Gus Jenkins born 24 March 1931

Augustus D. "Gus" Jenkins (March 24, 1931 – December 22, 1985) was an American blues and R&B pianist, vocalist and bandleader. Like many of his generation, Jenkins drew his influences from 40s blues and spent much of his mature career adapting to the demands of rock ‘n’ roll and R&B.

Walter Davis

 Born in Birmingham (Alabama), Augustus D. "Gus" Jenkins learned to play piano at an early age under the tutelage of his keyboard mother and the strong influence of Walter Davis' records. He started to play in local clubs before joining, still a teenager, several itinerant Shows, namely Atlanta's Sammy Green's Hot Harlem Review who also featured his fellow Alabamian Big Mama Thornton.

Big Walter Horton

At the end of the 1940's, Gus came to Chicago to try his luck, played in several clubs and even got a Chess recording session in 1953, backed by Big Walter Horton. His recordings, including "Eight Ball", were not released for some years.

But feeling (rightly) that his own style was more suitable to West Coast ears, he ended in Los Angeles where he found many opportunities in clubs, lounges and recording sessions for several Californian labels (Specialty, Combo, Cash, Flash).

Mamie Perry

Seeking the success, he recorded several blues or R&B sides, mostly in a Charles Brown's style but also as a credible Howlin' Wolf impersonator under the "Young Wolf" moniker as well as Little Temple or Piano Bo! He also backed his wife Mamie Reed/ Mamie Perry on some excellent records.

He also accompanied David "Honeyboy" Edwards on some of his recordings at Chess. Later in 1953 he recorded "Cold Love" and other tracks as Little Temple for the Specialty label in Los Angeles, with Jimmy Liggins (harmonica), Ted Brinson (bass), and an unknown drummer.

                              

He remained in Los Angeles for the rest of his career, and learned woodworking while continuing to perform, with Johnny Otis' band and others, and record. He recorded "I Miss My Baby" for Jake Porter's Combo label in 1955 before recording "Tricky" in 1956 for the Flash label owned by Charlie Reynolds. The single reached no.2 on the R&B chart and no.79 on the Billboard pop chart in late 1956. Henceforth, alongside with blues and ballads, he waxed many instrumental of this kind, playing either piano or organ (Spark plug, Payday shuffle) but without succeeding commercially.

In 1959, Gus Jenkins founded his own Pioneer label, recording several excellent obscure L.A. bluesmen as well as many tracks of his own. He later recorded for the General Artist label, but without further commercial success. However, his single "Chittlins" was released by Tower Records, a subsidiary of Capitol, in 1964. It became another last hit for Gus.

By 1970, Jenkins had converted to Islam, and used the name Jaarone Pharoah. He continued to perform around Los Angeles, until his death in 1985 at the age of 54 in Inglewood. California.

Largely unknown, outside a small number of blues buffs around the world, he leaves us a diverse and mostly very good works.

(Edited from Wikipedia and mainly from an article by Gerard Herzhaft) (As you can see there seems tp be only one photograph of Gus, so I placed in a few other relevent pics.) 

Dave Pike born 23 March 1938

Dave Pike (23 March 1938 - 3 October 2015) was born in Detroit, Wayne, Michigan. He learned drums at the age of eight and was self-taught on vibes. He moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1954 and played with Curtis Counce, Harold Land, Elmo Hope, Dexter Gordon, Carl Perkins, and Paul Bley, among others. In 1956, at the age of 18, he released his first recording, "Gene Norman presents the Jazz Couriers."

After moving to New York in 1960 he put an amplifier on his vibes when working with flautist Herbie Mann with whom he toured with during 1961-1964.  In 1961 he released his debut album “It’s Time For Dave Pike” for Riverside records which contained swinging, inspired bop along the lines of Milt Jackson, who was one of Pike's primary influences. Other albums followed on the Epic, New Jazz, Moodsville, Decca, Atlantic, Vortex and Relax labels.

                  Here's "Melvalita" from above 1962 album.

                             

By the late 1960s, Pike's music became more exploratory, contributing a unique voice and new contexts that pushed the envelope in times remembered for their exploratory nature. Doors of Perception, released in 1970 for the Atlantic Records subsidiary Vortex Records and produced by former boss Herbie Mann,

explored ballads, modal territory, musique concrète, with free and lyrical improvisation, and included musicians like alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, bassist Chuck Israels and pianist Don Friedman.

Pike moved to Europe and signed with MPS Records and worked in Belgium, Germany and The Netherlands where he lived in Loosdrecht. With the collaboration of Volker Kriegel (guitar), J. A. Rettenbacher (acoustic and electric bass), and Peter Baumeister (drums), he formed the Dave Pike Set. The group recorded six records from 1969-1972 that ran the gamut from funky grooves to free, textural territory.

The group, though short-lived, created a unique identity and textural palette. Kriegel's compositional and instrumental (playing acoustic, classical, and electric guitar as well as sitar) contributions to the group helped set the Dave Pike Set's sound apart, organically incorporating influences from jazz, soul jazz, psychedelia, avant-garde music, and World music.

He returned to the United States in the early 1970s and talked the owner of Hungry Joe’s, a tiny Huntington Beach hangout in California for bikers and surfers, to let him play there. With pianist Tom Ranier, guitarist Ron Eschete and bassist Luther Hughes, Pike and his group became regulars and turned the establishment into a lively jazz club. He recorded for the Timeless and Criss Cross labels.

He died 3 October 2015 in Del Mar, California. He was 77. A smoker since his teens, Pike had emphysema. He made more than two dozen recordings during his career, including “Times Out of Mind,” “Carnaval” and “Jazz for the Jet Set.” He stopped touring in 2010 when his illness worsened, his wife said. Besides his wife, Brooke, whom he married in 2004, he is survived by a son from a previous marriage, Jesse, and three grandchildren.

Because the meat of his career was spent recording for a European label at a time when jazz music was losing steam in mainstream America, he has been among the countless musicians to have taken his place amongst the more obscure and only recently sought after jazz musicians of the mid-Twentieth Century.

Footnote: Dutch pianist Rein de Graaff regularly played with Dave Pike, who was discussed during an interview with Flophouse Magazine a couple of years ago. As far as De Graaff is concerned, It’s Time For Dave Pike was nothing short of “Charlie Parker on vibes!”. Bop master De Graaff, who semi-retired recently, pointed towards a vibraphone that stood beside the baby grand in his music room and said, “that’s the vibraphone Pike played on It’s Time. He gave it to me as a gift.” His friend had passed away six months before the interview.

(Edited from Wikipedia, AllMusic, Last FM, LA Times & Flophouse)

Annette Snell born 22 March 1945

Annette Snell (March 22, 1945 – April 4, 1977) was an American rhythm and blues singer who recorded in the 1960s and 1970s. She died in the Southern Airways Flight 242 crash.

She was born Annetta Snell in Orlando, Florida. Little is known about her childhood and the story immediately continues to where she starts a professional career in music.In the early 1960s she was a member of a vocal backing group, the Mar-Vells The members of the group were all local Florida girls and did live concerts and session work for other Florida musicians. From 1963 and until 1968 or 69 the line-up consisted of: Annette Snell, Mattie Lovett, Addie Williams and Loretta Ludlow.

The Mar-Vells

Changing their name to The Fabulettes on their first recording for Monument Records was probably a decision taken by the record company who would not have been interested in promoting yet another band named Marvels/Mar-Vells/Marvells. Even though the group still performed as The Mar-Vells in the Florida area all their recordings were, from this point on, issued under the Fabulettes moniker.

The Fabulettes

Sometime during 1968 or early 1969 Annette Snell left the group to pursue a solo career. The Fabulettes attempted to find a replacement but after cutting two more records they split up. Annette went to New York, and then to Nashville, Tennessee. Under the name Annetta, she recorded "Since There Is No More You" with Paul Kelly, whom she met when in the Mar-vells. The record, although leased by Juggy Murray for national distribution, didn't make much noise.

                             

Kelly then brought her to the attention of record producer and music publisher Buddy Killen, who was suitably impressed. More singles came, all written by Kelly, and her greatest success was achieved with the No. 19 Billboard rhythm and blues hit "You 

Annette in NYC

Oughta' Be Here With Me" in 1973. She followed it up with two more R&B chart hits, also released on the Dial label, the following year, "Get Your Thing Together" (No. 44); and "Just as Hooked As I’ve Been" (No. 71).

She then won a deal to record an album for Epic Records in Muscle Shoals, Alabama with the Swampers session musicians. The studio was unique because The Swampers, had creative control over who was able to record sessions and when sessions were recorded. They initially produced one unreleased single, "Promises Should Never be Broken", and Snell returned for a further session in early 1977.

She was returning home via Atlanta, Georgia after working on tracks for the album when she was killed with 71 others when  the flight she was on, Southern Airways Flight 242, went down in New Hope, Georgia during a severe thunderstorm on April 4, 1977. Sixty-three people in the plane are killed, as are nine people in New Hope. Some survive the crash. Annette Snell is one of the victims. She had just turned 32.

Annette was buried in Dade North Memorial Park Cemetery Opa-locka, Florida. She was married to Pete Jackson of Touch of Class

(Edited mainly from Wikipedia & doowopheaven)

Otis Spann born 21 March 1924

Otis Spann (March 21, 1924 or 1930 – April 24, 1970) was an American blues musician, whom many consider to be the leading post-war Chicago blues pianist.

Sources differ over Spann's early years. Many sources state that he was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1930, but the researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc concluded, on the basis of census records and other official information, that he was born in 1924 in Belzoni, Mississippi.

Spann's father was, according to some sources, a pianist called Friday Ford. His mother, Josephine Erby, was a guitarist who had worked with Memphis Minnie and Bessie Smith, and his stepfather, Frank Houston Spann, was a preacher and musician. One of five children, Spann began playing the piano at the age of seven, with some instruction from Friday Ford, Frank Spann, and Little Brother Montgomery.

Otis Spann & Muddy Waters

By the age of 14, he was playing in bands in the Jackson area. He moved to Chicago in 1946, where he was mentored by Big Maceo Merriweather. Spann performed as a solo act and with the guitarist Morris Pejoe, working a regular spot at the Tic Toc Lounge. Spann became known for his distinctive piano style. He replaced Merriweather as Muddy Waters's piano player in late 1952 and participated in his first recording session with the band on September 24, 1953. He continued to record as a solo artist and session player with other musicians, including Bo Diddley and Howlin' Wolf, during his tenure with the group. He stayed with Muddy Waters until 1968.

                             

Spann's work for Chess Records includes the 1954 single "It Must Have Been the Devil" backed with "Five Spot", with B.B. King and Jody Williams on guitars. During his time at Chess he played on a few of Chuck Berry's early records, including the studio version of "You Can't Catch Me". In 1956, he recorded two unreleased tracks with Big Walter Horton and Robert Lockwood. He recorded a 
session with the guitarist Robert Lockwood, Jr. and vocalist St.
Louis Jimmy in New York on August 23, 1960, which was issued on the albums Otis Spann Is the Blues and Walking the Blues. A 1963 session for Storyville Records was recorded in Copenhagen. He worked with Muddy Waters and Eric Clapton on recordings for Decca and with James Cotton for Prestige in 1964.

The Blues Is Where It's At, Spann's enduring 1966 album for ABC-Bluesway, sounded like a live recording but was actually a studio date enlivened by a gaggle of enthusiastic onlookers who applauded every song (Waters, guitarist Sammy Lawhorn, and George "Harmonica" Smith were among the support crew on the date). A Bluesway encore, The Bottom of the Blues, followed in 1967 and featured Otis' wife, Lucille Spann, helping out on vocals.

He worked on albums with Buddy Guy, Big Mama Thornton, Peter

Otis with John McVie

Green, and Fleetwood Mac in the late 1960s. In 2012, Silk City Records released Someday which featured live and studio performances from 1967 produced by the noted blues guitarist Son Lewis. Spann's last few years with Muddy Waters were memorable for their collaboration on the Chess set Fathers and Sons, but the pianist was clearly ready to launch a solo career, recording a set for Blue Horizon with British blues-rockers Fleetwood Mac that produced Spann's laidback "Hungry Country Girl." He finally turned the piano chair in the Waters  band over to Pinetop Perkins in 1969, but fate didn't grant Spann long to achieve solo stardom.

Spann died of liver cancer in Chicago in 1970. He was buried in Burr Oak Cemetery, in Alsip, Illinois. His grave was unmarked for almost thirty years, until Steve Salter (president of the Killer Blues Headstone Project) wrote a letter to Blues Revue magazine, saying, "This piano great is lying in an unmarked grave. Let's do something about this deplorable situation". Blues enthusiasts from around the world sent donations to purchase a headstone. On June 6, 1999, the marker was unveiled in a private ceremony. The stone is inscribed, "Otis played the deepest blues we ever heard – He'll play forever in our hearts".

He was posthumously elected to the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980.

(Edited from Wikipedia & AllMusic)

Marian McPartland born 20 March 1918

Margaret Marian McPartland, OBE ( 20 March 1918 – 20 August 2013), was an English-American jazz pianist, composer and writer. She was the host of Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz on National Public Radio from 1978 to 2011

Legendary jazz pianist Marian McPartland was born Margaret Marian Turner in 1918 near Buckinghamshire, England. A musical prodigy, McPartland studied classical music and, in addition to her 
piano studies, mastered the violin. She pursued classical studies at the Guildhall School of Music in London and left to join Billy Mayerl’s Claviers, a four-piano vaudeville act, performing under the stage name Marian Page. 

The group toured throughout Europe during World War II, entertaining Allied troops. While touring with USO shows in Belgium in 1943, she met and began to play with a Chicago cornetist named Jimmy McPartland.

The two were married and performed at their own wedding at a military base in Germany. After the war, the couple moved to Chicago, but in 1949 they moved to Manhattan. With her husband’s encouragement, McPartland started a trio in 1952, and the group began an eight-year residency at the Hickory House, the famous New York City jazz nightclub.

                             

In 1955 McPartland began to initiate projects to introduce jazz to schoolchildren and her enlightened work with black students in Washington DC was significantly ahead of the general thinking on educational issues and race in the US at the time. However, she was encountering storms in her marriage and went through a difficult

period during the later 1950s and early 60s, which culminated in an unhappy tour with the bandleader Benny Goodman.

It was Goodman who first sought McPartland out, but he was a notoriously hard man to please and his relationships with musicians were often fractious. Goodman made it abundantly plain that he disliked his new pianist's modernisms and felt she was out of sympathy with his style. McPartland went into therapy at the Menninger Clinic in Kansas after a tour was abandoned following the assassination of President John F Kennedy in 1963 and Goodman expressed nothing but surprise at her need for sympathetic attention.

Marian, Mary Lou Williams & Thelonius Monk 1958

She began a parallel life as a jazz broadcaster, discovering she could treat interviews the way she treated small-group improvisation – by knowing when to perform and when to listen. Growing increasingly independent, McPartland also launched her own Halcyon Records label in 1969 (despite having recorded extensively for big jazz labels including Capitol, Savoy, Argo and Concord in earlier years) and began to tour, play at clubs and give workshops again.

Marian with Rose Murphy

She confirmed her class as a sensitive interpreter on an intimate recorded tribute to the composer Alec Wilder in 1973, and unique re-workings of standard songs, jazz classics by Strayhorn and Benny Carter, and contemporary pieces by Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea flowed from her fingers on memorable sessions in the 1970s and 80s. Though in 1970 she divorced Jimmy, she still threw a 70th birthday party for him seven years later. The couple also performed together at the Newport Jazz festival in 1978.

Marian and Mel Torme

In June that year, NPR began broadcasting Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz – with the host interviewing her guests from the keyboard, and eventually including practitioners of many instruments, though fellow pianists formed the majority. Artists and performers as different as Dizzy Gillespie, Steely Dan, Studs Terkel and the emerging young star Geri Allen were among the guests.

Through the 1980s, affected by the downturn in jazz's popularity, McPartland returned to classical music, performing Grieg's Piano Concerto across America. She also continued to work tirelessly for jazz education, and turned out to be an eloquent writer on the subject – her engaging pieces were collected in the anthology All in Good Time (1987). She also composed a number of enduring originals, including In the Days of Our Love, With You in Mind and Ambiance.

In the 1990s, the septuagenarian explored the music of John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, and Lennon and McCartney in the company of the cutting-edge saxophonist Chris Potter; paid a recorded tribute to her old friend Williams; and played an 80th birthday gig at Birdland, New York, as a reunion of her old trio, with the bassist Bill Crow and Morello on drums. For her 85th at Birdland in 2003 (recorded for the Concord label), McPartland was accompanied by a raft of stars but still right at the heart of things, notably in a superb duet with the guitarist Jim Hall.

She went on to win a Grammy in 2004 and was appointed OBE in 2010. She died in August 2013 at her home in Port Washington. She was 95 years old. (Edited mainly from The Guardian & limusichalloffame.org)

Lennie Tristano born 19 March 1919

Leonard Joseph Tristano (19 March 1919 - 18 November 1978) was a jazz pianist, composer  and teacher of jazz improvisation. He performed in the cool jazz, bebop, post bop and avant-garde jazz genres. He remains a somewhat overlooked figure in jazz history, but his enormous originality and dazzling work as an improviser have long been appreciated by knowledgeable jazz fans; in 

addition, his work as a jazz educator meant that he has exerted a substantial influence on jazz through figures such as Lee Konitz and Bill Evans.

Tristano was born in Chicago. He was born with weak sight, but became completely blind by age ten. Both of his parents emigrated from Italy, and his mother, a pianist and opera singer, taught him music. At a Chicago school for the blind, Tristano studied clarinet, cello, and saxophone as well as the piano.

He graduated from Chicago’s American Conservatory of Music in 1943, and quickly established himself as a teacher and performer. There he met alto saxophonist Lee Konitz and Bill Russo, a trumpeter and arranger, both of whom became students and proponents of what would later be called ‘The Tristano School’ of jazz. He married singer Judy Moore on July 27th, 1945. In 1946, the Tristanos moved to Freeport, Long Island. Lennie established a trio with a bassist and guitar player, and it was not long before he was performing with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. The jazz critic Barry Ulanov promoted Tristano’s playing through his writings in Metronome magazine, which gave Lennie its Musician of the Year award in 1947.

Tristano’s approach to jazz was unusual in its day. Rooted in the vocabularies of swing and bebop, it strove for a harmonic complexity that owed as much to Stravinsky and other twentieth-century classical composers as it did to Ellington and Parker. His linear solos suggested the contrapuntal nature of Bach, while his harmonic and rhythmic ideas were consistent with bebop but took its conceptions even further.

In 1949 Tristano formed a sextet with Konitz, guitarist Billy Bauer, and tenor saxophonist Warne Marsh. Their recordings encapsulate Tristano’s signature style in their long flowing lines, odd rhythms, and musical counterpoint. 

                              

This group recorded two pieces, ‘Intuition,’and ‘Digression,’ that were both fully improvised, with no pre-laid musical structure. Ten years later, saxophonist Ornette Coleman adopted this approach and was heralded by many as the inventor of “free jazz,” but Tristano’s group did it first.

Tristano continued to perform and record in New York City, and set up his school in a loft at 317 East Thirty-Second Street. The topics of study included ear training, harmony and technique. Tristano encouraged students to sing along with the recorded jazz solos of master improvisers like Parker and tenor saxophonist Lester Young. Tristano’s systematic approach to teaching jazz influenced other schools, such as the Lenox School and the Berklee School of Music, whose curricula later spread to jazz schools throughout the world.

Tristano also built a recording studio in his loft, where he experimented with overdubbing on his compositions ‘Ju-Ju’ and ‘Pastime’. He recorded his trio with Peter Ind on bass and Roy Haynes on drums, and then overdubbed a second piano part.

In 1955, Tristano made some of his most important recordings. Ind and drummer Jeff Morton recorded several choruses of the chord changes to the standard ‘All Of Me,’ and Tristano overdubbed his piano solo. This track, ‘Line Up’, became his best-known performance.

He closed the studio in 1956, and moved his school to a house in Hollis, Queens, where he set up shop after his separation from Judy. His public performances dwindled off, but in 1958 he began what would become a long-term engagement at the Half Note. In 1961 he recorded a solo piano album, ‘The New Tristano’. It included a disclaimer that no overdubbing was used in the recording process. His harmonic and rhythmic approaches grew more advanced, as evidenced on ‘C minor Complex’ and the standard ‘You Don’t Know What Love Is’.

In 1964, Tristano reunited with Konitz and Marsh for an extended engagement at the Half Note. The next year he departed for a solo piano tour of Europe, which yielded several solo and trio recordings. He recorded with vocalist Betty Scott in 1965, 1971, and 1974, but stayed away from performing for the most part, concentrating on teaching. He gave private concerts at his home, mostly to his students and friends.

He suffered from emphysema, caused by a lifetime of smoking unfiltered cigarettes. He also developed chronic bronchitis, and these conditions lead to his death from a heart attack on November 18th, 1978.  (Edited mainly from Jazz.com)

Dick Curless born 17 March 1932

Richard William Curless (March 17, 1932 – May 25, 1995) was an American country music singer best known for singing truck-drivin' songs such as "Drag 'Em Off the Interstate, Sock It to 'Em J.P. Blues." A tall man with an eye-patch and rich baritone voice, Curless was often called the "Baron of Country Music," after one of his popular songs, "The Baron."

The Trail Riders

Curless was born in Fort Fairfield, Maine, United States, and moved with his family to Massachusetts at the age of eight. After his high school years, Dick joined a local western band called the Trail Riders, and at 17 he began touring with country singers Yodeling Slim Clark, Hal Lone Pine and Al Hawkes. A year later, in 1950, Dick moved to Bangor, Maine, but the Trail Riders continued playing and doing some small-scale tours. Dick made up the stage name "Tumbleweed Kid", and soon got his own radio show in Ware, Mass. At that time he made his first recordings for the New York City-based Standard label, and also met his future bride Pauline, to whom he got married in 1951.

Life seemed to smile at Dick for once, but then somehow all the happiness turned to a fully opposite direction. Though Dick had a bad eye (which is why he had to wear an eye-patch) and serious heart problems, he was drafted and sent to the Korean war in 1952 for two years, first as a truck driver and later as a radio host with the stage name "Rice Paddy Ranger" and he also made a popular recording, "China Nights", under that name. After coming home in 1954, Dick continued to appear in radio and television shows. He also did some one-night stands in local joints (Silver Dollar House in Bangor, for example). When his health condition started to fail, he simply walked away from the spotlights and returned to his home area in Maine, spending almost a year in the wilderness, totally separated from publicity and without singing a single note during this time.

In 1956, Curless returned to the public spotlight and appeared on the CBS television show Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts. He spent much of the late 1950s performing in clubs in California and Las Vegas but occasionally returned home to Maine to recover from periods of illness and fatigue. While in Maine, Curless recorded several singles including "China Nights" at Event Records with Al Hawkes, but his budding career was interrupted by an ill health.

Eventually he temporarily left the music industry and bought his own lumber trucking vehicle in Maine.

In 1965, Curless recorded one of the biggest hits of his career, "A Tombstone Every Mile", which cracked the top 5 on the Billboard country charts and propelled him to national fame and soon was working with such stars as Gene Hooper, Lone Pine, and Betty Cody. From 1966 to 1968, he toured the nation with the Buck Owens All American Show. The pinnacle of his career came in the late 1960s with eleven top-40 hits, including "Six Times a Day (the Trains Came Down)". Altogether, he recorded 22 Billboard top-40 hits throughout his career.

                               

In 1970 Curless signed to Capitol and scored a Top 30 hit titled "Big Wheel Cannonball," based on the classic "Wabash Cannonball." The follow-up, "Hard, Hard Traveling Man" (1970), made it to the Top 40.

In 1975 Dick had most of his stomach removed, but he never really recovered from his health problems. However, it didn't prevent him from recording 20 new songs in 1976 at the Hilltop company's studios in Tennessee with Curtis McPeake & the Nashville Pickers (released only in Europe on an album called "CB Special"). Soon thereafter Dick experienced a religious transformation, and retired slowly from the music business, even though MR Records issued some of his singles in the late 1970's.

During the 70’s and 80’s he recorded infrequently and eventually became a born-again Christian. He was inducted into the Maine Country Music Hall of Fame on April 30, 1978, and got the DECMA Country Music Pioneer Award in 1982.

He released the albums Welcome to My World and It's Just a Matter of Time in Norway in 1987. The albums were successful in Europe, especially in Norway and Germany. In 1989 Dick's own Allagash Records issued the LP "Close Up", which was a tribute to his all-time singer-songwriter favourites and colleagues, including Smokey Rogers, Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Pee Wee King and Brook Benton

By 1992 Dick worked at the Cristy Lane Theater in Branson, Missouri, and appeared randomly in TV and memorial concerts. In Germany he was a big star all the way to the end, and in the early 1990's he made his last recordings there, with the German singer Tom Astor.

In 1995 the world saw the last comeback of Dick Curless, but tragically it wasn't meant to last long. The "baron" passed away on May 25, 1995, aged 63, shattered by stomach cancer, right after his strongly emotional Rounder album "Travelling Through" was released. (Edited from AllMusic, Wikipedia & Black cat Rockabilly)