Also lost to us last week was bass player Herbie Flowers. His CV is second to none.

Perhaps his most distinctive performance was his double bass line for Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side but that could be matched by the innovation on David Essex’s Rock On.

Lou Reed: Walk on the Wild Side

David Essex: Rock On

Brian Keith (Herbie) Flowers: 19/5/1938 – 5/9/2024. So it goes.

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.

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.

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.

Fox’s last UK hit. Noosha Fox (Susan Traynor) certainly had a distinctive – if perhaps weak – voice.

Fox: S-S-Single Bed

Another week, another sad death. This time Robbie Robertson, singer, songwriter and guitarist for The Band. Coming to fame as Bob Dylan’s backing band they found success on their own after releasing their first LP Music Fom Big Pink.

For me Robertson’s masterpiece will always be The Weight which I posted about here and have already featured their UK hits Up on Cripple Creek and Rag Mama Rag. In retrospect surprisingly, these were their only UK hits.

This is another of Robbie’s compositions for The Band. (From 1971.)

The Band:The Shape I’m In

Jaime Royal (Robbie) Robertson: 5/7/1943 – 9/8/2023. So it goes.