Bar-Kays trumpeter survived plane crash
Trumpeter Ben Cauley, a member of the Stax Records group the BarKays and the only survivor of the 1967 plane crash that killed most of his bandmates and legendary singer Otis Redding, has died in Memphis, Tenn. He was 67.
Cauley’s eldest daughter, Chekita Cauley-Campbell, said her father died late Monday at Methodist South Hospital.
Although he was long known as the sole survivor of the crash that killed Redding just as his career was peaking, Cauley was a survivor in many other ways.
He had struggled with health issues for years, including a stroke in 1989, but he persevered and continued to play his trumpet.
“He was just a real humble, debonair gentleman,” Cauley Campbell said. “He really loved his music. His music was really his life. He breathed music.”
Born Oct. 3, 1947, Cauley was playing with the Bar-Kays while attending Booker T. Washington High School in Memphis, his daughter said. When he was a senior, he would be picked up at high school on a Friday, travel and play with Redding on the weekends, then come back to school the next week.
Some of the musicians, she said, needed permission slips from their parents to travel with the band.
On Dec. 10, 1967, they were traveling to a show near the University of Wisconsin on Redding’s new twin engine Beechcraft when it went into Lake Monona near Madison. Able to hold on to a seat cushion, Cauley was the only survivor. Another band member, bassist James Alexander, was on a different plane. Redding, who had just recorded “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” was 26.
After the crash, Cauley and Alexander rebuilt the Bar-Kays and backed Isaac Hayes on his landmark album, “Hot Buttered Soul,” according to the Memphis Music Hall of Fame’s website. The Bar Kays were inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2013.
Cauley-Campbell said her father toured with Hayes, and also played with Aretha Franklin, the Doobie Brothers and many others. He was a well-known session musician, and Cauley-Campbell said she often recognized the sound of his trumpet on records because it was so different from anyone else’s playing. “No one could play like him,” she said. “It was a very distinct sound. It was a pitch above the roof.”
Besides Cauley-Campbell, Cauley is survived by daughters Shuronda Cauley-Oliver, Miriam Cauley-Crisp, Monica Cauley Johnson and Kimberly Garrett; and sons Phalon Richmond and Ben Wells.
‘He was just a real humble, debonair gentleman. He really loved his music. His music was really his life. He breathed music.’ — Chekita Cauley-Campbell, daughter