CARROLL Martin of the Isham Jones Orchestra occupies a notable place in the pantheon of 20th century music. Sadly for Carroll, his fame rests not on his musical ability but rather on the fact that he is probably the only person in popular music ever to have been killed by a trombone. In 1940, while travelling to a gig, the car in which he was a passenger braked suddenly and Carroll was impaled on the arm of his instrument.
It was probably not a good way to go, but then popular music stars have traditionally chosen offbeat ways to shuffle off this mortal coil. Perhaps it is something to do with Neil Young's old adage about it being "better to burn out than to fade away" but musicians, and rock musicians in particular, have made a point of popping their clogs in novel and frequently nasty ways.
To be absolutely fair, in some cases other people have chosen the way in which these unfortunates should shake off their mortal chains. In 1970 the body of jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler was pulled out of New York's East River. Someone had reputedly tied the body to a jukebox, just to ensure Albert didn't come up for an encore. Bobby Fuller, of I Fought the Law fame, was found badly beaten in a car outside his Hollywood flat in 1966 although it was unclear whether he had died from the beating or the gasoline which someone had force fed him first.
Rock stars, of course, have to be careful about what they ingest. Gasoline can be fatal but probably accounts for only a small number of rock casualties. Drugs have accounted for far more: Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix all succumbed to the effects of drugs of one kind or another, although one of the odder pill stories concerns the peculiar musical phenomenon known as "The Singing Nun".
`The Singing Nun'
The Trade Descriptions Act could not be evoked against Sister Luc Gabrielle for she was frankly, a nun who sang. She had a hit in 1963 with Dominique, a catchy paean to the founder of the Dominican Order, but by 1967 she appeared to have undergone a change of heart: she left the Church and recorded a prochoice song about oral contraceptives called funnily enough Glory Be to God For The Golden Pill. In 1985, aged 52, she and her friend Annie Pescher killed themselves with an overdose of sleeping pills when the Belgian Government began pursuing her for back taxes on her song earnings, which she had donated to the Church.
Mama Cass Elliot of The Mamas and Papas was rumoured to have choked to death on her ham sandwich, while Toto drummer Jeff Procaro, in a mode of dispatch - which has since come to make a unique contribution to the section marked "bizarre gardening deaths", suffered a fatal reaction to a herbicide he was using on his lawn.
The legendary blues pioneer Robert Johnson was reputed to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his extraordinary musical ability but, in the end, his twin weaknesses of women and drink claimed his soul. Johnson died at the age of only 27, apparently poisoned by a jealous husband.
Unlucky with guns
In fact, pick an odd way of dying and you can be reasonably certain that the name of a rock star can be added to the list of its victims. Rock stars, for example, have traditionally had bad luck with guns, in 1955, the Late Great Johnny Ace, aged 25, blew his brains out backstage at a concert in Houston, apparently while playing Russian roulette.
Twenty two years later Terry Kath, vocalist with Chicago, put his gun to his head and pulled the trigger to prove that the gun wasn't loaded. Sadly, he was mistaken. Tangentially, Jerry Lee Lewis managed to shoot his bass player Buck Owens twice in the chest in 1976, while trying to hit soda bottles.
Both Sam Cooke and Marvin Gaye, each of them the finest Black vocalist of his day, were shot to death, Gaye by his father, a repressed homosexual and alcoholic minister of the ultra conservative House of God. "Sir" Walter Scott had one hit as singer with Bob Kuban and the In Men called, ironically as it turned out, The Cheater. In 1983, Walter popped out to buy a battery for his car and wasn't seen again until 1987, when his body turned up in a cistern, bound and shot in the back of the head. His wife and her lover were indicted for the murder.
Aeroplanes have also accounted for more than their fair share of popular musicians. Buddy Holly, Jim Reeves, Patsy Cline and Otis Redding are perhaps the best known, but at least they weren't to blame for the accidents which killed them. In 1982, guitarist Randy Rhoads was killed when the small aircraft in which he was travelling tried to "buzz" the tour bus of former Black Sabbath vocalist Ozzy Ozbourne - who once, incidentally, bit the head off a live bat on stage. Instead, Rhoads's plane clipped the bus and promptly crashed.
Three years later, former teen star Ricky Nelson and six friends died when his chartered DC3 crashed in Texas. The crash is rumoured to have been caused by a fire resulting from the freebasing of cocaine.
Ill fated musicians
Such an array of misfortunes would probably cause people in any other walk of life to reconsider their chosen career path, for musicians do seem to have extraordinarily bad luck. Some of them aren't even safe with their own instruments: the Yardbirds guitarist Keith Relf was electrocuted by a live guitar in his own home.
Meanwhile, the Grateful Dead's keyboard players have all had a habit of dying unexpectedly and provided the inspiration for the spontaneously combusting drummer problem suffered by fictional rockers Spinal Tap in the mock documentary This Is Spinal Tap. First Ron "Pigpen" McKernan went, then Keith Godchaux and, finally, Brent Mydland. Mydland was replaced by Vince Welnick who is, apparently, still alive.
The history of popular music is a depressing litany of deaths, many of them self inflicted, accidental, or simply too strange to be found in any other walk of life. Memorably, Roger Daltry, the lead singer of The Who, once sang that he hoped he died before he got old. He is now a grandfather and runs a profitable fish farm, so he's probably glad he didn't. Dying of old age is infinitely preferable to death by trombone.