Deaths (Obituaries)

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      in Music

      Seiji Ozawa, Captivating Conductor, Is Dead at 88

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      He led the Boston Symphony Orchestra for 29 years, toured widely and helped dispel prejudices about East Asian classical musicians.Seiji Ozawa, the high-spirited Japanese conductor who took the Western classical music world by storm in the 1960s and ’70s and was music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1973 to 2002, died on Feb. 6 in Tokyo. He was 88.The cause was heart failure, said a spokeswoman for the Seiji Ozawa International Academy Switzerland, which announced his death in a news release. Mr. Ozawa had recently experienced health problems. He never fully rebounded from surgery for esophageal cancer in early 2010, or from back problems that were made worse during his recovery. He was also hospitalized with heart valve disease in later years.Mr. Ozawa was the most prominent harbinger of a movement that has transformed the classical music world over the last half-century: a tremendous influx of East Asian musicians into the West, which has in turn helped spread the gospel of Western classical music to Korea, Japan and China.For much of that time, a belief widespread even among knowledgeable critics held that although highly trained Asian musicians could develop consummate technical facility in Western music, they could never achieve a real understanding of its interpretive needs or a deep feeling for its emotional content. The irrepressible Mr. Ozawa surmounted this prejudice by dint of his outsize personality, thoroughgoing musicianship and sheer hard work.With his mop of black hair, his boyish demeanor and his seemingly boundless energy, Mr. Ozawa captured the popular imagination early on.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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      Dick Waterman, Promoter and Photographer of the Blues, Dies at 88

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      A “crackpot eccentric Yankee” from Massachusetts, he revived the careers of long-forgotten Southern artists during the blues boom of the 1960s.Dick Waterman, a beacon in the world of blues who as a promoter, talent manager and photographer helped revive the careers of a generation of storied purveyors of that bedrock American art form while lyrically documenting their journeys with his camera, died on Jan. 26 in Oxford, Miss. He was 88.His niece Theodora Saal said the cause was heart failure. A native of Massachusetts, he had lived in Oxford for nearly four decades.Through his company, Avalon Productions, which was considered the first management and booking agency devoted primarily to Black blues artists, Mr. Waterman provided overdue exposure — and income — to early blues luminaries like Mississippi John Hurt, Son House and Skip James.He also shepherded the careers of a younger blues cohort, including Buddy Guy and Otis Rush, as well as one young white artist, the singer-songwriter and future Grammy Award winner Bonnie Raitt.Mr. Waterman in 2003 in Oxford, Miss. A native of Massachusetts, he lived in Oxford for nearly four decades.Bruce Newman“Dick Waterman just may be the most knowledgeable man on the history of blues,” the music writer Don Wilcock wrote in 2019 on the website American Blues Scene. Mr. Waterman, he added, “sought out the originators of the genre, pulled them out of ‘retirement’ and presented them to a folk audience that to that point considered blues to be a footnote in the American musical 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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      Mojo Nixon, Who Mixed Roots and Punk Rock, Dies at 66

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      A self-styled voice of “the doomed, the damned, the weird,” he was known for satirical songs including “Elvis Is Everywhere” and “Destroy All Lawyers.”Mojo Nixon, the psychobilly musician and radio host who gained cult status for his rabble rousing and celebrity spoofs like the 1987 hit “Elvis Is Everywhere”, died on Wednesday aboard a country music cruise that he was co-hosting. He was 66.His death was confirmed by Matt Eskey, the director of a 2020 documentary film about Mr. Nixon. He said that Mr. Nixon had a “cardiac event” while he was asleep as the Outlaw Country Cruise was docked in San Juan, Puerto Rico.A statement posted by the film’s official Facebook page said that Mr. Nixon had died “after a blazing show, a raging night, closing the bar, taking no prisoners.”Mr. Nixon was best known for his celebrity spoofs, like “Don Henley Must Die” and “Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant With My Two-Headed Love Child,” and for satirical tirades like “I Hate Banks” and “Destroy All Lawyers.”“All of it was performed in maximum overdrive on a bed of rockabilly, blues, and R&B, which earned Nixon some friends in the roots rock community but had enough punk attitude — in its own bizarre way — to make him a college radio staple during his heyday,” the All Music Guide wrote.“I’m a rabble-rouser who does humorous social commentary within a rock-and-roll setting,” he told The New York Times in 1990. In another interview with the paper, he described himself as a voice of “the doomed, the damned, the weird.”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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      Aston Barrett, 77, Bass-Playing Force With Bob Marley and Wailers, Dies

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      Known by his nickname, Family Man, he was the group’s musical director, crafting the hypnotic rhythms and melodies that elevated reggae to global acclaim.Aston Barrett, who as the bass player and musical director for the Wailers — both with Bob Marley and for decades after the singer’s death in 1981 — crafted the hypnotic rhythms and complex melodies that helped elevate reggae to international acclaim, died on Saturday in Miami. He was 77.The cause of death, at a hospital, was heart failure after a series of strokes, according to his son Aston Barrett Jr., a drummer who took over the Wailers from his father in 2016.Mr. Barrett was already well known around Jamaica as a session musician when, in 1969, Mr. Marley asked him and his brother, Carlton, a drummer, to join the Wailers as the band’s rhythm section.More than anyone else, the collaboration between Mr. Marley and his bassist turned both the Wailers and reggae itself into a global phenomenon during the 1970s.Mr. Barrett with Mr. Marley in 1977. He kept the Wailers going after Mr. Marley died in 1981, playing an evolving sound rooted in his musical innovations.Kate SimonMr. Marley wrote and sang the songs and was the band’s soulfully charismatic frontman. Mr. Barrett arranged and often produced the music. He also kept the band organized during its constant touring, earning him the nickname Family Man — or, to his close friends, Fams.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

      Clyde Taylor, Literary Scholar Who Elevated Black Cinema, Dies at 92

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      A leading figure in the field of Black studies in the 1970s, he identified work by Black filmmakers as worthy of serious intellectual attention.Clyde Taylor, a scholar who in the 1970s and ’80s played a leading role in identifying, defining and elevating Black cinema as an art form, died on Jan. 24 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 92.His daughter, Rahdi Taylor, a filmmaker, said the cause was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.As a young professor in the Los Angeles area in the late 1960s — first at California State University, Long Beach, and then at the University of California, Los Angeles — Dr. Taylor was at the epicenter of a push to bring the study of Black culture into academia.Black culture was not merely an appendage to white culture, he argued, but had its own logic, history and dynamics that grew out of the Black Power and Pan-African movements. And filmmaking, he said, was just as important to Black culture as literature and art.Dr. Taylor in 1958 when he was a student at Howard University, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English.via Taylor familyHe was especially taken by the work of a circle of young Black filmmakers in the 1970s that he would later call the “L.A. Rebellion.” Among them were the directors Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, Haile Gerima and Billy Woodberry, all of whom went on to have immense impact on Black directors like Spike Lee and Ava DuVernay.As Dr. Taylor documented, these directors created their own, stripped-down approach to narrative and form. They borrowed from French New Wave, Italian neorealism and Brazil’s Cinema Novo to offer an unblinkered look at everyday Black life, often filming in Watts and other Black neighborhoods in and around Los Angeles.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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      Toby Keith, Popular Country Music Singer-Songwriter, Dies at 62

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      Mr. Keith, who announced in 2022 he had cancer, cultivated an in-your-face persona with hits like “Who’s Your Daddy” and “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue.”Toby Keith, the larger-than-life singer-songwriter of No. 1 country hits like “Who’s Your Daddy?” and “Made in America” and one of the biggest stars to come out of Nashville in three decades, died on Monday. He was 62.His death was announced on his official website. Elaine Schock, Mr. Keith’s publicist, said in an email that he died in Oklahoma, where he had lived his entire life.Mr. Keith announced in the summer of 2022 that he had been diagnosed with stomach cancer and was being treated with chemotherapy, radiation and surgery.In a recent interview with the Oklahoma City television station KWTV, Mr. Keith, who played a run of shows in Las Vegas in December, said he was still in treatment. “Cancer is a roller coaster,” he said. “You just sit here and wait on it to go away — it may not ever go away.” He said that his Christian faith was helping him get through the treatment and the potential dark outcome.Singing in an alternately declamatory and crooning baritone, Mr. Keith cultivated a boisterous, in-your-face persona with recordings like “I Wanna Talk About Me” and “Beer for My Horses.”Built around clever wordplay and droll humor — and more than a little macho bluster — both topped the Billboard country chart, with “Beer for My Horses,” a twangy, Rolling Stones-style rocker that featuring Willie Nelson as guest vocalist, crossing over to the pop Top 40.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

      Inger McCabe Elliott, Who Famously Became Con Man’s Victim, Dies at 90

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      She was a successful designer. But she was probably best known for being duped in a scheme that inspired the play “Six Degrees of Separation.”Inger McCabe Elliott, a photographer and designer who, with her husband, was conned at her home in Manhattan by a slick-talking 19-year-old purporting to be Sidney Poitier’s son — an incident that helped inspire John Guare to write his celebrated play “Six Degrees of Separation” — died on Jan. 29 at her home in Manhattan. She was 90.Her son, Alec McCabe, confirmed the death.It was a bizarre New York tale.In early October 1983, Mrs. Elliott and her husband, Osborn Elliott, a former top editor of Newsweek who at the time was the dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, got a call from a young man who introduced himself as David Poitier.He said that he was a friend of Mrs. Elliott’s daughter Kari McCabe, and that muggers had stolen his money and a term paper he had written about the criminal justice system. He needed a place to stay, he said, until his father arrived in Manhattan the next day to direct scenes for the film version of the Broadway musical “Dreamgirls.” (Mr. Poitier had six daughters but no sons, and he had no involvement in “Dreamgirls.”)Charmed, the Elliotts invited the young man — his real name was David Hampton, they later learned — to spend the night at their East Side apartment and gave him $50 and some clothes. He asked Mrs. Elliott to wake him early the next morning so that he could go jogging.David Hampton, the man who had masqueraded as Sidney Poitier’s son, in 1990 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center after the opening of the John Guare play based on his impersonation. William E. Sauro/The New York TimesThe Elliotts were unable to reach Kari McCabe that night to confirm Mr. Hampton’s claim that they were friends. (She had no idea who he was, they later found out.)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

      Hinton Battle, Three-Time Tony Winner in Musicals, Dies at 67

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      He won awards for his roles in “Sophisticated Ladies,” “The Tap Dance Kid” and “Miss Saigon” — the most ever in the category of best featured actor in a musical.Hinton Battle, a dazzling dancer who won the first of his three Tony Awards in 1981 for his performance in the Duke Ellington musical revue “Sophisticated Ladies” after learning how to tap dance in the weeks leading up to opening night, died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 67.His death, at a hospital, was confirmed by Leah Bass-Baylis, a family spokeswoman, who danced with him on Broadway. She did not provide a cause.“Some people are born with the spirit of the dance,” said Debbie Allen, the dancer, choreographer and actress, who had known Mr. Battle since he was 16. “Hinton Battle was that kind of person.” She added: “He was just technically superior to anyone who came close to him. He had rhythm and style. You were looking at a supernova.”Mr. Battle auditioned for “Sophisticated Ladies” several years after he originated the role of the Scarecrow in “The Wiz,” the all-Black adaptation of “The Wizard of Oz,” when he was 18. Trained as a ballet dancer, he didn’t know how to tap and felt the pressure of being in a show with virtuoso tappers like Gregory Hines and Gregg Burge.Mr. Battle playing the Scarecrow with Stephanie Mills as Dorothy in the Broadway musical “The Wiz” around 1975. Hulton archive/Getty ImagesAt his audition, Mr. Battle said that he fudged a soft-shoe routine.“I panicked,” he told The New York Times in 1984. “It used to be you didn’t need to know how to tap. Tap was out for so long, and there wasn’t much of it to see.”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