Greg Trooper [By Erik Joling]
Greg Trooper (January 13, 1956 – January 15, 2017) was an American singer-songwriter, whose songs have been recorded by many artists, including Steve Earle, Billy Bragg, and Vince Gill.
Trooper was born in Neptune Township, New Jersey, and raised in nearby Little Silver. As a teenager in the early 1970s, Trooper would frequent the folk clubs of Greenwich Village taking in the burgeoning singer/songwriter and blues scene. In 1976, he moved to Austin, Texas, and then to Lawrence, Kansas, where he entered college at the University of Kansas and continued to hone his guitar, singing, and songwriting skills.
Trooper moved to New York City for the 1980s and part of the 1990s, where he formed The Greg Trooper Band along with Larry Campbell on guitar, Greg Shirley on bass, and Walter Thomson on drums. During this time he recorded his first two records: We Won’t Dance on Wild Twin Records in 1986 and the critically acclaimed Everywhere produced by Stewart Lerman. He also met songwriter/publisher Earl Shuman, who secured Trooper’s first publishing deal with CBS Songs. Trooper’s records caught the attention of Steve Earle, who recorded Trooper’s “Little Sister”, and Vince Gill, who covered the title track from Trooper’s “We Won’t Dance” on his 1989 release “When I Call Your Name”.
In the early 1990s, Trooper met fellow New Jerseyite and E Street Band bassist Garry Tallent who, like Trooper, would move to Nashville. Tallent produced Trooper’s 1996 album Noises in the Hallway and released it on his D’Ville Record Group label. Popular Demons followed in 1998, on Koch Records and produced by Buddy Miller. After the release of that album, Trooper signed with Nashville indie Eminent Records, which released Straight Down Rain in 2001.
2002 saw the release of Trooper’s first live record Between A House and a Hard Place – Live at Pine Hill Farm with Eric “Roscoe” Ambel at the controls. He moved on to the esteemed Sugar Hill Records label in 2003 with the release of Floating followed by the Dan Penn-produced Make It Through This World in 2005. Back Shop Live, another live recording, was released in 2006.
In 2008, Trooper moved back to New York City and in 2009 put out the previously unreleased 1995 recording The Williamsburg Affair. In 2011 he released Upside-Down Town on 52 Shakes Records.
In August 2013, Trooper released his album Incident on Willow Street, also on 52 Shakes Records. According to Trooper, “In these songs, there seemed to be characters that were trying to break away from a bad situation into a better situation or trying to grow out of a stale and stagnant life into a richer life.”
Trooper died of pancreatic cancer on January 15, 2017, two days after his 61st birthday.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Trooper
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Other Notable Musicians’ Deaths… January 2017
Check out Studio 10 & Keith Urban’s video honoring some of the iconic musicians we lost in 2016.
https://www.facebook.com/Studio10au/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED&fref=nf
19: Loalwa Braz, 63, Brazilian singer-songwriter.
16: William Onyeabor, 70, Nigerian singer-songwriter; Charles “Bobo” Shaw, 69, American jazz drummer; Steve Wright, American bass guitarist (The Greg Kihn Band), heart attack.
15: Richard Divall, 71, Australian conductor and musicologist; Thandi Klaasen, 86, South African jazz singer, pancreatic cancer; Greg Trooper, 61, American singer-songwriter, pancreatic cancer.
14: Deepal Silva, 50, Sri Lankan singer, heart attack; Yama Buddha, 29, Nepalese rapper, suicide.
13: Muhammad Fachroni, 44, Indonesian singer (Project Pop), complications from diabetes; Mark Fisher, 48, British writer, cultural theorist and music journalist (The Wire, Fact), suicide; Horacio Guarany, 91, Argentine folkloric singer and writer, cardiac arrest; Richie Ingui, 70, American soul singer (Soul Survivors); Alan Jabbour, 74, American fiddler and folklorist (Library of Congress); Anton Nanut, 84, Slovenian conductor; Jan Stoeckart, 89, Dutch composer, conductor and trombonist.
12: Meir Banai, 55, Israeli singer, cancer; Larry Steinbachek, 56, English keyboardist (Bronski Beat), cancer (death announced on this date).
11: Tommy Allsup, 85, American rockabilly and swing guitarist; José Vicente Asuar (es), 83, Chilean composer; Tony Booth, 83, British poster artist (The Beatles), cancer.