Singer Song Writer David Crosby dead at age 81
By Diane Bartz
(Reuters) – David Crosby was one of the biggest and most influential rock singers of the 1960s and ‘70s. But he died accidentally at age 81 with Byrds & Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSNY), Variety reported on Thursday, citing a statement from Crosby’s wife.
He had been suffering from serious health problems including multiple heart attacks, diabetes and hepatitis C for a long time, for which he had undergone a liver transplant in 1994. He added five solo albums to his catalog between 2014 and 2021, and tours frequently with his two sets of collaborators, the Lighthouse Band (which also includes Snarky Puppy bandleader Michael League) and the Sky Trails Band, which includes his son James on keyboards. Raymond was primarily a specialty.
On one of his tours, Crosby’s focus went back to his early professional days, when he was a nomadic folk musician honing his performance skills on the road. In the late 1950s, Crosby began performing in coffeehouses in Santa Barbara, California, soon thereafter traveling around the US, populating South Florida, Chicago, and Boulder, Colo Crosby also spent an early period in Greenwich Village, where he started the team. to play on the then new Bitter End with Terry Callier, a Chicago musician.
Despite his long and successful solo career, Crosby thrived on collaboration—a trait he discovered as a young child, but which he wrote in his 1988 autobiography, Long Time Gone, after being mesmerized by a symphony orchestra performance. Even so, the idea of a cooperative effort toward something bigger than any one individual stuck in his mind. That’s why I like to be a harmony singer That’s why I like to be in a group
Crosby’s first major success came when he appeared as a founding member of the huge California country-folk troupe The Byrds. The group reached their commercial peak during their tenure, earning two No. 1 singles – Pete Seeger’s “Turn! Turn! Turn!” It was followed by Bob Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine Man—and stormed into the Top 20 with the classic “Eight Miles High.” Crosby co-wrote the latter and penned a number of other memorable Byrds songs, including the lilting, wild “Lady Friend”. He was instrumental in developing the group’s harmony-rich vocal approach and kaleidoscopic sound, which incorporated psychedelic rock, jazz, and twangy folk, and has been credited by bandmate Roger McGuinn for introducing him to the music of John Coltrane and Ravi Shankar!
Crosby’s early influences then became more prominent in his partnership with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, with whom he also explored new ways of expressing harmony. On Long Time Gone he dissected their unique vocal approach with characteristic brevity, noting that the group sang “non parallel stuff influenced by classical music, late ’50s rockers and early ’60s jazz and the Avrils. Crosby’s sea-clear tenor meshed seamlessly with Stills’ and Nash’s voices in their characteristic forms.” to his own “Guinevere”.
Born in the USA, Crosby was born on 14 August 1941 in Los Angeles. His father was a cinematographer who also won a Golden Globe in 1952 for High Noon, and his mother exposed him to the folk group The Weavers and classical music.
