In the late 1960s, the generation gap was so wide that the Who was singing “I hope I die before I get old” and activists were warning “Don’t trust anyone over thirty.” That’s just one reason why the jazz-influenced psychedelic rock band Spirit stood out when it debuted in 1967: The group was made up of four Baby Boomers plus Ed Cassidy, a drummer decades older than his bandmates. Cassidy, who passed away on December 6, 2012, at age eighty-nine, was born in 1923 in Illinois. After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he worked within many styles of music, from a stint with the San Francisco Opera to gigs with jazz greats like Chet Baker. In the ’60s he started playing rock ’n’ roll, and in 1964 he formed the band Rising Sons with Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder. In 1965 Cassidy began gigging with his […]