The Check Is In the Mail Trivia Quiz

Answer: Julee Cruise

When we consider the dreamy voice that Cruise used to provide us with the song "Falling", used as the theme to David Lynch's eerie "Twin Peaks" (1990) series, it is hard to image that this woman's first break in the industry was playing Janis Joplin in an off-Broadway revue called "Beehive". On the theatre circuit she got to know Angelo Badalamenti, a film score composer and it was through him that she was introduced to David Lynch. Lynch, at the time, was struggling to find someone who had "the voice of an angel" to sing a piece for his film "Blue Velvet" (1986). Cruise sang it for Lynch in a hushed and airy voice, more breathing the song than singing it. Lynch fell in love with the piece and working partnership was born.

Cruise would earn a Grammy for her debut album "Floating into the Night" (1989) but would venture into different fields in the late 1990s; acting as a substitute for Cindy Wilson as a member on the B-52's tours, releasing the jazz-electronica album "The Art of Being a Girl" (2002) and the trip-hop stylings of "My Secret Life" (2011).

In 2018 she was diagnosed with lupus and developed depression. The pain became too much to bear and in June 2022 she took her own life.

Answer: Jim Seals

Seals and Crofts both hailed from central west Texas. Jim maintained a varied music career starting off as a fiddle player, before playing saxophone for Dean Beard and the Crew Cats alongside Dash Crofts. The pair, along with Beard, would join Glen Campbell in a band called The Champs but this was after the band had their song "Tequila" top the US Billboard Hot 100 in 1958.

Seals would end up playing sax for the likes of Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran before joining the Baha'i Faith outfit The Dawnbreakers. Dash Crofts would re-unite with Seals there later and the pair became converts to the faith. After the breakup of the Dawnbreakers in 1969, they decided to work as duo and produced a string of folk influenced "feel good" songs such as "Summer Breeze" (1972), "Diamond Girl" (1973) and "Get Closer" (1976). Despite going their separate ways a number of times, they regularly re-united and managed to produce 16 albums between 1969 and 1980.

Their music would receive a new lease of life going forward, being sampled by the likes of DJ Shadow, J. Dilla and Busta Rhymes. Jim suffered a stroke in 2017 and passed away in June of 2022, after a long illness.

Answer: Bobby Weinstein

Weinstein's singing career did not take off, but he managed to find his niche as a songwriter. Primarily paired with Teddy Randazzo, he also wrote with Bobby Hart and Tommy Boyce. Weinstein would produce a string of hits during the 1960s, primarily for bands such as Little Anthony and the Imperials and the Royalettes. Among these were "Goin' Out of My Head" (1964), "It's Gonna Take a Miracle" (1965) and "I'm on the Outside (Looking In)" (1964). His song "Hurt So Bad" (1965), a minor hit for Little Anthony, would be a big hit for Linda Ronstadt in 1980.

Weinstein became a driving force for the establishment of a Songwriters Hall of Fame, an institution that he and Teddy Randazzo would be inducted into in 2007. Bobby would pass away in March 2022.

Answer: Massimo Morante

Guitarist "Max" Morante formed Goblin along with keyboard player Claudio Simonetti in 1973. They were, originally called Oliver and changed that to Cherry Five before settling on Goblin. Since then, there have been a welter of name changes but, they generally, centred on the word Goblin.

Goblin's initial break came with a contract with Italian film director Dario Argento to compose the score for his new horror film "Profondo Rosso" (Deep Red) in 1975. This led to further film work, with the most notable being "Suspiria" (1977) and George A. Romero's "Dawn of the Dead" (1978). Their sound, a combination of scary vocals and intense psycho vibrations, was unique and it has left a lasting impression on Italian cinema. Oh, and I forgot to mention their hair... they had big hair.

Max left the band in 1978 and, for a while, involved himself with some solo work and worked alongside Simonetti on his side project, an Italian disco band called the Crazy Gang. However, the lure of Goblin and the film industry was significant, and he would return to the band after a short hiatus until his passing in June of 2022.

Answer: Steve Broughton

Steve was the drummer for the Edgar Broughton Band which formed in Warwick, England in 1968. Initially a blues band they veered into psychedelic rock, which they delivered with a feral attitude. This was particularly reflected in the unrestrained nature of Steve's drumming.

The band became a hit in London's underground scene and came to a wider audience once they were signed to Blackhill Enterprises and headlining one of their free concerts at Hyde Park. Their second album "Sing Brother Sing" saw them hit the English charts and garner controversy with their singles "Out Demons Out" (1970), a reworking of the Fugs' song "Exorcising the Demons Out of the Pentagon" and "Apache Dropout" (1970), a melding of the Shadows hit "Apache" (1960) with Captain Beefheart's "Drop Out Boogie" (1967).

Steve's tribal drumming attracted the attention of Mike Oldfield in 1973 and he invited Steve to assist him with his work on the album "Tubular Bells". The only part on the disc that involves a drumkit is the "caveman" section on side two of the album.

After their sixth LP "Bandages" was released in 1976, the Edgar Broughton Band would break-up. They would re-unite sporadically over the next 30 years before Edgar went solo in 2010. Steve plied his trade with a number of rock bands in Norway. He passed away in May of 2022 at the age of 72.

Answer: Kelly Joe Phelps

Born into a musical family Phelps was exposed to the blues and country music at a very early age. In his teenage years he took a strong interest in the jazz stylings of Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman, and this shaped the early part of his career.

After spending ten years playing bass on the jazz circuit in a range of small bands, he became hooked on the catalogues of Delta bluesmen such as Fred McDowell and this triggered his seasons of experimentation and the desire to write his own material. He was 35 years old when he released his debut album, "Lead Me On" (1994), on an independent label. This featured some of his own original works, re-interpretations of others and some amazing slide guitar work. It generated great acclaim from critics and a record deal with the (now defunct) Rykodisc label was struck.

He would record a further ten albums, each growing more in atmosphere and experimentation, with the standouts being the incredible live disc "Tap the Red Cane Whirlwind" (2005) and "Western Bell" (2009), a set featuring 11 guitar instrumentals. In the end, he became a man of many labels - slide guitar master, folk stylist, jazz free-former, avant-garde improvisor... - and it may well be that this desire to experiment came at the cost of commercial success. The man whose name is alongside "versatility" in the dictionary and one who followed no template would pass away in his Iowa home in May 2022 at the tender age of 62.

Answer: James Rado

Ever since he was a teenager, James Rado's burning desire was to write a musical. In 1964 he would meet Gerome Ragni, who'd become his best friend and creative partner. The pair immersed themselves into the hippie culture that prevailed at the time and set about writing what would become "Hair: The American Tribal Love - Rock Musical", which was launched off-Broadway in 1967 and on-Broadway a year later.

Timed to perfection, as the counterculture was emerging from the underground, "Hair" produced a range of songs that covered environmentalism, anti-Vietnam War sentiments, radical peace and the sexual revolution that would endure and be covered by scores of artists. The shows use of profanity, nudity, irreverence to the flag and drug culture was extremely controversial at the time but, as far as musical theatre was concerned, it also broke new ground and gave definition to the term "rock musical".

Rado would later work on "Rainbow" (1972) which was a sort of sequel to "Hair" and work with Ragni again on the environmentally conscious "Sun (Audio Movie)" (1974). In 2013 he was a consultant on the rock musical "Barcode". His partner, Ragni, passed away in 1991 and Rado would spend most of his time, moving forward, developing new shows of the "Hair" musical for tours around the globe. He'd pass away after cardiorespiratory arrest in June 2022 at the age of 90.

Answer: Bernard Belle

Belle's first break in the music industry came when he was given a gig as the guitar player for The Manhattans in the early 1980s. In 1986 he formed a writing partnership with Teddy Riley and the pair became pioneers of the New Jack Swing sound. This was further consolidated when they provided the title song to Mario Van Peebles 1991 film "New Jack City".

Belle would write or co-write a number of songs for Michael Jackson, with the most notable being "Remember the Time" and "Why You Wanna Trip on Me", both of which appeared on Jackson's "Dangerous" (1991) LP and "Privacy", which is on the "Invincible" (2001) set. Other songs were written for the likes of Bobby Brown, Whitney Houston, Boy George and his sister, Regina Belle.

Belle would make his biggest impact as a music producer and gospel singer, which would see him earn four Grammy Awards during his time. He passed away in June 2022.

Answer: Manny Charlton

The two most distinctive features of the band Nazareth were their powerhouse lead guitarist (Manny) and the vocals of frontman Dan McCafferty. Formed in 1968, the band first garnered attention when they opened for Deep Purple in 1971 but, two years later, were headlining their own shows.

Manny took over as the band's producer in 1975 and was at the wheel for their album "Hair of the Dog" (1975), which earned platinum status in the USA and sold in excess of two million copies in that country alone. Featuring their version of the song "Love Hurts" it remains, comfortably, their biggest selling album. So good was his work on this disc that in 1986 Axl Rose (Guns n Roses) demanded "the man who produced "Hair of the Dog"" to look after their first recording "Appetite for Destruction". Manny would produce 25 demos for the band, but the end product was taken care of by Mike Clink.

Manny would leave Nazareth in 1990 and forge his own path, releasing 14 further albums, either in his own name or with the Manny Charlton Band. He would pass away in Texas in July 2022.

Answer: Paul Ryder

Paul and his brother Shaun were two of the key founders of the Happy Mondays in 1980, becoming a part of the surging "Madchester" sound. They were responsible for combining the key elements of American house music with British rock and roll. In short, it was a marriage between house and punk. However, in an interview with John Warburton for the "Hallelujah" (2000) book (which detailed the history of the band), head honcho of Factory Records, Tony Wilson, left little doubt that the driving force behind this amalgam were Paul and drummer Gary Whelan.

For Ryder, the light bulb moment came when he listened to a Paul Oakenfeld remix of "Wrote for Luck" (1989), a release that essentially defined acid rock. In Ryder's words "It was the sound we were looking for all along. When I first heard it, I couldn't believe it."

Paul's career followed the same rollercoaster path that the Happy Mondays endured. There were the highs with their albums "Bummed" (1988) and "Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches" (1990) which were followed by the downs of a falling out with his brother, heroin abuse and departure from the band. The brothers would eventually resolve their differences and the band did go through a series of reunions. Paul passed away in July 2022, aged 58, the day before the band was due to appear at a festival in Sunderland.