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Ruth Seymour, the hard-driving broadcast pioneer who transformed KCRW into a public radio powerhouse during her 32-year run at what was a sleepy Santa Monica-based station, died Friday. She was 88.
Seymour died after a long illness at her home in Santa Monica, former KCRW producer/publicity director Sarah Spitz announced.

The Bronx-born Seymour joined the FM station in 1977 as a consultant and became general manager a few months later. Her mission statement for KCRW was “to matter,” and she built it to be “singular, idiosyncratic, daring, independent, smart and compelling” — six words she employed over and over in her fundraising letters and on-air subscription drives.

During her tenure, KCRW became the West Coast flagship station for National Public Radio and launched a mix of news, talk, music, current affairs and cultural programming that included the signature music show Morning Becomes Eclectic; Which Way L.A.?, hosted by Warren Olney in the wake of the 1992 L.A. riots; Le Show, hosted by Harry Shearer; the political roundtable Left, Right and Center; To the Point; and The Politics of Culture.

“I believe we catch a lot of listeners by surprise,” she told the Los Angeles Times in a 1982 interview. “They tune in for one thing, just leave the radio on, and then find themselves wrapped up in something they didn’t expect.”

Through the internet and popular podcasts like The Business, hosted since 2009 by The Hollywood Reporter’s Kim Masters, KCRW gained a strong national profile and reputation before she retired in February 2010 and was succeeded by her onetime assistant, Jennifer Ferro, now station president.

“Ruth was singular in every way. She had a powerful vision that never wavered. There was a spirit in Ruth that no one else has,” Ferro said in a statement. “She didn’t just save NPR or create a new format — Ruth took chances and made decisions because she knew they were right. She trusted her gut. She broke rules and pursued excellence in ways that can’t easily be explained. She was a force of nature.

“Ruth’s legacy lives on at KCRW. She inspires us to be original, to host the smartest people, the most creative artists and to talk to our audience with the utmost respect for their intellect.”

The older of two sisters, Ruth Epstein grew up across the street from the Bronx Zoo. Her father was a furrier and her mother a garment worker, and the family didn’t have a telephone until she was 15.

She attended Sholem Aleichem Folk School in addition to public school and then City College of New York, where she studied one-on-one with the renowned Yiddish linguist Max Weinreich.

Seymour came to Los Angeles in 1961 to accompany her husband, the poet Jack Hirschman, who had landed a teaching job at UCLA after a stint at Dartmouth University, and she was hired as the drama and literary critic at the FM station KPFK. There, she interviewed the likes of Andy Warhol and Anne Sexton.

After freelancing in Europe for station parent Pacifica Radio, she returned to KPFK to serve as program director in 1971, and she produced a celebrity cast reading of selected scenes from the Watergate tapes with Shearer, Rob Reiner and, as President Nixon, Christopher Guest.

However, she was fired in 1976, a couple of years after the FBI had raided the station looking for a cassette from Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army that KPFK had put on the air.

When Seymour arrived at KCRW, it was owned by the Santa Monica School District, had just five employees and was operating out of two converted classrooms on a playground at John Adams Junior High School.

Seymour replaced the oldest transmitter west of the Mississippi with a new one in 1979. Also that year, she ran NPR’s new two-hour Morning Edition program three times each weekday starting at 3 a.m. in a bid to outmaneuver L.A.’s then-leading public station, KUSC. “That way nobody was going to have [the programs] when I didn’t have them,” she said.

She let Shearer do pretty much anything he wanted on his weekly one-hour program.

“Ruth was a towering figure in public radio, embracing a breadth of subject matter and styles that, frankly, does not seem possible anymore,” he said in a statement. “She imagined a listener who was endlessly curious, open to a wide range of opinions and music, and worked tirelessly to satisfy that listener. There will not be one like her again.”

Said Seymour in 1987: “Our audience always understood what we were trying to do. From the very beginning, we were regarded as slightly demented. Not exactly irresponsible but adventurous, interesting. And idealistic.”

She would get the station a new home in the basement of the student activities building at Santa Monica College, which licenses KCRW, in 1984. She also advocated for passage of a 2008 municipal bond that built the station’s first stand-alone building, now located on the campus of SMC’s Center for Media and Design.

In 1996, Seymour made KCRW the first station to carry Ira Glass’ This American Life outside of its home base, Chicago’s WBEZ. She also did interviews, including one with poet Allen Ginsberg in 1985.

“My favorite mental image of Ruth was during the first war in Iraq,” NPR special correspondent Susan Stamberg recalled. “She put on a radiothon to raise money to send NPR correspondents to cover it (the great Anne Garrels and others). And to make her on-air pitches, she wore camouflage and combat boots! She knew it would be war to raise the funds, and she dressed for the challenge. I loved and admired her enormously and found her to be a great teacher and inspirer.”

The Times wrote in 1995 that Seymour ruled “with an iron fist … she is renowned for attracting and nurturing brilliant on-air talent and for swiftly cutting them loose if they step out of line or their Arbitron ratings slump.” In 2004, she would fire radio personality Sandra Tsing Loh after she said “fuck” on the air.

“Well, you’re not allowed to do that, especially if you use it as a verb, which she did, and especially if you use it as a verb on Sunday morning in the middle of Weekend Edition,” she recalled a few years later. (The engineer on duty, however, is supposed to replace an expletive with a bleep).

Seymour replaced Claude Brodesser-Akner as host of The Business with Masters, who heard from the exec minutes after she had been laid off by NPR during the 2008 recession. “She called me before I had even gotten into my car,” Masters recalled. “I didn’t know her. She said, ‘Sweetheart, are they meshuga? Their loss will be my gain.’”

During every Hanukkah from 1979-2007, Seymour hosted the three-hour live show Philosophers, Fiddlers and Fools, which featured Yiddish folk music, songs and stories and a memorial to the Holocaust. “I always broadcast the program on Friday evenings so I could bid my listeners a gut yontif,” she said in 2010.

Years after she divorced Hirschman, she changed her surname in 1993 to honor her paternal Polish-born great-grandfather, a rabbi.

Survivors include her daughter, Celia; her sister, Ann, and brother-in-law, Richard; her niece, Jessica; her nephew, Daniel; and cousins Anita and Greg. Her son, David, died at age 25 from lymphoma.

A public memorial service is being planned.

This story was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.

Groundbreaking Los Angeles-based disc jockey Jim Ladd, whom Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers immortalized in their 2002 song “The Last DJ,” died suddenly Sunday of a heart attack. He was 75.
A Los Angeles fixture, Ladd worked up and down the Los Angeles radio dial, including stints at KNAC, KMET and KLOS. He was considered the last freeform DJ in the country, allowed to pick his own song selections.

After leaving KLOS in 2011, he was quickly picked up by SiriusXM’s Deep Tracks channel, where he appeared until his death. Over the decades, he was well known for his interviews with such artists as John Lennon, Pink Floyd,  Stevie Nicks and Led Zeppelin.

The Doors drummer John Densmore paid tribute to Ladd on social media, posting on X, “’The Last DJ’ has crossed the tracks. There wasn’t a more soulful spinner of music. The songs he played were running through his blood, he cared so much for rock n’ roll. Irreplaceable… a very sad day, which can only be handled by carrying his spirit forward.”

Densmore’s Doors bandmate Robby Krieger also posted, “Rest in peace, Jim Ladd. He was the best friend in radio The Doors ever had. Even when people forgot about us in the late ‘70s, he kept playing our music.“

Ladd started his career  at Long Beach, Calif.’s KNAC in 1969 as FM radio was burgeoning and quickly established himself as one of Southern California’s leading rock voices. In an undated interview with Michael Simone, he said of his mentors and being at the forefront of FM radio, “We were inventing this thing as we were going along, so what I would say in radio [for role models], it is pretty much everybody that I’ve worked with that I’ve learned from or borrowed from. … As far as role models in my life, Martin Luther King would be one, and certainly when I was growing up, John Lennon and Jim Morrison were two others who had a great influence on me, as well as [Roger] Waters.”

Waters and Ladd had a long friendship, with Ladd playing a rebel DJ on Waters’ 1987 Radio K.A.O.S. album and touring with Waters on the Radio K.A.O.S. On the Road outing.

From KNAC, Ladd moved to KLOS in 1971 and then had stops at Los Angeles stations KMET, KMPC and KLSX before returning to KLOS in 1997, where he stayed for 14 years. As Billboard reported in 2011, when he was let go from KLOS after Cumulus bought the station, he signed off with Pink Floyd’s “Shine On Your Crazy Diamond.”

Ladd inspired “The Last DJ” song, which Petty told journalist Jim DeRogatis was “about a DJ who becomes so frustrated with his inability to play what he wants that he moves to Mexico and gets his freedom back.”

Flowers will be placed on Ladd’s star on the  Hollywood Walk of Fame at 11 a.m. on Tuesday. He received his star in 2005. “His legendary voice and unparalleled contribution to the world of radio have left an indelible mark on the industry,” Ana Martinez, producer of the Hollywood Walk of Fame star ceremonies, stated in a statement. “Jim’s passion for music and his unique ability to connect with his listeners will always be remembered fondly.”

SiriusXM is airing tributes to Ladd, who is survived by wife Helene, on Deep Tracks as well as other classic rock channels.

Colin Burgess, the original drummer for AC/DC, has died. He was 77. The legendary rock band announced Burgess’ death through social media on Saturday (Dec. 16). A cause of death was not given. “Very sad to hear of the passing of Colin Burgess,” AC/DC captioned a photo of the drummer on Instagram. “He was our […]

Brazilian gospel singer Pedro Henrique died at age 30 after collapsing onstage during a performance Wednesday night. His record label, Todah Music, released a statement Thursday morning (Dec. 14) confirming the news. The cause of death is not yet known. “There are very difficult situations in life for which we have no explanation,” the label […]

Shane MacGowan, the legendarily shambolic, magnetic frontman of Celtic rock band The Pogues, died on Thursday (Nov. 30) at age 65 following a recent hospitalization. The band confirmed the passing of their notoriously hard-living vocalist, whose yearning, howling vocals super-charged the Pogues’ meld of traditional Irish music and punk rock spirit on such beloved songs as “Dirty Old Town” and “A Pair of Brown Eyes.”
The group issued a statement in honor of their beloved bandmate on behalf of MacGowan’s wife, Victoria Mary Clark, sister Siobhan and father, Maurice. “It is with the deepest sorrow and heaviest of hearts that we announce the passing of SHANE MACGOWAN. Shane died peacefully at 3am this morning (30 November, 2023) with his wife Victoria and family by his side. Prayers and the last rites were read which gave comfort to his family,” it read, alongside a picture of MacGowan in his prime, a cigarette and glass of wine in hand, flashing his signature infectious, crooked smile.

In an Instagram post, Clark wrote, “I don’t know how to say this so I am just going to say it. Shane who will always be the light that I hold before me and the measure of my dreams and the love ❤️ of my life and the most beautiful soul and beautiful angel and the sun and the moon and the start and end of everything that I hold dear has gone to be with Jesus and Mary and his beautiful mother Therese.”

The singer, who the BBC reported had been unwell for quite a while, struggled openly for many years with drugs and drink and was booted from the band in 1991 after his alcohol abuse made him unreliable; he returned to the fold in 2001 for a final thirteen-year stint before the band split for good in 2014. MacGowan was hospitalized in Dec. 2022 with viral encephalitis and spent several months in intensive care earlier this year as a result.

MacGowan was as mythical a figure on the British music scene as the grizzled characters he inhabited in the Pogues’ songs, which were inspired by figures from literature, the Bible, mythology and the hard-scrabble lives of working class heroes. His vocals, filled with a mix of anger, pugnaciousness and sad-eyed resignation, could swing from a howl and a growl to a grizzled tenderness in the span of a single track.

His death just weeks before Christmas added an extra layer of poignancy to the loss, as this is the season when the Pogues’ 1987 holiday standard, “Fairytale of New York,” is often in heavy rotation. The swaying, sentimental ballad featuring MacGowan trading vocals with the late singer/songwriter Kirsty MacColl has been in the UK’s top 20 19 times since its release, perennially charting around Christmastime and peaking at No. 2 on the UK charts during the year of its release.

After an opening scene in which MacGowan’s characer laments sleeping off a drinks binge in a New York drunk tank, the tune has the two trading (not-PC) insults as they lament dreams deferred by addiction, brought home by the crooned chorus, “The boys of the NYPD choir/ Still singing Galway Bay/ And the bells are ringing out/ For Christmas day.”

Born Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan on Dec. 25 1957, in Kent, England to Irish parents, MacGowan showed creative promise from a young age, earning a scholarship to the prestigious Westminster school for his literary skills, only to be expelled in his second year for drug possession. He burst onto the English music scene in an incident that was fittingly chaotic and tinged with punk-fueled violence when he was photographed covered in blood while attending a 1976 gig by The Clash at which his ear was ripped open, spawning the NME headline “Cannibalism at Clash Gig.”

After briefly joining a punk band called The Nipple Erectors (aka “the Nips”), MacGowan formed The Pogues in London in 1982 with tin whistle player Peter “Spider” Stacy, banjo player Jem Finer and former Nips accordion player James Fearnley; they were originally known as “Pogue Mahone,” a winking twist on a Gaelic phrase that roughly translates to “kiss my arse.”

With the addition of bassist Cait O’Riordan and drummer Andrew Ranken the band began playing London pub gigs and signed to punk label Stiff Records, which released their 1984 debut, Red Roses For Me. The album set the table for the Pogues’ signature sound from the very first song, “Transmetropolitan,” a rousing pub rocker featuring MacGowan’s excitable vocals, which fronted a collection of originals mixed with a number of traditional Irish songs.

Quickly establishing a reputation for high-energy, chaotic live shows, the group’s profile was kicked up several notches when Elvis Costello signed on to produce their breakthrough 1985 album, Run Sodomy & the Lash, which featured such classics as the lament “A Pair of Brown Eyes,” “Sally MacLennane,” “The Old Main Drag” and the frenetic pirate tune “Billy’s Bones,” all written by MacGowan.

Their next album, 1987’s If I Should Fall From Grace With God, (which featured “Fairytale”) was their best-seller and their most eclectic, swapping some of the traditional Irish sounds with more world music touches, including a epic take on the the Australian anti-war lament “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda.”

That was followed by 1989’s Peace and Love and 1990’s Hell’s Ditch, whose U.S tour was scotched due to MacGowan’s unreliability, which led to his sacking in 1991. The singer quickly formed the solo band Shane MacGowan and the Popes, with whom he released two studio albums and a live album. In 2000, Sinead O’Connor reported MacGowan to the police for heroin possession, which angered the singer at first, though he later thanked her for helping him kick the drug; when O’Connor’s son Shane, 17, died in 2022, MacGowan paid tribute to the “Nothing Compares 2 U” singer, writing, “You have always tried to heal and help.”

MacGowan returned to the Pogues in 2001 and the group toured for much of the next decade while stories of MacGowan’s life and times were chronicled in the autobiography A Drink With Shane MacGowan and the 2020 film Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan.

Hailed by late Clash singer Joe Strummer — who briefly joined the band in 1991 — as one of England’s greatest songwriters, MacGowan won the prestigious Ivor Novello songwriting award in 2018. His passing was honored by Irish president Michael Higgins, who said, “His words have connected Irish people all over the globe to their culture and history … The genius of Shane’s contribution includes the fact that his songs capture within them, as Shane would put it, the measure of our dreams – of so many worlds, and particularly those of love, of the emigrant experience and of facing the challenges of that experience with authenticity and courage, and of living and seeing the sides of life that so many turn away from.”

See the family’s statement and listen to some MacGowan’s most beloved songs below.

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Longtime Nashville music and radio industry executive and former Country Radio Broadcasters/Country Radio Seminar executive director Bill Mayne died on Tuesday (Nov. 28) at age 72 following a battle with a long-term illness.
Mayne’s career spanned nearly five decades. He began performing in a band before transitioning into radio, with his career including on-air and programming roles at various radio formats including top 40, rock and country. His radio career began in 1970 in an on-air role at KRLY in Houston; he would go on to serve in roles at KASE in Austin, KZLA/KLAC in Los Angeles and KSCS/WBAP in Dallas.

Mayne then spent 15 years at Warner Bros./Nashville, where he held a variety of roles, rising through the ranks from a regional role to senior vp/GM and vp of promotion. He was also a member of the Country Radio Broadcasters board, eventually becoming board vp before taking on the role of executive director at Country Radio Broadcaster in 2010 — a role he held until his retirement in 2019.

Current Country Radio Broadcasters/Country Radio Seminar (CRB/CRS) executive director RJ Curtis said in a statement, “The passing of Bill Mayne marks a profound loss for the entire country music community. Bill was a true giant in every sense of the word. His fifty years of passionate work positively impacted everyone he met, in nearly every segment of our business, through his time in radio, the music industry, artist management, entrepreneurialism, and, of course, his decade of leadership as Executive Director for CRB. Bill Mayne navigated the organization through a period of great adversity, ultimately reestablishing CRS as the premier industry event that it is today.”

In 2019, Mayne received CRB/CRS’ President’s Award in recognition of the significant contributions he made to the radio industry.

Mayne also founded Mayne Entertainment, an artist management company, and Mayne Street Consulting, a private entertainment consulting firm that offered insight and guidance to clients in the entertainment field.

“Bill had great passion for Country Music going back to his days in radio,” Country Music Association CEO Sarah Trahern said in a statement. “I first worked with him in 1996 on a TV special when he was with Warner Bros. Nashville. I was struck by his enthusiasm for the format and ability to get things done. Years later, we were both officers of the ACMs, where his great knowledge of board governance and organization was a huge asset to our leadership team. Most recently, we got to work together when he joined the CMA Board of Directors, where he served from 2016 to 2018. My deepest condolences to Sallie and his sons.”

Beyond his professional accolades, Mayne previously served as a board member of the Country Music Association and spent over 35 years on the Academy of Country Music board of directors, including roles as chairman and chairman of the board at the ACM’s charitable arm, Lifting Lives. He also co-founded the St. Jude Country Cares for Kids Program, an initiative that has raised over $700 million for St. Jude since its inception in 1989. Additionally, he held the role of national vp for the Muscular Dystrophy Association and was a member of the Nashville non-profit Leadership Music as well as the mayor’s Nashville Music Council.

“On behalf of our membership and Board of Directors of the Academy and ACM Lifting Lives, I am deeply saddened by the loss today of Bill Mayne, a true giant of the country music industry, an invaluable champion of the Academy of Country Music, and one of our longest serving board members,” said Academy of Country Music CEO Damon Whiteside in a statement.

“Bill dedicated more than 35 years of service to the ACM Board, including serving as the Chairman for both the Academy and ACM Lifting Lives,” Whiteside continued. “I am comforted that we were able to celebrate his phenomenal legacy this summer by presenting him with our ACM Service Award at the 16th ACM Honors. Bill had a huge heart, as evidenced by his incredible philanthropic work, including his service to ACM Lifting Lives. His impact, passion, and devotion to the Country Music industry and community will live on forever. On behalf of all of us at the ACM, we send our love and prayers to his family, friends, and all who have been lucky enough to work with and know him.”

Mayne is survived by his wife of 46 years, Sallie Mayne; sons Bryant Mayne and Christopher Mayne; his grandchild, Everleigh Mayne; and mother-in-law Helen Wood. Plans for a public service honoring Mayne’s life have yet to be announced.

Jean Knight, the R&B singer best known for her 1971 hit “Mr. Big Stuff” died at 80 on Wednesday (Nov. 22). “New Orleans and the music world mourns the loss of one its most treasure musical daughters, Jean Knight,” her family said in a statement shared with USA Today. Rolling Stone also confirmed the singer’s […]

Kevin “Geordie” Walker, founding guitarist for English industrial rockers Killing Joke died on Sunday (Nov. 26) at age 64. The band confirmed the news on their official Instagram page, writing, “It is with extreme sadness we confirm that at 6:30am on 26th November 2023 in Prague, Killing Joke’s legendary guitarist Kevin ‘Geordie’ Walker passed away after suffering a stroke, he was surrounded by family. We are devastated. Rest In Peace brother.”

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Born in County Durham, UK in 1958, Walker joined Killing Joke in 1979 after responding to an ad in Melody Maker placed by singer Jaz Coleman, with the two men serving as the band’s only consistent members over the next four decades. Known for a distinctive low-end guitar turning that gave the band’s songs a massive sound, Walker’s playing was key to the post-punk group’s success, which folded grinding industrial sounds, dub reggae, new wave melodies and a goth sensibility into a roiling mix.

The band’s self-titled, self-produced debut full-length album was released in October 1980 and featured the singles “Wardance” and “Requiem.” The prolific act released six more albums in the 1980s, followed by three more in the 1990s (Extremities, Dirt and Various Repressed Emotions, Pandemonium, Democracy). The band briefly split in the early 1990s, then reunited and split again in 1996 before reuniting once more in 2002. A reformed version of the band released a self-titled album in 2003 featuring superfan Foo Fighters leader Dave Grohl on drums; since their get-back, KJ have released five more albums, with the most recent, Pylon, dropping in 2015.

According to the Guardian, in 2013 Walker reflected on what made the band such a powerful, unique presence during their long run. “When we started making records, playing gigs wasn’t that much different. You’d rehearse, you wrote the songs, you mic’d it up and you played it! And now if you’re not careful, you might not even see the f–king drummer and the maker of the f–king record. It’s all bits of this, cut-and-paste. It can sound impressive on first listen but after subsequent listens, it’s lacking human imperfection. The imperfection is what makes it magical somehow.”

In addition to his decades of touring and recording with Killing Joke, Walker was also a member of the industrial music supergroups Murder, Inc. and The Damage Manual.

Check out the band’s tribute to Walker and some of Killing Joke’s best-known tracks below.

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Marty Krofft, the TV producer known for imaginative children’s shows such as H.R. Pufnstuf and primetime hits including Donny & Marie in the 1970s, has died in Los Angeles, his publicist said. Krofft was 86.

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He died Saturday (Nov. 25) of kidney failure, publicist Harlan Boll said.

Krofft and his brother Sid were puppeteers who broke into television and ended up getting stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Along the way, they brought a trippy sensibility to children’s TV and brought singing siblings Donny and Marie Osmond and Barbara Mandrell and her sisters to primetime.

The Osmonds’ clean-cut variety show, featuring television’s youngest-ever hosts at the time, became a lasting piece of ‘70s cultural memorabilia, rebooted as a daytime talk show in the 1990s and a Broadway Christmas show in 2010. The Kroffts followed up with Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters, centered on the country music star; it ran from 1980-82.

“I am so saddened by the passing of my dear friend, Marty Krofft,” Donny Osmond wrote Sunday in a statement posted on social media. “He and his brother, Sid, created the whole format of The Donny and Marie show. Together, they put my sister and me on the map and both of us will be forever grateful for their vision and creativity. Marty Krofft’s television legacy is incredible. His fingerprint is on generations of entertainment and the impact he’s had in connecting people around the world is an astonishing legacy he leaves behind. Our best wishes and love go out to his family and loved ones. As Marie and I sang at the end of every show, ‘May God keep you in His tender care, ’till He brings us together again.’”

Like the Osmonds, H.R. Pufnstuf proved to have pop culture staying power. Despite totaling just 17 episodes, the surreal show, featuring an island, a witch, a talking flute, a shipwrecked boy and a redheaded, cowboy boot-wearing dragon, came in 27th in a 2007 TV Guide poll ranking of all-time cult favorites.

More than 45 years after the show’s 1969 debut, the title character graced an episode of another Krofft brothers success, Mutt & Stuff, which ran for multiple seasons on Nickelodeon.

“To make another hit at this time in our lives, I’ve got to give ourselves a pat on the back,” Marty Krofft told The Associated Press ahead of the episode’s taping in 2015.

Even then, he was still contending with another of the enduring features of H.R. Pufnstuf — speculation that it, well, betokened a certain ‘60s commitment to altering consciousness. Krofft rebuffed that notion: “If we did the drugs everybody thought we did, we’d be dead today,” he said, adding, “You cannot work stoned.”

Born in Montreal on April 9, 1937, Krofft got into entertainment via puppetry. He and his brother Sid put together a risqué, cabaret-inspired puppet show called Les Poupées de Paris in 1960, and its traveling success led to jobs creating puppet shows for amusement parks. The Kroffts eventually opened their own, the short-lived World of Sid & Marty Krofft, in Atlanta in the 1970s.

They first made their mark in television with H.R. Pufnstuf, which spawned the 1970 feature film Pufnstuf. Many more shows for various audiences followed, including Land of the Lost; Electra Woman and Dyna Girl; Pryor’s Place, with comedian Richard Pryor; and D.C. Follies, in which puppets gave a satirical take on politics and the news.

The pair were honored with a Daytime Emmy for lifetime achievement in 2018. They got their Walk of Fame star two years later.

Sid Krofft said on Instagram that he was heartbroken by his younger brother’s death, telling fans, “All of you meant the world to him.”

While other producers might have contented themselves with their achievements far earlier, Marty Krofft indicated to The AP in 2015 that he no had interest in stepping back from show business.

“What am I gonna do — retire and watch daytime television and be dead in a month?” he asked.

Mars Williams, illustrious saxophone player who played a significant role in bands like The Psychedelic Furs and The Waitresses, died on Monday (Nov. 20). He was 68 years old. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news The Chicago Tribune revealed the news, noting that the Chicago area native died […]