Perry Miller (November 22, 1941 – March 16, 2025), known professionally as Jesse Colin Young, was an American singer and songwriter. He was a founding member and lead singer of the 1960s group the Youngbloods.
Young was born Perry Miller in Queens, New York. His parents, originally from Lynn, Massachusetts, were both fans of classical music and encouraged their son to learn piano. In 1959, he won a scholarship to attend Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and studied classical guitar there until he was expelled. He attended Ohio State University for a semester, but later transferred to New York University in 1961. Young balanced his studies with performances in Greenwich Village; however, he later decided to leave college and become a full-time musician.
During this period, he decided on his stage name Jesse Colin Young as a blend of the names of outlaws Jesse James and Cole Younger, and Formula One design engineer and team owner Colin Chapman, as he felt like this was a more appropriate name for the music he performed. Young met producer Bobby Scott in the early 1960s, who assisted Young in getting studio time. Young's debut album, The Soul of a City Boy, was released in 1964, the result of a four-hour recording session backed by an acoustic guitar.
Young's cover of the George Remaily song "Four in the Morning" received some radio airplay, and in 1965 Young released a second album produced by Scott, Young Blood. Young met guitarist Jerry Corbitt, a folk singer from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the pair decided to form a band as a duo called the Youngbloods (named after Young's sophomore album), touring Canada together. Eventually Corbitt's friend Lowell "Banana" Levinger (guitar and electric piano) and drummer Joe Bauer were added to the band, and the group became the house band for the Greenwich Village night club Cafe Au Go Go.
During this period, Young switched from performing guitar to performing bass, as the band already had two guitar players. Signing to RCA Records, the band released their debut single "Grizzly Bear" in 1966, and their debut album The Youngbloods in 1967. The group's first album contained the song "Get Together", written by Chet Powers, and was released as a single in 1967 to moderate success; however, after its use in a 1969 public service commercial for the National Council of Christians and Jews, it became an international hit. The group released a second album Earth Music just a few months later and became prolific, releasing three more albums in the next few years: Elephant Mountain in 1969, Good and Dusty in 1971 and High on a Ridge Top in 1972.
Young built a recording studio next to his home in Inverness, California, where he began recording his solo album Together, released in 1972 through Warner Bros. Records. Due to the album's success, Young disbanded the Youngbloods after their final album in November 1972, High on a Ridge Top. Young's fourth solo album, Song for Juli (1973), was a sleeper hit, staying on the Billboard 200 for almost a year. Young toured his fifth album, Light Shine (1974), as an opening act for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Young's third Warner album, Songbird (1975), was his highest charting album (reaching number 26 in the U.S. and number 20 in Canada), and his further Warner releases, the live album On the Road (1976) and Love on the Wing (1977), all charted on the Billboard top 200 albums chart.
In 1978, Young switched labels to Elektra Records, releasing American Dreams (1978). His follow up The Perfect Stranger (1982), and a further album on Cypress Records titled The Highway Is for Heroes (1987) did not meet with as much commercial success as his previous works. In 1993, Young and his wife Connie founded Ridgetop Music, a label based out of their home in Inverness, in order to re-release Young's 1970s catalog on CD, and as an outlet to release new music including Makin' It Real (1993), Swept Away (1994), and the compilation album Crazy Boy (1995).
From 2001 Young released the albums Walk the Talk, followed by Songs for Christmas in 2002 and Living in Paradise with Artemis Recordsin 2004. Young quit performing music in 2012, at the time when he was diagnosed with "chronic Lyme disease". He was inspired to start performing again in 2016, after being impressed by the musicians at his son's graduation recital at the Berklee College of Music. After touring for a year, Young recorded a new solo record with the College band, Dreamers, which was released in February 2019 on BMG.
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Although his voice showed the wear of time by 2020 his guitar work was still stellar and he continued to perform live as late as 2023, but by that time was suffering from cardiac complications of atherosclerotic and hypertensive cardiovascular disease and he died from a heart attack at the Aiken Regional Medical Center home in Aiken, South Carolina on March 16, 2025.
(Edited from Wikipedia & The Daily Mail)
