Various Causes of Death for Musicians of Different Genres

MichaelHorowitz

More reasons to practice Gypsy Jazz: it considerably lowers your risk of accidental death and homicide!

kungfumonk007

People who play the blues are not quite as unhappy as they let on :0)

Scoredog

Who came up with this? Maybe I don't want to know.

bopster

Where would Syntax Baumgartner fit into this? Rap and Gypsy Jazz.

Buco

Looks like you should start with Jazz right around the age of 5 before you ever saw a cigarette smoke, move on to Blues before the age of 9 and get to it while your heart is young, play world music during your teens so that you're avoiding any thoughts of suicide and gospel during your 20 as to stay away from any kind of dangerous weapons and then, and only then, when you're mature enough to contemplate the dooms of existence without terrible thoughts and finish a heated argument with an invite for a beer should you move up to metal and hip-hop/rap subsequently, and perhaps in your golden age rock out with some punk, by then drugs will just seem silly.

Do this and live to be 100 as a musician!!

Lango-Django

stuart wrote: »

The great guitarist Eddie Lang died young following complications from an operation to remove his tonsils. At the time he played guitar for Bing Crosby and with the advent of the talkies, so the story goes, Bing wanted Lang to have the operation to make it easier for him to have a speaking role in the film. Bing was devastated when Lang died. Years later, he decided to try and recapture the duets with Lang by recruiting Django for a US tour. Django collapsed and died the day after he heard about the invitation ....

Hadn't heard that version of the story before, but as they say, "if it's not true, it should be!"

Alas, there's not a whole lot of recorded footage of the great Eddie Lang playing solo behind Bing Crosby, but we do have this wonderful 1932 clip of him accompanying singer Ruth Etting on a Walter Donaldson tune, "Without That Man"



As you will see and hear, Lang excelled at this type of solo accompaniment combining bass runs, chords and little lead fills, probably because of all the years he spent developing his unique style as the musical partner of his childhood friend jazz violinist Joe Venuti.

We can only guess about what Django's approach to backing up Bing Crosby would have been, based upon his solo accompaniment of Stephane Grapelli... probably not very many bass runs? Probably more modern-sounding chords? Probably more little lead fills? Perhaps even occasional deliberate quotes of Eddie Lang's lines?

Alas, we'll never really know...

Bob Holo

So if you're a careful, non-smoking, vegetarian jazz musician with a positive outlook on life, you should be good to go. Cool. ;-)

Though... I do think that the accidental death figures for Metal are skewed upward a bit by Spinal Tap's drummer situation...

renzok

"you can't really dust for vomit" )

Jazzaferri

What about a whiskey drinking carnivore.....

Buco

Jazzaferri wrote: »

whiskey drinking carnivore

great band name!

Lango-Django

In 2004, I had the wonderful experience of spending an entire afternoon with singer/guitarist and jazz historian Marty Grosz.

You young punks of today have probably never heard of Marty, who is probably the only living guitarist still playing in the Carl Kress tuning of Bb-F-C-G-B-D.

Anyway, Marty told me some interesting stuff about Crosby and Lang, none of which I can actually verify... but once again, "If ain't true, it should be."

A) both Crosby and Lang were devotees of "the weed".

both were devout Catholics who would often go to early Mass together after all-night recording sessions.

********

And from a 1995 visit to Philadelphia to visit Lang's living nephews, Tom and Ed Massaro, I also learned

C) Bing and Eddie's wives, Dixie Crosby and Kitty Lang, were best friends... not to mention the fact that both of these ladies were total twenties- style cuties!

D) Bing attended Eddie's 1933 funeral in Philadelphia and cried inconsolably. Meanwhile, the police had to shut down vehicular traffic on the street outside (I believe it was Tenth Street in south Philly) as thousands of mourners stood outside silently showing their respect.

*******

Anyway, the story is that Eddie got the fatal tonsillectomy because he had a raspy voice and Bing wanted him to get more speaking parts in their films.

You can hear a recording of Eddie's voice as he chatted with Ruth Etting during the filming of a 1932 film...