Rick Stevens, a vocalist for the funk-soul band Tower of Power who, after leaving the group, was convicted of killing three men in a drug-addicted haze and served 36 years in prison, died on Tuesday in Antioch, Calif., where he lived with a son. He was 77.
The cause was liver cancer, the son, Clarence C. Maloney, said.
Mr. Stevens was known especially for the Tower of Power song “You’re Still a Young Man,” on which he sang lead. The song, about a relationship between an older woman and a younger man, was a track on the band’s 1972 album, “Bump City.” Released as a single, it reached No. 29 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Mr. Stevens joined Tower of Power, a horn-heavy group based in Oakland, Calif., in 1969, but “Bump City” proved to be his peak with the group: Within a few years he had left it and was in the grip of heroin and other narcotics.
In February 1976 he traveled to the Santa Cruz Mountains to meet with two brothers, Andrew and Harry Austin, who, he later said, had been pressuring him over a drug debt and threatening his family. Both brothers were shot dead. A day and a half later, the authorities said, Mr. Stevens killed Elliot Wickliffe, who he said had pulled a gun on him.
Mr. Stevens was convicted of murder in the first two killings and manslaughter in the third and found eligible for the death penalty. But soon afterward California declared capital punishment unconstitutional, and he was sentenced to life.
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In a 2015 interview, Mr. Stevens, whose surname was actually Stevenson, recalled the admonition given to him by Judge John S. McInerney.
“He said to me in the resentencing, he says, ‘Mr. Stevenson, I’m happy that I don’t have to sentence you to San Quentin’s gas chamber again, but I’m going to sentence you to new life.’ ”
The judge urged him to become an evangelist about the dangers of drugs, and, having committed to Christianity partway into his incarceration, he did. In prison he counseled and mentored other inmates and formed bands as a part of inmate music programs.
He was paroled in 2012 and resumed performing and recording. In January 2013 his old band brought him onstage at the Oakland club Yoshi’s to sing his signature song.
“When he got back onstage with Tower of Power for the first time in 40 years,” Mr. Maloney said, “he felt like he was levitating. That’s what he told me.”
Donald Charles Stevenson was born on Feb. 23, 1940, in Port Arthur, Tex. His mother, Jewell Hunter Derouen, was the sister of the rhythm-and-blues singer Ivory Joe Hunter. He grew up first in Texas and then in Reno, Nev. When Mr. Stevens was a teenager, the family moved to Oakland, where he began singing in bands, among them Rick and the Ravens and Four of a Kind.
“Some club owners told him, ‘You don’t look like a Donald Stevenson, you look like a Rick,’ ” Mr. Maloney said, and he became Rick Stevens. He joined Tower of Power as a vocalist in 1969 and he can be heard on the group’s first album, “East Bay Grease,” especially on the track “Sparkling in the Sand.”
After leaving Tower of Power, he spent time in another Bay Area band, Brass Horizon, but his drug use had taken over his life.
He remained remorseful for the deadly events of 1976, which he said occurred during a time in his life when he was going from one drug high to another and not thinking clearly — “a jackass in a jumpsuit,” he would describe himself years later. When he began performing again after his release from prison he was realistic about his past.
“I know a lot of people won’t forget,” he said in a 2013 interview. “I won’t forget.”
Mr. Stevens was married five times, twice to the same woman, and fathered a number of children; Mr. Maloney said his survivors include two daughters, Dawn Renee Stevenson and Doreen Stevenson; two other sons, Ricky and Derrick, and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Since his release from prison, Mr. Stevens had recorded the four-song EP “Back on the Streets Again Vol. 1.” Mr. Maloney said he had planned another record.
Georgina Hansen-Stevenson, Mr. Stevens’s most recent wife, from 1993 to 2000, said in an email that his time performing with Tower of Power in the 1970s, with big crowds in front of him and the band’s overwhelming sound behind, remained a treasured memory.
“It was a rush,” she recalled him telling her. “I felt like I was the engineer of a roaring train, going full throttle.”
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