LYNYRD SKYNYRD
As if his multi-faceted recording career were not enough, many years later, Al Kooper produced the first several albums by Lynyrd Skynyrd. (September 2012) * * * By now, the parade of early deaths of beloved musicians is long indeed. Not a few of these losses have occurred in small airplane crashes: Glenn Miller, John Denver, Jim Reeves, Otis Redding, Jim Croce, Rick Nelson, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Aaliyah, and three bandmembers in Lynyrd Skynyrd: Ronnie van Zant, Stevie Gaines, and Cassie Gaines. There is even a parallel to “The Day the Music Died” in country music, when Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins all died in a plane crash on March 5, 1963.
(June 2013/1) * * * After Rickey Medlocke and Greg T. Walker left the group in 1971 to join Lynyrd Skynyrd for a time, Blackfoot had a hiatus and then a series of personnel changes before settling into the line-up of Rickey Medlocke, Greg T. Walker, Jakson Spires and Charlie Hargrett.
(August 2013)
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Crosby, Stills, Nash and/or Young have released any number of cultural and counter-cultural touchstones over the years, such as “Southern Man” (on Neil Young’s excellent solo album, After the Gold Rush, with Lynyrd Skynyrd good-naturedly answering the song in their hit “Sweet Home Alabama”).
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The Cactus brand of American-style blues rock has been cited as an influence on many bands that followed; Wikipedia lists Aerosmith, Van Halen, .38 Special, Anvil, the Black Crowes, Montrose, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and the Black Keys. Cactus has been through a succession of line-ups over the years and is still active as of 2012.
(April 2014) * * *
But I was surprised when so many “Crawdaddy” entities came up in the initial Google searches for this post. Make it a search for “Crawdaddys band”, and there is a host of results: Besides the UARB the Crawdaddys, there is a rock band from Australia called the Crawdaddys, a Cajun/zydeco band from Baltimore called the Crawdaddies, a Canadian band called the Crawdaddy’s, a Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute band called Crawdaddy Band, a bluesman from Detroit named Crawdaddy – and that was just on the first page of search results. There are also Crawdaddy’s music clubs all over.
(January 2015/2)
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