I forgot:
Gerald Ford. He came to my high school during a campaign stop in 1976.
Ronald Reagan. I was present at a speech he made in Port Washington in 1987.
I forgot:
Doc Watson
Merle Watson
Oscar Brand
Long John Baldry
Elizabeth Cotten
Stan Rogers
John Allan Cameron
Peter Gzowski
Also, Eric Clapton is dead to me.
You know, I’ve always admired Clapton for his skills and his music, until I learned about his racist screed at a concert in 1976. It came in bits and pieces to me, I’ve maybe heard about it first in the mid-nineties, but that was just a rumor I read in some magazine. But later, I read the whole story and the transcript of his rant on a website, and I thought I’d never could enjoy his music again, which had brought me so much joy in my life before. This mellowed a bit in the last years, but when I read about his thoughts on Covid, I revisited the old story and found out that to this day, he hasn’t convincingly refuted his awful and disgusting words from way back in 1976. Obviously, he finds the incident “funny” in retrospect. Yeah, he’s dead to me too. (I’ve seen him in 1993).
ETA: sorry, if you don’t know what I’m referring to, here’s the story. It brought one good thing, “Rock Against Racism”:
Yup, that’s my point too
Roger Miller, George Carlin, Rodney Dangerfield
Saw B. B. King in a small bar in a high rise hotel in downtown Dayton, Ohio. Was in 1982 or 1983. I was 15 years old. My friend (who was also 15) was a fan of him and took me along. His mother drove us. There was probably less than 30 people in the bar.
Bon Scott