Obituaries for 2020

[EasyAce]

In his first season he turned the Dolphins around and won two consecutive SBs in five years with a strong running game.
So what do I know?

It almost didn't matter whether he coached a big-play team like the 1963-64 Colts or a ball-control team like his 1972-74 Dolphins (though when you had a quarterback like Bob Greise and a wide receiver like Paul Warfield you had big-play capacity)---the Shula style of non-adjustment still played, and in fact the Dolphins were shut out in the second half against the Redskins while tied in the second half against the Vikings. (It was the only time in any championship game that a Shula team got so far as a tie for the half.) Either team had a better-than-fair chance of tying or even overcoming to win those games based on the Dolphins' second-half performances.

A decade later, Shula had another ball-control team of Dolphins . . . and got shut out by the Redskins (17-0) in the second half of their Super Bowl. (Final score: Redskins, 27-17.) Two years later, yanked inside-out into a very big-play team anchored by Dan Marino, the  Dolphins got shut out in the second half (10-0) of that Super Bowl by the 49ers. (Final score: 38-16.)

[musiclady]

Flags in Ohio were at half mast yesterday for Don Shula.

RIP, sir!



Don Shula, a veteran of the Ohio National Guard's 145th Infantry Regiment, 37th Infantry Division passed away today at the age of 90. The NFL Hall of Fame football coach served in the 145th Infantry in the early 1950s while still attending John Carroll University in Cleveland. In January 1952, Shula entered active service with the division and was sent to Camp Polk, La. for training. He was released in November of that year to return to the Cleveland Browns, who had drafted him in 1951. 37th Infantry Brigade Combat Team For more information visit the link below:

https://www.profootballhof.com/don-shula-1930-2020/

[EasyAce]

Millie Small: My Boy Lollipop singer dies aged 72
BBC

Jamaican singer Millie Small has died at the age of 72 after suffering a stroke.

The star was most famous for her hit single My Boy Lollipop, which reached number two in both the US and the UK in 1964.

It remains one of the biggest-selling ska songs of all time, with more than seven million sales.

Island Records founder Chris Blackwell announced her death and remembered her as "a sweet person... really special".

It was Blackwell who brought Small to London in 1963 and produced her version of My Boy Lollipop, showcasing her childlike, high-pitched vocals.

"I would say she's the person who took ska international because it was her first hit record," he told the Jamaica Observer .

"It became a hit pretty much everywhere in the world. I went with her around the world because each of the territories wanted her to turn up and do TV shows and such, and it was just incredible how she handled it.

"She was such a sweet person, really a sweet person. Very funny, great sense of humour. She was really special," said Blackwell . . .

For decades to follow, Millie Small insisted the harmonica solo on "My Boy Lollipop" (the song was a remake of an obscure 1956 B-side cut by Barbie Gaye) was played by a kid named Rod Stewart, though Stewart denies it to this day. The solo was actually played by a musician who had a tie to Stewart: Pete Hogman, who replaced Stewart after the latter left a band called Jimmy Powell and the Five Dimensions.

Small's single on the Smash label (Mercury subsidiary) billed her as "The Blue Beat Girl" (she was 16 when she cut it) possibly thinking nobody would get the birth of ska at that time. This is the British-release picture sleeve:



The bad news: Small revealed four years ago that she never saw a nickel of royalties for her biggest hit.

RIP.

[Applewood]

@EasyAce

I remember My Boy Lollipop.  Seems it was all over the radio back in the 60's.  Always wondered what happened to Miss Small -- as I do with most one-hit wonders.  It's a dang shame she made no money from that single.  She was destitute, at least for a time, and could have used the money. 

Rest in peace, Miss Small.

[Cyber Liberty]

Millie Small: My Boy Lollipop singer dies aged 72
BBC
For decades to follow, Millie Small insisted the harmonica solo on "My Boy Lollipop" (the song was a remake of an obscure 1956 B-side cut by Barbie Gaye) was played by a kid named Rod Stewart, though Stewart denies it to this day. The solo was actually played by a musician who had a tie to Stewart: Pete Hogman, who replaced Stewart after the latter left a band called Jimmy Powell and the Five Dimensions.

Small's single on the Smash label (Mercury subsidiary) billed her as "The Blue Beat Girl" (she was 16 when she cut it) possibly thinking nobody would get the birth of ska at that time. This is the British-release picture sleeve:



The bad news: Small revealed four years ago that she never saw a nickel of royalties for her biggest hit.

RIP.

.
Artists don't usually get much in the way of Royalties, those go to the Writers, in the case of "Lollipop" that was Robert Spencer.

[goatprairie]

@EasyAce

I remember My Boy Lollipop.  Seems it was all over the radio back in the 60's.  Always wondered what happened to Miss Small -- as I do with most one-hit wonders.  It's a dang shame she made no money from that single.  She was destitute, at least for a time, and could have used the money. 

Rest in peace, Miss Small.

Cheated by the music industry. Common practice in those days. Few musicians/singers thought about royalties when some industry flack waved a contract in their faces. In her case, she was just a young teen when she was offered a contract. Easy to cheat.

[EasyAce]

.
Artists don't usually get much in the way of Royalties, those go to the Writers, in the case of "Lollipop" that was Robert Spencer.

@Cyber Liberty

It was Robert Spencer---who wrote the song in 1956 while he was still a member of the Cadillacs. But . . . he had the misfortune of the song attracting the attention of the notorious Morris Levy, who agreed to be the song's publisher---then wiped Spencer's credit for writing the song and replaced it with that of a mobbed-up R&B artists' manager named Johnny Roberts while claiming that he, Levy, was really Robert Spencer.

Both Levy and the song, written originally as "My Girl Lollipop," caught the eye and ear of a mobster who was tight with Levy and had just discovered a Brooklyn girl named Barbie Gaye, Caetano (Corky) Vastola, an underboss in the notorious DeCavalcante crime family in New Jersey. Vastola, in turn, got the attention of DJ legend Alan Freed, then arranged for Gaye to cut the song on the Darl label. (Among the musicians on that record were two legendary New York studio rats, saxophonist Al Sears and drummer Panama Francis.) She cut it in the shuffle style then still new to R&B. Though it was hugely popular on Freed's radio show and around the northeast it didn't really catch elsewhere in the U.S.

Barbie Gaye was actually paid $200 flat for her record. It was more than Millie Small ever got for having the eventual (way) bigger hit, other than the big fees she collected for singing it on television appearances (including on the Beatles' early 1964 British special Around the Beatles) around the world. British producer Chris Blackwell's re-discovery of the song on a reel-to-reel mix tape he'd acquired in 1964 led him to offer it to Small, a Jamaican teenager living in England whom Blackwell discovered, having her cut the song---not on his fledgling Island label in England, but leasing it to the Fontana label, and in the new ska style shuffle. The only thing keeping it from hitting number one in the U.S. in May 1964 was the Beach Boys' "I Get Around."

Barbie Gaye has another music history footnote: one of the kids who went for her original cut of "My Boy Lollipop" (spelled "Lollypop" on her record) was a Long Island girl named Ellie Greenwich, who adopted the stage name Ellie Gaye when she tried an early career as a recording artist before becoming the songwriting legend she eventually became.

This was Barbie Gaye's original recording . . .


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. . . and this, of course, in all her make-Geddy-Lee-resemble-a-baritone glory, is Millie Small's international hit . . .


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Millie Small's "My Boy Lollipop" has since sold over seven million copies on its own and remains one of the world's most popular early ska hits.

[Cyber Liberty]

@EasyAce  It  seems people get in line to screw Artists.  If I were a musician, and somebody approached me for a contract, my first stop would be an Agent.

[Applewood]

Cheated by the music industry. Common practice in those days. Few musicians/singers thought about royalties when some industry flack waved a contract in their faces. In her case, she was just a young teen when she was offered a contract. Easy to cheat.

I remember watching a documentary about many of the 50s and 60s artists who had one or more big hits, should have made big bucks, but ended up destitute.  A lot of them were poor, black and illiterate.  Some record producer would pluck these mostly young kids from the ghetto, tell them they'll get maybe a hundred dollars if they just sign on the dotted line.  For a lot of these artists, $100 was a lot of money, so they signed.  Only...many of them couldn't read or write, so they had no idea they were signing away any claims to royalties or any other further compensation. 

@Cyber Liberty  -- you mentioned getting an agent.  Well, back in the day, I don't think there were many and if there were, these youngster would never be able to afford them.  Plus, agents could be just as unscrupulous as the recording execs -- maybe more so.  Still true today. 

[EasyAce]

@Cyber Liberty  -- you mentioned getting an agent.  Well, back in the day, I don't think there were many and if there were, these youngster would never be able to afford them.  Plus, agents could be just as unscrupulous as the recording execs -- maybe more so.  Still true today.

@Applewood

You may remember Allen Klein first made his name by taking on performers, forcing their record companies to open the books, and prying boatloads of unpaid royalties for them. (He first managed Sam Cooke until Cooke's death---he'd helped Cooke assert his independence---and then took on British Invasion artists produced by his acquaintance Mickie Most, beginning with the Animals.) He got the artists the monies . . . but the price they ended up paying proved unconscionable: the Rolling Stones ended up losing the rights to every last one of their 1963-70 recordings to get themselves free of him after they smelled rats despite his making them rich, and the story of Klein and the Beatles is only too well known, too.

For black artists, a guy like Curtis Mayfield or Ray Charles was rare enough. Mayfield from almost the beginning made sure he alone had control of his songwriting and the records he made with the Impressions and as a solo artist. (His clout from the Impressions's success enabled him to set up his own label, Curtom, when their original ABC-Paramount deal expired.)When Charles first left Atlantic for ABC-Paramount, he managed to get a deal giving him complete artistic control and independent song publishing plus a record label (Tangerine, to which Charles usually brought other artists while he recorded for the ABC-Paramount parent). There were those occasional black artists then who had the success to back up that they weren't just exploitable dummies.

[jmyrlefuller]

Brian Howe
Lead singer of Bad Company dies at 66



Howe replaced Bad Company's original lead singer, Paul Rodgers, in 1986. In his eight years with the band, they scored their biggest hit, "Holy Water," in 1990. He had previously provided lead vocals for Ted Nugent's band (the former Amboy Dukes) for their 1983 album Penetrator.

Howe died of cardiac arrest May 6.

Obituary from the New York Post

Wikipedia

Bad Company · Holy Water - video dailymotion

[catfish1957]

Brian Howe
Lead singer of Bad Company dies at 66

Howe replaced Bad Company's original lead singer, Paul Rodgers, in 1986. In his eight years with the band, they scored their biggest hit, "Holy Water," in 1990. He had previously provided lead vocals for Ted Nugent's band (the former Amboy Dukes) for their 1983 album Penetrator.

Howe died of cardiac arrest May 6.

Never knew Paul Rodgers left.   Shows how much I kept up with this band.

[jmyrlefuller]

Roy Horn
Half of Siegfried & Roy dies at 75


Horn is at right.

Uwe "Roy" Horn was introduced to large cats through a family friend, who ran the zoo in Bremen. In the early 1960s, Horn, while on a cruise line, was pulled into an assistant job with Siegfried Fischbacher, a magician, and Roy introduced big cats into the act, initially with a cheetah (which got the duo fired). They returned to Bremen, toured Europe, then in 1967 came to Las Vegas, where their magic show emphasized white lions and tigers. Their high-budget act, bankrolled by promoter Feld Entertainment beginning in the early 1980s, raised the stakes of Las Vegas entertainment, inspiring more spectaculars on the strip. The show ran until Horn was mauled by one of his own tigers on stage in 2003, during which he sustained several injuries and a stroke.

Horn died May 8 from complications of coronavirus.

Obituary from the Las Vegas Review-Journal

Wikipedia (Siegfried & Roy)

[Applewood]

Saw Siegrfied & Roy a couple of times in Vegas   Fabulous show, but always thought it was way too dangerous.  Darn shame.  Roy never really recovered from the mauling. 

Rest in peace, Roy Horn.

[Gefn]

I never saw Siegfried and Roy other than on TV. But they got to touch tigers, which his cool for us cat ladies.

RIP, Mr. Horn.

[mountaineer]

A 75-year-old who barely survived as severe a stroke as he probably wouldn't have been able to survive many subsequent illnesses. It just so happened that the Coronavirus came along. Lucky for the hospital's coffers, I guess.

[Smokin Joe]

A 75-year-old who barely survived as severe a stroke as he probably wouldn't have been able to survive many subsequent illnesses. It just so happened that the Coronavirus came along. Lucky for the hospital's coffers, I guess.

One thing about the Coronavirus...It sure cut down on all those other things that were killing people...

[mountaineer]

Little Richard, Founding Father of Rock Who Broke Musical Barriers, Dead at 87
Pianist-singer behind “Tutti Frutti,” “Good Golly Miss Molly” and “Long Tall Sally” set the template that a generation of musicians would follow
David Browne
May 9, 2020

Little Richard, a founding father of rock and roll whose fervent shrieks, flamboyant garb, and joyful, gender-bending persona embodied the spirit and sound of that new art form, died Saturday. He was 87. The musician’s son, Danny Penniman, confirmed the pioneer’s death to Rolling Stone, but said the cause of death was unknown.

Starting with “Tutti Frutti” in 1956, Little Richard cut a series of unstoppable hits – “Long Tall Sally” and “Rip It Up” that same year, “Lucille” in 1957, and “Good Golly Miss Molly” in 1958 – driven by his simple, pumping piano, gospel-influenced vocal exclamations and sexually charged (often gibberish) lyrics. “I heard Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, and that was it,” Elton John told Rolling Stone in 1973. “I didn’t ever want to be anything else. I’m more of a Little Richard stylist than a Jerry Lee Lewis, I think. Jerry Lee is a very intricate piano player and very skillful, but Little Richard is more of a pounder.”  ... Rolling Stone

[sneakypete]

One thing about the Coronavirus...It sure cut down on all those other things that were killing people...

@Smokin Joe

What are the odds of it ever getting a name change to "The Mercy Killer"?

[Gefn]

BREAKING 
Little Richard: Rock 'n' Roll's founding father dies aged 87

Little Richard, one of the founding fathers of rock 'n' roll, has died at the age of 87, according to reports in the US.

His son, Danny Penniman, confirmed his death but said the cause was unknown, Rolling Stone reports.

The singer was famous for hits including Good Golly Miss Molly and Tutti Frutti.

https://news.sky.com/story/little-richard-rock-n-rolls-founding-father-dies-aged-87-11985747

[Smokin Joe]

@Smokin Joe

What are the odds of it ever getting a name change to "The Mercy Killer"?

Believe me, there is nothing merciful about spending a few days fighting to breathe, drowning in your own lung fluids...

[Gefn]

BREAKING 
Little Richard: Rock 'n' Roll's founding father dies aged 87



https://news.sky.com/story/little-richard-rock-n-rolls-founding-father-dies-aged-87-11985747

This one really hurts. Thank you for all the wonderful music. Heaven has a rocking new angel. RIP.

[Smokin Joe]

BREAKING 
Little Richard: Rock 'n' Roll's founding father dies aged 87



https://news.sky.com/story/little-richard-rock-n-rolls-founding-father-dies-aged-87-11985747

I didn't know he was still alive. RIP. He brought a lot of energy to a stage.

[sneakypete]

Little Richard, Founding Father of Rock Who Broke Musical Barriers, Dead at 87
Pianist-singer behind “Tutti Frutti,” “Good Golly Miss Molly” and “Long Tall Sally” set the template that a generation of musicians would follow
David Browne
May 9, 2020

@mountaineer

You really can't overstate his importance when it comes to making R&R big. He flat lit up the stage every time he appeared.

The musician’s son, Danny Penniman,

THERE's a shock!

[EasyAce]

The unforgettable segment of Little Richard stealing the show in Let the Good Times Roll . . .


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Paul McCartney's father was once quoted as saying that when he heard his then-teenage son doing his own Little Richard impersonation, "I couldn't believe anyone really sounded like that. It wasn't until years later, when I saw Little Richard on the bill with the Beatles, that I realised how good Paul's impersonation was." (The Beatles, of course, often used "Long Tall Sally" to close their concerts in 1963-65.)

RIP.