The RIP Famous Person Thread

[Chairman Mao]

[harrybarracuda]

FORMER Fleetwood Mac guitarist and songwriter Bob Weston has been found dead in bed at home.


Weston, 64, who lived alone, was discovered when police broke into his flat in Brent Cross, north London, after friends raised the alarm.


He had been due to work on a new album yesterday with former Rolling Stones guitarist Mick Taylor.


Weston’s brother Peter, 53, said last night: “He was a lovely, gentle bloke. It’s a shock. He’d everything to live for."



He was in Fleetwood Mac from 1972 to 1974. Police are not treating his death as suspicious.

(Mind you, his real claim to fame was that he got sacked for fucking Mick Fleetwood's missus).

[Mr Lick]

Reginald Hill


Dalziel and Pascoe author Reginald Hill dies at 75

The BBC drama based on Reginald Hill's novels began in 1996

The author of the Dalziel and Pascoe crime novels, Reginald Hill, has died at the age of 75.

His agent said Hill died peacefully at home in Cumbria on Thursday after a year long battle with cancer.

He is survived by his wife of 51 years, Pat, and two brothers, David and Desmond.
Ian Rankin, the author of the Rebus books, described Hill as a "fine writer and a great wit".

Hill was born in Hartlepool in 1936, where his father was playing professional football for the town's team, before moving to Cumbria with his family at the age of three.

He studied English at Oxford University and worked as a teacher but kept writing.
He eventually saw his first book, A Clubbable Woman, published in 1970

[S Landreth]

Legendary blues singer Etta James dies in California

LOS ANGELES -- Etta James' performance of the enduring classic "At Last" was the embodiment of refined soul: Angelic-sounding strings harkened the arrival of her passionate yet measured vocals as she sang tenderly about a love finally realized after a long and patient wait.

In real life, little about James was as genteel as that song. The platinum blonde's first hit was a saucy R&B number about sex, and she was known as a hell-raiser who had tempestuous relationships with her family, her men and the music industry. Then she spent years battling a drug addiction that she admitted sapped away at her great talents.

The 73-year-old died on Friday at Riverside Community Hospital, with her husband and sons at her side, De Leon said.

"It's a tremendous loss for her fans around the world," he said. "She'll be missed. A great American singer. Her music defied category."

James' spirit could not be contained - perhaps that's what made her so magnetic in music; it is surely what made her so dynamic as one of R&B, blues and rock 'n' roll's underrated legends.

"The bad girls ... had the look that I liked," she wrote in her 1995 autobiography, "Rage to Survive." ''I wanted to be rare, I wanted to be noticed, I wanted to be exotic as a Cotton Club chorus girl, and I wanted to be obvious as the most flamboyant hooker on the street. I just wanted to be."

"It's a tremendous loss for her fans around the world," he said. "She'll be missed. A great American singer. Her music defied category."

Despite the reputation she cultivated, she would always be remembered best for "At Last." The jazz-inflected rendition wasn't the original, but it would become the most famous and the song that would define her as a legendary singer. Over the decades, brides used it as their song down the aisle and car companies to hawk their wares, and it filtered from one generation to the next through its inclusion in movies like "American Pie." Perhaps most famously, President Obama and the first lady danced to a version at his inauguration ball.

The tender, sweet song belied the turmoil in her personal life. James - born Jamesette Hawkins - was born in Los Angeles to a mother whom she described as a scam artist, a substance abuser and a fleeting presence during her youth. She never knew her father, although she was told and had believed, that he was the famous billiards player Minnesota Fats. He neither confirmed nor denied it: when they met, he simply told her: "I don't remember everything. I wish I did, but I don't."

She was raised by Lula and Jesse Rogers, who owned the rooming house where her mother once lived in. The pair brought up James in the Christian faith, and as a young girl, her voice stood out in the church choir. James landed the solos in the choir and became so well known, she said that Hollywood stars would come to see her perform.

But she wouldn't stay a gospel singer for long. Rhythm and blues lured her away from the church, and she found herself drawn to the grittiness of the music.

"My mother always wanted me to be a jazz singer, but I always wanted to be raunchy," she recalled in her book.

She was doing just that when bandleader Johnny Otis found her singing on San Francisco street corners with some girlfriends in the early 1950s.

"At the time, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters had a hit with 'Work With Me, Annie,' and we decided to do an answer. We didn't think we would get in show business, we were just running around making up answers to songs," James told The Associated Press in 1987.

two more pages: Legendary blues singer Etta James dies in Calif. - Music Wires - MiamiHerald.com

[Mr Lick]

Musician Johnny Otis dies aged 90

Johnny Otis always said he identified far more with black culture than his own Greek origins

Johnny Otis, dubbed the "godfather of rhythm and blues", has died aged 90.

The bandleader, who had been unwell for several years, passed away at his home in Los Angeles, his manager said.

Best known for the track Willie and the Hand Jive, he also wrote Every Beat of My Heart, a hit for Gladys Knight and the Pips in 1961.

"He is one of the greatest talents of American music and he was a great American," said music historian Tom Reed, adding "He could do it all."

Otis, who was born to Greek-American parents, grew up in a predominately black community in Berkeley in California, listening to blues, gospel and swing.

"As a kid, I decided that if our society dictated that one had to be black or white, I would be black," said Otis, who changed his birth name from John Veliotes.

[Tom Sawyer]

This is a great thread. But it seems to be very "English". Not a bad thing at all - but unless you are English (and likely 50+) you'll have no idea who 90% of these people are.

[sabaii sabaii]

This is a great thread. But it seems to be very "English". Not a bad thing at all - but unless you are not retarded and know how to use a search bar (and likely 50+) you'll have no idea who 90% of these people are.

Sorted

[can123]

This is a great thread. But it seems to be very "English". Not a bad thing at all - but unless you are English (and likely 50+) you'll have no idea who 90% of these people are.

Unfortunately, most Americans, etc., know hardly anything about anything and historical/ famous people tend to pass them by unless they are black and live in the White House or else have big tits.

I would suggest that the thread stays as it is and should not be "dumbed down" so as to allow the uninformed and uneducated to participate.

[bobo746]

Legendary Ali boxing trainer Angelo Dundee dies, aged 90

ANGELO Dundee, who has died aged 90, was one of the greatest boxing trainers of all time and helped Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard and more than a dozen other world champions to glory.
During a career that spanned six decades it was Dundee's work with Ali that shot him to fame, having been recruited in 1960 to guide the then Cassius Clay, already an Olympic champion, to professional success.
Dundee died following a heart attack on Wednesday night at a rehabilitation centre in Clearwater, Florida, the Miami Herald reported, having initially been admitted to the hospital with a blood clot two weeks ago.
The trainer's son, Jimmy, told US television broadcaster ESPN that his father died with his family beside him.
"It was the way he wanted to go. He did everything he wanted to,'' he said.
Dundee was in the corner when his heavyweight protege first became world champion by defeating Sonny Liston in 1960.
He also guided him in all three fights against "Smoking Joe'' Frazier, and in the infamous fight where Ali regained the belt against George Foreman in 1974.
Together they crafted the "rope-a-dope'' technique which helped Ali dethrone Foreman with a blistering set of punches during "The Rumble in the Jungle,'' in Zaire, which was called the fight of the year by The Ring magazine.
Dundee, who was born in Philadelphia, worked with Ali right up until his final bout against Trevor Berbick in 1981 - a fight in which the legend by then looked overweight and slow and was outpunched by his opponent.
Their friendship continued long after they left the ring and Dundee was with Ali when the heavyweight legend celebrated his 70th birthday last month in Louisville, Kentucky.
Dundee was considered a quick thinker and the best fight strategist in the sport. He began working with Leonard in 1976 before helping Foreman win back the heavyweight title in 1994 at the age of 45.
With Leonard, who had been out of the ring for three years, Dundee ended the middleweight dominance of "Marvellous'' Marvin Hagler in 1987, a win attributed in part to the trainer spotting a flaw in the latter fighter's stance.
Leonard used his speed to exploit Hagler's habit of shuffling before he threw punches to outmanoeuvre his opponent and claim an unexpected victory.
But in his autobiography, I Only Talk Winning, Dundee gave the credit to Leonard. "Plans and strategies meant nothing unless my guy had the talent, the brains and the bravery to carry them out,'' he wrote
Dundee's death comes as questions surround the health of Ali. In November, the heavyweight great was briefly hospitalised in Phoenix, where doctors treated him for dehydration.
That came a few days after Ali attended the funeral of his old rival Frazier, who died of liver cancer in Philadelphia on November 8.

[Mr Lick]

Don Cornelius: Aretha Franklin leads tributes

Soul Train was credited with helping to tear down racial barriers

Aretha Franklin, Quincy Jones, Snoop Dogg and Slash are among the artists, who have paid tribute to the late Soul Train creator Don Cornelius.

The 75-year-old, who hosted the US music show for 22 years, shot himself at his Los Angeles home on Wednesday.

Franklin said the star had helped boost "unity and brotherhood" with the creation of Soul Train.

Jones said he was "shocked and deeply saddened at the sudden passing of my friend".

He added: "Don was a visionary pioneer and a giant in our business. Before MTV there was Soul Train, that will be the great legacy of Don Cornelius."

'Genius'
Cornelius paid $400 (£252) from his own pocket to launch Soul Train in 1970.
The show was a live showcase for black music, following a similar format to the UK's Top Of The Pops.

It brought artists like James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye and The Jacksons into US homes throughout the 1970s and 80s. The programme, which Cornelius wrote, presented and produced, was also a platform for white rock musicians like Elton John and David Bowie to reach black audiences.

As host, Cornelius became known for his dapper dress sense, and his deeply-intoned greeting to "the hippest trip in America".

"He was able to provide the country a window into black youth culture and black music," Lonnie G. Bunch III, the director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, told the New York Times.

"For young black teenagers like myself, it gave a sense of pride and a sense that the culture we loved could be shared and appreciated nationally."

Aretha Franklin was among many artists who appeared on the iconic US music show

Author Maya Angelou said: "We all have a great debt. His work in the 60s and 70s helped us to see, again, that human beings, we're more alike than we were unalike and the music and the people he showed allowed us to see."

Former Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash said Cornelius was "quite the maverick in his time" while rapper Snoop Dogg simply said: "RIP Don Cornelius."

Tom Morello from the band Rage Against the Machine said Soul Train was his "first exposure" to music and songwriter Kenny Gamble added: "The Soul Train legacy will show you how great this man was."

Patti LaBelle hailed the TV producer as a "genius", adding: "The contributions he made to music and our culture are second to none."

Drummer Amir ?uestlove of The Roots said Cornelius was the "most crucial non-political figure to emerge from the civil rights era post 68," next to Motown founder Berry Gordy.

Human rights activist Rev Jesse Jackson said: "Part of every person's soul who grew up on Soul Train died with him."

The Rev Al Sharpton, who has known Cornelius since he was 19, said: "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."

[Mr Lick]

Film-maker Zalman King dies at 69

Zalman King was a mentor for Stanley Kubrick's movie Eyes Wide Shut

Film-maker Zalman King, best known for writing and producing the hit movie Nine and a Half Weeks, has died at the age of 69.

King's son-in-law Allison Burnett said he died on Friday at home in Santa Monica, California.

He had been after battling cancer for six years, Burnett said.

"Zalman was an extraordinary man and artist, more complex and humane than those who knew him only from afar could possibly imagine," he told Reuters.

[harrybarracuda]

Film-maker Zalman King dies at 69

Zalman King was a mentor for Stanley Kubrick's movie Eyes Wide Shut

Film-maker Zalman King, best known for writing and producing the hit movie Nine and a Half Weeks, has died at the age of 69.

King's son-in-law Allison Burnett said he died on Friday at home in Santa Monica, California.

He had been after battling cancer for six years, Burnett said.

"Zalman was an extraordinary man and artist, more complex and humane than those who knew him only from afar could possibly imagine," he told Reuters.

So responsible for two pointless, arthouse titty movies then.

Not much of a legacy (apart from the cash).

*** Correction, three - I forgot Wild Orchid.

[spudge]

So responsible for two pointless, arthouse titty movies then.

Oi! If a film has titties it is, by definition, not pointless.

9.5 Weeks was fun for its time.

[WiserWizard]

Oi! If a film has titties it is, by definition, not pointless.

.

Two points. Well, one would hope

[The Ghost Of The Moog]

Film-maker Zalman King dies at 69

Zalman King was a mentor for Stanley Kubrick's movie Eyes Wide Shut

Film-maker Zalman King, best known for writing and producing the hit movie Nine and a Half Weeks, has died at the age of 69.

King's son-in-law Allison Burnett said he died on Friday at home in Santa Monica, California.

He had been after battling cancer for six years, Burnett said.

"Zalman was an extraordinary man and artist, more complex and humane than those who knew him only from afar could possibly imagine," he told Reuters.

So responsible for two pointless, arthouse titty movies then.

Not much of a legacy (apart from the cash).

*** Correction, three - I forgot Wild Orchid.

If he was a footballer, Harry. You'd be awarding him his own topic !

(ps: Are you still planning on spending your twilight years watching terabytes of dowloaded telly?!!)

[DrAndy]

this lot died this month, sort them out

Feb 6

• Sharada Dwivedi, 69, Indian historian. [1]
• Vitaly Gorelik, 44, Russian mountaineer, heart attack. [2]
• Yasuhiro Ishimoto, 90, Japanese photographer, complications following pneumonia and a stroke. [3] (Japanese)
• Matthew Mbu, 82, Nigerian politician and diplomat, Foreign Minister (1993). [4]
• Antoni Tàpies, 88, Spanish painter. [5]

5

• Jazmín De Grazia, 27, Argentine model, drowned. [6]
• Bill Hinzman, 75, American actor (Night of the Living Dead), cancer. [7]
• Mitsuhiko Yoshino, 80, Japanese mountain climber, heart failure. [8] (Japanese)

4

• István Csurka, 77, Hungarian playwright and politician, Chairman of the Hungarian Justice and Life Party (since 1993). [9] (Hungarian)
• Mike deGruy, 60, American documentary filmmaker (Trials of Life, The Blue Planet), helicopter crash. [10]
• Nigel Doughty, 54, British businessman, owner (since 1999) and chairman (2001–2011) of Nottingham Forest F.C.[11]
• Joseph W. Estabrook, 67, American Roman Catholic prelate, Auxiliary Bishop of the Military Services (since 2004) and Titular Bishop of Flenucleta. [12]
• Jeff Fraza, 34, American professional boxer, struck by train. [13]
• Andy Gabrielson, 24, American stormchaser, car accident. [14]
• Hubert Leitgeb, 46, Italian biathlete, two-time world champion, avalanche. [15] (German)
• Irene McKinney, 72, American poet, Poet Laureate of West Virginia (since 1994), cancer. [16]
• Wendell Mitchell, 71, American politician, Alabama State Senator (1974–2010), heart failure. [17]
• János Sebestyén, 80, Hungarian organist. [18] (Hungarian)
• Giovanni Volta, 83, Italian Roman Catholic prelate, Bishop of Pavia (1986–2003). [19]
• Andrew Wight, 51, Australian screenwriter and producer (Sanctum), helicopter crash. [20]

3

• Nikos Apergis, 65, Greek actor, playwright and politician, cancer. [21] (Greek)
• Steve Appleton, 51, American businessman (Micron Technology), plane crash. [22]
• Patricia Disney, 77, American philanthropist, Alzheimer’s disease. [23]
• Ben Gazzara, 81, American actor (Run for Your Life, Road House), pancreatic cancer. [24]
• Terence Hildner, 49, American general, commander of the 13th Sustainment Command (Expeditionary). [25]
• Kumashi Kakehashi, 88, Japanese politician, stomach cancer. [26] (Japanese)
• Raj Kanwar, 50, Indian film director and producer, kidney failure. [27]
• Zalman King, 69, American film director (Wild Orchid) and producer (9½ Weeks), cancer. [28]
• Karlo Maquinto, 21, Filipino boxer. [29]
• Mayer Matalon, 89, Jamaican businessman. [30]
• Andrzej Szczeklik, 73, Polish physician and educational administrator (Jagiellonian University Medical College). [31] (Polish)
• Toh Chin Chye, 90, Singaporean politician, Deputy Prime Minister (1965–1968) and Minister for Health (1975–1981). [32]
• Samuel Youd, 89, British science fiction author (The Tripods, The Sword of the Spirits). [33]

2

• Joyce Barkhouse, 98, Canadian children's writer (Pit Pony), heart attack. [34]
• Paul Consbruch, 81, German Roman Catholic prelate, Auxiliary Bishop of Paderborn (1980–1999). [35]
• Frederick William Danker, 91, American lexicographer and New Testament scholar. [36]
• George Esper, 79, American reporter (Fall of Saigon) and professor. [37]
• Luis Javier Garrido, 71, Mexican political analyst. [38] (Spanish)
• Dorothy Gilman, 88, American spy novelist (The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax), complications of Alzheimer’s disease. [39]
• Jorge Glusberg, 79, Argentine author and curator, director of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. [40] (Spanish)
• Jane Ising, 110, German-born American economics professor and supercentenarian, wife of Ernst Ising. [41]
• Nassib Lahoud, 67, Lebanese politician. [42]

1

• Herb Adams, 83, American baseball player (Chicago White Sox). [43]
• Gerlando Alberti, 88, Italian Sicilian Mafioso, cancer. [44] (Italian)
• Yona Baltman, 82, Israeli jurist, State Attorney (1982–1988). [45] (Hebrew)
• Elizabeth Candon, 90, American nun, president of Trinity College (Vermont), pulmonary fibrosis. [46]
• Don Cornelius, 75, American television host and producer (Soul Train), suicide by gunshot. [47]
• Angelo Dundee, 90, American boxing trainer (Muhammad Ali). [48]
• Ruth Hausmeister, 99, German actress (The Longest Day). [49] (German)
• Ladislav Kuna, 64, Slovak football player and manager. [50] (Slovak)
• Anil Mohile, 71, Indian film music composer, heart attack. [51]
• Ingolf Mork, 64, Norwegian ski jumper. [52] (Norwegian)
• Taiji Ōtani, 80, Japanese baseball umpire, heart failure. [53] (Japanese)
• David Peaston, 54, American R&B singer, complications of diabetes. [54]
• Charlie Spoonhour, 72, American basketball coach (Southwest Missouri State, Saint Louis University), complications from lung disease. [55]
• Jerry Steiner, 94, American basketball player (Fort Wayne Pistons). [56]
• Wisława Szymborska, 88, Polish poet, Nobel Prize in Literature (1996). [57]

[DrAndy]

If he was a footballer, Harry. You'd be awarding him his own topic !

he should have got Nigel Doughty (Notts Forest)

[BaitongBoy]

^sort it out yourself...can't read it...

[harrybarracuda]

So responsible for two pointless, arthouse titty movies then.

Oi! If a film has titties it is, by definition, not pointless.

9.5 Weeks was fun for its time.

By the time it got here, it was about 9.5 minutes.



Moog:

(ps: Are you still planning on spending your twilight years watching terabytes of dowloaded telly?!!)

When it rains, the bars are shut and there's no footy on, yes.

I think I'm already in my twilight years, best get started. I'm working on the basis that once Alzheimers kicks in, I can start watching The Wire again and have no idea that I've seen it before.

[spudge]

Ben Gazzara, 81, American actor (Run for Your Life, Road House), pancreatic cancer.

Hey man, that was Jackie Treehorn, have some respect!



/He made a hell of a Caucasian.

[Looper]

I can start watching The Wire again

I just started watching that. Couldn't understand the ghetto-nigga-mofo-speak so got the SRT english subtitles but even reading them I still don't really know what they are banging on about half the time.

Fortunately I also could not make out the mumbled dialogue from the cops (even though it is good quality rip) and the subtitles do help there.

Quite good so far but not as good as the general hype led me to believe. Shame it is all 4:3

[WiserWizard]

^ Wasn\'t too impressed by the Wire, watched six or seven episodes and stopped

Horses for courses

[Tom Sawyer]

Actor was master of subtle menace

OBITUARIES : BEN GAZZARA, 1930 - 2012

'Run for Your Life' star became known for films with Cassavetes.



A New York native of Sicilian heritage, Ben Gazzara was a strongly masculine, subtly menacing screen presence with a gravelly voice that one writer described as "saloon-cured" and another said could strip paint at 50 paces.

The veteran actor, who died Friday in New York City, found fame on Broadway in the 1950s, starred in the TV series "Run for Your Life" in the 1960s and was closely identified on the big screen with independent filmmaker John Cassavetes.

Ben Gazzara obituary: An obituary of actor Ben Gazzara in the Feb. 4 LATExtra section omitted the name of Danja Gazzara, his daughter, from the list of surviving family members.




The cause of death was pancreatic cancer, said his attorney Jay I. Julien. He was 81.

During his 60-year acting career, Gazzara appeared in more than 100 films and TV movies, including the indie films he made with writer-director Cassavetes: "Husbands," "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" and "Opening Night."

Late in life, Gazzara won an Emmy Award for his supporting role as the love interest of an aging waitress played by Gena Rowlands in the 2002 HBO drama "Hysterical Blindness."

He also received an Emmy nomination for the 1985 TV movie "An Early Frost," in which he and Rowlands played a middle-aged couple coping with the revelations that their son is gay and dying of AIDs.

Peter Bogdanovich, who directed Gazzara in two films -- "Saint Jack" in 1979 and "They All Laughed" in 1981 -- once described his working relationship with Gazzara as the best he'd ever had with an actor.

"Benny has the conscience of an artist, which is a rare thing," Bogdanovich told The Times in 1998.

An alumnus of the Actors Studio, Gazzara first gained notice in 1953 playing a sadistic bullying cadet at a military academy in an off-Broadway production of Calder Willingham's "End as a Man" that eventually moved to Broadway, marking Gazzara's debut there.
On Broadway in 1955, Gazzara also originated the role of Brick, the troubled, alcoholic son and husband in Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," directed by Elia Kazan. Later that year, he returned to Broadway to play junkie Johnny Pope in Michael V. Gazzo's drama "A Hatful of Rain," which garnered Gazzara a Tony Award nomination.

After making his movie debut starring in "The Strange One," the 1957 film version of "End as a Man," Gazzara resurfaced on the big screen two years later as Lee Remick's Army lieutenant husband, accused of murdering her alleged rapist, in director Otto Preminger's "Anatomy of a Murder."

On TV in the 1960s, Gazzara played a police detective opposite Chuck Connors' attorney in the ABC series "Arrest and Trial." And from 1965 to 1968, Gazzara starred in "Run for Your Life," an NBC adventure series about a lawyer diagnosed with a terminal illness who decides to live life to the fullest in the time he has left.

"I hated it," Gazzara, who received two Emmy nominations for his work on the series, told the New York Daily News in 1999. "So predictable I could almost do the next show without reading the script."





The day he finished the last episode of "Run for Your Life," he ran into Cassavetes on the Universal lot. He had a passing acquaintance with the filmmaker from their days as struggling actors in New York, and Cassavetes told him that they would do a film together.

The picture was "Husbands," the 1970 drama about three suburban New York City commuters -- Gazzara, Cassavetes and Peter Falk -- whose lives are affected by the death of a middle-aged friend. The film received mixed reviews but led to an enduring friendship among the three actors.

Gazzara went on to star in Cassavetes' "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" in 1976 and "Opening Night" in 1977.
"John created a climate where you could do no wrong," Gazzara said in 2005 in the Times Union of Albany, N.Y. "He allowed you to surprise yourself while he talked around the characters and the action."

Rowlands, who was married to Cassavetes, recalled in 1998 in The Times: "John and Benny had a great artistic understanding, and I think Benny was relieved to find someone like John, who took things as seriously as he did."

"It breaks my heart to have this era come to an end," Rowlands said in a statement that referred to the deaths of Cassavetes in 1989, Falk last year and now Gazzara. "Ben meant so much to all of us. To our families. To John. To Peter. To have them gone now is devastating to me."

Cassavetes' death had thrown Gazzara into a deep depression.

At the time, he and his third wife, Elke, were living in Italy, where Gazzara made a number of films and where, as he once explained, "I fell in love with the lifestyle." His first two marriages -- to actresses Louise Erickson and Janice Rule -- ended in divorce.

In his 2004 book "In the Moment," Gazzara described his constant womanizing and several affairs, including one with Audrey Hepburn, with whom he co-starred in "Bloodline" and "They All Laughed."

He had met the German-born Elke in South Korea in 1979 while he was filming the Korean War film "Inchon." She was producing a behind-the-scenes documentary. (MORE)

[venturalaw]

Whitney Houston, Superstar of Records, Films, Dies

By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY AP Music Writer
LOS ANGELES February 12, 2012 (AP)
Whitney Houston, who ruled as pop music's queen until her majestic voice and regal image were ravaged by drug use, erratic behavior and a tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown, has died. She was 48.

Houston's publicist, Kristen Foster, said Saturday that the singer had died, but the cause and the location of her death were unknown.

News of Houston's death came on the eve of music's biggest night — the Grammy Awards. It's a showcase where she once reigned, and her death was sure to case a heavy pall on Sunday's ceremony. Houston's longtime mentor Clive Davis was to hold his annual concert and dinner Saturday; it was unclear if it was going to go forward.

At her peak, Houston the golden girl of the music industry. From the middle 1980s to the late 1990s, she was one of the world's best-selling artists. She wowed audiences with effortless, powerful, and peerless vocals that were rooted in the black church but made palatable to the masses with a pop sheen.

Her success carried her beyond music to movies, where she starred in hits like "The Bodyguard" and "Waiting to Exhale."

She had the he perfect voice, and the perfect image: a gorgeous singer who had sex appeal but was never overtly sexual, who maintained perfect poise.


AP
File- In this Oct. 28, 2006, file photo,... View Full Caption

She influenced a generation of younger singers, from Christina Aguilera to Mariah Carey, who when she first came out sounded so much like Houston that many thought it was Houston.

But by the end of her career, Houston became a stunning cautionary tale of the toll of drug use. Her album sales plummeted and the hits stopped coming; her once serene image was shattered by a wild demeanor and bizarre public appearances. She confessed to abusing cocaine, marijuana and pills, and her once pristine voice became raspy and hoarse, unable to hit the high notes as she had during her prime.

"The biggest devil is me. I'm either my best friend or my worst enemy," Houston told ABC's Diane Sawyer in an infamous 2002 interview with then-husband Brown by her side.

It was a tragic fall for a superstar who was one of the top-selling artists in pop music history, with more than 55 million records sold in the United States alone.

She seemed to be born into greatness. She was the daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston, the cousin of 1960s pop diva Dionne Warwick and the goddaughter of Aretha Franklin.

Houston first started singing in the church as a child. In her teens, she sang backup for Chaka Khan, Jermaine Jackson and others, in addition to modeling. It was around that time when music mogul Clive Davis first heard Houston perform.

"The time that I first saw her singing in her mother's act in a club ... it was such a stunning impact," Davis told "Good Morning America."

"To hear this young girl breathe such fire into this song. I mean, it really sent the proverbial tingles up my spine," he added.

Before long, the rest of the country would feel it, too. Houston made her album debut in 1985 with "Whitney Houston," which sold millions and spawned hit after hit. "Saving All My Love for You" brought her her first Grammy, for best female pop vocal. "How Will I Know," ''You Give Good Love" and "The Greatest Love of All" also became hit singles.

Another multiplatinum album, "Whitney," came out in 1987 and included hits like "Where Do Broken Hearts Go" and "I Wanna Dance With Somebody.

Whitney Houston, Superstar of Records, Films, Dies - ABC News

[Mr Lick]

^



Singer Whitney Houston accepts the Winner of International - Favorite Artist Award onstage at the 2009 American Music Awards at Nokia Theatre L.A. Live on Nov. 22, 2009, in Los Angeles, Calif.
Singer Whitney Houston dead at 48

Whitney Houston influenced a generation of younger singers, from Christina Aguilera to Mariah Carey, who when she first came out sounded so much like Houston that many thought it was Houston.

But by the end of her career, Houston became a stunning cautionary tale of the toll of drug use. Her album sales plummeted and the hits stopped coming; her once serene image was shattered by a wild demeanor and bizarre public appearances. She confessed to abusing cocaine, marijuana and pills, and her once pristine voice became raspy and hoarse, unable to hit the high notes as she had during her prime.

"The biggest devil is me. I'm either my best friend or my worst enemy," Houston told ABC's Diane Sawyer in an infamous 2002 interview with then-husband Brown by her side.