We note with sadness the following contributors to rock and pop music of the 50s through the 80s – the BEST music ever made! – who passed on last month.
August 1
(2025) . David Roach . Lead singer for late 80s bluesy, biker image, East Hollywood/Sunset Strip hard rock Junkyard (“All The Time In The World,” Mainstream #24, 1991), started hard rock Borracho after Junkyard folded in 1992 but reunited his former bandmates in 2000 and toured the US and Europe for the next two decades, suffered through a long battle with cancer in the 20s and succumbed on 8/1/2025, age 59.
(2025) . Jeannie Seely / (Marilyn Jeanne Seely) . Singer, songwriter, and pioneer for women in country music, first to host a show on the Grand Ole Opry and subsequently appeared more times on the GOO center stage than any other performer (5,397 appearances starting in May 1966), her debut County Top 10 single, “Don’t Touch Me” (#85, Country #2, 1966) won a Grammy and led to thirteen other Country Top 40 hits, appeared in several feature films in the 80s and on stage in performances in the 90s and 00s, issued a final studio album, An American Classic (2020) shortly after her 80th birthday and continued to perform until retiring in 2024, died from complications of an intestinal infection on 8/1/2025, age 85.
August 4
(2025) . Jane Morgan / (Florence Catherine Currier) . Silky-smooth chanteuse who wowed Parisian nightclub goers with her renditions of American standards in the 1940s and then returned to her native United States in the 1950s to do the same for American audiences with a French-inflected songbook, released 14 charting singles and six gold albums over a 25-year recording career, but found true stardom on TV shows and music specials, on Broadway stages, and in a dozen well-known feature films, including over 50 appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show (thought to be a record for any female performer), retired in the 80s to live quietly in her homes in California and Maine, died of natural causes on 8/4/2025, age 101.
(2025) . Terry Reid / (Terrance James Reid) . British hard rock guitarist, bandleader, supporting act, session player and solo artist, nicknamed “Superlungs” for his vocal abilities and highly regarded as a rock guitarist despite relatively low commercial success, turned down offers to join early lineups of Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin in 1968 and went on to a blues-rock solo career with five studio albums from 1968 to 1978, a sixth in 1991, and mostly session work in the 80s for Jackson Browne, Don Henley and others, returned to touring in the 90s and spent the ensuing three decades in various groups at venues worldwide, announced the cancellation of his 2025 tour due to a cancer diagnosis and died from the disease two months later on 8/4/2025, age 75.
August 5
(2025) . Col Joye / (Colin Frederick Jacobsen) . Legendary Aussie musician, music publisher, promoter and artist manager with a nearly 60-year career in the music industry, started with his brothers in a pioneering rock ‘n’ roll band in the mid-50s, became the first Australian pop artist to have a nationwide #1 hit with “Oh Yeah Uh Huh” (AUS #1, 1959) and appeared multiple times on the music variety TV show Bandstand through the 60s, started a pop music based publishing, production and artist management business with his brother Keven in the late 60s, owned a recording studio outside Sydney, and managed, among others, the careers of The Bee Gees and their brother Andy Gibb into the 00s, continued to tour, record and promote music until shortly before his death from undisclosed causes on 8/5/2025, age 89.
August 10
(2025) . Graham Fenton . Lead singer in UK rockabilly revival Matchbox, joined the band in 1978 in time to record “Rockabilly Rebel” (UK #18, 1979), “When You Ask About Love” (UK #4, 1980) and their last six charting singles in the 80s, fronted the band for the ensuing 47 years with an occasional several solo album in the mix, including his last, Fastest Cadillac In Town (2017), died from undisclosed causes on 8/10/2025, age 88.
(2025) . Bobby Whitlock / (Robert Stanley Whitlock) . Memphis-born session musician for Stax Records followed by an early 70s stint as an R&B/blue-eyed soul singer with four solo albums, concurrently playing on 15 albums from 1969 to 1973, among them Delaney & Bonnie (5), Eric Clapton (2), George Harrison‘s All Things Must Pass (#1, UK #1, 1970), The Rolling Stones‘ Exile On Main Street (#1, UK #1, 1972) and the short-lived super-group Derek And The Dominos (2), largely retired to a farm in Mississippi during the 80s and 90s but moved to Texas in 2006 and resumed touring, recording and doing session work for the ensuing decade, often with his new wife and musical partner CoCo Carmel, died from cancer at home in hospice care on 8/10/2025, age 77.
August 11
(2025) . Chuck Girard / (Chuck Henry Girard) . Founding member of collegiate pop vocal quartet The Castells with five charting singles and two hits, Sacred (#20, 1961) and “So This Is Love” (#21, 1962), recruited to surf rock The Hondells in 1964 when the studio-manufactured cover of The Beach Boys “Little Honda” (#9, 1964) rose up the charts and needed an actual band to tour and support the record, left in the mid-60s and resurfaced in 1970 as a pioneer in Contemporary Christian music (CCM) with light rock Love Song, one of the first Jesus Music bands, went solo in 1975 and issued eleven studio CCM albums, the last in 2024, died from stage IV cancer at home in Tennessee on 8/11/2025, age 81.
August 12
(2025) . Ronnie Rondell, Jr. / (Ronald Reid Rondell, Jr.) . Hollywood stuntman with credits on hundreds of TV shows (Charlie’s Angels, Baretta and Dynasty) and in scores of feature films from 1962 (How the West Was Won) to 2003 (The Matrix Reloaded), best known by millions as the burning man on the cover of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, a stunt photo shoot that resulted in a burned moustache but no broken bones (a frequent occurrence in other stunts), died in an assisted living facility from undisclosed causes on 8/12/2025, age 88.
August 17
(2025) . Joe Hickerson / (Joseph Charles Hickerson) . Folk singer and songwriter in college folk group The Folksmiths in the late 50s, was studying for a doctorate in musicology when added two verses to Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” (1960) to create the enduring, circular version of the song, joined the Library of Congress in 1963 and served as a librarian and the Director of the Archive of Folk Song at the American Folklife Center within the Congress until retiring in 1998, died in an assisted care facility from unspecified causes on 8/17/2025, age 89.
August 19
(2025) . Michael "Tunes" Antunes / (Michael P. Antunes) . Rock saxophonist for several Northeast regional bands in the 60s before joining horn-rock John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band (“On The Dark Side,” #7. 1984), acted in the role of the saxophonist in the fictional band Eddie And The Cruisers in the music drama film (1983) and its sequel (1989), played in blues band Ernie & The Automatics from 2004 to 2011 alongside former members of the J. Geils Band and Boston, died from kidney failure 8/19/2025, age 85.
August 24
(2025) . Tom Shipley / (Thomas Nathan Shipley) . With Mike Brewer starting in the 60s, one half of the folk-rock duo Brewer & Shipley, their “One Toke Over The Line” (#10, 1971) was an unlikely hit during the Nixon-era attempts to censor drug-related songs and was banned from airplay at many non-progressive radio stations, technically not a won hit wonder, the duo charted two other singles on the Top 100 in the 70s and continued to tour and perform for over four decades, died from an undisclosed illness in a Missouri hospital on 8/24/2025, age 84.
August 26
(2025) . Joe Stevens . Greenwich Village coffeehouse manager in the 60s and sometime road manager for folk-rock The Lovin’ Spoonful before embarking on a career as a photographer of rock’s top acts, including hundreds of images of David Bowie shot over a several decade professional relationship, and intimate images of Paul McCartney, Johnny Rotten, Peter Gabriel and many others, mostly while working for the respected Brit rock magazine New Musical Express (NME) in the 70s, his work was included in a major retrospective on rock photography at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles in 2012, died from undisclosed causes on 8/26/2025, age 87.
August 28
(2025) . Ray Mayhew . Founding member and drummer in 80s audaciously dressed and coiffed, electro-glam-punk Brit new wave Sigue Sigue Sputnik, scored three UK Top 40 hits, the highest “Love Missile F1-11” (UK #3, 1986) and created a media stir for a short period in the late 80s, left to form and front his own band, Mayhem Deranged, as singer and chief songwriter, after 20 years without a recording contract and through several lineup changes, released a debut single, “Here I Go Again” in 2010 and a second, “50 Megaton Love” in 2014, died from undisclosed causes on 8/28/2025, age 60.
