Singer Miriam Makeba dies at 76

Here's a story I just found today on 'Old School Music Lover' ....

Miriam Makeba, the South African singer who wooed the world with her sultry voice but was banned from her own country for more than 30 years under apartheid, died after collapsing on stage in Italy. She was 76.

In her dazzling career, Makeba performed with musical legends from around the world — jazz maestros Nina Simone and Dizzy Gillespie, Harry Belafonte, Paul Simon — and sang for world leaders such as John F. Kennedy and Nelson Mandela.

“Her haunting melodies gave voice to the pain of exile and dislocation which she felt for 31 long years. At the same time, her music inspired a powerful sense of hope in all of us,” Mandela said in a statement.

He said it was “fitting” that her last moments were spent on stage.
more:

I won't re-post the links to her videos - just watch them on 'Old School Music Lover' especially Miriam performing in 2007. You would not think she was over 70 years old during that performance.

Ronnie Drew 16 September 1934 – 16 August 2008

'Twas in the year of 'thirty-nine
When the sky was full of lead
Hitler was heading for Poland
And Paddy for Holyhead
Come all you pincher laddies
And you long-distance men
Don't ever work for McAlpine, For Wimpey, or John Laing
For You'll stand behind a mixer
As your skin is turned to tan
And they'll say 'Good on you Paddy'
With your boat-fare in your hand

The craic was good in Cricklewood
And they wouldn't leave the Crown
With glasses flying and biddy's crying
Sure Paddy was going to town
Oh mother dear, I'm over here
And I'm never coming back
What keeps me here is the reek o' beer
The ladies and the craic

I come from county Kerry
The land of eggs and bacon
And if you think I'll eat your fish 'n' chips
By Jaysus you're mistaken'

Last week saw the passing of another great character of the folk world - Ronnie Drew, founder member of The Dubliners - thank christ we still have CD's and videos to enjoy those wonderful vocals on the likes of McAlpines Fusiliers, Seven Drunken Nights, Spanish Lady etc.

I was just a lad of 15 when I saw the Dubliners in concert (probably the first ever concert I ever attended) and was mesmerised not only by their appearance (these were not clean cut aran sweatered folk singers like The Clancy's) but also by their earthy singing, this was singing that struck your very roots and penetrated to the bone. I was also fascinated by how, every so often, some members of the group would disappear from the stage and it was a while before I realised they were nipping off to sup some of the black stuff.

Joseph O'Connor writing in the Sunday Independent says:

It wasn't the soundtrack to a Bord Failte commercial; it was the music of the real place we lived in then, with its evasions, compromised options and terrible beauties. And nobody sang it like Ronnie. There was only one Luke Kelly, a Caruso of his craft, a maestro we will never see again; Ronnie's genius was different, crackling with subtlety as well as muscle, alive to every phrasing and silence in a song, and together they fronted the kind of band that mattered, and will always matter to lovers of real music.

Luke's voice could lash you like a whip-crack when he wanted it to do that, but Ronnie's gravely rasp seemed to come from someplace under the sea, a sound, as one critic put it, "like someone crunching coal beneath a boot".

Musical star Charisse dies in LA

Cyd Charisse, a former co-star of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, has died in Los Angeles aged 86, her publicist says.

The actress-dancer from Texas died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after suffering an apparent heart attack on Monday, Gene Schwam said.

The long-legged star appeared in a number of films, but her fame came from the musicals of the 1940s and 1950s.

She sang and danced with legends Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain, and Fred Astaire in Silk Stockings.

At the height of her fame the film company said her long legs were insured for a million dollars. But her talent was enough to make her an essential part of the golden age of Technicolor musicals.

"Her beauty was breathtaking," Debbie Reynolds, who starred with Charisse in the 1952 classic Singin' in the Rain, said in a statement.

"The world will miss her dancing."

Born Tula Ellice Finklea in 1921, Charisse began her career dancing with the Ballet Russe as a teenager. During a European tour she met Nico Charisse, a young French dancer with whom she had trained in Los Angeles. They married in Paris in 1939.

Full report with video

Obituary: Cyd Charisse

Beryl Cook

Britain has lost one of its best-loved artists, the painter Beryl Cook, who has died at her home in Plymouth at the age of 81. She had been suffering from cancer for some time but, typically reticent, had kept it all but a secret.

timesonline

A Profile:

A day in the life of ....Beryl Cook 1982

One of TSW's first award-winning documentaries, focusing on saucy Plymouth artist Beryl Cook. A Day In The Life Of...was an offshoot of TSW's documentary strand, Scene South West. The programme was repeated on TSW's last day.

Albert's final trip

Albert Hofmann, the Swiss scientist who invented the LSD and became the first person in the world to experience a full-blown acid trip, has died. He was 102.

He was working as a chemist in Basel, when he synthesised lysergic acid diethylamide. On April 19, 1943, he took the substance before cycling home.
That day has become known among aficionados as “Bicycle Day” as it was while he was riding home that he experienced the most intense symptoms brought on by the drug.
Rick Doblin, who studied Hofmann’s work as part of his own research and knew Hofmann well, confirmed he died of a heart attack at 9am on Tuesday at his home in Basel.

As well as LSD, Hofmann later became the first person to synthesise psilocybin, the active constituent of “magic mushrooms”.
He also discovered the hallucinogenic principles of Ololiuqui (Morning Glory), lysergic acid amide and lysergic acid hydroxyethylamide.
In retirement, Hofmann served as a member of the Nobel Prize Committee. He was a Fellow of the World Academy of Sciences, and a Member of the International Society of Plant Research and of the American Society of Pharmacognosy.
In 1988 the Albert Hofmann Foundation was established “to assemble and maintain an international library and archive devoted to the study of human consciousness and related fields.”
He disapproved of the appropriation of LSD by the youth movements of the 1960s, but regretted that its potential uses had not been explored.
Albert Hofmann was married and had three children.
telegraph.co.uk

Humphrey Lyttelton: Obituary

It is with sadness that I have to announce once again the death of another great jazz musician, humphrey Lyttleton who died on Friday, 25 April 2008 ...

Steve Voce writing in the independent says .... he excelled at everything that he chose to do. He was a trumpeter, bandleader, calligrapher, cartoonist, writer, journalist and broadcaster. Well, not quite everything. He admitted to being no good at ice-skating, but attributed his lack of success to the failure of anyone to make size 13½ skating boots to suit his feet.

His career began when he gained fame for his declamatory trumpet style and he ended up contributing more to the British jazz scene than anyone else, bestriding it for more than half a century.

Lyttelton came from a respected family, filled with eccentrics, that had distinguished itself over the centuries. It was, he said, “a long line of land-owning, political, military, clerical, scholastic and literary forebears. Not a musician amongst them”. His ancestor Humphrey Littleton was notorious for having been, after an atypically bad career move, hanged, drawn and quartered for his part in the Gunpowder Plot.

Lyttelton liked to claim that Littleton was subsequently buried in Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire and Buckinghamshire. Sadly, or perhaps happily, the account of the original Humphrey’s fate has subsequently been discredited. Independent

Arthur C. Clarke: 16 December 1917 – 19 March 2008

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Arthur C. Clarke, a visionary science fiction writer who co-wrote "2001: A Space Odyssey" and won worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future, died Wednesday, an aide said. He was 90.

Clarke, who had battled debilitating post-polio syndrome since the 1960s, died in his adopted home of Sri Lanka after breathing problems, aide Rohan De Silva said.

Co-author with Stanley Kubrick of Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey," Clarke was regarded as far more than a science fiction writer.

He was credited with the concept of communications satellites in 1945, decades before they became a reality. Geosynchronous orbits, which keep satellites in a fixed position relative to the ground, are called Clarke orbits.

Born in Minehead, England, he was the son of a farmer. He worked as a clerk in Her Majesty's Exchequer and Audit Department in London, where he joined the British Interplanetary Society and wrote his first short stories and scientific articles on space travel. AP

Biography on wikipedia:

Sam Mahood 1946 - 2006

It is with great regret that I have just learned of the death of Soul man Sam Mahood - a legend of the Irish shownband era – who sadly passed away on Sunday, December 23.

Sam was a well known character around Belfast and, like fellow musician Rory Gallagher, he always had time to stop and talk to fans. In his orange cordauroy jacket, blue cordauroy trousers, knee high boots and with his long curly hair people would joke that he looked like King Billy. Sam gave the impression of being a quiet and gentle man but when he started singing he could belt it out with great energy. He disappeared off the scene for a few years and a number of rumours flew about as to where he had gone to but he eventually made a come-back and the power of his singing had in no way diminished. He will be sadly missed on the local music scene.

Back in the day of the Belfast Beat (Maritime Blues) scene, Sam Mahood played with Just Five and later toured with the Big Soul Band [who made the Commitments look like Val Doonican - ed].

Just Five were a powerhouse R & B act and one of Belfast's hottest acts. The band was founded by pork butcher Sam Mahood (born in 1946, in Banbridge on the River Bann, Co Down, Northern Ireland), who had long wild red hair, staring eyes, and a voice steeped in gospel, who lived in University Street with John Cox, brother of Mick Cox later of Eire Apparent. Promising guitar player John Cox nearly joined The Just Five. The band included Frank Connolly vocals; Billy McCoy guitar and Mervyn Crawford guitar. Just Five played the Maritime Hotel and also played a Friday night dance at the Annadale Boat Club. Their repertoire featured blues classics and the latest Rolling Stones songs like 'Paint It, Black' and as a tribute to Them they regularly included a version of 'Baby Please Don't Go'. Among their rivals were up-and-coming group the Few, a quintet of hip schoolboys. Just Five appeared on a package recording released as 'Ireland's Greatest Sounds - Five Top Groups From Belfast's Maritime Club' on Emerald Records established by Mervyn Soloman.

As a mark of respect, respected Ulster blues band The Lee Hedley Band is organising a farewell concert to Mahood on Sunday, January 27 in the Kings Head, Belfast, with the help of a few key people in the showbiz scene. The show will run from lunchtime on Sunday, January 27 until 8-9pm. More Lee Hedley Band

George Melly (1926 - 2007) Obituary

It was with great sadness that I learned of the death of another of the great jazz performers, George Melly.

Jazz singer and author George Melly has died at his London home at the age of 80, his wife Diana has announced.

The flamboyant performer had been diagnosed with lung cancer and vascular dementia, a condition which affects the brain after small strokes.

Despite his illness, the jazz veteran was still appearing on stage in the weeks leading up to his death. BBC:

"As a surrealist, I quite enjoy having dementia," he once quipped, making light of his disabilities.

I saw George perform at the Brecon Jazz Festival in Wales about 1990, when he was still in good health and he gave an outstanding performance as usual. He also thought of others - making a public protest on stage about landlords of local pubs displaying signs stating 'No Hippies'. He said that he was so incensed by the first he saw of these that he turned round and walked out of the pub. He also pointed out that the landlords were going to lose a lot of trade because as he said at the time he liked to put away a lot of drink. I also saw him perform at The Ulster Hall in Belfast in an equally impressive performance

George, we are really going to miss your humanity, your flamboyance, your humour and your artistry. So long, George.

BBC:
With his flamboyant suits, oversize hats and Havana cigars, George Melly was a good-time Renaissance man who indulged, often over-indulged, his passions for jazz, film, art, fishing, writing, drink and sex.
He was born in Liverpool in 1926 and educated at the ultra-liberal Stowe public school in Buckinghamshire, where he pursued his interests with vigour and without inhibition.

At school, he first became interested in art, particularly Surrealism.

He served as an able-seaman in the Royal Navy towards the end of World War II, where he got into trouble for distributing anarchist literature.

He moved to London in 1948 to work in an art gallery run by Belgian artist ELT Mesens, a leading light in the International Surrealist movement.

Melly became recognised as an authority on the subject and later wrote a book, Paris and the Surrealists.

According to his memoirs, it was at this time that he augmented the promiscuous homosexuality of his schooldays, indulging in a series of menages a trois, initially with Mesens and his wife Sybil.
He had also developed a love of jazz, and started singing with Mick Mulligan's band in 1949. His voice was described by John Mortimer as possessing "the raucous charm of an old negress".

A fan of Bessie Smith and Fats Waller, he was to become famous for his routine of singing jazz numbers from the 1920s, interspersed with ribald jokes and saucy asides.

The band's drink and sex-fuelled wild adventures were recalled in Melly's first book, Owning Up.

An article by George written in April 2006) for The Guardian that seems so pertinent now. (This may have been George's last column)

Another article by George published on 1st April 2002 for The New Statesman: I am very put out by the death of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She was an acrobatic beauty

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