Death was a band formed in Detroit, Michigan, in 1971 by the brothers Bobby (bass, vocals), David (guitar), and Dannis (drums) Hackney. The African American trio started out as an R&B band but switched to rock after seeing an Alice Cooper show. Music critic Peter Margasak retrospectively wrote of their musical direction, "The youngest of the brothers, guitarist David, pushed the group in a hard-rock direction that presaged punk, and while this certainly didn't help them find a following in the mid-70s, today it makes them look like visionaries." In the early 1960s, the young Hackney brothers were sat down by their father to witness The Beatles' first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. The following day, David found a discarded guitar in an alley and set about learning to play. Brothers Bobby and Dannis soon followed suit and they began playing music together. Originally calling themselves Rock Fire Funk Express, guitarist David convinced his brothers to change the name of the band to Death. "His concept was spinning death from the negative to the positive. It was a hard sell", Bobby Hackney recalled in 2010. In 1975 at Detroit's United Sound Studios with engineer Jim Vitti, they recorded seven songs written by David and Bobby. According to the Hackney family, Columbia Records president Clive Davis funded the recording sessions, but implored the band to change its name to something more commercially palatable than Death. When the Hackneys refused, Davis ceased his support. At any rate, they only recorded seven songs instead of the planned dozen. The following year they self-released 500 copies from the session on the 7" single "Politicians in My Eyes" b/w "Keep on Knocking," on their Tryangle label, which eventually became a collectors' item. Death officially broke up in 1977. The brothers then moved to Burlington, Vermont, and released two albums of gospel rock as The 4th Movement in the early 1980s. David moved back to Detroit in 1982, and died of lung cancer in 2000. Bobby and Dannis still reside in Vermont and lead the reggae band Lambsbread. After hearing Death's music played at underground parties in California and witnessing the crowd's "wild" response to it, Bobby's three sons, Bobby Hackney Jr. (vocals), Julian Hackney (guitar), Urian Hackney (drums) and two friends, Dylan Giambatista (guitar) and Steven Hazen Williams (bass) formed a punk band called Rough Francis in their family's honor. Rough Francis is a musical tribute to Death, and they also write original material that is heavily influenced by their elders. In 2009, Drag City Records released all seven Death songs from their 1975 United Sound sessions on CD and LP under the title ...For the Whole World to See. In September 2009, a reformed Death played three shows with original members Bobby and Dannis Hackney, and guitarist Bobbie Duncan, who is also a member of Lambsbread. During a performance at Lexington, Ky.'s Boomslang Festival 2010, the band announced that Drag City will be releasing a new album with demos and rough cuts that pre-date the 1975 sessions. It is scheduled for a tentative January 2011 release.

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