Delores Rhoads, Mother of Randy Rhoads, Dies
Delores Rhoads, the mother of guitar legend Randy Rhoads, has died. At the time of this publishing, neither her age nor cause of death were given.
We get the news via bassist Rudy Sarzo, who played with Rhoads in Quiet Riot before Rhoads went on to bigger fame with Ozzy Osbourne. "The world today has lost one of the most gracious and sweetest ladies I'm blessed to have known, Delores Rhoads," he wrote on his Facebook page. "Please keep her and the Rhoads family in your prayers."
Delores Rhoads graduated from UCLA with a Bachelor's degree in music and founded the Musonia School of Music in North Hollywood, Calif., in 1949. After receiving his first guitar at the age of six-and-a-half, Randy began taking lessons at Musonia.
"Randy grew up musically in my school," she once said. "I am sure he was influenced by this in many ways. He started when he was so young, he was somewhere between six-and-a-half and seven when he started lessons. In those days, way back then, we started them with the folk guitar where they learned the chords and a few pop songs."
But she also made sure that he learned that being able to play simple pop songs was only a small part of the equation. "To play in my little group that I had even way back then," she continued, "he had to read [music notation], because he couldn't play in the group unless he read. And then I worked with him when he was very young. I gave him some piano lessons, so he had to learn to read. I always make my students count very accurately and read properly and do everything the right way, so he had some help in that."
Rhoads' 50-second classical guitar interlude from Osbourne's Blizzard of Ozz, "Dee," was written as a tribute to her. You can listen to the track below.
As news of her passing reached social media, many people, including Osbourne, have tweeted their sympathies to the Rhoads family. We've embedded some of them below.
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Listen to Randy Rhoads' 'Dee'