MARTY BALIN (1942 - 2018)

Marty Balin, the co-founder and vocalist of the classic rock band, Jefferson Airplane and later a part of the revamped Jefferson Starship, has passed away on September 27th at the age of seventy-six.

He was born Martyn Buchwald in Cincinnati, Ohio but his family moved to San Francisco when he was a teen. He changed his name to "Marty Balin" after he began his professional music career when he was twenty and was later a part of a folk music group, The Town Criers. Balin met fellow folk musician Paul Kantner in 1965 and they eventually found other musicians, blues guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, drummer, Jerry Peloquin, acoustic bassist, Bob Harvey and vocalist Signe Toly Anderson to form their own group.

They called themselves, "Jefferson Airplane" (based on the name of a friend of Kaukonen's dog) and admiring the success of the Byrds, Simon & Garfunkel and the Beatles, this band moved away from folk and towards a pop-rock sound. As they began to play around the bay area, several band members left and were replaced until Jefferson Airplane's second album in 1967, "Surrealistic Pillow". The line-up (now considered the classic) featured Kantner, Kaukonen, bassist Jack Casady, drummer Spencer Dryden and Grace Slick who shared vocal duties with Balin. The album featured two top-ten hits, "Somebody To Love" and "White Rabbit" and sold over a million copies.

The band enjoyed great success and popularity until excessive drug-use and ego-clashing caused Balin to leave the band in 1971. Jefferson Airplane officially came to an end in 1973. Kantner and Slick went on to form a new band called "Jefferson Starship" in 1974. They eventually got Balin to join the following year and the band had hits with "Miracles", "With Your Love" and "Count on Me". Balin eventually decided to leave the band again by 1978 and embark on a solo career.  He recorded several solo albums and had a top-ten hit with "Hearts" in 1981. Balin, as a member of Jefferson Airplane, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 and honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016. In honor of this gifted artist, here are two my favorites songs performed by Marty Balin: