Obituary News

The Voice of the Hollywood Bowl

Source: Michael Ricci
March 22, 2010

Mark Ferber dies at 60; longtime production supervisor at the Hollywood Bowl.

To thousands of concert-goers, Mark Ferber's voice was comfortingly familiar as he announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Hollywood Bowl." As a child, he bicycled to the Bowl to do his homework in the picnic areas he found so peaceful. He was hired as an errand runner at 14, and his career at the venue stretched over 45 years. Ferber, who was the Bowl's longtime production supervisor ...

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Fearless to the End: Remembering Margaret Moth

Source: All About Jazz
March 21, 2010

CNN photojournalist Margaret Moth covered conflicts spanning continents, and said she lived her life to the fullest. Her guts, skill and humor made her one to remember, dies of cancer at 59, after surviving wars.

Given her jet-black hair, thick black eyeliner, black clothes and combat boots (which she often slept in while on assignment), people didn't always know what to think upon meeting her. She was quirky, the sort who excused herself from a social gathering by saying she ...

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King of the Wild Frontier Has Died

Source: Michael Ricci
March 19, 2010

Fess Parker, whose star-making portrayal of frontiersman Davy Crockett on television in the mid-1950s made him a hero to millions of young baby boomers and spurred a nationwide run on coonskin caps, died Thursday. He was 85. Parker, who played another pioneer American hero on television's “Daniel Boone" in the 1960s before becoming a successful Santa Barbara hotel developer and Santa Ynez Valley winery owner, died of complications from old age at his home near the winery, said family spokeswoman ...

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Herb Cohen Label Operator Introduced Mothers of Invention, Tom Waits

Source: All About Jazz
March 18, 2010

Herb Cohen, the tough, litigious manager and label operator who introduced such notables as the Mothers of Invention and Tom Waits during the '60s and '70s, died Tuesday of unknown causes in Napa, Calif. He was 77.

After beginning his professional career as an L.A. club booker and operator, Cohen branched into management in the mid-'60s. His biggest clients were Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention, the outre band that became a top attraction in venues on the Sunset Strip. After ...

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Fess Parker, Who Played Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone Dies

Source: Michael Ricci
March 18, 2010

Fess Parker, whose star-making portrayal of frontiersman Davy Crockett on television in the mid-1950s made him a hero to millions of young baby boomers and spurred a nationwide run on coonskin caps, died Thursday. He was 85. Parker, who played another pioneer American hero on television's “Daniel Boone" in the 1960s before retiring from acting a decade later and becoming a successful Santa Barbara hotel developer and Santa Ynez Valley winery owner, died of complications from old age at his ...

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World Music DJ Charlie Gillett Dies

Source: All About Jazz
March 18, 2010

Pioneering DJ Charlie Gillett has died aged 68 after battling a long illness, it emerged today.

Best known as the discoverer of rockers Dire Straits and as a champion of world music, the broadcaster died in a London hospital yesterday, his family said. He contracted a disease of the autoimmune system, and suffered a heart attack last week.

Gillett, who was born in Morecambe, Lancs, stepped down from his regular slot on Radio 3's World on 3 for health reasons ...

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Alex Chilton Big Nashville Star Dies

Source: All About Jazz
March 18, 2010

Alex Chilton, the pop hitmaker, cult icon and Memphis rock iconoclast best known as a member of 1960s pop-soul act the Box Tops and the 1970s power-pop act Big Star, died Wednesday at a hospital in New Orleans. The singer, songwriter and guitarist was 59. “I'm crushed. We're all just crushed," said John Fry, owner of Memphis' Ardent Studios and a longtime friend of Chilton's. “This sudden death experience is never something that you're prepared for. And yet it occurs." ...

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Country Music Impresario Johnnie High Dead at 80

Source: All About Jazz
March 18, 2010

Johnnie High, a north Texas country music showman who gave such performers as LeAnn Rimes and Boxcar Willie their early exposure, has died at the age of 80. High's daughter, Luanne Dorman, says her father died Wednesday after battling heart disease. The impresario of “Johnnie High's Country Music Revue" began his Saturday show in 1974 after converting an old movie theater in Grapevine, a Dallas- Fort Worth suburb, into the Grapevine Opry. There, he gave Boxcar Willie and Rimes, then ...

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