FULLER UP HOME GRIM REAPER PAGE CAUSES OF DEATH SEARCH BY NAME GET IN TOUCH SHAMEFUL DISCLAIMER    Fuller Up The Dead Musician Directory    Michael "Cub" Koda Cub Koda July 1, 2000 Age 51  Kidney Disease    OBITUARY  BIOGRAPHY   LINKS  Buy or Hear the Music         Editor's Pick:  Smoking In The Boy's Room: The Best Of Brownsville Station

OBITUARY 

Michael "Cub" Koda, 51, musician, songwriter                         By Sarah A. Webster / The Detroit News                            CHELSEA -- Michael "Cub" Koda, a beloved local                        musician, songwriter and music critic who led the Ann Arbor                        band Brownsville Station to the top of the pop charts in 1974                        with the song Smokin' in the Boys Room, died on Saturday, July                        1, 2000.                               The 51-year-old died at Chelsea Community Hospital from                        complications from kidney disease, said his 16-year manager,                        Thomas "Doc" Cavalier.                               In recent years, Mr. Koda, who lived with his wife, Jeannie,                        at a residential recording complex in Chelsea, made an                        appearance in a VH-1 Where are They Now? segment.                               At least six other Koda songs made the Billboard charts,                        though none was as successful as Smokin'. In 1985, the rock                        band Motley Crue remade Koda's 1974 hit.                               Fellow musicians were saddened at the news of Koda's                        death.                               George Bedard played with Mr. Koda at the Ark on Main Street in                           Ann Arbor every year  with other friends who returned home for the holidays.                            "We'll really miss him," Bedard said. "He was one of the best entertainers                            I ever worked with. He was funny, and he just put everything he had into it                           when he was on stage."                               Bedard remembered Mr. Koda, a guitarist, as a fan of all American-root music: blues,                        rockabilly and rhythm and blues.                               Mr. Koda, a 1966 graduate of Manchester High School, also was a writer.                            His father, Max, owned a small-town newspaper in Manchester.                            Mr. Koda wrote a column for Discoveries music magazine for 22 years, and regularly                        contributed to other publications. His output included liner notes for over 60 CD collections                        for Rhino Records, Time-Life, MCA and Motown.                            He also edited two reference books, The All-Music Guide and The All-Music Guide to the                        Blues. In 1998, he wrote Blues for Dummies, part of a popular paperback series.                               In 1995, after releasing a new album, Abba Dabba Dabba, Mr. Koda hit the stage in Ann                        Arbor for the first time in nearly a decade to the delight of his fans. That album also                        produced another hit, Random Drug Testing.                               "This last year has been the most hectic and maybe the most creative in                         my whole life," Mr. Koda told The News in an interview at that time. He called  his                        latest album a landscape of American music.                                                      "Beneath that topcoat of fluff fun, what I was really trying to show was the                      interconnectedness of all these forms of American music," he said. "You've got '60s garage                      noise to Tex-Mex instrumentals to Detroit doo-wop to Chicago blues to Southern rockabilly.                       I could've stuck country or jazz tunes on there, and it wouldn't have made any difference. It's                      all rock 'n' roll, as well as being tied together by my personality."                               In an interview with The Detroit News, Mr. Koda was once asked whether he minded                        always being identified with his big hit, and whether he viewed it as a "gold-plated curse."                               "Are you nuts?" Mr. Koda replied. "For a short white kid with big glasses from the                        Midwestern sticks to be in a band that makes a record that gets played on the radio that a                        million people go out and buy -- how could that possibly be a curse?                              "I can think of a whole lot of people, with maybe even more talent, to whom that has never                        happened. To me it's happened twice. That's no curse, mister. That's a blessing."                               Three months ago, Mr. Koda released another album, Noise Monkey.                              "He was actually telling me four days ago that he never felt better," Cavalier said. "He was                        working until two days ago ... I feel like it's a great loss of talent and a dear friend."                               Mr. Koda's albums include Welcome to My Job, an anthology of the most popular tracks                        from his independent solo albums of the 1980s.                            Mr. Koda is survived by his wife of 24 years; his son, Jesse Easudes of Pittsburgh, PA; his                        parents of Manchester; and a sister, Andrea Bollanger.                               No visitation will be held. Graveside service will be held at 2 p.m. today at Mount Hope                        Cemetery, Waterloo.                               Memorials can be made to the Make-a-Wish Foundation, 913 W. Holmes, Suite 111,                        Lansing, MI 48910.            Detroit musician Michael Koda dies                                 By JIM SUHR                               ASSOCIATED PRESS                               DETROIT -- Michael (Cub) Koda, the singer and                               songwriter behind the 1970s hit "Smokin' in the Boys'                               Room" and the guitarist once described by author                               Stephen King as "America's greatest houserocker,"                               died Saturday.                               Koda, 51, died about 2:45 a.m. of complications from                               kidney dialysis at Chelsea Community Hospital, said                               John Mitchell Sr. of Chelsea's Staffan-Mitchell                               Funeral Home, which is handling arrangements.                               Born in 1948 in Detroit and reared listening to jazz,                               Koda began playing drums at age 5 and took up                               guitar nine years later before playing in a high school                               band called the Del Tinos.                               Borrowing his nickname from the character "Cubby"                               on television's Mickey Mouse Club, Koda in 1969                               formed Brownsville Station and wrote "Smokin' in                               the Boys Room," which in 1973 rose to No. 3 on                               Billboard magazine's charts and sold more than 2                               million copies.                               Brownsville Station disbanded in 1979, six years                               before "Smokin' in the Boys' Room" was revived by                               heavy metal band Motley Crue.                               In later years, Koda said he never grew weary of                               playing the song, joking that "people would kill me if I                               didn't."                               "Let's just say if you could write a song that made                               people happy when you played it, you'd be playing it,                               too," Koda told the Detroit Free Press in 1995.                               Koda later played in groups called the Points and the                               Bone Gods, as well as releasing solo works                               spotlighting rockabilly and blues. In his dedications to                               his Bachman Book collection, the horror-writing                               King labeled Koda "America's greatest                               houserocker."                               Koda's releases included "Smokin' in the Boys'                               Room: The Best of Brownsville Station" and "Abba                               Dabba Dabba: A Bananza of Hits," featuring Koda                               on the cover dressed as a gorilla and a doo-wop take                               of "Meet the Flintstones."                               He co-authored "Blues for Dummies" in 1998 and                               has written a monthly column called "The Vinyl                               Junkie" for trade magazines.                               Survivors include his wife of 23 years, the former                               Jeannie Parker; a son, Jesse Easudes of Pittsburgh;                               and his parents of Manchester, Mich.                               Graveside services will be at 2 p.m. Monday at Mt.                               Hope Cemetery, Waterloo.                               No visitation is planned.   NY TIMES

 

 

BIOGRAPHY

All-Music Guide                              Best known as the leader of Brownsville Station and composer of                             their hit, "Smokin' in the Boys Room," Cub Koda has proven that his                             roots went far deeper, both before the band's formation, during its                             days in the sun, and long after its demise. His high school band, the                             Del-Tinos, was dipping into blues and rockabilly as far back as 1963                             -- not only pre-Butterfield, but pre-Beatles. Similarly, he recorded                             legendary home tapes during his off hours from Brownsville, before                             the rockabilly revival had uttered its first hiccup, and later teamed                             with Hound Dog Taylor's former rhythm section, the Houserockers,                             to play the blues in the '80s. Along the way he cranked out a                             monthly column ("The Vinyl Junkie") and recorded a series of                             albums that kept roots music of all kinds alive without ever treating                             it like a museum piece.                             Originally a drummer at age five, Koda switched over to guitar   when he formed his first band, the Del-Tinos, a teenage garage combo equally influenced by rock &   roll, blues, and rockabilly. The group cut their first single -- Roy Orbison's "Go Go Go" -- in the fall of   1963, and released two more 45s independently before they disbanded in 1966. By this time, Koda had   become so immersed in the blues, that the last Del-Tinos' single had the trio doing Muddy Waters' "I   Got My Mojo Workin'" on one side and Robert Johnson's "Ramblin' on My Mind" on the other.   After a couple of bands in the late '60s that largely went unrecorded, Koda formed Brownsville Station   in early 1969. After playing local Midwest gigs and releasing a handful of singles, the band released   their first album in 1970. But it wasn't until "Smokin' in the Boys Room" that Brownsville had a genuine   hit. Released as a single in the fall of 1973, "Smokin'" climbed all the way to number three, eventually   selling over two million copies.   But Koda began to back away from the group's loud, overdriven rock sound -- at least in private. He   purchased a multi-track tape recorder and started producing one-man-band tapes, where he   overdubbed all the instruments and vocals. For the next several years, Koda made home recordings of   rockabilly, blues, R&B, country, jazz and early rock & roll -- the exact opposite of Brownsville's heavy   rock stance; the rockabilly tapes were eventually released as That's What I Like about the South in   the early '80s, with other tracks showing up on compilations as late as 1993.   When Brownsville disbanded in 1979, Cub began writing a column called "The Vinyl Junkie" for   Goldmine magazine, now being published in DISCoveries. Through the column's success, Koda   established himself as an expert record collector and critic -- eventually, Cub would compile and write   liner notes for a number of projects, including three volumes in Rhino's acclaimed Blues Masters   series.   In 1980, Koda worked with Hound Dog Taylor's backing band, the Houserockers. Over the next 15   years, Koda, guitarist Brewer Phillips, and drummer Ted Harvey performed and recorded together,   with their first album, It's the Blues, appearing in 1981 and their latest, The Joint Was Rockin', being   released in 1996.   Throughout the '80s and '90s, Koda has continued to divide his time equally between touring, recording,   and writing. 1993 saw the twin release of Smokin' in the Boy's Room: The Best of Brownsville   Station on Rhino and Welcome to My Job, a retrospective of his non-Brownsville material on Blue   Wave, followed a year later by Abba Dabba Dabba: A Bananza of Hits on Schoolkids' Records. --   Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

 

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