Poco Co-Founder RUSTY YOUNG Passes Away at the Age of 75 gratefulweb.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from gratefulweb.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Rusty Young, Country-Rock Pioneer, Is Dead at 75
As a founding member of the band Poco, he helped define a genre and establish the pedal steel guitar as an integral voice in West Coast rock.
Rusty Young of the country-rock band Poco in Amsterdam in 1973.Credit.Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns
By Bill Friskics-Warren
April 17, 2021Updated 12:32 p.m. ET
Rusty Young, a founding member of the popular country-rock group Poco and a key figure in establishing the pedal steel guitar as an integral voice in the West Coast rock of the late 1960s and ’70s, died on Wednesday at his home in Davisville, Mo. He was 75.
Rusty Young, a cofounder of Poco and the band s only constant member since its formation in 1968, has died. He was 75.
An official statement released by his record company notes that Young died yesterday of a heart attack at his home in Davisville, Mo.
Young was born Norman Russell Young on Feb. 23, 1946, in Long Beach, Calif., but was raised in Denver. He began playing lap steel when he was young and performed in various country and psych-rock bands during his teenage years.
By 1967, Young had relocated to Los Angeles, where he befriended Richie Furay, a member of Buffalo Springfield, who took him on as a road manager. That band was falling apart at the time and needed assistance putting together the pieces of its third and last album,
Poco Co-Founder Rusty Young Died of Heart Attack at 75
Celebrity
Mourning the loss, former bandmate Richie Furay remembers the multi-instrumentalist as an innovator on the steel guitar and praises him for carrying their band s name for more than 50 years. Apr 16, 2021
Poco co-founder
Rusty Young has died after suffering a heart attack. The 75-year-old passed away at his home in Davisville, Missouri on Wednesday, April 14.
Born Norman Russell Young in Long Beach, California, Rusty was raised in Colorado and played in several psychedelia rock acts in his teens. He relocated to Los Angeles in 1967, befriended
Buffalo Springfield star
Jim Messina.
They released their debut album, Pickin Up the Pieces , in 1969 and went on to drop almost 20 albums. The group s biggest hit was 1979 s Crazy Love from the album Legend , which was a top 20 hit in the U.S.
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“He was an innovator on the steel guitar and carried the name Poco on for more than 50 years,” continued Furay. “Our friendship was real and he will be deeply missed. My prayers are with his wife, Mary, and his children Sara and Will.”
Young, born on February 23, 1946 and raised in Colorado, became adept from an early age as a pedal steel guitarist. After the 1968 split of Buffalo Springfield, on whose last album he played, he joined Furay, fellow Springfield guitarist Jim Messina, drummer George Grantham and bassist Randy Meisner (later of
the Eagles) in forming Poco in Los Angeles.