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Jun 19, 2011 13:10:28 GMT -5
Post by maherjunkie on Jun 19, 2011 13:10:28 GMT -5
Bye to Clarence Clemmons of the E Street band/ Bruce Springsteen fame. Gone yesterday at the age of 69 due to complications of from a stroke.
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roots2rock
Silver Shield Investigator
Birthdate: September 6 VIRGO!
Posts: 101
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RIP
Jun 20, 2011 23:13:24 GMT -5
Post by roots2rock on Jun 20, 2011 23:13:24 GMT -5
It's too bad "The Big Man" had to go, but he did have a good life. He was a great musician and the music he made with Springsteen will live on forever!
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dimarec
Silver Shield Investigator
Posts: 111
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RIP
Jun 24, 2011 14:16:02 GMT -5
Post by dimarec on Jun 24, 2011 14:16:02 GMT -5
Great Peter Falk! ;( nyti.ms/m2Jd1cJune 24, 2011 Peter Falk, Rumpled and Crafty Actor on ‘Columbo,’ Dies at 83 By BRUCE WEBER Peter Falk, who marshaled actorly tics, prop room appurtenances and his own physical idiosyncrasies to personify Columbo, one of the most famous and beloved fictional detectives in television history, died on Thursday night at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 83. His family announced his death in a statement, The Associated Press reported. He had been treated for Alzheimer’s disease in recent years. Mr. Falk had a wide-ranging career in comedy and drama, in the movies and onstage, before and during the three-and-a-half decades in which he portrayed the slovenly but canny lead on “Columbo.” He was nominated for two Oscars; appeared in original stage productions of works by Paddy Chayefsky, Neil Simon and Arthur Miller, worked with the directors Frank Capra, John Cassavetes, Blake Edwards and Mike Nichols, and co-starred with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Bette Davis and Jason Robards. But like that of his contemporary Telly Savalas of “Kojak” fame, Mr. Falk’s primetime popularity was founded on a single role. A lieutenant in the Los Angeles Police Department, Columbo was a comic variation on the traditional fictional detective. With the keen mind of Sherlock Holmes and Philip Marlowe, he was cast in the mold of neither — not a gentleman scholar, and not a tough guy. He was instead a mass of quirks and peculiarities, a seemingly distracted figure in a rumpled raincoat, perpetually patting his pockets for a light for his signature stogie. He drove a battered Peugeot, was unfailingly polite, was sometimes accompanied by a basset hound named Dog, and was constantly referring to the wisdom of his wife (who was never seen on screen) and a variety of relatives and acquaintances who were identified in Homeric-epithet-like shorthand — an uncle who played the bagpipes with the Shriners, say, or a nephew majoring in dermatology at U.C.L.A. — and who were called to mind by the circumstances of the crime at hand. It was a low-rent affect that was especially irksome to the high-society murderers he outwitted in episode after episode. Mr. Falk had a glass eye, resulting from an operation to remove a cancerous tumor when he was 3 years old. The prosthesis gave all his characters a peculiar, almost quizzical squint. And he had a mild speech impediment that gave his L’s a breathy quality, a sound that emanated from the back of his throat and that seemed especially emphatic whenever, in character, he introduced himself as Lieutenant Columbo. Such a deep well of eccentricity made Columbo amusing as well as incisive, not to mention a progenitor of later characters like Tony Shalhoub’s Monk. And it made him an especially suitable central figure for the detective story niche in which he lived, where whodunit was irrelevant and how-it-was-done paramount. From 1968 to 2003, Mr. Falk played the character dozens of times, mostly in the format of a 90-minute or two-hour television movie. “What are you hanging around for?” Mr. Falk wrote, describing the appeal of the show in “Just One More Thing,” an anecdotal memoir (2006), whose title was a trademark line of Columbo’s, usually indicating the jig was up. “Just one thing. You want to know how he gets caught.” When Columbo, the ordinary man as hero, brought low the greedy and murderous privileged of Beverly Hills, Malibu and Brentwood, they were implicit victories for the many over the few. “This is, perhaps, the most thoroughgoing satisfaction ‘Columbo’ offers us,” Jeff Greenfield wrote in The New York Times in 1973, “the assurance that those who dwell in marble and satin, those whose clothes, food, cars and mates are the very best, do not deserve it.” Peter Michael Falk was born on Sept. 16, 1927, in New York City, and grew up in Ossining, N.Y, where his father owned a clothing store and where, in spite of his missing eye, he was a high school athlete. In one story he liked to tell, after being called out at third base during a baseball game, he removed his eye and handed it to the umpire. “You’ll do better with this,” he said. After high school, Mr. Falk went briefly to Hamilton College, in upstate New York, before dropping out and joining the Merchant Marine as a cook. He later returned to New York City, where he earned a degree in political science from the New School for Social Research before attending Syracuse University, where he received a master’s degree in public administration. He took a job in Hartford as an efficiency expert for the Connecticut budget bureau. It was in Connecticut that he began acting, joining an amateur troupe called the Mark Twain Maskers in Hartford and taking classes from Eva Le Gallienne at the White Barn Theater in Westport. He was 29 when he decided to move to New York again, this time to be an actor. He made his professional debut in an Off Broadway production of Moliere’s “Don Juan” in 1956. In 1957 he was cast as the bartender in the famous Circle in the Square revival of “The Iceman Cometh,” directed by José Quintero and starring Jason Robards; he made his first splash on screen, as Abe (Kid Twist) Reles, a violent mob thug, in the 1960 film “Murder Inc.” That performance earned him an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor and a moment of high embarrassment at the awards ceremony. When the winner was announced — it was Peter Ustinov for “Spartacus” — Mr. Falk heard the first name and stood, only to have to sit back down again a moment later. “When I hit the seat I turned to the press agent and said, ‘You’re fired!’ ” Mr. Falk wrote in his memoir. “I didn’t want him charging me for another day.” The next year, newly married to a Syracuse classmate, Alyce Mayo — they would have two daughters and divorce in 1976 — Mr. Falk was again nominated for a supporting-actor Oscar, for playing a mobster, though this time with a more light-hearted stripe, in the final film to be directed by Frank Capra, “Pocketful of Miracles,” starring Bette Davis and Glenn Ford. From then on, Mr. Falk, who was swarthy, squat (he was 5-foot-6) and handsome, had to fend off offers to play gangsters. He did take such a part in “Robin and the 7 Hoods”, alongside Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Bing Crosby and Sammy Davis Jr., but fearful of typecasting, he also took roles in comic japes like “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” and “The Great Race.” He returned to the stage as well, as Stalin, the title role, in Paddy Chayefsky’s “Passion of Joseph D,” which earned him solid reviews in spite of the show’s brief run (14 performances). Mr. Falk played Stalin “with brilliant unsmiling ferocity,” Howard Taubman wrote in his largely positive review in The Times. His life was forever changed in 1967 when, reportedly after both Bing Crosby and Lee J. Cobb turned down the role, he was cast as Columbo in the television film “Prescription: Murder.” The film, about a psychiatrist who kills his wife with the help of one of his patients, was written by Richard Levinson and William Link; they had adapted it from their stage play, which opened in San Francisco in Boston in 1964, and which itself was an adaptation. Levinson and Link first wrote the story in 1960 for a series called “The Chevy Mystery Show.” It was in that show — the episode was titled “Enough Rope” — that Columbo made his debut as a character, played by Bert Freed. But it was Mr. Falk who made him a legend. During the filming it was he who rejected the fashionable attire the costume shop had laid out for him; it was he who chose the raincoat — one of his own — and who matched the rest of the detective’s clothes to its shabbiness. It was he who picked out the Peugeot from the studio motor pool, a convertible with a flat tire and needing a paint job that, he reflected years afterwards, “even matched the raincoat.” And as the character grew, the line between the actor and the character grew hazier. They shared a general disregard for nattiness, an informal mode of speech, an obsession with detail, an irrepressible absent-mindedness. Even Columbo’s favorite song, “This Old Man,” which seemed to run through his mind (and the series) like a broken record, was one that Mr. Falk had loved from childhood and that ended up in the show because he was standing around humming it one day, in character, when Columbo was waiting for someone to come to the phone. Three years passed between the first “Columbo” movie and the second, “Ransom for a Dead Man,” which became the pilot that launched the show as a regular network offering. It was part of a revolving wheel of Sunday night mysteries with recurring characters that appeared under the rubric “NBC Mystery Theater.” The first set included “McCloud,” with Dennis Weaver, and “McMillan and Wife,” with Rock Hudson and Susan St James. In between, Mr. Falk made “Husbands,” the first of his collaborations with his friend, Mr. Cassavetes. The others were “A Woman Under the Influence” in 1974, a brutally realistic portrayal of a marriage undermined by mental illness, directed by Mr. Cassavetes, for which Mr. Falk’s co-star and Mr. Cassavetes’s wife, Gena Rowlands, won the Academy Award; and “Mikey and Nicky” in 1976, a dark buddy comedy directed by Elaine May in which the two men played the title roles. In 1971 he once again returned to Broadway, in Neil Simon’s angry comedy “The Prisoner of Second Avenue.” In later years, Mr. Falk starred in several notable films — “Murder by Death” (1976), “The In-Laws” (1979), “The Princess Bride” (1987) and “Tune In Tomorrow” (1990) among them — and in 1998 he opened Off Broadway in the title role of Arthur Miller’s play “Mr. Peters’ Connection,” a portrait of an older man trying to make sense out his life as it comes to an end. By that time, however, Mr. Falk and Columbo had become more or less interchangeable as cultural references. Mr. Peters, Ben Brantley wrote in his review of the play in The Times, “is as genuinely perplexed as Columbo, his aggressively rumpled television detective, only pretends to be.” Mr. Falk is survived by his second wife, Shera Danese, and two daughters, Jackie and Catherine.
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Jun 24, 2011 15:52:59 GMT -5
Post by Patcat on Jun 24, 2011 15:52:59 GMT -5
And, I think, an inspiration for parts of Goren.
A wonderful actor in many other roles. "Push the button, Max!"
Patcat
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roots2rock
Silver Shield Investigator
Birthdate: September 6 VIRGO!
Posts: 101
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RIP
Jun 24, 2011 21:39:25 GMT -5
Post by roots2rock on Jun 24, 2011 21:39:25 GMT -5
And, I think, an inspiration for parts of Goren. A wonderful actor in many other roles. "Push the button, Max!" Patcat I used to think of Peter Falk fondly sometimes when watching Goren's character and say, Columbo was the original Snoop!
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roots2rock
Silver Shield Investigator
Birthdate: September 6 VIRGO!
Posts: 101
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RIP
Jul 23, 2011 20:13:11 GMT -5
Post by roots2rock on Jul 23, 2011 20:13:11 GMT -5
RIP Amy Winehouse, British R&B diva. So sad, she followed the "tradition" of Janis Joplin and others with a history of drugs and alcohol by dying at the very early age of 27. She had a unique voice.
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heikimikey
Silver Shield Investigator
Communication Junkie
Posts: 100
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RIP
Jul 24, 2011 16:30:07 GMT -5
Post by heikimikey on Jul 24, 2011 16:30:07 GMT -5
So sad...what a talent - what a waste.....
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Nov 5, 2011 10:18:55 GMT -5
Post by maherjunkie on Nov 5, 2011 10:18:55 GMT -5
One bad mutha....
NEW YORK (AP) — Andy Rooney so dreaded the day he had to end his signature "60 Minutes" commentaries about life's large and small absurdities that he kept going until he was 92 years old.
Even then, he said he wasn't retiring. Writers never retire. But his life after the end of "A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney" was short: He died Friday night, according to CBS, only a month after delivering his 1,097th and final televised commentary.
Rooney had gone to the hospital for an undisclosed surgery, but major complications developed and he never recovered.
"Andy always said he wanted to work until the day he died, and he managed to do it, save the last few weeks in the hospital," said his "60 Minutes" colleague, correspondent Steve Kroft.
Rooney talked on "60 Minutes" about what was in the news, and his opinions occasionally got him in trouble. But he was just as likely to discuss the old clothes in his closet, why air travel had become unpleasant and why banks needed to have important-sounding names.
Rooney won one of his four Emmy Awards for a piece on whether there was a real Mrs. Smith who made Mrs. Smith's Pies. As it turned out, there was no Mrs. Smith.
"I obviously have a knack for getting on paper what a lot of people have thought and didn't realize they thought," Rooney once said. "And they say, 'Hey, yeah!' And they like that."
Looking for something new to punctuate its weekly broadcast, "60 Minutes" aired its first Rooney commentary on July 2, 1978. He complained about people who keep track of how many people die in car accidents on holiday weekends. In fact, he said, the Fourth of July is "one of the safest weekends of the year to be going someplace."
More than three decades later, he was railing about how unpleasant air travel had become. "Let's make a statement to the airlines just to get their attention," he said. "We'll pick a week next year and we'll all agree not to go anywhere for seven days."
In early 2009, as he was about to turn 90, Rooney looked ahead to President Barack Obama's upcoming inauguration with a look at past inaugurations. He told viewers that Calvin Coolidge's 1925 swearing-in was the first to be broadcast on radio, adding, "That may have been the most interesting thing Coolidge ever did."
"Words cannot adequately express Andy's contribution to the world of journalism and the impact he made — as a colleague and a friend — upon everybody at CBS," said Leslie Moonves, CBS Corp. president and CEO.
Jeff Fager, CBS News chairman and "60 Minutes" executive producer, said "it's hard to imagine not having Andy around. He loved his life and he lived it on his own terms. We will miss him very much."
For his final essay, Rooney said that he'd live a life luckier than most.
"I wish I could do this forever. I can't, though," he said.
He said he probably hadn't said anything on "60 Minutes" that most of his viewers didn't already know or hadn't thought. "That's what a writer does," he said. "A writer's job is to tell the truth."
True to his occasional crotchety nature, though, he complained about being famous or bothered by fans. His last wish from fans: If you see him in a restaurant, just let him eat his dinner.
Rooney was a freelance writer in 1949 when he encountered CBS radio star Arthur Godfrey in an elevator and — with the bluntness millions of people learned about later — told him his show could use better writing. Godfrey hired him and by 1953, when he moved to TV, Rooney was his only writer.
He wrote for CBS' Garry Moore during the early 1960s before settling into a partnership with Harry Reasoner at CBS News. Given a challenge to write on any topic, he wrote "An Essay on Doors" in 1964, and continued with contemplations on bridges, chairs and women.
"The best work I ever did," Rooney said. "But nobody knows I can do it or ever did it. Nobody knows that I'm a writer and producer. They think I'm this guy on television."
He became such a part of the culture that comic Joe Piscopo satirized Rooney's squeaky voice with the refrain, "Did you ever ..." Rooney never started any of his essays that way. For many years, "60 Minutes" improbably was the most popular program on television and a dose of Rooney was what people came to expect for a knowing smile on the night before they had to go back to work.
Rooney left CBS in 1970 when it refused to air his angry essay about the Vietnam War. He went on TV for the first time, reading the essay on PBS and winning a Writers Guild of America award for it.
He returned to CBS three years later as a writer and producer of specials. Notable among them was the 1975 "Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington," whose lighthearted but serious look at government won him a Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting.
His words sometimes landed Rooney in hot water. CBS suspended him for three months in 1990 for making racist remarks in an interview, which he denied. Rooney, who was arrested in Florida while in the Army in the 1940s for refusing to leave a seat among blacks on a bus, was hurt deeply by the charge of racism.
Gay rights groups were mad, during the AIDS epidemic, when Rooney mentioned homosexual unions in saying "many of the ills which kill us are self-induced." Indians protested when Rooney suggested Native Americans who made money from casinos weren't doing enough to help their own people.
The Associated Press learned the danger of getting on Rooney's cranky side. In 1996, AP Television Writer Frazier Moore wrote a column suggesting it was time for Rooney to leave the broadcast. On Rooney's next "60 Minutes" appearance, he invited those who disagreed to make their opinions known. The AP switchboard was flooded by some 7,000 phone calls and countless postcards were sent to the AP mail room.
"Your piece made me mad," Rooney told Moore two years later. "One of my major shortcomings — I'm vindictive. I don't know why that is. Even in petty things in my life I tend to strike back. It's a lot more pleasurable a sensation than feeling threatened.
"He was one of television's few voices to strongly oppose the war in Iraq after the George W. Bush administration launched it in 2002. After the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, he said he was chastened by its quick fall but didn't regret his "60 Minutes" commentaries.
"I'm in a position of feeling secure enough so that I can say what I think is right and if so many people think it's wrong that I get fired, well, I've got enough to eat," Rooney said at the time.
Andrew Aitken Rooney was born on Jan. 14, 1919, in Albany, N.Y., and worked as a copy boy on the Albany Knickerbocker News while in high school. College at Colgate University was cut short by World War II, when Rooney worked for Stars and Stripes.
With another former Stars and Stripes staffer, Oram C. Hutton, Rooney wrote four books about the war. They included the 1947 book, "Their Conqueror's Peace: A Report to the American Stockholders," documenting offenses against the Germans by occupying forces.
Rooney and his wife, Marguerite, were married for 62 years before she died of heart failure in 2004. They had four children and lived in New York, with homes in Norwalk, Conn., and upstate New York. Daughter Emily Rooney is a former executive producer of ABC's "World News Tonight." Brian was a longtime ABC News correspondent, Ellen a photographer and Martha Fishel is chief of the public service division of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
Services will be private, and it's anticipated CBS News will hold a public memorial later, Brian Rooney said Saturday.
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Feb 1, 2012 12:38:20 GMT -5
Post by maherjunkie on Feb 1, 2012 12:38:20 GMT -5
May the Soul Train roll on, brother Cornelius.. latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2012/02/remembering-don-cornelius-soul-train-creator-defined-an-era.htmlDon Cornelius Dead: 'Soul Train' Host And Creator Dies After Apparent Suicide Soul Train Creator, Don Cornelius, Dead Don Cornelius, the creator and longtime host of the groundbreaking music show ‘Soul Train,' was found dead in his California home this morning. He was 75. According to the Los Angeles Times, police arrived at Cornelius’ Sherman Oaks home around 4 a.m. and found him dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. A radio news announcer by trade, Cornelius began moonlighting at WCIU-TV in the 1960s. While there, he toyed with the idea of creating an African-American version of "American Bandstand," Dick Clark's influential music show, with live dancing five days a week. On August 17, 1970, the first episode of Soul Train premiered on the station, and by the following year, it was being syndicated in other markets. 'Soul Train' became the longest-running nationally syndicated show in history, airing from 1971 through 2006. Cornelius held down the hosting duties for most of that run, before stepping away in 1993. Cornelius remained as its executive producer and expanded the brand into an annual awards show. "I have known him since I was19 years old and James Brown had me speak on Soul Train," the Rev. Al Sharpton said in a statement. "We have maintained a friendship for the last 38 years. He brought soul music and dance to the world in a way that it had never been shown and he was a cultural game changer on a global level. Had it not been for Don Cornelius we would not have ever transcended from the Chitlin circuit to become mainstream cultural trendsetters." Cornelius recently told the Los Angeles Times that there were early plans to create a movie based on the franchise. "We've been in discussions with several people about getting a movie off the ground," he said. "It wouldn't be the 'Soul Train' dance show, it would be more of a biographical look at the project. It's going to be about some of the things that really happened on the show." In 2008, Cornelius was arrested and charged with spousal battery and dissuading a witness from making a police report, and assault with a deadly weapon. He was sentenced to three years probation. During his rocky divorce battle to ex-wife, Viktoria, TMZ reported that Cornelius made a morbid request in the couple’s divorce papers. "I am 72 years old. I have significant health issues," Cornelius said. "I want to finalize this divorce before I die." Cornelius is survived by his two sons, Anthony and Raymond.
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Feb 1, 2012 15:05:33 GMT -5
Post by Patcat on Feb 1, 2012 15:05:33 GMT -5
The brilliant but troubled actor Nicol Williamson died on December 16, 2011, at the age of 75. His son Luke announced his father's death last week, stating that the actor didn't want any fuss over his death. Williamson was probably best known for his Sherlock Holmes in the film of THE SEVEN PER CENT SOLUTION, Merlin in EXCALIBUR, and his behavior on and off the stage. He was also a wonderful Little John in ROBIN AND MARIAN opposite Audrey Hepburn and Sean Connery. When he was good, he was great. Unfortunately, he seems to have been a man who was very good at something he occasionally despised.
Patcat
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Mar 1, 2012 12:06:06 GMT -5
Post by maherjunkie on Mar 1, 2012 12:06:06 GMT -5
Still a Daydream Believer.. www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/29/davy-jones-dead-singer-monkees_n_1310769.htmlLogin with Facebook to see what your friends are reading Enable Social Reading i Davy Jones Dead: Singer Of The Monkees Dies At 66 First Posted: 02/29/2012 12:57 pm Updated: 02/29/2012 10:31 pm React Amazing Inspiring Funny Scary Hot Crazy Important Weird Follow Video , Davy Jones , The Monkees , David Jones Monkees , David Jones The Monkees , Davy Jones Dead , Davy Jones Passed Away , Celebrity News SHARE THIS STORY 7,025 615 342 Get Celebrity Alerts Sign Up Submit this story The Monkees singer Davy Jones has died at the age of 66, TMZ reports. A rep for Jones revealed that he passed away Wednesday morning after suffering a heart attack. The singer is survived by his wife Jessica and four daughters from previous marriages. TMZ confirmed the news of Jones' death with an official from the medical examiner's office for Martin County, Fla. As part of the cast for the NBC sitcom "The Monkees," Jones joined the band with Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork in 1966. The group's single "I'm A Believer" was the top charting track of 1967. Over the course of its career, the band collected an array of accolades, including two Emmy awards and a number of Billboard hit singles and albums. The Monkees embarked on a reunion tour, sans Nesmith, in 2011 celebrating 45 years together. The Associated Press has published an obituary for Jones written by Matt Sedensky: WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Davy Jones, the diminutive heartthrob who rocketed to the top of the 1960s music charts by beckoning millions of adoring fans with the catchy refrains of The Monkees, died Wednesday. He was 66. His publicist, Helen Kensick, confirmed that Jones died of a heart attack near his home in Indiantown. Jones complained of breathing troubles early in the morning and was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead, said Rhonda Irons, spokeswoman of the Martin County Sheriff's Office. In a 911 call released Wednesday night, an unidentified woman anxiously pleads "Ambulance, please, hurry!" His home was about 27 miles from the hospital and a fire rescue unit rushed him to the hospital. Jones' moppish long hair, boyish good looks and his British accent endeared him to legions of screaming young fans after "The Monkees" premiered on NBC in 1966 as a made-for-TV band seeking to capitalize on Beatlemania sweeping the world. Aspirations of Beatles-like fame were never fully achieved, with the TV show lasting just two years. But The Monkees made rock `n roll history as the band garnered a wide American following with love-struck hits such as "Daydream Believer" and "I'm a Believer" that endure to this day. Born in Manchester, England, on Dec. 30, 1945, Jones became a child star in his native England who appeared on television and stage, including a heralded role as "The Artful Dodger" in the play "Oliver." He earned a Tony nomination at 16 when he reprised that role in the show's Broadway production, a success that brought him to the attention of Columbia Pictures/Screen Gems Television, which created The Monkees. Hundreds turned out for auditions, but the young men who became the Monkees had no idea what ultimately awaited them. "They had an ad in the newspaper," Jones recalled on NBC's "Today Show" last year, "and then we all showed up." "The Monkees" was a band clearly patterned on the Beatle's film "A Hard Days Night," chronicling the comic trials and tribulations of a rock group whose four members lived together and traveled to gigs in a tricked-out car called the Monkeemobile. Mike Nesmith, Peter Tork and Micky Dolenz starred with him. Each part was loosely created to resemble one of the Beatles. At 5-feet-3 inches, Jones was by far the shortest member of the group – a fact often made light of on the show. But he also was its dreamboat, mirroring Paul McCartney's role in the Beatles. And as the only Briton among the four, Jones was in some ways the Monkees' direct connection to the Beatlemania still strong in the U.S. when the TV show made its debut. In August 1966, the Beatles performed in San Francisco, playing their last live set for a paying audience. The same month, the Monkees released their first album, introducing the group to the world. The first single, "Last Train to Clarksville," became a No. 1 hit. And the TV show would caught on quickly with audiences, featuring fast-paced, helter-skelter comedy inspired as much by the Marx Brothers as the Beatles. It was a shrewd case of cross-platform promotion. As David Bianculli noted in his "Dictionary of Teleliteracy," "The show's self-contained music videos, clear forerunners of MTV, propelled the group's first seven singles to enviable positions of the pop charts: three number ones, two number twos, two number threes." Yet after the show's launch, The Monkees came under fire from music critics when it was learned that session musicians – and not the group's members – had played the instruments on their recordings. They were derided as the "Prefab Four," an insulting comparison to the Beatles' nickname, the "Fab Four." In reality, Jones could play the drums and guitar, and although Dolenz learned to play the drums after he joined the group, he also could play guitar, as could Nesmith. Nesmith also wrote several of The Monkees' songs, as well as songs for others. Tork, who played bass and keyboards on the TV show, was a multi-instrumentalist. The group eventually prevailed over the show's producers, including music director Don Kirchner, and began to play their own instruments. Regardless, the group was supported by enviable talent. Carole King and Gerry Goffin wrote "Pleasant Valley Sunday," and Neil Diamond penned "I'm a Believer." Musicians who played on their records included Billy Preston, who later played with the Beatles, Glen Campbell, Leon Russell, Ry Cooder and Neil Young. Young tweeted Wednesday that he was saddened by Jones' death. "The Monkees were such a sensation that it was a thrill for me to have them record some of my early songs," he added. The group also released the 1968 film "Head," derided at the time as a psychedelic mishmash notable only for an appearance by Jack Nicholson. It has since come to be considered a cult classic by Monkees fans. After two seasons, the TV series had flared out and was canceled after 58 episodes in the summer of 1968. But The Monkees remained a nostalgia act for decades. And Jones maintained that the stage was the only place he truly felt at home. "Even today, I have an inferiority complex," he told the Daily Mail in an interview last year. "I always feel I'm there at the window, looking in. Except when I'm on stage, and then I really come alive." After the TV show ended, Jones continued to tour with the other Monkees for a time, sometimes playing the drums at concerts when Dolenz came up front to sing. Many also remember Jones from a widely seen episode of "The Brady Bunch" that aired in 1971, in which he makes an appearance at Marcia Brady's school dance. In the episode, Marcia Brady, president of her school's Davy Jones Fan Club, promised she could get him to appear before her classmates. The group eventually broke up over creative differences, although it did reunite from time to time for brief tours over the years, usually without Nesmith. In 1987, Jones, Tork, and Dolenz recorded a new album, "Pool It." And two years later, the group received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On Wednesday, flowers were placed on Jones' own Hollywood star nearby as fans mourned. All four of the Monkees came together for a 1996 album, "Justus," and a subsequent TV movie "Hey, Hey, It's The Monkees!" that saw them still living in the same house and still traveling in the Monkeemobile – just like old times. Tork spoke of his former bandmate in an interview Wednesday night, saying "He was one of the funniest men and most talented I have ever known." Nesmith said in a statement "David's spirit and soul live well in my heart, among all the lovely people," using a phrase from a Beatles song that seemed to again cement the two groups' ties. Jones, who is survived by his wife Jessica Pacheco and four daughters from previous marriages, continued to make appearances on television and stage later. But it was the fame of The Monkees that pulled him back to that era time and time again. On his website, he recalled during auditions for the show when all four men finally were put together in a scene. "That's it," he recalled everyone around him saying: "Magic." ___ Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Nekesa Mumbi Moody, Frazier Moore and Hillel Italie in New York, Mike Gracia in Washington and John Rogers in Los Angeles.
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Mar 1, 2012 13:20:47 GMT -5
Post by skittles4me on Mar 1, 2012 13:20:47 GMT -5
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Mar 1, 2012 15:21:19 GMT -5
Post by maherjunkie on Mar 1, 2012 15:21:19 GMT -5
Karen, Karen, Karen!
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Apr 20, 2012 10:13:39 GMT -5
Post by maherjunkie on Apr 20, 2012 10:13:39 GMT -5
Home > Arts & Entertainment > Turn It Up Levon Helm, drummer and singer for The Band, dies of cancer
Ads by Google Group Auto InsuranceFind Out If You're Eligible To Save Up To $402/Year On Auto Insurance MetLife.com Comments 16Share4012 Greg Kot Music critic 2:39 p.m. CDT, April 19, 2012
Levon Helm was the rarest of musical multi-taskers: an unflappable drummer and a singer who wrung soul out of every note. He also was a terrific team player and bandmate; he made the people around him sound good.
Helm was "the only drummer who could make you cry," critic Jon Carroll once wrote.
"It's nearly impossible to sing so smoothly and hit that hard at the same time," singer Neko Case wrote on Twitter this week.
Greg Kot
E-mail | Recent columns Related Pictures: Levon Helm through the years Levon Helm Levon Helm Ads by Google Group Auto Insurance Find Out If You're Eligible To Save Up To $402/Year On Auto Insurance MetLife.com Helm, who died Thursday in New York City at age 71 after a long battle with cancer, was part of one of the most revered ensembles in rock history, The Band, a quintet built on interplay, empathy and shared responsibility. Helm was one of three distinctive lead vocalists in the group, along with the late Richard Manuel and Rick Danko, and an understated musician who knew exactly when to lay back and when to assert himself to best serve the song. For Helm, Danko, Manuel, Robbie Robertson and Garth Hudson, the sum truly was greater than the parts.
In the '90s his gutsy tenor voice was reduced to a croak because of throat cancer, but he re-emerged in the last decade as a revered elder statesman of American roots music. He won three Grammy Awards and his tours brought him to Chicago as recently as March, when he headlined two fundraising concerts at the Old Town School of Folk Music.
Mark Lavon Helm was born (according to his official website) on May 26, 1940 in Arkansas, the son of music-loving cotton farmers (he reputedly became known as "Levon" because it was easier for his bandmates to pronounce). As a teenager, he was a regular in the clubs around Helena, Ark., and was recruited by singer Ronnie Hawkins to join his band, the Hawks.
Helm then helped enlist Robertson, Manuel, Danko and Hudson, all of whom were Canadian. They developed a telepathic interplay during grueling one-night stands across the country. As the group began seasoning its country-blues-rock 'n' roll stew with soulful harmonies and R&B grooves, it left behind its more one-dimensional leader, who remained a devotee of Sun Records-style rockabilly.
By the mid-'60s, Levon and the Hawks, as they were sometimes known, were supporting Bob Dylan as he transitioned into rock from folk, stirring emotions in his fans that ranged from adulation to outright derision.
Together, the hurricane-haired bard and the grizzled-beyond-its-years bar band reinvented rock, meshing Dylan's poetic assault with roller-coaster surges of sound: Robertson's slice-and-dice guitar, the gospel-soul keyboard interplay of Manuel and Hudson, the peerless groove of Danko's bass and Helm's drums.
The audience reaction was nearly as violent as the music; some fans accused Dylan of selling out and greeted him with boos and insults. Discouraged, Helm quit and eventually went to work on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
Dylan and the rest of the Hawks regrouped in upstate New York in 1967-68 and rejuvenated themselves by playing acoustic music in the basement of a house known as Big Pink, rented by Hudson, Danko and Manuel. The music tapped into the twin streams of pre-rock blues and country, a stark contrast to the psychedelic experiments of the late '60s.
Helm was persuaded to rejoin the group, and soon he and the rest of the Hawks were signed by Capitol Records, the home of the Beatles. Helm only half-jokingly suggested the quintet name itself racial epithets aimed at Caucasians because, according to his autobiography, it was playing the music of poor Southern white folks, not unlike the music he heard and played with his family while growing up in Arkansas.
But a simpler moniker stuck: The Band, which seemed to suit the quintet's insular demeanor. It also created an impression of aloofness; on stage the quintet often seemed to be playing to each other, rather than for an audience. Yet it was exactly that quality that made the 1968 debut, "Music From Big Pink," a landmark.
In the flower power era, "Music From Big Pink" was a rustic affront to convention. It was revolutionary by not catering to the revolutionary rhetoric of the times, instead addressing themes that were personal, spiritual and familial. At a time when parents were portrayed as the enemy, the album's gatefold featured a portrait of the band members posing with their next of kin in front of a farm house.
The self-titled follow-up expanded this homespun approach to visionary proportions, embracing the South and its lore as a metaphor for universal longing. The effect was enhanced by Elliot Landy's stark black-and-white photography, in which the band's baleful, bearded 19th Century faces seemed drawn from the characters in Robertson's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," as movingly sung by Helm, the band's sole Southerner.
With these two albums as a springboard, The Band became one of the most celebrated groups of the era, even without any major hits. It was splashed on the cover of Time magazine and reunited with Dylan to tour in 1974, this time to wild acclamation and sizable profit.
Subsequent albums lacked the staying power of the first two, and Robertson – who had established himself as the band's primary songwriter – eventually wanted out to start a career in Hollywood. He concocted "The Last Waltz," a lavish 1976 dinner-concert-movie with numerous guest stars (including Dylan, Neil Young, Van Morrison, Muddy Waters and Joni Mitchell) that was to be the group's farewell.
Robertson's primary accomplice was movie director Martin Scorsese, who would turn the concert into a highly acclaimed movie; Helm's performance is particularly stunning, as he sings with soulful conviction even as he hammers the drums through an epic six-hour concert. But after the split, Helm said he and the rest of the band were ripped off by Robertson, who received the bulk of the songwriting royalties from the band's albums. Robertson said Helm's complaints were revisionist history.
Helm developed a credible career as an actor, most notably playing Loretta Lynn's father in "Coal Miner's Daughter" (1980) and Chuck Yeager's loyal friend in "The Right Stuff" (1983).
He also continued to participate in various Band reunions with Manuel, Danko and Hudson, but the road took a tragic toll. Manuel committed suicide in 1986 and Danko died of a drug-related heart attack in 1999. Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer in the late '90s and eventually lost his voice after radiation therapy. He began singing again in 2004, and hosted regular "Midnight Ramble" sessions at his home studio in Woodstock, N.Y., modeled after the traveling minstrel shows of his youth. His guests included Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris, Dr. John and Steely Dan's Donald Fagen.
He later released the acclaimed "Dirt Farmer" and "Electric Dirt" solo albums, digging into the rich soil of country, blues, soul and gospel that he had known since his childhood. "Dirt Farmer" brought him his first Grammy Award in 2008, and "Electric Dirt" and the live "Ramble at the Ryman" (2011) also won Grammys. The voice that had been reduced to a whisper by illness was now a world-weary drawl, weathered by time but not defeated by it. greg@gregkot.com
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