So long, Marshall Lytle

" the clock strikes two, three and four ..."

When was the last time you saw a string bass in a rock group?  There was one in what is acknowledged as the first rock and roll band, Bill Haley and the Comets, in their classic "Rock Around the Clock."

The bassist on that cut died this week, another in a long stream of  deaths recently among legends of rock.  It is something that takes some getting used to, as the musicians of youth grow old, the fortunate ones anyway.

I grew up on rock and roll. To provide some idea of the time progression,  I recall singing this song very loudly with friends on a school bus bringing our group home from an eighth grade field trip to Albany, N.Y. in 1955.  From there music and I grew along together.

When someone in that first group dies, it feels like someone kicked an important part out of the foundation, with more to come as one legend after another dies, not from the extravagant lifestyle of those early victims, but from what essentially amounts to simple aging.  Yes, the Stones are still going at 70 and so are others, but time is catching up as it did Saturday for Marshall Lytle.

"... when the band slows down we yell more, more, more."  

Please.