TRAGIC END for this legend. 😭💔 With heavy hearts, we announce the passing. When you find out who he is, you will cry

Looking back years later in a 2004 interview with the Rapid City Journal, he recalled the moment vividly:

“We were not just only the white group in the building. But by our second verse, something magical happened. The audience started to cheer us on.”

It was an early lesson in the unifying power of music — one that transcended race, background, and expectation.