David Savoy
DOB Unknown – February 7, 1987
David Savoy was a close friend, fan, promoter, and defacto manager of influential Minneapolis alternative rock band, Husker Du. As the band was about to launch their 1987 tour, Savoy jumped to his death off a bridge. He was just 24 and apparently suffering from depression.
Jimmy Van Heusen (Born Edward Babcock)
January 26, 1913 – February 7, 1990
Jimmy Van Heusen was an Emmy nominated, Golden Globe nominated and multi-Academy Award winning composer of film and television music. After college, Van Heusen went to work playing the piano for several publishers of the storied Tin Pan Alley. During that time, he became an extremely prolific tunesmith, ultimately penning the music for over 800 songs. More than 50 of those have become standards. Over the course of his career, he collaborated with the likes of Johnny Mercer, Phil Silvers, and most famously, Sammy Cahn. Fourteen songs for which Van Heusen wrote the music were nominated for Academy Awards for best song. Those that won were “Swinging on a Star,” “All the Way,” “High Hopes,” and “Call Me Irresponsible.” Other famous standards of his include “Come Fly With Me,” “Love and Marriage,” “You My Love,” “Love Is The Tender Trap,” and “It Could Happen To You.” Jimmy Van Heusen passed away at the age of 77 on February 7, 1990. A close friend of Frank Sinatra’s, he is buried in the Sinatra family plot.
Carl Wilson
December 21, 1946 – February 6, 1998
Carl Wilson was the youngest of three brothers who formed the Beach Boys. With Dennis Wilson, Brian Wilson, cousin Mike Love, and friend Al Jardine, Wilson helped create one of the best-selling and most influential bands in pop music history back in 1961. Some have called them the “American Beatles,” a band with which they had a friendly rivalry during their early years while actually strongly influencing each other. Carl was the lead guitarist for the band while handling an occasional lead vocal. It was he who sang lead on “God Only Knows,” “Good Vibrations,” and “Darlin’.” Carl released a handful solo albums during the ’70s and became the first Beach Boy to mount a solo tour. The turbulent goings-on within the band as well as at the Wilson home have been well documented. What many don’t know is that Carl was seen as the peacekeeper within the group. It was he who generally tried to keep the peace within the family and band. In 1997, Carl was diagnosed with brain cancer. He died less than a year later at the age of 51.
Jesse Belvin
December 15, 1932 – February 6, 1960
Member of the 27 Club
Jesse Belvin was a young R&B star during the ’50s. Besides being a talented singer and pianist, he wrote a few of the era’s most popular songs. His first hit, “Dream Girl,” which he recorded with Marvin Phillips, shot to #2 on the R&B charts in 1952. That was followed a couple of years later by “Earth Angel,” one of the first R&B songs to crossover to the pop charts when it was recorded by The Penguins in 1954. The record went on to sell over a million copies in just a year’s time. His biggest hit came in 1957 with his recording of “Goodnight My Love,” one of the era’s signature songs. An eleven year old Barry White supposedly played the piano on that recording. Belvin signed to RCA Records in 1959 and began to develop into a more sophisticated R&B crooner – a style that was similar to Nat King Cole’s. In early 1960, he had just finished recording an album of soulful standards when his life was cut tragically short. He and his wife were driving home from a performance that included Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson when they were involved in a head-on collision that killed them instantly. Jesse Belvin was 27 years old on the night he died.
King Tubby (Born Osbourne Ruddick)
January 28, 1941 – February 6, 1989
King Tubby’s path to music success was a bit unconventional in that he was not originally a musician, singer, songwriter, or producer, but a skilled Jamaican radio repairman. As sound systems and recording equipment began to grow in popularity throughout Jamaica during the ’50s, and ’60s, so did the demand for Tubby’s skill to fix equipment was continually exposed to bad elements of the island. He soon opened his own repair shop where he put together some of the island’s best sound systems. He soon became skilled at creating sound effects like reverb and echo and was eventually working at the island’s top studios working on some of ska and reggae’s earliest records as a mixer or engineer. It was in this capacity that Tubby began experimenting in what would later be called “remixes,” a practice that he has been credited for inventing. By the ’70s, Tubby was arguably the most popular mixers in Jamaica. Though not a musician in the traditional sense, Tubby was able to manipulate the knobs and dials of a mixing board in a way that made him just as vital to the final product as any of the guitarists or drummers. By removing vocals and certain instruments from the mixes, he created a new form of music called “dub.” Over the course of his career, he mixed or remixed albums by the greatest producers in Jamaica. Tragedy struck on February 6, 1989 when King Tubby, who had just turned 48, was shot and killed in what was believed to be a random robbery. His murder was never solved.
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