The last surviving member of perhaps the most prominent male Motown group, The Four Tops, ‘Duke’ Fakir has now left the stage.

Fakir was a constant presence in the group from its founding to his death.

This was the follow up to their biggest hit (which I have already featured here.)

The Four Tops: Standing in the Shadows of Love

Abdul Kareem (Duke) Fakir: 26/12/1935 –22/7/2024. So it goes.

No sooner had I heard the news on the radio that Duane Eddy had died (and Richard Tandy of ELO too) than I opened the Guardian’s obituary page to find that Mike Pinder of the Moody Blues has made his final voyage.

Pinder was the last of the original five members of the Moody Blues still standing. Now only Justin Hayward and John Lodge remain of the later classic line-up.

Pinder’s contribution to that classic line-up was immense. It is fair to say that without his ability on the mellotron (an instrument he personally brought to the attention of The Beatles) The Moody Blues would not have sounded as they did, nor had the same success.

His piano solo on the original group’s biggest hit Go Now was no small part of its effectiveness.

This song written by Pinder was the B-side to Ride My See-saw but later appeared on the odd album Caught Live + Five. It was later a hit for The Four Tops but as usual Levi Stubbs shouted his way through it.

The Moody Blues: A Simple Game

This is another of my favourite Pinder songs:-

The Moody Blues: The Best Way to Travel (from In Search of the Lost Chord)

I always loved the piano ending to this track which was sandwiched between Have You Heard Part 1 and Have You Heard Part 2 on the LP On the Threshold of a Dream.

The Moody Blues: The Voyage

Michael Thomas (Mike) Pinder: 27/12/1941 – 24/4/2024. So it goes.

This was Love Affair’s second last UK hit (out of five) but was the least successful in terms of chart position. It’s a better song than the other four though.

Love Affair: One Road

One of those mid 60s songs which eulogised San Francisco. It gave post-original-Animals Eric Burdon his biggest UK hit.

Eric Burdon and the Animals: San Franciscan Nights

Another week another remembrance. Rudolph Isley of the Isley Brothers died last week.

My favourite song of theirs will always be Behind a Painted Smile (no 5 in 1969) but their first UK hit reached no 3 in 1966.

The Isley Brothers: This Old Heart of Mine

Rudolph Bernard Isley: 1/4/1939 – 11/10/2023. So it goes.

I saw this week that Katherine Anderson of The Marvelettes who recorded the first ever Motown release to reach the US no 1, (Please Mr Postman) has died.

The Marvelettes perhaps exemplified the Motown sound but only ever had the one hit in the UK, the untypical When You’re Young and in Love.

This is one of their US hits.

The Marvelettes: Too Many Fish in the Sea

Katherine Elaine Anderson Schaffner; 16/1/1944 – September 20/9/2023. So it goes.

I Feel Free was the first Cream song I ever heard. I was immediately impressed. Like quite a few of Cream’s early songs its lyric was written by Pete Brown who died recently.

Cream: I Feel Free

I remember Brown more though for his perhaps unforgettably named band Pete Brown and Piblokto! who were responsible for one of the longest album titles in pop history, their first, Things May Come and Things May Go but the Art School Dance Goes on Forever  (though it wasn’t quite as long as this one.)

This is the B-side of Piblokto!’s second single.

Pete Brown and Piblokto!: Broken Magic

Peter Ronald (Pete) Brown: 25/12/1940 – 19/5/2023. So it goes.

And Cynthia Weil, too, has left us.

With her husband Barry Mann she wrote some of the most well-known songs of the 1960s. I featured one of them here. So apparently simple, yet so effective.

However, the song of theirs people are most familiar with is probably You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling as performed by The Righteous Brothers.

To celebrate her skills I’ve chosen this recording by a British band, though.

The Animals: We Gotta Get Out of This Place

Cynthia Weil: October 18/10/1940 – 1/6/2023. So it goes.

And on Wednesday it was the turn of Jeff Beck to leave us too early. He was one of that group of English exponents of the electric guitar which sprang up in the early to mid-sixties. But Beck was the electric guitarist’s electric guitarist.

Sadly he never gained the commercial success on his own account to match his status with his peers. He really only had the one hit and that track, Hi-Ho Silver Lining, wasn’t representative of Beck’s musical tastes.

I featured that hit here and his single Tallyman here. As the Jeff Beck Group he also had a hit with Donovan and the song Goo Goo Barabajagal (Love is Hot.)

His earliest brush with fame came with The Yardbirds. His guitar was a major part of their psychedelic sound.

This clip of the group performing Over, Under, Sideways, Down has a remastered stereo edit laid over the footage.

The Yardbirds: Over Under Sideways Down

Geoffrey Arnold (Jeff) Beck: 24/6/1944 – 10/1/2023. So it goes.

One of the two men behind the hits of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich (not to mention The Honeycombs and The Herd,) Alan Blaikley, died in July but I only found out when his obituary was published in today’s Guardian.

The two were apparently the first British composers to write a song for Elvis Presley.

An (incomplete) list of the songs the duo wrote is here. It’s not a bad CV.

This is the one featuring the “man with the whip” as the Queen Mother is supposed to have said to Dave Dee. In reality I believe the sound was made by scraping a bottle across the strings of a guitar.

Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich: Legend of Xanadu

Alan Tudor Blaikley: 23/3/1940 – 4/6/2022. So it goes.