THEY ALSO SERVED

MUSIC EXECUTIVE SALLY GROSSMAN (below, b.1939) was a close associate of Bob Dylan and wife of Dylan’s manager, Albert. She famously appears on the cover of Bringing It All Back Home, enigmatically smoking a cigarette on a chaise longue in a bright vermilion trouser suit. Manhattan-born Sally Ann Buehler dropped out of college to join the Greenwich Village arts scene, meeting Albert Grossman while working in Café Wha?. Settling in Woodstock, the couple ran the Bearsville record label and recording studio, and later the Bearsville Theatre. In 2008 she curated a unique digital archive of the sacred Bengali music Baul.

HEADHUNTERS bassist PAUL JACKSON (b.1947) studied piano and bassoon before taking up standup bass aged nine. He joined Herbie Hancock for the jazz-fusion trailblazer’s 1973 smash Head Hunters. After Hancock departed, Jackson and the other members stayed together; 1975’s God Made Me Funky became an essential hip-hop sample. Other sessions included the Pointer Sisters, Santana and Sonny Rollins. He later recorded solo, worked in jazz education and lived in Japan. “He could create a new bass line on every tune every night,” said Hancock, by way of tribute.

DUTCH ENGINEER LOU OTTENS (b.1926) showed his technical talent at an early age, devising a radio able to pick up jammed stations during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in the Second World War. When working for Philips in the ’60s, he worked on portable tape recorders, and led the team which developed the cassette, unveiled in 1963. He later reflected that he would change nothing about the design. In the 1970s he was also involved in the development of the compact disc.

PHOTOGRAPHER and guitarist BARBARA ESS (below, b.1944) met Glenn Branca at an audition for Theoretical Girls in 1978. Their meeting sparked a personal and creative relationship that lasted over 20 years: as well as creating Just Another Asshole fanzine, she played with NY no wave groups Y Pants, The Static and later Ultra Vulva. As a photographer she explored the boundaries of perception, most famously in large-scale works created with a pinhole camera. In 2001 Ess and Peggy Ahwesh released their Radio/Guitar project on Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace label, layering Ess’s electric guitar over radio sounds.

POET and guitarist MOHAMMED AG ITLALE, AKA Japonais (b.1960) was an early member of Tinariwen. Born in Tessalit, in Mali’s north-eastern Sahara region, like many young Tuaregs he received military training in Libya in the 1980s, meeting Ibrahim Ag Alhabib and other future band members at a rebel camp. As part of Tinariwen’s mutable collective, Ag Itlale’s lead guitar and vocals can be heard most prominently on 2006 album Aman Iman: Water Is Life, for which he wrote and performed Ahimana, a song about those early days in Libya, and Awa Didjen, lamenting the drought and famine that took the Tuareg people to Libya in the first place.

RAPPER PRINCE MARKIE DEE (b.Mark Morales, 1968) formed human beatboxing hip-hop trio The Disco Three in Brooklyn: after winning a talent show in 1983, they changed their name to the Fat Boys. Number 2 in 1987 with their Beach Boys team-up Wipeout, the following year they repeated the feat with The Twist, assisted

by Chubby Checker. Not the most serious of rappers, they appeared in three films, including Krush Groove and the Three Stooges-like comedy Disorderlies (1987). After leaving the group in 1989, he recorded solo, worked with Mary J Blige, Mariah Carey,

Destiny’s Child and others, was a radio host, and took part in Fat Boys reformations.

KEYBOARDIST MATT MILLER (b.1987) was an original member of New Jersey punks Titus Andronicus. He was cousin to the group’s frontman,

Patrick Stickles: a photo of the pair as children features on the cover of TA’s fifth LP,

A Productive Cough, where Miller can also be heard amid a rabble of backing vocals. He sang lead on the title track to 2018 EP Home Alone (On Halloween) and has credits

on 2010’s The Monitor and The Most Lamentable Tragedy in 2015. Miller played Money, the rapping bartender in the pilot episode of Stickles’ sitcom, Stacks, and is co-credited for additional jokes with Ryley Walker.

SONGWRITER IAN NORTH (right, b.1952) formed Long Island punk-poppers Milk ’N’ Cookies in 1973. Too clean-cut for the times, their delayed 1976 album would not be a hit. North then moved to London and embraced punk to form the short-lived Radio, soon renamed Neo (North used the latter name for his 1979 solo album). An early adopter of synths for 1980’s new wave solo LP My Girlfriend’s Dead, he also worked with The Fast, ran a recording studio in Manhattan, and in 2009 released the album EZ Listening For Suicides as Darkjet. He declined to participate in 2005’s Milk ’N’ Cookies reunion.

SINGER-SONGWRITER JON MARK (b.1943) played with Marianne Faithfull (he also arranged 1965’s LP Come My Way), Nicky Hopkins’ Sweet Thursday and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. In the latter group he met sax player Johnny Almond: the duo formed jazz-rockers Mark-Almond in 1970, and released eight albums, the last being 1996’s Nightmusic. Mark later recorded ambient music for his own White Cloud label in New Zealand, winning a Grammy in 2004 for his recording of the Tibetan chant of the Monks Of Sherab Ling Monastery.

SONGWRITER and actor TREVOR PEACOCK (b.1931) had a long TV career and is best known as Jim Trott from BBC sitcom The Vicar Of Dibley. But in the ’60s he also found huge success as a composer, his songs including the

Herman’s Hermits hit Mrs Brown You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter, Jess Conrad’s Mystery Girl and Joe Brown’s That’s What Love Will Do, as well as singles for The Vernons Girls. He also wrote the lyrics for John Barry’s Beat Girl film theme and Alan Price’s musical based on Andy Capp.

Jenny Bulley and Clive Prior