Bob Welch born 31 July 1945

Bob Welch (August 31, 1945 – June 7, 2012) was an American musician who was a member of Fleetwood Mac from 1971 to 1974. He had a successful solo career in the late 1970s. His singles included "Hot Love, Cold World", "Ebony Eyes", "Precious Love", "Hypnotized", and his signature song, "Sentimental Lady". 

Robert Lawrence Welch Jr. was born in Los Angeles. His mother was the actor Templeton Fox and his father was Robert L Welch, a screenwriter and producer at Paramount Pictures. As a child, he played the clarinet and guitar. After leaving high school, he briefly lived in Paris before starting a degree course in French at the University of California, Los Angeles. This was abandoned when Welch was recruited to play guitar in a Los Angeles pop-soul group that became known as the Seven Souls. 

When the Seven Souls split up in 1969, Welch returned to Paris and tried unsuccessfully to restart his musical career. He was rescued by an invitation in 1971 to travel to England to meet Fleetwood Mac. The meeting was engineered by Judy Wong, a high-school friend who knew the band. At this time, Fleetwood Mac were in need of a new guitarist, as two members, Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer, had recently left. 

Welch was hired almost immediately and joined the remaining personnel – the drummer Mick Fleetwood, the pianist and singer Christine McVie, the bass guitarist John McVie and the lead guitarist Danny Kirwan – at their headquarters, Benifold, a country house in Hampshire. There, they recorded the album Future Games, using the mobile studio owned by the Rolling Stones. Welch composed the title song and brought a more melodic element to a group whose basic sound had previously been R&B. Future Games was followed by the critically acclaimed Bare Trees, whose best moments included another Welch song, Sentimental Lady. 

Welch toured Europe and the US with Fleetwood Mac, but the deteriorating relationship between him and Kirwan led to the latter storming off stage following an argument over tuning. Kirwan was replaced in late 1972 by two more musicians from the British blues scene, the vocalist Dave Walker and the guitarist Bob Weston. After the next album, Penguin, Walker left the group. The band's second album of 1973, Mystery to Me, included one of Welch's most admired songs, Hypnotized. 

                             

Further turmoil occurred on tour as the McVies' marriage was under strain, and it was also revealed that Weston had been having an affair with Fleetwood's wife, Jenny Boyd. Weston was sacked and the rest of the tour was cancelled. Next, their manager, Clifford Davis, assembled a new team of musicians to tour as Fleetwood Mac. Fleetwood, Welch and the McVies retaliated with a lawsuit and after almost a year, they were able to tour and record again. 

By then, Welch had convinced his colleagues that they should base themselves in Los Angeles to conquer the US market and to monitor the efforts of their record company, Warner Bros. This was the crucial factor in Fleetwood Mac's global success. However, Welch would not be there to share in it. After recording one more album with the group, Heroes Are Hard to Find, he resigned at the end of 1974. He had made a major contribution to five albums in little more than three years and had to adapt to several switches of personnel. His first marriage, to Nancy, was in crisis and he felt alienated from the group except for Fleetwood, who was his manager for the next few years. 

Nicks and Welch.

The group replaced Welch with Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, whose arrival signalled the breakthrough in America. When Fleetwood Mac were inducted into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, eight members were included in the citation but not Welch. He was bitterly disappointed and believed his exclusion was connected to a lawsuit he had brought against his former colleagues and Warner Bros, alleging underpayment of royalties. The suit was settled out of court. 

Paris

In 1975, Welch formed the short-lived hard rock power trio Paris with ex-Jethro Tull bassist Glenn Cornick and former Nazz drummer Thom Mooney. Paris released two commercially unsuccessful albums: Paris and Big Towne, 2061. Hunt Sales later replaced Mooney until the group disbanded.

Welch's solo career began promisingly with the million-selling 1977 album French Kiss, which included a new version of Sentimental Lady, and Three Hearts (1979), which included Precious Love, but his records in the 1980s were less successful. He was treated for heroin addiction and began to concentrate on songwriting, moving to Nashville in the 90s. In 1999, Welch released an experimental jazz/loop-based album, Bob Welch Looks at Bop. He followed this up in 2003 with His Fleetwood Mac Years and Beyond.  In 2006, he released His Fleetwood Mac Years and Beyond 2, which mixed a half-dozen new compositions, along with a similar number of his Mac/solo remakes. He released more CDs with Fuel Records in 2008, 2010, and 2011. 

Welch had undergone spinal surgery three months prior to his death. Despite the surgery, doctors told him his prognosis for recovery was poor, and he would eventually become an invalid. He was still in considerable pain, despite taking the medication pregabalin (Lyrica) for six weeks. On June 7, 2012, around 6:00 a.m., Welch died by suicide, shooting himself in his Nashville home. He was 66 years old

 (Edited from Guardian obit by Dave Laing & Wikipedia)

 

Big Jack Johnson born 30 July 1941

Big Jack Johnson (July 30, 1940* – March 14, 2011) was an American electric blues musician, one of the "present-day exponents of an edgier, electrified version of the raw, uncut Delta blues sound." He was one of a small number of blues musicians who played the mandolin. He won a W. C. Handy Award in 2003 for best acoustic blues album. 

Jack N. Johnson was born in Lambert, Mississippi, in 1940, one of 18 children in his family. His father, Ellis Johnson, was a sharecropper, and his family picked cotton, but he was also a working musician, leading a band at local functions and playing fiddle and mandolin in country and blues styles. Big Jack got his start in music playing with his father. In his teens, he began playing the electric guitar, attracted to the urban sound of B.B. King. Johnson was nicknamed "The Oil Man", because of his day job as a truck driver for Shell Oil. He was the father of 13 children. 

His earliest professional playing, apart from his father's band, was with Earnest Roy, Sr., C. V. Veal & the Shufflers, and Johnny Dugan & the Esquires. In 1962, Johnson, Sam Carr and Frank Frost formed the Jelly Roll Kings and the Nighthawks, in which Johnson played bass, releasing two albums, Hey Boss Man (1962) and My Back Scratcher (1966). The group eventually broke up, but in 1978 the president of Earwig Records persuaded them to re-form and they cut an album for Earwig, "Rockin' the Juke Joint Down". The album was a critical and financial success, and the group--now calling themselves The Jelly Roll Kings--began touring, notably in Europe. With Frost as the bandleader, they performed and recorded together for 15 years. 

Since the mid-80s, however, Johnston had a career of his own as an energetic, old-fashioned blues singer, sharing the values as well as the background of contemporaries such as Magic Slim. Nonetheless, like most blues musicians, he was unable to make a living from music alone, and relied on the steady income of a day job, delivering heating oil to customers in and around Clarksdale, Mississippi. 

                              

Johnson's first solo album, The Oil Man, including the song "Catfish Blues", was released by Earwig in 1987. He recorded solo and as a member of the Jelly Roll Kings and Big Jack Johnson and the Oilers (with the poet and musician Dick Lourie).  He wrote and performed "Jack's Blues" and performed "Catfish Medley" with Samuel L. Jackson on the soundtrack of the film Black Snake Moan. His album Daddy, When Is Mama Comin Home? (1990) presents social concerns. The power of Johnson’s live performances with his own bands are also captured in the 1993 documentary Deep Blues and the concert video Juke Joint Saturday Night: Live from Margaret's Blue Diamond Lounge. 

Among further albums were a vivid Live in Chicago, for Earwig, and four for MC Records. In these Johnson revealed other facets, such as a taste for country music, which he had enjoyed since he was a boy. He also joined the small body of blues musicians who play the mandolin. The Memphis Barbecue Sessions (2002), a warm collaboration with the harmonica player Kim Wilson and the pianist Pinetop Perkins, won a WC Handy award in 2003 for best acoustic blues album. By 2004, Jack has performed over 300 shows a year worldwide, for the last three years, a true testament to his fiery intensity and crowd pleasing live show. 

He released his last two albums, Juke Joint Saturday Night (2007) and Katrina (2008), himself. He performed and recorded with his band, the Cornlickers, with Dale Wise on drums, Dave Groninger on guitar, Tony Ryder on bass, and Bobby Gentilo on guitar. They recorded his last album Big Jack's Way during 2010. 

Johnson died from an undisclosed illness at a hospital in his hometown of Clarksdale, Mississippi on March 14, 2011. According to family members, he had struggled with health problems in his final years, worsening to the point that there were erroneous reports of his death in the days leading up to it. 

Johnson was posthumously honoured with a plaque on the Clarksdale Walk of Fame in August 2011. He also has a marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail in Clarksdale. 

(Edited from Wikipedia, The Guardian, IMDb & AllMusic) (* one source gives birth year as 1939)

 

Nancie Banks born 29 July1951

Nancie Banks (July 29, 1951 – November 13, 2002)* was an American jazz singer. 

Nancie Manzuk in Morgantown, West Virginia, was born into a musical family. The four-octave range of her vocalist dad secured him a spot in the choir at church, while her mother played the piano. Banks' mother began giving her instruction on the instrument before she'd turned five years old. lived in Pittsburgh for a time, then relocated to New York City in the 1980s and studied with Edward Boatner, Barry Harris, and Alberto Socarras, and performed with both small ensembles and big bands. 

Clarence Banks

Her debut in the Big Apple occurred with Harris during one of his concerts. Banks' break came when Charlie Byrd hired her to sing with his big band. Also through Byrd, the singer first met her future husband, Clarence Banks, a trombonist. Banks went on to establish several quintets and quartets and led her ensembles in performances throughout the city, while also finding time to sing with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra. She also performed with Walter Davis Jr., Dexter Gordon, Michael Max Fleming, Bob Cunningham, Duke Jordan, Walter Booker, Charlie Persip, Sadik Hakim, C. Sharpe, John Hicks, Woody Shaw, Bross Townsend, Jon Hendricks, and Walter Bishop Jr., among others. 

She earned a jazz scholarship in 1989 to attend New School University. While under the direction of Cecil Bridgewater in the university's big band, Banks pulled together her own orchestra. The Nancie Banks Orchestra  performed in a variety of New York nightspots and at numerous festivals and other events. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts asked her to bring her 19-piece orchestra to Washington, D.C., for an appearance at the center's Mary Lou Williams Women's Jazz Festival. 

                            

    Here’s “Night And Day” from the album Berts Blues (1995) 

Waves of Peace, Banks' first album issued by Consolidated Artists, garnered critical acclaim as well as a nomination from the Village Voice for inclusion on its list of Best Jazz Records of the Year in 1993. Cadence magazine also included the release among the year's best. Two years later, Bert's Blues made more waves and earned nods from the magazines Cadence and Coda as one of the year's finest offerings. Airplay followed in countries around the world, including Japan, Brazil, South Africa, the Ukraine, Germany, and France. 

Nancie performed at Tatou, the Blue Note, Birdland, the Supper Club, the Williamsburg Music Center, Germany's Dennis Swing Club, the Village Gate, Sweet Basil, Lincoln Center's Damrosch Park & Avery Fischer Hall, the Hartford Jazz Festival, the Kansas City Women's Jazz Festival (broadcast nationally on NPR's Jazz Alive) and many other venues. 

In addition to her work as a singer and composer, Banks was also a lyricist, arranger, and producer. She also worked on film soundtracks, including Mo' Better Blues (1990) and Housesitter (1992), and in Broadway musicals such as Swingin' On a Star. During the 1990s, she taught jazz at the City University of New York as well as private instruction. 

Banks died in New York City in November 2002. Her body was found in her home. * The exact day she died is unknown but some sources give the 13th.

 (edited from AllMusic, Wikipedia & Jazzsingers)

Junior Kimbrough born 28 July 1930

David "Junior" Kimbrough (July 28, 1930 – January 17, 1998) was an American blues musician. In 2023, he was inducted in the Blues Hall of Fame. 

Kimbrough was born in Hudsonville, Mississippi, and lived in the north Mississippi hill country near Holly Springs. His father, a barber, played the guitar, and Junior picked his guitar as a child. He was apparently influenced by the guitarists Lightnin' Hopkins, Mississippi Fred McDowell and Eli Green. In the late 1950s Kimbrough began playing the guitar in his own style, using mid-tempo rhythms and a steady drone played with his thumb on the bass strings. This style would later be cited as a prime example of hill country blues. His music is characterized by the tricky syncopation between his droning bass strings and his midrange melodies. 

His soloing style has been described as modal and features languorous runs in the middle and upper registers. The result was described by music critic Robert Palmer as "hypnotic". In solo and ensemble settings it is often polyrhythmic, which links it to the music of Africa. The music journalist Tony Russell wrote that "his raw, repetitive style suggests an archaic forebear of John Lee Hooker, a character his music shares with that of fellow North Mississippian R. L. Burnside". 

In 1966 Kimbrough traveled to Memphis, Tennessee, to record for Goldwax Records, owned by the R&B and gospel producer Quinton Claunch. Kimbrough recorded one session at American Studios. Claunch declined to release the recordings, deeming them too country. Some forty years later, Bruce Watson, of Big Legal Mess Records, approached Claunch to buy the original master tapes and the rights to release the recordings made that day. These songs were released by Big Legal Mess Records in 2009 as First Recordings. 

Kimbrough's debut release was a cover version of Lowell Fulson's "Tramp" issued as a single on the independent label Philwood in 1967. On the label of the record his name was spelled incorrectly as Junior Kimbell, and the song "Tramp" was listed as "Tram?" The B-side was "You Can't Leave Me". Among his other early recordings are two duets with his childhood friend Charlie Feathers in 1969. Feathers counted Kimbrough as an early influence; Kimbrough gave Feathers some of his earliest lessons on the guitar. 

                             

Kimbrough recorded little in the 1970s, contributing an early version of "Meet Me in the City" to a European blues anthology. With his band, the Soul Blues Boys (then consisting of bassist George Scales and drummer Calvin Jackson), he recorded again in the 1980s for High Water, releasing a single in 1982 ("Keep Your Hands off Her" backed with "I Feel Good, Little Girl"). The label recorded a 1988 session with Kimbrough and the Soul Blues Boys (this time consisting of bassist Little Joe Ayers and drummer "Allabu Juju"), releasing it in 1997 with his 1982 single as Do the Rump! In 1987 Kimbrough made his New York debut at Lincoln Center. 

He received notice after live footage of him playing "All Night Long" in one of his juke joints appeared in the film documentary Deep Blues: A Musical Pilgrimage to the Crossroads, directed by Robert Mugge and narrated by Robert Palmer. This performance was recorded in 1990, in the Chewalla Rib Shack, a juke joint he opened in that year east of Holly Springs to divert crowds from his packed house parties. Beginning around 1992, Kimbrough operated Junior's Place, a juke joint in Chulahoma, near Holly Springs, in a building previously used as a church. 

Kimbrough came to national attention in 1992 with his debut album, All Night Long. Robert Palmer produced the album for Fat Possum, recording it in the Chulahoma joint, with Junior's son Kent "Kinney" Kimbrough (also known as Kenny Malone) on drums and R. L. Burnside's son Garry Burnside on bass guitar. The album featured many of his most celebrated songs, including the title track, the complexly melodic "Meet Me in the City," and "You Better Run". His joint in Chulahoma started to attract visitors from around the world, including members of U2, Keith Richards, and Iggy Pop and R. L. Burnside. 

A second album for Fat Possum, Sad Days, Lonely Nights, followed in 1994. A video for the album's title track featured Kimbrough, Garry Burnside and Kent Kimbrough playing in Kimbrough's juke joint. The last album he recorded, Most Things Haven't Worked Out, was released by Fat Possum in 1997. Kimbrough died of a heart attack following a stroke in 1998 in Holly Springs, at the age of 67.According to Fat Possum Records, he was survived by 36 children. He is buried outside his family's church, the Kimbrough Chapel Missionary Baptist Church, near Holly Springs. The rockabilly musician Charlie Feathers, a friend of Kimbrough's, called him "the beginning and end of all music"; this tribute is written on Kimbrough's tombstone. 

Following his death in 1998, Fat Possum released two compilation albums of recordings Kimbrough made in the 1990s, God Knows I Tried (1998) and Meet Me in the City (1999). A greatest hits compilation, You Better Run: The Essential Junior Kimbrough, followed in 2002. 

(Edited from Wikipedia)

 

Carol Ventura born 1939

Carol Ventura (1939 – March 5, 2010) was a little known Jazz singer who cut two LPs for Prestige in the mid-1960s. 

This Newark-born lady came from a musical family. Her father was a vaudeville performer, her mother a singer, her brother a drummer. Carol did her singing apprenticeship by working with a few bands every chance she had during her years at Barrington High School. Her first professional job was with a local band led by Johnny Anello She also sang with Charlie Spivak's band. Traveled across the country, and to Europe. When Keely Smith left Louis Prima’s orchestra Carol was chosen to replace her. 

Carol appeared in top clubs in Miami, Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe and also in the East. She recorded the odd single here and there, for a few labels, including Capitol. As far as albums go, she made only two, both of them released on Prestige Records:  After Carol! (1964) and I Love to Sing! (1965). Mixed among the well-known tunes, there are some completely unknown songs, some of them written by major songwriters. Described by Downbeat Magazine at the time as "a female Frank Sinatra," the song choices on her albums reflected a more modern sensibility than the typical jazz vocals of the day. 

                             

Recently, a double-sided acetate, which was recorded at Regent Sound Studios was put up for auction.. By comparing the label to similar acetates from the studio, it appears that it was made in the mid-late 60s. The eleven-track disc was likely a demo made by Ventura to attract the interest of other record companies. Carol Ventura Sings, which was printed on the label, may have been the working title. The track listings seem to be a collection of standards, which might have been easier to acquire/record than the more modern selections on her first two albums. 

Although Carol had no formal training and could barely read music, her instinct for the right sound was unerring. She polished her style by singing music of all kinds and with different tempos, making everything she sang hers and hers alone, But sadly Carol's music career never took off beyond her commercially released 1960s albums. Liner notes indicate that she was studying acting and dancing, with a view to becoming a Broadway stage performer. 

Those dreams do not seem to have been realized, either as the vibrant, smoky-voiced singer fell into obscurity. If word of mouth is true, this New Jersey native wounded up living in the streets, due to mental illness. She allegedly needed to be medicated, and would take to a homeless life on those occasions in which she stopped using medication. She is said to have passed away at a senior home on March 5, in 2010. 

(Edited from Steve Hoffman Music Forums, LP liner notes & Heritage Auctions)

Betty Davis born 26 July 1945

Betty Davis (July 26, 1944 – February 9, 2022) was an American singer, songwriter, and model. She was known for her controversial sexually-oriented lyrics and performance style and was the second wife of trumpeter Miles Davis. Her AllMusic profile describes her as "a wildly flamboyant funk diva with few equals who combined the gritty emotional realism of Tina Turner, the futurist fashion sense of David Bowie, and the trendsetting flair of Miles Davis". 

She was born Betty Gray Mabry in Durham, North Carolina. She developed an interest in music when she was about ten, and was introduced to various blues musicians by her grandmother, Beulah Blackwell, while staying at her farm in Reidsville. At 12, she wrote one of her first songs, "I'm Going to Bake That Cake of Love". The family relocated to Homestead, Pennsylvania, so her father, Henry Mabry, could work at a Pennsylvania steel mill. Davis attended and graduated Homestead High School. She decided to pursue a career in showbusiness after watching her father dance like Elvis Presley. 

Betty (named after her mother) left home and high school for New York in 1960, aged 16, after winning a place at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan. “She knew she was going to be something, and we all knew it,” her brother Chuck told an interviewer. “We just didn’t know what.” Gravitating to Greenwich Village, she became immersed in a culture where styles and races mixed. Her looks brought her work as a model for fashion shoots in Ebony, Seventeen and Glamour magazines and for designers including Halston and Norma Kamali, but music was equally important to her. She DJed at a Village club and made a couple of singles without success before writing a song, Uptown (to Harlem), which appeared on a hit album by the Chambers Brothers in 1967. 

Betty & Miles Davis

When she met Davis, introduced by Devon Wilson, Jimi Hendrix’s girlfriend, Mabry had just ended a relationship with the South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela. Davis had recently divorced his first wife, the dancer Frances Taylor. At the time he was trying to find a way out of the confines of a world where his adoring audiences expected him to wear narrow-cut Italian suits in fine fabrics while exploring the pensive cadences of My Funny Valentine in the way that had brought him fame and wealth. 

Under his new wife’s influence, Davis listened to Hendrix and Sly Stone. “Whatever I got into, he got into,” she said. He put her picture on the cover of an album, Filles de Kilimanjaro, which included a long track titled Mademoiselle Mabry, based on a lick from a Hendrix song, The Wind Cries Mary. His former wardrobe was replaced by buckskin-fringed jackets, silk scarves and freaky sunglasses. Over a band blending rock textures with bottom-heavy funk beats, he played trumpet through a wah-wah pedal. The marriage lasted barely a year, during which he tried and failed to get her a recording contract. It ended, in Betty’s account, when he turned violent after becoming convinced (wrongly, she maintained) that she was having an affair with Hendrix. 

                    

                

In 1971 Betty Davis – as she would continue to be known – spent several months in London, where she was befriended by Marc Bolan and continued to write songs. Returning to the US, she made three albums – Betty Davis, They Say I’m Different and Nasty Gal – between 1973 and 1975, raising many eyebrows but little consumer interest. She had two minor hits on the Billboard R&B chart: "If I'm in Luck I Might Get Picked Up", which reached no. 66 in 1973, and "Shut Off the Lights", which reached no. 97 in 1975. 

Davis remained a cult figure as a singer, due in part to her unabashedly sexual lyrics and performance style, which were both controversial for the time. She had success in Europe, but in the U.S. she was barred from performing on television because of her sexually aggressive stage persona. Some of her shows were boycotted, and her songs were not played on the radio due to pressure by religious groups and the NAACP.  In 1980, Davis' father died which prompted her return to the US to live with her mother in Homestead, Pennsylvania. Davis struggled to overcome her father's death, and subsequent mental illness. She acknowledged that she suffered a setback at the time, but stayed in Homestead, accepted the end of her career, and lived a quiet life.

In 2017, an independent documentary directed by Phil Cox entitled Betty: They Say I'm Different, was released, which renewed interest in her life and music career. When Cox tracked Davis down, he found her living in the basement of a house with no internet, cell phone, or car. He said: "This wasn't a woman with riches or luxury. She was living on the bare essentials." 

In 2019, Davis released "A Little Bit Hot Tonight", her first new song in over 40 years, which was performed and sung by Danielle Maggio, an ethnomusicologist who was a friend and associate producer on Betty: They Say I'm Different. Davis died from cancer at her home in Homestead, Pennsylvania, on February 9, 2022, at the age of 77. 

(Edited from Wikipedia & Richard Williams obit @ The Guardian)

Darrell Banks born 25 July 1937

Darrell Banks (July 25, 1937 – February 24, 1970) was an American soul singer. He had a hit with 1966's "Open the Door to Your Heart". 

A native of Mansfield, Ohio, he was born Darrell Eubanks, but he was moved as a toddler to Buffalo, New York. A talented musician by a young age, he began singing in church and then at local watering holes. On leaving high school, Darrell married a woman called Beverly Kay Simon. The marriage was an interracial marriage, with the couple having had two children, Darrell Jr. and Bamby Lynn Banks, but the marriage failed with the children remaining with their mother. 

Early photo of Darrell

Darrell befriended a local dentist named Doc Green, who by chance had also owned a local nightclub called the Revilot Lounge. Thanks to Doc Green and his songwriter/musician friend Donnie Elbert, Banks headed to Detroit, Michigan, to begin his professional music career. Under a license agreement by Doc Green, he hooked up with talent personality Lebron Taylor and Solid Hitbound Productions, to use the name of Murphy's night club Revilot for the Record Label of Banks' first single, 'Open The Door To Your Heart,' which debuted in 1966. 

Darrell with half sister Lois

The song written by Donnie Elbert, but credited as being written by Banks, and then later credited to both of them, landed at number two on the R&B Charts and number 27 on the pop charts. This would be one of Banks' biggest hits. Banks' next release was the single, 'Somebody Somewhere Needs You,' which went to the number 34 spot on the R&B Charts and number 55 on the Pop Charts. The song written by Marc Gordon and Frank Wilson was previously recorded by Ike & Tina Turner on the Loma Record Label. This was his last chart topper, and Revilot was soon merged with the Atlantic Records Atco Division. 

                             

Darrell gigged regularly on the Midwestern Soul circuit, and performed on 'American Bandstand' as well as supporting Jackie Wilson during this period. In 1967, he recorded two more singles, 'Angel Baby (Don't Ever Leave Me),' and 'Here Comes The Tears.' Although he never actually cut a record for the Revilot Record Label, they did release an Atco album in 1967 entitled, "Darrell Banks Is Here.' The album contained both the Atco singles he recorded the smae year and the single, 'I'm Gonna Hang My Head And Cry,' which was written by Cleveland Horne, Gene Redd, Donald Bell, and Rose Marie McCoy. Banks then joined the Cotillion Records Label for the single, 'I Wanna Go Home,' written by Don Davis and Fred Briggs. 

In 1969, banks signed with the Stax Records' Volt Division and released an album, and two singles for them entitled, 'No One Is Blinder (Then A Man In Love),' and 'Beautiful Feeling.' The song 'Beautiful Feeling' single fared well, but it didn't do much for Banks' career. Around the same time trouble brewed thanks to the Stax Record Label. A great entertainer Banks was, but he was moody and also had a bad temper. The Record label released a song he had compiled, but gave full credit to a singer named Steve Mancha, who had only recorded it. This was considered an insult to Banks, but the situation was soon cleared up. 

A compilation album featuring that song, all of his Stax recordings, and singles like, 'Forgive Me,' 'Don't Know What To Do,' and Mancha's 'I Could Never Hate Her,' was later released as a package. Although he had worked himself to stardom with more than seven albums, and several recordings, his career was beginning to slump, and tragedy would soon follow. On February 24, 1970, the man considered by many as soul's finest voice was shot and seriously wounded by an off-duty policeman named Aaron Bullock. The story goes that Banks was seeing a woman named Marjorie Bozeman, who was trying to break off the relationship. Bullock intervened when Banks grabbed Bozeman's arm and pulled a gun and shot him. Banks was then rushed to the New Grace Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, where he was pronounced dead at the age of 32. 

Following his death, the Banks family had a benefit evening at Watts Club Mozambique on Detroit’s West Side. Banks was buried in an unmarked grave at the Detroit Memorial Park West in Detroit, Michigan. After a visit from some fans some 33 years after his death this was discovered, and on July 17, 2004, thanks to financial help from the United States, Scotland, Finland, and Australia, a memorial bench was placed on Banks' unmarked grave. 

In December 2014, collectors were bidding many thousands of pounds for a copy of "Open the Door to Your Heart" in an online auction held in the UK, the London Records pressing of the record was thought to be the only copy in circulation. It had previously been thought that all the original versions had been destroyed when rival label EMI won the rights to release the single. It eventually sold for in excess of £14,000 (US$23,000). Bank's recording of "Just Because Your Love Is Gone", released as a single on Stax Records in 1969 is also collectable, with Record Collector magazine listing its value at £100 in mint condition, although in 2009 a copy actually sold for twice that amount. 

(Edited from bio by Kris Peterson , Wikipedia & Soul Walking)