Jesse Colin Youngwho sang one of the signature songs in the 1960s counter culture, Youngblood’s “meet”, before moving into a solo career in the 70s, has died at the age of 83.
His wife and boss, Connie Young, announced that her husband had died at home in Aiken, South Carolina on Sunday afternoon. No cause of death was given.
Young was a founding member of Youngbloods, whose “Get Together” reached No. 5 on Billboard Hot 100 1969, when it was released two years after it appeared on the band’s self -titled debut album. None of the group’s other songs made a significant diagram impact, and after releasing five albums between 1967-72, they broke up. He recorded seven albums during the following decade – five for Warner Bros. Records, two for Elektra – before moving on to independent labels.
Young did not write “Get Together”, but he had a hand in writing a lot of Youngblood’s’ other directory songs, such as “Darkness Darkness” (which was covered by Robert Plant, decades later, on his 2016 “Dreamland” -Album), “Sugar Babe” and “Quicksand.
He visited some of the early songs when he recorded his last album, 2021’s “Highway Troubadour”, which also included “” “Tripping on My Roots”, a theme song for his podcast.
Young said he was diagnosed with chronic lyme disease in 2009, for the better part of 20 years, after he had “probably had it for 20 years before that. I had to take some free time and get better and it was a slow process.” The condition affected his life and career until the mid -2010s, when he found a treatment that allowed him to be symptom.
Singer-Songwriter actively toured, including an opening site at Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Reunion tour at Stadions in 1974. He continued to make dates until October 2023, when he made a performance at LA’s Grammy Museum.
Jesse Colin Young participates in Reel to Reel: Jesse Colin Young at the Grammy Museum La Live on October 18, 2023 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Timothy Norris/Getty Images for Recording Academy)
Getty -Pictures for the recording a
Before the Youngbloods version, “Get Together” had been recorded by Kingston Trio and Jefferson Airplane, but Young remembered the serendipithous moment when it first came into his radar and sung by Buzzy Linhart at Cafe Au Go in New York. “I went down the other staircase’s flight and it was lively Linhart and he sang” meet “, and just like in those films about the Bible, the sky opened and my life changed,” he said in a 2021 interview With gold mine. “I knew the song was my way forward, not just as a musician, but as a human being. So I rushed behind the stage and got the lyrics from Buzzy after introducing myself, and he was happy to give them to me. I took them to rehearsal the next day with Youngbloods and my boss said, ‘What do you do and sing such a song? You have this angry young man who happens. ‘And I said,’ I don’t know. This is! This was the future. “”
“There was no pressure to make a hit of it,” he also told Songwriting Magazine. “No one had any idea that it would be so big. They left us alone to create a piece of sound art and we were lucky. It would never have been a hit if the country had not undergone what it went through – it was the right time and the right song. “
Although it took more than two years after it first came out for “Get Together” to become a top 10 hit, the Young reminded the effects of hearing it played as an album track on the radio in the summer after it came out, in 1967. “We lived in New York, and that was where we got our record agreement,” we had no idea for interview. “We flew in and checked in to this cheap motel. I will never forget it. I turned on this little fun radio that was built into Formica between two beds, and it was “meet” on the radio. Later in the night we went into the Avalon Ballroom, and instead of 40 people there were probably 400 there, with psychedelic lights I have never seen. The people were so into the music and love that came from the crowd just blew us away. We thought, we found a home for our music and our families, and that’s it. “After finishing their next album in New York, the band unpacked and moved to the Point Reyes-Inverness area north of San Francisco. “We decided precisely because we wanted to live in the country and we fell in love with the countryside in the navy. It was a fantastic, life -changing move. “
Young’s solo career started in earnest when Youngblods broke up in 1972 (although he had recorded under his own name card in the early 60s). In an interview with Jeff Tamarkin for Best Classic Band, he said “Song for July” was his most popular solo album. He had listened to jazz more, at that time, and the songs on the album were mostly about “about living in the country and having young children.”
In 1995, his house in Marin County burned down, which caused him to move his family out of California for the first time since the late 60s and restored in Hawaii, where he became a coffee farmer. Later, he and his wife moved to South Carolina.
In 2010, Young stopped touring and considered his career, but had a turnaround in 2016 that made him take up music again.
“I really had no intention to go back; I was just burnt out about it and I thought good, 50 years probably enough, ”he said. “Since spring 2016, my son Tristan graduated from Berklee College of Music, and I went to hear his senior reason. These young people he had gathered in a band, they just blew me away with their energy and talent. In an instant, I went from being done with it to think, ‘Wow, I want to play music with young people like this. I want them to play my music and I want to be in the middle of it. ‘… it’s a certain exposure (for the younger band members) that plays with me, and it is wonderful for me because it lifts me in an incredible way, which I have never experienced before. “
Speaking of “Get Together” in 2019, Young said, “The power of that song has never diminished. Sometimes I think that’s why I came out of my quasi pension. I didn’t know if I was physically ready for this or not, but I felt I had to do it. I wanted to play with these young people.
