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      Jeff Beck’s 10 Essential Songs

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      The guitarist, who died on Tuesday, could make his instrument slash, burn and sigh. Listen to tracks released from 1966 to 2010 that reveal his range and intensity.Songs could barely contain Jeff Beck’s guitar. It jabbed at tunes with brute-force riffs. It sparred with singers for the spotlight. It clawed at the limits of verses and choruses, screaming melodies of its own, making notes slide and wriggle; sometimes it scraped out funky, contentious rhythm chords.Yet in quieter moments, Beck’s guitar could also be startlingly tender, cherishing a melody or proffering teasing, insinuating undercurrents. Beck, who died on Tuesday at 78, was also a master of electric guitar tones, of amplification and distortion. He could make his Stratocaster sound icy, searing, slashing and otherworldly in the course of a single track.With a career that began during the British Invasion, Beck at first tucked his guitar work into songs aimed for pop radio. But by the end of the 1960s, he was leading his own groups, backing his lead singers with roiling, slamming arrangements that made them shout to keep up; he was blasting his way toward metal. Beck’s instrumentals moved to the forefront in the 1970s, as his material shifted toward jazz-rock. But he never left behind the blues and rockabilly that had inspired him from the start.Here, in chronological order, are 10 tracks that reveal Beck’s range and intensity.The Yardbirds, ‘Over Under Sideways Down’ (1966)The pushy, up-and-down, Eastern-tinged guitar line that opens the song, and the squirming guitar riff behind the chorus, turn this track from jaunty British Invasion pop into something far more urgent. Beck’s lead guitar takes over for the entire last minute, melding rockabilly and something like raga, leaving the rest of the band to whoop along.Jeff Beck, ‘Shapes of Things’ (1968)Beck’s supercharged remake of a Yardbirds song has Rod Stewart on vocals and a churning, whipsawing arrangement that rivals anything from contemporaries like the Who. The song gallops from the get-go, as Beck answers his own power chords with countermelodies high and low. The bridge rockets into double time, and after the final verse the band stages a neat slow-motion collapse.Donovan with the Jeff Beck Group, ‘Barabajagal’ (1969)Beck the bandleader, abetted by wailing backup singers including Suzi Quatro, catalyzed this rowdy song by Donovan, the normally soft-spoken flower-child troubadour. Beck’s electric guitar opens with twangy rockabilly syncopation, sets up the choppy piano groove and pointedly spurs things along. He really starts to wail toward the song’s free-for-all finish.Stevie Wonder, ‘Lookin’ for Another Pure Love’ (1972)Beck and Stevie Wonder shared songs and appeared on each others’ albums in the 1970s, and “Lookin’ for Another Pure Love” from Wonder’s “Talking Book” featured the guitarist at his most sweetly melodic in the song’s bridge. His solo eases up to a high note and then casually trickles down, continuing through the track to garland Wonder’s vocals with little slides and curlicues, reveling in the song’s sophisticated chord progression.Jeff Beck, ‘Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers’ (1975)Beck’s best-known ballad is an instrumental version of a Wonder song. He plays it with long-lined phrases and constantly changing nuances of tone: as a dialogue, as a keening lament, as bitter self-accusations, as an anguished plea, as a fragile chance at hope. From start to finish, it sings.Jeff Beck, ‘Freeway Jam’ (1975)Written by Max Middleton, then the keyboardist in Beck’s band, “Freeway Jam” is a brisk shuffle that materializes and fades out as if it’s excerpted from a jam session, though parts are clearly mapped out. It gives Beck room to peal some clarion melodies and then attack them with trills, bent notes, blues licks and dissonances. A live version featuring the keyboardist Jan Hammer, released in 1977, makes the tune even more gleefully frenetic.Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart, ‘People Get Ready’ (1985)Rod Stewart rejoined Beck for a remake of the Curtis Mayfield gospel-soul standard, “People Get Ready,” that starts out restrained but grows fervid. Beck offers a stately, fanfare-like guitar hook after the first verse, then engages Stewart more and more: taking over the melody with note-bending variations, surging up from below, goading Stewart to shout and leap into falsetto. Despite its dated 1980s production, the song finds the spirit.Jeff Beck, ‘THX 138’ (1999)Could a player as physical as Beck handle the mechanical drive of electronica? Of course. A tireless programmed drumbeat drives “THX 138,” but Beck rides it in multiple ways: with an Eastern-tinged modal loop, with sustained power chords, with high blues lines, with ferocious stereo call-and-response chords, with a melody that leaps skyward. For all the gadgetry, human hands dominate this mix.Jeff Beck with Jimmy Page, ‘Beck’s Bolero’ (2009)Before he formed Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page was Jeff Beck’s colead guitarist, and then his successor, in the Yardbirds. In 1966 they collaborated to record “Beck’s Bolero,” written by Page, for Beck’s first solo single. This gracious latter-day reunion for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is noisy, flashy, virtuosic and over the top in exactly the right proportions.Jeff Beck, ‘Over the Rainbow’ (2010)For all his speed and dexterity, Beck never underestimated the beauty of a sustained melody. He played this Hollywood standard backed by chords from a string orchestra, sliding through the tune, holding back some notes and using tremolo on others, making every turn of the familiar song sound like a precious discovery. More

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      SZA’s ‘SOS’ Holds Off Taylor Swift for a Fourth Week at No. 1

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      Both artists introduced new digital versions of their albums, bringing a tight race to a typically sleepy week on the Billboard charts.The R&B singer and songwriter SZA has edged out Taylor Swift to hold at No. 1 on Billboard’s album chart for a fourth time, attaining a notable victory during what is usually the post-holiday sales doldrums.“SOS,” the long-awaited second LP by SZA, who was born Solána Rowe in St. Louis and raised in suburban New Jersey, had the equivalent of 125,000 sales in the United States last week. That total included 162 million streams and about 3,000 copies sold as a complete package, according to the tracking service Luminate.It is the first time an album by a woman has held at No. 1 four consecutive times since Adele’s “30,” which reigned for six weeks at the end of 2021, Billboard reported. (Swift’s “Midnights” notched five No. 1’s over a six-week stretch last fall.) “SOS” is also the first R&B title by a woman to rack up four weeks at the top since Alicia Keys’s “As I Am” (2007).“SOS,” a steady streaming hit that features guest spots by Travis Scott, Phoebe Bridgers and other artists, faced stiff competition last week from “Midnights.” Both SZA and Swift released special digital versions of their albums to lure fans. SZA sold two versions, containing extra tracks, while Swift’s website sold four editions, featuring variant artwork and bonus commentary cuts, for one day only.Swift’s promotion helped “Midnights” move the equivalent of 117,000 sales, up 10 percent from the week before, including 58,000 copies sold as a complete package. “Midnights” holds at No. 2 for a fifth week in a row.Also this week, a number of recent hits crawl back up the chart as holiday albums disappear like so many Christmas trees hauled to the curb. “Heroes & Villains” by the rap producer Metro Boomin rises one spot to No. 3, Drake and 21 Savage’s “Her Loss” is No. 4 and Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” is in fifth place.Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album,” which dipped below the Top 10 for two weeks at the end of the year, jumps back five spots to No. 6. Since its release two years ago, “Dangerous” has notched a total of 101 weeks in the Top 10, dropping out only three times during the holiday-albums crushes in 2021 and 2022. More

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      Matt Shultz, Cage the Elephant Singer, Arrested on Weapons Charges

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      Mr. Shultz, 39, was seen pulling a gun out of his pocket in a public restroom at a Manhattan hotel, the authorities said.Matt Shultz, the lead singer of the indie rock band Cage the Elephant, was arrested at a Manhattan hotel on Thursday on weapons charges, law enforcement officials said.Mr. Shultz, 39, was arrested on Thursday morning after a Bowery Hotel employee had seen him pull a gun from his pants pocket in one of the hotel’s public restrooms, according to a criminal complaint.Mr. Shultz, of Nashville, appeared intoxicated, according to the Manhattan district attorney’s office.Police officers responded to a 911 call, obtained a search warrant and found two loaded firearms — a .45-caliber Smith & Wesson pistol and a .45-caliber Sig Sauer pistol — in a bag in Mr. Shultz’s hotel room, according to court records and the prosecutor’s office.Officers also found 11 Polaroid photos of the guns, some showing a hand pointing to the firearms, and six handwritten notes, the prosecutor’s office said. A message on one of the notes read, in substance, “I will defend myself if I am attacked,” according to the prosecutor’s office.Mr. Shultz faces multiple counts of weapons possession charges, according to court records. He is scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday. His lawyer, Sanford Talkin, declined to comment on Sunday. It was not immediately clear if Mr. Shultz had been released on bail, which was set at $30,000.Cage the Elephant, which was formed in 2006 in Bowling Green, Ky., is known for its psychedelic sound, distinct echoes of past rock eras and Mr. Shultz’s warbling, sometimes abrasive voice.The band released its first album in 2008, and has won the Grammy Award for best rock album twice, most recently in 2020 for “Social Cues.” It won its first Grammy in 2015 for its album “Tell Me I’m Pretty.”The band’s 2011 album, “Thank You Happy Birthday,” debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, and the album’s lead single, “Shake Me Down,” was No. 1 on Billboard’s Rock Songs and Alternative Songs charts, according to the Grammy Awards.Before the band was established, Mr. Shultz had worked as a plumber and in a sandwich bar, according to the Grammy Awards. More

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      7 Songs We Nearly Missed in 2022

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      Hear tracks by Flo, Becky G and Karol G, Monster and Big Flock and more.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Flo, ‘Cardboard Box (Live Acoustic)’A stunning entry in the litany of to-the-left-to-the-left kiss-off anthems, Flo’s “Cardboard Box” is cheeky, confident, ever so slightly righteously rude. Flo — Jorja Douglas, Renée Downer and Stella Quaresma — is a vividly talented British R&B girl group that released several strong songs last year, but this was the most striking, full of arched-brow dismissals, self-love affirmations and, in this acoustic rendition, mellifluous harmonies that communicate bliss amid collapse: “You ain’t gonna change, boy/What’s the point in stringing me a-loh-ohngggg?” JON CARAMANICABecky G and Karol G, ‘Mamiii’This blockbuster 2022 hit — the inevitable collaboration between the two “real Gs,” Becky (the American granddaughter of Mexican immigrants) and Karol (from Colombia) — strives to be the ultimate kiss-off to a toxic ex. “I gave you my heart,” Becky G charges as the song begins, but she has definitely taken it back, changing her phone number and comparing the ex to a rat and a venereal disease. Over the bounce of a reggaeton beat, with sisterly harmonies, the breakup turns into a female-bonding experience: angry, amused, unforgiving. JON PARELESMonster and Big Flock, ‘Cappin’The most obvious retort to the recent uptick in using rap lyrics in court cases is this: Rappers — like all artists — lie. Of course they do. Rap is history and reportage and also embellishment and fancy. Placing an unreasonable truth value on a set of words perhaps based on actual experience that also happen to rhyme and have narrative coherence and are presented in an entertaining manner — that’s a fool’s game. Thus, “Cappin,” a song by the rappers Monster and Big Flock, a song made under the presumption of surveillance. Everything they rap about? Falsehoods, they insist. If you’re listening in search of evidence, look elsewhere. “Why you so serious?” Monster raps. “I can’t play?/I ain’t got no pistols, these props/I act like I be in the mix, but I’m not.” It’s a clever gimmick that serves as a reminder that what appears in a song isn’t necessarily true, and by extension, that plenty of true things never appear in any song. CARAMANICAFally Ipupa, ‘Formule 7’The Congolese songwriter, singer, guitarist and producer Fally Ipupa has delved into styles new and old, releasing an album a year since 2016. He celebrates decades of Congolese rumba on “Formule 7,” his seventh album, and its eight-minute title song is more like a highlight reel, cruising through multiple eras, configurations and rhythms of Congolese music. It spotlights six-beat drumming, intertwined guitars, synthesizer and accordion obbligatos, call-and-response vocals, singing and rapping, cheerfully claiming a whole continuum of ideas. PARELESEla Minus and DJ Python, ‘Kiss You’The ticks, glitches and muffled drumbeats of DJ Python’s production mirror the insistent longing Ela Minus sings about in “Kiss You.” She insists on a certain equilibrium — “I’m not holding on/I’m not letting go” — as sustained chords and twitchy electronic rhythms come and go. This is stasis as a taut balance of competing forces, all virtual, and all subject to change at any moment. PARELESManuel Turizo, ‘La Bachata’One of the year’s biggest bachata songs came not from the long-running genre kingpin Romeo Santos but instead from the Colombian singer Manuel Turizo. “La Bachata” is both folksy and ambitiously modern — Turizo has a relatively thin voice, but the lushness of the modern production bolsters him. Santos can sometimes sing with a coyness that feels impossibly dreamy, but Turizo, less bound by tradition, pushes hard into the beat, a restless interloper. CARAMANICAMabe Fratti, ‘Cada Músculo’Mabe Fratti, from Guatemala, brings maximal emotion to the Minimalist structures she builds from her vocals and the gutsy riffs she plays on cello. “Every muscle has a voice,” she insists in “Cada Músculo” (“Every Muscle”), as she layers her cello and electronics into her own orchestra. The tension — muscular and psychological — only grows. PARELES More

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      Henry Grossman, Photographer of Celebrities and Beatles, Dies at 86

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      He was best known for his formal portraits of prominent politicians and entertainers. Less famously, he took thousands of candid shots of John, Paul, George and Ringo.Henry Grossman, a photographer who was best known for his formal portraits of celebrities and other public figures — but who also, less famously, immortalized the Beatles on film in thousands of unscripted antics while juggling a side career as a Metropolitan Opera tenor and a Broadway bit player — died on Nov. 27 in Englewood, N.J. He was 86.His son, David, said he died in a hospital several months after sustaining injuries in a fall.Mr. Grossman produced paradigmatic portraits of Eleanor Roosevelt, Richard M. Nixon, Elizabeth Taylor, Martha Graham, Leontyne Price, Leonard Bernstein and Nelson Mandela. He photographed new Metropolitan Opera productions for Time magazine and was the official photographer for many Broadway shows.His portraits of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson were published on the front page of The New York Times on Nov. 23, 1963, accompanying the news that the young president had been assassinated in Dallas and succeeded by his vice president the day before.The Nov. 23, 1963, front page of The New York Times featured two formal portraits by Mr. Grossman: one of President John F. Kennedy, who had just been assassinated, and one of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had just been sworn in to replace him.Mr. Grossman’s sensitivity to classical portraiture’s interplay of shadow and light was inspired by his father, the artist Elias M. Grossman, an immigrant from Russia whose etchings were acquired by numerous institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art.By the time Henry graduated from Brandeis University in Massachusetts in 1958, he had compiled an impressive portfolio of portraits of guest speakers on campus and photographs of stage productions there. His fledgling second career as a singer would imbue him with an empathy for performers that helped him establish an unusual bond with celebrity subjects.He was only 27 — barely older than the Beatles themselves — when he was commissioned by Life magazine in 1964 to cover the band’s American television debut, on the popular CBS variety series “The Ed Sullivan Show.”Mr. Grossman photographed the hirsute quartet juxtaposed against a jungle of television cameras, amplifiers and other backstage impedimenta, and he shot from the balcony to capture their electrifying effect on the audience. His creative eye would be reflected in an archive of some 7,000 photos he would take of the Beatles over the next four years.That only a few dozen were published or even printed at the time — most famously a 1967 portrait for Life of the newly mustachioed band members — left other photographers (among them Robert Freeman, Dezo Hoffmann, Astrid Kirchherr, Jürgen Vollmer and Robert Whitaker) more closely associated with the Beatles than Mr. Grossman was.Only a few dozen of Mr. Grossman’s Beatles photos were published at the time he took them. The best known was this one, seen on the cover of Life magazine in 1967. Henry Grossman/Grossman Enterprises. All rights reserved.But Mr. Grossman’s archive of intimate moments at home, at private parties and during overnight recording sessions amounted to more images of the band taken over a longer period than any other photographer’s, according to his publisher, Curvebender Publishing.In 2008, Curvebender released “Kaleidoscope Eyes,” a limited-edition book of Mr. Grossman’s photographs documenting an evening at Abbey Road Studios in London as the Beatles were recording the album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” In 2012, the company published “Places I Remember,” a hefty volume that included 1,000 of his Beatles photographs.The Beatles’ “Ed Sullivan Show” debut did not transform Mr. Grossman into a fan overnight. But during the band’s American tour that summer, he befriended George Harrison.“After that,” Mr. Grossman told The Times in 2012, “anytime I went to London, I’d check into my hotel, call their office to find out George’s phone number du jour — they had to change them, because the fans would find them out — and I’d arrange to spend a day with them.”“They were accustomed to seeing me with a camera, documenting everything that went on around me,” he explained in “Places I Remember.” “It was simply part of me, part of who I was. More than that, I had become a friend.”“I was first a friend and second a photographer,” he added. “So when I pulled out my camera, no one thought twice about it. No one cared. It wasn’t seen as invasive.”Among the many public figures Mr. Grossman photographed was Eleanor Roosevelt in 1960. Henry Grossman/Grossman Enterprises. All rights reserved.Henry Maxwell Grossman was born on Oct. 11, 1936, in Manhattan. His father died when he was 10, and his mother, Josephine (Erschler) Grossman, helped support the family by selling her husband’s etchings.After graduating from Metropolitan Vocational and Technical High School in Manhattan at 16, Henry earned a scholarship to Brandeis, where he received a degree in theater arts and did graduate work in anthropology — and where he first made a mark as a photographer.After returning to New York City, he began his career as a freelance photographer for Life, Time, Newsweek and Paris Match, among other magazines, and for The Times.His marriage to Carol Ann Hauptfuhrer in 1973 ended in divorce. He is survived by their children, David and Christine Grossman, who are both professional musicians, and his sister, Suzanne Grossman.While in his 20s, Mr. Grossman studied at the Actors Studio. After touring in the 1960s with the national company of the Metropolitan Opera, Mr. Grossman, a tenor, made his New York singing debut at Carnegie Hall in 1973 and went on to appear with the Washington Opera Society and the Philadelphia Lyric Opera. In the 1980s, he performed in concert with the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Riccardo Muti, and in the next decade he sang in three productions at the Metropolitan Opera.He also did some acting. He made a brief appearance in the 1978 movie “Who’s Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?” while on location in Italy as film photographer, and he played a scullery worker in the original cast of the Broadway musical “Grand Hotel” for its full run, from 1989 to 1992.Jacqueline Kennedy in 1967. Mr. Grossman waited to be invited rather than insinuating himself into his subjects’ private lives.Henry Grossman/Grossman Enterprises. All rights reserved.Mr. Grossman was gregarious but largely unassuming, waiting to be invited rather than insinuating himself into his subjects’ private lives. That was how he managed to take photos for Jacqueline Kennedy of her children at home, and to accompany George Harrison on his “Dark Horse” tour of North America in 1974.“I learned a lot from the Beatles,” he was quoted as saying in the 2012 Times article. “I was interested in how they took to fame, how they used it. It wasn’t easy for them.“One night in Atlantic City, I asked Ringo how he liked seeing America. He took me to the window of his hotel room, pointed to a brick wall across the parking lot, and said, ‘That’s what we’ve seen.’ They were trapped.”“I guess one reason we got along so well was that they knew I wasn’t trying to get anything from them,” Mr. Grossman said. “And I think I got the pictures I got because I wasn’t posing them. I wasn’t injecting myself into the scene as a participant. I was just watching.“I was like a fly on the wall. I got what was there.” More

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      Jeremiah Green, Drummer for Modest Mouse, Dies at 45

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      Mr. Green was a founder the group, an indie band that rose to mainstream success. He was also one of its most enduring members.Jeremiah Green, a drummer who co-founded and then became a stalwart member of Modest Mouse, an indie rock band that rose to mainstream fame, died on Saturday in the small coastal city of Sequim, Wash. He was 45.His mother, Carol Eckerich-Namatame, said the cause was cancer. She added that Mr. Green had been staying with his stepfather, Brian Namatame, while being treated for cancer at a nearby hospital.Mr. Green created Modest Mouse with the lead singer and songwriter Isaac Brock, the bassist Eric Judy and the guitarist Dann Gallucci in Issaquah, Wash., outside Seattle, in the 1990s. They played atonal rock, with Mr. Brock singing in an angry falsetto. His lyrics took a brooding, introspective approach to suburban ennui, winning over the sensitive souls of the indie rock community.But Modest Mouse transformed with the 2004 album “Good News for People Who Love Bad News,” and went on to produce multiple hit songs, most notably “Float On,” which was among the most popular rock tracks of the 2000s. The band’s vocals and guitar lines became more melodic, and Mr. Green’s drums drove a sound that listeners could dance to.“Modest Mouse has built a career out of music that sounds like it’s on the brink of falling apart, but importantly, it never collapses into the threatened hodgepodge,” Stylus magazine wrote in 2007. “Jeremiah Green’s drumming gathers the mess of howling vocals and scrabbling guitars and focuses it into something approaching pop music.”Jeremiah Martin Green was born on March 4, 1977, in Oahu, Hawaii, where his father, Donald, was stationed as a staff sergeant in the Army. His parents divorced when he was young, and he moved with his mother to Washington State. Ms. Eckerich-Namatame worked as an administrator at a trucking company and in the office of a produce wholesaler.By the time he was 12 or 13 years old, Jeremiah knew he wanted to play punk rock. His mother found him a drum teacher, but Jeremiah found him uninspired and decided to teach the instrument to himself. He attended small rock shows on the Seattle music scene and studied the movements of the drummers he saw, he told Modern Drummer in 2015.He graduated in 1995 from Best High School, an alternative school in Kirkland, Wash., that gave him time to pursue artistic projects. Modest Mouse’s first studio album, “This Is a Long Drive for Someone With Nothing to Think About,” was released in 1996, shortly after Jeremiah turned 19.Mr. Green was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and in 2004 he told Spin magazine about his attempts to find appropriate medication and about the difficulties he had communicating with bandmates. There were terrible fights, and Mr. Green briefly found himself in a mental hospital. But he wound up becoming one of Modest Mouse’s most enduring members, alongside Mr. Brock.In 2021, Modest Mouse released “The Golden Casket,” its first album in six years. Last month, the radio disc jockey Marco Collins wrote on Facebook that Mr. Green had been forced to pull out of a tour marking the 25th anniversary of Modest Mouse’s second studio album, “Lonesome Crowded West.”In 2017, Mr. Green married Lauren Engle. They had a son, Wilder. Mr. Green lived with his family in Port Townsend, Wash.In addition to his mother, stepfather, wife and son, Mr. Green is survived by a brother, Adam; a half sister, Teri Dean; and a stepsister, Emiko VanWie.In 2015, now a stable member of a world-famous rock band, Mr. Green looked back wistfully at his youth, when he was unknown and still an amateur on the drums.“Sometimes, I feel like I was better when I was 18 and didn’t know what I was doing,” he told Modern Drummer. “I listen to some parts of those records, and they’re kind of sloppy, but I think I was maybe more creative because it was all new to me.”Christine Chung More

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      Anita Pointer, Frequent Lead Singer of Famed Sister Act, Dies at 74

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      She was the lead vocalist on all three of the Pointer Sisters’ Top 40 hits in the group’s early years, and she helped define its pop sound in the 1980s.Anita Pointer, the sweet and occasionally sultry lead vocalist on many hits of her family band the Pointer Sisters in the 1970s and ’80s, died on Saturday at home in Beverly Hills, Calif. She was 74.The cause was cancer, her publicist, Roger Neal, said.The Pointer Sisters occupied a middle point in pop history between the doo-wop innocence of the Ronettes and the stilettoed girl power of Destiny’s Child.Anita’s voice had a lot to do with that. She sang with the speed and flavor of molasses. Though she commanded the virtuosity to trill prettily, she tended to sing too softly to sound overpowering. In “Slow Hand,” a love song with a soft-focus music video that reached No. 2 on the pop charts in 1981, Anita cooed.When she sang lead vocals, on that song and others, her sisters provided a melodic line on backup, and the women frequently harmonized, structuring their groovy ’70s sound along similar lines to a barbershop quartet.The group started with four Pointer Sisters — Anita, Ruth, Bonnie and June — and became a trio when Bonnie left to pursue a solo career in 1977. Anita sang lead on all three of the group’s Top 40 hits in its original incarnation, including the breakout hit, “Yes We Can Can,” from its debut album, “The Pointer Sisters” (1973). It reached No. 11 on the charts that year.The Pointer Sisters performing in 1973. From left, they are Ruth, Anita, Bonnie and June. Associated PressPerforming the song live, Anita sang through a toothy smile, with an earnest, imploring tone that might have been learned from hearing her father, a minister, preach.Some of the Pointer Sisters’ early music, such as “How Long (Betcha’ Got A Chick On The Side)” (1975), could be fast-paced and funky, but the antique aspect of the group’s sound was deliberate. The Pointer women performed wearing secondhand clothes that could have been worn to church in the 1940s — and they sometimes even sourced their wardrobe from their mother’s church friends.They won their first Grammy, unusually for a Black group of the time, in the best country vocal performance by a duo or group category, for the 1974 song “Fairytale,” written by Anita and Bonnie.Working outside her family band in 1986, Anita achieved a rare crossover hit in a duet with the country singer Earl Thomas Conley, “Too Many Times.” The two performed the song at an improbable venue for Mr. Conley: the R&B television show “Soul Train.”The Pointer Sisters charted a new course when Bonnie left the group. Its 1978 rendition of Bruce Springsteen’s song “Fire,” which reached No. 2 on the charts, was transitional: old-fashioned honky-tonk piano lines, but with Anita as lead vocalist leaning into a huskier, sexier side of her low voice.By 1982, the group had arrived at a largely new style with “I’m So Excited.” On lead vocals, Anita sounded joyous belting out come-hither lyrics about “those pleasures in the night,” and the group came out with a racy music video to match. The song spent 40 weeks on the Hot 100 chart.Anita sang backup on other Pointer Sisters hits, with June in lead for “Jump (For My Love),” which won the duo or group pop performance Grammy in 1985, and Ruth led on “Automatic,” which won the vocal arrangement for two or more voices award at that year’s ceremony.“That’s something I would always hate to see — somebody trying to out-sing the other person,” Anita said in a discussion of her career posted on YouTube in 2015. “Everybody did their best. I never felt like we were competing onstage.”Anita Marie Pointer was born on Jan. 23, 1948, in Oakland, Calif. Her father, the Rev. Elton Pointer, and her mother, Sarah Elizabeth Silas Pointer, both ministered to a small congregation. The six Pointer children sang in choir throughout their childhoods, gaining vocal training that would help the girls harmonize when they formed their own group.Elton and Sarah came from Arkansas, and Anita fell in love with her grandparents’ home in the town of Prescott, where she attended fifth, seventh and 10th grades. She attended a racially segregated school, was forced to sit in the balcony of the movie theater and once picked cotton for money.She graduated from Oakland Technical High School in 1965 and was hired as a legal secretary. In 1968, she saw Bonnie and June sing to a crowd in San Francisco. “I just lost it,” she told Collector’s Weekly in 2015. “I sat in that audience, and I cried, and I sang along. The next day, I quit my job. I said, ‘I’ve got to sing!’”The sisters soon became a backup group for musicians in the San Francisco area like Taj Mahal. Once, they were warned about upstaging a musical act they were supposed to be supporting. They began recording their own music.In addition to music, Anita amassed a notable collection of objects charting Black American history, including artifacts of slavery, segregation and racist caricature.“This reminds me that everybody don’t love you and that you have to prove them wrong,” Ms. Pointer told Collector’s Weekly. “You’re not a buffoon. The artists tried to depict Black people in an insulting way, but I think big lips and big booties are beautiful.”Ms. Pointer’s two marriages ended in divorce. Her daughter, Jada, from her first marriage, died of cancer in 2003. June died in 2006, and Bonnie died in 2020. Ms. Pointer is survived by her sister Ruth; her brothers, Aaron and Fritz; and a granddaughter.As she aged, Ms. Pointer never fell out of love with her old music, blasting it in her car and singing along. The band kept performing well into the 21st century.“It’s not a vulgar show, so you can bring your grandma and you can bring the kids,” Ms. Pointer told the French outlet Metro News in 2007. “They’re not going to get a corset in their face.” More

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      Year-End Listener Mailbag: Your 2022 Questions, Part 2

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicEach year, oodles of questions pour in from the Popcast faithful, and each year, the pop music staff of The New York Times tackles them with gusto.In part one of our mailbag, we answered questions about Taylor Swift and female pop aspirants. On this Popcast, heated conversation about nontraditional country music breakthroughs and the inevitability of the Morgan Wallen comeback, the state of music video, a possible Ethel Cain-SZA connection and more.Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterCaryn Ganz, The New York Times’s pop music editorConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More