obituary
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Neal Langford, former bassist for The Shins, has died at age 50. The group’s lead singer, James Mercer, confirmed the news in a Thursday (July 27) Instagram post to the band’s official account.
“Just want to let you guys know one of the best friends I’ve ever had has passed,” Mercer captioned a black-and-white photo of Langford playing his bass on stage. “He was in several bands with me including the Shins. A very important figure in my life you could say. I mean this is the guy who talked me into getting over my shyness and up on the stage. He put me in front of the microphone!”
Mercer continued, “He was the catholic school kid who showed me how to sneak into the back of the old El Rey theatre and get a ‘free’ beer. An invaluable person! Who turned me onto Dinosaur Jr. and Interview Magazine and the Cocteau Twins and countless other piles of cool stuff. … There’s too much to the story but I loved him. And I owe him a lot. Neal Langford you were always loved and you always will be.”
NBC affiliate WITN in North Carolina reports that the musician, who was also a well-known hot air balloonist and co-owner of IBX Balloon Flight, was found him dead in Bath Creek near a private dock on July 21 by law enforcement in Beaufort County. Foul play is not suspected, and a cause of death was not revealed.
The bassist’s last update on his Instagram account came on June 23, when he shared a certificate of completion for successfully finishing a treatment program at the Walter B. Jones Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment Center in Greenville, N.C.
Langford and Mercer played together in a band called Flake — eventually renamed Flake Music — in 1992 that was based in Albuquerque, N.M. The band released one album, 1997’s When You Land Here, It’s Time to Return, that was later reissued by Sub Pop Records. The Shins was developed as a side project by Mercer and Flake Music drummer Jesse Sandoval in 1996; Langford joined the band in 1999 after Flake Music disbanded and former Shins members Dave Hernandez and Ron Skrasek left the band.
The bassist notably played on the group’s debut album Oh! Inverted World. The release — now regarded as a classic of the indie rock genre — peaked at No. 19 on Billboard‘s Top Alternative Albums chart and was later certified platinum by RIAA. The LP’s lead single, “New Slang,” was featured in the 2004 movie Garden State starring Natalie Portman.
See Mercer’s tribute post to Langford below.
Randy Meisner, founding Eagles bassist and the sky-high voice behind the band’s 1976 Billboard Hot 100 top five hit “Take It to the Limit,” has died at age 77, the band announced Thursday (July 27).
Meisner died Wednesday night due to complications from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, according to a statement from the band.
“Randy was an integral part of the Eagles and instrumental in the early success of the band,” the band said in the statement. “His vocal range was astonishing, as is evident on his signature ballad, ‘Take It to the Limit.’”
Alongside Glenn Frey, Don Henley and Bernie Leadon, Meisner — born in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska, in 1946 — was a founding member of the Eagles in 1971. Before forming the band, he played with Rick Nelson & The Stone Canyon Band and was the original bass player for country-rock group Poco in the late 1960s.
Meisner was with the Eagles from their self-titled 1972 debut album through 1976’s Hotel California, before quitting the group in 1977. (He was replaced by Timothy B. Schmit, who had also succeeded Meisner in Poco when he had departed the group to form the Eagles.)
The bulk of the Eagles’ vocal duties went to Henley and Frey, but Meisner sang lead on one of the group’s most enduring hits: “Take It to the Limit,” from the 1975 album One of These Nights, peaked at No. 4 on the Hot 100 in 1976 and spent 23 weeks on the chart — the band’s longest-charting hit on the tally. The song is remembered for Meisner’s lofty vocals, especially toward the end of the song when his “aaaahs!” rise to new heights.
Meisner was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with the Eagles in 1998.
Tragedy struck Meisner’s personal life in 2016 when his wife, Lana Rae Meisner, was fatally shot in the couple’s Los Angeles home after an “accidental discharge of a firearm,” according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
According to the Eagles’ statement, funeral arrangements are pending for Meisner.
Sinead O’Connor has died at age 56, according to The Irish Times.Billboard has reached out to her reps.
With her bald head, piercing eyes and fierce bearing, O’Connor burst onto the music scene in the late 1980s, serving as a rebuke to the parade of sexist tropes that dominated the era’s hair metal scene. She gave notice of her bold path away from the typical packaging of female pop stars from the very first notes of her 1987 debut, The Lion and the Cobra, which she recorded while pregnant at 20 with her first child.
A mix of driving rock (“Mandinka”), alluring hip-hop (“I Want Your (Hands on Me)” and intense ballads (“Jackie”), O’Connor emerged as a fully formed force to be reckoned with, her powerful voice a haunting howl full of pain and mystery one moment, a steely suit of armor at others. Not concerned with the typical trappings of pop stardom, O’Connor’s public face — the shaved head, slouchy wardrobe and curious mix of dance, rock, folk, Irish balladry and devotional tropes — was an instant hit on alternative radio, as well as dance clubs, where remixes of “Mandinka” and “I Want Your Hands (On Me)” became staples for many party DJs.
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Though her debut brought raves from both sides of the Atlantic, it was 1990’s I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got that served as both O’Connor’s career high and turning point. With the run-away success of her gripping cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” as well as the chilling video for the track, the singer was thrust into the international spotlight, a place she seemed uneasy with at times. The album laid bare her personal struggles and feelings of loss in a striking manner, weaving the words from a Frank O’Connor poem with Celtic melodies and a sample of the James Brown “Funky Drummer” beat on the eerie “I Am Stretched on Your Grave.”
In between, she hits pop highs (“The Emperor’s New Clothes”) amid personal turmoil and touches on wrenching real-life drama (“The Last Day of our Acquaintance”) with massive beats, while mixing in a six-minute a cappella dirge and a prescient elegy for the police-involved death of a black London youth.
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Even as her star was rising, O’Connor refused to play the music industry game, controversially defending the sometimes bloody tactics of the Irish Republican Army in interviews, lashing out at longtime cheerleaders U2 and refusing to perform and refusing to perform on Saturday Night Live in May 1990 alongside comedian Andrew Dice Clay. She earned the ire of Frank Sinatra a few months later when she refused to perform at a New Jersey venue when she found out the national anthem would play before she took the stage. The move caused some stations to pull her music from airwaves and resulted in Sinatra threatening to “kick her in the a–.”
The controversy continued two years later, when O’Connor was again booked on SNL, where she performed an a cappella version of Bob Marley’s “War” and, in a surprise to producers, stared into the camera at song’s end and tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II and said “fight the real enemy” as a protest against the Catholic church’s cover-up of child abuse by clergy; O’Connor would later say she she was abused as a child.
Sinéad Marie Bernadette O’Connor was born on Dec. 8, 1966, in Glenageary, County Dublin, Ireland, to Sean and Marie O’Connor, who split when the singer was 8 years old. She claimed over the years that she and her two siblings were physically abused when they went to live with their mother after the divorce. Her teenage years were spent getting sent to reform schools and boarding schools due to bouts of shoplifting and other bad behavior and her discovery at 15 by the drummer for the Irish band Tua Nua, who heard her singing Barbra Streisand’s “Evergreen” at a wedding.
O’Connor studied voice and piano at Dublin’s College of Music before moving to London in the early 1980s, where she collaborated with U2 guitarist the Edge on a song for the soundtrack to 1986’s The Captive.
Her career was marked by an unpredictability, including the pop standards album she released in 1992, Am I Not Your Girl?, which failed to reach the success of its predecessors and began a slow commercial decline. She laid low for several years after the SNL incident — and another one shortly after in which she was roundly booed at a Bob Dylan tribute concert in New York — returning in 1994 with the underappreciated Universal Mother solid, which featured a moving Nirvana cover (“All Apologies”) and several songs that laid brutally bare her fierce drive to protect children from dangerous mothers.
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The years that followed included stories about her retirement, a permanent ban on talking to the press, a return to her Irish folk roots on 200’s Faith and Courage and 2002’s Sean-Nós Nua, a detour into covers of reggae songs on 2005’s Throw Down Your Arms and 2007’s two-disc Theology collection. O’Connor’s final album, 2014’s I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss, was widely praised for its return to her honest, emotionally charged songwriting and unique pop craft.
O’Connor had been very open about her mental health issues, which include a misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder, later amended to PTSD, including depression and suicidal tendencies, canceling a tour in 2012 after a doctor ordered her to get some rest following what was described as a “very serious breakdown.”
In January 2022, the singer suffered a massive loss when her 17-year-old son, Shane, was found dead in Ireland after she reported him missing to authorities. The singer-songwriter tweeted that he “the very light of my life, decided to end his earthly struggle today and is now with God. May he rest in peace and may no one follow his example. My baby, I love you so much. Please be at peace.”
She is survived by three children.
Tony Bennett died at his home in New York on July 21, according to a statement from his management company. He was 96 years old. Tetris Kelly:The legendary jazz singer Tony Bennett has died at the age of 96. Tony Bennett’s list of amazing achievements includes 20 Grammys, 23 Hot 100 hits and 44 Billboard […]
Tony Bennett, a singer’s singer whose steadfast allegiance to the Great American Songbook would connect him with multiple generations of diverse talent – Pearl Bailey, Count Basie, Amy Winehouse and Lady Gaga — died on Friday morning (July 21) at his home in New York according to a statement from his management company. He was 96-years-old.
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The singer was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease in 2016 and in 2021 he announced that he was retiring from touring and performing after one last show in August of that year with good friend and avowed superfan Gaga at Radio City Music Hall entitled “One Last Time.”
Bennett had a continuous recording career from 1950 to 2014 that would see him release more than 60 albums, 44 of which would chart on the Billboard 200, win 16 Grammy Awards, and include a signature song in “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” Over the last 25 years, Bennett thrived as the primary connection between modern pop and the music of the first half of the 20th century that came from Tin Pan Alley, Broadway shows and movies. Sticking to his style as he recorded with Gaga, Elvis Costello, k.d. lang and Winehouse, Bennett became a paragon of multi-generational cool starting in the early 1990s as he toured the world and, in 2011 at the age of 85, had his first No. 1 album with Duets II.
A student of the bel canto style of singing, Bennett developed his own voice by going to the jazz clubs on New York’s 52nd Street and listening to musicians such as saxophonist Charlie Parker and pianist Art Tatum. (A performance Tatum once gave of “Danny Boy” affected Bennett to the point that he named his first song Danny). He was following the advice of his voice teacher, Miriam Spier, who advised him that the only way to stand out is to emulate instrumentalists rather than other singers.
“I prefer the way the jazz artists work, and this is one of the things I have learned over the years from guys like (cornetist) Bobby Hackett,” Bennett told Billboard in 1968. “The way you feel it is the way it comes out, and it’s never the same way twice. That’s the way I like to sing — as if I just picked up the lead sheet for the first time.”
Bennett would stick to his guns about songs and his interpretations, even when it meant leaving Columbia Records after 23 years and forming his own label, Improv Records. Similarly, his output in the 1980s slowed as he resisted following trends, the payoff coming in the ‘90s when he paid tribute to the work of Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday and exposed a 21st century generation to the music he cut his teeth on.
“How does a singer get good performances out of himself,” Bennett wrote in a 1968 issue of Billboard. “Through dedication to his own talent. Through his wish to communicate with the listener in the audience. Through the songs he personally believes in.”
Born Antonio Dominick Benedetto in Long Island City, N.Y., on Aug. 3, 1926, Bennett started singing when he was 5, learning Irish songs from locals in his Astoria neighborhood and earn pennies and nickels for his performances.
Bennett’s father was ill most of the singer’s life, dying when Bennett was 10. His mother became a seamstress and, to contribute to the household of three children, Bennett, whose inspirations were Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong and Jimmy Durante, started singing in a tavern for $15 a week. At 16, he working as an usher at Ditmars Theater, worked as a singing waiter in a couple of local clubs and sang on weekends at a club in Paterson, N.J.
His goal, however, was to become a commercial artist after finishing studies at the High School of Industrial Arts in Manhattan. (He would be an avid visual artist his entire life, using his given name for his oil paintings). Bennett joined the Army and was stationed in Germany where he sang with Army bands.
After his discharge from the service, Bennett studied drama, diction and music theory at the American Theatre Wing. He started a singing in nightclubs in 1946, using the name Joe Barri.
He was opening for Pearl Bailey in 1949 at the Greenwich Village Inn when Bob Hope heard him and offered him an opening slot on his show at the Paramount Theatre. No fan of the name Joe Bari, Hope decided the singer’s birth name was too long for a marquee and suggested the Americanized “Tony Bennett.” Around that time he appeared on Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts TV show, coming in second place to Rosemary Clooney.
“I went to the Paramount Theater with Louis Prima,” Bennett told Billboard in 2006 when he received the Billboard Century Award. We had to do seven shows a day — start at 10 a.m. and go until 10 p.m. Sinatra did the same. It was tough.”
While on the road with Hope, a demo recording he had done of “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” led to Columbia Records bringing him in for a session. Bennett recorded four songs, “Boulevard” among them, on April 17, 1950; 10 days later “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” was released and would go to No. 1 for 10 weeks.
Bennett landed 12 top 20 singles between 1951 and 1954: “Because of You,” “Cold, Cold Heart” and “Rags to Riches” went to No. 1; “Stranger in Paradise” peaked at No. 2.
An early sign that he would work without attention to genre was “Cold, Cold Heart,” the first pop recording of a Hank Williams song. Jerry Wexler, while working at Billboard prior to joining Atlantic Records, played Williams’ version for Columbia A&R executive Mitch Miller, who brought the song to Bennett.
The recording exposed Williams to a pop audience for the first time, starting atrend that would become Bennett’s forte: In his first 18 years of making records, Billboard credited Bennett with introducing nearly 60 songs, helping establish writers such as Cy Coleman and Charles deForest. And he did so on his own terms, singing pop on singles and turning to jazz for his albums, recording with Art Blakey, Zoot Sims, Count Basie, Bill Evans, Frank Wess and other leading jazz artists.
His 1957 album The Beat of My Heart was jazz interpretations of standards given heavily percussive arrangements andfeaturing the drummer backed by Blakey, Jo Jones and Chico Hamilton. He wasalso the first male pop singer to work with Basie, releasing In Person with Count Basie and His Orchestra in 1959.
“The Count’s attitude became my philosophy — economy of keep it simple, keep it swingin’,” Bennett once said.
Bennett landed four top 20 hits on the Hot 100 in 1956, “In the Middle of an Island” charting highest, No. 9 in 1957. Miller, in a 1968 interview with Billboard, said a hit for Columbia at the time was anything that sold at least 150,000copies. Initial pressings of all of Bennett’s record were 200,000, to which Miller said “we’ve never overestimated.”
Still, entering the 1960s, he was in a top 20 dry spell, which may have owed to him avoiding the urging of Columbia brass to try more pop-oriented material.
“In the American Theatre Wing they insisted on no compromise,” Bennett told Billboard in 1968. “Mitch Miller actually understood where I was coming from though he was frustrated with me. I try to just never compromise. Not to be stubborn, but I don’t like to insult the audience.”
In 1961, during a stay in Hot Springs, Ark., Bennett’s pianist since 1956, Ralph Sharon, brought to Bennett a song written by his friends George Cory and Douglass Cross. Sharon suggested he sing it during his December 1961 run at the Venetian Room at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco.
“He played it for me and I liked it right away,” Bennett told Billboard. “It had been around and nothing had happened. I sang it at the Fairmont Hotel, but didn’t record it until six months later.”
“I Left My Heart in San Francisco” peaked at No. 19 in 1961, but the album I Left My Heart in San Francisco would enjoy 149 weeks on the Billboard 200, peaking at No. 5.
“Before I recorded ‘San Francisco,’ the trend of the music business was moving away from me,” Bennett told Billboard in 1968. “I was advised to try all sorts of tricks and gimmicks. I held out and finally found ‘San Francisco.’”
Bennett’s two follow-up singles in 1963 charted higher than “San Francisco”: “I Wanna Be Around” hit No. 14 and “The Good Life” peaked at No. 18. His album output perked up, too, with Columbia issuing two new studio albums in ’63 and three in ’64. I Wanna Be Around also reached No. 5 and would be his highest charting album for the next 46 years.
No denying “San Francisco” had changed his life as an entertainer, but it was a comment Sinatra made to Life magazine in 1965 that Bennett said made the difference in how he was viewed professionally.
“For my money,” Sinatra told Life, “Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business, the best exponent of a song. He excites me when I watch him. He’s the singer who gets across what the composer has in mind, and probably a little more.”
Powers at Columbia Records, though, wanted more hits from Bennett and wanted him to add more contemporary material to his repertoire. Other than his ballad rendition of Stevie Wonder’s “For Once in My Life” in 1967, his final Hot 100 hit (No. 91), his albums and singles stopped selling.
“Anyone who sings popular songs and tells you that he doesn’t want a hit song is lying,” Bennett wrote in the liner notes to a 1991 Columbia Legacy box set. “Early in my career, I decided to sing only the best, not realizing that I would run into many men in the business world who would try to get me to sing novelty songs with gimmicks, insisting that the public had the mentality of a 14-year-old.”
Columbia re-signed Bennett in 1968 and then-president Clive Davis continued to have Bennett record pop hits — Beatles songs, “The Look of Love,” “My Cherie Amour” — with no commercial success. At the same time, Bennett was going through a divorce with his first wife, Patricia, and, in 1971, marrying his second wife, Sandra Grant.
Bennett left Columbia — and the U.S. — going to London to host the TV show Tony Bennett From Talk of the Town. Then-manager Derek Boulton secured Bennett a deal with Curb-Polygram, which put him on Verve Records; he made a couple of albums before being dropped.
Despite Columbia offering to re-sign him, Bennett and Bill Hassett, a hotel and real estate magnate from Buffalo, N.Y., joined forces to create Improv Records in 1972, starting with a record by Ruby Braff. Two of Bennett’s two most significant jazz albums came out in that era, The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album on Fantasy in 1975 and Together Again on Improv in 1977. While nether charted, Bennett considered the bare bones nature of his collaborations with the pianist Evans vital. “If you can get to a pure simple thing, it always lasts forever,” he said in the liner notes of Concord Music Group’s Complete Improv Recordings set.
The label released about 10 jazz albums and, due to distribution issues, shut down.
Bennett, who performance schedule was largely limited to Las Vegas in the late ‘70s, found himself with money problems, a failing marriage and succumbing to ‘70s drug culture until he overdosed on cocaine in 1979.
“The manager of Lenny Bruce told me he sinned against his talent with his drug habit,” Bennett told Piers Morgan on CNN in 2011 about his decision to stop doing drugs. “That sentence changed my life. I’ve been given this gift. I know how to sing and perform. I’m sinning against this gift and I thought, ‘I am not going to do that any more,’ and I just stopped. I had to, because I thought I was going to lose everything. It wassaid at the right moment, at the right time.”
Bennett reached out to his oldest song Danny who took over as manager, moving his father back to New York, reuniting him with Ralph Sharon, the pianist who left in 1965, and booking him in small theaters and colleges. Bennett returned to Columbia Records, releasing The Art of Excellence in 1986. The first of his 18 albums for the label since returning, it peaked at No. 160, his first Billboard 200 entry in 14 years. He followed it by continuing to return to his roots, recording an album of Irving Berlin songs with jazz musicians such as Dexter Gordon, Dizzy Gillespie and George Benson.
To promote those albums, Bennett started appearing on The Late Show With David Letterman, the late-night talk show that would become crucial in establishing a new audience for him in the 1990s.
In 1989, still discouraged by slumping record sales, Bennett told new management at Columbia Records he was ready to hang it up. New Columbia president Donnie Ienner asked Bennett to come up with a concept that the label could sell. Within days, Bennett came up with Perfectly Frank, a tribute to Sinatra that would hit No. 102 and go on to win the Grammy for Traditional Pop Album.
It led to a second concept album, Steppin’ Out, a tribute to Astaire, and the floodgates opened.
The investments Danny Bennett started making with The Art of Excellence began paying dividends in 1990 when Tony Bennett became the first celebrity written into an episode of The Simpsons. He would then make a Nike commercial, have his music synched in GoodFellas, The Fabulous Baker Boys, JFK and A Bronx Tale and deliver a show-stopping performance of “When Do The Bells Ring For Me” at the 1991 Grammy Awards. To remind audiences of Bennett’s past triumphs, Columbia Legacy issued a four-CD box set, Forty Years: The Artistry of Tony Bennett, that has sold 88,000 copies. (The set was updated in 2004 as Fifty Years).
Perhaps the biggest moment of Bennett’s revival came at the MTV VMAs in September 1993 when Bennett, dressed in a black T-shirt, top hat, sunglasses and a tie, accompanied the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Anthony Kiedis and Flea – in tuxedos — to present the Video of the Year. Kiedis and Flea joked with Bennett at the podium save for him perfectly singing a snippet of “Give it Away.”
The response was such that Bennett’s video for “Steppin’ Out With My Baby” was then promptly placed in the MTV Buzz Bin, a demarcation of cool in 1993.
MTV continued its association with Bennett, booking him for an Unplugged special in 1994; it would win the Grammy for Album of the Year at the 1995 ceremony. While the strategy was to pair Bennett with lang and Costello, the repertoire was classic Bennett: “Fly me to the Mon,” “They Can’t Take That Away From Me,” “All Of You,” “Old Devil Moon” and other standards.
“I always tried to do good songs,” Bennett told Billboard in 2006. “When the whole rock ‘n’ roll change came in with Elvis Presley, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, I kept doing good songs. I just kept working. My ambition was never to go to No. 1, over the top bigger than anybody. If I’m sold out (in concert), and people want to come back 11 months later and see me again, I’m successful.”
In 2006, to celebrate his 80th birthday, his Duets: An American Classic featuring performances with Paul McCartney, Elton John, Barbra Streisand, Bono and others became his best-selling album in the Soundscan era, moving 1.95 million copies and peaking at No. 3.
Duets inspired the Rob Marshall-directed television special Tony Bennett: An American Classic, which aired on NBC in November 2006 and would go on to win seven Emmy Awards including Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Special and Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program.
When Duets II debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 charts in 2011, Bennett became the only artist at the age of 85 to have a chart-topping album. A documentary tied to Bennett’s 85th birthday, The Zen Of Bennett, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2012 .
Bennett received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001, Kennedy Center Honors in 2005 and a year later was named an NEA Jazz Master and received, a Citizen of the World award from the United Nations. The U.N. also commissioned him for two paintings, one for its 50th anniversary. Three of his paintings are part of the Smithsonian Museums’ permanent collections including his portrait of his Duke Ellington that became part of the National Portrait Gallery’s collection in 2009.
Bennett wrote four books: his autobiography The Good Life with Will Friedwald; Life is a Gift, What My Heart Has Seen and Tony Bennett in the Studio: A Life in Art & Music with Robert Sullivan.
Bennett, who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the historic Selma, Ala., march in 1965, raised millions of dollars for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation and donated his paintings annually for use as American Cancer Society’s annual holiday greeting card.
In 1999, Bennett and his wife Susan Benedetto founded Exploring the Arts to strengthen the role of the arts in public high school education and established the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Astoria in 2001.
Though Bennett was rarely seen in the years since his diagnosis, in January the singer congratulated his Love For Sale and Cheek to Cheek collaborator Gaga for her fourth Oscar nomination when the singer was given a nod for best original song for “Hold My Hand” from Top Gun: Maverick. “Congratulations to the amazingly talented @ladygaga on her 4th Oscar nomination!” Bennett tweeted. “Today, Lady Gaga makes history as the first artist to receive three nominations in the Best Original Song category at the #Oscars. So proud of you!”
Besides his wife Susan and son Danny, Bennett is survived by another son, Dae, and daughters Antonia and Joanna, as well as nine grandchildren.
Chicago-based ghetto house pioneer DJ Deeon has died. An update posted to the artist’s Facebook page on Tuesday (July 18) by an administrator states that “I am sorry to announce the legendary Artist, Producer, DJ, Label owner, and my friend Deeon ‘DJ Deeon’ Boyd gained his wings today. The family thanks you for your support […]
Music executive and Country Music Hall of Fame member Jerry Owen Bradley died Monday (July 17) in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee. He was 83.
Born in Nashville on Jan. 30, 1940, Bradley was part of the illustrious Bradley family, who played an indelible role in creating and shaping Nashville’s music industry and Music Row area.
Bradley’s father was music producer Owen Bradley while his uncle was studio musician Harold Bradley, who together shaped Nashville’s Music Row as a music business town and architected the “Nashville Sound.” Bradley’s wife of 42 years, Connie Bradley, died in 2021 at age 75; she had served as the head of ASCAP Nashville for more than three decades. Bradley’s sister, Patsy Bradley, previously served as assistant vp at BMI.
Jerry Bradley got his start in the music industry through Forrest Hills Music, a publishing company he launched with his uncle Harold. He soon began engineering and producing records at the Bradley’s Barn studio, which he and his father owned in Mt. Juliet; Bradley’s clients as an engineer included Loretta Lynn, Roy Clark, Gordon Lightfoot, The Who and more.
Given that his father Owen had produced enduring, legendary hits for artists including Patsy Cline, Kitty Wells, Conway Twitty and Brenda Lee while transforming Decca/MCA Records in Nashville into a dominant operation, Jerry sought to make his own way in the industry. He approached Chet Atkins for a job at RCA, where he served as staff producer from 1970 to 1973. Atkins later handpicked Bradley to succeed him as vp of Nashville operations — a role he held from 1973 to 1983.
While at RCA, Bradley worked with artists and on albums that shaped the fabric of country music. Inspired by the success of albums including Nelson’s groundbreaking 1975 set Red Headed Stranger, Bradley began developing a compilation project using the “Outlaw” moniker that included music from Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Jessi Colter and Tompall Glaser.
“We’d been working on Waylon. He was selling about 250,000 albums, which at that time, was fairly good,” Bradley said during an interview with the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2012. “But Willie had Red Headed Stranger and he was selling a million on Columbia. Jessi had ‘I’m Not Lisa.’ Waylon, we just couldn’t get him over the hill and I had [a] Time Life set of books on the old west and we looked at it and all these things were happening. Hazel Smith, who was working for Tompall, she used the word ‘Outlaw’ first and [when] you would talk about the Outlaws, that’s what she was talking about. I got wind of it, and I picked up this old Time Life Western thing and it had a picture of an old wanted poster on it and I thought, ‘Man, that would make a good album cover for the Outlaws.’”
In addition to coming up with the album’s eventual title, Wanted! The Outlaws, Bradley was influential in its marketing, including by modeling its vintage-style cover after that Old West “wanted” poster. Spurred by the Jennings/Nelson duet “Good Hearted Woman,” Wanted! The Outlaws became the first platinum-selling country album certified by the Recording Industry Association of America and furthered the notion of country music as a major commercial force.
At RCA, Bradley also signed hitmakers including Alabama, Ronnie Milsap, Steve Wariner, Earl Thomas Conlee and Gary Stewart. Additionally, he produced No. 1 singles and albums for RCA artist Charley Pride, including the album Charley Pride Sings Heart Songs, as well as hits for Dave and Sugar, Dottie West and Jimmy Dean.
After Bradley left RCA in 1983, the Gaylord Corporation (which had acquired Opryland) bought the Acuff-Rose music publishing company and named Bradley vp of Opryland USA and GM of the Opryland Music Group, which owned the Acuff-Rose publishing catalogs. During his tenure, Bradley brought in new staffers and song pluggers as well as hit writers and artists including Dean Dillon, Casey Beathard and Kenny Chesney, whom Bradley brought to Acuff-Rose in 1992.
“Jerry Bradley signed me to Acuff-Rose when I was a kid. He had a profound and unmeasurable impact on my life,” said Chesney in a statement. “But not just in my life…he helped change the lives of so many people that had a song in their heart. Jerry’s impact on our creative community will be felt for years.”
“Jerry never once called himself a ‘mentor’ but every day since the summer of 1988, when he hired me at Acuff-Rose, he has mentored me,” said Universal Music Publishing Group Nashville CEO Troy Tomlinson in a statement. “I will deeply miss him and the place he has occupied in my life and in my heart.”
During his more than five decades in music, Bradley served as president of the Country Music Association (1974-1975) and became a charter alumnus of Leadership Music; he also served on the Fan Fair committee from 1970 to 2000, during which time the festival grew into CMA Fest. For 20 of those years, Bradley served as either chairman or co-chairman of the committee. During his last year on the committee, the event moved to Adelphia Coliseum (now known as Nissan Stadium), home to the Tennessee Titans in Nashville.
“Today we lost a Country Music Hall of Famer and business icon who was instrumental in the careers of dozens of artists,” Country Music Association CEO Sarah Trahern said in a statement. “Jerry loved Country Music just as much as he lived it. His reputation preceded him and personally, I remember several times in my career being nervous to get Jerry’s blessing on a project or program. However, I quickly realized his bark was not as bad as I’d imagined. Jerry’s deep passion for our business will be greatly missed. My deepest condolences go out to his friends and family during this difficult time.”
Bradley was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2019, making him the third Bradley to be bestowed with that honor after his father Owen and his uncle Harold.
During his induction speech, Bradley told the audience, “This business has given me a wonderful life. I’m grateful for the people I’ve met, the songs I’ve heard and the part I played.”
Today, two more generations of Bradleys work on Nashville’s Music Row, including Bradley’s son, Clay Bradley (vp at BMI Nashville), grandson John Bradley (creative director at Eclipse Music Group) and granddaughter Lillian Grace Bradley (social media marketing manager at Easy Eye Sound).
Bradley was predeceased by his parents, Owen Bradley and Katherine Bradley; his uncles Harold Bradley, Charlie Bradley and Bobby Bradley; his aunt Ruby Strange; his wife Connie Bradley, and the mother of his two children, Gwynn Hastings Kellam. He is survived by his sister Patsy Bradley; his children Leigh Jankiv (Rob LeBlanc) and Clay Bradley (Sara); his grandchildren Josh Jankiv (Ashley), Eli Jankiv, Emma Jankiv (Matt Acott) John Bradley and Lillian Grace Bradley; and five great-grandchildren.
A celebration of life will be held at Cedar Creek Yacht Club in Mt. Juliet on Sept. 10 at 4 p.m.
Actress and singer Jane Birkin, who made France her home and charmed the country with her English grace, natural style and social activism, has died at age 76.
The London-born star and fashion icon was known for her musical and romantic relationship with French singer Serge Gainsbourg. Their songs notably included the steamy “Je t’aime moi non plus” (“I Love You, Me Neither”). Birkin’s ethereal, British-accented singing voice interlaced with his gruff baritone in the 1969 duet that helped make her famous and was forbidden in Italy after being denounced in the Vatican newspaper.
The style Birkin displayed in the 1960s and early 1970s — long hair with bangs, jeans paired with white tops, knit mini dresses and basket bags — still epitomizes the height of French chic for many women around the world.
Birkin was also synonymous with a Hermes bag that bore her name. Created by the Paris fashion house in 1984 in her honor, the Birkin bag became one of the world’s most exclusive luxury items, with a stratospheric price tag and years-long waiting list to buy it.
In her adopted France, Birkin was also celebrated for her political activism and campaigning for Amnesty International, Myanmar’s pro-democracy movement, the fight against AIDS and other causes.
“You can always do something,” Birkin said in 2001, drumming up support for an Amnesty campaign against torture. “You can say, ‘I am not OK with that.’”
She joined five monks on a march through the Cannes Film Festival in 2008 to demand that Myanmar let foreign aid workers into the country to help cyclone victims.
In 2022, she joined other screen and music stars in France in chopping off locks of their hair in support of protesters in Iran. Charlotte Gainsbourg, Birkin’s daughter with Gainsbourg and also an actor in her own right, cut off a snippet of her mother’s hair for the “HairForFreedom” campaign as Iran was engulfed by anti-government protests.
French President Emmanuel Macron hailed Birkin as a “complete artist,” noting that her soft voice went hand-in-hand with her “ardent” activism.
“Jane Birkin was a French icon because she was the incarnation of freedom, sang the most beautiful words of our language,” he tweeted.
French media reported that Birkin was found dead at her Paris home. The French Culture Ministry tweeted that Birkin died Sunday (July 16). It hailed her as a “timeless Francophone icon.”
Culture Minister Rima Abdul Malak called Birkin “the most French British person” and “the emblem for a whole epoch who never went out of fashion.”
Birkin’s early movie credits included Blow-Up in 1966, credited with helping introduce French audiences to her “Swinging Sixties” style and beauty.
Birkin and Gainsbourg met two years later. She remained his muse even after the couple separated in 1980.
She also had a daughter, Kate, with James Bond composer John Barry. Kate Barry died in 2013 at age 46. Birkin had her third daughter, singer and model Lou Doillon, with French director Jacques Doillon.
Birkin suffered from health issues in recent years that kept her from performing and her public appearances became sparse.
French broadcaster BFMTV said Birkin suffered a mild stroke in 2021, forcing her to cancel shows that year. She canceled her shows again in March due to a broken shoulder blade.
A return to performing was put off in May, with the singer saying she needed a bit more time and promising her fans she would see them again come the fall.
Peter Nero, a Grammy-winning pianist who interpreted pop songs through classical and jazz forms and served as the Philly Pops’ conductor for more than three decades, has died. Nero was 89.
Nero died Thursday (July 6) at Home Care Assisted Living Facility in Eustis, Fla., according to his daughter, Beverly Nero, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Services will be private.
Nero colored his renditions of pop songs — from Cole Porter and George Gershwin to the Beatles and Bob Dylan — with classical, swing, Broadway, blues and jazz melodies. He often called his sound “undefinable” and was not offended when others called it “middle of the road.” (He once told a newspaper, “Middle of the road and doing great business.”)
Recruited by Philadelphia concert promoter Moe Septee, Nero started the Philly Pops orchestra in 1979, the year Arthur Fiedler died. Fiedler is credited with virtually inventing the modern version of the pops orchestra in Boston, and Nero hoped to rival it in popularity.
“I’d like to beat the pants off them,” Nero said at the time.
Nero’s orchestra wasn’t as prominent as Boston’s, but it did tout routine sellouts in Philadelphia, no doubt helped by Nero’s lively playing style and warm stage presence.
In his work as both performer and conductor, Nero returned frequently to Broadway tunes, Hollywood themes and Gershwin, the subject of the Philly Pops’ first concert. But he also dipped into Motown’s catalog and farther afield to bands such as Procol Harum and an album devoted to disco and ’70s love songs.
In 1975, he lamented to The Washington Post: “I find it impossible to use a lot of the new material that’s coming out. There is some rock material in my repertoire … but a lot of rock groups are selling a sound, not music. You take the tune apart and there’s nothing there to work with.”
He led the Philly Pops until 2013, exiting his leadership role when the orchestra said it could no longer afford him.
By his own admission, Nero struggled early in his career — under the name Bernie Nerow — during stints in New York and Las Vegas. But he found his stride in his late 20s playing in New York’s club circuit.
He was signed to RCA by Stan Greeson, who saw a potential star and had him change his name to Peter Nero. A steady stream of early 1960s club shows led to regular radio and TV appearances and two dozen RCA albums over the span of a decade.
Nero earned Grammy Awards in 1961 for best new artist and in 1962 for best performance by an orchestra or instrumentalist for his record “The Colorful Peter Nero.”
A 1963 album, Hail the Conquering Nero, peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard pop album chart. It included versions of “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” and “Mack the Knife.”
He also charted with a version of “Theme from ‘The Summer of ’42,’” a song written by Michel Legrand for the 1971 movie. Nero’s version hit No. 21 on the Billboard pop singles chart.
Nero also wrote the score for the 1963 Jane Fonda film Sunday in New York and made an appearance in the movie.
Born Bernard Nierow in 1934, Nero was raised in Brooklyn. He started taking piano lessons at age 7 and, by age 11, he was said to have been able to play Haydn’s Piano Concerto in D Major from memory. He later won a scholarship to take classes at Juilliard, won several talent contests and graduated from Brooklyn College.
When headlining, Nero disliked having a set list and would pick songs on the spot. The idea of mixing styles and genres carried over to the Philly Pops.
“My programs for the Philly Pops may open with ‘Die Meistersinger,’ then ‘Chariots of Fire,’ then Enesco’s Rumanian Rhapsodies, then a television theme,” Nero told The New York Times in 1982. “I keep going back and forth, and the audience bought it from the beginning.”
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Alan Arkin, the wry character actor who demonstrated his versatility in everything from farcical comedy to chilling drama as he received four Academy Award nominations and won an Oscar in 2007 for Little Miss Sunshine, has died. He was 89.
His sons Adam, Matthew and Anthony confirmed their father’s death through the actor’s publicist on Friday. “Our father was a uniquely talented force of nature, both as an artist and a man,” they said in a statement.
A member of Chicago’s famed Second City comedy troupe, Arkin was an immediate success in movies with the Cold War spoof The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming and peaked late in life with his win as best supporting actor for the surprise 2006 hit Little Miss Sunshine. More than 40 years separated his first Oscar nomination, for The Russians are Coming, from his nomination for playing a conniving Hollywood producer in the Oscar-winning Argo.
In recent years he starred opposite Michael Douglas in the Netflix comedy series The Kominsky Method, a role that earned him two Emmy nominations.
“When I was a young actor people wanted to know if I wanted to be a serious actor or a funny one,” Michael McKean tweeted Friday. ‘I’d answer ‘Which kind is Alan Arkin?’ and that shut them up.”
Arkin once joked to The Associated Press that the beauty of being a character actor was not having to take his clothes off for a role. He wasn’t a sex symbol or superstar, but was rarely out of work, appearing in more than 100 TV and feature films. His trademarks were likability, relatability and complete immersion in his roles, no matter how unusual, whether playing a Russian submarine officer in The Russians Are Coming who struggles to communicate with the equally jittery Americans, or standing out as the foul-mouthed, drug-addicted grandfather in Little Miss Sunshine.
“Alan’s never had an identifiable screen personality because he just disappears into his characters,” director Norman Jewison of The Russians Are Coming once observed. “His accents are impeccable, and he’s even able to change his looks. … He’s always been underestimated, partly because he’s never been in service of his own success.”
While still with Second City, Arkin was chosen by Carl Reiner to play the young protagonist in the 1963 Broadway play Enter Laughing, based on Reiner’s semi-autobiographical novel.
He attracted strong reviews and the notice of Jewison, who was preparing to direct a 1966 comedy about a Russian sub that creates a panic when it ventures too close to a small New England town. In Arkin’s next major film, he proved he could also play a villain, however reluctantly. Arkin starred in Wait Until Dark as a vicious drug dealer who holds a blind woman (Audrey Hepburn) captive in her own apartment, believing a drug shipment is hidden there.
He recalled in a 1998 interview how difficult it was to terrorize Hepburn’s character.
“Just awful,” he said. “She was an exquisite lady, so being mean to her was hard.”
Arkin’s rise continued in 1968 with The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, in which he played a sensitive man who could not hear or speak. He starred as the bumbling French detective in Inspector Clouseau that same year, but the film would become overlooked in favor of Peter Sellers’ Clouseau in the Pink Panther movies.
Arkin’s career as a character actor continued to blossom when Mike Nichols, a fellow Second City alumnus, cast him in the starring role as Yossarian, the victim of wartime red tape in 1970’s Catch-22, based on Joseph Heller’s million-selling novel. Through the years, Arkin turned up in such favorites as Edward Scissorhands, playing Johnny Depp’s neighbor; and in the film version of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross as a dogged real estate salesman. He and Reiner played brothers, one successful (Reiner), one struggling (Arkin), in the 1998 film The Slums of Beverly Hills.
“I used to think that my stuff had a lot of variety. But I realized that for the first twenty years or so, most of the characters I played were outsiders, strangers to their environment, foreigners in one way or another,” he told The Associated Press in 2007.
“As I started to get more and more comfortable with myself, that started to shift. I got one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever gotten from someone a few days ago. They said that they thought my characters were very often the heart, the moral center of a film. I didn’t particularly understand it, but I liked it; it made me happy.”
Other recent credits included Going in Style, a 2017 remake featuring fellow Oscar winners Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman, and The Kominsky Method. He played a Hollywood talent agent and friend of Douglas’ character, a once-promising actor who ran an acting school after his career sputtered.
He also was the voice of Wild Knuckles in the 2022 animated film Minions: The Rise of Gru.
Arkin also directed the film version of Jules Feiffer’s 1971 dark comedy Little Murders and Neil Simon’s 1972 play about bickering old vaudeville partners, The Sunshine Boys. On television, Arkin appeared in the short-lived series Fay and Harry and played a night court judge in Sidney Lumet’s drama series 100 Centre Street on A&E. He also wrote several books for children.
Born in New York City’s borough of Brooklyn, he and his family, which included two younger brothers, moved to Los Angeles when he was 11. His parents found jobs as teachers, but were fired during the post-World War II Red Scare because they were Communists.
“We were dirt poor so I couldn’t afford to go to the movies often,” he told the AP in 1998. “But I went whenever I could and focused in on movies, as they were more important than anything in my life.”
He studied acting at Los Angeles City College; California State University, Los Angeles; and Bennington College in Vermont, where he earned a scholarship to the formerly all-girls school.
He married a fellow student, Jeremy Yaffe, and they had two sons, Adam and Matthew.
After he and Yaffe divorced in 1961, Arkin married actress-writer Barbara Dana, and they had a son, Anthony. All three sons became actors: Adam starred in the TV series “Chicago Hope.”
“It was certainly nothing that I pushed them into,” Arkin said in 1998. “It made absolutely no difference to me what they did, as long as it allowed them to grow.”
Arkin began his entertainment career as an organizer and singer with The Tarriers, a group that briefly rode the folk musical revival wave of the late 1950s. Later, he turned to stage acting, off-Broadway and always in dramatic roles.
At Second City, he worked with Nichols, Elaine May, Jerry Stiller, Anne Meara and others in creating intellectual, high-speed impromptu riffs the fads and follies of the day.
“I never knew that I could be funny until I joined Second City,” he said.