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.

One of Fleetwood Mac’s early singles from the Peter Green era, revived by Santana in 1970.

Fleetwood Mac: Black Magic Woman

Santana: Black Magic Woman

One of Ray Davies’s more understated compositions. A no 12 for The Kinks in 1968 and also a no 12 for Kirsty MacColl in 1989.

The Kinks:- Days

Kirsty MacColl: Days

I saw in the Guardian that Gary Brooker, the voice (and more besides) of Procol Harum has died.

His voice was certainly distinctive, as was Procol Harum’s output: a rock band, yes, but more. And of course one of the progenitors of Prog Rock.

This was Procol Harum’s fourth hit, if that description can be applied to a song that reached no 44. Despite its downbeat sound and slow pace I’ve always thought it one of their best.

Procol Harum: A Salty Dog

This video contains a very good live version – with accompaniment – and an added bonus of An Old English Dream. (On this occasion I’ll ignore his comment about the Euro.)

Procol Harum and the Danish National Concert Orchestra and Choir: A Salty Dog and An Old English Dream

Gary Brooker: 29/5/1945 – 19/2 /2022. So it goes.

I was saddened to read in the Guardian of the death of Graeme Edge of the Moody Blues on Armistice Day.

As a drummer he perhaps wasn’t spectacular but he did the job. He was one of the group’s original members (in the days of Denny Laine, Clint Warwick and Go Now) and continued on to the glory days of the late 60s and early 70s. His contribution to the group’s œuvre was not initially musical but spoken word (poetry if you will) starting with the Morning Glory sequence from Days of Future Passed whose first verse,

“Cold hearted orb that rules the night,
Removes the colours from our sight,
Red is grey and yellow white,
But we decide which is right,
And which is an illusion,”

is returned to in Late Lament, the spoken coda which comes after the final song, Nights in White Satin. Unfortunately this clip omits the gong right at the end.

The Moody Blues: Late Lament

Graeme Charles Edge: 30/3/1941 – 11/11/2021. So it goes.

This was the third UK hit for the Box Tops but it only reached no 22. It’s become something of a classic, though.

This clip sounds to be the recorded version played over footage of a TV appearance.

The Box Tops: Soul Deep