Literotica Cemetary

[Igor_1066]

`M-A-S-H' writer Larry Gelbart dies at 81

`M-A-S-H' writer Larry Gelbart dies at 81

By CHRISTY LEMIRE (AP) – 2 hours ago

LOS ANGELES — Larry Gelbart, the award-winning writer whose sly, sardonic wit helped create such hits as Broadway's "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," the films "Tootsie" and "Oh, God!" and television's "M-A-S-H," is dead.

Gelbart died at his Beverly Hills home Friday morning after a long battle with cancer, said Creative Artists Agency, which represented him. He was 81.

His wife of 53 years, Pat Gelbart, told The Associated Press Friday that after being married for so long, "we finished each other's sentences." She declined to specify the type of cancer he had.

"It wasn't a surprise. He had cancer, we've known that. We didn't know what the outcome would be, the result, whatever. And so here we are and we were sort of prepared for this," she said. "It's enough to be able to be resourceful and go forward."

Gelbart, who won a Tony for "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," an Emmy for "M-A-S-H" and was nominated for two Oscars, is most likely best remembered for the long-running TV show about Army doctors during the Korean War.

Carl Reiner, his longtime friend and colleague, called Gelbart "the Jonathan Swift of our day."

"It's a great, great, great, great, great, great loss. You can't put enough `greats' in front of it," said Reiner, who directed "Oh, God!" from Gelbart's Oscar-nominated script. "The mores of our time were never more dissected and discussed. He had the ability to make an elaborate joke given nothing but one line."

"M-A-S-H" debuted on CBS in 1972, when the nation was still embroiled in the Vietnam War, and some viewers were initially puzzled or offended by its depiction of the cynical, wisecracking physicians who worked frantically to save the lives of soldiers.

By its second season it had caught on, however, and it remained one of television's top-10 rated shows for a decade, until its final episode in 1983. Along the way, it won numerous awards including the Emmy for best comedy series.

"What attracted me to `M-A-S-H' was the theme song, `Suicide is Painless,'" Gelbart once remarked. "It was written in a very minor key and appealed to me emotionally."

The show, based on a book and the 1970 Robert Altman film of the same name, starred Alan Alda. Gelbart was brought into the project by producer-director Gene Reynolds who worked with him shaping the show.

After writing 97 half-hour episodes and winning an Emmy, Gelbart quit during the show's fourth season, saying he was "totally worn out."

But Pat Gelbart recalled the fondness with which people in the industry regarded him.

"Strangely enough, the thing that transpired in his rise to success was that everybody he worked with — co-writers, producers, actors, actresses — had nothing but a good word to say about him. He was never considered anything but reasonable, considerate, and never did anything untoward," she said. "I thought that was a singular kind of wonderful and most rare part of him. He didn't try to be a goody two-shoes. He just had that kind of character."

His entry into the entertainment business 30 years before had been worthy of a TV script itself.

Gelbart's father was a Los Angeles barber with a clientele of Hollywood notables, including Danny Thomas. While cutting Thomas' hair one day, he bragged of his 16-year-old son's writing ability and the comedian asked to see some of his work. Soon Thomas had hired Gelbart to write for his radio show.

"A comedy prodigy does not exist. A kid can make other kids laugh, but to make adults laugh with sophisticated humor at that age, it's not heard of," Reiner said Friday. "He had an unerring ear and eye for humor. He had a funny mother, which helps, and a father who loved jokes."

He went on to write gags for Bob Hope, Jack Paar, Red Buttons, Jack Carson, Eddie Cantor and Joan Davis. In 1953 he accepted Sid Caesar's offer of $1,000 a week to work for "Caesar's Hour," joining a legendary writing team that included Reiner, Mel Brooks and Neil Simon.

"He's the fastest of the fast, the wittiest man in the business," Brooks once said of him.

Deciding to expand his horizons, Gelbart also co-authored a revue, "My L.A.," which was a local hit in 1948.

His first foray to Broadway was far less successful. His 1961 play, "The Conquering Hero" closed after seven performances.

His next Broadway show, "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," written with Burt Shevelove, enjoyed a far better fate the following year. Based loosely on the Roman plays of Plautus with songs by Stephen Sondheim, the show was a runaway hit, resulting in road companies and a 1966 movie with Zero Mostel and Phil Silvers.

After the play's success, Gelbart decided to move with his wife and five children to England, quipping that he wanted "to escape religious freedom in America."

They remained there for nine years, and his only notable work during that time was a script, written with Shevelove, for the 1966 black comedy, "The Wrong Box."

By the time he returned to Hollywood, however, he had a broader view of the world that he said helped him tackle "M-A-S-H."

"I make jokes all the time," Gelbart once said of his penchant for comedy. "It's a tic — a way of making myself comfortable. I can't imagine not having humor to lean on."

Gelbart also returned to the theater with "Sly Fox," which transformed Ben Jonson's Elizabethan "Volpone" to Gold Rush San Francisco. Starring George C. Scott as the devious miser, it was a solid success.

"Mastergate," a scathing treatment of the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals, flopped in 1989, but Gelbart scored the same year with "City of Angels," a musical spoof of Hollywood movies and crime novels.

His films "Oh, God!" with George Burns as a philosophical deity, and "Tootsie," with Dustin Hoffman as a cross-dressing actor, both brought him Academy Award nominations, and the HBO movie "Barbarians at the Gate," about Wall Street chicanery, brought another Emmy.

Larry Simon Gelbart was born in Chicago, moving to Los Angeles while in high school.

He married singer and actress Pat Marshall in 1956 and they raised their two children, Becky and Adam, and her three by a previous marriage, Cathy, Gary and Paul. Cathy died of cancer at age 50.

AP writer Bob Thomas contributed to this report.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ix5WW8PoZMC82BvqU_LEuyYkP97AD9ALDV4O0

 

[KindaKinky]

NYT: Jim Carroll, poet and punk rocker, dead at 60
Mon Sep 14, 8:36 am ET

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NEW YORK – Jim Carroll, the poet and punk rocker who wrote "The Basketball Diaries," died Friday. He was 60.

He died from a heart attack at his home in Manhattan, his ex-wife Rosemary Carroll told the New York Times.

In the 1970s, Carroll was a fixture of the burgeoning downtown New York art scene, where he mixed with artists such as Andy Warhol, Patti Smith, Larry Rivers and Robert Mapplethorpe. His life was shaped by drug use, which he wrote about extensively.

Carroll also published several poetry collections, while his 1980 album, "Catholic Boy," has been hailed as a landmark punk record, and he became known for one of its songs, "People Who Died."

But it was "The Basketball Diaries," his autobiographical tale of life as a sports star at Trinity, an elite private high school in Manhattan, that brought him his widest audience. The son of a bar owner, Carroll attended the school on a basketball scholarship.

The book, which began life as a journal, was first published in 1978 and then became even more popular, particularly on college campuses, when it was issued as a mass-market paperback two years later. A 1995 movie version starred Leonardo DiCaprio.

His poetry career started even earlier. Carroll was in his teens when he first received recognition for his poems, especially "Organic Trains" in 1967 and then "4 Ups and 1 Down" in 1970. Among his other works are collections such as "The Book of Nods" (1986), "Fear of Dreaming" (1993) and "Void of course: Poems 1994-1997" (1998).

Carroll left New York in 1973 and moved to California, where he met his future wife Rosemary Klemfuss. They later divorced.

It was Smith who encouraged his music, and he formed the Jim Carroll Band. Among his other albums were the less successful "Dry Dreams" (1982) and "I Write Your Name" (1984).

 

[RobDownSouth]

NYT: Jim Carroll, poet and punk rocker, dead at 60
Mon Sep 14, 8:36 am ET

http://l.yimg.com/a/i/ww/news/2009/09/14/carroll1-pd.jpg

NEW YORK – Jim Carroll, the poet and punk rocker who wrote "The Basketball Diaries," died Friday. He was 60.

He died from a heart attack at his home in Manhattan, his ex-wife Rosemary Carroll told the New York Times.

In the 1970s, Carroll was a fixture of the burgeoning downtown New York art scene, where he mixed with artists such as Andy Warhol, Patti Smith, Larry Rivers and Robert Mapplethorpe. His life was shaped by drug use, which he wrote about extensively.

Carroll also published several poetry collections, while his 1980 album, "Catholic Boy," has been hailed as a landmark punk record, and he became known for one of its songs, "People Who Died."

But it was "The Basketball Diaries," his autobiographical tale of life as a sports star at Trinity, an elite private high school in Manhattan, that brought him his widest audience. The son of a bar owner, Carroll attended the school on a basketball scholarship.

The book, which began life as a journal, was first published in 1978 and then became even more popular, particularly on college campuses, when it was issued as a mass-market paperback two years later. A 1995 movie version starred Leonardo DiCaprio.

His poetry career started even earlier. Carroll was in his teens when he first received recognition for his poems, especially "Organic Trains" in 1967 and then "4 Ups and 1 Down" in 1970. Among his other works are collections such as "The Book of Nods" (1986), "Fear of Dreaming" (1993) and "Void of course: Poems 1994-1997" (1998).

Carroll left New York in 1973 and moved to California, where he met his future wife Rosemary Klemfuss. They later divorced.

It was Smith who encouraged his music, and he formed the Jim Carroll Band. Among his other albums were the less successful "Dry Dreams" (1982) and "I Write Your Name" (1984).

Awww fuck it all....."Differing Touch" was a fantastic song.

"one night she's dark and French, one night she's blonde and Dutch..."

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Emmy-Nominated Actor Paul Burke Dies

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Paul Burke, who was twice nominated for an Emmy for his role as Det. Adam Flint in the gritty crime hit ''Naked City,'' died Sunday. He was 83.

Burke, who had leukemia and non-Hodgkins lymphoma, died with wife Lyn at his side at his home in Palm Springs, family spokeswoman Daniela Ryan said.

Burke was featured in dozens of TV series in his four-decade career, including prominent parts on ''12 O'Clock High'' and ''Dynasty.''

In a pair of notable big screen appearances in the late 1960s he played a cop who chased upscale art thief Steve McQueen ''The Thomas Crown Affair'' and had the leading male role in the tale of young women and Hollywood excess ''Valley of the Dolls.''

Burke was born in New Orleans in 1926. His father was a boxer, Martin Burke, who had once fought heavyweight champion Gene Tunney.

The family ran a restaurant and nightclub in the city's French Quarter during World War II called Marty Burke's, where Paul Burke spent much of his time before leaving for Southern California to pursue an acting career at 19.

Burke said seeing that seeing the sad characters pass through the club gave him a sense of purpose.

''I stayed up late watching the barflies, the brawlers,'' he told TV Guide in 1962. ''I listened to the stories of wasted lives, I watched the effect of wasted lives. It gave me a strong feeling of urgency about my own life.''

He studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse, and after a slew of bit guest spots on television shows, he landed his first starring role in 1956 playing veterinarian Dr. Noah McCann in the short-lived series ''Noah's Ark.''

Four years later he joined ''Naked City'' in its second season, when it changed from a half-hour to an hour drama. Burke played the brooding detective Flint on the show famous for its dark, quasi-documentary style. It allowed him to practice his craft with future stars like Robert Duvall and Dustin Hoffman, who made guest appearances.

''Acting is more exciting than living -- more electric, more immediate than living,'' he told TV Guide at the time. ''That's because life is full of random elements. In acting, you select, you choose the elements. This selection allows you to get to the essence of the character, the essence of an experience.''

Burke would move on to play an Air Force colonel in the adventure show ''12 O'Clock High,'' where he met his actress wife Lyn.

He continued getting steady work into his 60s, including a recurring role in the primetime soap opera ''Dynasty'' from 1982-1988.

His last part was in the 1990 film ''The Fool.'' He had since retired to Palm Springs.

In addition to his wife, Burke is survived by three children from his first marriage, Paula Burke-Lopez, Paul Brian Burke and Dina Burke-Shawkat.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Tennis Great Jack Kramer Dies at 88

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LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Jack Kramer, a tennis champion in the 1940s and '50s and a promoter of the sport for more 60 years, died at his home in Los Angeles, his family said. He was 88.

Kramer died late Saturday from a soft tissue cancer that was diagnosed in July, according to his son Bob Kramer.

"We'd hoped he could hang on for a few more months," Bob Kramer said. "At the end, he didn't want to go to the hospital, so the family gathered and he died at home."

Kramer won the Wimbledon men's singles title in 1947 and the men's U.S. Championships, the forerunner of the U.S. Open, in 1946 and '47.He also won seven other Grand Slam titles in doubles, all at Wimbledon or the U.S. Championships. Kramer was the No. 1 player in the world for much of the late 1940s.

He was among the most successful of the touring pros who played in arenas across the country in the early 1950s.

After his retirement in 1954, due to an arthritic back, Kramer worked as a tireless promoter of the sport. He was among those who led the way for a more unified, open tennis tour.

Kramer was a founder of the Association of Tennis Professionals and served as its first executive director. In 1973, he led ATP's principled boycott of Wimbledon, which helped players gain more control of their own careers from national tennis associations.

Later he served on the Men's International professional Tennis Council, the worldwide governing board.

Since the 1950s, Kramer was heavily involved in the Los Angeles Tennis Open, serving as tournament chair, director and even referee in matches. For three years during the 1980s, the tournament was called the Jack Kramer Open.

In the days before he died, Bob Kramer said his father had been following the U.S. Open in New York.

"He was a big admirer of Roger Federer, who played with a single-handed backhand, like himself, and played a more classic game," Bob Kramer said. "Over the years, he was a big fan of Pete Sampras, and he thought Marit Safin was one of the most-underrated players."

The last tennis match he saw in person was on July 27, when he went to UCLA for the tournament that once bore his name.

Kramer owned more than 100 race horses over the years and made two trips to Del Mar race track this season to watch his horses run.

Kramer's wife, Gloria, died in 2008. Along with Bob, he is survived by four other sons, David, John, Michael and Ron, and by eight grandchildren.

 

[Violette]

Is it just me, or has the world lost the most familiar faces this year?

 

[KindaKinky]

Does THIS Answer Your Question?

Is it just me, or has the world lost the most familiar faces this year?

http://d.yimg.com/a/p/ap/20090915/capt.89527313b55b4854bac1197bf83af638.obit_swayze_nyps105.jpg

Publicist: Patrick Swayze dies at 57
By CHRISTY LEMIRE, AP Entertainment Writer Christy Lemire, Ap Entertainment Writer 1 min ago

LOS ANGELES – Patrick Swayze, the hunky actor who danced his way into viewers' hearts with "Dirty Dancing" and then broke them with "Ghost," died Monday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 57.

"Patrick Swayze passed away peacefully today with family at his side after facing the challenges of his illness for the last 20 months," said a statement released Monday evening by his publicist, Annett Wolf. No other details were given.

Fans of the actor were saddened to learn in March 2008 that Swayze was suffering from a particularly deadly form of cancer.

He had kept working despite the diagnosis, putting together a memoir with his wife and shooting "The Beast," an A&E drama series for which he had already made the pilot. It drew a respectable 1.3 million viewers when the 13 episodes ran in 2009, but A&E said it had reluctantly decided not to renew it for a second season.

Swayze said he opted not to use painkilling drugs while making "The Beast" because they would have taken the edge off his performance. He acknowledged that time might be running out given the grim nature of the disease.

When he first went public with the illness, some reports gave him only weeks to live, but his doctor said his situation was "considerably more optimistic" than that.

"I'd say five years is pretty wishful thinking," Swayze told ABC's Barbara Walters in early 2009. "Two years seems likely if you're going to believe statistics. I want to last until they find a cure, which means I'd better get a fire under it."

A three-time Golden Globe nominee, Swayze became a star with his performance as the misunderstood bad-boy Johnny Castle in "Dirty Dancing." As the son of a choreographer who began his career in musical theater, he seemed a natural to play the role.

A coming-of-age romance starring Jennifer Grey as an idealistic young woman on vacation with her family and Swayze as the Catskills resort's sexy (and much older) dance instructor, the film made great use of both his grace on his feet and his muscular physique.

It became an international phenomenon in the summer of 1987, spawning albums, an Oscar-winning hit song in "(I've Had) the Time of My Life," stage productions and a sequel, 2004's "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights," in which he made a cameo.

Swayze performed and co-wrote a song on the soundtrack, the ballad "She's Like the Wind," inspired by his wife, Lisa Niemi. The film also gave him the chance to utter the now-classic line, "Nobody puts Baby in a corner."

And it allowed him to poke fun at himself on a "Saturday Night Live" episode, in which he played a wannabe Chippendales dancer alongside the corpulent — and frighteningly shirtless — Chris Farley.

A major crowdpleaser, the film drew only mixed reviews from critics, though Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times, "Given the limitations of his role, that of a poor but handsome sex-object abused by the rich women at Kellerman's Mountain House, Mr. Swayze is also good. ... He's at his best — as is the movie — when he's dancing."

Swayze followed that up with the 1989 action flick "Road House," in which he played a bouncer at a rowdy bar. But it was his performance in 1990's "Ghost" that showed his vulnerable, sensitive side. He starred as a murdered man trying to communicate with his fiancee (Demi Moore) — with great frustration and longing — through a psychic played by Whoopi Goldberg.

Swayze said at the time that he fought for the role of Sam Wheat (director Jerry Zucker wanted Kevin Kline) but once he went in for an audition and read six scenes, he got it.

Why did he want the part so badly? "It made me cry four or five times," he said of Bruce Joel Rubin's Oscar-winning script in an AP interview.

"Ghost" provided yet another indelible musical moment: Swayze and Moore sensually molding pottery together to the strains of the Righteous Brothers' "Unchained Melody." It also earned a best-picture nomination and a supporting-actress Oscar for Goldberg, who said she wouldn't have won if it weren't for Swayze.

"When I won my Academy Award, the only person I really thanked was Patrick," Goldberg said in March 2008 on the ABC daytime talk show "The View."

Swayze himself earned three Golden Globe nominations, for "Dirty Dancing," "Ghost" and 1995's "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar," which further allowed him to toy with his masculine image. The role called for him to play a drag queen on a cross-country road trip alongside Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo.

His heartthrob status almost kept him from being considered for the role of Vida Boheme.

"I couldn't get seen on it because everyone viewed me as terminally heterosexually masculine-macho," he told the AP then. But he transformed himself so completely that when his screen test was sent to Steven Spielberg, whose Amblin pictures produced "To Wong Foo," Spielberg didn't recognize him.

Among his earlier films, Swayze was part of the star-studded lineup of up-and-comers in Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 adaptation of S.E. Hinton's novel "The Outsiders," alongside Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Emilio Estevez and Diane Lane. Swayze played Darrel "Dary" Curtis, the oldest of three wayward brothers — and essentially the father figure — in a poor family in small-town Oklahoma.

Other '80s films included "Red Dawn," "Grandview U.S.A." (for which he also provided choreography) and "Youngblood," once more with Lowe, as Canadian hockey teammates.

In the '90s, he made such eclectic films as "Point Break" (1991), in which he played the leader of a band of bank-robbing surfers, and the family Western "Tall Tale" (1995), in which he starred as Pecos Bill. He appeared on the cover of People magazine as its "Sexiest Man Alive" in 1991, but his career tapered off toward the end of the 1990s, when he also had stay in rehab for alcohol abuse. In 2001, he appeared in the cult favorite "Donnie Darko," and in 2003 he returned to the New York stage with "Chicago"; 2006 found him in the musical "Guys and Dolls" in London.

Swayze was born in 1952 in Houston, the son of Jesse Swayze and choreographer Patsy Swayze, whose films include "Urban Cowboy."

He played football but also was drawn to dance and theater, performing with the Feld, Joffrey and Harkness Ballets and appearing on Broadway as Danny Zuko in "Grease." But he turned to acting in 1978 after a series of injuries.

Within a couple years of moving to Los Angeles, he made his debut in the roller-disco movie "Skatetown, U.S.A." The eclectic cast included Scott Baio, Flip Wilson, Maureen McCormack and Billy Barty.

Swayze had a couple of movies in the works when his diagnosis was announced, including the drama "Powder Blue," starring Jessica Biel, Forest Whitaker and his younger brother, Don, which was scheduled for release this year.

Off-screen, he was an avid conservationist who was moved by his time in Africa to shine a light on "man's greed and absolute unwillingness to operate according to Mother Nature's laws," he told the AP in 2004.

Swayze was married since 1975 to Niemi, a fellow dancer who took lessons with his mother; they met when he was 19 and she was 15. A licensed pilot, Niemi would fly her husband from Los Angeles to Northern California for treatment at Stanford University Medical Center, People magazine reported in a cover story.

Baby's going to have to find a way out of that corner by herself now…

 

[Beco]

RIP Patrick

 

[Violette]

Ah damn... It's NOT just me...RIP Patrick Swayze

 

[JennyOmanHill]

http://img2.timeinc.net/ew/dynamic/imgs/040924/13161__snl_l.jpg

 

[Bacigalupo]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZyJCV_dyug

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Inspiration for 'Norma Rae' Dies at 68

RALEIGH, N.C. (Sept. 14) — Crystal Lee Sutton, whose fight to unionize Southern textile plants with low pay and poor conditions was dramatized in the film "Norma Rae," has died. She was 68.

Sutton died Friday in a hospice after a long battle with brain cancer, her son, Jay Jordan, said Monday.

"She fought it as long as she could and she crossed on over to her new life," he said.

Actress Sally Field portrayed a character based on Sutton in the movie and won a best-actress Academy Award.

Field said in a statement Sutton was "a remarkable woman whose brave struggles have left a lasting impact on this country and without doubt, on me personally. Portraying Crystal Lee Sutton in 'Norma Rae,' however loosely based, not only elevated me as an actress, but as a human being."

In 1973, Sutton was a 33-year-old mother of three earning $2.65 an hour folding towels at J.P. Stevens when a manager fired her for pro-union activity.
In a final act of defiance before police hauled her out, Sutton, who had worked at the plant for 16 years, wrote "UNION" on a piece of cardboard and climbed onto a table on the plant floor. Other employees responded by shutting down their machines.

Union organizers had targeted J.P. Stevens, then the country's second-largest textile manufacturer, because the industry was deeply entwined in Southern culture and spread across the region's small towns. However, North Carolina continues to have one of the lowest percentages of unionized workers in the country.

Bruce Raynor, president of Workers United and executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union, worked with Sutton to organize the Stevens plants. In 1974, the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union won the right to represent 3,000 employees at seven Roanoke Rapids plants in northeastern North Carolina.

"Crystal was an amazing symbol of workers standing up in the South against overwhelming odds — and standing up and winning," Raynor said Monday. "The fact that Crystal was a woman in the '70s, leading a struggle of thousands of other textile workers against very powerful, virulently anti-union mill companies, inspired a whole generation of people — of women workers, workers of color and white workers."

Sutton's son said his mother kept a photo of Field in the movie's climactic scene on her living room wall at her home in Burlington, about 20 miles east of Greensboro. But despite what many people think, she got little profit from the movie or an earlier book written about her, he said.

"When they find out she lived very, very modestly, even poorly, in Burlington, they're surprised," he said.

Jordan said his mother spent years as a labor organizer in the 1970s. She later became a certified nursing assistant in 1988 but had not been able to work for several years because of illnesses.

"She never would have been rich. She would have given it to anyone she called the working class poor, people that were deprived," Jordan said.
Sutton donated her letters and papers to Alamance Community College in 2007. She said: "I didn't want them to go to some fancy university; I wanted them to go to a college that served the ordinary folks."

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Medal-Winning Boxer Dies at 27

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LONDON (Sept. 15) - Darren Sutherland, who won an Olympic bronze medal in boxing at last year's Beijing Games, has been found dead at his home, manager Frank Maloney said. He was 27.

Sutherland was found hanged at his home Monday by Maloney, who was taken to the hospital suffering from shock. Tests revealed that the 55-year-old manager had a heart attack.

Sutherland, an Irishman who was unbeaten in his first four pro fights, was due to appear with Maloney at a news conference Tuesday to talk about his next fight, which had been scheduled for Oct. 16.

Olympic middleweight champion James DeGale, who beat Sutherland in Beijing, paid tribute to his former rival.

"He had an Olympic bronze medal and his whole life to look forward to," the Englishman said. "He had a great future and my heart goes out to everyone who knew him."

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Faith or Fear Bassist Dies Onstage During Show

Faith or Fear bassist Clarence 'C.J.' Jenkins died this Sept. 13 of an apparent heart attack while his band was playing onstage. Jenkins, 50, collapsed just before the Philadelphia-area thrash band finished their set at Millville, N.J.'s Arts, Music and Antiques Festival, New Jersey's Daily Journal reports. Guitarist Chris Bombeke and other bystanders performed CPR on Jenkins until medical personnel arrive. He was rushed to Vineland's South Jersey Healthcare Regional Medical Center, where we was pronounced dead.

A thrash band in the vein of Exodus or Overkill, Faith or Fear formed in 1985. Their 1988 Combat/Relativity album 'The Punishment Area' made them a popular regional band and got them national recognition as well. In addition to playing countless Philadelphia-area shows, they had toured with Sepultura before breaking up in 1991. The band reunited last year, and their latest album, 'Instruments of Death,' had come out in June. The band was playing in their hometown of Millville for the first time in 20 years on Sunday when Jenkins collapsed.

A musician through and through, Jenkins had been working at Musikraft, a company that made and serviced guitar necks and bodies. "We will all greatly miss your immense musical talents, oustanding craftsmanship, boundless knowledge, guidance, and inspiring passion and enthusiasm," a statement said on the company's Web site. "Most of all we will miss your friendship and your conversation. We are lucky to have known you. Your spirit will live on in us all forever."

"I'm just happy he went out like that," Bombeke told the Daily Journal. "He went out to a huge crowd. I had to pry that bass out of his hand." Before Jenkins' death, Faith or Fear had been considering touring Germany, Japan and South America, where audiences still have a deep appreciation of '80s thrash. Bombeke says that while his immediate thought was that there would be no Faith or Fear without their original bassist, that he hasn't decided whether or not they're going to retire the band for good.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

NCAA president Myles Brand dies after year-long battle with cancer

After a year-long battle with pancreatic cancer, NCAA President Myles Brand has died at the age of 67.

Brand served as the NCAA's president since January 2003 and led a strong initiative in academic reform. Prior to serving as the NCAA's president, Brand was the president of Indiana University.

"Myles Brand was a dear friend and a great academic leader. He was a tireless advocate for the student-athlete," said Michael Adams, president of the University of Georgia and chair of the NCAA Executive Committee in a statement released by the NCAA. "Indeed, he worked to ensure that the student was first in the student-athlete model. He will be greatly missed."

Brand came into the national spotlight while serving as president at Indiana, where he fired Bob Knight as men's basketball coach. Knight had won three national championships while at Indiana, but his famous temper continued to get him in hot water with the community and Brand eventually acted.

He was the first university president to head the college sports' governing body. Brand was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in December but remained at work through chemotherapy.

Brand, who once said he wanted to "turn down the volume" on college sports, was known as a champion of academic reform

 

[KindaKinky]

http://d.yimg.com/a/p/ap/20090917/capt.1d08d475a0a04894b491937bc7aea733.correction_obit_mary_travers_ny128.jpg

Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary dead at 72

By JAY LINDSAY, Associated Press Writer Jay Lindsay, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 1 min ago

BOSTON – Mary Travers, one-third of the popular 1960s folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary who were perhaps best known for their hit "Puff (The Magic Dragon)," died in a Connecticut hospital after battling leukemia for several years. She was 72.

The band's publicist, Heather Lylis, said Travers died Wednesday at Danbury Hospital.

Bandmate Peter Yarrow said that in her final months, Travers handled her declining health with bravery and generosity, showing her love to friends and family "with great dignity and without restraint."

"It was, as Mary always was, honest and completely authentic," he said. "That's the way she sang, too; honestly and with complete authenticity."

Noel "Paul" Stookey, the trio's other member, praised Travers for her inspiring activism, "especially in her defense of the defenseless."

"I am deadened and heartsick beyond words to consider a life without Mary Travers and honored beyond my wildest dreams to have shared her spirit and her career," he said.

Mary Allin Travers was born on Nov. 9, 1936 in Louisville, Ky., the daughter of journalists who moved the family to Manhattan's bohemian Greenwich Village. She quickly became enamored with folk performers like the Weavers, and was soon performing with Pete Seeger, a founding member of the Weavers who lived in the same building as the Travers family.

With a group called the Song Swappers, Travers backed Seeger on one album and two shows at Carnegie Hall. She also appeared (as one of a group of folk singers) in a short-lived 1958 Broadway show called "The Next President," starring comedian Mort Sahl.

It wasn't until she met up with Yarrow and Stookey that Travers would taste success on her own. Yarrow was managed by Albert B. Grossman, who later worked in the same capacity for Bob Dylan.

In the book "Positively 4th Street" by David Hajdu, Travers recalled that Grossman's strategy was to "find a nobody that he could nurture and make famous."

The budding trio, boosted by the arrangements of Milt Okun, spent seven months rehearsing in her Greenwich Village apartment before their 1961 public debut at the Bitter End.

Their beatnik look — a tall blonde flanked by a pair of goateed guitarists — was a part of their initial appeal. As The New York Times critic Robert Shelton put it not long afterward, "Sex appeal as a keystone for a folk-song group was the idea of the group's manager ... who searched for months for `the girl' until he decided on Miss Travers."

The trio mingled their music with liberal politics, both onstage and off. Their version of "If I Had a Hammer" became an anthem for racial equality. Other hits included "Lemon Tree," "Leaving on a Jet Plane" and "Puff (The Magic Dragon.)"

They were early champions of Dylan and performed his "Blowin' in the Wind" at the August 1963 March on Washington.

And they were vehement in their opposition to the Vietnam War, managing to stay true to their liberal beliefs while creating music that resonated in the American mainstream.

The group collected five Grammy Awards for their three-part harmony on enduring songs like "Leaving on a Jet Plane," "Puff (The Magic Dragon)" and "Blowin' in the Wind."

At one point in 1963, three of their albums were in the top six Billboard best-selling LPs as they became the biggest stars of the folk revival movement.

It was heady stuff for a trio that had formed in the early 1960s in Greenwich Village, running through simple tunes like "Mary Had a Little Lamb."

Their debut album came out in 1962, and immediately scored a pair of hits with their versions of "If I Had a Hammer" and "Lemon Tree." The former won them Grammys for best folk recording, and best performance by a vocal group.

"Moving" was the follow-up, including the hit tale of innocence lost, "Puff (The Magic Dragon)" — which reached No. 2 on the charts, and generated since-discounted reports that it was an ode to marijuana.

Album No. 3, "In the Wind," featured three songs by the 22-year-old Dylan. "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" and "Blowin' in the Wind" both reached the top 10, bringing Dylan's material to a massive audience; the latter shipped 300,000 copies during one two-week period.

"Blowin' In the Wind" became an another civil rights anthem, and Peter, Paul and Mary fully embraced the cause. They marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Ala., and performed with him in Washington.

In a 1966 New York Times interview, Travers said the three worked well together because they respected one another. "There has to be a certain amount of love just in order for you to survive together," she said. "I think a lot of groups have gone down the tubes because they were not able to relate to one another."

With the advent of the Beatles and Dylan's switch to electric guitar, the folk boom disappeared. Travers expressed disdain for folk-rock, telling the Chicago Daily News in 1966 that "it's so badly written. ... When the fad changed from folk to rock, they didn't take along any good writers."

But the trio continued their success, scoring with the tongue-in-cheek single "I Dig Rock and Roll Music," a gentle parody of the Mamas and the Papas, in 1967 and the John Denver-penned "Leaving on a Jet Plane" two years later.

They also continued as boosters for young songwriters, recording numbers written by then-little-known Gordon Lightfoot and Laura Nyro.

In 1969, the group earned their final Grammy for "Peter, Paul and Mommy," which won for best children's album. They disbanded in 1971, launching solo careers — Travers released five albums — that never achieved the heights of their collaborations.

Over the years they enjoyed several reunions, including a performance at a 1978 anti-nuclear benefit organized by Yarrow and a 35th anniversary album, "Lifelines," with fellow folkies Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Dave Van Ronk and Seeger. A boxed set of their music was released in 2004.

They remained politically active as well, performing at the 1995 anniversary of the Kent State shootings and performing for California strawberry pickers.

Travers had undergone a successful bone marrow transplant to treat her leukemia and was able to return to performing after that.

"It was like a miracle," Travers told The Associated Press in 2006. "I'm just feeling fabulous. What's incredible is someone has given your life back. I'm out in the garden today. This time last year I was looking out a window at a hospital." She also said she told the marrow donor "how incredibly grateful I was."

But by mid-2009, Yarrow told WTOP radio in Washington that her condition had worsened again and he thought she would no longer be able to perform.

Travers lived for many years in Redding, Conn. She is survived by her husband, Ethan Robbins and daughters, Alicia and Erika.

 

[KindaKinky]

'Laugh-In' actor Henry Gibson dies at 73

By DERRIK J. LANG, AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang, Ap Entertainment Writer Wed Sep 16, 6:44 pm ET

LOS ANGELES – Henry Gibson, the veteran comic character actor best known for his role reciting offbeat poetry on "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In," has died. He was 73.

Gibson's son, James, said Gibson died Monday at his home in Malibu after a brief battle with cancer.

After serving in the Air Force and studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Gibson — born James Bateman in Germantown, Pa., in 1935 — created his Henry Gibson comic persona, a pun on playwright Henrik Ibsen's name, while working as a theater actor in New York. For three seasons on "Laugh-In," he delivered satirical poems while gripping a giant flower.

After "Laugh-In," Gibson went on to appear in several films, including "The Long Goodbye" and "Nashville," which earned him a Golden Globe nomination. His most memorable roles included playing the menacing neighbor opposite Tom Hanks in "The 'Burbs," the befuddled priest in "Wedding Crashers" and voicing Wilbur the Pig in the animated "Charlotte's Web."

His recent work included playing cantankerous Judge Clarence Brown on ABC's "Boston Legal" for five seasons and providing the voice of sardonic, eye-patched reporter Bob Jenkins on Fox's "King of the Hill." In 2001, Gibson returned to the stage in New York in the Encores! New York City Center production of Rodgers and Hart's "A Connecticut Yankee."

Gibson is survived by three sons and two grandchildren.

http://d.yimg.com/a/p/ap/20090916/capt.264e61f89cc84604b7af5f6e125b33df.obit_gibson_nyet490.jpg

 

[Igor_1066]

Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary dead at 72

"By JAY LINDSAY, Associated Press Writer Jay Lindsay, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 1 min ago

BOSTON – Mary Travers, one-third of the popular 1960s folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary who were perhaps best known for their hit "Puff (The Magic Dragon)," died in a Connecticut hospital after battling leukemia for several years. She was 72.

The band's publicist, Heather Lylis, said Travers died Wednesday at Danbury Hospital.

Bandmate Peter Yarrow said that in her final months, Travers handled her declining health with bravery and generosity, showing her love to friends and family "with great dignity and without restraint."

"It was, as Mary always was, honest and completely authentic," he said. "That's the way she sang, too; honestly and with complete authenticity."

Noel "Paul" Stookey, the trio's other member, praised Travers for her inspiring activism, "especially in her defense of the defenseless."

"I am deadened and heartsick beyond words to consider a life without Mary Travers and honored beyond my wildest dreams to have shared her spirit and her career," he said.

Mary Allin Travers was born on Nov. 9, 1936 in Louisville, Ky., the daughter of journalists who moved the family to Manhattan's bohemian Greenwich Village. She quickly became enamored with folk performers like the Weavers, and was soon performing with Pete Seeger, a founding member of the Weavers who lived in the same building as the Travers family.

With a group called the Song Swappers, Travers backed Seeger on one album and two shows at Carnegie Hall. She also appeared (as one of a group of folk singers) in a short-lived 1958 Broadway show called "The Next President," starring comedian Mort Sahl.

It wasn't until she met up with Yarrow and Stookey that Travers would taste success on her own. Yarrow was managed by Albert B. Grossman, who later worked in the same capacity for Bob Dylan.

In the book "Positively 4th Street" by David Hajdu, Travers recalled that Grossman's strategy was to "find a nobody that he could nurture and make famous."

The budding trio, boosted by the arrangements of Milt Okun, spent seven months rehearsing in her Greenwich Village apartment before their 1961 public debut at the Bitter End.

Their beatnik look — a tall blonde flanked by a pair of goateed guitarists — was a part of their initial appeal. As The New York Times critic Robert Shelton put it not long afterward, "Sex appeal as a keystone for a folk-song group was the idea of the group's manager ... who searched for months for `the girl' until he decided on Miss Travers."

The trio mingled their music with liberal politics, both onstage and off. Their version of "If I Had a Hammer" became an anthem for racial equality. Other hits included "Lemon Tree," "Leaving on a Jet Plane" and "Puff (The Magic Dragon.)"

They were early champions of Dylan and performed his "Blowin' in the Wind" at the August 1963 March on Washington.

And they were vehement in their opposition to the Vietnam War, managing to stay true to their liberal beliefs while creating music that resonated in the American mainstream.

The group collected five Grammy Awards for their three-part harmony on enduring songs like "Leaving on a Jet Plane," "Puff (The Magic Dragon)" and "Blowin' in the Wind."

At one point in 1963, three of their albums were in the top six Billboard best-selling LPs as they became the biggest stars of the folk revival movement.

It was heady stuff for a trio that had formed in the early 1960s in Greenwich Village, running through simple tunes like "Mary Had a Little Lamb."

Their debut album came out in 1962, and immediately scored a pair of hits with their versions of "If I Had a Hammer" and "Lemon Tree." The former won them Grammys for best folk recording, and best performance by a vocal group.

"Moving" was the follow-up, including the hit tale of innocence lost, "Puff (The Magic Dragon)" — which reached No. 2 on the charts, and generated since-discounted reports that it was an ode to marijuana.

Album No. 3, "In the Wind," featured three songs by the 22-year-old Dylan. "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" and "Blowin' in the Wind" both reached the top 10, bringing Dylan's material to a massive audience; the latter shipped 300,000 copies during one two-week period.

"Blowin' In the Wind" became an another civil rights anthem, and Peter, Paul and Mary fully embraced the cause. They marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Ala., and performed with him in Washington.

In a 1966 New York Times interview, Travers said the three worked well together because they respected one another. "There has to be a certain amount of love just in order for you to survive together," she said. "I think a lot of groups have gone down the tubes because they were not able to relate to one another."

With the advent of the Beatles and Dylan's switch to electric guitar, the folk boom disappeared. Travers expressed disdain for folk-rock, telling the Chicago Daily News in 1966 that "it's so badly written. ... When the fad changed from folk to rock, they didn't take along any good writers."

But the trio continued their success, scoring with the tongue-in-cheek single "I Dig Rock and Roll Music," a gentle parody of the Mamas and the Papas, in 1967 and the John Denver-penned "Leaving on a Jet Plane" two years later.

They also continued as boosters for young songwriters, recording numbers written by then-little-known Gordon Lightfoot and Laura Nyro.

In 1969, the group earned their final Grammy for "Peter, Paul and Mommy," which won for best children's album. They disbanded in 1971, launching solo careers — Travers released five albums — that never achieved the heights of their collaborations.

Over the years they enjoyed several reunions, including a performance at a 1978 anti-nuclear benefit organized by Yarrow and a 35th anniversary album, "Lifelines," with fellow folkies Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Dave Van Ronk and Seeger. A boxed set of their music was released in 2004.

They remained politically active as well, performing at the 1995 anniversary of the Kent State shootings and performing for California strawberry pickers.

Travers had undergone a successful bone marrow transplant to treat her leukemia and was able to return to performing after that.

"It was like a miracle," Travers told The Associated Press in 2006. "I'm just feeling fabulous. What's incredible is someone has given your life back. I'm out in the garden today. This time last year I was looking out a window at a hospital." She also said she told the marrow donor "how incredibly grateful I was."

But by mid-2009, Yarrow told WTOP radio in Washington that her condition had worsened again and he thought she would no longer be able to perform.

Travers lived for many years in Redding, Conn. She is survived by her husband, Ethan Robbins and daughters, Alicia and Erika."

 

[Igor_1066]

Charles Manson follower Susan Atkins dies

Charles Manson follower Susan Atkins dies

By LINDA DEUTSCH (AP) – 6 hours ago

LOS ANGELES — Susan Atkins, a follower of cult leader Charles Manson whose remorseless witness stand confession to killing pregnant actress Sharon Tate in 1969 shocked the world, has died. She was 61 and had been suffering from brain cancer.

Atkins' death comes less than a month after a parole board turned down the terminally ill woman's last chance at freedom on Sept. 2. She was brought to the hearing on a gurney and slept through most of it.

California Department of Corrections spokeswoman Terry Thornton said that Atkins died late Thursday night. She had been diagnosed with brain cancer in 2008, had a leg amputated and was given only a few months to live.

She underwent brain surgery, and in her last months was paralyzed and had difficulty speaking. But she managed to speak briefly at the Sept. 2 hearing, reciting religious verse with the help of her husband, attorney James Whitehouse.

She had been transferred to a skilled nursing facility at the California Central Women's Facility at Chowchilla exactly one year before she died.

Tate, the 26-year-old actress who appeared in the movie "Valley of the Dolls" and was the wife of famed director Roman Polanski, was one of seven murdered in two Los Angeles homes during the Manson cult's bloody rampage in August 1969.

Atkins was the first of the convicted killers to die. Manson and three others involved in the murders — Patricia Krenwinkel, Leslie Van Houten and Charles "Tex" Watson — remain imprisoned under life sentences. Thornton said that at the time of Atkins death she had been in prison longer than any woman currently incarcerated in California.

Atkins, who confessed from the witness stand during her trial, had apologized for her acts numerous times over the years. But 40 years after the murders, she learned that few had forgotten or forgiven what she and other members of the cult had done.

Debra Tate, the slain actress's younger sister, told the parole commissioners Sept. 2 that she "will pray for (Atkins') soul when she draws her last breath, but until then I think she should remain in this controlled situation." Debra Tate noted that she would have a 40-year-old nephew if her sister had lived.

Atkins' prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, had spoken out earlier in favor of release, saying the mercy requested was "minuscule" because Atkins was on her deathbed.

Atkins and her co-defendants were originally sentenced to death but their sentences were reduced to life in prison when capital punishment was briefly outlawed by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1970s.

During the sensational 10-month trial, Atkins, Manson and co-defendants Krenwinkel and Van Houten maintained their innocence. But once they were convicted, the so-called "Manson girls" confessed in graphic detail.

They tried to absolve Manson, the ex-convict who had gathered a "family" of dropouts and runaways to a ranch outside Los Angeles, where he cast himself as the Messiah and led them in an aberrant lifestyle fueled by drugs and communal sex.

Watson had a separate trial and was convicted.

One night in August 1969, Manson dispatched Atkins and others to a wealthy residential section of Los Angeles, telling them, as they recalled, to "do something witchy."

They went to the home of Tate and her husband. He was not home, but Tate, who was 8 1/2 months pregnant, and four others were killed. "Pigs" was scrawled on a door in blood.

The next night, a wealthy grocer and his wife were found stabbed to death in their home across town. "Helter Skelter" was written in blood on the refrigerator.

"I was stoned, man, stoned on acid," Atkins testified during the trial's penalty phase.

"I don't know how many times I stabbed (Tate) and I don't know why I stabbed her," she said. "She kept begging and pleading and begging and pleading and I got sick of listening to it, so I stabbed her."

She said she felt "no guilt for what I've done. It was right then and I still believe it was right." Asked how it could be right to kill, she replied in a dreamy voice, "How can it not be right when it's done with love?"

The matronly, gray-haired Atkins who appeared before a parole board in 2000 cut a far different figure than that of the cocky young defendant some 30 years earlier.

"I don't have to just make amends to the victims and families," she said softly. "I have to make amends to society. I sinned against God and everything this country stands for." She said she had found redemption in Christianity.

The last words she spoke in public at the September hearing were to say in unison with her husband: "My God is an amazing God."

She spent 37 years in the California Institution for Women at Frontera. When she fell ill, she was moved to a medical unit at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla. She died there.

Susan Denise Atkins was born May 7, 1948, in the Los Angeles suburb of San Gabriel. Her mother was stricken with cancer and died when she was 15. Her father, reportedly an alcoholic, sent her and her brother to live with relatives.

While still in her teens, she ran away to San Francisco where she wound up dancing in a topless bar and using drugs. She moved into a commune in the Haight Ashbury district and it was there that she met Manson.

He gave her a cult name, Sadie Mae Glutz, and, when she became pregnant by a "family" member, he helped deliver the baby boy, naming it Zezozoze Zadfrack. His whereabouts are unknown.

The Manson slayings remained unsolved for three months, until Atkins confessed to a cellmate following her arrest on an unrelated charge. Police found Manson and other cult members living in a ranch commune in Death Valley, outside Los Angeles.

Besides Tate, their other victims were celebrity hairdresser Jay Sebring, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, filmmaker Voityck Frykowski and Steven Parent, a friend of Tate's caretaker; and grocery owners Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. Atkins also was convicted with Manson of still another murder, of musician Gary Hinman, in July 1969.

Atkins married twice while in prison. Her first husband, Donald Lee Laisure, purported to be an eccentric Texas millionaire. They quickly divorced. Whitehouse, her second husband, is a Harvard Law School graduate and had recently served as one of her attorneys.

___

EDITOR'S NOTE — Special Correspondent Linda Deutsch, the AP's trial reporter for 40 years, covered the Manson Family trial.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Blues Drummer Sam Carr Dies at 83

Sam Carr, who was considered by many to be one of the best blues drummers, died Monday of congestive heart failure in a nursing home in Clarksdale, Miss. Carr, 83, had played with blues giants like Sonny Boy Williamson II and Buddy Guy.

Raised in the Mississippi Delta, Carr was the son of 1930s blues guitarist and singer Robert McCollum, who recorded as Robert Nighthawk. Carr -- whose father was best known for the song 'Sweet Black Angel' -- played frequently with his dad early in his musical career.

Born Samuel Lee McCollum near Marvel, Ark., Carr was adopted as a toddler by a Mississippi family and lived on a farm near Dundee. He reunited with his estranged father at the age of 16 and worked the door at the clubs where Robert Nighthawk performed.

While he worked initially as a sharecropper, he threw himself into the blues full-time when he moved to St. Louis to play bass with noted harmonica player Tree Top Slim. In the 1960s, Carr returned to his home state of Mississippi and formed the Jelly Roll Kings.

His decade-spanning career earned him several awards from Living Blues magazine as well as the Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts in 2007.

 

[phrodeau]

http://www.lptown.com/CVR/IL/30/IL3003362.b.jpg

Alicia de Larrocha, Pianist, Dies at 86

By ALLAN KOZINN
Published: September 25, 2009
Alicia de Larrocha, the diminutive Spanish pianist esteemed for her elegant Mozart performances and regarded as an incomparable interpreter of Albéniz, Granados, Mompou and other Spanish composers, died on Friday evening in a hospital in Barcelona. She was 86.

Her death was confirmed by Gregor Benko, a piano historian, record producer and family friend. He said she had been in declining health since breaking her hip two years ago.

In a career that began when she was a child — she made her concert debut at 5, and her first recording at 9 — Ms. de Larrocha cultivated a poetic interpretive style in which gracefulness was prized over technical flashiness or grand, temperamental gestures. But her approach, combined with her small stature — she was only 4-foot-9 — was deceptive: early in her career she played all the big Romantic concertos, including those of Liszt and Rachmaninoff, and she could produce a surprisingly large, beautifully sculptured sound.

Even so, it was in music that demanded focus, compactness and subtle coloristic breadth that Ms. de Larrocha excelled. Her Mozart performances, as well as her readings of Bach and Scarlatti, were so carefully detailed and light in texture that even as public taste shifted toward the more scholarly interpretations of period-instrument specialists, Ms. de Larrocha’s readings retained their allure. She was closely associated with the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, where she first performed in 1971. Her appearances remained among the festival’s hottest tickets until her final performance there in 2003.

Her approach to Mozart also served her well in larger works, like the Beethoven concertos. When she belatedly recorded the full cycle, with Riccardo Chailly and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, in 1986, her performance was notable for the devotional serenity she brought to the slow movements and her fleet but dignified renderings of the Allegros. But even there she retained a touch from a former age: instead of playing Beethoven’s own cadenzas in the Fourth Concerto, she played those of the composer Carl Reinecke, because those were the only ones available to her as a student in the 1930s.

Ms. de Larrocha’s most enduring contribution, however, was her championship of Spanish composers. Although Arthur Rubinstein played some of this repertory, few other pianists outside Spain did, and none with Ms. de Larrocha’s flair. She made enduring recordings of Albéniz’s “Iberia” and Granados’s “Goyescas,” and helped ease those works into the standard piano canon. She also made a powerful case for the piano music of Joaquín Turina, a composer otherwise known mostly for the guitar music he wrote for Andrés Segovia, and she almost single-handedly built a following for Federico Mompou, a Catalan composer of quietly shimmering, poetic works.

Although she was often regarded as partial to Granados — her mother and an aunt were among his piano students, but he died before Ms. de Larrocha was born — she refused to cite a favorite.

“I don’t believe there is a ‘best’ of anything in this life,” she said in a 1978 interview with Contemporary Keyboard. “I would say, though, that Granados was one of the great Spanish composers, and that, in my opinion, he was the only one that captured the real Romantic flavor. His style was aristocratic, elegant and poetic — completely different from Falla and Albéniz. To me, each of them is a different world. Falla was the one who really captured the spirit of the Gypsy music. And Albéniz, I think was more international than the others. Even though his music is Spanish in flavor, his style is completely Impressionistic.”

Alicia de Larrocha y de la Calle was born in Barcelona on May 23, 1923, to Eduardo de Larrocha and Maria Teresa de la Calle. Although her mother gave up any ambition of a performing career when she married, Ms. de Larrocha’s aunt was a piano teacher at the Academia Marshall, a school founded by the pianist Frank Marshall, who was also a Granados student.

Ms. de Larrocha began to demand piano lessons when she was 3, after visiting her aunt as she taught students. At the keyboard on her own, Ms. de Larrocha imitated what she had seen her aunt’s students do, and impressed her aunt sufficiently that she took Ms. de Larrocha to Marshall. He was less encouraging. He said it was too early to start lessons, and suggested that Ms. de Larrocha be kept away from the piano. Ms. de Larrocha said that once her aunt locked the instrument, she banged her head on the floor until Marshall relented and began to teach her.

She made progress quickly. At 5 she made her concert debut, performing works by Bach and Mozart at the 1929 International Exhibition in Barcelona. She made her orchestral debut with a Mozart concerto in Madrid when she was 11.

Happenstance led to her first recordings, when she was 9. She was taken to a recording studio to watch the great Spanish mezzo-soprano Conchita Supervia at work, and the singer invited Ms. de Larrocha to record something. She played two Chopin works, a nocturne and a waltz.

Mr. Benko has written of these recordings that “it is uncanny to note that this 9-year-old demonstrates all the elements of Chopin’s style — tone, color, legato phrasing and singing line — by means of finger technique alone, since we know Alicia’s legs were barely long enough to reach the pedals.”

When Marshall, Ms. de Larrocha’s only teacher, left Spain in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War — he was, Ms. de Larrocha said, a target of the Loyalists — the young pianist continued her studies on her own. She resumed working with Marshall after he returned in 1939, and she took over the direction of Marshall’s academy after he died in 1959. Her co-director was the pianist Juan Torra, whom she married in 1958. Mr. Torra died in 1982. They had two children, a son, Juan, and a daughter, Alicia, who survive her.

Ms. de Larrocha confined her performances mostly to Spain until 1947, when she undertook a European tour that included recitals in Paris, Geneva and Brussels. She made her American debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1955, performing Mozart’s Concerto in A (K. 488) and Falla’s “Nights in the Gardens of Spain.” That same year she had her New York recital debut at Town Hall. Her program, which included Beethoven’s large Sonata in A flat (Op. 110), Schumann’s “Carnaval” and works by Carlos Surinach, Granados and Albéniz, quickly established her strengths.

Reviewing the concert in The New York Times, Harold C. Schonberg wrote of her Spanish set that “she had a way of idiomatically shaping a musical phrase that cannot be taught — a sudden dynamic shift, a note instinctively accented, a touch of the pedal, an application of rubato. Her rhythm was extraordinarily flexible. Obviously this music is in the pianist’s blood. She invested it with a degree of life and imagination that not many pianists before the public today could begin to duplicate.”

Yet Ms. de Larrocha was a reluctant star. She returned to Spain; taught at the Marshall academy; made a series of exquisite recordings for the Spanish Hispavox label, which were later licensed for release by Vox and other American companies; and played occasional recitals in Europe. She returned to the United States after Herbert Breslin, a concert manager, heard her Hispavox recording of “Iberia” and brought her back for performances in 1965, including her first appearance with the New York Philharmonic.

Mr. Breslin also built her recording career, getting Ms. de Larrocha signed to an international recording contract with the British Decca label. For Decca she remade the Spanish works that she had recorded for Hispavox, and added many others, as well as a great deal of Mozart and albums of Bach, Franck, Ravel and Rachmaninoff. She recorded for Decca until 1990, when she took a new look at her repertory for BMG Classics.

“There are two kinds of repertory Alicia plays,” Mr. Breslin said in 1978. “Things she plays extremely well, and things she plays better than anyone else. But what I think makes her a phenomenon is that she doesn’t give the impression of being a great personality. She’s cool as a cucumber. Onstage, she doesn’t even like to look at the audience. So what the public is responding to is something in the music.”

After 1965, Ms. de Larrocha visited the United States regularly, and continued making annual recital, concerto and, occasionally, chamber music appearances, until her retirement in 2003. She was, as always, self-conscious about her size. In the mid-1990s she complained that she was shrinking: by 1995 her height was only 4-foot-5, and where her small hand had been able to reach the interval of a 10th in her heyday, she was by then able to reach only a 9th, which limited her repertory somewhat.

But over all her technique never failed her, nor did her sense of color, especially in the twin pillars of her repertory, Spanish music and Mozart. She continued to earn glowing reviews.

When she played her final Carnegie Hall performance — the chamber version of Mozart’s Concerto No. 12 in A (K. 414), with the Tokyo String Quartet, in November 2002 — The New York Times reported that, “The small details — the trills and turns that adorn the score — as well as the more expansive pianism in the cadenzas and the glowing Andante, had considerable energy behind them.”

The review continued: “Her performance had the bright, light quality that she brought to her playing in the ’70s, when her appearances at the Mostly Mozart Festival were among the highlights of New York summers. If anything, her approach to Mozart on Monday was more fluid, more carefully nuanced than it was then.”

 

[phrodeau]

http://www.washingtonspeakers.com/cropped_speakers/Safire_William_WEB150X200.jpg

Pulitzer prize-winning columnist William Safire dies
The conservative New York Times commentator and former speechwriter to Nixon suffered from pancreatic cancer

Daniel Nasaw in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Monday 28 September 2009 01.50 BST

William Safire, the Pulitzer prize-winning columnist, English language stickler and former speechwriter to President Richard Nixon, died yesterday, aged 79. He was diagnosed with cancer and died in a hospice in Maryland, his assistant, Rosemary Shields, told the Associated Press. The New York Times said he died of pancreatic cancer.

A columnist for the New York Times for more than 30 years, Safire won the 1978 Pulitzer prize for his writings on a now obscure scandal involving an appointee of President Jimmy Carter.

He was on the Pulitzer board from 1995 to 2004.

The following year, the New York Times launched On Language, a weekly magazine column in the New York Times magazine in which Safire would dissect popular and political usage of the English language, tracing the origin of phrases such as "dirty tricks" and "suspension of disbelief". He wrote 10 books on English, leading the Times to dub him the most widely read writer on the language.

As a political columnist, Safire described himself as a libertarian conservative. He supported President George Bush's invasion of Iraq, for instance, but opposed what he believed were the administration's encroachments on civil liberties.

Before joining the paper in 1973, Safire worked as a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune, as a radio a television producer and as a US army correspondent.

As a public relations agent in the late 1950s and 1960s, he worked on retainer for Nixon, setting up the famous "kitchen debate" in Moscow between him and Nikita Khrushchev that pitted capitalism against communism.

After working on retainer for him for several years, in 1968 Safire joined Nixon's presidential campaign, writing speeches and outlining strategy on how to clean up the two-time loser's image and put him in the White House. On the Nixon staff, he was known for his ostentatious plaid coats and air of intellectual pretension, according to the historian Rick Perlstein. When Nixon was elected in 1968, Safire went to the White House as a senior speech writer.

He published several novels, a dictionary, a history, anthologies and works of commentary.

Safire was born 17 December, 1929 in New York City. He attended Syracuse University in New York state, but dropped out after two years. He later joined the school's board of trustees. He is survived by his wife, the former Helene Belmar Julius, two children and a granddaughter.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Las Vegas Impresario Bob Stupak Dies

http://www.freewebs.com/jodo777d58/Bob%20Stupak.jpg

Though he was a Las Vegas impresario and master of publicity ploys, Bob Stupak never saw some of his grandest visions come true, such as constructing a giant King Kong on the side of a tower, or building a casino in the shape of the sinking Titanic. Expensive efforts to achieve political office also faltered.

But the casino operator and fixture in the local media did realize his dream of building the Stratosphere tower as a giant monument to himself and to the city that at once embraced and derided him. Mr. Stupak died Sept. 25 after struggling with leukemia. He was 67 years old.

He was a flamboyant throw-back to the casino mecca's anything-goes early days, though he operated at a time when corporations were entering the casino business and working to transform it into something more respectable. He stayed in the public eye in part because of the stunts he reportedly staged over a three decade career. He spent $150,000 to play basketball with the Harlem Globetrotters. He challenged Donald Trump to a million dollar bet over a board game, though Mr. Trump didn't take the bait. He placed a $1 million 1989 Super Bowl bet (and won). In a press release, he announced that he had sent his female friend 1,001 bouquets of roses.

His crowning achievement was the Stratosphere, which transformed the burgeoning city's skyline and featured thrill rides at the top of a 1,149 foot tower. "If ever there was a guy beyond the rim of reality, there was Bob. But somehow he made reality happen," said John Woodrum, the owner of the Klondike casino and a longtime friend of Mr. Stupak's.

Mr. Stupak grew up in Pittsburgh and spent most of his life surrounded by gamblers. His father operated a floating illegal craps game for 50 years. A high school dropout who began operating gambling ventures in army barracks, Mr. Stupak later led a business selling dinner coupon books in Australia.

He brought that to Las Vegas in 1972 and not long after bought a parcel of land on Las Vegas Boulevard in a downtrodden area between the resort casinos on the Strip and older casinos downtown. He said later that he didn't realize it wasn't the Strip.

Gifted at superlatives, he opened Bob Stupak's World Famous Historic Gambling Museum. There, according to local historian Michael Green, he advertised that customers could see a $10,000 bill. (It was a fake.)

After the museum burned down under mysterious circumstances, he built Bob Stupak's Vegas World in 1979 with a $1 million loan. With a vague outer space theme, Mr. Stupak filled the casino with such oddities as moon rocks, a tic-tac-toe-playing rooster that always won, and new house-friendly casino games such as "crapless craps."

Vegas World advertised "Virtually Free" Las Vegas vacations through schemes that later came under the wrath of regulators. It generated $100 million in revenue at its peak, and Mr. Stupak continued to promote its most notorious asset: himself.

By the time Mr. Stupak ran for mayor in 1987, his carnival-like flamboyancy wasn't always welcomed by other operators and establishment figures.
"We were an off-colored industry to start with in most people's minds, and we worked very, very hard over the years to try to legitimize ourselves," Mr. Woodrum said. "We didn't want somebody giving us a black eye. But Bob was out there by himself. I liked him because he made me laugh. He was one of those crazy guys who did off-the-wall things."

Mr. Stupak refused to use the word "gaming," as others in the industry preferred, according to the Las Vegas Business Press, and instead stuck with "gambling." He was a fixture in the poker rooms and sports books of casinos around the Strip and downtown, and said he gambled every single day of his adult life.

"Honey, you're talking to a sucker," he was quoted as saying in "Winner Take All," a book about the casino industry. "Gambling is a vice... You can't sell the poison unless you're willing to take it yourself."

Year after year, Mr. Stupak was voted the "most annoying Las Vegan" or "community's biggest embarrassment" in a poll in the local newspaper.

Mr. Stupak's image improved somewhat following a nearly-fatal motorcycle crash in 1995. The Las Vegas City Council dubbed him "Mr. Las Vegas." He turned some of his stunts into good deeds, opening a community center in a poor neighborhood and offering a $100,000 reward for the killer of a murdered seven-year-old boy.

By the end of the 1980s, as developers began to build larger resorts on the Strip, Mr. Stupak realized that he needed something more to entice gamblers to his out-of-the-way casino. The idea for a $550 million sky-high tower and casino grew out of more modest plans to build a really big sign. He originally financed the Stratosphere through time-shares and Vegas World revenues, but the construction was foiled by a fire and eventually ran out of money.

Locals doubted it would ever be complete, and began calling it Stupak's Stump.

The construction was rescued by Grand Casinos, run by fellow poker player Lyle Berman. Mr. Stupak's involvement in the final completion was limited. He said he wasn't happy with the way the casino was laid out -- not even the statue of himself erected in the entrance way, according to later interviews.

Its opening in 1996 was a disaster and within a year the Stratosphere filed for bankruptcy -- the largest in the history of the state at the time.
Carl Ichan bought the debt and turned it into a profitable venture. Despite the foibles, its completion was Mr. Stupak's "lifetime achievement," he and others said.

"You never see skyline picture of Las Vegas where you don't see the Stratosphere," said Jan Jones, the former Las Vegas mayor who is now a Harrah's Entertainment executive. "It rises above everything."

Mr. Stupak regretted that aviation regulators didn't let him build an even taller tower.

"Not having the tallest structure in the world is heartbreaking," he told a reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 1996. "It was right there within grasp."


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[Igor_1066]

Woman who inspired Beatles' Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds dies

Woman who inspired Beatles' Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds dies aged just 46 after battling disease

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 5:22 PM on 28th September 2009


Inspiration: Lucy Vodden (nee O'Donnell) died after battling lupus, an incurable disease

The woman who inspired the classic Beatles song Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, has died aged 46, a charity said today.

The song featured on the ground-breaking 1967 album Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

John Lennon's elder son Julian said it was inspired by a picture he drew of his classmate Lucy O'Donnell when they were at a nursery school in Weybridge, Surrey, in 1966.

Julian said he took the picture home and showed it to his father, explaining: 'It's Lucy in the sky with diamonds.'

When Lennon and Paul McCartney's song was subsequently released, it caused controversy because of its hallucinogenic theme and supposed reference to the drug LSD.

The former classmates resumed their friendship in recent months when Lennon heard that Lucy, who was married to Ross Vodden and lived in Surbiton, Surrey, had become ill with lupus.

The autoimmune disease causes the body to attack its own cells, causing immense pain and organ breakdown.

The St Thomas Lupus Trust, which had been supporting Mr and Mrs Vodden during her illness, said she died last Tuesday.

Angie Davidson, campaign director of the trust, said: 'Everyone at the Louise Coote Lupus Unit was dreadfully shocked by the death of Lucy. She was a great supporter of ours and a real fighter.



Muse: Julian Lennon, pictured with father John and stepmother Yoko Ono, drew a picture of Lucy O'Donnell and took it home

'It's so sad that she has finally lost the battle she fought so bravely for so long.'

The trust said that Lennon and his mother Cynthia were 'shocked and saddened' by Mrs Vodden's death.

A book of condolence will be opened on the trust's website www.lupus.org.uk.

In April, Julian, who now lives in France, sent Mrs Vodden a bouquet of flowers and a personally written card after hearing from his personal assistant, who knows Lucy's sister, that she was chronically ill.

Speaking then about the couple's childhood friendship and the painting, Mrs Vodden said: 'I can imagine him saying, "That's Lucy at school," and his father asking questions like "What's that in the sky?"'

'When I told a couple of friends that Lucy in the sky with diamonds was about me, they said, "No, it can't be, it's to do with LSD." I was too embarrassed to tell them that I didn't know what LSD was.'



Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and John Lennon at EMI studios for rehearsals of the live show Love Is All You Need in 1967 - the year of Sgt Pepper

Julian said he remembered showing the picture to his father: 'I used to show dad everything I'd built or painted at school, and this one sparked off the idea for a song about Lucy in the sky with diamonds.'

The image inspired Lennon and McCartney to write one of the most popular Beatles lyrics of them all.

'Picture yourself in a boat on a river, With tangerine trees and marmalade skies. Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly, A girl with kaleidoscope eyes...'

The rest, as they say, is history.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Grammy-Winning Producer Greg Ladanyi Dies at 57

Greg Ladanyi, a Grammy-winning producer who worked with Jackson Browne, Don Henley, Fleetwood Mac, Warren Zevon and Toto, died Tuesday after sustaining severe head trauma in an onstage accident last week in Cyprus. Ladanyi, 57, was on tour wiith Anna Vissi, an artist signed to his label, Maple Jam Music Group.

Officials said Ladanyi fractured his skull after falling 13 feet during Vissi's performance at Nicosia's GSP stadium. He also suffered multiple fractures to the ribs and chest when he slipped down a gap between the stands and the ground level at the venue, just before the start of Vissi's concert.

According to reports, Ladanyi's family is honoring his wish to donate his organs. "It was Greg's wish to donate his organs to help other people," a family representative announced. His lungs and his liver will reportedly go to transplant patients in the UK and Israel.

Friday's concert went ahead after Vissi visited the producer at Nicosia hospital. Vissi, who was extremely close to Ladanyi and was working with him on her second English-language album, said, "On Friday night, I lived through one of the strangest nights of my life -- the worst and most tragic of nights. Within a few seconds, my great joy and excitement at the prospect of performing for the first time in around four years in front of my compatriots was transformed into an unbearable drama."

Ladanyi worked on six albums with Jackson Browne, including his landmark 1977 disc 'Running on Empty,' four albums with Toto, three albums with Don Henley, including his 1984 bestseller 'Building the Perfect Beast,' and the Church's 1988 watermark 'Starfish'. He also helped produce Fleetwood Mac's 1990 record 'Behind The Mask' and had worked with Jeff Healey ('See the Light'), Jaguares ('Bajo el Azul de Tu Misterio') and most recently on Vissi's Greek album 'Apagorevmeno.'

During his career, Ladanyi earned 16 Grammy nominations, including being nominated for Producer of The Year for Henley smash 'The Boys of Summer.' He won the Best Engineered Recording -- Non-Classical Grammy in 1982 for Toto's 'Toto IV' album.