Deaths (Obituaries)

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      Cobi Narita, Tireless Jazz Promoter and Benefactor, Dies at 97

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      She produced concerts, helped musicians find work and started a women’s jazz festival. “Jazz in New York would not have been the same without Cobi,” one musician said.Cobi Narita, an indefatigable jazz impresario who for more than 40 years in New York City produced concerts, celebrated female artists in an annual festival and ran performance spaces, died on Nov. 8 in Los Angeles. She was 97.Her death, at the home of a granddaughter, was confirmed by her son Robert Narita.Ms. Narita — who grew up in California, spent most of World War II with her family in an Arizona internment camp for Japanese Americans, and moved to New York in her early 40s — was a unifying force in local jazz circles.“Jazz in New York would not have been the same without Cobi,” the saxophonist Jimmy Heath told the website All About Jazz in 2006.Loren Schoenberg, the founding director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, called Ms. Narita a respected benefactor who provided much-needed opportunities for performers in New York — a role that was later more formally adopted, at least in part, by Jazz at Lincoln Center.“She started at a time when there was no organized world of jazz institutions to give financial aid to musicians,” Mr. Schoenberg said by phone. “Everybody was out in the ocean doing their own little projects. But Cobi had all these things going, and she handed out money to support people.”He added, “Her affect was low-key, but she had charisma and a gravitational field around her.”In 1976, Ms. Narita started the nonprofit Universal Jazz Coalition, an umbrella organization that for about 10 years helped musicians manage their careers, promoted and produced concerts, and distributed a newsletter about local jazz events.Seven years later, she opened the Jazz Center of New York in a rented loft in Lower Manhattan, on Lafayette Street, where famous musicians like Dizzy Gillespie as well as up-and-comers performed. In 2002, she opened Cobi’s Place, on West 48th Street near Seventh Avenue, as a venue for singers, instrumentalists and dancers.Cobi’s Place stayed in business for about a decade. The Jazz Center of New York closed recently but she had retired during the pandemic.Over the years, Ms. Narita produced concerts and performances by, among others, the singers Abbey Lincoln and Dakota Staton, the saxophonist Henry Threadgill and the trumpeter Clark Terry.“Without producers like Cobi,” Ms. Lincoln told The Daily News of New York in 1993, “musicians like me would have a hard time having careers.”In 1978, Ms. Narita organized the four-day Salute to Women in Jazz, which was renamed the New York Women’s Jazz Festival the next year and ran for more than 10 years. The event was held at the disco Casablanca 2, on the original site of the jazz club Birdland, on Broadway between 52nd and 53rd Streets. The event made news when Robert Tirado, the disco’s owner, abruptly increased the rent after two successful nights. Ms. Narita could not meet his demand, and he locked the festival out.Ms. Narita quickly regrouped. The musicians played outdoors near the club for the third and fourth nights, using electricity from a nearby parking lot, instruments and a public address system from the Sam Ash Musical Instruments store a few blocks away, and chairs from the Roseland Ballroom. The pianist Mary Lou Williams and the singer Helen Merrill were among those who performed.“A thousand people had to have lined up on the street,” Ms. Narita told All About Jazz. “It was amazing.”George Wein, the producer of the Newport Jazz Festival, happened to be walking by and was stunned when he came upon the unscheduled street concert. He paid for Ms. Narita to use Carnegie Recital Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) for a bonus fifth night.Ms. Narita’s financial backer in most of her ventures was Paul Ash, whose family owns the Sam Ash chain of musical instrument stores; Cobi’s Place was located above Manny’s Music, which was owned by Sam Ash. Ms. Narita and Mr. Ash met in 1973 and married in 1989. He died in 2014.“They were like magnets, man, from the start,” her son Robert said. “Soul mates.”Nobuko Emoto was born on March 3, 1926, in San Pedro, Calif. Her father, Kazumasa Emoto, was a farmer who brought fresh vegetables to Los Angeles markets. Her mother, Kimiko (Hamamoto) Emoto, was a homemaker.Nobuko, her parents, her two sisters and her two brothers were among the estimated 120,000 Japanese Americans forcibly relocated during World War II to internment camps, mostly in Western states. Mr. Emoto lost his trucks, his equipment and his land.During her incarceration at the Gila River Relocation Center in Arizona, Nobuko wrote a newsletter about goings-on at the camp.She and her family were released in 1945, and she finished high school. She soon married Masao Narita, with whom she would have seven children. She entered Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania in 1948 and studied theater there, but left after one year.After Ms. Narita and her husband divorced in the mid-1950s, she worked in various jobs in the Long Beach, Calif., area. Looking for a better career opportunity, she left for New York City in 1969, taking a job with the International Council of Shopping Centers.Soon after her move, she was walking in Central Park when she heard jazz being played. One of the musicians, the bassist Gene Taylor, urged her to volunteer for the renowned jazz ministry at St. Peter’s Church, on Lexington Avenue near East 54th Street. (In later years the church would be the site of her annual birthday party, which featured live jazz.)In 1972, Ms. Narita was hired as the executive director of Collective Black Artists, a repertory orchestra and support group for needy musicians. But after two and a half years, after raising more than $100,000 for the organization’s projects, she was fired — because, she said, she was not Black.“They really thought a male Black person should be in that job; it just looked better than an Asian woman,” she was quoted as saying in a profile of her on the Library of Congress website.She recovered from that setback by studying corporate organization on a fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That program built her skills in time to start the Universal Jazz Coalition.In addition to her son Robert, Ms. Narita is survived by her daughters, Susan Narita-Law and Judith, Charlene, Jude, Lisa and Patricia Narita; another son, Richard; 13 grandchildren; six great-grandchildren; and a sister, Therese Nakagawa.Ms. Narita said that one of her lasting goals was to help lesser-known women and budding young artists build jazz careers.“There were a thousand struggling musicians who never got concerts or promotional help so they could build their own names,” she told The Daily News in 1982. “All these young people who seem to have come to a stopping point after going to school: Where do they play?” More

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      in Television

      Robert H. Precht, Producer of ‘The Ed Sullivan Show,’ Dies at 93

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      Among the highlights of his long tenure were supervising the Beatles’ appearances and telling the comedian Jackie Mason he was fired.Robert H. Precht, who for more than a decade produced “The Ed Sullivan Show,” the Sunday night variety extravaganza that for 23 years brought singers, comedians, rock bands, jugglers, animal acts and the Italian mouse puppet Topo Gigio into the living rooms of millions of viewers, died on Nov. 26 at his home in Missoula, Mont. He was 93.His death was confirmed by his daughter Margo Precht Speciale, the producer of a forthcoming documentary about Mr. Sullivan.Mr. Precht joined the Sullivan show as its associate producer in 1958, 10 years after the program made its debut as “The Toast of the Town.” He became producer two years later, replacing Marlo Lewis, and was eventually named executive producer.Mr. Precht arrived too late for Elvis Presley’s electrifying appearances in 1956 and 1957. But he was in charge when the Beatles performed on the show in 1964, first in New York and then in Florida. And when the Beatles performed at Shea Stadium in Queens in August 1965, Mr. Precht filmed the concert for a documentary for Mr. Sullivan’s production company.“This is probably the most fantastic television operation I’ve gotten into,” he told The Daily News of New York a day before the concert. “We’ll have 11 cameras in the ballpark, but there’ll be no chance for rehearsal or for checking our sound system. And with 55,000 people liable to do anything, we don’t know what will happen.”Mr. Precht and Ed Sullivan at Shea Stadium in Queens in August 1965, when the Beatles performed there for 55,000 fans. Mr. Precht filmed the concert for a documentary for Mr. Sullivan’s production company.George E. Joseph/MPTV imagesThe Beatles were the most important act on the Sullivan show during Mr. Precht’s tenure. But as the producer, he knew that he could not rely on the rare megastar to fill an hour every week, and that he had to cast widely for talent, famous and obscure, to keep the masses watching.“It would be easy to book the show without ever leaving the office,” he wrote in an article for The Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester, N.Y., in 1961. But, he said, members of his staff saw every Broadway show and went to nightclubs, concerts and films in search of acts to book.“Because there’s no type of act we won’t use,” Mr. Precht added, “there’s no place we won’t scout for talent.”In 1964, Mr. Sullivan accused the comedian Jackie Mason of making an obscene gesture on camera during his monologue. Mr. Mason said he was reacting to Mr. Sullivan, who was standing out of camera range holding up two fingers and then one to indicate how many minutes were left for his routine. Upset, Mr. Mason held up his own fingers and told the audience, “Here’s a finger for you, and a finger for you, and a finger for you.”Mr. Sulivan was convinced that one of those gestures was obscene. He canceled Mr. Mason’s six-show, $45,000 contract and refused to pay him for the performance. Mr. Precht confronted Mr. Mason as he left the stage to tell him that he was fired.Mr. Mason sued Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Precht for $3 million in damages in New York State Supreme Court; an appellate judge ruled that Mr. Mason’s gestures had not been obscene. In 1966, Mr. Mason returned as a guest.Mr. Precht recognized that “The Ed Sullivan Show” stood out among all the other variety shows on television.“I don’t know if another variety show will ever have the appeal and impact of the Sullivan show,” he told The Missoulian, a newspaper in Missoula, in 1990, almost two decades after the show had left the air. “It’s hard for me to think of someone dying to get home on a Sunday night to watch a variety show.”Robert Henry Precht Jr. was born on May 12, 1930, in Douglas, Ariz., and moved with his parents to San Diego when he was about 12. His father was an ironworker. His mother, Agnes (Branagh) Precht, was a homemaker and a Red Cross volunteer.Mr. Precht made news in 1949 when, as a sophomore at the University of California, Los Angeles, he was voted a “great lover” by his fellow students, which earned him the right to escort Elizabeth Taylor to the school’s junior prom. It was part of the promotion for the Bob Hope film “The Great Lover.”When he was a sophomore at the University of California, Los Angeles, Mr. Precht won a contest whose prize was the chance to escort Elizabeth Taylor to the junior prom.Harold P. Matosian/Associated PressAfter transferring to the University of California, Berkeley, Mr. Precht received a bachelor’s degree in international relations in 1952. That same year, he married Elizabeth Sullivan, known as Betty. She died in 2014.He spent four years in the Navy after graduating and then began working in television — first as an assistant producer of the children’s show “Winky Dink and You” and then as an associate producer of “The Verdict Is Yours,” which presented dramatized versions of real trials.In 1959, shortly after he began working for his father-in-law, Mr. Precht produced “Ed Sullivan’s Invitation to Moscow,” a special that brought the Sunday night vaudeville formula to the Soviet Union. That program, which coincided with the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s visit to the United States, won a Peabody Award.Andrew Solt, whose company, Sofa Entertainment, acquired the Sullivan archive, containing more than 1,000 hours of programming, from the family in 1990, said that Mr. Precht had modernized the show.“He brought the perspective of a new generation; he focused on the music, and the bookings were top notch,” Mr. Solt said in a phone interview. “One of the reasons it was so easy to watch was that they never had the same set twice. He made it state of the art.”A Sullivan family portrait from 1954. From left: Sylvia and Ed Sullivan and Betty and Robert Precht, with their son Robert.CBS, via Getty Images“The Ed Sullivan Show” was canceled in 1971. Mr. Precht spent the next 20 years largely producing music and awards shows, including the 50th- and 60th-anniversary celebrations of the Grand Ole Opry and the annual Country Music Association Awards.He had begun buying cable television systems with Mr. Sullivan in 1967. After Mr. Sullivan’s death in 1974, he also began to acquire TV stations.In addition to his daughter Ms. Speciale, Mr. Precht is survived by another daughter, Carla Precht; two sons, Robert and Vincent; and six grandchildren. His son Andrew died in 1995.The success of the Beatles and other rock groups on the Sullivan show created a problem for Mr. Precht, The New York Times reported in late 1964: too many screaming teenagers in the audience, who created “an hourlong din that distracts other performers and mars the audio portion of the show.”In one instance, the comedian Alan King appeared to be annoyed during his routine by the screeching that carried over from a performance by the Dave Clark Five.Mr. Precht told The Times that the “whole show is being colored by the kids’ reaction,” and that he was trying to find out how so many teenagers got tickets to the theater. One measure to change the audio mix, he said, was to “turn down the microphones that pick up audience reaction in order to reduce the din going out on the air.” More

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      Myles Goodwyn, Singer-Songwriter of April Wine, Dies at 75

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      Mr. Goodwyn sang and played guitar for April Wine, an arena rock band in the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.Myles Goodwyn, a singer, songwriter and guitarist for the Canadian classic rock group April Wine, died in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Sunday. He was 75.His death was announced on social media by Eric Alper, his publicist, who did not provide a cause.Mr. Goodwyn was “suffering from a lot of health issues,” said Mr. Alder, who did not provide further details. Mr. Goodwyn had been public about his struggle with diabetes. In 2008, he was hospitalized after he collapsed en route to a Quebec airport on his way to play a sold-out show.Mr. Goodwyn announced in December 2022 that he was retiring from touring with April Wine. He performed his last show in Truro, Nova Scotia, in March.April Wine, arena rockers known for their power ballads, sold over 10 million records worldwide and in 2010 were inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. In September, the band was given a spot on the Canadian Walk of Fame, and Mr. Goodwyn was named to the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame.April Wine formed in late 1969 in Waverley, Nova Scotia, with Mr. Goodwyn, the brothers David Henman on guitar and Ritchie Henman on drums, and Jimmy Henman, their cousin, on bass. Not long after forming they moved to Montreal.“Fast Train” was the band’s first hit, from its self-titled debut album in 1971. Success in the United States took longer: In 1978, it scored its first American Top 40 hit, “Roller.” In 1981, the album “The Nature of the Beast” went platinum and gave the band its biggest U.S. hit, “Just Between You and Me.”The band attracted attention in 1977 when it was performing at the El Mocambo Club in Toronto. Before the show, April Wine was asked to pose as the headliner for a charity event with a group called the Cockroaches as the opening act, but the Cockroaches turned out to be the Rolling Stones.In 2016, Mr. Goodwyn released a memoir, “Just Between You and Me,” which became a best seller in Canada. “Elvis and Tiger,” his novel, was published in 2018.Mr. Goodwyn was born in Woodstock, New Brunswick, on June 23, 1948. He is survived by his wife, Kim Goodwyn, and their two children, as well as another child from a previous marriage. More

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      Geordie Walker, Guitarist for Killing Joke, Dies at 64

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      He helped define the look as well as the sound of the enduring British post-punk band, which influenced Nirvana, Metallica and others.Geordie Walker, the founding guitarist of the British post-punk band Killing Joke, whose haunting, muscular riffs proved an inspiration to platinum-selling bands including Nirvana and Metallica, died on Sunday in Prague. He was 64.The cause was a stroke, according to a statement the band posted on social media.With his icy good looks, rockabilly-esque pompadour and vintage gold-top Gibson guitar, Mr. Walker helped define the look as well as the sound of Killing Joke during its peak in the 1980s and ’90s.“No man was cooler than Geordie, one of the very best and most influential guitarists ever,” Youth, the band’s original bassist, wrote in a recent Instagram post. “He was like Lee Van Cleef meets Terry-Thomas via Noël Coward.”Mr. Walker’s driving, multilayered fretwork helped propel the dark though often danceable sound of a band that helped pioneer industrial music by blending heavy metal intensity, new wave hooks and a punk taste for provocation. The cover of the band’s 1992 compilation album, “Laugh? I Nearly Bought One!,” for example featured a clergyman exchanging salutes with Nazi brownshirts.Despite its uncompromising approach, the band released five singles that reached the Top 40 in Britain — “Love Like Blood” was their highest charting, reaching No. 16 in 1985 — as well as six Top 40 albums.Killing Joke never found comparable commercial success in the United States, although its 1984 single “Eighties” got plenty of play on alternative rock stations in that era. But the band — and Mr. Walker’s searing guitar work — earned the respect of many artists, including, according to Rolling Stone, Trent Reznor, My Bloody Valentine, Faith No More and LCD Soundsystem.Metallica put its own spin on Mr. Walker’s ferocious guitar work on its 1987 cover of Killing Joke’s 1980 song “The Wait.” More famously, or infamously, Nirvana — big fans of Killing Joke — relied on an ominous riff so eerily similar to Mr. Walker’s on “Eighties” for its landmark song “Come as You Are” that Killing Joke considered legal action.While the tension between the bands eventually subsided — Dave Grohl, the Foo Fighters frontman who had been Nirvana’s drummer, played drums on the band’s 2003 album, called simply “Killing Joke” — Mr. Walker was noticeably tart on the subject when interviewed by Guitarist magazine in 1994. “Kurt Cobain is a bloody good songwriter,” he said, “but a complete plagiarist.”“We are very pissed off about that, but it’s obvious to everyone,” Mr. Walker said. “It’s obvious to everyone. We had two separate musicologists’ reports saying it was; our publisher sent their publisher a letter saying it was, and they went, ‘Boo, never heard of ya!’ But the hysterical thing about Nirvana saying they had never heard of us was that they had already sent us a Christmas card!”Mr. Walker performing with Killing Joke in 2015. Despite shifting lineups and multiple hiatuses, the band, formed in 1979, continued to record for nearly four decades.Lorne Thomson/Redferns, via Getty ImagesKevin Walker was born on Dec. 18, 1958, in County Durham, in the northeast of England, the only child of Ronald Walker, a woodworker, and Mary (Glen) Walker, a bookkeeper. He spent his early years in Chester-le-Street, a town near Newcastle, and acquired his nickname — a term referring to the people and accent of the Newcastle area — while attending Sir Herbert Leon Academy in Bletchley after the family moved to southeast England.Mr. Walker was an avid guitarist as a youth, but he had never played in a band until he moved to London in 1979 after graduation to study architecture. He answered an advertisement in Melody Maker, the influential British magazine, posted by the singer Jaz Coleman, who was looking to start a band with the drummer Paul Ferguson.“It looked rather serious, fanatical,” Mr. Walker said in a 1984 interview. “It clicked with me.” Killing Joke released its first EP, “Almost Red,” in December 1979.Despite shifting lineups and multiple hiatuses, Killing Joke continued to record for nearly four decades. During those breaks from the band in the 1990s, Mr. Walker formed the band Murder Inc. with Chris Connelly, the lead singer of Revolting Cocks, along with other members of Killing Joke but without Mr. Coleman, and the Damage Manual, featuring Mr. Connelly along with Martin Atkins and Jah Wobble from Public Image Ltd.At a party after a Killing Joke concert at Saint Andrew’s Hall in Detroit in 1989, Mr. Walker met Ginny Kiraly, a college student and model. The two married six months later. After the birth of their son, Atticus, in 1992, the family settled in suburban Detroit, where they stayed until the mid-2000s, when Mr. Walker returned to England to care for his ailing father and the couple split. They divorced in 2012.Mr. Walker is survived by his mother; his son; his partner, Alexandra Kocourkova; and their daughter, Isabella.Despite its British chart success, Killing Joke never reached the commercial pinnacle. But as Mr. Walker once put it in an interview with the music writer Andrew Perry, he was not sorry to have missed the perils of rock stardom.“If it had all gone according to plan,” he said, “we’d have all been dead by 1986.” More

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      in Movies

      John Nichols, Author of ‘The Milagro Beanfield War,’ Dies at 83

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      After decamping from New York to New Mexico, he wrote what was, for a time, among the most widely read novels about Latinos.John Nichols, a New York City transplant to New Mexico whose exuberant novels, notably “The Milagro Beanfield War,” transformed him from an urban gringo into a local idol, died on Monday at his home in Taos. He was 83.The cause was heart failure, said his daughter, Tania Harris.Imbued with a heady pedigree and a peripatetic upbringing, Mr. Nichols evolved instinctively from a cosmopolitan New Yorker and world traveler to a Western writer of the purple sage.He was best known for “The Milagro Beanfield War” (1974), a 445-page political allegory that tells the story of farmers in the fictional town of Milagro Valley who are denied the right to irrigate their farms because water is being diverted to a huge development.“The Milagro Beanfield War” became a crowd pleaser on college campuses, was venerated in his adopted state, and for a while was considered among the most widely read novels about Latinos. In 1988 it was adapted into a film, directed by Robert Redford and starring Rubén Blades, Christopher Walken and Melanie Griffith.“A lot of his work might be characterized as a long slow-motion valentine to the mountains, mesas, high desert, sky and especially people of New Mexico,” said Stephen Hull, director of University of New Mexico Press, which published Mr. Nichols’s memoir “I Got Mine: Confessions of a Midlist Writer” last year.“He was a comic writer who used tropes of absurdism and excess to depict essential injustices,” Mr. Hull said in an email. “He was deeply affected by a period of time he spent in Guatemala in ‘64-’65, and by the poverty, authenticity, even nobility of his neighbors in northern New Mexico.”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?  More

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      in Music

      Shane MacGowan, Pogues Songwriter Who Fused Punk and Irish Rebellion, Dies at 65

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      As frontman for the Pogues, he delivered lyrics romanticizing whiskey-soaked ramblers and hard-luck stories of emigration, while providing a musical touchstone for members of the Irish diaspora worldwide.Shane MacGowan, the brilliant but chaotic former songwriter and frontman for the Pogues, who reinvigorated interest in Irish music in the 1980s by harnessing it to the propulsive power of punk rock has died. He was 65.Mr. MacGowan’s wife, Victoria Mary Clarke, announced his death on Instagram. She did not provide additional details.Mr. MacGowan emerged from London’s punk scene of the late 1970s and spent nine tumultuous years with the initial incarnation of the Pogues. Rising from North London pubs, the band was performing in stadiums by the late 1980s, before Mr. MacGowan’s addictions and mental and physical deterioration forced the band to fire him. He later founded Shane MacGowan & the Popes, with whom he recorded and toured in the 1990s.Along the way, Mr. MacGowan earned twin reputations as a titanically destructive personality and a master songsmith whose lyrics painted vivid portraits of the underbelly of Irish emigrant life. His best-known are the opening lines of his biggest hit, an alcoholics’ lament-turned-unlikely Christmas classic titled “Fairytale of New York.”It was Christmas Eve babeIn the drunk tankAn old man said to me, won’t see another one“I was good at writing,” Mr. MacGowan told Richard Balls, who wrote his authorized biography “A Furious Devotion,” which was published in 2021. “I can write, I can spell, I can make it flow and when I mixed it with music, it was perfect.”A full obituary will be published shortly. More

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      Scott Kempner, Del Lords Guitarist and Punk Rock Pioneer, Dies at 69

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      The Bronx-born musician played guitar for and co-founded the Dictators, an early punk band. He later founded the Del Lords.Scott Kempner, a guitarist and songwriter and a co-founder of the Dictators, one of the first punk rock bands, died on Wednesday. He was 69.His death, at a nursing home in Connecticut, was confirmed by Rich Nesin, who managed his solo career. Mr. Kempner died from complications related to early onset dementia, Mr. Nesin said.Born and raised in the Bronx, Mr. Kempner started his music career not long after he had graduated from the Bronx High School of Science. He was born Feb. 6, 1954, to Manny and Lynn Kempner.In 1972, while visiting a friend who was in college in New Paltz, N.Y., Mr. Kempner started playing music with Andy Shernoff and Ross Friedman, who was known as the Boss, and together they created the Dictators.That was when he earned the nickname, Top Ten. The band’s first album, “The Dictators Go Girl Crazy,” was released in 1975, a year before the Ramones made their debut. The All Music Guide called the band “one of the finest and most influential proto-punk bands to walk the earth” but said that on its debut album, the group’s satire and “ahead-of-their-time enthusiasm for wrestling, White Castle hamburgers, and television confused more kids than it converted.”The band was dropped by its label, Epic, after its first album. It recorded two more albums, on the Elektra label, that failed to find a big audience, and the band split up, though the members occasionally reunited over the ensuing years.After the breakup, Mr. Kempner founded the roots rock band the Del Lords and took the lead as chief singer and songwriter. “In the Dictators, he was a team player, the heart of the band,” Eric Ambel, a member of the Del Lords, said of his former bandmate.Frank Funaro, the drummer for the Del Lords, said Mr. Kempner had been someone he looked up to.“Scott Kempner was like the older brother that I never had,” Mr. Funaro said in an interview. “The older, cool brother, that turns you on to an encyclopedia worth of rock ’n’ roll, country music, soul music.”The Del Lords released seven albums, including “Elvis Club” in 2013, which featured the doo-wop star Dion DiMucci one on track. Mr. Kempner also played and toured as a side man in several bands, including Little Kings, with Mr. DiMucci, and the Paradise Brothers.Starting in 1992, Mr. Kempner also released three solo albums: “Tenement Angels,” “Saving Grace” and “Live on Blueberry Hill.”The Dictators re-formed in 2019 with Mr. Kempner on board, until he was diagnosed with dementia and had to leave the band in 2021.Mr. Kempner is survived by his wife, Sharon Ludtke, and by his sister, Robin Kempner, and her wife, Mary Noa-Kempner. More

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      in Theater

      Frances Sternhagen, ‘Sex and the City’ Actress and Tony Winner, Dies at 93

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      Her Tony-winning Broadway career included “Driving Miss Daisy,” “On Golden Pond” and “The Heiress.” On TV she had maternal roles in “Cheers” and “Sex and the City.”Frances Sternhagen, the Tony Award-winning actress who played leading roles in stage productions of “Driving Miss Daisy” and “On Golden Pond” as formidable older women when she was so young that she had to wear aging makeup, died on Monday at her home in New Rochelle, N.Y. She was 93.Her son Tony Carlin confirmed the death.Ms. Sternhagen won Tonys as featured actress in a play for her performances in two very different productions. In a 1995 Broadway revival of “The Heiress,” based on Henry James’s novel “Washington Square,” she was Cherry Jones’s well-meaning, matchmaking Aunt Lavinia. In “The Good Doctor,” Neil Simon’s 1973 take on Chekhov, she played multiple roles in comedy sketches.Ms. Sternhagen came into her own in mature Off Broadway roles: as the strong-willed 70-something-and-up Southern widow in Alfred Uhry’s “Driving Miss Daisy” in 1988, when she was still in her 50s, and the concerned retirement-age wife in Ernest Thompson’s “On Golden Pond” in 1979, when she was 49.She received Tony nominations for her roles in the original productions of “On Golden Pond,” “Equus” and the musical “Angel” and in revivals of “Morning’s at Seven” and “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window.”People who never saw a Broadway show or even went to the movies may have known Ms. Sternhagen’s face from television. Beginning in the 1980s, when she played the controlling working-class mother of the oddball postal carrier Cliff Clavin on “Cheers,” she sailed through a period of playing maternal figures in memorable recurring roles in a number of hit series.Ms. Sternhagen in a 1990 episode of the sitcom “Cheers.” She played the controlling working-class mother of the oddball postal carrier Cliff Clavin (John Ratzenberger, right).Kim Gottlieb-Walker/NBC Universal, via Getty ImagesOn “ER,” she was Dr. John Carter’s aristocratic Chicago grandmother. On “Sex and the City,” she was Trey MacDougal’s rich but peculiar mom. Most recently she played the mother of Kyra Sedgwick’s Southern character on the police procedural “The Closer.” She received three Emmy Award nominations, two for “Cheers” and one for “Sex and the City.”Ms. Sternhagen was known to turn down movie roles because they would take her away from her family for too long, but over the years she did appear in some two dozen films. She was Burt Reynolds’s intensely caring sister-in-law in “Starting Over” (1979), a perfectionist magazine researcher in “Bright Lights, Big City” (1988), and the cookbook author Irma Rombauer in “Julie & Julia” (2009). Her other films included “The Hospital” (1971), “Independence Day” (1983) and “Misery” (1990).But stage was her first home, and her career flourished in Off Broadway productions. She made her New York stage debut at 25 in Jean Anouilh’s “Thieves’ Carnival” at the Cherry Lane Theater, and she won her first Obie Award the next year, for George Bernard Shaw’s “The Admirable Bashville” (1956). She won again in 1965 for two performances (“The Room” and “A Slight Ache”) and received a lifetime achievement Obie in 2013.Ms. Sternhagen, right, and Cherry Jones in the 1995 Broadway revival of “The Heiress.” In a Tony-winning performance, Ms. Sternhagen played the well-meaning, matchmaking Aunt Lavinia.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHer reviews were positive from the beginning. “When an intellectual comedy is about to be staged, it is always a wise notion to send for Frances Sternhagen,” Brooks Atkinson wrote in The New York Times in 1959, reviewing “The Saintliness of Margery Kempe,” an Off Broadway comedy. “She is the mistress of sardonic fooling.”Frances Hussey Sternhagen was born on Jan. 13, 1930, in Washington, D.C. She was the only child of John Meier Sternhagen, a United States tax court judge, and Gertrude (Hussey) Sternhagen, a World War I nurse who became a homemaker.Frances attended the Potomac School and the Madeira School, both in Virginia. At Vassar College, she originally studied history but was persuaded by an adviser to give drama a try.Ms. Sternhagen in 1999 at her home in New Rochelle. “It’s through working on characters in plays that I’ve learned about myself, about how people operate,” she said in 2001.Chris Maynard for The New York TimesAfter graduation in 1951, Ms. Sternhagen taught briefly at the Milton Academy in Milton, Mass. When she auditioned at the Brattle Street Theater in nearby Cambridge, she was rejected. “They said I read every part as if I was leading a troop of Girl Scouts out onto a hockey field,” she told The Toronto Star decades later.Returning to Washington, she took theater courses at the Catholic University of America and began appearing in Arena Stage productions.At the same time she began working in New York theater, Ms. Sternhagen also ventured into television work; she made her small-screen debut in 1955 in Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth,” alongside Helen Hayes, on the series “Producers’ Showcase.” But she didn’t make her feature film debut until a decade later, with a supporting role as a high school librarian in “Up the Down Staircase” (1967). Like many working actors, she appeared on soap operas, including “Love of Life,” and in television commercials.She continued working into her 80s. Her last Broadway appearance was in a 2005 production of Edward Albee’s “Seascape.” Her last New York stage appearance was Off Broadway in “The Madrid” (2013) at City Center, playing the mother of a kindergarten teacher, played by Edie Falco, who up and leaves her job and family.In Ms. Sternhagen’s final film, “And So It Goes” (2014), a comic drama with Michael Douglas and Diane Keaton, she played a wise, snarky and chain-smoking real estate agent.Ms. Sternhagen and Phoebe Strole in an Off Broadway production of “The Madrid,” at City Center in Manhattan in 2013. It was Ms. Sternhagen’s last stage performance.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMs. Sternhagen married Thomas Carlin, a fellow actor, in 1956, and they had six children. The couple had met briefly at Catholic University, acted together in “The Skin of Our Teeth” in Maryland and fell in love when both were in the cast of “Thieves’ Carnival” in New York. Mr. Carlin died in 1991.In addition to their son Tony, she is survived by three other sons, Paul, Peter and John; two daughters, Amanda Carlin Sanders and Sarah Carlin; nine grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. She lived in New Rochelle for more than 60 years.In 2001, Ms. Sternhagen talked to drama students at Vassar and gave an interview to the college’s alumni publication. She revealed that as an actress she liked working from the outside in, starting with how a character speaks and walks rather than with her inner motivation. And she attributed a good deal of her personal emotional development to acting.“It’s through working on characters in plays that I’ve learned about myself, about how people operate,” she said.As for young aspiring actors who look down on paying their dues by appearing in commercials, Ms. Sternhagen suggested, “Think of it as children’s theater.”Alex Traub More