Rolling Obituary Thread: 2015

I think I'd heard something about him being sick, but I'd totally forgotten it. R.I.P.

Anita Ekberg?

Yes:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/anita-ekberg-of-la-dolce-vita-fame-dies-1.2897039

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o15UTomYsc

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/drummer-vocalist-popsy-dixon-holmes-brothers-dies-28125004

Soulful falsetto vocalist

Very sad.

This is beautiful and amazing and heartbreaking:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPNhnIwT920

http://www.wearemoviegeeks.com/2015/01/brian-clemens-dead-83/

Probably best known for The Avengers, also lots of other British TV and some film work including the Golden Voyage Of Sinbad.

Oh sad - definitely one of the major figures of British genre film/tv. I'm particularly fond of Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde, perhaps the most polymorphously perverse of all Hammer movies.

Yeah, shame, RIP Brian.

Tim Drummond:
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/tim-drummond-bassist-neil-young-bob-dylan-dead-20150112

Hear him walk a little bit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP1wtIfs8lg

Oh no, that is terrible news. RIP.

Samuel Goldwyn Jr., key arthouse distributor of the 1980s

http://thedissolve.com/news/4434-samuel-goldwyn-jr-1926-2015/

Dozy!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-30811311

RIP Dozy. I always mean to investigate DDDBMT, I like them, but I never do.

Now, they are Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich

You want awesome?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51lxwZXeNSI

Novelist Robert Stone

RIP Kim Fowley

http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/6443507/kim-fowley-legendary-record-producer-dead-at-75

o

Shocker, RIP Kim!!!!!!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/17/arts/music/ervin-drake-composer-of-pop-songs-dies-at-95.html?action=click&contentCollection=Music®ion=Footer&module=MoreInSection&pgtype=article

Ervin Drake’s “Now That I Have Everything” debuted the same day he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1983, a fitting coda for a career that was punctuated by hit versions of his songs, like Frank Sinatra’s “It Was a Very Good Year,” Billie Holiday’s “Good Morning Heartache” and the inspirational “I Believe,” sung by Frankie Laine.

Mr. Drake, who wrote lyrics and music, produced television programs and was president of the American Guild of Authors and Composers, died on Thursday at 95 at his home in Great Neck, N.Y. The cause was complications of bladder cancer, said his stepson, Jed Berman.

Takao Saitô, Kurosawa's cinematographer on Ran, Sanjuro and many others

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/takao-saito-cinematographer-18-kurosawa-761859

Faten Hamama, actress who was "Lady of Arabic Cinema"

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-faten-hamama-1931-2015

http://www.tennessean.com/story/entertainment/music/2015/01/17/dixie-hall-prolific-bluegrass-songwriter-dies/21914181/

Dixie Hall, wife of Tom T. Hall. I didn't really know anything about her before this article, but what a life.

http://www.nola.com/music/index.ssf/2015/01/bo_dollis_longtime_big_chief_o.html

Theodore Emile "Bo" Dollis, the longtime Big Chief of the Wild Magnolias Mardi Gras Indians, died at his home in New Orleans on Jan. 20, 2015, his son confirmed. He was 71.

....He was among the first to bring the culture and sound of the Indian culture to national prominence, recording the first commercial album of Mardi Gras Indian music, the single "Handa Wanda," in 1970 – the same year that he and Monk Boudreaux of the Golden Eagles Mardi Gras Indians appeared at the first New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. In 1974, along with his wife Laurita Dollis, keyboardist Willie Tee, Snooks Eagilin, percussionist Uganda Roberts and saxophonist Earl Turbinton, Dollis recorded the groundbreaking album "The Wild Magnolias," melding Indian chants with sizzling funk. ...

Saw that coming. RIP

Leon Brittan

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/leon-brittan-dead-thatcher-minister-accused-of-failure-to-act-on-child-sex-abuse-dossier-dies-9995572.html

(also Anne Kirkbride the other day, mentioned on Coronation Street thread but not here)

Frank Mazzola, editor of Performance (amongst other extraordinary things):

http://variety.com/2015/film/news/frank-mazzola-film-editor-and-rebel-without-a-cause-actor-dies-at-79-1201410982/

@jeremyscahill
These obit headlines are puke-worthy: "Saudi King Abdullah: patient reformer who battled hardliners"

He's getting no RIPs from me.

For constant larfs, make sure you read Greenwald's twitter today.

@ggreenwald 2h2 hours ago
Next on CNN: Was the dearly departed King Abdullah more like MLK or Gandhi? Our panel remembers this beloved figured of peace and reform.

@ggreenwald · 1h 1 hour ago
UK orders flags flown at half-mast for King Abdullah. Will return to lecturing the world about democracy tomorrow

faith seidenberg, who desegregated mcsorley's ale house in manhattan, among other things

Joe Franklin

bummer.

http://espn.go.com/chicago/mlb/story/_/id/12219755/ernie-banks-former-chicago-cubs-great-dies-age-83

I got through to Joe Franklin once, as a teenager in the mid- or late-'70s. He must have been syndicated, because I'm pretty sure it was a station out of Cleveland that you could pick up in Toronto. Zero recollection of what we talked about.

(Check that--think it was this guy instead: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Franklin.)

VERY DIFFERENT GUY.

I interviewed Joe in his office in 1980. (The OLD office, not the neater one below.) Papers and folders and God-knows-what stacked floor-to-ceiling. He was yakking on the phone about "Gore Vidal's Caligula" ("It's terrible, people are asking for their $10 back").

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr2s7K8Qmdk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFXsMTS9MS4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bpf1j0cA5Hg

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-30984851

Demis Roussos. I suspect he might get his own thread, or the Aphrodite's Child one.

:((((((((

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=321JxxzlGio

rod mckuen

can't understand it anymore

Colleen McCullough, author of The Thorn Birds: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-31036362

What not to do. Seriously, what NOT TO DO:

http://www.crikey.com.au/2015/01/30/why-the-oz-called-colleen-mccullough-fat-and-ugly-in-her-obituary/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Marie_McCoy

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100823151

Prolific songwriter who had songs recorded by Big Maybelle, Elvis Presley, Little Jimmy Scott, Nat King Cole, Ike & Tina Turner and others died on January 20th at age 92 according to Wiki and a Yahoo Southern Soul group email listserv thing I get. She was a New Jersey-based independent songwriter who rejected offers to join well-known house songwriting operations at Stax, Motown and elsewhere

Edward Saylor one of the surviving Doolittle Raiders (three left)
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/31/us/edward-j-saylor-airman-who-took-fight-to-japan-with-the-doolittle-raiders-dies-at-94.html

navy ace alexander vraciu, who once shot down six japanese bombers in eight minutes

NY Times now has obit of songwriter McCoy

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/arts/music/rose-marie-mccoy-a-songwriter-for-rock-pop-and-jazz-legends-dies-at-92.html?_r=1

http://oregonmusicnews.com/2015/02/02/don-covay-soul-singer-songwriter-dead-76/

He had been in ill health for awhile after a stroke. No larger outlets are reporting this yet. Reports of the death have also been on facebook

more online tributes starting to show up

RIP Don

Geraldine McEwan, star of theatre, television and film

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/feb/01/geraldine-mcewan-from-mrs-malaprop-to-miss-marple

LA based saxophonist Zane Musa, at 36.

http://www.laweekly.com/music/la-jazz-scene-reels-from-untimely-death-of-zane-musa-5367964

Well, that seems unlikely. RIP.

There's no question that the news is true, but allow me to not believe it for a while longer. R.I.P. Lemmy

https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtp1/v/t1.0-9/10710773_1106121706072795_6645400775584024850_n.jpg?oh=5c0f1489cd175d37201045b21bd96b00&oe=5717672D

RIP stormin norman

RIP Lemmy - Killed by Death, just like he predicted.

it's like when Ronnie James Dio died. I knew he was sick but it never crossed my mind to picture what it would be like without him

and now bummertown usa ;_;

Let me get this straight, Lemmy is dead?

Meadowlark Lemmy

I don't wanna live forever ;_;

Czech goalie Pavel Srnicek, 47:

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/dec/29/pavel-srnicek-newcastle-united-sheffield-wednesday-west-ham-dies-aged-47-cardiac-arrest

The Specials' John Bradbury

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/dec/29/john-bradbury-of-the-specials-dies-ages-62

Guru Josh

http://www.hln.be/hln/nl/9092/Muzieknieuws/article/detail/2570076/2015/12/29/Danceproducer-Guru-Josh-Infinity-overleden.dhtml

Hearing Guru Josh as well, but can't find a link

xpost, ah there we go

And there's your English-language report:

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/dec/29/guru-josh-rave-star-dies-aged-51

Aidan Higgins.
http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/acclaimed-irish-writer-aidan-higgins-dies-aged-88-1.2478631

http://tvline.com/2015/12/31/wayne-rogers-dead-age-82-mash/

R.I.P. Trapper John

No way. He always had that youthful glow. RIP

natalie cole

rip

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music/singer-natalie-cole-dead-65-article-1.2482580

Ring out the old: Rolling Obituary Thread: 2016