obituary
Page: 24
Gordon Lightfoot, the Canadian singer/songwriter behind the folk hits “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” “Sundown” and “If You Could Read My Mind,” died at age 84 on Monday (May 1), his family has announced.
“Gordon Lightfoot passed away this evening in a Toronto hospital at 7:30 p.m.,” a statement on Lightfoot’s Facebook page announced, promising “more to come.”
Earlier this month, Lightfoot had canceled his upcoming U.S. and Canada tour dates due to health issues. “Gordon Lightfoot announces the cancellation of his U.S. and Canadian concert schedule for 2023,” a statement read at the time. “The singer is currently experiencing some health related issues and is unable to confirm rescheduled dates at this time.”
Lightfoot’s six-decade career began in the early 1960s on the Toronto folk circuit and went worldwide in the 1970s thanks to a string of influential hits. He scored four top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 in the ’70s, starting with “If You Could Read My Mind,” which peaked at No. 5 in 1971. Next up were “Sundown” — his lone No. 1 — and “Carefree Highway” (No. 10), both from 1974’s Sundown — also his only No. 1 album on the Billboard 200.
Finally, there was the most epic song of his catalog, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” which was released in 1976 and peaked at No. 2 on the Hot 100. The song told the story of the fatal sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald a year earlier in Lake Superior, which killed all 29 men aboard the Great Lakes freighter. “They might have split up or they might have capsized/ They may have broke deep and took water/ And all that remains is the faces and the names/ Of the wives and the sons and the daughters,” the poetic lyrics read.
Lightfoot was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2012. He was nominated for four Grammys but never won — best folk performance for Did She Mention My Name (1968), best pop vocal performance, male for “If You Could Read My Mind” (1971) and song of the year and best pop vocal performance, male for “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” (1976).
Lightfoot is survived by his wife, actress Kim Hasse, whom he married in 2011. He had six children from his past relationships, including two previous marriages.
Tim Bachman, guitarist and co-founder of Canadian rock band Bachman-Turner Overdrive, has died at age 71. The news was announced by Bachman’s son, Ryder, on Friday, who wrote in a Facebook post, “My Dad passed this afternoon. Thank You Everyone for the kind words. Grateful I got to spend some time with him at the end. Grab yer loved ones and hug em close, ya never know how long you have.”
In a previous post, Ryder revealed that he got a call from the care unit where his father was staying last Wednesday in which they informed him to pay his final respects after doctors found “cancer riddled all throughout his [Tim’s] brain.”
Tim Bachman co-founded the group commonly referred to as BTO in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1973 with his brothers, singer/guitarist Randy Bachman and drummer Robin Bachman; the latter died in January of this year at age 69. Tim performed on the band’s eponymous album and their breakthrough second collection, Bachman-Turner Overdrive II, which dropped in December of that year and featured two of the band’s most beloved, hard-charging hits, “Let It Ride” and Billboard Hot 100 No. 12 hit “Takin’ Care of Business,” which Tim sang backing vocals on in addition to playing second lead guitar.
His run in the brotherly band would be short-lived, however, as he left in early 1974 shortly after the second album dropped, reportedly due to singer Randy’s strict rules prohibiting drugs, alcohol and premarital sex on the road. He was replaced by Blair Thornton, who played on the band’s third album, 1974’s Not Fragile, which included the No. 1 single “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” and “Roll on Down the Highway.”
After a series of lineup changes — including the departure of singer Randy in 1977 — BTO reunited in 1983 with Randy and Tim leading the charge, with younger brother Robbie declining to participate. They released Bachman-Turner Overdrive in Sept. 1984 and a live album from their stint opening for Van Halen before Randy left again in 1986, which marked the last year of Tim Bachman’s run with the group as well. The group re-re-reformed in 1988 with Randy Bachman again taking lead along with Robbie on drums, but no Tim Bachman.
On Sunday, Ryder Bachman continued paying tribute to his dad, writing “The last words he said were, “I love you Paxton, Share the Music” and so I’ll honour Dad this afternoon by sharing songs, some he’s played a million times on stage; c’mon down and sing em with me, I bet u know the words.”
See Ryder Bachman’s post below.
Rapper MoneySign Suede has died after he was stabbed in a shower at a California prison, authorities and his attorney said.
Jaime Brugada Valdez, 22, of Huntington Park was found in the shower area of the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad State Prison shortly before 10 p.m. Tuesday, according to a statement from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Despite life-saving efforts, he died at a prison medical facility.
The agency didn’t detail his injuries but said his death was being investigated as a homicide.
“They said it was a stabbing to the neck,” Valdez’s attorney, Nicholas Rosenberg, told the Los Angeles Times.
Suede signed to Atlantic Records in 2021 and released his most recent album Parkside Baby in September, the Times said.
The Monterey County prison houses more than 4,000 minimum- and medium-security inmates.
Valdez was sent there after being sentenced in Riverside County in December to serve two years and eight months on two charges of being a convicted felon in possession of a gun, according to state corrections officials.
[embedded content]
Harry Belafonte died on Tuesday morning (April 25) at 96 in his Manhattan home from congestive heart failure. According to the actor, singer and producer’s longtime spokesperson, Ken Sunshine, Belafonte’s wife, Pamela Frank, was by his side, Billboard confirmed.
As news of his death spread, musicians remembered the artist and civil rights activist. John Legend, who spoke about Belafonte after learning of his passing at the Time100 Summit, wrote on Twitter, “I loved Mr Belafonte and I’m so grateful for his revolutionary work and his massive influence on our nation and the world … He worked so hard and did so much. May he get his well-deserved rest.”
Questlove shared a few words on his Instagram account, posting few snapshots from the late star’s lifetime. “Shining example of how to use your platform to make change in the world. Hi$ activi$m was crucial for the civil rights movement. His activism was key in the anti apartheid movement,” The Roots frontman wrote, adding that the late artist “represented many things to us: fun calypso music, iconic acting (I came to know him as #GeechieDan in the iconic #UptownSaturdayNight as a child)—-but most importantly he taught me to think in terms of ‘WE’ not ‘I.’”
Tony Bennett also shared a photo of himself with the “Day-O” singer and recalled the beginning of their friendship. “Met Harry in 1948 and knew then he would be a huge star. More than that, he fought for social justice and equality and never, ever gave up,” he wrote. “Our dearest of friends, he will be deeply missed by myself and so many for all he contributed to the world.”
See reactions to Harry Belafonte’s death, from Patti LaBelle, Bootsy Collins and more below.
I loved Mr Belafonte and I’m so grateful for his revolutionary work and his massive influence on our nation and the world. I found out that he passed just before this interview. He worked so hard and did so much. May he get his well-deserved rest. https://t.co/8NJqNaHGBS— John Legend (@johnlegend) April 25, 2023
The world has just lost a true great. A beautiful man inside and out. Rest peacefully sweet Harry Belafonte. You shall be terribly missed. pic.twitter.com/kOWOkyQSyH— Garbage (@garbage) April 25, 2023
Another brick in our fabric has risen, Mr. Harry Belafonte; 3-1-1927 – 4-25-2023)🙏was an American singer, activist, and actor. His breakthrough album Calypso (1956) was the first million-selling LP by a single artist. Best known for “The Banana Boat Song”. R.I.P.😥Bootsy!!!🏆🫡 pic.twitter.com/zEngkBSb0O— Bootsy Collins (@Bootsy_Collins) April 25, 2023
Harry Belafonte, the actor, producer and singer who made calypso music a national phenomenon with “Day-O” (The Banana Boat Song) and used his considerable stardom to draw attention to civil rights issues and injustices around the world, has died at 96.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Belafonte, the Caribbean-American star who received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in November 2014, died on Tuesday morning (April 25) at his home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan due to congestive heart failure longtime spokesperson Ken Sunshine told the New York Times.
A master at blending pop, jazz and traditional West Indian rhythms, Belafonte released more than 30 albums during his career and received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy from the Recording Academy in 2000.
One of his three albums that charted in the top three in 1956, Calypso, which featured “Day-O” and another hit, “Jamaica Farewell,” topped the Billboard pop list for an incredible 31 weeks and is credited as the first LP to sell 1 million copies. In the late 1950s, Belafonte also made news as a rare non-white sex symbol and matinee idol.
In the Darryl F. Zanuck-produced Island in the Sun (1957), his politician character is romantically pursued by a rich white woman (Joan Fontaine), a storyline that created much controversy (and big box office) at the time.
And in two films released in 1959, he played a bank robber opposite a racist partner (Robert Ryan) in Robert Wise’s Odds Against Tomorrow and survived a nuclear disaster — and then battled Jose Ferrer over Swedish actress Inger Stevens — in The World, the Flesh and the Devil. Both movies were financed by his own company, HarBel Productions.
Following an acclaimed Carnegie Hall two-night stand in April 1959, Belafonte became the first African-American performer to win an Emmy (in 1960) for his Revlon Revue TV special, Tonight With Belafonte.
Belafonte — who found inspiration in such figures as Eleanor Roosevelt and Paul Robeson — helped round up celebrities for the Freedom March on Washington in 1963, when Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his historic “I Have a Dream” speech. Later, he participated in the Alabama march from Selma and Montgomery (archive footage of him appears in the 2014 film Selma), performed in Paris and Stockholm for the first European-sponsored benefit concerts on behalf of King and sat alongside his widow at MLK’s funeral.
Belafonte was a driving force behind the nonprofit organization USA for Africa, which was launched to stamp out famine and spawned the mega-selling single “We Are the World,” which brought together such artists as Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and Ray Charles. A year later, he masterminded the 1986 human-chain campaign Hands Across America, which benefited U.S. poor.
Belafonte, a Kennedy Center honoree in 1989, also was active in efforts to end apartheid in South Africa and to release Nelson Mandela.
“Tonight is no casual encounter for me,” Belafonte said during his Hersholdt acceptance speech. “Along with the trophy of honor, there is another layer that gives this journey this kind of wonderful Hollywood ending. To be rewarded by my peers for my work for human rights and civil rights and for peace — well, let me put this way: It powerfully mutes the enemy’s thunder.”
Harold George Belafonte Jr. was born in the New York on March 1, 1927. While a child, his mother, a cleaning lady, moved the family in 1936 from Harlem to her native Jamaica, where they lived for five years. After returning to New York, he attended George Washington High School but dropped out and enlisted in the U.S. Navy.
After he was discharged, Belafonte found work as a janitor’s assistant but dreamed of becoming an entertainer. For repairing a tenant’s apartment, he received two free tickets to the American Negro Theatre (“The universe opened up for me there,” he said), was accepted there and wound up winning the lead in the Sean O’Casey play Juno and the Paycock.
Belafonte later enrolled in the Actors Studio and Erwin Piscator’s Dramatic Workshop at the New School for Social Research, where his fellow students included Tony Curtis, Walter Matthau, Bea Arthur, Elaine Stritch, Rod Steiger and Marlon Brando. He also began a lifelong friendship with another struggling actor, Sidney Poitier, whose parents were from the Bahamas.
At the New School, Belafonte’s performance of an original song, “Recognition,” won him applause and prompted him to consider a music career. He landed a job singing standards like “Pennies From Heaven” for $70 a week at the Royal Roost, a New York nightclub, and his original two-week contract was extended to 22.
He bought a club in Greenwich Village and gravitated to folk music as the best way to combine his acting and singing talents. He had a three-month gig at the Village Vanguard, made his movie debut as a school principal opposite Dorothy Dandridge in Bright Road (1953) and in 1954 won a Tony Award for his performance in the musical revue John Murray Anderson’s Almanac.
In 1955, Belafonte starred in Otto Preminger’s film adaptation of Oscar Hammerstein’s Carmen Jones, again with Dandridge, and was a Broadway sensation in the song- and dance-filled 3 for Tonight.
After signing with RCA Records, Belafonte released two albums in 1956 that shot him to stardom: Belafonte, which also made it to No. 1 on the Billboard charts, and the West Indian-flavored Calypso. (Mark Twain and Other Folk Favorites, which was released in 1954, leap-frogged to No. 3 that year.)
“When I sing the ‘Banana Boat Song,’ the song is a work song,” Belafonte said in a 2011 interview with NPR. “It’s about men who sweat all day long, and they are underpaid, and they’re begging the tallyman to come and give them an honest count — counting the bananas that I’ve picked, so I can be paid. And sometimes, when they couldn’t get money, they’ll give them a drink of rum.
“There’s a lyric in the song that says, ‘Work all night on a drink of rum.’ People sing and delight and dance and love it, but they don’t really understand unless they study the song that they’re singing a work song that’s a song of rebellion.”
In 1956, Belafonte broke a 39-year record when he attracted a crowd of 25,000 to Lewisohn Stadium, an open-air auditorium on the campus of City College of New York since razed. He played The Palace in New York for 14 weeks and the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles for four, filling the venue to capacity at each performance (he released a live double album from a show there in 1963). And in 1971, Belafonte played a record 16-week engagement at L.A.’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
“When Harry Belafonte strides out of semi-darkness into the spotlight of stage center at the Palace Theatre, the total effect will be theatrical but simple — deceptively simple,” The New York Times wrote in 1959. “The open-necked cotton shirt he wears, the lights which bathe his easy grace, the projected scenery, the musical effects, none of this will be there because of happenstance.”
Belafonte used his clout to bring African-American entertainers into the spotlight by producing The Strollin’ Twenties, a 1966 musical remembrance of Harlem in its heyday for CBS that featured Duke Ellington, Sammy Davis Jr., Diahann Carroll, Nipsey Russell and Joe Williams, and the 1967 ABC project A Time for Laughter, which showcased comics Richard Pryor, Redd Foxx and Moms Mabley.
In 1968, Belafonte appeared with blond, blue-eyed English singer Petula Clark on her NBC special. During one song, Petula touched Belafonte’s forearm — the first time a black man and white woman touched on primetime television, producer-director Steve Binder recalled in a 2004 interview with the Archive of American Television — and that contact ignited a national controversy.
Five months later, Belafonte found himself in the eye of the storm again when, on the season-opening installment of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, he performed an extended calypso medley as news footage of the riotous 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago played on a green screen behind him.
CBS took out the song “and inserted instead a commercial for [Richard] Nixon for president … we were furious,” Tommy Smothers recalled in a 2000 interview. “That piece was never seen on television.”
Belafonte co-starred with Poitier in Buck and the Preacher (1972), a Western that was produced by their respective production companies, and teamed again with his pal in Uptown Saturday Night (1974), this time playing a gang leader.
He played famed football coach Eddie Robinson in the 1981 NBC telefilm Grambling’s White Tiger, was a bigot in White Man’s Burden (1995) and appeared as mobster Seldom Seen in Robert Altman’s Kansas City (1996).
He published a memoir, My Song, in 2011.
Belafonte was married three times — to nurse Marguerite Byrd, dancer Julie Robinson and photographer Pamela Frank, who survives him, as do his daughters Shari, Gina (both actresses) and Adrienne and son David (a producer).
In the NPR interview, he remembered what his mother had told him when he was 5, something that shaped his life forever.
“She was tenacious about her dignity not being crushed,” he said. “And one day she said to me — she was talking about coming back from the day when she couldn’t find work — fighting back tears, she said, ‘Don’t ever let injustice go by unchallenged.’ And that really became a deep part of my life’s DNA. A lot of people say to me, ‘When as an artist did you decide to become an activist?’ I say to them, ‘I was long an activist before I became an artist.’ ”
Duane Byrge contributed to this report.
Singer and guitarist Otis Redding III, the son and namesake of the legendary 1960s soul singer, has died from cancer at age 59, his family said Wednesday.
Redding was just 3 years old when his father, Otis Redding, perished along with several band members in a plane crash on Dec. 10, 1967. More than a decade later, the younger Redding and his brother, Dexter, formed the funk band The Reddings, which recorded six albums in the 1980s.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
“It is with heavy hearts that the family of Otis Redding III confirms that he lost his battle with cancer last evening,” said his sister, Karla Redding-Andrews, in a statement posted on the Facebook page of the Otis Redding Foundation, the family’s charity in Macon.
Though singles “Remote Control” and “Call The Law” by The Reddings made appearances on the Billboard music charts, the Redding brothers never matched their father’s success. Redding continued playing and performing after the band recorded its final album in 1988.
He was once hired for a European tour as guitarist for soul singer Eddie Floyd, under whose guidance the younger Redding became comfortable performing “(Sittin’ On) the Dock of the Bay” and other songs of his famous father.
“He said, `You can play guitar with me, but you’re going to have to sing a few of your dad’s songs,‘” Redding recalled in a 2018 interview with WCSH-TV in Portland, Maine. “I was like, `Huh? I don’t sing,’ you know. And he was like, `Well, you’re going to sing “Dock of the Bay” with me tonight.’”
Redding worked with his family’s foundation to organize summer camps that teach children to play music, and served as board president for the local chapter of Meals on Wheels.
He continued to perform his father’s songs for audiences large and small, according to his website, from appearing onstage at Carnegie Hall for a 2018 Otis Redding tribute concert to singing at weddings and private parties. Redding said he was grateful for the enduring legacy even if it overshadowed efforts to make music of his own.
“No matter how hard I try to do my own thing, you know, it’s like … ‘sing one of your daddy’s songs,’” he told the Maine TV station. “So I go ahead and do what people want, and I live with it. But I’m not under any pressure and I don’t put myself mentally under any pressure to go begging for record deals.”
Five months after his tragic passing, Aaron Carter‘s cause of death was made public on Tuesday (April 18).
The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner ruled the former child star’s death accidental, stating that he drowned in the bathtub at his home in Lancaster, Calif., after inhaling difluoroethane and taking alprazolam.
According to reporting by both People and TMZ, the deadly combination of the gas, typically used in cans of compressed air, and the generic version of Xanax caused Carter to become “incapacitated while in the bathtub” and eventually slip below the surface of the water while under the influence.
At the time of his death, the singer’s older brother, Backstreet Boys star Nick Carter, posted an emotional and devastating memorial to him, writing, “My heart is broken. Even though my brother and I have had a complicated relationship, my love for him has never ever faded. I have always held on to the hope that he would somehow, someday want to walk a healthy path and eventually find the help that he so desperately needed…God, Please take care of my baby brother.” Nick Carter has since launched a mental health fund in Aaron’s memory as well.
Other tributes honoring Carter poured in across social media from everyone from Hilary Duff — whom he dated briefly in the early 2000s — and New Kids on the Block to Paris Hilton, Christy Carlson Romano, Melissa Joan Hart and more. Controversy erupted among the onetime teen heartthrob’s fanbase when he was left out of the “In Memoriam” segment at the 2023 Grammy Awards just a few months later.
Influential jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal has died at age 92. The New York Times reported that Jamal died at his home in Ashley Falls, MA on Sunday April 16) due to prostate cancer.
A beloved piano player and composer, Jamal’s unique sound influenced fellow jazz greats Miles Davis and McCoy Tyner, as well as a generation of crate-digging hip-hop lyricists and producers who sampled his music, including J Dilla (who snagged Jamal’s 1974 tune “Swahililand” for De La Soul’s “Stakes Is High”), Nas (“The World is Yours”) and DJ Premiere (for Gang Starr’s “Soliloquy of Chaos”) among many others.
Renowned for a light touch that favored lyricism over a barrage of notes — in contrast to the heady, sometimes hectic sound of bebop that ruled when he began playing as a teen in the 1940s — Jamal sought to create more space with a style that has been credited as one of the most admired in the genre’s history.
After getting his start performing as Fritz Jones in the late 1940s, Jamal began to develop what the Times described as a “laid-back, accessible style, with its dense chords, its wide dynamic range and above all its judicious use of silence,” which led to some dismissive, negative reviews from the jazz press early on, including writer Martin Williams describing his sound as “chic and shallow.”
That criticism would not stick, however, as more and more jazz greats began to cite Jamal as an inspiration, including Herbie Hancock and Keith Jarrett. Legendary trumpeter Davis — who became a friend and who later recorded Jamal’s songs — once said “all my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal,” the paper noted.
Jamal was born Frederick Russell Jones in Pittsburgh, PA on July 2, 1930 and began playing piano at an early age, going pro at 14 and hitting on the road in 1948 with George Hudson’s Orchestra after graduating from high school. A move to Chicago in 1950 brought more work, as well as a conversion to Islam that birthed Jones’ new stage name. His piano-guitar-bass trio, the Three Strings, caught the ear of legendary producer/talent scout John Hammond, who signed them to Okeh record label, which launched a long and fruitful recording career for more than a dozen labels.
Jamal first full-length album, Ahmad Jamal Plays, was released on the Parrot label in 1955 — and later rereleased on Chess Records under a different name — and featured the original track “New Rhumba” and covers of such jazz standards as George and Ira Gershwin’s “A Foggy Day” and “It Ain’t Necessarily So” and Cole Porter’s “All of You.”
It was 1958’s live album, At the Pershing: But Not for Me, which was recorded at the famed Chicago nightclub, however, that introduced the world to Jamal’s sound. The record spent more than two years on the Billboard 200 album chart, a rare feat for a jazz album. The album collection featured the pianist’s best-known track, his energetic take on the standard “Poinciana.”
Over the course of his career Jamal would release more than 60 albums and earn a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master award, as well as lifetime achievement honor from the Grammy Awards and a Living Jazz Legend designation from the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts.
Jamal continued to perform and record well into his 80s, releasing his final album, the mostly solo piano collection Ballades, in 2019, which included a solo version of “Poinciana” that served as a poignant bookend to a prodigious, acclaimed career that also included the founding of several record labels and the short-lived Alhambra jazz club in Chicago. Two double-disc compilations of previously unreleased live recordings in Seattle, Emerald City Nights: Live at the Penthouse (1963-1964) and the sequel, (1965-66), were released last year.
Listen to the Jamal Trio perform “But Not For Me” and “Poinciana” below.
Lasse Wellander, longtime guitarist for ABBA, has died at 70, the band confirmed in a statement on Monday (April 10). A second statement was posted to Wellander’s official Facebook page, and revealed that he passed away on Friday, April 7, due to cancer.
“Lasse was a dear friend, a fun guy and a superb guitarist. The importance of his creative input in the recording studio as well as his rock solid guitar work on stage was immense,” band members Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Frida (Anni-Frid) Lyngstad wrote in an Instagram post featuring the late guitarist.
ABBA concluded its Instagram statement by adding, “We mourn his tragic and premature death and remember the kind words, the sense of humour, the smiling face, the musical brilliance of the man who played such an integral role in the ABBA story. He will be deeply missed and never forgotten.”
A statement on the late artist’s Facebook page was also remembered the guitarist. “It is with indescribable sadness that we have to announce that our beloved Lasse has fallen asleep. Lasse recently fell ill in what turned out to be spread cancer and early on Good Friday he passed away, surrounded by his loved ones,” the message read. “You were an amazing musician and humble as few, but above all you were a wonderful husband, father, brother, uncle and grandfather. Kind, safe, caring and loving … and so much more, that cannot be described in words. A hub in our lives, and it’s unbelievable that we now have to live on without you.”
While Wellander was not a part of ABBA’s core lineup, he served as the group’s lead guitarist for decades, starting in 1974, and played on several of ABBA’s recordings, live concerts and tours in 1975, 1977, 1979 and 1980. Most recently, Wellander’s guitar playing appeared on ABBA’s 2021 album, Voyage, which hit No. 2 on the Billboard 200.
Wellander also had a series of musical endeavors outside of ABBA, first dating back to 1968 and his teenage years while playing in Peps & Blues Quality, which later reformed to become Nature with Mats Ronander as its singer and harmonica player. (When Nature disbanded in 1977, Wellander and Ronander teamed up to form Wellander & Ronander.)
Other groups the guitarist played in included Zkiffz (1980), Little Mike and the Sweet Soul Music Band (1983–1986), Stockholm All Stars (1985–1988), Low Budget Blues Band (1983–1994) and the Vikings (2004). Wellander recorded solo music of his own through the 1970s to 1990s, and went on a hiatus of making his own material until 2017, when he released multiple singles and an album, Lasse Wellander 2017/2018. His latest solo release was single “O Come, All Ye Faithful” in November of 2022.
Actor and singer Julián Figueroa, the son of the late Mexican music icon Joan Sebastian and actress Maribel Guardia, died on Sunday (April 9) in Mexico City. He was 28.
“It saddens me to announce the passing of my beloved son Julián Figueroa, who has unfortunately preceded us in parting from this level,” Guardia posted on her Instagram account.
Guardia said Figueroa was found unconscious in his room while she was at the theater. “They called 911 and when the ambulance and police arrived, they found him already lifeless, with no traces of violence. The medical report indicates that he died of an acute myocardial infarction and ventricular fibrillation,” she said.
Guardia added that the funeral services will be held privately, and asked that the family’s privacy be respected at this painful moment.
Just a day before, Figueroa had published a heartfelt tribute to his father, who would have turned 72 on Saturday.
“How slowly 8 years have gone by, since the day you left time tastes more bitter. And people proclaim that time is a fix for everything, but this is a vile lie, it hurts more every day, and this is without fear of hurting sensibilities,” the artist wrote on his social networks, next to a photo of himself as a child, with his father. “The fans cry LONG LIVE THE PEOPLE’S POET, but I don’t give a damn, I ONLY LOVE MY DAD.”
Figueroa was known for songs such as “Pídeme,” “Volaré,” “Cómo Olvidar” and “Necesito de Ti,” among others. According to El Universal newspaper, he had finished recording his first solo album and was preparing its release. His last stint as an actor was in the Televisa-Univision telenovela Mi Camino Es Amarte.
He is the third of Sebastian’s eight children to pass away. The first was Trigo Figueroa, who was murdered in 2006 by fans of his father who insisted on entering the singer’s dressing room; and the second was Juan Sebastián, also murdered in 2010 outside a bar where he apparently had an argument with local security staff.
In addition to his mother, Julián Figueroa is survived by his wife, Ime Garza; his 6-year-old son, José Julián; and his siblings José Manuel, Juliana, Zarelea, Marcelina and Joana.
Read Maribel Guardia’s full statement below: