THEY ALSO SERVED
HAWKWIND audio-generator and oscillator operator DIKMIK (above, AKA Michael Davies b.1943) was a face on the Twickenham blues scene before roadieing for Dave Brock’s freak band supreme. Playing echoing swathes of cosmic noise from a green baize card table, he joined the group for their self-titled debut in 1970 and was responsible for his “speed buddy” bassist Lemmy’s additon to the ranks in 1971. DikMik left after 1973’s mighty live album Space Ritual. He rejoined his old bandmates for the ‘Hawkestra’ reunion in Brixton in 2000.
FAITH NO MORE vocalist CHUCK MOSLEY (b.1959) involved in the San Francisco punk scene before joining the California alt-metallers in 1984. He made two albums with the band, We Care A Lot and Introduce Yourself, before being replaced by Mike Patton in 1988. He later played with Bad Brains, Cement and Primitive Race, released the 2009 LP Will Rap Over Hard Rock For Food and later re-joined his old bandmates for several high-profile reunion shows.
MIRACLES singer WARREN ‘PETE’ MOORE (b.1938) sang bass alongside his childhood friend
Smokey Robinson from their 1955 formation in Detroit until their split in 1978. With Robinson, he co-wrote hit songs for the group including The Tracks Of My Tears, Going To A Go-Go and Love Machine; the duo also wrote for Marvin Gaye and The Temptations. Moore also produced records for Gaye and The Supremes, and was inducted into the Vocal Group Hall Of Fame in 2012.
SOUL VOICE ROBERT KNIGHT (b.1945) was a member of Tennessee vocal group The Paramounts when he sang on 1961 US R&B hit Free Me. After a stint studying chemistry, in 1967 he reached US pop Number 13 with his version of Everlasting Love. He also hit the Top 100 on two more occasions, and reached Number 10 in the UK in 1973 with his 1968 cut Love On A Mountain Top, thanks to its popularity among Northern soul fans. His Everlasting Love reached the UK Top 20 the following year.
AUSTRALIAN composer DUDLEY SIMPSON (b.1922) conducted orchestras at the Royal Opera House before working in television. He composed incidental music for more than 300 episodes of Doctor Who from 1964 to 1980, wrote the theme tunes to BBC sci-fi drama Blake’s Seven and ITV’s The Tomorrow People, as well as scoring numerous TV adaptions of literary works. In 1987 he retired and returned to Australia.
AUDIO ENGINEER HEDLEY JONES (b.1917) played jazz in Kingston, Jamaica before joining the RAF as a radar engineer during the Second World War. Back home he opened the Bop City record shop and began making ever-more powerful
amplifiers in the ’40s. Soon he was building for sound system operators including Tom The Great Sebastian, Duke Reid and Clement Dodd. In 1963 he built the equipment used at Dodd’s Studio One, cradle of ska, rocksteady and reggae hits by Bob Marley, The Skatalites, Burning Spear and others. Jones led his own bands, designed Jamaica’s first traffic light system and wrote newspaper columns into his late nineties.
SINGER/GUITARIST FRED COLE (b.1948) began his musical life in the middle ’60s, and would traverse garage rock, bubblegum, punk and country in bands including The Lords, The Weeds, The Lollipop Shoppe, Zipper, King Bee and Western Front. In 1987 in Oregon he began his cult project Dead Moon with his bassist wife Toody: they would release 10 LPs before the group ended in 2006. The couple would later form Pierced Arrows.
BLUE-EYED SOUL singer WAYNE COCHRAN (b.1939) played bass for Otis Redding before signing with King records, alongside his inspiration, James Brown. He formed his touring revue the C.C. Riders and played Vegas, where he earned the sobriquet ‘The White Knight of Soul’ thanks in part to his impressive pompadour and wild jumpsuits. His death-disc Last Kiss was successfully recorded by J. Frank Wilson & The Cavaliers (1964) and
Pearl Jam (1999). In 1981 he became a minister in Georgia; in 2001 he played two reunion shows with the C.C. Riders.
JAZZ voice and lyricist JON HENDRICKS (b.1921) sang on the radio with Art Tatum as a teenager. After serving in the Second World War, he studied law before joining Annie Ross and Dave Lambert in jazz trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross in 1957, exploring the art of vocalese with Hendricks composing words for extant instrumental pieces on LPs including Sing A Song Of Basie. Having worked with collaborators including Manhattan Transfer, The Warlocks (AKA Grateful Dead) and Thelonious Monk, he continued to record and create, one of his last works involving writing lyrics for Miles Davis’s Miles Ahead.
JAZZ AND GOSPEL voice DELLA REESE (B.1931) sang with Mahalia Jackson’s vocal group as a juvenile before beginning her jazz recording career in 1953. In 1957 she scored a Top 20 pop hit with And That Reminds Me, followed two years later by the Number 2 Don’t You Know? Her recorded output slowed after the mid ’60s, but Reese later found success on screen, hosting her own US talk show, acting alongside Redd Foxx and Elliott Gould in film and taking a lead role on godly TV fantasy Touched By An Angel. Clive Prior