Obituary News

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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Peter Levinson Publicist and Biographer of Jazz Greats Dies

Source: Michael Ricci
November 16, 2008

Peter J. Levinson, a music publicist who parlayed his close familiarity with jazz personalities into rich and sometimes intimate biographies of them, died on Oct. 21 at his home in Malibu, Calif. He was 74.

The cause was injuries suffered from a fall, said Dale Olson, a publicist and his longtime friend. Nearly two years ago Mr. Levinson received a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the neurodegenerative disease popularly called Lou Gehrigs disease. With the aid of his talking computer ...

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Rosetta Reitz Champion of Jazz Women

Source: Michael Ricci
November 15, 2008

Rosetta Reitz, an ardent feminist who scavenged through the early history of jazz and the blues to resurrect the music of long-forgotten women and to create a record label dedicated to them, died on Nov. 1 in Manhattan. She was 84.

Ms. Reitz (pronounced rights) came by her interest in jazz through her husband and male friends, but as the feminist movement gathered steam in the 1960s, she noticed something was missing: the musics women. So she started collecting old ...

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Edward Scott Mc Michael Seattle Bids Tuba Man a Sad Goodbye

Source: Michael Ricci
November 14, 2008

SEATTLE He played Itsy Bitsy Spider when it rained and the theme from Chariots of Fire even when the home team lost. Thumbs up! he insisted when you were not so sure. Want to be a part of it tonight? he beseeched, a call for coins and maybe transformation.

Edward Scott McMichael was a busker with perfect pitch and an improbable horn whom most people in this city knew by another name, Tuba Man. He wore funny hats and said ...

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Jody Reynolds Rockabilly Singer's 'Endless Sleep' Hit Top 10 Dies

Source: Michael Ricci
November 14, 2008

Jody Reynolds, the 1950s rockabilly singer and songwriter whose one and only Top 10 hit, “Endless Sleep," was the first of a wave of melodramatic “teen tragedy" tales, died of liver cancer Nov. 7 in Palm Desert. He was 75.

Endless Sleep, which peaked at No. 5 on Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart in 1958, opened the door for a string of similarly tragic pop hits including Mark Dinning's “Teen Angel," Ray Peterson's “Tell Laura I Love Her," Johnny Preston's ...

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Miriam Makeba Taking Africa with Her to the World

Source: Michael Ricci
November 13, 2008

To be the voice of a nation speaking to the wider world is a tough mission for any performer. To be the voice of an entire continent is exponentially more difficult. Both were mantles that the South African singer Miriam Makeba took on willingly and forcefully.

Despite her lifelong claim that she was not a political singer, she became Mama Africa with an activists tenacity and a musicians ear. She died Sunday, at 76, after a concert in Italy.

Treating ...

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