Bud Prager
DOB Unknown – December 23, 2008
Bud Prager was a longtime artist manager who, with his ESP Management, steered the careers of the likes of Megadeth, Foreigner, Bad Company and Damn Yankees. Prager passed away after a long struggle with cancer.
Thanks to Craig Rosen at Number1Albums for the assist.
Eric Woolfson
March 18, 1945 – December 2, 2009
Eric Woolfson was a much respected Scottish musician, songwriter and singer who is best remembered as one-half of the driving force behind the Alan Parsons Project. Woolfson started out mostly as a songwriter, penning songs for the likes of Marianne Faithfull, Peter Noone and the Tremeloes. In the early ’70s, he got into artist management, guiding the careers of Carl Douglas of “Kung Fu Fighting” fame and an up-and-coming producer, Alan Parsons who had previously engineered the Beatles’ Abbey Road and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. In 1975, the two began collaborating creatively and the Alan Parsons Project was born. Over the next decade, the group released such popular prog rock albums as I Robot, Pyramid and Eye in the Sky. Overall, they sold in excess of 40 million albums. By the early ’90s, Woolfson and Parsons parted ways with Woolfson moving into musical theater. Woolfson was later diagnosed with cancer and died from the disease on December 2, 2009. He was 64.
Aaron Schroeder
September 7, 1926 – December 2, 2009
Aaron Schroeder was a producer and prolific songwriter who reportedly penned upwards of 2000 tunes. Elvis Presley recorded seventeen of his songs, including the hits “A Big Hunk of Love,” “It’s Now or Never,” and “Stuck on You.” Other legends to make hits out of Schroeder’s songs were Roy Orbison, Rosemary Clooney, Nat King Cole, Perry Como and many more. He also wrote the theme song for the Saturday morning cartoon, Scooby Doo Where Are You?. As a producer, Schroeder worked with, among others, Jimi Hendrix, Gene Pitney and Barry White. Diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease, Aaron Schroeder, 84, passed away on December 2, 2009.
Bob Keane (Born Robert Kuhn)
January 5, 1922 – November 28, 2009
Bob Keane was the founder of Del-Fi Records, the first label to give a young Ritchie Valens a recording contract. Keane began his music career as a clarinetist who, after a 1938 concert by his jazz band was broadcast on Los Angeles radio station, KFWB, was offered a record deal by MCA Records. A couple of years later, he was dropped by the label so he enlisted in the army. Upon his return home from duty, Keane picked up where he left off, playing in local clubs around Los Angeles. In 1955, Keane and a partner formed the label, Keen Records, and released a single by then unknown soul singer, Sam Cooke. The song was “Summertime,” but it was the b-side “You Send Me” that started to get attention at radio, quickly sending it to #1 on the Billboard pop chart. Unfortunately for Keane, he made an oral agreement with his partner, and before he could collect any of the “You Send Me” earnings, he was out the door. He soon formed his own label, Del-Fi Records and discovered Valens, a young Latino rock ‘n roller from Pacoima, CA. Over the next several months, Keane released hit after hit records by Valens but sadly, the musician was killed the following year in the plane crash that also took the lives of Buddy Holly and JP “The Big Bopper” Richardson. The label continued on, eventually signing a stable of artists that were just as important to the legacy of popular music as Valens had been. That list included the Surfaris, Frank Zappa, Brenda Holloway, and the Bobby Fuller Four. In 1967, Keane shuttered the label and went on to manage his sons’ band. He sold the Del-Fi catalog to the Warner Music Group in 2003. On November 28, 2009, Bob Keane, 87, died of renal failure.
Rob Partridge
June 2, 1948 – November 26, 2008
Rob Partridge was a UK music industry veteran who founded and ran the Coalition Group, a powerful management and PR firm. Partridge began his career in the mid ’70s when he worked as a journalist Music Week. By the late ’70s, he was the head of the publicity department at Island Records where he worked directly with such greats as Bob Marley, Marianne Faithfull, U2, Steve Winwood and Robert Palmer. He left Island in 1990 to form a PR firm which would eventually be called the Coalition Group after he opened a management division of the company. Over the years, Partridge represented the likes of Johnny Marr, Tom Waits, Bloc Party, and Billy Bragg. In recent years, Rob Partridge had been suffering from cancer. He died as a result of it at the age of 60.
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