Florence Ballard:
(b. 30 June 1942, Detroit, Michigan, USA, d. 22 February 1976).
In her teens, Ballard formed the vocal group the Primettes with school friends Mary Wilson
and Betty Travis. Diana Ross completed the line-up in 1960.  Unhappy with her diminishing
role in the Supremes, she repeatedly complained to Gordy and his executives, and the resulting
friction led to her being ousted from the group in 1967.  By the early '70s, Florence was living in
extreme poverty in a Detroit housing project. Her reliance on a lethal cocktail of alcohol and diet
pills had weakened her health, and in February 1976 her tragic career ended when she suffered a
cardiac arrest.
 

John Belushi:
(b. 24 January 1949, Chicago, Illinois, USA. d. 5 March 1982, Los Angeles, California, USA).
 Belushi's death from a drug overdose in 1982 brought the original concept to a premature end.

Bix Beiderbecke:
(b. Leon Bix Beiderbecke, 10 March 1903, Davenport, Iowa, USA, d. 6 August 1931 New York, USA).
Troubles led him to take refuge in drink and this swiftly degenerated into chronic alcoholism. One
of the legends of jazz, a role he would doubtless have found wryly amusing had he lived to know of it.
When he died in August 1931, Beiderbecke was still only 28-years-old.
 

Bunny Berigan:
(b. Rowland Bernart Berigan, 2 November 1908, Hilbert, Calumet, Wisconsin, USA, d. 2 June 1942).
Early the following year he was taken ill with pneumonia but continued working—and drinking cheap
liquor—until he collapsed at the end of May and died in June 1942.
 

Big Maybelle:
(b. Mabel Louise Smith, 1 May c.1920, Jackson, Tennessee, USA, d. 23 January 1972).
Maybelle's career was marred by frequent drug problems which contributed to her early
death in Cleveland Ohio in January 1972.
 

Mike Bloomfield:
(b. 28 July 1944, Chicago, Illinois, USA d. 15 February 1981).
For many, both critics and fans, Bloomfield was the finest white blues guitarist America
has so far produced. A second burst of activity occurred shortly before his tragic death
when another three album's worth of material was recorded. Bloomfield was found dead
in his car from a suspected accidental drug overdose, a sad end to a ‘star’ who had
constantly avoided stardom in order to maintain his own integrity.
 

Tommy Bolin:
James Gang/Deep Purple
(b. 1 August 1951, Sioux City, Iowa, USA, d. 4 December 1976, Miami, Florida).
In December 1976, Bolin was found dead in a Miami hotel room, the victim of a drug overdose.
 

Leroy Carr:
(b. 27 March 1905, Nashville, Tennessee, d. 29 April 1935).
 An acute alcoholic, Carr died on 29 April 1935.
 

Steve Clark:
Def Leppard
(b. 23 April 1960, Sheffield, England, d. 8 January 1991, London, England).
As Def Leppard began work on their belated follow-up to HYSTERIA, Clark was found dead in
his London flat after consuming a mixture of drugs and alcohol.
 

Miles Davis:
(b. 26 May 1926, Alton, Illinois, USA, d. 28 September 1991).
In 1975, after a succession of personal upheavals including a car crash, further drug problems,
a shooting incident, more police harassment and eventual arrest, Miles, not surprisingly, retired.
During this time he became seriously ill, and it was generally felt that he would never play again.
As unpredictable as ever, Davis returned six years later healthy and fit with the comeback album,
THE MAN WITH THE HORN.  Following further bouts of ill health Miles was admitted to hospital
in California and died in September 1991.

 
Pete Farndon:
The Pretenders
(b. 2 June 1952, Hereford, England, d. 14 April 1983).
 Pete Farndon was found dead in his bath from a drug overdose.

 
Lowell George:
Little Feat’s
(b. 13 April 1945, Hollywood, California, USA, d. 29 June 1979).
During a solo concert tour George had a heart attack and died; years of abuse had taken their toll.
 

Andy Gibb:
(b. 5 March 1958, Manchester, England, d. 10 March 1988, Oxford, England).
Following the international success of his three elder brothers in the Bee Gees, Andy appeared
as a star in his own right in 1977.  The pressure of living with the reputation of his superstar brothers,
coupled with immense wealth and a hedonistic bent, brought personal problems and he became
alarming reliant upon cocaine. Within months of his brothers autumnal and highly successful reunion in
the late '80s, tragedy struck when the 30-year-old singer died of an inflammatory heart virus at his home.
 

Billie Holiday:
(Eleanora Harris, 7 April 1915, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. d. 17 July 1959).
Billie began singing during her early years in Baltimore, Maryland, where she was brought up
until moving to New York in 1929. From the '50s on, Billie Holiday and trouble seemed often
inseparable. At the end of May 1958 she was taken to hospital suffering from heart and liver disease.
Harried still by the police, and placed under arrest in the hospital, she was charged with possession
and placed under police guard—the final cruelty the system could inflict upon her. Thus the greatest
of jazz singers died in humiliating circumstances at 3.10 am on 17 July 1959.

 
James Honeyman-Scott:
Pretenders
(b. 1956, Hereford, England, d. 16 June 1982, London, England).
Weakened by a detoxification course for drug addiction, his death in June 1982 occurred
shortly after snorting cocaine at a London party. The group found a replacement in Robert
McIntosh, a Honeyman-Scott soundalike.
 

Brian Jones:
Rolling Stones
(b. Lewis Brian Hopkin-Jones, 26 February 1942, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England, d. 3 July 1969).
While the Stones were re-establishing themselves, Brian Jones was falling deeper into drug abuse.
A conviction in late 1968 prompted doubts about his availability for US tours and in the succeeding
months he contributed less and less to recordings and became increasingly jealous of Jagger's leading
role in the group. Richards' wooing and impregnation of Jones' girlfriend Anita Pallenberg merely
increased the tension. Matters reached a crisis point in June 1969 when Jones officially left the group.
The following month he was found dead in the swimming pool of the Sussex house that had once
belonged to writer A.A. Milne. The official verdict was ‘death by misadventure’.

 
Phil Lynott:
Thin Lizzy
(b. 20 August 1951, Dublin, Eire, d. 4 January 1986).
 In 1986, he suffered a drug overdose and, following a week in a coma, died of heart failure,
exacerbated by pneumonia.

 
Clyde McPhatter:
Drifters
(b. Clyde Lensley McPhatter, 15 November 1932, Durham, North Carolina, USA, d. 13 June 1972).
A 1970 album, on Decca, WELCOME HOME, was his last recording. McPhatter, one of R&B's
finest voices, died from a heart attack as a result of alcohol abuse in 1972.
 

Keith Moon:
The Who
(b. 23 August 1947, Wembley, London, England, d. 7 September 1978).
As the unpredictable, madcap drummer in the Who, Keith Moon cultivated a reputation as one
of rock's great characters. Tales of destruction were legendary, but Moon was now increasingly
debilitated by drug and alcohol abuse, and his professional life inevitably suffered. Indeed Music Must
Change, a track on WHO ARE YOU (1978), was left without a drum track when he was unable to
hold the required beat   Sadly, the album was to be the last to feature Moon, who died in September
1978 as a result of an overdose of prescription drugs.
 

Jim Morrison:
The Doors
(b.James Douglas Morrison, 8 December 1943, Melbourne, Florida, USA, d. 3 July 1971, Paris).
Having completed sessions for a new album, the last owed to Elektra, the singer escaped to Paris
where he hoped to follow a literary career and abandon music altogether. Tragically, years of
hedonistic excess had taken its toll and on 3 July 1971, Jim Morrison was found dead in his bathtub,
his passing recorded officially as a heart attack.
 

Charlie Parker:
(August 1920, Kansas City, Kansas, USA, d. 12 March 1955).
Charlie Parker was black music's first existential hero. There were problems. However, Parker's
heroin-related health problems came to a head following the notorious Loverman session of July 1946
when, after setting his hotel-room on fire, the saxophonist was incarcerated in the psychiatric wing of the
LA County Jail and then spent six months in a rehabilitation centre (commemorated in Relaxin At
Camarillo’, 1947).  His health had continued to give him problems: ulcers and cirrhosis of the liver.
His last public appearance was on 4 March 1955, at Birdland, the club named after him: it was a fiasco
—Parker and pianist Bud Powell rowed onstage, the latter storming off followed shortly by bassist Charles Mingus. Disillusioned, obese and racked by illness, Parker died eight days later in the hotel suite of Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, a wealthy aristocrat and stalwart bebop fan.
 
Gram Parsons:
(b.Cecil Ingram Connor, 5 November 1946, Winter Haven, Florida, USA, d. 19 September 1973).
Gram's death in 1973 as a result of ‘drug toxicity’ emphasized its air of poignancy, and the mysterious
theft of his body after the funeral, whereupon his road manager, Philip Kaufman cremated the body in
the desert, carrying out Gram's wishes, added to the singer's legend.
 

Elvis Aaron Presley:
(b. 8 January 1935, Tupelo, Mississippi, USA, d. 16 August 1977, Memphis, Tennessee).
The most celebrated popular music phenomenon of his era and, for many, the purest embodiment of
rock ‘n’ roll, Elvis's life and career have become part of rock legend. He collapsed onstage on a
couple of occasions and finally on 16 August 1977 his tired, burnt-out body expired. The official cause
of death was a heart attack, no doubt brought on by barbiturate usage over a long period. In the weeks
following his demise, his record sales predictably rocketed and Way Down proved a fittingly final UK
number 1.
 

Jimmy Reed:
(b.Mathis James Reed, 6 September 1925, Leland, Mississippi, USA, d. 29 August 1976, Oakland, California).
To counter the positive elements in his life, Reed was continually undermined by his own unreliability,
illness (he was an epileptic) and a fascination for the bottle. He visited Europe in the early '60s by
which time it was obvious that not all was well with him. He was supremely unreliable and prone to
appear on stage drunk.  Inactive much of the time due to illness, Reed seemed on the road to recovery
and further success, having controlled his drink problem. Ironically he died soon after of respiratory
failure. He was buried in Chicago.
 

David Ruffin: Age 50
The Temptations
(b. 18 January 1941, Meridian, Mississippi, USA, d. 1 June 1991).
The younger brother of Jimmy Ruffin and the cousin of Melvin Franklin of the Temptations.
He toured with Eddie Kendricks and Dennis Edwards as Tribute To The Temptations on a
package tour in 1991. A few weeks after the last performance he died in tragic circumstances
after an overdose of crack.
 

Carter Glen Stanley:
The Stanley Brothers
(b. 27 August 1925, McClure, Dickenson County, Virginia,  d. Bristol, Virginia, on 1 December 1966).
The hectic schedules caused Carter to develop a drink problem; his health was badly affected
and he died in hospital in Bristol, Virginia, on 1 December 1966.
 

Jack Teagarden:
(b. Weldon L. Teagarden, 29 August 1905, Vernon, Texas, USA, d. 15 January 1964).
 The ceaseless touring and drinking weakened him and he died suddenly on 15 January 1964.
 

Merle Travis:
(b.Merle Robert Travis, 29 November 1917, Rosewood, Kentucky, USA, d. 20 October 1983, Tahlequah, Oklahoma).
Says Tennessee Ernie Ford, ‘Merle Travis was one of the most talented men I ever met. He
could write songs that would knock your hat off, but he was a chronic alcoholic and when
those binges would come, there was nothing we could do about it.’ Travis died in October 1983.
 

Gene Vincent:
(Eugene Vincent Craddock, 11 February 1935, Norfolk, Virginia, USA, d. 12 October 1971).
One of the original bad boys of rock ‘n’ roll, the self-destructive Vincent was involved in a
motorcycle crash in 1955 and his left leg was permanently damaged.  Although he failed to
retrieve past glories on record, he toured frequently and survived the car crash which killed
Eddie Cochran. The often intolerable pain he suffered due to his festering leg merely exacerbated
his alcoholism, which in turn devastated his health. On 12 October 1971, his abused body finally
succumbed to a fatal seizure and rock ‘n’ roll lost one of its genuinely great rebellious spirits.
 

Dinah Washington:
(b. Ruth Jones, 29 August 1924, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA, d. 14 December 1963).
She was settling down happily with her seventh husband when she took a lethal combination
of pills, probably by accident after having too much to drink.
 

Keith Whitley:
(b. 1 July 1955, Sandy Hook, Kentucky, USA, d. 8 May 1989, Goodlettsville, Tennessee, USA).
He subsequently returned to drinking, which resulted in him dying at his home in Goodlettsville,
Tennessee in 1989.   The cause of death was accute alcoholic poisoning: a.477 alcohol level
—roughly the equivalent of 20 shots of 100 proof liquor drunk in two hours time.
 

Hank Williams:
(Hiram Williams, 17 September 1923, Georgiana, Alabama d. 1 January 1953, Virginia).
His lifestyle was akin to the later spirit of rock ‘n’ roll. He drank too much, took drugs
(admittedly, excessive numbers of painkillers for his back), played with guns, destroyed
hotel rooms, threw money out of windows and permanently lived in conflict... An 18-year-old
taxi driver, Charles Carr, was hired to drive Williams’ Cadillac. They set off with Hank having
a bottle of whiskey for company. He sank into a deep sleep. A policeman who stopped the car
for ignoring speed restrictions remarked, ‘That guy looks dead’. Five hours later, Cook discovered
that his passenger was indeed dead. Death was officially due to ‘severe heart attack with hemorrhage’
but alcohol and pills played their part. Some commentators took Williams’ current number 1, I'll Never
Get Out Of This World Alive, as an indication that he knew he was going.