Archive for the ‘Music’ Category

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Obit watch: December 23, 2024.

Monday, December 23rd, 2024

I hope all of my readers are having a Festive Festivus.

Rickey Henderson, for the historical record, as I think this was well covered over the weekend. NYT. ESPN. Baseball Reference.

Michael Brewer, of Brewer & Shipley (“One Toke Over the Line”).

Miguel Angel Aguilar, fitness influencer.

Aguilar was hospitalized in a critical condition on Sept. 13 after he got caught up in an attempted robbery in Los Angeles, KTLA reported.
According to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), Aguilar and his wife, celebrity hair stylist Priscilla Valles, were confronted by four armed men in the driveway of their Bel-Air home on Sept. 13.
The armed intruders ultimately struck Aguilar multiple times, including once in the face, before fleeing, TMZ reports. LAPD officers were called at around 4:30 p.m. that day.

He had been hospitalized since, and passed away on Saturday.

Posted in Music, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 25, 2024.

Monday, November 25th, 2024

Two members of the Civil Air Patrol were killed in a crash in Colorado over the weekend. Susan Wolber was the pilot and Jay Rhoten was serving as an aerial photographer. They were on a routine training mission when the plane crashed near Storm Mountain in Larimer County, Colorado. A third member of the crew, co-pilot Randall Settergren, survived the crash but was seriously injured.

I’m putting this up to give FotB RoadRich a chance to comment if he wishes. From private discussions with him, I know he was a friend of the pilot, but I’m going to leave it up to him how much more he wants to say.

Barbara Taylor Bradford, author. Her books were huge.

Beginning with the runaway success of her 1979 debut novel, “A Woman of Substance,” Ms. Bradford’s 40 works of fiction sold more than 90 million copies in 40 languages and were all best sellers on both sides of the Atlantic, according to publishers’ reports.
Ten of her books were adapted for television films and mini-series, and the author, a self-described workaholic whose life mirrored the rags-to-riches stories of many of her heroines, achieved global celebrity and amassed a $300 million fortune.

Charles Dumont has passed away at 95. He was a French songwriter, and you might recognize his name: he wrote (with Michel Vaucaire) “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien”.

At 44, Piaf was racked by pain after a car accident and expressed little apparent interest in returning to the stage — certainly not with a song by Mr. Dumont, whom she had previously dismissed as “a mechanical songwriter of no great talent,” he recalled in a 2010 interview with The Independent.
That day, Piaf’s secretary had already informed them that the meeting was canceled when the singer piped up in a weary voice from her bedroom and agreed to see them. It took an hour for the frail figure to emerge, Mr. Dumont said, and when she did, she told them. “I’ll hear only one song — just one.” Mr. Dumont raced to the piano and began belting out “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien,” which he and Mr. Vaucaire had written with Piaf in mind.
“When I finished,” he said in 2010, “she asked, rather rudely, ‘Did you really write that song? You?’ Then she made me play it over and over again, maybe five or six times. She said that it was magnificent, wonderful. That it was made for her. That it was her. That it would be her resurrection.”

Noted:

Piaf dedicated her recording of the song to the Foreign Legion. At the time of the recording, France was engaged in a military conflict, the Algerian War (1954–1962), and the 1st REP (1st Foreign Parachute Regiment)—which backed the failed 1961 putsch against president Charles de Gaulle and the civilian leadership of Algeria—adopted the song when their resistance was broken. The leadership of the Regiment was arrested and tried but the non-commissioned officers, corporals and Legionnaires were assigned to other Foreign Legion formations. They left the barracks singing the song, which has now become part of the Foreign Legion heritage and is sung when they are on parade.

Chuck Woolery. NYT (archived).

After the Kentucky native performed “Delta Dawn” on The Merv Griffin Show, Griffin offered him a chance to audition as the host of a new game show he had just developed called Shopper’s Bazaar. Woolery beat out former 77 Sunset Strip star Edd “Kookie” Byrnes for the job, and the renamed Wheel of Fortune premiered on NBC on Jan. 6, 1975.
With the show pulling in a 44 share in 1981, Woolery requested a raise from $65,000 a year to about $500,000, what other top game show hosts were making at the time, he recalled in 2007. Griffin offered him $400,000 and NBC said it would pony up the rest, but that somehow infuriated Griffin, who threatened to take Wheel of Fortune to CBS, according to Woolery.
Not wanting to lose the game show, NBC withdrew the offer, and Griffin proceeded to fire Woolery and hire Pat Sajak. Also let go: original letter-turner Susan Stafford, who was replaced by Vanna White.

Posted in 1970s, Books, Music, Obits, Planes, TV | 6 Comments »

This is an obit about Alice, and about the restaurant…

Saturday, November 23rd, 2024

Alice Brock, restaurant owner.

Most people would know her best as the “Alice” of Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree”.

She closed the Back Room in 1967 and sold the church in 1971; Mr. Guthrie bought it in 1991 to house his archives and a community action center. By then she had moved to Provincetown, where she tried to put her fame behind her in favor of the tight-knit community she found on the Cape, which she considered her “chosen family.”

Also among the dead: Peter Sinfield, King Crimson guy.

Mr. Sinfield, who once referred to himself as the band’s “pet hippie,” linked up with Mr. Fripp in 1968 after living an itinerant life in Spain and Morocco. He was the lyricist on the first four King Crimson albums, starting with “In the Court of the Crimson King” in 1969, which is widely regarded as the first album in the genre that came to be known as prog rock.
But his role was varied. He also helped produce King Crimson’s albums and worked as a roadie, lighting operator and sound engineer and, as art director, oversaw the band’s album covers. He even came up with the name of the band, plucked from his lyrics for the song “The Court of the Crimson King.”

Spencer Lawton Jr. He was a DA for 28 years.

Mr. Lawton served as district attorney for Chatham County, Ga., from 1981 to 2009, a tenure in which he combined a tough-on-crime message with a pioneering program to provide help to victims and witnesses.
After recognizing that the criminal justice system, which pits the government against the defendant, often left victims and witnesses as an afterthought, he created an office to give them counseling and resources as they navigated a labyrinth that they usually had not chosen to enter.His Victim-Witness Assistance Program swiftly became a model in other jurisdictions, first around Georgia and eventually nationwide.

He may be better known as the lead prosecutor in the murder case against James Arthur Williams for the killing of Danny Hansford, or the Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil murder case.

Mr. Berendt, who spent several years in the 1980s living in Savannah and peppered his gossipy story with denizens of the city’s quirky demimonde, clearly believed Mr. Williams, and he went to great lengths to depict Mr. Lawton as dimwitted and opportunistic, yet also “eloquent and venomous.”
He strongly implied that Mr. Lawton chose a charge of first-degree murder, instead of manslaughter, at the behest of Lee Adler, who had an ongoing feud with Mr. Williams, a neighbor, according to the book, and who was one of Mr. Lawton’s major campaign donors.
Mr. Lawton declined to speak with Mr. Berendt during the trials, saying it would be unprofessional.
Nor did he speak out after the book appeared, though he let friends and colleagues know he was frustrated — especially after its success sent a flood of tourists to Savannah and led to a film version that leaned into Mr. Berendt’s depiction of Mr. Lawton as a bumbling hack (though it did use a pseudonym for him, Finley Largent).

…

Mr. Lawton built his campaign on promises to resolve an enormous backlog of cases the Ryans had accumulated and to fix an antiquated local criminal-justice system that he claimed was failing the public. He won handily, and over the next 28 years won acclaim for making the system more responsive and humane.
It was, he always insisted, his real legacy, regardless of what millions of readers and tourists might think. In an obituary prepared by his family, “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” or Mr. Lawton’s role in it, does not get a single mention.

I haven’t read Midnight and I don’t plan to. My understanding is that Berendt is a hack, and a lot of Midnight is fabricated. That bothers me, and I owe you guys a longer more thoughtful essay on the subject of fabrication in true crime books, and why Midnight bothers me when In Cold Blood doesn’t. I think the best answer I have right now is that In Cold Blood seems less egregious to me than Midnight.

Posted in History, Law, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 21, 2024.

Thursday, November 21st, 2024

A lot of obits from the NYT today for people of questionable notability, but I have a reason for posting each of these.

Diane Coleman, disability rights activist and opponent of assisted suicide/”right to die” laws.

Gifted with a dark sense of humor, in 1996 she founded a group called Not Dead Yet, a reference to a memorable scene in the movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” in which a man tries to pass off an infirm — but very much alive — relative to a man collecting dead bodies.
“To put it bluntly, she was blunt,” Jim Weisman, a disability rights lawyer, said in an interview.

Vic Flick, British session musician.

The Bond films produced signature catchphrases (“shaken, not stirred,” “Bond, James Bond”) that have been endlessly recited and parodied since “Dr. No,” the first in the series, was released in Britain in 1962. But it was the sound of Mr. Flick’s guitar in the opening credits that helped make the spy thrillers instantly recognizable.
During the title credits of “Dr. No,” when moviegoers were introduced to or reacquainted with the works of the author Ian Fleming, who wrote the James Bond books, Mr. Flick’s thrumming guitar sounded out through a brass-and-string orchestra.

Bill Moyes, one of the pioneers of hang gliding.

One winter day in 1968, Mr. Moyes became a man with wings. He took a ski lift to the top of Mount Crackenback, in the Australian Alps, harnessed himself to a device that looked like a giant kite and skied off a cliff.

…

Mr. Moyes flew at 1,000 feet for almost two miles, setting the world record for the longest unassisted flight, according to newspaper accounts. The triumph marked the beginnings of hang gliding, a sport Mr. Moyes popularized by flying into the Grand Canyon, soaring off Mount Kilimanjaro and being towed behind an airplane at 8,600 feet.

…

He nearly killed himself several times.
In 1972, at a show in Jamestown, N.D., he fell 300 feet after the towing rope snapped. He sustained multiple fractures and was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where he spent several weeks recuperating.

…

On another occasion, he attempted, unsuccessfully, to launch from a speeding motorcycle that he was also driving. He did not break any bones. He also did not try that again.

Reg Murphy, newspaper guy. Beyond my well-known affection for crusty old newspaper people, Mr. Murphy was the centerpiece of a bizarre crime story I’d never heard of before.

Mr. Murphy was the editorial page editor of The Atlanta Constitution on Feb. 19, 1974, when a man later identified as William A.H. Williams, a drywall subcontractor, called Mr. Murphy’s office to ask his advice about how best to donate 300,000 gallons of heating oil to a worthy cause.
He called again the next day at dusk and arranged to meet Mr. Murphy at his home; the two of them would then drive to Mr. Williams’s lawyer’s office to sign some papers.
“I really had no choice but to go with him,” Mr. Murphy wrote in a lengthy account in The New York Times shortly after the incident, “for newspapermen have to lead open lives and be available to anonymous or strange people.”
So strange was Mr. Williams that he immediately displayed a .38-caliber gun in his left hand and announced, “Mr. Murphy, you’ve been kidnapped.” He identified himself as a colonel in the American Revolutionary Army and ranted against the “lying, leftist, liberal news media” and “Jews in the government.”

…

Mr. Murphy was held in a motel room, wedged tightly between a wall and a bed, and ordered to record an audiotape demanding $700,000 in ransom. The money was delivered in marked bills in two suitcases dropped off on a rural road.

That’s $700,000 in 1974 money. According to my preferred inflation calculator, that’s $4,482,044.62 in 2024 money.

After 49 hours of captivity, Mr. Murphy was released in the parking lot of a Ramada Inn. Mr. Williams, whom Mr. Murphy identified from photos of suspects, was arrested six hours later.
He was convicted on federal extortion charges and sentenced to 40 years in prison, of which he served nine. His wife received a three-year suspended sentence for failing to report his crimes. The ransom was recovered.
In 2019, Mr. Williams, stricken with Stage 4 melanoma, called the newspaper to apologize. He said he had been high on amphetamines when the kidnapping took place.

…

In 1975, Mr. Murphy left Atlanta to become editor and publisher of The San Francisco Examiner, owned by Randolph Hearst, whose daughter was on trial at the time for participating in a bank robbery linked to the radical group that had abducted her. After she was convicted, Mr. Hearst appeared in The Examiner’s office and dropped the key to a new Porsche on his desk in appreciation of the newspaper’s coverage.
“It takes integrity of a different kind for a father to come in and say, ‘You did a good job covering the trial of my daughter,’” Mr. Murphy said in an interview published this year in The Mercerian, the magazine of Mercer University in Macon, Ga., his alma mater.

Posted in Law, Media, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 19, 2024.

Tuesday, November 19th, 2024

Lawrence, the Guardian, and the New York Times have all noted that two drummers for the Bee Gees have died in the past few days.

Dennis Bryon, 76, the Bee Gees’ drummer starting in 1973, died on Nov. 14, according to Blue Weaver, who played in the band Amen Corner with Mr. Bryon. He announced his death on Facebook on Thursday, but gave no cause of death for Mr. Bryon.
Colin “Smiley” Petersen, the band’s first professional drummer, died on Nov. 18 at the age of 78, according to Evan Webster and Sue Camilleri, who work on The Best of The Bee Gees Show, a tribute band. Mr. Petersen died from a fall, they said.
Mr. Petersen, who joined the Bee Gees in 1967, played on the band’s first four albums. He started playing in the The Best of The Bee Gees Show five years ago, Mr. Webster said.

…

Mr. Petersen played on a string of hit ballads from 1967 to 1970, including “Massachusetts,” “To Love Somebody,” “I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You,” “I Started a Joke” and “Words.” He was also a child actor, known for his role in the 1956 film “Smiley,” which was the origin of his nickname, among a few other movies in the late ’50s.

…

Mr. Bryon, born in Cardiff, Wales, was a part of the Bee Gees for many of its greatest hits in the 1970s, including “Stayin’ Alive,” “How Deep is Your Love,” “You Should Be Dancing,” “More Than a Woman” and the rest of the “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack. He started playing drums when he was 14.

Arthur Frommer, travel book guy.

Mr. Frommer built an empire of guidebooks, package tours, hotels and other services on the bedrock of his first book, published in 1957, which sold millions of copies in annually updated editions until 2007. (It was “Europe From $95 a Day” by then.)

…

“This is a book,” he wrote, “for American tourists who a) own no oil wells in Texas, b) are unrelated to the Aga Khan, c) have never struck it rich in Las Vegas and who still want to enjoy a wonderful European vacation.”

Thomas E. Kurtz, one of the great men of history. He co-created the BASIC computer language.

At 4 a.m. on May 1, 1964, in the basement of College Hall on the Dartmouth campus, the time-sharing system and BASIC were put to a test. A professor and a student programmer typed a simple command, “RUN,” into neighboring Teletype terminals and watched as both received the same answer simultaneously. It worked.

Posted in Books, Geek, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch; November 4, 2024.

Monday, November 4th, 2024

Quincy Jones. NYT.

Alan Rachins, actor. I watched enough “L.A. Law” that I remember him. THR.

Other credits include “Stargate SG-1”, “Showgirls”, and the “Fear on Trial” TV movie, which some of us had to watch in high school.

Posted in Music, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 28, 2024.

Monday, October 28th, 2024

David Harris, actor. NYT (archived).

Other credits include “18 Wheels of Justice”, “Crime Story”, “Badge of the Assassin”, and “Cop Rock”.

Tom Jarriel, ABC reporter. He’s another one of those old-time guys I remember from watching the news when I was younger.

Phil Lesh, of the Grateful Dead.

Jeri Taylor. TV writer and producer.

Before embarking on her Star Trek voyage, the Indiana native wrote and produced episodes of such popular network crime fare as Quincy, M.E., Magnum, P.I., Jake and the Fatman and In the Heat of the Night. She was adept at writing about “character, of people and relationships and feelings,” she once noted.

…

Along the way, Taylor also wrote ABC Afterschool Specials, episodes of Little House on the Prairie, The Incredible Hulk, Blue Thunder and Father Dowling Mysteries and the 1987 CBS telefilm A Place to Call Home, starring Linda Lavin.

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

Obit watch: September 30, 2024.

Monday, September 30th, 2024

Kris Kristofferson. THR.

He was a good Texas boy who did some acting in addition to his music career. There’s plenty of press coverage around this, but a few credits that aren’t covered in the articles: “Lone Star”, “Millennium”, “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia”, “Heaven’s Gate”, and let us not forget…

(I know both Lawrence and I have said this before, but “Passion & Poetry: Sam’s Trucker Movie”, which is on the blu-ray edition of “Convoy”, has a lot of Kristofferson in it. And I think it is almost more interesting than the movie itself.)

Dikembe Mutombo, Hall of Fame NBA player. ESPN.

I kind of disliked that commercial because I felt it made him look like a jerk (yes, I know it was playing off his signature move). But:

Mutombo often joked about how much in fines his showmanship had cost him under the league’s no-taunting rule. But four years into retirement he received ample payback, starring in an acclaimed Geico commercial created for the 2013 Super Bowl. In that 30-second spot, in full uniform, he wagged his famous finger at people in various everyday activities.
He told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the commercial had reestablished recognition “for me and for my foundation. I thank God for it.”

…

Mutombo’s mother, Biamba Marie, died at home in 1998 after having a stroke; he had been unable to get hospital care for her due to a government-enforced curfew. That year, he invited business and political insiders to a dinner in Washington to announce a fund-raising campaign for a hospital in Kinshasa to provide treatment for the poor. Over the next several years, he struggled to raise money, even from people within the N.B.A., two notable exceptions being Ewing and Mourning.
“I thought it would be easy, that I would call up all the rich people I knew from being a basketball player and the whole thing would take nine months,” he told The New York Times weeks before the 300-bed hospital, named for his mother, opened in September 2006, on land donated by the government. He said that he had to pay squatters to vacate the property and that he had donated roughly $15 million to the project.
“This is going to be the proudest day of my life,” he said during the ceremonial opening.

John Ashton, actor. Other credits include “EastEnders”, “Hardcastle and McCormick”, “Police Squad!” (In color), and “Columbo”.

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

Obit watch: September 27, 2024.

Friday, September 27th, 2024

Dame Maggie Smith. THR. Tributes. Other credits include “Richard III” (1995), “Murder By Death”, “Death on the Nile” (1978), “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”, “The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”, and voice work in “Sherlock Gnomes” and “Gnomeo & Juliet”.

Barbara Leigh-Hunt, actress. Other credits include “Oh Heavenly Dog”, “The Plague Dogs”, and “Longitude”.

Muriel Furrer, Swiss cyclist. She was 18. Her death was a result of head injuries she sustained in a crash yesterday during the UCI World Championships.

Frank Coppa died in October of 2023, but his death was not announced until recently.

In 2002, he was serving time for securities fraud when he was indicted on racketeering and extortion charges. Facing an even longer prison sentence, he notified the F.B.I. that he wanted to cooperate with the government.
It was the first time a Bonanno member had flipped, violating the mafia’s solemn oath of loyalty, Omertà.
Mr. Coppa’s decision to cooperate with federal prosecutors, knowingly putting his life at risk, led at least 10 other members to do the same and ultimately helped the government convict Joseph Massino, the Bonanno boss, of seven murder charges and immobilize his mafia family.

…

Mr. Coppa, known as Big Frank, spent two days on the witness stand describing a world seemingly drawn from a Mario Puzo novel, with characters nicknamed Bobby Wheelchairs, Sally Bagel, Gene the Hat, Patty from the Bronx and Little Nicky Eyeglasses.

…

Mr. Coppa also detailed his role in the death of Dominick Napolitano, a Bonanno member, known as Sony Black, who was executed in 1981 for unwittingly connecting the family with an undercover F. B.I agent, Joseph D. Pistone, who used the alias Donnie Brasco. Mr. Pistone later wrote a book about that experience and was played by Johnny Depp in “Donnie Brasco,” a 1997 film adaptation.
The night of Mr. Napolitano’s murder, Mr. Coppa testified, he had bought fried chicken for the hit men as they prepared for the execution, at a Bonanno member’s house in Queens.

…

Among law enforcement officials, Mr. Coppa was known as a clever wise guy. He made millions of dollars for himself and the Bonanno family in pump-and-dump schemes, boosting the value of penny stocks to quickly turn a profit. He also shook down underworld figures outside the Bonanno family who were engaging in securities fraud.
“He was one of the smartest mob guys you’re ever going to meet,” a former F.B.I. agent involved in the case said in an interview on the condition of anonymity so that he could speak about the investigation. “He understood how to engineer these financial frauds. He was at a completely different level when it came to most of these guys.”

Posted in Cycling, Law, Music, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 20, 2024.

Friday, September 20th, 2024

Dr. John A. Clements, another big damn hero, passed away on September 3rd at 101.

Newborn babies sometimes have a problem called respiratory distress syndrome, or RDS. They can’t breathe, and they die. Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, the second son of JFK and Jacqueline, famously died from RDS. In the 1960s, RDS killed about 10,000 babies every year.

Dr. Clements first did the early work that determined the lungs used a surfactant to allow breathing. Then, two other researchers that he served as an advisor for determined that RDS was caused by an absence of surfactant in the baby’s lungs.

Then Dr. Clements developed an artificial surfactant.

His research led to the first synthetic lung surfactant, which the University of California licensed to the drugmaker Burroughs Wellcome and Company. Its drug Exosurf was the first replacement surfactant for clinical use approved by the Food and Drug Administration, in 1990.
Eventually, further study found that animal-derived surfactants worked better, and they are most often used today. Infant deaths from R.D.S. in the United States have declined to fewer than 500 a year.

JD Souther, musician and actor.

Mr. Souther was almost the fifth Eagle: He joined the quartet for an afternoon tryout at the Troubadour, but he decided that the band was already perfect, and that he’d rather write for them.
A string of songs followed, many of them hits and most of them written with Mr. Henley and Mr. Frey, including “The Best of My Love,” “Victim of Love,” “Heartache Tonight” and “New Kid in Town.”

…

In recent years he was better known, at least to younger fans, for his screen presence. In 2012 he joined the cast of “Nashville,” playing a veteran music producer, Watty White — a character that drew heavily on his own experiences in the industry. He appeared during the first season, and his character was popular enough that the showrunners brought him back for the fifth season.

Nobody else has bothered to report this yet, as far as I’ve seen, but: Nelson DeMille, thriller author.

His first novel was “By the Rivers of Babylon,” published in 1978.

I actually remember when that came out, and being interested in reading it. However, I had somewhat limited means at the time, and that was one of the books I never bought. Now that I’m older, I may have to pick it up, because what’s not to like about a book with two Concordes in it?

Posted in Books, Music, Obits | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: September 16, 2024.

Monday, September 16th, 2024

Dr. George Berci, Holocaust survivor, violinist, and big damn hero, passed away on August 30th. He was 103.

Dr. Berci was one of the pioneers of minimally invasive surgery.

Dr. Berci brought a precise eye and an inventor’s zeal to innovations that enabled doctors to better visualize the bladder, colon, esophagus, prostate, common bile duct and other body parts. Until earlier this summer, he was the senior director of minimally invasive surgery research at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he had worked since 1969.
His innovations were critical to the revolution in minimally invasive endoscopies and laparoscopies, which dramatically reduced the need for surgeons to make large incisions.
In endoscopies, doctors use a flexible tube with a light and a camera to examine the upper and lower digestive system. Dr. Berci focused mainly on the area around the throat and vocal cords.
In laparoscopies, surgeons place a thin rod with a video camera attached at the end through a small abdominal incision. Carbon dioxide is then used to inflate the space to give doctors enough room to use small instruments to, among other things, remove gallbladders, cysts, tumors, appendixes and spleens; diagnose endometriosis; and repair hernias.

…

“It is unlikely that there will ever be another surgeon who so single-handedly impacts an entire field of surgery as Dr. Berci did,” said Dr. Brunt, the producer of the documentary, who is a professor of surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “He understood the potential for laparoscopy and its applications long before most surgeons saw any value in it.”

Tito Jackson. THR.

Herbie Flowers, session musician who played bass on “Walk on the Wild Side”.

Tommy Cash, Johnny’s brother, but he had a music career of his own. THR.

Posted in Heroism, History, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 3, 2024.

Tuesday, September 3rd, 2024

James Darren, actor and musician.

Other credits include the good “Hawaii Five-O”, “S.W.A.T.” (the original), “Black Sheep Squadron” (aka “Baa Baa Black Sheep”), and “Renegade”.

Simon Verity, stone carver.

Mr. Verity was chosen to direct the St. John the Divine project in 1988. That venture placed him on a scaffold on Amsterdam Avenue for parts of nine years, leading a team that, using hammers, mallets and chisels, carved 31 biblical figures, including Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist, Abraham and Sarah, from limestone blocks in the niches that frame the great brass doors at the Portal of Paradise.
One carving, a reimagining of the burning of Jerusalem, depicts the destruction of the World Trade Center and other city landmarks under a nuclear mushroom. (It was created more than a decade before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.) The carving illustrates signs of a rebirth, building on the city’s ashes.
The Very Rev. Patrick Malloy, dean of the cathedral, said in a statement that many tourists visited the cathedral just to see the portal.
“Mr. Verity took the long-dead worthies of the Hebrew and Christian traditions and made them things of wonder for people in our own day,” he added. “Beyond this present age, his work will endure into a future beyond us.”

…

In the late 1970s, Mr. Verity visited Austria, where he became fascinated by a 17th-century grotto built for the prince-archbishop of Salzburg. He went on to restore centuries-old grottoes and designed and built new ones, both in Europe and in the United States.

…

One of his original grottoes was at Leeds Castle, in Kent, England, which visitors entered through a suite of rooms. Nearly all the rooms were encrusted, from ceiling to floor, with colorful mosaics made from minerals, shells and animal bones, and some of the walls were covered with elaborate limestone sculptures.
In addition, he carved statues of four whales and a fountain for King Charles III when Charles was the Prince of Wales; a teacup made of broken crockery for Elton John’s garden; a seated king in the front of Wells Cathedral, whose restoration he also worked on; and “The Agony in the Garden,” which depicts Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane before his betrayal.
Mr. Verity created fountains and a sundial at the American Academy in Rome and headstones for the writer Nancy Mitford; George Wein, the Newport Jazz Festival impresario, and his wife, Joyce (for which he sculpted a jazz band); and the British poet laureate John Betjeman.

Posted in Music, Obits, TV | 1 Comment »

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