Deaths (Obituaries)

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      in Music

      Steve Harley, ‘Make Me Smile’ Singer, Dies at 73

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      Mr. Harley was the frontman of the 1970s rock band Cockney Rebel, which landed several hits on the British charts.Steve Harley, the 1970s British rock star who topped Britain’s music charts with the single “Make Me Smile,” died on Sunday. He was 73.He died at his home, his family said on Facebook. No cause was given but Mr. Harley had announced last month that he would step away from the stage to undergo treatment for cancer and previously canceled several concerts scheduled for this year.Mr. Harley was the frontman of the band Cockney Rebel, which he formed in the early 1970s.His biggest hit was the 1975 single “Make Me Smile,” in which Mr. Harley’s even-keeled vocals and melancholic lyrics cruise over instrumentals bearing the optimistic sound distinct to bands of the era. The song hit the top of the British charts in February of that year.Cockney Rebel graced the British charts with other releases, including the 1974 single “Judy Teen,” which peaked at No. 5 on the charts that year, and a funky cover of “Here Comes the Sun” by the Beatles in 1976.Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel in 1974.Gijsbert Hanekroot/RedfernsOther songs found success outside of Britain.“Sebastian,” a single featured on the band’s debut 1973 album, “The Human Menagerie,” wound up being a No. 1 hit in Belgium and the Netherlands, according to Mr. Harley’s website.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

      Gylan Kain, a Founder of the Last Poets and a Progenitor of Rap, Dies at 81

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      He spun gripping portraits of the Black experience starting in the 1960s with the seminal Harlem spoken-word collective, laying a foundation for what was to come.Gylan Kain, a Harlem-born poet and performance artist who was a founder of the Last Poets, the spoken-word collective that laid a foundation for rap music starting in the late 1960s by delivering fiery poetic salvos about racism and oppression over pulsing drum beats, died on Feb. 7 in Lelystad, the Netherlands. He was 81.He died in a nursing home from complications of heart disease, his son Rufus Kain said. His death was not widely reported at the time.The Last Poets, which originally consisted of Mr. Kain, David Nelson and Abiodun Oyewole, were aligned with the Black Arts Movement — the cultural corollary to the broader Black Power movement of the 1960s and ’70s — of which the activist poet and playwright Amiri Baraka was a central figure.The Original Last Poets, as they were billed, in the 1970 film “Right On!” From left, Mr. Kain, Felipe Luciano and David Nelson. Herbert Danska, via Museum of Modern ArtWith their staccato wordplay and sinewy rhythms, the Last Poets were pioneers of performance poetry, spinning out portraits of Black street life that often bristled with the guerrilla spirit of revolution.They made their public debut on May 19, 1968, in Mount Morris Park, now Marcus Garvey Park, in Harlem, at a celebration of the slain civil rights leader Malcolm X. Less than two months after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, it was a fraught period in Black America, but also a time percolating with calls for dramatic change.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

      Ed Mintz, Who Gave Audiences the Chance to Grade Films, Dies at 83

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      With CinemaScore, he broke new ground by building a business based on the opinions of moviegoers rather than critics.Ed Mintz, a mathematician who created an exit polling system for films called CinemaScore, which asks people leaving theaters on opening nights to grade the movies they have just seen — a precursor of the website Rotten Tomatoes, which aggregates and scores critics’ opinions — died on Feb. 6 in Las Vegas. He was 83.His son Harold said the cause of death, in a memory care facility, was vascular dementia.Mr. Mintz, a film buff, was a partner in a computerized billing service for dentists in 1978 when he and his wife, Rona, went to see “The Cheap Detective,” a comedy written by Neil Simon and starring Peter Falk, at a theater in the Westwood section of Los Angeles. They both disliked it, and they felt let down by the critics whose praise had encouraged them to see it.Their disappointment was echoed by at least one other departing moviegoer.“And all of a sudden, some guy said, ‘Is anybody here wondering why they can’t get the opinions of actual moviegoers and publish that? We keep getting critics,’” Mr. Mintz recalled in an interview with The Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2016. “I looked at him and thought, ‘Wow, that’s a great idea.’”That thought percolated until later that year. While attending Yom Kippur services at a synagogue in Los Angeles, he gazed at a donation pledge card. Rather than write with a pen or pencil, which Jews are prohibited from doing on Yom Kippur and the Sabbath, worshipers designated what to give by bending a perforated tab.“I almost jumped out of the chair,” he said. “I thought: ‘Simple. How simple.’”He quickly conceived the CinemaScore ballot card, which he tested by sending employees of his dental business to a few theaters. When the testing phase ended, polling began in 1979, and Mr. Mintz started reporting the results in a syndicated newspaper column.The card and the polling process have changed little since the beginning and create a crowdsourcing alternative to critics’ opinions.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

      Byron Janis, Pianist of Romantic Passion, Dies at 95

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      He had a brilliant career before arthritis in his hands forced him from the stage, but he overcame the condition and returned to performing.Byron Janis, an American pianist renowned for his commanding performances of the Romantic repertory and for his discovery of manuscript copies of two Chopin waltzes, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 95. His death, at a hospital, was confirmed by his wife, Maria Cooper Janis. He remained active, writing about his career and managing recordings of his music, until recent days, she said. On the concert stage, Mr. Janis could seem like a tightly wound spring, full of tension that, when combined with the sheer physical energy he brought to his performances, yielded interpretations that could be overpowering and seductive, by turns. At the height of his career, in the 1950s and 1960s, he was known for the tremendous sound and colorful sonorities he drew from the piano, and for a freewheeling interpretive approach that sometimes led him to bypass composers’ expressive markings when they were at odds with his conception.“Mr. Janis has a quirky physical style compounded of nervous hovering, sudden jabs, bounces, brittle taps and tentative caresses,” the critic Will Crutchfield wrote in The New York Times, reviewing a recital at the 92nd Street Y in 1985. “The music emerges a little like that too; occasionally it’s disconcerting, but at least he has a style, and more often it is engaging.”What audiences did not know was that by the early 1970s, Mr. Janis was experiencing pain and stiffness during his performances, the result of psoriatic arthritis in both hands and wrists. After he was diagnosed, in 1973, he maintained his concert schedule, and his five-hour daily practice regimen.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

      Joe Camp, Filmmaker Behind ‘Benji’ Franchise, Dies at 84

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      He defied the odds to turn “Benji,” a live-action film series from a dog’s perspective, into a smash hit, and turned the film industry on its head in the process.Joe Camp, a pioneering filmmaker who created a groundbreaking franchise with his “Benji” movies, which brought a lovable live-action dog to the masses and became a smash success, died on Friday at his home in Bell Buckle, Tenn. He was 84.His son the director Brandon Camp announced the death in a statement. He said his father died “following a long illness” but provided no other details.Joe Camp began thinking about directing when he was as young as 8 years old, but he would first encounter decades of rejections. While attending the University of Mississippi, he tried to transfer to U.C.L.A.’s film school, only to be turned down. After college, he dabbled in advertising at the Houston office of McCann Erickson and then at Norsworthy‐Mercer, an agency in Dallas, while writing unproduced sitcom scripts on the side.In 1971, Mr. Camp and James Nicodemus, a cinematographer, formed their own production company, Mulberry Square Productions, which was based in Dallas, far from the traditional hubs of the television and film industry, Los Angeles and New York.The idea for “Benji” came to Mr. Camp while he was watching the animated Disney feature film “Lady and the Tramp” (1955) in the late 1960s with his first wife, Carolyn (Hopkins) Camp. Afterward, Mr. Camp observed his own dog’s facial expressions and wondered if a movie could be made starring a real-life dog and told from the dog’s perspective.Higgins the dog appeared on the TV series “Petticoat Junction” before finding cinematic fame as the title character in the first “Benji” film in 1974.CBS Photo Archive, 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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      in Television

      Michael Culver, ‘Star Wars’ Actor and Victim of Darth Vader, Dies at 85

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      Mr. Culver, who was best known for his demise as Captain Needa in “The Empire Strikes Back,” was also a familiar actor on British TV and in theater.Michael Culver, the British actor best known for one of the memorable death scenes in the Star Wars franchise, died on February 27. He was 85.Mr. Culver’s death was confirmed by Alliance Agents, which posted a statement to social media on Tuesday, and his agent, Thomas Bowington. The agency did not give a cause of death, though Mr. Bowington said Mr. Culver had had cancer for several years.He had a long acting career onscreen and stage that spanned over 50 years and included roles in “The Return of Sherlock Holmes” on TV and the 1984 film “A Passage to India.”But his most lasting impact on popular culture came in 1980, with his brief role as Captain Needa in the second “Star Wars” film, “The Empire Strikes Back.” Needa, after losing track of Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon, apologizes to Darth Vader, who promptly chokes him to death telepathically.“Apology accepted, Captain Needa,” Vader says, walking around the captain’s body and motioning for others to take him away.Mr. Culver also appeared in two “James Bond” films with the actor Sean Connery, “From Russia With Love” and “Thunderball.”Michael John Edward Culver was born on June 16, 1938, in London to Daphne Rye, a theater casting director, and Ronald Culver, an actor, according to Mr. Bowington.Mr. Culver performed in several Shakespeare plays and worked regularly with the British director Anthony Page, his agent said.Mr. Culver is survived by his second wife, Amanda Ward Culver, and his children, Roderic, Sue and Justin Culver.His son, Roderic Culver, also became an actor, Mr. Bowington said.Later in his life, Mr. Culver mostly gave up acting to focus on politics and would have likely pursued a political career had he not been an actor, Mr. Bowington said.He still regularly visited Star Wars fan events, notably one in Chicago in 2019, when “he was lost for words” when he saw nearly 200 people waiting in line to see him, his agency said in its statement.In a 2023 interview on the “Making Tracks” podcast, he recalled that he “knew nothing about” the movie before auditioning, and marveled that its extraordinary appeal meant he was still asked about it well into his 80s.“When I did ‘Star Wars,’ it just seemed to be, ‘Oh, they’re doing a movie about starships.’ So I did it. I just thought, ‘Well, I hope it’s successful,’” he said, adding: “You don’t expect 40 years later to be still signing autographs for it.” More

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      in Music

      Karl Wallinger, Who Sang With World Party and the Waterboys, Dies at 66

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      As a songwriter and instrumentalist as well, he blended pop and folk influences into music that helped define college radio in the 1980s and ’90s.Karl Wallinger, a Welsh singer-songwriter who helped define college radio in the 1980s and ’90s as a member of the Waterboys and the founder of World Party, died on Sunday at his home in Hastings, England. He was 66.His daughter, Nancy Zamit, confirmed the death but did not provide a cause. Mr. Wallinger suffered a brain aneurysm in 2001 that forced him to stop performing for several years.Following on the heels of the post-punk, new wave and new romantic movements of the early 1980s, Mr. Wallinger embodied something of a throwback to the classical pop and folk styles of an earlier era, with music and lyrics influenced by the Beatles and Bob Dylan.Though he rejected the label “retro,” onstage he looked like a stylish hippie, with long stringy hair and tinted round glasses that would have fit in at Woodstock.Mr. Wallinger was widely admired for his instrumental skills. He primarily played keyboards for the Waterboys, an influential folk-rock band founded by the Scottish musician Mike Scott, but on his own he usually played a guitar — which, though he was right-handed, he played upside down, with his left hand.After two albums with the Waterboys, Mr. Wallinger left in 1985 to form World Party, which was at first a one-man act: He wrote all the music and recorded all the parts in the studio. Only when he began to tour did he add members and make it a true band.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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      Eric Carmen, Raspberries Frontman and ‘All By Myself’ Singer, Dies at 74

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      He sang on the power-pop pioneers’ 1972 breakout hit, “Go All the Way,” before launching a successful solo career as a soft rock crooner.Eric Carmen, whose plaintive vocals soared above the crunching guitars of the 1970s power-pop pioneers the Raspberries before his soft rock crooning made him a mainstay of 1980s music, has died. He was 74.His death was announced on his website by his wife, Amy Carmen. She did not give a cause and said only that he died “in his sleep, over the weekend.”The Raspberries, which formed in Cleveland, burst onto the American rock scene in 1972 with their self-titled debut album, featuring a raspberry-scented scratch-and-sniff sticker and their biggest hit: “Go All the Way,” a provocative song for its day, sung from the point of view of a young woman.Dave Swanson of the website Ultimate Classic Rock called it “the definitive power pop song of all time,” as the emerging style, known for grafting bright ’60s-era vocal harmonies onto the heavy guitar riffs of the ’70s, would come to be called.“The opening Who-like blast leads into a very Beatles-esque verse, before landing in some forgotten Beach Boys chorus,” he wrote. “Thus was the magic of the Raspberries song craft. They were able to take the best parts and ideas from the previous decade, and morph them into something new, yet familiar.”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