Chas Chandler wore many hats throughout his music career. During the early ’60s, he co-founded the Animals with Alan Price and Eric Burdon, playing bass for the band. After the group broke up, he got into artist management, his famous client being Jimi Hendrix. Later, he produced records for Slade and Nick Drake while running his own recording studio and eventually starting his own label, Barn Records. In his later years, Chandler helped develop the Newcastle Arena, which opened in 1995. Chandler died of a heart condition on July 17 of the following year.
Charles Miller is best remembered as an original member of one of the premier ’70s funk bands, War. Raised in the Los Angeles area, Miller began playing a variety of instruments while still in high school, eventually settling on the saxophone and flute. While in college he began finding local gigs, even landing a recording sessions with Ray Charles and live performances with Brenton Wood. He eventually hooked up with Harold Brown, Papa Dee Allen, and Howard E. Scott and formed a band called Night Shift, which would soon be re-christened War by Eric Burdon and include Lee Oskar. War’s fusion of jazz, funk, R&B and Latin coupled with the raw British vocals of Burdon made a hit out of their 1970 single, “Spill the Wine.” In 1975, the band, sans Burdon, released Why Can’t We Be Friends? which included the Miller sung hit, “Low Rider,” one of the most popular songs to come out of the era. Charles Miller was murdered in a botched robbery just two weeks before his 41st birthday. The crime has never been solved.
Sonny Boy Williamson II (Born Rice Miller)
December 5, 1899 or May 11, 1908 – May 25, 1965
There’s likely only one person who could say they played alongside not only Robert Johnson, but also Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Eric Burden, and Robbie Robertson; that person was Sonny Boy Williamson II. Born on a plantation, Williamson worked along with his father as a sharecropper until he decided to head out on his own in the early ’30s with a harmonica along for the ride. He would meet up and play with the likes of Elmore James, Robert Lockwood Jr., and the great Robert Johnson. Besides having tremendous skills on the harmonica, Williamson learned a few tricks to dazzle his audiences, like playing it with no hands or playing it while nestled between his upper lip and nose. I should point out that around this time, there was another harmonica-playing Sonny Boy Williamson gaining popularity throughout the blues world. So to distinguish the two, this one (Rice Miller) was referred to as “Number 2” or “The Second,” even though he claimed to have started using the stage name first. Williamson made his first recordings for Trumpet Records in 1951, but when the label went bankrupt in 1955, his contract became the property of the renowned Chess Records who helped him achieve much greater success. By the ’60s he was being embraced by the new British blues-rock artists as a main influence affording him the opportunity to record with the Animals and the Yardbirds. Williamson recorded some 70 songs during his career, many of which are considered blues staples and have been covered by Aerosmith, the Who, Led Zeppelin, Van Morrison, Nick Cave, the New York Dolls, and the Allman Brothers to name but a few. Sadly, as Williamson was gaining a new fame and fortune, he was found dead in his room on May 25, 1965 of an apparent heart attack.
Working as a record producer through the late ’50s and most of the ’60s, Tom Wilson earned a place alongside such better-known contemporaries as Phil Spector and George Martin. After graduating from Harvard, Wilson started up Transition Records, where he signed Sun Ra and Cecil Taylor. In the early ’60s, he moved over to Columbia Records as house producer. While there, he produced such masterpieces as Bob Dylan’sThe Times They Are A-Changin’, Another Side Of Bob Dylan, and Bringing It All Back Home. He also produced seminal albums by the likes of Simon and Garfunkel, Frank Zappa, Eric Burdon and the Velvet Underground. Tom Wilson suffered a fatal heart attack on September 6, 1978. He was 47.
themusicsover 
Chas Chandler wore many hats throughout his music career. During the early ’60s, he co-founded the Animals with Alan Price and Eric Burdon, playing bass for the band. After the group broke up, he got into artist management, his famous client being Jimi Hendrix. Later, he produced records for Slade and Nick Drake while running his own recording studio and eventually starting his own label, Barn Records. In his later years, Chandler helped develop the Newcastle Arena, which opened in 1995. Chandler died of a heart condition on July 17 of the following year.
There’s likely only one person who could say they played alongside not only 
