Deaths (Obituaries)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares183 Views

      in Music

      Lou Donaldson, Soulful Master of the Alto Saxophone, Dies at 98

      by

      A player of impeccable technique and a mainstay of the Blue Note label, he recorded constantly as both a leader and a sideman beginning in 1952.Lou Donaldson, an alto saxophonist who became part of the bedrock of the jazz scene and whose soulful, blues-steeped presence in the music endured undiminished for three-quarters of a century, died on Saturday. He was 98.His death was announced by his family. The announcement did not say where he died.A mainstay of the Blue Note record label at the height of its influence and power, Mr. Donaldson recorded constantly as both a leader and a sideman beginning in 1952. He was a leading voice of the more elemental style that came to be called “hard bop,” an evolution out of the bebop revolution wrought by his inspiration on the alto sax, Charlie Parker. The National Endowment for the Arts named Mr. Donaldson a Jazz Master in 2012.A player of impeccable technique, plangent tone, taste and refinement, Sweet Poppa Lou, as he was long known, nevertheless prized the raw gospel of Black church music and the gutbucket sound of rhythm and blues in his improvisations. The blues was at the heart of his sound: His album “Blues Walk,” released in 1958, is regarded as a jazz masterwork, and its title tune, which he wrote, became a jazz standard.Mr. Donaldson also proved to be an acute talent scout for Blue Note’s owners, Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, bringing to their attention both the young trumpet giant Clifford Brown and, later, the young guitar virtuoso Grant Green.“I went down to Alfred Lion at Blue Note and gave him Clifford’s number,” he recalled in “A Wonderful Life,” his unpublished autobiography. “He brought him to New York and we made this tremendous date — tremendous date.”Mr. Donaldson said he had also persuaded Mr. Lion to hand his close friend Horace Silver — the pianist and composer who would come to epitomize “the Blue Note sound” — his maiden recording date as a leader.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

    • 150 Shares178 Views

      in Music

      Ella Jenkins, Musician Who Found an Audience in Children, Dies at 100

      by

      Performing and recording, she transformed what was seen as a marginal genre in the music industry into a celebration of shared humanity. Ella Jenkins, a self-taught musician who defied her industry’s norms by recording and performing solely for children, and in doing so transformed a marginal and moralistic genre into a celebration of a diverse yet common humanity with songs like “You’ll Sing a Song and I’ll Sing a Song,” died on Saturday in Chicago. She was 100. Her death was confirmed by John Smith, associate director at Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.Ms. Jenkins had no formal musical training, but she had an innate sense of rhythm. “I was always humming or singing and la-la, lu-lu or something,” she once said.She absorbed the everyday melodies of her childhood — the playground clapping games, the high school sports chants, the calls of a sidewalk watermelon vendor hawking his produce. As an adult, she paired such singsong rhythms with original compositions and sought not simply to amuse or distract children but to teach them to respect themselves and others.Against the sound of a kazoo, a harmonica, a variety of hand drums or, later, a baritone ukulele, Ms. Jenkins sang subtly instructive lyrics, as in “A Neighborhood Is a Friendly Place,” a song she wrote in 1976:You can say hiTo friends passing byA neighborhood is a friendly place.You can say helloTo people that you knowA neighborhood is a friendly place.Neighbors to learn to shareNeighbors learn to careA neighborhood is a friendly place.Over children’s steady clapping, she recorded the age-old “A Sailor Went to Sea”:A sailor went to sea, sea, seaTo see what he could see, see, seeAnd all that he could see, see, seeWas down in the bottom of the sea, sea, sea.For many parents and classroom teachers, Ms. Jenkins’s renditions of traditional nursery rhymes like “Miss Mary Mack” and “The Muffin Man” are authoritative.Still, from the beginning of her career in the 1950s, Ms. Jenkins pronounced her signature to be call-and-response, in which she asked her charges to participate directly in the music-making, granting them an equal responsibility in a song’s success. She had seen Cab Calloway employ the technique in “Hi-De-Ho,” and for her, the animating idea, veiled in a playful to-and-fro, was that everything good in the world was born of collaboration.In one of her most popular recordings, Ms. Jenkins sings out, “Did you feed my cow?” “Yes, ma’am!” a group of children trumpet back. The song continues:Could you tell me how?Yes, ma’am!What did you feed her?Corn and hay!What did you feed her?Corn and hay!As Ms. Jenkins repopularized time-honored children’s songs, she also gave the genre global scope. Before Ms. Jenkins, children’s music in the United States consisted primarily of simplified, often cartoonish renditions of classical music.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

    • 138 Shares114 Views

      in Movies

      Tony Todd, Prolific Actor Best Known for ‘Candyman,’ Dies at 69

      by

      Mr. Todd’s decades-long career spanned across mediums and genres, but he was largely associated with a scary figure summoned in front of a mirror.Tony Todd, a prolific actor whose more than 100 film and television credits included “Candyman” and “Final Destination,” died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 69.Jeffrey Goldberg, Mr. Todd’s manager, announced the death in a statement on Saturday morning. He did not specify the cause.Mr. Todd’s decades-long acting career spanned genres and mediums. He starred or had prominent roles in several films, including the 1990 remake of “Night of the Living Dead,” “The Crow,” “The Rock” and Oliver Stone’s Oscar-winning Vietnam War movie, “Platoon.” His television credits include “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” “24,” “The X-Files,” and many other shows. He also lent his rich voice to animation and video games.He was perhaps best known for his role as the titular demon in the 1992 movie “Candyman,” He told The New York Times in 2020 that he was proud of playing the terrifying figure with a hook for a hand, a Black man who had been wronged in life and is summoned from the beyond by people who call his name five times while looking in a mirror — unleashing vicious attacks in which the Candyman slices to death those who dared to disturb him. “If I had never done another horror film,” he said, “I could live with that, and I’d carry this character.”Mr. Todd reprised the role in the film’s 1995 and 1999 sequels and returned to it for the 2021 reboot, directed by Nia DaCosta and written by Jordan Peele.In the “Final Destination” franchise, Mr. Todd played the role of the mysterious funeral-home owner William Bludworth — the rare recurring character in a film series that famously killed off all of its new characters by the time the end credits rolled.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

    • 100 Shares181 Views

      in Theater

      Overlooked No More: Go-won-go Mohawk, Trailblazing Indigenous Actress

      by

      In the 1880s, the only roles for Indigenous performers were laden with negative stereotypes. So Mohawk decided to write her own narratives.This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.For a long time, theatrical roles for Indigenous characters were laden with stereotypes: the savage, the tragic martyr, the helpless drunk. And it was rare in stories of any kind, on the page or on the stage, for an Indigenous character to have a starring role.By the late 1880s, the actress Go-won-go Mohawk had had enough. “I grew tired of being cast in uncongenial roles,” like meek princesses or submissive women who were restrained in corsets, she told The Des Moines Register and Leader in 1910. So she decided to write her own roles, ultimately carving out a groundbreaking career in which she told stories onstage about Indigenous people as the heroes of their own lives. She also did it while performing as a man.Mohawk’s primary work was “Wep-ton-no-mah, the Indian Mail Carrier” (1892), which follows the title character, a young Indigenous man, as he saves a young white woman from a stampede, winning her heart and earning the respect of her family.The woman’s father, a colonel, offers Wep-ton-no-mah a position as a mail carrier, which he initially turns down. “I could not start being under the control of anyone but the great Manitou,” Wep-ton-no-mah says, referring to the spiritual power of the Algonquians. “I want to be free–free–free like the birds, the eagles and deers — owning no master but one.”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

    • 150 Shares115 Views

      in Theater

      Jonathan Haze, Star of ‘The Little Shop of Horrors,’ Dies at 95

      by

      Best known for his star turn in the cult film about a flesh-eating plant, he was a go-to member of the low-budget auteur Roger Corman’s repertory company.Jonathan Haze, a prince of the B-movie who appeared in nearly 20 pulp cinema popcorn munchers by the king of the B-movie, the low-budget auteur Roger Corman — most notably as Seymour, the sniveling flower shop assistant in the original “The Little Shop of Horrors” — died on Saturday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 95.His death was confirmed by his daughter Rebecca Haze.Mr. Haze, a fledgling actor who had hitchhiked to Los Angeles to chase his screen dreams, was working at a Hollywood gas station in 1952 when he was discovered by Wyott Ordung, a young actor and aspiring director affiliated with Mr. Corman.Mr. Corman at that point was just starting a career in which he would produce more than 300 exploitation films and direct roughly 50, with titles like “The Beast With a Million Eyes” and “Teenage Cave Man.” He was also known for his eye for talent: He gave early opportunities to Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Jack Nicholson, among many others.Mr. Corman cast Mr. Haze in two movies in 1954: “Monster From the Ocean Floor,” directed by Mr. Ordung, and “The Fast and the Furious,” whose title would be licensed decades later for the Vin Diesel car-frenzy franchise, in which he had an uncredited role.Among the many other Corman movies in which Mr. Haze appeared was “Not of This Earth” (1957), with Paul Birch, center, and Beverly Garland.MGMMr. Haze, left, and Ms. Garland were also in Mr. Corman’s “Gunslinger” (1956), along with Chris Alcaide, center, and Martin Kingsley.MGMAs the Tumblr site Know Your B Movie Actors observed: “Haze was a small, slight man with boyish good looks, and it was a virtual certainty that he would never be a leading man, even in Corman’s universe. Instead, he devoted himself to playing an assortment of oddballs and losers.”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

    • 150 Shares193 Views

      in Music

      Linda LaFlamme Dies at 85; Her ‘White Bird’ Reflected a Hippie Fantasy

      by

      With her husband, David LaFlamme, she founded the rock band It’s a Beautiful Day and wrote a soaring paean to a generation’s dreams of escape.Linda LaFlamme, a songwriter and keyboardist who helped found the San Francisco folk-rock band It’s a Beautiful Day in 1967 and co-wrote the band’s soaring “White Bird,” an enduring anthem of the psychedelic era, died on Oct. 23 in Harrisonburg, Va. She was 85.She died in a nursing home of vascular dementia, her daughter, Kira LaFlamme Newman, said, adding that Ms. LaFlamme had a stroke in April.Linda Sue Rudman was born on April 13, 1939, in St. Louis, the middle of three children of Edward Leonid Rudman and Annette (Miller) Rudman. She was classically trained on piano and harpsichord, but her tastes veered toward jazz and rock ’n’ roll. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin with a bachelor’s degree in English in 1961, she moved to San Francisco.Two years later, she met David LaFlamme, an Army veteran who had played violin with the Utah Symphony. Musically and romantically, “we just clicked,” she said in a 2020 interview with the music website Please Kill Me.They married the following year and went on to form the six-piece unit It’s a Beautiful Day, with the help of Matthew Katz, who managed Jefferson Airplane. Mr. Katz sent his new act to Seattle, where he had a rock venue, for seasoning. The LaFlammes were living in a cold, drafty house there in early 1968 when they wrote “White Bird.”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

    • 138 Shares187 Views

      in Television

      Virginia Carter, a Feminist Adviser to Norman Lear, Dies at 87

      by

      A physicist who headed a chapter of the National Organization for Women, she took a career detour to be a feminist voice in Mr. Lear’s empire of socially aware sitcoms.Virginia Carter, a physicist whose activism for the National Organization for Women led the sitcom impresario Norman Lear to hire her in the early 1970s to be his feminist conscience as he presided over taboo-breaking shows that touched on sensitive social issues, died on Oct. 17 at her home in Redondo Beach, Calif. She was 87.Her friend Martha Wheelock, a filmmaker, confirmed her death but did not specify a cause.In 1973, Ms. Carter was at a turning point. Her success at Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit think tank that advised the Air Force on space programs and satellite systems, was tempered by being underpaid and receiving inadequate credit for her work.“Out of the depths of my own insecurities, I’d think, ‘Gee whiz, Virginia, you’re not good enough,’” she told The Chicago Tribune in 1978. “And I’d work harder and harder.”But she had also been the president of the Los Angeles chapter of NOW, building its membership and fighting for feminist issues like the Equal Rights Amendment, which the California State Legislature ratified in November 1972.“I began to change, to speak publicly,” she told The Tribune. “And I found people outside of physics.”One of them was Frances Lear, a feminist activist who was Mr. Lear’s wife at the time (the couple divorced in 1985). She suggested that Ms. Carter meet with her husband, who by then was producing sitcoms that sometimes touched on feminist and political themes — “All in the Family” and, to a much greater degree, “Maude.” But Ms. Carter wasn’t immediately convinced.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

    • 163 Shares138 Views

      in Music

      Tyka Nelson, Sister of Prince Who Carved Her Own Path, Dies at 64

      by

      Out from under an imposing shadow, she recorded four albums as a singer and had two R&B hits before turning her focus to her brother’s legacy.Tyka Nelson, who was once called “the most famous unknown singer” as she followed her brother, Prince, into a four-album recording career, and who helped promote his legacy after his death in 2016, died on Monday in Robbinsdale, Minn. She was 64.Her death, in a hospital, was announced in a statement by her son President Nelson. He did not cite a cause.Tyka Evene Nelson, the only full sibling of Prince Rogers Nelson — who assumed his mononymic persona and began his rapid rise to fame in the late 1970s — was born on May 18, 1960, in Minneapolis to John L. Nelson, a factory worker who performed as a jazz pianist under the name Prince Rogers, and Mattie (Shaw) Nelson, a jazz singer.With her first album, “Royal Blue” (1988), Ms. Nelson drew comparisons to Anita Baker, Sade and Laura Nyro.NoneBy the time Ms. Nelson embarked on a music career of her own, her brother had been turning pop music inside out with his kaleidoscopic fusion of funk, rock, R&B and the color purple for a decade. With the release in 1988 of her debut album, “Royal Blue,” an adult contemporary rumination on love and relationships, The Minneapolis Star Tribune compared Ms. Nelson to Anita Baker, Sade and Laura Nyro.But it was another inevitable comparison that she found impossible to shake. “I was praying one day, I said, ‘Please, God, why can’t I sound like CeCe Winans?’” Ms. Nelson recalled in a 2018 interview with Australian television, referring to the star gospel artist. “Then people said I sound like him, so it’s definitely not intentional.” Still, she added, “If there’s anyone you can compare me to, c’mon, you might as well compare me to the best, right?”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