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Wesla Whitfield, RIP
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Wesla Whitfield, a singer of uncommon talent, taste, musicianship and courage, died yesterday in St. Helena, California. Her husband and accompanist of more than three decades, the pianist Mike Greensill, announced her passing. She had been under treatment for bladder cancer and was recently in hospice care but died at home. She was 70. I once wrote, “Whitfield is often billed as a cabaret singer…but with her time sense, phrasing and inflection, the fuzzy border between cabaret and jazz disappears." ...
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Remembering John Perry Barlow - Grateful Dead Lyricist, Tech Futurist
Source:
HypeBot
It's inadequate to call John Perry Barlow a product of the 1960's since he did so much to help shape it and the decades that followed. If being a lyricist for the Grateful Dead weren't enough, his “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace", published 22 years ago this week, and his work as a founding member of both the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Freedom of the Press Foundation, cemented his status as an influential thinker. By Mike Masnick of techdirt I ...
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Hugh Masekela Has Died
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Hugh Masekela, a hero of African popular music and an inspirational fighter against discrimination, died today in Johannesburg, South Africa. He was 78. Masekela’s rapid ascent to fame in the 1950s led to international recognition of his trumpet playing and his protests against his country’s apartheid policy that for decades subjugated South Africa’s black people. By the time of his 1968 hit “Grazing In The Grass,” he was a prominent figure in world culture. Masekela was a tenacious force in ...
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Marlene VerPlanck Is Gone
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
From New York comes news that the singer Marlene VerPlanck died today at 84. She reportedly had pancreatic cancer but managed to keep the illness a secret from nearly everyone. Beginning in the 1960s Ms. VerPlanck worked closely with her husband Billy as a studio musician, singing in commercial jingles. In the 1970s she began singing in jazz clubs and at festivals and appeared at Carnegie Hall. Billy VerPlanck died in 2009. By then his wife’s career as a jazz ...
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Marlene VerPlanck (1933-2018)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Marlene VerPlanck, a polished jazz vocalist who began her recording career in 1955, had a strong second career in the 1960s and '70s as a prolific jingle singer, sang backup on Frank Sinatra's Trilogy album and had a third career recently as she toured and performed to critical praise, died January 14. She was 84. Despite being diagnosed in November with pancreatic cancer, Marlene continued to sing in New York and New Jersey and planned to perform in February, according ...
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Maurice Peress, 1930-2017
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Maurice Peress, a conductor who served as a link between jazz and classical music, died at his home in New York. He was 87. Peress collaborated with Duke Ellington in preparing the composer’s 1943 “Black, Brown And Beige” for performance by a symphony orchestra. He also worked closely with New YorkPhilharmonic conductor Leonard Bernstein in adapting Bernstein’s “Mass” and works by Charles Ives for symphony performance. When he was conductor of the Kansas City Philharmonic, a performance by Ellington’s band ...
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Keely Smith (1929-2017)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Keely Smith, a vocalist best known in the 1950s at nightclubs and on TV as the stone-faced half of a husband-and-wife comic duo in which she impatiently waited out and mocked the rubbery crooning style of mate Louis Prima before delivering a sincere pop rendition of her own, died on December 16. She was 89. After their divorce in 1961, the split left fans wondering whether the personality differences that made their on-stage act so successful were, in part, rooted ...
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Jeter Thompson 1930 - 2017
Source:
St. Louis Jazz Notes by Dean Minderman
Pianist Jeter Thompson, whose leadership of the groups Quartette Trés Bien and Trio Trés Bien made him a significant figure on the St. Louis jazz scene from the Gaslight Square era into the 21st century, died on Friday, December 1. He was 87 years old. Born in St. Louis on March 16, 1930, Thompson started playing piano at five years old, and made his first professional appearance at age 16 in 1946, performing with saxophonist Emmett Carter at a downtown ...
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