R.I.P.: Paul Cotton, Guitarist, Lead Singer With Poco

Paul Cotton (February 26, 1943 – July 31, 2021)

Paul Cotton, the lead guitarist and frequent lead singer and songwriter for the country-rock band Poco, died on July 31 near his summer home in Eugene, Ore. 

He was 78, reports The NY Times. 

His wife, Caroline Ford Cotton, said he died unexpectedly but she did not cite a cause. His death came less than four months after that of Rusty Young, Poco’s longtime steel guitarist.

Cotton joined Poco, replacing the founding member Jim Messina in 1970, just in time to appear on the group’s third studio album, “From the Inside” (1971). Produced by Steve Cropper, the guitarist with the Memphis R&B combo Booker T. & the MGs, the project signaled a new artistic direction for the band, maybe nowhere so much as on the three songs written by Mr. Cotton.

Rooted more in rock and soul than in the country and bluegrass that had hitherto been the group’s primary influences, Mr. Cotton’s sinewy, blues-inflected guitar work and brooding baritone vocals on songs like the ballad “Bad Weather” greatly expanded Poco’s emotional and stylistic palette.

“There was no doubt that he was the guy to replace Jimmy,” Richie Furay, who founded the band with Messina and was its principal lead singer, said about Mr. Cotton’s impact on the band in a 2000 interview with soundwaves.com. “We knew that he was bringing a little bit of an edge to our sound, and we wanted to be a little more rock ’n’ roll sounding.”

Poco became a major influence on West Coast country-rock acts like Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles and, a generation later, on alternative-country bands like the Jayhawks and Wilco.

Formed in Los Angeles in 1968, the group originally consisted of Messina and Furay, both of them formerly with the influential rock band Buffalo Springfield, along with Young, Grantham and the bassist Randy Meisner, a future member of the Eagles. (Timothy B. Schmit, another future Eagle, replaced Meisner when he left the band in 1969.)

Furay departed in 1973, disillusioned over the group’s lack of success compared with that of his ex-bandmates in Crosby, Stills & Nash and the Eagles, especially after the release of critically acclaimed but commercially disappointing Poco albums like “A Good Feeling to Know” (1972) and “Crazy Eyes” (1973).