Ray Manzarek, keyboardist and founding member of The Doors, dies at 74

Ray Manzarek, who studied economics in college but cherished music and met with Jim Morrison on a California beach one fateful day in 1965 to help create the Doors, died May 20 at a clinic in Rosenheim, Germany.

Mr. Manzarek, 74, who had lived for years in California’s Napa County, had bile duct cancer.

Led by the charismatic Morrison, with his mystical wildness and commanding physical presence, and driven by the power of Mr. Manzarek on the organ, the band worked its way into the soul of the 1960s counterculture.

Much of what the Doors became known for was owed to Mr. Manzarek, with his penchant for blending musical streams and currents, old and new, from blues to classical, with spoken poetry and an overlay of the psychedelic....