Aged 70, from lung cancer.
RIP
What an amazing and powerful voice. He will be missed. RIP
Wow tough loss his first album one of my favorites RIP Joe
Often imitated - never quite equaled. Another giant of the music world gone.
As much as I love to hear Susan and the TTB do, Space Captain ... it belongs to Joe! Until I die!
God rest ye!
R.I.P. 
Joe
a great talent
Damned sad news ! Listening to lots of Joe from youtube with the mrs. , what a unique performer, miss him already. RIP Joe...damned cancer !
I was just watching the film Joe Cocker Mad Dogs and Englishman over the weekend. Someone mentioned to me that Bobby Keys was the sax player. sigh... RIP Joe and Bobby, you made great music for us and you will always be remembered. Phil
[Edited on 12/22/2014 by PhilBNY]
No one can throw the ball...like Catfish can.
Ride in peace Joe.
Perhaps the greatest cover artist in R & R history. He made so many songs his own
And also a great sport
I have said many times I never went to the Fillmore East; as my brother lost our Mad-Dogs tickets. If he predeceases me I will be forced to bad mouth him during the eulogy
emr, thanks for the take.
Rest Easy Joe......
One of the greatest voices.......ALWAYS.......
Another great one gone.
RIP Joe. Saw him at the ARMS benefit on 12/2/83 w/ Beck, Clapton, Page, Paul Rodgers, Ray Cooper, Kenney Jones, Bill Wyman, Andy Fairweather-Low, Charlie Watts & Ronnie Lane. He was great. Definitely made a lot of excellent cover tunes his own. Just finished watching his fabulous complete set @ Woodstock 94:
There links to 3 more complete shows @ http://musicphotographics.com/VIDEOS/complete_concert_videos_streams_jo_bands.htm. Enjoy!
One of the more memorable shows I went to was Joe Cocker in a Cleveland park amphiteather somewhere about 12-14 years ago. My wife kept saying she just wanted to go up and hug him. He put on a real good show and had a strange lovable quality about him while he was singing. Was just listening to the Deluxe Englishmen and Mad dogs Friday evening and Saturday morning.
Been listening to mad Dogs & Englishmen..what a show..R.I.P.
Another music icon gone. Sad day. RIP Joe
It seems like 70 is the life span of some our favorite musicians. Too many this year around that age have passed:
Cocker
McClagan
Keys
Winter
Bruce
Hopefully 2015 will be a better year in that respect.
His style was so unique and it worked brilliantly for him. His music always brings me back to my college days. RIP Joe.
Rest in peace, he had a very nice singing voice, and I grew up hearing his music since my mother liked his songs.
Very sad news. Got to see Joe three amazing times- Mad Dogs and Englishmen at Stony Brook, with SRV for a 4th of July show in Vermont, and another time with Buddy Guy at the Shoreline in Mountain View, Ca. One of the true rock greats. Always amazed how he could push the emotional envelope in his singing without ever seeming maudlin, overstated or insincere. Mad Dogs and Englishmen set a precedent for revival-style rock 'n roll.
Always thought of Joe as one of Ray Charles' three rock 'n roll love children, along with Stevie Winwood and Gregg. So appreciative of having experienced his artistry.
saw him at music midtown when it was off north ave. in Atlanta.best show of the day
An excellent talent. He got the most out of his abilities. We must also remember that the band for Mad Dogs and Englishmen were essentially The Dominoes. RIP Joe
Perhaps the greatest cover artist in R & R history. He made so many songs his own
So true.
RIP Joe Cocker 🙁 🙁 🙁 .
Nice write-up
Source: NYTIMES
Joe Cocker Is Dead at 70; Raspy-Voiced Rock Star With Distinctive Moves
By BEN SISARIODEC. 22, 2014
Joe Cocker, the gravelly British singer who became one of pop’s most recognizable interpreters in the late 1960s and ’70s with passionate, idiosyncratic takes on songs like the Beatles’ “With a Little Help From My Friends,” died on Monday at his home in Crawford, Colo. He was 70.
The cause was lung cancer, his agent, Barrie Marshall, said.
Mr. Cocker had been a journeyman singer in Britain for much of the 1960s, building a reputation as a soulful barreler with full-throated versions of Ray Charles and Chuck Berry songs. But he became a sensation after his performance of “With a Little Help From My Friends” at the Woodstock music festival in 1969.
His appearance there, captured in the 1970 concert film “Woodstock,” established him as one of pop’s most powerful and irrepressible vocalists. With his tie-dyed shirt and shaggy mutton chops soaked in sweat, Mr. Cocker, then 25, pleadingly teased out the song’s verses — “What would you do if I sang out of tune?/Would you stand up and walk out on me?” — and threw himself into repeated climaxes, lunging and gesticulating in ways that seemed to imitate a guitarist in a heroic solo.
On Twitter, Ringo Starr wrote on Monday, “Goodbye and God bless to Joe Cocker from one of his friends.” In a statement, Paul McCartney recalled hearing Mr. Cocker’s record of the song. “It was just mind-blowing, totally turned the song into a soul anthem,” he said, “and I was forever grateful for him for having done that.”
After Woodstock, Mr. Cocker toured widely and took his place as perhaps the rock world’s most distinctive interpreter of others’ songs — an art then going out of fashion with the rise of folk-inspired singer-songwriters and groups, like the Beatles, that wrote their own material.
His other hits included a version of the Box Tops’ hit “The Letter” and the standard “Cry Me a River,” both in 1970, and “You Are So Beautiful,” in 1975. His only No. 1 single was “Up Where We Belong,” recorded as a duet with Jennifer Warnes for the 1982 film “An Officer and a Gentleman,” for which he won his only Grammy Award.
Almost from the start of his fame, Mr. Cocker struggled with alcohol and drug addiction.
“If I’d been stronger mentally, I could have turned away from temptation,” he said in an interview last year with The Daily Mail, the British newspaper. “But there was no rehab back in those days. Drugs were readily available, and I dived in head first. And once you get into that downward spiral, it’s hard to pull out of it. It took me years to get straight.”
His early tours — particularly “Mad Dogs & Englishmen” in 1970, which was documented in a live album and film of the same name — were rowdy affairs, awash in both drugs and the artistic excesses of the era. The sprawling “Mad Dogs” entourage included not only more than 30 musicians, among them the keyboardist and songwriter Leon Russell and the drummer Jim Keltner, but also spouses, babies and pets.
At the same time, Mr. Cocker’s onstage contortions had, for better or worse, become his signature. John Belushi performed a sendup on “Saturday Night Live” in 1975 that ended with his convulsing on the floor; the next year Mr. Cocker performed Traffic’s “Feelin’ Alright” on the show, joined by Mr. Belushi in imitation.
Asked about his mannerisms in an interview last year with The Guardian, Mr. Cocker said that they “came with my frustration at having never played guitar or piano.” He added: “It’s just a way of trying to get feeling out. I get excited, and it all comes through my body.”
Photo
John Robert Cocker was born on May 20, 1944, in Sheffield, England, and began playing drums and harmonica in 1959 with a group called the Cavaliers. Influenced by Ray Charles and skiffle stars like Lonnie Donegan, he soon switched to lead vocals and rebranded himself Vance Arnold — a name inspired by both the American country singer Eddy Arnold and a character from the Elvis Presley film “Love Me Tender.”
While still a budding teenage performer, Mr. Cocker had kept his day job as a gas fitter for the East Midlands Gas Board. He was given a six-month leave when he signed with Decca in 1964. But his version of the Beatles “I’ll Cry Instead” and a tour slot opening for Manfred Mann drew little notice, so he went back to gas fitting for a time.
Mr. Cocker’s career began to take shape around 1965 when he and the keyboardist Chris Stainton formed the Grease Band, which played Motown covers in pubs throughout northern England before relocating to London two years later. In 1968, the group’s single “Marjorine,” released under Mr. Cocker’s name, became a minor hit, and a version of “With a Little Help From My Friends” — with Jimmy Page on guitar and B. J. Wilson, from Procol Harum, on drums — went to No. 1 in England.
Woodstock made Mr. Cocker a worldwide star, but throughout the 1970s his career was dogged by problems with drugs. He sometimes forgot the words to songs onstage, and while on tour in Australia in 1972 he was arrested on a charge of possession of marijuana.
“Up Where We Belong” resuscitated Mr. Cocker’s career in 1982, leading to numerous other songs in film soundtracks, among them Randy Newman’s “You Can Leave Your Hat On” in “9 1/2 Weeks” (1986) and “When the Night Comes,” from “An Innocent Man” (1989), which went to No. 11 on Billboard’s pop chart.
Meanwhile, Mr. Cocker was reaching millions of younger fans as the Woodstock version of “With a Little Help From My Friends” was used as the theme song for the ABC comedy series “The Wonder Years,” which started in 1988. He performed at Woodstock ’94, the 25th-anniversary version of the festival.
In all, Mr. Cocker released more than 20 studio albums, most recently “Fire It Up” in 2012.
He is survived by his wife, Pam; a brother, Victor; a stepdaughter, Zoey Schroeder; and two grandchildren.
At a concert in September, Billy Joel called Mr. Cocker “a great singer who is not very well right now.” He added: “I think he should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I’m amazed that he’s not yet, but I’m throwing in my vote for Joe Cocker.”
Joe Coscarelli contributed reporting.
Love the madness of the Mad Dogs era. What a party that must have been.
I posted this on facebook but should be shared here. Love this tune and the energy/visual captured in the room.
Man it has been tough year for old rockers, Johnny Winter, Jack Bruce, Bobby Keys, and cast of others. Our generations musical idols are slowly passing away. RIP Joe
Man it has been tough year for old rockers, Johnny Winter, Jack Bruce, Bobby Keys, and cast of others. Our generations musical idols are slowly passing away. RIP Joe
As Bob Dylan sang: "It ain't dark yet - but its getting there." When those a bit older than you die off it is God's way of placing you at Yankee Stadium with Bob Shepard going: "And now in the on deck position"
