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Johnny Canales, the iconic television host who dedicated his career to promoting Norteño and Tejano music in the United States, has died at 77. The announcement was made on his Facebook page Thursday (June 13).
“He was more than just a beloved husband, father, TV host, musician, and entertainer; he was a beacon of hope and joy for countless people,” reads the message. “His infectious charisma and dedication to promoting Latino music and culture left a large mark on the world. Johnny’s spirit will continue to live on through the countless lives he touched and the legacy he built.”
The Johnny Canales Show was an important platform for regional Mexican music artists, including Los Tigres del Norte, Los Relámpagos del Norte and Intocable, and was the prime mover of Selena’s career. “You got it, take it away” was one of the most famous phrases Canales used in his broadcasts to encourage artists in their nascent careers.
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Born in Nuevo Leon, Mexico, he moved to the Corpus Christi, Texas, area at a very young age. From childhood, he showed his passion for music and became a singer. However, it was in television hosting where he found stardom.
From 1988 to 1996, his program was broadcast on the Univision network, which allowed him to reach thousands of Mexicans living in the United States and become a cultural standard bearer for migrants. In 1997 he joined Telemundo, where he remained for several years, and later, his own show would be broadcast would be through their networks.
However, Canales’ health began to deteriorate in 2008 after suffering a stroke that led to loss of mobility, and forced him to give up television broadcasting. At the beginning of 2024, he appeared in networks in delicate health, reporting himself stable from his home. However, he would become weaker and weaker until his last days.
Below, watch a clip of Johnny Canales in action.
Songwriters are lucky if they leave behind one song that everyone knows and loves. Mark James, who y the Houston Chronicle reported died at his home in Nashville on June 8 at age 83, left behind three: “Suspicious Minds,” the final No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 by Elvis Presley; “Always on My Mind,” which was a top five Hot 100 hit for both Willie Nelson and Pet Shop Boys; and “Hooked on a Feeling,” which was a top five Hot 100 hit for both B.J. Thomas and Blue Swede.
James won two Grammy Awards – song of the year and best country song – for “Always on My Mind,” an exquisite ballad he co-wrote with Johnny Christopher and the late Wayne Carson. The song was also named song of the year by the Country Music Association in both 1982 and 1983. (CMA rules at the time allowed songs to win twice in this category, an overly generous policy which we can forgive if it worked to the benefit of a song this timeless and classic.)
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James was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2014 and the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame the following year. Thomas and Hunter Hayes performed James’ songs at the latter event.
James’ other notable hits included “The Eyes of a New York Woman,” a top 30 Hot 100 hit for Thomas in 1968; “Moody Blue,” a top 40 Hot 100 hit for Presley in 1977 and the title track of his last studio album released in his lifetime; and “Sunday Sunrise,” a top 10 hit on Hot Country Songs in 1973 for Brenda Lee.
James was born Francis Rodney Zambon on Nov. 29, 1940, in Houston, Texas. He befriended Thomas, who grew up in nearby Rosenberg, Texas, while both were still young. (Thomas died in 2021 at age 78.)
By the late 1960s, James was signed as a staff songwriter to Memphis producer Chips Moman’s publishing company. Moman produced Thomas’ versions of James’ songs “The Eyes of a New York Woman”, “Hooked on a Feeling” and “It’s Only Love” (which James co-wrote with Steve Tyrell). All three singles made the top 50 on the Hot 100 in 1968-69.
James released his own version of “Suspicious Minds,” also produced by Moman, on Scepter Records in 1968. Presley’s 1969 version, co-produced by Moman and Felton Jarvis, topped the Hot 100 in the issue dated Nov. 1, 1969, becoming the final No. 1 for the King of Rock and Roll.
In 1972, Lee had the first notable recording of “Always on My Mind.” Her version reached No. 45 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart. Presley recorded the song that same year, but, in what may have been a missed opportunity, allowed the song to go out as the B-side of a far less memorable song, “Separate Ways.” “Separate Ways,” Presley’s follow-up to his No. 2 Hot 100 smash “Burning Love,” reached No. 20, but “Always on My Mind” may have had far greater potential. As noted, subsequent cover versions by Nelson and Pet Shop Boys both made the top five. (Pet Shop Boys’ 1988 EDM version of this classic ballad served as a reminder that a great song can be interpreted any number of ways.)
Also in 1972, James signed a long-term contract with Screen Gems-Columbia Music. In 1973, Lee landed a top 10 hit on Hot Country Songs with James’ “Sunday Sunrise.” Anne Murray revived the song with some success in 1975.
In 1974, James landed his second No. 1 on the Hot 100 when Blue Swede, a Swedish group, recorded “Hooked on a Feeling.” The song was propelled by a punchy performance and, especially, an “ooga chaka” introduction (borrowed from a 1971 cover by Jonathan King) that was at once grating and fiendishly clever. It was the love-it-or-hate-it hook that sent the song to No. 1 in April 1974.
Fine Young Cannibals, Jay-Z, Dwight Yoakam and Bill Withers are among the other artists who have recorded James’ songs. James’ songs have also been featured in such films as Kramer vs. Kramer, Black Hawk Down and Reservoir Dogs.
French pop singer, actress and model Françoise Hardy died on Tuesday (June 11) at 80 after a long battle with cancer. Her son, musician Thomas Dutronc, announced her passing in a touching Instagram post featuring a picture of him as a baby in the arms of his mother with the message “Maman est partie (mom is gone).”
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One of the most versatile and beloved French artists of her generation, Hardy went public with her lymphatic cancer diagnosis in 2004 and was briefly put in an induced coma in 2015 when her condition worsened.
Hardy was born in Paris on Jan. 17, 1944 in the midst of an air raid on the Nazi-occupied city and by most accounts had a melancholy childhood whose spell was broken when her absent father gifted her a guitar after her early high school graduation at 16. The singer got her break in 1961 when the Disques Vogue label signed the then-18-year-old and released the single “Tous les garçons et les filles,” which became an instant hit and sold more than 2.5 million copies.
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Best known for her melancholy ballads, Hardy became one of the leading lights of the Yé-yé style of music, whose name was a spin on the frequent “yeah, yeah” chants in English language pop songs of the era by the likes of the Beatles. More hits followed, including “Je Suis D’Accord” and “Le Temps de L’Amour” and in 1963 Hardy came in fifth place as the entry from Monaco in that year’s Eurovision Song Contest.
With her stylish, androgynous look and a deadpan, breathy style that landed with young audiences thanks to lyrics about the heartache and angst of adolescence, films came calling and the singer was cast by director Roger Vadim in his 1963 comedy Château en Suède (Nutty, Naughty Chateau), alongside established star Monica Vitti. As a testament to her growing popularity, Hardy began translating her songs into English (as well as German and Italian), scoring her first top 20 UK hit in 1964 with “All Over the World.”
In addition to influencing (and being fawned over by) everyone from Bob Dylan to the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger, Hardy became a muse for fashion designers Yves Saint Laurent and Paco Rabanne as well, with famed photographers Richard Avedon and William Klein shooting her over the years. Dylan was so entranced by her, in fact, that in the liner notes of his 1964 Another Side of Bob Dylan album he included a poem in her honor that began, “For Françoise Hardy, at the Seine’s edge, a giant shadow of Notre Dame seeks t’ grab my foot.”
David Bowie was similarly smitten, once saying that he was “passionately in lover with her. Every male in the world, and a number of females, also were.”
After releasing a series of albums and EPs in France, Hardy’s debut full length release in the U.S. was 1965’s, The ‘Yeh-Yeh’ Girl From Paris!, a repackaging of her 1962 French debut album, Tous les garçons et les filles; her early albums were often released without titles and were frequently known by their most popular tracks. Her first English-language album, 1965’s In English, featured “All Over the World” and a number of other songs she co-wrote with collaborator Julian More, including “This Little Heart,” “The Rose” and “Another Place.” It was followed in 1968 by another English album known as The Second English Album and Will You Love Me Tomorrow. She scored her biggest English-language hit in 1968 with the Serge Gainsbourg-penned “It Hurts to Say Goodbye,” which hit No. 1 in France and the U.K.
Working with a series of collaborators throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Hardy released a dozen albums exploring Brazilian funk, rock, disco, jazz and electronic pop before taking a six-year break before 1988’s Décalages LP, which was followed in 1996 by Le danger, which she said at the time would be her final album. She continued to release albums throughout the early 2000s, though, issuing her 28th and final studio collection, Personne d’autre, in 2018.
Speaking to the Associated Press in 1996, she explained her unusual approach to songwriting, in which she emphasized the importance of melody. “I always put the words on the music. It’s always like that. I don’t write before, and then, I’m looking for music,” she said at the time of the method that gave her songs a unique quality mixing poetry-like lyrics with entrancing melodies. “First, I get the music and (then) I try to put words on it.”
In addition to collaborating with everyone from Iggy Pop to Blur, Hardy also appeared in films by such acclaimed directors Jean-Luc Godard (1966’s Masculine Feminine) and John Frankenheimer (Grand Prix). The singer also developed an interest in astrology, authoring a series of books on the subject as well as publishing fiction and her autobiography, The Despair of Monkeys and Other Trifles, in 2018. She was the only French singer to be named on Rolling Stone‘s 2023 list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time, coming in at No. 162 thanks to what the magazine said was “a breathy, deadpan also that wafted like Gauloises smoke.”
See Dutronc’s post and some of Hardy’s performances below.
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Brother Marquis, integral member of the influential, yet controversial rap group 2 Live Crew has died at age 57. While no cause of death has been officially confirmed, TMZ reports natural causes. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Born Mark Ross, Brother Marquis joined 2 Live Crew […]
Nashville music publishing executive Linda Patterson “Pat” Rolfe, who became one of the first women to lead a major music publishing company in the early 1970s, died of cancer on Friday (May 24) at age 77.
Rolfe, a Waverly, Tenn., native, was born July 27, 1946. She graduated from Waverly Central High School in 1964 and moved to Nashville, launching her music industry career in 1966 at music publishing company Hill & Range. While at the company — which became a dominant music publishing player in country music in the 1950s and 1960s — she joined Lamar Fike, a member of Elvis Presley‘s entourage who worked in lighting and helped oversee Presley’s music publishing. She also worked on hit songs by Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins, Eddy Arnold and bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe.
Rolfe was elevated to a leadership role at Hill & Range — rare for a woman executive in that era — when she was named GM at Hill & Range in 1972. She also brought Celia Froehlig into the company fold, with both staying on until Chappell Music acquired the Hill & Range companies in 1975. Froehlig would go on to hold senior roles at EMI Music Publishing and Black River Entertainment.
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Following the acquisition, Rolfe continued at Chappell Music, which was named ASCAP publisher of the year seven times during her tenure. She rose to the role of vp and held that role until 1987, when Warner Bros. Music acquired the company.
That same year, longtime ASCAP Nashville head Connie Bradley offered Rolfe a position as director of membership relations. While at the performing rights organization, Rolfe rose to the role of vp, bringing such songwriters and singer-songwriters as Dierks Bentley, Brad Paisley, Wynonna Judd, Tony Mullins, Trevor Rosen, Hillary Lindsey, Gerry House, Josh Kear, Michael Knox and Chris Tompkins into the fold. She retired in 2010.
In 1991, seeking to further elevate women in the music industry, Rolfe teamed with Judy Harris and Shelia Shipley Biddy to co-found SOURCE, a nonprofit organization that supports women professionals in the Nashville music industry. She was inducted into the SOURCE Hall of Fame in 2012.
“We are heartbroken over the loss of one of our beloved Founding SOURCE members Pat Rolfe,” said SOURCE Nashville president Kari Barnhart in a statement. “Pat’s heart for recognizing and elevating the Women Behind the Music is a legacy that will continue to live on through the organization she lovingly helped build with our other founding members Judy Harris and Shelia Shipley-Biddy over 33 years ago. Pat remained dedicated to the organization as a member of the Source Awards Committee through the years.”
Rolfe also served on the boards of organizations including the Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI), Nashville Music Association and Copyright Society of the South.
Rolfe is survived by her husband of 54 years, Mack, as well as stepchildren John (Vanessa), Jim (Mary K) and Dick (Michelle); seven grandchildren; brothers Jim, Mike, Joe and Charlie Patterson; and sister Margaret Simmons. She was preceded in death by her parents, Marie and George Patterson, her brother Jerry Patterson and sister-in-law Ann Patterson.
A visitation with the family will be held on Wednesday (May 29) from 9:30 a.m. until 11:00 a.m. at Green Hills Community Church in Nashville, with the funeral service set to begin at 11:00 a.m. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations go to the Bonaparte’s Retreat Dog Rescue, the Green Hills Community Church or a charity of your choosing.
Doug Ingle, the original singer and organist of psychedelic rock band Iron Butterly, has died. He was 78.
The musician’s son Doug Ingle Jr. shared the news of his father’s passing through social media on Saturday (May 25).
“It’s with a heavy heart & great sadness to announce the passing of my Father Doug Ingle. Dad passed away peacefully this evening in the presence of family,” Ingle Jr. wrote on Facebook. “Thank You Dad for being a father, teacher and friend. Cherished loving memories I will carry the rest of my days moving forward in this journey of life.”
A cause of death was not provided.
Ingle, writer of Iron Butterfly’s signature song “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” was the last surviving member of the group’s classic lineup, which was formed in San Diego in 1966. Drummer Ron Bushy died in 2021 at age 79, bassist Lee Dornan passed in 2012 at age 70, and guitarist Erik Brann died in 2003 at age 52.
Following numerous lineup changes early on, Ingle and Bushy was part of the five-piece Iron Butterfly that released the act’s 1968 debut album, Heavy. Soon after, the band’s other three members departed and were replaced by Brann and Dornan, who were part of the lineup that released the 17-minute version of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.”
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A shortened version of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” peaked at No. 30 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1968, one of four Iron Butterfly titles to impact the chart. Its parent album hit No. 4 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, while 1969’s Ball went to No. 3.
Ingle remained with Iron Butterfly through the release of its 1970 album, Metamorphosis, and left when the band broke up a year later.
Ingle did not take part in an Iron Butterfly reunion organized by Bushy and Brann in the mid-1970s, but he did perform with various versions of the group over the decades before retiring from performing in 1999.
Richard M. Sherman, the Oscar-winning songwriter who partnered with his late brother to craft tunes for such Disney classics as Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and The Jungle Book, died Saturday. He was 95.
Sherman, who also co-wrote “It’s a Small World (After All)” — considered the most performed song ever — as well as “You’re Sixteen,” a chart-topper for Ringo Starr, died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles of age-related illness, Disney announced.
Members of the Songwriters Hall of Fame and recipients of the National Medal of Honor, Richard and his older brother, Robert Sherman, wrote an estimated 1,000 songs and music for 50 movies, and they were responsible for more movie musical songs than anyone in history.
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For their work on Mary Poppins (1964), the Sherman brothers made two victorious trips to the Academy Awards stage at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, accepting the trophies for best original score and best song (“Chim Chim Cher-ee”).
The pair, who were hired by Walt Disney himself and worked directly with the Hollywood legend for almost a decade, also were nominated for the songs “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” from the 1968 United Artists film; “The Age of Not Believing” from Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971); “The Slipper and the Rose Waltz (He Danced With Me/She Danced With Me)” from The Slipper and the Rose: The Story of Cinderella (1976) and “When You’re Loved” from The Magic of Lassie (1978). They received three other noms for their scores.
Their movie work also included The Parent Trap (1961) — which featured “Let’s Get Together,” their inventive “duet” performed by Hayley Mills — The Sword in the Stone (1963), Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966), The AristoCats (1970), Snoopy, Come Home (1972), Charlotte’s Web (1973), Tom Sawyer (1973) and The Tigger Movie (2000).
In 1961, Richard and Robert separately watched British actress Julie Andrews perform two songs from her Broadway musical Camelot on The Ed Sullivan Show and knew immediately she would be ideal for the lead in Mary Poppins. In a savvy move, they had Disney’s secretary purchase tickets to Camelot for the studio head and his wife, and he saw the same thing in Andrews that they did.
Mary Poppins may have been inspired by the characters in the books written by P.L. Travers, but it was the brothers and their songs — also including the 34-word-long “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” “A Spoonful of Sugar,” “Sister Suffragette” and the lullaby “Feed the Birds,” which was Walt’s favorite song — that shaped the film’s narrative.
“You don’t get songs like ‘Spoonful of Sugar’ without a genuine love of life, which Richard passed on to everyone lucky enough to be around him,” director and Pixar chief creative officer Pete Docter said in a statement. “Even in his 90s, he had more energy and enthusiasm than anyone, and I always left renewed by Richard’s infectious joy for life.”
In a wonderful 2011 interview with THR’s Scott Feinberg, Richard described how “the boys” — that’s what Disney affectionately called them — came to work on Mary Poppins.
“One day, he had just accepted one of our songs — I think for a Zorro episode or something —and he said, ‘You know what a nanny is?’ And we said, ‘Yeah, it’s a goat.’ We thought he was going to do a picture about a nanny goat that sang or something. So he says, ‘No, no, no, in an English nursery!’ ‘Oh, yeah, sure, in an English nursery there’s a nanny, that’s right.’
“So he says, ‘Well, I have a book. I want you to read this and tell me what you think.’ He did not say, ‘I have this book, I want you to write me a title song for it,’ or, ‘I have a situation I want you to write for this character to sing.’ He just said, ‘Read the book and tell me what you think.’ ”
In other words, Disney was searching for a plot.
In a 2013 interview, Richard described the brothers’ first meeting with Travers. “Her opening line to us was, ‘I don’t even know why I’m meeting you gentlemen, because in fact we’re not going to have music in this film and, in fact, we’re not going to have any prancing and dancing.’ We were completely dashed.”
Of course, Walt and the boys would change her mind, and in a memorable backstage photo taken at the 1965 Oscars, the trophy-bearing brothers are seen planting a kiss on the cheeks of Andrews, who is holding her own statuette, for best actress.
Disney also asked the Shermans to come up with a catchy, overarching tune for his “UNICEF Salutes the Children of the World” walk-through attraction at the 1964 World’s Fair. Before the brothers got involved, it featured the unpleasant cacophony of various national anthems sung by audio-animatronic dolls.
“But Walt, are we stuck with this title, ‘Salute the Children of the World?’ ‘UNICEF?’ It’s a mouthful,” Richard told Feinberg. “He said, ‘Yeah. Well, it’s the small children of the world who are the hope of the future — that’s what we’re trying to say.’ He kept saying, ‘Small children are the hope of the world,’ and we said, ‘Yeah, small … world. That’s it! And let’s not blow each other up!’
“Now, how do we say that? Let’s, after all, use our heads. ‘After all … small … after all.’ That rhymes. ‘Small world, after all.’ And that was the way we came up with the expression.”
Disney loved their take so much, he named the attraction after it, and “It’s a Small World After All” now plays at theme parks all around the world, thousands of times a day. Richard described the song as a “prayer for peace” and said it’s the one tune by the brothers that makes people want to “either kiss or kill them.”
Despite their overwhelming success, the siblings did not always get along, as was documented in The Boys: The Sherman Brothers’ Story (2009), produced and directed by their sons Gregory V. Sherman and Jeffrey C. Sherman.
“Bob was into his orbit; I was into mine,” Richard said. “I wouldn’t say it was anything but that his interests were different. I’ve always been kind of an extrovert; he’s always been an introvert. … Basically, one of the chemical things that worked with us was the fact that we both had a stereopticon look at things, so we could blend our thinking together, and success came that way.”
Robert died in March 2012 at age 86. B.J. Novak played him, and Jason Schwartzman portrayed Richard, in the Disney film Saving Mr. Banks (2013), about the making of Mary Poppins.
Richard Sherman was born in Manhattan on June 12, 1928, 30 months after his brother. Their mother was a Broadway actress and their father was Tin Pan Alley composer Al Sherman, whose song, “Potatoes Are Cheaper, Tomatoes Are Cheaper, Now’s the Time to Fall in Love,” was a favorite of Eddie Cantor’s. His tunes also were recorded by the likes of Maurice Chevalier, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee and Cyndi Lauper.
The family moved west in the mid-1930s, and Richard attended Beverly Hills High School. He and his brother attended Bard College in New York (his major was music, while Roberts’ was English literature and painting), and Richard wrote what is now the school’s official song.
Challenged by their father — “You guys, I bet you couldn’t even write a song that some kid would give up his lunch money to buy on a record!” — the boys began writing, and their first song, “Gold Can Buy You Anything But Love,” was recorded in 1951 by the singing cowboy Gene Autry.
In 1958, they celebrated their first top 10 hit with “Tall Paul,” covered by Mouseketeer Annette Funicello. They wrote a number of hits for the teenager they called “our lucky star,” and Mr. Disney took notice. He gave the brothers various assignments, then offered them jobs as staff songwriters in the moments after telling them he loved their ideas for Mary Poppins.
They were named Disney Legends in 1990.
Most recently, Sherman wrote a song with composer Fabrizio Mancinelli for Andreas Deja’s 2023 animated short, Mushka. “Mushka’s Lullabye” was performed by soprano Holly Sedillos.
Survivors include his wife of 66 years, Elizabeth; his children, Gregory, Victoria and Lynda; five grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
Asked by Feinberg what were the best lyrics he ever came up with, Sherman touched on those he wrote for “A Man Has Dreams” from Mary Poppins.
“When it comes to writing what a man really feels — every man, every man — he dreams of doing something wonderful, of walking with the giants in his particular world,” he said. “An insurance guy wants to be the top man in the insurance business. I dreamed of being a top man in the music business, so it came out of my head.
“I said, ‘A man has dreams of walking with giants.’ I wanted to be with Gershwin. Who knows if I got there? I wanted to carve my niche in the edifice of time, so what I was saying — I was talking about myself, really.”
This article originally appeared on The Hollywood Reporter.
Documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, an Oscar nominee whose most famous works skewered America’s food industry and who notably ate only at McDonald’s for a month to illustrate the dangers of a fast-food diet, has died. He was 53.
Spurlock died Thursday in New York from complications of cancer, according to a statement issued Friday by his family.
“It was a sad day, as we said goodbye to my brother Morgan,” Craig Spurlock, who worked with him on several projects, said in the statement. “Morgan gave so much through his art, ideas, and generosity. The world has lost a true creative genius and a special man. I am so proud to have worked together with him.”
Spurlock made a splash in 2004 with his groundbreaking film Super Size Me, which was nominated for an Academy Award. The film chronicled the detrimental physical and psychological effects of Spurlock eating only McDonald’s food for 30 days. He gained about 25 pounds, saw a spike in his cholesterol and lost his sex drive.
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“Everything’s bigger in America,” he said in the film. “We’ve got the biggest cars, the biggest houses, the biggest companies, the biggest food, and finally: the biggest people.”
In one scene, Spurlock showed kids a photo of George Washington and none recognized the Founding Father. But they all instantly knew the mascots for Wendy’s and McDonald’s.
The film grossed more than $22 million on a $65,000 budget and preceded the release of Eric Schlosser’s influential Fast Food Nation, which accused the industry of being bad for the environment and rife with labor issues.
Spurlock returned in 2017 with Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken! — a sobering look at an industry that processes 9 billion animals a year in America. He focused on two issues: chicken farmers stuck in a peculiar financial system and the attempt by fast-food chains to deceive customers into thinking they’re eating healthier.
“We’re at an amazing moment in history from a consumer standpoint where consumers are starting to have more and more power,” he told the Associated Press in 2019. “It’s not about return for the shareholders. It’s about return for the consumers.”
Spurlock was a gonzo-like filmmaker who leaned into the bizarre and ridiculous. His stylistic touches included zippy graphics and amusing music, blending a Michael Moore-ish camera-in-your-face style with his own sense of humor and pathos.
“I wanted to be able to lean into the serious moments. I wanted to be able to breathe in the moments of levity. We want to give you permission to laugh in the places where it’s really hard to laugh,” he told the AP.
After he exposed the fast-food and chicken industries, there was an explosion in restaurants stressing freshness, artisanal methods, farm-to-table goodness and ethically sourced ingredients. But nutritionally not much had changed.
“There has been this massive shift and people say to me, ‘So has the food gotten healthier?’ And I say, ‘Well, the marketing sure has,’” he said.
Not all his work dealt with food. Spurlock made documentaries about the boy band One Direction and the geeks and fanboys at Comic-Con. One of his films looked at life behind bars at the Henrico County Jail in Virginia.
With 2008’s Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?, Spurlock went on a global search to find the al-Qaida leader, who was killed in 2011. In POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, Spurlock tackled questions of product placement, marketing and advertising.
“Being aware is half the battle, I think. Literally knowing all the time when you’re being marketed to is a great thing,” Spurlock told AP at the time. “A lot of people don’t realize it. They can’t see the forest for the trees.”
Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken! was to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017 but it was shelved at the height of the #MeToo movement when Spurlock came forward to detail his own history of sexual misconduct.
He confessed that he had been accused of rape while in college and had settled a sexual harassment case with a female assistant. He also admitted to cheating on numerous partners. “I am part of the problem,” he wrote.
“For me, there was a moment of kind of realization — as somebody who is a truth-teller and somebody who has made it a point of trying to do what’s right — of recognizing that I could do better in my own life. We should be able to admit we were wrong,” he told the AP.
Spurlock grew up in Beckley, West Virginia. His mother was an English teacher who he remembered would correct his work with a red pen. He graduated with a BFA in film from New York University in 1993.
He is survived by two sons — Laken and Kallen; his mother Phyllis Spurlock; father Ben; brothers Craig and Barry; and former spouses Alexandra Jamieson and Sara Bernstein, the mothers of his children.
Charlie Colin, the founding bassist of pop-rock band Train, has died. He was 58 years old.
According to TMZ, who spoke to the musician’s mother, the California-bred artist died after slipping and falling in the shower while house-sitting for a friend in Brussels, Belgium. His mother said it’s unclear when Colin passed away, as his body was found only after his friends returned from their trip approximately five days ago. Colin’s sister also confirmed his death to Variety.
His mom also told TMZ that the musician had moved to Brussels to teach a music masterclass at a conservatory, and was working on new music for a film at the time of his death. Colin had been documenting his time abroad on Instagram, where he declared that the locale was his “officially [his] favorite city” in a March post.
Colin helped form Train with lead singer Pat Monahan, Rob Hotchkiss, Jimmy Stafford and Scott Underwood in the ’90s. Before leaving the group due to substance abuse issues in 2003, he took part in recording hits such as “Drops of Jupiter” — which peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and earned the band its first Grammy nominations for best rock performance by a duo or a group and record of the year — and “Meet Virginia.” Train’s self-titled debut album reached No. 76 on the Billboard 200 in 1999.
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In 2015, Colin, Hotchkiss and Underwood formed the band Painbirds with Tom Luce.
Raised in Newport Beach, Colin first met Hotchkiss in middle school. The two later went to Boston’s Berklee College of Music at separate times before reconnecting when the latter formed the band the Apostles.
After the Apostles disbanded, Hotchkiss met Monahan and began collaborating on songs in the Bay Area. They later invited Stafford and Colin to join their lineup, after which Colin brought in Underwood to play drums — and Train was born.
“Charlie called me up and said, ‘It’s been this weird synchronicity where we’re not even willing to consider quitting,’” Hotchkiss recalled of his friend in a 2015 interview with The Los Angeles Times. “First and foremost, our priority is writing songs, and we really enjoy playing live.”
Omar Geles, the Latin Grammy-nominated vallenato singer, songwriter and accordionist who rose to fame in the ’80s with the group Los Diablitos, died on Tuesday (May 21) at Clínica Erasmo in Valledupar, Colombia. He was 57.
On May 18, Geles appeared as a guest artist at Silvestre Dangond‘s concert at El Campín Stadium in Bogotá, where he took the stage alongside Karen Lizarazo, Gusi, Elder Dayan, Rafa Peréz, Penchi Castro, Churo Díaz, and Diego Daza.
The Colombian newspaper El Tiempo noted that Geles had already suffered a “decompensation” on April 27 after a show in Miami, where he was treated at a hospital and successfully recovered.
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“Being grateful is the most precious gift and I have no way to repay you because you were attentive to my health,” Geles tweeted on April 28. “To God be the glory because he is the owner of life and everything. I still have a big handful of songs to give you. I love you. Here I am, strong as an oak!”
The news of his death led stars such as Carlos Vives and Miguel Morales, his former bandmate in Los Diablitos, to express their sorrow on social media.
“It’s not easy to accept that an artist like Omar Geles, with so much talent, so much joy, so many stories to tell, so much love for people has suddenly left,” Vives wrote on X, where he also posted a series of photographs of the many moments they shared, including in the TV series Escalona, in which Geles portrayed Simón Salas. “I could tell you many stories of a truly fraternal, unselfish artist that was loved by all. I will miss you dear Omar. Rest in peace.”
“The paths of life are like this… OMAR GELES, today my heart expresses with my tears of pain your departure. You were my partner, my brother, my friend, colleague, and my source of what I am today,” Morales expressed on his Instagram account, making a reference to their hit “Los Caminos de la Vida,” which means “The Paths of Life.”
The Vallenato Legend Festival highlighted on X that “in his musical career as an accordionist and composer [Geles] achieved great triumphs and knew how to give glory and honor to the music he loved until his last days.”
Geles became known in 1985 when he and Morales created the group Los Diablitos, releasing hits such as “Los Caminos de la Vida” and “Cómo le Pago a mi Dios.” In 2004, after separating from Morales, the artist changed the name of the group to La Gente de Omar Geles and remained active.
In the last decade, he received two Latin Grammy nominations for best cumbia/vallenato album: in 2010 for Prueba Superada, and in 2012 for Histórico – A Dúo Con Los Grandes.
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Watch a snippet shared by El Tiempo of his last performance at Dangond’s show over the weekend below.
@eltiempo Sobre las 8 de la noche de este martes 21 de mayo se conoció que el reconocido compositor y cantante de vallenato Ómar Geles falleció en la Clínica Erasmo de Valledupar. Aunque las causas de su fallecimiento no han sido confirmadas, de manera preliminar se informó que presentó una falla cardiaca. La noticia ha causado sorpresa entre compositores, amigos y fanáticos del artista, pues este fin de semana se estuvo presentando como parte de los invitados al concierto de Silvestre Dangond @Silvestre Dangond en Bogotá. Créditos @Angelica Daza Garrid ♬ sonido original – EL TIEMPO