Obituary News

Guy Peellaert Belgian Pop Artist Worked with Rock Stars Dies

Source: Michael Ricci
November 23, 2008

Belgian painter, graphic designer, photographer and pop artist Guy Peellaert, whose surreal pictures for the 1972 cult book Rock Dreams brought him worldwide attention and led him to design album covers for the Rolling Stones and David Bowie, died at 74 Monday in Paris after a long illness.

Rock Dreams was a fantasy tribute to rock 'n' roll that placed various major rock stars in dreamlike situations intended to reflect their music and public images. With 116 flashy pictures by ...

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Charlie O's Charles Ottaviano Famed Nightclub Owner Passes

Source: Michael Ricci
November 22, 2008

Charles Ottaviano, 66, whose intimate Van Nuys nightclub Charlie Os developed a loyal following of jazz enthusiasts, died of a heart attack Monday at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, said his wife of 26 years, Jo-Ann. He lived in Granada Hills.

I always wanted to have a jazz room, ever since I moved out here from Buffalo [N.Y.] in 1960. My father was a musician, and I started to play when I was very young. Charles Ottaviano He said ...

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Remembering Artist Henri Matisse

Source: Michael Ricci
November 21, 2008

November 4, 1954 Art World Mourns Henri Matisse, Dead at Home in Nice at Age of 84

PARIS, Nov. 4--The world of art today mourned Henri Matisse, one of France's greatest painters, who died in his apartment in Nice yesterday afternoon of a heart attack. He was 84 years old. Death came swiftly to the aged artist, who had been a semi-invalid since undergoing a serious operation in 1940. At his bedside were his daughter, Mme. Marguerite Duthite; ...

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Michele Rosewoman's Tribute to Orlando 'Puntilla' Rios

Source: All About Jazz
November 20, 2008

Legendary Cuban percussionist and vocalist Orlando 'Puntilla' Rios passed away August 12, 2008. Along with several tribute concerts to him taking place in the coming months, Puntilla's former student and colleague, pianist Michele Rosewoman, paid tribute to him with the below article.

Born in Havana, Cuba, percussionist/vocalist Orlando 'Puntilla' Rios is revered in Cuba and the Americas as a master of the many Cuban musical folkloric forms. When 'Puntilla' arrived in New York in 1980, he ...

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Irving Gertz Composer for Sci-Fi Films

Source: Michael Ricci
November 20, 2008

Irving Gertz, a film and television composer who contributed music to 1950s science-fiction films such as It Came From Outer Space and The Incredible Shrinking Man and to 1960s TV series such as Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, has died. He was 93.

Gertz died Friday at his home in West Los Angeles, said David Schecter, a record producer and film-music historian who was a close friend. No specific cause of death was given.

From the late 1940s ...

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Irving Brecher Wrote The Lines That Made The Whole World Smile

Source: Michael Ricci
November 19, 2008

The Last Great Golden-Age Screenwriter Shares the Hilarity and Heartaches of Working with Groucho, Garland, Gleason, Burns, Berle, Benny & Many More. And that's just the subtitle Irving Brecher dies at 94; Comedy writer got an Oscar nod for Meet Me in St. Louis.

Irving Brecher, a comedy writer whose career in radio, television and the movies included writing two Marx Brothers comedies, co-writing the Judy Garland musical Meet Me in St. Louis and creating the ...

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Tony Reedus, 49, Top Jazz Drummer

Source: All About Jazz
November 19, 2008

A man with a big heart and a big beat, drummer Tony Reedus cared for other people the way he cared about making a band swing. “He was true blue, he'd do anything for you," said pianist Mulgrew Miller, who knew Mr. Reedus as a youth in Memphis, where the drummer was born, and later employed him in his trio in the late 1980s and early 1990s. “He was supersensitive," said his wife, violinist Jenise Grice-Reedus. “He'd see a person ...

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Miriam Makeba Cremated After Moving Memorial in South Africa

Source: All About Jazz
November 17, 2008

The body of acclaimed South African singer Miriam Makeba was cremated at a private ceremony in her home country on Sunday, radio reports said. Makeba, Africa's first Grammy award-winning singer and a leading anti-apartheid activist, died of a heart attack November 10 in Italy after performing at a concert. She was 76. The cremation follows a moving memorial service attended by some 1, 500 people in northern Johannesburg, including prominent people in politics, culture and business. Makeba's ex-husband, South African ...

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