The RIP Famous Person Thread

[kmart]

The "..Replica" album is often cited as a cultural landmark and groundbreaking album, blah blah.
To the casual listener however, it just sounds like a bunch of wino street musicians tuning up.
Best when he was with Zappa, imo.

RIP.

[genghis61]

The crazy cult of Beefheart
Mick Brown
December 21, 2010 - 3:16PM



Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart, who died last Friday, could be a difficult man. His idiosyncratic recordings - a bizarre goulash of delta blues, free jazz, Jabberwocky-style surrealism and Dada-esque humour - were an acquired taste, never likely to find a popular audience.

He was notoriously dictatorial, with a manipulative, domineering personality once described as "Manson-esque".

He claimed to have studied brainwashing techniques before recording his epochal 1969 album, Trout Mask Replica, the better to discipline his group, the Magic Band, to his baffling time signatures and enigmatic directives; the drummer John "Drumbo" French, described the atmosphere preparing for the album as "cult-like" and told of Beefheart attacking him with a sharpened broomstick, and then throwing him down some stairs after he had failed to rise sufficiently to the command to "play a strawberry" on the drums. He claimed credit for everything, and was a notoriously stingy paymaster.

But he could be surprisingly genial. I met him once, in 1980, in a budget hotel in Bayswater, where he and the Magic Band were staying. Seated in a breakfast room populated by businessmen and tourists, he cut an incongruous figure, a heavy-set man with a luxuriant walrus moustache, carrying a green plastic bag, with a clothes-peg clipped to his shirt. He had recently cut off his hair "to show my ears", he explained, but feared that he now looked "like a taxi cab going down the street with both doors open".

It was one of the most surreal conversations I have ever had, ambling in a haphazard fashion through his views on Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (not favourable), his affection for poultry, his disdain for rock music in general ("disgusting. Plants just absolutely do all they can to get out of their pots when they hear rock music") and for Bob Dylan in particular. "The Times They Are A Changing... a quick change artist, if you ask me. Although he did get the last breath of Woody Guthrie on a mirror."

He expressed bewilderment that anybody should listen to his music.

"I don't know how people can stand it. Who would want to be beat, slapped, have their wig pulled off, if they have one for sure. I can't stand falsies. When I was three or four I found one of my grandmother's falsies, and it had NO NIPPLE. It was a hip shape, and that old foam - like a soya-bean steering wheel".

His voice rose in a deafening bellow - "Blow your top! BLOW YOUR TOP!", causing everybody in the room to cast anxious looks in our direction.

His father, he said, had been "a helmsman". On a boat? "Similar. He sold goods door to door for Helms Bakery."

He claimed never to have been to school - "not even kindergarten" - a child prodigy driven by a passion for art so all-consuming that his parents were obliged to force food on him while he painted and sculpted.

As befits a man who wore a raw carp on his head for the cover of his most celebrated album, and whose oeuvre included such songs as Pachuco Cadaver, Bat Chain Puller and Making Love to a Vampire with a Monkey on my Knee, Beefheart was an artist who stayed heroically true to his own peculiar vision.

The only time he allowed himself to be persuaded to bend his music to popular taste, with the album Unconditionally Guaranteed, he suggested repentantly that purchasers should "take copies back for a refund".

Having decided to abandon performing in the mid-1980s, he went on to make more money from his paintings - brash, expressionist daubs as singular and challenging as his albums - than he ever had from his music.

"An artist is one who kids himself the most gracefully," he told me. "And I may get hardening of the arteries, but I'll never get hardening of the eyes or the heart. I refuse to have my heart attack me. We're friends."

The Telegraph, London

[Mr Lick]

25 December 2010 Last updated at 12:55 GMT


Wombles' creator Elisabeth Beresford dies

Before writing the Wombles Elisabeth was a Wren during World War II
Continue reading the main story


Elisabeth Beresford, the creator of The Wombles, has died, her family have announced.
Born in 1926, she passed away on Christmas Eve in the Mignot Memorial Hospital, in Alderney in the Channel Islands, according to her son.
Her creations featured in a series of books as well as a TV series. Many of the characters in the stories stemmed from her family.
In 1998 she was made an MBE, remarking: "The Queen's a mad Womble fan."
She served as a Wren during World War II before finding work as a ghost writer on BBC Radio's Woman's Hour.
In her spare time she wrote fiction, starting with romantic stories for women's magazines.
The Wombles books were inspired by a comment made by her daughter during a Boxing Day walk on Wimbledon Common.



The Wombles were hugely popular in the 1970s


In a November 2010 interview with BBC Guernsey, she described the moment: "Over Christmas I had to keep the children quiet as their grandparents were visiting, so on Boxing Day, after the grandparents left, we got in my car and went to Wimbledon Common.
"The three of us ran backwards and forwards screaming at the top of our voices and it was my daughter who said to me 'oh ma, isn't it great on Wombledon Common?' and I said 'That's where the Wombles live.'"
This idea led to a series of books.
Her association with the BBC led to Woman's Hour producer Monica Simms suggesting she take her idea to television company FilmFair who produced television for the BBC and, with the help of Ivor Wood puppet versions of the Wombles were made and Film Fair produced the series with Bernard Cribbins providing the voices.
The theme tune for the show was written by Mike Batt and Elisabeth said "it was Mike Batt who invented recycling [for the Wombles]", but she added: "I'm all for recycling."
Many of the characters in the stories stemmed from Elisabeth's family: "Great Uncle Bulgaria was my father-in-law, Madame Cholet was from my daughter Kate... my brother had two children and John was a very clever boy who went to Wellington College, which is where Wellington came from... and Orinoco I just picked off a map."

[Mid]

[daveboy]

Bobby Farrell, front man of the 1970s disco group Boney M, has died at the age of 61, his agent has announced.
The singer was found dead in a hotel room in St Petersburg, Russia, where he had been performing, John Seine said.
Farrell, he continued, had complained of breathing problems before and after a show on Wednesday. The cause of his death has yet to be established.

[The Cat]

Boney M frontman Bobby Farrell found dead in hotel room - Telegraph

Farrell, 61, had performed in St Petersburg on Wednesday but had complained of breathing problems before and after his show, according to his agent John Seine. Staff at his hotel discovered him after he failed to answer a wake-up call.

Farrell, who lived in Amsterdam, was more a dancer and showman than singer when he fronted Boney M in the 1970s and 80s. The group, based in Germany, broke into the charts with "Daddy Cool" and "Sunny" in 1976. Two years later their version of "By the Rivers of Babylon" sold nearly two million records in Britain alone, keeping it No. 1 for five weeks. The original Boney M disbanded in 1986.

In 1978 Boney M was the first Western music group invited by a Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, to perform in the Soviet Union. A Soviet military plane flew the performers from London to Moscow, where they sang for an audience of 2,700 Russians in Red Square.

Mr Seine said the cause of death was not known, but Farrell had suffered health problems off-and-on for 10 years.

[The Cat]

Billy Taylor

Billy Taylor, who died on December 28 aged 89, was a pianist, composer, academic and tireless advocate for jazz (which he described as “America’s classical music”) on radio and television.




Billy Taylor at the Peacock Alley night club, St. Louis, Missouri, in 1974 Photo: GETTY








http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obit...ly-Taylor.html




His gospel-style composition I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free was recorded by Nina Simone and adopted as the unofficial anthem of the civil rights movement. British listeners, however, know the tune as the introductory music to the popular BBC television show Film Night, presented by Barry Norman.

William Edward Taylor, the son of a dentist and a schoolmistress, was born on July 24 1921 at Greenville, North Carolina, and grew up in Washington DC. He began taking formal piano lessons at junior high school.

Meanwhile, a neighbour, who had been a boyhood friend of Duke Ellington, and had a large record collection, introduced him to jazz. This set the pattern of his musical education through high school and Virginia State College, where he read Music and spent the evenings sitting in with every band he could find.

In 1943, at the age of 22, Taylor determined to try his luck in New York. He arrived on a Friday night and made straight for Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem, where ambitious young players were always welcome to sit in. Before the weekend was out he had been spotted by the great tenor saxophonist Ben Webster and hired to play with his quartet at the Three Deuces on 52nd Street, the very epicentre of the jazz world at the time.

Taylor soon discovered that his greatest asset was his adaptability. An acute ear for the nuances of individual players enabled him to accompany soloists of widely differing styles. In 1949 he became the house pianist at Birdland, accompanying all the leading figures of the era, including Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and the young Miles Davis.

[The Cat]

BBC News - Oscar-nominated actor Pete Postlethwaite dies aged 64




BBC: Oscar-nominated actor Pete Postlethwaite has died, a spokesman announces.
More to follow...

Oscar-nominated British actor Pete Postlethwaite has died at the age of 64, a spokesman has announced.
Journalist and friend Andrew Richardson said Postlethwaite, who was made an OBE in 2004, died peacefully in hospital in Shropshire after a lengthy illness.
In 1994, he was nominated for an Oscar for In The Name of the Father.
He received a best supporting actor nod for his role as Giuseppe Conlon, who was falsely convicted of the IRA's Guildford pub bombings.
Mr Richardson said the actor, who also starred in films including The Usual Suspects and Brassed Off, had carried on working in recent months despite receiving treatment for cancer.
Postlethwaite was once described by director Steven Spielberg, whom he worked with in films including The Lost World: Jurassic Park, as "the best actor in the world".

[daveboy]

Now that is a blow what a fine actor he was liked a drink to, a great loss RIP Pete Postlethwaite.

[Ubermensch]

A big loss.

Loved him in When Saturday Comes

See you later, Pete.

[jizzybloke]

Agree with that, a real shame!

[Looper]

Great loss. He inhabited his characters so completely and the intensity of his performances could elevate a whole movie. Thought there would have been a lot more to come from him but sadly not.

[hopskimoet]

One of my all time favourite actors. Damn.

[Moonraker]

Genuinely gutted that Pete is gone. A great actor and by all accounts a wonderful person.

He was brilliant in The Usual Suspects, to name just one performance.

RIP Pete.

[Mr Lick]

Remembered him being in Alien 3? and a few others. Sad loss, RIP Sir

[Bogon]

Postlethwaite was once described by director Steven Spielberg, whom he worked with in films including The Lost World: Jurassic Park, as "the best actor in the world".

And Postlethwaite came out with a great quote after.
"I think Speilberg said that Pete thinks he is the best actor in the world".

[The Gentleman Scamp]

Sincerely saddened to hear about Pete Poss, a very humble man he was.

And now, in the same first week of the year we have now lost Gerry Rafferty also.

[Mr Lick]

4 January 2011 Last updated at 21:51 GMT


Gerry Rafferty dies at age of 63


Click to play


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Rafferty was reputed to have earned £80,000 a year from the royalties on Baker Street. Clip courtesy of United Artists/EMI

Continue reading the main story Related stories

• Obituary: Gerry Rafferty
• Gambaccini on Rafferty's fame
• 'Missing' singer Rafferty in Italy

Scottish singer-songwriter Gerry Rafferty has died at the age of 63 after suffering a long illness.
His career high came in the 1970s and included the anthemic Baker Street and Stuck in the Middle with You, recorded with his band Stealers Wheel.
Rafferty had battled a drink problem and spent time in hospital in Bournemouth with liver failure.
He was born in Paisley and began his musical career as a busker on the London Underground.

Rafferty died peacefully at home, with his daughter Martha at his bedside.
He had recorded and toured with Billy Connolly as part of the Humblebums, before forming Stealers Wheel with his friend Joe Egan in 1972.

Stuck in the Middle with You was a hit in the early 70s and also appeared on the soundtrack of Quentin Tarantino's debut film Reservoir Dogs in 1992.
Baker Street charted in the UK and US in 1978 after Rafferty began his solo career and still achieves airplay on radio stations around the world.

It is understood his funeral will be held in Paisley later this month.

[forreachingme]

That was the hit then, how many girls i had a nice slow dance on this one, how many parties ended quietly in sunrise playing this one, nostalgia...

[Mathos]

Gary Mason, (RIP Gary)

Sadly killed whilst cycling in London.


Gary was a former British Heavyweight Boxing Champion.

He had 38 professional fights and only lost one,
against Lennox Lewis.

Gary Mason

‎
Telegraph.co.uk - Elizabeth Edwards - 4 hours ago

Gary Mason, the former British heavyweight champion who died in a cycling accident in London on January 6 aged 48, will be remembered as one of the “nearly ...
Boxing mourns Mason‎ - SkySports
Former boxer Gary Mason killed in cycling accident‎ - The Guardian
Boxing champion Gary Mason dies in bike crash‎ - This is London

Condolences and deepest sympathies to his family.

RIP Gary.

[chitown]

Vang Pao Tribute: The Obituary and Death Notice of Vang Pao | Legacy.com

Vang Pao Obituary

FRESNO, California (AP) - Vang Pao, a fabled military hero and beloved father figure among the international Hmong refugee community, will be honored with a massive funeral "fit for a king" in central California, the general's son said Friday.

Vang Pao led Hmong guerrillas in their CIA-backed battle against communists during the Vietnam War. He died Thursday night in a hospital near Fresno after battling pneumonia he caught while presiding over two Hmong New Year celebrations in California's agricultural belt. He was 81.

Since immigrating to the United States once the communists seized power in Laos in 1975, Vang Pao has been venerated by his transplanted countrymen who settled mainly in California's Central Valley, Minneapolis and cities in Wisconsin.

Chi Vang, the general's 46-year-old son, said family elders decided to honor Vang Pao with a dayslong memorial service in Fresno, but said there may also be an opportunity for mourners to pay their respects at a viewing in Minnesota.

"When he traveled here the family was already talking to him about his health and the need to stay at home to relax, but his whole life was geared toward the Hmong community," said Chi Vang, one of the general's 32 children. "We are planning an enormous international event fit for a king."

The general had been hospitalized for about 10 days at Clovis Community Medical Center, where a crowd gathered Thursday night following the news of his death. Many sobbed and knelt on the ground as his body emerged to be transported to a nearby funeral home.

During World War II, while still a teenager, Vang Pao fought to prevent the Japanese from seizing control of Laos. In the 1950s, he joined the French in the war against the North Vietnamese who were dominating Laos and later, as a general in the Royal Army of Laos, worked with the CIA to wage a covert war there.

Former CIA Chief William Colby once called Pao "the biggest hero of the Vietnam War," for the 15 years he spent heading a CIA-sponsored guerrilla army fighting against a communist takeover of the Southeast Asian peninsula.

After his guerrillas ultimately lost to communist forces, Vang Pao came to the U.S., where he was credited with brokering the difficult resettlement of tens of thousands of Hmong, an ethnic minority from the hillsides of Laos.

"He's the last of his kind, the last of the leadership that carries that reference that everyone holds dear," said Blong Xiong, a Fresno city councilman and the first Hmong-American in California to win a city council seat. "Whether they're young or old, they hear his name, there's the respect that goes with it."

Regarded by Hmong immigrants as an exiled head of state, Vang Pao made frequent appearances at Hmong festivals, advocated on behalf of Hmong veterans and often was asked to mediate disputes or solve problems.

In 2007, however, he was arrested and charged with other Hmong leaders in federal court with conspiracy in a plot to kill communist officials in his native country. Federal prosecutors alleged the Lao liberation movement known as Neo Hom raised millions of dollars to recruit a mercenary force and conspired to obtain weapons.

Even after his indictment, he appeared as the guest of honor at Hmong New Year celebrations in St. Paul and Fresno, where crowds of his supporters gathered to catch a glimpse of the highly decorated general as he arrived in a limousine.

The charges against Vang Pao were dropped in 2009, "after investigators completed the time-consuming process of translating more than 30,000 pages of pages of documents," then-U.S. Attorney Lawrence G. Brown said in a written statement. The government arrested the defendants before understanding all the evidence because they felt a threat was imminent, he said.

In November, a federal judge in Sacramento threw out parts of the case against 12 other defendants. The defendants were retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Harrison Jack and 11 members of California's Hmong community, many of whom fought for the U.S. during the Vietnam War. All 12 have pleaded not guilty since their arrests in 2007.

"Vang Pao was a great man and a true American hero. He served his country for many years in his homeland, and he continued to serve it in America," said attorney William Portanova, who represents one of the remaining Hmong defendants. "To think that these elderly men would be in a position to try to overthrow a country is, on its face, almost laughable."

Lauren Horwood, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in Sacramento, said she had no immediate comment.

Vang Pao had been a source of controversy for several years before the case was filed.

In 2002, the city of Madison, Wisconsin, dropped a plan to name a park in his honor after a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor cited published sources alleging Vang Pao had ordered executions of his own followers, of enemy prisoners of war, and of his political enemies.

Five years later, the Madison school board removed his name from a new elementary school named for him, after dissenters said it should not bear the name of a figure with such a violent history.

But such criticism meant little to Hmong families who looked to Vang Pao for guidance as they struggled to set up farms and businesses in the U.S. and assume a new, American identity. The general formed several nonprofits to aid the refugee communities and set up a council to mediate disputes between the 18 Hmong clans, whose president he hand-picked for decades.

Ka Houa Yang, president of the Lao Family Community of Minnesota, compared Vang Pao's role to that of the first American president, George Washington, and said his death is a huge loss for Hmong immigrants in the Twin Cities.

"I'm seeing seasoned older men cry. They're so heartbroken. So it's a really sad day," said Ilean Her, executive director of the Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans, a state agency.

Lar Yang of Fresno, who featured an interview with Vang Pao last month in his Hmong business directory, said no one could replace such a towering figure in the community.

"He's always been kind of the glue that held everyone together," he said.

[chitown]

Dick Winters

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nyt...&pid=147730261

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Richard "Dick" Winters, the Easy Company commander whose World War II exploits were made famous by the book and television miniseries "Band of Brothers," died last week in central Pennsylvania. He was 92.

Winters died following a several-year battle with Parkinson's Disease, longtime family friend William Jackson said Monday.

An intensely private and humble man, Winters had asked that news of his death be withheld until after his funeral, Jackson said. Winters lived in Hershey, Pa., but died in suburban Palmyra.

[venturalaw]

http://www.popeater.com/2011/01/12/o...ec1_lnk3|35962

'Ozzie and Harriet' Star David Nelson Dies

By The Editors of TV Squad Posted Jan 12th 2011 05:46AM

David Nelson, who co-starred with his parents and little brother Rick on the popular television show 'The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,' has died after battling complications of colon cancer, a family spokesman told the Associated Press. He was 74.

Nelson died Tuesday at his home in the Century City area of Los Angeles.

Nelson was born in New York City and moved to Los Angeles with his parents, where he attended Hollywood High School and the University of Southern California.

When 'The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet' moved from radio to TV, he and Rick convinced their parents to be on the show.

'The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet' aired on ABC from 1952 to 1966; many of the episodes were directed by Nelson, who was the last surviving member of the TV family.

Nelson's film credits included 'Peyton Place,' 'The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker,' 'The Big Circus' and 'The Big Show.'

In 1976 he co-starred with his mother in 'Smash-Up on Interstate 5.' His television credits included 'Up in Smoke,' 'The Love Boat,' 'High School USA' and 'A Family For Joe.'

His directing credits included 'O.K. Crackerby,' 'Childish Things,' 'Easy to Be Free,' 'Ozzie's Girls' and 'A Rare Breed.'

Nelson was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1996.

Nelson is survived by his wife, Yvonne; four sons and a daughter; and seven grandchildren. A service will be held Thursday at Pierce Brothers Westwood Mortuary.

For more coverage, visit TV Squad.

[Marmite the Dog]

Lots of not very famous people dying at the moment...

[blue]

Actress Susannah York has died, aged 72

Susannah York, the celebrated film and stage actress best known for her role in the film They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, has died aged 72.

She was the blue-eyed English rose with the china-white skin and cupid lips who epitomised the sensuality of the swinging Sixties. Sexy and demure by turn, Susannah York, who died yesterday from cancer at 72, held a generation of male admirers in her thrall.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...d-aged-72.html