Ray Collins Dies – Mothers of Invention Founder Dead
Ray Collins, the guitarist and the founder of the Mothers of Invention with Frank Zappa, died on Monday. According to the New York Times, he was admitted at the Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center about a week earlier for cardiac arrest.
Mr. Collins entered the national spotlight with the Mothers of Invention, an outlet for Mr. Zappa’s unique sense of humor and challenging, unorthodox compositions. But his musical beginnings were more mainstream.
In the mid-1960s Mr. Collins was singing falsetto in a rhythm-and-blues cover band called the Soul Giants when things soured between him and the band’s guitarist, Ray Hunt. Mr. Collins fired Mr. Hunt and replaced him with Mr. Zappa. Precisely how he delivered the news of the firing is unclear.
Mr. Collins “punched his lights out,” Mr. Zappa told the television host Mike Douglas in the 1970s. “He was out of the band and they needed somebody to come in and take over for a while, so I went down there and sat in with them and I thought they were real good.”
In Mr. Collins’s version of the events he threw no punches, but Mr. Zappa did indeed take over the band. Mr. Zappa urged his band mates to perform original material — his own — and the Soul Giants changed their name, first to the Mothers and later to the Mothers of Invention. The shift in direction eventually led to recognition, a recording contract, some truly original music and a devoted following, if not rock stardom.