As I and many others have noted, it hasn't been a particularly great year for music when it comes to deaths of important musical figures. I wrote about two of the biggest who have died this year, David Bowie and Prince, and in the latter post I listed many of the other major losses up to that point in time, from the Beatles producer George Martin to the keyboard wizard Keith Emerson. Recently a few other significant people have been added to the list. One was Leon Russell, who worked with artists such as Joe Cocker, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Elton John. His first album included guest musicians like George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Eric Clapton. Though I don't own any of his albums myself, I'm certainly aware of his impact.
That is even more true of another aritist who died recently, Leonard Cohen. I only have one Leonard Cohen compilation, an early "best of" album, so there's a lot his stuff I haven't heard. But he was definitely a very distinctive songwriter and wrote some great stuff. Bob Dylan is the obvious comparison, but Cohen had a style all his own. One of these days I need to get one or two more of his albums, either a more comprehensive compilation album, one of his top rated original albums, or both. For now, I have to be content with early classics like "Suzanne", "So Long, Marianne", "Bird on a Wire", "Famous Blue Raincoat" and "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye", as well as Jeff Buckley's version of "Hallelujah" and Billy Joel's cover of "Light as the Breeze".
There's only one month left in 2016, so we can hope there will be no more major deaths this year. But considering the ages of so many of the remaining greats who emerged in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, perhaps we should prepare ourselves for a few more years like 2016 in the near future.
