Deena Webster born September 8, 1949

 

Deena Webster (born September 8, 1949) is an English folk pop singer.

Deena Webster was born in in Canterbury, Kent, England, UK., Her father served in the RAF during the Second World War and met his wife, who worked with the Red Cross. He stayed in service in peacetime and was posted to Hong Kong, where Webster spent part of her youth, and it was there that she first performed. Hong Kong had a strong American influence, musically, and Deena who was still in her teens played in folk clubs, then the City Hall, which was one of the main auditoriums in Hong Kong.

 Inspired by artists like Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Carolyn Hester, Tom Paxton, Joan Baez and Tim Hardin, Webster learned to play the acoustic guitar by ear, folk-style, with a thumb-pick. Due to the nature of her father’s employment, Webster was used to shuttling between the Far East and the UK, and she precociously set her mind on being a professional singer. It was in 1968 during one of her early appearances that Webster was spotted by the Noel Gay agency. After a few auditions she was signed. Her father had to help with her contract, as she was still under the legal age of 18.

Noel Gay was one of the biggest showbiz agencies in the UK and it boasted a vibrant publishing arm. Webster slotted into their folk roster alongside artists like Strawbs, The Pentangle, Jake Thackray, Eranga & Prianga, and Lyn & Graham McCarthy. With her management contract signed, things began to happen. Noel Gay not only secured Webster bookings as a professional musician, but also arranged a contract with Parlophone. With the success of Janis Ian in the US (only 16 when her debut LP was released), Noel Gay saw Webster as a potential UK counterpart. Cash was invested in recording Webster’s first single at Abbey Road, and the result was an up-tempo pop version of Janis Ian’s You’re Losing, backed by Wish You Were Here. Released in May 1968, the single was strongly promoted with adverts in the music press and got some radio play. You’re Losing was a strong debut and, though it failed to chart, it served as a springboard to launch Webster’s career.

                                    

Sessions for Deena Webster Is Tuesday’s Child took place around the same time that You’re Losing was produced by Tony Palmer in Abbey Road. The sessions were made up of cover versions, some of which were suggested by Palmer, such as Lionel Bart’s Who Will Buy, and Bobbie Gentry’s Hurry, Tuesday Child, which were both lushly orchestrated. The other material on the album was chosen by Deena. Thus, traditional tunes Geordie and The House Of The Rising Sun, part of her live repertoire, were performed by Webster alone. As well as Hair Of Spun Gold and Then Tangles Of My Mind, culled from Janis Ian’s debut LP, there was The Bee Gees’ New York Mining Disaster, Bob Dylan’s Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues, Tom Paxton’s The Last Thing On My Mind and two tunes by Donovan. 

Noel Gay’s contacts secured a number of TV appearances, and Webster’s small screen debut was on Simon Dee’s Dee Time in June 1968. This appearance was followed by another on David Frost Presents and, in July, she appeared on The Saturday Show. Better still, Webster became resident singer on The Wednesday Show presented by David Jacobs on BBC 1, where she performed one solo song per week. It was an amazing showcase, though Webster cannot recall the tracks that she performed. 

Material from Tuesdays Child was aired at solo concerts around the country including Sheffield, Manchester, Newcastle. And she also sang at the Albert Hall and appeared at the Savoy Hotel for three weeks, which was not her favourite gig. When not on the live treadmill, Webster enjoyed life in London’s Bayswater. “It was wonderful, magical, so much going on: hippies, folk, rock, Carnaby Street and a carnival along the King’s Road in Chelsea, with Afghan hounds on leads and open-top convertibles, Mary Quant miniskirts and wild gypsy clothes. It was a unique time; love, peace and music was everywhere.”

Despite the album failing to sell, Parlophone continued to back Webster. Her next single, in October ’68, was a wonderful version of Scarborough Fair. The track was one of the first arrangements for another artist by Barbara Moore. She was best known for her work as a singer with The Ladybirds and, when she arrived at the studio, many of the musicians thought that she’d come to help with backing vocals. She remembers that when she got onto the rostrum to conduct, the baton fell out of her palm and ended up on the bass drum which relaxed the whole atmosphere. At the end of the session, Moore received a standing ovation from the 60 string and horn players present. Sadly, the single didn’t sell well, though Moore arranged the A-side of Webster’s next 45, released in August 1969, Joey/It’s Alright With Me. Webster’s final single for Parlophone was Things Men Do/The End Of The Day.

Webster remained on the live circuit in the UK and Europe. However, it appears that, at the end of her Parlophone contract, she simply decided to wind her career down. She left London and returned to Hong Kong where she continued to perform and her music appeared in a 1975 film soundtrack of The Man From Hong Kong. She married Peter Greene, who worked for the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) and then settled down away from the spotlights. 

Later Webster was genuinely surprised that her album and singles are collectors’ items, and that her music is reaching a new audience through YouTube. “I’m quite surprised, but I was confident in my voice and felt a passion for some of the songs and loved singing for people.” As of 2014 Webster still performed but mostly in small private venues and for friends. 

(Edited from Record Collector article, Discogs & IMdB)

Sonny Rollins born September 7, 1930

Sonny Rollins (September 7, 1930 – May 25, 2026) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist who is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential of jazz musicians.

He was born Walter Theodore Rollins in New York City, and raised in its Harlem district, earning the nickname Sonny from his grandmother. Inspired by a piano-playing sister and violin-playing brother, as well as jazz heroes such as Louis Jordan and Fats Waller, he started learning the saxophone when he was seven. Such was the vibrancy of his area’s jazz scene that one of his first bands, in high school, featured future stars Jackie McLean, Kenny Drew and Art Taylor; just after leaving school he began playing with local talents such as Bud Powell and touring stars such as JJ Johnson, and started composing his own work.

Rollins once described himself as “primitive … I’m going with my feelings more than my brain”, and it was this willingness to break with convention and embrace improvisation that helped chart a new course for jazz alongside Davis, Charlie Parker and others in the bebop scene that soon loosened further into hard bop and post-bop. Davis himself wrote about how Rollins quickly became “a legend, almost a god to a lot of the younger musicians … he was an aggressive, innovative player who always had fresh musical ideas”. For his part, Rollins said when reminiscing about his early life: “Jazz is good. It’s not just lecture music, it’s not shake your booty music. It’s everything. It doesn’t make you feel like fighting. It makes you feel that there is a God.”

He was sidetracked by heroin, though, and in 1950 committed an armed robbery to raise funds to feed his habit, later describing himself as “really a despicable character … I alienated everybody except my mother”. He was jailed for 10 months on Rikers Island in New York, but managed to kick his habit with a rehab programme in 1955. Getting clean helped spur an astonishing burst of creativity: Rollins released his debut album as bandleader in 1953, and recorded 17 more by the end of the decade including landmarks such as Saxophone Colossus (1956), which featured signature tune St Thomas, nodding to calypso and named after his mother’s Caribbean place of birth; the piano-free “strolling” style explored on Way Out West (1957); and Freedom Suite (1958), where his emancipated composition on the 20-minute title track became an elegant argument for freedom in the midst of the growing civil rights movement. Collaborators in this period included Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Art Blakey and others. 

                             

                         Here's Without A Song from above LP

In 1959, Rollins took a three-year break from recording and on-stage performance, honing his craft by practising for up to 15 hours a day on the pedestrian walkway of the Williamsburg Bridge, partly so as not to disturb his neighbours – it inspired his 1962 comeback album The Bridge. This decade saw him join the avant-garde and fusion directions in the jazz scene, playing Latin American music on What’s New (1962); freer (but still highly melodic) improvisations on Sonny Meets Hawk! (1963) and East Broadway Run Down (1966). Now a major artist of international repute, Rollins toured widely, particularly to Europe and Japan. It was during an extended London season at Ronnie Scott’s, in 1965, that he composed and performed the soundtrack music for the film Alfie, (minus the theme song).Much of it in collaboration with the British composer and pianist Stan Tracey. The score was nominated for a Grammy Award.

In 1969, despite his eminence in the jazz world, Rollins again retired from music, embarking on a three-year spiritual quest which took him to Japan and India. His return in 1972 marked the start of a long and happy recording relationship with the Milestone label, which produced such universally applauded albums as The Cutting Edge (1974), Sunny Days, Starry Nights (1984) and Sonny Rollins + 3 (1995). Not all his Milestone albums were well received, however, the worst failures being attempts to connect with fads such as fusion.

In the 1980s, he continued to fuse his playing with funk and calypso, and added uncredited soloing to the Rolling Stones’ 1981 album Tattoo You. He focused his live performances away from “smoke-filled, cash-register-banging night clubs” and on to larger stages, and campaigned around the growing climate crisis with benefit concerts and his 1998 album Global Warming. “Right now, it’s like we’re on the Titanic, but everybody’s just watching Titanic,” he later said.

Rollins married twice, first (and briefly) to Dawn Finney in 1957. He met his next wife, Lucille Pearson, that year, and they married in 1965, remaining together until her death in 2004. The couple were at home just six blocks from the World Trade Center on September 11 – they evacuated to upstate New York with Rollins carrying only his saxophone. Three days later, he drove to Boston for an acclaimed live set that would be released as Without a Song: The 9/11 Concert, which won him a Grammy for best jazz instrumental solo. Rollins later told the Guardian: “I lost many prized possessions in 9/11 and learned a lesson – possessions are not where it’s at.” 

In August 2010, Rollins was named the Edward MacDowell Medalist, the first jazz composer to be so honored. The Medal has been awarded annually since 1960 to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to his or her field. Yet another major award was bestowed on Rollins on March 2, 2011, when he received the Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in a White House ceremony. Rollins accepted the award, the nation’s highest honor for artistic excellence, “on behalf of the gods of our music.”

The real triumphs of his late maturity were his live appearances. Here he would improvise with immense concentration, and often at great length, leaving audiences around the world both exhausted and exhilarated. The sheer expenditure of energy involved meant that, as he grew older, he was forced to limit the number of such concerts, to pace himself and conserve his strength. He earned a lifetime achievement Grammy award in 2004, and after touring and performing throughout his life, retired in 2014 after being diagnosed with the lung disease pulmonary fibrosis. “I went through a period of depression; I was really low,” he said in 2017. “I’d been on this life quest to try and fulfil my potential with music, and not being able to play any more meant I wasn’t going to get a chance to do that. But I eventually came out of my depression when I realised that rather than being depressed I should be grateful. I had an opportunity to live a life as a musician, which I always wanted to do.”

His death was announced on his website. No cause was given but the statement said “the Saxophone Colossus” died at his home in Woodstock, New York, on May 25, 2026. The statement also quoted Rollins reflecting on death: “I think when the creative person ends, he continues in the next existence. I’m a person who believes this life isn’t the be-all and end-all of everything. A spiritual person doesn’t feel like that.”

With more than 60 albums released from the late-1940s onwards, including collaborations with Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane and others, Rollins was one of the last living stars of the bebop generation, who took jazz from a predominantly dance or ballad form into startlingly expressive new territory.

(Edited from Guardian & Telegraph obits)

David Allen Coe born September 6, 1939

David Allan Coe (September 6, 1939 – April 29, 2026), also known by his initials DAC, was an American outlaw country singer and songwriter.

Coe was born in Akron, Ohio. The product of a broken and unhappy home, he had a troubled childhood, and at the age of 9, he was sent to a reform school in Albion, Michigan. Through most of the next 20 years, Coe was in and out of various correctional institutions, having been convicted of crimes ranging from possession of burglary tools to auto theft. While behind bars, Coe took up song writing, claiming he was encouraged by Screamin' Jay Hawkins, supposedly a fellow inmate at the time. In 1967, Coe was out of prison and he was eager to break into music, so he headed to Nashville, living in his car and occasionally camping out in front of Ryman Auditorium (the home of the Grand Ol' Opry) in hopes of getting noticed.

Coe's early music was strongly influenced by blues and R&B (he's often cited Hank Ballard as one of his favorite vocalists), and when he landed his first record deal, with Shelby Singleton's SSS Records, he cut a tough blues-based effort based on his experiences behind bars, 1969's Penitentiary Blues. The album earned enthusiastic reviews despite thin sales, and Coe hit the road in support, headlining clubs and opening dates for rock acts like Grand Funk Railroad. Coe's second album, 1973's Requiem for a Harlequin, was an introspective, poetic effort which attracted little notice. Coe's music began to evolve into a hard, honky tonk country sound, and his single "Keep Those Big Wheels Running" gained some C&W airplay, but he and Singleton soon parted ways.

While Coe's recording career wasn't making much impact, he landed a contract with a Nashville publishing house, and in 1973 Tanya Tucker scored a breakout hit with Coe's song "Would You Lay with Me (In a Field of Stone)." As Coe began making a name for himself as a songwriter, he revamped his on-stage persona, wearing rhinestone-studded suits and a mask, calling himself "the Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy" years before Glen Campbell scored a hit with a similar title. In 1974, Coe signed a deal with Columbia Records, calling his first album The Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy. With his second LP for Columbia, 1974's Once Upon a Rhyme, Coe scored a hit single of his own with a cover of John Prine & Steve Goodman's "You Never Even Called Me by My Name." After losing the mask and the suits, Coe's career as a performer took off.

                                   

He was soon making regular appearances on the country charts with tunes like "Longhaired Redneck" and "Waylon, Willie, and Me," and in 1977, Johnny Paycheck scored a massive hit with his version of Coe's song "Take This Job and Shove It." Paycheck's recording crossed over to the pop charts and was even adapted into a feature film, featuring Coe in a supporting role. By this time, Coe's outlaw credentials had been solidified by his frequent statements to reporters about his years in the penal system. Coe relocated to Florida, and Caribbean influences began to seep into his music. He was also a devotee of biker culture, and in 1978, he released two controversial albums Nothing Sacred and Underground Album, which threw racial humour in with blue material; Coe rarely performed material from his X-rated albums on-stage and in time stopped performing the songs altogether, but they would create a lingering PR problem for him, leading to frequent charges that he was a racist and misogynist, both of which he's strongly denied.

In the early '80s, Coe's recording career enjoyed a resurgence; in 1983, his song "The Ride" rose to number four on the C&W charts, followed by "Mona Lisa Lost Her Smile," "It's Great to Be Single Again," "She Used to Love Me a Lot," and "Don't Cry, Darlin'." Coe also did more acting, appearing in a pair of made-for-TV movies with Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson, The Last Days of Frank & Jesse James and Stagecoach (both aired in 1986). In addition, Coe had developed an interest in magic and began incorporating illusions into his stage shows. As the '80s wore on, Coe's outlaw image became more pronounced, as he sported larger and more elaborate tattoos, began braiding his beard, and eventually adopted a dreadlock hairstyle. By 1990, Coe's contract with Columbia came to an end, and an unpleasant divorce and troubles with the IRS made a mess of his finances and private life; one of the more colourful tales about Coe alleges that after the IRS repossessed his house, he took to living in a cave for several months, though the veracity of this story is widely questioned.

From the '90s onward, Coe survived as a road warrior; he released albums periodically through several small labels (including his own Coe-Pop), and even charted with his 1997 concert set Live: If That Ain't Country. But after losing his publishing rights in a legal battle with creditors, live work provided his primary source of income, and at various times his band included members o Confederate Railroad, future Allman Bros. and Gov't Mule guitar hero Warren Haynes, and Coe's son Tyler. In 1999, Coe met Dimebag Darrell, guitarist with heavy metal outlaws Pantera, and their fast friendship led to a collaboration. Dimebag, bassist Rex Brown, and drummer Vinnie Paul teamed up with Coe to cut an album, Rebel Meets Rebel; recorded over the space of three years, the record wasn't released until 2006, after Dimebag's death. Coe also won new fans thanks to the endorsement of another fan, Kid Rock, who namechecked him in the song "American Badass," and then invited Coe to open his 2000 concert tour. Coe and Rock began writing songs together, and one of them, "Single Father," appeared on Rock's self-titled 2003 album. 

In March 2013, Coe was involved in a serious auto accident when his SUV was struck by a tractor trailer truck; despite suffering broken ribs, head trauma, and bruised kidneys, Coe was back on the road in a matter of months, performing at Willie Nelson's annual Fourth of July picnic. In 2024, he and Hank Williams III collaborated with Hardy on his song "Live Forever".

Suffering from pneumonia he was admitted to a hospital in Daytona Beach, Florida where he passed away on April 29, 2026, at the age of 86.

(Edited from AllMusic& Wikipedia) 

Zuzu Bollin born September 5, 1923

Zuzu Bollin (September 5, 1923 – October 2, 1990) was an American Texas blues guitarist and singer from Frisco, Texas. Two 78s in the early '50s and a 1989 rediscovery album don't add up to much of a recorded legacy. But Zuzu Bollin's contribution to the Texas blues legacy shouldn't be overlooked, as his T-Bone Walker-influenced sound typified post-war Lone Star blues guitar.

A. D. Bollin was born in Frisco, Texas. His social security records say he was born in 1923, though most music references give his birth year as 1922. As a boy, Bollin was influenced by two uncles, amateur guitarists, who played the records of Blind Lemon Jefferson and Leroy Carr and other early blues musicians. He moved to Dallas with his mother by the 1930s, served in the navy from 1944 to 1946. He did earn the odd dollar strumming hillbilly songs, of all things, in the officer’s club, but he didn’t take it seriously. He planned on pressing clothes for a living. Later, after his discharge, Bollin discovered that a new blues subgenre called jump was popular. Still with no plans for a musical career, he began listening to T-Bone Walker, Wynonie Harris, and Eddie Vinson.

Then, almost overnight, it happened. Bollin moved to Omaha, where he often visited a joint that featured a comic called Rabbit. On a whim Bollin convinced Rabbit, a fellow Texan, to let a homeboy sing one with the band. Bollin let ’em have it with a natural bluesy baritone so impressive he was hired on the spot as the club’s singer. For two months he performed there, following Rabbit. Bollin forgot all about pressing clothes; he was in showbiz! After the Omaha gig played out, Bollin moved back to Texas, where he played in local bands. It was a giant step up when he joined the mighty Ernie Fields jazz/jump orchestra.

Zuzu sang for four months with Fields, during which time they entertained at prestigious civilian venues as well as Army camps in Washington, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada. After Fields told him to “stick with singin’, boy, ’cause you’ll never be no guitar player,” Bollin, irked, got a guitar of his own and set about honing his skills. He got good enough to hire on as a guitarist on a Percy Mayfield show but quit after touring several states because Mayfield wouldn’t let him sing. In 1947 he was living in Denton, where he played in the band of Texan E. X. Brooks. He also performed in bands with such illustrious Texas reedmen as Buster Smith, Booker Ervin and Adolphus Sneed. During this time he took the nickname "Zuzu" from his favourite brand of ginger cookies called Zu Zu ginger snaps.

                                  

In 1949 Bollin formed a group with renowned saxists Leroy Cooper and David "Fathead" Newman. Both of these musicians played on his 1951 recording of one of the true classics of Texas blues, "Why Don't You Eat Where You Slept Last Night?" (flip side "Matchbox Blues"), for the short-lived label Torch. Bollin's voice was deep and strong, and his guitar break was in the jazzy T-Bone Walker style. The 1951 piece garnered a bit of regional fame for Bollin, so he figured he was entitled to raise his performance price a bit. Reputedly this irked Dallas nightclub boss Jack Ruby, who used his influence to quash the record.  If it happened, the power play doesn’t seem to have done much real damage. A Torch follow-up, "Stavin' Chain"/"Cry, Cry, Cry," found Bollin backed by Jimmy McCracklin's combo. No more recording ensued after that and Zuzu simply started taking more out-of-town dates, touring again with Ernie Fields, this time for three months.

The work and the money were good, but life on the blues circuit could be grim. In late 1957, Zuzu hit the road with the Joe Morris outfit. Morris was a Lionel Hampton alum who knew how to do absolutely nothing but blow trumpet, and that’s precisely what doctors had told him not to do. Joe Morris died on the road, far from his Alabama home. Zuzu led the band for the rest of the tour.  When it was over, he sent Morris’s few possessions back to his widow. Zuzu’s next tour was with Jimmy Reed, a raging alcoholic who could still slay audiences despite his legendary boozing. The tour broke up after a bad car accident in New Mexico in which Zuzu almost got killed. Zuzu kept working but in lesser venues, and he wasn’t as eager to go on the road as he once had been. The death blow to his career came when the Black musician’s union, Local 168, merged with all-white Local 147. Still, its deleterious effect was that various Black entertainers of merit could no longer get enough work to stay in the business.Zuzu Bollin was one. He faded from sight, and no one in the world music community heard a word from him for a quarter century. 

His obscurity lasted until 1987, when blues enthusiast Chuck Nevitt found him in a poverty-row rooming house near downtown Dallas. He asked the bluesman if he’d like to go to some joints, sit in with the bands. Maybe they could lay the groundwork for a comeback. Hell yes, responded Bollin, who said he was on hard times indeed and if given a chance to sing his way out of them he’d take it, and that was for damn sure. The first place they hit was Fort Worth’s Bluebird, the old-style blues bar with the ambience of a bait store.  Zuzu took the stage with the band of U.P. Wilson, a guitarist who counts Zuzu as an influence, and let fly.

Nevitt took Bollin down the comeback trail, acting as his manager and producing the acclaimed LP Zuzu Bollin: Texas Bluesman, sponsored by the Dallas Blues Society and released on the Antone's label in 1989. Bollin was suddenly ubiquitous in Dallas nightspots. The friendly, personable bluesman sometimes performed with the Juke Jumpers, but his most empathic accompanist was Brian "Hash Brown" Calway. In 1989 Bollin played at the Chicago Blues Festival and toured Europe, playing at Holland's prestigious Blues Estafette. During April 1990 he sang and played on four tracks of Hash Browns T Is for Texas album (not released until 1993). His impressive comeback was curtailed by cancer, from which he died on October 19, 1990.

(Edited from Texas State Historical Association, Record Town Texas & AllMusic) 

Jerry Ragovoy born September 4, 1930

Jerry Ragovoy (September 4, 1930 – July 13, 2011) was an American songwriter and record producer who specialised in creating three-minute songs of intense emotion, enhanced by complex orchestral arrangements and was one of several white American songwriters and producers who, in the 1960s, helped mould the new African-American sound of soul music.

Jordan "Jerry" Ragovoy was born in Philadelphia, the son of a Hungarian-born Jewish optometrist. As a child he learned the piano and absorbed European classical music. He wrote his first song at eight, describing it later as "a direct steal from the Nutcracker Suite". Ragovoy's interest in African-American music was sharpened after leaving high school, when he worked in an electrical appliance store that also sold 78rpm records. He supplemented his income by giving piano lessons.

The Castelles

One day in 1952, a group of black teenagers, who had been singing at high school dances as the Castelles, came in with a demo recording to play to the shop's owner, Herb Slotkin. Impressed, Slotkin and Ragovoy set up Grand Records to release tracks by the group. Success was immediate when My Girl Awaits Me was a national R&B hit, with Ragovoy the pianist and producer. The next record, This Silver Ring, was the first of dozens of Ragovoy songs to be recorded over the next two decades. Grand Records never replicated the success of that first release and soon Ragovoy was working with Philly's premier pop label, Chancellor Records, home to Frankie Avalon and Fabian. There he wrote A Wonderful Dream for the Majors, a top 30 hit in 1962, a novelty number for which Ragovoy persuaded the group's male lead singer to sing falsetto.

                                   

Unhappy with the commercialism of Chancellor, Ragovoy moved to New York City. The first person he contacted was the songwriter and producer Bert Berns, whom Ragovoy had met when Berns was a music publisher's rep pitching songs to record companies. Berns needed a song for a new black vocal group, Garnet Mimms and the Enchanters. "He'd been working on this song called Cry Baby for six months," Ragovoy told the journalist Tony Cummings. "He was disgusted: he couldn't complete the song no-how. But one day, over at Berns' house, we got the thing finished." Cry Baby (one of a number of songs for which Ragovoy used the pseudonym Norman Meade) was a million-seller in 1963. Its mixture of pop, gospel, R&B and Ragovoy's lush string-laden orchestration has earned it the reputation of a pioneering soul recording. Among its backing singers was Dionne Warwick. Cry Baby also launched the most successful period of Ragovoy's career. 

Jerry with Garnet Mimms & The Enchanters

Working mainly with Berns until the latter's premature death in 1967, he crafted a series of soul records that combined high sales with artistic excellence. Among these were Time Is On My Side by Irma Thomas (1964), Erma Franklin's Piece of My Heart (1967), Howard Tate's Ain't Nobody Home (1966) and Lorraine Ellison's sublime Stay With Me (co-written by George David Weiss), a slice of grand emotion to rival almost any operatic aria (Ragovoy once said of this song "that's my Puccini influence"). Ellison's 1966 performance was recorded with the help of a full orchestra assembled in the studio to accompany Frank Sinatra, after Sinatra had cancelled.

Several of these songs were to become big hits for white artists. Time Is On My Side was a global hit for the Rolling Stones and the Walker Brothers recorded Stay With Me, while Piece of My Heart became the Janis Joplin hit. Joplin also recorded versions of Cry Baby, and another song Ragovoy wrote for Ellison, Try (Just a Little Bit Harder). Their composer was less impressed by some of these efforts, once complaining that "lots of singers, male and female, felt they were obliged to scream until the veins popped out of their necks", than by the royalty cheques they brought him. As late as 1999, it was rumoured that the producers of a proposed film about Joplin had paid more than $1m to use Piece of My Heart.

Outside the soul music genre, Ragovoy worked with such artists as the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the exiled South African singer Miriam Makeba, whose version of a traditional tune Pata Pata was a Top 20 hit in 1967. In the late 1960s, Ragovoy ploughed some of his earnings into a New York recording studio, the Hit Factory, which he was to sell in 1975. Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life was among the albums made there. Ragovoy also owned a shortlived record label, Rags. After 1970, Ragovoy was much less active in the record industry, although he won a Grammy award as producer of the cast album of the Broadway show Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope. In 1974, Ragovoy teamed up with Dionne Warwick to produce her Then Came You album, which peaked at No. 35 in the US Billboard R&B albums chaHe also produced albums by Bonnie Raitt and Milkwood. 

He decided to come out of retirement in 2003 for a reunion with Howard Tate, writing the songs for an album by the veteran singer.  A comprehensive collection of his best productions, The Jerry Ragovoy Story: Time Is On My Side, was issued on CD by the British company Ace Records in 2008.  Prior to Joplin's death, Ragovoy wrote a song especially for her next album, titled "I'm Gonna Rock My Way to Heaven". The song was never recorded or performed until it was included in the theatrical production One Night with Janis Joplin, written and directed by Randy Johnson with arrangements and musical direction by Len Rhodes. Ragovoy was in attendance on opening night when the show premiered at Portland Center Stage on May 27, 2011.

Ragovoy was taken ill shortly after giving an interview for a documentary film about Berns. He died, due to complications from a stroke at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, New York City on July 13, 2011, at the age of 80. In 2025 Ragovoy was posthumously Inducted Into the Songwriters Hall of Fame during an intimate ceremony held in New York City.

(Edited from Dave Laing obit @ The Guardian, Wikipedia & Broadway World)

Ernie Henry born September 3, 1926

Ernie Henry (September 3, 1926 – December 29, 1957) was an American jazz alto saxophonist. Not well known, but even in his brief lifetime, he played with Monk, Mingus, and Gillespie – and he was on the verge of bridging the gap from bebop to free jazz. However, his life ended far too soon, but certainly deserves to be remembered. 

Ernie Henry with Tadd Dameron

Ernie Albert Henry was born and grew up in Brooklyn and learned piano at 8, violin at 10, and turned to the alto sax while in high school. He began playing in the style of Johnny Hodges, who of course was the alto man at the time. Ernie's first memory of hearing Charlie Parker dates back to 1939, when he happened to catch a radio broadcast of the Jay McShann band from the Savoy Ballroom and, he recalls, was immediately impressed. 

His professional career began after his army service, when in 1947 Tadd Dameron began to show an interest in his playing and made him known to musicians who worked in the clubs on 52nd street; as a result he performed with Dameron, Fats Navarro, Charlie Ventura, Max Roach, Georgie Auld and Kenny Dorham. After working with Dizzy Gillespie’s big band (1948-49) he joined Illinois Jacquet (1950). 

                     Here's "Gone With The Wind" from above LP

                                   

As an alto saxophonist, Ernie Henry naturally lived in the shadow of the great Charlie Parker at that time. But the youngster had a knack for giving his solos a different twist and avoiding typical Parker phrases as much as possible. In pieces like “The Chase” and “The Squirrel” (both from 1947 with Dameron/Navarro), his playing tended towards a rough cry and adventurous runs through the octaves.

Charlie Parker

In the early 1950s, Ernie Henry disappeared from the scene for an extended period. It was an open secret that he was battling drug addiction. Heroin use was a sad trend among jazz musicians at the time, and many talents died young from overdoses, including Freddie Webster (1947), Sonny Berman (1947), Dick Twardzik (1955), Carl Perkins (1958), Shadow Wilson (1959), and Sonny Clark (1963). Even Charlie Parker, the leading alto saxophonist of bebop, lost his life in 1955 – heroin and alcohol played a significant role in his demise. 

When Ernie Henry returned to the scene a year after Parker’s death, his style had visibly matured. He no longer compulsively avoided sounding like his great predecessor but integrated the “Parker tone” into his own phrasing. His sound was aggressive, almost tenor-like. He played virtuoso bop but led his lines across large intervals into remote territories. It’s no wonder that the later avant-gardist Eric Dolphy was a big fan of his. In 1956 he recorded with Matthew Gee and just a few days before his 30th birthday, Ernie Henry made his debut album: “Presenting Ernie Henry” (Riverside, 1956). In September 1957, Henry made more recordings as a bandleader, but they were only released after his death.            

His most famous studio sessions took place in October 1956 with Thelonious Monk. The pianist had booked a distinctive frontline of two saxophones for the album “Brilliant Corners” (Riverside, 1956) (the tenor saxophonist was Sonny Rollins), and he had composed three exciting pieces for it. The second studio date (lasting a full four hours) was entirely dedicated to the title track. “Brilliant Corners” is an highly unusual composition. The band made 25 attempts, but in the end, the producer had to piece the piece together from multiple takes. Ernie Henry was on the verge of a nervous breakdown in the studio. Because Monk’s intricate piano accompaniment irritated him, the bandleader even stopped playing during Henry’s solo (Monk often did the same when playing with Miles Davis). In response, Ernie Henry embarked on adventurous harmonic journeys in his solo.

Kenny Dorham, the trumpeter on Henry’s debut album, returned the favour at the end of 1957 by recording the album “2 Horns/2 Rhythm” (Riverside, 1957) together with the saxophonist. Once again, Henry took the opportunity to harmonically loosen his controlled, jagged style. His fantastic playing here points directly toward the freer jazz of the 1960s. These later recordings show that he was beginning to develop a strongly individual style that seemed primed to send him to future stardom. Unfortunately, four weeks after these recordings, on December 29, 1957, Ernie Henry mysteriously died in his sleep at the age of 31. A heroin overdose has been alleged, but he also suffered from very high blood pressure.

(Edited from Fidelity Magazine, New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, and Liner Notes) (NB. There are very few photos of Ernie on the web and many that say that it's him but it isn't, so beware)