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      Thom Bell, a Force Behind the Philadelphia Soul Sound, Dies at 79

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      As a songwriter, arranger and producer, he brought sophistication and melodic inventiveness to hits by the Delfonics, the Spinners and others.Thom Bell, the prolific producer, songwriter and arranger who, as an architect of the lush Philadelphia sound of the late 1960s and ’70s, was a driving force behind landmark R&B recordings by the Spinners, the Delfonics and the Stylistics, died on Thursday at his home in Bellingham, Wash. He was 79.His death was confirmed by his manager and attorney, Michael Silver, who did not cite a cause.Along with Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, Mr. Bell was a member of the songwriting and production team — the Mighty Three, as they were called (and as they branded their publishing company) — that gave birth to what became known as the Sound of Philadelphia. Renowned for its groove-rich bass lines, cascading string choruses and gospel-steeped vocal arrangements, the Sound of Philadelphia rivaled the music being made by the Motown and Stax labels in popularity and influence.A classically trained pianist, Mr. Bell brought an uptown sophistication and melodic inventiveness to Top 10 pop hits like the Delfonics’ “La-La (Means I Love You)” (1968) and the Spinners’ “I’ll Be Around” (1972). He was particularly adept as an arranger: On records like “Delfonics Theme (How Could You),” strings, horns and timpani build, like waves crashing on a beach, to stirring emotional effect.He also wrote the arrangement for the O’Jays’ propulsive Afro-Latin tour de force, “Back Stabbers,” a No. 3 pop hit in 1972.Mr. Bell had a knack for incorporating instrumentation into his arrangements that was not typically heard on R&B recordings. He employed French horn and sitar on the Delfonics’ “Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)” (1970) and oboe on the Stylistics’ “Betcha by Golly, Wow” (1972). Both records were Top 10 pop singles, and “Didn’t I,” which was later covered by New Kids on the Block, won a Grammy Award for best R&B vocal performance by a duo or group in 1971.“The musicians looked at me like I was crazy. Violin? Timpani?” Mr. Bell said of his first session with the Delfonics in a 2020 interview with Record Collector magazine. “But that’s the world I came from. I had a three-manual harpsichord, and I played that. I played electric piano and zither, or something wild like that.”“Every session,” he went on, “there was always one experiment.”Mr. Bell, who typically collaborated with a lyricist, said that his chief influences as a songwriter were Teddy Randazzo, who wrote tearful ballads like “Hurts So Bad” for Little Anthony and the Imperials, and Burt Bacharach.“Randazzo and Bacharach, those are my leaders,” Mr. Bell told Record Collector. “They tuned me in to what I was listening to in a more modernistic way.”Mr. Bacharach “was classically trained also,” Mr. Bell said in the same interview. “He was doing things in strange times, in strange keys. He was doing things with Dionne Warwick that were unheard-of.”The recording engineer Joe Tarsia, the founder of Sigma Sound Studios, where most of the hits associated with the Sound of Philadelphia were made, was fond of calling Mr. Bell the “Black Burt Bacharach.” (Mr. Tarsia died in November.)Coincidentally, Mr. Bell’s first No. 1 hit single as a producer was Ms. Warwick’s “Then Came You,” a 1974 collaboration with the Spinners. (He also won the 1974 Grammy for producer of the year.)His other No. 1. pop single as a producer was James Ingram’s Grammy-winning 1990 hit, “I Don’t Have a Heart,” co-produced by Mr. Ingram.Mr. Bell produced dozens of Top 40 singles, many of which were certified gold or platinum. His influence on subsequent generations of musicians was deep and wide; numerous contemporary R&B and hip-hop artists, among them Tupac, Nicki Minaj and Mary J. Blige, have sampled or interpolated his work.Thomas Randolph Bell was born on Jan. 27, 1943, in Philadelphia. His father, Leroy, a businessman, played guitar and accordion. His mother, Anna (Burke) Bell, a stenographer, played piano and organ and encouraged young Tom (he only later started spelling his name Thom) and his nine brothers and sisters to pursue music and other arts — in Tom’s case, the piano.He was in his early teens when he first gave thought to pop music. The precipitating event was overhearing Little Anthony and the Imperials’ “Tears on My Pillow” on the radio while working at his father’s fish market.“I fell in love with the whole production,” he said of the epiphany he experienced in a 2018 interview with The Seattle Times. “I listened to the background, the bass, a lot more than just the lyrics.”Mr. Bell, center, with his fellow songwriters Leon Huff, left, and Kenny Gamble in 1973, when Mr. Gamble and Mr. Huff announced that he would be joining them in a production partnership.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesMr. Bell and his friend Kenny Gamble teamed up and made a go of it as a singing duo called Kenny and Tommy. They met with little success, but the experience confirmed Mr. Bell’s desire to pursue a career in pop music. He soon found work playing piano in the house band at the Apollo Theater in Harlem and at the Uptown Theater in Philadelphia, and he was eventually invited to play on the soul singer Chuck Jackson’s 1962 hit, “Any Day Now.”But he got his big break — coming while he was working at Cameo-Parkway Records in Philadelphia as, among other things, the touring conductor for Chubby Checker — when he wrote “La-La (Means I Love You)” with William Hart, the lead singer of the Delfonics.In the late 1960s, while continuing to collaborate with the Delfonics, Mr. Bell re-established ties with Mr. Gamble and his creative partner Leon Huff. He became part of their team at Sigma Sound Studios and, ultimately, the Sigma Sound house band, MFSB (the initials stood for “Mother Father Sister Brother”).By the early 1970s, Mr. Bell had started working as producer, arranger and songwriter (most often with the lyricist Linda Creed), first for the Stylistics and later for the Spinners, whose career he helped revitalize after it had stalled at Motown.He remained active as the ’70s progressed, even as the Sound of Philadelphia was being eclipsed by disco and rap. But apart from successful collaborations with Johnny Mathis, Elton John, Deniece Williams and Mr. Ingram, the hits quit coming.Mr. Bell had moved to Tacoma, Wash., in 1976 with his first wife, Sylvia, who suffered from health issues that her doctors believed might be alleviated by a change of climate. The couple divorced in 1984, and shortly afterward Mr. Bell remarried and moved to the Seattle area. He settled in Bellingham in 1998, having by then retired from the music business.Mr. Bell at a concert honoring the recipients of lifetime achievement Grammy Awards at the Beacon Theater in New York in 2017. He had been given a Grammy Trustees Award the year before.Michael Kovac/Getty Images for NARASHe was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2006 and the Musicians Hall of Fame 10 years later. In 2016, he received a Grammy Trustees Award, an honor that recognizes nonperformers who have made significant contributions to the field of recording. (Mr. Gamble and Mr. Huff received the award in 1999.)Mr. Bell is survived by his wife of almost 50 years, Vanessa Bell; four sons, Troy, Mark, Royal and Christopher; two daughters, Tia and Cybell; a sister, Barbara; four grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.Early in his career, Mr. Bell was met with questions about his often unconventional production and arrangements, particularly his extensive use of European orchestral conventions on R&B records.“Nobody else is in my brain but me, which is why some of the things I think about are crazy,” he told Record Collector magazine. “I hear oboes and bassoons and English horns.“An arranger told me, ‘Thom Bell, Black people don’t listen to that.’ I said, ‘Why limit yourself to Black people? I make music for people.’” More

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      Tshala Muana, Congolese Singer With Danceable Messages, Dies at 64

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      A superstar in Africa, she sang in the language of her tribe and often addressed social concerns, insisting on women’s strength and decrying abuse. Tshala Muana, a Congolese singer who brought a supple voice and sensual dance moves to songs about women’s dignity and social issues, died on Dec. 10 in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. She was 64.Her death, in a hospital, was announced on Facebook by her producer and companion, Claude Mashala. He did not cite a cause, but Ms. Muana had a stroke in 2020 and had diabetes and hypertension.Unlike other internationally successful Congolese performers, Ms. Muana sang most of her songs in Tshiluba, the native language of her Kasai tribe, rather than in French or Lingala, the Congolese lingua franca. Her songs often addressed social concerns, insisting on women’s strength and decrying abuse; she also promoted condom use to fight the spread of AIDS in Africa.She was praised as the “queen” of mutuashi, a traditional Kasai rhythm and hip-pumping dance which she updated in her hits and carried to concert stages worldwide. In the early 2000s, Ms. Muana was elected to Congo’s parliament along with another top musician, Tabu Ley. She championed issues involving women, children and the poor and became widely known as Mamu Nationale, “Mother of the Nation.”Elisabeth Tshala Muana Muidikay was born on March 13, 1958, in Élisabethville, in what was then the Belgian Congo; the city is now Lubumbashi, the second largest city in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She was the second of 10 children of Amadeus Muidikayi and Alphonsine Bambiwa Tumba. Her father, a soldier, died during civil warfare in Congo when she was 6 years old.Ms. Muana had an arranged marriage as a teenager, but she left it after the death of an infant daughter. She moved to Kinshasa, where she became a dancer and backup singer in the band led by the singer M’Pongo Love.In 1980 she left her homeland, which by then had been renamed Zaire, and traveled through West Africa. She settled in Ivory Coast, where she started her solo career, and recorded her first single, “Amina,” in Paris in 1982. She moved to Paris around the time she recorded her first album, “Kami,” there in 1984.By the time she returned to Zaire in the mid-1980s, she had established herself as a hitmaker in Africa. In 1987, she had a pan-African hit with “Karibou Yangu,” whose lyrics were in Swahili.She moved to Paris again in 1990 and remained there until the end of the dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997 before returning to what was now the Democratic Republic of Congo.Ms. Muana maintained a long and prolific career, releasing nearly two dozen albums and performing in Africa, Europe and the United States. The percolating grooves of her songs fused mutuashi rhythms with salsa, Congolese soukous and other African and Caribbean rhythms, deploying synthesizers and horns alongside traditional percussion. One of her most highly regarded albums, “Mutuashi,” was released in the United States in 1996.Her songs often carried messages of ethical uplift and social criticism, at times veiled in metaphor. At her concerts, which brought her to stadiums across Africa, she was renowned for dancing that fans considered sexy and detractors considered vulgar. In 2003 she shared the Kora All Africa Music Award for best female central African artist with another Congolese singer, M’bilia Bel.In November 2020, Ms. Muana released her last single, “Ingratitude,” a song chiding someone for disloyalty to a mentor. She was arrested and imprisoned, apparently because Congo’s president, Félix Tshisekedi, believed the song was criticizing him for breaking away from Joseph Kabila, Congo’s former president, whom Ms. Muana had supported. She was released within a day, and Mr. Mashala, her producer and companion, said at the time that the song was aimed more generally at a lifetime of betrayals by people and corporations. Ms. Muana had no children. Information on survivors other than Mr. Mashala was not immediately available.Although Ms. Muana championed her Kasai roots, she strongly supported multicultural unity for her strife-torn country.“In Congo there is no love for each other, no one has the country at heart,” she told The Observer, a Ugandan newspaper, in 2009. “We were elected to Parliament to represent our cultures and musicians, but the primary assignment was teaching love.” More

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      Mike Hodges, Director Acclaimed for ‘Get Carter,’ Dies at 90

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      He was best known for complex crime dramas like “Croupier.” But he also made the big-budget 1980 science-fiction yarn “Flash Gordon.”Mike Hodges, a director whose visceral feature-film debut, “Get Carter” (1971), is regarded as one of Britain’s best gangster movies, died on Saturday at his home in Dorset, England. He was 90.Mike Kaplan, a longtime friend and a producer of Mr. Hodges’s 2004 film, “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead,” said the cause was heart failure.Mr. Hodges wasn’t prolific — writing about him in The New York Times in 2004, the critic Terrence Rafferty said, “The English director Mike Hodges has made so few films he should be legendary,” like Stanley Kubrick and other limited-output directors. But he had successes, none bigger than his feature debut.Mr. Hodges had directed for a handful of British television series when he stepped up in class with “Get Carter,” a movie he wrote based on a novel by Ted Lewis. Michael Caine starred as a criminal out to avenge his brother, who had died under suspicious circumstances.“Its violence is so ghastly and unremitting and its view of the human condition is so perfectly vile that one would almost rather wash one’s mouth out with soap than recommend it,” Peter Schjeldahl wrote in The Times when the movie came out. “Yet it is so finely acted and crafted — and is so spectacularly better than the run of its genre — that as a lover of movies one feels practically duty‐bound to sing its praises.”After “Pulp” (1972), a crime comedy that also starred Mr. Caine, and “The Terminal Man” (1974), a blend of science fiction and horror based on a Michael Crichton novel, Mr. Hodges took on a high-profile assignment, the big-budget sci-fi yarn “Flash Gordon.” Released in 1980, the movie divided critics.“It means to be escapist entertainment,” Vincent Canby of The Times wrote, “but it’s all so extravagantly witless that it stirs the social conscience, if not too deeply. It reminds you that there are people in India who would be glad to eat the spinach you leave on your plate.”But Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times admired Mr. Hodges’s campy take on the story, which was based on the popular comic strip of the same name.“At a time when ‘Star Wars’ and its spinoffs have inspired special effects men to bust a gut making their interplanetary adventures look real, ‘Flash Gordon’ is cheerfully willing to look as phony as it is,” he wrote. “I don’t mean that as a criticism.”Michael Caine in “Get Carter” (1971). “As a lover of movies one feels practically duty‐bound to sing its praises,” the critic Peter Schjeldahl wrote in The New York Times.Everett CollectionLater in the 1980s Mr. Hodges made some flops, including the sci-fi comedy “Morons From Outer Space” (1985) and the crime drama “A Prayer for the Dying” (1987), which he disowned because he objected to the editing. But “Croupier” (1998), a crime drama about a writer (Clive Owen) who goes to work in a casino, brought him a burst of new attention.The movie didn’t get much notice when it had a limited release in Europe, but then a friend found an American distributor willing to give it a two-week run in some markets in the United States, and critics hailed a comeback.“‘Croupier,’ filmed by Mr. Hodges from a screenplay by Paul Mayersberg, shows that the director hasn’t lost his knack for whip-smart, tongue-in-cheek suspense,” Stephen Holden wrote in The Times in 2000.Mr. Hodges said that until those American reviews, his disappointment over the original lack of attention to “Croupier” had him considering quitting the business.“I was sitting at home in Dorset, getting over a hip replacement,” he told The Daily Telegraph of Britain in 2001, “and these amazing notices from America started pouring from my fax machine. I couldn’t believe it. It was like some crazy fairy tale.”Yet he directed only one more feature, “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead,” which also starred Mr. Owen, as a gangster who investigates his brother’s suicide. With a plot not unlike that of “Get Carter,” it seemed like completing a circle.“It’s hard not to see ‘I’ll Sleep’ as a kind of unofficial sequel to ‘Get Carter,’” Xan Brooks wrote in The Guardian in 2003. “The film plays as a wearied elegy to the gangster life, full of characters slightly past their sell-by dates, angry and outmoded as they nurse their ancient feuds and clamber in and out of their E-type Jags. Hodges watches their decline with a cool, clinical eye.”Mr. Hodges, center, directing “Flash Gordon” (1980). The movie “is cheerfully willing to look as phony as it is,” Roger Ebert wrote. “I don’t mean that as a criticism.”Universal/courtesy Everett CollectionMichael Tommy Hodges was born on July 29, 1932, in Bristol, England, to Sandy and Norah Hodges. His father was a cigarette salesman, his mother a homemaker. He grew up watching the westerns and musicals of the 1940s and set his sights on becoming a director, though at his father’s urging he studied accounting for a time.He had grown up in Salisbury and Bath — “cities with soft centers,” as he put it — but in the mid-1950s, two years of national service in the Royal Navy, which sent him to “every fishing port in the U.K,” opened his eyes to a rugged, saltier side of life, an experience later reflected in his films.After the Navy he got a job as a teleprompter operator for the BBC in London, which introduced him to television. He began writing advertising copy and was eventually producing and directing.In 1999, when a retrospective of Mr. Hodges’s movies was showing in Los Angeles, Kevin Thomas of The Los Angeles Times said that the crime films stood out for their complexity and ambiguity.“Just when you think Hodges is building to a payoff that will clear everything up,” he wrote, “he may leave you to sort things out for yourself.”Mr. Hodges’s first marriage, to Jean Alexandrov, ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife, Carol Laws; two sons from his first marriage, Ben and Jake; and five grandchildren.Mr. Hodges reflected on his career in an interview with The Evening Standard of Britain in 1999.“I’m always astonished that my messages in bottles, as I think of my films, ever got off the ground at all,” he said. “Astonished, but very happy too.” More

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      in Television

      Sonya Eddy, ‘General Hospital’ Actress, Dies at 55

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      Ms. Eddy played Epiphany Johnson, the head nurse on the long-running ABC daytime series, for 16 years.Sonya Eddy, who played the no-nonsense head nurse Epiphany Johnson in more than 500 episodes of the enduring ABC soap opera “General Hospital,” died on Monday at a hospital in Burbank, Calif. She was 55.The cause was an infection following nonemergency surgery, said Tyler Ford, her producing partner.Ms. Eddy joined the cast of “General Hospital” in 2006 and quickly established herself as a fan favorite as the head nurse of the hospital where much of the show is set. “General Hospital,” a fixture of ABC’s daytime lineup for nearly six decades, follows the adventures of characters who live in the fictional town of Port Charles, N.Y.Ms. Eddy, right, as the head nurse Epiphany Johnson with the actors Jason Thompson and Kimberly McCullough in a scene from “General Hospital.”Ron Tom/ABC, via Associated PressFrank Valentini, the executive producer of “General Hospital,” said in a statement, “The lights in the hub of the nurse’s station will now be a little dimmer, but her spirit and light will live on in both the show and our set.”Ms. Eddy appeared in 543 episodes in 16 years on the show, the most recent of which aired on Oct. 20. She also played Epiphany in 25 episodes in the spinoff “General Hospital: Night Shift” in 2007 and 2008. The character was the mother of Stan Johnson, who was killed in a mob hit.Sonya Eddy was born on June 17, 1967, in Concord, Calif. She was a theater and dance major at the University of California, Davis, where she received her bachelor’s degree in 1992, according to IMDb.com. While she was a student there, she made her acting debut onstage in a production of “Zora Is My Name!”Ms. Eddy recalled the experience in an interview with the website stonecoldandthejackal.com. “I loved the sense of being able to influence the audience, to open a door in their mind that they otherwise may not have opened,” she said.She later performed in stage productions of “Comedy of Errors,” “The Crucible,” “Into the Woods” and “South Pacific.”Ms. Eddy’s is survived by her mother, Robbie Jean Eddy, and a brother, Lee Eddy.Ms. Eddy made her first television appearance, as “Woman No. 2,” in an episode of “The Drew Carey Show” in 1995, and went on to find steady work with roles on “ER,” “Seinfeld,” “Glee” and other hit programs. Her film credits include “Barbershop,” “Coach Carter” and “Matchstick Men.”But her most enduring role was as Epiphany on “General Hospital.” She must have appeared credible as a nurse because she played one several times throughout her career, including in the film “Seven Pounds,” from 2008, starring Will Smith, and “Year of the Dog,” from 2007. She also appeared as a nurse in the thriller “Frank and Penelope,” which was released this year.She was a supporter of real-life nurses, and led a campaign this year to raise money for scholarships for nursing students.Ms. Eddy was also a singer. On “General Hospital,” she showcased her singing skills during memorial services and nurses’ balls. On Tuesday, the “General Hospital” Instagram account shared a clip of Ms. Eddy’s character leading other nurses on the show as they sang “Hallelujah” in a 2017 episode.Sheelagh McNeill More

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      Elayne Jones, Pioneering Percussionist, Is Dead at 94

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      She challenged racial barriers when she joined the San Francisco Symphony in 1972. But she became embroiled in a legal battle when she was denied tenure two years later.Elayne Jones, a timpanist who was said to be the first Black principal player in a major American orchestra when she joined the San Francisco Symphony in 1972, and who mounted a legal battle over racial and sexual discrimination when she was denied tenure two years later, died on Saturday at her home in Walnut Creek, Calif. She was 94.Her daughter Cheryl Stanley said the cause was dementia.The charismatic, Juilliard-trained Ms. Jones was not only a rare woman among the orchestral percussionists of her time; she also helped lead a generation of Black musicians in confronting the pervasive — and enduring — racism of the classical music industry. Her appointment in San Francisco, under that ensemble’s modish music director, Seiji Ozawa, “projected a forward-looking vision of classical music,” the scholar Grace Wang has written.Admired for her lyricism and finesse, Ms. Jones was an instant hit in San Francisco. “Her playing is so outlandish in quality, one gets the titters just thinking of it,” the critic Heuwell Tircuit wrote in The San Francisco Chronicle of her debut. Arthur Bloomfield of The San Francisco Examiner wrote that her work in a seemingly straightforward passage of “Norma,” at the San Francisco Opera, was “so rounded and suave I just about fell out of my seat.”Once described in a headline as “the groovy tympanist,” Ms. Jones had seen the San Francisco auditions as a last chance to win a permanent post, a success that had been denied her during the two decades she spent toiling to challenge the color line as a freelancer in New York City.“I had to prove that music could be played by anyone who loves it,” she said in 1973. “It’s been a terrible burden because I always felt I had to do better, that I wouldn’t be allowed the lapses other musicians have. It’s true even now.”Orchestral musicians typically serve probationary periods before being granted tenure. Approval seemed a formality in Ms. Jones’s case, but a seven-man committee of the San Francisco players voted against her — and a bassoonist, Ryohei Nakagawa — in May 1974, despite Mr. Ozawa’s advice to the contrary; two rated her competence at 1 out of 100.As audience members launched pickets and petitions, many white critics portrayed the incident primarily as a challenge to Mr. Ozawa’s authority; though the conductor denied any link, he soon quit. Ms. Jones saw things differently.“I’ve had good vibes everywhere. Now I wonder what the hell is wrong and what do I do that’s so wrong?” she said that June, announcing her intention to sue the orchestra and the musicians’ union. “Was it because I was a woman or a Black? Or both?”Ms. Jones played on for a season while her lawsuit made its way through the courts. But when a judge ordered a second, supervised vote in August 1975, a new committee of players turned her down again, citing concerns about her intonation. Although she performed, tenured, in the pit of the San Francisco Opera until 1998, her effective firing at the symphony stayed with her.“It has been quite difficult,” she said in a television interview in 1977, “not only playing but trying to live through all this, and living with myself too, which is kind of hard because you begin to question, well, am I really a good performer, am I worthy person?”But, she went on, “I listen to other people, and I have more confidence in myself.”Ms. Jones looked on as the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and the conductor Seiji Ozawa acknowledged the audience’s applause after a performance by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra at the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory in 1973.Bruce Beron, courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony ArchivesElayne Viola Jones was born on Jan. 30, 1928, in Harlem, the only child of immigrants from Barbados. Her father, Cecil, was a porter and then a subway conductor; her mother, Ometa, dreamed of becoming a professional pianist, but had to enter domestic service. They had a piano in their apartment, and Elayne used it to play along with the big-band jazz she heard on the radio. She was 6 when her mother introduced her to classical music.“At first, I thought it was strange to have music that people didn’t dance to, because we all loved dancing to swing music,” Ms. Jones wrote in her autobiography, “Little Lady With a Big Drum” (2019). “However, I didn’t reject this different kind of music and practiced it every day, growing to enjoy its irregularities.”She qualified for the High School of Music & Arts (now the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and the Performing Arts), and she hoped to add the violin to her studies on the piano; she was given drumsticks instead. “We all know that Negroes have rhythm,” she recalled a teacher saying.Ms. Jones was sufficiently talented to win a scholarship to the Juilliard School in 1945, under the sponsorship of Duke Ellington. Her tutor was Saul Goodman, the storied timpanist of the New York Philharmonic, and after she graduated, in 1949, he persuaded New York City Opera to hire her as its timpanist.But the City Opera season was limited, and she had to scrounge for jobs for much of the year; on tour with the company, she was forced to sleep in separate hotels from the other musicians, stopped at stage doors as white colleagues walked through, and told to perform hidden from view.Politically a leftist, Ms. Jones became an insistent activist. When the critic Howard Taubman wrote in The New York Times in 1956 that “if there are capable Negro musicians” they would deserve major-ensemble jobs, she visited him to demonstrate that such musicians did, in fact, exist. She worked on an Urban League report about racism in the music world; within weeks of its publication in 1958, she found herself filling in at the New York Philharmonic. Although the Philharmonic’s records of substitute players are sparse, archival documents name her as the first Black musician to perform as part of the orchestra.Ms. Jones left City Opera in 1960 at the request of her husband, the doctor and civil rights activist George Kaufman, who asked that she spend more evenings with him and their three children. But Leopold Stokowski, long a fan, quickly tapped her for his American Symphony Orchestra, for which she performed until 1972. She was one of the driving forces behind the founding of the integrated Symphony of the New World in 1965, and she joined other Black musicians to urge that the initial rounds of auditions be held blind, with the musicians behind a screen, to reduce bias. The San Francisco Symphony was an early adopter of that approach.“I wouldn’t have gotten the job if the screen wasn’t in play,” she later told Dr. Wang. “I’m the recipient of a thing that I worked on.”Ms. Jones’s marriage to Dr. Kaufman ended in divorce in 1964. In addition to her daughter Ms. Stanley, she is survived by her son, Stephen Kaufman, a violinist and performance artist also known as Thoth; another daughter, Harriet Kaufman Douglas; and three grandchildren.As a single mother, Ms. Jones often had to take her children to rehearsals, she told The Times in 1965. She hoped, she said, that she offered them an example.“All youngsters need an image to project to, Negro youngsters even more than white,” she said. “When they can see Negroes playing in the orchestra, they may feel that they can get there someday, too.” More

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      Stanley Drucker, Ageless Clarinetist of the N.Y. Philharmonic, Dies at 93

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      He played in the orchestra for 60 years, performing under the baton of five music directors. He personified the orchestra’s brilliant, even brash, character.Stanley Drucker, who was known as the dean of American orchestral clarinets during a 60-year career with the New York Philharmonic, putting his mark on countless performances and recordings under a legion of celebrated conductors, died on Monday in Vista, Calif., outside San Diego. He was 93.His death, at the home of his daughter, Rosanne Drucker, was confirmed by his son, Lee.Mr. Drucker, who retired in 2009, was only the fourth principal clarinetist of the Philharmonic since 1920 when he took up the post. Few wind players at any of the great American orchestras served as long.He played for the Philharmonic music directors Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez, Zubin Mehta, Kurt Masur and Lorin Maazel, presenting a style and sound that typified the Philharmonic’s character — soloistic, technically and sonically brilliant, flamboyant and on the verge of brash.Mr. Drucker combined shapely phrasing with impeccable fingerwork. With his iron-gray hair and a slightly crooked front tooth, he was known for his youthful look and energy well into his 70s. His nickname in the orchestra was “Stanley Steamer,” a reflection of his swift marches offstage to make the commute to his home on Long Island, in Massapequa. “That’s my exercise,” he often said, “running for the train.”Such a long tenure naturally meant that he encountered the same pieces over and over again, and he greeted them like “old friends,” he said. The different perspectives that various conductors would bring to the music, he added, kept things fresh.“You absorb the personality and talent of whoever’s up on the podium,” he said.Just as much, those maestri would defer to Mr. Drucker’s interpretations of clarinet solos. Such was his influence that when a clarinet-playing New York Times reporter put in a request to perform with the orchestra for an article in 2004, the final say rested not with the music director, Mr. Maazel, not the orchestra president, Zarin Mehta, not even the powerful personnel manager, Carl Schiebler, but with Mr. Drucker.Mr. Drucker’s longevity with the Philharmonic gave rise to impressive statistics: 10,200 concerts with the orchestra, including 191 solo appearances, and performances of nearly every major clarinet concerto and soloist on more than a dozen recordings. He also recorded most of the standard clarinet chamber music works.Mr. Drucker with Leonard Bernstein in Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in about 1967. Mr. Bernstein was just one of the Philharmonic’s renowned music directors for whom Mr. Drucker played.Bert Bial/New York Philharmonic ArchivesHe was nominated twice for a Grammy — for recordings of the Aaron Copland Concerto for Clarinet, Strings, Harp and Piano, with Leonard Bernstein conducting, and of John Corigliano’s Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra, with Zubin Mehta conducting. The Philharmonic commissioned the Corigliano for Mr. Drucker.The publication Musical America named him instrumentalist of the year in 1998, and he was one of the few living orchestral musicians with an entry in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.A measure for any clarinetist is the great Mozart concerto, one of the composer’s last works. Of a 2001 performance, Allan Kozinn wrote in The Times that Mr. Drucker gave a “lively, thoughtfully shaped reading” of the opening movement and “tapped all the aching beauty in the Andante.”“But it was in the finale that he really let loose,” Mr. Kozinn added, “both with phrasing turns that pushed against the constraints of the line and by conveying a sense of heightened dialogue between his instrument and the rest of the orchestra.”Mr. Drucker’s conceived of an orchestral wind section as one organism.“You give and take; you don’t only take,” he said in a 2004 interview with The Times. “It’s a chamber music situation. You play to enhance.” He urged orchestral players to become deeply familiar with an entire work and express “what you have inside, what your sensitivity is.”Stanley Drucker was born on Feb. 4, 1929, in Brooklyn to immigrants from Galicia, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire when they had left it 20 years earlier. He grew up in the Brownsville and Park Slope neighborhoods. His father, Joseph, had a custom tailor shop. His mother, Rose (Oberlander) Drucker, was a homemaker.Like so many clarinetists of the era, Mr. Drucker was inspired by Benny Goodman. His parents, seized by the Goodman craze of the time, bought him a clarinet for his 10th birthday. “They figured it was better than being a tailor,” Mr. Drucker said.His main teacher was Leon Russianoff, a leading clarinet pedagogue of the latter half of the 20th century, after whom Mr. Drucker would name his son. Mr. Drucker attended the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.Astonishingly, he entered the Indianapolis Symphony at age 16. “The object was to play, and get out into the real world,” he said. “I thought I knew everything, but found out quickly I didn’t.” During the summers he would return to New York for lessons with Russianoff.Mr. Drucker’s first formal photo with the New York Philharmonic, in about 1948. New York Philharmonic ArchivesMr. Drucker spent a year touring with the Adolf Busch Chamber Players, a conductor-less ensemble led by Mr. Busch, a violinist, and then joined the Buffalo Philharmonic. By 19 he had joined the New York Philharmonic as assistant principal, after Mr. Busch suggested that the Philharmonic invite him to audition. His getting the post, in 1948, was front page news in The Brooklyn Eagle. “My parents thought I was Joe Louis,” he said.Despite his youth, Mr. Drucker caught up quickly, learning on the job. “It was a master class every day,” he said.Bernstein, the Philharmonic’s music director, appointed him to the principal clarinet position in 1960.In 1998, the Philharmonic commemorated Mr. Drucker’s 50th anniversary during the final subscription program of the season by featuring him playing the Copland concerto. At the time, he pointed out that he was not the oldest player there.“I’ve been there the longest, because I started so young,” he told The Times. “But time compresses, you know? Fifty years doesn’t really seem so long.”Mr. Drucker married Naomi Lewis, a clarinetist who has had a fruitful career in her own right, in 1956. Their son, Leon, who goes by Lee, is a bassist with the rockabilly band Stray Cats, performing under the name Lee Rocker. Their daughter, Rosanne, is an alt-country singer-songwriter.In addition to his wife and children, Ms. Drucker is survived by two grandchildren. He lived for most of his adult life in Massapequa.Mr. Drucker, right, with his son, Lee, a bassist with the rockabilly band Stray Cats, and Mr. Drucker’s wife, the clarinetist Naomi Lewis, in 2006.Richard Perry/The New York TimesAlong with the clarinet, Mr. Drucker and his wife had a passion for their 30-foot-long fly bridge cabin cruiser, which they christened the Noni, for Ms. Drucker’s childhood nickname. They would take it for a monthlong cruise every summer.Mr. Drucker edited numerous volumes of studies, solo works and orchestral excerpts for clarinet for the International Music Co. He taught at the Juilliard School from 1968-98.But he was not given to high-flown pronouncements about artistry or musicianship.“You learn all of this stuff,” he once said. “And after a point, somebody has to tell you, ‘Forget it all, just go out and play.’”Alex Traub More

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      Kim Simmonds, a Key Figure in the British Blues Movement, Dies at 75

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      His band, Savoy Brown, never had a hit single, but it showcased his skills as a guitarist and songwriter and remained active for more than 50 years.Kim Simmonds, a fleet and commanding guitarist who for over 50 years led one of Britain’s seminal blues bands, Savoy Brown, died on Dec. 13 in Syracuse, N.Y. He was 75.His wife and manager, Debbie (Lyons) Simmonds, confirmed the death, in a hospital. Mr. Simmonds, who lived in nearby Oswego, had announced in August that he had Stage 4 signet ring cell carcinoma, a rare form of colon cancer that is seldom detected early enough to be treated successfully.Though Savoy Brown never had a hit single, and though only two albums from the group’s vast catalog broke Billboard’s Top 40, it held an important place in the British blues movement of the 1960s alongside bands like John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Ten Years After and the early Fleetwood Mac.Mr. Simmonds changed the band’s lineup often, bringing to mind a subway turnstile at rush hour, making it difficult to build an audience. The most notable firing happened in 1970, when he got rid of all the other members — who then went on to form a far more commercially successful band, Foghat. In all, more than 60 musicians played under the Savoy Brown banner.“I don’t want to stand still,” Mr. Simmonds told the website Music Aficionado in 2017. “Once I’ve climbed a mountain, I want to climb another. If a band weren’t willing to do that, I would get another band.”Throughout all the personnel changes, he maintained a musical vision anchored in the skill of his guitar work, the melodicism of his songwriting and his commitment to American blues.As a guitarist, he could be stinging or sweet, lithe or robust. He also drew attention for the speed of his playing, and for his ability to spin long solos without losing the melodic thread or breaking a song’s momentum. In addition to the blues, his music drew from jazz and — most notably on Savoy Brown’s highest-charting album (it reached No. 34 in Billboard), “Hellbound Train” (1972) — R&B.Savoy Brown at a festival in Sussex, England, in 1970. From left: Roger Earl, Dave Peverett, Mr. Simmonds and Tony Stevens. The band changed personnel frequently over the years, with Mr. Simmonds the only constant.Michael Putland/Getty ImagesKim Maiden Simmonds was born on Dec. 5, 1947, in Caerphilly, Wales, to Henry Simmonds, an electrician, and Phyllis (Davies) Simmonds, a homemaker. As a child, he was drawn to the early rock ’n’ roll albums owned by his older brother, Harry, who later worked for Bill Haley’s British fan club.“My brother took me to see all the rock ’n’ roll movies,” Mr. Simmonds told the magazine Record Collector in 2017. “I grew up with all that: Little Richard, Bill Haley and, of course, Elvis.”By age 10 he had moved with his family to London, where his brother took him to jazz record stores that sold blues albums. The singer and pianist Memphis Slim — “one of the sophisticated blues guys that could keep one foot in the jazz world and one foot in the blues world,” he told Record Collector — became a favorite.He bought his first guitar at 13 and began imitating the blues licks on the records he loved. So intent was he on a music career that he never completed high school.A chance meeting at a record shop in 1965 with the harmonica player John O’Leary led to the formation of what was initially called the Savoy Brown Blues Band. (The first word in the name echoed the name of an important American jazz and R&B label.) The group’s initial lineup featured six players, two of them Black — the singer Brice Portius and the drummer Leo Manning — making them one of the few multiracial bands on the British rock scene of the 1960s.While playing gigs with Cream and John Lee Hooker, the band developed a reputation for its intense live performances, leading to a contract with Decca Records in 1967. The band’s debut album, “Shake Down,” consisted almost entirely of blues covers. By its second album, “Getting to the Point,” issued in 1968, most of the lineup had changed. The most significant additions were the soulful singer Chris Youlden (who also wrote memorable original songs, often with Mr. Simmonds) and the forceful rhythm guitarist and singer Dave Peverett.Mr. Simmonds in performance in Nashville in 2017.Rick Diamond/Getty Images for IEBAHalf of the band’s third album, “Blue Matter,” issued in 1969, was recorded live, highlighted by a revved-up version of Muddy Waters’s “Louisiana Blues,” which became a signature piece. Its 1970 album, “Raw Sienna,” forged a dynamic new direction that reflected the emerging jazz-rock movement, best evidenced by Mr. Simmonds’s Dave Brubeck-like instrumental, “Master Hare.” When Mr. Youlden elected to leave for a solo career, Mr. Peverett stepped up impressively to sing lead on the band’s “Lookin’ In” album later that year.Mr. Simmonds’s desire to add more R&B influences led to the firings that paved the way for Foghat. The resulting sound on the album “Street Corner Talkin’,” released in 1971, earned heavy play on FM radio in the U.S., where the band enjoyed a larger following than in its native country.Though Savoy Brown’s subsequent albums weren’t as commercially successful, Mr. Simmonds kept producing them at a steady clip, resulting in a catalog of more than 40. His last releases, both in 2020, were a studio album, “Ain’t Done Yet,” and a set of live performances from the 1990s, “Taking the Blues Back Home.” He also released six solo albums.In addition to his wife, his survivors include their daughter, Eve Simmonds, and two children from a previous marriage, Tabatha and Justin Simmonds.Addressing his dedication to Savoy Brown in whatever form it took, Mr. Simmons told Music Aficionado: “A famous poet once said, ‘The deed can never be done without need.’ There’s something in me that’s gotta come out.”He added: “Throughout it all — the changes, the music, the 50 years — the one tie-in is my guitar playing. That’s what keeps it all going.” More

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      Drew Griffin, CNN Investigative Journalist, Dies at 60

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      His reporting on delayed care for military veterans at Veterans Affairs hospitals led to the resignation of the secretary of the department.Drew Griffin, an investigative journalist whose reporting for CNN on delayed care at Veterans Affairs hospitals prompted the resignation of the secretary of the department, died on Saturday at his home in the Atlanta area. He was 60.Chris Licht, CNN’s chief executive, announced the death in an email to staff members on Monday. The cause was not immediately made public, but Mr. Griffin had cancer.“Drew’s death is a devastating loss to CNN and our entire profession,” Mr. Licht said. “Drew’s work had incredible impact and embodied the mission of this organization in every way. He cared about seeking the truth and holding the powerful to account.”Mr. Griffin joined CNN in May 2004. During his time with the network, he covered a range of issues, including sexual assault allegations against Uber drivers, fraud claims against Trump University during Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the United States Capitol. His work on the Capitol attack was cited in court filings by the U.S. Department of Justice, according to CNN.Mr. Licht noted that Mr. Griffin “was even working on an investigation until the day he passed away.”In January 2014, Mr. Griffin led a team that investigated the deaths of at least 19 military veterans after their appointments at Veterans Affairs hospitals had been delayed. Thousands of other veterans were experiencing similar delays for treatment.After CNN’s report, Eric Shinseki resigned under pressure as secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, and other department officials were later fired.“We don’t have time for distractions,” President Barack Obama said at the time. “We need to fix the problem.”CNN’s report earned a Peabody Award, one of the most prestigious recognitions in television and radio, in 2014. The reporting also earned an Edward R. Murrow Award.“Our goal in this reporting wasn’t just to shed light on this problem,” Mr. Griffin said when accepting the Peabody Award. “We wanted to effect change, to hold these politicians and bureaucrats responsible.”Mr. Griffin also earned a National Press Foundation Award in 2007, and Emmy Awards in 2005, 2006 and 2007, according to CNN.Though Mr. Griffin’s work centered on investigations, he also volunteered to cover breaking news stories, CNN said.In 2017, Mr. Griffin was about to do a live report on Hurricane Harvey from Beaumont, Texas, when a man nearby drove a truck into floodwater. Mr. Griffin and a photojournalist ran to rescue the man from the truck as it began to sink, a moment that was aired live.Andrew Charles Griffin was born on Oct. 21, 1962. His father, Michael James Griffin, served in the Army and later worked as a civil engineer with the Cook County, Ill., Highway Department. His mother, Judith Anne Griffin, was a lawyer.Mr. Griffin earned a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and began his career in journalism as a reporter and cameraman for WICD-TV in Champaign, Ill. He went on to work in Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina and Washington, according to CNN.In January 1994, Mr. Griffin joined CBS 2 News in Los Angeles, where he was a reporter and anchor, and helped create an investigative reporting team. While working for that organization, Mr. Griffin reported from New York City to cover the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and he earned a number of local awards for his investigative reporting.Mr. Griffin is survived by his wife, Margot; his children, Ele, Louis and Miles; his brothers Peter and Michael; and two grandchildren.Sheelagh McNeill More