Cocker, Joe (1944-2014)

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    Chubby Checker, Outkast and the White Stripes Will Join the Rock & Hall of Fame

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    Joe Cocker, Cyndi Lauper, Bad Company and Soundgarden — but not Oasis or Phish — are also part of the 40th anniversary class.Chubby Checker is finally joining the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, 65 years after “The Twist” became a No. 1 hit and an international dance craze.Checker, 83, who has campaigned for decades to be admitted to the pantheon — at one point taking out a full-page ad in Billboard magazine that said “I want my flowers while I’m alive” — is part of the 40th annual crop of performer inductees. He is joined by Joe Cocker, the White Stripes, Outkast, Cyndi Lauper, Bad Company and Soundgarden, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation announced on Sunday evening, after a Rock Hall-themed segment on ABC’s “American Idol.”Those artists — a lineup that mixes classic rock, hip-hop, 1990s-vintage alternative rock and a female pop icon — will formally join the hall on Nov. 8 in a ceremony at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles that will stream live in Disney+.Checker, Cocker, Outkast and Bad Company were all accepted on their first nomination.The induction of the White Stripes, the stylish garage-rock minimalists whose “Seven Nation Army” has become a stadium-rousing standard, could lend some anticipatory drama to this year’s ceremony. Since the band broke up in 2011, Meg White, its drummer, has become one the great recluses of 21st-century pop, rarely seen in public and declining all interview requests — which would make any possible appearance by her a major coup for the Rock Hall.Among the other honors this year, Salt-N-Pepa, the pioneering female rap group, and the singer-songwriter Warren Zevon will receive the musical influence award. The musical excellence citation will go to the keyboardist Nicky Hopkins, the studio bassist Carol Kaye and the producer Thom Bell, a key figure in Philadelphia soul. Lenny Waronker, a producer and longtime executive at Warner Bros. Records, will receive the Ahmet Ertegun Award.Among the nominees who failed to make the final cut this year are Oasis, the Britpop standard-bearers who have reunited for perhaps this year’s most in-demand world tour, and Phish, the veteran Vermont jam band. Phish won the hall’s fan ballot — a single vote, entered alongside those submitted from the hall’s voting body of more than 1,000 music historians, industry professionals and previously inducted artists.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Chubby Checker, Phish and Outkast Among Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Nominees

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      Billy Idol, the Black Crowes and Maná will also appear on the ballot for the first time, alongside Oasis, Joe Cocker, Mariah Carey and others.Outkast, Phish, Chubby Checker, Billy Idol, the Black Crowes and the Mexican band Maná are among the first-time nominees for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.This year’s ballot, announced by the hall on Wednesday, will also include Oasis, Joe Cocker, Mariah Carey, Cyndi Lauper, the White Stripes, Bad Company and Soundgarden, as well as Joy Division and New Order, the band that members of Joy Division formed after the death of its lead singer, Ian Curtis.As in recent years, the latest nominees represent a mix of eras and subgenres. Those include boldface rock ’n’ roll names from the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s (Cocker, Idol), punk and alternative heroes (Joy Division, Soundgarden, the White Stripes), arena-filling giants (Oasis, Phish), a hip-hop act (Outkast) and a nod to the world outside mainstream Anglo-American pop (Maná).Given the intense pressure the Rock Hall has faced in recent years to correct its poor record of admitting women to the pantheon, the inclusion of just two female performers — Carey and Lauper, neither of them new to the ballot — may bring yet more scrutiny to the institution despite its promises to reform.For longtime Rock Hall watchers, the biggest news this year may be Checker. His song “The Twist” — a cover of a B-side originally released by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters — was a global phenomenon in the early 1960s, and it stands as one of the biggest hits in the history of the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. But until now, Checker, 83, has been ignored by the Rock Hall, despite years — decades, even — of complaints from his fans and protests by Checker himself. (Ballard, who died in 2003, was inducted into the hall in 1990.)In 2001, Checker took out a full-page ad in Billboard magazine calling on the Rock Hall — along with nominators of the Nobel Prizes — to recognize him for the song that, he said, became “the biggest dance of the century.”“I want my flowers while I’m alive,” he wrote. “I can’t smell them when I’m dead.”In 2018, the Rock Hall included “The Twist” in a new honor, a list of singles that shaped rock ’n’ roll.Artists become eligible for nomination 25 years after the release of their first recording. The nominations are voted on by more than 1,000 music historians, industry professionals and inducted artists.The winning nominees are to be announced in April, and this year’s induction ceremony will be held in Los Angeles in the fall. More

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      in Movies

      ‘Learning to Live Together’ Review: Remaking a Once-in-a-Lifetime Band

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      Joe Cocker’s bacchanalian “Mad Dogs & Englishmen” tour gets a reconsideration and a revival in this documentary by Jesse Lauter.Joe Cocker’s mammoth 1970 “Mad Dogs & Englishmen” American tour presented itself as a freewheeling rock ’n’ roll jamboree. As such, it astonished audiences and yielded a couple of hit singles. In 2015 the first-rate blues-rock ensemble Tedeschi Trucks Band put together a tribute show to that project, enlisting many of the surviving participants. This documentary, directed by Jesse Lauter, chronicles that undertaking and revisits the counterculture phenom that inspired it.Mad Dogs was “an emergency tour, an emergency band,” singer Rita Coolidge recalls in a new interview. After blowing away Woodstock, among other festivals, an exhausted Cocker had fired his band, hoping to duck out of a long tour. But the dates were booked and defaulting would mean financial and career ruin. The American R&B artist and bandleader Leon Russell came to the rescue, assembling a musical commune.The sometimes-reclusive Russell answered the Tedeschi Trucks call in 2015. His recollections are certainly of interest, but his protean talent is more impressive still. His performances with the new band are thrilling. (He died in 2016.)The drug-and-booze-fueled utopianism reflected in the archival footage is replaced in 2015 by what appears to be relatively clean living, mutual appreciation and joyous pragmatism.Not all the memories of the reunited players are pleasant. Coolidge recounts being assaulted at the hands of Jim Gordon, the drummer who was later convicted of slaying his mother and is serving a life sentence in prison. The Mad Dogs’ second drummer, Jim Keltner, turns an old cliché about dysfunctional families on its head: “We were too young to be dysfunctional. I don’t think anyone was in their 30s yet.” Here the now-elders seem delighted to make a joyful noise with the generations they influenced.Learning to Live Together: The Return of Mad Dogs & EnglishmenNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes. In theaters. More