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| Joe Cocker onstage at Woodstock in 1969. Credit Don Hogan Charles |
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.
More Read
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/23/arts/music/joe-cocker-is-dead-at-70.html?_r=0
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