Crap. The first member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band to die is keyboardist Danny Federici. Check out the end of that March 20 concert video on The Boss' site -- I think Bruce whispers "My brother" to him, but I'm not sure. In any case, everybody seems teary. This is the last concert appearance of a 58-year-old musician about to pass away.

Some regard Federici, an old Springsteen buddy who'd been around since the early days of Steel Mill and so forth, as an inessential member of the band. That's true on a lot of songs -- Springsteen began downsizing his sound somewhere around 1984's Born In the USA, and Federici's big organ mostly gave way to Roy Bittan's more economical synths for the next decade or two. But I can't imagine "Sandy" without Federici's accordion, or "Kitty's Back" without his organ solo. And he certainly became essential again around The Rising, as the AP obit points out.

As an organist myself, who always notices the Booker Ts before the Steve Croppers, I always regarded Federici as one of the great unsung sidemen in rock.

Check out this two-part "Kitty's Back" video, which I believe is from the 1975 Hammersmith Odeon DVD released a couple years ago. Federici's solo is towards the end of Part One: