Robin Gibb, left, with his brothers in the Bee Gees.

It doesn't happen very often, but now and then a song or album comes along that perfectly captures the mood of a historical moment and embeds itself into the consciousness of a generation. It happened with for the Beatles with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967, and it happened for the Bee Gees in 1977 when they appeared on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.

The amazing success of Saturday Night Fever created an almost immediate backlash in some quarters, but in the late-'70s, the life affirming exuberance of "Stayin' Alive" and "Night Fever" created a rush that was more powerful, and longer lasting, than a line of cocaine. Money was plentiful. Everybody seemed to have plenty of leisure time (not to mention leisure suits), and middle class white men and women all across America were dancing to the Bee Gees. Guys were grooming themselves and preening, the women looked as good as always, and the hippie ethos had seeped into the consciousness of Middle America. Dancing wasn't just for gays and black people anymore. White folks were having fun and dancing the night away -- even dancing down the streets in broad daylight -- and the Bee Gees were always there, inescapable, pumping up the party with their anthemic songs and heavenly vocals.

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While previous diagnoses of the death of disco have come off as somewhat premature in the wake of countless rivals, it now seems we're a step closer to a definite end. Donna Summer, the vocalist known as the "queen of disco," has died of cancer at the age of 63. A five-time Grammy award winner, her work comprises much of the backbone of disco and, by extension, techno and house.

Summer's ascent began in the early-'70s while working on a production of Hair in Munich. The American-born singer was introduced to the young production team of Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte. In 1975, this collaboration would result in the game-changing "Love to Love You Baby," a 16-minute disco gesamtkunstwerk scored for orchestra, orgasmic moan, and drum machine. The track was an immediate success, topping out at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100, while simultaneously giving the finger to the moral majority with its unsubtle sexual overtones.

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There's a glorious sense of mystery, a rightfully rarefied air, reserved for the masters of American soul. It's not just that the genre is called "soul," although that's got to be part of it. The greats of the music are held in special regard because playing soul well is something akin to magic, a little more so than other genres. Soul musicians get the same notes as everyone else, of course, but the best practitioners shade them differently, imbue them with a raw humanity that comes through disarmingly clear, probably because the music is purpose-built to exhibit it.

The power of the music is expressed most clearly through soul singers, like Otis Redding, or Sam Cooke, or Stevie Wonder. But soul instrumentalists deserve to occupy this realm, too. As the longtime bass player for the house band of Stax Records, Donald "Duck" Dunn -- who died Sunday in Japan at age 70 -- lent low notes to the songs of Redding, Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett, Carla Thomas, and others. An instrumentalist for some the genre's greatest moments, it's no surprise that Dunn's recordings, at least, will be remembered. But what's notable about Dunn's playing wasn't how well it stood out -- his bass rarely announced itself -- but the superlative job it did of blending in, of holding together the rhythms and melodies that made those songs so powerful.

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Adam Yauch

Adam Yauch, the musician and filmmaker best known as Beastie Boys member MCA, died today of the cancer he was diagnosed with in 2009. Yauch was 47.

It's so easy to underrate the Beastie Boys, in part because nobody did what they did, and for so long. From fighting for their right to party to fighting for human rights, the evolution of MCA, Mike D, and Ad-rock was shocking and heartwarming. Prank-calling hardcore Brooklyn kids who almost named the world's first chart-topping rap album Don't Be a Fag, the three musicians grew into major advocates against bigotry and violence who spent two un-booed, uninterrupted minutes explaining their disapproval of our country's Middle East invasion at the 1998 VMAs (Courtesy of Yauch, by the way).
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Christopher Victorio

Levon Helm performing at San Francisco's Outside Lands festival in 2009.

While they never became superstars, the men in The Band cut two of the most influential albums of the '60s -- Music From Pig Pink and The Band. Unlike other groups, The Band eschewed flashy musicianship in favor of a dense, smoky sound that emphasized group dynamics over the talents of individual members. Their combination of folk, blues, rock, soul and New Orleans shuffle created the template for what is now called Americana -- America's roots music reinvented for listeners that were put off by the pure sounds of acoustic folk and Chicago blues.

The Band had a timeless sound, emphasized by the bedrock timekeeping of Levon Helm, who passed away yesterday at the age of 71. Helm played with a deep, muted bass drum and tom toms tuned down to emphasize the overtones of their lower range. He was an excellent timekeeper and, like the rest of the band, his playing didn't call attention to itself. He could rock out when it was called for, but most of The Band's tunes were cinematic, mid-tempo explorations of mood and feeling. His innate blend of swing, drive, and economy sounded effortless, but was developed over decades of playing in bars for dancers.

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Levon Helm with the Band in San Francisco, 1976.

Today, with the passing of Levon Helm, the music world lost a gem -- and probably the greatest drummer-singer ever. We're sad to see him go, glad we got a chance to see him perform at Outside Lands 2009, and ever so appreciative that Martin Scorcese bothered to make a film about the Band's final show in San Francisco in 1976. From The Last Waltz, here is a great clip of Levon leading the Band through "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," onstage at the Winterland Ballroom. Check it out. And rest in peace, Levon.

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Dick Clark in 1961

If you were a teenager in the 1950s, you hated TV. Your parents watched TV. Anything your parents liked, you despised. Springsteen's song "57 Channels (And Nothing On)" talked about the video wasteland in 1992, but in 1956, even in a big city like New York, there were fewer than 10 channels on the air. There really was nothing on TV worth watching. Teenagers listened to the radio to get their rock 'n' roll fix. That changed when American Bandstand debuted in 1957.

Dick Clark, who didn't look much older than the kids on the show, hosted the program. Off camera, someone played the latest records -- hits or newly released sides by known and unknown singers. On camera, an audience of teenagers, about 200 of them, danced. Bandstand came on at 3:30 in the afternoon, and suddenly the streets in my neighborhood were deserted. We all rushed home to hear the latest sounds and see Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Freddie Cannon, Little Richard, and others lip synch their hits. The kids looked just like the kids I knew and, on every show, they got to rate new records on a scale of 35 to 98. The typical critique was, "Its got a good beat and you can dance to it," which quickly became a popular catch phrase. There was no pop music journalism in the '50s, so hearing your peers rate a record had an enormous impact. It created hit songs overnight.

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Earl Scruggs, the North Carolina-born banjo legend who was a regular at San Francisco's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass music festival, died at a Nashville hospital this morning, according to news reports. He was 88.

Known as part of a seminal duo with guitarist and mandolin player Lester Flatt (who died in 1979), Earl Scruggs helped popularize bluegrass music in the United States. His influence was so great that the three-fingered banjo style is now known as the "Scruggs style."

Scruggs was also a favorite of Hardly Strictly Bluegrass founder and fellow banjo player Warren Hellman, who passed away last December. Scruggs played at every Hardly Strictly since 2005. And four years ago, according to festival booker Dawn Holliday, Scruggs asked Hellman to join him onstage for "Solder's Joy."

"It made Warren's life," Holliday says. "At that point Warren had only been playing a couple of years, and he was scared to death."

The performance went off without a hitch -- if anything, Holliday says, Hellman's obsessive practice helped him play faster than Scruggs. Afterward, Scruggs gave Hellman a red bolo tie that Hellman wore every subsequent time his band the Wronglers played Hardly Strictly.

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Khalil Shaheed had unflagging dedication as a trumpet player, composer, and jazz educator. I knew him in all three roles. His death on March 23, at age 63, followed a long battle against lung cancer. His absence leaves a hollow space in the Bay Area's jazz scene, and particularly in the world of jazz education.

Originally from Chicago, the forty-plus years Khalil lived in the Bay Area produced a career in which he recorded with Jimi Hendrix and Babatunde Lea, and toured with Buddy Miles and Taj Majal. He founded Oaktown Jazz Workshops in 1994, and worked as an educator for the San Jose Jazz Society and other organizations. Through all of this work, Khalil's aim was to extend the legacy of jazz, draw connections between its disparate styles, and to invest his students with a sense of its history.

When I worked at the San Jose Jazz Society from 1999 to 2005, Khalil was one of many Bay Area musicians who served as a performer, teacher, and clinician for the organization's jazz education programs. These consisted primarily of appearances at schools, a student jazz competition, and a multi-week summer jazz camp. Khalil not only participated, but helped shape the curriculum. Far from being a mere hired hand, he was a committed partner in the organization's programs.

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Ronnie Montrose, the intense guitarist and songwriter who led the band Montrose and helped bring Sammy Hagar to the world's attention, died Saturday, March, 3, of complications from prostate cancer, according to a posting on his website. He was 64.

Throughout a 40-year career, Montrose worked with rockers such as Boz Scaggs and Van Morrison (with whom he recorded the 1971 classic Tupelo Honey), but saw the most success with the hard-rock outfit of his own name. Montrose's self-titled 1973 debut and its 1974 follow-up, Paper Money, are early hard-rock classics that would go on to inspire groups like Iron Maiden and Van Halen.

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