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Longtime booking agent Scott Pang passed away on Thursday (Jan. 23) after suffering from a cardiac arrest. He was 69 years old. “He loved what he did and he was always on the phone,” his son Thompson Pang tells Billboard. “He knew so many people, it was crazy.” Pang was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on […]
Garth Hudson, the inventive keyboard player whose soulful playing was a key part of 1960s/70s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame group The Band‘s country-tinged Americana anthems has died at 87. The last surviving member of the group, Hudson died peacefully in his sleep on Tuesday morning (Jan. 21) at a nursing home in Woodstock, N.Y., according to the Toronto Star.
Along with fellow Canadians Robbie Robertson (guitar/vocals), Rick Danko (bass/vocals) and Richard Manuel (piano/vocals) and lone American member, drummer/singer Levon Helm, Hudson was a key component of the unique sound the band explored during its initial 20-year run.
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He officially began playing with The Band in 1965, after they had served a two-year apprenticeship as the back-up group for rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins. The Hawks — as they were known — left Hawkins’ employ in 1963 after years on the road honing their sound. After meeting Bob Dylan in 1965, the group recorded the song “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window” the next year for what would become Dylan’s beloved 1966 double album, Blonde on Blonde, which featured such classics as “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,” “Visions of Johanna,” “I Want You” and “Just Like a Woman.”
Dylan toured with The Band as his backing group in 1966 and then joined him in the studio for a series of 1967 sessions that became The Basement Tapes. The fruit of those sessions recorded at the group’s legendary Saugerties, N.Y. home known as Big Pink, were not officially released until 1975. That home was the inspiration for the title of the Band’s 1968 debut album, Music From Big Pink, which spotlighted Hudson’s churchy organ playing on such earthy anthems as “Tears of Rage” and what is perhaps the group’s most well-known song, “The Weight.”
For those who saw the Timothée Chalamet Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown — which (spoiler alert) ends after the folk icon burns his bridges by going electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival — it’s instructive to note that The Band served as Dylan’s backup group on his first official electric tour later that year.
Though they performed at the Woodstock Festival in 1969 — which took place about 90 minutes from Big Pink — they were not included in the final film due to legal issues. The rustic, black and white cover of their eponymous next album from 1969 was a visual metaphor for their rich, throwback sound, which incorporated dusty barroom laments, aching rock odes and urgent country balladry for a mash-up roping in rock, country and classic R&B. It was all anchored by a gritty, hand-made, sepia-toned quality that served as an antidote to the more expansive, paisley-colored psychedelic experimentation and bombast of the era.
Classically trained pianist Eric Garth Hudson was born in Windsor, Ontario on August 2, 1937 and played organ in his church (and at his uncle’s funeral home) as a young man as well as studying music at the University of Western Ontario in the early 1950s before dropping out to join the rock group the Silhouettes.
Equally adept at saxophone, trumpet, violin and accordion, among other instruments, Hudson was best known for playing the two-tiered Lowery electric organ, whose distinctive, church-like sound can most famously be heard on the Bach-esque intro to the Band’s 1968 classic “Chest Fever.” That song became a highlight of the group’s shows, during which Hudson reliable performed an extended, improvised solo that roped in bits of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor on its way to stops at classical, jazz and soul.
Hudson’s oscillating, bouncing sound can also famously be heard on another of the band’s most well-known tunes, “Up on Cripple Creek,” from the 1969 eponymous album. On that song he played a clavinet through a wah-wah pedal, giving it a distinctive, Jews-harp-like twang; that song reached No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. The group would release a handful of albums through the mid-1970s, including 1970s Stage Fright (“The Shape I’m In”) 1971’s Cahoots (”Life Is a Carnival,” “When I Paint My Masterpiece”), 1973’s cover album Moondog Matinee, as well as 1975’s Northern Lights – Southern Cross (“Ophelia,” “It Makes No Difference”) and the final LP by the original lineup, 1977’s Islands, before substance abuse and intra-band quarreling led to their split.
As a final, grand gesture, though, they set their disputes aside for one final, blow-out show dubbed The Last Waltz. The all-star show featuring guests Dylan, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and many others, was documented by director Martin Scorsese for the live movie/album of the same name. The group would get back together in the 1980s — without key member Robertson — and released a trio of albums that did not reach the creative or critical heights of their early trio of classics.
In addition to his work on albums by Hawkins and John Hammond in his pre-Band days, Hudson could be heard on Dylan’s 1966 Blonde on Blonde album, as well as the soundtracks to Last Summer, Kent State, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy and Best Revenge. Throughout his career he was an in-demand session ace as well, recording tracks for albums by artists including: Bobby Charles, Eric Von Schmidt, Ringo Starr, Maria Muldaur, Paul Butterfield, Neko Case, the Secret Machines, Eric Clapton, Band-mates Danko and Helm, as well as Emmylou Harris, the Lemonheads, Van Morrison, Leonard Cohen, The Call, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Marianne Faithfull, Camper Van Beethoven and many more.
He released his first solo album, The Sea to the North, in 2001, and followed up with 2010’s Garth Hudson Presents a Canadian Celebration of The Band. Hudson was inducted into the Canadian Juno Hall of Fame in 1989 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994 and received a lifetime achievement awards from the Grammys in 2008.
Check out some of Hudson’s playing below.
John Sykes, the guitarist who performed with Thin Lizzy and Whitesnake in the 1980s — and who co-wrote several tracks on Whitesnake’s highest-charting album, including the hit “Is This Love” — has died.
Sykes passed away following a battle with cancer, a statement posted on his verified Facebook page said on Monday (Jan. 20).
“It is with great sorrow we share that John Sykes has passed away after a hard fought battle with cancer,” the message said. “He will be remembered by many as a man with exceptional musical talent but for those who didn’t know him personally, he was a thoughtful, kind, and charismatic man whose presence lit up the room. He certainly marched to the beat of his own drum and always pulled for the underdog.”
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“In his final days, he spoke of his sincere love and gratitude for his fans who stuck by him through all these years. While the impact of his loss is profound and the mood somber, we hope the light of his memory will extinguish the shadow of his absence,” the note read.
“Just heard the shocking news of John’s passing…My sincere condolences to his family, friends & fans,” Whitesnake’s David Coverdale wrote Monday on X, where he posted photos in tribute to his former bandmate.
Born in Reading, England, in 1959, Sykes took up guitar when he was a teenager. He joined the band Streetfighter, and then Tygers of Pan Tang, but left the band in 1982 before recording his first solo single.
Sykes co-wrote and recorded his 1982 single “Please Don’t Leave Me” with Thin Lizzy’s Phil Lynott. He later joined Thin Lizzy as guitarist and played on the Irish rockers’ final studio album, 1983’s Thunder and Lightning, for which he co-wrote the track “Cold Sweat.” “It was a little heavier and I think that was something that I’d brought to the table,” he recalled of the sound of the album in a 2008 interview.
“I was young and what I lived for was being involved in rock ‘n’ roll,” said Sykes, who’d been a fan of Thin Lizzy before joining. “That was a wonderful time in my life, and I was only about 22 years old at the time.”
He added that Thin Lizzy’s 1983 split, following a tour billed as a farewell run, was “definitely a kick to the guts. I didn’t really think it was going to end and I don’t think Phil really thought it was going to end either.”
Sykes linked with Whitesnake to record new guitar parts for the U.S. version of the group’s 1984 album Slide It In, and for their next studio album, their self-titled set that was released in 1987.
It turned out to be Whitesnake’s biggest chart success. Whitesnake the album peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 that year, ultimately spending a total of 76 weeks on the chart.
The single “Is This Love,” co-written by Whitesnake’s Coverdale and Sykes, reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart in 1987. It was the second biggest chart hit off of Whitesnake’s self-titled album, just behind “Here I Go Again” (co-written by Coverdale and Bernie Marsden), which made it to No. 1 on the Hot 100. Both singles were preceded by “Still of the Night” (another Coverdale/Sykes work), a song that only ranked at No. 79 on the Hot 100 but reached the MTV audience with its Marty Callner-directed music video — but Sykes isn’t in the video.
Though Sykes was a co-writer on the majority of the album’s tracks, it would be the last Whitesnake project he contributed to before Coverdale unexpectedly fired him, and his bandmates, ahead of the record’s release.
“As you know, things went squirrely between us, which was unfortunate,” Coverdale said in an interview with Metal Edge in 2023. “But John was and is an incredible talent. Our musical chemistry was great, but it didn’t work personally.”
Sykes shared his version of what happened in a 2017 interview with Rock Candy, saying in part, “David said nothing to any of us about having decided to kick us out of the band,” and that he had found out about it from John Kalodner, then A&R at Geffen Records.
But Sykes continued on his path in music. Following his time with Whitesnake, he formed the band Blue Murder, releasing two studio albums and one live album in the early ’90s. His career later shifted to a focus on solo work, with five albums to come over the timespan of 1995-2004.
2004’s Bad Boy Live! was his last full-length album released before his death.
In 2021, Sykes released two singles, “Dawning of a Brand New Day” and “Out Alive.”
David Lynch, the beloved filmmaker and director known for his dark, surrealist vision in the television classic Twin Peaks, as well as films including Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet, has died. He was 78 years old.
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Lynch’s family announced the news of his passing via a Facebook post on Thursday (Jan. 16). “It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch,” the statement reads alongside a photo of the artist playing a guitar. “We would appreciate some privacy at this time. There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.’ It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way.”
See the post here. His cause of death was not revealed.
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Lynch’s death comes just five months after he announced that he was housebound over fears he’ll contract COVID-19 after being diagnosed with emphysema from many years of smoking. At the time, he added that he wasn’t planning to make another film. “I would try to do it remotely, if it comes to it,” Lynch said. “I wouldn’t like that so much.”
The Missoula, Montana, native, was a one-time painter who enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts before he shifted his focus to making films. His breakthrough came via 1977’s Eraserhead, which became popular in the midnight movie underground circuit. Among his many notable films include 2001’s Mulholland Drive starring Justin Theroux, Naomi Watts and Laura Harring; and 1986’s Blue Velvet, starring Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, Dennis Hopper and Laura Dern.
In television, he was best known as the visionary behind the mystery drama series Twin Peaks, which ran for two seasons from 1990 to 1991 and returned for a third season in 2017. The series won three Golden Globes and two Emmys, as well as a 1991 Grammy for best pop instrumental performance for the Angelo Badalamenti-composed theme music.
Lynch’s projects also made appearances on the Billboard charts. Twin Peaks: Music From The Second Season And More claimed the No. 17 spot on the the April 27, 2019-dated Soundtracks chart. That same week, it peaked at No. 68 on the Top Album Sales tally. His third studio album, The Big Dream, peaked at No. 40 on Independent Albums and No. 167 on Top Current Album Sales in 2013.
He also directed a number of music videos, including Nine Inch Nails’ 2013 “Came Back Haunted” clip as well as Moby’s 2009 “Shot in the Back of the Head” video.
Buck White, the patriarch of country and bluegrass music group The Whites, died Monday, Jan. 13 at age 94.
White’s daughters Sharon, Cheryl, Rosie and Melissa said in a statement: “The Lord answered our prayers and took our daddy home peacefully this morning at 8:00 a.m. We are so thankful for his 94 years on this earth. He was a great Dad who taught us by example to put Jesus first always. His great loves were the Lord, our mother, his family and music. Most people will remember him not only for being a great musician and entertainer, but also for being fun-loving and full of mischief. He lived a full life and finished well.”
White was born Dec. 13, 1930. According to The Whites’ Skaggs Family Records bio, White launched his music career by playing mandolin and piano in dance halls and radio shows around Texas. He later relocated his family to Arkansas in the 1960s. The group initially formed as Buck White & the Down Home Folks, and as White’s daughters Sharon and Cheryl began displaying their own talents for music, they joined the group.
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In 1971, they performed at Bill Monroe’s Bean Blossom festival, which prompted the group to move to Nashville and further pursue a career in music. Throughout the early 1970s, they continued releasing albums. Their music and familial harmonies caught the ear of Emmylou Harris, who invited the group to sing on her 1979 album Blue Kentucky Girl; they then joined Harris on the road as her opening act.
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Buck White also released the solo album More Pretty Girls Than One in 1979, while the group issued their first album under the moniker The Whites in 1983, with Old Familiar Feeling.
In the 1980s, the group earned top 10 Hot Country Songs chart hits including “You Put the Blue in Me” (which earned the group its first Grammy nomination, for best country performance by a duo or group with vocal) and “Hangin’ Around.” Sharon White married bluegrass/country artist Ricky Skaggs in 1981, and Skaggs produced the bulk of The Whites’ 1980s hits. The Whites and Skaggs also began performing often together, with Skaggs introducing the group to new audiences. The Whites became members of the Grand Ole Opry in 1984. The Whites also picked up CMA Awards nominations in categories including horizon award, instrumental group of the year and vocal group of the year. They released their first all-gospel album in 1988 with Doing It by the Book.
White appeared with his daughters in the 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou, and the country music classic “Keep on the Sunny Side” as part of the movie’s soundtrack. The group also took part in the 40-plus city Down From the Mountain Tour.
To date, The Whites have won two Grammys, earning best southern, country or bluegrass gospel album for their project Salt of the Earth (with Skaggs), and album of the year for the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. The Country Music Association also named the soundtrack as its album of the year in 2001.
The Whites were inducted into the Texas Music Hall of Fame in 2008, and earned the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA)’s distinguished achievement award in 2006. They also celebrated 40 years as members of the Grand Ole Opry last March.
On the Billboard Bluegrass Albums chart dated Jan. 18, 2025, the O Brother, Where Art Thou? album re-entered the chart at No. 2.
Funeral arrangements for White are pending.
Jackie Farry, a music industry veteran who served as tour manager for Elliot Smith and the Lemonheads in the 1990s and who was Frances Bean Cobain’s first nanny, died on Sunday (Jan. 12) of complications from lung disease. Farry’s death was confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter by longtime friend manager/producer Janet Billig Rich.
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Farry’s career began in the 1980s when she served as a receptionist at Homestead Records, a beloved New York indie label whose roster included such beloved acts as Antietam, Babe the Blue Ox, The Meatmen, Tsunami, Volcano Suns and others. She moved on to gigs at Atlantic Records (1988-1989), Epic Records (1991-1992), where she worked in radio promotion, often with hard rock and metal bands.
She pivoted to working with Nirvana during the band’s heyday, serving as nanny to singer Kurt Cobain and wife Courtney Love’s daughter, Frances Bean, until Cobain’s death in 1994. After working with a number of metal bands early in her career, she also hosted the short-lived MTV series Superock, which launched in 1995 as a replacement for the former video music channel’s beloved Headbangers Ball series.
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Later in the decade, Farry was a tour manager for a number of indie rock acts, including Stereolab, the Lemonheads, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Quasi and others.
According to THR, Farry was born Jacquelyn Beth Farry in New York and raised in the controversial Synanon community, which was initially established as drug rehab program before growing into a cult in which leaders allegedly controlled members using confrontational “attack therapy.”
“Jackie carried with her an incredible trove of memories and songs from those formative years,” Billig told THR. “Jackie’s love for music was matched only by her sharp wit, humor, and magnetic personality. She was a beacon for friends and strangers alike, drawing people in with her infectious energy. Jackie Farry’s legacy is one of love, laughter and an indomitable spirit. She will be deeply missed — her unforgettable stories, her humor and her impact on those who knew her will live on forever.”
Farry was diagnosed with cancer in 2003, with her many friends standing by her and organizing a series of “f–k cancer” benefit shows featuring bands including the Breeders, TV on the Radio and Guided By Voices. In honor of her longtime support of pit bull rescue, donations in Farry’s honor can be made to her charity of choice, LovePaws.
Anita Bryant, a former Miss Oklahoma, Grammy-nominated singer and prominent booster of orange juice and other products who became known over the second half of her life for her outspoken opposition to gay rights, has died. She was 84.
Bryant died Dec. 16 at her home in Edmond, Oklahoma, according to a statement posted by her family to news site The Oklahoman on Thursday. The family did not list a cause of death.
Bryant was a Barnsdall native who began singing at an early age, and was just 12 when she hosted her own local television show. She was named Miss Oklahoma in 1958 and soon began a successful recording career. Her hit singles included “Till There Was You” (from the Broadway musical The Music Man), “Paper Roses” (a top five hit on the Billboard Hot 100), and “In My Little Corner of the World” (a top 10 hit on the Hot 100). A lifelong Christian, she received two Grammy nominations for best sacred performance (for Abide With Me and “How Great Thou Art”) and one for best inspirational performance, for Anita Bryant … Naturally.
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By the late 1960s, she was among the entertainers joining Bob Hope on his USO tours for troops overseas, had sung at the White House and performed at the national conventions for both the Democrats and Republicans in 1968. She also became a highly visible commercial spokesperson, her ads for Florida orange juice featuring the tag line, “A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.”
But in the late 1970s, her life and career began a dramatically new path. Unhappy with the cultural changes of the time, Bryant led a successful campaign to repeal an ordinance in Florida’s Miami-Dade County that would have prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation. Supported by the Rev. Jerry Falwell among others, Bryant and her “Save Our Children” coalition continued to oppose gay rights around the country, denouncing the “deviant lifestyle” of the gay community and calling gays “human garbage.”
Bryant became the object of much criticism in return. Activists organized boycotts against products she endorsed, designed T-shirts mocking her and named a drink for her — a variation of the screwdriver that replaced orange juice with apple juice. During an appearance in Iowa, an activist jammed a pie in her face. Her career in entertainment declined, her marriage to her first husband, Bob Green, broke up, and she later filed for bankruptcy.
In Florida, her legacy was challenged and perpetuated. The ban against sexual discrimination was restored in 1998. Tom Lander, an LGBTQ+ activist and board member of the advocacy group Safe Schools South Florida, told The Associated Press on Friday (Jan. 10), “She won the campaign, but she lost the battle in time.” But Lander also acknowledged the “parental rights” movement, which has spurred a recent wave book bannings and anti-LGBTQ+ laws in Florida led by such conservative organizations as Moms Against Liberty.
“It’s so connected to what’s happening today,” Lander said.
Bryant spent the latter part of her life in Oklahoma, where she led Anita Bryant Ministries International. Her second husband, NASA test astronaut Charles Hobson Dry, died last year. According to her family’s statement, she is survived by four children, two stepdaughters and seven grandchildren.
Sam Moore, half of the seminal duo Sam & Dave, died Friday (Jan. 10) in Coral Gables, Fla. The cause of death was complications from surgery. He was 89.
Moore, who was revered by artists including Bruce Springsteen, Phil Collins, Garth Brooks and Jon Bon Jovi, had an instantly recognizable tenor, first heard on such call-and-response classics as Sam & Dave’s 1960s hits “Hold On, I’m Coming” and the Grammy-winning “Soul Man,” both of which reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot R&B Singles chart, as well as “I Thank You” and “When Something Is Wrong with My Baby.” The duo, who performed at Martin Luther King Jr.’s memorial concert at Madison Square Garden following his assassination in 1968, was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 by Billy Joel.
Moore, who grew up in Miami, began singing in church and drew the attention of another legendary Sam, Sam Cooke, who wanted Moore to replace him in his gospel group The Soul Stirrers. However, after seeing Jackie Wilson perform, Moore shifted from gospel to pop and was performing at the King O’Hearts Club when he met Dave Prater and the two formed Sam & Dave.
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Legendary Atlantic Records executives Ahmet Ertegun, Tom Dowd and Jerry Wexler saw the pair at the King O’Hearts Club and signed them to the label in 1965. Wexler passed them to Atlantic’s southern partner, Stax Records, where Isaac Hayes and David Porter took them under their wing and produced their iconic hits.
Following Sam & Dave’s breakup in 1970, Moore signed to Atlantic as a solo artist. He recorded a solo album produced by King Curtis featuring Donnie Hathaway and Aretha Franklin. However, after Curtis was murdered in 1971, the album was shelved. He reunited with Dave for a few years, but spiraled into heroin addiction, which was chronicled in the DA Pennebaker/Chris Hegedus documentary Only the Strong Survive.
Interest in the duo was greatly revived by 1980’s The Blues Brothers movie, starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. The pair’s main theme was their boisterous version of “Soul Man.”
The song “turned out to be an anthem, sort of like ‘Blowin’ in the Wind” or one of those,” Moore told the Library of Congress in a 2002 interview when “Soul Man” was added to the Library’s National Recording Registry. “And, I tell you, it doesn’t matter where I sing — perform it — at the end of the night; if we didn’t do ‘Soul Man, the room would go up in smoke!”
Moore also shared how he and Prater worked out how to trade verses, with the help of Hayes. “By me at that time being the dominate one — and I’m not bragging here — I always sang the high parts,” he said in the same interview. “We went back with Isaac and he took us back and forth [with the verses]. Isaac was like, ‘Sam, try something like this.’ I remember him saying, ‘We want it bright. Not a dull opening.’ That’s why you hear all the high. Isaac was the one that suggested that.”
In the early ‘80s, Moore became sober with the help of Joyce McRae, whom he married in 1982 and who became his manager.
Moore went on to perform for six U.S. presidents — Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump — and was a frequent performer at the Kennedy Center Honors.
Springsteen asked Moore to perform on his 1992 Human Touch album, as well as Only the Strong Survive, his 2023 album of soul covers.
Moore recovered his lost 1970 album, Plenty Good Loving, and released it in 2002 via EMI. “I met Sam and his wife, Joyce, when I was in my 20s and working for Rhino Records, who reissued the classic Sam & Dave albums,” says Exceleration Music creative director David Gorman, who was instrumental in the album finally seeing daylight. “Drooling fanboy that I was, I showed up to our first meeting holding a 45 and asking for his autograph. The 45 was his solo single ‘If I Should Lose Your Love.’ When he picked it up, his jaw dropped because he had completely forgotten that he ever made a solo record at all. Over dinner, his memories came flooding back and he remembered making an entire album but had no recollection around its fate. As soon as I got back to LA, I asked [mastering engineer] Bill Inglot if it really existed and within a few days he’d found the tapes and sent over a CD-R. It was brilliant. Sam, Joyce, and I worked together to find a new home for the solo album nobody remembered making.”
Four years later, Moore released his first new album in 30 years, Overnight Sensational, which featured Bon Jovi, Sting, Springsteen and Billy Preston, with whom he received a Grammy nomination for their duet of “You Are So Beautiful.”
In 2019, Moore and Prater received the Recording Academy’s highest honor, its Lifetime Achievement Award.
In his later years, in addition to continuing to perform, Moore became an artists’ advocate, including testifying in Congress on behalf of the Fair Play Fair Pay Act, which would pay performers for radio airplay.
“His loss is deep,” Gorman says. “He was a force of joy as a human being, who lit up everyone around him. As an artist he had the explosive ability to work a crowd out — even Otis [Redding] feared following Sam & Dave on stage — but I found Sam’s genius alone with his records, especially the ballads. Sam’s cries, his knowing asides, the way would use time as a weapon to hit you when it would hurt or heal the most, gave me comfort and companionship in ways no other artist could. He could turn up the tempo and turn up the heat, but his slow-burn just couldn’t be touched. He was a master, the last of his kind.”
At the time of his death, Moore was working on a gospel album with Rudy Perez. He is survived by Joyce, daughter Michelle and grandchildren Tash and Misha.
Peter Yarrow, one third of the beloved 1960s folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary has died at 86. According to the New York Times, spokesperson Ken Sunshine said the singer and anti-Vietnam War activist died at his home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan following a four-year battle with bladder cancer.
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With his high tenor melding seamlessly with baritone Paul Stookey and contralto Mary Travers, Yarrow and this singing partners produced some of the most beloved songs of the 1960s, taking the lead on classics “Puff the Magic Dragon,” “The Great Mandala” and “Day Is Done,” all of which he wrote or co-wrote.
Perhaps the group’s most well-known track, “Puff the Magic Dragon,” was penned by Yarrow based on a poem by fellow Cornell grad and author Leonard Lipton about a magical dragon name Puff and his human friend, child Jackie Paper, who take off on adventures in the magical land of Honalee. Fans of the 1963 song — which was later turned into a beloved 1978 animated special and two follow-up sequels — were convinced that it was larded with secret drug references, tagging it as a trojan horse ditty about smoking weed, a claim both Lipton and Yarrow repeatedly denied.
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The song was one of the group’s most successful on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 2 on the tally in May 1963. Following Yarrow’s death and Travers’ passing in 2009 at age 72, Stookey, 87, is the group’s last living member.
“Our fearless dragon is tired and has entered the last chapter of his magnificent life. The world knows Peter Yarrow the iconic folk activist, but the human being behind the legend is every bit as generous, creative, passionate, playful, and wise as his lyrics suggest,” daughter Bethany Yarrow said in a statement according to the Associated Press.
Yarrow was born in Manhattan on May 31, 1938 and after starting his singing career as a student while pursuing a degree in psychology at Cornell University in the late 1950s. He moved back to the city to begin performing in New York’s burgeoning Greenwich Village folk scene after graduation. After a performance at the Newport Folk Festival, he met the event’s founder and famed music manager Albert Grossman, who shared his idea for putting together a vocal group in the vein of the Weavers, a harmony quartet from the 1940s and 50s that sang traditional folk and labor songs as well as children’s tunes and gospel; it originally featured beloved folk singer/songwriter Pete Seeger.
It was Dylan manager Grossman’s idea to put Yarrow and Travers together, with the latter later suggesting the addition of Stookey, who both had performed with on the folk scene. After signing to Warner Brothers Records, they debuted in 1962 with the song “Lemon Tree,” which peaked at No. 35 on the Hot 100. Quickly establishing their folk credentials, they followed up with the 1949 Seeger/Lee Hayes-penned protest anthem “If I Had a Hammer,” which won them two Grammy Awards in 1962 for best folk recording and best performance by a vocal group; they were also nominated for best new artist that year. They picked up two more Grammys the next year in the same categories for their cover of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and a fifth one in 1969 (best recording for children) for the Peter, Paul and Mommy LP, which peaked at No. 12 on the album chart.
Among their string of hits on the Billboard Hot 100 were their 1969 No. 1 cover of John Denver’s “Leavin’ on a Jet Plane,” as well as the No. 9 charting “I Dig Rock and Roll Music” and the No. 21 hit “Day Is Done.” They were also well-known for their charting covers of such Dylan classics as “Blowin’ in the Wind” (No. 2, 1963) and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” (No. 9, 1963), scoring a total of five top 10 albums on the Billboard 200 chart. Two of those albums, a self-titled collection from 1962 and 1963’s In the Wind, reached No. 1. (Those albums held the top two spots simultaneously, an extremely rare feat, on Nov. 2, 1963. In the Wind jumped from No. 12 to No. 1 in its second week. Peter, Paul And Mary slipped from No. 1 to No. 2 in its 80th week.)
In keeping with the tenor of the era, the group were also notable for their strong, progressive political stance in song (“The Cruel War,” “Day Is Done”) and in practice. They participated Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington in 1963, performing Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” (and “If I Had a Hammer”) on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, helping to cement that song’s place as a civil rights anthem.
In total, the group released nine albums during their initial run before breaking up in 1970. It was around that time that Yarrow was accused of taking “immoral and indecent liberties” with a 14-year old girl, Barbara Winter, after she and her older sister came to his hotel room for an autograph and he answered the door naked and forced her to perform a sex act on herself. The singer was indicted and sentenced to one to three years in prison, and ended up serving just three months. He later apologized for the incident and was granted a presidential pardon by Jimmy Carter in January 1981, just before the late president’s final day in office.
Yarrow was also an indefatigable anti-war protester, helping to organize the anti-Vietnam National Mobilization to End the War protest in 1969 in Washington that drew nearly 500,000 fellow anti-war activists, as well as 1978’s anti-nuclear benefit show Survival Sunday at the Hollywood Bowl, which featured appearances by Jackson Browne, Graham Nash and Gil Scott-Heron, among others. In 2000, he founded Operation Respect, a non-profit that aimed to tackle the mental health effects of school bullying.
In addition to his work with the trio, Yarrow released five solo albums, scoring a No. 100 hit on the singles chart with “Don’t Ever Take Away My Freedom” in 1972 and a No. 163 debut on the Billboard 200 album chart in 1972 for his debut solo LP, Peter. Following solo ventures by all three, the trio reunited several times over the ensuing years, including for a 1972 concert to support George McGovern’s failed presidential campaign, his 1978 Survival Sunday anti-nukes show and a summer reunion tour that same year.
By 1981 they were back together for good, performing and releasing five more albums before Travers’ death.
Check out some of Yarrow’s highlights below.
Brenton Wood, the soul singer best known for his 1967 hit “The Oogum Boogum Song,” has died at the age of 83.
Wood passed away on Friday (Jan. 3), at his home in Moreno Valley, Calif., surrounded by family and friends, according to his manager and assistant, Manny Gallegos, TMZ reports.
Gallegos confirmed to The New York Post that Wood died of natural causes. “He went in his sleep peacefully. The love that he gave us, God took him the same way,” Gallegos said.
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The manager also shared a final message from Wood to his fans: “He said, ‘Catch you on the rebound,’” referring to a 1967 song and the title of his final tour, which wrapped up over Valentine’s Day weekend in 2024. Wood began feeling ill shortly after the tour and was hospitalized last May.
Born Alfred Jesse Smith in Shreveport, La., Wood relocated with his family to San Pedro, Calif., in the 1950s. He later attended college in Southern California, where he began nurturing his passion for music, drawing inspiration from artists like Jesse Belvin and Sam Cooke. A self-taught pianist, Wood wrote songs and harmonized with neighborhood friends. He adopted the stage name Brenton Wood, drawing inspiration from the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles.
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After signing with Double Shot Records in 1967, Wood released three of his biggest hits that same year: “The Oogum Boogum Song” (which reached No. 34 on the Billboard Hot 100), “Gimme Little Sign” (peaking at No. 9 on the Hot 100) and “Baby You Got It” (hitting No. 34 on the Hot 100). “The Oogum Boogum Song” and “Gimme Little Sign” both peaked at No. 19 on the Billboard‘s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, while “Baby You Got It” reached No. 30 on that chart.
In 1972, he founded his own label, Prophesy Records, and later released music under Mr. Wood Records.
Over the years, “The Oogum Boogum Song” has reached new audiences through its inclusion in popular TV shows and movies such as The Umbrella Academy, Almost Famous and Don’t Worry Darling, among others.
“It’s hard to be in a bad mood after you hear the ‘Oogum Boogum Song,’” NPR wrote in 2023. “Probably not worth the effort.”
“It’s a silly title and has silly lyrics, too. But there’s something about the feeling. That almost playful falsetto, the drums bouncing along, the jangly guitar hits.”
During his career, Wood believed in “giving back” and frequently performed at schools and community outreach events throughout Southern California, according to his website. During these appearances, the musician would share his personal and professional challenges and successes, offering a message of empowerment with an emphasis on education and a “can do” attitude to inspire youth, the site states.