Soon As I Get Home

New York City's vaccine mandate for indoor venues goes into effect today and DISTROKID is rocking a $1.3 billion (!) valuation—about 1/30th the current valuation of UNIVERSAL MUSIC—and R. KELLY is about to go on trial and BRITNEY SPEARS and her dad may or may not be headed for a legal breakup and "RADIOACTIVE" has given way to "BLINDING LIGHTS," but today, my first day back after a week and a half of reading, beaching, unwinding and masking as much as I can in the blinding lights of a Northeastern heatwave, I pause to remember those we've lost in the last week and a half—and to catch up, in the mix below, on some highlights from around the musicverse.

We'll Catch Some Blackbird's Wing

The description "singer/songwriter" was made for NANCI GRIFFITH, a not-quite-folk, not-quite-country daughter of Texas and longtime resident of Nashville who sang other people's songs damn close to definitively, had other singers take hers up the charts, and had to make up her own name, folkabilly, for what came out when she did both with her girlish drawl and poet's pen. She sang "From a Distance" and wrote "Love at the Five and Dime" and there were hundreds of others and the list of friends and descendents who owe their careers to her is long and still being added to. Though she had all but stopped recording and performing in the last decade of her life, she was still way too young, and her passing at age 68 leaves a Texas-sized hole in Tennessee and a Tennessee-sized hole in Texas... Songwriter/producer CHUCKY THOMPSON, one of Bad Boy Records' "Hitmen," was a crucial collaborator with Mary J. Blige, the Notorious B.I.G., Faith Evans and others. "His fingerprints are all over some of the greatest hip-hop/R&B records of the ‘90s and 2000s"... WALTER YETNIKOFF, another kind of hitman, was the controversial, colorful head of CBS Records in the 1970s and '80s who played a not-unimportant role in the careers of Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen and several other pop and rock superstars. "A wild man," Springsteen told the Los Angeles Times, but "he respected and shepherded my art through an often hostile and unfriendly music business." He cajoled hard, played hard and, in the end, fell hard.

Also lost in the past 10 days: Kool & the Gang saxophonist and master of ceremonies DENNIS "DEE TEE" THOMAS... South African amapiano stars KILLER KAU and MPURA, killed in a car accident on the way to a show... Backup singer NICOLE HURST, who performed with Justin Timberlake, Kelly Clarkson, Janet Jackson, Bruno Mars and others... STEVE "ZUMBI" GAINES, rapper in veteran Bay Area hip-hop group Zion I... Canadian composer/environmentalist R. MURRAY SCHAFER... EMI Music Publishing executive PAT LUCAS... DICK ODETTE, who as longtime music purchasing head of the Musicland Group was a music retail powerhouse... PIL TRAFA, lead singer of Argentine punk band Los Violadores... Tower of Power guitarist BRUCE CONTE... Country songwriter RAZZY BAILEY... Sacramento, Calif., jazz pianist (and famous dad) BOB RINGWALD... California rock guitarist KYLE HOOVER, whose bands included Ganglians and Tiaras... JIM O'ROURKE, a staple of the Orlando, Fla., rock scene... Nashville rapper and concert promoter ROSS "KIDDEAD" NORTON... Kiwi rapper LOUIE KNUXX... And the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th (at least) hip-hop artists murdered in the US in 2021: Hip-hop DJ and producer SQUEAKPIVOT of Chicago's Pivot Gang, cousins ODION "12 O'CLOCK" TURNER and DAVID "MURDOCK" TURNER of the Wu-Tang Clan-affiliated rap group Brooklyn Zu (killed in Portland, Ore.), and 17-year-old aspiring Hartford rapper YNT JUAN. Guns are by no means the entirety of the problem but they're absolutely part of the problem, and maybe the music industry is in a position to use its voice to say something about this.