Ustad Imrat Khan

sitar and surbahar player

17.11.1935 - 22.11.2018

Ustad Imrat Khan is one of the world's greatest players of the surbahar, a deep-toned, sitar-like stringed instrument that was developed by his great-grandfather, Ustad Sahabdad Khan. For decades, Khan has recorded extensively on both his instruments. His full performance practice starts with a surbahar alap in dhrupad ang (embellished with more romantic touches), followed by a shorter alap on the sitar leading into gat in traditional Imdadkhani style.

Khan has toured in Europe, the Americas, and East and Southeast Asia. He spends a portion of each year teaching classical Indian music and instructing sitar students at Washington University in Saint Louis.

Imrat Khan is the senior performer of the Imdadkhani gharana, the school of sitar and surbahar performance named after his grandfather Imdad Khan.

Roy Bailey

guitarist, singer

20.10.1935 - 20.11.2018

Roy Bailey was an English socialist folk singer. Colin Irwin from the music magazine Mojo said Bailey represented "the very soul of folk's working class ideals... a triumphal homage to the grass roots folk scene as a radical alternative to the mainstream music industry."

Eddie C. Campbell

guitarist, singer

06.05.1939 - 20.11.2018

Eddie C. Campbell was an American blues guitarist and singer in the Chicago blues scene. In his early years as a professional musician, he played as a sideman with Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, Little Johnny Taylor, and Jimmy Reed. In 1976, Willie Dixon hired him to play in the Chicago Blues All-Stars. Campbell's debut album, King of the Jungle, featuring Carey Bell on harmonica and Lafayette Leake on piano, was released the next year.

In 1984, Campbell left Chicago for Europe, living first in the Netherlands and later in Duisburg, Germany, where he remained for ten years before returning to Chicago. Campbell's last album was Spider Eating Preacher (Delmark, 2012). It was nominated for a Blues Music Award in 2013 in the category Traditional Blues Album.

James Augustus McNaughton (Trevor McNaughton)

singer (The Melodians)

16.12.1940 - 20.11.2018

Born in Hanover, the dreadlocked McNaughton started The Melodians in 1963 in Greenwich Farm, Kingston. Trevor McNaughton had the idea of putting a group together and contacted the then 14-year-old Tony Brevett, who had already had success in local talent shows. Brevett recruited his friend Brent Dowe and the group was formed, with Brevett taking on lead vocal duties.

They were one of the most successful acts of the 1966-68 rocksteady era, recording mainly for producer Duke Reid. Many of their songs, including Little Nut Tree and By The Rivers of Babylon, are reggae classics.

Norris Weir

singer (The Jamaicans)

23.10.1946 - 17.11.2018

Reverend Norris Weir was founding member of the legendary group, The Jamaicans and winner of the 1967 festival song, “Ba Ba Boom”. Weir has been an ordained minister of religion since 2010. He has recorded 10 gospel albums.

Cyril Pahinui

guitarist, singer

21.04.1950 - 17.11.2018

Cyril Pahinui was a slack-key guitarist and singer of Hawaiian music. He has contributed to more than 35 Hawaiian musical releases and three Grammy Award-winning compilations of Hawaiian music. His 1994 album 6 & 12 String Slack Key won the Nā Hōkū Hanohano award for Instrumental Album of the Year and contains "No Ke Ano Ahiahi", perhaps the greatest 12-string kī hō'alu (slack key) and vocal recording ever made. His 2007 album He'eia won the Nā Hōkū Hanohano award for Island Music Album of the Year.

In 2013, Pahinui received a fellowship from the Native Arts & Culture Foundation to produce Let's Play Music! Slack Key with Cyril Pahinui & Friends, a program of traditional Hawaiian music developed for PBS Hawaii. In 2014, he received a Nā Hōkū Hanohano Lifetime Achievement Award for perpetuating the craft of slack key music through performance and teaching. He was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2017.

Geoffrey Betts (Al James)

bassist (Showaddywaddy)

13.01.1945 - 16.11.2018

Bassist Al James, whose real name was Geoffrey Betts, was one of the founding members of the pop group Showaddywaddy. Al James was with the group for 35 years and retired in 2008.

Roy Linwood Clark

guitarist, banjo player, singer

15.04.1933 - 15.11.2018

Roy Linwood Clark was an American singer and musician. He is best known for having hosted Hee Haw, a nationally televised country variety show, from 1969 to 1997. Clark was an important and influential figure in country music, both as a performer and helping to popularize the genre.

During the 1970s, Clark frequently guest-hosted for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show and enjoyed a 30-million viewership for Hee Haw. Clark was highly regarded and renowned as a guitarist and banjo player, skilled in the traditions of many genres, including classical guitar, country music, Latin music, bluegrass, and pop. He had hit songs as a pop vocalist (e.g., "Yesterday, When I Was Young" and "Thank God and Greyhound"), and his instrumental skill had an enormous effect on generations of bluegrass and country musicians. He became a member of the Grand Ole Opry in 1987, and, in 2009, was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Ivan Nikolayevich Smirnov

guitarist

09.09.1955 - 15.11.2018

Ivan Nikolayevich Smirnov was regarded as one of the greatest guitar players in Russia. He was proficient in many different styles, such as fusion, world, Russian folk, folk-jazz, and new flamenco. Smirnov lived in Russia and played with musicians such as Mikhail Smirnov, Sergey Klevensky, Dmitry Safonov, and Aleksei Kozlov.

Hugh Alexander McDowell

celist (Electric Light Orchestra)

31.07.1953 - 06.11.2018

Hugh Alexander McDowell was an English cellist best known for his membership of the Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) and related acts.

Mark Fosson

guitarist, singer

1950 - 02.11.2018

Mark Fosson was an American singer-songwriter and American primitive guitarist who grew up in eastern Kentucky, where he began writing songs while he was still in his early teens. He got his start in the mid to late 1960s, playing in local rock bands until going into service with the Air Force in 1971, and returning home around 1974. In the late 1970s, he sent some song demos to John Fahey's West Coast-based Takoma Records, and Fahey, impressed with what he heard, offered Fosson a recording deal. Fosson lost no time in relocating to Los Angeles and began recording, but as bad luck would have it, Takoma was in some difficulty, and the label soon folded. Fahey allowed Fosson to retain the master tapes of the sessions, however.

Now located on the West Coast, Fosson met fellow songwriter Edward Tree, and the two began working together, forming the Bum Steers, a country-tinged group, in the late 1980s, eventually being invited to play the Grand Ol' Opry at the request of Porter Wagoner. Fosson's material appeared on several soundtracks through the 1990s.

In 2001, he began collaborating with singer-songwriter Lisa O'Kane, who recorded several of his songs, including the No. 1 European single "Little Black Cloud" and Fosson also began recording a solo project, Jesus on a Greyhound, which was released on New Light Entertainment/Universal. The record drew positive reviews and Fosson was frequently compared to Americana music artists such as Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Joe Ely, John Prine and Guy Clark. The Fahey material finally saw the light of day as The Lost Takoma Sessions from Drag City Records in 2006. His song "Another Fine Day" was included on Volume 3 of the Imaginational Anthem acoustic guitar compilation from Tompkins Square Records.

Roy Anthony Hargrove

trumpeter

16.10.1969 - 02.11.2018

Roy Anthony Hargrove was an American jazz trumpeter. He won worldwide notice after winning two Grammy Awards for differing types of music, in 1997 and in 2002. Hargrove primarily played with jazz luminaries such as Wynton Marsalis and Herbie Hancock.

Hargrove was the bandleader of the progressive group The RH Factor, which combined elements of jazz, funk, hip-hop, soul, and gospel music. Its members have included Chalmers "Spanky" Alford, Pino Palladino, James Poyser, Jonathan Batiste and Bernard Wright.

Hargrove used a jazz sound with a lot of groove and funk, performing and recording with neo soul singer D'Angelo, resulting in Voodoo. Hargrove also performed the music of Louis Armstrong in Roz Nixon's musical production "Dedicated To Louis Armstrong" as part of the Verizon Jazz Festival. In 2002, he collaborated with D'Angelo and Macy Gray, the Soultronics, and Nile Rodgers, on two tracks for Red Hot & Riot, a compilation album in tribute to the music of afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti. He acted as sideman for jazz pianist Shirley Horn and rapper Common on the album Like Water for Chocolate and in 2002 with singer Erykah Badu on Worldwide Underground.

Glenn Schwartz

guitarist, singer (James Gang, Pacific Gas & Electric)

20.03.1941 - 02.11.2018

Glenn Schwartz was the American original guitarist for The James Gang, based in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. The band did not have a recording contract, nor did the group gain any attention until Joe Walsh joined the band.

Schwartz left the James Gang in late December 1967 when he moved to California. He later joined the Los Angeles based blues band Pacific Gas & Electric where he first came to the attention of rock audiences, and, in 1970, scored a national top 20 hit with the song "Are You Ready?".

Tired of the rock and roll life, he left PG&E to join a pioneering Gospel rock group All Saved Freak Band, which was the musical evangelistic arm of an Ohio religious group-turned-cult, the Church of the Risen Christ, headed by Larry Hill. Schwartz's life in this cult with Rev. Larry Hill is explored in the book, Fortney Road: Life, Death, and Deception in a Christian Cult by Jeff C. Stevenson (2015). All told, Schwartz recorded four albums with the Freak Band before leaving it in 1980.

Through the 1990s and 2000s, Schwartz played weekly blues gigs at bars in Cleveland's The Flats neighborhood, often with his brother, Gene. Changes at venues and health issues kept him from playing live for a few years, but Schwartz returned to the stage for a 75th birthday show and an impromptu jam at Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival with Joe Walsh and The Arcs, featuring Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys. As of 2016, Schwartz has brought his celebrated guitar playing — and preacher-style stage presence — back to Cleveland bars regularly and has gone back into a Nashville studio with Auerbach.