Deaths (Obituaries)

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      Deaths in 2021: Headline Names Against the Backdrop of Pandemic

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      Aaron, Sondheim, Dole and Didion. But the loss of Colin Powell from the virus spoke most directly to the moment the world is in.Hank Aaron was gone. So were Stephen Sondheim, and Bob Dole, and Cicely Tyson, and Larry King, and Joan Didion. Prince Philip, two months short of 100, was buried with all the royal pomp one would expect. But in a year that saw the deaths of a host of figures who helped shape our era in decades past, none spoke more to the still-perilous present moment than that of Colin Powell.His death came not just against the backdrop of a global pandemic in its second unrelenting year, but also as another casualty of it. And his case spoke to the vagaries of an elusive, mutating virus that has laid siege to the world. He had been vaccinated, after all, and was under the best of care at Walter Reed, and still he succumbed, his 84-year-old immune system compromised by multiple myeloma.Kenneth Lambert/Associated PressGeneral Powell joined a death toll that has surpassed 800,000 in the country he long served, both in the military and in the halls of government, and four million worldwide. He was probably the most prominent victim of Covid-19 in 2021, but there were others of influence who fell to it too.Ron Wright, a Texas conservative, in February became the first member of the House of Representatives to die of the virus. The author Donald Cozzens, a former priest who challenged the Catholic Church on its protection of child-molesting clerics, was another Covid victim, as was the music producer Chucky Thompson, a power behind hip-hop and R&B. And no fewer than four American talk-radio hosts, all having the ears of millions on the political right, died of the virus after dismissing the idea of getting vaccinated against it, echoing the message of their most prominent radio peer, Rush Limbaugh, who had compared the virus to the common cold. He died in February, too, of lung cancer.Plenty of luminaries in the obituary pages escaped the virus, of course, dying of more conventional but no less grievous maladies. But they had at least one thing in common: In a year when no one could get out from under the pall of the pandemic, they died in the midst of it, never to see its end.Back over on Capitol Hill, still staggered by the sacking of Jan. 6, respects were paid to some of its stalwarts: Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader and former boxer whose mild public manner disguised a fierce legislative pugilist and tactician; Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who, peering skeptically over the top of his gold-rimmed eyeglasses, interrogated corporate America; John Warner, the genteel Virginia Republican forever identified as Elizabeth Taylor’s No. 6; Walter Mondale, the liberal Minnesota senator turned vice president whose White House ambitions were buried in a Reagan landslide; Carrie Meek, the first Black person elected to Congress from Florida since Reconstruction; and, of course, Mr. Dole, the Kansas Republican who carried his wounds from World War II into a half-century of public service under the very dome that soared above him as his body lay in state just weeks ago.Harry Reid in 2014, when he was the Senate majority leader. A former boxer, he became a fierce legislative pugilist and tactician.Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesSenator Dole was the last of his war generation to win a major party’s presidential nomination, in 1996, and his passing at 98 was another reminder that his former brothers and sisters in arms are a dwindling cohort. Even the youngest of those who fought at the Battle of the Bulge or at Iwo Jima and who still survive have now entered their 90s, their former commanding officers mostly long gone. But one company leader who did hang on until this year was Dave Severance. He led the Marine unit that raised that now-hallowed American flag over Iwo Jima itself in 1945. He was 102.Warriors for a CauseThe world at large lost a host of dignitaries whose battles were in the political arena. One was F.W. de Klerk, the South African president who tore down the barriers of apartheid erected by his Afrikaner forerunners, a white power structure that collapsed in no small part because a fellow Nobel Peace Prize honoree, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, had pounded at it from the pulpit. Farther north, one of apartheid’s nemeses, Kenneth Kaunda, a founding father of African independence and the first president of a liberated Zambia, died at 97, having so dominated his country for 27 years that some supporters had viewed him as a minor deity.Roh Tae-woo at his inauguration as president of South Korea in 1988. With a stern eye, he oversaw his country’s transition from dictatorship to democracy.The Asahi Shimbun/Getty ImagesHalf a world away, two former strongmen who led South Korea in back-to-back regimes in the 1980s and ’90s died within a month of each other: first, in October, Roh Tae-woo, a former general who oversaw, with a stern eye, his country’s transition from dictatorship to democracy; then, in November, Chun Doo-hwan, the bloodstained dictator who had seized power in a coup and later handpicked his friend Mr. Roh to succeed him.In Argentina, a country long in the grip of dictatorship, the charismatic Carlos Saúl Menem, the beneficiary of the first peaceful transfer of power there from one constitutionally elected party to another since 1916, died at 90, having presided over an astonishing economic recovery in his 10-year rule, 1989-99, only to tumble from grace, pulled down by corruption.In the Middle East, there were Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, who tried but failed to resist the rise of religious radicalism as the first president of the Islamic Republic of Iran; Ahmed Zaki Yamani (though he died in London), the schmoozing, globe-trotting Saudi oil minister who became a player in the rise of Persian Gulf states to stratospheric heights of wealth; and A.Q. Khan, the so-called father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb.Dr. Khan’s work left no doubt that his country had acquired weapons of mass destruction. But had Saddam Hussein’s Iraq? Yes, proclaimed Donald Rumsfeld (an assertion echoed by his colleague General Powell in the George W. Bush White House). Time would prove him and others in the administration wrong, but not before, as defense secretary, Mr. Rumsfeld had helped push the United States into another invasion, after Afghanistan, and into another war.Others who died this year had fought on entirely different fronts. Simple but courageous acts of defiance by both Martha White and Lucille Times in the Deep South of the 1950s, predating and presaging Rosa Parks, led to bus boycotts that in turn gave momentum to the civil rights movement and to warriors for the cause like Bob Moses. He endured brutality and jail in trying to register voters in Mississippi, where he “was the equivalent of Martin Luther King,” the historian Taylor Branch said.Margaret York had pushed open a door that had long been shut to women, becoming the highest-ranking woman in the Los Angeles Police Department (while inspiring a feminist version of a buddy cop show, “Cagney & Lacey”).LaDonna Brave Bull Allard in 2017. She led resistance in North Dakota to what she called “the black snake,” an underground pipeline that threatened tribal burial grounds. Jens Schwarz/laif/ReduxLaDonna Brave Bull Allard lived up to her name by establishing a “resistance camp” in North Dakota to block what she called “the black snake,” an underground pipeline that in its thousand-mile slithering would, she claimed, veer too close to sacred Native American burial grounds, one holding the remains of her son. The camp became the catalyst for a global protest movement that embraced issues of tribal sovereignty, environmental justice and more.And Madeline Davis became the first openly lesbian delegate to a national political convention in the United States, rising to speak before Democrats in Miami Beach in 1972 to argue, unsuccessfully, for an anti-discrimination plank in the party’s platform. “I am a woman and a lesbian, a minority of minorities,” she told what few delegates remained at the time, for it was 5 a.m. before her turn at the podium came. “Now we are coming out of our closets and onto the convention floor.”Some took the call for equal rights to athletic arenas. The Olympic gold-medal sprinter Lee Evans raised a Black fist from the winners’ platform in Mexico City to protest racism in the strife-torn America of 1968. Lee Elder’s mere presence at the 1975 Masters in Augusta, Ga., was symbolic enough — as the first Black golfer ever to compete in the tournament, and doing so in face of death threats.And Joan Ullyot, a competitive runner herself, became a powerful voice for women who sought to compete in marathons, producing research that irrefutably debunked assertions that women were not built for it and then pressing the International Olympic Committee to include a women’s marathon in the Games. The first was in 1984.Arenas and StagesElsewhere in sports, the coaching ranks took an unusually heavy toll. The N.F.L. lost, among others, John Madden, whose winning decade with the Oakland Raiders was just a prelude to a more sensational run as the most colorful of TV color commentators and a video-game king, and Marty Schottenheimer, the winner of 200 regular-season games with four N.F.L. franchises. College football lost Bobby Bowden, the architect of a powerhouse at Florida State; college basketball lost John Chaney, who led Temple’s Owls to 17 N.C.A.A. tournaments.John Madden in 2006. His Hall of Fame career coaching the Oakland Raiders was a prelude to a sensational run as a color commentator and video-game king.Matt Sullivan/ReutersAnd if baseball managers in the dugout can be lumped with head coaches on the sidelines, then a final tip of the cap must be paid to the irrepressible Tommy Lasorda, who had, as he liked to say with only slight hyperbole, bled Dodger blue.Henry Aaron’s death, of course, generated big headlines, accompanied by tales of his home run heroics and the racial animus they aroused among those who couldn’t countenance the idea of a Black man outslugging Babe Ruth. But other stars, too, fell, their exploits now sports lore: the ferocious Sam Huff of the football Giants; the acrobatic forward Elgin Baylor of the Lakers; the lightning-quick Rod Gilbert (“Mr. Ranger”), who dazzled hockey fans at Madison Square Garden. In auto racing, the brothers Bobby, 87, and Al Unser, 82 — born into the sport’s most illustrious family in the same decade — died seven months apart in the same calendar year.Performers of a different mold had left their imprint on stages and screens portraying anyone but their actual selves, yet we mourned their passing all the same as if we knew them. Christopher Plummer was Georg von Trapp, of course, in “The Sound of Music,” but also too many other characters to count in his rich seven decades as an actor — from King Lear to Sherlock Holmes to General Chang, the one-eyed Klingon in “Star Trek VI.”Cicely Tyson in 1973. She’s remembered as the unconquerable wife of an imprisoned Louisiana sharecropper in “Sounder” and the indomitable title character in “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.” Dennis Oulds/Central Press/Getty ImagesCicely Tyson was indelibly two characters: Rebecca, the unconquerable wife of an imprisoned Louisiana sharecropper in “Sounder,” and the seen-it-all title character in “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” who survived into the civil rights era, to age 110, recalling her memories of slavery.Olympia Dukakis will forever be Rose, Cher’s sardonically wise mother in “Moonstruck”; Helen McCrory, the blue-blooded witch Narcissa Malfoy in a clutch of Harry Potter films; Cloris Leachman, the flighty landlady of Mary Richards in “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”; Hal Holbrook, a one-man-show Mark Twain; Michael K. Williams, the swaggering, openly gay hoodlum of “The Wire”; and Ed Asner, who else but Lou Grant?You could also say that Larry King was a performer, hosting talk shows on radio and TV seemingly forever, but he never played anyone but his loquacious, inquisitive and ingratiating self. Ditto Jackie Mason and Mort Sahl: stand-ups performing as themselves — or at least very funny versions of themselves. (Their fellow jokester Norm Macdonald was an exception, as comfortable alone on a stage as he was in a “Saturday Night Live” sketch or his own sitcom.)The proscenium stage knew no greater loss in 2021 than that of Stephen Sondheim, who, if he rarely took a curtain call bow from one, could nevertheless bask in the applause of a grateful theater world enriched by his music and lyrics.Stephen Sondheim in 1990. His music and lyrics enriched the theater world.Fred R. Conrad/The New York TimesAnd where performance is nothing but wordless drama (or sometimes comedy) in exhilarating motion, there were farewells to the magnetic Jacques d’Amboise, who may have done as much as anyone to popularize ballet in America, and the daring ballerina Patricia Wilde — both of them eternally linked to the great choreographer George Balanchine of New York City Ballet.The classical music stage, and the orchestra pit, were bereft with the deaths of James Levine, the maestro of the Metropolitan Opera whose brilliant career was darkened in the end by a sex scandal, and two of opera’s most illustrious singers in the last half of the 20th century: the virtuosic Slovak soprano Edita Gruberova and the German-born mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig, a radiant fixture at the Met for years.A Drummer and a RapperIn a vastly different musical sphere, Charlie Watts, the solemnly aloof drummer of the Rolling Stones, became the second member of that age-defying band to die, at 80 (after Brian Jones a half-century ago). Mary Wilson was the second to do so among Motown’s original three Supremes (after Florence Ballard). Michael Nesmith left just one of the four Monkees still standing (Micky Dolenz). And with the death of Don Everly seven years after that of the younger Phil, the Everly Brothers will survive now only in their hit recordings of yesteryear.The drummer Charlie Watts in 1965. He was the second member of the age-defying Rolling Stones to die.George Wilkes/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesMore fresh in memory were the explosive lyrics of the rapper Earl Simmons, a.k.a. DMX, who had channeled the mean streets of his boyhood Yonkers into No. 1 albums and onto the stage before pumped-up thousands. He was just 50.Chick Corea, a jazz pianist at heart, found a new audience by infusing his music with rock. And the flutist, composer and bandleader Johnny Pacheco, one of a raft of Latin musicians to die this year, spread salsa far and wide as its unofficial ambassador.If Mr. Pacheco was intent on expanding a genre, Larry McMurtry, in the world of letters, was out to subvert one — the western — by scrapping the cowboy and outlaw mythologies of dime-store novels in favor of unvarnished stories like “Lonesome Dove” and “The Last Picture Show.”Anne Rice, meanwhile, was revivifying a moribund branch of the book world — the Gothic horror tale — with stories of vampires. Beverly Cleary was a virtual children’s-book cottage industry as she found unlikely drama and mystery in middle-class America. And no one could dissect any and all aspects of American life with a more exacting eye than Joan Didion, though the unsparing journalism of Janet Malcolm could give her a run for her money (even while questioning the very ethics of journalism itself).Janet Malcolm in 1981. Her unsparing journalism examined American life even while questioning the very ethics of journalism itself. Nancy Crampton via Malcolm familyThe world said goodbye to them all, but in 2021 any death reported in the obituary columns was always set against that bigger story that never seemed to leave the front page. It was a disorienting phenomenon for the second year: noting the passing of this famous person or that one, from cancer or heart attack or the infirmities of old age, in the midst of a plague — a scourge that continued to take one life after another from all corners of the world while leaving everyone else, or almost everyone else, masked up and wondering if they’d ever get theirs back.Inevitably, despite the skeptics and the deniers, we turned to the scientists, knowing that they’re the ones who must finally give us the weapons to get us out of this. Many trailblazers from that community died in 2021, among them Nobel Prize winners who helped unlock the secrets of the universe (Toshihide Maskawa’s eureka moment, in understanding why the Big Bang didn’t destroy said universe, came in the bathtub) and explorers, like E.O. Wilson, who uncovered clues to human nature in the biosphere.E.O. Wilson found clues to human nature in his explorations of the biosphere.Hugh Patrick Brown/Getty ImagesBut there were also those whose time in the labs had more practical goals. One was Helen Murray Free, who helped develop a simple paper strip that when dipped in urine made it easier to detect diabetes — a revolution in diagnostic testing. Millions have benefited.And there was Andrew Brooks, a Rutgers researcher who, in the early dark days of the pandemic in 2020, came up with the first saliva test for the coronavirus, a breakthrough that was rolled out after getting emergency approval from the federal government. This was before there were vaccines and before testing protocols were revised once the airborne nature of the virus was fully understood. But as the governor of New Jersey said at the time, Dr. Brooks’s contribution to the cause “undoubtedly saved lives.”We’ve continued to turn to the Dr. Frees and the Dr. Brookses, and they’ve responded with alacrity with vaccines and treatments. But as the pandemic races on, the entreaty to them remains the same, still urgent but hopeful: Please, do more. More

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      in Theater

      Neil Marcus, Whose Art Illuminated Disability, Dies at 67

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      A playwright and actor, he saw his life as performance art. He was best known for his play “Storm Reading.”At each performance of his play “Storm Reading,” the writer and actor Neil Marcus offered his audience a reminder: “Disability is not a brave struggle or courage in the face of adversity. Disability is an art. It’s an ingenious way to live.”Mr. Marcus, who had dystonia, a neurological disorder that causes involuntary muscle contractions and affects speech, starred in the play, which comically illuminated how he passed through the world in a typical week, through vignettes of him conversing with grocery shoppers, doctors and passers-by.In 1988, when the show had its premiere at the Lobero Theater in Santa Barbara, Calif., people more often than not looked away from those with disabilities. “We’ve always been taught as kids we don’t point, don’t laugh, just basically ignore them,” Rod Lathim, the director of “Storm Reading,” said in an interview.In contrast, “Storm Reading” encouraged audiences to laugh with Mr. Marcus about his experiences.“Neil invited and welcomed, and in some cases demanded that people look,” Mr. Lathim said. “And so he brought them into his reality, which was not a reality of disability; it was a reality of his definition of life.”The success and longevity of the play, which toured throughout the country until 1996, turned Mr. Marcus into a pioneer of the disability culture movement. He called his work a reclamation of personhood in a world determined to deny people with disabilities their autonomy.Mr. Marcus died on Nov. 17 at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 67.His sister Kendra Marcus said the cause was dystonia.In 1987, Mr. Marcus and his brother Roger contacted Mr. Lathim, the director of Access Theater, a Santa Barbara company that regularly mounted plays featuring disabled artists. Neil Marcus sent over samples of his writing and asked Mr. Lathim if the theater would be interested in adapting them.Their conversation led to the genesis of “Storm Reading.” Mr. Marcus, his brother and Mr. Lathim worked together to draft the play, whose cast of three originally also included Roger as “The Voice,” who portrayed Neil’s thoughts during his interactions (the role was later played by Matthew Ingersoll), as well as a sign language interpreter.The show was physically taxing for Mr. Marcus. But it also invigorated him.“There’s no drug, there’s no treatment, that is, in my opinion, as powerful as the interaction between a live audience and an artist on the stage,” Mr. Lathim said. “And watching Neil transform from that was astounding.”Scenes from “Storm Reading” were filmed for NBC as part of a 1989 television special about disability, “From the Heart,” hosted by the actor Michael Douglas. The cast reunited in 2018 for a performance at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.Neil Marcus was born on Jan. 3, 1954, in Scarsdale, N.Y., the youngest of five children of Wil Marcus, who worked in public relations, and Lydia (Perera) Marcus, an actor. When Neil was 6, the family moved to Ojai, Calif.Neil was 8 when he learned he had dystonia, and he attempted suicide at 14 after a taxing series of surgeries, he said in a 2006 oral history interview for the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.But counseling gave him confidence. He attended Ojai Valley School, where he was often spotted zooming around in a golf cart. After graduating from high school as valedictorian in 1971, he traveled to Laos; when he returned, he hitchhiked around the West Coast and eventually took classes at Fairhaven College, part of Western Washington University, and elsewhere. He moved to Berkeley in 1980 and became active in the disability activist community there.He explored art through various partnerships. With professional dancers, he participated in “contact improvisation” performances, which eschewed formal choreography and instead followed the seemingly frenetic movements of Mr. Marcus’s dystonia.He also wrote widely. He worked with the University of Michigan professor and activist Petra Kuppers on the Olimpias Performance Research Project, an artist collective that spotlights performers with disabilities in performances and documentaries. Their conversations on disability as art were published in a 2009 essay, “Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance.” The two also wrote a book, “Cripple Poetics: A Love Story” (2008), which features poetry and photography highlighting the physicality and sensuality of disability.The Neil Marcus Papers, including his essays, poems and correspondence, are held at the Bancroft Library.In addition to his sister Kendra, Mr. Marcus is survived by another sister, Wendy Marcus, and his brothers, Roger and Russell.In 2014 the Smithsonian National Museum of American History commissioned Mr. Marcus to write a poem dedicating its online exhibition “EveryBody: An Artifact History of Disability in America.”His poem began: “If there was a country called disabled, I would be from there./I live disabled culture, eat disabled food, make disabled love,/cry disabled tears, climb disabled mountains and tell disabled stories.” More

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      in Music

      J.D. Crowe, Banjo Virtuoso and Bluegrass Innovator, Dies at 84

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      Drawing on rock and R&B, Mr. Crowe recast the sound of bluegrass while helping launch the careers of some of the genre’s biggest stars.J.D. Crowe, a master banjo player and bandleader who expanded the sound of bluegrass while attracting some of the genre’s most prodigiously gifted musicians into his groups, died on Friday at his home in Nicholasville, Ky. He was 84.The death was confirmed by his friend Frank Godbey, who said Mr. Crowe had recently been hospitalized for pneumonia. Mr. Godbey’s wife, Marty Godbey, who died in 2010, was the author of “Crowe on the Banjo: The Music Life of J.D. Crowe” (2011).As the leader of the Kentucky Mountain Boys in the 1960s and J.D. Crowe & the New South in the ’70s, Mr. Crowe was among the first musicians to adapt rock and R&B to a bluegrass setting. Built around his impeccable tone and timing as a banjoist, the resulting hybrid was a harbinger of both the freewheeling “newgrass” movement of the ’70s and the bluegrass-aligned alternative country music that came after it.Mr. Crowe’s bands were renowned for their precision and soulfulness. The classic edition of the New South featured a who’s who of future bluegrass masters: Tony Rice, who died in December 2020, on lead vocals and guitar; Ricky Skaggs on mandolin and tenor vocals (Mr. Crowe sang baritone); and Jerry Douglas on dobro. Rounded out by Bobby Slone on bass guitar and fiddle, this lineup alone could be credited with ushering in a new era of progressive bluegrass with their 1975 album, called just “J.D. Crowe & the New South” but more popularly known by its catalog number, Rounder 0044.Mr. Crowe’s Kentucky Mountain Boys had covered material by the hippie country-rock band the Flying Burrito Brothers, but J.D. Crowe & the New South’s landmark album gave expression to a broader musical palette. It drew on everything from old-time country music to straight-ahead bluegrass and songs written by Fats Domino and Gordon Lightfoot.The 1975 album by Mr. Crowe’s band the New South changed not only how people thought about bluegrass but also their approach to playing it. Rounder 0044 changed not only how people thought about bluegrass but also their approach to playing it. Musically intrepid inheritors like Alison Krauss & Union Station and Nickel Creek would scarcely be imaginable without it.Ms. Krauss grew up listening to the album and kept a framed copy of its cover on the wall in her home, Bill Nowlin, whose Rounder label released the project, wrote in 2016 in the online publication Bluegrass Situation.Mr. Skaggs talked about the record’s impact in a 1999 interview with No Depression magazine. Referring to Bill Monroe and other bluegrass pioneers, he said that the album “had a lot of influence on kids that grew up during that time because, for a whole new generation, that was their Flatt & Scruggs and Monroe and the Stanley Brothers.”“Rounder 0044 was the transition,” Mr. Crowe said in a 2012 interview for the liner notes to a reissue of the New South’s 1977 album, “You Can Share My Blanket.” “All we did was we took tunes nobody was doing, and it was like they were new tunes as far as the bluegrass genre was concerned.”James Dee Crowe was born on Aug. 27, 1937, in Lexington, Ky., one of three children of Orval Dee and Bessie Lee (Nichols) Crowe. His parents were farmers.He had taken up the guitar as a boy before falling under the spell of Earl Scruggs’s dazzling three-finger banjo playing when, at about 12 or 13, he went to see Flatt and Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys perform in Lexington.“There was no other sound like that, so I dropped the guitar and got into the banjo,” he told No Depression.As a teenager Mr. Crowe played in bands led by bluegrass royalty like Mac Wiseman and Jimmy Martin, but he did not begin working in music full time until 1956, after rejoining Mr. Martin’s Sunny Mountain Boys. Mr. Crowe appeared regularly on the “Louisiana Hayride” broadcast with Mr. Martin, the self-proclaimed “King of Bluegrass Music.” He also made numerous recordings with him, including one of his signature songs, “You Don’t Know My Mind,” in 1960.Weary of touring, Mr. Crowe left Mr. Martin’s employ in 1961. He later formed the Kentucky Mountain Boys with the singer Red Allen and the mandolinist Doyle Lawson. That group, which also featured Mr. Slone, eventually settled into a regular gig at the Red Slipper Lounge at the Holiday Inn North in Lexington, where Mr. Crowe proceeded in earnest to incorporate country-rock into a bluegrass context.The formation of the New South, though, marked the real watershed of his career, attracting musicians with expansive sensibilities who regularly passed through the band’s ranks before moving on to other projects. Among the more notable of these was the singer Keith Whitley, a late-’70s arrival who, like Mr. Skaggs, would achieve considerable success in mainstream country music.Mr. Crowe started slowing down professionally in the ’80s, limiting himself to reunion concerts and selected recording projects like the six-album series he did with the Bluegrass Album Band, a bluegrass supergroup he founded with Mr. Rice.Mr. Crowe won a Grammy in 1983 for best country instrumental performance for his recording “Fireball.” He was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Association Hall of Fame in 2003. Kentucky Educational Television aired the documentary “A Kentucky Treasure: The James Dee Crowe Story” in 2008.Mr. Crowe is survived by his wife of 48 years, Sheryl Moore Crowe; a son, David; a daughter, Stacey Crowe; and a granddaughter.Mr. Crowe’s musical catholicity gave the lie to the belief that bluegrass is only about cleaving to tradition.“So many groups try to keep the same sound, and that’s all well and good, if you can,” he said in 2012. “But for myself, I mean, how are you going to replace a Tony Rice and a Ricky Skaggs and a Jerry Douglas?“You’re not going to do that. If you’re trying to do that, you’re forcing somebody to do what they can’t do, really. Although they may try, it don’t come off. So I figured, well, the best thing is, hire people that has good voices, can sing good, pick good, and let them do their deal.” More

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      in Movies

      Richard Marcinko, Founding Commander of SEAL Team 6, Dies at 81

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      The Navy asked Commander Marcinko, a larger-than-life soldier who often flouted rules, to build a SEAL unit that could respond quickly to terrorist crises.Richard Marcinko, the hard-charging founding commander of Navy SEAL Team 6, the storied and feared unit within an elite commando force that later carried out the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, died Saturday at his home in Fauquier County, Va. He was 81.The cause was believed to be a heart attack, a son, Matthew Marcinko, said.Commander Marcinko climbed the ranks to command Team 6 and wrote a tell-all best seller that cemented the SEALs in pop culture as heroes and bad boys. Though the highly decorated Vietnam veteran led Team 6 for only three years, from 1980 to 1983, he had an outsize influence on the group’s place in military lore.After a failed 1980 mission to rescue 53 American hostages seized in the takeover of the United States Embassy in Tehran, the Navy asked Commander Marcinko to build a SEAL unit that could respond quickly to terrorist crises. The name itself was an attempt at Cold War disinformation: Only two SEAL teams existed at the time, but Commander Marcinko called the new unit SEAL Team 6, hoping that Soviet analysts would overestimate the size of the force.He flouted rules and fostered a maverick image for the unit. (Years after leaving the command, he was convicted of military contract fraud.) In his autobiography, “Rogue Warrior,” Commander Marcinko describes drinking together as important to SEAL Team 6’s solidarity; his recruiting interviews often amounted to boozy chats in bars.For years, SEAL Team 6 embraced its rogue persona and was assigned some of the military’s toughest operations. Only Team 6 trains to chase after nuclear weapons that fall into enemy hands. And the team’s role in the 2011 raid that killed bin Laden — the Qaeda leader who 10 years earlier had overseen the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 — spawned a wave of books and movies, elevating the unit to even higher heights of fame.Young officers were sometimes run out of Team 6 for trying to clean up what they saw as a culture of recklessness. Adm. William H. McRaven, who rose to lead the Special Operations Command and oversaw the bin Laden raid, left Team 6 during the Marcinko era after disagreements about leadership.After retiring from the Navy in 1989, Commander Marcinko embarked on a career as a best-selling author, motivational speaker and military consultant, relying heavily on his authenticity as a military veteran. He also appeared on the cover of several of his books, presenting an imposing image of muscular forearms, bearded jaw and piercing eyes staring out at readers.Some SEALs over the years have said that Commander Marcinko invented his own legend. Of his 1992 book, “Rogue Warrior,” written with John Weisman, David Murray wrote in The New York Times that “his story is fascinating” but the method of telling it “is not.” In the book, Commander Marcinko “comes across as less the genuine warrior than a comic-book superhero who makes Arnold Schwarzenegger look like Little Lord Fauntleroy.”The book sold millions of copies. Readers apparently wanted more, and Commander Marcinko obliged. His 1995 novel, “Rogue Warrior: Green Team,” also with Mr. Weisman, has “so much action that the reader scarcely has time to breathe,” Newgate Callendar, another Times reviewer, wrote.Richard Marcinko was born on Nov. 21, 1940, to George Marcinko and Emilie Teresa Pavlik Marcinko in his grandmother’s house in Lansford, Pa., a tiny mining town. In his autobiography, he described his mother as “short and Slavic looking” and his father as dark and brooding, with a “nasty temper.”All the men in the family, Commander Marcinko wrote, were miners. “They were born, they worked the mines, they died,” he wrote. “Life was simple and life was hard, and I guess some of them might have wanted to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, but most were too poor to buy boots.”He dropped out of high school and enlisted in the Navy in 1958. He was deployed to Vietnam with SEAL Team 2 in 1967, according to the National Navy SEAL Museum, which announced the death on its Facebook page.He received many honors for his service, including four Bronze Stars, a Silver Star and a Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, according to the museum. After completing two tours in Vietnam, he was promoted to lieutenant commander and then took the reins of SEAL Team 2 from 1974 to 1976, according to the museum.Commander Marcinko is survived by his wife, Nancy; four daughters, Brandy Alexander, Tiffany Alexander, Hailey Marcinko and Kathy-Ann Marcinko; two sons, Matthew and Ritchie Marcinko; and several grandchildren. An earlier marriage to Kathy Black ended in divorce.On Sunday night, Admiral McRaven called Commander Marcinko “one of the more colorful characters” in Naval special warfare history.“While we had some disagreements when I was a young officer, I always respected his boldness, his ingenuity and his unrelenting drive for success,” Admiral McRaven wrote in an email. “I hope he will be remembered for his numerous contributions to the SEAL community.”Dave Philipps More

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      in Movies

      Jean-Marc Vallée, Director of ‘Dallas Buyers Club,’ Dies at 58

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      Known for his naturalistic approach, the Canadian-born filmmaker transformed true stories into acclaimed dramas.Jean-Marc Vallée, the award-winning Canadian director of the film “Dallas Buyers Club” and the hit HBO show “Big Little Lies,” was found dead this weekend at his cabin outside Quebec City. He was 58.His publicist, Bumble Ward, said his death had been unexpected. The cause and further details were not immediately available. Mr. Vallée was known for a naturalistic and generous approach to filmmaking that colleagues said brought out the best in those he worked with. He avoided artificial lighting — and even rehearsals. Mr. Vallée also became known for helming several films and TV series with strong female leads.His debut feature film, “Liste noire” (“Black List”), a 1995 thriller that follows the trial of a judge, was nominated for several Genie Awards in Canada, including for best picture. He went on to co-write and direct “C.R.A.Z.Y.,” a coming-of-age film, in 2005. That helped catapult him to Hollywood.In 2009, Mr. Vallée directed “The Young Victoria,” which starred Emily Blunt and explored the early years of Queen Victoria’s rule. The film received several major awards and nominations.He took on the critically acclaimed “Dallas Buyers Club” in 2013, a drama based on the true story of Ron Woodroof, a Texas electrician and rodeo rider. After receiving a diagnosis of H.I.V. in 1985, the Texan fought to get medication (illegal in the United States at the time) for himself and others with the virus.Matthew McConaughey said he dropped 50 pounds ingesting nothing but vegetables, egg whites, fish and tapioca pudding — and “as much wine as I wanted to drink” — to lose weight to play Mr. Woodroof. The film was nominated for six Oscars, winning three, including Best Actor for Mr. McConaughey and Best Supporting Actor for Jared Leto.In a Vanity Fair article adapted from “Never Silent: ACT UP and My Life in Activism,” the activist Peter Staley recounted his long battle to make sure homophobia and AIDS denialism did not make it into the film. He said he put Mr. Vallée “through hell and back.” But he said the director “kept the promise he’d once emailed me: that in all his films, he tries to ‘capture humanity and reveal the beauty behind it.’”The following year, Mr. Vallée directed “Wild,” another film based on a true story, which starred Reese Witherspoon as the author Cheryl Strayed during a solo hike on the Pacific Crest Trail. That film was also nominated for several major awards, including an Oscar nod for Best Actress.“Big Little Lies” won several Emmys and an award from the Directors Guild of America. The cutting tale of violence and class in the wealthy beachside town of Monterey, Calif., starred Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Zoë Kravitz, Laura Dern, Shailene Woodley and Meryl Streep.Later, he took viewers into the world of small-town Missouri with the series “Sharp Objects,” which starred Amy Adams as a troubled reporter, and was nominated for eight Emmy Awards.“It’s true that my last projects were featuring mainly female characters,” Mr. Vallée said in an interview published by HBO in 2018. “So, am I the lucky guy? Maybe — maybe I am. I’m not afraid of intelligent, strong women. You got to create a space where they’re going to feel respected and comfortable.”“We pushed the envelope in order to capture something that feels real and authentic,” he added. There were no storyboards, shot lists or reflectors used in making “Sharp Objects” because he preferred to allow the actors to express themselves.“I’m reacting to what they’re doing, instead of being active and telling them, this is what I’ll do with the camera,” he said, adding: “I love it. You know, I’m like a kid on a set, a kid playing with a huge toy and having fun.”Mr. Vallée was born on March 9, 1963, in Montreal. He studied filmmaking at the Collège Ahuntsic and the Université du Québec à Montreal. Two sons, Alex Vallée and Emile Vallée; and his siblings Marie-Josée Vallée, Stéphane Tousignant and Gérald Vallée survive him.In a statement, Nathan Ross, Mr. Vallée’s producing partner and close friend, described him as a “true artist” who stood for “creativity, authenticity and trying things differently.”“The maestro will sorely be missed,” he said, adding, “It comforts knowing his beautiful style and impactful work he shared with the world will live on.”Mr. Vallée was set to direct and executive-produce another show for HBO, “Gorilla and the Bird,” a limited series based on a memoir of the same name about a public defender who suffers a psychotic break.In an interview with The New York Times in 2018, Mr. Vallée described his work as attempting to expose the flaws and imperfection in human nature.“I see that I seem to be attracted to these stories and to underdog characters,” Mr. Vallée said. He added: “The humanity, the beautiful humanity, is dark.” More

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      Wanda Young, Motown Hitmaker With the Marvelettes, Dies at 78

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      She was the lead voice on “Don’t Mess With Bill” and other songs written by Smokey Robinson, who said she “had this little voice that was sexy to me.”Wanda Young, one of the lead singers of the Marvelettes, the girl group whose 1961 song “Please Mr. Postman,” recorded when they were teenagers, was Motown’s first No. 1 hit, died on Dec. 15 in Garden City, Mich. She was 78.Her daughter Meta Ventress said the cause was complications of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.The Marvelettes began recording in 1961, two years after Berry Gordy Jr. founded Motown Records. They signed the same year as the Supremes and a year before Martha and the Vandellas, all-female groups who eventually overshadowed them at Motown.Ms. Young (who was also known as Wanda Rogers) and Gladys Horton shared lead singer duties. “Don’t Mess With Bill,” which rose to No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1966, was one of several hits written by Smokey Robinson on which Ms. Young sang lead. (Ms. Horton was the lead singer on “Please Mr. Postman,” “Beechwood 4-5789” and other songs.)“Wanda had this little voice that was sexy to me, a little country kind of voice,” Mr. Robinson was quoted as saying in the music writer Fred Bronson’s liner notes to the 1993 Marvelettes compilation, “Deliver: The Singles (1961-1971).” “I knew if I could get a song to her, it would be a smash.”Among the other Robinson songs that featured Ms. Young’s voice were “I’ll Keep Holding On,” a 1965 release that peaked at No. 34 on the Billboard chart; “The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game,” which rose to No. 13 in 1967; and “My Baby Must Be a Magician,” which hit No. 17 in 1968.The Marvelettes, who recorded for Motown’s Tamla label, released more than 20 singles that made the charts.The group, which started with five members and later became a quartet and eventually a trio, disbanded around 1970. That year, Ms. Young recorded an album, produced by Mr. Robinson with backing vocals by the Andantes, a female session group, that, although actually a solo project, was released as “The Return of the Marvelettes” and marketed as a Marvelettes album.Wanda LaFaye Young was born on Aug. 9, 1943, in Eloise, Mich., and grew up in Inkster, about 20 miles west of Detroit. Her father, James, worked for the Ford Motor Company, and her mother, Beatrice (Dawson) Young, was a homemaker.Ms. Young, whose early ambition was to be a pediatric nurse, joined the Marvelettes after one of the original members had to leave.Ms. Horton had formed a quintet in 1960 with three high school classmates, Katherine Anderson, Georgeanna Tillman and Juanita Cowart, and a recent graduate, Georgia Dobbins. The group — then called the Casinyets, a contraction of “can’t sing yet” — competed in a talent show whose top three finishers were to receive an audition with Motown. The quintet didn’t win, but a teacher helped get them an audition anyway. Motown executives were impressed but told the young women that they needed to return with original material.They did: Ms. Dobbins’s friend William Garrett had composed a blues song, which Ms. Dobbins rewrote and recast as a pop song, about a girl pining for mail from her distant boyfriend. “Please Mr. Postman” was a hit, but Ms. Dobbins left the group before it was recorded because her mother was ill and her father had forbade her to be involved in the music business. Ms. Horton recruited Ms. Young.“She wanted to know if I could sing alto, and I said, ‘I think I can sing all of them — soprano, second soprano and alto,’” Ms. Young said in an interview with Blues & Soul magazine in 1990. “So that evening I went over to Georgeanna’s house and instantly became a member of the group.”Ms. Horton sang lead on the song. Three months after its release, it became a No. 1 hit.While Ms. Young fondly recalled the family atmosphere that Mr. Gordy fostered at Motown, she was disappointed when he moved the company to Los Angeles in 1972.“It was all done so quietly that we didn’t know if the gangsters had taken over or what was going on,” she told Blues & Soul. She added: “I felt like I’d been personally left behind. I’d grumble and complain within myself sometimes: Why would they move to California, knowing that this is Berry Gordy’s hometown?”Ms. Young’s 12-year marriage to Bobby Rogers of the Miracles ended in 1975. They had two children, Robert III and Bobbae Rogers, who survive her, along with Ms. Ventress, her daughter from another relationship; seven grandchildren; a great-grandson; four sisters, Adoria Williams, Cynthia Young, Regina Young and Beatrice Wilson; and four brothers, James Jr., Stephen, Paul and Reginald Young. Another daughter, Miracle Rogers, was killed in 2015. Ms. Young lived in Redford, Mich.Ms. Young reunited with Ms. Horton in 1990 for the album “The Marvelettes: Now!” on the producer Ian Levine’s Motorcity Records label. It featured some Marvelettes oldies, including “Don’t Mess With Bill.”Ms. Horton died in 2011.Ms. Ventress said that her mother — who lived off her royalties in the years after the Marvelettes broke up — was sometimes surprised at the longevity of her music.“I told her constantly, ‘All these people love you,’” Ms. Ventress said in an interview. “And she’d say, ‘Wow.’” She added, “She didn’t wake up every day thinking of the Marvelettes, but she never lost that glamour.” More

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      Dave Draper, Bodybuilding’s ‘Blond Bomber,’ Dies at 79

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      After being named Mr. America, Mr. Universe and Mr. World, he left competitive bodybuilding in 1970. But he kept lifting weights until a year before he died.Dave Draper, a popular bodybuilder of the 1960s who won three major titles before dropping out of competition at age 28, died on Nov. 30 at his home in Aptos, Calif., near Santa Cruz. He was 79.The cause was congestive heart failure, his wife, Laree Draper, said.Mr. Draper — who stood six feet tall, had a 54-inch chest and competed at 235 pounds — emerged as a force in bodybuilding in 1962 with his victory at the Mr. New Jersey competition. He soon moved to Southern California, where he continued to sculpt his body at the Dungeon, a gym on the fabled Muscle Beach in Santa Monica, and at Gold’s Gym, in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles.He loved lifting weights for its physical and spiritual benefits. But he disliked the preening and posing required of bodybuilders at competitions and exhibitions.“For a reasonable season of my life, it seemed like the thing to do,” Mr. Draper said in an interview in 2009 with T-Nation, a strength training and bodybuilding website. “But competition stood between me and the relief of hoisting the iron — the private exertion, the pure delight and the daily fulfillment of building muscle and strength.”Despite that ambivalence, Mr. Draper, who became known as the Blond Bomber, was a star on the bodybuilding scene of the 1960s. He was named Mr. America in 1965, and Mr. Universe in 1966 — before Arnold Schwarzenegger had arrived from Austria — and won the Mr. World title in 1970.“Dave trained harder than anybody else and always wore jeans to the gym,” Frank Zane, a three-time Mr. Olympia, said in a phone interview. “He loved to train, and he was very strong. He just didn’t like competing.”Mr. Draper’s spectacular physique found an occasional home in Hollywood. He had roles in sitcoms like “The Beverly Hillbillies” (as Dave Universe, a date for Elly May Clampett) and “The Monkees” (as a character named Bulk). He was also in a few films, including “Don’t Make Waves” (1967), in which he played Sharon Tate’s boyfriend.“In Austria, I kept his cover of Muscle Builder magazine on the wall above my bed for motivation,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said in a statement after Mr. Draper’s death, “and when I saw him starring in ‘Don’t Make Waves,’ I thought, ‘My dreams are possible.’”Mr. Draper, who was also a skilled woodworker, became one of Mr. Schwarzenegger’s training partners and built some furniture for his home in Santa Monica. “I learned his heart was as big as his pecs,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said.Even as he was competing, Mr. Draper was abusing alcohol, marijuana and angel dust. (He said he also used steroids, sparingly, under a doctor’s supervision.) He continued to have problems, chiefly with alcohol, until 1983, when he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure.Ms. Draper — who met her future husband at a gym in Capitola, Calif., near Santa Cruz — attributed his alcohol and drug use to the tensions brought on by competing and dealing with the demands of Hollywood.“He got caught up in it, and I guess he couldn’t handle it,” she said in an interview.Mr. Draper “loved to train, and he was very strong,” a fellow bodybuilder said. “He just didn’t like competing.”via Laree DraperDavid Paul Draper was born on April 16, 1942, in Secaucus, N.J. His father, Dan, was a salesman; his mother, Anne (Simsek) Draper, was a homemaker.Dave, who did not excel at team sports, got his first set of weights at age 10. By 12 he was fervently working out with barbells and dumbbells.“They were my solid steel friends that I could trust,” he said in his book “A Glimpse in the Rear View” (2020), a compilation of columns from his website. “When the going got tough, when I kept missing the baseball, and when girls were far too cute to talk to, the weights were there and they spoke my language.”He bought his gear at Weider Barbell in Union City, N.J. — part of Joe Weider’s empire of muscle magazines, fitness equipment, supplements and competitions — and at 19 became the weekend manager of a gym in Jersey City. He also got a part-time job in the Weider Barbell warehouse, where he worked out with the other shipping clerks. Mr. Weider, who was known as the Master Blaster, gave Mr. Draper his Blond Bomber nickname.“He had the fire in the belly, don’t kid yourself,” Mr. Weider told GQ magazine for a profile of Mr. Draper in 2000. “He wouldn’t have gotten the kind of body he did without hard work.”After winning Mr. New Jersey, Mr. Draper moved to Santa Monica, where he continued to work for Mr. Weider. As Mr. Draper’s profile in bodybuilding rose, he appeared on the covers of magazines published by Mr. Weider, like Muscle Builder and Mr. America, and in ads for his equipment.Reflecting on his victory in the Mr. America event, held at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Mr. Draper wrote that he took pride in being a “muscle-building original.”“I invented, improvised and rooted about, along with a small, disconnected band of rebels with a cause: to build solid muscle and might through the austere, hard labor of love — the lifting of iron,” he wrote in a column included in “A Glimpse in the Rear View.”Mr. Draper with Tony Curtis in the 1967 movie “Don’t Make Waves.” “When I saw him starring in ‘Don’t Make Waves,’” Arnold Schwarzenegger said, “I thought, ‘My dreams are possible.’”via Laree DraperIn 1972 Mr. Draper sued Mr. Weider for not paying him for his endorsement of Mr. Weider’s gym and bodybuilding products. He settled for $17,500 before the jury was to deliver a verdict.Mr. Draper did not stop lifting weights until a year before he died.Once sober, he was hired as a special programmer at a gym in Santa Cruz. He married Laree Setterlund in 1988 and opened two World Gyms with her in the 1990s, which they owned and ran into the 2000s.In addition to his wife, he is survived by his sisters, Dana Harrison and Carla Scott; his brothers, Don and Jerry; two grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter. His daughter, Jamie Johnson, died in 2016. His marriage to Penny Koenemund ended in divorce.In one column, Mr. Draper contemplated what his life would have been like without weight lifting. The thought, he said, was unbearable.“No sets? No reps? No cunning determination of how to bombard the delts or blast the biceps?” he wrote. “Days on end without pursuing extreme pain through maximum muscle exertion?” He added: “Full body, full strength, full breath and fulfillment are lost, gone, no more: nary a remnant to remind, disappoint or shame. Shoot me!” More

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      Steve Bronski, of Pioneering Gay Band Bronski Beat, Dies at 61

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      He was part of a British trio whose songs often directly addressed gay themes and issues in a way few other pop music acts were doing.Steve Bronski, part of the 1980s British synth-pop trio Bronski Beat, whose members were openly gay at a time when that was uncommon and whose early songs unabashedly addressed homophobia and other gay issues, died after a fire on Dec. 7 at his apartment building in the Soho section of London, British news outlets reported. He was 61.The London Fire Brigade confirmed that it had responded to a fire on Berwick Street and taken an unidentified man to a hospital, where he later died. Josephine Samuel, a friend who had been helping to care for Mr. Bronski since he’d had a stroke several years ago, told The Guardian that Mr. Bronski was the fire victim.Mr. Bronski formed Bronski Beat in 1983 with Jimmy Somerville and Larry Steinbachek, and their first single, “Smalltown Boy,” was released the next year. It was a stark story of a young gay man’s escape from a provincial town where he had endured a homophobic attack; a haunting chorus repeats, “Run away, turn away.” The official video for the song, fleshing out the events the lyrics allude to, has been viewed more than 68 million times on YouTube.The song became a Top 5 hit in Britain and made the charts in other countries as well, including the United States. A follow-up, “Why?,” another chart success, was equally direct, the lyrics speaking to the ostracism and social disapproval experienced by gay people. “You in your false securities tear up my life, condemning me,” one lyric goes. “Name me an illness, call me a sin. Never feel guilty, never give in.”At the time, a number of mainstream performers — Elton John, the Village People, Boy George — telegraphed gayness, often with stereotypical flamboyance, but rarely addressed gay issues directly in song. Bronski Beat was different, eschewing coyness and gimmicks.“They buck stereotypes,” Jim Farber wrote in The Daily News in 1985, “presenting themselves as everyday Joes.”The group’s debut album, “The Age of Consent” (1984), was as forthright as the two singles. The album sleeve listed the “minimum age for lawful homosexual relationships between men” in European countries, an effort to underscore that the age in the United Kingdom at the time, 21, was higher than almost everywhere else. The sleeve also included a phone number for a gay legal advice line.Mr. Bronski said the trio didn’t start out as a political or social statement.“We were just writing songs that spoke about our lives at the time,” he told Gay Times in 2018. “We had no idea ‘Smalltown Boy’ would resonate with so many people.”But when they began doing live performances in 1983, he told The Associated Press in 1986, the audience reaction helped them realize that they had struck a chord.“We had all these people coming backstage saying, ‘I think it’s great you’ve been so honest about it,’” he said.That same audience reaction landed them a contract with London Records in early 1984. Mr. Bronski was on keyboards and synthesizers along with Mr. Steinbachek; Mr. Somerville’s distinctive falsetto vocals were the group’s signature.Warren Whaley, an electronic music composer based in Los Angeles and half of the synth-pop duo the Dollhouse, struck up a running correspondence with Mr. Bronski when he wrote to him after Mr. Steinbachek’s death in 2016.“I recall hearing their debut single, ‘Smalltown Boy,’ on the alternative music radio station in Los Angeles in 1984,” Mr. Whaley said by email. “The song starts with a heavy octave bass. Then a staccato hook. Then Jimmy Somerville’s lovely falsetto. I was hooked by 22 seconds in. This band was something special. Something new — but old. Their sound harkened to disco and R&B. But it sounded new, different.”Mr. Bronski in 1996. He continued to make music after the original Bronski Beat trio broke up. Jim Steinfeldt/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesThe original Bronski Beat lineup didn’t last long; Mr. Somerville left the group in 1985. But Mr. Bronski continued to make music, with Mr. Steinbachek for a time and with others over the years, most notably “Hit That Perfect Beat,” a hit in Britain and elsewhere in 1986 and a dancehall favorite ever since. Mr. Whaley said that though Bronski Beat’s best-known songs had gay-centric lyrics, “their appeal crossed the boundaries of sexual alignment.”“Everyone bopped their heads and danced to their music,” he said.Mr. Bronski was born Steven Forrest on Feb. 7, 1960, in Glasgow. He had made his way to London by the early 1980s, where he met Mr. Somerville and Mr. Steinbachek.“It was a lot easier living in London,” he told Classic Pop magazine in 2019, explaining why he and other gay men had gravitated to the city, “since there was a thriving gay scene compared to other parts of the country.”Information on his survivors was not available.In 2017, more than three decades after the release of “The Age of Consent,” the only album with the original Bronski Beat lineup, Mr. Bronski teamed with Stephen Granville and Ian Donaldson to release the album “The Age of Reason” under the Bronski Beat name, revisiting songs from the original record and adding new tracks.“I think a lot of the songs are as relevant today as they were all those years ago,” he told Gay Times. More