Deaths (Obituaries)

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      in Music

      Eddie Adcock, Musician Who Pushed Bluegrass Forward, Dies at 86

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      A master improviser on banjo, he understood the genre’s roots but was also in the forefront of the later “newgrass” movement.Eddie Adcock, a virtuoso banjo and guitar player who served as a bridge between the formative early years of bluegrass and the innovative “newgrass” movement of the 1970s and beyond, died on March 19 in Lebanon, Tenn. He was 86.His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by Dan Hays, a former executive director of the International Bluegrass Music Association, who said Mr. Adcock had a number of chronic health problems.Mr. Adcock brought his improvisatory fretwork to musical settings ranging from the first-generation traditionalism of Bill Monroe to the newgrass, or “new acoustic,” sounds fashioned by forerunners of modern bluegrass like the Country Gentlemen and II Generation.Mr. Adcock was best known for his tenure in the 1960s with the Country Gentlemen, a group based in Arlington, Va., that, through advances in style and repertoire, all but redefined bluegrass music. Employing a traditional string-band format, they broadened the genre’s appeal with their impromptu arrangements of folk and pop songs and material written by artists, like Hedy West and Gordon Lightfoot, whose work fell outside the bounds of bluegrass.Mr. Adcock’s contributions were consistently among the quartet’s most daring, notably his dazzling string-bending and his use of the thumb-style guitar technique of Merle Travis to create a unique jazz- and blues-inflected approach to playing the banjo.“I released all my insides, all my creativity, into the band,” Mr. Adcock said of his heady early years with the Country Gentlemen in a 2016 interview with Scottsville Monthly, the magazine of his hometown, Scottsville, Va. “I was ready to say something of my own, and that’s where I made my mark.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Marty Callner, Director of Comedy Specials and Music Videos, Dies at 78

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      At HBO in the late 1970s, he established the template for presenting stand-up on the small screen. He then became a mainstay of MTV in its early days.Marty Callner, a pioneering director of comedy specials who set the template for the genre at HBO in the 1970s before going on to make music videos infused with humor during the early heyday of MTV, died on March 17 at his home in Malibu, Calif. He was 78.His son Jazz Callner said the cause was not yet known.Over a half-century, Mr. Callner worked with some of the biggest names in popular culture, including Jerry Seinfeld, Madonna, Robin Williams, George Carlin, the Rolling Stones and Chris Rock.Mr. Callner, who preferred to stay in the background but was far from shy, “might be the most successful director you have never heard of,” Jason Zinoman of The New York Times wrote in 2022.One day in the early 1980s, Mr. Callner had an epiphany. While watching television at his home in Beverly Hills, he found himself enraptured by a music video. It was Kim Carnes’s “Bette Davis Eyes” — and he couldn’t take his eyes off it.“I said, ‘This is unbelievable,’” he recalled on the “HawkeTalk” podcast in 2021. He called it “the most artistic and entertaining thing I’ve ever seen” and recalled thinking, “I’ve got to go do this.”Marty Callner in his home office in 2022 with a Sports Emmy Award that he won for the football reality series “Hard Knocks.”Peter Fisher for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Brian James, Pioneer of Punk Rock, Is Dead at 70

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      As the guitarist and main songwriter for the Damned, he helped spark an explosion on the British music scene in the 1970s.Brian James, who helped spark the punk-rock revolution in Britain in the 1970s as the lead guitarist and chief songwriter of the British band the Damned, bringing a rare degree of musicality to a genre known for its chain-saw attack, died on March 6. He was 70.His death was announced on his Facebook page. The announcement did not cite a cause or say where he died.Mr. James formed the Damned in London in 1976 with Dave Vanian, a former gravedigger, on lead vocals; Captain Sensible on bass, and Rat Scabies on drums. The band was part of Britain’s original punk vanguard.The Damned never shook British society, or the rock world at large, like the Sex Pistols, who sneered at the queen, hurled obscenities on television talk shows and had pundits mulling the collapse of Western values. Nor did they play the part of political revolutionaries like the Clash, who were billed as “the only band that matters.”Nevertheless, the Damned made history. They were the first British punk band to release a single: “New Rose,” written by Mr. James, in October 1976 (the Sex Pistols’ anthemic “Anarchy in the U.K.,” soon followed); the first to release an album, “Damned Damned Damned,” in 1977; and the first to tour the United States.The Damned in 1977, from left: Captain Sensible, Mr. James, Dave Vanian and Rat Scabies.Jorgen Angel/Redferns, via Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      J.B. Moore, Producer of Seminal Hip-Hop Records, Dies at 81

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      He was a magazine ad salesman when he and a colleague, Robert Ford, teamed with Kurtis Blow and helped break rap music into the mainstream.J.B. Moore, an advertising man from suburban Long Island who wrote the lyrics to one of rap’s first hits — Kurtis Blow’s 1979 novelty song, “Christmas Rappin’” — and with a partner, Robert Ford, produced that rapper’s albums as he became a breakout star in the early 1980s, died on March 13 in Manhattan. He was 81.His friend Seth Glassman said the cause of his death, in a nursing home, was pancreatic cancer.Mr. Moore and Mr. Ford, known as Rocky, were unlikely music impresarios. They met at Billboard magazine in the 1970s, where Mr. Moore was an advertising salesman who wrote occasional jazz reviews, and where Mr. Ford was a reporter and critic and one of the first journalists at a mainstream publication to expose the musical fusion created by DJs and MCs that was then emerging from New York City block parties and Black discos.Mr. Ford “was a Black guy from the middle of Hollis, Queens,” Mr. Moore recalled in a 2001 oral history for the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle. “I was a white guy from the North Shore of Long Island.” Still, he said, “our record collections were virtually identical.”The two friends’ careers took a turn in the late summer of 1979, when Mr. Ford, who had a child on the way, told Mr. Moore of his idea to try to scrape up money with a Christmas song. He was inspired by a Billboard colleague who had written a holiday tune for Perry Como decades earlier and was still getting paid for it.Mr. Moore and Mr. Ford came up with the idea for “Christmas Rappin’” in 1979, inspired by a colleague who had written a holiday tune for Perry Como decades earlier and was still getting paid for it.Mercury RecordsMr. Moore liked the idea. “Christmas records are perennials, and therefore you get royalties ad infinitum on them,” he said in the oral history.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      Lenny Schultz, Comedian Who Made a Lot of Noise, Dies at 91

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      A highly physical performer, he said he couldn’t tell jokes. But he became well known for a wild act that fellow comedians didn’t want to follow.Lenny Schultz, a wild-eyed comedian who became known in the 1970s and ’80s for high-energy performances that he delivered with a mouthful of sound effects and a table full of silly props, died on Sunday at his home in Delray Beach, Fla. He was 91.His son and only immediate survivor, Mark, confirmed the death.“I can’t tell a joke,” Mr. Schultz told The Orlando Sentinel in 1972, but that didn’t matter. “The guys I like and the guys I identify with,” he added, “are Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters, Guy Marks — the zanies. I like the zanies. I am a zany!”With his expressive face, his physicality and the rapid pace of his act, Mr. Schultz exuded a loony intensity. He began his comedy career in the late 1960s while keeping his day job as a high school gym teacher.Onstage, he described the start of life on Earth, punctuating his narrative with explosions and other noises; bowed a banana as if it were a violin (while taking bites out of it); played the Lone Ranger, wearing a mask and a tiny cowboy hat while riding a small toy horse on a stick and flinging Froot Loops from a box; rendered a cockfight between game fowl of different ethnicities; and admonished the baby doll in his backpack to stop crying because William Morris agents were in the audience.Mr. Schultz in 1977 on the first episode of the rebooted “Laugh-In.” The original show had revolutionized TV comedy, but the new version was canceled after six episodes.NBCUniversal Photo Bank, via Getty Images“Lenny has a special place in the hearts and memories of everybody in his peer group,” David Letterman, who met Mr. Schultz when they were performing in Los Angeles, said in a phone interview. “He is talked about more often, randomly, than any single person we spent time with at the Comedy Store in the 1970s.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Robert E. Ginna Jr., Whose Article Bolstered U.F.O. Claims, Dies at 99

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      A founding editor of People, he also served as editor in chief of Little, Brown and produced films. But his public image was defined by a 1952 story for Life.Robert E. Ginna Jr., a founding editor of People magazine, a book editor and a film producer whose 1952 Life magazine article provoked a frenzy by validating the idea that flying saucers might exist and could have visited Earth from outer space, died on March 4 at his home in Sag Harbor, N.Y.His death was confirmed by his son, Peter St. John Ginna. He was 99.Mr. Ginna (pronounced gun-NAY) enjoyed a wide-ranging, eight-decade career. As the editor in chief of Little, Brown, he persuaded the acclaimed novelist James Salter to shift from screenplays to books and discovered Dr. Robin Cook as an author of thrillers. He also produced movies and was part of the team that started People as a highbrow showcase for profiles of cultural figures like Graham Greene and Vladimir Nabokov, but quit when the magazine descended into what he viewed as celebrity fluff.To the general public, though, he was perhaps best known for an article he wrote with H.B. Darrach Jr. for the April 7, 1952, issue of Life magazine. The cover featured an alluring photograph of Marilyn Monroe under the headline “There Is a Case for Interplanetary Saucers.”The April 7, 1952, issue of Life magazine featured a seductive photo of Marilyn Monroe juxtaposed with the now-infamous headline “There Is a Case for Interplanetary Saucers.”Philippe Halsman/Life Magazine, via Magnum PhotosTo Mr. Ginna’s eternal dismay, the article made him a target for U.F.O. buffs and kooks. Headlined “Have We Visitors From Space?,” it examined 10 reports of unidentified flying object sightings, followed by an unequivocal assessment from the German rocket expert Walther Riedel: “I am completely convinced that they have an out-of-world basis.”While reports of U.F.O.s in the late 1940s were often trivialized, Phillip J. Hutchison and Herbert J. Strentz wrote in American Journalism in 2019: “By the early 1950s, however, more substantial human-interest features embraced the idea that U.F.O. reports might correspond to extraterrestrial Earth visitors. A widely cited April 7, 1952, Life magazine feature titled ‘Have We Visitors From Space?’ represents one of the most influential examples of the latter trend.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Jesse Colin Young, Singer Who Urged Us to ‘Get Together,’ Dies at 83

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      As the leader of the Youngbloods, he sang one of the enduring anthems of the peace-and-love era. He went on to have a prolific career as a solo artist.Jesse Colin Young, whose sincere tenor vocals for the Youngbloods graced one of the most loving anthems of the hippie era, “Get Together,” a Top Five hit in 1969, before he went on to pursue a solo career that lasted more than five decades, died on Sunday at his home in Aiken, S.C. He was 83.His death was announced by his publicist, Michael Jensen, who did not specify a cause.Mr. Young didn’t write “Get Together.” It was composed by the folk singer Dino Valenti, later a member of the band Quicksilver Messenger Service, under the pseudonym Chet Powers. But Mr. Young’s voice idealized it, and the chorus he sang — “Come on people now/Smile on your brother/Everybody get together/Try to love one another right now” — became one of the best-known refrains of the 1960s.“The lyrics are just to die for,” Mr. Young told the website The Arts Fuse in 2018. “To this day, it gives me a thrill to play it.”He composed many other key pieces of the Youngbloods’ repertoire during their prime in the late 1960s, including the brooding “Darkness, Darkness,” which reflected the terror he imagined American soldiers were experiencing during the Vietnam War; “Sunlight,” a ravishing ode to passionate love; and “Ride the Wind,” a jazzy paean to freedom.The lyrics to many of Mr. Young’s songs celebrated the gifts nature gives, from the dreamy play of sunlight on skin to the unfettered sweep of wind in the hair.“Love of the natural world is as much a theme in my music as romantic love,” he told the website Music Aficionado in 2016. “I get more out of walking over the ridgetop in Marin and looking out at the national seashore than any drugs I ever did” — a reference to the Northern California county where he lived for much of his career.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Gene Winfield, Whose Cars Starred in Film and on TV, Dies at 97

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      He was know for modifying cars with innovative metal work and paint jobs, and for building vehicles like the Galileo shuttle for the original “Star Trek” series.Gene Winfield, a hot rodder and prominent car customizer who built fanciful vehicles for “Star Trek,” “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” and other television series and for films like “Blade Runner” and “Sleeper,” died on March 4 in Atascadero, Calif. He was 97.His son, Steve, said he died in an assisted living facility from metastatic melanoma. He had also been diagnosed with kidney failure.Mr. Winfield began to attract national attention in the late 1950s with a two-door 1956 Mercury hard top called the Jade Idol.According to the custom car website Kustorama, he transformed the Mercury for a customer by adding features like handmade fenders rolled in aluminum in the front end; headlight rings made from 1959 Chrysler Imperial Crown hubcaps; a television set integrated into a new dashboard; and a steering column taken from an Edsel.The restored Jade Idol in Salinas, Calif., in 1981. Mr. Winfield first attracted national attention in the late 1950s with the car, a customized two-door 1956 Mercury hardtop.David GrantAutomobile magazine described the Jade Idol as having “a sharklike presence that represented a new direction in customs.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More