NASHVILLE, Tennessee — Trumpeter Ben Cauley, the sole survivor of an airplane crash that killed rhythm and blues singer Otis Redding and his entourage in 1967, has died. He was 67.
Cauley died Monday night at a Memphis, Tennessee, hospital, said Tim Sampson, a friend. Cauley had health problems but a cause of death has not been released.
Cauley was a founding member of the Bar-Kays, which was the No. 2 house band at the influential Stax recording studio behind Booker T and the MGs. The Bar-Kays were serving as the backing band for Redding, one of the popular soul and rhythm and blues singers of the 1960s, on a tour when his private airplane crashed into a Wisconsin lake in December 1967.
Sampson, who is communications director for the Soulsville Foundation in Memphis, which operates the Stax Museum, Stax Music Academy and The Soulsville Charter School, described Cauley as “a gentle guy, always willing to share his knowledge with young people.”
After the crash, Cauley played with a new version of the Bar-Kays for five years and was in demand as an international performer. He also did recording session work in Memphis, Nashville and Muscle Shoals, Alabama, Sampson said.
Even a near-fatal stroke in 1989 did not stop Cauley, who had to relearn how to walk and talk.
“He could still pick his trumpet up and play it,” Sampson said.
Cauley recently played on an album with Rolling Stones co-founder Keith Richards, Sampson said.
Despite his many achievements, Cauley is best remembered as the only survivor of the crash near Madison, Wisconsin, that killed eight people, including Redding and Bar-Kays members Phalon Jones, Carl Cunningham, Jimmy King and Ronnie Caldwell.