Jack Russell, singer and frontman for Southern California-based heavy blues band Great White, who enjoyed brief success in the late 1980s and early 1990s but whose music career was overshadowed by a 2003 fire at a Rhode Island club during a band performance at which 100 people died and another 115 were injured, passed away on August 15, 2024. The announcement did not reveal the cause of death; however, Russell had announced a few weeks before his death that he was retiring from performing due to Lewy body dementia. Russell was 63.
Russell was no choirboy.
Russell and (Great White guitarist Mark) Kendall first started playing together in Los Angeles in 1978. Russell quickly landed in prison, however, after he and some friends attempted to rob a Whittier drug dealer’s home to steal cocaine. Russell was high on PCP at the time, he says; he shot through a door and accidentally hit a…
