Updated at 7.12pm
SINGER JOE COCKER — best known for his cover of the Beatles’ With a Little Help From my Friends — has died, aged 70.
The vocalist, who died late yesterday in the US, was “without the doubt the greatest rock/soul singer ever to come out of Britain,” his agent Barrie Marshall said in a statement.
His performance of the Beatles tune at the 1969 Woodstock Festival was one of the iconic moments of that event.
Later in his career — which spanned six decades — his duet with Jennifer Warnes from the soundtrack of the movie An Officer and a Gentleman, ‘Up Where We Belong’ became a huge international hit, earning an Oscar and a Grammy.
Naming him in their 100 Greatest Singers List, Rolling Stone said Cocker’s voice was “an irresistible force that combines a love of American soul music with an undeniable depth of feeling”.
After his early successes, the magazine said “Cocker would go on to interpret tunes by Randy Newman and Traffic as if they were R&B classics”.
And once he was done with them, that’s what they were.
The singer was awarded an OBE in 2007 for his services to music.
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