Deaths (Obituaries)

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      Phil Wiggins, Virtuoso of the Blues Harmonica, Dies at 69

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      First as half of the duo Cephas and Wiggins and later on his own, he was one of the best-known musicians playing the style known as the Piedmont blues.Phil Wiggins, a harmonica player of such range that he could make his instrument sound like a clarinet one minute, an accordion the next and then an entire percussion section — all in the service of the complex melodies and steady rhythms of the style known as the Piedmont blues — died on May 7 at his home in Takoma Park, Md. He was 69.His daughter Martha Wiggins said the cause was cancer.For much of his career, Mr. Wiggins was best known as half of the duo Cephas and Wiggins, in which he performed and recorded with the guitarist and singer John Cephas. The two were considered one of the country’s top Piedmont blues acts, and they toured regularly at home and abroad for over 30 years, until Mr. Cephas’s death in 2009.The Piedmont blues is distinct from its Delta and Chicago cousins in its relaxed yet complicated melodies and its insistent rhythms. Its influences include gospel, Appalachian folk and early country music.Mr. Cephas played his instrument with the sophisticated fingerpicking typical of Piedmont blues. Mr. Wiggins would wrap all manner of counterpoints around it, then burst out in a solo that could be aggressive or restrained, tight or relaxed.“The harmonica works the same way as your voice,” he told Blues Blast magazine in 2021. “You have an idea in your mind that you want to express, and it just comes out, the same way speaking happens. In a lot of ways, it still feels that intuitive to me, except that, for me, the harmonica works better than my voice!”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

      Dabney Coleman, Actor Audiences Loved to Hate, Is Dead at 92

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      In movies like “9 to 5” and “Tootsie” and on TV shows like “Buffalo Bill,” he turned the portrayal of egomaniacal louts into a fine art.Dabney Coleman, an award-winning television and movie actor best known for his over-the-top portrayals of garrulous, egomaniacal characters, died on Thursday at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 92.His daughter Quincy Coleman confirmed the death to The New York Times but did not cite the cause.Mr. Coleman was equally adept at comedy and drama, but he received his greatest acclaim for his comic work — notably in the 1980 movie “9 to 5,” in which he played a thoroughly despicable boss, and the 1983-84 NBC sitcom “Buffalo Bill,” in which he starred as the unscrupulous host of a television talk show in Buffalo.At a time when antiheroic leads, with the outsize exception of Carroll O’Connor’s Archie Bunker, were a rarity on television comedies, Mr. Coleman’s distinctly unlikable Bill Bittinger on “Buffalo Bill” was an exception. A profile of Mr. Coleman in Rolling Stone called Bill “a rapscallion for our times, a playfully wicked combination of G. Gordon Liddy and Groucho Marx.” (“He has to do something terrible,” Bill’s station manager said of him in one episode. “It’s in his blood.”)Mr. Coleman’s manically acerbic performance was widely praised and gained him Emmy Award nominations as best actor in a comedy in 1983 and 1984. Reviewing “Buffalo Bill” in The Times, John J. O’Connor said Mr. Coleman “manages to bring an array of unexpected colors to his performance” and called him “the kind of gifted actor who always seems to be teetering on the verge of becoming a star.” But the ratings were disappointing, and “Buffalo Bill” ran for only 26 episodes.Mr. Coleman with his co-star Geena Davis in a scene from the 1983-84 NBC sitcom “Buffalo Bill,” in which he played the unscrupulous host of a television talk show in Buffalo.Frank Connor/Stampede Productions, via Everett CollectionMr. Coleman revisited the formula in 1987 with the ABC sitcom “The ‘Slap’ Maxwell Story,” in which he played a similar character, this time an outspoken sportswriter for a struggling newspaper. He garnered another Emmy nomination for his performance and won a Golden Globe. But low ratings, this time combined with friction between Mr. Coleman and the producer Jay Tarses (who, with Tom Patchett, had created “Buffalo Bill”), led to its demise after just one season.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 Theater

      Samm-Art Williams, Playwright, Producer and Actor, Dies at 78

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      He challenged racial barriers in Hollywood, was a producer of “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and earned a Tony nomination for “Home,” a paean to his Southern roots.Samm-Art Williams, who made his mark in several fields — as an executive producer of the sitcom “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” as an actor on both stage and screen and as a Tony-nominated playwright for “Home,” died on Monday in Burgaw, N.C. He was 78.His death was confirmed by his cousin Carol Brown. She did not cite a cause.An imposing 6-foot-8 (a lefty, he once served as a sparring partner to Muhammad Ali), Mr. Williams appeared in films including Brian De Palma’s Hitchcock homage, “Dressed to Kill” (1980), and the Coen brothers’ neo-noir, “Blood Simple” (1984). He had a memorable turn as Jim in the 1986 adaptation of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” part of PBS’s “American Playhouse” series.Mr. Williams as Jim with Patrick Day in the 1986 television version of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”Everett CollectionCommitted to expanding the Black presence in Hollywood, he was both a writer and an executive producer on “Fresh Prince,” the hit 1990s NBC comedy starring Will Smith as a street-smart teenager from West Philadelphia who moves in with his aunt and uncle in the moneyed hills of Los Angeles.He also served as a writer and a producer on the television shows “Martin” and “Frank’s Place.” He was nominated for two Emmy Awards — for his work as a writer on “Motown Returns to the Apollo” in 1985 and a producer of “Frank’s Place” in 1988.Raised in Burgaw, a former railroad town north of Wilmington, N.C., he moved to New York in 1973 to pursue a career in acting. It was his wistfulness for his small Southern hometown that inspired “Home,” a production of the celebrated Negro Ensemble Company that opened at the St. Marks Playhouse in Manhattan six years later before moving to Broadway.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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      John Barbata, Turtles and C.S.N.Y. Drummer, Dies at 79

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      Barbata belonged to marquee bands of the late ’60s and ’70s, drumming on smash hits such as “Happy Together,” the first song he recorded with the Turtles.John Barbata, the drummer for the Turtles, Jefferson Airplane, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, who walked away from rock music at the height of his career, has died. He was 79.His death was announced in a social media post by Jefferson Airplane on Monday. A cause of death was not given and a list of survivors was not immediately available.Mr. Barbata joined the Turtles after leaving his high school band and enjoyed success almost immediately, drumming on the band’s best-known track, “Happy Together,” released in 1967.“I heard that the Turtles were looking for a drummer, they called me down to the studio to try me out on some session work, the first song we recorded was ‘Happy Together,’” Mr. Barbata wrote on his now defunct website, archived by web.archive.org.“We got it in one take,” he said.The song spent three weeks at No. 1 and became a pop classic. It’s been performed by acts as varied as Mel Tormé, Weezer, Miley Cyrus and the punk band Simple Plan.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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      Daniel Kramer, Who Photographed Bob Dylan’s Rise, Dies at 91

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      For 366 days, he captured intimate images of the singer-songwriter as he changed the look and sound of the 1960s.Daniel Kramer, a photojournalist who captured Bob Dylan’s era-tilting transformation from acoustic guitar-strumming folky to electric prince of rock in the mid-1960s, and who shot the covers for his landmark albums “Bringing It All Back Home” and “Highway 61 Revisited,” died on April 29 in Melville, N.Y., on Long Island. He was 91.His death, in a nursing home, was confirmed by his nephew Brian Bereck.Rolling Stone magazine once described Mr. Kramer as “the photographer most closely associated with Bob Dylan.” But that designation seemed highly improbable at the outset.Although Mr. Dylan had already begun his rise to global fame — he released his third album, “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” in early 1964 — Mr. Kramer knew little about him.That changed in February 1964, when he watched the 22-year-old Mr. Dylan perform his rueful ballad “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” on “The Steve Allen Show.” The song details a real event in which a Black woman died after being struck with a cane by a wealthy white man at a white-tie Baltimore party.“I hadn’t heard or seen him,” Mr. Kramer said in a 2012 interview with Time magazine. “I didn’t know his name, but I was riveted by the power of the song’s message of social outrage and to see Dylan reporting like a journalist through his music and lyrics.”As a young Brooklynite trying to carve out a career as a freelance photographer, Mr. Kramer decided he had to arrange a photo shoot with the budding legend. He spent six months dialing the office of Mr. Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman. “The office always said no,” Mr. Kramer said in a 2016 interview with the British newspaper The Guardian. Finally, six months later, Mr. Grossman himself took his call. “He just said, ‘O.K., come up to Woodstock next Thursday.’”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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      David Sanborn, Saxophonist Who Defied Pigeonholing, Dies at 78

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      He was best known as a jazz musician, but his shimmering sound was also heard on classic albums by David Bowie, Stevie Wonder and Bruce Springsteen.David Sanborn, whose fiery alto saxophone flourishes earned him six Grammy Awards, eight gold albums and a platinum one, and who established himself as a celebrity sideman, lending indelible solos to enduring rock classics like David Bowie’s “Young Americans,” died on Sunday. He was 78.He died after a long battle with prostate cancer, according to a statement on his social media channels. He had received the diagnosis in 2018 but had maintained his regular schedule of concerts until recently, with more planned for next year.The statement did not say where Mr. Sanborn died.Drawing from jazz, pop and R&B, Mr. Sanborn was highly prolific, releasing 25 albums over a six-decade career. “Hideaway” (1980), his fifth studio album, featured two instrumentals written with the singer Michael McDonald as well as “The Seduction,” written by Giorgio Moroder, which was the love theme from “American Gigolo,” the ice-cool Paul Schrader film starring Richard Gere.“Many releases by studio musicians suffer from weak compositions and overproduction, including some albums by Sanborn himself,” Tim Griggs wrote in a review of that album on the website Allmusic. In contrast, he continued, “Hideaway” had a “stripped-down, funky” quality that showed off his “passionate and distinctive saxophone sound.”Mr. Sanborn’s albums “Hearsay” (1994), “Pearls” (1995) and “Time Again” (2003) all reached No. 2 on the Billboard jazz chart.Mr. Sanborn joined Miles Davis onstage at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland in 1986. He worked with a long list of musicians, both in and out of jazz.Keystone/ReduxWe 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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      Susan Backlinie, First Shark Attack Victim in ‘Jaws,’ Dies at 77

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      Ms. Backlinie, a stunt woman, appeared in the terrifying opening scene of the 1975 blockbuster in which a great white shark attacks.The actress and stunt woman Susan Backlinie, whose portrayal of a violent death as the first shark attack victim in the opening scene of the blockbuster movie “Jaws” terrified moviegoers, died on Saturday. She was 77.Ms. Backlinie died at her home in California, her agent, Sean Clark, said on Sunday. He said she had a heart attack.“Jaws,” the 1975 movie directed by Steven Spielberg, memorably features Ms. Backlinie in a scene in which she played a skinny-dipper, Chrissie Watkins, who runs along the beach and dives into the water for a nighttime swim.The placid scene is shattered as she is suddenly pulled under the water. She screams while being violently thrashed by an unseen great white shark and tries desperately to cling to a clanging buoy only to be pulled below the water one final time.For the scene, Ms. Backlinie was secured to a harness, according to The Daily Jaws website. The Palm Beach Post reported that Ms. Backlinie was wearing a pair of jeans with metal plates stitched into the sides with cables attached.Susan Backlinie getting prepared for her memorable opening scene from “Jaws.”MPTV, via ReutersWe 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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      Alex Hassilev, the Last of the Original Limeliters, Dies at 91

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      The trio’s witty, urbane arrangements made it one of the top acts of the early-1960s folk music revival. His gift for languages helped.Alex Hassilev, a multilingual, multitalented troubadour and the last original member of the Limeliters, one of the biggest acts of the folk revival of the early 1960s, died on April 21 in Burbank, Calif. He was 91.His wife, Gladys Hassilev, said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was cancer.Before Beatlemania gripped America’s youth in 1964, the country fell in love with the tight harmonies and traditional arrangements of folk music — and few acts drew more adoration than the Limeliters, a trio made up of Mr. Hassilev, Glenn Yarbrough and Lou Gottlieb.Mr. Hassilev played banjo and guitar and sang baritone, not only in English but in French, Portuguese, Spanish and Russian, all of which he spoke fluently. His bandmates were equally brainy: Mr. Gottlieb had a doctorate in musicology and Mr. Yarbrough once worked as a bouncer to pay for Greek lessons.Urbane and witty, they packed coffeehouses and college auditoriums with a repertoire that mixed straight-faced folk standards like “The Hammer Song” and cheeky tunes like “Have Some Madeira, M’Dear,” “The Ballad of Sigmund Freud” and “Charlie the Midnight Marauder.”At their height, between 1960 and 1962, the Limeliters were playing 300 dates a year and recording an album every few months, two of which — “Tonight in Person” (1960) and “The Slightly Fabulous Limeliters” (1961) — reached the Billboard Top 10.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