In Memory Of ...

[BooBootheBear]

One of if not the single greatest influence on popular music in the 20th Century. Quincy Jones had more musical talent in his left arse cheek than Jay-Z, Kanye and whatever Sean Combs is calling himself this month (inmate 37452-054 ?) have combined.

Thriller was a good album but its success was distorted by the global furore over the video. Off the wall is arguably Jackson's greatest album and it was all Quincy Jones.

Little known fact. That most peculiarly "English" soundtrack of the original film The Italian Job starring Michael Caine was composed by Quincy Jones.

Ai No Corrida has been a permanent earworm for me since 1981

You will never see another popular musician, composer or producer like this again.

[KDO]

Phil Lesh
Philip Chapman Lesh
March 15, 1940 – October 25, 2024

American Musician | Bassist | Songwriter
Founding Member of Grateful Dead

Phil Lesh, Bassist Who Anchored the Grateful Dead, Dies at 84 - NYT

Phil Lesh, Grateful Dead Co-Founder and Bassist, Dead at 84 - RollingStone
The musician pushed the band toward long-form improvisation, electronic experiments, and nightly free-form “space” interludes.

The Grateful Dead Bassist Phil Lesh dies at 84 - NPR

Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh Dies at 84 - Pitchfork
The bassist was an original member of the rock band with Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, and Bill Kreutzmann.

Phil Lesh - Wikipedia

[Gemini37]

Tony Todd
Dec 4 1954 - Nov 6 2024

Tony Todd, Prolific Actor Best Known for ‘Candyman,’ Dies at 69

Tony Todd, veteran actor behind the ‘Candyman’ horror movie franchise and more, dies at 69

[BooBootheBear]

Originally Posted by Gemini37

Tony Todd
Dec 4 1954 - Nov 6 2024

Tony Todd, Prolific Actor Best Known for ‘Candyman,’ Dies at 69

Tony Todd, veteran actor behind the ‘Candyman’ horror movie franchise and more, dies at 69

Damn.Hadn't heard of that. What a shame.

Typecast too often and criminally underused, but a regular in TV and low budget films when a man with a distinctive or menacing voice was required. If you look at his CV he turned up in a dozen and more productions every year for more than 20 years and he has a dozen in post production classed as upcoming. That makes him what used to be called a steady jobbing actor. He popped up in Star Trek franchise as the Klingon Kurn and showed the capacity for depth in appearances in DS9 (as an older Jake Sisko) Smallville and Andromeda but he was basically the go to guy for horror and SF.
I always wanted someone to give him something dramatically meaty to get his teeth into in a TV movie or series but he seemed happy with the roles offered and you can't criticise him for that.

In today's world 69 is at least a decade too early to go.

[ghost2509]

Bela Karolyi, who led Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton to Olympic gymnastics gold, dies

USA TODAY
Nancy Armour
November 16, 2024

Bela Karolyi, the larger-than-life coach who led Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton to Olympic gold while revolutionizing the sport of gymnastics, only to see his legacy destroyed by allegations of abusive coaching, has died. He was 82.

USA Gymnastics confirmed the news, saying he had died Friday. Comaneci paid tribute to Karolyi with a post on her Instagram, showing a carousel of photos that included a black-and-white photo of her with the coach on a walk in the woods. The caption read: "A big impact and influence in my life. RIP Bela Karolyi."

"Almost 50 years ago he guided me to the historic performance of the First Perfect 10 in the Olympics … and that changed my life for ever," Comaneci, who remained close with Karolyi, told USA TODAY Sports in a text message.

A cause of death has not been revealed, but Karolyi had been in poor health in recent years. He and wife Martha largely disappeared from public view following the abuse scandal that rocked USA Gymnastics. Former team physician Larry Nassar sexually abused hundreds of girls and young women, with some of the abuse occurring during national team training camps at the Karolyi ranch.

The Karolyis denied any knowledge of Nassar’s abuse but the scandal brought a reckoning with the sport's toxic culture, including complaints that both Karolyis had been physically and emotionally abusive as coaches. In 2017, USA Gymnastics backed out of a deal to buy the Karolyi ranch and use it as a national team training center, effectively cutting ties with the couple.

"Bela Karolyi was a man whose influence on my life and the sport of elite gymnastics is undeniably significant. He was a complex individual, embodying a mix of strengths and flaws that left a lasting impact on those around him," Dominique Moceanu, perhaps the most vocal critics of the Karolyis, said in a post on social media.

"Anyone who has followed my story knows that my journey under Bela's guidance as my coach came with immense challenges. His harsh words and critical demeanor often weighed heavily on me," she continued. "While our relationship was fraught with difficulty, some of these moments of hardship helped me forge and define my own path."

Karolyi first rose to prominence in his native Romania. He and Martha were elementary school teachers in Transylvania when they began teaching their students gymnastics as a way to stay warm. Their performances delighted the townspeople and caught the attention of the government. Within a few years, they’d been put in charge of the national team.

Karolyi shook up the sport in 1976, when he arrived at the Montreal Olympics with a team of kids. Most elite female gymnasts in the 1970s were in their late teens or early 20s, but Karolyi’s team had just one gymnast older than 14. Romania won the silver medal, cementing for the next four decades the idea that gymnastics was a sport reserved for the young.

It was also in Montreal that the world was introduced to Comaneci, a dark-eyed, dark-haired sprite who scored the first perfect 10 at the Olympics. Comaneci would repeat that feat six times on her way to winning three gold medals, with Karolyi there to wrap her in a bear hug after each routine.

Though Karolyi was initially celebrated in Romania for the team’s success, he fell out of favor with the government four years later after criticizing the judging at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. Karolyi was incensed, believing Comaneci had been robbed of a second gold medal, but Romanian officials were horrified that he’d embarrassed the Soviet hosts.

The following year, the Karolyis brought Comaneci and the Romanian team to the United States. While there, the couple learned they would likely be arrested upon their return. Despite not speaking any English, and with their young daughter still in Romania, they decided to defect, walking away from the team hotel in March 1981. (Their daughter would join them in the United States a year later.)

Karolyi spent the first few months in America doing menial jobs before reuniting with Americans he knew in the gymnastics community. Soon, he and Martha were coaching again —including a bubbly teenager from West Virginia named Mary Lou.

In 1984, Retton became the first U.S. woman to win the Olympic all-around title. Bela Karolyi was right alongside her, celebrating wildly and wrapping her in one of his trademark bear hugs.

For the next eight years, the Karolyis were the most prominent gymnastics coaches in the United States. A Karolyi gymnast won every U.S. all-around title from 1987 to 1992, and Kim Zmeskal in 1991 became the first U.S. woman to win the world championships.

The Karolyis retired after the 1992 Olympics but returned ahead of the Atlanta Games to coach Moceanu and Kerri Strug. The "Magnificent Seven" would win the U.S. women's first Olympic gold, but one of the signature moments still belonged to Karolyi, who carried Strug onto the medals podium after she'd badly injured her ankle while vaulting.

The Karolyis retired again after Atlanta. But in 1999, with the U.S. women falling behind Russia, Romania and China, USA Gymnastics convinced Karolyi to return and oversee an overhaul of the U.S. training system.

Unlike most other countries, the United States did not have a national training center. Instead, gymnasts gravitated to powerhouse gyms, often leaving home at an early age, and would only come together for international events. Karolyi created a semi-centralized system built around monthly national team training camps. Gymnasts no longer had to leave home in search of elite-level training because they and the less-experienced personal coaches were getting guidance from the national team staff each month. The camps also fostered a camaraderie, among both gymnasts and coaches, that previous generations had lacked.

But Karolyi's blusterous personality and insistence that he knew best rubbed the personal coaches and gymnasts at the Sydney Olympics the wrong way, and he spent just one year as the national team coordinator. Martha Karolyi succeeded him and, under her direction, the U.S. women became an international powerhouse.

Despite Bela Karolyi's love of the spotlight, he was content to step back and let Martha Karolyi run the U.S. program. Though she would occasionally consult him, he spent most of her 15-year tenure in the background, focusing instead on maintaining his beloved ranch, located in the middle of Sam Houston National Forest.

Though Martha Karolyi retired after the Rio Olympics in 2016, the couple planned to stay involved in the sport by having the ranch serve as the national team training center. But within months, the Nassar scandal and the scrutiny over the Karolyis' coaching methods had made them pariahs in the gymnastics community.

[KDO]

Shel Talmy
Sheldon “Shel” Talmy
August 11, 1937 – November 13, 2024

American Born Record Producer
Mr. Talmy helped define the sound of the British Invasion

Shel Talmy, Producer for the Who and The Kinks, Dead at 87 - RollingStone
Talmy collaborated with the legendary bands to help create hit songs "You Really Got Me" and "My Generation"

Shel Talmy, Who Produced The Who and the Kinks, Dies at 87 - NYT
Though he was American, he helped define the sound of the British Invasion after settling in London in the early 1960s.

Shel Talmy, Early Producer for the Who and Kinks and a Pioneer of the Brit Beat Sound, Dies at 87 - Variety

Shel Talmy, record producer who oversaw hits by the Kinks and the Who, dies at 87 - LA Times

Shel Talmy - Wikipedia

*

[ghost2509]

Vic Flick, Guitarist on the James Bond Theme Song, Dies at 87

yahoo.com
TheHollywoodReporter
Mike Barnes
November 19, 2024

Vic Flick, the famed British session guitarist who picked out the twangy riff for the James Bond theme song introduced to moviegoers on Dr. No, has died. He was 87.

His death on Thursday after a battle with Alzheimer’s disease was announced by his family on Facebook.

Flick also played on No. 1 hits for Peter and Gordon (“A World Without Love”) and Petula Clark (“Downtown”); performed on Tom Jones’ “It’s Not Unusual” and “Ringo’s Theme” (This Boy) for A Hard Day’s Night (1964); and collaborated with the likes of Jimmy Page, George Martin, Herman’s Hermits, Cliff Richard, Eric Clapton, Dusty Springfield and Engelbert Humperdinck.

“He was a musician’s musician,” Justin Hayward of The Moody Blues wrote in the foreword to Flick’s 2008 memoir, Vic Flick Guitarman: From James Bond to The Beatles and Beyond.

“He always stood up to play! Yes, I know it sounds obvious — but you couldn’t play ‘our’ music sitting down. The real guitar heroes always stood.”

Flick had performed with John Barry in The John Barry Seven, and when the composer was brought on to re-arrange Monty Norman’s original theme for Dr. No (1962), Flick added a “heavy sound” using a Clifford Essex Paragon De Luxe guitar.

“It had an edge to it, sort of a dynamic sound,” Flick recalled in Jon Burlingame’s 2012 book, The Music of James Bond. “I overplayed it — leaned into those thick low strings with the very hard plectrum, played it slightly ahead of the beat, and it came out exciting, almost ‘attacking,’ which fit the James Bond image.”

Flick would perform on a half-dozen other 007 films, including on Shirley Bassey’s theme for Goldfinger (1964).

Victor Harold Flick was born on May, 14, 1937, in Surrey, England. His father taught music, and he started out on the piano. He switched to the guitar to play in a band formed by his dad, eventually joined Bob Cort and his skiffle group and met Barry for the first time when The John Barry Seven accompanied Paul Anka on a European tour.

In a 2021 interview for Guitar Player magazine, Flick credited the sound of his guitar on the Bond theme to the “plectrum I used and the guitar’s strings. I placed the DeArmond pickup near the bridge. I put a crushed cigarette packet underneath it to get it nearer the strings. That helped to get that round sound. Most important, sound wise, was the Vox AC15 amplifier. I used it on tour. It wouldn’t let me down — until it fell eight feet into a music pit and disintegrated.

“Also important was the way the guitar was recorded. It was picked up by the mics for the orchestra, and it gave the guitar a mysterious, powerful sound. It was a sound we created, to a certain extent, and it had a bite that they loved.”

In 2013, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from The National Guitar Museum.

Survivors include his wife, Judith; his son, Kevin; and his grandchild, Tyler.

[ghost2509]

Earl Holliman, Actor on ‘Police Woman,’ Dies at 96

TheHollywoodReporter
yahoo.com
Mike Barnes
November 26, 2024

Earl Holliman, the actor best known for playing Angie Dickinson’s boss on the 1970s NBC cop drama Police Woman, has died. He was 96.

Holliman died Monday in hospice care at his home in Studio City, his spouse, Craig Curtis, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Holliman won a best supporting actor Golden Globe for portraying Katharine Hepburn’s girl-crazy kid brother in The Rainmaker (1956) — he beat out Elvis Presley for the role — and then appeared in another Burt Lancaster film, as Wyatt Earp’s assistant in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957).

In the George Stevens epic Giant (1956), the Louisiana native played the son-in-law of Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson’s characters, was the cook in Forbidden Planet (1956) and appeared as the brother of John Wayne, Dean Martin and Michael Anderson Jr. in Henry Hathaway’s The Sons of Katie Elder (1965).

Holliman also portrayed a man with amnesia in a deserted town on the very first episode of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone, “Where Is Everybody?” which premiered on Oct. 2, 1959.

Also during the 1959-60 TV season, Holliman starred as Sundance, a Colorado gunslinger-turned-marshal with a sidekick — a dog named Useless — on the short-lived Hotel de Paree.

Three years later, Holliman toplined another TV Western, NBC’s Wide Country; he played a rodeo star on that Ralph Edwards-produced series, but that lasted only a season as well.

Holliman replaced Bert Convy after the pilot to star as the macho Lt. Bill Crowley on Police Woman, which aired from 1974-78. He shared a pleasant chemistry with Dickinson, who starred as LAPD undercover cop Sgt. Suzanne “Pepper” Anderson, on the series’ four seasons.

“She’d get into trouble and I’d run in and save her,” Holliman, talking about a typical Police Woman storyline, said in a 2003 interview. “I would make some smart remark and she would come back at me in some sexy kind of way, and a lot of that was ad-libbed. We had a tacit kind of permission to do that.”

Henry Earl Holliman was born on Sept. 11, 1928, in Delhi, Louisiana. His natural father died six months before he was born, and Holliman was placed in an orphanage before being adopted when he was a week old.

“When [his adoptive parents] came to see me, I was sick and they took me right away to the doctor, who apparently said, ‘You don’t have a baby here, you have a funeral expense,'” he said. “They paid the midwife $7.50 for me — this was in the backwoods of Louisiana.

“I had wonderful parents who gave me all the love in the world. They encouraged me to be whatever I can be. I was their only child.”

Holliman dreamed about becoming an actor, and when he was 14, shortly after his father died, he hitchhiked from a relative’s home in Texarkana, Texas, to the outskirts of Hollywood.

He was talked into returning home, so he came back to Oil City High School, where he played tackle on the football team and was voted president of his senior class.

After a stint in the U.S. Navy, Holliman studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse and made his professional debut with one line of dialogue as an elevator operator in the Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis comedy Scared Stiff (1953).

He had minor roles in four other films that year, and in 1954, he played Spencer Tracy’s son in Broken Lance and appeared with William Holden and Grace Kelly in The Bridges at Toko-Ri.

In 1957, Holliman starred on an installment of CBS’ Playhouse 90 called “The Dark Side of the Earth,” which was written by Serling. That put him on the writer’s radar for The Twilight Zone.

Holliman received another Globe nomination in 1993 for playing a gruff bar owner on the short-lived ABC series Delta, starring Delta Burke, and he portrayed Luddie Mueller on the landmark 1983 ABC miniseries The Thorn Birds.

His other TV credits included Gunsmoke, Cannon, Bonanza, Slattery’s People, The Fugitive, Dr. Kildare, The Six Million Dollar Man, Empty Nest, Murder, She Wrote and Caroline in the City.

Holliman also was in such as films as I Died a Thousand Times (1955), Hot Spell (1958), Last Train From Gun Hill (1959), Summer and Smoke (1961), A Covenant With Death (1967), The Power (1968), Anzio (1968), The Biscuit Eater (1972), Bad City Blues (1999) and The Perfect Tenant (2000).

Holliman ran the Fiesta Dinner Theatre in San Antonio for many years and served as president of Actors and Others for Animals, which promoted animal population control.

[SynchroDub]

RIP to one of the most innovative film-maker that's ever lived.

David Lynch, Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive director, dies aged 78



Film-maker who specialised in surreal, noir style mysteries made a string of influential, critically acclaimed works including Wild at Heart and Eraserhead

David Lynch, the maverick American director who sustained a successful mainstream career while also probing the bizarre, the radical and the experimental, has died aged 78.

“It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch,” read a Facebook post. “We would appreciate some privacy at this time. There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, “Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.” It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way.”

Last August, Lynch said he had been diagnosed with emphysema and in November, spoke further about his breathing difficulties. “I can hardly walk across a room,” he said. “It’s like you’re walking around with a plastic bag around your head.”

Lynch ploughed a highly idiosyncratic furrow in American cinema: from his beginnings as an art student making experimental short films, to the cult success of his surreal first feature Eraserhead, and on to a string of award-winning films including Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and Mulholland Drive, as well as the landmark TV show Twin Peaks. He received three best director Oscar nominations (for Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man and Mulholland Drive), and was given an honorary lifetime achievement Oscar in 2019; he won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival for Wild at Heart in 1990.

Lynch also avidly practiced transcendental meditation, setting up the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace in 2005; he also produced paintings, released albums (including collaborations with Julee Cruise, Lykke Li and Karen O), created a long-running YouTube weather report and opened a nightclub in Paris in 2011. In 2018 he explained his reclusive lifestyle to the Guardian: “I like to make movies. I like to work. I don’t really like to go out.” In 2024 he revealed his lifetime cigarette habit had resulted in debilitating emphysema.

Born in Missoula, Montana in 1946, Lynch went to art college in the 1960s and made his first experimental short, Six Men Getting Sick, while a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Lynch moved to Los Angeles in 1971 and studied film-making at the AFI Conservatory, where he began filming his first feature Eraserhead. Finally finishing it in 1976, the surreal black-and-white fable was received largely with bafflement, and rejected from most film festivals, but in the late 70s became something of a success on the late-night “midnight movie” circuit.

Eraserhead’s impact led to an offer from Mel Brooks’ production company to direct The Elephant Man; starring John Hurt in a biopic of Joseph Merrick, the film about the disfigured 19th-century man was nominated for eight Oscars and secured Lynch’s Hollywood status. After turning down an offer to direct Return of the Jedi, Lynch agreed to make an adaptation of Frank Herbert’s epic sci-fi novel Dune, but the film was substantially recut in postproduction and proved a commercial and critical disaster. Instead of a planned Dune sequel, Lynch decided to make a more personal film: his dark noir thriller Blue Velvet was a cult hit and a hugely influential critical success on its release in 1986, and it resulted in Lynch’s second best director Oscar nomination.

Lynch then embarked on another noirish project, the opaque and surreal murder-mystery Twin Peaks that – unusually for notable film directors of the period – was envisioned as a TV series; Lynch developed it with former Hill Street Blues writer Mark Frost. A mix of small town comedy, police procedural and surreal dreamworld, and described as “the most hauntingly original work ever done for American TV”, Twin Peaks defied early predictions of failure on its broadcast in 1990; as a pioneer of “high-end TV” it is arguably Lynch’s most influential work. A second series was broadcast later in 1990, a feature film prequel Fire Walk With Me was released in 1992, and a third series launched more than a quarter of a century later in 2017.

As Twin Peaks went into production, Lynch began working on a feature film adaptation of Barry Gifford’s novel Wild at Heart, and cast Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern in the lead roles in a violent, haunting road movie with echoes of The Wizard of Oz. Wild at Heart premiered at Cannes in 1990 and won the Palme d’Or.

In 1997 Lynch began to edge back to his avant garde roots with Lost Highway, a surreal thriller starring Bill Pullman and Patricia Arquette, which flopped at the box office. In complete contrast Lynch released The Straight Story in 1999, a bluntly straightforward story about an elderly man (played by Richard Farnsworth) who drives 240 miles across the country on a motorised lawnmower.

Lynch then embarked on another highly successful project: Mulholland Drive. Initially it appeared to go disastrously wrong, as Lynch had pitched it as a Twin Peaks-style TV series. A pilot was shot and then cancelled by TV network ABC. But the material was picked up by French company StudioCanal, who gave him the money to refashion it as a feature film. A noir-style mystery drama, it was another big critical success, secured Lynch a third best director Oscar nomination and in 2016 was voted the best film of the 21st century. Lynch followed it in 2006 with the three-hour surreal thriller Inland Empire, shot on video and starring Dern as an American movie star who appears to mysteriously transport into the Polish original of a film she is working on.

Thereafter Lynch appeared to step back from feature films, with only the third series of Twin Peaks in 2017 representing a big film-making project, although reports suggest he had been working on a series for Netflix. Lynch took acting roles in other people’s work, most notably as Gus the Bartender in Seth MacFarlane’s The Cleveland Show, and as legendary director John Ford in Steven Spielberg’s loosely autobiographical 2022 movie The Fabelmans.

Lynch was married four times and had a long-term relationship with his Blue Velvet star Isabella Rossellini.

[ghost2509]

'Mr. Baseball' Bob Uecker passes away at 90

mlb.com
January 16th, 2025
Adam McCalvy

MILWAUKEE -- Bob Uecker was a famously mediocre Major League hitter who discovered that he was much more comfortable at a microphone than home plate. And that was just the start of a second career in entertainment that reached far beyond the ballpark.

Uecker, the backup catcher turned Hollywood star, and the legendary radio voice of his hometown Brewers for more than five decades, died early Thursday after a private, multiyear battle with cancer. He was 90.

“While this onetime backup catcher was known for his self-deprecating style, Bob Uecker was one of the game’s most beloved figures throughout his 70-year career in baseball," Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. "In his six years in his hometown of Milwaukee as well as St. Louis, Philadelphia and Atlanta, Bob made lifelong friendships with many Hall of Famers and other stars of the ’60s, and he was a member of the 1964 World Series Champion Cardinals. Near the beginning of his remarkable 54-year run in the Brewers’ radio booth, Bob’s trademark wit became a staple of television and movies. Even with his considerable success in Hollywood, Bob remained fiercely loyal to baseball and to Milwaukee. He loved the game and used his platform to help numerous charitable causes in his hometown and beyond.

“Bob was the genuine item: always the funniest person in any room he was in, and always an outstanding ambassador for our National Pastime. We are grateful for this baseball life like no other, and we will never forget him. On behalf of Major League Baseball, I extend my deepest sympathy to Bob’s family, his many friends across the game, Brewers fans and the countless baseball fans who admired him.”

Uecker was a career .200 hitter but gained fame thanks to his quick wit. Nicknamed “Mr. Baseball” by “Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson during one of Uecker’s 100 or so appearances on late-night TV, he starred in a popular series of Miller Lite commercials, then in the ABC sitcom “Mr. Belvedere” and in the “Major League” film trilogy. He authored two books, hosted “Saturday Night Live” and WrestleMania, and famously graced the pages of Sports Illustrated as a septuagenarian in a speedo.

But Uecker’s first love was baseball, and that never changed. Following six seasons in the Major Leagues with the Braves, Cardinals and Phillies, then a failed stint as a Brewers scout, Uecker’s voice became one of the sounds of summer in the Midwest. He joined the Brewers radio team in 1971 and launched a second career in broadcasting that led to the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame, the Radio Hall of Fame, the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame, the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame and the National Baseball Hall of Fame as the 2003 recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award.

That’s how a .200 hitter gets into Cooperstown.

“It’s going to be very hard to not see him the first day of Spring Training,” said Brewers principal owner Mark Attanasio, who was surprised to learn upon purchasing the team from the Selig family that Uecker never worked on a contract, preferring instead a handshake deal and the trust that he’d always come home. “It’s going to be very hard to go into the radio booth and not see him. It’s going to be very hard to walk through that ballpark, American Family Field, and hear a voice calling the game that’s not his.”