RonBoyd
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
(Starting around 1:42)
RIP Bobby Keys
- Thread starter RonBoyd
- Start date
frayne
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
He had some serious chops and was almost solely responsible for me taking up the air sax. His solo on "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" is nothing short of classic.
golfnut
Full time employment: Posting here.
Rock and Roll just lost an original here. He dates back playing with Buddy Holly when Bobby was around 15 years old. He's played with a ton of famous artists.
I saw Bobby about 5 yrs. ago playing in a bar o/s of Chicago. He joined the Joe Ely band for a few songs. He looked and played great!
This has got to be a big body blow to his kindred spirit - Keith Richard.
I saw Bobby about 5 yrs. ago playing in a bar o/s of Chicago. He joined the Joe Ely band for a few songs. He looked and played great!
This has got to be a big body blow to his kindred spirit - Keith Richard.
There was a nice article in our paper about him yesterday. Keep scrolling down to finish the article. I copied it so you wouldn't have to sign up for the website to read it:
Friends remember Slaton native, Rolling Stones sax player Bobby Keys
Keys died Tuesday at his home in Franklin, Tennessee after a prolonged illness. He was 70.
Posted: December 2, 2014 - 10:45pm | Updated: December 3, 2014 - 12:20am
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Casey Monahan
Ronnie Lane, right, along with Bobby Keys on saxophone, join The Tremors at the Steamboat in Austin in 1987. Keys, a Slaton native died at his home in Franklin, Tennessee. He was 70 years old.
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Andy Lo
Saxophonist Bobby Keys signs a copy of his autobiography, "Every Night's a Saturday Night: The Rock 'n' Roll Life of Legendary Sax Man Bobby Keys," for Jo Claire Swayze in Greenwood, Miss.,in 2012. Keys died at his home in Franklin, Tenn. He was 70 years old.
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Ely
By BLAKE URSCH
A-J MEDIA
Bobby Keys once caught a plane out of Los Angeles for a short trip playing saxophone with the Rolling Stones. He wouldn’t return for more than a year.
When he tried to retrieve his car from the L.A. airport parking lot, an attendant presented him with a bill for several thousand dollars.
The parking fees, he would later tell a friend, were well over the cost of the car. So he grabbed the title from the glove compartment, handed the keys to the parking attendant and jumped in a taxi cab.
This is just one story about the Slaton native and legendary rock ’n’ roll saxophonist who performed staggering solos on the Stones’ “Brown Sugar” and “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” during a career spanning almost 50 years. His friends say there are countless more.
Keys died Tuesday at his home in Franklin, Tennessee after a prolonged illness. He was 70.
“There’s about umpteen gillion memories. When you went somewhere with Bobby, you didn’t just pass through quietly. Every step along the way was rambunctious,” said West Texas musician Joe Ely, whom Keys often played with over the years. “Bobby had this presence that tended to rattle the crystal off the chandeliers whenever he walked through a room.”
On the evening of his death, friends and former bandmates often struggled to put Keys’ legacy into words. When they did, they chose adjectives like “fun-loving,” “ornery,” “bigger than life” and “energetic.”
Keith Richards, Stones guitarist, said in a statement: “I have lost the largest pal in the world, and I can’t express the sense of sadness I feel, although Bobby would tell me to cheer up.”
Keys was a troublemaker who was rumored to have once drank an entire bathtub full of champagne. Ely called him a “freight train” and recounted a tale in which Keys drank about 30 tequila shots on his birthday and still stood upright to play his sax.
Don Caldwell, head of Don Caldwell Productions in Lubbock, grew up with Keys in Slaton and remembers when “Bobby” was “Robert.” As youngsters, they played Little League baseball together.
When Caldwell was in junior high school, Keys, a freshman in high school, began playing saxophone in the Slaton High School marching band. Caldwell eventually decided to pick up the sax on his own, and Keys tutored him.
Keys’ life was tougher than most kids’ growing up in Slaton at the time, Caldwell said. He was raised by his grandparents after his parents moved to New Mexico to have more children, a story Keys recounts in his autobiography, “Every Night’s a Saturday Night.”
Caldwell said the self-reliance Keys cultivated during his upbringing would later power his musical success. While a teenager in the 1950s, after first hearing their music at the opening of a local gas station, Keys earned the attention of Buddy Holly and The Crickets.
“He used to tell us stories that he’d hang out at rehearsals with The Crickets, and they’d send him off to get Cokes and hamburgers,” said Davis McLarty, a former bandmate of Keys.
His attachment to Holly and The Crickets would eventually lead to his first encounter with the Stones.
He met the band in the mid-1960s while playing a state fair in San Antonio. Keys was distraught that the British rockers had recorded a cover of Holly’s “Not Fade Away.”
In Stones guitarist Keith Richards’ 2010 memoir, “Life,” Keys recounted confronting the band: “I said ‘Hey, that was Buddy’s song. Who are all these pasty-faced, funny-talking, skinny-legged guys to come over here and cash in on Buddy’s song?’ ”
He eventually decided he approved of the Stones’ brand of rock ’n’ roll, and first appeared on the band’s 1969 album “Let It Bleed.” He formed a deep friendship with Richards, who would later call Keys his soulmate.
In some ways, he was too close to Richards, joining him in throwing televisions off hotel balconies, and developing a heroin addiction that would lead to his temporary estrangement from the band.
Keys played on recordings for other music giants such as John Lennon’s “Whatever Gets You Through the Night” and albums by George Harrison, Barbra Streisand and Eric Clapton.
Each performance, every solo, rang with a special intensity unique to Lubbock musicians, Ely said. Keys carried his saxophone like a sword. He urged people to get up and move with his music.
The man played like an athlete, McLarty said. He was always in the zone.
“Every musician sort of aspires to play like it might be their last night on Earth, and he did in my opinion,” he said.
Keys and his saxophone were the embodiment of a brand of music specific to Lubbock, Ely said.
“It’s an all-or-nothing spirit. It’s a go-for-it kind of attitude,” he said. “I guess because of that old dust always blowing, and the wind just kind of pisses you off; it’s just this whole thing that makes you want to go full tilt. And Bobby had that spirit.”
Perhaps Keys would be glad to read this story.
Once, during a meeting in L.A. in the 1970s, Caldwell remembers Keys repeatedly asking what people back home thought of him.
Despite traveling the world, playing with greats whose names are etched deeply into the stone tablet of music history, the saxophonist still wanted West Texas to be proud of him.
In 1984, Keys was inducted into the West Texas Walk of Fame.
“All of us want to be accepted in our hometown. I think most people thought that he had kind of risen above this whole thing out here,” Caldwell said. “But it was a big deal to him.”
(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
blake.ursch@lubbockonline.com
Friends remember Slaton native, Rolling Stones sax player Bobby Keys
Keys died Tuesday at his home in Franklin, Tennessee after a prolonged illness. He was 70.
Posted: December 2, 2014 - 10:45pm | Updated: December 3, 2014 - 12:20am
Casey MonahanRonnie Lane, right, along with Bobby Keys on saxophone, join The Tremors at the Steamboat in Austin in 1987. Keys, a Slaton native died at his home in Franklin, Tennessee. He was 70 years old.
Back | Next 
Andy LoSaxophonist Bobby Keys signs a copy of his autobiography, "Every Night's a Saturday Night: The Rock 'n' Roll Life of Legendary Sax Man Bobby Keys," for Jo Claire Swayze in Greenwood, Miss.,in 2012. Keys died at his home in Franklin, Tenn. He was 70 years old.
Back | Next
Ely
By BLAKE URSCH
A-J MEDIA
Bobby Keys once caught a plane out of Los Angeles for a short trip playing saxophone with the Rolling Stones. He wouldn’t return for more than a year.
When he tried to retrieve his car from the L.A. airport parking lot, an attendant presented him with a bill for several thousand dollars.
The parking fees, he would later tell a friend, were well over the cost of the car. So he grabbed the title from the glove compartment, handed the keys to the parking attendant and jumped in a taxi cab.
This is just one story about the Slaton native and legendary rock ’n’ roll saxophonist who performed staggering solos on the Stones’ “Brown Sugar” and “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” during a career spanning almost 50 years. His friends say there are countless more.
Keys died Tuesday at his home in Franklin, Tennessee after a prolonged illness. He was 70.
“There’s about umpteen gillion memories. When you went somewhere with Bobby, you didn’t just pass through quietly. Every step along the way was rambunctious,” said West Texas musician Joe Ely, whom Keys often played with over the years. “Bobby had this presence that tended to rattle the crystal off the chandeliers whenever he walked through a room.”
On the evening of his death, friends and former bandmates often struggled to put Keys’ legacy into words. When they did, they chose adjectives like “fun-loving,” “ornery,” “bigger than life” and “energetic.”
Keith Richards, Stones guitarist, said in a statement: “I have lost the largest pal in the world, and I can’t express the sense of sadness I feel, although Bobby would tell me to cheer up.”
Keys was a troublemaker who was rumored to have once drank an entire bathtub full of champagne. Ely called him a “freight train” and recounted a tale in which Keys drank about 30 tequila shots on his birthday and still stood upright to play his sax.
Don Caldwell, head of Don Caldwell Productions in Lubbock, grew up with Keys in Slaton and remembers when “Bobby” was “Robert.” As youngsters, they played Little League baseball together.
When Caldwell was in junior high school, Keys, a freshman in high school, began playing saxophone in the Slaton High School marching band. Caldwell eventually decided to pick up the sax on his own, and Keys tutored him.
Keys’ life was tougher than most kids’ growing up in Slaton at the time, Caldwell said. He was raised by his grandparents after his parents moved to New Mexico to have more children, a story Keys recounts in his autobiography, “Every Night’s a Saturday Night.”
Caldwell said the self-reliance Keys cultivated during his upbringing would later power his musical success. While a teenager in the 1950s, after first hearing their music at the opening of a local gas station, Keys earned the attention of Buddy Holly and The Crickets.
“He used to tell us stories that he’d hang out at rehearsals with The Crickets, and they’d send him off to get Cokes and hamburgers,” said Davis McLarty, a former bandmate of Keys.
His attachment to Holly and The Crickets would eventually lead to his first encounter with the Stones.
He met the band in the mid-1960s while playing a state fair in San Antonio. Keys was distraught that the British rockers had recorded a cover of Holly’s “Not Fade Away.”
In Stones guitarist Keith Richards’ 2010 memoir, “Life,” Keys recounted confronting the band: “I said ‘Hey, that was Buddy’s song. Who are all these pasty-faced, funny-talking, skinny-legged guys to come over here and cash in on Buddy’s song?’ ”
He eventually decided he approved of the Stones’ brand of rock ’n’ roll, and first appeared on the band’s 1969 album “Let It Bleed.” He formed a deep friendship with Richards, who would later call Keys his soulmate.
In some ways, he was too close to Richards, joining him in throwing televisions off hotel balconies, and developing a heroin addiction that would lead to his temporary estrangement from the band.
Keys played on recordings for other music giants such as John Lennon’s “Whatever Gets You Through the Night” and albums by George Harrison, Barbra Streisand and Eric Clapton.
Each performance, every solo, rang with a special intensity unique to Lubbock musicians, Ely said. Keys carried his saxophone like a sword. He urged people to get up and move with his music.
The man played like an athlete, McLarty said. He was always in the zone.
“Every musician sort of aspires to play like it might be their last night on Earth, and he did in my opinion,” he said.
Keys and his saxophone were the embodiment of a brand of music specific to Lubbock, Ely said.
“It’s an all-or-nothing spirit. It’s a go-for-it kind of attitude,” he said. “I guess because of that old dust always blowing, and the wind just kind of pisses you off; it’s just this whole thing that makes you want to go full tilt. And Bobby had that spirit.”
Perhaps Keys would be glad to read this story.
Once, during a meeting in L.A. in the 1970s, Caldwell remembers Keys repeatedly asking what people back home thought of him.
Despite traveling the world, playing with greats whose names are etched deeply into the stone tablet of music history, the saxophonist still wanted West Texas to be proud of him.
In 1984, Keys was inducted into the West Texas Walk of Fame.
“All of us want to be accepted in our hometown. I think most people thought that he had kind of risen above this whole thing out here,” Caldwell said. “But it was a big deal to him.”
(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
blake.ursch@lubbockonline.com
OP
OP
