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      Singer Ed Sheeran Tests Positive for Coronavirus

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      The singer Ed Sheeran announced Sunday on social media that he had tested positive for the coronavirus and would be canceling public appearances and working at home, in quarantine.It wasn’t immediately clear what appearances would be canceled or rescheduled, or whether Mr. Sheeran was sick with symptoms of Covid-19.The news came days before the Friday release of his new album, “=,” pronounced “equals.” The 14-song album includes his recently released single “Bad Habits.”And it comes just after Mr. Sheeran had been announced as the musical guest for “Saturday Night Live” on Nov. 6.The four-time Grammy winner took a break from work and social media in late 2019 after two years of touring in support of his best-selling album “÷” (or “divide”). More

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      Lee (Scratch) Perry, Bob Marley Mentor and Reggae Innovator, Dies at 85

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      With a four-track tape recorder in his Jamaican home studio, he opened surreal sonic vistas and cultivated the image of a mad genius.Lee (Scratch) Perry, the innovative Jamaican producer who mentored Bob Marley and pushed reggae into the sonic avant-garde with his dub productions, died on Sunday in Lucca, Jamaica. He was 85.His death, at a hospital, was reported by Jamaican Observer and other Jamaican media; no cause was given. Prime Minister Andrew Holness of Jamaica tweeted condolences and praised Mr. Perry’s “sterling contribution to the musical fraternity.”Mr. Perry wrote songs, led the studio session band the Upsetters and produced leading Jamaican acts in the 1960s and ’70s. He went on to collaborate internationally with the Clash, Paul and Linda McCartney, the Beastie Boys and many others. George Clinton and Keith Richards were guests on his albums.Mr. Perry recorded dozens of albums under his own name and with the Upsetters; he also produced hundreds of songs for other performers. “All my records are angels,” he told Uncut magazine in 2018. “They are not flesh and blood, they are spirits.”As a singer and frontman, he reveled in the image of a mad genius. He gave himself numerous nicknames — the Upsetter, the Super-Ape, Inspector Gadget, the Firmament Computer — and spoke about blowing marijuana smoke on his master tapes to improve their sound, or dousing them with blood or whiskey. He once boasted, “I am the creator of the alien race globally.”In a 2010 interview with Rolling Stone, he said: “Being a madman is good thing! It keeps people away. When they think you are crazy, they don’t come around and take your energy.”Mr. Perry vastly expanded the possibilities of dub reggae in the 1970s, creating radical remixes that stripped songs down to their rhythm tracks and rebuilt them with samples (animal sounds, breaking glass, explosions) along with surreal echo and phasing effects to create hallucinatory aural spaces.Albums like the Upsetters’ “Blackboard Jungle Dub” (1973) and “Super Ape” (1976) were as dizzying as they were danceable. One of Mr. Perry’s most exploratory albums, “Roast Fish, Collie Weed & Corn Bread,” released in 1978, was rejected by his international distributor at the time, Island Records, leading to a lasting rift.Mr. Perry’s album “Roast Fish, Collie Weed & Corn Bread,” from 1978, was his most exploratory..Mr. Perry brought his dub techniques to the production of new songs on albums that would become reggae milestones. The recordings he concocted using minimal equipment — a four-track Teac tape recorder — would decisively influence hip-hop, post-punk, electronica and all sorts of other studio-tweaked music.“The studio must be like a living thing, a life itself,” he once explained. “The machine must be live and intelligent. Then I put my mind into the machine and the machine perform reality. Invisible thought waves — you put them into the machine by sending them through the controls.”Rainford Hugh Perry was born on March 20, 1936, in Kendal, in rural western Jamaica. His parents, Hugh Perry and Ina Davis, were laborers, and one of Lee’s early jobs was driving a tractor in the building of a road that would bring tourists to the western seaside town of Negril. He moved to Kingston, the capital, and started working for the producer and sound system owner Clement (Coxsone) Dodd in 1961, first as a gofer and record vendor and eventually as a talent scout, engineer and producer for Dodd’s Studio One, a Jamaican hit factory in the early 1960s.Feeling exploited by Mr. Dodd, Mr. Perry joined a competitor, Joe Gibbs, at Amalgamated Records. He released “I Am the Upsetter,” a complaint aimed at Mr. Dodd, and continued to produce Jamaican hits. But he broke away from Mr. Gibbs as well.Mr. Perry started his own label, Upset Records (soon renamed Upsetter), and its first release, in 1968, was a song attacking Mr. Gibbs, “People Funny Boy.” It became a hit in Jamaica and Great Britain. Presaging Mr. Perry’s later productions, it also featured the sound of a crying baby, and it was an early example of the midtempo rhythm that would soon define roots reggae.Bob Marley and the Wailers had recorded with Mr. Dodd but went to work with Upsetter Records and Mr. Perry to make the albums “Soul Rebels” (1970) and “Soul Revolution” (1971). Mr. Perry encouraged Mr. Marley to explore spiritual and political themes, and songs like “Small Axe,” “Kaya” and “Duppy Conqueror” established the direction that would make Mr. Marley an international star.But there were disputes over money. Mr. Perry sold rights to the Wailers albums to an English label, and Mr. Marley and the Wailers accused Mr. Perry of withholding royalties. “I pirated their music to expose them,” Mr. Perry claimed in a 2008 documentary, “The Upsetter: The Life and Music of Lee Scratch Perry.” In 2010, the percussionist and singer-songwriter Bunny Wailer, a member of the band, told Rolling Stone: “He screwed us. We never saw a dime from those albums we did with him.”Mr. Perry in 2001 outside the studio he built in his backyard in Kingston, Jamaica. He called it the Black Ark. Echoes/Redferns, via Getty ImagesMr. Marley hired the Upsetters’ rhythm section, the brothers Aston and Carlton Barrett on bass and drums, and they became the foundation of the Wailers’ live band. Yet Mr. Marley and Mr. Perry didn’t stay estranged; in 1977, Mr. Marley enlisted him to produce the single “Punky Reggae Party.”Living in the Washington Gardens neighborhood of Kingston, Mr. Perry built his own small studio, the Black Ark, in his backyard in 1973. He named it after the Ark of the Covenant and considered it a spiritual place. There he could record at any time and in any way he chose.“Scratch dances with the board while he produces,” Vivien Goldman wrote in 1976 for the magazine Sounds. “Flicking switches with a twist of the hips, after a particularly elaborate movement he might spin round twice and clap his hands and be back in position for the next pull of a slide control. He’s aware of his studio audience, but dances in spite, not because of them.”At the Black Ark, Mr. Perry stacked up layers of sound with multiple overdubs on each track of his four-track recorder; tape hiss only added depth and mystery to his mixes.“One of his phrases was, ‘He had four tracks on the board and eight tracks in his head,’ ” Max Romeo, one of the singers Mr. Perry produced, told Mojo magazine in 2019. Among the enduring reggae albums that Mr. Perry made at the Black Ark were the Congos’ “Heart of the Congos,” Max Romeo’s “War Ina Babylon,” the Heptones’ “Party Time” and Junior Murvin’s “Police and Thieves”— albums suffused with righteousness, compassion, determination and experimentation.In the early days of English punk-rock, the Clash remade “Police and Thieves,” and when Mr. Perry visited England in 1977, he produced a Clash single, “Complete Control.” Paul and Linda McCartney built two songs on Mr. Perry’s tracks for Linda McCartney’s solo debut album.But under the strains of constant recording, his marijuana and alcohol use, gang violence and political turmoil in Jamaica as well as extortion threats and his divorce from his first wife, Pauline Morrison, in 1979, Mr. Perry’s mental state grew troubled. In 1983, the Black Ark burned down.There were various explanations, including faulty wiring. But to Mr. Perry “the studio had been polluted with unholy spirits,” as he put it in “The Upsetter” documentary.“I was mixing good and evil spirits together in the Ark,” he said, “and then I had to burn it down to get rid of what I created.”Mr. Perry in 2018. Over the years he was nominated for five Grammy Awards for best reggae album and won one for “Jamaican E.T.,” released in 2002.John Palmer, via Associated PressHe moved to London in 1984 and resumed a copious, scattershot recording and performing career. Onstage, leading assorted lineups of the Upsetters and interspersing songs with free-associative speechifying, he stepped forward as a gaudily costumed wizard-jester-sage-extraterrestrial figure, like Sun Ra or George Clinton.In the studio, he collaborated with producers who had been inspired by his 1970s dubs, making albums with Adrian Sherwood, Bill Laswell and, extensively, the British-Guyanese producer Mad Professor. On Sunday, Mad Professor posted on Facebook that they had enough material recorded for 20 more albums together and added: “What a character! Totally ageless! Extremely creative, with a memory as sharp as a tape machine! A brain as accurate as a computer!”In 1989 Mr. Perry married Mireille Rüegg, a record-store owner who became his manager, and moved with her to Switzerland, where they lived until relocating to Jamaica in 2020. In addition to her, his survivors include their two children, Gabriel and Shiva, and four children from his first marriage: Cleopatra, Marsha, Omar and Marvin (Sean) Perry.Recognition continued to grow for Mr. Perry through the decades. In 1998, the Beastie Boys featured him on their album “Hello Nasty,” employing his vocals and lyrics on “Dr. Lee, PhD.”Mr. Perry was nominated five times for a Grammy Award for best reggae album. His album “Jamaican E.T.” (2002) won the award.In 2018, he told Uncut magazine: “The reality is, all that craziness, all that madness, I made it work, because it’s nature. It’s natural grace. In nature we have the big space overhead, the big sky, the orbit. Nature is crazy! I want my records to sound as crazy as nature.” More

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      Micki Grant, Groundbreaking Broadway Composer, Dies at 92

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      With “Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope,” she became the first woman to write the book, music and lyrics of a Broadway musical.Micki Grant, who in the early 1970s became the first woman to write the book, music and lyrics of a Broadway musical, “Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope,” a soulful, spirited exploration of Black life, died on Saturday in Manhattan. She was 92.Her death, at Mount Sinai Morningside hospital, was announced by Joan Allen, a family spokeswoman.Ms. Grant, an actress, composer, playwright and musician, had developed “Don’t Bother Me” for two years with the director Vinnette Carroll, taking it to small theaters in New York, Philadelphia and Washington before opening on Broadway in April 1972.She would also be known for her work on another Broadway musical, “Your Arms Too Short to Box With God,” and for her seven years on the NBC soap opera “Another World.”Set in New York City, “Don’t Bother Me” explored topics like ghetto life, Black power, feminism and student protests with an all-Black cast performing songs — all by Ms. Grant — that drew from rock, jazz, funk, blues calypso and other musical genres.Ms. Grant recalled in 2018 that she and Ms. Carroll had wanted audiences of the musical to recognize the similarities among races, not the differences.“And I think that’s expressed when you find out in the end that the audience is willing to reach out and take someone’s hand,” she said in an interview with The New York Amsterdam News. “Some people in the audience never held the hand of a person of a different race before, and all of the sudden, they’re holding another person’s hand.”The musical got rave reviews, including one from Clive Barnes of The New York Times, who wrote: “It is the unexpected that is the most delightful. Last night at the Playhouse Theater a new musical came clapping, stomping and stamping in. It is fresh, fun and Black.”The show received Tony nominations for best musical, best original score, best book (also by Ms. Grant) and best direction. It won a Grammy for best musical theater album, making Ms. Grant the first female composer to win in that category.“Don’t Bother Me” was revived in 2016 as a concert performance by the York Theater Company in Manhattan and two years later by the Encores! Off-Center series at New York City Center, directed by Savion Glover.Amber Barbee Pickens, foreground, in the Encores! production of “Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope” at New York City Center in 2018. One critic said of the original Broadway production: “A new musical came clapping, stomping and stamping in. It is fresh, fun and Black.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesJames Morgan, York’s producing artistic director, said in a phone interview that Ms. Grant had “wanted a say in everything and would say, ‘No, that’s not how that goes.’ I’d tell her, ‘We want this to be your version of the show.’”He had been hoping to stage a full Off Broadway production of “Don’t Worry,” he said, but couldn’t raise the money. “I so wanted it for her, because there’s still a big audience for it,” he said.Ms. Grant was born Minnie Louise Perkins on June 30, 1929, in Chicago to Oscar and Gussie (Cobbins) Perkins. Her father was a barber and a self-taught pianist, her mother, a saleswoman for Stanley Home Products.Minnie was smitten by theater and music at a young age. At 8 she played the Spirit of Spring, touching flowers to bring them to life, in a community center production. She began taking piano and double-bass lessons at about the same age.And, she recalled in an interview with The Times in 1972: “I was busy writing poetry and walking around the house reciting it. My family always listened and said what nice poetry it was.”Ms. Grant began writing music at 14 or 15 and acting in community theater at 18. She studied at the Chicago School of Music and later attended the University of Illinois, Chicago.But one semester shy of graduating, she left to perform in Los Angeles, where, in 1961, she appeared in a musical revue, “Fly Blackbird,” a social satire about the evils of segregation. She moved with the show to its Off Broadway production in 1962.By then, she had changed her name to Micki.Ms. Grant made her Broadway debut a year later in a supporting role in “Tambourines to Glory,” a short-lived “gospel singing play” — written by the poet Langston Hughes with music by Jobe Huntley — about two female street preachers in Harlem. It also starred Robert Guillaume and Louis Gossett Jr. A year later she appeared in a revival of Marc Blitzstein’s musical play “The Cradle Will Rock,” set in 1937 during the Great Depression.She turned to television in 1965, beginning a seven-year run on “Another World” playing a secretary-turned-lawyer, Peggy Nolan. She is believed to have been the first Black contract player in soaps. She later had roles in the soap operas “Guiding Light,” “Edge of Night” and “All My Children.”Ms. Grant in the NBC soap opera “Another World” in 1968. She had a seven-year run on the show playing a secretary-turned-lawyer.Fred Hermansky/NBCCasey Childs, the founder of the Primary Stages Company in New York, recalled directing her in one soap opera episode. “She was an absolutely lovely actress, who understood the need on a soap to move quickly and make fast choices,” he said in an interview.During her long run on “Another World,” Ms. Grant was building a theatrical legacy with Ms. Carroll, who in 1967 founded the Urban Arts Corps to provide a showcase for Black and Puerto Rican performers.They put together the first production of “Don’t Bother Me” in 1970 at the company’s theater on West 20th Street in Manhattan. Ms. Grant also wrote the music and lyrics for a song and dance version of the Irwin Shaw novel “Bury the Dead” and for a children’s show called “Croesus and the Witch.”Working with Ms. Carroll, she said, was a “magical” experience.“It all came together so perfectly,” Ms. Grant told American Theater magazine in an interview this year. “It was a fortunate meeting between us: I needed somewhere to present my work, and she needed the new work to present because of who she was — having original works brought out her creativity, rather than trying to repeat something that was already done.”The two women also collaborated on “Your Arms Too Short to Box With God,” an acclaimed gospel-infused musical that opened on Broadway in 1976 and ran for 429 performances. Ms. Carroll wrote the book, and music and lyrics were by Alex Bradford, with additional songs by Ms. Grant.Two years later, Ms. Grant was one of the five songwriters behind the musical “Working,” which was based on the writer Studs Terkel’s book of interviews with everyday people about their jobs. The group was nominated for a Tony for best original score.In one of Ms. Grant’s songs in “Working,” a woman laments: “If I could’ve done what I could’ve done/I could’ve done big things./With some luck to do what I wanted to do/I would’ve done big things./Swam a few rivers/Climbed a few hills/Paid all my bills.”She returned to Broadway one last time, with a musical, “It’s So Nice to Be Civilized” (1980), which closed after eight performances.Her other credits include the English-language lyrics to songs in “Jacques Brel Blues,” which debuted in East Hampton, N.Y., in 1988, and “Don’t Underestimate a Nut,” a musical based on the life of George Washington Carver, the agricultural scientist who promoted the cultivation of peanuts. It was commissioned by a children’s theater in Omaha, Neb., in 1994.In the late 1990s, Ms. Grant spent two years with Lizan Mitchell on a tour of the United States and South Africa as they played the centenarian Delany sisters in “Having Our Say,” Emily Mann’s Tony Award-winning play.Ms. Grant had no immediate survivors. Her marriages to Milton Grant and Ray McCutcheon ended in divorce.When Encores! revived “Don’t Bother Me,” Ms. Grant, reflecting on its creation, said that her and Ms. Carroll’s goal had not been to produce an incendiary musical about the difficulties faced by Black people in America.“There was a lot of angry theater out there at the time, especially in the Black community — Bullins, Jones,” she said, referring to the playwrights Ed Bullins and LeRoi Jones, who became known as Amiri Baraka. “I wanted to come at it with a soft fist. I wanted to open eyes but not turn eyes away.” More

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      Grammys Settle With Ousted C.E.O.

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      The settlement between the Recording Academy, which runs the Grammy Awards, and Deborah Dugan, its former chief executive, came just weeks before arbitration over her dismissal was to begin.The Recording Academy, the organization behind the Grammy Awards, has reached a confidential settlement with Deborah Dugan, its ousted chief executive, just weeks before arbitration hearings over her dismissal were set to begin.In a joint statement issued late Thursday, the two sides said: “The Recording Academy and Deborah Dugan have agreed to resolve their differences and to keep the terms of their agreement private.”By settling, the Recording Academy avoids what could have been a rare glimpse at its opaque internal politics. The arbitration was set to begin on July 12 in Los Angeles, and despite earlier promises to make the hearings open to the public, the academy had in recent weeks been pushing to keep the proceedings secret.The settlement closes a contentious period in Grammys history. Ms. Dugan, a former media executive who had led Red, the nonprofit co-founded by Bono of U2, was brought in to the academy in 2019 as a change agent. The academy had for years faced complaints about its voting process and its poor record of recognizing women and people of color in many of the top awards, and in 2018, Neil Portnow, Ms. Dugan’s predecessor, was criticized for suggesting that women should “step up” to be recognized at the Grammys.But Ms. Dugan spent only five months at the helm. In January 2020, just 10 days before the ceremony that year, Ms. Dugan was placed on administrative leave — and later fired — over what the academy said were “concerns raised to the Recording Academy board of trustees, including a formal allegation of misconduct by a senior female member of the Recording Academy team.”In a discrimination complaint lodged with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Ms. Dugan said her dismissal was an act of retaliation after she challenged the “boys’ club” that she said dominated the academy. It also came a few weeks after she wrote a detailed letter to the academy’s human resources department alleging voting irregularities, financial mismanagement and conflicts of interest.Perhaps most shocking to music insiders, Ms. Dugan also accused a prominent outside lawyer for the academy of making unwanted sexual advances toward her shortly after she got the job. (That lawyer, Joel Katz, disputed Ms. Dugan’s account.)The academy denied her allegations and portrayed her as a disruptive force at the organization, which sees itself as a home for the entire music community.“What we expected was change without chaos,” Christine Albert, the academy’s board emeritus at the time, said in an interview with The New York Times after Ms. Dugan was dismissed but before she filed her discrimination complaint.Lawyers for Ms. Dugan declined to comment further about the settlement. Representatives of the Recording Academy did not respond early Friday to requests for comment. More

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      Grammy Officials Oppose an Open Hearing on Reasons for Ousting C.E.O.

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      The lawyer for the former chief executive, Deborah Dugan, said the Recording Academy, which runs the Grammy Awards, had already agreed to an open session to discuss her grievances.As the organization behind the Grammy Awards prepares for an arbitration hearing next month with Deborah Dugan, its ousted chief executive, lawyers for Ms. Dugan have accused the Grammys of reneging on a promise to have the proceedings be open to the public.The arbitration, over Ms. Dugan’s dismissal early last year after just five months on the job, could be a rare window into the opaque politics of the Recording Academy, after years of complaints from artists and others in the music industry that the group fails to adequately recognize women and minorities and is rife with conflicts of interest.Those criticisms boiled over when Ms. Dugan was placed on administrative leave by the academy just 10 days before the 62nd annual Grammys ceremony, in January 2020, and later fired. As the dispute played out between Ms. Dugan and the academy, Harvey Mason Jr., who was then the chairman and interim chief, declared the academy’s dedication to transparency.In a letter on Feb. 4, 2020, Mr. Mason, who has since taken over as chief executive, told Ms. Dugan that the academy had agreed to waive the confidentiality provision of the arbitration clause in Ms. Dugan’s employment contract.“The Recording Academy has absolutely nothing to hide,” Mr. Mason wrote, “and, in fact, welcomes the opportunity to tell its story so that the entire music community and the world can hear the truth — and nothing but the truth — about what you did to this proud institution during your brief tenure as president/C.E.O.“In short,” Mr. Mason continued, “we welcome a full public airing of your allegations against the Academy as well as the Academy’s many claims and defenses against you.”Harvey Mason Jr. wrote that “The Recording Academy has absolutely nothing to hide,” in a letter dated Feb. 4, 2020.Jordan Strauss/Invision, via Associated PressBut as the hearing, now set for July 12 in Los Angeles, approaches, the academy has requested the proceedings remain closed. In correspondence with the arbitrator, Sara Adler, and lawyers for both sides, the academy’s lawyers said that the organization “was and is willing to make public the results of this arbitration, and the reasoning for those results, and nothing more,” according to Anthony J. Oncidi of Proskauer Rose, a law firm that has long represented the academy.According to Mr. Oncidi, the confidentiality provision cited in Mr. Mason’s letter last year covered only the disclosure of “the existence, content or result of any arbitration,” and that a full public hearing would expose other confidential information and cause “further emotional distress” to witnesses.In an email to Ms. Adler last week, Michael J. Willemin, a lawyer for Ms. Dugan at the firm Wigdor LLP, said that the academy was changing its position and should be required to keep the hearing open.“The simple, undeniable fact,” Mr. Willemin wrote, “is that the parties agreed to open this proceeding to the public, and, therefore, it must be open to the public unless Ms. Dugan agrees otherwise.”According to the academy, Ms. Dugan was dismissed because she alienated the staff and exhibited bullying behavior toward an executive assistant assigned to her.Ms. Dugan cast the decision to dismiss her differently in a discrimination complaint lodged with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Ms. Dugan — who had led Red, the nonprofit co-founded by Bono of U2, and was brought into the Grammys as a change agent — said her dismissal was an act of retaliation after she challenged the “boys’ club” that she said dominated the academy.Dugan’s ouster also came three weeks after she wrote a detailed letter to the academy’s human resources department alleging voting irregularities, financial mismanagement and conflicts of interest involving members of the academy’s board and its executive committee. She also accused a prominent outside lawyer for the academy of making unwanted sexual advances toward her. (That lawyer, Joel Katz, disputed Ms. Dugan’s account.)The Recording Academy has for years faced complaints about its voting process and its poor record of recognizing women and people of color in many of the top awards. In 2018, Neil Portnow, Ms. Dugan’s predecessor, was criticized for suggesting that women should “step up” to be recognized at the Grammys.This year, the academy voted to eliminate most of its anonymous nomination review committees, in which experts selected by academy executives made the final decision on who made the final ballot in 61 of the Grammys’ 84 categories.Those committees were criticized by Ms. Dugan and came under fire from top musicians like the Weeknd. The next Grammy ceremony, set for Jan. 31, 2022, will be the first in years in which the committees will play no part in making up the ballots of most awards, although they will still be used for 11 categories like production and packaging. More

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      John Davis, a Voice Behind Milli Vanilli, Dies at 66

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      The singer was one of the voices behind the pop duo Milli Vanilli, fronted by Fabrice Morvan and Rob Pilatus, who later admitted that they did not sing on their albums or in concert.This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.John Davis, one of the real voices behind the lip-syncing duo Milli Vanilli, died in Nuremberg, Germany, on Monday. He was 66.His daughter, Jasmin Davis, who confirmed the news of his death on Facebook, said he had Covid-19.While living in Germany, Mr. Davis started unknowingly singing for Milli Vanilli in the 1980s after he met Frank Farian, a German music producer. Mr. Farian asked Mr. Davis to work on a project, but he did not disclose that his voice would be used for others to lip-sync, Mr. Davis told The Hustle podcast on an episode posted in April.Only later would he discover that his voice was being used by Fabrice Morvan, one-half of the pop duo Milli Vanilli, with Rob Pilatus.“The truth is, I signed a contract with Frank Farian before I even knew who Milli Vanilli was,” Mr. Davis said. “One evening, I was sitting at home watching my TV, and I saw Fab singing ‘Girl I’m Gonna Miss You.’”Milli Vanilli was best known for hits like “I’m Gonna Miss You” and “Girl You Know It’s True,” and won the Grammy for best new artist in 1989.By 1990, Milli Vanilli’s work had sold more than seven million copies, but after Mr. Morvan and Mr. Pilatus admitted that they did not actually sing on Milli Vanilli’s albums or in concerts, they were stripped of the award.Mr. Morvan and Mr. Pilatus then told The Los Angeles Times that they wanted to give the award to those who actually voiced their work, including Mr. Davis, Brad Howell and Charles Shaw.“I didn’t want the Grammy because it was their faces and our voices,” Mr. Davis said. “I was mad.”Mr. Pilatus died in 1998, but Mr. Davis and Mr. Morvan later had an amicable relationship and even performed together.On Friday, Mr. Morvan shared a video with pictures of him performing with Mr. Davis.“Your golden voice will continue to be heard, you best believe that those classic records will live just like you eternally,” Mr. Morvan said on Twitter.Additional details about survivors were not immediately available on Saturday.Mr. Davis, who was born on Aug. 31, 1954, in Anderson, S.C., was stationed in Germany with the U.S. Army and stayed there for much of his life, he told The Hustle podcast.In Germany, Mr. Davis found many opportunities to play in Army clubs in the 1970s, he told the podcast.Mr. Davis said he learned how to play music from his father, a choir director who played piano and guitar.“My one mission I had on this earth was to become a musician and to play music,” Mr. Davis said.Those We’ve LostThe coronavirus pandemic has taken an incalculable death toll. This series is designed to put names and faces to the numbers. More

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      Grammys Drop Anonymous Nominating Committees After Backlash

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      Since 1989, small groups have whittled down 61 of the awards’ 84 categories. The Weeknd, who criticized the process, applauded the change but said he would not lift his boycott.The governing body of the Grammy Awards voted on Friday to change its nominating process, eliminating a step that has recently come under fire — the use of anonymous expert committees to decide who makes the final ballot in dozens of categories.Each year, the Recording Academy convenes music professionals to serve on its nomination review committees for 61 of the Grammys’ 84 categories. They whittle down the initial nomination choices by the academy’s thousands of voters to determine the ballot, and their work is intended to protect the integrity of the awards process.The committees began in 1989, but in recent years they have come under intense criticism from artists, music executives and even Grammy insiders as examples of an unaccountable system rife with conflicts of interest and mysterious agendas.Before this year’s Grammys, in March, the pop star the Weeknd — who had been shut out of the nominations despite the success of his latest album, “After Hours” — announced that he would be boycotting the show from now on, and focused his blame on the nomination process.“Because of the secret committees,” the Weeknd told The New York Times, “I will no longer allow my label to submit my music to the Grammys.”The Weeknd’s rebuke came after years of complaints by musicians, particularly Black artists in genres like hip-hop and R&B, many of whom have been lauded repeatedly in genre categories but blocked in the four most prestigious awards: album, record and song of the year, and best new artist. Among the most outspoken have been Jay-Z, Drake, Kanye West and Frank Ocean.In a statement to The Times early Monday, the Weeknd, whose real name is Abel Tesfaye, applauded the move by the academy but said he would not lift his boycott.“Even though I won’t be submitting my music, the Grammys’ recent admission of corruption will hopefully be a positive move for the future of this plagued award and give the artist community the respect it deserves with a transparent voting process,” the Weeknd said.At this year’s ceremony, Beyoncé became the most-awarded woman in Grammy history, with 28 wins. But of her career total, only one prize was in a major category, when she took home a song of the year trophy in 2010 as one of the credited songwriters on “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).”In a statement, Harvey Mason Jr., the interim chief executive of the Recording Academy, praised the decision by the academy’s board as part of “a year of unprecedented, transformational change” at the institution.“This is a new academy, one that is driven to action and that has doubled down on the commitment to meeting the needs of the music community,” Mason added. The proposal was discussed for over a year, and involved a special committee of academy members and leaders, the organization said.The workings of the nomination committees have long been a subject of intrigue in the music industry. The identities of the committee members are kept secret to protect those people from outside influence and fan attacks, according to the academy.But the process came under particular scrutiny last year, when Deborah Dugan, the academy’s former chief, made a number of detailed accusations as part of a legal complaint over her ouster from the organization.According to her complaint, many people on the committees had conflicts of interest. In one example she gave, one artist who was up for the song of the year category was allowed to sit on the committee for that category, and was also represented by a board member.Last year, the academy instituted a rule that musicians on the committees must sign disclosure forms to prevent conflicts.The decision to cut the committees was made during a meeting of the academy’s board of trustees. Although they are being eliminated for the four top prizes and all genre categories, review panels will remain for 11 so-called craft categories, which cover awards for production, packaging, album notes and historical recordings.The board also decided to reduce to 10 from 15 the number of genre award categories the academy members may vote on, beyond the top four prizes, and added two awards: best global music performance and best música urbana album, a Latin category.The changes will take effect with the 64th annual Grammy Awards, to be held on Jan. 31, 2022, which will cover music released during a 13-month window from Sept. 1, 2020, to Sept. 30, 2021. More

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      Al Schmitt, Maestro of Recorded Sound, Is Dead at 91

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      The winner of multiple Grammys, he engineered or produced records by Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Jefferson Airplane and many others.Al Schmitt, who as a boy watched Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters record music in his uncle’s studio, and who went on to become a Grammy Award-winning engineer for a long roster of artists including Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles and Diana Krall, died on Monday at his home in Bell Canyon, Calif. He was 91.His death was confirmed by his wife, Lisa Schmitt.For more than 60 years, Mr. Schmitt brought deft engineering skills and a sixth sense about what made a song great to his collaborations with dozens of musicians and singers. He was renowned for his ability to make subtle but critical changes during a recording session.His gentle, informed guidance from behind the recording console was an essential, if unseen, element in 15 of Ms. Krall’s studio albums.“It’s how he heard things,” she said by phone. “Sometimes he’d adjust the mic a bit or put his hand on my shoulder and say, ‘It’s OK.’ I don’t know if he was adjusting the mic or me.”While recording at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles, she added, “Al would say, ‘Why don’t we bring out the Frank Sinatra stool?’ And you’d do the best take in your life.”Mr. Schmitt, whose engineering credits also included Sinatra’s popular “Duets” albums in the 1990s, won 20 Grammys, the most ever for an engineer, and two Latin Grammys. He also won a Trustees Award for lifetime achievement from the Recording Academy in 2006.In 2005, Mr. Schmitt’s contributions to Ray Charles’s own duets album, “Genius Loves Company,” brought him five Grammys. (He shared four with others, for album of the year, record of the year, best pop vocal album and best engineered album. One of the five, for best surround-sound album, he won on his own.)As an occasional producer, his credits include albums by Sam Cooke, Eddie Fisher, Al Jarreau, Jackson Browne and, most notably, Jefferson Airplane. In his autobiography, “Al Schmitt on the Record: The Magic Behind the Music” (2018), he described the zoolike atmosphere during the recording of the Airplane’s album “After Bathing at Baxter’s” in 1967.“They would come riding into the studio on motorcycles,” he wrote, “and they were getting high all the time. They had a nitrous oxide tank set up in the studio, they’d be rolling joints all night, and there was a lot of cocaine.” In spite of those obstacles, “After Bathing at Baxter’s” was well received, and Mr. Schmitt went on to produce the group’s next three albums.A tamer atmosphere existed in 2015, when Mr. Schmitt engineered “Shadows in the Night,” Mr. Dylan’s album of songs associated with Frank Sinatra. (Mr. Dylan produced the album under the name Jack Frost.) Between sessions over three weeks, they listened on Mr. Dylan’s small player to Sinatra’s renditions of the songs that they were about to record.Mr. Schmitt recalled that they were trying not to approach each song “in the same way” that Sinatra had, “but to get an idea of the interpretation,” he told Sound on Sound magazine in 2015.“We then would talk for maybe a couple of hours about how we were going to do the song,” he said.He was initially uncertain about whether Mr. Dylan could sing the Sinatra standards, he said, but he was thrilled by what emerged from the speakers from the start.“If there was something slightly off-pitch, it didn’t matter because his soul was there, and he laid the songs open and bare the way they are,” he told Sound on Sound. “He also wanted people to experience exactly what was recorded, hence no studio magic or fixing or turning things or moving things around and so on.”Mr. Schmitt at the 2014 Grammy Awards in Los Angeles with the 20th and final Grammy of his career, which he won for the Paul McCartney DVD “Live Kisses.” He also won two Latin Grammys and a lifetime achievement award.Frazer Harrison/Getty ImagesAlbert Harry Schmitt was born in Brooklyn on April 17, 1930. His father, also named Albert, made PT boats at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and later worked for a printing company and for a record processing plant. His mother, Abigail (Clark) Schmitt, was a homemaker.In his Uncle Harry Smith’s recording studio in Manhattan, Al discovered his future.“I loved my mother and father, but life with Uncle Harry was glamorous,” Mr. Schmitt wrote in his autobiography. (His uncle had changed his surname from Schmitt.)At first his father escorted him to the studio on weekends. But by age 8 Al was taking the subway on his own. He reveled in listening to Crosby, being asked by Orson Welles if he believed in Martians (soon after Welles’s nation-rattling radio broadcast of a Martian invasion in “The War of the Worlds”) and being taken to bars by his uncle and his close friend Les Paul.His uncle put Al to work — setting up chairs for a big band, cleaning cables. And Al learned about the proper placement of musicians in a one-microphone studio.After Mr. Schmitt was discharged from the Navy in 1950, his uncle helped him get a job as an apprentice engineer at Apex Studios in Manhattan. He had been working there for three months, still not certain of his capabilities, when he was left alone in the studio on a Saturday. He was taken aback when the members of Mercer Ellington’s big band arrived, along with Mr. Ellington’s father, Duke.Fearful of fouling up the session, he fetched a notebook with diagrams about how to set up the seating and place the microphones. He apologized to Duke Ellington.“I’m sorry, this is a big mistake,” he recalled telling him. “I’m not qualified to do this.”“Well,” Ellington said, “don’t worry, son. The setup looks fine, and the musicians are out there.”Over three hours, Mr. Schmitt said, he successfully recorded four songs.He worked at other studios in Manhattan before moving west in 1958 to join Radio Recorders in Los Angeles, where Elvis Presley had recorded “Jailhouse Rock” and where Mr. Schmitt in 1961 was the engineer for both the celebrated album “Ray Charles and Betty Carter” and Henry Mancini’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” soundtrack, indelibly featuring the Mancini-Johnny Mercer song “Moon River.”Mr. Schmitt was nominated for a Grammy for “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” but he did not win. His first Grammy came the next year, for his work on Mancini’s score for the film “Hatari.” (He was also nominated that year for “The Chipmunk Songbook,” by Alvin and the Chipmunks.)After five years at Radio Recorders, Mr. Schmitt was hired by RCA Studios, where he moved into production. He left RCA after three years to become an independent engineer and producer.Those years were among his busiest as an engineer. In 2018, during an interview on “Pensado’s Place,” an online series about audio engineering, he remembered one two-day period.“From 9 to 12 I did Ike and Tina and the Ikettes; we’d take a break, and from 2 to 5 I’d be doing Gogi Grant, a singer with a big band, and that night I’d be doing Henry Mancini with a big orchestra. The next day, Bobby Bare, a country record, and then a polka record.“I hated polka music,” he added, “but what I’d concentrate on was getting the best accordion sound anybody ever heard.”Mr. Schmitt began his career after leaving the Navy and continued working well into the digital age.Chris SchmittMr. Schmitt kept working until recently, helping to shape artists’ sound well into the digital era. His most recent Grammy, in 2014, was for Mr. McCartney’s DVD “Live Kisses.”In addition to his wife, Mr. Schmitt is survived by his daughter, Karen Schmitt; his sons, Al Jr., Christopher, Stephen and Nick; eight grandchildren; five great-grandchildren; his sister, Doris Metz; and his brothers, Russell and Richy. His previous three marriages ended in divorce.In 2015, Mr. Schmitt received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.Speaking at the unveiling of that star, the record producer Don Was said that Steve Miller had recently played him several new songs.“I listened for a minute and I said, ‘Did Al Schmitt record this?’” Mr. Was said. “He was taken aback and said, ‘Yes, how did you know?’ I said, ‘Because your vocals sound better than I ever heard them before.’” More