2 MORE GONE, VAGUE CONNECTIONS TO BOTH

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

In the past week, we’ve lost two veteran singer/songwriters, both in their middle 80s, both Americans, and both had hits in the UK though only through cover versions. I met Dash Crofts, who passed away on Wednesday at age 87, in 1980 when my partner and I did some HBO low-rent variety show with Seals & Crofts as the headliner and Maureen McGovern, whose big hit was “The Morning After” from The Poseidon Adventure, in the middle, with us as openers. All I remember is not thinking much of their music when it was popular, but after meeting and working with them and seeing what nice people they were, I gave them another consideration. I got to where I liked S&C’s version of their song “Summer Breeze” a lot more than the Isley Brothers cover, which for some reason was a big hit in UK. Strange too, that only a year after we met them, Seals and Crofts disbanded, reuniting for tours from 1989-92.

We also lost Chip Taylor, who died last weekend at age 85. While he never had any hits as a singer, there were two songs he wrote that paid his bills for a while. One was “Wild Thing,” an international hit by the UK band The Troggs, and also notable from Jimi Hendrix’s cover where he set his guitar on fire at the Monterey Pop Festival. The other was “Angel Of The Morning,” a hit twice in the US, by Merilee Rush in 1968 and Juice Newton in 1981. The English singer P.P. Arnold had the UK hit version, plus a reworking in 2001 by reggae star Shaggy was a UK and US #1. When you listen to both of Taylor’s songs back to back, you can see they follow a similar chord pattern and tempo, even though the sound of the end products is vastly different.

All that is to say I was doing a freebie gig in 2003 on one of my off nights, and not sure how I got put on the bill for this one, and in fact did not know what the occasion was until after I had already performed. I remember the gig was under the auspices of an English musical comic named Earl Okin, whom I had met about five years before I first came to UK. Earl should be a lot more famous than he is, but to his credit, he is still working steadily despite being several years older than me. Just like me, he had a major tour as an opening act in the 1970s, touring with Paul McCartney.

He performed on this night before me, and since I was only being given 10 minutes, I chose to do my medley of hard rock songs done in Country music style. The big one was my rockabilly version of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” but before that I had done Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Wild Thing” as Country songs. To my surprise, after I was done, Earl informed me that the theme of the night was a tribute to Chip Taylor, who would be there to perform songs from his new album, but also special guests would be there to perform his two big hits.

The guests were P.P. Arnold, who sang “Angel of The Morning,” and the former lead singer of The Troggs, the late Reg Presley, whose voice sounded exactly the one on the 1966 hit, but his look was entirely different. If he had not been introduced by name, I would have thought he was a bodyguard or club bouncer, certainly not a rock star. What’s odd is that the only person besides me who noticed that I had already done my version of “Wild Thing” was Earl. Otherwise, none of the performers took any notice, which was probably a good thing. Still it was a fun night, and I got really nice response from the crowd that was there. Had I known the night going to be was a tribute to Taylor, who I actually never got to meet, nor either of the guest performers, I might have thought twice about including his song, but hard to say in retrospect.

It was only on Taylor’s passing that I learned his real name was Wesley Voight, and had recorded a few tunes in the late 1950’s under that name. The other fact I never knew was that he was indeed the younger brother of the actor Jon Voight, and thus uncle of Angelina Jolie. I’ll never know if Taylor had gone down the same rabbit hole his older brother/Trump supporter went.

March 27th, 2026



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