State Champ Radio obituary
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Bassist and session musician Michael Rhodes, who was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame in 2019, has died. He was 69.
A representative for Rhodes confirmed his death to Billboard. Rhodes passed away at his home in Nashville, Tennessee, Saturday morning (March 4). No cause of death was given at press time.
Rhodes was born in Monroe, Louisiana, in 1953. At age 11 he taught himself to play guitar, which he began playing professionally, before taking up bass.
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After stints living in Austin and Memphis, he wound up in Nashville in 1977, where he joined local rock band Nerve and Tree Publishing’s house demo band. It was there that he got what he called “a great crash course in the art of playing a song, and what was needed for a song,” he told Nashville Arts.
He went on to have a prolific career in session work, playing on award-winning songs including Shawn Colvin’s “Sunny Came Home” (1996) and Lee Ann Womack’s “I Hope You Dance” (2000), and even had the honor of playing on both LeAnn Rimes’ and Trisha Yearwood’s 1997 versions of Diane Warren’s “How Do I Live.”
His incredibly long list of credits includes recordings for Willie Nelson, Etta James, Mark Knopfler, Alan Jackson, Stevie Nicks, Brian Wilson, Joss Stone, Dolly Parton, the (Dixie) Chicks, J.J. Cale, Wynonna, Merle Haggard, Randall Bramblett, Amy Grant, Hank Williams Jr, the Highwaymen, John Oates, George Strait, Kenny Chesney, Bob Seger, Dave Stewart, Keith Whitley, Joan Baez, Lionel Richie, Burt Bacharach, Aaron Neville, Johnny Cash, Lonnie Mack, India.Arie, Buddy Guy, Grace Potter, Billy Joe Shaver, Ruthie Collins, Michael McDonald, Dan Penn, Jennifer Holiday, John Fogerty, Elton John and Joan Osborne.
In recent years, he played often in Joe Bonamassa’s band.
Rhodes is survived by wife Lindsay Fairbanks Rhodes, son Jason Rhodes and daughter Melody Wind Rhodes, and Lindsay’s sons, Van and Weston Hayes, as well as grandchildren Cayman Rhodes, Cora Rhodes, Wylder Rhodes, Kingsley Rhodes, Jenna Nicole Hillman and Ryley Bruce Hillman.
Memorial arrangements will be provided at a future time.
In lieu of flowers, and in Rhodes’ spirit, his family requests that donations be made to the Music Health Alliance, which provides aid to musicians in need of healthcare and support. Checks may be sent to Music Health Alliance, 2737 Larmon Dr, Nashville, TN, 37204 or through their website, musichealthalliance.com. Rhodes’ family also encourages listening to a piece of music that matters to you; Rhodes listened to John Coltrane before he passed. “He really loved jazz and John Coltrane, all those guys,” Rhodes’ wife says. “It fed him, always.”
David Lindley, a notable Los Angeles session musician known for his work and collaborations with numerous stars during the 1970s and ’80s, died on Friday (March 3). He was 78.
The highly talented multi-instrumentalist — whose guitar and fiddle skills made him a go-to collaborator for icons like Jackson Browne, Dolly Parton, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Rod Stewart and others — had been ill for a number of months, according to the Los Angeles Times. A cause of death was not provided.
“The loss of David Lindley is a huge one,” Jason Isbell wrote on Twitter. “Without his influence my music would sound completely different. I was genuinely obsessed with his playing from the first time I heard it. The man was a giant.”
Graham Nash also paid tribute on Instagram to Lindley, calling him “one of the most talented musicians there has ever been.” He added, “David could play pretty much any instrument you put in front of him with incredible versatility and expression.”
Lindley was born in San Marino, Calif., on March 21, 1944. He grew up surrounded by music and began playing banjo and fiddle as a child. By his early twenties, Lindley had developed an interest in electric music and formed the psychedelic folk-rock band Kaleidoscope. The group released its debut album, Side Trips, in 1967. That same year, he worked as a session musician on Leonard Cohen’s first album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, according to the Times.
After splitting with Kaleidoscope in 1970 following the release of four albums, Lindley joined Jackson Browne’s band, establishing himself on albums like 1973’s For Everyman, 1974’s Late for the Sky and 1977’s Running on Empty. During his time with Browne, Lindley also joined studio sessions with other notable artists during the mid-’70s, including Linda Ronstadt, Warren Zevon, Crosby & Nash, Rod Stewart and Ry Cooder.
In the early 1980s, Lindley put his session work on hold and formed the group El Rayo-X, which went on to release two albums. Later that decade, he appeared on Bob Dylan’s Under the Red Sky, Iggy Pop’s Brick by Brick and John Prine’s The Missing Years. During the ’90s, Lindley collaborated on albums releases with avant-garde guitarist Henry Kaiser and Jordanian oud player Hani Naser. He reunited with Browne for a tour of Spain in 2006.
Lindley released his last solo album, Big Twang, in 2007. That same year, he and Kaiser scored Werner Herzog’s documentary Encounters at the End of the World.
See more tributes on social media to Lindley below.
It’s so sad to hear of David Lindley’s passing. He was a giant among musicians. Always his unique sound and style gave him away in one note. My thoughts are with his family.— Peter Frampton (@peterframpton) March 4, 2023
The loss of David Lindley is a huge one- Without his influence my music would sound completely different. I was genuinely obsessed with his playing from the first time I heard it. The man was a giant.— Jason Isbell (@JasonIsbell) March 3, 2023
Musician David Lindley Dead at 78 Years Old – Rolling Stone.That final cadenza on that one live version of Jackson Browne’’s Running On Empty is the greatest recorded live song ending EVER. Gawd Bless You, El Rayo X aka David Lindley !☮️🌹❤️🩹🎸🙏🏾😞 https://t.co/JDLGvvwIgo— Vernon Reid (@vurnt22) March 4, 2023
Wayne Shorter, one of the most admired and singular American jazz composers and saxophonists of the modern era has died at 89. At press time no information was available about the cause of death, but a spokesperson for label Blue Note Records confirmed to Billboard that the 12-time Grammy winner had passed in Los Angeles on Thursday (March 2).
After brief runs with the Horace Silver Quintet and the Maynard Ferguson big band, Shorter’s career began in earnest in 1959 when he joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, a four-year tenure that found him graduating to musical director for the group while blossoming into a multi-faceted composer and master of the driving, hard bop sound.
“Visionary composer, saxophonist, visual artist, devout Buddhist, devoted husband, father and grandfather Wayne Shorter has embarked on a new journey as part of his extraordinary life – departing the earth as we know it in search of an abundance of new challenges and creative possibilities,” read a statement from a spokesperson for Shorter. “Always inquisitive and constantly exploring – ever the fearless and passionate innovator – Shorter was 89 years young and had just won his 13th Grammy Award in February.”
“Shorter was surrounded by his loving family at the time of his transition and is survived by his devoted wife Carolina, daughters Miyako and Mariana, and newly-born grandson, Max. Most recently Wayne had been contemplating his next project, a Jazz ballet,” it continued.
He then moved on to a fruitful six-year run with jazz icon Miles Davis, first in his Quintet, where Shorter was able to stretch his musical wings and add layers to his already formidable talents, including on Davis’ landmark 1969 jazz fusion albums In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew.
A master on the tenor saxophone, by the time Shorter left the Davis orbit he had moved on to playing soprano sax in the 1970s and 80s with keyboardist Joe Zawinul, bassist Miroslav Vitous, percussionist Airto Moreira and drummer Alphonse Mouzon in the fusion supergroup Weather Report; other members of the group of the years included genre-defining jazz bassist Jaco Pastorious, beloved session drummers Steve Gadd and Omar Hakim and Sly and the Family Stone drummer Greg Errico.
Born on August 25, 1933 in Newark, N.J., Shorter studied music at New York University in the mid-1950s, developing a style influenced by such jazz pioneers as John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins. In addition to helping to pioneer the fusion movement — which encouraged improvisation and the folding in of rock, funk and R&B styles and the addition of electric guitars and keyboards — the deeply intellectual Shorter also released a series of beloved solo albums during his tenure with Davis.
Among those albums are Juju — which featured members of Coltrane’s quartet — and Speak No Evil — with some of his Davis bandmates — the latter considered by many jazz critics to be one of the finest examples of both Shorter’s compositional brilliance and a foundational text for students and lovers of the post-1950s jazz era.
In addition to his stints in those bands, Shorter also collaborated with folk icon Joni Mitchell on 10 albums, Brazilian composer/singer Milton Nascimento, fellow former Davis bandmember Carlos Santana (on 1980’s The Swing of Delight) and, in perhaps his most high-profile non-jazz collab, he played the extended solo on the title track to Steely Dan’s 1977 Aja album.
Shorter continued to record and perform into the 2000s, forming his “Footprints” acoustic quartet in 2000 with drummer Brian Blade, bassist John Patitucci and pianist Danilo Perez, with whom he released four live albums, including the 2006 Grammy-winning album Beyond the Sound Barrier. He also toured with the supergroup Mega Nova in 2016, which featured Santana and Hancock, as well as bassist Marcus Miller and drummer Cindy Blackman Santana.
In the statement, Shorter’s friend of six decades Hancock said, “Wayne Shorter, my best friend, left us with courage in his heart, love and compassion for all, and a seeking spirit for the eternal future. He was ready for his rebirth. As it is with every human being, he is irreplaceable and was able to reach the pinnacle of excellence as a saxophonist, composer, orchestrator, and recently, composer of the masterful opera ‘…Iphigenia’. I miss being around him and his special Wayne-isms but I carry his spirit within my heart always.”
After more than half a century on the road and in the studio, Shorter retired from performing in 2018 due to health issues. Over the course of his career, in addition to the dozen Grammy awards, Shorter received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016, the Polar Music Prize in 2017 and a Kennedy Center Honor in 2018.
Over his 70-year career, Shorter’s works were performed by a long list of orchestras and performers, including: the Chicago Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Lyon Symphony, National Polish Radio Symphonic Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Prague Philharmonic and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, as well as ensembles including soprano Renée Fleming and the Imani Winds; he also received commissions from the National, St. Louis and Nashville symphony orchestras, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the La Jolla Music Society.
Shorter released his final album, Emanon, in 2018.
Listen to Shorter’s “Footprints” below.
Pulp bassist Steve Mackey has died at age 56. The Britpop band’s singer, Jarvis Cocker, confirmed the news on Thursday (March 2), writing on Instagram, “Our beloved friend & bass player Steve Mackey passed away this morning. Our thoughts are with his family & loved ones.”
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At press time there was no additional information on the cause of death or the illness that struck the musician who joined the group in 1989 and first apepared on their 1992 album Separations.
Mackey’s wife, stylist Katie Grand, announced the news on her Instagram page (which is private, but was reposted on Mackey’s page), writing, “After three months in hospital, fighting with all his strength and determination, we are shocked and devastated to have said goodbye to my brilliant, beautiful husband, Steve Mackey. Steve died today, a loss which has left myself, his son Marley, parents Kath and Paul, sister Michelle and many friends all heartbroken.”
Grand called Mackey the “most talented man I have ever known,” as well as “an exceptional musician, producer, photographer and filmmaker. As in life, he was adored by everyone whose paths he crossed in the multiple creative disciplines he conquered. I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to all the NHS staff who worked tirelessly for Steve. He will be missed beyond words. The family has asked for privacy at this time.”
The “Common People” group first formed in 1978, fronted by bespectacled singer Cocker and released their debut album, It, in 1983, followed by 1987’s Freaks. Mackey joined in time to appear on 1992’s Separations, the precursor to the group’s 1994 breakthrough, His ‘n’ Hers, which crystallized the band’s slack disco rock sound delivered via louche anthems about sex, social class and a lust for life.
But it was 1995’s Different Class that proved to be their shot across the bow of the then burgeoning Britpop movement that also encompassed bands such as Oasis and Blur. The record debuted on the UK charts at No. 1, scored Pulp the coveted Mercury Music Prize and spun off what is the band’s best-known hit, “Common People.” Mackey also played on 1998’s This Is Hardcore and the group’s studio swan song, 2001’s We Love Life.
Pulp went on hiatus after Life‘s release until 2011, when they reunited for a run of festival gigs and a number of shows and appearances that lasted through early 2013, before once again going on hiatus. Last year, Cocker announced that the group would reunite again this year for more dates — which are slated to kick off on May 26 in Bridlington, UK — with Mackey announcing on Instagram in Oct. 2022 that he planned to continue working on other projects and not join the group on the road.
“Wishing Candy, Nick, Mark and Jarvis the very best with forthcoming performances in the UK and also an enormous thanks to Pulp’s amazing fanbase, many of whom have sent me lovely messages today,” he wrote at the time.
In his memorial post, Cocker included a picture of Mackey hiking in the snow-covered Andes mountains from a 2012 South American tour. “We had a day off & Steve suggested we go climbing in the Andes. So we did. & it was a completely magical experience,” Cocker wrote. “Far more magical than staring at the hotel room wall all day (which is probably what I’d have done otherwise). Steve made things happen. In his life & in the band. & we’d very much like to think that he’s back in those mountains now, on the next stage of his adventure. Safe travels, Steve. We hope to catch up with you one day. “
See Grand and Cocker’s posts below.
Madonna‘s older brother Anthony Ciccone has died, according to a social media post by the pop icon’s brother-in-law Joe Henry. He was 66.
Henry, a musician who is married to Madonna’s sister Melanie Ciccone, announced the sad news through Instagram on Saturday (Feb. 25). In his emotional post, the songwriter and producer described Anthony Ciccone — one of Madonna’s seven siblings — as a “complex character.”
“My brother-in-law, Anthony Gerard Ciccone, exited this earthly plane last evening,” Henry wrote alongside a youthful photograph of his brother-in-law. “I’ve known him since I was 15, in the spring of our lives in Michigan so many years now gone. As brother Dave Henry (who took this photograph) notes here, Anthony was a complex character; and god knows: we tangled in moments, as true brothers can.”
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Henry continued, “But I loved him, and understood him better than I was sometimes willing to let on. But trouble fades; and family remains — with hands reached across the table. Farewell, then, brother Anthony. I want to think the god your blessed mother (and mine) believed in has her there, waiting to receive you. At least for today, no one shall dissuade me from this vision.”
Further details about Ciccone’s passing were not provided.
Henry’s Instagram post was liked by Madonna, but the legendary pop superstar had not released a statement about her brother’s passing at press time. Billboard has reached out to her representatives for comment.
Ciccone had reportedly struggled with alcoholism and was homeless for several years. In 2013, he needed nine stitches to his forehead after resisting arrest in a public bathroom in Michigan. His blood-alcohol level at the time was 0.40, according to the Associated Press.
Ciccone spoke out in a 2011 interview against Madonna, accusing the star and the rest of his family of not caring about him. “I’m a zero in their eyes — a non-person. I’m an embarrassment,” Ciccone told the Daily Mail. “If I froze to death, my family probably wouldn’t know or care about it for six months.”
Read Henry’s full post on Instagram here.
Thomas H. Lee, a billionaire private equity investor and part of the group that acquired Warner Music from Time Warner in 2004, died Thursday (Feb. 24) in New York at age 78, his family said in a statement.
A pioneer in the private equity world, Lee was the chairman of Lee Equity and formerly the chief executive of Thomas H. Lee Partners, the namesake firm he founded in 1974. Over nearly five decades in finance, Lee invested $15 billion in hundreds of companies and transactions, including the acquisition and sale of household brands like Snapple.
The Wall Street Journal, citing a New York Police Department source, said Lee was found dead in a bathroom at his Fifth Avenue office from what first responders believe to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. They were responding to an emergency call placed Thursday morning by Lee’s office assistant, the WSJ reported.
“The family is extremely saddened by Tom’s death,” Lee’s family said. “Our hearts are broken. We ask that our privacy be respected and that we be allowed to grieve.”
Lee’s Thomas H. Lee Partners, Bain Capital, Providence Equity Partners and Edgar Bronfman Jr. bought Warner Music from Time Warner Inc. for $2.6 billion in 2004. The group took the company public the following year, and Lee’s firm, Bain Capital Partners and Bronfman controlled 56% of Warner’s outstanding shares when it was sold to Len Blavatnik‘s Access Industries in 2011 in a deal valued at $3.3 billion.
Lee sat on WMG’s board as a director from 2004 to 2021, when he became a director emeritus.
“We are deeply saddened by the passing of our friend and colleague Tom Lee,” Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl said in an emailed statement. “Tom made valuable contributions to WMG’s trajectory for almost two decades. Tom’s experience, wisdom, and enthusiastic support helped guide WMG through periods of major transformation, both within our company and in the music industry at large. Our condolences go out to his family and many friends.”
When Lee announced he would retire from the role of WMG board director in 2021, he described the company as having “undergone an extraordinary evolution,” and said he was gratified to have helped it transform and grow.
Lee was worth an estimated $2 billion, according to Forbes, and he was an active philanthropist involved in several New York City cultural institutions, including Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and the Museum of Modern Art.
Huey “Piano” Smith, a beloved New Orleans session man who backed Little Richard, Lloyd Price and other early rock stars and with his own group made the party favorites “Don’t You Just Know It” and “Rockin’ Pneumonia and Boogie Woogie Flu,” has died. He was 89.
His daughter, Acquelyn Donsereaux, told The Associated Press that he died in his sleep Feb. 13 at his home in Baton Rouge. She did not cite a specific cause.
A New Orleans native who performed nationwide but always returned to Louisiana, Smith was one of the last survivors of an extraordinary scene of musicians and songwriters who helped make New Orleans a fundamental influence on rock ‘n’ roll. He was just 15 when he began playing professionally and in his 20s helped out on numerous ’50s hits, including Price’s “Where You At?”, Earl King’s “Those Lonely Lonely Nights” and Smiley Lewis’ “I Hear You Knocking.” Little Richard, Fats Domino and David Bartholomew were among the many other artists he worked with.
In 1957, he formed Huey “Piano” Smith and the Clowns and reached the top 10 with “Rockin’ Pneumonia,” a mid-tempo stomp which featured the vocals of John Marchin and Smith’s buoyant keyboard playing, and the equally rowdy and good-natured “Don’t You Just Know It.” The Clowns also were known for “We Like Birdland”, “Well I’ll Be John Brown” and “High Blood Pressure.”
One Smith production became a major hit and rock standard, for another performer. Smith and his group wrote, arranged and recorded “Sea Cruise,” but Ace Records thought the song would have more success with a white singer — as Smith learned bluntly from local record distributor Joe Caronna — and replaced the Clowns’ vocals with those of Frankie Ford, whose version became a million seller.
“I was crying as he (Caronna) said that,” Smith told biographer John Wirt, whose Huey ‘Piano’ Smith and the Rocking Pneumonia Blues came out in 2014. “I had been drinking a little bit. It hurt me to my heart when he told me he was taking that.”
Artists covering “Sea Cruise” and other Smith songs included John Fogerty, the Beach Boys, Aerosmith and Jerry Garcia. In 2005, Ford would deny “stealing” the song, alleging that he had written the words. “Huey sorta went through a period and ‘forgot’ a lot of things,” Ford told Offbeat Magazine.
Smith’s popularity faded after the Beatles arrived and by 1980 he had quit the business, settled in Baton Rouge with his wife, Margrette, and become a Jehovah’s Witness. Like many rock musicians from the ’50s, he fought to be paid and credited for “Sea Cruise” and other hits and spent decades in legal battles and financial trouble. Local musicians, meanwhile, continued to cite him as an inspiration.
“To me he was the man who got more out of simplicity than anybody in New Orleans,” drummer Earl Palmer told Wirt.
In 2000, Smith received a Pioneer Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation and he was honored a year later by the Louisiana Blues Hall of Fame. Admirers would cite him as one of the most vital performers not to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
He is survived by his wife, 10 children, 18 grandchildren and 47 great grandchildren, his daughter told the AP.
Smith grew up in the Uptown section New Orleans, his father a roofer, his mother a laundry worker. As a boy, Smith took up piano, learning by watching his uncle play, and he soon mastered the eight-bar progression that anchored countless blues songs. He played obsessively, sometimes to the annoyance of his neighbors, and in high school he helped start the band the Joy Jumpers.
He was still in his teens when he met another young New Orleans musician, Eddie Lee Jones, who as “Guitar Slim” influenced countless musicians and gave Smith his “Piano” nickname. Lewis’ own work initially drew upon the blues-boogie woogie of Professor Longhair. But he would eventually absorb a wide range of styles, whether the jazz of Jelly Roll Martin or the rock-rhythm and blues of Fats Domino.
“I took up to tryin’ a variety of music other than just one individual style,” he told Wirt. “I like my own style, but my own style is completely different than rhythm-and-blues, or calypso or any of that. It’s just deep down funk.”
Gerald Fried, the Oscar-nominated, oboe-playing composer who created iconic gladiatorial fight music for the original Star Trek series and collaborated with Quincy Jones to win an Emmy for their theme to the landmark miniseries Roots, has died. He was 95.
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Fried died Friday (Feb. 17) of pneumonia at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Bridgeport, Connecticut, his wife, Anita Hall, told The Hollywood Reporter.
After meeting Stanley Kubrick on a baseball field in the Bronx in the early 1950s, Fried wound up scoring the filmmaker’s first four features: Fear and Desire (1953), Killer’s Kiss (1955), The Killing (1956) and Paths of Glory (1957).
Fried also supplied the music for such cult Roger Corman classics as Machine-Gun Kelly (1958), The Cry Baby Killer (1958) and I Mobster (1959). He also worked with directors Larry Peerce on One Potato Two Potato (1964) and The Bell Jar (1979), as well as with Robert Aldrich on The Killing of Sister George (1968), What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? (1969), Too Late the Hero (1970) and The Grissom Gang (1971).
And chances are if you are a fan of Gilligan’s Island, Lost in Space, Mission: Impossible, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Emergency!, Flamingo Road or Dynasty, you have heard his music.
Fried first worked on NBC’s Star Trek midway through the first season on the December 1966 episode “Shore Leave,” but he really made his mark on the second-season opener, “Amok Time.” His relentless “The Ritual/Ancient Battle/2nd Kroykah” score dramatizes a memorable “fight to the death” on the planet Vulcan between Kirk (William Shatner) and Spock (Leonard Nimoy).
In the 1999 book The Music of Star Trek, author Jeff Bond describes the music as “a model of action-scene bombast, wildly percussive and bursting with exclamatory trumpet, flute and woodwind trills to accentuate the hammering of the brass-performed fanfare.”
Passages were reused for 18 other Star Trek episodes and popped up in The Cable Guy (1996) and installments of Futurama and another animated series.
“I started to get royalty checks from The Simpsons,” Fried noted in a 2003 conversation with Karen Herman for the TV Academy Foundation website The Interviews. “I didn’t write any music for The Simpsons. What they did was when Bart Simpson would get angry and cross the living room or something like that, they quoted the music for ‘Amok Time.’”
A year after Fried received an Oscar nomination for Birds Do It, Bees Do It (1976), a documentary about the mating rituals of animals and insects, he won his Emmy for his work on the first episode of ABC’s Roots.
Jones had been hired to write the music for the miniseries, but as the January 1977 premiere date loomed, he was missing deadlines. So producer Stan Margulies called Fried.
“Quincy, for whatever reason, went into some kind of writer’s block and did not come up with a main theme,” Fried said. “And they needed a main theme for advertising. It was three weeks before airtime. So they called me in. I wrote the main theme. I finished episode number one. The first show, Quincy did 56 percent of that, and I had to finish that. And I’m very happy I was on Roots. It was quite an honor.”
Fried also was nominated on his own for his underscore on the eighth and final episode.
“There were two shows that I did in television that had reverberations far beyond what you’d expect from the venue and the possibilities,” Fried said during a 2013 Q&A with StarTrek.com. “One was Star Trek, and the other was Roots. There was an atmosphere, doing both shows, that these were a little special and certainly more important than most shows. So I’m not totally surprised, but the enormity of Star Trek is a little bit startling and wonderful.”
Born in Manhattan on Feb. 13, 1928, Fried was raised in the Bronx by his father, Samuel, a dentist, and his mother, Selma. He credited his mom’s side of the family for his musical talents. Her father, a trombonist, earned passage for the family to America as a traveling musician in Eastern Europe. And Fried’s aunt was a pianist who provided live music for silent movies.
“She was one of these perfect-pitch types of people who could hear and reproduce anything,” he said. “I studied with her, and because they forced me to take piano lessons, I got my revenge by being the world’s worst pianist.”
His love of music grew after Fried entered New York’s High School of Music & Art and was assigned the oboe. He took to that instrument and the tenor sax, then enrolled at Juilliard as an oboe major.
In 1948, Fried began a three-year stint as the English hornist for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Following gigs with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and a return to Dallas, he returned to New York to perform with The Little Orchestra Society.
Fried was playing baseball in the Bronx for a club team called The Barracudas when he met a kid who “wasn’t a very good athlete” but still wanted to play. Fried encouraged his teammates to let the guy join in, and they became friends.
“This turned out to be Stanley Kubrick,” Fried said. “He found out that I was a musician. He saved his pennies. He made a short [film] that was actually quite good. And I think I was the only musician he knew. He said, ‘Hey, Gerry, you know how to write and conduct movie music?’ ‘Sure,’ I said, ‘I do it all the time.’ I spent the next three or four months going to about 20 movies a day to learn what to do.”
Fried’s crash course resulted in the music for Day of the Fight (1951), about middleweight Walter Cartier preparing for a bout. Bought by RKO-Pathe, the 16-minute film would help launch their show business careers.
Fried came to Los Angeles and worked on Terror in a Texas Town (1958), starring Sterling Hayden of The Killing and written under a pseudonym by Dalton Trumbo; filled out the scores for episodes of such shows as M Squad, Wagon Train and Riverboat; and often collaborated with Corman.
Fried went on to work on other series like Gunsmoke, Ben Casey, My Three Sons, Mannix, The Flying Nun, It’s About Time and Police Woman and other films like Dino (1957), I Bury the Living (1958), Cast a Long Shadow (1959) and Soylent Green (1973).
He received three more Emmy noms, for his compositions for the telefilms The Silent Lovers in 1980 and The Mystic Warrior in 1984 and for the miniseries Napoleon and Josephine: A Love Story in 1987.
More recently, Fried taught at UCLA and played the oboe with the Santa Fe Great Big Jazz Band and Santa Fe Community Orchestra. The oboe is “the instrument of passion. It somehow gets into people’s guts,” he said.
In addition to his wife, survivors include his children, Daniel, Debbie, Jonathan and Josh; six grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. His son Zach died from AIDS in 1987 at age 5 as the result of a blood transfusion.
This article originally appeared on The Hollywood Reporter.
De La Soul‘s Trugoy the Dove, who also went by the name Dave, has died, a representative for the legendary New York hip-hop trio confirms to Billboard. His death was first reported on Sunday (Feb. 12).
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The death of Trugoy the Dove, born David Jolicoeur, comes just weeks before De La Soul’s classic catalog is set to finally arrive on streaming and digital platforms on March 3, following a 2021 deal with Reservoir Media.
Dave’s cause of death had not been made known as of press time.
“This one hurts,” Erick Sermon, former EPMD member and renowned producer, wrote on Instagram on Sunday. “From Long Island from one of the best rap groups in Hiphop #Delasoul #plug2 Dave has passed away you will be missed… RIP.”
With a career spanning more than three decades, De La Soul is known as one of hip-hop’s most innovative and eclectic groups. Formed in 1988 in the Amityville area of Long Island, Dave (Trugoy the Dove) and members Posdnuos and Maseo met in high school and went on to impress local producer Prince Paul, who circulated their demo tape. They landed a deal with Tommy Boy Records.
Their 1989 debut — the album 3 Feet High and Rising, peaking at No. 1 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and No. 24 on the Billboard 200 — featured the breakthrough single “Me Myself and I,” which topped the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, reached No. 34 on the Hot 100 and was nominated for a best rap performance Grammy. 3 Feet High and Rising is often cited as the start of what’s referred to as “alternative hip-hop.”
But music industry red tape and sample clearances prevented their back catalog from becoming available on digital marketplaces and streaming services, until the rights to Tommy Boy were acquired by the music rights firm Reservoir Media in 2021.
De La Soul secured a deal to retrieve their masters, allowing their first six albums to become available via their label AOI, distributed by Chrysalis Records. The trio’s first six albums are scheduled to arrive in full on streaming on March 3.
In an interview with Billboard published in January, Dave reflected on De La Soul’s debut. “I think 3 Feet High and Rising, as much as people might claim it to be a hip-hop masterpiece – it’s a hip-hop masterpiece for the era in which it was released,” he said.
“I think the element of that time of what was taking place in music, hip-hop, and our culture, I think it welcomed that and opened up minds and spirits to see and try new different things,” Dave noted in the conversation with Billboard. “I think releasing 3 Feet High and Rising right now, even to maybe the age group that was listening back then, I think hip-hop as a whole just wouldn’t get it. I think hip-hop would possibly look at it as obnoxious, soft, that kind of thing. But I think it’s also because where we’re at in hip-hop right now, hip-hop is about what you got on, who you’re impressing, what can you do, how much you got, how much you’re spending, and how much is in that bag that you got around you? I don’t think the impact of what 3 Feet High and Rising and what it meant back then would mean anything now. I feel like there are people who will get it, but I don’t know if there’s that acclaim to it in this day and age if it was something we’d never heard before.”
Dave added, “I think the innocence that we had back then was brave, but we were in a time where innocence was so cool. Not sampling James Brown, but sampling Liberace; I think it was shocking [when] we came out [that] we sampled Liberace. I don’t know if it’d impact the same way [now].”
“But the magic happens with us three on the phone, in the same conversation, in the room together, in the studio, and hanging out on the tour bus,” said Dave. “That’s where the magic happens, so that’s why we’re still here. We don’t want to interrupt that magic.”
South African rapper AKA was shot and killed outside of a restaurant in Durban on Friday night (Feb. 10). He was 35.
The parents of AKA, whose legal name Kiernan Forbes, confirmed the passing of their son on Saturday (Feb. 11) in an emotional statement on social media.
“It is with extreme sadness that we acknowledge the passing of our beloved son, and confirm his untimely and tragic passing on the evening or February 10, 2023. We are awaiting further details from Durban police,” Tony and Lynn Forbes wrote in the statement, which was shared on AKA’s Twitter official account.
“To us, Kiernan Jarryd Forbes was a son, brother, grandson, nephew, cousin and friend, most importantly father to his beloved daughter Kairo,” his parents added. “To many, he was AKA, Supa Mega, Bhova and the many other names of affection his legion of fans called him by. Our son was loved and gave love in return.”
Police say that AKA, who was scheduled to perform at a nightclub on Friday, had been walking to his car in a popular nightlife area of the coastal city shortly after 10 p.m. when two armed individuals fired several gunshots at close range before fleeing, The New York Times reports. A second man died at the scene, believed to be AKA’s friend Tebello “Tibz” Motsoane, a chef and entrepreneur.
Authorities were still searching for the suspects at press time, according to the Times.
Hours before his death on Friday, AKA shared a post on Instagram promoting his upcoming album, Mass Country, which is scheduled for release in late February. Following news of his death, the post was flooded with comments from music stars like Diplo and Swizz Beatz. “Damn bro,” Diplo wrote. Swizz added numerous crying face emojis.
One of South Africa’s leading hip-hop artists, AKA had worked as a producer for numerous artists before releasing his 2010 debut album, Altar Ego, which featured the popular track “Victory Lap.” He later become known for songs like “All Eyes on Me,” “Fela in Versace” and “Lemons (Lemonade).”
Read the full statement from AKA’s parents on Twitter below.
