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Tributes from across the live music industry have been paid to Chris York, one of the United Kingdom’s leading promoters and a director of SJM Concerts, following his death at age 55 following a long illness.
In a statement on Thursday (July 25), SJM Concerts said the company was “deeply saddened” to announce the passing of a man who “helped define the U.K.’s live music scene” over the past three decades.
York’s career in the live music industry began in the late 1980s when he started booking gigs at Warwick University, where he was a student.
After finishing his studies, York worked as a booker at London’s The Venue — putting on early shows by Pulp, Suede and PJ Harvey — before deepening his knowledge of the live business with roles at U.K. live promoters Straight Music and MCP Concerts.
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In 1993, York joined SJM Concerts, where he “formed a solid and unshakeable partnership and friendship” with the company’s founder, Simon Moran, that “would last the rest of his career,” the Manchester-based firm said in a statement.
Artists that York promoted during his three decades at SJM included Oasis, Foo Fighters, Green Day, The Chemical Brothers, Lily Allen, Massive Attack, Smashing Pumpkins, Underworld, Robert Plant, Underworld, Lorde, Morrissey, Lorde, Placebo, Kraftwerk, Swedish House Mafia, Suede and Stereophonics, among many others.
Oasis singer Liam Gallagher, The Doves, The Pogues, Stereophonics and Suede are among the many acts who posted tributes on social media.
“Chris York was a true unsung hero of the music world,” wrote The Charlatans frontman Tim Burgess on X, adding that the British group “are proud” to have called York a friend.
“You might not recognise the name but if you’re a London gig-goer then you’ll have been at one of the thousands of gigs [York] put on through SJM,” stated Suede’s bassist Mat Osman, who called York “a huge friend and supporter” of the group. “He put on Suede shows from the lowliest to the biggest and was a constant presence in our career,” he added.
Posting on X, U.K. indie rock group Shed Seven said it was “heartbroken” to hear of York’s death. The promoter “played a pivotal role in shaping our career from the very beginning, standing by us every step of the way,” said the band, who topped the U.K. albums charts earlier this year. Shed Seven went on to call York “a kind and inspirational man, a true gent, one of the good guys.”
Those sentiments were echoed by U.K. venue operator Academy Music Group, which called York “a force of nature, exceptional promoter, industry pioneer and above all, a genuine music fan and all-round lovely man.”
During his career, York also worked closely with The Who’s Roger Daltrey, live producer Des Murphy and fellow SJM director Rob Ballantine on establishing the annual Teenage Cancer Trust spring concert series at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Since its launch in 2006, the event has raised more than £30 million ($38 million) for charity with everyone from Ed Sheeran to New Order to Paul McCartney taking part.
In 2021, York was awarded the Jo Walker Meador International Award by the Country Music Association for his work on the Country to Country (C2C) Music festival, which SJM launched in 2013 in partnership with AEG Europe. The event has since become Europe’s biggest country music festival, taking place annually at London’s The O2 arena, Glasgow’s OVO Hydro and Belfast’s The SSE Arena.
“When he got involved at the start of C2C Chris really knew f— all about country. But to his credit he knew what he had to do and immersed himself in every aspect of it and soon became a go-to oracle on country, which he always maintained,” Steve Homer, CEO of AEG Presents U.K., tells Billboard. “He has left a big hole in the live music industry and I’m not sure it will ever be filled.”
“Chris was so loved by the business as you can see from the tributes that are flooding in for him from far and wide,” Emma Banks, co-head of global touring at Creative Artists Agency (CAA) and a close friend of York, tells Billboard.
“I am going to miss working with him. I am going to miss his wisdom. I am going to miss chatting with him about pretty much everything and having a laugh with him,” Banks adds. “My thoughts are with Alice, his family, friends and the team at SJM.”
Also paying tribute was Live Nation U.K. and Ireland chairman Denis Desmond, who said York was “a fighter to the end. His legacy will live on.”
John Mayall, the British blues musician whose influential band the Bluesbreakers was a training ground for Eric Clapton, Mick Fleetwood and many other superstars, has died. He was 90.
A statement on Mayall’s Instagram page announced his death Tuesday (July 23), saying the musician died Monday at his home in California. “Health issues that forced John to end his epic touring career have finally led to peace for one of this world’s greatest road warriors,” the post said.
He is credited with helping develop the English take on urban, Chicago-style rhythm and blues that played an important role in the blues revival of the late 1960s. At various times, the Bluesbreakers included Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce, later of Cream; Mick Fleetwood, John McVie and Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac; Mick Taylor, who played five years with the Rolling Stones; Harvey Mandel and Larry Taylor of Canned Heat; and Jon Mark and John Almond, who went on to form the Mark-Almond Band.
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Mayall protested in interviews that he was not a talent scout, but played for the love of the music he had first heard on his father’s 78-rpm records.
“I’m a band leader and I know what I want to play in my band — who can be good friends of mine,” Mayall said in an interview with the Southern Vermont Review. “It’s definitely a family. It’s a small kind of thing really.”
A small but enduring thing. Though Mayall never approached the fame of some of his illustrious alumni, he was still performing in his late 80s, pounding out his version of Chicago blues. The lack of recognition rankled a bit, and he wasn’t shy about saying so.
“I’ve never had a hit record, I never won a Grammy Award, and Rolling Stone has never done a piece about me,” he said in an interview with the Santa Barbara Independent in 2013. “I’m still an underground performer.”
Known for his blues harmonica and keyboard playing, Mayall had a Grammy nomination, for “Wake Up Call” which featured guest artists Buddy Guy, Mavis Staples, Mick Taylor and Albert Collins. He received a second nomination in 2022 for his album The Sun Is Shining Down. He also won official recognition in Britain with the award of an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in 2005.
He was selected for the 2024 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame class and his 1966 album Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton is considered one of the best British blues albums.
Mayall once was asked if he kept playing to meet a demand, or simply to show he could still do it.
“Well, the demand is there, fortunately. But it’s really for neither of those two things, it’s just for the love of the music,” he said in an interview with Hawaii Public Radio. “I just get together with these guys and we have a workout.”
Mayall was born on Nov. 29, 1933 in Macclesfield, near Manchester in central England.
Sounding a note of the hard-luck bluesman, Mayall once said, “The only reason I was born in Macclesfield was because my father was a drinker, and that’s where his favorite pub was.”
His father also played guitar and banjo, and his records of boogie-woogie piano captivated his teenage son.
Mayall said he learned to play the piano one hand at a time — a year on the left hand, a year on the right, “so I wouldn’t get all tangled up.”
The piano was his main instrument, though he also performed on guitar and harmonica, as well as singing in a distinctive, strained-sounding voice. Aided only by drummer Keef Hartley, Mayall played all the other instruments for his 1967 album Blues Alone.
Mayall was often called the “father of British blues,” but when he moved to London in 1962 his aim was to soak up the nascent blues scene led by Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Eric Burdon were among others drawn to the sound.
The Bluesbreakers drew on a fluid community of musicians who drifted in and out of various bands. Mayall’s biggest catch was Clapton, who had quit the Yardbirds and joined he Bluesbreakers in 1965 because he was unhappy with the Yardbirds’ commercial direction.
Mayall and Clapton shared a passion for Chicago blues, and the guitarist later remembered that Mayall had “the most incredible collection of records I had ever seen.”
Mayall tolerated Clapton’s waywardness: He disappeared a few months after joining the band, then reappeared later the same year, sidelining the newly arrived Peter Green, then left for good in 1966 with Bruce to form Cream, which rocketed to commercial success, leaving Mayall far behind.
Clapton, interviewed for a BBC documentary on Mayall in 2003, confessed that “to a certain extent I have used his hospitality, used his band and his reputation to launch my own career,”
“I think he is a great musician. I just admire and respect his steadfastness,” Clapton added.
Mayall encouraged Clapton to sing and urged Green to develop his song-writing abilities.
Mick Taylor, who succeeded Green as a Bluesbreaker in the late 1960s, valued the wide latitude which Mayall allowed his soloists.
“You’d have complete freedom to do whatever you wanted,” Taylor said in a 1979 interview with writer Jas Obrecht. “You could make as many mistakes as you wanted, too.”
Mayall’s 1968 album Blues From Laurel Canyon signaled a permanent move to the United States and a change in direction. He disbanded the Bluesbreakers and worked with two guitars and drums.
The following year he released The Turning Point, arguably his most successful release, with an atypical four-man acoustic lineup including Mark and Almond. “Room to Move,” a song from that album, was a frequent audience favorite in Mayall’s later career.
The 1970s found Mayall at low ebb personally, but still touring and doing more than 100 shows a year.
“Throughout the ’70s, I performed most of my shows drunk,” Mayall said in an interview with Dan Ouellette for Down Beat magazine in 1990. One consequence was an attempt to jump from a balcony into a swimming pool that missed — shattering one of Mayall’s heels and leaving him with a limp.
“That was one incident that got me to stop drinking,” Mayall said.
In 1982, he reformed the Bluesbreakers, recruiting Taylor and McVie, but after two years the personnel changed again. In 2008, Mayall announced that he was permanently retiring the Bluesbreaker name, and in 2013 he was leading the John Mayall Band.
Mayall and his second wife, Maggie, divorced in 2011 after 30 years of marriage. They had two sons.
Jerry Fuller, who wrote and/or produced hits that spanned decades and genres, died of lung cancer on Thursday (July 18) at his home in Sherman Oaks, Calif. He was 85.
Fuller wrote two songs that reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100: Ricky Nelson’s “Travelin’ Man” in 1961 and Al Wilson’s “Show and Tell” in 1974. He also produced the latter song, which in addition to topping the Hot 100 reached No. 10 on what was then known as Billboard‘s Best Selling Soul Singles.
He also wrote Nelson’s “A Wonder Like You,” his follow-up to “Travelin’ Man,” which reached No. 11 on the Hot 100, as well as two subsequent Nelson singles that went top 10: “Young World” (No. 5) and “It’s Up to You” (No. 6).
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Fuller had another solid run of hits in 1968 with Gary Puckett & the Union Gap. He wrote the group’s punchy pop hits “Young Girl” and “Lady Willpower,” which spent a combined five weeks at No. 2 on the Hot 100, and the mellower, adult contemporary-oriented “Over You,” which reached No. 7. All three of those singles went gold.
“What can I say about a guy whose vision defined my musical identity and destiny,” Puckett said in a statement in the wake of Fuller’s death. “What can ANYONE say about a man who gave SO much to SO many through his talents and efforts in the world of music. Thank you, Jerry! The world was a better place with you in it.”
Fuller was born in Fort Worth, Texas on Nov. 19, 1938, and moved to Los Angeles in early 1959. In 1960, while touring with The Champs (best known for their 1958 smash “Tequila”), Fuller got to know Glen Campbell, who remained a lifelong friend.
Early in his career, Fuller worked as a demo singer, which led to a recording and songwriting contract with Gene Autry’s Four Star Music and Challenge Records.
Fuller had four Hot 100 hits as an artist from 1959-61, the highest-charting of which (a rockabilly cover version of the standard “Tennessee Waltz”) reached No. 61. But he had far more success working with other artists. He originally wrote “Travelin’ Man” for Sam Cooke — it has the pop flavor of such Cooke hits of the period as “Only Sixteen,” “Wonderful World” and Cupid” — but it made its way to Nelson instead.
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Fuller was unique among writer/producers in that he also produced songs he didn’t write, including O.C. Smith’s recording of Bobby Russell’s “Little Green Apples,” which reached No. 2 on both the Hot 100 and Billboard‘s Best Selling Rhythm & Blues Singles (as the chart was then known) in 1968.
He also produced but did not write Gary Puckett & the Union Gap’s breakthrough hit “Woman, Woman” (which was written by Jim Glaser and Jimmy Payne); Mark Lindsay’s solo hits “Arizona” and “Silver Bird” (which were written by Kenny Young, the latter in tandem with Artie Butler); and The Knickerbockers’ 1965 hit “Lies” (which was written by Beau Charles and Buddy Randell).
The power-pop hit “Lies,” which has the energy of Beatles hits of the era, also underscores Fuller’s range. From power-pop to ballads; from pop/soul to country, his hits defied easy categorization.
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In the early ’90s, Fuller co-produced (with John Hobbs) Collin Raye’s “Love, Me,” which topped Billboard‘s Hot Country Songs for three weeks in early 1992. The song brought Raye, Fuller and Hobbs a nomination for single of the year at the 1991 CMA Awards.
Elsewhere, Fuller also wrote numerous country hits for Ray Price, including “That’s All She Wrote,” “To Make a Long Story Short” and “Feet.”
In the 1970s, Fuller formed his own companies, Moonchild Productions In. and Fullness Music Company.
Fuller was never personally nominated for a Grammy, though some of the records he worked on were. And, somewhat surprisingly, he was not inducted into either the Songwriters Hall of Fame or the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. But he wrote and/or produced many songs that are fondly remembered.
Fuller is survived by his wife, the former Annette Smerigan, and their two children, Adam Lee and Anna Nicole.
Abdul Kareem “Duke” Fakir, the last of the original Four Tops and a stalwart of Motown’s golden age, has died at age 88.
Fakir’s family announced the singer’s death on Monday afternoon (July 22), noting that “our hearts are heavy as we mourn the loss of a trailblazer, icon and music legend who, through his 70-year music career, touched the lives of so many.”
Fakir, who co-founded The Four Tops in 1953, had been in poor health, most recently fighting bladder cancer, and had retired from touring late last year. He was, according to the family, “surrounded by his loved ones” at his home in the Detroit area. An associate told Billboard that on Sunday he was “happy, talking and interacting, and when they turned to do something and turned back around, he had slipped away.”
With his glasses and angular frame, Fakir was arguably the most recognizable of The Tops and maintained his leadership in the group following the deaths of Levi Stubbs in 2008, Renaldo “Obie” Benson in 2005 and Lawrence Payton in 1997 (his son Lawrence Payton Jr. is part of the current lineup).
“I am probably as surprised as you are at the longevity,” Fakir said during 2022 while promoting his memoir I’ll Be There: My Life With The Four Tops. “It’s unbelievable. I never would’ve thought that while I was in my 80s I’d even be thinking about doing this, let alone still doing it. I feel nothing but blessed, man. Just blessed.”
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Fakir was born in Detroit on Dec. 26, 1935; his father was a factory worker who’d come over from what is now Bangladesh. He played football, basketball and ran track in high school, meeting Stubbs through neighborhood football games; the two began singing after separately attending a variety show, eventually recruiting Payton and Benson to form the group, first called The Aims but later changed to avoid confusion with the Ames Brothers.
The Four Tops recorded without success for several labels — including Chess, Red Top, Riverside and Columbia — and supported Billy Eckstine before signing with Motown in 1963. The group started out recording standards for the label’s Workshop Jazz Records imprint, but when the songwriting/production team of Holland-Dozier Holland gave The Tops “Baby I Need Your Loving” in mid-1964, it hit No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100, which opened the floodgates for a string of hits that included “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch),” “Reach Out I’ll Be There,” “Standing in the Shadows of Love” and “It’s the Same Old Song.”
“We were so fortunate in a lot of things we did,” explained Fakir, who was engaged to The Supremes’ Mary Wilson during the mid-’60s but called it off due to their individual career demands. “The love we shared between the four of us was kind of rare for four really kind of street guys from the north of Detroit, to come together with that kind of love. But music does a lot of things to you. It created a lot of love that we had, especially between ourselves.
“I didn’t know how much I would love the audience and the people. Just being on stage changed my whole life and my perspective. I look at the world a whole different way than I did when I was a young guy. It’s a beautiful world, and it just needs a little push towards love and togetherness.”
The Tops had several stints with Motown, and away from that company it also had hits with “Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I’ve Got),” “Are You Man Enough” and “When She Was My Girl.” The Tops were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998 and the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1999. Fakir accepted a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award on behalf of the band in 2009. “Reach Out I’ll Be There” was added to the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry in 2022.
“They’re just a tremendous group, one of the best,” Otis Williams of friendly “rivals” The Temptations said when the groups performed together a few years ago. “You look how long the original four stayed together like they did, and it’s so rare and special. I always marveled at it.” Like Fakir, Williams is the only remaining founding member of The Temptations, a role he said the two would speak about.
“These groups are our lives, you know?” Williams said. “I know Duke will be a Four Top until he can’t do it anymore. We both feel a responsibility to keep our [groups] going and keep the music out there for people to hear.”
In addition to the memoir, Fakir was also working on a stage musical based on The Four Tops’ story.
Fakir is survived by his wife, Piper; daughter Farrah Fakir Cook; sons Nazim Bashir Fakir, Abdul Kareem Fakir Jr., Myke Fakir, Anthony Fakir and Malik Robinson; 13 grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren. Funeral arrangements for Fakir are currently pending.
Jerry Miller, one of the music world’s most beloved and admired guitarists and co-founder of Moby Grape, died on Sunday (July 21) in his Tacoma, Wash., home. He was 81 years old.
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The news was shared via a Moby Grape Facebook fan page, according to Variety. “Sadly, Jerry Miller passed away last night,” said the fan page post. “Jo and the family are asking for everyone to please give them some privacy and respect, and Jo asked that people cease phone calls for the time being. Thank you.”
In a follow-up post, a text from Miller’s wife, Jo, was shared to the group: “Everybody flood the ether with Jerry Miller’s music. Play it all day long for me and him. And thank you all so much.” His cause of death has yet to be revealed.
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Miller was born in Tacoma, Wash., in 1943 and grew up playing in various local bands including the Elegants, the Incredible Kingsmen and the Frantics. When he was just 23 years old, he co-founded Moby Grape as the lead guitarist alongside Skip Spence (guitar), Bob Mosley (bass), Don Stevenson (Drums) and Peter Lewis (guitar). The band name, chosen by Mosley and Spence, was inspired by the punch line of the joke: “What’s big and purple and lives in the ocean?”
The group signed with Columbia Records and recorded four albums for the label between 1967 and 1969 — their self-titled debut in 1967, 1968’s Wow/Grape Jam, 1969’s Moby Grape ’69 and 1969’s Truly Fine Citizen. Moby Grape disbanded in 1970, but regrouped in 1971 and have played and recorded music with various members throughout the years since.
Miller’s guitar skills were beloved in the instrumentalist community, with Robert Plant citing the star as an influence for Led Zeppelin and Eric Clapton naming him the “best guitar player in the world.”
Evelyn Thomas, the powerhouse vocalist who helped define the hi-NRG dance music scene of the 1980s with her international hit “High Energy,” has died at the age of 70. The news was confirmed by her longtime producer and mentor Ian Levine on social media. No cause of death was disclosed.
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“It is hard for me to accept that my lifelong protege really has left us,” Levine wrote on X. “Her music will outlive us all.”
Born on Aug. 22, 1953, in Chicago, Thomas first caught the attention of the music industry when Levine discovered her in 1975.
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Her debut single “Weak Spot” became her first chart success, peaking at No. 26 on the U.K. Singles Chart in 1976. The early triumph led to an appearance on the influential British music show Top of the Pops, marking the beginning of her ascent in the music world.
Thomas’s career exploded with the release of “High Energy” in 1984. The track topped the Billboard Hot Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart for one week and reached No. 85 on the Billboard Hot 100. Co-written and co-produced by Levine and Fiachra Trench, it became a defining moment in the emerging hi-NRG genre, a high-tempo offshoot of disco that dominated clubs in the mid-1980s.
“Nobody else in the world could have ever sung it,” Levine noted about vocal prowess. The pulsating dance anthem achieved remarkable commercial success, selling an impressive seven million records worldwide. As of 2024, “High Energy” continues to resonate with listeners, boasting over 15 million streams on Spotify.
Thomas’s powerful four-octave range and emotive delivery set her apart in the dance music scene. DJ and music historian Bill Brewster commented, “Evelyn’s voice had this incredible ability to convey both vulnerability and strength. She was a cornerstone of the hi-NRG movement.”
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Following the success of “High Energy,” Thomas continued to make her presence felt on the charts.
Her soulful rendition of The Supremes’ “Reflections” climbed to No. 18 on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart in 1985, while “How Many Hearts” ascended to No. 11 in 1986. Both tracks were featured on her final studio album, Standing at the Crossroads (1986).
Thomas’s discography includes notable albums such as I Wanna Make It on My Own (1978) and High Energy (1984).
Levine revealed that Thomas had reached out to him “in love” in recent months, aware of her declining health. The reconciliation led Levine and Trench to compose a final song for her titled “Inspirational,” though Thomas was ultimately too ill to record it.
Her daughter, recording artist YaYa Diamond (born Kimberly), intends to record the track as a heartfelt tribute to her mother’s legacy.
Watch “High Energy” by Evelyn Thomas below.
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We are a deeply divided country, as we keep hearing, but there’s one thing we can all agree on – Bob Newhart was a national treasure, and one of the most talented and original comedy stars who ever lived. Newhart who died on Thursday (July 18) at age 94, starred in two long-running sitcoms, The […]
Bob Newhart, the beloved stand-up performer whose droll, deadpan humor showcased on two critically acclaimed CBS sitcoms vaulted him into the ranks of history’s greatest comedians, died Thursday morning. He was 94.
The Chicago legend, who won Grammy Awards for album of the year and best new artist for his 1960 breakthrough record The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, died at his Los Angeles home after a series of short illnesses, his longtime publicist, Jerry Digney, announced.
The former accountant famously went without an Emmy Award until 2013, when he finally was given one for guest-starring as Arthur Jeffries (alias Professor Proton, former host of a children’s science show) on CBS’ The Big Bang Theory.
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In 1972, MTM Enterprises cast the modest comic as clinical psychologist Bob Hartley, who practiced in the real-life Newhart’s favorite burg, Chicago. The Bob Newhart Show would become one of the most popular sitcoms of all time, featuring a wonderful cast of supporting players: Suzanne Pleshette, Peter Bonerz, Marcia Wallace, Bill Daily and Jack Riley among them.
Newhart ended the series in 1978 after 142 episodes — and, incredibly, no Emmy nominations for him and no wins for the show — feeling it had exhausted its bag of tricks. But he was back on CBS in 1982 to front another MTM comedy.
In Newhart, he portrayed Dick Loudon, a New York author turned proprietor of the Stratford Inn in Vermont. The show was a mainstay for eight seasons, and this one also featured a great cast (Mary Frann, Tom Poston — who later would marry Pleshette — Julia Duffy, Peter Scolari and, as handymen “Larry, Darryl and their other brother Darryl,” William Sanderson, Tony Papenfuss and John Voldstad).
In one of the most admired series endings in history, Newhart wrapped its eight-season run with a cheeky final scene in which Loudon wakes up in the middle of the night as Bob Hartley in bed with Pleshette in their Chicago apartment, suggesting that his whole second series had been a dream.
Newhart’s pauses and stammering were among his trademarks, and his wry observations were a result of his observant nature.
“I tend to find humor in the macabre. I would say 85 percent of me is what you see on the show. And the other 15 percent is a very sick man with a very deranged mind,” he said during a 1990 interview with Los Angeles magazine.
He was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame in 1992.
George Robert Newhart was born on Sept. 5, 1929, in Oak Park, Illinois. He grew up a Cubs fan and participated in the team’s victory parade down La Salle Street after Chicago took the National League pennant in 1945. (He was, quite naturally, thrilled when the Cubs ended their 108-year World Series drought by winning in 2016.)
Newhart never dreamed of being in show business; in fact, such a gaudy profession ran against the Midwestern grain of his personality and perhaps was why he would connect with Middle America.
After attending St. Ignatius College Prep and then earning a degree in commerce from Loyola University, Newhart spent two years in the Army and then flunked out of law school. He then worked as an accountant with U.S. Gypsum and then the Glidden Co., which sold paint.
“Somehow there’s a connection between numbers and music and comedy. I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s there,” he once said in an interview with a college business professor. “I know it’s a case of 2 and 2 equals 5 in terms of a comedian. You take this fact and you take that fact and then you come up with this ludicrous fact.”
To combat the tedium at work, Newhart and a friend would amuse themselves by making prank phone calls. He refined those into what was then his signature comic bit: having a one-sided phone conversation (the audience got to imagine what the other side of the chat was like).
He and his pal also sold a syndicated radio show in which they did five-minute comedy routines five days a week for $7.50 a week.
In 1959, another friend who was a disc jockey in Chicago introduced Newhart to a Warner Bros. Records executive. The accountant, now a copywriter, had just three routines at the time but came up with more material and landed a contract with the record company.
“Keep in mind, when I started in the late fifties, I didn’t say to myself, ‘Oh, here’s a great void to fill — I’ll be a balding ex-accountant who specializes in low-key humor,’ ” he said. “That’s simply what I was and that’s the direction my mind always went in, so it was natural for me to be that way.”
The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, recorded live at a nightclub in Houston, became the first comedy album to reach the top of the album charts, selling 1.5 million copies as one of the biggest-selling “talk” albums. The bits included such classics as “Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Avenue” and “Driving Instructor.”
Coming at a time when controversial, harder-edge comedians like Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl were taking hold, The Button-Down Mind also earned Newhart a third Grammy for best comedy performance. Suddenly, he was getting booked on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Following two more successful albums, Newhart was offered a weekly TV variety series for the 1961-62 season. The first The Bob Newhart Show won an Emmy for the year’s outstanding program achievement in the field of humor as well as a Peabody Award.
Newhart, however, soon found himself exhausted. “I took all the responsibility for the program seven days a week, 24 hours a day, despite a fine production team,” he once said.
He was offered a spate of sitcoms but turned them down, returning to nightclubs and sharpening his acting skills with TV guest spots and film work, beginning with Don Siegel’s Hell Is for Heroes (1962), starring Steve McQueen, and then in other movies like Hot Millions (1968), Mike Nichols’ Catch-22 (1970) and Norman Lear‘s Cold Turkey (1971).
Newhart Show co-creators Dave Davis and Lorenzo Music had wanted to work with the comic for some time.
“Lorenzo and I wrote a segment for Bob on Love American Style. Bob wasn’t available. So, we got Sid Caesar. A few years later, we did a script for Bob for The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Again, Bob wasn’t available,” Davis told THR in an oral history of the sitcom. “After we became story editors on Mary’s show, MTM Enterprises decided to branch out and asked Lorenzo and me to do a pilot. We knew exactly what we wanted to do. We wanted a show with Bob.”
Said Newhart: “Arthur Price [co-founder of MTM] was my manager. He asked me if I was interested. For 12 years I’d been on the road doing stand-up, mostly one-night shows where the next day you’re off somewhere 5,300 miles away. I wanted a normal life where I could be home with my family.
“I didn’t have a lot of demands. I just didn’t want the show to be where dad’s a dolt that everyone loves, who gets himself into a pickle and then the wife and kids huddle together to get him out of it.”
In 1992, he embarked on another new series, Bob, playing a cult comic book artist, but it never found an audience. Neither did George & Leo, in which he played a bookstore owner opposite Judd Hirsch.
Newhart appeared on NBC’s ER for three episodes, playing a doctor who is developing macular degeneration (that earned him another Emmy nom), and played Morty Flickman, the husband of Lesley Ann Warren’s character, on ABC’s Desperate Housewives.
More recently, Newhart portrayed Judson on a trio of The Librarians telefilms and then a series for TNT.
Newhart also co-starred in Little Miss Marker (1980); as the president in Buck Henry‘s First Family (1980), with Gilda Radner as his frisky daughter; as Papa Elf in Will Ferrell‘s Elf (2003); and in Horrible Bosses (2011). He brought his flat Midwestern cadence to voice work on two Rescuers films.
Chicago honored Newhart with a statue on Michigan Avenue, near the office building seen in the opening credits of The Bob Newhart Show, with his likeness in a chair and an empty psychiatrist’s couch at his side. It was later moved to the Navy Pier.
In 2002, he became the fifth recipient of the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor and four years later published his memoirs, I Shouldn’t Even Be Doing This.
Newhart was married to Virginia “Ginny” Quinn (the daughter of character actor Bill Quinn) from January 1963 until her death in April 2023 at age 82. They were set up on a blind date by comedian Buddy Hackett (Ginnie was baby-sitting Hackett’s kids).
“Buddy came back one day and said in his own inimitable way, ‘I met this young guy and his name is Bobby Newhart, and he’s a comic and he’s Catholic and you’re Catholic and I think maybe you should marry each other,’ ” she recalled in a 2013 interview.
She was the one who came up the idea for the brilliant ending of the Newhart show during a Christmas party that Pleshette happened to also be attending.
The Newharts were great friends with Don Rickles and his wife, Barbara, and the couples often vacationed together.
Survivors include his children, Robert Jr., Timothy, Courtney and Jennifer, and 10 grandchildren.
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
One of the most powerful voices of the civil rights movement, Sweet Honey in the Rock co-founder Bernice Johnson Reagon, has died at 81. Daughter and musician Toshi Reagon announced the news in a Facebook post on Wednesday (July 17) in which she announced that the “multi-award-winning force and cultural voice for freedom” passed on Tuesday; no cause of death was given.
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“As a scholar, singer, composer, organizer and activist, Dr. Reagon spent over half a century speaking out against racism and systemic inequities in the U.S. and globally,” her daughter wrote of the singer who co-founded the civil rights vocal ensemble The Freedom Singers as well as the Grammy-nominated all-female vocal group Sweet Honey in the Rock.
Reagon was a key part of the civil rights fight in the 1960s, lending her voice to anthems illustrating the struggle by African-Americans via her founding of the Freedom Singers, who came together at Albany State College in Albany, GA in 1962. The group’s powerful combination of Baptist church-influenced singing and protest anthems, anchored by Reagon’s soulful, expressive vocals, led to a collaboration with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a group of Black college students who led peaceful direct action protests across the country, including Freedom Rides and voter registration campaigns that often elicited violent reactions from police and racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.
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Johnson, the daughter of Baptist minster J.J. Johnson, was born in Dougherty County, GA on Oct. 4, 1942 and enrolled in the historically black public college Albany State College (now known as Albany State University) in 1959 at age 16. She was active in civil rights activities and protests on campus, though she was in jail when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested in December 1961 in Albany along with hundreds of others on charges of obstructing the sidewalk and parading without a permit.
“I was already in jail, so I missed most of that,” she told WHYY’s Fresh Air in 1988. “But what they began to write about… no matter what the article said, they talked about singing.” Those revamped church songs, which Reagon would say often swapped “freedom” in for “Jesus,” as well as her activism got the singer expelled from Albany state after her arrest for protesting. That led to Reagon founding the a cappella Freedom Singers in 1962, whose songs often served as a record of the civil rights struggle, from tributes to fallen leaders (“They Laid Medgar Evers in His Grave”), to a revamp of the movement’s anthem, “We Shall Overcome” and “Free At Last,” which took its name from a quote in Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington. She also co-founded the Atlanta-based group the Harambee Singers in 1966, whose work was tied to the growing Black Consciousness Movement at the time.
Following her divorce from Freedom Singer’s co-founder Cordell Reagon in 1967, Reagon went back to school at Spelman College in 1970 to complete her undergraduate degree. A Ford Foundation fellowship to study at another HBCU, Howard University, led to Reagon receiving a Ph.D. from the school, one of a number academic honors she would collect over the the course of her life.
Among her many academic titles, Reagon was a Professor Emeritus of History at American University, Curator Emeritus at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and the Cosby Chair of Fine Arts at Spelman College. She was also the principal scholar and host of the 26-part Peabody Award-winning 1994 NPR series/Smithsonian series Wade in the Water and the score composer for the Peabody-winning 1998 film series Africans in America. She was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship in 1989 in honor of her work in music performance and composition, musicology and ethnomusicology as an upholder of the Black oral, performance, protest and worship traditions.
Reagon co-founded the six-member all-female a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock in 1973, a vocal ensemble that toured the world with a rotating group of singers who combined Gospel music, jazz, blues and African traditions, with hymns and song stories that touched on topics ranging from love and spirituality to racism and domestic violence. Among their signature tracks are “Ella’s Song” in honor of civil rights leader Ella Baker and “Biko,” a tribute to South African freedom fighter Steve Biko.
The group, which Reagon directed for three decades before retiring from in 2003, has released more than two dozen albums since their eponymous 1976 debut LP. Reagon wrote the group’s memoir, We Who Believe in Freedom: Sweet Honey in the Rock, Still on the Journey in 1993 and also compiled the booklet for the 2-CD collection Voices of the Civil Rights: Black American Freedom Songs 1960-1965 from Smithsonian Folkways Records. In addition to her work singing in and producing Sweet Honey in the Rock, Reagon released solo efforts, including 1975’s Give Your Hands to Struggle and 1986’s River of Life.
Check out some of Sweet Honey in the Rock’s songs below.
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Richard Simmons, the fitness guru with a flamboyant, relentlessly positive persona, died Saturday (July 13) at his home in the Hollywood Hills. His death, which appears to be from natural causes, came one day after his 76th birthday.
Simmons’ multi-faceted fitness empire included at least 12 books, 10 CDs and 22 DVDs, including five volumes of his signature Sweatin’ to the Oldies.
Simmons had a platinum album in 1982 with Reach, which rode the Billboard 200 for 40 weeks. The album consisted of Simmons singing motivational songs such as “What Are You Waiting For?,” “You Can Do It,” “Wake Up,” “Reach” and “Live It.”
Simmons’ album entered the Billboard 200 in the week ending June 5, 1982, one week after Jane Fonda’s Workout Record debuted. Jane Fonda‘s double-disk album reached No. 15 on the chart and went double-platinum. It consisted mostly of such upbeat jams as The Jacksons’ “Can You Feel It” and Brothers Johnson’s “Stomp!” Both albums were part of the get-fit craze of the era, which was also immortalized in Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical” video, which was released in 1981.
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Simmons’ colorful personality made him a natural for television, where he achieved his greatest fame. From 1980-84, he headlined his own daytime talk show The Richard Simmons Show, focusing on personal health, fitness, exercise, and healthy cooking. He also made frequent appearances as himself on General Hospital and many other programs.
He was also a frequent guest of late-night television and radio talk shows, such as Late Night with David Letterman (NBC) and Late Show with David Letterman (CBS) and The Howard Stern Show, where those hosts knew just how far they could tease Simmons without crossing the line into cruelty. Simmons, dressed in his signature Dolphin shorts and sparkly tank-tops, always seemed to be in on the joke.
He understood his role in show business. In a 2012 interview with Men’s Health, he was quoted as saying: “When the king gets depressed, he doesn’t call for his wife or the cook. He turns to the little man with the pointed hat and says to the court jester ‘make me laugh.’ And I am that court jester.”
Simmons was born Milton Teagle Simmons was born on July 12, 1948, in New Orleans. He grew up in the French Quarter, where, he noted in his biography, “lard was a food group and dessert mandatory.” Simmons struggled with his weight from an early age. He reportedly weighed 268 pounds when he graduated high school.
Upon moving to Los Angeles in the 1970s, Simmons developed an interest in fitness. He opened an exercise studio, the Anatomy Asylum, later renamed Slimmons. His interest in fitness helped him lose more than 100 pounds. In 2010, he proudly announced that he had kept that weight off for 42 years.
Simmons didn’t make any major public appearances after 2014. In February 2017, the podcast Missing Richard Simmons launched, investigating why Simmons left public life so suddenly.
In August 2022, in response to continued rumors and a TMZ documentary, What Really Happened to Richard Simmons, Simmons issued a statement to the New York Post that he “is happy, healthy, and living the life he has chosen to live.”
In March 2024, Simmons revealed that he had been diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma, located underneath his right eye. That same month, Simmons issued a statement clarifying that he is not dying, after a cryptic Facebook post he had written drew public concern.
“I am … dying,” Simmons had written on Facebook. “Oh I can see your faces now. The truth is we all are dying. Every day we live we are getting closer to our death. Why am I telling you this? Because I want you to enjoy your life to the fullest every single day. Get up in the morning and look at the sky … count your blessings and enjoy. “
Earlier this year, actor Pauly Shore portrayed Simmons in a short film called The Court Jester, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival. In promoting the movie, Shore teased the production of a larger biopic on the fitness icon
Simmons, however, made it clear that he was not on board with the film.
“You may have heard they may be doing a movie about me with Pauly Shore,” Simmons wrote in a post. “I have never given my permission for this movie. So don’t believe everything you read.”
Simmons, who was active on social media, appeared to be in good spirits Friday, on his birthday. He posted a black-and-white photo of himself next to a cake. “I never got so many messages about my birthday in my life!” Simmons wrote on Facebook. “I am sitting here writing emails. Have a most beautiful rest of your Friday.”