Deaths (Obituaries)

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      Curtis Fowlkes, Avant-Jazz Pioneer of the 1980s, Dies at 73

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      A founder of the acclaimed Jazz Passengers, he was also a sought-after sideman who played trombone for both jazz and rock heavyweights.Curtis Fowlkes, a trombonist and vocalist who was best known as a founder of the Jazz Passengers, a playfully eclectic ensemble that emerged from the New York avant-jazz underground of the 1980s to achieve critical acclaim while collaborating with the likes of Elvis Costello, Debbie Harry and Jeff Buckley, died on Aug. 31 in Brooklyn. He was 73.His son, Saadiah, said he died in a hospital of congestive heart failure.Blending sly humor and artistic daring with soft-spoken dignity, Mr. Fowlkes was the “balancing magician” of the Jazz Passengers, Roy Nathanson, the band’s co-founder and saxophonist, said in a phone interview.The Jazz Passengers released 11 albums, starting with “Broken Night Red Light” in 1987, without ever achieving more than modest commercial success. But with a fan base largely consisting of cognoscenti and fellow musicians, the band’s reputation far outweighed its sales.Mr. Fowlkes’s supple trombone stylings also stood out in his work as a sought-after sideman for jazz notables like Henry Threadgill, Charlie Haden and Bill Frisell, as well as for rock stars like Lou Reed and Levon Helm.“He was equally at home with boppish fluency or a gutbucket blare, often incorporating the array of lip slurs, wobbles and pitch slides that can make a trombone evoke a human voice,” Nate Chinen, a former New York Times music critic, recently wrote for the Philadelphia-based public radio station WRTI.He also provided rich, nuanced vocals for the band, which made waves in 1994 with the album “In Love.” That album featured vocals by Jeff Buckley, the star-crossed sensation who was then just beginning his career (he would die young in 1997), as well as Mavis Staples and Ms. Harry, who became a regular member of the band.The Jazz Passengers in an undated photo. From left: Bill Ware, Sam Bardfeld, Mr. Fowlkes, E.J. Rodriguez, Ray Nathanson, Ben Perowsky and Brad Jones.Dana WareThe band’s 1996 album, “Individually Twisted,” included a duet with Ms. Harry and Mr. Costello on the jazz standard “Don’cha Go ‘Way Mad.”“Its pleasures are various and manifest,” the critic Robert Christgau wrote in a review, “and if they’re over the head of the average Costello completist, that’s because this pop move isn’t aimed at any kind of average.”The Jazz Passengers were part of a wave of musicians pushing the frontiers of jazz in the 1980s and ’90s that was centered in clubs like the Knitting Factory in downtown Manhattan and included the saxophonist John Zorn, the clarinetist Don Byron and the saxophonist John Lurie, who became a face of New York cool as an actor in films like Jim Jarmusch’s “Stranger Than Paradise” and “Down by Law.”Mr. Fowlkes and Mr. Nathanson, who met while playing in the pit orchestra of the Big Apple Circus in 1981, broke onto the scene in Mr. Lurie’s band the Lounge Lizards in the early 1980s before splitting off to pursue their own off-kilter musical vision.Blending post-bop jazz, performance art and old-time vaudeville slapstick, the Jazz Passengers were “a crew of jazz oddities,” as New York magazine once described them, specializing in “perky, irreverent, sometimes gorgeously cinematic music that somehow manages to orbit both Sun Ra and the Marx Brothers.”The live production “The Jazz Passengers in Egypt,” which premiered at the La MaMa Experimental Theater Club in the East Village in 1990, was equal parts jazz show, performance art piece and borscht-belt comedy routine, with a plot involving a dream sequence in ancient Egypt.“We were really goofballs,” Mr. Nathanson said. “We really wanted this band to be like Brooklyn guys on the street — funny, less cool — but also seriously connected to the language of jazz.”Curtis Mataw Fowlkes was born on March 19, 1950, in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, along with his twin brother, James. His father, also named James, made machine parts for an aircraft manufacturer on Long Island; his mother, Rosa (Coor) Fowlkes, was a homemaker.In addition to his son, he is survived by his brother; a daughter, Elisheba Fowlkes; and three grandchildren. His marriage to Cynthia Lewis ended in divorce last year.Mr. Fowlkes grew up in a house filled with the jagged rhythms of his father’s bebop records. He chose trombone for his instrument in elementary school because he figured too many people would want to play his first choice, saxophone.“People didn’t even know what the trombone was,” he said in a 2011 interview with Kira Joy Williams, a Brooklyn-based artist and photographer. “I barely knew what it was. But I had made a statement that gave me some control.”As a student at Samuel J. Tilden High School, Mr. Fowlkes started to earn money with his music, playing trombone with local Latin, R&B, funk and reggae bands, and continued playing part time after graduation.“I was into my 20s and still playing music, but I was taking day jobs too,” he said in a 1988 video interview. “I worked construction jobs, and some of my friends would say, ‘Well, look, we want to do a certain style of music but we can’t make a living off of it, so we’re going to take jobs so we can do the music we like to do.’”“But now,” he added, “when I look back on it, I realized that you have to devote yourself to music.” More

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      Richard Davis, Gifted Bassist Who Crossed Genres, Dies at 93

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      He was best known for his jazz work. But he was also heard on Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks” and with orchestras conducted by Igor Stravinsky and Leonard Bernstein.The bassist Richard Davis in 1989 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was a professor of music and music history from 1977 to 2016.Brent Nicastro, via University of Wisconsin-Madison ArchivesRichard Davis, an esteemed bassist who played not just with some of the biggest names in jazz but also with major figures in the classical, pop and rock worlds, died on Wednesday. He was 93.His death was announced by Persia Davis, his daughter. She did not say where he died but said he had been in hospice care for the past two years.Mr. Davis, who was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2014, appeared on more than 600 albums. A first-call player for some of the most important figures in jazz history, he had fruitful collaborations with the reed player Eric Dolphy (whose composition “Iron Man” was named for him) and the pianist Andrew Hill. He was a member of the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra, which performed every Monday night at the Village Vanguard in New York, from the ensemble’s debut in 1966 until 1972.His advanced technique, especially with the bow, led to work with classical orchestras under Igor Stravinsky and Leonard Bernstein. His adaptability resulted in sessions with Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon and Bonnie Raitt.Mr. Davis made 30 albums as a leader or co-leader from 1967 to 2007. He was named best bassist in the DownBeat magazine readers poll from 1968 to 1972.Reviewing a 1986 performance at Sweet Basil in Greenwich Village by a band led by Mr. Davis and featuring Freddie Waits on drums, the New York Times music critic Robert Palmer wrote: “The relaxed, slightly behind-the-beat swing typical of so many jazz rhythm sections is not for them. Their accents fall right up on top of the beat, and they vary their springy forward momentum with rhythmic whirlpools and rapids and an explosive sense of dynamics.”Mr. Davis performed at the Rose Theater in Manhattan in 2014 as part of a ceremony at which he received a Jazz Masters honor from the National Endowment for the Arts.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesRichard Davis was born on April 15, 1930, in Chicago. His mother died in childbirth, and he was adopted by Robert and Elmora Johnson. He was exposed to music through the records his mother had collected in her native New Orleans and the hymns Mr. Johnson would sing around the house.He attended DuSable High School in Chicago, where he studied music under Walter Dyett, who mentored many future jazz stars, and he started playing the bass at 15. As he recalled in a 2013 interview published in the American Federation of Musicians magazine Allegro: “I was just enthralled by the sound. The bass was always in the background and I was a shy kid. So I thought maybe I’d like to be in the background.”Mr. Davis credited Mr. Dyett with pushing him to play across styles, and during high school he also studied with Rudolf Fahsbender of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He would go on to receive a bachelor’s degree in music education from the VanderCook College of Music in Chicago in 1952.As a young player in Chicago, he was mentored by local bassists like Wilbur Ware and Eddie Calhoun. While still in college, he performed with the pianist and bandleader Sun Ra, who at the time was still billed as Sonny Blount.His first major gig was with the pianist Ahmad Jamal in 1952. He then went on the road with another pianist, Don Shirley (whose story was told in the movie “Green Book”); this led to his initial recordings and eventually to his move, in 1954, to New York, where he worked with the singer Sarah Vaughan from 1957 to 1962.In a 2005 interview for The New York City Jazz Record, Mr. Davis spoke of how he used aspects of his classical study and his time with Ms. Vaughan to create his particular bowing technique:“Some of the first bass players used the bow to play the walking bass line. And I heard all of that coming up as a kid. Therefore, when you start to study books of bass methods, you start out with the bow no matter what your intentions are, so there must be some intertwining of what I heard as a kid, what I heard working with Sarah Vaughan, wanting to imitate those vocal sounds.”After his time with Ms. Vaughan, Mr. Davis’s reputation began to grow rapidly, as did his discography. The year 1964 was an especially significant one; he played on Mr. Dolphy’s last studio recording, “Out to Lunch!”; Mr. Hill’s seminal “Point of Departure”; the drummer Tony Williams’s first album, “Life Time”; and the saxophonist Booker Ervin’s “The Song Book.”Mr. Davis’s first album under his own name was a collaboration with the drummer Elvin Jones.Impulse!Three years later, Mr. Davis made his first album under his own name, “Heavy Sounds,” on which he and the drummer Elvin Jones were co-leaders, released on the Impulse! label. Over the next several years, his work outside the jazz world expanded: His credits included acting as musical director for Mr. Morrison’s album “Astral Weeks” and providing the haunting bow work at the end of “The Angel,” on Mr. Springsteen’s album “Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.”Mr. Davis continued to release albums regularly through the new millennium. In the late 1960s and ’70s he was also a member of the New York Bass Violin Choir, led by his fellow bassist Bill Lee, playing alongside other luminaries of the instrument like Ron Carter, Milt Hinton and Sam Jones. In the late 1980s he was a founding member of New York Unit, a trio with the pianist John Hicks and the drummer Tatsuya Nakamura, which recorded eight albums for Japanese labels through 1998.In an email, Mr. Carter said Mr. Davis was “an incredible bassist, a great teacher and my dear friend.”In 1977, Mr. Davis left New York to take a position as a professor of music and music history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “I got a call offering me a job at the university in Madison because they didn’t have a bass teacher on campus,” he told OnWisconsin, the university’s alumni magazine, in 2011. “I said, ‘Where’s Madison?’ I asked around if anyone had heard of the place because this school kept calling me. Martin Luther King Jr. talked about the importance of teaching others, and I had always wanted to teach young people. I thought maybe it was time.”Mr. Davis at his home in Wisconsin in 1978.Brent NicastroHe retired from teaching in 2016. In 2018, Richard Davis Lane in eastern Madison was named in his honor.Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.In addition to his recorded work and his influence on generations of students, Mr. Davis leaves behind two legacies — one musical, the other societal.The Richard Davis Foundation for Young Bassists, which he created in 1993, conducts an annual conference for young players to learn from professionals and perform with one another. And in 2000, Mr. Davis established the Madison chapter of the Center for the Healing of Racism, an outgrowth of his founding in 1998 of the Retention Action Project at the University of Wisconsin to improve graduation rates for students of color.His activism was connected to his earliest experiences trying to be a classical player., he said in the 2005 interview:“My environment with race issues started the day I was born. You’re born with dark skin, and that itself brings on attitudes of other people who are not dark-skinned to see you as someone to be oppressed and not to be given equal chances in society. So that is something that is permanent.“I was 18 years old and I could play any and all of the European classical music,” he continued, “but you weren’t allowed to participate in the symphony orchestra because there were racial issues and prejudices. They didn’t want to see you.”The bassist William Parker, who studied with Mr. Davis as young man in New York, said: “Richard Davis was a beautiful musician and human being. He reminded me of an African king, regal and strong. I praise him not because he could play both classical and jazz. I applaud him because the brother had a big, poetic sound full of freedom.”Mr. Davis, he added, “taught me some things about music, but his main message was ‘Be yourself.’” More

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      Arleen Sorkin, Soap Opera Star With a Claim to Batman Fame, Dies at 67

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      Her “Days of Our Lives” character provided a rare burst of daytime-drama comedy. She was later the voice of Harley Quinn, the Joker’s henchwoman.Arleen Sorkin, an actress and comedian who created memorable characters in two decidedly different universes — the soap opera one of “Days of Our Lives” and the crime-fighting one of Batman, where her Harley Quinn became a fan favorite after she first gave her a voice in 1992 on “Batman: The Animated Series” — died on Aug. 24 in Los Angeles. She was 67.Her husband, the producer and writer Christopher Lloyd, said the cause was pneumonia coupled with multiple sclerosis, which she had dealt with for many years.Early in her career Ms. Sorkin was best known as part of a female comedy troupe called the High-Heeled Women, which formed in 1978 and performed all over the country, mixing jokes and comic songs. One number in their repertory was a rap called “For White Girls Who Have Considered Analysis When Electrolysis Is Enuf,” a riff on the Ntozake Shange play “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf.”By some accounts, Lilly Tartikoff, the wife of the NBC executive Brandon Tartikoff, saw Ms. Sorkin in a High-Heeled Women show and told her husband to look into signing her. In any case, in 1984 Ms. Sorkin made her debut on “Days of Our Lives,” the long-running NBC soap, as Calliope Jones (later Calliope Jones Bradford), an offbeat fashion designer who brought a rare burst of humor to the often overly earnest world of daytime drama.In an oral history recorded in 2006 for the Television Academy, Ken Corday, one of the show’s producers, said that the character was inspired by the stage persona of the singer Cyndi Lauper. In her audition, Ms. Sorkin nailed the character’s kookiness.“It was one of those things where we don’t need to read any more, we don’t need a screen test; she’s got the role,” Mr. Corday said.Calliope quickly established herself as the quirkiest thing in Soap Land.Ms. Sorkin as the outlandish fashion designer Calliope Jones Bradford in a 1986 episode of “Days of Our Lives.” “What I lack in talent,” she said, “I make up for in accessories.”Joseph Del Valle/NBCUniversal, via Getty Images“The sacrosanct dramatic aura of daytime soaps has never tolerated a giggle, much less a full-out belly laugh, in plots dealing with drug abuse, child molestation, abortion, murder, wife-swapping and worse,” Vernon Scott, who covered Hollywood for United Press International, wrote in 1985. “Then along comes Calliope Jones, a ding-a-ling character in ‘Days of Our Lives,’ who actually pokes fun at soap operas themselves. This revolutionary development is akin to electing Eddie Murphy to the Politburo or appointing Johnny Carson to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”Viewers loved it; the fan mail began pouring in. The producers let Ms. Sorkin ad-lib some of her lines, adding a spontaneity to the usually glum proceedings. Calliope’s outlandish wardrobe augmented the comedy.“What I lack in talent, I make up for in accessories,” Ms. Sorkin told Mr. Scott.Ms. Sorkin appeared in more than 400 episodes of “Days of Our Lives,” most recently in 2010. Throughout her appearances, she sought to make viewers pay attention.“I imagine women doing housework while they watch our show, things like ironing,” she said. “It’s my job to make them scorch something.”The Calliope character helped bring about Harley Quinn, the Joker’s sidekick, who has an inexplicable romantic attachment to that archvillain even though he is abusive toward her.When the character Harley Quinn first appeared on “Batman: The Animated Series” in 1992, Ms. Sorkin provided the voice. “Arleen Sorkin’s voice certainly gave a great deal of life and dazzle to the character,” said Paul Dini, a writer for the show. Courtesy of DCHarley was introduced in a 1992 episode of “Batman: The Animated Series” called “Joker’s Favor.” Paul Dini, a writer for the show, told Entertainment Weekly in 2017 that he had been toying with creating a funny, snappy henchwoman for the Joker. Ms. Sorkin, an old friend from their days as students at Emerson College in Massachusetts, had appeared in a fantasy sequence on “Days of Our Lives” where Calliope was dressed as a sort of court jester. She had given Mr. Dini a videotape of her favorite “Days of Our Lives” moments, and the sequence was on it. Mr. Dini happened to watch the tape one day when he was sick and something clicked.“I was like, Well, there she is,” Mr. Dini said. “She should run around with the Joker dressed like that.”He and the animator Bruce Timm came up with Harley, a sidekick clad in red and black, and Ms. Sorkin provided the distinctive voice: “high-nasal, sing-song-y and filled with Brooklyn-ish inflections,” as Vulture put it in a 2015 article.“Arleen Sorkin’s voice certainly gave a great deal of life and dazzle to the character,” Mr. Dini told Entertainment Weekly.Harley wasn’t originally intended as a regular, but she became one, and then, later in the decade, made the transition to DC comic books, a rare case of a character going from TV to the page rather than the reverse. Ms. Sorkin provided her voice not only in “Batman: The Animated Series” but also in assorted video games and subsequent TV series, including “The New Batman Adventures” and “Justice League.” Among the other actresses who have taken up the role in animated or live-action productions is Margot Robbie (“Birds of Prey” and “The Suicide Squad”), who has most recently owned the box office as the title character in “Barbie.”Mr. Lloyd, in a phone interview, was asked whether Ms. Sorkin would have described herself as a comedian, an actress or what. He said her choice might have been “clown.”That, though, he said, would have been misleading, as she also had credits as a writer, including on the 1997 Jennifer Aniston movie “Picture Perfect,” and as a creator of the 1990s sitcom “Fired Up.” She was also involved in various humanitarian causes.“These are not the typical achievements of a clown,” he said. “I think that’s how she would describe herself, but she went on to do quite a bit more than that.”Arleen Frances Sorkin was born on Oct. 14, 1955, in Washington to Joyce and Irving Sorkin. Her mother held various jobs, including real estate agent. Her father was a dentist with a longtime dream of having one of his film ideas adapted into a movie. In an interview with The Los Angeles Times in 2007 on the occasion of his death, Ms. Sorkin recalled that when she was hired as an extra in the 1979 movie “And Justice for All,” when she left the family’s home in Washington headed for the assignment, he handed her a movie treatment he had written and asked her to give it to Al Pacino, the film’s star. (Dr. Sorkin’s dream was finally realized in 2004 when he received a producing credit on “Something the Lord Made,” an HBO film drawn from an idea he had long championed.)Ms. Sorkin with her husband, the producer and writer Christopher Lloyd, at an awards show in Beverly Hills, Calif., in 2004. Asked how he thought his wife, who was a writer as well as a performer, would have described herself, he said her choice might have been “clown.”Mathew Imaging/FilmMagic, via Getty ImagesMr. Lloyd, whom Ms. Sorkin married in the mid-1990s, said she pursued an education degree at Emerson, anticipating a career in teaching, but was also involved in theater there. She played Lola in a production of “Damn Yankees,” and a cast mate urged her to hold off on teaching and instead give performing a try.Lisa Pessaro, another Emerson alumna, was among the original members of High-Heeled Women and remembered her comic colleague in an interview with Emerson Today shortly after Ms. Sorkin’s death.“She was just simply an unharnessed gem,” Ms. Pessaro said. “She had incredible wit and was oozing with personality.”In addition to her husband, Ms. Sorkin is survived by her mother; two sons, Eli and Owen Lloyd; and two brothers, Arthur and Robert Sorkin. More

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      Gary Wright, Who Had a ’70s Hit With ‘Dream Weaver,’ Dies at 80

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      He was a pioneer in using synthesizers, and his friendship with George Harrison led to a spiritual awakening that also influenced another hit, “Love Is Alive.”Gary Wright, a spiritually minded singer-songwriter who helped modernize the sound of pop music with his pioneering use of synthesizers while crafting infectious and seemingly inescapable hits of the 1970s like “Dream Weaver” and “Love Is Alive,” died on Monday at his home in Palos Verdes Estates, Calif. He was 80.The cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia, his son Justin said.The New Jersey-bred Mr. Wright rose to prominence in the late 1960s after relocating to London and helping to form the bluesy British progressive rock band Spooky Tooth.He soon befriended George Harrison, with whom he would collaborate frequently over the years, including playing keyboards on that former Beatle’s magnum opus triple album, “All Things Must Pass,” released in 1970.Their long friendship would have a lasting impact on both Mr. Wright’s life and his music. Mr. Harrison introduced him to Eastern mysticism, giving him a copy of “Autobiography of a Yogi,” by Paramahansa Yogananda, who helped popularize yoga and meditation in the United States, and Mr. Harrison traveled with him to India.Mr. Wright with George Harrison performing on “The Dick Cavett Show” in 1971. The two collaborated frequently over the years.ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content, via Getty Images“That was his life path after that,” Justin Wright said in a phone interview. “Deep down inside of him, he was searching for something, and this was the answer for him.”His spiritual awakening helped spawn “Dream Weaver,” a track from his 1975 album, “The Dream Weaver,” which hit No. 7 on the Billboard album chart and rocketed him to fame. The song was inspired by the yogi’s poem “God, God, God,” which includes the line “My mind weaves dreams.”Mr. Wright begins the song with the lyrics “I’ve just closed my eyes again/Climbed aboard the dream weaver train/Driver take away my worries of today/And leave tomorrow behind.”The “Dream Weaver” single, swept along by a wave of lush electronica that bordered on the interstellar, soared to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1976. The song became a soft-rock touchstone, appearing in such movies as “Wayne’s World” (1992) and “The People vs. Larry Flynt” (1996), as well as on a 2010 episode (called “Dream On”) of the musical comedy-drama television series “Glee.”It was not the only smash hit from that album. That July “Love Is Alive,” like “Dream Weaver,” rose to No. 2 conjuring the languid sexuality of the waterbed era. Mr. Wright performed at stadium shows on the same bill as heavyweights like Peter Frampton and Yes, standing out among the guitar gods with his strap-on keyboard, known as a keytar.While his biggest hits became emblematic sounds of the 1970s, Mr. Wright had taken an unconventional musical approach on the album “The Dream Weaver”: He relied almost entirely on keyboard instruments, including a Minimoog synthesizer, as opposed to guitars, foreshadowing the synth-pop boom of the early ’80s.Mr. Wright playing his strap-on keyboard known as a keytar during a performance in 2001. Richard E. Aaron/Redferns, via Getty Images“The theme of having only keyboards, drums, voices — and no guitars — came accidentally,” Mr. Wright said in a 2010 interview with Musoscribe, a music website. When he went back and listened to the demos he had recorded, he said, “I thought, ‘Wow. This sounds good. It doesn’t really need guitars.’”Gary Malcolm Wright was born on April 26, 1943, in Cresskill, in northeast New Jersey. He was the middle of three children of Lou Wright, a structural engineer, and Anne (Belvedere) Wright.His mother helped instill in him an interest in music and acting, driving him to piano lessons and eventually to auditions. Their efforts paid off when he made an appearance on the seminal science fiction TV series “Captain Video and His Video Rangers” and later won a role in the 1954 Broadway musical “Fanny,” starring Florence Henderson.“I originally came into the play as an understudy to the main role, and then I picked up the main child role,” Mr. Wright said in a 2014 interview with Smashing Interviews magazine. “I was only 11 and 12 during those years. It was an amazing experience to act and sing every night before sold-out audiences and sing with a full orchestral band.”Within a few years, he abandoned the stage and screen “to be a normal kind of person in school, playing sports and Little League baseball and that kind of thing,” he told Smashing Interviews. While attending Tenafly High School, he played in various rock groups, including a duo called Gary and Billy with his school friend Bill Markle. Their single “Working After School” was played on the TV show “American Bandstand.”After high school, Mr. Wright attended William & Mary in Virginia for a year before transferring to New York University, where he switched his focus to medicine. After graduating in 1965, he briefly enrolled in medical school before moving to Berlin to study psychology.Losing interest in a life in clinical practice, he went back to music, helping to form a band that built a following in Europe; at one point it opened for the rock group Traffic in Oslo. There he caught the attention of Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records. Mr. Blackwell summoned him to England to join a band called Art, which evolved into Spooky Tooth.Mr. Wright, center, played the organ and sang with the progressive rock group Spooky Tooth in the 1960s. He was flanked by the lead guitarist Luther James Grosvener, left, and the singer and pianist Mike Harrison. Seated were the bassist Greg Ridley, left, and the drummer Mike Kellie. Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix, via Getty ImagesSpooky Tooth temporarily disbanded in 1970, and a year later Mr. Wright released his first solo album, “Footprint.” That album featured Mr. Harrison on guitar on the track “Two Faced Man,” which the two performed with Mr. Wright’s band Wonderwheel on “The Dick Cavett Show” in 1971.In addition to his son Justin, Mr. Wright is survived by his wife, Rose (Anthony) Wright; another son, Dorian; a sister, Lorna Lee; and two grandchildren. His marriages to Christina Uppstrom, the mother of his sons, and Dori Accordino ended in divorce.Along with his work with Mr. Harrison, Mr. Wright was a session keyboardist for Harry Nilsson, B.B. King and Jerry Lee Lewis, and he continued to record solo albums.In the Musoscribe interview, he discussed his 2010 release, “Connected,” and the album’s hook-laden opening track, “Satisfied,” in terms that could have applied to “Dream Weaver.”“The word ‘hook’ means drawing people into something,” he said. “When I write songs, I always try to make them that way — catchy — so that people will remember them. They’ll be more embedded in people’s consciousness.” More

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      Gloria Coates, Composer Who Defied Conventions, Dies at 89

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      A Wisconsin native, she was among the most prolific female composers of symphonies, 17 in all, finding particular prominence in Europe, where she lived.Gloria Coates, an adventurous composer who wrote symphonies — she was one of the few women to do so — as well as other works, pieces that were seldom performed in her home country, the United States, but found audiences in Europe, where she lived much of her professional life, died on Aug. 19 in Munich. She was 89.Her daughter, Alexandra Coates, said the cause was pancreatic cancer.Ms. Coates composed 17 symphonies, along with numerous works for small ensembles and voice. In 1999, when she was working on her 11th symphony, the composer and critic Kyle Gann wrote in The New York Times that “Ms. Coates’s symphonies are dark and sensuous, and distinguished by an imaginative use of orchestral glissandos (gradual rather than stepwise changes of pitch, like slow sirens), which culminate powerfully in drawn-out crescendos.”The glissando continued to be her calling card, Mr. Gann said this week by email.“Gloria owned the orchestral glissando the way van Gogh said he owed the sunflower,” he said. “The slow pitch slides that run across the surfaces of her symphonies and string quartets can be difficult for the performers to coordinate, which has probably made musicians less willing to present her music. But they make it absolutely distinctive and recognizable. And underneath those glissandos there is often a clear discipline of canons, palindromes and other simple musical structures.”“The effect,” he added, “is often like a painting of a beautiful edifice on which rain has impressionistically smeared the surface.”Ms. Coates first came to wide attention when her “Music on Open Strings” was performed by the Polish Chamber Orchestra at the Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary Music in 1978. Her work has since received only occasional bursts of attention in the United States — as in 1989, when her “Music on Abstract Lines” was given its world premiere at the New Music America festival in Brooklyn; and in 2002, when New World Records released the first recording of her works on an American label; and in 2019, when “Music on Open Strings” was performed at Zankel Hall in Manhattan by the American Composers Orchestra.In 2021, Edition Peters announced that it would begin publishing her works.Ms. Coates said her music “sometimes is melodic, but often derived from structures of microtones melted together.”“It is a way of thinking of music not as separate tones on a scale, as we have for centuries,” she told The Wausau Daily Herald of Wisconsin, her hometown newspaper, in 2021, “but as sounds gliding through time and space which have their own laws and still have roots in the historical musical tradition.”In 2005, the Crash Ensemble performed her Sixth String Quartet (1999) in Dublin.“Bleak and ascetic, strange and disturbing as her music may be, it’s also got a purity that makes it peculiarly compelling,” The Irish Times wrote then. “It’s not music that’s ever likely to leave even a single listener indifferent.”Ms. Coates and the conductor George Manahan in 2019 at Zankel Hall in New York City, where the American Composers Orchestra performed her “Music on Open Strings.”Jennifer TaylorGloria Ann Kannenberg was born on Oct. 10, 1933, in Wausau. Her father, Roland, was a state senator, and her mother, Natalina (Corso) Kannenberg, worked in weapons manufacturing during World War II and was later a nurse’s assistant.Gloria showed musical inclinations early.“The children in the 5-year-old kindergarten have a rhythm band,” The Wausau Daily Herald reported in early 1939. “Thomas Evenson, Jack Luedtke and Gloria Kannenberg brought drums from home.”By then she was also proficient on the toy piano. By 12 she was creating her own often unconventional music. In 1951, a composition of hers won an “excellent” rating in a national junior composers’ competition. But teachers and contest judges sometimes discouraged her more audacious departures from tradition.She told The Irish Times in 2005 that a key moment in her development came when, as a teenager, she attended a question-and-answer with the Russian composer Alexander Tcherepnin, who would become a mentor. He told her that it was more important to follow her instincts than to follow predetermined rules.After graduating from high school in Wausau, she studied music and drama for a time at Monticello College in Illinois. She later studied at other institutions, including the Cooper Union in New York and Louisiana State University, which she attended after marrying Francis Mitchell Coates Jr. in 1959 and settling for a time in Baton Rouge. She earned a master’s degree in composition there.She continued her studies in New York, but after her marriage ended in divorce in 1969, she, her daughter and their dachshund boarded a ship for Europe. Ms. Coates, who had studied voice as well as composition, settled in Munich and for a time pursued a career singing opera. But fate intervened.“When I was 7,” Alexandra Coates said by email, “she was hit by another skiing student and was paralyzed in the upper back.”Ms. Coates gave up singing and focused on painting, another interest, along with music. She told The Irish Times that in the early 1970s, amid the terrorist attacks at the Olympics in Munich and the violence of the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Munich building where she was living was thought to be a possible terrorist target. She moved her music manuscripts out of the building but continued to live there. (Her daughter was living with her father in the United States.) She was, she said, sending a sort of subliminal message to herself.“It was not until several months later that I realized that that music was so important, it was more important than my life,” she said.From then on, music became her primary focus. For years Ms. Coates curated a series in Germany devoted to American contemporary music. Her own compositional output covered a wide range. Her daughter said that for a time Ms. Coates held a job giving tours of the Dachau concentration camp to members of the U.S. Army. Among the works those tours inspired was her “Voices of Women in Wartime,” a setting of writings by women under various circumstances during World War II.In addition to her daughter, Ms. Coates is survived by a brother, Philip Kannenberg; a sister, Natalie Tackett; and a grandson.If her work wasn’t often heard in the United States, critics and other writers admired her originality. Simon Cummings, who writes the contemporary music blog 5:4, said by email that Ms. Coates had set herself apart from other out-of-the-mainstream composers as “one who doesn’t merely surprise or amuse you when you encounter their music for the first time, but who completely knocks you off your feet, and moves you very deeply and powerfully, even if, at the time, you’re not really sure why you’re experiencing such a strong reaction.”In 2014, the Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed called Ms. Coates simply “our last maverick.” More

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      Steve Harwell, Former Smash Mouth Lead Singer, Dies at 56

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      He was a founding member of the band, which broke out in the late 1990s with hit songs like “Walkin’ on the Sun” and “All Star.”Steve Harwell, the former lead singer of the rock band Smash Mouth, which was best known for its 1999 hit “All Star,” died on Monday. He was 56.His death, at his home in Boise, Idaho, was confirmed by the band’s manager, Robert Hayes, who said the cause was liver failure.Smash Mouth was founded in 1994 in San Jose, Calif., and was made up of Mr. Harwell, the guitarist Greg Camp, the drummer Kevin Coleman and the bassist Paul De Lisle. Its first success came with the song “Walkin’ on the Sun,” from the band’s debut album, “Fush Yu Mang” (1997).An upbeat track with a dark undertow, calling to mind both the Doors and contemporary ska-punk, “Walkin’ on the Sun,” with songwriting credits going to all four band members, went into steady rotation on MTV and topped Billboard’s alternative chart.The song’s music video laid out the band’s aesthetic and attitude. Dressed in short-sleeve shirts and shades, with fedoras and soul patches, the four members looked like rougher versions of the image-obsessed retro hipsters depicted in the 1996 comedy “Swingers.” The video features a dance party straight out of a 1960s beach movie and ends with a drag-race crash, with Mr. Harwell — beefy, with tattoos on his arms — behind the wheel.“The question of a particular style never once crossed our minds,” Mr. Harwell said in a 1997 interview. “We didn’t want to be labeled as a punk band, a ska band, a surf band, a rock band, a pop band or a whatever band. We just wanted to be us, Smash Mouth, and leave it to the people to interpret what we are.”The band Smash Mouth in 1999. From left, the guitarist Greg Camp, the drummer Kevin Coleman, Mr. Harwell, and the bassist Paul De Lisle.Bob Berg/Getty ImagesThe band’s big-time crossover came with “All Star,” from its next album, “Astro Lounge,” in 1999. Backed by harder-driving guitars, Mr. Harwell, with a slight sneer, sings an outsiders’ anthem to ignore ridicule and shoot for the moon:Hey now, you’re an all starGet your game on, go playHey now, you’re a rock starGet the show on, get paid“All Star” — written by Mr. Camp, the band’s guitarist — went to No. 4 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart, the band’s best-ever chart position, and found a lasting audience through movie soundtracks. In 1999, it was used in “Inspector Gadget” and “Mystery Men,” and two years later the song got its broadest exposure when it played during the opening credits of “Shrek,” the animated hit that featured Mike Myers as a grouchy but good-hearted ogre.The “Shrek” soundtrack — which also featured Smash Mouth’s amped-up version of the Monkees’ “I’m a Believer,” in the closing scene — went double platinum, and the film won an Academy Award for best animated feature. “All Star” was everywhere.“We had no clue how big ‘Shrek’ was going to be,” Mr. Harwell recalled in a 2019 article in Rolling Stone. “We sold millions of records off that alone. The song was reborn again.”Since then, “All Star” has lived on, becoming a rich source for online parodies. Nearly 25 years later, the song has garnered nearly a billion streams on Spotify alone, and the sound of Mr. Harwell’s slightly raspy voice is still linked to the song’s recognizable opening lines: “Somebody once told me/The world is gonna roll me/I ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed.”Steven Scott Harwell was born on Jan. 9, 1967, and grew up in San Jose. He began his musical career as a rapper with the group F.O.S., which stood for Freedom of Speech. With a sound reminiscent of West Coast groups of the late 1980s and early ’90s like N.W.A and Cypress Hill, it released a single, “Big Black Boots,” in 1993. But by then Mr. Harwell was already restless.“Around the time we were about to put out our single, this kid Snoop Dogg came out and changed everything,” he recalled in 2017 interview with the music website Stereogum. “I was at a radio convention in Las Vegas watching MC Hammer, of all people, and I just looked at my manager, ‘I’m tired of all this hip-hop’” — he added an expletive — “‘I want to start an alternative rock band.’”After “Astro Lounge,” Smash Mouth released five more studio albums through 2012, with diminishing levels of success. In 2006, Mr. Harwell was a cast member on “The Surreal Life,” a reality show on VH1 in which onetime celebrities live together; his fellow cast members included Sherman Hemsley of “The Jeffersons,” Florence Henderson of “The Brady Bunch” and Tawny Kitaen, known for her appearances in Whitesnake music videos.Mr. Harwell performing in 2003. “We didn’t want to be labeled as a punk band, a ska band, a surf band, a rock band, a pop band or a whatever band,” he said. “We just wanted to be us.”Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesFor the last decade, Mr. Harwell’s career had been marked by health problems and occasionally erratic behavior. In 2013, he was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, a heart condition, and Wernicke’s encephalopathy, a neurological condition that can affect speech and memory.In August 2020, while many parts of the country were still under major restrictions related to the Covid-19 pandemic, Smash Mouth appeared at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, a huge annual event in South Dakota, and performed before thousands of fans — very few of whom, according to reports and videos of the event, were wearing masks or taking any precautions.Mr. Harwell drew cheers from the crowd — but wide condemnation elsewhere — when he said from the stage, “We’re all here together tonight, and we’re being human once again,” and made a crude dismissal of the viral threat.Mr. Harwell performing with Smash Mouth in Brooklyn in 2015. He retired from the band in 2021. Brad Barket/Getty ImagesIn 2021, Mr. Harwell left the band and retired from performing after a live show in upstate New York during which he was seen slurring his words, using profanity and apparently giving a Nazi salute.“I’ve tried so hard to power through my physical and mental health issues, and to play in front of you one last time, but I just wasn’t able to,” he said in a statement at the time.He is survived by his fiancée, Annette Jones; a brother, Mark; and three sisters, Carla Crocker, Michelle Baroni and Julie Harwell.In 2022, Smash Mouth recruited a new lead singer, Zach Goode, and the group has concerts scheduled in coming weeks, including one on Thursday in Madera, Calif. Mr. Hayes, the manager, said the band was still scheduled to perform there.In a statement on Monday, Mr. Goode said: “I love singing these songs every night and carrying on the spirit of rock n roll in front of the best fans in the world. I will continue to try, in my own way, to honor what Steve and the band have created.” More

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      in Theater

      Nathan Louis Jackson, Writer for the Theater and TV, Dies at 44

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      He wrote plays that tackled big issues like the death penalty and gun violence. He also wrote for series including the superhero saga “Luke Cage.”Nathan Louis Jackson, an acclaimed playwright who grappled with serious issues like the death penalty, homophobia and gun violence — and was also known for his work on television shows like “Luke Cage,” a Netflix series about a Black superhero — died on Aug. 22 at his home in Lenexa, Kan., a suburb of Kansas City. He was 44.His wife, Megan Mascorro-Jackson, confirmed the death. She said that she did not know the cause, but that Mr. Jackson had had cardiac problems over the past few years, including an aortic dissection and an aortic aneurysm.Mr. Jackson was still attending the Juilliard School when his play “Broke-ology,” premiered in 2008 at the Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts. The story of a Black family in a poor neighborhood of Kansas City, Kan., where Mr. Jackson grew up, it focuses on the confrontation between two brothers over the care of their father, William (played by Wendell Pierce), who has a debilitating case of multiple sclerosis — a disease that Mr. Jackson’s father, who died in 2001, also had.Reviewing the play in The Boston Globe, Louise Kennedy wrote that “what makes Jackson’s writing feel true and fresh — aside from its great humor”— was the way he portrayed the brothers. Malcolm, she noted, “isn’t just a selfish striver,” nor is Ennis “just a resigned martyr” — and William “isn’t just a passive victim.”Crystal A. Dickinson and Wendell Pierce in “Broke-ology,” which one critic called “a very promising debut in the big time for a playwright with a rare quality: heart.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesA year later, after Mr. Jackson received his artist diploma in playwriting from Juilliard, “Broke-ology” opened at the Off Broadway Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center.“‘Broke-ology’ is a decidedly imperfect work,” Robert Feldberg wrote in The Record of Hackensack, N.J., “but it’s a very promising debut in the big time for a playwright with a rare quality: heart.”Mr. Jackson’s next play, “When I Come to Die,” explored the emotional turmoil of a death row inmate whose execution goes awry — the drug cocktail that was supposed to kill him managed only to stop his heart temporarily — forcing him to wonder what to do with an unexpected extension of his life, and if he will face another execution.“I started thinking about people in weird time positions, and these cats know exactly how much time they have left on this earth,” he said of death row inmates in an interview with The New York Times in 2011, when the play was running Off Broadway at the Duke Theater, a production of Lincoln Center Theater’s program for emerging playwrights. “But what happens if you get more of it?”Although Mr. Jackson established an early place for his work in New York City, he remained close to his Midwestern roots. In addition to living in Kansas, he was the playwright in residence at the Kansas City Repertory Theater, in Missouri, from 2013 to 2019.From left, Michael Balderrama, Chris Chalk and Neal Huff as Adrian Crouse in Mr. Jackson’s play ‘When I Come to Die.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThat theater staged productions of “When I Come to Die” and “Broke-ology” and the world premieres of his “Sticky Traps,” about a woman’s response to protests by a homophobic preacher at the funeral of her gay son, who had killed himself, and “Brother Toad,” about the reactions in the Kansas City community to the shooting of two Black teenagers.“The beautiful thing about his writing is that he never told the audience what to think,” Angela Gieras, the executive director of the Kansas City Rep, said in a phone interview. “He’d share a story that was compelling and truthful and let the people have their own conversations.”Nathan Louis Jackson was born on Dec. 4, 1978, in Lawrence, Kan. His father, Cary, was a heating and cooling service technician. His mother, Bessie (Brownlee) Jackson, was a preschool teacher.Nathan said that he was not a good student in high school, and that he studied as little as he could.“Ironically, I failed English,” he told Informed Decisions, a Kansas State University blog, in 2017. “I didn’t want to read Shakespeare.”He graduated from Kansas City Kansas Community College with an associate degree in 1999. At Kansas State, where he majored in theater, he made his first attempt at playwriting by creating monologues for forensics competitions.“I’m there in the Midwest, and there ain’t no other Black folks doing this, so I’d just end up doing August Wilson every time,” he told The Times. “I wanted to do a piece that speaks for me, so I said, ‘I’ll just write my own stuff.’”Mr. Jackson wrote two plays in college that were recognized after his graduation by the Kennedy Center. He won the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award twice, for “The Last Black Play” and “The Mancherios,” which he adapted into “Broke-ology,” and the Mark Twain Comedy Playwriting Award, also for “The Last Black Play.”After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 2003, Mr. Jackson acted in a children’s theater, took graduate courses in environmental science and writing, and worked as the manager of a barbecue restaurant.He moved to New York City to attend Juilliard in 2007. He and his wife lived in a diverse neighborhood there, and he remembered seeing people from all over the world on the subway.But at the theater, “I did not see that,” he said in an interview with KCUR-FM, a public radio station in Kansas City, Mo., in 2016, “What I saw was predominantly white, older, and with a little money in their pockets.”He strove to write plays featuring “people marginalized by poverty, incarceration or gun violence,” Ms. Mascarro-Jackson said in a phone interview.“Lots of times they were Black characters,” she added, “because that’s what he knew.”In addition to his wife, Mr. Jackson is survived by his mother; a daughter, Amaya; a son, Savion; a sister, Ebony Maddox; and a brother, Wardell.Over the last decade, while continuing to work in the theater, Mr. Jackson also wrote episodes of several TV series, including “13 Reasons Why,” “Resurrection,” “S.W.A.T.,” “Southland,” Shameless” and “Luke Cage,” for which he was also an executive story editor. He spent a lot of time in Los Angeles, where he suffered the aortic dissection in 2019.“The series makes a bigger, grander statement about African American men and how we view them,” he told The Kansas City Star in 2016, referring to “Luke Cage,” a Marvel show whose title character is a former convict (played by Mike Colter) with superhuman strength and unbreakable skin who solves crimes in Harlem.He added: “It is undoubtedly a Black show. But at the same time, it’s just a superhero show. We deal with something all the other superheroes deal with. We just do it from a different standpoint.” More

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      in Music

      Jimmy Buffett, ‘Margaritaville’ Singer, Is Dead at 76

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      With songs like “Margaritaville” and “Fins,” he became a folk hero to fans known as Parrot Heads. He also became a millionaire hundreds of times over.Jimmy Buffett, the singer, songwriter, author, sailor and entrepreneur whose roguish brand of island escapism on hits like “Margaritaville” and “Fins” made him something of a latter-day folk hero, especially among his devoted following of so-called Parrot Heads, died on Friday. He was 76. His death was announced in a statement on his website. The statement did not say where he died or specify a cause. Peopled with pirates, smugglers, beach bums and barflies, Mr. Buffett’s genial, self-deprecating songs conjured a world of sun, saltwater and nonstop parties animated by the calypso country-rock of his limber Coral Reefer Band. His live shows abounded with singalong anthems and festive tropical iconography, making him a perennial draw on the summer concert circuit, where he built an ardent fan base akin to the Grateful Dead’s Dead Heads.Mr. Buffett found success primarily with albums. He enjoyed only a few years on the pop singles chart, with “Margaritaville,” his 1977 breakthrough hit and only single to reach the pop Top 10.“I blew out my flip-flop/Stepped on a pop-top/Cut my heel, had to cruise on back home,” he sang woozily to the song’s lilting Caribbean rhythms. “But there’s booze in the blender/And soon it will render/That frozen concoction that helps me hang on.”Mr. Buffett’s music was often described as “Gulf and western,” a nod to his fusion of laid-back twang and island-themed lyrics, as well as a play on the conglomerate name Gulf and Western, the former parent of Paramount Pictures, among other companies.His songs tended to be of two main types: wistful ballads like “Come Monday” and “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” and clever up-tempo numbers like “Cheeseburger in Paradise.” Some were both, like “Son of a Son of a Sailor,” a 1978 homage to Mr. Buffett’s seafaring grandfather, written with the producer Norbert Putnam.“I’m just a son of a son, son of a son/Son of a son of a sailor,” he sang. “The sea’s in my veins, my tradition remains/I’m just glad I don’t live in a trailer.”The Caribbean and the Gulf Coast were Mr. Buffett’s muses, and nowhere more so than Key West in Florida. He first visited the island at the urging of Jerry Jeff Walker, his sometime songwriting and drinking partner, after a gig fell through in Miami in the early ’70s.“When I found Key West and the Caribbean, I wasn’t really successful yet,” Mr. Buffett said in a 1989 interview with The Washington Post. “But I found a lifestyle, and I knew that whatever I did would have to work around my lifestyle.”Mr. Buffett had an affinity for sailing, and his songwriting was greatly influenced by his laid-back life in Key West.Gems/Redferns, via Getty ImagesThe locales provided Mr. Buffett with more than just a breezy, sailing life and grist for his songwriting. They were also the impetus for the creation of a tropical-themed business empire that included a restaurant franchise, a hotel chain and boutique tequila, T-shirt and footwear lines, all of which made him a millionaire hundreds of times over.“I’ve done a bit of smugglin’, and I’ve run my share of grass,” Mr. Buffett sang of his early days trafficking marijuana in the Florida Keys in “A Pirate Looks at Forty.”“I made enough money to buy Miami,” he went on, alluding to his subsequent entrepreneurial pursuits. “But I pissed it away so fast/Never meant to last/Never meant to last.”His claim to squandering his wealth notwithstanding, Mr. Buffett proved to be a shrewd manager of his considerable fortune; in 2023, Forbes estimated his net worth at $1 billion.“If Mr. Buffett is a pirate, to borrow one of his favorite images, it is hardly because of his days palling around with dope smugglers in the Caribbean,” the critic Anthony DeCurtis wrote in a 1999 essay for The New York Times. “He is a pirate in the way that Bill Gates and Donald Trump have styled themselves, as plundering rebels, visionary artists of the deal, not bound by the societal restrictions meant for smaller, more careful men.”(The comparison to Mr. Trump here is strictly economic; Mr. Buffett was a Democrat.)Mr. Buffett was also an accomplished author, one of only six writers, along with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck and William Styron, to top both The Times’s fiction and nonfiction best-seller lists. By the time he wrote “Tales from Margaritaville” (1989), the first of his three No. 1 best sellers, he had abandoned the hedonistic lifestyle he had previously embraced.“I could wind up like a lot of my friends did, burned out or dead, or redirect the energy,” he told The Washington Post in 1989. “I’m not old, but I’m getting older. That period of my life is over. It was fun — all that hard drinking, hard drugging. No apologies.”“I still have a very happy life,” he went on. “I just don’t do the things I used to do.”Mr. Buffett in 1991. “Margaritaville,” his blockbuster hit, rocketed him to fame in 1977.Tim Mosenfelder/ImageDirect, via Getty ImagesJames William Buffett was born on Dec. 25, 1946, in Pascagoula, Miss., one of three children of Mary Loraine (Peets) and James Delaney Buffett Jr. Both of his parents were longtime employees of the Alabama Drydock and Shipbuilding Company. His father was a manager of government contracts, and his mother, known simply as Peets, was an assistant director of industrial relations.Jimmy was raised Roman Catholic in Mobile, Ala., where he took up the trombone in elementary school, at St. Ignatius Catholic School. He went to high school at another Catholic institution in Mobile, the McGill Institute.In 1964 he enrolled in classes at Auburn University. He flunked out and later attended the University of Southern Mississippi and began performing in local nightclubs. He graduated with a degree in history in 1969, before moving to the French Quarter of New Orleans and playing in a cover band on Bourbon Street.In 1970 he moved to Nashville, hoping to make it as a country singer while working as a journalist for Billboard. (Mr. Buffett was credited with having broken the story about the disbanding of the pioneering bluegrass duo Flatt and Scruggs.) “Down to Earth,” his debut album, was released on Andy Williams’s Barnaby label that year. It sold 324 copies.Mr. Buffett’s second album for Barnaby, “High Cumberland Jubilee,” went unreleased until 1976, long after he had signed with ABC-Dunhill and recorded “A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean,” released in 1973 and featuring the debauched party anthem “Why Don’t We Get Drunk.”Mr. Buffett had a fondness for puns, as witnessed by “A White Sport Coat,” an album title inspired by the song “A White Sport Coat (and a Pink Carnation),” a 1957 pop-crossover hit for the country singer Marty Robbins. Another album was called “Last Mango in Paris.”The “Margaritaville” restaurant and hotel chains are part of the tropical-themed business empire that Mr. Buffett built.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesMr. Buffett’s 1974 release “Living and Dying in ¾ Time” included a version of the comedian Lord Buckley’s “God’s Own Drunk.” “Come Monday,” a lovelorn track from the record, became his first Top 40 hit.“A1A” (also from 1974) was named for the oceanfront highway that runs along Florida’s Atlantic coastline. The album was Mr. Buffett’s first to contain references to Key West and maritime life, but it was 1977’s platinum-selling “Changes in Attitudes, Changes in Latitudes,” with the blockbuster hit “Margaritaville,” that finally catapulted him to stardom. “Fins,” another major single, was released in 1979.A series of popular releases followed, culminating in 1985 with “Songs You Know By Heart,” a compilation of Mr. Buffett’s most beloved songs to date. The record became the best-selling album of his career.Mr. Buffett also opened the first of his many “Margaritaville” stores in 1985. That was the year that the former Eagles bassist Timothy B. Schmit, then a member of the Coral Reefer Band, coined the term Parrot Heads to describe Mr. Buffett’s staunch legion of fans, the bulk of whom were baby boomers.A supporter of conservationist causes, Mr. Buffett moved away from the Keys in the late ’70s because of the area’s increasing commercialization. He initially relocated to Aspen, Colo., before making his home on St. Barts in the Caribbean. He also had houses in Palm Beach, Fla., and Sag Harbor, on eastern Long Island.In addition to touring and recording, activities he pursued into the 2020s, Mr. Buffett wrote music for movies like “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and “Urban Cowboy.” He also appeared in movies and television shows, including “Rancho Deluxe,” “Jurassic World” and the “Hawaii Five-O” revival in the 2010s, where he starred as the helicopter pilot Frank Bama, a character from his best-selling 1992 novel, “Where Is Joe Merchant?”Mr. Buffett favored wordplay in the names of his songs and albums, like “Last Mango in Paris” and “Jamaica Mistaica,” a sendup song about an incident that involved Jamaican authorities mistakenly shooting at one of his planes.Aaron Richter for The New York Times An avid pilot, Mr. Buffett owned several aircraft and often flew himself to his shows. In 1994 he crashed one of his airplanes in waters near Nantucket, Mass., while taking off. He survived the accident, after swimming to safety, with only minor injuries.In 1996 another of Mr. Buffett’s planes, Hemisphere Dancer, was shot at by the Jamaican police, who suspected the craft was being used to smuggle marijuana. On board the airplane, which sustained little damage, were U2’s Bono; Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records; and Mr. Buffett’s wife and two daughters. The Jamaican authorities later admitted the incident was a case of mistaken identity, inspiring Mr. Buffett to write “Jamaica Mistaica,” a droll sendup of the affair.Mr. Buffett is survived by his wife, Jane (Slagsvol) Buffett; two daughters, Savanah Jane Buffett and Sarah Buffett; a son, Cameron; two grandsons; and two sisters, Lucy and Laurie Buffett.In a 1979 interview with Rolling Stone, Mr. Buffett was asked about a previous remark in which he somewhat incongruously cited the wholesome choral director Mitch Miller and the marauding Gulf Coast pirate Jean Lafitte as two of his greatest inspirations.“Mitch Miller, for sure,” Mr. Buffett said, doubtless in acknowledgment of the way his own fans sang along with him at concerts. “In the old days: “Sing Along with Mitch?” Who didn’t?”“But Jean Lafitte was my hero as a romantic character,” he continued. “I’m not sure he was a musical influence. His lifestyle influenced me, most definitely, ’cause I’m the very opposite of Mitch Miller.”Aaron Boxerman More