Archive for the ‘Music’ Category

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Obit watch: August 30, 2026.

Sunday, August 30th, 2026

Borepatch put up an excellent obit for Dolly Parton, much better than anything I’ve written or could write. I strongly, strongly encourage you to go over and read it.

(I’d never heard the “my aunt had a sofa just like it” story before. And it made me laugh. Hard.)

The NYT has a nice obit for Azriel Blackman (may require registration or an email address or something).

Mr. Blackman is another one of those people who wasn’t necessarily famous, but who the paper of record does a good job of covering.

He was an airline mechanic for American Airlines. He worked for them for 80 years.

No, that’s not a typo. Eighty years. Eight. Zero.

The first aircraft he worked on was the amphibious Sikorsky flying boat. He serviced more than a dozen kinds of planes over the next eight decades, including the Douglas DC-3, the Convair CV-240, the Lockheed Constellation, the Boeing 377 and the McDonnell Douglas MD-80.
After enlisting in the Army, he served in the Korean War, repairing helicopters for Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals. Following his discharge in 1952, he returned to American at LaGuardia, then moved as a crew chief to New York International Airport, better known as Idlewild Airport, in 1960, three years before it was renamed for President Kennedy.

…

Mr. Blackman’s love of airplanes continued in volunteer work on his days off, like helping to restore aircraft for an ongoing project at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn and a Sikorsky flying boat at the New England Air Museum in Windsor Locks, Conn., near Hartford.

…

“He represents a valuable institutional memory that says, ‘This is how we do it at American,’” Robert L. Crandall, the president of American from 1980 to 1998, said at Mr. Blackman’s 75th anniversary ceremony. “He’s the guy who sits with the new kids at lunch and passes it on.”

…

In 2012, American honored Mr. Blackman’s tenure by flying him around New York City in a restored, propeller-driven DC-3, part of the airline’s fleet that carried passengers between the mid-1930s and the late 1940s. He sat in the cockpit as it flew along the Hudson River, over Central Park and past the former site of Aviation High.
“He was taken aback by all of that,” his son said. “He didn’t really know how to accept praise of that magnitude. In his mind, he didn’t feel he had done anything extraordinary. He loved going to work. He considered the people he worked with family, and it was enjoyment to him. That was his real reward.”

He was 100 when he passed.

Posted in Music, Obits, Planes | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: August 26, 2026.

Wednesday, August 26th, 2026

Dolly Parton. NYT share link (may require registration or an email address or something).

Everyone was on this yesterday: I held off, per the policy of this blog, and I think pretty much everything that can be said has been, or will be. I only have two thoughts:

1. I know this isn’t original to Ms. Parton (it’s actually a cover of a Neil Young song, with a slightly modified lyric) but I find this to be incredibly haunting.

2. She was a zealous advocate of literacy. She wanted to put books in kid’s hands. I swear I read somewhere (but can’t find it now) that she believed books were the best way for kids to broaden their horizons and lift themselves up from poverty.

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. You know, just in case you feel like tossing a few bucks in.

Dolly Parton’s letter to Eminem.

In other news: Jaye P. Morgan. Yes, from “The Gong Show”. (Kids, ask your parents about “The Gong Show”.)

Posted in 1970s, Books, Music, Obits, TV | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: August 19, 2026.

Wednesday, August 19th, 2026

Frank Beard, drummer for ZZ Top. NYT (share link, but they’re going to want you to create an account or put in your Google or Apple address or something).

Beard isn’t technically a founder of ZZ Top (that’d be Dan Mitchell), though he joined the group in its infancy in 1969 and led its rhythm section for over five decades.

There are a lot of great Top songs, but I thought I’d go for a slightly deeper cut. Mostly because this video has been on my mind recently:

Peggy Webber, actress.

She also is known for her turn as the newlywed who moves into a mansion where her husband’s (John Hudson) first wife died under suspicious circumstances in the cult horror classic The Screaming Skull (1958). American International Pictures promised a free burial to anyone who died of fright watching the movie, a thinly veiled remake of Hitchcock’s Rebecca.

“The Screaming Skull” on the MST3K site.

She was also part of Jack Webb’s stock company. The obit mentions her role as “Ma Friday”, but she also appeared four times on the 1960s color “Dragnet”, twice on “Adam-12”, and one time each on “Emergency!” and “Project U.F.O.” She also did a “Quincy, M.E.” and two episodes of “Night Gallery”.

Posted in Movies, Music, Obits | No Comments »

Obit watch: August 17, 2026.

Monday, August 17th, 2026

Violet Hensley, fiddler. (Share link, but they’re going to want you to create an account or put in your Google or Apple address or something).

Ms. Hensley made a clear distinction between a fiddle and a violin, even though they are essentially the same instrument. “If you can read music, you play the violin,” she told The Tulsa World in 1982. “I can’t read music, so I just play the fiddle.”
By the time she turned 99, Ms. Hensley had performed old-time mountain music — not bluegrass, which she deemed too fancy — at the Silver Dollar City theme park in Branson, Mo., for more than 50 years; played on radio stations and at schools; recorded at least two albums, one of them, with family members, called “Old-Time Hoedowns”; and appeared on TV programs like “Captain Kangaroo,” “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee.”
She also handcrafted 73 fiddles — she played No. 4, which she made in the 1930s — thus acquiring nicknames like “The Whittlin’ Fiddler” and “Stradivarius of the Ozarks.” She could have built more fiddles if not for time spent gardening, canning, sewing and cutting her neighbors’ hair, she told CBS News when she was 90. To make ends meet, she was a cleaning lady at a hospital for many years.

There was one thing she wanted to do: play the Grand Ole Opry.

When another fiddler, Tim Crouch, read about that desire in Ms. Hensley’s autobiography, “Whittlin’ and Fiddlin’ My Own Way” (written with Randall Franks and published in 2014), he called the banjo player Mike Snider, who brought her onstage at the Opry on Aug. 6, 2016.
“This little lady was born in 1916,” he said as he introduced her, to cheers. She played “Angeline the Baker” and “Black Eyed Susie” with Mr. Snider, Mr. Crouch and other fiddle players, and received three standing ovations, Ms. Flagg, her daughter, said.

…

She performed twice more at the Opry, in 2017 and in 2018, the year she was inducted into the National Fiddler Hall of Fame in Tulsa, Okla.

…

In addition to Ms. Flagg, Ms. Hensley is survived by two other daughters, Beatrice Porter and Lewonna Nelson; three sons, Marvin, R.G. and Eddie Hensley; Wilma Flagg, a family friend who came to live with her as a teenager; 32 grandchildren; 85 great-grandchildren; 29 great-great-grandchildren; and two great-great-great-grandchildren. Her husband died in 1997. Four of their sons — Calvin, Russell and Gary Hensley and Larry Hensley, who was stillborn — predeceased her.
Making fiddles was one of many skills Ms. Hensley developed over her lifetime. She also made lye soap, tanned leather, broke horses and tended crops.
“I always say,” she told The Tulsa World, “making a fiddle is a lot easier than plowing a field with a team of mules.”

She was 109 when she passed.

Mark Rydell, director. Other credits include “The Reivers”, “Harry and Walter Go to New York”, and “The Fugitive” (the original series). NYT share link for the record.

The NYT finally got around to running an obit for Zale Parry. (Previously.) (Share link, but they’re going to want you to create an account or put in your Google or Apple address or something).

What the NYT obit lacks in timeliness, it makes up for by covering another aspect of Ms. Parry’s life: she was involved in early LSD studies. The NYT obit also reproduces her SI cover, in color.

Tommy John, pitcher.

After suffering what had been up to then considered a career-ending injury, John, then 31, underwent ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction surgery on his left (pitching) elbow in 1974, with the revolutionary procedure being performed by Dr. Frank Jobe. The procedure was named after John and has since become commonplace, performed on thousands of players — not just pitchers — with a typical recovery time of a year to 18 months.
John, nicknamed “The Bionic Man,” went on to pitch for 14 more seasons after the surgery.

…

John had 124 wins in 355 games at the time of the procedure. He pitched in 405 more games, winning 164, and finished with a career record of 288-231 — the second-most wins of any pitcher since 1900 not to be elected to the Hall of Fame — with a 3.34 ERA and 2,245 strikeouts in 760 career appearances.
Besides eight seasons with the Yankees, for whom he won 91 games over two stints, John pitched for the Chicago White Sox, Dodgers, California Angels, Cleveland Indians and Oakland Athletics during his career.

He is tied for third on the list of most seasons played, with 26. Only Nolan Ryan and Cap Anson (27 seasons) are ahead of him.

NYT share link. Baseball Reference.

Hayden Panettiere. Everyone is on this, and I’ve got nothing to add. IMDB. NYT share link, for the record.

Posted in Movies, Music, Obits, Sports, TV | 1 Comment »

Notes on film.

Monday, August 10th, 2026

Keeping with our “worst movies to win the Academy Award for Best Picture” watching, we saw “Gigi” the other night. I don’t think it was a conscious choice to watch another movie from that list – it was more “let’s watch a musical”, that was what Lawrence had on hand, and “Gigi” is more of a “honorable mention” on the list of worst Oscar winners.

I am not a gay man. But I like theater, I like musicals, and I like movie musicals. And I have a passing familiarity with Lerner and Loewe. (I’ve seen “My Fair Lady” cut up for TV, and (I think) in a Houston Grand Opera production. And some years ago, I saw what I also think was a HGO production of “Brigadoon”. I remember that because one of the leads was the aerial traffic reporter for a local radio station. I wish I could remember that guy’s name. It was KPRC 950 AM in the late 1970s – early 1980s, if that helps anybody.)

As good as ”The Greatest Show On Earth” is…”Gigi” isn’t.

(more…)

Posted in Movies, Music | 7 Comments »

Obit watch: July 9, 2026.

Thursday, July 9th, 2026

Bonnie Tyler. NYT.

Things I did not know, sort of in order of surprise:

  • Jim Steinman wrote “Total Eclipse of the Heart”.
  • He wrote it for Meat Loaf.
  • As part of a vampire musical.

After seeing Meat Loaf singing on TV, she told Muff Winwood, a producer at the label, that she should work with Mr. Steinman, who wrote all the tracks on Meat Loaf’s blockbuster 1977 debut album, “Bat Out of Hell,” including the hits “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” and “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad.”
“Muff looked at me like I was barmy and told me that Jim would never do it,’” Ms. Tyler later recalled. “‘I just want you to ask him,’ I said.”
Intrigued by her voice, Mr. Steinman invited her to his apartment in Manhattan to run through “Total Eclipse of the Heart” — which, he told her, he had originally written for an unfinished musical about the vampire Nosferatu.
With its rock-opera bombast bordering on the Wagnerian, the song seemed like a natural fit for Meat Loaf. But “around the time we were recording,” Ms. Tyler later told The Guardian, “Meat Loaf had lost his voice.”

…

The accompanying video, extravagant even by 1980s standards, was shot in a former asylum in Surrey, England. Conjuring a mood of gothic horror with ninjas, half-clad football players and altar boys with glowing eyes mixed in — “turn around, bright eyes,” indeed — it seemed to play once an hour on MTV, at the height of that network’s influence.

Posted in Music, Obits | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: July 1, 2026.

Wednesday, July 1st, 2026

Victor Willis, of the Village People.

And, since we’re coming up on America250!, a tribute to one branch of the armed services:

Thing I did not know:

From 1978 to 1982, Willis was married to Phylicia Ayers-Allen, now Phylicia Rashad, who played Clair Huxtable on The Cosby Show. On Nov. 17, 2007, Willis married Karen Huff, a lawyer and entertainment exec.

Posted in Music, Obits | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: June 22, 2026.

Monday, June 22nd, 2026

Another one of those “it got busy up in here” obit watches.

James Bradley, author (Flags of Our Fathers).

I haven’t read the book, but the Saturday Movie Group watched the movie. I can’t put it any better than Lawrence did: “I wanted to see a movie about the flag raising, not a movie about a bond drive.”

James Burrows, sitcom guy.

Mark Singer (paywall link: sorry), New Yorker writer. Among his works: the Ricky Jay profle.

Also among his works:

Mr. Singer is also the author of “Citizen K: The Deeply Weird American Journey of Brett Kimberlin” (1996), an expanded version of a New Yorker profile of a drug smuggler, murder suspect and media manipulator, that was a finalist for a National Magazine Award; and the collection “Somewhere in America: Under the Radar with Chicken Warriors, Left-Wing Patriots, Angry Nudists and Others” (2004).

Unmentioned in the obit: Brett Kimberlin is the guy who claimed to have sold marijuana to Dan Quayle.

However, Singer “decided that [he] had been lied to repeatedly by Kimberlin.” Singer concluded that Kimberlin “was not telling the truth about Quayle.” In print, Singer said he believed Kimberlin had known someone who had claimed to sell marijuana to Quayle and had then appropriated the story as his own.

Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve. WP.

Clive Davis, music guy.

Posted in Books, History, Music, TV | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: June 4, 2026.

Thursday, June 4th, 2026

Marjane Satrapi, author of the graphic novel “Persepolis”.

I haven’t read it, but “Persepolis” got a lot of praise from the usual suspects.

Peabo Bryson, musician.

Posted in Books, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Register recordings, not guns!

Friday, May 15th, 2026

It would be impossible for me to care any less than I already do not care about Taylor Swift.

I’m not a big Beyoncé fan, either, though my opinion of her isn’t quite at the Swift level.

With that out of the way, some random thoughts about the other 23 new inductees to the National Recording Registry:

  • Weezer? Aren’t they one of those one-hit wonder college whimsy bands?
  • Nice to see Spike Jones and His City Slickers getting some love.
  • The guys get shirts!
  • I have never heard Brother Ray’s “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music” but I have heard good things about it. Maybe I should purchase that.
  • I should also grab the “Chicago” original cast album, if I can find it. For those not familiar with “Chicago” or Broadway, the original cast included Gwen Verdon, Chita Rivera, and Jerry Orbach. And I like “Chicago”.
  • I loved “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” when I was a child. I still do: I think it would still go in my personal top ten songs list.
  • When I was younger, I thought Stevie Ray Vaughan was overrated. My opinion has softened some in the past few years, and I think “Texas Flood” isn’t a bad choice.
  • ““Doom” soundtrack by Bobby Prince, composer”. In case you were unclear (as I was), yes, this is the soundtrack for the video game.

Posted in Music | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: May 15, 2026.

Friday, May 15th, 2026

Joe Sedelmaier, commercial director.

Among his works:

And this one:

And this one:

I can’t embed it, but here’s a link to his Southern Airways “Steerage” commercial. For some reason, that commercial reminds me of…every Southwest flight I’ve been on.

Claudine Longet, actress and singer.

The enchanting, doe-eyed Longet recorded albums of breathy pop for A&M Records before she sang the Henry Mancini-Don Black song “Nothing to Lose” in Blake Edwards’ The Party (1968), in which she portrayed an aspiring actress alongside Peter Sellers.

I’ve heard this is actually a pretty good movie, but have never seen it.

A onetime Las Vegas showgirl, Longet had married “Moon River” crooner [Andy] Williams in December 1961 and appeared on his long-running NBC variety show and Christmas specials, often with their three children.

After she and Williams divorced (amicably), she took up with a skier named Vladimir “Spider” Sabich.

… Longet and the kids were living with the California-born Sabich at his chalet in Starwood, Colorado, when she shot him on March 21, 1976, in his bathroom with a .22-caliber German‐made gun that had been purchased by his father. She claimed the gun accidentally discharged as he was showing her how it worked.

He died on the way to the hospital. She was criminally charged, but local law enforcement completely botched the case. She ended up being convicted of “criminally negligent homicide”.

She was given two years’ probation, fined $250 and sentenced to 30 days in jail (she was able to serve most of her sentence on weekends).
The Sabich family later filed a civil suit against Longet for $1.3 million, but the case was settled out of court. Longet agreed not to speak publicly about Sabich or the murder and to never publish a book about her life and the trial, and her career as a singer and actress was done.

@jack.hutton

The Claudine Longet Ski Invitational 1976 SNL A classic. #SNL #classic #1976 —

♬ original sound – Jack Hutton

Edited to add: I know the NYT is watching this space. Because as soon as I put up my own obit for someone, the NYT puts up theirs. Guys, let’s not fight. I’d be willing to entertain a job offer, though I would insist on working remotely.

Posted in Movies, Music, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 30, 2026.

Thursday, April 30th, 2026

David Allan Coe, the man who wrote what should be our national anthem.

The first of those recordings, “You Never Even Called Me by My Name,” a droll sendup of honky-tonk clichés written by the folk singers Steve Goodman and John Prine, reached the country Top 10 in 1975.

…

Mr. Coe wrote or helped write most of his material, but had his greatest success with songs he wrote for others, notably Tanya Tucker’s “Would You Lay With Me (In a Field of Stone)” (1973) and Johnny Paycheck’s “Take This Job and Shove It” (1977). Both records were No. 1 country singles, and “Take This Job and Shove It” inspired a 1981 movie in which Mr. Coe had a minor role. He also wrote for the punk rock band Dead Kennedys and Johnny Cash.

…

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Mr. Coe released two albums — “Nothing Sacred” and “Underground Album” — that were later reissued as a compilation called “18 X-Rated Hits.” In 2000, the music writer Neil Strauss of The New York Times described the material as “among the most racist, misogynist, homophobic and obscene songs recorded by a popular songwriter.”
For years, Mr. Coe distanced himself from those songs. “Anyone that would look at me and say I was a racist would have to be out of their mind,” he insisted in a 2004 interview with the site Swampland.

J. Craig Venter, the guy who decoded the human genome.

In the 1990s, Dr. Venter, a risk-taker and intense competitor, made a bold move when he decided that the Human Genome Project, a $3 billion government program for decoding the human genome, was moving slowly enough that he could enter the race late and beat it with a much faster method.
His gamble paid off. In 2000, his company, Celera, made a joint announcement with a rival group saying that they had assembled the first human genomes, a landmark step toward uncovering the genetic basis of human disease and origins.

Posted in Music, Obits, Science | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 10, 2026.

Friday, April 10th, 2026

Afrika Bambaataa, early rap/hip-hop guy. (Edited to add: NYT (archived). This wasn’t working for me earlier today.)

(I actually asked ChatGPT to explain the difference between rap and hip-hop to me last night. I don’t trust the results.)

By way of Lawrence: Thomas Tessier, horror writer.

Jim Whittaker. He was the first American to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

On May 1, 1963, a decade after Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary became the first climbers confirmed to have reached the summit of Mount Everest, and at a time when fewer than 10 people were known to have matched that feat, Mr. Whittaker set out into a storm with his climbing partner, Nawang Gombu, a Sherpa guide.
The conditions on the South Col of Everest were less than ideal for a summit push, but Mr. Whittaker did not hesitate.
“You always start up,” he told The Seattle Times in 2013. “Because you can always turn around.”
Mr. Whittaker became the first American to top Everest at about 1 p.m. local time on May 1. He and Mr. Gombu were the 10th and 11th climbers known to have gotten there and part of the only expedition to reach the summit that season.

Posted in Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 10, 2026.

Tuesday, March 10th, 2026

Bo Gritz.

Mr. Gritz served four tours in Vietnam as a Green Beret, during which he led a roving contingent of mostly Cambodian guerrillas deep behind enemy lines. He received more than 60 medals and commendations for his service.
But former comrades and journalists later raised questions about his record. In some cases, they said, his awards had come at his own recommendation.
In Mr. Gritz’s telling, he retired from the U.S. Army in 1978 at the request of a Pentagon intelligence official, who wanted him to develop a clandestine program to locate U.S. prisoners of war still alive in Southeast Asia. (It is unclear whether such a request was ever made.)
Just five years before, North Vietnam had released its remaining 591 American prisoners. But it became a matter of truth to some veterans, including Mr. Gritz, that hundreds had been left behind, primarily in Laos.
In 1981, Mr. Gritz put out a call for Special Forces veterans for a private rescue mission. They trained at a cheerleading camp in Central Florida. For guidance, he hired a psychic. Unsurprisingly, the plan fell apart after the volunteers soured on it.
A year later, thanks to money from the actors Clint Eastwood and William Shatner, Mr. Gritz and a small band of American civilians crossed from Thailand into Laos with a team of Lao guerrillas. A few days in, Laotian government forces attacked, killing two guerrillas and capturing an American.
Mr. Gritz returned to Thailand, paid a ransom to free the man and turned himself in to the Thai authorities. He and his accomplices were convicted of a long list of crimes, but were let go on the promise that they would not return.

He went on to become a survivalist, a presidential candidate on the Populist Party ticket, and “one of the best-known figures on the radical right”. He negotiated Randy Weaver’s surrender.

Alexander Butterfield. He was the guy who revealed to Congress Nixon’s secret taping system.

Mr. Butterfield had been in charge of White House security but had not been a member of Nixon’s inner circle and did not appear to be a major witness. But under questioning by Senator Fred D. Thompson, a Tennessee Republican who was chief minority counsel to the Watergate committee, Mr. Butterfield dropped a bombshell.
Q. Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the president?
A. I was aware of listening devices, yes, sir.
Under the folksy prodding of Mr. Thompson and of Senator Sam J. Ervin Jr., a North Carolina Democrat who was the panel chairman, and Samuel Dash, the committee’s chief counsel, it all tumbled out — the story of a secret, sophisticated recording system that the president himself had authorized and that for more than two years had picked up virtually all of Nixon’s meetings and telephone conversations.

Monti Rock III. I’d never heard of him, either, but he was a frequent Carson guest, and this is one of the more entertaining obits I’ve read in a while.

It also gives me hope.

It was clear that Mr. Rock had few actual skills. He could not sing, dance or tell funny stories, as he was the first to admit. “I was a failure for 11 years on TV,” he said in a 1976 profile in The Province, a newspaper in Vancouver, British Columbia.

…

The details that Mr. Rock gave about his biography and career could not always be trusted. He claimed he was a guest of Mr. Carson’s 84 times, though the IMDb entertainment database says he was on 43 times. He also appeared on the talk shows of Merv Griffin, Joey Bishop and Mike Douglas. A 1966 singing performance on “The Merv Griffin Show,” available online, shows him in his flower.

He indeed fronted Disco-Tex and His Sex-O-Lettes, at the invitation of the songwriter and producer Bob Crewe. The group had a pair of hits, “Get Dancin’” in 1974 and “I Wanna Dance Wit’ Choo (Doo Dat Dance)” in 1975. Both reached the top 25 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart.
Mr. Rock, shouting the lyrics over the singing of four female Sex-O-Lettes, took that tongue-in-cheek act on the road. Not everyone got the joke.
“Not only does Monti Rock III have no discernible talent whatsoever,” an entertainment writer for The Fort Lauderdale News wrote in a 1975 review, “he also has a filthy mouth.”

So a guy who had no discernible talent had two Billboard top 25 singles? Like I said, this gives me hope. And remember, this was before auto tune.

Posted in History, Music, Nixon, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 9, 2026.

Monday, March 9th, 2026

Country Joe McDonald, of Country Joe McDonald and the Fish.

The YouTube link doesn’t seem to work in the archived version, so here it is, for the hysterical record:

It has been a bad time for screenwriters.

Alan Trustman. Other credits include “They Call Me Mister Tibbs!”, “Hit!”, and “Lady Ice”. The NYT obit makes it sound like his career pretty much came to a screeching halt after he and Steve McQueen got into it while writing “Le Mans”.

Their differences proved irreconcilable. “Thank God I wasn’t involved,” Mr. Trustman told Hagerty, the car site. “I think he went through 10 to 15 directors and 10 to 15 writers and fired pretty much everybody in his life.”

Jeremy Larner. I wasn’t originally going to note this, but his arc is mildly interesting.

He has a total of four credits in IMDB. Two of those are as “Self”. The other one is for “Drive, He Said”, which he wrote (and which was based on his novel) and which you can find in the “America Lost and Found: The BBS Story” box set from Criterion.

I intended to note this the other day, but it got past me: Bruce Froemming, major leage umpire.

Froemming was one of the most durable umpires of his time: a 5-foot-8, 250-pound autocrat who called 5,163 regular season games (exceeded only by Joe West and Bill Klem) over a record 37 consecutive seasons beginning in 1971. He worked nine division series, 10 league championship series, five World Series and three All-Star Games. In 1986, The Sporting News named him the National League’s best umpire.

…

Umpires are known for their accuracy — or lack thereof — in calling balls, strikes and outs, as well as for their on-field disputes and occasional ejections. Froemming gave the heave-ho to players, managers and coaches 125 times from 1971 to 2007, far fewer than Klem’s record of close to 300 ejections. Three managers were each thrown out by Froemming three times: Davey Johnson of the Mets, Bobby Cox of the Atlanta Braves and Joe Torre, once with the St. Louis Cardinals and twice when he skippered the Mets.
Froemming booted out his last man, Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon, in the waning days of his last season, in 2007, for arguing a check swing call.

He also booted Billy Martin (though, as far as I can tell, there was no fistfight involved).

In 1976, Froemming ejected the fiery Yankees manager Billy Martin in the ninth inning of Game 4 of the World Series for tossing a ball at Bill Deegan, the home plate umpire, from the dugout. Martin, claiming that Deegan had tossed three balls out of play in his direction, rushed onto the field to argue his ejection.
“It’s a touchy situation,” Froemming said afterward, “and to have Martin start something at this point is something we can’t tolerate.”

Jennifer Runyon, actress. Other credits include “Carnosaur”, “The Falcon and the Snowman”, and “The Master”.

Lawrence sent over a NotTheBee obit for Alvin Greene, “the most bizarre Senate candidate in United States history”.

Frequently, “his jokes were not well understood by the media, such as when he told British newspaper The Guardian that one way to create jobs was to employ people to make toys in his likeness.”

Posted in History, Movies, Music, Obits, Sports, TV | 1 Comment »

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