Rusty Young – co-founder, singer and multi-instrumentalist of the trailblazing country rock band Poco – died of a heart attack on April 14. Young, who was 75, died at his home in Davisville, Missouri. His death was confirmed by a spokesperson, Mike Farley.
In Poco, Young made a name and reputation as one of the first musicians to integrate a pedal steel guitar, then largely associated with country, into rock & roll. Young’s spirited playing enriched the band’s goal of bringing together two seemingly disparate genres, even pushing the sonic boundaries of the instrument on Poco standards like “A Good Feelin ‘to Know”. “Rusty was one of the most innovative people on the pedal steel guitar,” said Poco founder Richie Furay Rolling stone“No one had ever heard a steel guitar running through a Leslie cabinet when we did it. We wanted to bring rock and country together, and that pedal language gave us that rock & roll organ sound. “
In later years, Young’s role expanded to include songwriting and more vocal duties. In 1979, his soothing acoustic ballad “Crazy Love” became the band’s first and only top 10 hit after a decade of existence.
Young was born Norman Russell Young on February 23, 1946 in Long Beach, California, and grew up in Denver, Colorado. He played in local bands and worked in a music store, but his big break came in 1968 when Furay, then in Buffalo Springfield, decided he wanted to hear a steel guitar on “Kind Woman” on the band’s last album, Last time aroundThe band’s road manager knew Young and asked him to fly to LA, in what Young would later call “ a lifelong decision. ” As Furay recalls, “See unseen or unheard, Jimmy Messina [also then in the Springfield] and I said, “Let’s get him out of here.” Rusty had to borrow a steel guitar, but he put it on and Jimmy and I looked at each other and said, “There’s our man.” ”
While in LA, Young also auditioned for what would become the Flying Burrito Brothers, but instead chose to join Poco, the band that Furay and Messina formed after the Springfield fell.
While they never reached the commercial heights of the Eagles or garnered the rave reviews of the Burritos, Poco exuded a sociable, crowd pleaser, captured on their 1971 live album. DeliverinYoung himself was not content to be behind the pedal language as other players had. Furay remembers a Poco show at Carnegie Hall where Young “turned the pedal steel guitar on stage and played it on his knees, turned all the way. He did it like Pete Townshend would have done. “
Members like Furay, Messina, Paul Cotton and later Eagles bassist Timothy B. Schmit came and went over Poco’s more than 50 years, but the departure allowed Young to showcase his skills as a songwriter and singer – not just on ‘Crazy Love’ but Poco standards like the campfire swing ‘Rose of Cimarron’ and ‘Sagebrush Serenade’. His pedal steel and dobro work was also featured in the band’s nine-minute epic country rock symphony, “Crazy Eyes,” Furay’s tribute to Parsons.
In 2017 Young finally released a solo album, Waitin ‘for the Sun, as you continue to tour with Poco. Until the pandemic, Young continued to tour with the current version of Poco, the only original member left in the group. “I don’t have to do this,” said Young in an interview in 2019. “But I made a vow when I kind of took over the band that the music would always be something the guys in the band would be proud of. And that I would be proud of what we do. “