Lynyrd Skynyrd Keyboardist Billy Powell Dead at 56

RIP Billy :cry:

RIP Billy.

I hear he and Ronnie had some scraps in their day. He will be missed.

It is heartbreaking to watch. He was obviously still shellshocked, and wearing bandages from his injuries (he nearly lost his nose, but was one of the very few able to walk or speak for the days and weeks following the plane crash). He did fine work in the post-Skynyrd era of the 80's too. I should add the Rossington-Collins Band's "Tashauna" as one his very best pieces.

:(

He died of cardiac arrest. :-( He was one helluva piano player. Played a 1928 Steinway. His classical training as a child payed off - you could hear Bach, gospel, and road house boogie in his playing. A music professor I had in college said that he embodied that saying, "One hand was in the whorehouse on Saturday night, and the other in church on Sunday morning." He had started out as a roadie for the band during their bar days. One day, they came across him playing "Free Bird", and the band's reaction was "You mean you can play piano like that and never told us?" They hired him as a band member on the spot.

Read more here:

Lynyrd Skynyrd keyboardist dies at Florida home
Published: 1/28/09, 1:46 PM EDT

ORANGE PARK, Fla. (AP) - A keyboardist for the southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd has died at his northeast Florida home.

Keyboard player Billy Powell called 911 about 12:55 a.m. Wednesday saying he was having trouble breathing. Rescue crews performed CPR, but he was pronounced dead at 1:52 a.m., said Orange Park Police Lt. Mark Cornett.

Powell, 56, who has a history of heart problems, missed a Tuesday appointment with his doctor for a cardiac evaluation. A heart attack is suspected. No autopsy will be performed because Powell's cardiologist will sign the death certificate, Cornett said.

The Jacksonville-based band was formed in 1966 by a group of high school students - famously, it took its name from a P.E. teacher they disliked, Leonard Skinner. Powell joined the group around 1972, the year before they released their first album, "Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd."

It became one of the South's most popular rock groups, and gained national fame with such hits as "Free Bird," "What's Your Name" and especially "Sweet Home Alabama," which reached the top 10 on the national charts in 1974.

The band was decimated on Oct. 20, 1977, when their chartered plane crashed in a swamp near McComb, Miss.

Six people were killed - lead singer Ronnie Van Zant; guitarist Steve Gaines; and his sister, vocalist Cassie Gaines; as well as an assistant road manager, the pilot and co-pilot.

Powell was one of the survivors.

Two years after the accident, Powell and fellow members Allen Collins, Gary Rossington and Leon Wilkeson formed the Rossington-Collins Band. It broke up in 1982.

Powell was on hand again in 1991 when a revived version of the band put out a new album, "Lynyrd Skynyrd 1991" and launched a tour in Baton Rouge, La., where the band was headed in 1977 when the plane crashed. Fans who kept their tickets from the canceled 1977 concert were admitted free.

The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006.

-- From the AP wire.

Fly on with your fellow Free Birds at the great jam in the sky.

(and please God, let this bring the final curtain down on that embarrasment fake "Skynyrd")

I'm sorry to hear this. :-(

:cry:

RIP Billy

It couldn't have been easy to precede the Stones but the UK crowd seemed to appreciate them:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG3GTyXMiLk&feature=related">Lynyrd Skynyrd-Knebworth Park 1976-part 1

:patriot: