Posthumous hits played on as fans listened through tears
The world was still crying when Buddy Holly’s final recording hit top spot on British charts, earning him the unfortunate distinction of becoming the first artist with a posthumous No. 1 hit in UK chart history.
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THE world was still crying when Buddy Holly’s final recording hit top spot on British charts, earning him the sad distinction of becoming the first artist with a posthumous No. 1 hit in Britain.
Holly recorded Paul Anka’s boppy heartbreaker It Doesn’t Matter Anymore in New York in October 1958. It was released on January 5, 1959, a month before Holly perished in a plane crash with J.P. “Big Bopper” Richardson and Ritchie Valens. It Doesn’t Matter Anymore was a US hit by the end of February, and No.1 1 in Britain by April, sadly demonstrating the devotion of grieving pop fans.
Similarly, news of David Bowie’s unexpected death has propelled his final album, Blackstar, released on his 69th birthday, two days before his death, to the top of British music charts, with 43,000 combined sales, 25,000 sales ahead of its nearest competitor. Unlike Holly and stars such as Otis Redding, Janis Joplin, Tupac Shakur and Amy Winehouse, Bowie’s release of his farewell performance was likely personally stage-managed to precede his death.
Redding recorded his rhythm and blues reflection, Sittin’ On The Dock Of The Bay, co-written and recorded with guitarist Steve Cropper, on November 22, 1967, adding overdubs on December 8. Two days later Redding was dead, killed in a plane crash at age 26.
Stax Records’ Volt label released the song in 1968, delivering Redding his first US chart-topper. He also become the first artist to have a posthumous single top US charts, while Dock Of The Bay made No.3 on the UK Singles Chart.
Joplin had been clean for six months when she failed to turn up to complete a recording session at Los Angeles Sunset Sound Studios. She had been cutting her album Pearl with a new band, Full Tilt Boogie, who accompanied her Festival Express concert tour by train across Canada
in mid-1970.
It was 24 hours since Joplin, then 27, was last been seen partying with the band when her concerned road manager John Cooke went to her room at the Landmark Hotel. Joplin had died about 18 hours earlier, on October 3, 1970, from a heroin overdose.
Although uncompleted with one instrumental track, Joplin’s final album was released by Columbia Records in January 1971. It toppled Jesus Christ Superstar off top spot for Billboard 200’s No.1 album at the end of February, holding the spot until
the end of April, and also reached No.1 in Australia.
Crooner Nat King Cole had been dead for 27 years when his 1951 hit Unforgettable won three Grammy Awards in 1992. Cole had died of cancer at age 45 in Santa Monica on February 15, 1965. In 1991, bandleader and musical director Joe Guercio suggested Cole’s daughter Natalie,
who died on December 31, 2015, at age 65, remix her father’s original 1951 recording as a duet.
Father and daughter won Song of the Year, Record of the Year and Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance at the 1992 Grammys.
Mystery still surrounds the death of New York-born rapper Tupac Shakur, killed after a drive-by shooting at traffic lights on Flamingo Road and Koval Lane in Las Vegas on September 7, 1996. His record manager and Death Row Records founder Suge Knight was at the wheel.
Shakur, who had completed his final album, The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory, in a week of recording at the end of August, died six days later at age 25. Recorded under his stage name Makaveli, the album was due for release in March 1997. Shakur planned to start his own recording label, so The 7 Day Theory was one of his final contracted albums for Death Row.
Knight, a major beneficiary of Shakur’s death, released The 7 Day Theory on November 5, 1996, the first of seven posthumous Shakur albums Knight would release.
The album peaked at No.1 on the US Billboard 200, selling over 350,000 copies in the first week.
WINEHOUSE’S GENIUS A HIDDEN TREASURE
AGEING crooner Tony Bennett shared a studio with British music rebel Amy Winehouse in what became her final recording session on March 23, 2011. Their duet Body And Soul was released on what should have been her 28th birthday, September 14, 2011. Sadly, Winehouse had died of alcohol poisoning on July 23, 2011.
The duet reached No. 87 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early October and was included on a posthumous album Lioness: Hidden Treasures, released in December 2011. Produced by Salaam Remi Gibbs and Mark Ronson from thousands of hours of unreleased vocals, it debuted at No.1 in the UK and No.5 in the US.
Winehouse’s father Mitch told London newspapers the album “took my breath away. I spent so much time chasing after Amy,” he said, “telling her off — that I never realised what a true genius she was.”
Originally published as Posthumous hits played on as fans listened through tears
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