The Rest In Peace and Remembrance Thread

[unchoopfan]

Memphis music legend Alex Chilton dies
Vocals powered Box Tops hits "The Letter," "Cry Like A Baby"
By Jody Callahan, Bob Mehr
Memphis Commercial Appeal
March 17, 2010

Pop hitmaker, cult hero, and Memphis rock iconoclast Alex Chilton has died.

The singer and guitarist, best known as a member of '60s pop-soul act the Box Tops and the '70s power-pop act Big Star, died today at a hospital in New Orleans. Chilton, 59, had been complaining of about his health earlier today. He was taken by paramedics to the emergency room where he was pronounced dead. The cause of death is believed to be a heart attack.

His Big Star bandmate Jody Stephens confirmed the news this evening. "Alex passed away a couple of hours ago," Stephens said from Austin, Texas, where the band was to play Saturday at the annual South By Southwest Festival. "I don’t have a lot of particulars, but they kind of suspect that it was a heart attack."

The Memphis-born Chilton rose to prominence at age 16, when his gruff vocals powered Box Tops massive hit “The Letter.” The band would score several more hits, including “Cry Like a Baby” and “Neon Rainbow.”

After the Box Tops ended in 1970, Chilton had a brief solo run in New York before returning to Memphis. He soon joined forces with a group of Anglo-pop-obsessed musicians, fellow songwriter/guitarist Chris Bell, bassist Andy Hummel and drummer Jody Stephens, to form Big Star.

The group became the flagship act for the local Ardent Studios' new Stax-distributed label. Big Star’s 1972 debut album, #1 Record met with critical acclaim but poor sales. The group briefly disbanded, but reunited sans Bell to record the album Radio City. Released in 1974, the album suffered a similar fate, plagued by Stax’s distribution woes.

"I’m crushed. We’re all just crushed," said Ardent founder John Fry, who engineered most of the Big Star sessions. "This sudden death experience is never something that you’re prepared for. And yet it occurs."

The group made one more album, Third/Sister Lovers, with just Chilton and Stephens — and it too was a minor masterpiece. Darker and more complex than the band’s previous pop-oriented material, it remained unreleased for several years. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine would name all three Big Star albums to its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
In the mid-'70s Chilton began what would be a polarizing solo career, releasing several albums of material, like 1979’s Like Flies on Sherbet — a strange, chaotically recorded album of originals and obscure covers that divided fans and critics. Chilton also began performing with local roots-punk deconstructionists the Panther Burns.

In the early '80s, Chilton left Memphis for New Orleans, where he worked a variety of jobs and stopped performing for several years. But interest in his music from a new generation of alternative bands, including R.E.M. and the Replacements, brought him back to the stage in the mid-'80s.

He continued to record and tour as a solo act throughout the decade. Finally, in the early '90s, the underground cult based around Big Star had become so huge that the group was enticed to reunite with a reconfigured lineup.

"It’s obvious to anybody that listens to his live performances or his body of recorded work, his tremendous talent as a vocalist and songwriter and instrumentalist," Fry said.

"Beyond the musical talent, he was an interesting, articulate and extremely intelligent person," Fry added. "I don't think you’d ever have a conversation with him of any length that you didn’t learn something completely new."

The band, featuring original member Stephens plus Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow of the Posies, continued to perform regularly over the next 16 years. Big Star became the subject of various articles, books and CD reissue campaigns, including the release of widely hailed box set, Keep an Eye on the Sky, released last year by Rhino Records.

"When some people pass, you say it was the end of an era. In this case, it’s really true," said Memphis singer-songwriter Van Duren, a Chilton contemporary in the Memphis rock scene of the '70s.

The band was scheduled to launch the spring 2010 season at the Levitt Shell at Overton Park with a benefit concert on May 15.

Big Star had not played in Memphis since a 2003 Beale Street Music Festival appearance.

Chilton is survived by his wife, Laura, and a son Timothy.

[David Paleg]

World music champion Charlie Gillett dies at 68
Mar 18, 6:42 AM (ET)
By JILL LAWLESS

LONDON (AP) - Charlie Gillett, a DJ and music historian who helped bring music from around the world to wider attention, has died at the age of 68, his employer, the British Broadcasting Corp. said Thursday.

The BBC said Gillett died in a London hospital on Wednesday. He had an autoimmune disease and last week suffered a heart attack.

Soft-spoken Gillett was a fixture of the BBC's domestic radio stations and its international World Service, where his show "Charlie Gillett's World of Music" offered a wildly eclectic mix of music from around the globe.

In contrast to the narrow formats of most Western radio stations, Gillett played everything from Cajun boogie to Nigerian soul to Portuguese fado, gaining a devoted international following.

World Service director Peter Horrocks said Gillett was "an inspiration whose spirit of adventure and passion for the rich diversity of global music opened the ears of the world."

Many musicians had reason to be grateful to Gillett. Among the artists he championed were Senegal's Youssou N'Dour and Mali's Salif Keita, and he was credited with launching the career of Dire Straits by playing the then-unknown band's song "Sultans of Swing" on his BBC London radio show in 1976, prompting a battle to sign them by record companies.

Born in Morecambe, northwestern England, in 1942, Gillett studied at Cambridge University and at Columbia University in New York, where he wrote an MA thesis on the history of rock 'n' roll. He expanded it into the book "The Sound of the City," published in 1970 and regarded as one of the best accounts of the genre's early years.

In the 1970s Gillett co-founded the Oval record label, whose releases included the influential Cajun compilation "Another Saturday Night," and for a time managed pub-rock band Kilburn and the High Roads, whose lead singer, Ian Dury, went on to fame with The Blockheads.

Gillett is survived by wife Buffy and their children Suzy, Jody and Ivan. Funeral details were not immediately available.

[Scott Reppert]

Shoulda Had My Money On Fess Parker...

LOS ANGELES – Fess Parker, a baby-boomer idol in the 1950s who launched a craze for coonskin caps as television's Davy Crockett, died Thursday of natural causes. He was 85.

Family spokeswoman Sao Anash said Parker, who was also TV's Daniel Boone and later a major California winemaker and developer, died at his Santa Ynez Valley home. His death comes on the 84th birthday of his wife of 50 years, Marcella.

"She's a wreck," Anash said, adding Parker was coherent and speaking with family just minutes before his death. Funeral arrangements will be announced later.

The first installment of "Davy Crockett," with Buddy Ebsen as Crockett's sidekick, debuted in December 1954 as part of the "Disneyland" TV show.

The 6-foot, 6-inch Parker was quickly embraced by youngsters as the man in a coonskin cap who stood for the spirit of the American frontier. Boomers gripped by the Crockett craze scooped up Davy lunch boxes, toy Old Betsy rifles, buckskin shirts and trademark fur caps. "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" ("Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee...") was a No. 1 hit for singer Bill Hayes while Parker's own version reached No. 5.

The first three television episodes were turned into a theatrical film, "Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier," in 1955.

True to history, Disney killed off its hero in the third episode, "Davy Crockett at the Alamo," where the real-life Crockett died in 1836 at age 49. But spurred by popular demand, Disney brought back the Crockett character for some episodes in the 1955-56 season, including "Davy Crockett's Keelboat Race." In reporting this development, Hedda Hopper wrote: "Take off those black armbands, kids, and put on your coonskin caps, for Davy Crockett will hit the trail again."

But just as suddenly it had taken the country by storm, the craze died down.

Parker's career then leveled off before he made a TV comeback from 1964-1970 in the title role of the TV adventure series "Daniel Boone" — also based on a real-life American frontiersman. Actor-singer Ed Ames, formerly of the Ames Brothers, played Boone's Indian friend, Mingo.

After "Daniel Boone," Parker largely retired from show business, except for guest appearances, and went into real estate.

"I left the business after 22 years," Parker told The Associated Press in 2001. "It was time to leave Hollywood. I came along at a time when I'm starting out with Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Sterling Hayden and Gregory Peck."

"Who needed a guy running around in a coonskin cap?" he said.

Parker had made his motion picture debut in "Springfield Rifle" in 1952. His other movies included "No Room for the Groom" (1952), "The Kid From Left Field" (1953), "Them!" (1954), "The Great Locomotive Chase" (1956), "Westward Ho, the Wagons!" (1956), "Old Yeller" (1957) and "The Light in the Forest" (1958).

Several of Parker's films, including "The Great Locomotive Chase" and "Old Yeller," came from the Disney studio.

It was Parker's scene as a terrified witness in the horror classic "Them!" that caught the attention of Walt Disney when he was looking for a "Davy Crockett" star. He chose Parker over another "Them!" actor, James Arness — who became a TV superstar in the long-running "Gunsmoke."

After departing Hollywood, Parker got into real estate with his wife, Marcella, whom he had married in 1960.

He bought and sold property, built hotels (including the elegant Fess Parker's Wine Country Inn & Spa in Los Olivos and Fess Parker's Doubletree Resort Santa Barbara) and grew wine grapes on a 2,200-acre vineyard on California's Central Coast, where he was dubbed King of the Wine Frontier and coonskin caps enjoyed brisk sales.

After its inaugural harvest in 1989, Parker's vineyard won dozens of medals and awards. The Parkers' son, Eli, became director of winemaking and their daughter, Ashley, also worked at the winery.

Parker was a longtime friend of Ronald Reagan, whose Western White House was not far from the Parker vineyards. Reagan sent Parker to Australia in 1985 to represent him during an event, and when Parker returned he was asked by White House aide Michael Deaver if he was interested in being ambassador to that country.

"In the end, I decided I'd better take myself out of it. But I was flattered," Parker said.

Parker also once considered a U.S. Senate bid, challenging Alan Cranston. But Nevada Sen. Paul Laxalt said it would be a rough campaign, and a key dissenter lived under the same roof.

"My wife was not in favor," Parker said. "I'm so happy with what evolved."

Fess Elisha Parker Jr. was born Aug. 16, 1924, in Fort Worth, Texas — Parker loved to point out Crockett's birthday was Aug. 17. He played football at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene but was injured in a nearly fatal road-rage knifing in 1946.

"There went my football career," Parker had said.

He later earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Texas.

Parker was discovered by actor Adolphe Menjou, who was Oscar-nominated for "The Front Page" in 1931 and who was a guest artist at the University of Texas. Menjou urged him to go to Hollywood and introduced Parker to his agent.

[unchoopfan]

Robert Culp, who starred in `I Spy,' dead at 79
March 24, 2010

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Robert Culp, the actor who teamed with Bill Cosby in the racially groundbreaking TV series "I Spy" and was Bob in the critically acclaimed sex comedy "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice," died Wednesday after collapsing outside his Hollywood home, his agent said. Culp was 79.

His manager, Hillard Elkins, said the actor was on a walk when he fell. He was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead just before noon. The actor's son was told he died of a heart attack, Elkins said, though police were unsure if the fall was medically related.

Los Angeles police Lt. Robert Binder said no foul play was suspected. Binder said a jogger found Culp, who apparently fell and struck his head.

Culp had been working on writing screenplays, Elkins said.

"I Spy," which aired from 1965 to 1968, was a television milestone in more ways than one. Its combination of humor and adventure broke new ground, and it was the first integrated television show to feature a black actor in a starring role.

Culp played Kelly Robinson, a spy whose cover was that of an ace tennis player. (In real life, Culp actually was a top-notch tennis player who showed his skills in numerous celebrity tournaments.). Cosby was fellow spy Alexander Scott, whose cover was that of Culp's trainer. The pair traveled the world in the service of the U.S. government.

The series greatly advanced the careers of both actors.

Cosby, who had achieved fame as a standup comedian, proved he could act. Culp, who had played mostly heavies in movies and TV, went on to become a film star.

He followed "I Spy" with his most prestigious film role, in "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice." The work of first-time director Paul Mazursky, who also co-wrote the screenplay, it lampooned the lifestyles of the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Bob and Carol (Culp and Natalie Wood) were the innocent ones who were introduced to wife-swapping by their best friends, Ted and Alice (Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon).

Culp also had starring roles in such films as "The Castaway Cowboy," "Golden Girl," "Turk 182!" and "Big Bad Mama II."

His teaming with Cosby, however, was likely his best remembered role.

Cosby won Emmys for actor in a leading role all three years that "I Spy" aired, and Culp, who was nominated for the same award each year, said he was never jealous.

"I was the proudest man around," he said in a 1977 interview.

Both he and Cosby were involved in civil rights causes, and when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968 the pair traveled to Memphis, Tenn., to join the striking garbage workers King had been organizing.

Culp and Cosby also costarred in the 1972 movie "Hickey and Boggs," which Culp also directed. This time they were hard-luck private detectives who encountered multiple deaths. Audiences who had enjoyed the lightheartedness of "I Spy" were disappointed, and the movie flopped at the box office.

After years of talking up the idea, they finally re-teamed in 1994 for a two-hour CBS movie, "I Spy Returns."

In his first movie role Culp played one of John Kennedy's crew in "PT 109."

His first starring TV series, "Trackdown" (1957-1959) was a Western based partly on files of the Texas Rangers. In the 1980s, he starred as an FBI agent in the fantasy "The Greatest American Hero."

He remained active in movies and TV. Among his notable later performances was as a U.S. president in 1993's "The Pelican Brief." More recently, he also had a recurring role in the sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond" and appeared in such shows as "Robot Chicken," "Chicago Hope" and an episode of "Cosby."

[jag]

NEW YORK—Singer Johnny Maestro, who performed the 1958 doo-wop hit "16 Candles" with The Crests and enjoyed a decades-long career with The Brooklyn Bridge, has died of cancer. He was 70.

Les Cauchi, a friend and original Brooklyn Bridge member, said Maestro _ born John Mastrangelo _ died late Wednesday in Florida. His last residence was in Cape Coral, Fla.

After beginning his career in the 1950s with The Crests _ one of the first interracial singing groups _ Maestro joined a local New York group, The Del-Satins. It merged with a Long Island band, The Rhythm Method, to form Johnny Maestro and The Brooklyn Bridge in 1968.

Hits by the rock 'n' roll and doo-wop group included "The Worst That Could Happen," which Cauchi said earned "gold record" status with a million sales.

Cauchi said the group performed that song on "The Ed Sullivan Show." Other hits included "Blessed is the Rain," "Welcome Me Love" and "You'll Never Walk Alone."

Cauchi recalled that another well-known song, "Your Husband, My Wife," drew controversy when it was released in 1969 because it dealt with infidelity _ a touchy topic during that era.

"Johnny was a class act. He was truly a gentleman," singer Dion DiMucci said on Facebook. "He sang `You'll Never Walk Alone' like an angel. ... We thank you for the beautiful trip you took us on. Love and peace."

"Dion reached out to John over the last couple of months, when Johnny was sick, to encourage him and give him some spiritual guidance," Cauchi said.

The band got its name after a manager declared it would be "harder to sell than the Brooklyn Bridge," Maestro once said. He performed at arenas, amphitheaters and casinos throughout the U.S. and Europe.

"He's considered one of the premier vocalists in rock 'n' roll _ and one of the nicest, most sincere perfectionists in music," said Cauchi.

"Maybe now the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will recognize him," said veteran radio host, author and music historian Bruce "Cousin Brucie" Morrow.

"Of all the talent, Johnny was the smoothest," said Morrow, who worked with Maestro many times. "He probably sounded more like his recordings live than any other performer. He always held true to the music and treated it with great respect."

Maestro's last performance was Jan. 17, when The Brooklyn Bridge was among groups appearing at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Connecticut. It was billed as "The Ultimate Doo-Wop Party."

[jag]

Jazz guitarist Herb Ellis has died at 88 of complications from Alzheimer’s disease, the AP reports. Ellis performed with the Oscar Peterson Trio and contributed standard “Detour Ahead” to the jazz canon with his Soft Winds trio.

[That 70's Employee]

Actor John Forsythe, who played a scheming oil tycoon on "Dynasty" and was the voice of Charlie on "Charlie's Angels," has died at 92, a publicist says.

[David Paleg]

Awwww. He's chasing after Farrah. Also meeting up with Bosley #1 - David Doyle, and Bosley #3 - Bernie Mac. Charlie gets to meet real angels.

[David Paleg]

Dynasty loses another star:
From IMDB.com
April 7, 8:08 pm

Actor Christopher Cazenove Dies at 66

Christopher Cazenove, the British actor most famous for his portrayal of Ben Carrington in the TV series Dynasty, died Wednesday in London after a battle with septicemia, which he had contracted in February; he was 66. In addition to his role in the famous 80s drama, Cazenove was known to audiences as the villain in the comedy 3 Men and a Little Lady, and the father of Heath Ledger's character in A Knight's Tale.

[David Paleg]

Raabe, 'Wizard of Oz' Munchkin actor, dies at 94
Apr 10, 5:03 AM (ET)
By POLLY ANDERSON

Meinhardt Raabe, who played the Munchkin coroner in "The Wizard of Oz" and proclaimed in the movie that the Wicked Witch of the East was "really most sincerely dead," has died. He was 94.

His caregiver, Cindy Bosnyak, said Raabe - pronounced RAH'-bee - died Friday morning at a hospital in Orange Park, Fla. He was one of the few surviving Munchkins from the 1939 film.

Bosnyak said he complained of a sore throat at his retirement community before collapsing and going into cardiac arrest. He was taken to Orange Park Medical Center, where he later died, she said.

[David Paleg]

'Designing Women' star Dixie Carter dies at 70
By ANDREW DALTON, AP

LOS ANGELES — "Designing Women" star Dixie Carter, whose Southern charm and natural beauty won her a host of television roles, has died at age 70.

Carter died Saturday morning, according to publicist Steve Rohr, who represents Carter and her husband, actor Hal Holbrook. He declined to disclose the cause of death or where she died. Carter lived with Holbrook in the Los Angeles area.

"This has been a terrible blow to our family," Holbrook said in a written statement. "We would appreciate everyone understanding that this is a private family tragedy."

A native of Tennessee, Carter was most famous for playing wisecracking Southerner Julia Sugarbaker for seven years on "Designing Women," the CBS sitcom that ran from 1986 to 1993. The series was the peak of a career in which she often played wealthy and self-important but independent Southern women.

She was nominated for an Emmy in 2007 for her seven-episode guest stint on the ABC hit "Desperate Housewives."

Carter's other credits include roles on the series "Family Law" and "Diff'rent Strokes."

She married Holbrook in 1984. The two had met four years earlier while making the TV movie "The Killing of Randy Webster," and although attracted to one another, each had suffered two failed marriages and were wary at
first.

They finally wed two years before Carter landed her role on "Designing Women." Holbrook appeared on the show regularly in the late 1980s as her boyfriend, Reese Watson.

The two appeared together in her final project, the 2009 independent film "That Evening Sun," shot in Tennessee and based on a short story by Southern novelist William Gay.

The middle of three children, Carter was born in 1939 in McLemoresville, Tenn.

Carter was the daughter of a grocery and department store owner who died just three years ago at 96. She said at the time of his death that he taught her to believe in people's essential goodness.

"When I asked him how he handled shoplifting in his new store, which had a lot of goods on display, making it impossible to keep an eye on everything, he said, 'Most people are honest, and if they weren't, you couldn't stay in business because a thief will find a way to steal,'" Carter said. "'You can't really protect yourself, but papa and I built our business believing most people are honest and want to do right by you.'"

Carter grew up in Carroll County and made her stage debut in a 1960
production of "Carousel" in Memphis. It was the beginning of a
decades-long stage career in which she relied on her singing voice as much
as her acting.

She appeared in TV soap operas in the 1970s, but did not become a national star until her recurring roles on "Diff'rent Strokes" and another series, "Filthy Rich," in the 1980s.

Those two parts led to her role on "Designing Women," a comedy about the lives of four women at an interior design firm in Atlanta.

Carter and Delta Burke played the sparring sisters who ran the firm. The series also starred Annie Potts and Jean Smart.

The show, whose reruns have rarely left the airwaves, was not a typical
sitcom. It tackled such topics as sexism, ageism, body image and AIDS.

"It was something so unique, because there had never been anything quite like it," Potts told The Associated Press at a 2006 cast reunion. "We had Lucy and Ethel, but we never had that exponentially expanded, smart, attractive women who read newspapers and had passions about things and loved each other and stood by each other."

Carter appeared on the drama "Family Law" from 1999 to 2002, and in her last major TV appearance she played Gloria Hodge, the surly mother-in-law to Marcia Cross's Bree on "Desperate Housewives."

Carter said the role was far from the kindly woman she played on "Designing Women."

"It's a vast difference," Carter said while filming the series. "Gloria Hodge doesn't have any redeeming qualities except her intelligence."

In addition to Holbrook, Carter is survived by daughters Mary Dixie and Ginna.

[David Paleg]

3 just announced this morning...

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

TV Comedy Writer Myles Wilder Dies at 77
Apr 27, 2010 11:31 AM ET
by Joyce Eng, TV Guide online

Myles Wilder, the prolific TV comedy screenwriter whose resume includes such classics as McHale's Navy and The Dukes of Hazzard, has died. He was 77.

Wilder died April 20 from complications of diverticulitis in Temecula, Calif., according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The son of director W. Lee Wilder and the nephew of Oscar-winning writer-director Billy Wilder, Wilder got his start by developing, writing and producing the 1956 NBC series The Adventures of Marco Polo. He joined the Ernest Borgnine comedy McHale's Navy in 1963, penning 28 episodes and earning two Emmy nominations during his three-year tenure. Other credits
during that time include The Patty Duke Show, Get Smart, The Flying Nun and My Three Sons.

In the '70s and '80s, Wilder wrote and produced The Dukes of Hazzard, and also wrote for The Doris Day Show, The Brady Bunch, The Addams Family, Welcome Back, Kotter, and Diff'rent Strokes.

Wilder was also in charge of daytime TV at Hanna-Barbera Studios and developed such animated shows as Inch High, Private Eye and Hong Kong Phooey.

After retiring in 1989, Wilder moved to Temecula to raise avocados.

He is survived by his wife, Bobbe; their daughter, Kimberly, and her husband Brynley; grandchildren Olivia and Morgan; and godson Matthew McGinnis.


-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Elizabeth Post, etiquette expert, dies at 89
Apr 27, 11:53 AM (ET)

NAPLES, Fla. (AP) - Elizabeth Post, who wrote more than a dozen books on etiquette and was spokeswoman for the Emily Post Institute in Vermont, has died.

Post's daughter-in-law, Peggy Post, says the the 89-year-old died on Saturday in Naples, Fla.

Elizabeth Post became the spokeswoman for the Emily Post Institute in 1965 and for decades, wrote a column on manners and etiquette for Good Housekeeping magazine.

She was the granddaughter-in-law of the country's foremost etiquette expert, Emily Post.

Elizabeth Post revised the manual "Emily Post's Etiquette" five times, helping keep it current as social norms have changed since its original printing in 1922.


-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Woodsman featured on 'American Loggers' dies at 45
Apr 27, 10:24 AM (ET)

BANGOR, Maine (AP) - A Maine woodsman and skidder operator who had a supporting role on Discovery Channel's "American Loggers" has died.

The Maine medical examiner's office has confirmed the death Friday night of David McLaughlin of Milo. He was 45 and had suffered from a severe diabetic condition.

Rudy Pelletier, co-owner of Gerald Pelletier Inc. in Maine, said the amiable, hardworking logger was sidelined from time to time because of his diabetes.

McLaughlin's condition was diagnosed when he was 14, but he maintained a sense of humor that sometimes came through on the TV series.

"American Loggers" focuses on the Pelletier family's logging operations. Rudy Pelletier tells the Bangor Daily News that viewers were touched by McLaughlin's struggles.

[David Paleg]

Actress Dorothy Provine Dies
29 April 2010 5:21 AM, PDT
WENN

Actress Dorothy Provine has died after a battle with emphysema.

The star passed away on Sunday at a hospice in Bremerton, Washington at the age of 75, reports Reuters.

Her career began after she landed the title role in 1958's The Bonnie Parker Story - just three days after moving from a small town in South Dakota to Hollywood.

She later went on to star in The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock with Lou Costello, and played Jack Lemmon's wife in Good Neighbor Sam.

Provine also appeared in 1963 comedy It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World as well as Live Fast, Die Young and Never a Dull Moment, opposite Dick Van Dyke.

She is survived by her husband, TV director Robert Day.

[David Paleg]

Catherine Bach's husband dies in apparent suicide
May 1, 2:41 AM (ET)
By RAQUEL MARIA DILLON

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A successful entertainment attorney who was married to
actress Catherine Bach was found dead in an apparent suicide Friday,
coroners officials said.

Peter Lopez, 60, died of a gunshot wound at his home in the Encino Hills,
coroner's office operations chief Craig Harvey said.

A neighbor reported hearing a shot and someone at the home found Lopez's
body, coroners officials said.

Bach and her two daughters suffered a "tragic personal loss," said her
publicist, Steve Rohr.

Bach played Daisy Duke in the 1980s TV series "The Dukes of Hazzard."

Lopez was Michael Jackson's music attorney for several years, according to
Alfred Newman, a spokesman for the firm Lopez helped found, Kleinberg
Lopez Lange Cuddy & Klein. He also represented The Eagles, Andrea Bocelli
and Michael Buble.

"We are deeply shocked and saddened by the unexpected loss of our friend
and partner," the firm said in a statement.

Lopez worked with singers, record producers and songwriters and was a
co-producer of the Jennifer Lopez film "Selena," a biopic about the
beloved Tejano singer who was killed by the president of her fan club.

Raymone Bain, Michael Jackson's former general manager, said she hired
Peter Lopez in 2006 as Jackson's entertainment attorney when she was
reorganizing the singer's business affairs.

"I'd known Peter for 20 years," she said. When she was searching for a new
legal team she said another of her clients, R&B singer Babyface,
recommended Lopez.

"I can't think of a nicer individual," she said. "He was a good guy. I'm
just so shocked."

She said Lopez traveled with her and Jackson to London for the World Music
Awards and spoke to the singer quite often.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Lopez to the California State
Athletic Commission, which regulates boxing, and as the director of the
California Exposition and State Fair Board.

Lopez attended UCLA Law School.

[Lester]

Alfred Newman?

[Scott Reppert]

Lynn Redgrave Passes Away At 67

NEW YORK - Lynn Redgrave, an introspective and independent player in her family's acting dynasty who became a 1960s sensation as the freethinking title character of "Georgy Girl " and later dramatized her troubled past in such one-woman stage performances as "Shakespeare for My Father" and "Nightingale," has died. She was 67.

Her publicist Rick Miramontez, speaking on behalf of her children, said Redgrave died peacefully Sunday night at her home in Connecticut. Children Ben, Pema and Annabel were with her, as were close friends.

"Our beloved mother Lynn Rachel passed away peacefully after a seven year journey with breast cancer," Redgrave's children said in a statement Monday. "She lived, loved and worked harder than ever before. The endless memories she created as a mother, grandmother, writer, actor and friend will sustain us for the rest of our lives. Our entire family asks for privacy through this difficult time."

Her death comes a year after her niece Natasha Richardson died from head injuries sustained in a skiing accident and just a month after the death of her older brother, Corin Redgrave.

The youngest child of Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson, Lynn Redgrave never quite managed the acclaim — or notoriety — of elder sibling Vanessa Redgrave, but received Oscar nominations for "Georgy Girl " and "Gods and Monsters ," and Tony nominations for "Mrs. Warren's Profession," "Shakespeare for My Father" and "The Constant Wife." In recent years, she also made appearances in the television shows "Ugly Betty," " Law & Order " and "Desperate Housewives."

"Vanessa was the one expected to be the great actress," Lynn Redgrave told The Associated Press in 1999. "It was always, 'Corin's the brain, Vanessa the shining star, oh, and then there's Lynn.'"

In the theater, Redgrave, with her striking dark red hair, often displayed a sunny, sweet and open personality, much like her ebullient offstage personality. It worked well in such shows as "Black Comedy," her Broadway debut in 1972 and again two years later in "My Fat Friend," a comedy about an overweight young woman who sheds pounds to find romance.

Tall and blue-eyed like her sister, she was as open about her personal life as Vanessa has been about politics. In plays and in interviews, Lynn Redgrave confided about her family, her marriage and her health. She acknowledged that she suffered from bulimia and served as a spokeswoman for Weight Watchers. With daughter Annabel Clark, she released a 2004 book about her fight with cancer, "Journal: A Mother and Daughter's Recovery From Breast Cancer."

Redgrave was born in London in 1943 and despite self-doubts pursued the family trade. She studied at London's Central School of Speech and Drama and was not yet 20 when she debuted professionally on stage in a London production of "A Midsummer's Night Dream." Like her siblings, she appeared in plays and in films, working under Noel Coward and Laurence Olivier as a member of the National Theater and under director/brother-in-law Tony Richardson in the 1963 screen hit " Tom Jones ."

"Before I was born, my father was a movie star and a stage star," the actress told the AP in 1993. "I was raised in a household where we didn't see our parents in the morning. We lived in the nursery. Our nanny made our breakfast, and I was dressed up to go downstairs to have tea with my parents, if they were there."

True fame caught her with "Georgy Girl ," billed as "the wildest thing to hit the world since the miniskirt." The 1966 film starred Redgrave as the plain, childlike Londoner pursued by her father's middle-aged boss, played by James Mason .

Dismissed by critic Pauline Kael as a false testament to free thinking ("Underneath all the nonconformity gear are the crooked little skeletons of old Shirley Temple pictures"), the film was branded cool by moviegoers on both side of the Atlantic and received several Academy Award nominations, including one for Redgrave and one for the popular title song performed by the Australian group The Seekers.

"All the films I've been in — and I haven't been in that many attention-getting films — no one expected anything of, least of all me," Redgrave said in an AP interview in 1999.

But "Georgy Girl " didn't lead to lasting success and by age 50, Redgrave was as known for her weight problems as for her acting. As she wrote in the foreword to "Shakespeare for My Father," she was out of work and set off on a "journey that began almost as an act of desperation," writing a play out of her "passionately emotional desire" to better understand her father, who had died in 1985.

In the 1993 interview, Redgrave remembered her father as a fearless stage performer yet a shy, tormented man who had great difficulty talking to his youngest daughter.

"I didn't really know him," Redgrave said. "I lived in his house. I was in awe of him and I adored him, and I was terrified of him and I hated him and I loved him, all in one go."

She looked at her mother's side of the family in "The Mandrake Root" and "Rachel and Juliet." In 2009, her play "Nightingale" touched upon her health, the life of her grandmother (Beatrice Kempson) and the end of her 32-year marriage to actor-director John Clark, who had disclosed that he had fathered a child with the future wife of their son Benjamin.

"Redgrave, a cancer survivor, sits at a desk ... and works from a script because of what has been described as an unspecified medical ailment — but not a recurrence of cancer — requiring immediate treatment. It doesn't affect her touching, beautifully realized performance," the AP wrote last year.

"And reading gives the evening an almost storybook quality in which it seems as if the actress, buoyed by a radiant smile, has gathered a few good friends to hear her reminisce about this formidable woman — mother of Rachel, mother-in-law of Michael and grandmother to Lynn, Vanessa and Corin."

Lynn Redgrave is survived by six grandchildren, her sister Vanessa, and four nieces and nephews.

A private funeral with be held later this week.

[jag]

NEW YORK— Actress Helen Wagner, who played mild-mannered Nancy Hughes on the CBS soap opera "As the World Turns" for more than a half-century and spoke its first words, has died at age 91.

She died Saturday, said the show's New York-based production company, TeleNext Media Inc., which didn't say where she died or what was the cause of her death.

Wagner opened "As the World Turns" when it premiered on April 2, 1956, with the words: "Good morning, dear." She held the Guinness World Record for playing the same role on television for the longest amount of time, 54 years, TeleNext Media said.

[Scott Reppert]

Lena Horne, Who Had More Talent In Her Furthest
Left Toenail Than Lady GaGa Does Overall, Dead At 92

Lena Horne, the enchanting jazz singer and actress who reviled the bigotry that allowed her to entertain white audiences but not socialize with them, slowing her rise to Broadway superstardom, died Sunday. She was 92.

Horne died at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, according to hospital spokeswoman Gloria Chin. Chin would not release any other details.

Horne, whose striking beauty and magnetic sex appeal often overshadowed her sultry voice, was remarkably candid about the underlying reason for her success.

"I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white people could accept," she once said. "I was their daydream. I had the worst kind of acceptance because it was never for how great I was or what I contributed. It was because of the way I looked."

In the 1940s, she was one of the first black performers hired to sing with a major white band, the first to play the Copacabana nightclub and among a handful with a Hollywood contract.

In 1943, MGM Studios loaned her to 20th Century-Fox to play the role of Selina Rogers in the all-black movie musical "Stormy Weather." Her rendition of the title song became a major hit and her signature piece.

On screen, on records and in nightclubs and concert halls, Horne was at home vocally with a wide musical range, from blues and jazz to the sophistication of Rodgers and Hart in songs like "The Lady Is a Tramp" and "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered."

In her first big Broadway success, as the star of "Jamaica" in 1957, reviewer Richard Watts Jr. called her "one of the incomparable performers of our time." Songwriter Buddy de Sylva dubbed her "the best female singer of songs."

But Horne was perpetually frustrated with the public humiliation of racism.

"I was always battling the system to try to get to be with my people. Finally, I wouldn't work for places that kept us out ... it was a damn fight everywhere I was, every place I worked, in New York, in Hollywood, all over the world," she said in Brian Lanker's book "I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America."

While at MGM, she starred in the all-black "Cabin in the Sky," in 1943, but in most of her other movies, she appeared only in musical numbers that could be cut in the racially insensitive South without affecting the story. These included "I Dood It," a Red Skelton comedy, "Thousands Cheer" and "Swing Fever," all in 1943; "Broadway Rhythm" in 1944; and "Ziegfeld Follies" in 1946.

"Metro's cowardice deprived the musical of one of the great singing actresses," film historian John Kobal wrote.

Early in her career Horne cultivated an aloof style out of self-preservation, becoming "a woman the audience can't reach and therefore can't hurt" she once said.

Later she embraced activism, breaking loose as a voice for civil rights and as an artist. In the last decades of her life, she rode a new wave of popularity as a revered icon of American popular music.

Her 1981 one-woman Broadway show, "Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music," won a special Tony Award. In it, the 64-year-old singer used two renditions — one straight and the other gut-wrenching — of "Stormy Weather" to give audiences a glimpse of the spiritual odyssey of her five-decade career.

A sometimes savage critic, John Simon, wrote that she was "ageless. ... tempered like steel, baked like clay, annealed like glass; life has chiseled, burnished, refined her."

When Halle Berry became the first black woman to win the best actress Oscar in 2002, she sobbed: "This moment is for Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll. ... It's for every nameless, faceless woman of color who now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened."

Lena Mary Calhoun Horne, the great-granddaughter of a freed slave, was born in Brooklyn June 30, 1917, to a leading family in the black bourgeoisie. Her daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote in her 1986 book "The Hornes: An American Family" that among their relatives was a college girlfriend of W.E.B. Du Bois and a black adviser to Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Dropping out of school at 16 to support her ailing mother, Horne joined the chorus line at the Cotton Club, the fabled Harlem night spot where the entertainers were black and the clientele white.

She left the club in 1935 to tour with Noble Sissle's orchestra, billed as Helena Horne, the name she continued using when she joined Charlie Barnet's white orchestra in 1940.

A movie offer from MGM came when she headlined a show at the Little Troc nightclub with the Katherine Dunham dancers in 1942.

Her success led some blacks to accuse Horne of trying to "pass" in a white world with her light complexion. Max Factor even developed an "Egyptian" makeup shade especially for the budding actress while she was at MGM.

But in his book "Gotta Sing Gotta Dance: A Pictorial History of Film Musicals," Kobal wrote that she refused to go along with the studio's efforts to portray her as an exotic Latin American.

"I don't have to be an imitation of a white woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I'd become," Horne once said. "I'm me, and I'm like nobody else."

Horne was only 2 when her grandmother, a prominent member of the Urban League and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, enrolled her in the NAACP. But she avoided activism until 1945 when she was entertaining at an Army base and saw German prisoners of war sitting up front while black American soldiers were consigned to the rear.

That pivotal moment channeled her anger into something useful.

She got involved in various social and political organizations and — along with her friendship with Paul Robeson — got her name onto blacklists during the red-hunting McCarthy era.

By the 1960s, Horne was one of the most visible celebrities in the civil rights movement, once throwing a lamp at a customer who made a racial slur in a Beverly Hills restaurant and in 1963 joining 250,000 others in the March on Washington when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. Horne also spoke at a rally that same year with another civil rights leader, Medgar Evers, just days before his assassination.

It was also in the mid-'60s that she put out an autobiography, "Lena," with author Richard Schickel.

The next decade brought her first to a low point, then to a fresh burst of artistry.

She had married MGM music director Lennie Hayton, a white man, in Paris in 1947 after her first overseas engagements in France and England. An earlier marriage to Louis J. Jones had ended in divorce in 1944 after producing daughter Gail and a son, Teddy.

In the 2009 biography "Stormy Weather," author James Gavin recounts that when Horne was asked by a lover why she'd married a white man, she replied: "To get even with him."

Her father, her son and her husband, Hayton, all died in 1970-71, and the grief-stricken singer secluded herself, refusing to perform or even see anyone but her closest friends. One of them, comedian Alan King, took months persuading her to return to the stage, with results that surprised her.

"I looked out and saw a family of brothers and sisters," she said. "It was a long time, but when it came I truly began to live."

And she discovered that time had mellowed her bitterness.

"I wouldn't trade my life for anything," she said, "because being black made me understand."

[jag]

Hank Jones
Hank Jones, who died on Sunday aged 91, was a jazz pianist of prodigious talent; although not as well known as Oscar Peterson or George Shearing, he was of comparable stature as an artist, admired by his peers and treasured by jazz-lovers.


Jones's discography was longer than almost any other living jazz musician's, and he played with virtually every major figure in the genre, including Benny Goodman, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and John Coltrane.

His ability to grasp the essence of a soloist's style and come up instantly with the perfect accompaniment was one of his great strengths.




Henry "Hank" Jones was born at Vicksburg, Mississippi, on August 31 1918. When he was a few months old his parents moved to Pontiac, Michigan, and he grew up there, the oldest boy in a family of 10 children.

It was a musical household. Two of Hank's brothers also grew up to become famous jazz musicians: the trumpeter and bandleader Thad Jones, and the drummer Elvin Jones. Their parents were religious and their upbringing strict; Hank was a lifelong teetotaller and non-smoker, eschewed even the mildest of profanities and always insisted on saying grace at table.

All the Jones boys studied music formally from an early age and – somewhat to their father's disapproval – listened avidly to jazz on the radio, Hank's particular passion being for Fats Waller. By the age of 13 he was playing in local bands, and on leaving school became a professional musician.

In 1944, on the recommendation of the saxophonist Lucky Thompson, he joined the band of the trumpeter and singer Hot Lips Page in New York. This was where he first encountered the new and complex musical language of bebop. After the initial shock he became fascinated by its possibilities and soon developed a mastery of the idiom.

In 1945 he played for a while in the revolutionary big band led by Billy Eckstine. He worked with both Coleman Hawkins and Buster Bailey in 1946, and the following year became Ella Fitzgerald's accompanist, a post he held for almost six years.

Ella Fitzgerald toured regularly with the jazz package-show Jazz At The Philharmonic (JATP), staged by the impresario Norman Granz, who was also her personal manager. As a result, Jones became a member of the elite company of JATP musicians, recording with Parker, Lester Young and Roy Eldridge, among others.

From the summer of 1953 he worked as a freelance in New York. This was perhaps the busiest and most exciting era in the jazz life of the city, and he enjoyed it to the full. He became a semi-permanent fixture at Birdland, Manhattan's most famous jazz club; played in a bewildering variety of bands; took part in Artie Shaw's final recording session; toured the Far East with Benny Goodman; and, with the drummer Kenny Clarke and the bassist Wendell Marshall, became part of the house rhythm section for the Savoy record label.

Jones can be seen in the famous group photograph of 57 famous jazz musicians, published by Life magazine in 1958. Typically, he has placed himself discreetly at the edge of the picture.

The jazz world was taken aback in 1959 when Jones joined the staff orchestra of CBS television, playing for the Jackie Gleason and Ed Sullivan Shows and anything else that was required. It was, he said, a challenge which he relished. He took polite exception to being described as "buried in the studios", and claimed that even accompanying auditions could be an educational experience.

It was the CBS orchestra which played for John F Kennedy's birthday rally at Madison Square Garden on June 19 1962, and Hank Jones is the pianist who can be heard faintly on the famous recording of Marilyn Monroe singing Happy Birthday, striving manfully to keep her in tune.


Jones finally began to receive his due recognition in the late 1970s. He started recording and giving concerts as a piano soloist and playing duets with other pianists, including John Lewis, Tommy Flanagan and Marian McPartland.

He gained a particular following in Japan, which he visited at least once a year. He also constituted a third of the Great Jazz Trio, with a changing cast of well-known bassists and drummers. At the 1987 JVC Jazz Festival in New York he shared an evening of solos and duets with George Shearing.

As he grew older, Jones's music assumed a patina of elegant but deceptive simplicity. Recordings in the CD era, such as Lazy Afternoon (1989); Live At Maybeck (1991); Upon Reflection (1993); Steal Away, with the bassist Charlie Haden (2004); and Kids, with the saxophonist Joe Lovano (2007), are full of harmonic and melodic invention, but the ideas are offered with characteristic reticence, so that they charm rather than overwhelm the listener.

At the age of 90, Jones toured Europe, performing in Vienna, Paris, Geneva, Prague and Istanbul.

[Scott Reppert]

Hank Jones played what I call "real jazz". Just like Lamar, the concierge, in "That Thing You Do!" refers to...