Jim Seals, of Seals and Crofts.
Paul Vance, most famous for “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini”.
Archive for the ‘Music’ Category
Obit watch: June 8, 2022.
Wednesday, June 8th, 2022Obit watch: June 6, 2022.
Monday, June 6th, 2022Linda Lawson, actress. Other credits include “Sea Hunt”, “Hawaiian Eye”, and “Ben Casey”.
Alec John Such, drummer bassist [thanks, LP] for Bon Jovi.
Lawrence sent over an obit for Isidoro Raponi, who did a lot of practical effects work.
Obit watch: May 29, 2022.
Sunday, May 29th, 2022Still in on the road mode:
Bo Hopkins, actor. My mother described him as one of those “oh, yeah, that guy” guys.
Ronnie Hawkins, musician. I feel like some of my readers will have more to say about him (and they are welcome to do so in the comments) but I did like this:
Obit watch: May 27, 2022.
Friday, May 27th, 2022Still somewhat time constrained due to my vacation, so short and quick: Alan White, drummer for Yes. (He replaced Bill Bruford in 1972.)
Andy Fletcher, of Depeche Mode.
Obit watch: May 24, 2022.
Tuesday, May 24th, 2022Simon Preston, organist.
…
But Mr. Preston, who maintained a vigorous solo schedule throughout that period, came to chafe at the tedious routine of playing and conducting regular services. He decided to leave the abbey and to concentrate on his freelance career, one that came to include more than a decade spent working with the Deutsche Grammophon label on the organ works of Bach, in whose more grandly scaled compositions he excelled.
“It was hard to imagine that anyone could have displayed the mighty Skinner instrument of St. Bartholomew’s Church, said to be the largest pipe organ in New York, more fully and effectively,” critic James R. Oestreich of The New York Times wrote in reviewing one of Mr. Preston’s many recitals in the city in 1992.
Noted:
Robert J. Vlasic, pickle guy. He was 96.
Obit watch: May 19, 2022.
Thursday, May 19th, 2022Vangelis (Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou).
Yeah, yeah, yeah, “Chariots of Fire”, “Blade Runner”…
…in the late ’60s, he found success as a member of the Greek rock band Forminx and then with the progressive group Aphrodite’s Child, which had hits with the single “Rain and Tears” in 1968 and the influential album 666 in 1972.
He enjoyed a partnership with Yes lead singer Jon Anderson, and they released four albums as Jon & Vangelis from 1980 through 1991. (He had been asked to join Anderson’s prog rock band in the wake of keyboardist Rick Wakeman’s departure but declined.)
…
How about a musical interlude?
Ray Scott, pioneer of bass fishing as sport.
The idea for a bass fishing tour came to Mr. Scott, then an insurance salesman, when rain cut short a fishing outing with a friend in Jackson, Miss., in 1967. Stuck in his hotel room watching sports on television, he had an epiphany: Why not start the equivalent of the PGA Tour for bass fishing?
He held his first tournament at Beaver Lake, in Arkansas, where 106 anglers paid $100 each to compete over three days for $5,000 in prizes. A second tournament followed that year; in 1968 he formed a membership organization, the Bass Anglers Sportsman Society, or BASS.
In 1971, Mr. Scott started what has become known as the Super Bowl of bass fishing: the Bassmaster Classic, his organization’s annual championship tournament, which he paired with a merchandising expo for manufacturers of bass fishing boats and gear.
…
Mr. Scott was the showman of BASS, the umbrella company for tournaments, magazines and television shows. Easily recognized in his cowboy hat and fringed jackets, Mr. Scott memorably served as the M.C. for tournament weigh-ins, entertaining thousands of fans with his exuberant patter as anglers pulled flopping fish out of holding tanks.
“Now, ain’t that a truly wonderful fish?” he asked one tournament crowd. “How many of you want to see more fish like that? C’mon, let’s hear it for that fish!”
NYT obits for Rosmarie Trapp and Sgt. Maj. John L. Canley.
John Aylward, actor. Other credits include “Stargate SG-1”, “The X-Files”, and “3rd Rock from the Sun”. He also did some theater:
He appeared in stage roles at the Kennedy Center with Kentucky Cycle, and at Lincoln Center with the play City of Conversation. A classically trained actor, Aylward performed everything from Shakespearean roles to farce with plays by Alan Ayckborne, and dramas by David Mamet, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams.
His standout roles included playing Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, Richard III, Scrooge in Inspecting Carol and Shelley Levine in Glengarry Glen Ross, a role he played twice.
Marnie Schulenburg, actress. (“One Life to Live”, “As the World Turns”) She was only 37, and died from cancer.
Obit watch: May 18, 2022.
Wednesday, May 18th, 2022June Preston has passed away at 93.
Interesting career. She was a child actress: among her credits, “Anne of Green Gables”, “Heaven Can Wait”, “It Happened One Night” (uncredited) and “Never Give a Sucker an Even Break” (uncredited).
She also had considerable musical talent.
A year after playing Ann Rutherford‘s daughter in Happy Land (1943), her final feature, Preston was discovered at age 16 by maestro Gustav Stern, a German conductor and vocal coach in Seattle.
She graduated from West Seattle High School in 1947 and began touring two years later. In 1952 at age 24, she debuted with a Metropolitan Opera company on a South American tour in the leading role of Mimi in La Boheme opposite Met standout Jan Peerce.
During the next decade, Preston performed in the world’s most prestigious opera houses and with symphony orchestras in the U.S., Europe and Central and South America. A soprano with a five-octave range, she was nicknamed the “Golden Voice,” and entertainment columnist Walter Winchell was an admirer.
She retired after her marriage in 1963.
Ricky Gardiner, guitarist. He worked with David Bowie (“Visconti co-produced Bowie’s “Low” album and brought Gardiner to play lead guitar on the first half of the iconic album.“) and with Iggy Pop on “Lust for Life“.
Rosmarie Trapp, of the Trapp Family.
…
Obit watch: May 12, 2022.
Thursday, May 12th, 2022Gloria Parker has passed away at 100.
Ms. Parker played glasses.
At a young age, Gloria began studying violin (she said she played a child-sized instrument at the Brooklyn Academy of Music when she was 4 or 5). At 8, she began learning to play the glasses from her grandfather, who had brought the skill (and eight fragile Bohemian crystal glasses) from his native Czechoslovakia.
“When I was still a little girl,” Miss Parker told United Press International in 1984, “I had a musical vaudeville act playing both the glasses and marimba.”
She mastered how to conjure music from 28 glasses, each filled with water or white wine to produce particular sounds.
“One drop either way makes a difference,” she told The Daily News in 2012. “Height, circumference — it all makes a difference soundwise.”
She would rub her fingers over the rims of the glasses to produce a musical range of two octaves as she played pop, classical, jazz and calypso songs.
…
She was also in “Broadway Danny Rose” as one of Rose’s clients.
Richard Wagner. He was one of the old CBS news guys who covered Vietnam and a lot of other stories.
Obit watch: May 9, 2022.
Monday, May 9th, 2022This was another one of those weekends where I got behind the power curve and am playing catch-up. I expect that next weekend will be closer to what passes for normal around here.
A honey-toned singer with a warm, unhurried delivery, Mr. Gilley had 17 No. 1 country singles from 1974 to 1983, including “I Overlooked an Orchid” and “Don’t the Girls All Get Prettier at Closing Time.”
He placed 34 singles in the country Top Ten during his two decades on the charts. But he was ultimately best known as the proprietor, with Sherwood Cryer, of Gilley’s, the honky-tonk in Pasadena, Texas, that became one of the most storied nightspots in country music.
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Interesting fact #1 which may not be generally known: Jerry Lee Lewis and Jimmy Swaggart were cousins of Mr. Gilley.
Interesting fact #2 for the benefit of FotB RoadRich:
George Pérez, comics guy. (“Wonder Woman”, “Avengers”, “The New Teen Titans”)
For the record, NYT obits for Kevin Samuels and Ric Parnell.
Dennis Waterman, British actor. Credits other than “The Sweeney” include “The Life and Loves of a She-Devil”, “Tube Mice”, and “Stay Lucky”.
Kenneth Welsh. 242 credits in IMDB, which is pretty impressive (Clint Howard has 253). Other credits include one of the spinoffs of a minor SF TV show from the 1960s, “Perfect Storms: Disasters That Changed the World”, “Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer”, “Due South”, and “The X-Files”.
Threads from Twitter that amused me.
Friday, May 6th, 2022By way of President Dawg, a long thread on “Convoy” (the song and the movie) and the ’70s trucker/CB culture:
I was in hysterics last night while Patrick was trying to explain to me the ‘trucking enthusiasm of the late 70s’ https://t.co/q4wXiSuIyQ
— Ricardo Montalbán’s remote control piano (@pipandbaby) May 4, 2022
Includes bonus “Phantom 309”, MST3K, and “B.J. and the Bear” references.
I’m a little old for this, but:
30 THINGS YOU SHOULD START DOING BEFORE YOU TURN 30
1/ pic.twitter.com/i9hkdkVIj2— Pee Wee Herman Melville (@PeeMelville) May 6, 2022
Obit watch: May 2, 2022.
Monday, May 2nd, 2022It was a busy weekend, so I’m playing catch-up on a lot of stuff here.
For the record: Naomi Judd. THR.
Klaus Schulze, musician.
Jacques Perrin, French actor. Credits include “Z”, “Cinema Paradiso”, and “The Young Girls of Rochefort”.
Neal Adams, comics guy.
During his Batman run, Adams and writer Dennis O’Neil brought a revolutionary change to the hero and the comics, delivering realism, kineticism and a sense of menace to their storytelling in the wake of the campy Adam West-starring ’60s ABC series and years of the hero being aimed at kiddie readers.
He created new villains for the rogue’s gallery — the Man-Bat and Ra’s al Ghul as well as the latter’s daughter, Talia, who became Batman’s lover. The father and daughter, played by Liam Neeson and Marion Cotillard, were key characters in the trilogy of Batman movies directed by Christopher Nolan.
Joanna Barnes. Beyond “Parent Trap” and “Auntie Mame”, she had a fair number of 70s TV credits, including “The Name of the Game”, the good “Hawaii 5-0”, “O’Hara, U.S. Treasury”, “McCloud” (and, interestingly, “Cool Million”, a short-lived show in the “Mystery Movie” wheel), “Quincy M.E.”…
…and “Mannix”. (“Fear I to Fall“, season 2, episode 12.)
Jossara Jinaro. Credits other than “ER” include “Doctor Who: Alternate Empire” and “The Devil’s Rejects”.
Rachelle Zylberberg, aka “Régine“, disco entrepreneur. At one point, she supposedly owned 23 clubs. (“Some of her clubs, she explained, were franchises owned by local entrepreneurs who paid up to $500,000 and gave her cuts of the action to use her name.”)
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Saluting Bastille Day in New York, the patriots included Gov. Hugh L. Carey, Ethel Kennedy, Margaux Hemingway, Elizabeth Taylor and John Warner (at the time, the chairman of the United States Bicentennial Commission), and Senator George S. McGovern, the 1972 Democratic presidential candidate.
“If anyone had second thoughts about celebrating an event that theoretically ended the privileged class, in a room some 40 times as crowded as the Bastille dungeon on that fateful day, no one made them audible,” The New York Times reported. “To be fair, it was somewhat difficult to make anything other than isolated words audible.”
Kathy Boudin is burning in Hell. Peter Paige, Edward J. O’Grady, and Waverly L. Brown were unavailable for comment.
Obit watch: April 23, 2022.
Saturday, April 23rd, 2022Over at his place, Murray Newman has put up a really nice obit for his friend and mentor Gil Schultz. I encourage you to click over and read it.
David Carter, chief of police for the University of Texas Police Department. Before that, he was with APD for 28 years, reaching the rank of chief of staff.
Mikhail Vasenkov, Commie.
When they were arrested, Mr. Vasenkov and his wife, Vicky Pelaez, a journalist, had been living undercover in a Soviet-owned two-story brick and stucco house in suburban Yonkers, N.Y., since immigrating from her native Peru in 1985.
They and eight others, part of a network of so-called illegals, were rounded up in a multiyear F.B.I. investigation, called Operation Ghost Stories, and pleaded guilty to failing to register as agents of a foreign government. They were then deported, flown to Europe on July 9, 2010, and swapped for four Russians who had been imprisoned in Moscow on charges of spying for the United States and Britain.
…
When the spies were rounded up, the F.B.I. said that while “their intent from the start was serious, well-funded by the S.V.R.” — the Soviet intelligence service — “and far-ranging,” they “never got their hands on any classified documents.”
Whether for the benefit of eavesdroppers or because he was getting paid regardless, Mr. Vasenkov was recorded by federal agents telling his wife matter-of-factly that his Soviet handlers “say my information is of no value,” adding, “If they don’t like what I tell them, too bad.”
Cynthia Albritton. She was better known as “Plaster Caster”, and that’s all I’m going to say. Those of you unfamiliar with the whole “plaster caster” thing can click over to the obit for the details.
Obit watch: April 18, 2022.
Monday, April 18th, 2022Lawrence sent over a nice story about Rachel Schrey, volunteer firefighter…and volunteer Easter Bunny.
Kevin Lippert. I had not heard of him before, but he sounds like a really interesting guy. He founded Princeton Architectural Press, which started out reprinting old books on architecture and grew from there.
Mr. Lippert made his name as a publisher, but he was more than that. He was a classical pianist who first performed at 6 and first composed music at 8. He started at Princeton as a pre-med student, until he was captivated by the history and philosophy of science and switched majors. Elected to Phi Beta Kappa, he earned his master’s degree from Princeton’s School of Architecture. He was a computer whiz and ran a tech services company, selling hardware and software to design businesses.
On the side, he cooked, biked, hiked, built furniture, gardened and fueled himself with innumerable cups of espresso. He was also a historian and wrote a book, “War Plan Red” (2015), about secret plans by the United States and Canada to invade each other in the 1920s and ’30s.
“He was a genuine polymath,” Mark Lamster, who worked for him at Princeton Architectural Press and is now the architecture critic at The Dallas Morning News, wrote in a tribute after his death.
Paul Siebel. He was one of the old time Village folkies, and got compared to Dylan. Except he had one problem…
…crippling stage fright.
Linda Ronstadt, in her book “Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir” (2013), recalled seeing Mr. Siebel at the Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village in 1969.
“We saw the last part of his very impressive show made rich with his cowboy falsetto and a song about a poignant, sad girl of a certain reputation named Louise,” Ms. Ronstadt wrote.
She recorded “Louise” and included it on her album “Silk Purse” (1970). It was subsequently covered by Bonnie Raitt, Leo Kottke and at least 20 other artists. Another of Mr. Siebel’s songs, “Spanish Johnny,” was recorded by Emmylou Harris and Waylon Jennings and by Mr. Bromberg.
He did two studio albums, neither of which sold very well (though the first did get some critical praise), and one live album. Then he quit music.
Obit watch: April 15, 2022.
Friday, April 15th, 2022Jack Newton, noted golfer.
Newton turned professional in 1971 on the European Tour and won his first event, the Dutch Open, the following year. A week later, he won another tournament at Fulford, England and, in 1974, the tour’s match play championship.
The Australian’s playoff loss in the 1975 British Open at Carnoustie came after Watson had a few rather fortuitous shots. A wire fence kept Watson’s ball in bounds on the eighth hole and the American chipped for eagle at the 14th to claim the Claret Jug by a shot over Newton.
Then, on July 24, 1983, he walked into an aircraft propeller.
His right arm was severed, he lost sight in his right eye and also sustained severe injuries to his abdomen. Doctors gave him only a 50-50 chance of surviving, and he spent nearly two months in intensive care and required lengthy rehabilitation from his injuries.
“Things weren’t looking too good for me. I knew that from the priest walking around my (hospital) bed,” Newton said later. He was 33 at the time of the accident.
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Mike Bossy, of the New York Islanders.
Franz Mohr, who the paper of record describes as the “piano tuner to the stars”. He was Steinway’s chief concert technician for 24 years.
For years, he went where the pianists went. When Vladimir Horowitz went to Russia in the 1980s, Mr. Mohr traveled with him, as did Horowitz’s favorite Steinway. Mr. Mohr made house calls at the White House when Van Cliburn played for President Gerald R. Ford in 1975, and again in 1987, when Mikhail S. Gorbachev was in Washington for arms-control talks with President Ronald Reagan.
Mr. Gorbachev’s wife, Raisa, wanted Cliburn to play one of the pieces that had made him famous — Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 — but there was no orchestra. Instead, Cliburn played some Chopin and, as an encore, played and sang the Russian melody “Moscow Nights.”
“I was amazed that Van Cliburn, on the spur of the moment, remembered not only the music but all the words,” Mr. Mohr recalled in his memoir, “My Life with the Great Pianists,” written with Edith Schaeffer (1992). “The Russians just melted.”
He was also Glenn Gould’s New York piano tuner.
And (as noted in the obit) he wrote a book, My Life with the Great Pianists (affiliate link).
He also attended to performers’ personal pianos. The pianist Gary Graffman, whose apartment is less than a block from the old location of Steinway’s Manhattan showroom, and Mr. Mohr’s home base, on West 57th Street, recalled that Mr. Mohr would come right over when a problem presented itself.
“If he came because I broke strings, he would replace the strings,” Mr. Graffman said in an interview. But if more extensive work was needed — if Mr. Graffman’s almost constant practicing had worn down the hammers and new hammers had to be installed, for example — “he would take out the insides of the piano and carry it half a block to the Steinway basement. He would work on it and carry it back.” (The unit Mr. Mohr lifted out and took down the street is known as the key and action assembly, a bewildering combination of all 88 keys and the parts that respond to a pianist’s touch, driving the hammers to the strings.)
Mr. Mohr was 94 when he passed.
Noted.
Friday, April 8th, 2022I have written before about my fondness for the old Texas Monthly, and my disdain for most of what’s in the current version.
This is an exception, for obvious reasons.
“At One of the Last Classical Music Stores, CDs Still Rock“.
(Archive.is version, because TM can sometimes be skirty if you don’t have a subscription.)
…
…The store was never really about shopping; it was more of a community center or musical salon, where classical buffs gathered to argue about their favorite artists, discuss new releases, and listen to albums on the store’s speakers.
“It’s a hangout,” Sumbera mused. “People don’t just come in and flip through the stacks, pick up a couple of recordings, buy them, and leave. People stick around and chat.”
…
…the logistics of setting up an online storefront for classical music are darn near terrifying.
Think about searching Amazon for a pop album you want to download. You can probably type in “Adele 30” and be done. But the classical world, with composers, soloists, conductors, ensembles, and hundreds of compositions with identical names like “Piano Sonata,” is a database programmer’s nightmare. And then there’s the sheer volume of classical recordings being released. Presto Music, for example, stocks 614 recordings of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
“I don’t think people realize how many classical titles are out there in print right now,” Sumbera pointed out, before offering a ballpark guess: 150,000. Naxos, America’s biggest classical distributor, lists 297 brand-new albums arriving in the month of March alone. Sumbera can’t load all of those into an online store by himself, or even fit the inventory into his building.
Classical Music of Spring is linked on the sidebar, but to save searching…