Jesse Colin Young, the co-founder and frontman of ’60s group Youngbloods has died. He was aged 83.
The musician – born Perry Miller – passed away at his home in Aiken, South Carolina on Sunday (March 16), his wife and manager Connie confirmed. A cause of death has not been revealed.
The Youngbloods were best known for their 1969 folk-rock track, ‘Get Together’, which crystallised the ideals of ’60s counterculture: “Smile on your brother/Everybody get together/Try to love one another right now.”
While Young didn’t pen the track, he wrote numerous other songs for the Youngbloods, with the statement announcing his death nodding to his “socially conscious lyrics with top-tier guitar skills and gorgeous vocals.”
His social and environmental activism was a major theme of his career, and he went on to appear at 1979’s ‘No Nukes’ protest concert at Madison Square Garden alongside Crosby, Stills & Nash, James Taylor, Jackson Browne and more.
Young grew up studying piano and classical guitar, with his love of blues leading him to Greenwich Village. He released a pair of solo folk albums in the mid-’60s, ‘The Soul of a City Boy’ and ‘Young Blood’.
After meeting guitarist Jerry Corbitt, the pair formed the Youngbloods alongside pianist/guitarist Lovell Levinger and drummer Joe Bauer, and the band gigged regularly around the Village, going on to release their self-titled debut in 1967.
The Youngbloods’ two biggest hits, were ‘Grizzly Bear’ and ‘Get Together’, the latter of which initially only hit 62 on the Billboard Hot 100, but later became a far bigger success after being featured in a PSA by the National Conference of Jews and Christians.
With stronger backing from RCA, the song later re-entered the charts and eventually peaked at Number Five on the Hot 100. Following that, Young became their primary songwriter, writing two minor hits on their third album, ‘Elephant Mountain’, ‘Darkness, Darkness’ – as covered by Robert Plant in 2002 – and ‘Sunlight’. The band shared a pair of live albums and two more studio records before disbanding in 1972.
That same year, Young went solo career and released a string of albums, including ‘Song for Juli’ and ‘Songbird’. In the early nineties, Young co-founded his own label, Ridgetop Music, with his wife Connie.
A later Lyme’s disease diagnosis would force him off the road in 2012, but he turned to YouTube to share performances and document his recovery. He released what would be his final album in 2019 with ‘Dreamers’.
In a 2021 interview with Goldmine, Young said he had never heard any of the earlier versions of the song ‘Get Together’, which had been recorded by the likes of the Kingston Trio and Jefferson Airplane.
“I went down the stairs [at the Cafe Au Go Go] and I heard some music, and I thought ‘Damn, it must be an open mic or something like that,’” he recalled. “And for some reason, instead of turning around and going home, I went down the second flight of stairs and there was Buzzy Linhart and he was singing ‘Get Together,’ and just like in those movies about the Bible, the heavens opened and my life changed.
“I knew that song was my path forward, not only as a musician, but as a human being. So I rushed backstage and got the lyrics from Buzzy after introducing myself, and he was glad to give them to me.”
