Johnnie Wright born 13 May 1914

Johnnie Wright (May 13, 1914 – September 27, 2011) was an American country music singer-songwriter and bandleader, best known as one half of the influential duo Johnnie & Jack with Jack Anglin and for managing the career of his wife, Kitty Wells, the first female country artist to top the charts with "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" in 1952. In hit recordings such as Poison Love, Cryin' Heart Blues and Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight, Johnnie & Jack spiced country music's plain cooking with exotic dashes of Latin American music and black doo‑wop vocalising, yet for a decade they were valued cast members of the conservative Grand Ole Opry.

Wright was born into a farming family in the small town of Mount Juliet, east of Nashville. By his early 20s he was singing on one of the city's radio stations, WSIX, with The Harmony Girls - his sister Louise Wright and his new wife, Muriel Deason, for whom he had suggested the stage name Kitty Wells, drawn from the title of an old song. In 1938 he met Anglin, who had been working in a trio with his brothers Jim and Red, and who soon afterwards married Louise Wright. This close-knit group spent the next five years on various south-eastern radio stations before Anglin was drafted into the military in 1943. Re-forming in 1946, Johnnie & Jack recorded for the King and Apollo labels and had a brief spell on the Grand Ole Opry before moving to a rival station, KWKH in Shreveport, Louisiana, where they participated in the first broadcast, in April 1948, of the Louisiana Hayride, a show that would prove hugely popular for many years.

                                     

The following year they signed with RCA-Victor, having been recommended by the guitarist Chet Atkins, who had played the fiddle in their band briefly in the mid-1940s. In 1951 came the chart success of Poison Love and Cryin' Heart Blues, with their rumba rhythm emphasised by maracas. There was a similar Latin touch to Ashes of Love, written by them and Jack's brother Jim. RCA issued it as a B-side, but it has since become a country and bluegrass standard. In 1952 they were invited back to the Grand Ole Opry, this time to stay.

Johnnie & Jack took an even more innovative step when they decided, in 1954, to adapt songs from the R&B chart: first the Four Knights' (Oh Baby Mine) I Get So Lonely, which they took to No 1 in the country chart, then the Spaniels' Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight, a remarkable mélange of strident hillbilly harmony, steel guitar and a booming bass part, sung by Culley Holt from what would become Elvis Presley's favourite backing group, the Jordanaires. Within a year or two, however, Presley and his kind were pushing country acts down the bill, and by the end of the 50s Johnnie & Jack were simply Opry regulars with an occasional minor hit record, such as Stop the World (and Let Me Off) in 1958 and the folky Sailor Man (1959), which borrowed its martial drumbeat from Johnny Horton's recent huge hit The Battle of New Orleans.

Then, in 1963, driving to attend a memorial service for Patsy Cline, Hawkshaw Hawkins and Cowboy Copas, country stars who had died in a plane crash, Anglin was killed in a car accident. Wright continued to perform and record with their band, the Tennessee Mountain Boys, as Johnny Wright, and in 1965 had a country No 1 with Hello Vietnam. In 1968, he and Wells recorded an autobiographical duet, "We'll Stick Together", and in the 1970s had their own TV show. Between 1983 and 2000 they ran their Family Country Junction museum and studio in Madison, Tennessee, where they had settled. 

Wright joined producers Randall Franks and Alan Autry for the 1991 CD Christmas Time's A Comin' featuring the cast of the TV series, In the Heat of the Night. He performed along with Kitty Wells and Bobby Wright on "Jingle Bells", with the rest of the cast.  After several years' retirement, in 1992 they resumed playing, joined by their son Bobby, who, like their daughters Carol Sue and Ruby, had some minor-league success as a country singer.

On December 31, 2000, the duo performed their farewell concert at the Nashville Nightlife Theater in Nashville, Tennessee. They played to a full house of fans, family and friends that included Ricky Skaggs, The Whites, Marty Stuart, Connie Smith, Leona Williams, Tommy Cash, Jack Greene, Jean Shepard and comedian-impressionist, Johnny Counterfit.

Johnnie Wright died at his home of natural causes in Madison, Tennessee on September 27, 2011, exactly two years after older daughter Ruby's death; 33 days short of his 74th wedding anniversary with Wells; and on the same day as fellow country singer-songwriter "Country" Johnny Mathis. Wright had been in failing health for some time. Wright's widow Kitty Wells followed him in death less than ten months later on July 16, 2012. He is interred at Spring Hill Cemetery in Nashville, Tennessee. Johnnie & Jack were posthumously inducted into the Volunteer State Music Hall of Fame in 2025.

(Edited from Tony Russell obit @ the Guardian & Grokipedia) 

Ian McLagan born 12 May 1945

Ian  McLagan (12 May 1945 – 3 December 2014) was an English keyboardist, best known as a member of the rock bands Small Faces and Faces. He also collaborated with the Rolling Stones and led his own band from the late 1970s. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012.

Ian Patrick McLagan was born at West Middlesex Hospital, Isleworth, to Alec William McLagan, of Scottish descent, and Susan (née Young), from Mountrath, County Laois. He had an elder brother, Mike. The McLagan family lived in Hounslow, West London. Alec McLagan was an enthusiastic amateur skater, having been British speed-skating champion in 1928; a photograph of him in this role features on the cover of his son's solo album, Best of British (2000). Ian first started playing keyboards at the age of seven after his mother purchased an upright piano; one of his first appearances was in a group entitled 'the Blue Men' in which he played rhythm guitar. McLagan was educated at Spring Grove Grammar School, Isleworth, and the Twickenham College of Technology and School of Art. He quit his study of art to focus on music.

The Small Faces

McLagan first started playing in bands in the early 1960s, initially using the Hohner Cembalet before switching to the Hammond organ and Wurlitzer electric piano, as well as occasionally playing guitar. He was influenced by Cyril Davies' All Stars, and his first professional group was the Muleskinners, followed by the Boz People with future King Crimson and Bad Company member Boz Burrell. In 1965, he was hired, for the sum of £30 a week, to join Small Faces by their manager, Don Arden, replacing Jimmy Winston. McLagan played his debut gig with them at London's Lyceum Theatre on 2 November that year.  Once the 'probation' period ended, McLagan's pay was reduced (at his request) to £20 a week, which was what the other band members were getting. 

                                     

Don Arden managed the group's finances, paying them all a weekly salary until 1967 when payment was changed to royalties. With the band, he wrote and sang only two songs which are credited entirely to him, "Up the Wooden Hills to Bedfordshire" and "Long Agos and Worlds Apart", which appear on Small Faces and Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake respectively. However, he is also credited as a co-writer on several other tracks such as "Own Up Time", "Eddie's Dreaming" and "The Hungry Intruder". In 1969, Steve Marriott left the group; Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood joined, and the band changed its name to Faces.

The Faces

McLagan played piano on the studio side of the 1972 album The London Chuck Berry Sessions. After the Faces split up in 1975, McLagan worked as a sideman for the Rolling Stones, both in the studio (Some Girls including electric piano on "Miss You"), on tour and on various Ronnie Wood projects, including the New Barbarians. In addition, his session work has backed such artists as Arc Angels, Chuck Berry, Jackson Browne, Joe Cocker, Bob Dylan, James McMurtry, Melissa Etheridge, Bonnie Raitt, Sid Griffin, Paul Westerberg, Izzy Stradlin, John Hiatt, Frank Black, Nikki Sudden, John Mayer, Bruce Springsteen, Tony Scalzo, Carla Olson, Mick Taylor, and The Georgia Satellites. McLagan also released several solo albums. An in-demand player, he filled the role of bandleader with his own Bump Band from 1977 onwards.

McLagan played keyboards in the band that backed Bob Dylan on his 1984 joint European tour with Santana. Also playing in that band were Mick Taylor, Colin Allen and Gregg Sutton. He was a member of Billy Bragg's band "The Blokes" for several years in the late 1990s and early 2000s, co-writing and performing on the 2002 England, Half-English album and tour. He played Hammond B3 organ on Mary Gauthier's 2005 album, Mercy Now. In 2009, McLagan joined the James McMurtry band on tour in Europe. On 25 September 2010, at Stubbs in Austin, Texas, McLagan joined The Black Crowes on keyboards and vocals for their encore set. The set included two Faces songs, "You're So Rude" and "Glad and Sorry". McLagan appeared in the 2012 film This is 40 performing with Ryan Adams.

In 2013, he appeared with the Warren Haynes band at the Moody Theatre in Austin, Texas, playing piano on one number and organ on the other. McLagan is featured prominently on the Lucinda Williams double album Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone, which was released 30 September 2014 on her own label, Highway 20 Records. He also features prominently on Scunthorpe duo Ruen Brothers' debut album All My Shades Of Blue, released 1 June 2018 via Ramseur Records. McLagan recorded his parts shortly before his death. It was produced by Rick Rubin. Other notable musicians on the album were Chad Smith from the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Dave Keuning from the Killers. Towards the end of his life, he relocated to Austin, Texas and did gig nights at local clubs and bars. Ian McLagan & the Bump Band played at the 2006 Austin City Limits Music Festival, and opened for the Rolling Stones in Austin, Texas, in 2006.

Ian & Kim

McLagan was married from 1968 to 1972 to Sandy Sarjeant, a dancer on the television show Ready Steady Go!, with whom he had a son. He then began a relationship with Kim Kerrigan, the estranged wife of Keith Moon, drummer of the Who. She divorced Moon and she and her daughter from her marriage to Moon moved in with McLagan. He began and Kerrigan were married in 1978, one month after Moon died at the age of 32. Kim McLagan died in a traffic accident near the couple's home in Austin, Texas, US on 2 August 2006, aged 57. McLagan published an autobiography, All the Rage: A Riotous Romp Through Rock & Roll History, in 2000. A revised version, with new material, was published in 2013.

Awarded the prestigious Ivor Novello Award in 1996 for his outstanding contributions to British music and inducted into the Texas Music Hall of Fame in 2004, McLagan is beloved by musicians and music lovers alike. He produced the Faces four CD boxed set, Five guys walk into a bar… for Rhino Records, and received a rare honour on April 6th, 2006, when it was proclaimed Ian ‘Mac’ McLagan Day in Austin Texas. McLagan died of a stroke on 3 December 2014, aged 69, at University Medical Centre Brackenridge in Austin.

(Edited from Wikipedia & The Small Faces.com) 

Carla Bley born 11 May 1936

Carla Bley (born Lovella May Borg; May 11, 1936 – October 17, 2023) was an American jazz composer, pianist, organist, and bandleader. An important figure in the free jazz movement of the 1960s, she gained acclaim for her jazz opera Escalator over the Hill, as well as a book of compositions that have been performed by many other artists, including Gary Burton, Jimmy Giuffre, George Russell, Art Farmer, Robert Wyatt, John Scofield, and her ex-husband Paul Bley. She was a pioneer in the development of independent artist-owned record labels, and recorded over two dozen albums between 1966 and 2019.

Born Lovella May Borg in Oakland, California, to Swedish parents. Her father, Emil Borg, a piano teacher and church choirmaster, encouraged her to sing and to learn to play the piano; her mother, Arline Anderson, died of a heart attack when Bley was eight years old. After giving up church to immerse herself in roller skating at the age of fourteen, she dropped out of high school and moved to New York City in 1953 to experience live jazz first-hand. Her primary vantage point was her job selling cigarettes inside Birdland, the Midtown Manhattan jazz club. It was there she met Canadian pianist Paul Bley, who she married after relocating to Los Angeles in 1957, later divorcing. 

She kept the Bley surname professionally thereafter. With her husband’s encouragement, the rechristened Carla Bley began writing music, including “O Plus One,” which appeared on Paul’s 1958 album Solemn Meditation. Returning east, she continued to compose while working in the coat check rooms at New York’s Basin Street and the Jazz Gallery, and her songs began to attract the attention of artists like Jimmy Giuffre, who featured two of her compositions on Fusion (1961) and George Russell, who recorded “Dance Class” and “Beast Blues” for George Russell Sextet At The Five Spot (1960).

Bley’s membership in the Jazz Composers Guild introduced her to Austrian trumpeter Michael Mantler, whom she married in 1965. Their daughter, musician Karen Mantler, was born in 1966. Bley and Mantler formed the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra, which brought together a broad range of musicians, including Cecil Taylor, Steve Lacy, Archie Shepp and Don Cherry, and an affiliated supporting organization — the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra Association — which commissioned work, sponsored performances and functioned as a record label. 

                                    

Bley’s breakthrough came with three major works that were released in the late ’60s: Gary Burton’s A Genuine Tong Funeral (1967), Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra (1969) and the sprawling Escalator Over The Hill (1971), which was released under the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra name but featured 36 musicians, stretching from singer Linda Ronstadt to guitarist John McLaughlin and a young Karen Mantler on vocals. With lyrics by poet Paul Haines, Escalator drew wide praise, including an influential review in Rolling Stone that called it “an international musical encounter of the first order” and a French Oscar du Disque de Jazz award.

In 1972, Bley was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for composition and, with Mantler, founded a new label, WATT. Its first release, Tropic Appetites (1974) was Bley’s debut as a leader. Following a brief sojourn in the U.K., where she worked with bassist Jack Bruce and Rolling Stones guitarist Mick Taylor, she formed the Carla Bley Band and entered a very active period of touring and recording, using a core that included her husband, trombonist Roswell Rudd, Steve Swallow and drummer D. Sharpe. Throughout her career, Bley thought of herself as a writer first, describing herself as 99 percent composer and one percent pianist.

Bley and Mantler were pioneers in the development of independent artist-owned record labels, and also started WATT Records and the now defunct New Music Distribution Service, which specialized in small, independent labels that issued recordings of "creative improvised music". In the mid-’80s, Bley downsized to a sextet and made a shift to more amplified music with Steve Swallow, guitarist Hiram Bullock and drummer Victor Lewis. She and Swallow also formed a duo, which toured and recorded frequently for five years, during which time Bley left Mantler and formed a 32-year relationship with the bassist. In spite of achieving a higher profile, with tours that took her to Europe and Japan, Bley remained circumspect about her talent. As she told DownBeat in 1984: “I’m just a composer, and I use jazz musicians because they’re smarter, and they can save your ass in a bad situation. … I need all the help I can get.” 

Saxophonist Sheppard re-joined Bley and Swallow for Songs With Legs (1994) and they continued as a trio for more than 20 years. Bley arranged and composed music for bassist Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra, and wrote A Genuine Tong Funeral for vibraphonist Gary Burton. Bley collaborated with a number of other artists, including Jack Bruce, Robert Wyatt, and Nick Mason, drummer for the rock group Pink Floyd. Mason's solo debut album Nick Mason's Fictitious Sports was written entirely by Bley, and features, alongside Mason on drums, and many of her regular band musicians. The ’90s also saw Bley working more often in a big band setting — both with her own unit and as a guest composer.

In 2005, she arranged the music for and performed on Charlie Haden's latest Liberation Music Orchestra tour and recording, Not in Our Name. In 2009, she received the German Jazz Trophy "A Life for Jazz". During their later years, Bley and Swallow became the most celebrated couple in the jazz world, touring in various formations and appearing as special guests on the festival circuit. In 2015, she was named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts, and the following year, to celebrate her 80th birthday, ECM Records organized a special event at Steinway Hall in New York. Her final album, Life Goes On, was released in 2020.

In 2018, Bley was diagnosed with brain cancer, from which she died at home in Willow, New York, on October 17, 2023, at age 87.

(Edited from DownBeat & Wikipedia) 

Bert Weedon born 10 May 1920

Bert Weedon (10 May 1920 – 20 April 2012) was an English guitarist whose style of playing was popular and influential during the 1950s and 1960s. He was the first British guitarist to have a hit record in the UK singles chart, in 1959.

Herbert Maurice William Weedon was born in Burges Road, East Ham, Essex (now part of the London Borough of Newham).His father was a train driver who had a collection of hillbilly records and was an amateur singer. Weedon bought his first guitar aged 12 from Petticoat Lane market and began learning classical guitar, and decided to become a professional musician. As a teenager, he was the leader of such groups as the Blue Cumberland Rhythm Boys and Bert Weedon and His Harlem Hotshots. In the 1930s and 1940s the guitar was not the ubiquitous instrument it would later become and, Weedon said: "The only time you saw a guitar was in the hands of a cowboy in a western singing Home on the Range." He soon graduated to the semi-professional Dixieland jazz group Harry Gold's Pieces of Eight and performed with the violinist Stéphane Grappelli and the pianist George Shearing in the early 1940s. Weedon and the classical guitarist Julian Bream provided the music for a postwar London production of Lorca's Blood Wedding.

The first amplified guitars were beginning to appear and Weedon became an enthusiastic exponent, playing in the orchestras of Ted Heath, Mantovani and Ronnie Aldrich. His career was interrupted by a bout of tuberculosis. After he was discharged from hospital, doctors advised him to avoid smoky dancehalls and nightclubs, so he switched the focus of his career to records, radio and television. Although he first appeared on TV in 1946, it was not until the arrival of the independent network in 1955 that Weedon began to appear frequently on the small screen. He was seen in Slater's Bazaar, the first TV advertising magazine. He joined the BBC Show Band directed by Cyril Stapleton in the 1950s, when he began to be featured as a soloist and could be heard almost daily on the Light Programme throughout the 1950s.

                                       

He also worked as a session musician on many early British rock and roll and other records for artists such as Marty Wilde, Tommy Steele, Billy Fury, Adam Faith and Kenny Lynch, and worked as an accompanist to visiting American singers such as Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland and Nat King Cole. It is estimated that he performed on over 5,000 BBC Radio broadcasts. He was also seen regularly on British television in the 1950s, including some of the most popular children's television programmes. In 1959 he was asked by Top Rank Records to make a record as a solo guitarist. He became the first British guitarist in the UK singles chart, with "Guitar Boogie Shuffle" in 1959.From the late 1950s to the mid-1960s he was a regular in a series of children's shows: Small Time, Tuesday Rendezvous and Five O'Clock Club, with Muriel Young, Wally Whyton and the glove puppet Ollie Beak. When Weedon invited anyone needing help to play the guitar to drop him a line, sackfuls of mail arrived at Associated Rediffusion, who had to print and mail out thousands of instructional leaflets.

As well as his hits and TV appearances at a crucial time in modern music history, his best-known contribution to British guitar style is his tutorial guide Play in a Day, first published in 1957, which many stars claim was a major influence on their learning  and playing. It sold over one million copies. He also wrote a follow-up, Play Every Day. His playing style focussed on both rhythm and melody, and was itself influenced by the jazz guitarists of the 1950s, notably Les Paul.Weedon was cited as an influence by many stars, including Eric Clapton, Brian May, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, John Lennon, Pete Townshend, Keith Richards, Sting, Hank Marvin, Robert Smith, Mike Oldfield, Mark Knopfler and Jimmy Page. McCartney commented: "George and I went through the Bert Weedon books and learned D and A together." According to Clapton, “I wouldn’t have felt the urge to press on without the tips and encouragement Bert’s book gives you. I’ve never met a player of any consequence that doesn’t say the same thing.” Brian May stated: "There's not a guitarist in Britain from my generation who doesn't owe him a great debt of gratitude."

Weedon placed a lot of emphasis on control of tone, and wanted to make the guitar the star of his music. The style became best known through the music of The Shadows, especially Hank Marvin. The Bonzo Dog Band mentioned Weedon in their song "We are Normal" on their album, The Doughnut in Granny's Greenhouse (1969). With the various "rock revivals" of the 70s, Weedon was once again in demand, making the hit albums Rockin' at the Roundhouse (1970) and 22 Golden Guitar Greats (1976), a No 1 that sold more than 1m copies. For much of his career Weedon was involved with the entertainment industry charity the Grand Order of Water Rats, becoming King Rat in 1992. In 1999, Weedon performed at the Pipeline Instrumental Rock Convention in London. He was appointed OBE in 2001 for services to music and was honoured by the Variety Club of Great Britain, the British Music Hall Society and the British Association of Songwriters, Composers and Authors.

Married to Maggie Weedon, he had two sons, Lionel and Geoffrey, nine grandchildren and a great-grandson. He died at his home in Beaconsfield on 20 April 2012, aged 91, following a long illness.

(Edited from Wikipedia & Dave Laing obit @ the Guardian)

Here's a clip of Bert Weedon backed by The Jaguars with "Gimme that jive" taken from one of his last concerts.

 

Nokie Edwards born 9 May 1935

 

Nole Floyd "Nokie" Edwards (May 9, 1935 – March 12, 2018) was an American musician and member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was primarily a guitarist, best known for his work with The Ventures, and was known in Japan as the 'King of Guitars'. Edwards was also an actor, who appeared briefly on Deadwood, an American Western drama television series.

Edwards was born in Lahoma, Oklahoma, the son of Elbert Edwards and Nannie Mae Quinton Edwards, an original enrollee of the Western Cherokee. Edwards came from a family of accomplished musicians, and by age five he had begun playing a variety of string instruments, including the steel guitar, banjo, mandolin, violin, and bass. His family relocated from Oklahoma to Puyallup, Washington. During Edwards' late teen years he joined the United States Army Reserve. After traveling to Texas and California for training, he returned home and began playing regularly for pay in numerous country bands in the area.

In January 1958, country songwriter and guitarist Buck Owens relocated from California to Tacoma, Washington, as the owner of radio station KAYE. Prior to the formation of The Buckaroos with Don Rich, Edwards played guitar with Owens in the new band he formed in the area, and also played in the house band of television station KTNT, located in the same building as KAYE. In 1960 Edwards recorded a single, "Night Run" b/w "Scratch", on Blue Horizon Records with a band called The Marksmen.

The Ventures, an instrumental musical quartet, were founded in Tacoma, Washington, in 1958. Original members included Don Wilson on rhythm guitar, Bob Bogle on lead guitar (who later became the bass player), and drummer George Babbitt, who went on to become a 4-star general in the U.S. Air Force. When Babbitt left, Howie Johnson took his place and was later replaced by Mel Taylor. Edwards met Wilson and Bogle when they performed on KTNT. Edwards originally played bass for The Ventures, but he took over the lead guitar position from Bogle. 

                                       

The Ventures released a series of best-selling albums throughout the 1960s, and Edwards left towards the end of this period in 1968. He returned full-time as the Ventures' lead guitarist in 1972 and stayed with the band until 1984. In subsequent years, he would occasionally reunite with the band, and starting in the early 2000s, he once again toured with The Ventures until 2012. During his last stint with the Ventures, Edwards primarily played during the annual winter Japan tour, along with several dates in the United States.

In 1971, Edwards began a solo career with the release of Nokie!. While he released an album each year through 1974, his solo attempt was unsuccessful in America, and he suspended his solo efforts to concentrate on further recordings with the Ventures. Upon leaving the Ventures a second time in 1984, Edwards pursued a music career in Nashville, Tennessee. He played lead guitar for Lefty Frizzell, on what would become Frizzell's final recording sessions. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, he was involved with numerous country-influenced recording projects and relaunched his solo career with the release of several albums starting in 1988.

Edwards performed occasionally in the United States as both a soloist and member of various bands, including AdVenture, Art Greenhaw, and Texas Western swing outfit The Light Crust Doughboys. The fruitful and critically acclaimed collaboration of Edwards and artist-producer Greenhaw, resulted in a number of albums in several music genres including Edwards' two nominations for "Grammy Award for Best Southern, Country or Bluegrass Gospel Album of the Year", album titles 20th Century Gospel (2005) and Southern Meets Soul (2006). AllMusic noted about the 20th Century Gospel album that the "former Ventures member Nokie Edwards guests on several tracks ("Ode to Joy," "The Great Speckled Bird") and his sound has never been twangier". 

After accepting an offer to pursue an acting career in 2007, Edwards landed a role on Deadwood, an American Western drama television series. Edwards played the mysterious friend of Wild Bill Hickok and a local citizen, who serves as a bridge between the villains and heroes of the show. During production, Edwards temporarily relocated to Santa Clarita, California and lived on the set's location with his wife Judy.

In 2008, Edwards was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, along with The Ventures. The award was presented by John Fogerty. The band performed their biggest hits, "Walk Don't Run" and "Hawaii Five-0", augmented on the latter by Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame musical director Paul Shaffer and his band. In July 2010, Deke Dickerson announced on his Facebook page that he was currently working on a new studio album with Nokie Edwards. Dickerson and his band backed Edwards for several shows, including Deke's yearly Guitar Geek Festival held in Anaheim, California. In 2011, Nokie Edwards, of Cherokee heritage, was inducted into the Native American Music Awards Hall of Fame.

On March 12, 2018, Edwards died in Yuma, Arizona, following an infection he’d been fighting since undergoing hip surgery in December. He was 82.

(Edited from Wikipedia)

Nan Wynn born 8 May 1918

Nan Wynn (May 8, 1918* – March 21, 1971) was an American big-band singer, and Broadway and film actress. She sang and recorded throughout the 1930s and 1940s with the Emery Deutsch, Rudy Vallee, Eddie Duchin, Richard Himber, Hal Kemp, Hudson-DeLange, Raymond Scott, Teddy Wilson and Freddie Rich orchestras.

Of Russian descent, Wynn was born Masha Vatz in York, Pennsylvania, but grew up in Wheeling, West Virginia, where she attended high school, and sang in the school choir. Her father, Abe Vatz, owned a department store in Wheeling, and travelled often to New York. During February 1935 while spending a weekend in New York City with her mother, Wynn's singing came to the attention of a retired producer who was a guest at the same place. He booked Wynn at a Peekskill vaudeville house, the owner of which engaged her to sing at his two other New York State properties, in Kingston and Newburgh. After working the vaudeville circuit, the late 1930s saw Wynn landing at radio station WNEW in New York for a 13-show-per-week stint and honing her talent under the mentorship of Jimmy Rich, the singing coach to Dinah Shore, Bea Wain, and Barry Wood, among others. In 1936, she appeared in a musical short with Vincent Lopez for Warner Bros.

                                     

In early 1937, Wynn became vocalist for the Hudson-DeLange Orchestra, with whom she made her first recordings. She soon began to attract attention, and by January 1938 she had left Hudson-DeLange for CBS radio, where she appeared regularly with her own fifteen-minute sustainer and on other programs, including Musical Gazette. 

In March and June 1938, Wynn recorded with Emery Deutsch on Brunswick, and in July she began a series of recordings with Teddy Wilson on the same label. She also signed with Vocalion in mid-1938, releasing solo recordings over the next year billed as “Nan Wynn and her Orchestra,” though it was only a studio band. Wynn’s vocal style fooled many into thinking she was black, and the press often went out of their way to clarify that she was actually white. One reviewer compared her voice to a cross between Mildred Bailey and Ella Fitzgerald.

Wynn substituted for Durelle Alexander in Eddy Duchin’s band in mid-September 1938 when Alexander had to return home for a family emergency, and on October 1 she made her night club debut as a solo artist at the Belmont Plaza Hotel. On October 9 she began a new sustainer program on CBS with Walter Gross leading the orchestra, recording two songs on Vocalion with Gross backing her. Wynn made two musical shorts for Paramount in 1938 and a third in 1939. In February 1939, she opened at the Famous Door night club.

In early May 1939, Wynn joined the new CBS program Time to Shine, sponsored by Griffin shoe polish and featuring Hal Kemp’s orchestra. When Kemp’s female vocalist, Maxine Gray, left the band two weeks later, Wynn took her spot, touring and recording with Kemp over the next five months. She was not an employee of Kemp however. She and Kemp were both under contract to CBS and Griffin. When Griffin ended Time to Shine in October, Wynn and Kemp parted company. Her time with Kemp, however, proved popular with the public. She placed ninth in Billboard magazine’s 1940 poll for favourite female band vocalist.

After leaving Kemp, Wynn continued her solo career. In February 1940, she joined the Concert in Rhythm program, which featured Raymond Scott’s studio orchestra and Jack Leonard as male vocalist. She also toured the theatre circuit. In mid-1940, Scott, better known at the time for his eccentric compositions, decided to try his hand at leading a straight dance band. Since Wynn had been singing with Scott on radio for the past few months, CBS contracted her as his vocalist. She was guaranteed three songs on each broadcast and would record with the band as well. Known as Raymond Scott and his New Orchestra, the group debuted in July, hitting the theatre and hotel circuit. They attracted much publicity, but Wynn was unhappy, and she quit both Scott and the radio show in early September after the band’s engagement at the Sherman Hotel in Chicago, saying she would never work with a dance band ever again.

After leaving Scott, she moved to Hollywood where she became best known for dubbing Rita Hayworth's singing voice in several films, including The Strawberry Blonde (1941), My Gal Sal (1942), and You Were Never Lovelier (1942), where she introduced the Kern-Mercer standard I'm Old Fashioned. Wynn appeared often as a nightclub singer, in such films as Million Dollar Baby (1941), Pardon My Sarong (1942), Right Guy, (1943), Princess O'Rourke (1943), Is Everybody Happy? (1943), Jam Session (1944) and Intrigue (1947). She had a starring role opposite William Lundigan in the 1941 film A Shot in the Dark (1941). Wynn also appeared in Billy Rose's 1944 Broadway musical, The Seven Lively Arts and Finian's Rainbow in 1948. At the beginning of 1948, she made her first recordings since 1941, released by Decca. In May 1948, she opened at the Blue Angel in New York and then spent a brief time later that year starring as Sharon Lonergan in the Broadway production Finian’s Rainbow, replacing Dorothy Claire.

In  1949 Wynn appeared in an ABC radio series sponsored by the Army for recruiting purposes. The program featured pop singers performing theater songs. And then tragedy struck.In early 1949, Wynn was diagnosed with throat cancer. The subsequent operation to remove the tumour damaged her voice, and she retired from show business.  Wynn worked hard to regain her singing voice, and in 1955 she attempted a comeback, recording for RCA Victor. Her voice was different, and Victor used that in promotional material, taking out full-page ads calling it “the incredible come-back story, it’s the new voice, the new sound of Nan Wynn.” The recordings received favourable reviews, and in January 1956 she toured with other RCA Victor stars as part of the ten-day, eleven-city “Starliner” train tour to raise money for the March of Dimes. She failed to catch the public’s ear, however, and Wynn’s comeback attempt was over by early 1956. 

In the early 1960s, she made appearances at American Cancer Society state meetings, providing entertainment in the form of a musical program that highlighted her life story and told what the ACS had done for her. She also appeared on the CBS talk show PM with Mike Wallace in April 1962 discussing her story.

Wynn was married three times. Her first husband, from 1944 to 1947, was producer, writer, and director Cy Howard (ne Seymour Horowitz). In 1949, she married Dr. Thomas Baylek, with whom she had a daughter, Jane. Wynn married industrialist John Small in Mexico in April 1956. Small passed away in 1969. Wynn died of cancer on March 21, 1971, in Santa Monica, California, aged 55.

(Edited from BandChirps & Wikipedia)(*some sources state 1915 as birth year)