We inadvertently overlooked the following contributors to rock and pop music from the 50s to the 80s – the BEST music ever made! – who passed away in 2025:
March 29
● Tracy Schwarz / (Daniel Tracy Schwarz) → Renowned traditional fiddler, banjoist and guitarist, early member of the folk revival trio New Lost City Ramblers for ten years beginning in 1962 and played on a dozen NLCR albums during the group’s heyday performing mountain ballads and songs of the pre-war deep South, left in the early 70s to tend to his Pennsylvania farm but continued to record and perform sporadically with others, including Strange Creek Ramblers and Cajun fiddler Dewey Balfa in the 70s, with his first wife Eloise in Tracy’s Family Band in the late 70s, and after 1989 with his second wife Ginny Hawker, the pair issued two albums in the early 00s along with his dozen solo albums, many of them fiddler or banjo instructional records, died in a hospice from undisclosed causes on 3/29/2025, age 86.
April 27
● Stan Love / (Stanley S. Love) → Former NBA basketball player, father of NBA star Kevin Love, brother of Beach Boy Mike Love, and caretaker in the late 70s and 80s to complicated first cousin Brian Wilson, The Beach Boys’ mentally troubled, drug-using frontman, keyboardist and songwriter, provided 24-hour protection for Wilson until removed following a beating of Dennis Wilson over his obtaining drugs for older brother Brian, filed a petition in 1990 to become Brian Wilson’s conservator but was rebuffed, died from a long-term, degenerative disease on 4/27/2025, age 76.
April 30
● Joe Louis Walker / (Louis Joseph Walker Jr.) → Versatile, award-winning contemporary blues guitarist and product of the San Francisco blues and rock scene of the 60s, played with Jimi Hendrix, Muddy Waters and Mike Bloomfield, among others, before starting a long, fruitful solo career blending traditional blues with rock, soul and gospel influences and releasing more than two dozen albums from 1986 through 2025, the last, Cold Is The Night Reimagined, a remake of his 1986 debut, was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2013, suffered from cardiac ailments in his later years and died from cardiac failure on 4/30/2025, age 75.
May 04
● David Cope / (David Howell Cope) → The “Godfather of A.I. Music,” author, composer and computer scientist credited with creating the earliest computer algorithm to generate music with his Experiments in Music Intelligence (EMI, or “Emmy”) program, in the early 80s released two albums of new classical music composed by EMI based on original scores by Bach, Chopin, Mozart and others, followed with a dozen more albums from 1997 to 2012 broadening the breadth of EMI’s capability to compose music in its own style, authored eleven textbooks on the subject of A.I. music over the years, as well as several chapters in books by others and nearly twenty articles in various scholarly computer science journals, plus several of his own novels, plays and books of poetry, taught music at the University of California, Santa Clara for 30 years from 1977, died from congestive heart failure on 5/4/2025, age 83.
May 20
● Arthur Hamilton / (Arthur Hamilton Stern) → Oscar, Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated popular music songwriter with scores of titles, mostly of his own but often as lyricist for others, best known for penning the enduring torch song “Cry Me A River,” a hit for Julie London (#9, UK #22, 1955) and source of countless covers over the decades by Joe Cocker, Ella Fitzgerald, Michael Bublé, among many others, and was added to the National Recording Registry at the U. S. Library of Congress in 2015, died at home from unspecified causes on 5/20/2025.
May 31
● Dave “Baby” Cortez / (David Cortez Clowney) → Pop and R&B keyboardist, first in Detroit-area doo wop groups in the mid-50s and then as musical director for Little Anhtony & The Imperials, gained fleeting fame in 1959 for his rendition of “The Happy Organ” (#1, R&B #5), the first pop/rock hit to feature an electronic organ as the lead instrument and the first instrumental No. 1 hit on the Billboard pop charts, after a second hit, “Rinky Dink” (#10, R&B #9, 1962) left the industry and led a reclusive life before dying from unknown causes at home in New York City on 5/31/2022, age 84. (At the time of his death, there were no known surviving family members. He was subsequently buried in a potter’s field on New York’s Hart Island. His death was not reported publicly until 2025.)
June 18
● Henry Mount Charles / (Henry Vivien Pierpont Conyngham) → Anglo-Irish aristocrat who returned from London to his family’s ancestral Slane Castle in Ireland in 1976 to save it from bankruptcy, first by opening a restaurant and then by holding open-air rock concerts in a natural amphitheater next to the castle, starting with a show by U2 in 1981 and continuing annually with performances by The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen and scores of other top acts, many of which drew up to 100,000 fans to the site, thus preserving the asset and allowing other projects to follow, including a whiskey distillery in its stables, continued to promote the one-day, Slane Festival shows despite a lung cancer diagnosis in 2014 and died from the disease in a Dublin hospital on 6/18/2025, age 74.
July 30
● Michael Lydon / (Michael Clery Lydon) → Fresh-from-college correspondent for Newsweek magazine in “Swinging” London at the height of Beatlemania and later in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco for the hippie era, reported on the major upheavals in music and culture in the two key centers and became a founding editor of Rolling Stone magazine in 1967, chronicled tours by the Grateful Dead and The Rolling Stones in the late 60s, including the infamous Altamont Speedway concert in 1969, formed a cabaret act in the 70s with future wife Ellen Mandel and later a solo stand-up comedy act, issued four jazz-pop albums in the 00s on his own record label and found time to publish over 20 books about music and the people that made it, died in a hospital from complications of Parkinson’s disease on 7/30/3025, age 82.
August 01
● Jeannie Seely / (Marilyn Jeanne Seely) → Trailblazing country music singer and songwriter with the nickname “Miss Country Soul” for her vocal style, was the first woman to host a segment on Nashville’s Grand Old Opry program and the first to appear on its stage in a miniskirt and go-go boots instead of a traditional long gingham dress, appeared more times on the Opry than any other performer (5,397 dating to 1966), released 17 studio albums from 1966 to 2020 and 26 charting singles of heartache, infidelity and feminism, among them nine Country Top 20 hits and a lone crossover hit, “Don’t Touch Me” (#85, Country #2, 1966), was a member of the Opry for 57 years and performed there for a final time in February 2025 before dying in a hospital from complications of an intestinal infection on 8/1/2025, age 85.
September 30
● Soo Catwoman / (Susan Helene Lucas) → Distinctively-coiffed groupie in the early London punk subculture with an anti-fashion hairdo featuring a close-shaved head and cat’s ears on the side, plus long licks of eyeliner, caught the attention of Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols and led to a snarling photo on the cover of the band’s fanzine, Anarchy in the U.K., quickly became the literal poster-girl for punk attitude and fashion when the photo appeared, mostly unauthorized, in all corners of the punk world, after the Sex Pistols dissolved in 1979 sang back-up for punk-rock The Invaders, then dropped from sight in the early 80s and led a quiet life as a suburban homemaker and mother, but reappeared in 1998 to record a cover of The O’Jays song “Back Stabbers” alongside punk legends Derwood Andrews of Generation X and Rat Scabies of The Damned, died from complications of meningitis at a London hospital on 9/30/2025, age 70.
November 23
● Phil Upchurch / (Phillip Rodney Upchurch) → Self-taught R&B, jazz, blues and soul guitarist for Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson, Muddy Waters, Dizzy Gillespie and many others on more than 50 albums and over 1,000 songs during a 40+ year career as a top-tier session musician, plus eight albums as a member of Cadet Records’ house band The Soulful Strings in the mid-60s, a lone album with psychedelic soul Rotary Connection in 1967, and nearly 30 albums as a frontman for his own ensembles, published two books along the way and was working on an autobiography at the time of his death from unspecified causes on 11/23/2025, age 84.
December 02
● Billy Nichols / (William Lee Nichols) → Guitarist and songwriter best known for penning the disco-funk crossover megahit “Do It (‘Til You’re Satisfied)” (#2, R&B #1, 1974) by B.T. Express, also played with Martha and the Vandellas, in Motown Records’ house band and was Marvin Gaye’s musical director in the 60s, fronted the house band at the Crystal Ballroom in New York City and played in drummer Bernard Purdie’s jazz band in the 70s, produced records for early rappers Jimmy Spicer and Count Coolout, and issued seven solo albums over 45 years, the last in 2014, died after a brief, undisclosed illness on 11/30/2025, age 85.
