Jim Gordon passed away yesterday. He was 77.
Mr. Gordon was a drummer who worked with both Eric Clapton and George Harrison. He co-wrote “Layla” with Clapton.
He also had mental problems. On June 3, 1983, he used a hammer and knife to kill his mother. He’d been in prison ever since. After the killing, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, but was still convicted criminally and sentenced to 16 to life in prison. He was turned down for parole ten times.
Bobby Caldwell, R&B guy. (“What You Won’t Do for Love”).
I didn’t know of Jim Gordon, but Bobby Caldwell was well known. With a smooth and sweet voice, his was the sound you loved to hear, when listening to music on a raining night.
I hope that the demons of Mr. Gordon finally are put to rest. I have a friend who suffers from the same thing, having killed his 2 young sons. Sometimes the world doesn’t make sense.
I actually had not heard of Bobby Caldwell at all until that obit was published. I guess that shows how out of touch I am with music.
And yeah, the Jim Gordon story is a sad sundae. There’s a comment in that obit to the effect that, even though he was diagnosed schitzophrenic, that still wasn’t enough to allow an insanity plea under California law at the time.
I wonder if the law has changed since then, and if he might have been better able to manage with modern medicine.
Heck, Spade Cooley brutally murdered his wife and got out after eight years…
(I generally hate the use of “brutally murdered”. Is there such a thing as “gently murdered”? But Spade Cooley’s case was particularly excessive in the level of brutality he directed at Ella Mae Cooley.)
Here in Michigan the verdict was guilty but insane. The man killed his two kids in our shop on a Thanksgiving day, in 1987.
When on his meds, he was relatively fine, but when he stopped, he was really bad. He had a pastor who told him that he didn’t need to use chemicals but instead prayer.
The same pastor somehow got him to believe that since he had married a woman who was divorced, his kids were somehow tainted, and the only way to cleanse them was by fire, which is where foundry came in.
One of the tough times of my working career.