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Artist manager and record promotion executive Eugene Ervine “Erv” Woolsey, 80, died Wednesday (Mar. 20) in Clearwater, Florida, following surgery complications.
Woolsey was best known as the longtime manager for and champion of country music superstar and Country Music Hall of Fame member George Strait, as well as for managing and championing artists including Lee Ann Womack, Dierks Bentley, Clay Walker and Ronnie Milsap.
“My manager for around 45 years and most importantly my friend for even longer, Erv Woolsey, passed away this morning,” Strait said in a statement. “He had complications from a surgery and just couldn’t overcome it. He was a very tough man, and fought hard, but sadly it was just too much. We will miss him so very much and will never forget all the time we had together. Won’t ever be the same without him.”
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Woolsey was born on Feb. 15, 1944, in Houston. After graduating from Southwest Texas State University in 1969 with a BBA degree in business, Woolsey began working in Decca Records’ promotion department. He spent time working at several labels before relocating to Nashville in 1973, when he began serving as the head of promotions for ABC Records’ newly-launched country division. There, he helped guide the careers of Johnny Rodriguez, Jimmy Buffett, Billy “Crash” Craddock, Donna Fargo, Freddy Fender and the Amazing Rhythm Aces. Simultaneously, Woolsey and his then-wife Connie owned the San Marcos, Tex., club The Prairie Rose, where Woolsey first saw and became acquainted with Strait. He immediately recognized Strait’s talent and booked him at the venue as a regular performer.
Woolsey followed his success at ABC Records with an unprecedented run at MCA during the 1980s, bringing radio success for artists including Barbara Mandrell, Don Williams, Loretta Lynn, Tanya Tucker, Conway Twitty and the Oak Ridge Boys, all of whom would become members of the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Erv Woolsey and George Strait
Courtesy of The Erv Woolsey Co.
In 1981, following the success of the John Travolta film Urban Cowboy and on the cusp of a new traditionalist movement, Woolsey convinced MCA Records head Jim Fogelsong to sign Strait to the label, where Strait remains to this day. On MCA, Strait released his debut single, “Unwound,” which had an undercurrent of Texas swing; the song reached No. 6 on Billboard‘s Hot Country Songs chart and launched Strait’s juggernaut career. In 1984, Woolsey left MCA and devoted himself to managing Strait’s career full-time.
Since then, Strait has earned entertainer of the year accolades spanning four decades and won a Grammy. Strait and Woolsey broke ground with the 1992 Jerry Weintraub-produced film Pure Country, as well as the stadium-sized George Strait Country Festival Tours, which began in 1995 and featured artists including Alan Jackson, The Chicks, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Kenny Chesney, Womack and Western swing band Asleep at the Wheel.
Though Strait has retired from traditional touring, he still plays a handful of stadium dates each year, most recently sharing his stage and audience with Chris Stapleton and Little Big Town.
Along the way, Woolsey also found success as a songwriter, co-writing “In Too Deep” on Strait’s 1985 project Something Special, as well as the Hot Country Songs chart-topper “I Can Still Make Cheyenne,” which earned a BMI Million-Air award for garnering more than 1 million spins on terrestrial radio. Woolsey also developed a series of clubs and bars, including opening Nashville clubs The Trap with business partner Steve Ford and the Music Row-area mainstay Losers, which was designed as a hole-in-the-wall establishment for publishers, producers and songwriters. Losers’ success led to Winners right next door, as well as the Dawg House. Woolsey also served on the Country Music Association’s board of directors as well as the board of directors for the Tennessee Museum of History.
Late into his career, Woolsey continued his passion for developing new talent, signing artists including Ian Munsick, Davisson Brothers Band, Kylie Frey, Triston Marez, Nick Davisson, Zach Neil, Stone Senate and Vince Herman over just the past few years.
A longtime fan and passionate member of the horse racing community, Woolsey is a lifetime member of the Texas Thoroughbred Association and was a regular at Kentucky’s Churchill Downs and Keeneland, including Super Stock’s run in the Kentucky Derby Grade 1 in 2021 and Jordan’s Henny in the Kentucky Oaks Grade 1 in 2017.
Universal Music Group Nashville Chair/CEO Cindy Mabe told Billboard in a statement, “Erv Woolsey was a really special human. God broke the mold with this character who is as much a part of the fabric of country music as George Strait. He was a legendary manager, a promotion man at heart, and an entrepreneur who loved music and built his career and businesses around serving the creative community and enjoying life, a good laugh, horse races, and country music. I am honored to have known this iconic country music hero and benefit from so many of the decisions and deals he brokered on behalf of both MCA Nashville and country music in general. He will be sorely missed.”
“Without the savvy and determination of Erv Woolsey, we may never have heard of George Strait,” said Kyle Young, CEO of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, in a statement. He added, “When execs urged Strait to change his image and his sound, Erv as his manager backed Strait’s determination to stay true to himself. You know the rest. Strait became a superstar who filled stadiums, and together Strait and Erv helped lead country music back to its traditions. All of us owe Erv Woolsey an enormous debt of gratitude for leading with his convictions and always supporting artists and new talent.” Woolsey is survived by his son Clint, ex-wife Connie, brother David and sister Beth. He was preceded in death by his parents, John and Mavis Woolsey, and brother Johnny Woolsey.
Details on funeral arrangements will be shared at a future date.
Musician Matthew Urango, best known as his artist name Cola Boyy, has died. He was 34 years old. The Oxnard, Calif., native’s manager, Jack Sills, announced the news on Instagram on Monday (March 18). “Rest in peace to my brother @colaboyy . Anyone who knew Matthew knows he had a larger than life personality,” he wrote alongside […]
Byron Janis, the celebrated classical pianist who studied with Vladimir Horowitz, recorded previously unknown Chopin waltzes from manuscripts he unearthed and became a cultural hero in the U.S. after performing in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, has died. He was 95.
Janis died Thursday (March 14) at The Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, his wife, Maria Cooper Janis, daughter of two-time Oscar-winning actor Gary Cooper, announced.
“I have been blessed with the privilege for 58 years of loving and being loved by not only one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, but by an exceptional human being who took his talents to their highest pinnacle,” she said in a statement.
During his 85-year career, Janis covered composers from Bach to David W. Guion and performed major piano concertos from Chopin, Mozart, Rachmaninoff, Liszt and Prokofiev. He occupied two volumes of the 1999 Mercury Philips series Great Pianists of the 20th Century and recorded for Philips, EMI, Sony and Universal as well.
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In 1944, Janis became Horowitz’s first student and made his orchestral debut with conductor Arturo Toscanini’s NBC Symphony Orchestra. At 18, he was signed by RCA Victor Records as its youngest artist.
He performed at Carnegie Hall on Oct. 29, 1948, and Olin Downes in The New York Times wrote: “Not for a long time had this writer heard such a talent allied with the musicianship, the feeling, the intelligence and artistic balance shown by the twenty-year-old pianist, Byron Janis … Whatever he touched, he made significant and fascinating by the most legitimate and expressive means.”
During the Cold War, Janis became the first American artist chosen to participate in the 1960 Cultural Exchange between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Later, he was the first American concert pianist to be asked back to Cuba, 40 years after his previous performance there.
Byron Yanks (shortened from Yankilevich) was born on March 24, 1928, in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh. His father, Samuel, owned several Army-Navy stores in the area but lost all but one of them during the Depression.
Janis started out playing the xylophone before moving with his mother, Hattie, and sister in 1936 to New York to study piano with Josef and Rosina Lhévinne and then Adele Marcus.
Horowitz saw Janis perform Rachmaninoff’s “Concerto No. 2” at a concert in Pittsburgh and went on to give him lessons at his home on the Upper East Side in New York for three years. “Can you imagine how exciting it was? I was the very first person he worked with,” Janis recalled in the 2009 PBS documentary The Byron Janis Story.
“He said something very interesting to me: ‘You play a bit in watercolors, but you could play more in oils.’ What he was saying was, you could be a bigger, romantic, virtuoso concert pianist.”
(Only two other pianists, Gary Graffman and Ronald Turini, were ever acknowledged by Horowitz as his students.)
In 1967, Janis accidentally discovered two previously unknown manuscripts of Chopin waltzes in France and later found two others while teaching at Yale University. The discoveries provided new insight into Chopin’s creative process, and EMI would release his Chopin Collection in 2012.
Janis performed six times by four sitting presidents at the White House, and among his awards were the Commander of the French Legion d’Honneur for Arts and Letters, the Grand Prix du Disque, the Stanford Fellowship from Yale and the gold medal from the French Society for the Encouragement of Progress (he was the first musician to receive that honor since its inception in 1906).
He composed the scores for major musical productions of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates and wrote one for The True Gen, a 2013 documentary on the 20-year friendship between Gary Cooper and Ernest Hemingway.
His trip to the Soviet Union was important, he noted, “because the Russians were saying America can only produce cars. The total propaganda was we were totally uncultured.” He impressed the audience there and returned home a hero. (Watch him perform in 1965 on The Ed Sullivan Show here.)
Another performance that year was released in 2018 as Live From Leningrad, 1960.
“According to Janis,” John Von Rhein of the Chicago Tribune wrote, “he was unaware a recording had been made until a vinyl disc transfer sent by an anonymous source turned up in a mailbox of his sound engineer. The pianist is in peak form (his Chopin ‘Funeral March’ sonata is positively hair-raising), and the restoration captures the frisson of a live performance the Russian audience obviously savored.”
A selection of original compositions from Janis will be released this year.
He published his memoirs, Chopin and Beyond: My Extraordinary Life in Music and the Paranormal, in 2010.
His son, Stefan, whom he had with his first wife, June Dickson Wright, died in 2017.
When he was 11, Janis tore tendons when he accidentally put his left hand through a glass door, forcing him to alter his playing. “I had to learn a way of using my eye instead of my finger so I knew where I was going,” he once told Barbara Walters. “People thought I was finished.”
And in 1973, he developed painful psoriatic arthritis in both hands but kept it secret until 1985 when, after a performance at the White House, Nancy Reagan made his condition public when she announced his role as spokesperson for the Arthritis Foundation. He underwent several surgeries to fix the problem.
“In spite of adverse physical challenges throughout his career, he overcame them, and it did not diminish his artistry,” Maria Cooper Janis, 86, wrote. “Music is Byron’s soul, not a ticket to stardom, and his passion for and love of creating music informed every day of his life of 95 years.
“The music world, if it knows how to listen, will be constantly enriched and educated by the music created by Byron Janis, my best friend, companion, LOVE — what gratitude I have lived with every day and shall continue to do so all the rest of my days.”
This article originally appeared on The Hollywood Reporter.
Steve Harley, the frontman of British rock band Cockney Rebel, has died. He was 73.
The English singer-songwriter’s family confirmed the news of his passing through social media on Sunday (March 17).
“We are devastated to announce that Steve, our wonderful husband, father and grandfather, has passed away peacefully at home, with his family by his side,” reads the statement on Facebook. “The birdsong from his woodland that he loved so much was singing for him. His home has been filled with the sounds and laughter of his four beloved Grandchildren.”
A cause of death was not provided, but Harley noted on his website earlier this year that he would not be touring in 2024 “due to on-going treatment for cancer.”
“Steve took enormous comfort from all of his fans’ well wishes during his battle, and we know he would want to thank you all deeply for your love and support throughout his career, and during his battle to the end,” his family’s statement said. “We know he will be desperately missed by countless friends, family and devoted fans all over the world, and we ask that you respectfully allow us privacy to grieve.”
Harley is perhaps best known for Cockney Rebel’s 1975 hit “Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me),” which topped the U.K. charts. The London-born musician joined Cockney Rebel in 1972 and the glam rock band released its debut album, The Human Menagerie, the following year. The group went on to release The Psychomodo in 1974 and later renamed itself Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel following lineup changes.
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Although “Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)” was not a hit in the U.S. (the song peaked at No. 98 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1976), the track has been covered more than 100 times by artists including Duran Duran, Erasure and Robbie Williams.
After Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel parted ways in 1977, Harley enjoyed a solo career, with his final release being the 2020 covers album, Uncovered, which featured renditions of songs by David Bowie, Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan and others.
See the announcement from Harley’s family about his passing on X below.
03/13/2024
Billboard pays tribute to the executives, songwriters, managers, producers, promoters, radio hosts and more who passed on this year.
03/13/2024
Anthony “Baby Gap” Walker, a member of the long-running sibling R&B/funk act The Gap Band, has reportedly died at 60.
TMZ, which broke the news, claims the artist died from “complications from a neck surgery.”
Walker had been performing with the group GapX, comprised of former Gap Band members. “The Band will miss our friend, brother, and band mate Anthony ‘Baby Gap’ Walker,” reads a post from GapX. “Gone too soon. We will never forget you!!!”
Formed in 1967 by brothers Ronnie, Charlie and Robert in Tulsa, Okla., The Gap Band scored a series of Billboard R&B hits over a 40-year career during which they released 15 albums and such beloved singles such as “Shake,” “I Don’t Believe You Want to Get Up and Dance (Oops Up Side Your Head),” “Early in the Morning,” “Burn Rubber (Why You Wanna Hurt Me)” and one of their highest-charting single, 1982’s No. 31 Hot 100 funk number “You Dropped a Bomb on Me.”
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The bros originally named their group the Greenwood Archer Pine Street Band, for the three streets in the Black part of Tulsa that were attacked by a white mob during the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
The full-length debut, Magicians Holiday, arrived in 1974, but they had to wait until 1979 for a breakthrough with their self-titled album, which featured R&B hits “Shake” and “I’m in Love.” Also that year, the group had their first platinum album with Gap Band III, which peaked at No. 16 on the Billboard 200 and yielded the singles “Humpin’” and “Burn Rubber.”
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It was at this time when Wilson joined the group, for which he contributed as a performer, songwriter dancer and choreographer for 23 years.
Anthony joined forces with Charlie Wilson and bandmate Billy Young on the 1985 project Billy & Baby Gap, and, over time, he collaborated with the likes of Rick James and George Clinton.
Though the Gap Band’s chart success began to wane by the late 1980s and 1990s, their funky songs gained a robust second life during that period when they were heavily sampled and covered by everyone from Snoop Dogg, Nas and Ice Cube to Tyler, the Creator and Mary J. Blige.
Robert Wilson died of a heart attack in 2010, Ronnie died following a stroke in 2021.
Fran Boyd, former executive director of the Academy of Country Music, died March 9 at 84.
Boyd played a key role in shaping and advancing the ACM from its early years in California in the late 1960s, through the start of the millennium.
Boyd joined the ACM as an executive secretary in 1968, as the organization’s first paid employee. She rose through the ranks over the years; in 1995, following the passing of her husband Bill, who himself led the Academy, Fran was named executive director. Boyd oversaw year-round operations and also served as talent producer for the ACM Awards, and oversaw nearly every aspect of the annual awards presentation.
The ACM Awards’ signature “hat” trophy was created the same year Boyd joined the ACM. Among the winners that year were Glen Campbell, Lynn Anderson and Bobbie Gentry.
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During her tenure, Boyd saw the organization open its first office in Hollywood, and rebrand its name from the Academy of Country and Western Music to the Academy of Country Music in the 1970s. During her time at the ACM, the organization also moved the awards show to major California venues including Disneyland, Universal Amphitheatre and Knott’s Berry Farm.
Boyd retired from the ACM in 2002, after more than three decades of service. She said at the time, “I continue to be proud of all the Academy of Country Music has accomplished in my time. It has given me great joy to see so many young country artists rise from newcomers to having great careers. The Academy has helped music fans acknowledge country music as the enduring genre it deserves to be.”
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“Her tireless work and years of dedication to this organization, the country music industry and its artists cannot be overstated, and her legacy with the Academy will forever live on,” Damon Whiteside, CEO of the Academy of Country Music, said in a statement.
“Fran Boyd played an essential part in the Academy’s history, stretching way back to the earliest days in the 1960s and steering the ship through decades of change, innovation, and growth, all while fostering an incredible passion for country music,” added Gayle Holcomb, ACM Board Sergeant-At-Arms and longtime board member. “Fran will always be remembered as a champion for our industry, its artists, and this organization. On behalf of the ACM Officers and Board of Directors, I send our gratitude, prayers, and condolences to the Boyd family.”
In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Alive Hospice Nashville or the Alzheimer’s Association in Boyd’s honor.
Eric Carmen, the hitmaker behind ’70s and ’80s smashes like “All By Myself” and “Hungry Eyes,” has died at age 74, his wife Amy confirms.
“It is with tremendous sadness that we share the heartbreaking news of the passing of Eric Carmen,” a message posted to his website, Facebook and X account reads. “It brought him great joy to know, that for decades, his music touched so many and will be his lasting legacy. ‘Love Is All That Matters…Faithful and Forever,’” the message concludes, signed by Amy Carmen, his wife of eight years.
Over his decades-long career — starting in earnest during his college years at John Carroll University in his home state of Ohio, when he joined a band called Cyrus Erie — Carmen scored three top five hits on the Billboard Hot 100: the No. 2-peaking “All By Myself” in 1976, followed by the Dirty Dancing soundtrack standout “Hungry Eyes,” which peaked at No. 4 in 1988, and “Make Me Lose Control,” a No. 3 hit, also in 1988. His highest-charting album was his self-titled solo debut, which peaked at No. 21 in 1976.
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In addition to scoring a hit on the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, Carmen also co-wrote “Almost Paradise… Love Theme from Footloose” (performed by Mike Reno and Ann Wilson) for the Footloose soundtrack, earning him his lone Grammy nomination for best album of original score written for a motion picture or a television special.
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Before his blockbuster solo career, he recorded four albums with The Raspberries from 1972 to 1974. They scored a No. 5 hit from their debut album called “Go All the Way” in 1972 and a top 20 hit with the ironically titled “Overnight Sensation (Hit Record),” which peaked at No. 18 in 1974.
Many of Carmen’s songs have endured thanks to new placements in pop culture, including Celine Dion’s Hot 100 No. 4-peaking cover of “All By Myself” in 1997; “Go All the Way” being featured on the Guardians of Galaxy: Awesome Mix Vol. 1 soundtrack in 2014; and his co-written “Almost Paradise” serving as the theme song to The Bachelor spin-off Bachelor in Paradise in 2014.
Karl Wallinger, who was a short-lived member of Welsh rock band The Waterboys and then helmed his solo project World Party, died Sunday (March 10). He was 66, according to his publicist. No cause of death or place was given.
Wallinger also worked with Sinead O’Connor, had his music covered by Robbie Williams, and was featured on 1994’s Reality Bites soundtrack.
The multi-instrumentalist was born in Prestatyn, Wales, in 1957. After serving as musical director for a West End production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Wallinger joined the Michael Scott-led Waterboys for the alternative rock band’s second album, 1984’s A Pagan Place, providing keyboards, percussion and backing vocals. By the time he finished work on their third album, This Is the Sea, which included the Scott/Wallinger composition “Don’t Bang the Drum,” he was done.
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In its review of 1985, a Waterboys’ boxed set devoted to the creation This Is the Sea, Mojo describes the fractious, yet fruitful musical dynamic between Scott and Wallinger. “It’s the volatile relationship between [Wallinger] and Scott that forms another key narrative on 1985. Long, stoned sessions at Seaview, Wallinger’s home studio in central London, prove inventive. A first instrumental take on ‘The Pan Within’ is a gorgeous meeting of aesthetics, with Scott – organic, gestural – on piano and guitar, and Wallinger providing rubbery, funky synth bass and drumbox.”
Shortly thereafter, Wallinger left The Waterboys and in 1986 formed World Party, a primarily solo endeavor with Wallinger bringing in a revolving cast of musicians as needed to his atmospheric pop universe.
World Party’s debut album, Private Revolution, spawned what ended up being the act’s biggest hit, the cynical indie-pop anthem “Ship of Fools,” which reached No. 27 on the Billboard Hot 100. The album included a then-unknown Sinead O’Connor on backing vocals and Wallinger then helped O’Connor on her album debut, 1988’s The Lion and the Cobra. Wallinger reissued “Ship of Fools” in 2018 with a new video that included newsreel footage of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Stormy Daniels, refugee camps and environmental crises. The lyric video concluded with the declaration “Now more than ever.”
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World Party’s second album, Goodbye Jumbo, included “Way Down Now,” which reached No. 1 on Billboard‘s Alternative Songs chart, and “Put the Message in the Box” and was nominated for best alternative music performance at the 33rd annual Grammy Awards. World Party’s fourth album, 1997’s Egyptology, included “She’s the One,” which Williams later covered and took to No. 1 on the U.K. Singles Chart.
Wallinger suffered an aneurysm in 2001 and had to reteach himself to talk and play instruments. Following his recovery, World Party returned to the road, including playing South by Southwest and Bonnaroo in 2006. Their last tour was in 2015, and their last recording was 2012’s Arkeology, a 70-track collection of new and live songs, as well as cover tunes. “It was my homespun attempt at making something interesting,” he told BuzzineNetwork. “On this album there’s lots of different kinds of music…It’s not really one genre which has been one of our problems, actually; we’ve never been able to be marketed to any particular audience. It’s just music really.”
In a 2022 interview with The Big Takeover Show, following the reissue of Egyptology, Wallinger talked about the power of music and what he aimed for as a songwriter: “It’s good to write songs about stuff that people think about, that I thought about … I’ve always thought it should be something to do with healing or finding things out about the world that have truth. It maybe sounds a little idealistic, but it’s what music is about. It’s kind of a pure thing, music. I’m not left or right wing; I don’t even think in terms of that. I just want people to have what they need to get through living on the planet.”
Survivors include his wife, a son and daughter, and two grandchildren.
Vince Power, the legendary Irish impresario who founded the U.K.’s Mean Fiddler Music Group, had a hand in many of Europe’s leading festivals, and was made an honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his work in the live music industry, died Saturday (March 9). He was 76.
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Power had the right name for the job. Born into a rural family in 1947 in County Waterford, Ireland, the concert promoter and venue operator founded MFMG in 1982, then a small northwest London country music venue.
He made his move to London at age 16, and initially ventured into the secondhand furniture business, but his love of music led him to invest in that derelict former drinking club in Harlesden. The Mean Fiddler was born, and it proved to be the platform from which he built an empire.
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At its peak, the group encompassed some 30 venues and events, including the London Astoria, Jazz Cafe, the Leeds and Reading festivals, Fleadh Festival, and an interest in Europe’s biggest and best-known annual festival, England’s Glastonbury.He sold his stake in MFMG in 2005 to Clear Channel, now Live Nation, and returned to the game with a new live entertainment venture, the Vince Power Music Group, initially comprising a portfolio of London live-music venues, bars and nightclubs.
The following year, in 2006, Power was made an honorary CBE for his “valuable contribution to music.”
Power reentered the festival business with the Day at the Hop Farm fest, and took a controlling interest in Spain’s Benicassim (Vince Power Music Group was hammered by the global financial crisis and went under in 2010).
“I just love organizing festivals,” he told Billboard in 2008. “It’s a challenge again—and I’m not ready to keel over just yet. With the Mean Fiddler, we had a huge amount of stuff which we did—live music festivals, dance festivals, bars, tours—and when I sold it out three years ago, it had got to the stage that it was huge. It was a [public limited company], it [had] £80 million [$158 million] [in revenue], and I lost the sort of touch that I have now, the hands-on touch. I looked at retiring for about two weeks. [laughs] That didn’t really work for me.”
Power is remembered as a music man, and a maverick with a tough-guy image, but in an interview with The Irish Times, he described himself as a “lucky chancer”.
Power never switched off the music, never forget his Irish roots. In recent years, he produced Liverpool Feis festival, billed as “the biggest celebration of Irish culture the city has ever seen.”
As news of his passing spread, the music community paid their respects to the powerful Irish concerts specialist. “I’m going to miss you so very much, my friend in music, in thinking, in dreaming,” writes Welsh singer and songwriter Cerys Matthews, co-founder of Catatonia. “Love you very much.”
Irish Imelda May writes on social media, “So sad to hear of the passing of the great Vince Power. I adored him. He took a chance on me at the start of my career when I needed it most. He was so important to Irish culture and community at home and the UK. He’ll be greatly missed. Love to his family.”
Power is survived by his wife Sharon.