Last week was once again a somber time in the music world with the death of Amy Winehouse. A promising young vocalist is gone much too soon. I never really listened to her music but recently sat down to hear her “Back to Black” album. After hearing a few songs I understood her sound and why she had such great appeal. So much was written about her troubles with drug abuse that her musical abilities were much clouded. On You Tube there was a clip of a concert of hers where she appeared to be high. It was so sad to watch as she attempted to sing but her performance was awful. Hers is a story that has been retold many times throughout the decades of musical entertainment. I remember a few years ago speaking with a jazz musician friend of mine who fought his own demons (cocaine) for many years. He’s doing very well today, ten years clean and sober, but he said that he couldn’t remember actually playing a gig without being high on drugs. He then went on to tell me about so many of his contemporaries who were also functioning alcoholics and drug abusers. When will we learn the harsh lessons being taught by such tragedies like the drug abuse and eventual death of Amy Winehouse? One day I hope. I happened to hear Whoopi Goldberg’s statement about Ms. Winehouse’s death and she spoke about the 27 Club. If you don’t know the 27 Club is a list of entertainers who died at age 27. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse and the list is much longer than the afore-mentioned artists’. But if you look at the full list you will see how many of the deaths were drug related. After hearing about this 27 Club I thought back to when I was 27. There was a lot going on in my life. I got married at 27. Looking back from today my life really was just getting started. Yes, these great entertainers truly died too soon. As I looked at Amy Winehouse’s family and so many friends support each other in their time of grief, my heart went out to her dad. He did all he could to intervene but just couldn’t reach his daughter. I understand Amy has a great deal of unreleased music that I’m sure we will hear now. We could have had so much more music but she died too soon.