Macamba's Life and Legacy

Bob Weir (78), co-frontman with the Grateful Dead, was born as Robert Hall Parber on October 16, 1947 in San Francisco, California. He was immediately adopted by the Weir family. His birthmother told him in the late 1980s, that she and a fellow college student in Tucson, Arizona had a fling in early 1947. When she  discovered she was pregnant, she moved to San Francisco, arranged for the baby’s…

Jimmy Cliff (81), first Jamaican Reggae great was born James Chambers on 30 July 1944 in St James, northwestern Jamaica in the Montego Bay area, the second youngest of nine children. He began writing songs during primary school while listening to a neighbour’s sound system. At 14, he travelled with his father to Kingston, where he adopted the name Jimmy Cliff. Determined to break into the local…

Steve Cropper (84) – guitarist and composer for Booker T and the MGs – was born October 21, 1941 in Dora, Missouri. Cropper spent his early childhood between Dora and West Plains before his family moved to Memphis when he was nine. The move placed him in the centre of a rich musical environment, where he absorbed the sound of local churches and neighborhood groups. He bought his first guitar at…

Louis Johnson (60) – bass guitarist with Michael Jackson – was born 13 April 1955 in Los Angeles. Johnson was the youngest of three brothers, after Tommy and George. They all shared a guitar as children, although Louis moved to bass in 1961 after being smitten by the guitarrón, a large acoustic bass favored by mariachi bands, which he had heard being played in a shopping arcade in LA. In their…

John Sykes (65) – guitarist/songwriter with Thin Lizzy/Whitesnake etc. – was born 29 July 1959 in Reading, England and discovered his gift for guitar through learning the blues licks of Eric Clapton, Gary Moore and Jimmy Page. The Sykes family spent three years living in the Spanish island of  Ibiza, where John’s father and uncle owned a discothèque. Afterward, they moved back to Reading. At age…

Rick Davies (81) – Singer/songwriter, keyboardist/co-founder with Supertramp was born in Swindon, England, on July 22, 1944. Rick went to Sanford Street School and, according to his mother: “Music was the only thing he was any good at at school.” Davies’s first musical stirrings were at the age of eight, when his parents gave him a secondhand radiogram which included a few records left by the…

James Lowe (82) – frontman of ’60s psych-rock icons The Electric Prunes – was born March 5, 1943 in San Luis Obispo, California and grew up in West Los Angeles. He spent time as a teenager living in Hawaii and began playing Hawaiian music, before returning to California in 1963. There, he performed in a folk duo. James Lowe had a boyhood friend whose father had a home recording studio. Lowe was…

Charlie Daniels (83) was born on October 28, 1936 in Wilmington, North Carolina to teenage parents William and LaRue Daniel. The “s” in Daniels’ name was added by mistake when his birth certificate was filled out. Two weeks after Daniels had begun to attend elementary school, his family moved to Valdosta, Georgia, commuting between Valdosta and Elizabethtown, North Carolina, before moving back to…

Brian Keenan (42) – drummer for The Chamber Brothers – was born on January 28th 1943 in New York City.As a child, he also lived in Conisbrough, Yorkshire, UK, and in Ireland. In the early 60s he did a short stint with pre-Do Wah Diddy Manfred Mann.Back in the USA, prior to joining The Chambers Brothers, Keenan was a member of the Ondine night club house band, The Losers which was formed around…

Alan Murphy (35) – guitarist with Level 42 – was born on November 28th 1953 in Islington, London. Murphy’s first musical group was called Blackmass and consisted of Murphy, Roy Phillips, James Hedges, Terry Eden, Steve Paget, and Vincent Duffy. Blackmass was named in tribute to Deep Purple founding guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, an early influence of Murphy’s. The band fell apart when their…

Rick Hall (85) – producer/session musician with Fame Studios – was born January 31, 1932 to a family of sharecroppers in Tishomingo County, Mississippi, and after his mother left home was raised by his father and grandparents in Franklin County, Alabama. He moved to Rockford, Illinois, as a teenager, working as an apprentice toolmaker, and began playing guitar  in local bar bands. When he was…

Denise LaSalle (84) – Reigning Queen of the Blues – was born on July 16, 1934 near Sidon (The Island), Mississippi and raised in Belzoni.  The youngest of eight children, she was actually born Ora D. (or Ora Dee) Allen. Her family was a family of share croppers, and she sang in church choirs before moving to Chicago to live with her oldest brother in early 1947, where she sat in with R&B…

Steve ‘Grizzly’ Nisbett (69) – Drummer for reggae band Steel Pulse from 1977 – 2001 – was born March 15, 1948 in Nevis, (Nevis & St.Kitts) the eldest of seven children. He left the Caribbean in 1957 at the age of nine to join his parents who had migrated to Saltley, Birmingham, England. He began playing drums and percussion as a teenager, and was a member of various soul bands, such as Penny…

Dave Holland (69) – drummer with Trapeze and Judas Priest – was born April 5, 1948 in Northampton England. At the age of six Holland began piano lessons, but soon developed a “mania for the drums” in his own words and begged his parents to let him have a set. After his first appearance as a stand-in for a local band, Holland realised he wanted to be a musician. When he was 14 years old, he…

Dennis Edwards (75) -The Temptations- was born on February 3, 1943 in Fairfield, Alabama, about eight miles from Birmingham, as the son of Reverend Dennis Edwards Sr. He began singing as a toddler, just two years old, in his father’s church. The Edwards family moved to Detroit, Michigan when Edwards was about ten years old, and Edwards would continue to sing in the church pastored by his father,…

Terry Reid (75) – formidable British singer/songwriter – was born in Little Paxton, St Neots, Huntingdonshire, England. He lived in the village of Bluntisham and attended St Ivo School, St Ives. As a young teenager, Reid was playing for a local band, The Redbeats, who regularly performed at the River Club in St. Ives. A teen prodigy of sorts, Reid turned professional at the age of 15 to join…

Terry Evans (80) – blues icon – was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, on August 14, 1937. From an early age he sang in his local church choir. His parents were keen for him to concentrate purely on gospel music, although Evans found exposure to the work of mainstream blues musicians, by the randomness of the location where he was born. He worked semi professionally with an a cappella group called…