We note with sadness the following contributors to rock and pop music of the 50s through the 80s – the BEST music ever made! – who passed on last month:
December 03
● Steve “The Colonel” Cropper / (Steven Lee Cropper) → Southern soul guitarist, songwriter, producer, highly regarded session player, and member of legendary Stax Records house band Booker T. & The MG’s (“Green Onions,” #3, 1962) and The Blues Brothers Band (“Soul Man,” #14, 1979), his guitar work can be heard on hundreds of songs by a wide range of artists, many of which bear his production credit and many his co-songwriting credit, including “Dock Of The Bay” (#1, R&B 1, 1971) with Otis Redding, worked in later years as a in-demand, freelance session musician and in collaborations with dozens of top-tier artists, issued twelve albums of his own through 2024, was voted #36 on Rolling Stone magazine’s 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, and died in a rehabilitation facility from undisclosed causes on 12/3/2025, age 84.
December 04
● Tetsu Yamauchi → Bassist for 60s Japanese prog rock Micky Curtis & the Samurais, relocated to London and soon replaced Andy Fraser in hard-rockers The Faces (“Stay With Me,” #17, 1971), then joined proto-metal/hard rock Free and received songwriting credits for “Wishing Well” (UK #13, 1972) near the end of the band’s run, thereafter worked as a session musician until returning to Japan and eventually retiring from music in the late 90s to spend his last decades in a quiet, spiritual lifestyle, died from undisclosed causes on 12/04/2025, age 79.
December 06
● Jerry Kasenetz / (Jerrold H. Kasenetz) → With business/music partner Jeffry Katz, leading figure in the development of 60s-70s light pop “bubblegum” music, the pair wrote and/or produced six, million-selling pop hits between 1967 and 1969, mostly by pre-fab studio bands, at a time when harder rock gained dominance, including “Little Bit O’Soul” (#2, 1967) by The Music Explosion, “Simon Says” (#4, UK #5, 1968) by the 1910 Fruitgum Company, and “Yummy Yummy Yummy” (#4, UK #5, 1969) by Ohio Express, among others hits, and reprised with “Black Betty” (#10, 1977) by pre-fab pseudo-Southern rock Ram Jam, opened a recording studio in the late 70s on Long Island but left the industry shortly thereafter and lived outside the limelight until dying from complications after a fall in his home on 12/06/2025, age 82.
December 07
● Bernie Toorish / (John Bernard Toorish) → Toronto native, New York transplant co-founder, occasional songwriter, music arranger and tenor vocals in 50s pop harmony quartet The Four Lads, wrote the group’s first hit, “The Mocking Bird” (#23, 1952) and another, “Rain, Rain, Rain” (#30, 1954) during their run of over 30 charting singles at the dawn of rock ‘n’ roll, left in the early 70s for a career in the insurance business but continued to sing and front pop vocal groups for decades, often with former Four Lads groupmates, died from natural causes in hospice on 12/7/2025, age 94.
December 08
● Steve Duncan → Drummer in Rick Nelson’s The Stone Canyon Band (“Garden Party,” #6, AC #1, 1972) before co-founding The Desert Rose Band alongside Chris Hillman (of The Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers), the group charted sixteen singles on the country charts, eight of them in the Top 10, including “I Still Believe In You” (Country #1. 1988) over six years, left the group in 1991 to form the Hellecasters with DRB bandmate John Jorgenson, played with the band for decades in between gigs as a session drummer, died from undisclosed causes on 12/8/2025, age 72.
December 12
● Manny Guerra / (Manuel R. Guerra) → Hugely influential Tejano music record producer, music engineer and recording artist, first as a member of Sunny and The Sunglows with the crossover hit “Talk To Me” (#11, 1963) and numerous appearances on American Bandstand, and, starting in the 70s, as a record label executive, recording studio owner and talent manager, produced and promoted albums by Latin Breed, Jay Perez, and Shelly Lares, among many others, most notably Selena Quintanilla’s hits during the Tejano music boom of the 90s, died from an undisclosed type of cancer on 12/12/2025, age 86.
December 14
● Carl Carlton → Teenage R&B/soul singer billed as “Little Carl” Carlton in an unsuccessful attempt to capitalize on “Little Stevie” Wonder’s success in the early 60s, dropped the “Little” and achieved relative stardom with eighteen soul-funk charting singles from 1968 to 1986, including early disco hit “Everlasting Love” (#6, R&B #11, 1974) and the Grammy-nominated “She’s A Bad Mama Jama (She’s Built, She’s Stacked)” (#22, R&B #2, 1981), was featured on the “Rhythm, Love, and Soul” segment of the PBS-TV series American Soundtrack in 2003 and issued a gospel-themed single, “God Is Good” in 2010, suffered a stroke in 2019 and died from its complications on 12/14/2025, age 73.
● Rob Reiner / (Robert Reiner) → Popular actor/comedian on the 70s groundbreaking program All In The Family and a score of other film and TV roles over a nearly 60 year career, and a highly-respected film director with dozens of beloved films, including the rock-mockumentary comedy This Is Spinal Tap (1984) satirizing the music industry through a fictitious heavy metal band, other notable films include the BAFTA-winning When Harry Met Sally… (1989) and the Oscar-winning Misery (1990), had just released the sequel, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues when murdered along with his wife, photographer Michelle Singer Reiner, in their home by their adult son on 12/14/2025, age 78.
December 15
● Joe Ely / (Earle Rewell Ely Jr.) → Progressive country singer, songwriter and guitarist with music encompassing a broad brush of sounds, including rock, blues, Tex-Mex, honky tonk and Western swing, starting with teenage chums Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock in early 70s Americana and country-rock The Flatlanders, then enjoyed a fifty-year solo career with sixteen studio albums, six live albums and a lone chart hit, “Musta Notta Gotta Lotta” (Mainstream Rock #40, 1981), as well as a long list of sessions, tours, Flatlander reunions and collaborations with artists as diverse as Bruce Springsteen, The Clash, Linda Ronstadt and Uncle Tupelo, died from a combination of Parkinson’s disease, Lewy body dementia and pneumonia on 12/15/2025, age 78.
December 19
● Mick Abrahams / (Michael Timothy Abrahams) → Co-founding member and original lead guitarist for long-lived Brit folk-rock Jethro Tull, left after a 1968 falling-out with frontman Ian Anderson and before the group achieved widespread success (“Living In The Past,” #11, 1973), shortly formed blues-rock Blodwyn Pig and became the band’s lead singer, lead guitarist and chief songwriter until dissolving the band in 1970, spent the ensuing forty years issuing multiple solo albums, fronting incarnations of Blodwyn Pig and the Mick Abrahams Band, and sporadically collaborating with Ian Anderson on acoustic, blues-based recordings and live performances, largely retired following a 2009 heart attack and stroke but still managed to issue a final studio album, Revived! in 2015 with guest and former Jethro Tull bandmate Martin Barre, suffered through declining health until dying from undisclosed causes on 12/19/2025, age 82.
December 22
● Chris Rea / (Christopher Anton Rea) → Gravelly-voiced English singer, prolific songwriter and virtuoso slide guitarist with wide success in the UK and Europe but little impact in the US, his debut “Fool (If You Think It’s Over)” (#12, AC #1, 1978) was the highest among six charting US single and “Working On It” (#73, Mainstream Rock #1, 1989) the last, whereas in the UK alone nearly 50 of his singles charted, with 13 reaching the UK Top 10, following pancreatic cancer surgery in 2001 switched to a slower, more bluesy style, opened his own studio and record label so as to release his music without profit-minded label executives, and recorded a further ten albums before his last in 2019, died from complications after a stroke on 12/22/2025, age 74.
December 24
● Perry Bamonte / (Perry Archangelo Bamonte) → Roadie and guitar tech for post-punk, art-glam-goth rock The Cure (“Friday I’m In Love,” #18, Modern Rock #1, 1992) before moving to the front of the stage in 1990 as guitarist, keyboardist and songwriter for the band, left in 2005 after being dismissed inexplicably by frontman Robert Smith and kept a low-profile for several years fly fishing, providing illustrations for a fly fishing magazine, and managing a retirement stable for elderly horses, joined London-based rock band Love Amongst Ruin in 2012 and resumed playing guitar and keyboards for The Cure in 2022 until suffering through a short, unspecified illness and dying at home on Christmas Eve, 12/24/2025, age 65.
● Howie Klein / (Howard Klein) → College concert booking manager in the 60s, San Francisco punk radio DJ in the early 70s, founder of new wave label 415 Records in 1978, joined Sire Records in 1987 and became president of Reprise Records in 1989, over a dozen years oversaw a stable of diverse artists including Eric Clapton, the Ramones, Ice-T and Joni Mitchell, among others, left at the merger of Reprise/Warner Brothers with AOL in 2001 and spent two decades devoted to full-time advocacy for free speech and against censorship in the music industry and broader society through speaking engagements, membership in various progressive organizations and his website, DownWithTyranny!, died after a long battle with pancreatic cancer on Christmas Eve, 12/24/2025, age 77.
December 26
● Don Bryant / (Donald Maurice Bryant) → R&B/soul session singer at Hi Records in the 60s, released a solo album in 1969 but focused on songwriting in the 70s and is credited on over 150 songs as a staff writer at Hi, including several for future wife Ann Peebles, with whom he co-wrote the now pop standard “I Can’t Stand The Rain” (#38, R&B #6, 1974), shifted to singing gospel music on three albums in the 80s and 90s, then dropped out of sight for 15 years until being coaxed back into the recording studio in 2016 to record two albums paying homage to Memphis soul music, one of which earned a Grammy nomination for him at age 78, suffered from various health issues in his later years and died on 12/26/2025, age 83.
