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      Phyllis McGuire, Last of a Singing Sisters Act, Dies at 89

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPhyllis McGuire, Last of a Singing Sisters Act, Dies at 89Starting in the ’50s, the McGuire Sisters were one of America’s most popular vocal groups, their three-part harmonies a balm to audiences rattled by rock ’n’ roll.The McGuire Sisters in 1953 — from left, Christine, Phyllis and Dorothy. They became staples of television variety shows. Credit…Associated PressDec. 31, 2020Updated 4:58 p.m. ETPhyllis McGuire, the lead singer and last surviving member of the McGuire Sisters, who bewitched teenage America in the 1950s with chart-topping renditions of “Sincerely” and “Sugartime” in a sweet, innocent harmony that went with car fins, charm bracelets and duck-tail haircuts, died on Tuesday at her home in Las Vegas. She was 89.The Palm Eastern Mortuary in Las Vegas confirmed the death but did not specify a cause. Ms. McGuire, with her older sisters Christine and Dorothy, shot to success overnight after winning the televised “Arthur Godfrey Talent Scouts” contest in 1952. Over the next 15 years, they were one of the nation’s most popular vocal groups, singing on the television variety shows of Ed Sullivan, Milton Berle, Andy Williams and Red Skelton, on nightclub circuits across the country and on records that sold millions.The sisters epitomized a 1950s sensibility that held up a standard of unreal perfection, wearing identical coifs, dresses and smiles, moving with synchronized precision and blending voices in wholesome songs for simpler times. Their music, like that of Perry Como, Patti Page and other stars who appealed to white, middle-class audiences, contrasted starkly with the rock ’n’ roll craze that was taking the world by storm in the mid-to-late ’50s.In 1965, as the trio’s popularity began to fade, Phyllis McGuire’s image as the honey-blonde girl next door was shattered by published reports linking her romantically with Sam Giancana, a Chicago mobster with reputed ties to the Kennedy administration and a Central Intelligence Agency plot to enlist the Mafia in what proved to be unsuccessful attempts to assassinate the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.Ms. McGuire with the Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana at a nightclub in 1962. Their relationship shattered her girl-next-door image. Credit…Associated PressMr. Giancana and Ms. McGuire, who had been followed by federal agents for several years, appeared before a grand jury in Chicago. He refused to answer questions and was jailed for contempt. She testified that she had met him in Las Vegas in 1961, traveled with him to Europe, the Caribbean and elsewhere and accepted his gifts in a continuing relationship. She was aware that he was a reputed gangster, she said, but insisted that she knew nothing of his underworld activities.“It makes me look terrible,” she told reporters afterward. “It would be different if I were on my own, but I’m not a single — I’m part of a trio. My sisters and my parents — they’re brokenhearted about this.”The McGuire Sisters retired from public appearances in 1968, Christine and Dorothy to raise families, Phyllis to continue as a soloist. She appeared regularly in Las Vegas, where she lived for the rest of her life in a mansion with a swan moat and a replica of the Eiffel Tower rising through the roof.After serving a year for contempt, Mr. Giancana was released, and he fled to Mexico, where he lived in exile until arrested by the Mexican authorities in 1974. Deported to the United States, he agreed to testify in a prosecution of organized crime in Chicago but was killed by an unknown assailant at his home in 1975.Ms. McGuire remained unapologetic about her relationship with Mr. Giancana. “Sam was the greatest teacher I ever could have had,” she told Dominick Dunne of Vanity Fair in 1989. “He was so wise about so many things. Sam is always depicted as unattractive. He wasn’t. He was a very nice-looking man. He wasn’t flashy. He didn’t drive a pink Cadillac, like they used to say.”In 1985, the sisters reunited for a comeback and performed for almost two decades at casinos and clubs in Las Vegas, Atlantic City and elsewhere. They sang their own hits, 1950s pop hits and Broadway show tunes, and Phyllis did impersonations of Peggy Lee, Judy Garland, Pearl Bailey and Ethel Merman.“They take me back to the olden times, the beautiful times,” Barbara Pattison, a fan in Toronto, told People magazine as the comeback began. “They are not loud and they are not distant. They bring back the beauty in music.”Ms. McGuire in a celebratory mood in 1995 at her home in Las Vegas. She sang regularly at clubs and casinos in the city. Credit…Lennox McLendon/Associated PressPhyllis McGuire was born in Middletown, Ohio, on Feb. 14, 1931, the youngest of three daughters of Asa and Lillie (Fultz) McGuire. Her mother was a minister of the First Church of God in Miamisburg, Ohio., and her father was a steelworker. The sisters began singing in church when Phyllis was 4. They performed at weddings and other services, then at veterans’ hospitals and military bases.Phyllis’s 1952 marriage to Neal Van Ells, a broadcaster, ended in divorce in 1956. They had no children. Dorothy McGuire died in 2012, and Christine died in 2019. She is survived by nieces and nephews. Her longtime companion, Mike Davis, an oil and gas magnate, died in 2016.While making Las Vegas her home, for years she kept a Park Avenue apartment and then a townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.After winning “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts,” the sisters were regulars on Mr. Godfrey’s morning radio and television shows for six years. They made the covers of Life and Look magazines and signed with Coral Records, a Decca subsidiary. Their first Top 10 hit was “Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight” in 1954. “Sincerely” (1955) and “Sugartime” (1958) were No. 1 hits; they and “Picnic” (1956) each sold over a million copies.The McGuire Sisters were one of the many white groups that covered 1950s R&B hits, many by Black artists, in what critics called blander versions though better-selling ones. They also sang for Presidents Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and for Queen Elizabeth II.In 1995, an HBO movie, “Sugartime,” focused on the Giancana-McGuire affair, with John Turturro as the mobster and Mary-Louise Parker as Phyllis. The sisters gave their last big performance on a 2004 PBS special, “Magic Moments: The Best of ’50s Pop.” They were inducted into the National Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 1994, the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2001 and the Hit Parade Hall of Fame in 2009.Long past the customary retirement years for a singer, Ms. McGuire remained passionate about her career.“I don’t fear living, and I don’t fear dying,” she told Vanity Fair in 1989. “You only live once, and I’m going to live it to the fullest, until away I go. And I’m going to continue singing as long as somebody wants me.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Fou Ts’ong, Famed Chinese Pianist, Dies of Covid-19 at 86

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFou Ts’ong, Pianist Whose Family Letters Inspired a Generation, Dies at 86Driven from China during Mao’s rule, Mr. Fou kept up a correspondence with his father that became a beloved book in the wake of the Cultural Revolution.Fou Ts’ong in 1960. He was one of the first pianists from China to win international renown.Credit…Erich Auerbach/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesDec. 31, 2020, 4:59 a.m. ETFou Ts’ong, a Chinese pianist known for his sensitive interpretations of Chopin, Debussy and Mozart, and whose letters from his father, a noted translator and writer, influenced a generation of Chinese readers, died on Monday at a hospital in London, where he had lived for many years. He was 86.The cause was the coronavirus, said Patsy Toh, a pianist, who had been married to Mr. Fou since 1975.In 1955, Mr. Fou became one of the first Chinese pianists to achieve global prominence when he took third place in the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, also winning a special prize for his performance of Chopin’s mazurkas.Almost overnight, he became a national hero at home. To China’s nascent Communist-led government, Mr. Fou’s recognition in a well-known international competition was proof that the country could stand on its own artistically in the West. Chinese reporters flocked to interview Mr. Fou, while many others sought out his father, Fu Lei, a prominent translator of French literature, for advice on child-rearing.But the authorities’ good will did not last long.Two years later, Mao Zedong initiated the Anti-Rightist Campaign, during which hundreds of thousands of Chinese intellectuals, including Mr. Fu, were persecuted. Many were tortured and banished to labor camps. Mr. Fou, then studying at the Warsaw Conservatory in Poland, was made to return to China to undergo “rectification” for several months.Not long after going back to Warsaw, Mr. Fou found himself in a quandary. Having witnessed the increasingly tumultuous political climate back home, he knew that if he returned to China upon graduation — as the government expected him to do — he would be expected to denounce his father, an unimaginable situation.So in December 1958, Mr. Fou fled then-Communist Poland for London, where he claimed political asylum.“About my leaving, I always felt full of regret and anguish,” he later recalled in an interview. So many intellectuals in China had suffered, he said, but he had escaped. “I felt uneasy, as if I owed something to all my friends,” he added.After his defection to London, Mr. Fou maintained a written correspondence with his father in Shanghai — a special privilege that was said to have been personally approved by Zhou Enlai, the Chinese premier.Then, in 1966, Mao unleashed the Cultural Revolution, a decade-long period of chaos that upended Chinese society. Militant Red Guards accused Mr. Fu, a prolific translator of writers like Balzac and Voltaire, of having “capitalistic” artistic taste, among other crimes. They humiliated and tortured the scholar and his wife for days until the couple, like many other Chinese, were driven to suicide. Mr. Fou, still in London, did not learn of his parents’ deaths until several months later.In 1981, after China’s post-Mao government posthumously restored the reputations of Mr. Fou’s parents, a volume of letters written by his father, primarily to Mr. Fou, was published in China. Full of advice, encouragement, life teachings and stern paternal love, the book, “Fu Lei’s Family Letters,” became an instant best seller in China.For many, the long disquisitions on music, art and life offered a welcome contrast to the Cultural Revolution years, which saw sons turn against fathers, students against teachers and neighbors against neighbors — all in the name of politics.“If you imagine the environment we grew up with, it was very rigid,” said Xibai Xu, a political analyst who first read the letters in middle school in Beijing. He added, “So when you read ‘Fu Lei’s Family Letters,’ you realized how a decent human life could be — a life that is very delicate and artistic, with real human emotions and not just ideology.”Besides influencing a generation of Chinese, Mr. Fu’s words resonated long after his death with the person for whom they were originally intended.“My father had a saying that ‘First you must be a person, then an artist, and then a musician, and only then can you be a pianist,’” Mr. Fou once recalled in an interview. “Even now, I believe in this order — that it should be this way and that I am this way.”Mr. Fou performing in New York City in 2006.Credit…Nan Melville for The New York TimesFou Ts’ong was born on March 10, 1934, in Shanghai. His father, in addition to being a translator, was an art critic and a curator. His mother, Zhu Meifu, was a secretary to her husband.Under the strict supervision of their father, Mr. Fou and his brother, Fu Min, were educated in the classical Chinese tradition, and they grew up surrounded by both Western and Chinese cultural influences. As a child, Mr. Fou studied art, philosophy and music, frequently making use of his father’s phonograph and extensive record collection.A lover of classical music from a young age, Mr. Fou began taking piano lessons when he was 7. He later studied under a number of teachers, including Mario Paci, the Italian conductor of the Shanghai Philharmonic.But the chaos of wartime China prevented the young pianist from receiving a systematic musical education. In 1948, Mr. Fou, then in his teens, moved with his family to the southwestern province of Yunnan, where he went through what he described as a rebellious period. It was only after returning to Shanghai several years later that he began to dedicate himself in earnest to the piano.In 1952, Mr. Fou made his first stage appearance, playing Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. The concert caught the attention of officials in Beijing, who selected the young pianist to compete and tour in Eastern Europe, Mr. Fou’s first trip abroad.Soon, Mr. Fou moved to Poland, where he studied at the Warsaw Conservatory on a scholarship. To prepare for the fifth Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1955, he practiced so diligently that he hurt his fingers and was nearly cut from the first round of competition.After the deaths of his parents in 1966, Mr. Fou stayed abroad, rising to become a renowned concert pianist on the international circuit. Though he was best known for his interpretations of Chopin, he also received acclaim for his performances of works by Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and Debussy. In a review of a 1987 recital in New York, the critic Bernard Holland wrote in The New York Times of Mr. Fou’s “sensitive ear for color” and “elusive gift of melody.”“We should hear Mr. Fou more often,” Mr. Holland wrote. “He is an artist who uses his considerable pianistic gifts in pursuit of musical goals and not for show.”In 1979, after Mao’s death and the end of the Cultural Revolution, Mr. Fou was granted permission to return to China for the first time in more than two decades, reuniting with his brother to hold a memorial service for their parents.On subsequent visits, Mr. Fou gave performances and lectures; he became known to many Chinese as the “Piano Poet” for his lyrical musical interpretations. Later versions of “Fu Lei’s Family Letters” were updated to include some of Mr. Fou’s letters to his father.Mr. Fou’s death came at a time of resurgent nationalism in China. On Chinese social media, some ultranationalist commentators called him a traitor to the country for having defected decades ago, echoing similar accusations that Mr. Fou faced in the 1950s not long after settling in London.“What would I tell them? There was nothing to say,” Mr. Fou once said of such critics in an interview. “It’s not that I was longing for the West.”“I was choosing freedom,” he added. “It was not an easy situation. There was no other choice.”Many other Chinese honored his memory, including well-known pianists like Li Yundi as well as Lang Lang, who called Mr. Fou “a clear stream in the world of classical music and a beacon of light in our spirit.”Mr. Fou in Chengdu, China, in 2007. The pianist Lang Lang called him “a clear stream in the world of classical music.”Credit…VCG/VCG, via Getty Images“Fou Ts’ong’s legacy was to show people and musicians the importance of integrity, character and music beyond technique,” said Jindong Cai, a conductor and the director of the U.S.-China Music Institute at Bard College Conservatory of Music.Mr. Fou’s first marriage, to Zamira Menuhin, daughter of the prominent violinist Yehudi Menuhin, ended in divorce, as did a brief marriage to Hijong Hyun. In addition to Ms. Toh, Mr. Fou is survived by a son from his first marriage, Lin Xiao; a son from his marriage to Ms. Toh, Lin Yun; and his brother, Mr. Fu.Mr. Fou remained passionately devoted to music in his later years, playing piano for hours every day even as his fingers grew frail. It was a love that he invoked often in interviews, alongside nuggets of wisdom from his father.“When I was very young, I wrote to my father from Poland that I was sad and lonely,” he once recalled. “He wrote back: ‘You could never be lonely. Don’t you think you are living with the greatest souls of the history of mankind all the time?’”“Now that’s how I feel, always,” Mr. Fou said.Amy Chang Chien contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Dawn Wells, Mary Ann on ‘Gilligan’s Island,’ Dies at 82

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeHoliday TVBest Netflix DocumentariesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTHOSE we’ve lostDawn Wells, Mary Ann on ‘Gilligan’s Island,’ Dies at 82Her character on the ’60s sitcom radiated all-American wholesomeness and youthful charm. After her TV career cooled, she focused on theater acting.Dawn Wells as Mary Ann Summers on an episode of “Gilligan’s Island” in 1964. Her character and her look — Gingham blouses, short shorts and double ponytails — personified the girl next door.Credit…CBS, via Getty ImagesDec. 30, 2020Updated 6:35 p.m. ETDawn Wells, the actress who radiated all-American wholesomeness, Midwestern practicality and a youthful naïve charm as the character Mary Ann on the hit 1960s sitcom “Gilligan’s Island,” died on Wednesday at a nursing home in Los Angeles. She was 82.Her publicist, Harlan Boll, said the cause was related to Covid-19.Debuting on CBS in 1964, “Gilligan’s Island” followed an unlikely septet of day trippers (on a “three-hour tour,” as the theme song explained) who ended up stranded on a desert island.There, shipwrecked alongside a movie star (who spent most of her time in evening gowns), a science professor, a pompous, older rich couple, and two wacky crew members was Mary Ann Summers (Ms. Wells), a farm girl from Kansas who had won the trip in a local radio contest.The character had a relatively scant back story — it was said that she worked at the hardware store back home and had a boyfriend — but Mary Ann’s persona alone made her memorable. Gingham blouses, short shorts, double ponytails and perky hair bows were all parts of her signature look.The first version of the show’s theme song mentioned five of the characters “and the rest,” but the lyrics were soon changed to name the professor (Russell Johnson) and Mary Ann as well. The others in the cast were Bob Denver (Gilligan), Alan Hale Jr. (the Skipper), Jim Backus and Natalie Schafer (as the couple Thurston Howell III and Lovey Howell), and Tina Louise (as the actress, Ginger). Ms. Louise is the last surviving member of the original cast.That the premise of “Gilligan’s Island” was pretty much implausible and its humor simplistic made no difference to the show’s millions of fans or its producers, who would discover in the years to come that they had spawned a cultural phenomenon.Though “Gilligan’s Island” lasted only three seasons, canceled in 1967, it hardly slipped from the horizon. Endless reruns ensued, and the cast members had a series of encore performances. Ms. Wells, for one, reprised her role as Mary Ann in three reunion TV movies: “Rescue From Gilligan’s Island” (1978), “The Castaways on Gilligan’s Island” (1979) and “The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island” (1981).In 1982, she did the voices of both her character and Ms. Louise’s movie star for “Gilligan’s Planet,” an animated spinoff series. And she went on to play Mary Ann in episodes of at least four other (unrelated) shows: “Alf” (1986), “Baywatch” (1989), “Herman’s Head” (1991) and “Meego” (1997). “Gilligan’s”-themed episodes had a certain camp value.The cast of “Gilligan’s Island” from a reunion television movie in 1978: sitting, from left, Bob Denver, Ms. Wells and Russell Johnson; standing, from left, Judith Baldwin (replacing Tina Louise in the movie star role), Jim Backus, Natalie Schafer and Alan Hale Jr.Credit…CBS, via Associated PressEven her career as an author related directly to the series. “Mary Ann’s Gilligan’s Island Cookbook,” which included Skipper’s Coconut Pie, was published in 1993. “What Would Mary Ann Do? A Guide to Life,” a memoir she wrote with Steve Stinson, appeared in 2014.Mary Ann’s advice in the book included this thought: “Failure builds character. What matters is what you do after you fail.” The San Francisco Book Review called the book “a worthwhile mix of classic values and sincerity.”Asked decades later about her favorite “Gilligan’s Island” episodes, Ms. Wells mentioned “And Then There Were None,” which included a dream sequence in which she got to do a Cockney accent. She also cited “Up at Bat,” an episode in which Gilligan imagined that he had turned into Dracula.“I loved being the old hag,” she said.Dawn Elberta Wells was born in Reno, Nev., on Oct. 18, 1938, the only child of Joe Wesley Wells, a real estate developer, and Evelyn (Steinbrenner) Wells. Dawn majored in chemistry at Stephens College in Columbia, Mo., then became interested in drama and went to the University of Washington in Seattle. She graduated in 1960 with a degree in theater arts and design, having taken some time off to win a state beauty title and compete in the 1960 Miss America pageant.“Big deal,” she said in a 2016 interview with Forbes, making light of her Miss Nevada win. “There were only 10 women in the whole state at the time.”For the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, her talent performance was a dramatic reading from Sophocles’ “Antigone.”A 1961 episode of the drama “The Roaring Twenties” was her screen debut. When she was cast on “Gilligan’s Island,” she had appeared onscreen only about two dozen times, mostly in prime-time series, including “77 Sunset Strip” (multiple episodes), “Surfside Six,” “Hawaiian Eye,” “Bonanza” and “Maverick.”Ms. Wells in 2015. After her television career cooled down, she returned to her first love: theater acting.Credit…Jason Merritt/Getty ImagesAfter her television career cooled down, Ms. Wells returned to her first love: theater, doing at least 100 productions nationwide. Her last television role was in 2019, as the voice of a supernatural dentist on the animated Netflix series “The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants.”Her last onscreen appearance was in a 2018 episode of “Kaplan’s Korner,” about actors running an employment agency. Her only soap opera appearance was in a 2016 episode of “The Bold and the Beautiful,” in which she played a fashion buyer from a wealthy family.Ms. Wells’s marriage in 1962 to Larry Rosen, a talent agent, ended in divorce in 1967, the same year “Gilligan’s Island” went off the air. She is survived by a stepsister, Weslee Wells. Ms. Wells went on to operate charity-oriented businesses. She was a prominent supporter of the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, the nation’s largest natural habitat refuge developed for African and Asian elephants.She also taught acting, creating the nonprofit Idaho Film and Television Institute while living at her ranch in the Teton Valley. But a screen career was never her childhood dream.“I wanted to be a ballerina, then a chemist,” she recalled in the Forbes interview. “If I had to do it all over again, I’d go into genetic medicine.”Alex Traub contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Rita Houston, WFUV D.J. Who Lifted Music Careers, Dies at 59

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRita Houston, WFUV D.J. Who Lifted Music Careers, Dies at 59From a studio in the Bronx, she introduced listeners to artists from a wide range of genres. She was also a mentor to the stars, and a sometime-confidante.Rita Houston in 1996 at WFUV’s studio at Fordham University in the Bronx. She was one of the station’s best-known personalities. Credit…Linda RosierDec. 30, 2020Updated 6:30 p.m. ETRita Houston, a big-hearted disc jockey with an intoxicating voice who championed artists like Brandi Carlile, Mumford & Sons, Adele, the Indigo Girls and Gomez at the widely followed WFUV-FM in the Bronx, died on Dec. 15 at her home in Valley Cottage, N.Y. She was 59.Laura Fedele, her wife, said the cause was ovarian cancer.Since 2012, Ms. Houston had been program director at WFUV, a listener-supported station licensed to Fordham University. She was also perhaps its best-known personality, hosting a popular Friday night show, “The Whole Wide World,” which was her vehicle for updating the station’s sound, balancing a new mix of indie rock, world music, hip-hop and electronica with the more familiar one of folk, rock and blues.“Rita could pull together all those things and make you feel, ‘Wow what a big world of music there is here,’” Chuck Singleton, WFUV’s general manager, said in a phone interview.“In her music she contained multitudes,” he added.Ms. Houston was also the impresario of in-studio performances — by Tom Jones, Adele and Emmylou Harris, among many others — and musical events in Manhattan at venues like the Bottom Line and the Beacon Theater as well as on the High Line, the elevated park.“I’m a singer girl, I’m a vocal girl, I don’t like when people don’t sing,” she told the musician-artist Joseph Arthur in March on his podcast, “Come to Where I’m From.” “I don’t want everything to sound like Ella Fitzgerald, but I just love a good voice.”One of those was Ms. Carlile’s, the folk and Americana singer-songwriter who credits Ms. Houston with giving her music its first airplay as well as the confidence to talk publicly about being a lesbian.In a remembrance on Facebook, Ms. Carlile wrote, “‘Is that your plus one?’ Rita Houston said to 22-year-old me as a picture of my girlfriend accidentally popped up on my cellphone screen.”Ms. Houston, sensing Ms. Carlile’s uneasiness at confiding to people in the music industry that she was gay, had persuaded her to open up.“I don’t know what it’s like where you’re from, but this is N.Y.C.,” Ms. Carlile recalled Ms. Houston telling her. “We’re going lesbian karaoke singing right now. Do a shot of tequila and get your coat.”Ms. Carlile cast Ms. Houston in the music video for “The Joke,” which won Grammy Awards in 2019 for best American roots song and best American roots performance.Ms. Houston’s recognition of the Indigo Girls had a significant impact on their career as well.“You knew you were doing something right if she played your songs,” Amy Ray, a member of that folk duo, said in an interview. “And she was one of those people we weren’t afraid to be ourselves and be queer with. We could be who we were. She gave us a lot of bravery.”Since earlier this year, Ms. Houston had guided a station initiative, called EQFM, to put more female artists on the air.“WFUV is on the right side of this issue, but we acknowledge there was more work we can do,” she told AllAccess.com, a radio industry news website. “For example, our music mix is 35 percent female-coded. That is higher than most but needs to be at 50 percent for true parity.”She added: “Good songs come from everywhere, across race, age and gender. Good radio should celebrate that, without bias.”Ms. Houston with Paul Simon in 2003. She balanced the station’s offerings between a mix of indie rock, world music, hip-hop and electronica and the more familiar format of folk, rock and blues.Credit…WFUVRita Ann Houston was born on Sept. 28, 1961, in White Plains, N.Y., and grew up in nearby Mount Vernon. Her father, William, was a home heating oil company executive. Her mother, Rita (Paone) Houston, was a waitress.Ms. Houston majored in urban studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, in Geneva, N.Y., but was expelled for tripping fire alarms and tipping over vending machines. “I went out big,” she told Mr. Arthur on his podcast. “I was in the wrong place.”She worked as a waitress before finding work as a D.J. at Westchester Community College’s radio station, then at another station in Mount Kisco, N.Y., for $7 an hour. She left for a job at ABC Radio as an engineer, and worked with the sports journalist Howard Cosell and the talk show host Sally Jessy Raphael. The pay was far better than her low-wage radio jobs, but she missed being on the air. In 1989 she was back behind a microphone at WZFM in White Plains.“Someone said to me, ‘I want to introduce you to the voice of God,’” said Paul Cavalconte, who, as the WZFM program director, hired Ms. Houston. “She was so engaging and charismatic, which worked on the radio and in personal appearances.” (WZFM is now WXPK.)When WZFM’s format shifted from adult album alternative to modern rock in 1993, Ms. Houston was told that she had to adopt on-air name with an X in it. She became Harley Foxx. But, seeking more diversity in the format, she sought refuge a year later at WFUV, of which she had been a fan for some time.“I just called the station and was, like, ‘Hey, can I work here, please?’” she told Mr. Arthur.She started hosting the midday show in 1994, then stepped away from it after a few years to become the full-time music director. She returned to the air in 2001 to host “The Whole Wide World.”In addition to her wife, she is survived by her sister, Debra Baglio, and her brothers, Richard and Robert. Another brother, William Jr., died in October.Ms. Houston recorded her final show from home on Dec. 5, with Mr. Cavalconte, also a D.J. at WFUV, as the co-host. It was broadcast three days after she died.“She was short of breath and aware that her voice was not strong,” said Ms. Fedele, who is the station’s new media director. “I nagged her for a couple of days, I wanted her to think about the playlist. Finally, she asked me to get a pen, and she just reeled off 30 songs.”Her playlist was a distillation of the genres that she had brought to her show and the station. She opened with James Brown (“Night Train”), moved on to artists like Deee-Lite (“Groove is in the Heart”), Emmylou Harris (“Red Dirt Girl”), Los Amigos Invisibles (“Cuchi Cuchi”), LCD Soundsystem (“New York I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down”) and David Bowie (“Station to Station”).The finale was the Waterboys’ “In My Time on Earth,” which the group performed last year at a WFUV event at Rockwood Music Hall in Manhattan.Given the time she had left, the song resonated with her.“In my time on earth,” it goes, “I will speak the secret / In my time on earth / I will tell what is true.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Joe Clark, Tough Principal at New Jersey High School, Dies at 82

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyJoe Clark, Tough Principal at New Jersey High School, Dies at 82Bullhorn in hand, he roamed the hallways as he imposed discipline, expelling “miscreants” and restoring order. Morgan Freeman portrayed him in the film “Lean on Me.”Joe Clark in 1988 in a hallway of Eastside High School in Paterson, N.J., where he gained renown for his tough-love approach as the principal.Credit…Joe McNally/Getty ImagesDec. 30, 2020Updated 6:04 p.m. ETJoe Clark, the imperious disciplinarian principal of a troubled New Jersey high school in the 1980s who gained fame for restoring order as he roamed its hallways with a bullhorn and sometimes a baseball bat, died on Tuesday at his home in Gainesville, Fla. He was 82.His family announced his death but did not specify a cause.When Mr. Clark, a former Army drill sergeant, arrived at Eastside High School in Paterson in 1982, he declared it a “caldron of violence.” He expelled 300 students for disciplinary problems in his first week.When he tossed out — “expurgated,” as he put it — about 60 more students five years later, he called them “leeches, miscreants and hoodlums.” (That second round of suspensions led the Paterson school board to draw up insubordination charges, which were later dropped.)Mr. Clark succeeded in restoring order, instilling pride in many students and improving some test scores. He won praise from President Ronald Reagan and Reagan’s education secretary, William J. Bennett. With Morgan Freeman portraying him, he was immortalized in the 1989 film “Lean on Me.” And his tough-love policies put him on the cover of Time magazine in 1988, holding his bat. “Is getting tough the answer?” the headline read. “School principal Joe Clark says yes — and critics are up in arms.”Mr. Clark, who oversaw a poor, largely Black and Hispanic student body, denounced affirmative action and welfare policies and “hocus-pocus liberals.” When “60 Minutes” profiled him in 1988, he told the correspondent Harry Reasoner: “Because we were slaves does not mean that you’ve got to be hoodlums and thugs and knock people in the head and rob people and rape people. No, I cannot accept that. And I make no more alibis for Blacks. I simply say work hard for what you want.”Mr. Clark in 2001 as director of the Essex County Juvenile Detention Center in New Jersey. He was criticized for excessive use of physical restraints in disciplining inmates.Credit…Keith Meyers/The New York TimesTo get control of a crime-ridden school, Mr. Clark instituted automatic suspensions for assault, drug possession, fighting, vandalism and using profanity against teachers. He assigned students to perform school chores for lesser offenses like tardiness and disrupting classes. The names of offenders were announced over the public address system.And, in 1986, to keep thugs from entering the school, he ordered the entrance doors padlocked during school hours. Fire officials responded by having the locks removed, citing the safety of students and teachers. A year later, the city cited him for contempt for continuing to chain the doors.“Instead of receiving applause and purple hearts for the resurgence of a school,” Mr. Clark said after a court hearing, “you find yourself maligned by a few feebleminded creeps.”Though the padlocking episode put him in conflict with the Paterson school board, his no-nonsense style led to an interview for a White House job in early 1988. Before turning it down, he insisted that if he took the job it would not be because of any pressure from the board.“I refuse to let a bunch of obdurate, rebellious board members run me out of this town that I’ve worked in so assiduously for 27 years,” he told The Washington Post in 1988. A Post headline called him “The Wyatt Earp of Eastside High.”Joe Louis Clark was born on May 8, 1938, in Rochelle, Ga., and moved with his family to Newark when he was 6. He earned a bachelor’s degree from what is now William Paterson University, in Wayne, N.J., and earned his master’s at Seton Hall.After serving as a drill instructor in the Army Reserve, he started his education career as an elementary-school teacher and principal in New Jersey and then as director of camps and playgrounds for Essex County, N.J. Then he was appointed to turn Eastside High around.“A school’s going where the principal is going,” William Pascrell, the Paterson school board president, told the North Jersey newspaper The Record. “Eastside is a school ready to take off. Joe Clark is the guy who can do it.”Morgan Freeman played Mr. Clark as a no-nonsense high school principal in the 1989 movie “Lean on Me.” Beverly Todd played a high school teacher.Credit…Warner BrothersIn 1989, his final year at Eastside, Mr. Clark spent time away from the school promoting “Lean on Me” and was on the road when a group of young men stripped down to their G-strings during a school assembly. Mr. Clark was suspended for a week for failing to supervise the gathering.He resigned from Eastside in July 1989 two months after heart surgery.After six years on the lecture circuit, often calling for rigorous academic standards, Mr. Clark resurfaced as the director of the Essex County Youth Detention Center in Newark. Again his tactics drew fire. Both the New Jersey Juvenile Justice Commission and the state’s Division of Youth and Family Services criticized him at different times for excessive use of physical restraints, including shackling and cuffing some detainees for two days.Mr. Clark stepped down as director in early 2002 after the juvenile justice commission accused him of condoning putting teenagers in isolation for long periods.His survivors include his daughters, Joetta Clark Diggs and Hazel Clark, who were both Olympic middle distance runners; a son, J.J., the director of track and field at Stanford University; and three grandchildren.Mr. Clark’s image got a dramatic reimagining in the climax of “Lean on Me.” As Mr. Clark, Mr. Freeman is sent to jail for violating fire safety codes, only to persuade students rallying for his release to disperse. (He’s released by the mayor in the movie.)Mr. Clark never went to jail, and the film’s director, John Avildsen, admitted that the scene was fictional.“Now, if he hadn’t taken the chains off the doors in reality,” Mr. Avildsen told The Times in 1989, speaking of Mr. Clark, “and if he had gone to jail, then what happened in the movie could very well have happened.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Tony Rice, Bluegrass Innovator With a Guitar Pick, Dies at 69

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTony Rice, Bluegrass Innovator With a Guitar Pick, Dies at 69The nimble king of flatpicking had enormous influence on a host of prominent musicians. And he could sing, too, until he could no longer.Tony Rice in about 2000. “I don’t know if a person can make anything more beautiful” than his guitar playing, the singer-songwriter Jason Isbell said.Credit…Stephen A. Ide/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesDec. 28, 2020Updated 6:26 p.m. ETTony Rice, an immensely influential singer and guitarist in bluegrass and in the new acoustic music circles that grew up around it, died on Saturday at his home in Reidsville, N.C. He was 69.The International Bluegrass Music Association confirmed his death. No cause was specified.“Tony Rice was the king of the flatpicked flattop guitar,” the singer-songwriter Jason Isbell said on Twitter. “His influence cannot possibly be overstated.”Mr. Isbell was referring to what is commonly known as flatpicking, a technique that involves striking a guitar’s strings with a pick or plectrum instead of with the fingers. Inspired by the forceful fretwork of the pioneering bluegrass bandleader Jimmy Martin, Mr. Rice’s flatpicking was singularly nimble and expressive.“I don’t know if a person can make anything more beautiful,” Mr. Isbell went on to say in his tweet, describing Mr. Rice’s fluid, percussive playing, in which feeling, whether expressed harmonically or melodically, took precedence over flash.Mr. Rice left his mark on a host of prominent musicians, including his fellow newgrass innovators Mark O’Connor and Béla Fleck, acoustic music inheritors like Chris Thile and Alison Krauss, and his flat-picking disciples Bryan Sutton and Josh Williams.“There’s no way it can ever go back to what it was before him,” Ms. Krauss said of bluegrass in an interview with The New York Times Magazine for a profile of Mr. Rice in 2014. She was barely a teenager when Mr. Rice first invited her onstage to play with him.Starting in the 1970s with his work with the group J.D. Crowe and the New South, Mr. Rice built bridges that spanned traditional bluegrass, ’60s folk songs, jazz improvisation, classical music and singer-songwriter pop.He was a catalyst for the newgrass movement, in which bands broke with bluegrass tradition by drawing on pop and rock sources for inspiration, employing a more improvisational approach to performing and incorporating previously untapped instrumentation like electric guitar and drums.The bluegrass association named him instrumental performer of the year six times, and in 1983 he received a Grammy Award for best country instrumental performance for “Fireball,” a track recorded with J.D. Crowe and the New South.Not only a virtuoso guitarist, Mr. Rice was also a gifted singer and master of phrasing. His rich, supple baritone was as equally at home singing lead in three-part bluegrass harmony arrangements as it was adapting the troubadour ballads of Gordon Lightfoot under the newgrass banner.But his performing career was abruptly cut short beginning in 1994, when he learned he had muscle tension dysphonia, a severe vocal disorder that robbed him of the ability to sing in public and compromised his speaking voice. He would not sing onstage or address an audience again until 2013, when the bluegrass association inducted him into the International Bluegrass Hall of Fame.Not long after that diagnosis, Mr. Rice learned that he also had lateral epicondylitis, commonly known as tennis elbow, which made it too painful for him to play the guitar in public anymore as well.A 1975 album by the band J.D. Crowe and the New South, with Mr. Rice on guitar, modernized bluegrass in ways that shaped the music into the 21st century. From left, J.D. Crowe, Ricky Scaggs, Bob Slone and Mr. Rice. David Anthony Rice was born on June 8, 1951, in Danville, Va., one of four boys of Herbert Hoover Rice and Dorothy (Poindexter) Rice, who was known as Louise. His father was a welder and an amateur musician, his mother a millworker and a homemaker. It was her idea to call her son Tony, after her favorite actor, Tony Curtis. Everyone in the Rice household played or sang bluegrass music.After the family moved to the Los Angeles area in the mid-1950s, Mr. Rice’s father formed a bluegrass band called the Golden State Boys. The group, which recorded several singles, included two of his mother’s brothers as well as a young Del McCoury at one point, before he became a bluegrass master in his own right. The band inspired Mr. Rice and his brothers to form a bluegrass outfit of their own, the Haphazards.The Haphazards sometimes shared local bills with the Kentucky Colonels, a band whose dazzling guitarist, Clarence White — a future member of the rock band the Byrds — had a profound influence on Mr. Rice’s early development as a musician.(Mr. White was killed by a drunken driver while loading equipment after a show in 1973. Afterward, Mr. Rice tracked down Mr. White’s 1935 Martin D-28 herringbone guitar, which he purchased from its new owner in 1975 for $550. Restoring the guitar, he started performing with it, affectionately calling it the “Antique.”)The Rice family moved from California to Florida in 1965 and then to various cities in the Southeast, where Mr. Rice’s father pursued one welding opportunity after another.He also drank, creating a tumultuous home life that forced Mr. Rice to move out when he was 17. Tony Rice struggled with alcohol himself but, by his account, had been sober since 2001.Dropping out of high school, Mr. Rice bounced among relatives’ homes before moving to Louisville in 1970 to join the Bluegrass Alliance. The band’s members, including the mandolinist Sam Bush, went on to form much of the founding nucleus of the progressive bluegrass band New Grass Revival.Mr. Rice joined J.D. Crowe and the New South in 1971. Three years later, Mr. Skaggs signed on as well, replacing Mr. Rice’s brother Larry in the group. The dobro player Jerry Douglas also become a member of the New South at this time. In 1975, the band released an album titled simply “J.D. Crowe and the New South” (but commonly known by its first track, “Old Home Place”), which modernized bluegrass in ways that shaped the music into the 21st century.Mr. Rice, Mr. Douglas and Mr. Skaggs left the group in August 1975. Mr. Rice then moved to San Francisco and helped found the David Grisman Quartet, a trailblazing ensemble featuring bluegrass instrumentation that fused classical and jazz sensibilities to create what Mr. Grisman called “dawg music.”“The music laid out in front of me was like nothing I’d ever seen,” Mr. Rice told The Times Magazine in 2014. “At first I thought I couldn’t learn it. The only thing that saved me was that I always loved the sound of acoustic, small-group, modern jazz.”After four years with Mr. Grisman, Mr. Rice established his own group, the Tony Rice Unit, which was acclaimed for its experimental, jazz-steeped approach to bluegrass as heard on albums like “Manzanita” (1979) and “Mar West” (1980).Mr. Rice also recorded more mainstream and traditional material for numerous other projects, including a six-volume series of albums that paid tribute to the formative bluegrass of the 1950s.“Skaggs & Rice” (1980), another history-conscious album, featured Mr. Skaggs and Mr. Rice singing seamless, soulful harmonies in homage to the brother duos prevalent in the pre-bluegrass era.Mr. Rice performing in 2009 with his band the Tony Rice Unit at the Bonnaroo music festival in Tennessee. Credit…Jason Merritt/FilmMagic, via Getty ImagesMost of Mr. Rice’s releases after 1994, the year he got his vocal disorder diagnosis, were instrumental projects or collaborations, like “The Pizza Tapes,” a studio album with Mr. Grisman and Jerry Garcia of Grateful Dead fame; Mr. Rice contributed acoustic guitar.His survivors include his wife of 30 years, Pamela Hodges Rice, and his brothers Ron and Wyatt. His brother Larry died in 2006.Mr. Rice cut a dashing figure onstage, complete with finely tailored suits and a dignified bearing, as if to gainsay the lack of respect bluegrass has sometimes received outside the South, owing to its hardscrabble rural beginnings.Mr. Rice was as conscious of these cultural dynamics as he was of the limitless possibilities he saw in bluegrass music.“Maybe the reason I dress like I do goes back to the day where, if you went out on the street, unless you had some sort of ditch-digging job to do, you made an effort to not look like a slob,” he told his biographers, Tim Stafford and Caroline Wright, for “Still Inside: The Tony Rice Story” (2010).“Back in the heyday of Miles Davis’s most famous bands, you wouldn’t have seen Miles without a tailored suit on,” he went on. “My musical heroes wear suits.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Jon Huber, Who Rose to Fame With World Wrestling Entertainment, Dies at 41

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyJon Huber, Who Rose to Fame With World Wrestling Entertainment, Dies at 41Mr. Huber, who was known in the ring as Brodie Lee and Luke Harper, died from a “lung issue” unrelated to Covid-19, his wife said.Jon Huber, who was also known as Luke Harper, was known for his soft-spoken intensity in the ring.Credit…Roy Rochlin/Getty ImagesDec. 27, 2020Jon Huber, a pro wrestler known in the ring as Luke Harper and Brodie Lee, died on Saturday. He was 41.His death followed a battle with a “lung issue” unrelated to Covid-19, his wife, Amanda Huber, said on Instagram.Aside from his wife, he is survived by his two children.Mr. Huber rose to fame with World Wrestling Entertainment, where he was known for his soft-spoken intensity in the ring.During his time with WWE, he found success in the independent circuit before joining the NXT brand.He battled other wrestling stars, including The Shield, Kane, Daniel Bryan, John Cena and the Usos, using a combination of “aggressive offense and demented mind games,” WWE said.Mr. Huber “moved with a rare quickness for a 6-foot-5 monster,” his biography on WWE said. “His jaw-rattling clotheslines and frenzied dives to the outside knocked down anyone who dared to step across the ring from him.”In 2014, he won the intercontinental championship and later the SmackDown Tag Team and NXT Tag Team championships.“Whether powerbombing rivals off ladders or standing toe-to-toe with John Cena, Harper left an undeniable mark — and on some superstars, a literal one in the form of a scar — on WWE and NXT,” WWE said.Mr. Huber joined All Elite Wrestling, a WWE competitor, this year as “The Exalted One.”Over the summer, he won the All Elite Wrestling TNT Championship.“In an industry filled with good people, Jon Huber was exceptionally respected and beloved in every way — a fierce and captivating talent, a thoughtful mentor and simply a very kind soul that starkly contradicted his persona as Mr. Brodie Lee,” AEW said in a statement.His final televised battle was a bloody fight against Cody Rhodes, an AEW superstar, in October.Mr. Rhodes wrote in a social media tribute that it was an honor to share his final match with Mr. Huber, who he said was “a family man and first-class human being.”Referring to Mr. Huber as “Big Rig,” Mr. Rhodes said Mr. Huber was a “gifted athlete and storyteller and his gift beyond that was to challenge you, and he set the bar very high.”Mr. Huber’s death reverberated among other wrestling stars.“Totally devastated over the loss of Jon,” Hulk Hogan wrote on Twitter. “Such a great talent and awesome human being! RIP my brother.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      John Fletcher, a.k.a. Ecstasy of the Group Whodini, Dies at 56

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyJohn Fletcher, a.k.a. Ecstasy of the Group Whodini, Dies at 56He was, the executive who signed Whodini said, “truly one of the first rap stars” and a sex symbol “when they were very scarce in the early days of rap.”Jalil Hutchins, left, and John Fletcher, a.k.a. Ecstasy, of the foundational hip-hop group Whodini in 1984. “I can’t sing,” Mr. Fletcher once said. “But I heard somebody rap one day and I said to myself, ‘I can do that.’”Credit…Paul Natkin/Getty ImagesDec. 26, 2020, 5:56 p.m. ETJohn Fletcher, who as Ecstasy of the foundational hip-hop group Whodini was the engine for some of the genre’s first pop successes, wearing a flamboyant Zorroesque hat all the while, died on Wednesday. He was 56.Jonnelle Fletcher, his daughter, confirmed the death in a statement but did not specify the cause or say where he died. In the mid-1980s, Whodini — made up initially of Mr. Fletcher and Jalil Hutchins, who were later joined by the D.J. Grandmaster Dee (born Drew Carter) — released a string of essential hits, including “Friends,” “Freaks Come Out at Night” and “One Love.” Whodini presented as street-savvy sophisticates with a pop ear, and Mr. Fletcher was the group’s outsize character and most vivid rapper.“I can’t sing,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1987. “But I heard somebody rap one day and I said to myself, ‘I can do that.’ I rap in pitch. I try to be unique. I have my own style.”John Fletcher was born on June 7, 1964, and grew up in the Wyckoff Gardens projects in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. He first worked with Mr. Hutchins, who was from nearby Gowanus, when Mr. Hutchins was trying to record a theme song for the newly influential radio D.J. Mr. Magic.Mr. Fletcher in performance in 2017. His flat-brimmed leather hats became his signature look.Credit…Leon Bennett/Getty ImagesThat collaboration received significant local attention, and Mr. Fletcher and Mr. Hutchins were soon signed by Jive Records, which named them Whodini. They quickly recorded “Magic’s Wand,” produced by Thomas Dolby, and “The Haunted House of Rock,” a Halloween song.“Ecstasy was truly one of the first rap stars,” Barry Weiss, the executive who signed them, wrote on Instagram. “Not just a brilliant voice and wordsmith but a ladies’ man and sex symbol when they were very scarce in the early days of rap. Whodini helped usher in a female audience to what had been a traditional male art form.”Most of the group’s earliest material was recorded in London when Mr. Fletcher was fresh out of high school. Its 1983 self-titled debut album was produced by Conny Plank, who had also produced the bands Kraftwerk and Neu! Whodini also toured Europe before finding true success back in the United States.“We didn’t go to university and get a college degree, but that was our education, just seeing the world,” Mr. Fletcher said in a 2018 interview with the YouTube channel HipHop40.For its follow-up album, “Escape” (1984), Whodini began working with the producer Larry Smith, who amplified its sound and gave it a bit of appealing scuff. (Mr. Smith was also responsible for Run-DMC’s breakout albums.) “Escape” contained the songs that would become Whodini’s seminal hits, notably “Friends” and “Five Minutes of Funk” (released as flip sides on the same 12-inch single) and “Freaks Come Out at Night.”“Friends,” a skeptical storytelling song about deceit, was a smash in its own right and had a robust afterlife as sample material, most notably on Nas and Lauryn Hill’s “If I Ruled the World (Imagine That).”“Five Minutes of Funk” — which would become even more widely known as the theme music for the long-running hip-hop video show “Video Music Box” — deployed a clever countdown motif woven through the lyrics. “In creating that song,” Mr. Fletcher told HipHop40, “we pictured it blaring from the windows in the projects as we walked through it on a summer’s day.”As hip-hop was beginning to gain global notice, Whodini was consistently near the center of the action. The group was managed by the rising impresario Russell Simmons and appeared on the inaugural Fresh Fest tour, hip-hop’s first arena package.But as Run-DMC was taking hip-hop to edgier territory, Whodini remained committed to smoothness. “We were the rap group that kind of bridged the gap between the bands and the rappers,” Mr. Fletcher told HipHop40, adding that he and Mr. Hutchins were mindful that hip-hop was still struggling to gain acceptance among radio programmers, and wrote songs accordingly: “We wanted to curse, but we couldn’t curse.”Mr. Fletcher was also a key innovator in introducing melody to rapping. “Ecstasy was the lead vocalist on most Whodini songs because anything that we could play he could rap right to it in key,” Mr. Hutchins said in an interview with the hip-hop website The Foundation.“Escape” went platinum, and Whodini’s next two albums, “Back in Black” (1986) and “Open Sesame” (1987), both went gold. On “One Love” (from “Back in Black”), which had streaks of the sound that was to soon coalesce as new jack swing, Mr. Fletcher was reflective, almost somber:The words ‘love’ and ‘like’ both have four lettersBut they’re two different things altogether‘Cause I’ve liked many ladies in my dayBut just like the wind they’ve all blown awayHavelock Nelson and Michael A. Gonzales, in their book “Bring the Noise: A Guide to Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture” (1991), described Whodini as “a beautifully kept building in the middle of Brooklyn’s ghetto heaven, personable characters floating gently through a turbulent sea of hard-core attitude and crush-groove madness.”In no small part that was because of the group’s style. Whodini dressed with flair: leather jackets, sometimes with no shirt; flowing pants or short shorts; loafers. And most crucially, Mr. Fletcher’s flat-brimmed leather hats, which became his signature look, inspired by a wool gaucho he saw in a shop on Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn that he had remade in leather. Before long, he had several.“He had them in red; had them in white; two in black, one with an African headpiece on it,” Mr. Hutchins said in a 2013 interview with the Alabama website AL.com. “He had different ones, but the original one was his favorite.”Whodini was also one of the first hip-hop groups to use dancers in their stage shows. A young Jermaine Dupri got one of his earliest breaks as a dancer for the group. He later repaid the favor, signing Whodini to his label, So So Def, on which it released its final album, “Six,” in 1996. Whodini continued to perform frequently into the 2000s.Information on Mr. Fletcher’s survivors in addition to his daughter was not immediately available.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More