Legendary American pop singer, Bobby Vee has died at the age of 73.
According to his son, Jeff Velline, the singer peacefully died at his home on Monday, October 24, 2016, surrounded by his family.
Late Bobby Vee was best known for hits including ‘Rubber Ball’, ‘Take Good Care of My Baby’ and ‘The Night Has a Thousand Eyes’.
Bobby Vee, real name Robert Thomas Velline, also had a hand in starting American singer Bob Dylan‘s career when he added the recent Nobel Prize for Literature recipient to his band in 1959. Dylan played on two tour dates with the band before moving on.
READ: Bob Dylan has just won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature
Back then, Bob Dylan, whose real name is Robert Zimmerman, had introduced himself to Bobby Vee as Elston Gunnn and according to Vee, ‘He played pretty good in the key of C. We hired him to come out and work that weekend with us. He was staying with a mutual friend of ours in Fargo. The gig was in a church basement. When he wasn’t playing, he would come up behind me and do handclaps. It was a Gene Vincent thing. He must have seen Gene Vincent do it. He was a nice guy, and wiry, with a lot of energy and no money, just like us. I didn’t fire him, it was a natural evolution of lack of finances.’
In his career, Bobby Vee released more than 25 albums before retiring in 2011 after being diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.
Vee had been in a care home near Minneapolis for just over a year and had been receiving hospice care before his death.
Vee and his wife Karen were married for more than 50 years and had four children before she died of kidney failure in 2015 at the age of 71.
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