Guess who died in 2023

[metirish]

Burt Bacharach, the songwriter and performer who turned easy listening into high art, has died aged 94. A representative for Bacharach confirmed to the Washington Post that the singer died at home in Los Angeles of natural causes.

The Guardian

[whippoorwill]

I hate this thread

[G-Fafif]

The recent CNN doc on Dionne Warwick served as a reminder of what a magnificent partnership she forged with Bacharach and David, indelibly scoring an an era while also producing a timeless sound.

I once ate at Burt Bacharach’s East Norwich Inn. My friend and I were driving aimlessly one summer afternoon, saw such a place existed and stopped in. The place made an omelette you wouldn’t walk on by.

[G-Fafif]

This AP obit really does Bacharach justice.

Over the past 70 years, only Lennon-McCartney, Carole King and a handful of others rivaled his genius for instantly catchy songs that remained performed, played and hummed long after they were written. He had a run of top 10 hits from the 1950s into the 21st century, and his music was heard everywhere from movie soundtracks and radios to home stereo systems and iPods, whether “Alfie” and “I Say a Little Prayer” or “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” and “This Guy’s in Love with You.”

Dionne Warwick was his favorite interpreter, but Bacharach, usually in tandem with lyricist Hal David, also created prime material for Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield, Tom Jones and many others. Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Frank Sinatra were among the countless artists who covered his songs, with more recent performers who sung or sampled him including White Stripes, Twista and Ashanti. “Walk On By” alone was covered by everyone from Warwick and Isaac Hayes to the British punk band the Stranglers and Cyndi Lauper.

Bacharach was both an innovator and throwback, and his career seemed to run parallel to the rock era. He grew up on jazz and classical music and had little taste for rock when he was breaking into the business in the 1950s. His sensibility often seemed more aligned with Tin Pan Alley than with Bob Dylan, John Lennon and other writers who later emerged, but rock composers appreciated the depth of his seemingly old-fashioned sensibility.

“The shorthand version of him is that he’s something to do with easy listening,” Elvis Costello, who wrote the 1998 album “Painted from Memory” with Bacharach, said in a 2018 interview with The Associated Press. “It may be agreeable to listen to these songs, but there’s nothing easy about them. Try playing them. Try singing them.”

He triumphed in many art forms. He was an eight-time Grammy winner, a prize-winning Broadway composer for “Promises, Promises” and a three-time Oscar winner. He received two Academy Awards in 1970, for the score of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and for the song “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” (shared with David). In 1982, he and his then-wife, lyricist Carole Bayer Sager, won Oscars for “Best That You Can Do,” the theme from “Arthur. His other movie soundtracks included “What’s New, Pussycat?”, “Alfie” and the 1967 James Bond spoof “Casino Royale.”

Bacharach was well rewarded, and well connected. He was a frequent guest at the White House, whether the president was Republican or Democrat. And in 2012, he was presented the Gershwin Prize by Barack Obama, who had sung a few seconds of “Walk on By” during a campaign appearance.

In his life, and in his music, he stood apart. Fellow songwriter Sammy Cahn liked to joke that the smiling, wavy-haired Bacharach was the first composer he ever knew who didn’t look like a dentist. Bacharach was a “swinger,” as they called such men in his time, whose many romances included actor Angie Dickinson, to whom he was married from 1965-80, and Sager, his wife from 1982-1991.

Married four times, he formed his most lasting ties to work. He was a perfectionist who took three weeks to write “Alfie” and might spend hours tweaking a single chord. Sager once observed that Bacharach’s life routines essentially stayed the same — only the wives changed.

It began with the melodies — strong yet interspersed with changing rhythms and surprising harmonics. He credited much of his style to his love of bebop and to his classical education, especially under the tutelage of Darius Milhaud, the famed composer. He once played a piece for piano, violin and oboe for Milhaud that contained a melody he was ashamed to have written, as 12-point atonal music was in vogue at the time. Milhaud, who liked the piece, advised the young man, “Never be afraid of the melody.”

“That was a great affirmation for me,” Bacharach recalled in 2004.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/burt-bac ... 5caae9c78a

[Chad ochoseis]

If I ever decided to enter a CPF song parody contest and drew the right player, first stanza to my first song was this:

What did you get when Murph wore the glove?
A bunch of pop flys that turn into doubles
In left field, nothing but trouble
He'll never wear the glove again

[G-Fafif]

TMZ is reporting Raquel Welch has died at age 82.

[MFS62]

TMZ is reporting Raquel Welch has died at age 82.

She took me on a fantastic voyage every time I saw her.
RIP.

Later

[G-Fafif]

Comedian, actor and long-ago WNBC-AM morning man Richard Belzer, 78.

[metirish]

Comedian, actor and long-ago WNBC-AM morning man Richard Belzer, 78.

RIP , just reading about him and I didn't know this about Det. Munch


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Munch

[batmagadanleadoff]

Richard Anobile, Chronicler of the Marx Brothers, Dies at 76
He produced many books about film. But Groucho Marx tried to stop distribution of one collaborative effort because he didn’t like seeing his salty and insulting remarks in print.

Excerpt:

Richard Anobile, a prolific creator of film books whose friendly collaboration with the anarchic comedian Groucho Marx on a project called “The Marx Bros. Scrapbook” turned sour when Mr. Marx sued to stop its distribution after reading his unedited quoted remarks in print, died on Feb. 10 in Toronto. He was 76.

His wife, Elizabeth (Golfman) Anobile, said the cause was idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

Mr. Anobile (pronounced a-NO-buh-lay) first entered the world of Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo Marx with the publication in 1971 of “Why a Duck?” (the title is based on wordplay between Groucho and Chico over the word “viaduct” in the 1929 movie “The Cocoanuts”). The book combined blowups of frames from scenes in eight of the comedy team’s films with the dialogue that accompanied them. Groucho Marx wrote the introduction.

“The Marx Bros. Scrapbook,” published two years later, was a more ambitious project, and it brought Mr. Anobile into closer contact with Groucho, then in his 80s, through an introduction by his agent.

In addition to excerpts from his many hours of interviews with Mr. Marx, the book included photographs and illustrations, as well as playbills, reviews, advertisements, family scrapbook entries and pages from film scripts. Mr. Anobile also interviewed the other two surviving Marx brothers, Gummo (who left the group long before they started making movies) and Zeppo, as well as friends like the comedian Jack Benny.


The cover of “The Marx Bros. Scrapbook,” with caricatures of all four brothers and the title plus the words “By Groucho Marx and Richard J. Anobile” in elaborate cursive. Everything is in black and white except the title, which is in red.


The film critic Roger Ebert called “The Marx Bros. Scrapbook” “the all-time definitive work on the subject.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/01/book ... -dead.html

That Marx Bros. book featured prominently in my bedroom during my junior high and high school years.

[MFS62]

When I saw the headlines today that said "Murdoch Guilty of Murder" I was hoping it was Rupert.
My only question is, they have the timeline, So where is the gun? He didn't have time to hide it. Did he have an accomplice?

Later

[metirish]

I won't expect many if anyone here to know this name ( Edgy might though) but a great man to the Irish , sponsor of the Donnelly visa program that helped legalize the Irish in the 80s.i came on the later Morrison -Donnelly Visa program ( 90s)

[Edgy MD]

Oh, yeah, I was familiar with him. I met a few Irish ambassadors to the US, but not typically US ambassadors to Ireland. I've been in the same room as him once or twice, but that won't butter anyone's bread.

I'm glad his program brought you over.

[Fman99]

Tom Sizemore, 61, due to a stroke/aneurysm. He was great in a number of things but Saving Private Ryan comes to mind first for me.

[TransMonk]

SPOT — SST Records’ producer for Black Flag, Minutemen, Hüsker Dü and more — has died

[MFS62]

Chaim Topol - Israeli actor known for playing Tevye in Fiddler On The Roof - 87

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/09/11621262 ... tevye-dies

Olevai Shalom

Later

[Benjamin Grimm]

He was terrific in that.

[kcmets]

Great, now all day long I'm gonna biddy biddy bum in my head.

RIP

[Frayed Knot]

He usually went by simply Topol and I could never remember whether that was his actual first name or last.

[Fman99]

Rest in peace, Dr. Zarkov

[Frayed Knot]

Michael Gubitosi, aka Robert Blake - 89

Most known from TV as 'Baretta (1975-78) and from the movies as Perry Smith in 'In Cold Blood', he got his starts as a child actor in 'Our Gang' and various other roles.
An Italian-American from New Jersey, he was often cast as Mexicans or Indians (cuz Hollywood apparently didn't know any real Mexicans or Indians back in those days)
including two scenes in TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE as the Mexican kid who sells Humphrey Bogart his winning lottery ticket.

[MFS62]

Otis Taylor- KC Chiefs wide receiver 80 from Parkinson's Disease.
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/358 ... ies-age-80

Later

[batmagadanleadoff]

He was terrific in that.

A goddamn force of nature!

[Edgy MD]

Michael Gubitosi, aka Robert Blake - 89

Most known from TV as 'Baretta (1975-78) and from the movies as Perry Smith in 'In Cold Blood', he got his starts as a child actor in 'Our Gang' and various other roles.
An Italian-American from New Jersey, he was often cast as Mexicans or Indians (cuz Hollywood apparently didn't know any real Mexicans or Indians back in those days)
including two scenes in TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE as the Mexican kid who sells Humphrey Bogart his winning lottery ticket.

Blake's Mickey replaced Porky in The Little Rascals/Our Gang shorts, and he rose to become the alpha male/lead by the end of the series.

Obviously, as known for beating a spouse-murder rap as he was for anything else. He also made for an interestingly weird guest on Johnny Carson from his Baretta days and well beyond, regaling Johnny's audience with his Hollywood tales delivered wholeheartedly with out-of-date Rat Pack-y swinger slang, ending each of story with an emphatic Mickey Spillane-ish New Jersey-inflected topper like "And that's the name of that tune!"

[Benjamin Grimm]

I'm not sure that I ever really watched Baretta, but I do remember "Don't go to bed with no price on your head. Don't do it!"

Didn't he have a parrot? I wonder if the parrot is still alive?