Ronald LaPread, co-founder of legendary group the Commodores, dead at 75
Ronald LaPread, co-founder of the iconic band the Commodores, has passed away at the age of 75. His daughter announced the news on social media, revealing that he died following a sudden medical event. LaPread was a significant figure in the music industry, contributing to the Commodores' success from 1970 to 1986.
- ▪Ronald LaPread was a co-founder of the Commodores, a successful funk and soul group.
- ▪He played bass for the band from 1970 to 1986 and later lived in New Zealand for 40 years.
- ▪The Commodores sold over 70 million albums worldwide and won a Grammy for their hit 'Nightshift'.
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| Original publisher | Page Six |
| Canonical URL | https://pagesix.com/2026/05/31/celebrity-news/ronald-lapread-co-founder-of-legendary-group-the-commodores-dead-at-75/ |
| Publication time | Sun, 31 May 2026 17:25:23 -0400 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-31T21:48:03.194Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-31T22:13:53.560Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | oW8rluMqPka6 · 2 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Celebrity News Ronald LaPread, co-founder of legendary group the Commodores, dead at 75 By Antoinette Bueno Published May 31, 2026, 5:25 p.m. ET See more of our coverage in your search results. Add Page Six on Google Ronald LaPread, the bassist who co-founded the Commodores, has died. LaPread’s daughter Sonya shared the news in an Instagram Story Saturday, writing, “It is with a heavy heart that I must announce that my Father Ronald LaPread has passed.” Though she didn’t share any details about his death, the New Zealand Herald reported that he died after a “a sudden medical event.” LaPread was 75 years old. 6 The Commodores co-founder Ronald LaPread, pictured here in June 2004, has died. Getty Images 6 His daughter Sonya shared the news in an Instagram Story Saturday.
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