Where Are They Buried? (67 page)

At 56, Rick was found dead in bed and he officially died of pulmonary/cardiac failure, with diabetes, an earlier stroke, and a pacemaker all listed as contributing factors. Later toxicology tests confirmed nine recreational drugs in his system which, it would seem to me, also affected his life circumstance negatively.

After some 6,000 well-wishers filed past Rick, who was smartly clad in a black suit with yellow shirt and two gold neck pendants, the cover to his casket was closed forever and he was interred at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, New York.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From Route 33, the Kensington Expressway, follow Route 198 1½ miles west and then turn south on Route 384, which is Delaware Avenue. At the intersection with Delavan Avenue, make a hard left into the cemetery.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery and bear left at three consecutive intersections. Then, when the drive begins sweeping hard to the right, stop, and in Section 10 on your left you won’t miss Rick’s brown stone reminding you that “God is Love.”

MAY 8, 1911 – AUGUST 16, 1938

It’s generally accepted that the blues were born out of the hard times and suffering endured by Mississippi Delta blacks at the start of the twentieth century, and they’ve been called “a solo recitation of misery.” Robert Johnson, were he alive today, would probably agree, as his songs certainly sprang from a life of poverty and squalor.

Born into the large family of a sharecropper, he learned to play the harmonica and guitar in the conventional “country blues” style, but it was his later development of guitar techniques that earned him the respect of modern musicians. Robert, it seems, was the first to play a guitar in the “finger-picking” style, a complex melody technique that allows one guitar to do the work of two by placing a treble-string melody over a constant bass-string accompaniment. And, though he didn’t invent the bottleneck style in which a bottle is placed on the little finger of the fretting hand to yield that distinctive metallic
glissando
effect that’s commonly heard in Hawaiian music, he certainly popularized and perfected it. Later, the bottleneck, or slide effect, as it’s more commonly called, figured prominently in the works of artists such as Duane Allman and Jimi Hendrix.

Though Robert’s lyrics were simple and colloquial, touching on the common themes of a longing to be somewhere else or of fleeting love, his compositions were fully developed and the language articulate. This was a significant departure from the traditional oral improvisation common to his day’s music. Further, he defined a song structure—instrumental, several verses, instrumental, verse, and end—that is used in rock music almost without variation today.

Robert Johnson recorded only 32 songs (his most famous being “Crossroads”) and never received a cent in royalties. In true blues fashion, his demise was dramatic: He was poisoned with strychnine-laced whiskey provided by a jealous husband. After
three days of torturous agony, lolling madly on a makeshift cot amid the relentless humidity of a Mississippi summer, Robert died of his poisoning at 27.

He was buried at Little Zion Missionary Baptist Church Cemetery in Greenwood, Mississippi.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From the center of Greenwood, follow Main Street, which is Route 518, north for three miles to the cemetery on the left.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Approximately in the middle of the cemetery, you’ll find Robert’s marker in the shade of a big pecan tree.

FEBRUARY 28, 1942 – JULY 3, 1969

If Brian Jones couldn’t achieve rock immortality through the musical talent that burst from his seams, it seems he resolved to attain notoriety by virtue of the four different palimony suits that hung over him by age 24. But in the end, Brian was prematurely martyred as another rock-music casualty.

In 1960 Brian was a multitalented blues and jazz musician, but after picking up guitar, his style began increasingly to favor the new rock sounds. By the end of 1962 Brian had formed his own band, the Rolling Stones, its lineup highlighted by guitarist Keith Richards and frontman Mick Jagger, while Charlie Watts thudded out the drum beats and Bill Wyman plucked bass lines. Through 1966, Brian was the leader of the band, nurturing them from ragtag anonymity to regal pop stars with a series of hit singles including “Ruby Tuesday,” “Time is on My Side,” and “Heart of Stone.”

By 1967 though, manager Andrew Oldham was increasingly developing the Jagger-Richards songwriting partnership to more effectively compete with their Lennon-McCartney rivals, and Brian, who had become the group’s most substantial consumer of assorted recreational pharmaceuticals, was relegated to its margins. By the time of the
Beggar’s Banquet
recording sessions in 1968, Brian’s contributions were almost nil, and in June 1969 he officially departed the band citing musical differences.

All but forgotten a month later, Brian’s status skyrocketed after newspaper headlines screamed he’d been found at the bottom of his swimming pool, dead at 27. A postmortem revealed that both his heart and liver were grossly enlarged due to long-term alcohol abuse, and traces of “an amphetamine-like substance” were found in his urine. However, no appreciable quantity of any other drugs was found in Brian’s system and the final analysis handed down by the coroner declared his death was “by misadventure, cause of death drowning.”

None of the witness statements given by the three people present at Brian’s estate when he drowned ever quite tallied, and questions lingered about who was doing what while Brian went for his fateful midnight swim. Especially questionable were the whereabouts of Frank Thorogood, a laborer at the estate, who maintained in his statement that while Brian was in the pool he had “popped indoors” for a cigarette. (
Indoors
for a cigarette?) In 1994 a recording of a deathbed confession by Thorogood surfaced, but after a brief investigation it was found to be fraudulent. Then in 1999 Anna Wohlin, Brian’s girlfriend, who had found him dead in the pool, wrote a tell-all, alleging that Thorogood had indeed killed Brian in a row over money. It’s not clear why she waited 30 years to come forward but, because she offered the information via a pricey book instead of in a free-of-charge police report, cynics pointed out the obvious motive while the rest of the world hardly noticed.

A horse-drawn hearse carried Brian to his resting place in Prestbury, Gloucestershire, England. After a two-hour drive out of London on the M40 heading northwest, you can find his neatly groomed grave at Priory Road Cemetery, along the lane near the chapel.

NOVEMBER 20, 1885 – DECEMBER 6, 1949

Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter personified the Delta bluesman. He was born on a Louisiana plantation and during his early adult years survived as an itinerant musician and sometime farm laborer. In 1918 Leadbelly received a 7-to-30-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to shooting a man to death in Texas, and it’s been endlessly romanticized that he was pardoned after the governor heard a song of his in which he pleaded for release. Though Leadbelly did write such a song, it’s clear that he was let out for good behavior after serving the minimum time.

In any event, Leadbelly was back behind bars by 1930. A white man had insisted to Leadbelly that “niggers is supposed to walk in the road” instead of on the sidewalk and, though he may have been guilty of assault after a scuffle ensued, the prosecution added that Leadbelly had “intended to murder,” and he received six to ten years of hard labor.

While on a 1933 tour of the South to document Negro work songs for the Library of Congress archives, John Lomax recorded Leadbelly in a Louisiana prison. Lomax returned the next year and Leadbelly, who sincerely believed that his Texas prison release came about because of that earlier ballad, convinced Lomax to put a similar ballad on the flip side of a recording of one of his favorite songs, “Goodnight Irene.” Lomax personally delivered the record to Louisiana’s governor and this time, the song may indeed have been instrumental in gaining Leadbelly’s release, though Lomax’s elucidation of the trumped-up charges upon which Leadbelly had been convicted didn’t hurt.

In 1935 Leadbelly followed Lomax to New York and recorded the majority of his work there, including “Midnight Special” and “Gallow’s Pole,” over the next dozen years. While his legend preceded him, Leadbelly performed tirelessly and played the part of a subservient Southern black that curious white audiences expected to see. Passing the hat after appearances in which he always played his “pardon songs,” Leadbelly became the cajoling dark minstrel: “Bless Gawd, dat’s a dime! Where is all de quarters? Thank you, boss! Thank you, missy, thank you!”

During a series of performances in Europe, Leadbelly’s extremities grew numb and he died six months later, penniless at 64, from what was believed to be a particularly aggressive form of Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

Leadbelly was buried at Shiloh Baptist Church Cemetery in Mooringsport, Louisiana.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From I-220 in Shreveport, take Exit 7A and follow Route 71 north for 1½ miles to its intersection with Highway 1. Follow Highway 1 a short distance north, then reverse your direction in order to access Pine Hill Road on the west side of the highway. After 13 miles on Pine Hill Road (which at some point becomes Blanchard-Latex Road), the church and its cemetery are on the left.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Leadbelly’s grave is in the middle of the cemetery surrounded by a black iron fence.

JANUARY 15, 1948 – OCTOBER 20, 1977

JULY 5, 1948 – OCTOBER 20, 1977

SEPTEMBER 14, 1949 – OCTOBER 20, 1977

JULY 19, 1952 – JANUARY 23, 1990

APRIL 2, 1952 – JULY 27, 2001

JUNE 3, 1952 – JANUARY 28, 2009

In the summer of 1964 Ronnie Van Zant and four friends formed a band called the Noble Five, and that December they played their first paying gig at an auto-parts store’s Christmas
party. At the end of the night they were handed a single, crisp, $10 bill and, after chipping in for gasoline, they strutted home with $1.75 each.

With nowhere to go but up, the band mates practiced incessantly. Their band’s name evolved into the peculiar Lynyrd Skynyrd, a play on the name of a gym teacher, Leonard Skinner, whom they particularly disliked for his dutiful enforcement of the school dress code prohibiting sideburns and long hair. By 1973 the Southern-style, rebel-rock band had gained a tremendous following throughout Florida, landed a deal with MCI Records, and seen their debut album,
Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd
, released. After they were tapped to be the opening act for the Who’s U.S. tour later that year, they never looked back. By 1975, with two more best-selling albums under their belts, Lynyrd Skynyrd was one of America’s hottest and hardest-working rock and roll acts.

Predictably, the temptations of the road took their toll, and Lynyrd Skynyrd picked up a well-deserved reputation as a collection of hellbent, redneck, rock-star drunks. Despite the hard partying, they remained true to their music and churned out a string of irrepressible and incendiary guitar-driven singles, “Gimme Three Steps,” “Sweet Home Alabama,” and “Saturday Night Special,” to name a few. In 1976 the band made personnel changes in order to fine-tune its sound, the most critical being the addition of guitarist Steve Gaines and a female backup vocal group, the Honkettes, of which Steve’s sister Cassie was a member. By 1977 the band was at an all-time high and its new lineup hit the road in support of the album,
Street Survivors
.

In Greenville, South Carolina, after the fourth concert of a planned 80-concert tour, the band and its twelve-person entourage boarded their leased Convair 240 and headed for their next gig in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. At 6:42 p.m. on October 20, 1977, the pilot radioed from 6,000 feet over McComb, Mississippi, that his craft was dangerously low on fuel and, less than ten minutes later, the plane clipped the tops of branches over a swamp, then cut an 800-foot path through the trees until it lurched to a halt within the dense thicket. Because the plane had run out of fuel, it didn’t burst into flames, and eighteen people emerged from the wreckage with assorted injuries, some more serious than others. Not everyone survived, however, and among those killed were the new guitarist, Steve Gaines, and his sister Cassie, as well as the frontman and founder Ronnie Van Zant, without whom the real Lynyrd Skynyrd band ceased to exist. Who else could ever justly imitate his introduction of the song “Freebird”: “What song is it you want to hear?”