Source: Associated Press
Bummer.
I remember when they were a bunch of Jesus freaks. I always enjoyed them.
Mississippi moon, won’t you keep on shinin’ on Keith.
Jesus freaks? With a name like Doobie Brothers? I thought they started out as a California bikers’ band.
Why not? Jesus & pot went hand-in-hand all through the 60’s and 70’s. 
Keith Knudsen’s page at the official Doobie Brothers website.
Count me as one of the many who enjoyed the DBs in concert.
I think the reference is to the song “Jesus is Just All Right with Me” - I grew up in the Bay Area and really like a lot of their songs, but that song is crap. Not to mention that all the born-agains I knew would try to foist that off on my to show how “cool” Christianity was. It is not my place to comment on the relative “coolness” of a religion, but their attempt was not working.
Sorry to hear about KK - he (and the DB’s) made some good music. 56 is so young.
Way back when, sometime in the early 70s, there was a little concert thing thing televised that all featured Jesus Freaks. It had that band Ocean (Put Your Hand In the Hand of the Man), the Doobie Brothers, Norman Greenbaum (Spirit In the Sky), and some realy no name bands. (It may have been a concert clip show put together by JFs, and not a special concert event of its own.)
The thing they all had in common were they were rock bands singing about Jesus or God. They didn’t actually have to be JFs, just do songs used by JFs. Anyways, that image stuck in my head, and I could never separate the Doobies from JFs in my mind.
Truth be told, it doesn’t really matter to me if they were or not. The Doobie Brothers put out some very good music that seemed to speak for the common man, was damn fun to listen to, and even more fun to play and sing yourself.
56 is REALLY young to be dying of pneumonia. Did he have a compromised immune system, or did he just take really bad care of himself?
He had been battling cancer.
He may have been born in Iowa, but his family lived four doors down from my grandparents in Princeton, Illinois in the 70’s. Keith joined the Doobies in 1974, the year I graduated from high school. I went to school with his younger brother. It was a huge deal when Keith came back to town (either to get married or right after his marriage). Big write-up in the local paper…bunch of decked out 70’s rockers on the front page of the local rag.
Don’t know exactly when Keith left town to seek his fortune, but it appears to be a good thing he did…the rest of the family was pretty low-rent…
Apropos of nothing, of course, and no reflection on Keith or his family. Just never seemed like a big deal. “Oh, yeah,…he’s from Princeton…they have TWO drummers, you know…”, like that somehow detracted from the fact that he played with the DOOBIES!!!
And the4 “Jesus is Just Alright” thing…I never understood that. They could play. “Black Water” still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.