Jon Corneal, a largely forgotten founder of country-rock, dies at 80
Jon Corneal, a drummer from Auburndale who helped birth the genre of country-rock, has died at age 80. Corneal’s death on Nov. 6 came just eight days before his teenage bandmate, Winter Haven native Gram Parsons, will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on Nov. 14. “Jon Corneal was at Ground Zero of country rock as evidenced in his collaborations with Gram Parsons, Gene Clark and Doug Dillard, and his own solo work,” said Bob Kealing, author of “Calling Me Home: Gram Parsons and the Roots of Country Rock.” “I’ll miss his stories of those formative days whenever I attend Gram Parsons Derry Down shows. He was a Polk County country rock original.” In recent years, Corneal performed regularly with a small band on Friday afternoons at Hillcrest Coffee in Lakeland, singing and playing guitar and working a percussion setup with his feet. Corneal played a final show on Oct. 30, exactly one week before his death, said his friend of 50 years, Gene Owen. The influential website AllMusic.com has described Corneal as the first drummer in country-rock "down to a virtual certainty." Corneal decided to become a drummer after his mother took him to see
