Results for "Obituary"

Terry Teachout (1956-2022)

January 15, 2022

Yesterday afternoon, my literary agent called with terrible news. Terry Teachout had died hours earlier. I had to sit down. I couldn't believe it. My agent also was Terry's agent. In fact, Terry was the one who had introduced us years earlier at a book party. Now Terry was gone at age 65. For those unfamiliar ...

Ronnie Spector (1943-2022)

January 14, 2022

Ronnie Spector, whose quivering, commanding vocals as the lead singer of the Ronettes in the early 1960s touched the hearts of love-struck teens and set new standards for girl groups on records and TV shows, died January 12. She was 78. With her high, sonorous teenage voice and distinct New York accent, Ronnie, along with the ...

Barry Harris (1929-2021)

December 11, 2021

Barry Harris, a jazz pianist and beloved educator whose leadership and sideman recordings celebrated bebop—the 1940s modernist movement that established a roadmap for improvised jazz—died on December 8. He was 91. Though Harris was too young to have participated in bop's birth or initial  popularity in the years immediately after World War II, the Detroit-based pianist ...

Slide Hampton (1932-2021)

December 10, 2021

Slide Hampton, a slide trombonist and a prolific leader, composer and arranger for many of the most significant big bands of the post-war era, including several led by Maynard Ferguson, died November 18. He was 89. Though not as well known to jazz fans as J.J. Johnson, Kai Winding, Urbie Green or Curtis Fuller, Hampton was ...

Margo Guryan (1937-2021)

December 2, 2021

Margo Guryan, a singer-songwriter and sunshine pop pioneer whose first and only commercial album in 1968 was notable for its swinging, breathy approach and layered vocal overdubs, died on Nov. 8. She was 84. Guryan's album, Take a Picture, for Bell Records, had a happy-go-lucky, bedroom-and-incense feel and still sounds of the era—between San Francisco's Summer ...

Canadian Jazz Guitarist Jim Kilburn Departs at 94

November 23, 2021

Born October 3, 1927, Canadian jazz guitarist Jim Kilburn passed away peacefully on Saturday, November 13, 2021, at 10:50 am at the age of 94 at his Qualicum, BC, Vancouver Island home. A cast member of the short documentary film, In the Zone: Rick Kilburn, the jazz guitarist had peaked at 11.2 million internet hits on ...

Obituary

Obituary is one of the pioneering bands of the death metal genre. The band came from Tampa, Florida, and was founded as Xecutioner in 1985. In 1988, shortly before the release of its first album "Slowly We Rot", they changed their name to Obituary. It still remains an influential band of the Florida death metal movement that arose in the late 1980s. The 1990 release "Cause of Death" has been described as a seminal album in the genre, and vocalist John Tardy is recognized as one of the first vocalists to use an abnormally low growl (compared to the screechy growls used by predecessors Death and Possessed)

Pat Martino (1944-2021)

November 2, 2021

Pat Martino, a hard-swinging jazz guitarist whose singular soul-jazz feel elevated his visibility in 1970s only to suffer a health crisis that forced him to relearn the instrument with miraculous results, died on Nov. 1. He was 77. Martino's recording career began in 1963 under his real name, Pat Azzara. He started as a sideman on ...

Dave Brubeck and Mort Sahl

November 1, 2021

Mort Sahl, a Canadian-born American comedian who helped pioneer socio-political satire in the 1950s and '60s, died on October 26. He was 94. For a brief moment in 1958, he hosted a pilot for a local San Franciso TV jazz show called Jam Session. He wasn't the show's planned host but he agreed to sit in. ...

Ginny Mancini (1924-2021)

October 28, 2021

Ginny Mancini, the wife of the late composer-arranger Henry Mancini, a polished singer who was one of the original Mel-Tones, and an elegant and graceful woman who was as down to earth as she was charming, died on October 25. She was 97. An ardent JazzWax reader, Ginny's last email to me arrived in May, in ...