Deaths (Obituaries)

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      George Frayne, a.k.a. Commander Cody, Alt-Country Pioneer, Dies at 77

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      With his band the Lost Planet Airmen, he infused older genres like Western swing and boogie-woogie with a freewheeling 1960s spirit and attracted a devoted following.George Frayne, who as the frontman for the band Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen melded Western swing, jump blues, rockabilly and boogie-woogie with a freewheeling 1960s ethos to pave the way for generations of roots-rock, Americana and alt-country musicians, died on Sunday at his home in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. He was 77.John Tichy, one of the band’s original members, who is now a professor of engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, said the cause was esophageal cancer.Though the band lasted only a decade and had just one Top 10 hit, Mr. Frayne’s charisma and raucous onstage presence — as well as the Airmen’s genre-busting sound — made them a cult favorite in 1970s music meccas like the San Francisco area and Austin, Texas.Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen was not the only rock band exploring country music in the early 1970s. The Eagles, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Poco and others mined a similar vein and were more commercially successful. But fans, and especially other musicians, took to the Airmen’s raw authenticity, their craftsmanship and their exuberant love for the music they were making — or, in many cases, remaking.“He said, ‘We’re gonna reach back and get this great old music and infuse it with a ’60s and ’70s spirit,’” Ray Benson, the frontman for Asleep at the Wheel, one of the many bands inspired by Mr. Frayne, said in a phone interview. “He saw the craft and beauty of things America had left behind.”Mr. Frayne and his band were more comfortable onstage than in the recording studio. They often performed 200 or more shows a year, and they were widely considered one of the best live bands in America; their album “Live From Deep in the Heart of Texas” (1974), recorded at Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, was once ranked by Rolling Stone as one of the top 100 albums of all time.“He was a comic-book character come to life,” Mr. Benson said of Mr. Frayne. “He looked the part of the wild man, chomping on a cigar and banging on a piano. But he was also an artist, who happened to use the band as a way to express a much bigger picture.”Mr. Frayne in performance with a later version of the Lost Planet Airmen in 2016.John Atashian/Getty ImagesGeorge William Frayne IV was born on July 19, 1944, in Boise, Idaho, where his father, George III, was stationed as a pilot during World War II. Soon afterward the family moved to Brooklyn, where his father and his mother, Katherine (Jones) Frayne, were both artists. The family later moved to Bay Shore on Long Island, near Jones Beach, where George worked summers as a lifeguard.Mr. Frayne’s first marriage, to Sara Rice, ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife, Sue Casanova, and his stepdaughter, Sophia Casanova.Having learned to play boogie-woogie piano while at the University of Michigan, Mr. Frayne used his musical talent to make beer money, joining a series of bands hired to play frat-house parties. He soon fell in with a group of musicians, including Dr. Tichy, who played guitar, and who introduced Mr. Frayne to classic country, especially the Western swing of Bob Wills and the Bakersfield sound of Buck Owens.Both Mr. Frayne and Dr. Tichy stayed at Michigan for graduate school and continued to play in clubs around Ann Arbor. Although they offered throwback country to students otherwise keen on protest songs, they were a hit. They just needed a name.Mr. Frayne was a big fan of old westerns, especially weird ones like the 1935 serial “The Phantom Empire,” in which Gene Autry discovers an underground civilization. Something about sci-fi and retro country clicked for him. He took the stage name Commander Cody, after Commando Cody, the hero of two 1950s serials, and named his band after the 1951 movie “Lost Planet Airmen.”He received his master’s degree in sculpture and painting in 1968 and that fall began teaching at Wisconsin State College-Oshkosh, today the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. But he was restless; he flew back to Ann Arbor on weekends for gigs, and when Bill Kirchen, the lead guitarist for the Lost Planet Airmen, moved to Berkeley and encouraged the rest to follow, Mr. Frayne quit academia and headed west.The San Francisco scene was still in the thrall of acid rock, but the East Bay was more eclectic. Soon the band was opening for acts like the Grateful Dead and later Led Zeppelin and Alice Cooper.The Lost Planet Airmen grew to eight core members, several of them sharing lead-singer duties; there would often be 20 or more others onstage, dancing, playing kazoo and even, at certain adults-only shows, stripping. Their music was bright and up-tempo, centered on Mr. Frayne, who sat — or just as often stood — at his piano, longhaired and shirtless, pounding beers and keys.A 1970 profile in Rolling Stone, a year before the band released its first album, called Commander Cody and His Lost Airmen “one of the very best unknown rock ‘n’ roll bands in America today.”At first the Lost Airmen’s rockin’ country didn’t really fit in anywhere — neither in the post-hippie Bay Area nor in Nashville, where they were booed off the stage at a 1973 concert, the crowd yelling “Get a haircut!”“We didn’t think of appealing to anybody,” Mr. Frayne told Rolling Stone. “We were just having a good time, picking and playing and making a few dollars on the side.”In 1971 the band released its first album, “Lost in the Ozone.” It spawned a surprise hit single, a cover of Charlie Ryan’s 1955 rockabilly song “Hot Rod Lincoln,” with Mr. Frayne speed-talking through the lyrics:They arrested me and they put me in jailAnd called my pappy to throw my bail.And he said, “Son, you’re gonna’ drive me to drinkin’If you don’t stop drivin’ that hot … rod … Lincoln!It was that song, and the band’s frequent trips to Austin, that allowed them room to find their place, nestling in among the seekers and weirdos piling into the city and building its music scene.“They were plowing new turf, even if they were doing it with heritage seeds,” the Austin journalist Joe Nick Patoski said in an interview.But the success of “Hot Rod Lincoln” haunted them, especially when they tried to reach too far beyond their fan base.“Their success got them pigeonholed as a novelty band, and so the suits at the record company were looking for the next ‘Hot Rod Lincoln,’” Mr. Patoski said.In 1974 they signed with Warner Bros. Records, but the relentless pressure to produce new music, and the band’s lackluster album sales, eventually broke them apart — a story documented in the 1976 book “Starmaking Machinery: The Odyssey of an Album,” by Geoffrey Stokes.“The only thing worse than selling out,” Mr. Frayne told Mr. Stokes, “is selling out and not getting bought.”After the band broke up in 1977, Mr. Frayne continued to perform with a variety of backup bands, always as Commander Cody. In 2009 he re-formed the Lost Planet Airmen, mostly with new members, and released an album, “Dopers, Drunks and Everyday Losers.”He also returned to art, making Pop Art portraits of musicians like Jerry Garcia and Sarah Vaughan — collected in a 2009 book, “Art, Music and Life” — and experimenting with video production.As a musician, he had one more minor hit, “Two Triple Cheese, Side Order of Fries,” in 1980. But it was the song’s video, directed by John Dea, that really stood out: A fast-paced, low-tech (by today’s standards) mash-up of 1950s lunch-counter culture and hot-rod mischief, it won an Emmy and is now part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art. More

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      Ruth Sullivan, Advocate for People With Autism, Dies at 97

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      After her son was found to be autistic, she started organizations to help children and adults. She also consulted on the making of the movie “Rain Man.”Ruth Sullivan, a public health nurse who became an influential advocate for autistic children and adults after one of her sons was diagnosed with the disorder in the early 1960s, died on Sept. 16 at an assisted-living facility in Huntington, W.Va. She was 97.Her daughter Lydia Sullivan said the cause was atrial fibrillation, an abnormal heart rhythm.For more than 40 years, Dr. Sullivan was a tireless champion for educational and other opportunities for people on the autism spectrum. She was a founder of the Autism Society, a national grass-roots organization, and secured state funding to open the West Virginia Autism Training Center at Marshall University.She started and ran the Autism Services Center, which provides residential, therapeutic and community services, and for several years offered information and referrals by telephone from her home in Huntington, where she and her husband, William, raised seven children.“Our dinners were often interrupted by hysterical parents calling,” Lydia Sullivan said in a phone interview, “and my mother would spend the evenings talking to desperate parents from around the world.”Dr. Sullivan was once that parent desperate for information about autism. When her son Joseph received his diagnosis in 1963, at the age of 3, autism was a mysterious disorder that most pediatricians knew little about. She took Joseph to a doctor in Lake Charles, La., where the family was living at the time, and he quickly recognized that Joseph was autistic.“I said, ‘What is that?’” she recalled when she was interviewed on a podcast in 2016 by Marc Ellison, the executive director of the Autism Training Center and one of her protégés. “He said he will always be odd. But he couldn’t offer anything else.”Nearly as disturbing to Dr. Sullivan was a prevailing psychological theory that cold and distant parents — most notably those who were referred to as “refrigerator mothers” — were responsible for causing their children’s autism.“I knew it wasn’t true,” she said on the podcast. “I didn’t love Joseph any less than the others. I treated him differently because he didn’t behave like the others.” She added: “I’m the oldest of seven. I have seven children. I was a nurse. I knew something about children.”Research led her to read the book “Infantile Autism: The Syndrome and Its Implications for a Neural Theory of Behavior” (1964), by Bernard Rimland, a psychologist with an autistic son. He rebutted the claim that neglectful parents caused autism in their children and argued that autism was a result of genetics and possibly environmental factors.Dr. Sullivan wrote to Dr. Rimland about starting a national network of parents that would receive the latest research about autism. In 1965, the two of them and a group of parents who had also written to Dr. Rimland met at a house in Teaneck, N.J., and founded the National Society for Autistic Children (now the Autism Society), a support group that would have numerous local chapters throughout the country. Dr. Sullivan was elected its president in 1969.Around that time she was also trying to overcome a local school board’s resistance to providing an education to autistic children like Joseph. She brought a prepared statement to a school board meeting, and local newspapers wrote about her campaign to educate Joseph.“For almost six weeks I was on the phone every day trying to persuade them to set up a special class,” Dr. Sullivan told The Sunday Gazette-Mail of Charleston, W.Va., in 1972. “The next week,” she added, “there was a class for Joseph and 12 other children. With the help of some dedicated teachers, they’ve been attending school ever since.”Dr. Sullivan lobbied for the passage in 1975 of what came to be called the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, which required public schools that received federal money to provide equal access to children with disabilities. When the law was amended 15 years later, she helped write the language to include autistic children.She also became a technical adviser to “Rain Man,” Barry Levinson’s 1988 film about an autistic man (Dustin Hoffman) and his brother (Tom Cruise). To prepare for the role, Mr. Hoffman studied two documentary films featuring Joseph as well as outtakes from one of them, “Portrait of an Autistic Young Man” (1986), which was shown on PBS stations.“That’s where I met Joe, in a sense,” Mr. Hoffman told The Associated Press in 1988 at a showing of “Rain Man” in Huntington that, at Dr. Sullivan’s request, was a fund-raiser for the Autism Services Center. “I buried myself there for the first two months.”Joseph’s favorite scene in the film was when Mr. Hoffman’s character, Raymond Babbit, quickly counted spilled toothpicks.Mr. Hoffman thanked Dr. Sullivan and Joseph from the awards ceremony stage when he accepted the Oscar for best actor. She believed that the film helped broaden the public’s understanding of autism.Dr. Sullivan in 2018. For more than 40 years, she fought for educational and other opportunities for people on the autism spectrum.Rick Lee/Huntington QuarterlyRuth Marie Christ was born on April 20, 1924, in Port Arthur, Texas, 90 miles east of Houston. Her father, Lawrence, worked in oil refineries, then turned to farming after he and his family moved to Mowata, La., when Ruth was very young. Her mother, Ada (Matt) Christ, worked in a department store.After graduating from the nursing program at Charity Hospital in New Orleans in 1943, Dr. Sullivan served in the Army Nurse Corps, treating soldiers during World War II at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio (now Joint Base San Antonio).After the war ended, she moved to Lake Charles for four years, then attended Teachers College at Columbia University on the G.I. Bill. After receiving bachelor’s and master’s degrees in public health, she worked as a nurse in Manhattan. She married William Sullivan, an English professor, in 1952 and accompanied him to teaching posts in Columbia, Mo., Lake Charles and Albany, working part time as a nurse until her fourth child was born, in 1958.Joseph, her fifth child, was born in 1960. He started speaking early but began to withdraw at 18 months. By his second birthday, Dr. Sullivan wrote in her journal — which was quoted by The Gazette-Mail in 1972 — “he could say only eight words. He would indicate what he wanted by grunts, guiding our hands to what he wanted.”In 1984, at 60, she earned a Ph.D. in special education, speech pathology and psychology from Ohio University, which gave her greater standing with the people she lobbied.Her relentless but gentle style of advocacy continued until her retirement in 2007.“Providing guidance to families nationally was obviously spectacular,” said Stephen Edelson, executive director of the Autism Research Institute. “But she was also one of the first people to talk about medical comorbidities associated with autism, like seizures, sleep problems and gastrointestinal problems. And she was one of the first to point to the importance of providing services to adults with autism.”Jimmie Beirne, chief executive of the Autism Services Center (the position Dr. Sullivan held from 1979 to 2007), was hired 33 years ago to work part time with Joseph on developing his social skills.“The philosophy that she worked so hard to instill in us was to have a parent’s perspective, to think as if this is our child receiving these services,” Dr. Beirne said by phone. “She’d say that the difference between good and excellent services is in the details, and, like a good coach, she had an eye for details.”Today, Joseph lives in a group home run by the Autism Services Center and works at the Autism Training Center.In addition to Joseph and her daughter Lydia, Dr. Sullivan is survived by her other sons, Larry, Richard and Christopher; her other daughters, Eva Sullivan and Julie Sullivan, who is writing a book about her mother; her sisters, Geraldine Landry, Frances Buckingham and Julie Miller; her brother, Charles; 12 grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.Dr. Sullivan’s influence was international. She received letters from parents around the world in search of solutions for their children, and she traveled widely to speak about autism.“She was invited to a conference on autism in Argentina in the 1990s,” her daughter Julie said by phone. “At the time, Argentina was in the grips of the ‘refrigerator mother’ thing, and she got together with parents and told them they needed to start their own group. So she’s the godmother of an autism parents’ group in Argentina.” More

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      Lonnie Smith, Soulful Jazz Organist, Is Dead at 79

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      Adept at blending the sophistication of jazz with the earthy appeal of rhythm and blues, he was later widely sampled by hip-hop artists.Lonnie Smith, a master of the Hammond B3 organ and a leading exponent of the infectiously rhythmic genre known as soul jazz, died on Tuesday at his home in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was 79.His manager and partner, Holly Case, said the cause was pulmonary fibrosis.Mr. Smith, who began billing himself as Dr. Lonnie Smith in the mid-1970s, could draw an audience’s attention with his appearance alone: He had a long white beard and always wore a colorful turban. (The turbans apparently had no specific religious significance, and he did not have an advanced degree in anything and never explained why he had adopted the honorific “Dr.”) His playing was every bit as striking.He began his career at a time when organists like Jimmy Smith and Jack McDuff were blending the sophistication of jazz with the earthy appeal of rhythm and blues. Mr. Smith was very much in that tradition, but his playing could also display an ethereal quality that was all his own. His music later reached new generations of fans when it was widely sampled by hip-hop artists.Reviewing a 2015 performance at the Jazz Standard in New York, Ben Ratliff of The New York Times praised Mr. Smith’s sense of dynamics. “When he is quiet, he is very quiet,” Mr. Ratliff wrote. “During a gospelish song with the singer Alicia Olatuja, he started a solo passage at a level that almost couldn’t be heard and stayed there for quite a while, unspooling jagged, alert phrases that you had to strain to listen to: an easy trick but a powerful one.”Lonnie Smith was born on July 3, 1942, in Lackawanna, N.Y., a suburb of Buffalo, and raised by his mother, Beulah Mae Early, and his stepfather, Charles Smith. As a teenager he sang in vocal groups and played trumpet and other instruments before a store owner’s generosity spurred his lifelong love affair with the organ.As he recalled in interviews, he spent a lot of time in a Buffalo music store, mostly just looking. One day he told the owner, Art Kubera (whom he would later call “my angel”), that he was sure he could make a living in music if he had an instrument. Mr. Kubera took him to the back of the store, showed him a Hammond B3 organ and told him that he could have it for nothing if he was able to get it out of the store. He did, he taught himself to play it, and his career began.Mr. Smith was soon working regularly at the Pine Grill in Buffalo. Mr. McDuff was an early influence, and when the guitarist George Benson left Mr. McDuff’s combo to form his own group, he hired Mr. Smith.The Benson quartet had an inauspicious beginning at a bar in the Bronx, where, Mr. Benson wrote in his autobiography, “Benson” (2014), “Lonnie and I played behind a revolving cast of go-go dancers.” After moving to a jazz club in Harlem, the Benson quartet began building a following.Mr. Smith’s first album as a leader was released by Columbia Records in 1967.Both Mr. Benson and Mr. Smith signed with Columbia Records. Mr. Smith’s first album as a leader, “Finger-Lickin’ Good,” which featured Mr. Benson on guitar, was released in 1967, but his tenure with Columbia was brief. The next year he moved to Blue Note, which had already used him on the alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson’s hit album “Alligator Boogaloo.”Blue Note, which had helped launch the organ-jazz boom by signing Jimmy Smith a decade earlier, was a natural home for Mr. Smith. But after releasing four well-received albums on the label, beginning with “Think!” (1968) and ending with “Drives” (1970), he moved on.He recorded for various labels throughout the 1970s, but by the end of the decade his brand of jazz was falling out of favor and he was growing tired of the music business. He stopped recording and maintained a low profile, performing only occasionally and sometimes under an assumed name.He ended his studio hiatus in 1993 with “Afro Blue,” a tribute to John Coltrane with John Abercrombie on guitar and Marvin Smith on drums, released on the MusicMasters label. (The same trio would later release two Jimi Hendrix tribute albums, “Foxy Lady” in 1994 and “Purple Haze”in 1995.) By that time Mr. Smith’s influence had grown in ways he had never anticipated: His 1970 cover of the Blood, Sweat & Tears hit “Spinning Wheel” had been sampled by A Tribe Called Quest, the first of many hip-hop acts that would find inspiration in his catalog.Mr. Smith began performing again, both with his own groups and with Mr. Donaldson, and eventually returned to Blue Note; his first album for the label in more than 40 years, “Evolution,” was released in 2016. His most recent album, “Breathe,” released this year, included a surprising guest appearance by the punk-rock pioneer Iggy Pop on two tracks, the vintage R&B ballad “Why Can’t We Live Together” and Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman.”In addition to Ms. Case, Mr. Smith is survived by four daughters, Lani Chambers, Chandra Thomas, Charisse Partridge and Vonnie Smith, and several grandchildren.In 2017 the National Endowment for the Arts named him a Jazz Master, the country’s highest official honor for a jazz musician.“A lot of musicians get into music because they want to be rich, famous or all of the above,” Mr. Smith said in a 2012 interview. “You are already rich once you sit down and learn to play. That’s richness in itself.”Alex Traub contributed reporting. More

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      Sue Thompson, Who Sang of ‘Norman’ and Sad Movies, Dies at 96

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      She started out a country singer, but she found fame and pop-chart success in the early 1960s with catchy novelty songs, as well as the occasional ballad.Sue Thompson, who after more than a decade of moderate success as a country singer found pop stardom in the early 1960s with hook-laden novelty hits like “Sad Movies (Make Me Cry)” and “Norman,” died on Thursday at the home of her daughter and caregiver, Julie Jennings, in Pahrump, Nev. She was 96.Her son, Greg Penny, said the cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease.With a clear, somewhat girlish voice that brought sass to humorous ditties but that could also be used to good effect on a ballad, Ms. Thompson was part of a wave of female vocalists, like Connie Francis and Brenda Lee, who had hits in the late 1950s and early ’60s.Her breakthrough came when she was paired with the songwriter John D. Loudermilk, who wrote her first big hit, “Sad Movies,” a done-me-wrong tune about a woman who goes to a movie alone when her boyfriend says he has to work late, only to see him walk in with her best friend on his arm.The song cracked the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the fall of 1961, and before long she was back in the Top 10 with another Loudermilk song, “Norman,” in which she turned that rather unglamorous male name into an earworm. (“Norman, Norman my love,” Ms. Thompson cooed in the chorus, surrounding the name with oohs and hmms.)Mr. Loudermilk also wrote an elopement novelty, “James (Hold the Ladder Steady),” which did moderately well for Ms. Thompson in 1962. That year she also showed what she could do with a ballad, having modest success with “Have a Good Time,” a song, by Boudleaux and Felice Bryant, Tony Bennett recorded a decade earlier.The British Invasion soon eclipsed this kind of light fare, but Ms. Thompson had one more pop success, in 1964, with Mr. Loudermilk’s “Paper Tiger.”In 1966 she traveled to Vietnam to entertain the troops. Because she was accompanied by only a trio, she could go to more remote bases than bigger U.S.O. acts, exposing her to greater danger.“Tonight we are at Can Tho, a huge American air base,” she wrote to her parents. “You can see the fighting (flashes from guns), hear the mortars, etc.”“We’re fairly secure most of the time,” she continued, “but must be aware that things can pop right in our midst.”The trip left her shaken.“A heartbreaking — and heartwarming — experience,” she wrote. “I will never be the same. I saw and learned unbelievable things.”Mr. Penny said that his mother was ill for weeks afterward, and that she long suspected that she had been exposed to Agent Orange. She underwent a sort of awakening, he said, becoming a vegetarian and developing an interest in spiritual traditions, Eastern as well as Western.Despite becoming ill after the first trip, she went on other tours to entertain troops, including one the next year on which Mr. Penny, just a boy, accompanied her. They traveled to Japan, Hong Kong, the Philippines and elsewhere. Vietnam had also been on the itinerary, but that part of the trip never happened.“I remember getting the communication while we were on the road in Okinawa,” Mr. Penny said in a phone interview. “They said it was just too dangerous.”When Ms. Thompson returned to performing stateside, she also returned to country music, releasing a number of records — including a string recorded with Don Gibson — and leaving behind the little-girl sound of her hits.“I don’t want to be ‘itty bitty’ anymore,” she told The Times of San Mateo, Calif., in 1974. “I want to project love and convey a more mature sound and a more meaningful message.” Country music, she said, was a better vehicle for that because “country fans pay more attention to what is being said in a song.”Ms. Thompson performing at a Country Music Association luncheon in New York in 1963.PoPsie Randolph/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesEva Sue McKee (she picked her stage name out of a phone book) was born on July 19, 1925, in Nevada, Mo. Her father, Vurl, was a laborer, and her mother, Pearl Ova (Fields) McKee, was a nurse. In 1937, during the Depression, her parents moved to California to escape the Dust Bowl, settling north of Sacramento. When she was in high school the family moved again, to San Jose.As a child Ms. Thompson was entranced by Gene Autry, and she grew up envisioning herself as a singing cowgirl. Her mother found her a secondhand guitar for her seventh birthday, and she performed at every opportunity as she went through high school.In 1944 she married Tom Gamboa, and while he fought in World War II, she had their daughter, Ms. Jennings. She also worked in a defense factory, Mr. Penny said.Her wartime marriage ended in divorce in 1947, but her singing career soon began in earnest. Ms. Thompson won a talent show at a San Jose theater, which led to appearances on local radio and television programs, including those of Dude Martin, a radio star in the Bay Area who had a Western swing band, Dude Martin’s Roundup Gang.In the early 1950s she became the lead vocalist on a TV show that Mr. Martin had introduced in the Los Angeles market, and she cut several records with his band, including, in 1952, one of the first versions of the ballad “You Belong to Me.” Later that year it became a hit for Jo Stafford, and in the 1960s it was covered by the Duprees.Ms. Thompson and Mr. Martin married in December 1952, but they divorced a year later, and Ms. Thompson soon married another Western swing star with his own local TV show, Hank Penny. That marriage ended in divorce in 1963, but the two continued to perform together occasionally for decades.The country records Ms. Thompson made on the Mercury label in the 1950s never gained much traction, but that changed when she signed with Hickory early in 1961. “Angel, Angel,” another ballad by the Bryants, garnered some attention — Billboard compared it to the Brenda Lee hit “I Want to Be Wanted” — and then came “Sad Movies.”That breakthrough hit was something of an accident. In a 2010 interview on the South Australian radio show “The Doo Wop Corner,” Ms. Thompson said she recorded it only after another singer had decided not to.“I inherited the song,” she said, “and I was really happy and excited when it turned out to be such a hit for me.”Even before her pop hits Ms. Thompson was a familiar sight on stages in Nashville and Nevada as well as on the country fair circuit, and the hits made her even more in demand in Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe, Reno, Nev., and elsewhere. Gravitating between country and pop came easily.“Most popular songs actually are country-and-western songs with a modern instrumental background,” she told The Reno Gazette-Journal in 1963.Ms. Thompson said her favorite among the songs she recorded was “You Belong to Me.” About a decade ago, when she was in her 80s, Greg Penny, a record producer who has worked with Elton John and other top stars, recorded her singing the song to a guitar accompaniment. Carmen Kaye, host of “The Doo Wop Corner,” gave the demo its radio premiere during the 2010 interview, Ms. Thompson still sounding sweet and clear.Her fourth husband, Ted Serna, whom she had known in high school and married in 1993, died in 2013. In addition to Ms. Jennings and Mr. Penny, she is survived by eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.Ms. Jennings, in a phone interview, told about a time when her mother, on tour in Vietnam, asked to visit soldiers in the infirmary who couldn’t come to her stage show. One badly injured young man, when introduced to her, said, “I don’t give a darn who’s here; I just want my mama.” Ms. Thompson sat with him for a long while, asking all about his mother, helping him conjure good memories.“Three years later,” Ms. Jennings said, “my mother was working in Hawaii, and he brought his mother in there and introduced her to my mom.” More

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      Bob Moore, an Architect of the Nashville Sound, Dies at 88

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      He played bass on thousands of popular recordings, helping to create the uncluttered style that came to characterize the country music of the 1950s and ’60s.NASHVILLE — Bob Moore, an architect of the Nashville Sound of the 1950s and ’60s who played bass on thousands of popular recordings, including Elvis Presley’s “Return to Sender” and Patsy Cline’s “Crazy,” died on Sept. 22 at a hospital here. He was 88.His death was confirmed by his wife, Kittra Bernstein Moore, who did not cite a cause.As a mainstay of the loose aggregation of first-call Nashville session professionals known as the A-Team, Mr. Moore played on many of the landmark country hits of his day, among them Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man,” Loretta Lynn’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter” and George Jones’s “He Stopped Loving Her Today.”All were No. 1 country singles, and each typified the intuitive, uncluttered style of playing that came to characterize the less-is-more Nashville Sound.Mr. Moore, who mainly played the upright bass, also contributed the swaggering opening figure to Roger Miller’s “King of the Road” as well as the indomitable bass line on Jeannie C. Riley’s skewering of hypocrisy, “Harper Valley P.T.A.” Both records were No. 1 country singles and major crossover hits, with Ms. Riley’s reaching the top of the pop chart in 1968.Over 40 years Mr. Moore elevated the bass in country music from a subordinate timekeeper to an instrument capable of considerable tonal and emotional reach. By turns restrained and robust, his imaginative phrasing revealed a gift for seizing the dramatic moment within a recording or arrangement.“No matter how good a musician you are technically, what really matters boils down to your taste in playing,” he once said. “A lot of guys can play a hundred notes a second; some can play one note, and it makes a lot better record.”Mr. Moore’s forceful, empathetic playing extended well beyond the precincts of country music to encompass the likes of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Boxer” and Brook Benton’s “Rainy Night in Georgia,” among other pop and soul hits, as well as several notable rockabilly records.As session leader at Monument Records, where he worked in the late 1950s, Mr. Moore created arrangements for recordings by Roy Orbison and others, including “Only the Lonely,” a Top 10 pop single for Mr. Orbison in 1960. The record stalled at No. 2 and might have gone on to occupy the top spot on the chart were it not for Brenda Lee’s “I’m Sorry.” Mr. Moore played bass on that one, too.He had a Top 10 pop record of his own: the Mariachi-flavored instrumental “Mexico” (1961), credited to Bob Moore and His Orchestra. (The song was composed by Boudleaux Bryant, who, with his wife, Felice, also wrote hits for Mr. Orbison and the Everly Brothers.)In 1960 Mr. Moore and some of his fellow A-Teamers received an invitation to appear at the Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island. After a series of violent incidents in Newport, some set off by an angry crowd of concertgoers who had been shut out of sold-out shows, the festival ended prematurely and Mr. Moore was unable to perform, so he and a group billed as the Nashville All-Stars, which included the vibraphonist Gary Burton, recorded an album of instrumentals called “After the Riot at Newport.”“Anyone who has heard me play bass knows my soul,” Mr. Moore said, looking back on his career in a 2002 interview with the website Art of Slap Bass. “I am studied, solid, thorough, steadfast, bold and dependable.”In 2007, Mr. Moore and his fellow A-Team members were inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville.His son R. Stevie Moore is also a musician, having played a pioneering role in the lo-fi, or do-it-yourself, movement popularized by indie-rock artists like Pavement and Beck.“Anyone who has heard me play bass knows my soul,” Mr. Moore once said. “I am studied, solid, thorough, steadfast, bold and dependable.”Bill ForsheeBobby Loyce Moore was born on Nov. 30, 1932, in Nashville and raised by his maternal grandmother, Minnie Anderson Johnson, a widow.When he was 9, Bobby set up a shoeshine station outside the Ryman Auditorium, then home to the Grand Ole Opry. One of his regular customers was Jack Drake, the bass player for Ernest Tubb and his Texas Troubadours; Mr. Drake became an early mentor.Bobby appeared in local bands before going on tour at age 15 as a guitarist and stand-up bassist for the minstrels Jamup and Honey. Along with the future A-Team guitarists Hank Garland and Grady Martin, he spent time in the bands of the Opry stars Paul Howard and Little Jimmy Dickens before working with the singers Red Foley and Marty Robbins.Mr. Moore’s big break came in the early 1950s, when the Nashville bandleader Owen Bradley offered him steady employment with his dance orchestra. Even more auspicious, Mr. Bradley promised Mr. Moore, then weary of touring, steady work on the recording sessions he would soon be supervising as the newly established head of the local office of Decca Records.Over the next three decades Mr. Moore would appear on hits by Decca luminaries like Kitty Wells and Conway Twitty as well as others, like Jim Reeves and Earl Scruggs, who recorded for other labels. He appeared on virtually all of Patsy Cline’s 1960s recordings for Decca, including her hit “Crazy” in 1961, and much of Presley’s RCA output of the early to mid-’60s, including “Return to Sender,” released in 1962.As a new generation of session musicians began supplanting the original A-Team in the early ’80s, Mr. Moore pursued other projects, including a stint with Jerry Lee Lewis’s band. A hand injury forced his premature retirement from performing later that decade.In addition to his wife and his son Stevie, Mr. Moore is survived by a daughter, Linda Faye Moore, who is also a performing musician; two other sons, Gary and Harry; and two granddaughters.In the early 1950s, when Mr. Bradley offered him a career as a studio musician, Mr. Moore discovered a life-changing musical fellowship as a member of the A-Team.“We were like brothers,” he said in his Art of Slap Bass interview. “We had great musical chemistry and communication.” He continued: “We loved creating our music together. We were able to assert our personalities and express our feelings through our music in such an effective way that the public came to recognize our individual styles.” More

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      Alemayehu Eshete, Singer Known as the ‘Abyssinian Elvis,’ Dies at 80

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      He became a swaggering star in the late 1960s, when Addis Ababa experienced a golden age of night life and music. Decades later, he was rediscovered.Alemayehu Eshete, a soulful Ethiopian pop singer widely known as the “Abyssinian Elvis” who became a star in the 1960s when a cultural revolution took hold of Addis Ababa, died on Sept. 2 at a hospital there. He was 80.Gilles Fruchaux, the president of Mr. Eshete’s reissue label, Buda Musique, confirmed the death.For years under Haile Selassie’s imperial rule, Ethiopia’s music industry was controlled by the state. Orchestras dutifully performed patriotic songs at government events, while defiant bands played Little Richard songs at night in clubs. It was forbidden to record and distribute music independently.“All the musicians used to work for the government,” Mr. Eshete said in a 2017 documentary about the era, “Ethiopiques: Revolt of the Soul.” “When they told you to perform, you had to perform. We were treated like average workers, not like real artists.”But in the late 1960s, as Selassie grew old and the grip of his rule loosened, Addis Ababa experienced a golden age of night life and music, and Mr. Eshete became a swaggering star of the so-called “swinging Addis” era.The sound that dominated this period was distinct: an infectious blend of Western-imported blues and R&B with traditional Ethiopian folk music. It was typified by hypnotic saxophone lines, funky electric guitar stabs and grooving piano riffs.As a teenager, Mr. Eshete was smitten with American rock ‘n’ roll, and his idol was Elvis Presley, so when he started singing in the clubs of Addis he imitated his hero. He sported a pompadour and wore big collared shirts as he gyrated onstage.“I dressed like an American, grew my hair, sang ‘Jailhouse Rock,’” he told The Guardian in 2008. “But the moment that I started singing Amharic songs, my popularity shot up.”He was soon enlisted in the fabled Police Orchestra, a state-run band composed of Ethiopia’s finest musicians, and he began playing with the ensemble at government functions in the city. After hours, he found refuge in the underground music scene.In 1969, the defiant act of Mr. Eshete and a young record shop owner named Amha Eshete (no relation) galvanized the scene.The acclaimed “Éthiopiques” album series, begun in 1997, ignited international interest in Ethiopian music. Two releases in the series are devoted to Mr. Eshete’s work.Buda MusiqueAmha Eshete decided to found a label, Amha Records, to commit to vinyl the Ethiopian pop music that bands were performing in clubs. Few musicians were willing to flout the law with him until Alemayehu Eshete stepped forward and offered to record the funky tune “Timarkialesh,” and Amha then had it manufactured as a 45 r.p.m. single in India.When copies of the record arrived, and Amha played it from a loudspeaker in his Harambee Music Shop, people started dancing outside and stopped traffic. The single became a hit, and when the government turned a blind eye toward this transgression, the city’s musical revolution exploded.Amha Records went on to release the work of giants of Ethiopian music like the vocalist Mahmoud Ahmed and the composer Mulatu Astatke. Mr. Eshete went on to found the Alem-Girma Band with the pianist and arranger Girma Beyene. He also became known for writing socially conscious songs, like “Temar Lije” (“Study, My Son”), which stressed the importance of education.But a Communist military junta, the Derg, took control of Ethiopia in the mid-1970s, and the swing in Addis came to an end.In what became known as the Ethiopian Red Terror, the Derg ousted Selassie, and thousands were massacred. A curfew extinguished night life in Addis and musicians left the country in droves, creating a lost generation of Ethiopian musical stars.Amha Eshete, who died in April, opened a nightclub and restaurant in Washington; Girma Beyene, who also landed there, became a gas station attendant. Alemayehu Eshete remained in Ethiopia to raise his family. He continued working as a musician under the Derg and returned to singing patriotic songs at state-sponsored events.“That time was hell,” he told The Guardian. “I was ordered to sing a song in Korean for Kim Il-sung, which I learned, though I had no idea what I was singing.”When the regime was overthrown nearly two decades later, much of the world didn’t know what had transpired musically in swinging Addis.But that changed in 1997 when a French musicologist, Francis Falceto, produced the first album in the acclaimed series “Éthiopiques,” which compiled the era’s lost treasures. Released on the Buda Musique label, the project, which now consists of 30 titles, ignited international interest in Ethiopian music. Two releases in the series are devoted to Mr. Eshete’s work.“Alemayehu is an icon of that era,” Mr. Falceto said in a phone interview. “He is a legend of the music of modern Ethiopia.”Alemayehu Eshete Andarge was born in June 1941 in Addis Ababa. His father, Eshete Andarge, was a taxi driver. His mother, Belaynesh Yusuf, was a homemaker.As a boy, Alemayehu liked watching Elvis Presley movies and singing Presley songs for his friends at school. Dreaming of stardom in Hollywood, he once ran away from home, hitching a ride to a port city in Eritrea, where he hoped to board a ship bound for America. His mission was foiled when someone got in touch with his family and he was sent home.Mr. Eshete is survived by his wife, Ayehu Kebede Desta; seven children; and six grandchildren.As Addis Ababa entered the new millennium, its musical past was revisited as part of a cultural revival. Young musicians played the old songs with reverence, and lost classics became radio hits again. Mr. Eshete began performing every Wednesday at a venue called the Jazzamba Lounge.In 2008, Mr. Eshete and three other notable Ethiopian musicians, Mahmoud Ahmed, Mulatu Astatke and the saxophonist Getatchew Mekurya, performed together at the Barbican in London and at the Glastonbury festival. In New York, backed by the New England-based Either/Orchestra, Mr. Eshete played at Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park.“Mr. Eshete was at his charismatic best,” Nate Chinen wrote in a review of that show in The New York Times. “Each verse began with a single clarion note and then plunged into rapid-fire patter. He tried a few other approaches in his set, like an insinuative croon and a bark befitting his nickname, the Ethiopian James Brown.”A funeral ceremony attended by hundreds was held for Mr. Eshete at Meskel Square in Addis Ababa. An orchestra played before his coffin was driven away. Just months earlier, Mr. Eshete’s music had echoed across the square when he performed there with a band and sang his song, “Addis Ababa Bete” (“Addis Ababa, My Home”).Mr. Eshete had recorded that tune, a funky love letter to his city, in 1971 with his fellow musical outlaw, Amha. They sold it from Amha’s defiant little record shop, where it quickly became a hit and set swinging Addis on fire. More

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      Pee Wee Ellis, James Brown’s Partner in Funk, Dies at 80

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      As musical director for the bands behind Mr. Brown and also Van Morrison, Mr. Ellis helped forge new hybrids, meshing pop, jazz, R&B and more.Alfred (Pee Wee) Ellis, a saxophonist, arranger and composer who fused jazz, funk and soul as the musical director for James Brown and Van Morrison, died on Thursday. He was 80.The cause was “complications with his heart,” his Facebook page said. It did not say where he died; he lived in Dorset County, England.Mr. Ellis also performed, arranged and recorded extensively with his own jazz groups, in funk bands with fellow James Brown alumni and as a sideman for a broad array of musicians in jazz, R&B, pop, rock and African music. And his association with Mr. Morrison stretched across two decades.Mr. Ellis shared credit with Mr. Brown for writing 26 songs performed by Mr. Brown, including “Cold Sweat” and “Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud.”He had a collaborative temperament that allowed him to get along with demanding performers like Mr. Brown, Mr. Morrison, Esther Phillips and the rock drummer Ginger Baker. “I’m not hard to get along with — and I’m a good mediator,” he said in a 2020 interview with The American magazine. “All their problems were their problems, not mine.”Alfred James Ellis was born on April 21, 1941, in Bradenton, Fla. He started playing piano, clarinet and saxophone as a youth, joining the marching band in junior high school. The family moved to Lubbock, Texas, in 1949 after his mother had married Ezell Ellis, who managed local musicians. Those musicians gave Alfred, who was a skinny child, his nickname, Pee Wee.Ezell Ellis was stabbed to death in a Texas club in 1955; a white woman had insisted on dancing with him, and the killer was infuriated at seeing an interracial couple.The family moved to Rochester, N.Y., when Alfred was a teenager, and he played jazz in high school groups and in clubs. He also spent time in New York City and studied at the Manhattan School of Music. He made his first recordings as a sideman.One day, in 1957, he was retrieving his saxophone from a repair shop when he ran into the jazz titan Sonny Rollins on Broadway and boldly asked him for lessons. Mr. Rollins agreed, and Mr. Ellis began making weekly trips to New York City to study with him. In a 2014 interview for the magazine Neon Nettle, Mr. Ellis likened working with Mr. Rollins to being “a sponge in deep water.”After high school he moved to Miami and became a full-time musician. Members of Mr. Brown’s band saw him performing at a motel there in 1965, and soon afterward he was hired to join the band. In a few months Mr. Ellis had become Mr. Brown’s musical director, writing arrangements and teaching them to the band.Mr. Brown in 2010. He made more than a dozen albums as a bandleader.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesAfter a show at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, Mr. Brown summoned Mr. Ellis with an idea for a bass line. Then, in the band bus on the way to Cincinnati, Mr. Ellis constructed the rest of the music for what became “Cold Sweat,” a syncopated vamp with a two-note horn line that echoed Miles Davis’s “So What.”Fiercely polyrhythmic and untethered from blues or pop-song forms, the song became a cornerstone of funk. “‘Cold Sweat’ deeply affected the musicians I knew,” the producer Jerry Wexler said in the liner notes to “Star Time,” a James Brown boxed set. “It just freaked them out. For a time, no one could get a handle on what to do next.”Mr. Brown and Mr. Ellis wrote “Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud,” another funk milestone, in response to the murder of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 and the subsequent summer of racial unrest.“It was a music that heralded a new attitude,” Mr. Ellis said in a 2020 interview with Jazzwise magazine, “a new and distinctive Black culture, of street culture finding confidence and popularity outside and alongside the establishment. Sweeping into mainstream consciousness during the civil rights movement was unlike anything people had heard, and its positive energy united a new generation making them proud of their music, fashion and political tastes.”But relentless touring and recording with the James Brown band was grueling, and as the 1960s ended Mr. Ellis decided to return to jazz. In the 1970s he arranged and conducted the music for full albums by George Benson and Johnny Hammond; he also recorded with Esther Phillips, Leon Thomas, Hank Crawford, Shirley Scott, Sonny Stitt and Dave Liebman. He released his first full album as a leader, “Home in the Country,” in 1977.Mr. Ellis was invited to do horn arrangements for Van Morrison’s 1979 album, “Into the Music,” starting a lasting relationship. He appeared on Mr. Morrison’s albums for the next 20 years, and had stints as the musical director for Mr. Morrison in the 1980s and 1990s.In the ’90s and 2000s Mr. Ellis rejoined the saxophonist Maceo Parker and the trombonist Fred Wesley, bandmates from his years with Mr. Brown, to perform and make albums under various names, including the J.B. Horns and the J.B.’s Reunion.He led his own group, the Pee Wee Ellis Assembly, and made more than a dozen jazz albums as a leader. His touring projects included a stint in the 2010s with a quartet led by Mr. Baker, the drummer from Cream, and “Still Black Still Proud,” a James Brown tribute featuring African musicians.He also played sessions for, among many others, De La Soul, 10,000 Maniacs, Walter Wolfman Washington, Poncho Sanchez, Oumou Sangaré, Toumani Diabaté, Cheikh Lo and Ali Farka Touré. (Information on his survivors was not immediately available.)Mr. Ellis told The American that he was happiest when collaborating. “Part of the magic,” he said, “is joining forces and making something happen from nowhere.” More

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      Bobby Zarem, ‘Superflack’ and Maker of Stars, Dies at 84

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      As a spirited impresario of public relations, he promoted entertainers, films and the “I Love New York” tourism campaign.Bobby Zarem, the exuberant press agent who fulfilled his childhood fantasies by catching rising stars and promoting them to stellar careers, died early Sunday morning at his home in Savannah, Ga. He was 84.His death was confirmed by Bill Augustin, a longtime colleague, who said the cause was complications of lung cancer.A gregarious and ingratiating Yale graduate, Mr. Zarem lasted barely 18 months on Wall Street before stumbling into a career as an indefatigable show business promoter.A largely affable Barnum, he cannily cultivated a symbiotic bond with reporters, greeted favored guests at his parties by obsequiously dropping to his knees and kissing their hands, and gushed with joyful benevolence one moment only to unleash a vitriolic but lyrical X-rated tirade the next, prompted by a perceived slight or an underling’s lapse.Mr. Zarem’s clients included (in alphabetical order) Alan Alda, Ann-Margret, Woody Allen, Michael Caine, Cher, Michael Douglas, Dustin Hoffman, Sophia Loren, Jack Nicholson, Diana Ross, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone.He publicized the films “Tommy” (by staging a gala party in a Midtown Manhattan subway station) and “Saturday Night Fever” (after stealing stills of the production from the studio, which expected the movie to flop and neglected to distribute photographs of John Travolta), as well as “Rambo,” “Dances With Wolves” and “Pumping Iron,” the 1977 documentary about bodybuilding, which starred Mr. Schwarzenegger. For that film, Mr. Zarem arranged a meeting with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis that helped elevate Mr. Schwarzenegger to global superstardom.Mr. Zarem with Michael Douglas in 2010. Mr. Douglas was one of Mr. Zarem’s many celebrity clients.Dave Allocca/Starpix/ShutterstockHe also played a role in initiating the “I Love New York” tourism campaign — although just how much of a role is unclear; he was one of a number of people who claimed credit for originating the slogan (the logo was designed by Milton Glaser).He was hired by William S. Doyle, the state’s deputy commerce commissioner, and said he recruited the Wells Rich Greene advertising agency to produce a television advertising campaign starring Broadway celebrities.He also promoted his own birthplace, transforming John Behrendt’s true-crime book “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” (1994) into a tourism magnet for Savannah. He helped launch a film festival there in 1998 and retired there in 2010.Judy Klemesrud of The New York Times called him “Super Flack.” Spy magazine characterized him as “preternaturally energetic.” Marion Meade wrote in her biography “The Unruly Life of Woody Allen” (2000) that Mr. Zarem was “fueled by an inexhaustible tank of hot air.”And Hal Erickson, likening him to the fading publicist he inspired who was played by Al Pacino in the film “People I Know,” wrote in his book “Any Resemblance to Actual Persons” (2017) that Mr. Zarem “never worried about getting into heaven as long as he could get his people into print.”Like his theatrical clients, Mr. Zarem could deftly switch roles: from the choleric control freak grappling with the last-minute glitches in staging an event to the chivalrous host greeting every guest like a best friend.He wanted badly to be liked, but he could develop a grudge when he wasn’t.Mr. Zarem feuded venomously with the columnist Liz Smith in the 1980s after he discovered that she was writing a separate syndicated column under a pseudonym, Robin Adams Sloan, that denigrated his clients.In contrast to many of his less gregarious colleagues, Mr. Zarem’s own boldfaced name punctuated gossip columns nearly as frequently as his clients’.But despite his personal visibility, Mr. Zarem insisted in an interview with The New York Times in 2001 that his career “was for a long time hurt because I didn’t promote myself.”“People don’t know half of what I’ve done because I’m not a bragger,” he had told The Times four years earlier. He added, though, that while most of his competitors were “handlers or caterers,” he himself had “elevated publicity to an art form.”He regularly dined at Elaine’s on the Upper East Side (where he said he introduced Mia Farrow to Woody Allen), helped organize an annual Oscar-night gala (“Almost everybody here is somebody,” he said at one event), and, in an era of antiseptic tweets, was known for sending personalized handwritten notes.Endowed with a discerning eye that could identify potential stars, Mr. Zarem delivered on his boyhood dreams.“I sit here now,” he said in an interview with South magazine in 2017, “and I realize that everything I fantasized about became real.”Robert Myron Zarem was born on Sept. 30, 1936, in Savannah, the youngest of three sons in an Orthodox Jewish family. His father, Harry, owned a wholesale shoe company. His mother, Rose (Gold) Zarem, was a pianist.“I’ve had major identity problems all my life because I’m obsessed with meeting stars,” he told The Times in 1997When he was 8, he said, he and a friend cut Sunday-school classes to collect an autograph from the tempestuous actress Tallulah Bankhead, who was staying at a Savannah hotel.They planned and executed an elaborate subterfuge — learning her room number from a bellhop who worked for Bobby’s father; walking up eight flights to avoid the elevator operator; knocking on the door and refusing to be cowed when she shrieked, “Go away! I don’t sign autographs”; and then sneaking in behind a maid’s breakfast cart, prompting Miss Bankhead to lob a newspaper at them.Many years later, as a prominent publicist, he encountered Miss Bankhead and made one more fruitless effort. He was equally unsuccessful. “I still don’t sign autographs,” she said.He would continue to collect them, though. Before his father died of cancer when Bobby was 13, he would accompany him when he came to New York for treatment at a New York hospital. They would stay at the Waldorf Astoria, where Bobby would forage for famous guests.After his father died, he told Hamptons magazine, “I was scared to get close to anybody out of fear that that person, too, would disappear.”Despite a lifelong struggle with attention deficit disorder that made reading demanding, he followed his two older brothers to Phillips Academy in Massachusetts and then to Yale, where he graduated in 1958. (Danny Zarem, a fashion retailer, died in 2013. Dr. Harvey Zarem, a plastic surgeon, died in 2015. No immediate family members survive.)After earning a bachelor’s degree in political science, he worked for the United States Trust Company in New York; served briefly in the Air National Guard; was hired by Columbia Artists Management; and, starting in 1968, discovered his gift as a publicist while working for the producer Joseph E. Levine.In 1969 he went to work for Rogers & Cowan, the public relations firm, where his client roster included Dustin Hoffman. He opened his own agency, Zarem Inc., in 1974.Mr. Zarem, a workaholic, never married and didn’t drink, although he smoked marijuana to relax. He cultivated a devil-may-care style in untucked shirts and New Balance sneakers, but that style belied a fierce temper.The publicist Peggy Siegal, who once worked for him, swore that Mr. Zarem lobbed a typewriter at her when she erred in taking a phone message. (He responded that he wouldn’t have missed at such short range.) Mr. Schwarzenegger recalled in his 2012 memoir, “Total Recall,” that Mr. Zarem “always talked like he was completely confused and the world was coming to an end.”He bemoaned the current state of public relations, he told New York magazine in 2010, because the warp speed of digital media pre-empted what to a pro like him was a fine-tuned battle plan of leaks and exclusive stories.About the state of the art as he practiced it, Mr. Zarem noted, “Nobody knows what a press agent does, and if you’re smart, you keep it that way.”He claimed that he had gained self-awareness after more than three decades of analysis with Dr. Samuel Lowy, a psychiatrist who specialized in interpreting dreams. Mr. Zarem concluded that he promoted other people to magnify his own self-image.“I think that’s why I did what I did,” he told Hamptons magazine. “Not feeling that I had anything to communicate, I felt that if I made the rest of the world accept Dustin Hoffman and Ann-Margret and Cher, and all these people, then I would be accepted.”In retrospect, he said, he saw his role in the “I Love New York” campaign as a breakthrough.“My therapist once told me, ‘Anyone who saved the single greatest metropolis can’t be that screwed up,’” Mr. Zarem said. “For the first time in my life, I don’t feel the need to jump out a window if someone cancels dinner on me. Now I know who and what I am.” More