Reason has a nice obit up for Dick Dale.
“…We’re like Johnny Appleseed, crossing the country and sowing the seeds of survival.”
Johnny Thompson, aka “The Great Tomsoni”,
He was more than a magician, though: he was a consultant and advisor to other magicians (including Penn and Teller, who he worked extensively with) and an expert magic historian.
“Johnny had a profound way of taking an idea and creating an illusion that worked,” he said by email. “When I called him and asked, ‘How do I make a guarded car vanish from inside of a dealership?,’ without missing a beat he said, ‘We don’t, we vanish it from a tent outside, just like the vanishing elephant illusion,’ ” a reference to a classic trick performed by Houdini and others.
Mr. Jillette said that this knowledge of history had also come into play in a less visible role that Mr. Thompson filled: that of informal mediator when one magician thought another might be stealing material.
“If two people felt they were doing material that was too close, Johnny knew the provenance of everything,” Mr. Jillette said. “He could adjudicate that.”
You should read all the way to the end of this obit: there’s a story involving Mr. Jillette that I won’t spoil for you here.