NEW YORK—Marty Balin, a patron of the 1960s “San Francisco Sound” both as founder and lead singer of the Jefferson Airplane and co-owner of the club where the Airplane and other Bay Area bands performed, has died. The name Jefferson Airplane, suggested by Kaukonen, was based in part on bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson. A year later, the group signed with RCA Records and released the folk-rock album The Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, for which Balin wrote or co-wrote eight songs. The Airplane, attuned early on to the counterculture, turned out buttons and bumper stickers reading THE JEFFERSON AIRPLANE LOVES YOU. “I remember it was really pretty and beautiful for a year or two,” Balin told Relix magazine in 1993.

Source: thestar September 29, 2018 00:18 UTC