Scott Kempner, guitarist and punk rock pioneer, at 69
Scott Kempner, a guitarist and songwriter who was a founder of the Dictators, a band that in its brief lifetime helped lay the groundwork for punk rock, and later founded the roots-rock band the Del-Lords, died Nov. 29 at a nursing home in Connecticut. He was 69.
The cause was complications related to early-onset dementia, said Rich Nesin, who managed Kempner’s solo career.
Born and raised in the Bronx, Mr. Kempner started his music career not long after he had graduated from the Bronx High School of Science.
In 1972, while visiting a friend who was attending college in New Paltz, N.Y., he started playing music with Andy Shernoff and Ross Friedman, who was known as the Boss. (Mr. Kempner himself earned the nickname Top Ten.) The three of them soon began performing as the Dictators.
The band had grown to include singer Handsome Dick Manitoba and drummer Stu Boy King by the time it recorded its first album, “The Dictators Go Girl Crazy!” The album was released in 1975, a year before the Ramones’ debut, but it made little impact. Writing on the All Music Guide, Mark Deming called the band “one of the finest and most influential proto-punk bands to walk the earth” but said that the satire and “ahead-of-their-time enthusiasm for wrestling, White Castle hamburgers, and television” on their debut album “confused more kids than it converted.”
The band was dropped by its label, Epic, after its first album, and signed with Elektra. But the band’s two Elektra albums also failed to find a big audience, and the band split up, though its members would occasionally reunite over the years.
After the breakup, Mr. Kempner founded the DelLords in 1982.
“In the Dictators, he was a team player, the heart of the band,” said Eric Ambel, a member of the Del-Lords. But in his new band, he took the lead as chief singer and songwriter.
Frank Funaro, the DelLords’ drummer, said in an interview that Mr. Kempner “was like the older brother that I never had.”
The Del-Lords, Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote in 1984, “twang and thump like country-rockers without ever turning their back on their hometown, New York City.” Mr. Kempner’s songs, he added, “draw on the Texas strain of country — the pushy guitar licks of the Bobby Fuller Four and the pop sense of Buddy Holly, delivered with a roadhouse punch.”
The Del-Lords released seven albums, the last of which, “Elvis Club” (2013), featured singer Dion DiMucci, best known for the doo-wop hits “Runaround Sue” and “The Wanderer,” on one track. In the early 1990s, Mr. Kempner and DiMucci had toured with a short-lived band called Little Kings.
Mr. Kempner released three solo albums: “Tenement Angels” (1992), “Saving Grace” (2008), and “Live on Blueberry Hill” (2015).
The Dictators re-formed in 2019 with Mr. Kempner on board. He left the band after being diagnosed with dementia in 2021.
Scott Kempner was born in the Bronx on Feb. 6, 1954, to Manny and Lynn Kempner. He leaves his wife, Sharon Ludtke; his sister, Robin Kempner; and his sister’s wife, Mary NoaKempner.