In 2020 he finally announced his retirement as a working musician. He released his one and only solo album in 2017, ‘Waitin’ For the Sun’ and made his last recording in 2019 with the release of a song, ‘Listen to Your Heart’ to benefit a local animal shelter. Poco ceased life as a touring band in 2014, though Young would continue to do one-off shows over the next few years, with various band members, under the Poco banner. Poco will go down in history as one of the great country-rock bands and, while their early success is rightly recognised as being for the sum of its parts, the band’s long term viability was really all down to the vision and drive of Rusty Young. Poco released nineteen studio albums and a further eleven live recordings and, while the band never scaled the heights of the likes of The Eagles or The Byrds, they were a constant, solid presence over five decades of delivering high-quality music. Not only was Young a great pedal-steel player, he also contributed vocals (lead and harmony), guitar, dobro, mandolin and banjo to the band’s recordings and, after Richie Furay and Jim Messina, was one of the main songwriters throughout their long career, being responsible for penning some of their most memorable tracks, including the hauntingly beautiful ‘Rose of Cimmaron’ and their biggest commercial hit, ‘Crazy Love’. The band would go through twenty-four different configurations in its fifty years of existence but Rusty Young would always be there, leading from the front and preserving the sound of a band that was always a distinct presence in a genre where few bands stand out as unique. Schmit and Kim Bullard all passing through the ranks. ![]() Other members would come and go but Young would always remain, presiding over a band that became something of a finishing academy for country-rock musicians, with the likes of Paul Cotton, Timothy B. Young would devote his life to what, quite rapidly, became his band. When the Springfield finally called it a day in 1968, he turned down an offer to become the pedal steel player in The Flying Burrito Brothers and, instead, teamed up with Furay and Messina, bringing in Drummer George Grantham and Bass player Randy Meisner to complete the band and Poco was born. He joined Buffalo Springfield in the late 60s, specifically to play on their final album, ‘Last Time Around’. Poco never resorted to synthesisers or complicated studio techniques their sound was based around what they could reproduce in a live setting and much of that was down to Young and his prowess as a musician. He moved on from lap steel to pedal steel guitar, building a distinctive sound around his use of a Leslie Speaker cabinet that could make his pedal steel sound like a Hammond B3 organ and he was a real innovator when it came to the use of pedal steel in a rock setting. By this time he was already playing bars with various country bands, as well as playing with Denver based psych-rock outfit, Boenzee Cryque. Norman Russell Young, known to all as “Rusty” and as a frontman for the band Poco, which he led since forming the band in 1968 with fellow Buffalo Springfield bandmates, Richie Furay and Jim Messina, died of a heart attack at the age of 75.īorn in Long Beach, California, Young was brought up in Colorado and began playing lap steel guitar when he was just six years old, graduating to giving lessons on both the lap steel and standard guitar while he was still in High School. ![]() ![]() ![]() On April 14 th we lost one of the great pioneers of Country-Rock. Founding father of country rock, legendary steel guitar player and Poco frontman.
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