Deaths (Obituaries)

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      in Music

      Phil Lesh, Bassist Who Anchored the Grateful Dead, Dies at 84

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      One of the first rock bassists whose instrument regularly took a lead role, he also had a hand in writing some of the band’s best-known songs.Phil Lesh, whose expansive approach to the bass as a charter member of the Grateful Dead made him one of the first performers on that instrument in a rock band to play a lead role rather than a supporting one, died on Friday. He was 84.His death was announced on his Instagram account. No further information was provided.In addition to providing explorative bass work, Mr. Lesh sang high harmonies for the band and provided the occasional lead vocal. He also co-wrote some of the band’s most noteworthy songs, including ones that inspired adventurous jams, like “St. Stephen” and “Dark Star,” as well as more conventional pieces, like “Cumberland Blues,” “Truckin’” and “Box of Rain.”Key to the dynamic of The Dead was the way Mr. Lesh used the bass to provide ever-shifting counterpoints to the dancing lines of the lead guitarist Jerry Garcia, the curt riffs of the rhythm guitarist Bob Weir, the bold rhythms of the drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, and, in the band’s first eight years, the warm organ work of Ron McKernan, known as Pigpen.A source of particular excitement was the relationship between Mr. Lesh’s instrument and Mr. Garcia’s. At times they mirrored each other. At other times they contrasted, in the process widening the music’s melodic nuances while helping to create the kind of variety and tension that allowed the band to improvise at length without losing the listener.Mr. Lesh’s bass work could be thundering or tender, focused or abstract. On the Grateful Dead’s studio albums, his lines held so much melody that one could listen to a song for his playing alone. At the same time, he shared his bandmates’ love for unusual chord structures and uncommon time signatures. In constructing his bass parts, he drew from many sources, including free jazz, classical music and the avant-garde.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

      Jack Jones, a Suave, Hit-Making and Enduring Crooner, Dies at 86

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      With his smooth voice, he drew crowds to cabarets and music halls for six decades. He also sang the themes for films and TV shows, including “The Love Boat.”Jack Jones, a crooner who beguiled concert fans and stage, screen and television audiences for decades with romantic ballads and gentle jazz tunes that even in large venues often achieved the intimacy of his celebrated nightclub performances, died on Wednesday in Rancho Mirage, Calif. He was 86. His wife, Eleonora Jones, said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was leukemia.While his popularity peaked in the 1960s, Mr. Jones found a new audience in later years singing the theme to the hit television show “The Love Boat.” But even then he seemed always to have stepped out of an earlier generation, one that dressed in tuxedos for the songs of Tin Pan Alley and reminded America of its love affairs with the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen.He won two Grammy Awards and recorded numerous albums of American Songbook favorites that hit the upper reaches of Billboard’s charts on the strength of his smooth vocal interpretations. He performed at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the White House and the London Palladium, and for more than 60 years drew crowds to cabarets and nightclubs around the world.At the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan in 2010, marking his 52nd year in show business, Mr. Jones opened and closed a two-hour retrospective of his songs with Paul Williams’s “That’s What Friends Are For.” He sang to a packed house of longtime fans:Friends are like warm clothesIn the night air.Best when they’re oldAnd we miss them the most when they’re gone.“Those lyrics evoked the vanishing breed of pop-jazz crooner, of which Mr. Jones and Tony Bennett remain the great survivors,” Stephen Holden wrote in The New York Times. “Mr. Jones, now 72, draws the same kind of well-dressed sophisticated audiences that used to attend the annual appearances at the defunct Michael’s Pub of his friend Mel Tormé, who died 11 years ago at 73.”Mr. Jones with his fellow vocalist Tony Bennett in 1972.Central Press/Hulton Archive/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 Movies

      Lynda Obst, Producer, Dies at 74; Championed Women in Hollywood

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      She helped make films like “Sleepless in Seattle” and “Contact.” She also wrote widely about the industry, for The Times and other publications.Lynda Obst, a New York journalist turned Hollywood producer who promoted women in films like “Sleepless in Seattle” and “Contact” while writing incisive dispatches from Tinseltown for outlets like The Atlantic and The New York Times, died on Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 74.Her brother Rick Rosen said the cause was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.Known for her booming, raspy laugh and her startling candor, Ms. Obst was a colorful character even by the standards of a colorful industry.Even more unusual for Hollywood, she was at times an outspoken critic of the movie industry, especially its treatment of women.As a producer, she excelled at both frothy romantic comedies and serious science fiction dramas. She helped shepherd Nora Ephron’s seminal “Sleepless in Seattle” as an executive producer in 1993 and the box-office hit “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” as a producer in 2003. But she also produced Robert Zemeckis’s “Contact” in 1997 and Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” in 2014.She was an advocate for stories focused on women, and often made by women, at a time when there weren’t many. She pushed, for example, for Jodie Foster to star as an astronomer in “Contact” when it was unusual for a major science fiction movie to have a female lead. An acolyte and admirer of Ms. Ephron, she produced her directorial debut, “This Is My Life” (1992).Ms. Obst excelled at both frothy romantic comedies and serious science fiction dramas. She was an executive producer of the hit Nora Ephron comedy “Sleepless in Seattle” (1993), which starred Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, seen here with Ross Malinger.TriStar PicturesWe 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

      Antonio Skármeta, Who Wrote of Chile’s Tears and Turmoil, Dies at 83

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      His literary career traced the arc of his country’s modern political journey in stories about ordinary citizens facing repression and arbitrary government.Antonio Skármeta, a Chilean novelist, screenplay writer, playwright and television presenter who captured his country’s affections with warmhearted tales of its suffering and redemption through dictatorship and democracy, died on Oct. 15 at his home in Santiago. He was 83.His death, after a long struggle with cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, was announced by President Gabriel Boric Font of Chile on his X account.Mr. Boric paid tribute to the leading role Mr. Skármeta played in his country’s cultural life. He praised Mr. Skármeta “for the life you lived,” adding: “For the stories, the novels and the theater. For the political commitment. For the book show that expanded the boundaries of literature.”Mr. Skármeta’s literary career traced the arc of Chile’s modern political journey in lightly ironic stories that depicted the strategies of ordinary citizens faced with repression and arbitrary government.He lived that journey himself — as an activist supporting the leftist government of Salvador Allende in 1970; as a political exile in Argentina and in Germany after the 1973 coup d’état that inaugurated Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s brutal 15-year military dictatorship; as host of a popular television program about literature (the “book show” Mr. Boric mentioned) in the 1990s, after democracy returned to Chile; and as his country’s ambassador in Berlin from 2000 to 2003.His best-known work, the 1985 novel “Ardiente Pacienca” (“Burning Patience”) — the story of a postal worker who befriends Chile’s national poet Pablo Neruda and used the friendship to woo a young local woman — illustrated a method Skármeta typically used: weaving real-life figures and disasters with fictional characters who must cope with them, often with bumbling but very human ineptitude.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

      Ron Ely, Who Played an Updated Tarzan in the 1960s, Dies at 86

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      He later built a career as a reliable TV guest star. His life turned tragic in 2019 when his son killed Mr. Ely’s wife and was then shot to death by the police.Ron Ely, a veteran television actor best known for his role as an educated, urbane vine-swinger on the 1960s show “Tarzan,” died on Sept. 29 at the home of one of his daughters near Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 86.That daughter, Kirsten Ely, announced the death on Wednesday on social media. It had not been previously reported.A tall, muscled Texas native, Mr. Ely (pronounced “EE-lee”) had made his name by the early 1960s as a reliable supporting actor on popular TV shows like the sitcoms “Father Knows Best,” “How to Marry a Millionaire” and “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis” before landing the lead role on “Tarzan” in 1966.The show, which ran on NBC for 57 episodes across two seasons, featured a Tarzan updated for a modern audience. Gone were the semi-verbal grunts of previous iterations; in this version, Tarzan had left the jungle and learned the ways of modern civilization before deciding to return to the creature comforts of his former home.Gone, too, was Jane, Tarzan’s traditional love interest, though Cheetah, his chimpanzee sidekick, remained.Mr. Ely performed almost all his own stunts, which left him with two broken shoulders, a torn back muscle and two lion bites.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

      Paul Di’Anno, Early Iron Maiden Frontman, Dies at 66

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      The English singer played with the band in its early years. He later worked with other bands and pursued a solo career.Paul Di’Anno, an English singer who was an early frontman for the popular heavy metal band Iron Maiden in the 1970s and ’80s, has died at his home in Salisbury, England. He was 66.Conquest Music, a label that represented Mr. Di’Anno, announced his death in a statement on social media on Monday. No additional details were given.Mr. Di’Anno, whose legal name was Paul Andrews, gained popularity on the heavy metal scene in the late 1970s after he joined Iron Maiden as the band’s lead singer. He performed with the band from 1978 through 1981.While Mr. Di’Anno was with Iron Maiden, the band released two albums — the eponymous “Iron Maiden” in 1980 and “Killers,” which came out in February 1981.From left, Clive Burr, Dave Murray, Steve Harris, Dennis Stratton and Paul Di’Anno in a park in the United Kingdom in 1980.Virginia Turbett/Redferns, via Getty ImagesAfter leaving Iron Maiden, Mr. Di’Anno performed with other bands such as Battlezone and Killers and also played solo. He released his first career retrospective album, “The Book of the Beast,” in September.Mr. Di’Anno said in a recent interview with Metal Hammer magazine that he didn’t blame the band for replacing him with Bruce Dickinson, who would go on to lead Iron Maiden during its most successful years.“In the end I couldn’t give 100 percent to Maiden anymore and it wasn’t fair to the band, the fans or to myself,” he said.In his autobiography, “The Beast,” which was published in 2010, Mr. Di’Anno wrote that he also thought his band members had grown worried about his partying habits, a topic he wrote openly about.“That was just the way I was,” he wrote. “I’d let off a bit of steam, have a few drinks and generally act as if I was taking part in a 24-hour party, which I honestly felt I was.”Mr. Di’Anno suffered from health issues in the past few years, but he continued to perform shows in a wheelchair. He played more than 100 shows since 2023, according to his label.Paul Andrews was born in Chingford, East London, on May 17, 1958. In “The Beast,” he wrote that he had an interest in music since he was young. He remembered skipping school once to see the band AC/DC, which he described as “just on the verge of becoming really big then.”A list of survivors was not immediately available.The first time he saw Iron Maiden play was at a venue in East London. The band’s performance, he wrote in his book, was unremarkable.“It was a very early incarnation of the band, but Christ almighty, they bloody stank to high heaven,” he wrote.Mr. Di’Anno later met the band, and soon they began writing songs together and rehearsing. After that, as he wrote in his book, he “really began to think the band had the potential to be something a bit special.” More

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      in Music

      Libby Titus, Introspective Singer and Songwriter, Dies at 77

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      Her “Love Has No Pride” was widely recorded, and she had high-profile relationships with Levon Helm and Donald Fagen. But she was uneasy with life in the spotlight.Libby Titus, a singer-songwriter known for her wistful ballad “Love Has No Pride,” covered by Linda Ronstadt and Bonnie Raitt, and for her collaborations with the likes of Burt Bacharach, Dr. John and her husband, Donald Fagen of Steely Dan, died on Oct. 13. She was 77.Mr. Fagen announced her death on the Steely Dan website, but he did not cite a cause or say where she died.A highly regarded songwriter and backup vocalist in the 1970s, Ms. Titus never scaled the commercial heights as a solo artist. Still, she garnered critical praise for her first and only major-label album, called simply “Libby Titus” and released by Columbia Records in 1977, on which she was backed by an all-star cast of friends, including Paul Simon, Robbie Robertson of the Band, James Taylor and Carly Simon. Ms. Simon wrote or co-wrote four of the tracks.A showcase for Ms. Titus’s jazz leanings and her taste for torch songs, the album “immediately distinguishes her from the Hollywood cowgirls of the Ronstadt regiment,” the influential rock critic Dave Marsh wrote in a review for Rolling Stone. She is “a sophisticated pop singer,” he added, “closer to Bette Midler than anyone else.”The album included her version of “Love Has No Pride,” a heart-rending song about lost love and longing, written with her childhood friend Eric Kaz. Stephen Holden, reviewing a performance by Ms Titus for The New York Times in 1983, called it “one of the finest ballads of the rock era.”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

      Toni Vaz, Stuntwoman and Founder of N.A.A.C.P. Image Awards, Dies at 101

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      She created a program to honor Black artistic success in the 1960s. But she spent decades trying to get its organizers to recognize her role.Toni Vaz, who cut a path as one of the first Black stuntwomen in Hollywood, with appearances in more than 50 movies, and then created the N.A.A.C.P. Image Awards to recognize the often unsung work of Black writers and performers, died on Oct. 4 in Los Angeles. She was 101.Cheryl Abbott, her great-niece, said her death, at a retirement home for actors in the Woodland Hills neighborhood, was caused by congestive heart failure.The notion of a Black stunt performer did not really exist when Ms. Vaz began her career in the 1950s — she and others were officially cast as extras, received no training, and often did not know what dangers they might face on a set until the cameras began to roll.During the filming of “Porgy and Bess” (1959), Ms. Vaz was instructed to lean out a window to catch a glimpse of two of the film’s stars, Sammy Davis Jr. and Sidney Poitier. Unbeknown to her, a carpenter had purposely weakened the railing; it broke as soon as she leaned on it, sending her falling several feet onto a mattress.Shaken, she was handed a shot of brandy to recover.Throughout her career, Ms. Vaz played a critical part in support of Black actresses like Eartha Kitt, Cicely Tyson and Juanita Moore as they began to break out of the racially stereotyped roles that had long been their only options in Hollywood.But she and other Black stunt performers were typically paid less than their white counterparts for the same work. Standing in for Ms. Moore in a scene for “The Singing Nun” (1966), she and a white stuntwoman were directed to crash a jeep; Ms. Vaz got $40, she told the interviewer Amie Jo Greer in 2010, while the white performer got $350.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