Obituary News

Buffalo Springfield Drummer Dewey Martin Passes Away

Source: All About Jazz
February 5, 2009

Buffalo Springfield drummer Dewey Martin died January 31st of unknown causes. He was 68. Born Walter Milton Dwayne Midkiff, Martin cut his teeth in Nashville, playing with Patsy Cline, Roy Orbison and the Everly Brothers.

He moved to L.A. in the mid-1960s and learned that a fledgling band was looking for a new drummer. The groups guitarist, Neil Young, was highly impressed by Martin during his audition in 1966. He was a sensitive drummer, Young says in his biography Shakey. ...

Continue Reading...

Milton Parker Carnegie Deli Partner Dies

Source: Michael Ricci
February 5, 2009

Milton Parker, who brought long lines and renown to the Carnegie Deli in Manhattan with towering pastrami sandwiches and a voluble partner who kibitzed with common folk and celebrities alike, died in Queens on Friday. He was 90 and lived in Manhattan.

Mr. Parker was primarily the back-room planner who brought taam a Yiddish word suggesting great flavor and quality to the pastrami, corned beef, brisket and tongue; the cheesecake and matzo balls; the soups and the pickles that placed ...

Continue Reading...

Buddy Holly 50th the Day Music Didn't Die

Source: All About Jazz
February 3, 2009

Sorry, Don McLean, but the music didnt die 50 years later, Buddy Hollys songs still alive in tunes we hear today.

Buddy Holly was the James Dean of his generation. But whereas Dean who died at 24 in a car crash in California was celebrated for his brooding screen presence, it was Hollys earnestness that defined him. At another time in history, he would have been called a nerd. The wreckage of a single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza was scattered ...

Continue Reading...

Hank Crawford Saxophonist for Ray Charles Dies

Source: Michael Ricci
February 3, 2009

Hank Crawford, whose fluidly emotional saxophone solos as a sideman for Ray Charles led to a long career as a leader of jazz and soul bands and a lengthy discography for Atlantic, Kudu and Milestone Records, died Thursday at his home in Memphis. He was 74.

The cause was complications of a stroke he had in 2000, his sister Delores said.

Beginning in the early 1960s, when Mr. Crawford was music director for Charless big band and also recorded on ...

Continue Reading...

Lukas Foss Prolific American Composer Dies

Source: Michael Ricci
February 3, 2009

Lukas Foss, the polyglot American composer, conductor and pianist who directed half a dozen Ojai Music Festivals, led marathon concerts at the Hollywood Bowl and succeeded Arnold Schoenberg as head of composition at UCLA, has died. He was 86.

Foss died Sunday at his home in New York, according to his wife, Cornelia Foss. No cause of death was given, but Foss was known to have had Parkinson's disease.

Lukas Foss Lukas FossAmerican composer Aaron Copland once called Foss' works ...

Continue Reading...

Hank Crawford

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
February 2, 2009

Hank Crawford, another of the cadre of Ray Charles saxophonists who went on to their own fame, died on January 29. David “Fathead" Newman and Leroy “Hog" Cooper, Crawford's colleagues in the Charles band, died earlier last month. Crawford's alto, Newman's tenor and Cooper's baritone saxophones were integral to Charles's big band in the 1950s and early '60s. Crawford's own recording and touring bands were among the finest medium-sized groups of the era. Some of his earliest and best work ...

Continue Reading...

Sat Eye Candy: R.I.P. John Martyn

Source: JamBase
February 1, 2009

WE BID FAREWELL TO ONE OF THE HEAVIEST ROMANTIC SOULS MUSIC HAS EVER KNOWN

Time after time, I held it Just to watch it die Line after line, I loved it Just to watch it cry

Bless the weather that brought you to me Curse the storm that takes you away

In music we sometimes stumble upon an unknown country, fresh landscape of such varied, wonderful terrain that one knows ...

Continue Reading...

Not Fade Away: Remembering Buddy Holly

Source: All About Jazz
January 31, 2009

Next Tuesday marks the 50th anniversary of the plane crash that claimed the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. The Big Bopper Richardson.

In the current issue of Rolling Stone, Hollys friends, family and fellow musicians remember an artist who helped invent rock & roll as we know it today. Jonathan Cott revisits 1959s Winter Dance Party, which would become known as rocks Tour From Hell, as it wound its way across the frozen Midwest hitting places like ...

Continue Reading...