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Rusty Young, Poco Co-Founder and Pedal Steel Player, Dead at 75
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/rusty-young-poco-dead-obit-1156578/
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Rusty Young — co-founder, singer, and multi-instrumentalist with the pioneering country-rock band Poco — died March 14th of a heart attack. Young, who was 75, passed away at his home in Davisville, Missouri. His death was confirmed by a spokesperson, Mike Farley.
In Poco, Young made his name and reputation as one of the first musicians to integrate a pedal steel guitar, then largely associated with country, into rock & roll. Young’s spunky playing enriched the band’s goal of fusing two seemingly disparate genres, and on Poco standards like “A Good Feelin’ to Know,” he even pushed the sonic limits of the instrument. “Rusty was one of the most innovative people on the pedal steel guitar,” Poco founder Richie Furay tells Rolling Stone. “Nobody had ever heard a steel guitar run through a Leslie cabinet when we were doing it. We wanted to bring rock and country together, and that pedal steel gave us that rock & roll organ sound.”
While in L.A., Young also auditioned for what would be the Flying Burrito Brothers but instead opted to join Poco, the band that Furay and Messina formed after the Springfield folded.
Although they never hit the commercial heights of the Eagles or garnered the critical acclaim of the Burritos, Poco exuded a good-time, crowd-pleasing vibe, captured on their 1971 live album Deliverin‘. Young himself wasn’t content to sit behind the pedal steel as other players had. Furay recalls a Poco show at Carnegie Hall where Young “turned the pedal steel guitar over on stage and was playing it down on his knees, all turned over. He was doing it like Pete Townshend would have.”
Members like Furay, Messina, Paul Cotton, and later Eagles bassist Timothy B. Schmit came and went over Poco’s 50-plus years, but the departures allowed Young to showcase his skills as a songwriter and singer — not only on “Crazy Love” but Poco standards like the campfire rockers “Rose of Cimarron” and “Sagebrush Serenade.” His pedal steel and dobro work also ran through the band’s epic, nine-minute country rock symphony, “Crazy Eyes,” Furay’s tribute to Parsons.
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RIP
RIP...
I mean, I like them a lot, but he introduced me to them, and he's the reason we have so many Poco cds. I'm sure he'll be sad to hear this. 
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/obituaries/rusty-young-co-founder-longtime-frontman-poco-dies-75-n1264242
"I just received word that my friend Rusty Young has passed away and crossed that line into eternity," co-founder Richie Furay said in a statement to Variety. "My heart is saddened; he was a dear and longtime friend who help me pioneer and create a new Southern California musical sound called 'country rock.' He was an innovator on the steel guitar and carried the name Poco on for more than 50 years. Our friendship was real and he will be deeply missed. My prayers are with his wife, Mary, and his children Sara and Will."
Although he had threatened to retire and to put Poco to rest over the years, iterations of the group soldiered on with Young at the helm, and Poco was still continuing to tour through March 2020, when the pandemic put a stop to shows.
Poco was formed in 1968 out of the wreckage of Buffalo Springfield, as Richie Furay and Jim Messina hooked up with Young, who had been brought in to play steel guitar on one of that band's final recordings, "Kind Woman," to form a new group that would carry on in the tradition of the Springfield's gentlest, rootsiest material. After both Furay and Messina left the group, Young shared frontman status with Paul Young for some of Poco's most successful years in the '70s and early '80s.
Said Rick Alter, Young's (and Poco's) manager more than two decades, "Rusty was the most unpretentious, caring and idyllic artist I have ever worked with, a natural life force that he consistently poured into his music. To fans and fellow musicians alike, he was a once-in-a-lifetime musician, songwriter, performer and friend."
"I just received word that my friend Rusty Young has passed away and crossed that line into eternity," co-founder Richie Furay said in a statement to Variety. "My heart is saddened; he was a dear and longtime friend who help me pioneer and create a new Southern California musical sound called 'country rock.' He was an innovator on the steel guitar and carried the name Poco on for more than 50 years. Our friendship was real and he will be deeply missed. My prayers are with his wife, Mary, and his children Sara and Will."
Although he had threatened to retire and to put Poco to rest over the years, iterations of the group soldiered on with Young at the helm, and Poco was still continuing to tour through March 2020, when the pandemic put a stop to shows.
Poco was formed in 1968 out of the wreckage of Buffalo Springfield, as Richie Furay and Jim Messina hooked up with Young, who had been brought in to play steel guitar on one of that band's final recordings, "Kind Woman," to form a new group that would carry on in the tradition of the Springfield's gentlest, rootsiest material. After both Furay and Messina left the group, Young shared frontman status with Paul Young for some of Poco's most successful years in the '70s and early '80s.
Said Rick Alter, Young's (and Poco's) manager more than two decades, "Rusty was the most unpretentious, caring and idyllic artist I have ever worked with, a natural life force that he consistently poured into his music. To fans and fellow musicians alike, he was a once-in-a-lifetime musician, songwriter, performer and friend."
