover of George Harrison’s song Here Comes the Sun here.

This song was the first of Cockney Rebel’s (and therefore Steve’s) songs I ever heard. A no. 5 in 1974.

Cockney Rebel: Judy Teen

Stephen Malcolm Ronald Nice (Steve Harley) 27/2/1951 – 17/3/2024. So it goes.

So US songwriter and Eric Carmen has left the chorus.

As a solo performer he was perhaps most famous for writing and singing All by Myself and for the hit Hungry Eyes.

He had in the early 1970s been in the US group The Raspberries for whom he wrote this song.

The Raspberries: Overnight Sensation (Hit Record)

Eric Howard Carmen: 11/8/1949 – 11?/3/2024. So it goes.

And this week Aston Barret, known as Aston “Family Man” Barrett, bassist with Bob Marley’s band the Wailers, and instrumental in popularising reggae, has died.

His bass playing is prominent on this famous track.

Bob Marley and the Wailers: No Woman, No Cry

Aston Francis Barrett: 22/11/1946 – 3/2/2024. So it goes.

Melanie Safka has also gone.

She first came to notice in the UK with her 1970 cover of the Rolling Stones song Ruby Tuesday, which I featured here.

Her biggest UK hit was Brand New Key, parodied by The Wurzels as The Combine Harvester.

I’ve chosen her second UK hit (no 39 in 1970) What Have They Done to My Song Ma (aka Look What They’ve Done to My Song Ma) partly for the verse in French but also since I always wanted to write a parody of it entitled Look What They’ve Done to My Team Ma. (By ‘team’ I meant the mighty Sons of the Rock.) I never got round to that of course.

Melanie: What Have They Done to My Song Ma

Melanie Anne Safka-Schekeryk (Melanie):  3/2/1947 – January 23/1/2024. So it goes.

Pedant’s corner:- Both of the song’s titles surely ought to have a comma after ‘Song’ and the ‘what’ one, a question mark at its end.

Yes it has taken me long enough to get round to this.

The song that announced Roxy Music and Brian Ferry to the world.

Curiously the dancers on the Top of the Pops floor look bored rather than anything.

Roxy Music: Virginia Plain