Singer-songwriter Kenny Rankin dies

LOS ANGELES - Kenny Rankin, a brilliant pop vocalist and highly regarded musician-songwriter whose stylings ranged from jazz to pop to the world music influences he picked up as a child in New York, has died of complications related to lung cancer, his record company announced Monday. He was 69.

Rankin died Sunday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Mack Avenue Records spokesman Don Lucoff said.

The musician, who first gained acclaim as one of the guitarists on Bob Dylan’s landmark 1965 album, “Bringing it all Back Home,” had been preparing to record an album of new material when he became ill a few weeks ago. Recording sessions scheduled with producer Phil Ramone were canceled as his health began to deteriorate.

“That he was still at the top of his game is one of the saddest parts of his passing for me,” Denny Stilwell, president of Mack Avenue Records, said in a statement. “He performed the new material in our office over the last few months and his voice was still in its finest form — he sounded absolutely amazing. Our hearts and prayers are with his family.”

His own “The Kenny Rankin Album” was recorded live in 1976 with a 60-piece orchestra.

After signing with Decca in the late 1950s he released a handful of singles before moving on to Columbia Records, also the home of Dylan. There, he took part in the recording of “Bringing it All Back Home,” the album in which Dylan moved firmly from an all-acoustic folk music sound to an electric mixture of pop and rock ’n’ roll.

Soon after, he made his first appearance on “The Tonight Show,” where he impressed host Johnny Carson so much that Carson contributed liner notes to Rankin’s first album, 1967’s “Mind Dusters.” Other albums included “Family,” “Like a Seed,” “Inside and “Silver Morning:”

His supple tenor voice on such recordings as “Spanish Harlem,” “’Round Midnight” and the Beatles’ “Blackbird” and “I’ve Just a Face” also won him the respect of fellow musicians as a singer’s singer.

Mack Records said he so impressed the Beatles’ Paul McCartney that McCartney asked him to perform “Blackbird” when he and songwriting partner John Lennon were inducted into the Songwriters Hall Of Fame.

He is survived by his son, Chris Rankin, daughters Chanda Rankin and Jena Rankin-Ray and a granddaughter.