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Tyrone Downie, a keyboardist and producer who is best known for his work as a member of Bob Marley & The Wailers, died Saturday (Nov. 5) in Kingston, Jamaica after a brief illness. He was 66.
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Born May 20, 1956 in the capital, Downie was drawn to music from a young age. He went on to study at the Kingston College and often sang with the chapel choir.
Downie carved his name in music history when he joined Marley’s band in 1973, making his recording debut on Rastaman Vibration, and contributing keys and backup vocals to some of legendary reggae act’s recordings into the 1980s.
“Reflecting on brother Tyrone Downie, Bob’s keyboardist, who made his transition yesterday,” reads a statement on the late Marley’s official social accounts. “Rest in peace brother.”
Across his career, Downie also played with The Abyssinians, Beenie Man, Black Uhuru, Buju Banton, Peter Tosh, Junior Reid, Tom Tom Club, Ian Dury, Burning Spear, Steel Pulse, Alpha Blondy, Tiken Jah Fakoly and Sly & Robbie, and, prior to the Wailers, was a member of the Impact All Stars.
A statement from Tuff Gong studio in Kingston, founded by Marley, reads: “We are saddened to learn of the passing of Wailers keyboardist, Tyrone Downie. Tyrone joined The Wailers just before the age of 20, making his recording debut with the band on Rastaman Vibration. We are blessed to count him as a member of the Tuff Gong Family.”
We are saddened to learn of the passing of Wailers keyboardist, Tyrone Downie. Tyrone joined The Wailers just before the age of 20, making his recording début with the band on Rastaman Vibration. We are blessed to count him as a member of the Tuff Gong Family. pic.twitter.com/RFhmSJXGHb— Tuff Gong (@TuffGongINTL) November 7, 2022
Several of Downie’s compositions appeared on the big screen, including 1989’s Slaves of New York and The Mighty Quinn.
Downie settled in France in the mid-to-late 1990s, during which time he focused on production and worked closely with Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour.
The multi-instrumentalist also had an impact on Grace Jones, the iconic Jamaica-born singer and actor. Jones penned the 1983 song “My Jamaican Guy,” which she later revealed was written about Downie.
Downie went on to released the solo album Organ-D — his nickname — in 2001.
He is survived by nine children, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, The Gleaner reports.
Guitarist Jeff Cook, who co-founded the mega-successful country group Alabama and steered them up the charts with such hits as “Song of the South” and “Dixieland Delight,” has died. He was 73.
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Cook had Parkinson’s disease and disclosed his diagnosis in 2017. He died Tuesday (Nov. 8) at his home in Destin, Florida, said Don Murry Grubbs, a representative for the band.
Tributes poured in from country stars, including Travis Tritt who called Cook “a great guy and one heckuva bass fisherman” and Charlie Daniels, who tweeted that “Heaven gained another guitar/fiddle player today.”
As a guitarist, fiddle player and vocalist, Cook — alongside cousins Randy Owen and Teddy Gentry — landed 33 No. 1 songs on Billboard‘s Hot Country Songs chart, including the pop crossover hits “Love in the First Degree” and “Feels So Right,” as well as “Tennessee River” and “Mountain Music.”
“Jeff Cook, and all of the guys in Alabama, were so generous with wisdom and fun when I got to tour with them as a young artist,” Kenny Chesney said in a statement. “They showed a kid in a T-shirt that country music could be rock, could be real, could be someone who looked like me. Growing up in East Tennessee, that gave me the heart to chase this dream.”
The band had a three-year run as CMA entertainer of the year from 1982-85 and received five ACM Awards trophies in that same category from 1981-85. The band was the first three-time winner and the first five-time winner of that top award at the respective shows. Cook stopped touring with Alabama in 2018.
Cook released a handful of solo projects and toured with his Allstar Goodtime Band. He also released collaborations with Charlie Daniels and Star Trek star William Shatner. He entered the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2005 as a member of Alabama.
Survivors include his wife, Lisa.
Tame One, veteran New Jersey rapper and member of hip-hop groups Artifacts and The Weathermen, has died. He was 52.
His death was confirmed by Pitchfork and on Facebook by the late rapper’s mother, Darlene Brown Harris. “What’s on my mind….I cant express this any other way. My son, Rahem Brown, Tamer Dizzle Is Dead,” she wrote on Sunday. “The medical examiner says the six pharmaceutical drugs … prescribed to him last Friday, combined with the weed he smoked over this weekend … his heart simply gave out. He will know better after the autopsy. I will not be responding to all the posts for a bit, but the hardest words I will ever post or say is, my son, my heart, is dead.”
Tame One, born Rahem Brown, expressed himself as a teenager by way of music and graffiti. Tame One’s 1994 debut alongside Artifacts groupmate El Da Sensei, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, was an ode to the influential art form and broke the duo into the mainstream. The album appeared on both the Billboard 200 and R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts. Despite their collective success, Artifacts only went on to release one more album together, That’s Them, in 1997 before moving on to solo careers.
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After the group’s initial split, New York hip-hop group The Weathermen, founded by a handful of East Coast producers and rappers, was formed. Tame One rapped alongside a number of co-members, including Cage Kennylz, Masai Bey, Aesop Rock, Yak Ballz, El-P, Jakki Tha Motamouth, Vast Aire and Breeze Brewin. The group released one mixtape in 2003, titled Conspiracy.
After 25 years, El Da Sensei and Tame One came together with producer Buckwild for their third album as Artifacts, No Expiration Date, which released on Aug. 20. “[In 1979], we would walk miles with markers and cans, taggin’ up everywhere,” he said in his final interview before his death. “I was influenced by my surroundings, I’m a product of my environment, and I capitalized upon what I saw. It’s a blessing to transform that energy and give back.”
Brooklyn rapper Gloria “Hurricane G” Rodriguez has died at age 52. The passing of the Puerto Rican MC best known for her 1997 No. 10 hot rap singles hit “Somebody Else” as well as binlingual songs including “Underground Lockdown” and “El Barrio,” was confirmed by EPMD’s Erick Sermon, who had a daughter with Rodriguez.
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“My heart is hardened today. One of my good friends…. my oldest daughters mother passed away today #HURRICANEGLORIA was also a legend in her own right in the Hiphop community,” Sermon wrote in an Instagram tribute posted on Sunday (Nov. 6). “One of the first puertorican female rappers She rapped with me. @redmangilla she paved the way @keithmurray @diddy she was in all the Hiphop magazines with all the top females at the time.”
Rodriguez first gained fame in 1992 when she appeared on Redman’s “Tonight’s da Night,” then teamed up with him again two years later on “We Run N.Y.” from his Dare Iz a Darkside album. Her debut full-length Spanglish album, All Woman, dropped in 1997 on the New York-based H.O.L.A. Recordings after she’d logged spots on songs by everyone from Xzibit to Funkdoobiest, Keith Murray and Puff Daddy. She also became the first female member of the East Coast hip-hop crew the Def Squad, which included Sermon, Redman, Murray and Jamal.
Though her output was sparse, Sermon noted in his tribute that legendary underground hip-hop radio due Stretch and Bobbito “loved a song that she did called ‘MILKY,’” adding, “She will be missed all around the world. I can’t believe this. Pray for us. Beautiful blessings. She was a beautiful person a wonderful mother as real as they come.”
At press time no cause of death was revealed, but according a FB post on May 20 from Rodriguez’s daughter, Lexus, her mom was suffering from advanced lung cancer. “My mom has stage 4 lung cancer,” she wrote at the time. “I dont know how many of you understand what that means but even after 30 years of life Im still trying to process it myself. I have never cried so much in my life I have never felt so disconnected from reality in my life. Yet my mom still manages to be the one to hold it together and say “dont worry baby everythings gonna be alright”. S–t im crying right now but today is a blessing.”
Hurricane G’s last released album was a 2013 collaboration with Thirstin Howl III entitled Mami & Papi.
See Sermon’s tribute and listen to “Somebody Else” below.
Mimi Parker, the vocalist and drummer of rock band Low, died on Saturday (Nov. 5) following a battle with ovarian cancer. She was 55.
The Duluth, Minn.-based group, which also includes Parker’s husband and bandmate Alan Sparkhawk, confirmed the sad news through its official Twitter account on Sunday.
“Friends, it’s hard to put the universe into language and into a short message, but she passed away last night, surrounded by family and love, including yours,” Low tweeted in a statement. “Keep her name close and sacred. Share this moment with someone who needs you. Love is indeed the most important thing.”
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Friends, it’s hard to put the universe into language and into a short message, but She passed away last night, surrounded by family and love, including yours. Keep her name close and sacred. Share this moment with someone who needs you. Love is indeed the most important thing.— LOW (@lowtheband) November 6, 2022
In recent weeks, Low announced the cancellation of upcoming concert dates in the United Kingdom and Europe while Parker continued treatments for her cancer. She was diagnosed with the disease in December 2020.
“There have been difficult days, but your love has sustained us and will continue to lift us through this time,” Sparkhawk wrote in an Instagram post on Oct. 7. “With tears, we say thank you and hope to see you soon.”
Parker was born and raised in Minnesota, and her mother was an aspiring country singer, the vocalist and drummer previously told Chickfactor. Parker first played drums in her high school marching band, and began dating her future husband Sparkhawk during junior high school, according to NPR.
Sparkhawk and Parker, both practicing Mormons, formed Low in 1993 with original bassist John Nichols. The band, which featured other rotating members throughout the years, would later become a standout name in the “slowcore” rock sub-genre. Low’s 1994 debut album, I Could Live in Hope, received critical acclaim, and the act went went on to release 13 albums during its nearly 30-year career.
Parker is survived by her husband, Sparhawk, and their two children, Hollis and Cyrus.
Aaron Carter, singer, television personality and younger brother of Backstreet Boys star Nick Carter, died Saturday (Nov. 5). He was 34.
A source confirms his death to The Hollywood Reporter, and it was also reported by TMZ. A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Police Department told THR that a suspicious death took place at Carter’s address but could not confirm the identity.
Representatives for Carter and his brother did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Carter got his start opening for the Backstreet Boys on a 1997 tour, and his debut album, Aaron Carter, was released later than year, reaching gold status.
His follow-up album, Aaron’s Party (Come and Get It), was released in September 2000. Aaron’s Party peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 albums chart and went triple platinum. It featured the singles “I Want Candy” and two Billboard Hot 100 hits, “Aaron’s Party (Come Get It)” (No. 35) and “That’s How I Beat Shaq” (No. 95). He supported the album as an opening act for Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears on the Oops!… I Did It Again Tour.
Carter dabbled in acting, appearing on shows including Lizzie McGuire and making his Broadway debut in 2001 as JoJo the Who in Seussical the Musical.
He starred alongside Nick and their siblings B.J., Aaron, Leslie and Angel Carter on the E! unscripted series House of Carters in 2006. Leslie died of a drug overdose in January 2012 at the age of 25.
Other television credits included competing on the 2009 season of ABC’s Dancing With the Stars, finishing in fifth place, and on the Food Network cooking battle series Rachael vs. Guy: Celebrity Cook-Off in 2012.
Carter was a gossip-site fixture and known for headlines surrounding his personal life, dating back to his early years as a teen heartthrob.
He has had multiple rehab stays, most recently entering earlier this year in an effort to regain custody of his son Prince. He had previously entered rehab back in 2017 following an arrest on suspicion of driving under the influence and marijuana charges.
This article originally appeared on The Hollywood Reporter.
Patrick Haggerty, the frontman for acclaimed country outfit Lavender Country, died Monday morning (Oct. 31). The news was announced on the group’s Facebook page, in a post that also explained that Haggerty had suffered a stroke weeks earlier. He was 78.
Self-described as a “screaming Marxist b—h singer,” the openly gay Haggerty joined up with the rest of Lavender Country in Seattle in the early ’70s. The group released just one album with their original lineup, an eponymous 1973 effort, making little commercial impact at the time — and the group eventually fell apart due to a lack of mainstream interest and disenchantment with their own community. (“The Stonewall Movement morphed into a Democratic Party machine,” Haggerty offered to Billboard earlier this year.)
However, the album endured as an underground favorite, thanks in large part to Haggerty’s biting wit and vivid, sometimes explicit lyrics. The set was reissued multiple times in the 21st century to a new audience, and the group reunited sporadically for live shows and re-recordings. In 2019, with a new lineup, they self-released an original album, Blackberry Rose and Other Songs and Sorrows, which was reissued with a new tracklist by the indie label Don Giovanni earlier this year, drawing strong reviews.
Haggerty continued through the decades to rail against the oppressive systems that marginalized his and other voices within the country music industry. “For every notable country star in Nashville there’s a thousand other artists who are just as good or better, frequently better, who go unsung and unacknowledged and have to jerk lattes just to pay the rent so they can continue to do music,” he lamented to Billboard in 2021. “That’s the star system — and darling, that’s really f–ked up … The corporate Nashville folks are purporting to be the music of the working class, but you can’t sing about union organizing, or the anti-racist struggle, or class struggle.”
However, he also appreciated that society had evolved enough to make him something of a cult hero later in his life — allowing him a platform, however modest, from which he could preach his brand of gospel without compromise to his image or message. “I get to use Lavender Country — unfettered and uncompromised — for the very reason I made it in the first place: To be a conduit for social change,” he raved to Billboard in the same interview. “I can put on bedazzled shirts and strut my beauty like anybody else on stage, but my real beauty is the way I chose to live my life.”
Haggerty’s loss was mourned on Twitter Monday by his Don Giovanni label, referring to him as “one of the funniest, kindest, bravest, and smartest people I ever met. He never gave up fighting for what he believed in, and those around him who he loved and took care of will continue that fight.”
See the tweet and Lavender Country’s Facebook announcement below.
Patrick Haggerty (Lavender Country) was one of the funniest, kindest, bravest, and smartest people I ever met. He never gave up fighting for what he believed in, and those around him who he loved and took care of will continue that fight. RIP Patrick (1944-2022). pic.twitter.com/phjutisgcq— Don Giovanni Records (@DonGiovanniRecs) October 31, 2022
Singer-actor Lee Jihan was among those who died in the Itaewon crowd crush tragedy in Seoul, South Korea. Two agencies representing the star, 935 Entertainment and 9Ato Entertainment, confirmed the news on Sunday (Oct. 30). He was 24.
Born on Aug. 3, 1998, Lee Jihan had made his first big move in the Korean entertainment industry by competing in the second season of the Korean singing competition Produce 101, where 101 K-pop hopefuls looked to land a spot in an 11-member boy band.
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Representing as a K-pop trainee from Pan Entertainment at the time, Lee originally auditioned on the show with a cover of EXO‘s “Overdose,” delivered a well-received group performance of INFINITE‘s “Be Mine” with castmates, and was ultimately eliminated in the fifth episode. The show produced Wanna One (who scored five entries on the World Albums chart during their one year together) and other breakout stars.
Former Produce 101 contestants Park Heeseok and Kim Dohyun expressed their condolences and shared funeral information for their former castmate via Instagram Stories.
Post-Produce, Lee moved into acting. In 2019, he starred in the Korean drama Today Was Another Namhyun Day. 935 Entertainment and 9Ato Entertainment agencies both represent a handful of different actors in South Korea.
Lee Jihan is one of at least 153 dead in Seoul’s crowd crush incident over the weekend. The Korean government has announced a period of national mourning that will last until Nov. 5. Several K-pop music releases and events have been canceled or postponed in light of the tragedy. Artists like PSY, ENHYPEN and more have expressed condolences.
D.H. Peligro, the drummer for influential punk band Dead Kennedys who also was a drummer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers for a short period of time, had died. He was 63.
The band confirmed the news of Peligro’s passing on their official social media accounts Saturday night (Oct. 29), noting that he died the day before in his Los Angeles home following an accidental fall.
“Dead Kennedys’ drummer D.H. Peligro (Darren Henley) passed away in his Los Angeles home yesterday, October 28th,” Dead Kennedys wrote in a statement on Instagram. “Police on the scene stated that he died from trauma to the head caused by an accidental fall. Arrangements are pending and will be announced in the coming days. We ask that you respect the family’s privacy during this difficult time. Thank you for your thoughts and words of comfort.”
“My dear friend, my brother I miss you so much,” Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea wrote on Instagram upon hearing of his death. Peligro had played with the band briefly, in 1988, and has three writing credits on RHCP’s Mother’s Milk album.
Flea’s tribute said: “I’m devastated today, a river of tears, but all my life I will treasure every second. The first time I saw you play with the DK’s in ‘81 you blew my mind. The power, the soul, the recklessness. You became my beloved friend, so many times of every kind. We had so much fun, so much joy, having each other’s backs. I love you with all my heart. You are the truest rocker, and a crucial part of rhcp history. D H P in the place to be, you live forever in our hearts, you wild man, you bringer of joy, you giant hearted man. I will always honor you. Rest In Peace and freedom from all that restrained you.”
Peligro, born Darren Henley in 1959, joined Dead Kennedys in 1981 and first appeared on the band’s In God We Trust, Inc. EP that year. The St. Louis native who moved to San Francisco recorded on the band’s pre-breakup studio albums Plastic Surgery Disasters (1982), Frankenchrist (1985) and Bedtime for Democracy (1986), plus the compilation album Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death (1987).
Dead Kennedys reunited (without original vocalist Jello Biafra) in 2001, with Peligro returning on drums alongside other original band members East Bay Ray and Klaus Flouride.
In a 2018 interview with LA Weekly, he spoke of the racism he faced touring in a punk rock band over the years. “You go down South, you go across the Midwest, then people were thinking that it was music for white people, or I was the janitor or security or something,” Peligro said. “You got to experience the racism firsthand, because everybody wasn’t as open-minded as they were in San Francisco. It’s a bit more open and accepted today, but there’s still pockets of people who want to use punk rock to create hate music. That angers me to no end.”
At the time, he said he was working on a script for a series based on his 2013 memoir, Dreadnaught: King of Afropunk. “It’s about all the stuff you don’t hear about from African-American punk rockers,” he told the publication.
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