obituary
Page: 32
Charlie Gracie, an early rockabilly singer and guitarist who influenced a generation of 1960s rock stars has died at 86. The news of his passing on Dec. 16 was confirmed by ABKCO Records, which is home to the catalog of Cameo Records, the Philadelphia label that Gracie recorded his biggest hits for; at press time no cause of death was announced.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
The South Philadelphia native born Charles Antony Graci on May 14, 1936 who was discovered by Cadillac Records owner Graham Prince after the then 15-year-old singer performed on a local radio show, leading to a series of early singles (“Rockin’ ‘n’ Rollin’,” “Boogie Woogie Blues,” “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter”) and a deal with Cameo, which released his breakthrough 1957 Billboard No. 1 pop chart hit and signature tune, the rockabilly burner “Butterfly.”
The song led to tours with Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, the Everly Brothers, Bo Diddley and Eddie Cochran, as well as a starring role in the 1957 musical romance Jamboree as himself. The hits continued apace, with late 1950s charting tracks including “Fabulous,” “Ninety-Nine Ways” and “Cool Baby,” charting in the U.S. and England, where Gracie would take his place as an early influence on a generation of soon-to-be global superstars.
According to the artist’s bio, “Charlie’s star burned even brighter in Great Britain where he became the first solo American artist to bring rock & roll to the English concert stage. Preceded only by Bill Haley and the Comets, Charlie headlined London’s Palladium and Hippodrome — receiving outstanding receptions from the press and public.”
As a testament to his enduring influence, in 2011 ABKCO Records released For the Love of Charlie!, an all-star compilation produced by Al Kooper and featuring such fans as Graham Nash and Herman’s Hermits singer Peter Noone. Paul McCartney covered Gracie’s “Butterfly” follow-up single, “Fabulous,” in 1999 on his Run Devil Run early rock covers album, 30 years after Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page recorded his own version with Zep bassist John Paul Jones and guitarist Albert Lee, among others.
Following his run on Cameo, Gracie cycled through a series of smaller label homes and kept touring for the next 50+ years, including opening a handful of dates for Van Morrison on his 2000 U.S. West coast tour and releasing his last album, Angel on My Shoulder, in 2015. Gracie was also the subject of a PBS documentary, Fabulous!, in 2007.
Listen to 1957’s “Butterfly” below.
Drummer Dino Danelli, an original member of 1960s New Jersey rock group The Rascals has died at 78. His death was confirmed by Rascals archivist and friend Joe Russo on Danelli’s Facebook page, where Russo wrote, “To know Dino, you must understand that art was his life. Art, music and film consumed his mind and his heart. He was an insomniac, sometimes staying awake for days, because he was always writing, reading, painting, drawing, watching films. He was beyond private and for someone who many consider one of the greatest drummers of all time, humble to a fault.”
Russo said the drummer who manned the kit for the Rascals from 1965-1971 — and also performed with E Street Band member and solo rocker “Little” Steven Van Zandt’s Disciples of Soul from 1982-1984 — was the “most private person I knew.” While he did not disclose a cause of death, Russo wrote that Danelli was “acutely disappointed” about the “abrupt” conclusion of the Rascals’ 2013 “Once Upon a Dream” reunion tour and he noted that after it fell apart the timekeeper was “almost obsessed” with trying to find a way to “keep the ball rolling” as his health began to decline.
“When this project attempt failed, it seemed Dino’s intense artistic spirit began to drift away,” Russo wrote of the musician who was born in Jersey City on July 23, 1944 and formed the Young Rascals with singer Eddie Brigati, keyboardist Felix Cavaliere and guitarist Gene Cornish in 1964.
“Around this time in 2017, I noticed subtle changes in his movements and ability to walk steady. One day, he asked me to pick him up from a doctor’s visit. We returned to his apartment where he began indicating to me certain wishes he would like honored after his passing,” Russo continued. “It wasn’t alarming for a man his age to do so, but it seemed unusually sudden and out of left field.”
With his musical ventures drying up, Russo said Danelli’s desire and ability “to do the creative things he loved suddenly began dissipating. He stopped being ‘Dino.’ Almost overnight it seemed, a huge aspect of the the tremendous personality I knew since I was a teenager virtually began to vanish.” Russo said Danelli ended up in a hospital and then checked out in Dec. 2019, only to return in early 2022 to a rehab center where his condition quickly deteriorated.
“He’d spend every day there until his passing,” Russo explained. “His primary challenges were coronary artery disease and congestive heart failure, but there were many others. He had already required an angioplasty over a decade earlier.” (Read the full Facebook post here.)
Driven by Danelli’s swinging, high-energy drum sound, the Young Rascals (as they were originally known) scored nine Billboard Hot 100 singles, including their signature No. 1 1966 recording of Rudy Clark and Arthur Resnick’s “Good Lovin’,” as well as the 1967 No. 1 “Groovin’,” and 1968’s chart-topping civil rights anthem “People Got to Be Free,” written by Brigati and Cavaliere in the wake of the murders of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. The band — who shortened their name to just The Rascals in 1968 as they moved away from their more eclectic garage soul vibe to a more psychedelic sound — was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.
After the departure of Brigati and Cornish in the early 1970s, Danelli and Cavaliere carried on and released two more albums to diminishing returns before breaking up in 1971. Danelli formed the group Bulldog with Cornish that year and the duo released a pair of albums before breaking up three years later. Danelli then bounced around, playing with Mountain’s Leslie West and the short-lived power pop act Fotomaker before joining Van Zandt’s band in the early 1980s and playing on the groups first two records, 1982’s Men Without Women and 1984’s Voice of America.
The Rascals reformed in 1988 briefly, with all four original members on hand for their Rock Hall induction in 1997 and then again for a run of shows entitled “One Upon a Dream” in 2012-2013 — which was co-produced and co-written by Van Zandt — before taking that show on the road for a North American run. In a Facebook message, Cornish wrote, “It is with a broken heart that I must tell you of the passing of Dino Danelli. He was my brother and the greatest drummer I’ve ever seen. I am devastated at this moment. Rest In Peace Dino I love you brother.”
Van Zandt also paid tribute, tweeting, “RIP Dino Danelli. One of the greatest drummers of all time. Rascals 1965-1971. Disciples Of Soul 1982-1984. On Broadway at the Richard Rodgers Theater in Once Upon A Dream 2013.” While heartbroken over the inability to carry one with the Rascals, Russo said Danelli continued to work with him on video, art and photography projects as well as writing, recording and producing “entire albums worth of songs together” that have not been released.
“He was the epitome of ‘cool’ and never ceased to impress me with his seemingly endless reservoir of ideas and approaches,” Russo said of his friend and collaborator. “The word ‘artist’ is so commonly used to describe even the slightest level of self expression, but let me assure you Dino Danelli possessed a mindset, a creative philosophy and a set of skills as profound as any of the great artists you’ve ever read about.”
Watch the Young Rascals performing “Good Lovin’” on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1966 below.
Shirley Eikhard, songwriter of Bonnie Raitt‘s 1991 hit “Something to Talk About,” has died at 67, her publicist announced on Thursday (Dec. 15). The musician passed away at the Orangeville Hospital in Ontario, Canada, surrounded by family.
The New Brunswick born singer-songwriter first rose to prominence during the ’70s. At age 15, Eikhard’s song “It Takes Time” was recorded by country singer Anne Murray in 1971, and later became a hit in her native Canada. Eikhard released her self-titled debut album the following year in 1972.
Several songs of Eikhard’s would go on to be covered by popular musicians, most notably Bonnie Raitt and Cher. The singer-songwriter struck gold after penning “Something to Talk About” in the ’80s.
Raitt released the song as the first single from her 1991 album, Luck of the Draw. The track was a hit and spent a total of 20 weeks on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100 hit, peaking at No. 5 on the tally. The tune would ultimately win Raitt the best pop vocal performance, female award at the 1991 Grammy Awards, and was also nominated in the record of the year category.
For Cher, Eikhard’s track “Born With the Hunger” would be rerecorded and released for the singer’s 2000 album Not Commercial. Eikhard also wrote “Lovers Forever” with Cher for the 1994 film Interview With the Vampire; the track is featured on Cher’s 2013 studio album Closer to the Truth.
Eikhard’s songwriting ability earned her two JUNO Awards for best country female artist in 1973 and 1974. “Something to Talk About” led to her induction into the Canadian Songwriter’s Hall of Fame in October 2020.
Angelo Badalamenti, the acclaimed David Lynch composer who went from teaching in junior high school in Brooklyn to creating haunting, ethereal music for the filmmaker’s Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive, has died. He was 85.
Badalamenti died Sunday of natural causes surrounded by family at his home in Lincoln Park, New Jersey, his niece Frances Badalamenti told The Hollywood Reporter.
The classically trained composer also collaborated with an eclectic mix of singers in virtually every genre during his long career, from Nina Simone, Nancy Wilson, Shirley Bassey, Patti Austin, David Bowie, Paul McCartney, Marianne Faithfull, Liza Minnelli, Mel Tillis and Roberta Flack to Pet Shop Boys, Anthrax, Dolores O’Riordan, Tim Booth and LL Cool J.
Badalamenti composed the theme music for ABC’s Twin Peaks, NBC’s Profiler and Bravo’s Inside the Actors Studio, and for the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona, his “Torch Theme” during the opening ceremony accompanied an archer’s flaming arrow that ignited the Olympic cauldron.
When Lynch needed a vocal coach for actress Isabella Rossellini on Blue Velvet (1986), then filming in North Carolina, he turned to Badalamenti, who had developed a reputation for working with singers.
“I met with Isabella and after a couple of hours with a piano and a little cassette recorder, we got a decent vocal [on the Bobby Vinton song ‘Blue Velvet’],” he recalled in a 2015 interview for Spirit & Flesh magazine. “So we go over to the set where David is shooting the last scene. … He puts on the earphones, listens to the recording and says, ‘Peachy keen. That’s the ticket!’”
Badalamenti was tasked to write another tune — Lynch told him, “Oh, just let it float like the tides of the ocean, make it collect space and time, timeless and endless” — and that became the memorable torch song “Mysteries of Love,” performed by Julee Cruise, who was recruited by the composer.
Lynch turned over all the music for Blue Velvet to Badalamenti, who went on to collaborate with the filmmaker on Twin Peaks — he created themes for several characters in the 1989-91 drama — Wild at Heart (1990), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), Lost Highway (1997), The Straight Story (1999) and Mulholland Drive (2001).
“I sit with Angelo and talk to him about a scene and he begins to play those words on the piano,” Lynch told The New York Times in 2005 in explaining how the duo made music. “Sometimes we would even get together and make stuff up on the piano, and before you know it that leads to the idea for a scene or a character.
“When we started working together, we had an instant kind of a rapport — me not knowing anything about music but real interested in mood and sound effects. I realized a lot of things about sound effects and music working with Angelo, how close they are to one another.”
Added Badalamenti: “David’s visuals are very influenced by the music. The tempo of music helps him set the tempo of the actors and their dialogue and how they move. He would sit next to me at a keyboard describing what he was thinking as I would improvise the score. Almost all of Twin Peaks was written without me seeing a single frame, at least in the pilot.”
Badalamenti said he would often come to Lynch’s set and play live music during filming so the actors “could feel the mood.”
In 1990, Badalamenti received a Grammy Award for his evocative Twin Peaks theme and three Emmy nominations for his work on the series. The show’s soundtrack album went gold in 25 countries.
About that Twin Peaks music — which Badalamenti composed on an old Fender Rhodes electric piano — Michael Tedder wrote in 2017 in Esquire: “Together they created a score that was often as serene and beautiful as the images of the waterfall that we see in the opening credits — but one that could quickly go to a macabre place. Music oozed out of every pore of the show, whether we were watching The Man From Another Place dance, checking out a performance at the Roadhouse or discovering Laura Palmer’s body, wrapped in plastic.”
Badalamenti was born in Brooklyn on March 22, 1937, and raised in the Bensonhurst section of the borough. His father, from Sicily, owned a fish market. An uncle, Vinnie Badale, played trumpet with bandleaders Benny Goodman and Harry James.
When Badalamenti was young, there was one song, Irving Berlin’s “What’ll I Do,” that always brought him to tears, and he played it over and over.
As a teenager, he played piano and French horn in the Lafayette High School orchestra before attending the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, on a full scholarship. After two years there, he graduated from the Manhattan School of Music with his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in 1960.
During summers in his college years, he accompanied singers at resorts in the Catskill Mountains. “I had to play a lot of the standards, so I learned quite a wide range of music,” he said in a 2019 interview with his niece. “I had to learn them very quickly, and learning so many different types of music was a tremendous help later on in my career.”
While teaching music to seventh-graders during his fifth year at Dyker Heights Junior High in Brooklyn, he composed a Christmas musical for his students that wound up being telecast in 1964 by PBS station WNET.
That led to a job at a music publisher, and Badalamenti (then going by the pen name Andy Badale) would arrange and write songs for artists including Bassey.
He advertised for a lyricist in magazines and newspapers and connected with John Clifford, and they wrote the songs “Hold No Grudge” and “He Ain’t Comin’ Home No More,” which he blindly pitched and then sold to Simone. She recorded both as well as 1969’s “Another Spring,” which one critic noted is “as rousing and moving a song as you’ll find in the singer’s repertoire.”
Badalamenti also wrote with Frank Stanton “Face It Girl, It’s Over,” recorded by Wilson in 1968, and collaborated with French electronic music pioneer Jean-Jacques Perrey on tracks including 1970’s “E.V.A.,” which would be sampled by Fatboy Slim, A Tribe Called Quest and others.
He even wrote a country song — with Norman Mailer, no less — “You’ll Come Back (You Always Do),” recorded by Tillis for the 1987 film Tough Guys Don’t Dance.
His first job in the movies was composing the score for the Harlem-set Gordon’s War (1973), directed by Ossie Davis. Badalamenti said Davis was all set to hire Barry White before he listened to his music.
He then scored the crime drama Law and Disorder (1974), directed by the Czech-born Ivan Passer, but wouldn’t work on another film until Blue Velvet.
Badalamenti, Lynch and Cruise also collaborated on two albums, 1989’s Floating Into the Night (the unofficial soundtrack to Twin Peaks) and 1993’s The Voice of Love, and a 1990 avant-garde concert piece called Industrial Symphony No. 1, which featured Wild at Heart stars Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern. He and Lynch also recorded a jazz album, Thought Gang, in the early ’90s.
Lynch fans also know Badalamenti as the espresso-obsessed gangster Luigi Castigliane in Mulholland Drive. (He also was seen at the piano during Rossellini’s “Blue Velvet” performance.)
The composer worked with other top-notch directors, including Paul Schrader on The Comfort of Strangers (1990), Forever Mine (1999), Auto Focus (2002) and Dominion (2005); Jean-Pierre Jeunet on The City of Lost Children (1995) and A Very Long Engagement (2004); Jane Campion on Holy Smoke (1999); Danny Boyle on The Beach (2000); Eli Roth on Cabin Fever (2002); Walter Salles on Dark Water (2005); and Fedor Bondarchuk on Stalingrad (2014).
His music also is heard on Weeds (1987), A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989), Cousins (1989), Naked in New York (1993), Arlington Road (1999), Secretary (2002), The Wicker Man (2006) and A Late Quartet (2012).
Badalamenti was honored for lifetime achievement at the 2008 World Soundtrack Awards, then received the prestigious Henry Mancini Award from ASCAP, presented by Lynch, three years later.
In addition to his niece, survivors include his wife, Lonny, an artist whom he married in 1968, and his daughter, Danielle.
In his Spirit & Flesh interview (and in this great 2018 video), Badalamenti describes how he and Lynch came up with “Laura Palmer’s Theme”:
“David came to my little office across from Carnegie Hall and said, ‘I have this idea for a show, ‘Northwest Passage.’ … He sat next to me at the keyboard and said, ‘I haven’t shot anything, but it’s like you are in a dark woods with an owl in the background and a cloud over the moon and sycamore trees are blowing very gently …’
“I started to press the keys for the opening chord to ‘Twin Peaks Love Theme,’ because it was the sound of that darkness. He said, ‘A beautiful troubled girl is coming out of the woods, walking toward the camera …’ I played the sounds he inspired. ‘And she comes closer and it reaches a climax and …’ I continued with the music as he continued the story. ‘And from this, we let her go back into the dark woods.’
“The notes just came out. David was stunned, as was I. The hair on his arms was up and he had tears in his eyes: ‘I see Twin Peaks. I got it.’ I said, ‘I’ll go home and work on it.’ ‘Work on it?! Don’t change a note.’ And of course I never did.”
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
Georgia Holt, the seven times-married mother of Cher who spent time as a model, actress and singer-songwriter, has died, her daughter announced Saturday night (Dec. 10) on Twitter. She was 96.
“Mom is gone,” Cher wrote.
A rep for the Oscar-winning singer-actress confirmed Holt’s death to The Hollywood Reporter on Sunday morning. No details of Holt’s death were immediately available.
Holt appeared briefly in such films as A Life of Her Own (1950), Grounds for Marriage (1951), Father’s Little Dividend (1951) and Artists and Models (1955) and on TV shows like The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and, as a “Jacques Marcel” model, on I Love Lucy (in the hilarious 1956 episode “Lucy Gets a Paris Gown”).
Holt was offered a contract by Columbia Records, and in 1980 recorded an album, Honky Tonk Woman, backed by members of Elvis Presley’s band. It included a duet with Cher, “I’m Just Your Yesterday”; covers of “Love Me Tender” and “Cryin’ Time”; and original tunes written by Holt.
“I know that a record company might want to sign me just because I’m Cher’s mother,” she told People magazine in 1978. “I’d like to have a career, but I’m not going to be a novelty or a flash in the pan. A lot of people say I can do it.”
However, the album was not released until spring 2013, shortly after the master tapes were rediscovered in Holt’s garage. Cher took the tapes to her musical director, Paul Mirkovich of The Voice, and “he went in and took it all apart and put all new music in it,” she told Jay Leno on The Tonight Show. “Basically, we just kept Mom’s voice and put everything else new on it.”
Also in 2013, mother and daughter appeared (with Cher’s half-sister, actress Georganne La Piere) in the Mother’s Day Lifetime documentary Dear Mom, Love Cher.
A year later, Holt appeared as a guest judge alongside her grandson Chaz Bono on Logo TV’s RuPaul’s Drag Race.
Holt was born Jackie Jean Crouch on June 9, 1926, in Kensett, Arkansas. Her mother was just 13 at the time and her father, a baker and an alcoholic, wasn’t much older.
“When I was little I was a singer,” she said in a 2013 interview. “When I was 7, my father used to put me up on top of the old-fashioned bars. They used to have sawdust on the floor and spittoons. It was during the Depression. We had no money and no food — well, we got beans, but that was it.”
She performed with bandleader Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys at age 10 and then hitchhiked to California with her dad and her brother. She once said that she had attended 17 different junior high schools growing up.
While working in a doughnut shop in Fresno, California, she met truck driver John Sarkisian, and soon they were off to Reno, Nevada, to be married.
“I left him the day after [the wedding],” she told People. “I knew I didn’t want to be married. But he told me to try it for three months, and if I didn’t like it, then I could walk out. Well, before three months was out, I was pregnant with Cher.”
Cherilyn Sarkisian was born on May 20, 1946, in El Centro, California, and spent some time in a Catholic orphanage, where nuns urged her mother to give up her baby for adoption, but Holt wouldn’t do it.
Holt won several singing and beauty competitions and worked as a model as she made her way to Hollywood. She said that she was given a part in John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle (1950), but her agent called to say she was being replaced by Marilyn Monroe.
Holt was married three times by the time she was 21. Her husbands were Sarkisian, John Southall, Joseph Harper Collins, Chris Alcaide, banker Gilbert La Pierre (who adopted Cher and Georganne), Sarkisian again and Hamilton Holt.
She also had a recent and longtime relationship with former antiques dealer Craig Spencer.
This article originally appeared on The Hollywood Reporter.
Tina Turner is mourning a loss in her family. The singer’s youngest son, Ronnie Turner — whom she shared with late ex-husband Ike Turner — died at age 62 on Thursday (Dec. 8).
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
TMZ was the first to report the news, stating that police received a call that he was not breathing and later arrived on the scene to revive him with CPR, but were unsuccessful.
Following the news of the tragedy, the veteran singer took to Facebook to share a simple yet heartfelt message honoring her son’s memory that read, “Ronnie, you left the world far too early. In sorrow I close my eyes and think of you, my beloved son.”
Ronnie’s wife, Afida Turner, also expressed her grief on social media and posted a series of pictures of him in a carousel posted that she captioned: “MY GOD RONNIE TURNER A TRUE ANGEL HIUGE SOUL HIGHLY SPIRITUAL MY HUSBAND MY BEST FRIEND MY BABY IYOUR MUMMY YOUR NURSE I DID THE BEST TO THE END THIS TIME I WAS NO ABLE TO SAVE YOU LOVE U FOR THIS 17 YEARS THIS IS VERY VERY VERY BAD I AM VERY MAD THIS IS A TRAGEDY U WITH YOUR BROTHER CRAIG AND YOUR FATHER IKE TURNER AND ALINE REST IN PARADISE SO UNFAIR.”
Ronnie, full name Ronnie Rennelle Turner, was the youngest of four children that Tina Turner had with ex-husband and former collaborator Ike Turner. The pair welcomed Ronnie on Oct. 27, 1960. Born into a musical family, Ronnie assumed his parents’ talents and played bass in Manufactured Funk with songwriter and musician Patrick Moten, as well as in his parents’ bands. He married French singer Afida in 2007.
While Ronnie’s cause of death is currently unclear, he has had a history of health issues throughout the year, including cancer. Turner’s eldest son Craig, whom Ike adopted once they married, died by suicide in 2018.
Jet Black, one of the co-founders and the original drummer in beloved British new wave/punk band The Stranglers has died at 84. “It is with heavy hearts we announce the passing of our dear friend, colleague and band elder statesman Jet Black,” the band wrote in a statement on Thursday (Dec. 8). “Jet died peacefully at home surrounded by his family. Fond adieu, fly straight JB.”
In a lengthy tribute, the band said that Black (born Brian John Duffy on Aug. 26, 1938 in Essex, England) died on Tuesday (Dec. 6) of unspecified causes. “As the ‘elder statesmen’ of the group, Jet was already a successful businessman in the Guildford area when The Stranglers formed in 1974,” they wrote. “Jet owned a fleet of ice cream vans, one of which, as many fans will fondly remember, was used to tour the UK in the early years. Jet also owned an off licence, the upstairs apartment of which doubled as ‘Stranglers HQ’ in the early days.”
The group credited Black with keeping the beat on 23 top 40 singles in the UK, as well as 19 top 40 albums on the official UK charts thanks to his jazz-influenced style on such beloved hits as “Golden Brown,” “Patches” and “No More Heroes.” Just years after forming, the band became a vital part of the UK punk and new wave scenes, making their bones supporting American punks such as the Ramones and Patti Smith on their UK tours.
The Stranglers’ lone remaining original member, bassist/co-frontman JJ Burnel said, “The welcoming committee has doubled. After years of ill health Jet has finally been released. He was a force of nature. An inspiration. The Stranglers would not have been if it wasn’t for him. The most erudite of men. A rebel with many causes. Say hi to Dave for me.” The band’s former keyboardist/vocalist, Dave Greenfield, died in 2020.
Black retired from touring and performing live with the Stranglers in 2015 due to complications from respiratory issues that had dogged him since childhood and which had caused him to take a series of health-related pauses from touring in the early and mid-200s. “Despite difficulties in performing towards the end of his career, Jet’s charismatic charm resonated with fans who would endlessly chant his name as he took his place at the drums,” they wrote.
In addition to his steady-on drumming, Black also wrote two books about the band’s notorious 1980 arrest in Nice, France for allegedly inciting a riot, 1981’s Much Ado About Nothing and 2010’s Seven Days in Nice.
See the band’s tweet and other tributes below.
RIP Jet Black drummer and co founder of The Stranglers. As young punks we saw them play many times. Jet was always the solid foundation of the band.— Lol Tolhurst (@LolTolhurst) December 9, 2022
The backbone of The Stranglers’ rhythm.Rest in peace Jet Black, drummer and co-founder of pivotal proto-punk band The Stranglers. Thank you for so many classics 🖤 pic.twitter.com/bp820x0VvZ— Rough Trade (@RoughTrade) December 9, 2022
Peter Cooper, a Grammy-nominated producer, highly regarded Nashville journalist and Country Music Hall of Fame executive, died Dec. 6. He was 52.
His family confirmed the death, posting on Facebook that he died in his sleep after suffering a severe head injury following a fall late last week.
A South Carolina native, Cooper joined the staff of The Tennessean as its prime music writer in 2000 before moving to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2014 as museum editor.
“He grew to assume the role of museum senior director, producer and writer, driving several important creative initiatives and bringing a poetic grace to them all,” the hall’s CEO Kyle Young said in a statement. “He developed and implemented mission-oriented programs, exhibitions, podcasts and, as a writer, elegantly described the rich character of the country music story. His talents were immense, but his heart was even bigger, and he touched the lives of those he encountered in immeasurable ways. Our thoughts are with his family during this difficult time.”
For all his talents, many saw Cooper first and foremost as a journalist, who brought tremendous empathy to the subjects he covered, including such titans as Johnny Cash, George Jones and Kris Kristofferson, who reportedly told Cooper that he looked “at the world with an artist’s eye, and a human heart and soul.”
Ricky Skaggs tells Billboard he considered Cooper “one of the most gentle and soft-spoken men I ever knew. His knowledge of music, the writers, the players and singers was really unmatched in Nashville. Our industry lost a vital voice for our times. He will be sorely missed!”
Best-selling biographer/journalist Alanna Nash added, “One of the many things that separated Peter from the rest of us who do this work, aside from just the breathtaking humanity that imbued his writing, was his side gig as a musician and his intimate understanding of the torment artists endure. He wrote journalism from the inside of the story, from its guts, because he lived all the wrenching passion and rode every threadbare highway. You don’t drive Hank Williams’ 300-mile ‘last ride’ from Knoxville to Oak Hill, W.V., as Peter did for a story about the 50th anniversary of Williams’ death, without feeling that same pain.”
Like Tom T. Hall, whom he revered, Cooper was, above all, a storyteller through his reported pieces and his own career as a performing singer/songwriter. An accomplished musician, he released several albums as part of the duo Eric Brace & Peter Cooper and was in the trio Eric Brace, Peter Cooper and Thomm Jutz.
His songs had been recorded by John Prine, Todd Snider, Bobby Bare and Mac Wiseman, among others.
Cooper received a Grammy nomination in best children’s album for 2011’s I Love: Tom T. Hall’s Songs of Fox Hollow, a tribute album to the songwriter’s story songs.
A memorial service will take place in early 2023. In lieu of flowers, his family asks that donations be made to the Baker Cooper fund to support his 12-year-old son’s education care of Wells Fargo Bank or to the Country Music Hall of Fame.
–Assistance in preparing this story provided by Jessica Nicholson.
Steve Greenberg, founder/CEO of S-Curve Records, produced “The Complete Stax/Volt Singles 1959-1968,” and box sets devoted to Stax artists Otis Redding and Sam & Dave. He wrote album notes for “Stax ’68: A Memphis Story.” Below, he reflects on a 30-year friendship with Stax co-founder Jim Stewart, who died Dec. 5.
I first met Jim Stewart when I was producing the 9-CD Complete Stax/Volt Singles:1959-1968 box, which came out in 1991. While consulting with him over the phone about the project, he mentioned that legendary Stax songstress Carla Thomas still lived in Memphis, and that he’d really love a chance to work with her again on a record—something he hadn’t done in over 20 years. Almost immediately, I flew down to Memphis, meeting Jim and Carla at the stately Peabody Hotel to discuss the possibility of making a record together. The record never materialized, but a bond began to form between Jim and me.
What initially struck me about Jim was his humility: Here was a man who’d co-founded one of the greatest R&B record labels of all time—who, in addition to running the label, was in the studio producing such classic recordings as Otis Redding’s “Try A Little Tenderness” and Rufus Thomas’ “Walking the Dog.” Perhaps even more impressively, he created an environment at Stax where Black and white musicians could work together in complete equality, all the while situated in the heart of the segregated South during the most tumultuous years of the civil rights movement. Yet, Jim possessed none of the hubris or self-regard typical of many who have achieved greatness or attained legendary status.
Nor did he express an ounce of bitterness, even though his career could be described as a rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-riches-to-rags story: From a modest upbringing in rural Tennessee, he started a record label in 1957 with his sister Estelle Axton originally called Satellite before rebranding as Stax (St+ Ax) in 1961. A string of hits by the likes of Sam & Dave, Booker T. & the MGs, Redding and many more artists brought worldwide fame to Stax, and the label was flying high. But in 1968 Stewart learned that a distribution contract he’d signed with Atlantic’s president Jerry Wexler a few years earlier—without consulting an attorney—had somewhere in the fine print given Atlantic permanent rights to the entire Stax catalog. This calamity occurred nearly simultaneously with the death of Stax’s biggest star, Redding, in a plane crash, and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, just a short distance from the Stax studio, causing parts of that city to go up in flames and hastening the demise of the air of racial harmony at the label.
Taken together, these tragedies would have been enough to cause most record companies to shutter. But, together with his new partner, the civil rights activist turned record promo man Al Bell, Jim started Stax Records again from scratch, with the label achieving even greater commercial and critical success in its second incarnation. As the ‘70s dawned, Stax, under Bell’s leadership, became deeply identified with the cause of Black empowerment, and Jim decided it was time to exit, selling his interest to his partner. Now a wealthy man, Jim could have ridden off into the sunset, but a few years later, when Stax began to experience serious financial difficulties, Jim reinvested most of his assets in the label, not being able to bear the idea of his baby’s demise. By 1976, the label declared bankruptcy and closed. Stewart lost nearly everything; his home and possessions were sold at auction in 1981.
When I first met Jim that night at the Peabody, I imagined he harbored no small amount of ill will towards Atlantic Records, the label that had taken away his catalog and was now putting out the box set I’d produced. But no, he said, he didn’t hold any sort of grudge, and when I invited him to come to New York for the launch party celebrating the release of the box set, he was only too happy to do so. The New York event featured a concert by legendary Stax performers and was attended by Atlantic Records veterans who’d been around during Stax’s Atlantic period, including label founder Ahmet Ertegun. Jim offered some remarks from the podium—his first public appearance in nearly two decades—and spoke of what a pleasure it was to see old friends, and what an honor it had been to get to work with such great artists and to have been in business with Atlantic. He even referred to Jerry Wexler as “my hero.” He was the embodiment of grace.
Even after Stax closed, Jim continued in the music business. In the late ‘70s he opened a recording studio in Memphis with former Stax guitarist Bobby Manuel. Eventually, they started the Houston Connection record label, scoring a top 15 Billboard R&B hit in 1982 with former Stax artist Margie Joseph’s “Knockout!” They never had another national hit, but Jim kept at it, producing records locally.
The release of the Stax box brought Jim back into the music industry’s field of vision, and he began to make regular visits to New York, always stopping by to have lunch and to pitch me his newest discoveries. I remember he had a fun record called “Mud Ducks” by Memphis rapper Yan-C which we almost signed when I was head of A&R at Big Beat Records, but in the end the only record I ever worked on with Jim was Lea’Netta Nelson’s “That’s the Way,” a great slow R&B jam that I signed in 1994 when I was an A&R guy at, of all places, Atlantic Records. I had high hopes for that record, but looking back, I think Atlantic only let me sign it as a token gesture to Jim, and it received no attention, only seeing release as a radio promo single. I spoke to Jim shortly after that record disappeared without a trace, and he told me he was retiring from the music business.
Eventually, Jim received his due as one of the great label chiefs of the 20th century. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2002 and made one final public appearance at Memphis’ Stax Museum of American Soul Music in 2019, where he was feted by such Stax legends as Carla Thomas and Al Bell in a special salute.
The last time I spoke to Jim was a phone interview with him for the liner notes of 2019’s “Stax’68” box set, a collection chronicling Stax’s annus horribilus and its aftermath, produced by A&R man/music historian Joe McEwen. Jim was in good spirits, with a sharp recollection of events that happened more than 50 years earlier. He was better off financially, partially due to producer royalty payments for the Stax singles he produced, which began to be paid in the 1990s. Even looking back on that trying year of 1968, he remembered it with fondness. “Most importantly,” he told me, “We still loved what we were doing. We believed it was going to be okay.”
This world will miss you, Jim Stewart. You were a great label executive, a producer of classic records and you believed in the dignity of all people. And you really appreciated that you got to do it at all.
Janis Hunter Gaye, the second wife of Motown legend Marvin Gaye and the inspiration for several of his songs, died Saturday of an undisclosed cause at her home in Rhode Island, her family announced. She was 66.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Hunter Gaye was introduced to the singer by producer Ed Townsend during a 1973 recording session at Hitsville West in Los Angeles for his album Let’s Get It On, which was released that year. Gaye at the time was married to Anna Gordy, the sister of Motown founder Berry Gordy; Hunter Gaye was 17, he was 34.
Gaye wrote the song “Jan” for his future wife and recorded it for his 1974 album, Marvin Gaye Live!, and his 1976 album, I Want You, has been described as “a romantic and erotic tribute” to her. His 1977 disco single “Got to Give It Up,” which reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, featured her on background vocals. They were married that year.
According to her family, Hunter Gaye put together the iconic outfit — red watch cap, beaded denim shirt and silver red-laced platform boots— that Gaye donned for his memorable 1974 concert performance at the Oakland Coliseum.
The pair were married from 1977 until their 1981 divorce. He died three years later after being shot by his father in Los Angeles. Her memoir, After the Dance: My Life With Marvin Gaye, was published in 2015.
Hunter Gaye was the daughter of singer-musician Slim Gaillard, known for hits including “Flat Foot Floogie (With a Floy Floy).” She also managed the career of her daughter, Nona Gaye, a singer and actress with credits including Ali, Crash and two Matrix films.
“From the time she met my father, she was exposed to the way he saw this world was aching, and she did her best to preserve his legacy as he was taken from us far too early,” Nona Gaye said in a statement. “She took every moment to speak about every word and every note of his music, and she wanted to make sure everyone knew the man she fell in love with. I will never get to see her again in this life but know she’s in heaven with my father and a spokesperson for us in spirit.”
Survivors also include son Frankie, sister Shawnn, brother Mark and grandson Nolan.
A public event will be announced. Donations in her honor can be made to Arms Around the Child, Breathe With Me Revolution and/or Fund a Mom.
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.