The RIP Famous Person Thread

[Happy As Larry]

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, giant of African literature, dies aged 87

Kenyan writer’s death announced by his daughter, who wrote: ‘He lived a full life, fought a good fight

The Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, who was censored, imprisoned and forced into exile by the dictator Daniel arap Moi, a perennial contender for the Nobel prize for literature and one of few writers working in an indigenous African language, has died aged 87.

“It is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of our dad, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, this Wednesday morning,” wrote his daughter Wanjiku wa Ngũgĩ on Facebook. “He lived a full life, fought a good fight.”
He died in Atlanta, and his daughter said more details would be announced soon.

“I am me because of him in so many ways, as his child, scholar and writer,” his son Mukoma Wa Ngũgĩ wrote on X. “I love him - I am not sure what tomorrow will bring without him here. I think that is all I have to say for now.”

Ngũgĩ explored the troubled legacy of colonialism through essays, plays and novels including Weep Not, Child (1964), Devil on the Cross (1980) and Wizard of the Crow (2006). Consider a giant of the modern African pantheon, he had been a favourite for the Nobel prize in literature for years. After missing out on the prize in 2010 to Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, Ngũgĩ said he was less disappointed than the photographers who had gathered outside his home: “I was the one who was consoling them!”
Born in 1938, while Kenya was under British colonial rule, Ngũgĩ was one of 28 children, born to a father with four wives. He lived through the Mau Mau uprising as a teenager, during which the authorities imprisoned, abused and tortured tens or even hundreds of thousands of people. During the conflict, Ngũgĩ’s father – one of the Gikuyu, Kenya’s largest ethnic group – was forced off his land, and two of his brothers were killed.

This struggle formed the backdrop to the novel that made his name: Weep Not, Child. Published in 1964, just a year after Kenya gained independence, it tells the story of the education of Njoroge, the first of his family to go to school, and how his life is thrown into turmoil by the events which surround him.

A series of novels, including short stories and plays followed, as Ngũgĩ became a lecturer in English literature at Nairobi University. There he argued that the English department should be renamed, and shift its focus to literature around the world. “If there is need for a ‘study of the historic continuity of a single culture’, why can’t this be African?” he wrote in a paper. “Why can’t African literature be at the centre so that we can view other cultures in relationship to it?”

In 1977, he published his fourth novel, Petals of Blood, and a play, The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, which dealt with the troubled legacy of the Mau Mau uprising, but it was his co-authoring of a play written in Gikuyu, I Will Marry When I Want, which led to his arrest and imprisonment in Mamiti maximum security prison.

“In prison I began to think in a more systematic way about language,” he told the Guardian in 2006. “Why was I not detained before, when I wrote in English?” He decided from then on to write in Gikuyu, that “the only language I could use was my own”.
Released in 1978, exile followed in 1982, when the author learned of a plot to kill him upon his return from a trip to Britain to promote his novel Caitani Mutharabaini, translated as Devil on the Cross. He later moved from the UK to the US, where he worked as a professor of English and comparative literature at the University of California, Irvine, and headed its International Centre for Writing and Translation.

Ngũgĩ continued to write in Gikuyu, despite his troubled connection with his homeland; an arrest warrant was issued for the fictional main character of his 1986 novel Matigari, which was also banned in Kenya. Returning to Nairobi with his wife Njeeri for the first time in 2004, two years after the death of Daniel arap Moi, Ngũgĩ was greeted by crowds at the airport. But during the trip, men wielding guns broke into their apartment, raping Njeeri and beating Ngũgĩ when he tried to intervene. “I don’t think we were meant to come out alive,” he told the Guardian two years later.

His novel Wizard of the Crow, translated by the author into English in 2006, returned to the subject of African kleptocracy, being set in the imaginary dictatorship of the Free Republic of Aburiria. He said the “most beautiful sentence in the entire novel” was “a translation from Gikuyu by the author”.

He continued to translate his own works from Gikuyu, and was nominated for the international Booker prize in 2021 for his epic novel-in-verse The Perfect Nine. He was the prize’s first nominee writing in an indigenous African language and the first author to be nominated for their own translation.

Ngũgĩ had been diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1995 and underwent triple heart bypass surgery in 2019.
Ngũgĩ had nine children, four of whom are authors: Tee Ngũgĩ, Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ, Nducu wa Ngũgĩ, and Wanjiku wa Ngũgĩ.

“Resistance is the best way of keeping alive,” he said to the Guardian in 2018. “It can take even the smallest form of saying no to injustice. If you really think you’re right, you stick to your beliefs, and they help you to survive.”

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, giant of African literature, dies aged 87 | Ngugi wa Thiong'o | The Guardian

[beachbound]

Loretta Swit-“Hot lips” Houlihan, passes away, at 87.

Loretta Swit, the Emmy-winning actress who made the high-strung and relentlessly militaristic Maj. Margaret Houlihan human, dignified and — against all odds — sympathetic on the acclaimed television series “M*A*S*H,” died on Friday at her home in Manhattan. She was 87.

M*A*S*H was one of my favorite shows, growing up.

RIP, Hot Lips

[harrybarracuda]

No, not Hot Lips!

She was epic!

Loretta Swit, who starred as Maj. Houlihan on TV series 'M.A.S.H.,' dies at 87




NEW YORK — Loretta Swit, who won two Emmy Awards playing Army Maj. Margaret Houlihan, the demanding head nurse of a behind-the-lines surgical unit during the Korean War on the pioneering hit TV series “M.A.S.H.,” has died. She was 87.

Swit died Friday at her home in New York City, likely from natural causes, publicist Harlan Boll said.

Swit and Alan Alda were the longest-serving cast members on “M.A.S.H.,” which was based on Robert Altman’s 1970 film, itself based on a novel by Richard Hooker, the pseudonym of H. Richard Hornberger.

The CBS show aired for 11 years from 1972 to 1983, revolving around life at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, which gave the show its name. The 2½-hour finale on Feb. 28, 1983, drew over 100 million viewers, the most-watched episode of any scripted series ever.

Rolling Stone magazine put “M.A.S.H.” at No. 25 of the best TV shows of all time, while Time Out put it at No. 34. It won the Impact Award at the 2009 TV Land annual awards. It won a Peabody Award in 1975 “for the depth of its humor and the manner in which comedy is used to lift the spirit and, as well, to offer a profound statement on the nature of war.”

Swit performed on Chicago stages over the years, including a 1990 production at the former Wellington Theatre (the home of TimeLine Theatre), where she starred as the title character in “Shirley Valentine,” considered to be her signature stage role, which she performed more than 1,200 times over the course of her career at various theaters across the country. She was awarded the prestigious Sarah Siddons Award in 1991 for her work in the show. She was also among the cast of a 2001 production of “The Vagina Monologues” at the Apollo Theater Chicago. In 2015, Swit joined Ed Asner (“The Mary Tyler Moore Show”) for one-night-only presentation of “An Evening with the Roosevelts” at the Auditorium Theatre, celebrating the 70th anniversary of Roosevelt University.

In Altman’s 1970 film, Houlihan was a one-dimensional character — a prickly, rules-bound head nurse who was regularly tormented by male colleagues, who gave her the nickname “Hot Lips.” Her intimate moments were broadcast to the entire camp after somebody planted a microphone under her bed.

Sally Kellerman played Houlihan in the movie version, and Swit took it over for TV, eventually deepening and creating her into a much fuller character. Her sexuality was played down, and she wasn’t even called “Hot Lips” in the later years.

The growing awareness of feminism in the ’70s spurred Houlihan’s transformation from caricature to real person, but a lot of the change was due to Swit’s influence on the scriptwriters.

“Around the second or third year, I decided to try to play her as a real person, in an intelligent fashion, even if it meant hurting the jokes,” Swit told Suzy Kalter, author of “The Complete Book of ‘M.A.S.H.”

“To oversimplify it, I took each traumatic change that happened in her life and kept it. I didn’t go into the next episode as if it were a different character in a different play. She was a character in constant flux; she never stopped developing.”

“M.A.S.H.” wasn’t an instant hit. It finished its first season in 46th place out of 75 network TV series, but it nabbed nine Emmy nominations. It was rewarded with a better time slot for its sophomore season, paired on Saturday nights with “All in the Family,” then TV’s highest-rated show. At the 1974 Emmys, it was crowned best comedy, with Alda winning as best comedy actor.

The series also survived despite cast churn. In addition to Swit and Alda, the first season featured Wayne Rogers, McLean Stevenson, Larry Linville and Gary Burghoff. Harry Morgan, Mike Farrell and David Ogden Stiers would later be added, while Jamie Farr and William Christopher had expanded roles.

“Loretta Swit’s portrayal of Margaret ‘Hot Lips’ Houlihan was groundbreaking — bringing heart, humor and strength to one of television comedy’s most enduring roles. Her talent extended well beyond that iconic character, with acclaimed work on both stage and screen that showcased her intelligence, versatility and passion,” Journey Gunderson, National Comedy Center executive director said in a statement.

Swit appeared in all but 11 episodes of the series, nearly four times longer than the Korean War itself, exploring issues like PTSD, sexism and racism. Swit pushed for a better representation for women.

“One of the things I liked, with Loretta’s prodding, was every time I had a chance to write for her character, we’d get away from the Hot Lips angle and find out more about who Margaret was. She became more of a real person,” Alda told the Hollywood Reporter in 2018.

The series ended on a happy note for Houlihan, who spends much of the finale debating whether she wants to head to Tokyo or Belgium for her next overseas post. Ultimately she opts to return to America and work at a hospital, citing her father — a career Army man.

Swit didn’t personally agree that was the correct decision for a military-minded official: “I didn’t think that was correct for my Margaret,” she told Yahoo Entertainment in 2023. “I think her next move was Vietnam. So I didn’t agree with that, but that’s what they wanted her to do.”

But the actor did get to write the speech that Houlihan delivers to her fellow nurses on their final night together, in which she says: “It’s been an honor and privilege to have worked with you. And I’m very, very proud to have known you.

“I was consumed with writing that. And I still get letters from women all over the world who became nurses because of Margaret Houlihan. To have contributed to someone’s life like that is remarkable,” she told Yahoo Entertainment.

During her run, Houlihan had an affair with Hawkeye’s foil, the bumbling Frank Burns, played by Linville in the TV version, and in Season 5, Houlihan returns from a stay in Tokyo engaged to a handsome lieutenant colonel, a storyline that Swit said she advocated for with the writers.

“I told them: ‘Can you imagine what fun you’re going to have with Larry when I come back to town, and I tell him I’m engaged? He’ll rip the doors off of the mess tent!’ And that’s exactly what they had him do. So we were all of the same mind.”

Toward the end, Swit was tempted to leave the show. She played the role of Chris Cagney in a 1981 television movie, “Cagney & Lacey,” and was offered the part when it was picked up as a midseason series for the spring of 1982. But producers insisted she stay with “M.A.S.H.” for its last two seasons.

Swit told the Florida Times-Union in 2010 she might have stayed with “M.A.S.H.” anyway. “You can’t help but get better as an actor working with scripts like that,” she said. “If you’re in something that literate, well, we got spoiled.”

In 2022, James Poniewozik, The New York Times’ chief television critic, looked back on the show and said it held up well: “Its blend of madcap comedy and pitch-dark drama — the laughs amplifying the serious stakes, and vice versa — is recognizable in today’s dramedies, from ‘Better Things’ to ‘Barry,’ that work in the DMZ between laughter and sadness.”

After the TV series, Swit became a vocal animal welfare activist, selling SwitHeart perfume and her memoir through her official website, with proceeds benefiting various animal-related nonprofit groups.

In 1983, she married actor Dennis Holahan, whom she’d met when he was a guest star on “M.A.S.H.” They divorced in 1995.

Born in Passaic, New Jersey, the daughter of Polish immigrants, Swit enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, then paid her dues for years in touring productions.

In 1969, she arrived in Hollywood and was soon seen in series such as “Gunsmoke,” “Hawaii Five-O,” “Mission Impossible” and “Bonanza.” Then in 1972, she got her big break when she was asked to audition for the role of “Hot Lips.”

She would regularly return to theater, starring on Broadway in 1975 in “Same Time, Next Year” and “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” in 1986. She was in “Amorous Crossing,” a romantic comedy, at Alhambra Theatre & Dining in 2010 and in North Carolina Theatre’s production of “Mame” in 2003.

Loretta Swit dead: Starred as Major Houlihan on '''M.A.S.H.''' - Chicago Sun-Times

[Happy As Larry]

James Lowe, singer of psychedelic rock trailblazers the Electric Prunes, dies aged 82

The band’s early single I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night) was their biggest hit, featuring on the compilation Nuggets, and has influenced generations of musicians.
James Lowe, the singer of psychedelic rock band the Electric Prunes, has died aged 82. His family said in a statement that he died of natural causes.

“Dad leaves behind a legacy of sound, love and boundless creativity,” they said on Facebook. “At the centre of it all was our amazing mom, Pamela – his guiding star, enduring muse and wife of 62 years. We know how deeply he cherished this community, and we feel that love too.”

Formed in Los Angeles in 1965, the band’s second single, 1966’s I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night), reached No 11 in the US, and proved their biggest hit. (Most of their hits were written by Annette Tucker and Nancie Mantz.) More significant, perhaps, was the song’s inclusion on the 1972 psych and garage compilation Nuggets, a cult favourite for more than 50 years, and their general influence over the emerging psychedelic scene. Lowe said that the band wanted to make “free-form garage music”.

The band’s name started as a joke and they had a short-lived, tumultuous existence, with Lowe later admitting that they were learning to play their instruments as they went along, with one significant early woodshedding session taking place at the house of Leon Russell. Members came and went, a David Axelrod-produced album of psychedelic pop and Gregorian music flopped and inspired a disastrous live performance, and producer and engineer Dave Hassinger’s rights to the name allowed him to reassemble the band at will. Lowe left in 1968. The so-called New Improved Electric Prunes released their last album, Just Good Old Rock and Roll, in 1969 and split a year later.

Lowe distanced himself from the band until interest resurged in the 1990s and he began touring and recording with other members of the group. The song Kyrie Eleison, from the Gregorian-inspired album Mass in F Minor, had been used in the 1969 film Easy Rider and part of the album were later sampled by the likes of MF Doom and Madlib. At the time of his death, he was the last surviving original member.

Lowe was born in San Luis Obispo, California, on 5 March 1943 and lived in Hawaii for a time as a teenager. When he returned to California, he performed folk music and worked in rocket engine production before forming the Sanctions, the band that evolved into the Electric Prunes.

After the band’s split, Lowe worked as a recording engineer, contributing to significant works such as all three albums by Todd Rundgren’s band Nazz and the first album by the band that would become Sparks, then known as Halfnelson. That record flopped, prompting Lowe to leave music to work in television production.

In 2000, he told US author Richie Unterberger that the band’s reunion had reminded him “how much fun music is. Take away the profit motive and all that greed and you get back to trying to make a good record … it’s very hard.” Of the Electric Prunes’ brief existence, he said: “Some things are meant to be short and sweet. Life is but a dream.”

https://www.theguardian.com/music/20...es-dies-age-82

[Happy As Larry]

(I missed this from a couple of weeks ago. Barry Fantoni contributed much of the humour in Private Eye for around 50 years – Cartoons, EJ Thribb, Slyvie Krin, Glenda Slag, and Colemanballs amongst others.)

Barry Fantoni obituary

Cartoonist, illustrator, TV show host, playwright and detective novelist whose greatest love was poetry

It was the freezing winter of 1963 and snow was lying thick on the ground in London when Barry Fantoni, who has died aged 85 of a heart attack, came to fame by unveiling the Duke of Edinburgh in his underwear at the Woodstock gallery. The near-lifesize image of Prince Philip surrounded by a kilt, a polo stick and items of naval uniform, in the style of a child’s cut-out doll, caused a sensation after the show was reviewed by the art critic of the Daily Express. Within a week the entire collection of Baz’s first one-man show had been sold to an American art dealer.

The portrait, an early example of pop art, caught the eye of Richard Ingrams, one of the founders of Private Eye magazine, and opened the door for Baz’s 47-year career at the satirical title, during which time he featured in all but 31 of the 1,278 issues. He was a cartoonist, illustrator and member of the jokes team, notably inventing – with Ingrams – the character of EJ Thribb, the magazine’s teenage poet-in-residence.

During the 60s, he was a face of swinging London – Paul McCartney, Ray Davies, Pete Townshend, Marianne Faithfull and Ralph Steadman would hang out at his home and studio in Clapham, south London. In 1966 he became the host of A Whole Scene Going, a BBC show intended to rival ITV’s Ready Steady Go! (for which Baz had designed the set) and Melody Maker named him Top Male TV Celebrity that year. He had his own fanclub.

Baz’s instinctive understanding of popular culture as a working-class Londoner brought a new relevance to Private Eye, whose founders had met at public school. But he was sensitive to how he was seen and angrily denounced an early history of the magazine for portraying him as a “Jewish sex-maniac and a half-wit” for highlighting his amorous pursuit of women at the office.

By contrast, he never spared the subjects of his cartoons and always aimed to “wound or mock” the “miserably corrupt establishment” that were his primary targets. Cartooning was not what he wished to be remembered for, however. “If I could be honest I would put it at the bottom of the list,” he said when I interviewed him in 2009 and we became friends. He could discuss almost any subject and usually find a joke in it.

Away from the Eye, Fantoni worked as a poet, a professional jazz player, a playwright, a painter, a gumshoe detective novelist and a reader of Chinese horoscopes. Poetry was his great passion. “It is the key feature of my life, more than anything else, more than plays, more than the musicals, more than my jazz, more than Private Eye, more than painting, more than everything. It’s the bedrock of my life.”

He adopted the persona of Thribb for public poetry readings alongside Roger McGough, whom he had known since playing sax with McGough’s band the Scaffold in 1967. Always opening with “So farewell then” and usually including the line “That was your catchphrase”, Thribb’s obituary poems could also be designed to wound or mock, Baz said. “That’s the thing about the catchphrase … that’s what really sums you up and you weren’t anything more than that.”

For a time his own catchphrase was Little Man in a Little Box, the title of the pop song that Davies wrote for him, which he recorded in 1966 and would perform as a support act to the Spencer Davis Group. It was a reference to the age of television – (“You can turn me on, you can switch me off”) – but it would be good Thribb material, following Baz’s burial in Turin’s monumental cemetery. He could find humour in death. It amused him that his mother had “wryly noted” the irony in his father’s death, also from a heart attack, while watching This Is Your Life.

Baz was born in Epping, Essex, to where his mother had been evacuated from Stepney, east London, during the second world war. His Italian father, Peter (born Paolo) Fantoni, was an artist, and his Jewish mother, Sarah (known as Maxi, nee Deverell) was a musician, of French and Dutch extraction. Baz grew up in south London and painted landscapes from the roof of the family flat on Brixton Hill.

He attended Archbishop Temple school before joining Camberwell School of Art on a scholarship before his 15th birthday. At 18 he was expelled for multiple misdemeanours, including depicting the staff naked in the style of Toulouse-Lautrec. While travelling in France, he contracted tuberculosis. Admitted to hospital on his return to London, he watched fellow patients dying on his ward. That experience, he later explained, was where his work drive came from.

He resumed his education at the Slade School of Fine Art and then came the exhibition that brought him to the attention of Ingrams. He went on to have a further six solo exhibitions (including Caricatures by Barry Fantoni at the National Portrait Gallery in 2007) and five joint exhibitions with his father, and took part in 11 group shows.

The Eye’s fortnightly publishing rhythm allowed him multiple careers. From the mid-1960s he taught at Croydon College of Art, alongside Bridget Riley. He was a diary cartoonist (1983-90) and art critic (1973-77) for the Times, and his caricatures were a fixture in the Listener for 20 years (1968-88). He put on plays in Paris and London. But for Baz there was never enough time. On leaving the Eye in 2010, he told colleagues there was “still so much else I’ve got left to do”.

Depechism, an art movement which he founded in 2012 after moving to Calais, was emblematic of his need to produce work quickly. The Depechist “manifesto” decreed that each painting must be completed within a time limit set by the length of the canvas. It seemed like an idea suited to the digital age, but Baz was making a protest, he said, against the “Saatchiism and Serotaism” of the “empty” arts establishment, from which he felt alienated.

In the same year he published Harry Lipkin PI, a slick novel about “the world’s oldest private detective”. It was set in Miami, even though the author (who did not fly) had never visited the city.

Baz married Tessa Reidy in 1972. They had separated by the time he met Katie Dominy, an art and design journalist and editor, who became his partner in 1996 and who survives him. In search of his Italian roots, in 2016 Baz moved with Katie to a riverside flat in Turin, where he produced two memoirs, A Whole Scene Going On (2019) and Breasts As Apples (2023), more pictures, short plays and a collection of brief poems, Poems You May Have Missed (2021), mimicking the style of famous poets. The Italian obsession with ice-cream and national tendency to talk noisily were things he complained of, often loudly and in public.

In 2022 he spent months in hospital, critically ill with heart problems, but somehow he came back to life and returned to his projects. “I have a huge pile of work ahead,” he told me in an email last month. However, in the time-honoured phrasing of Private Eye editors: “That’s enough Barry – Ed.”

Barry Ernest Fantoni, artist and writer, born 28 February 1940; died 20 May 2025



Barry Fantoni obituary | Painting | The Guardian

[harrybarracuda]

Best-selling author Frederick Forsyth, known for thriller novels including The Day Of The Jackal, has died at the age of 86, his agent has said.

"We mourn the passing of one of the world's greatest thriller writers," Jonathan Lloyd said in a statement.

Forsyth published more than 25 books, also including The Odessa File and The Dogs of War, and sold 75 million books around the world, he said.

His publisher Bill Scott-Kerr said: "Still read by millions across the world, Freddie's thrillers define the genre and are still the benchmark to which contemporary writers aspire. He leaves behind a peerless legacy which will continue to excite and entertain for years to come."

• Obituary: Life as a thriller writer, fighter pilot, journalist and spy

Born in Kent in 1938, Forsyth was an RAF pilot before becoming a war correspondent for the BBC and Reuters, and revealed in 2015 he also worked for British intelligence agency MI6 for more than 20 years.
Many of his fictional plots drew on his real-life experiences around the world.

He made his name with his first novel, 1971's The Day Of The Jackal, which he wrote when he was out of work.

"[I was] skint, in debt, no flat, no car, no nothing and I just thought, 'How do I get myself out of this hole?' And I came up with probably the zaniest solution - write a novel," he said.
It is a gripping tale, set in 1963, about an Englishman hired to assassinate the French president at the time, Charles de Gaulle.
The Day Of The Jackal was turned into a 1973 film starring Edward Fox as the Jackal, and then became a TV drama starring Eddie Redmayne last year.

The Day of the Jackal author Frederick Forsyth dies

[misskit]

Sly Stone, visionary funk frontman of the Family Stone, has died at age 82

Sly Stone, the remarkable, eccentric frontman, singer, songwriter, and producer of his family group, Sly & the Family Stone, has died. He was 82.


The musical icon had been battling lung disease, according to a statement provided by his family.


"While we mourn his absence, we take solace in knowing that his extraordinary musical legacy will continue to resonate and inspire for generations to come," they wrote.


Born Sylvester Stewart, he was the second of five children. As an adolescent, Stone and his family moved from Denton, Texas to Vallejo, California. The family was heavily involved in the Church of God In Christ.

By age 8, Stone was recording gospel music with his siblings, Freddie, Rose and Vaetta as The Stewart Four. You can hear Stone as a child belting out "On the Battlefield of the Lord" on a single they recorded in 1952.


He was still in grade school when a friend misspelled 'Sylvester' as "Sly." The nickname stuck. By age 11, Stone became proficient in keyboards, guitar, bass, and drums. In high school, he'd formed a multi-racial doo-wop group, The Viscaynes, which recorded some singles in Los Angeles.


As a young man, Stone was a successful disc jockey for KSOL, an R&B radio station in San Mateo, California. His playlists included popular records by white artists such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.


During this time Stone also worked as a record producer for Autumn Records, producing San Francisco-area bands. One of the Stone-produced singles was Bobby Freeman's "C'mon and Swim," which reached No. 5 on the U.S. pop chart in 1964.


Stone and his brother Freddie merged their own bands together in 1966 to form Sly & the Family Stone. In it, women - notably – were not just vocalists but also played instruments, a rarity for the era. And it included both Black and white musicians. Within a few years, the group was turning out hits such as "Everyday People," "Family Affair," and "Dance to the Music."

Although the group attracted a large and diverse audience from its beginnings, Stone was pressured by the Black Panthers to kick the white members out of the group – sometimes in menacingly and in person, as saxophone player Jerry Martini recalled in a 2013 interview with NPR.


"Sly always, always stood up for me, and in many instances, he saved my butt," Martini said.


Sly & the Family Stone's sound was a dazzling fusion of psychedelic rock, soul, jazz, gospel, and Latin. The group's early morning performance at Woodstock in 1969 was widely recognized as a legendary moment in a legendary concert.


"The call, the response. It felt like church," Stone wrote in his 2023 memoir Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin). "The horns went up into the sky. When the show was over, we were wet and cold. I don't remember how I left, maybe the same way I came in, but I wasn't there to see Jimi [Hendrix] close the festival."


"We knew something magical was happening. I think after we realized that it was a sea of people in front of us," Sly's sister, Rose Stone, told NPR in 2007. "It was about 5:00 AM when we went on. It was dark, and we were playing our best... And the sun started to come up and all of a sudden all we could see was just a sea of people. I think it was like an apex of our group."


In the 1970s, Sly Stone's music got gloomier and more cynical, reflecting a world made bleak by the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President John F. Kennedy, as well as elevated racial tensions and the horrors of the Vietnam War.


After playing some of the most euphoric and politically charged music that defined a generation, Sly and the Family Stone dissolved, in part, because of Stone's well-documented drug abuse. He became infamous for ghosting his own shows.

By the 1980s, Sly Stone had slipped into seclusion and he was arrested for cocaine possession in 2011. But in the mid 2000s, he started to make sporadic public appearances, including performing with his daughter's band, Baby Stone. The Grammys gave him a lifetime achievement award in 2017. His memoir, wrote Associated Press reviewer Christopher Weber, "overflows with wit and wordplay." Sly Stone was a musical visionary whose charismatic stage presence and distinctive vocals are now woven into the fabric of American joy.

Sly Stone has died at the age of 82 : NPR

[misskit]

[beachbound]

^
The world is a little less cool, today.

RIP, Sly.

[misskit]

Indeed.

[Happy As Larry]

A documentary was released earlier this year - Sly Lives - which charted the life, career and legacy of Sly & The Family Stone.
It received decent reviews.

[harrybarracuda]

Beach Boy Brian Wilson Dies At 82

Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys co-founder who masterminded the group’s wild success and soundtracked the California dream, has died, his family announced Wednesday. He was 82.
“We are heartbroken to announce that our beloved father Brian Wilson has passed away. We are at a loss for words right now,” read the statement published on Wilson’s social media accounts.
“We realize that we are sharing our grief with the world.”

Just a moment...

[harrybarracuda]

Harris Yulin, Scarface and Ozark Actor, Dies at 87




Harris Yulin, a veteran actor of stage and screen, died of cardiac arrest in New York City on Tuesday, June 10. He was 87 years old.

A memorial will be held at a later date, a rep confirmed. “Yulin was part of the vanguard of a generation who cared passionately about the craft of acting,” said his family in a statement shared with PEOPLE. “This deep, lifelong dedication led to extraordinary, resonant performances that were a gift to audiences, the actors he worked with, and the art of acting itself.”

The late actor, added the statement, “was an avid birder and lover of the sea.”

Born in Los Angeles in 1937, Yulin began amassing over a hundred film, television and stage productions in the 1970s. Best known for his appearances in 1983’s Scarface, 1989’s Ghostbusters II and 1996's Looking for Richard, he earned a Primetime Emmy nomination in 1996 for a guest role on the comedy Frasier and a 2019 ensemble Screen Actors Guild Award nod for Ozark. More recently he featured in the series Veep, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, And Just Like That… and more.

Stage and Screen Star Harris Yulin Dead at 87