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Departed During 2023

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Re: Departed During 2023

#61 Post by k3k3 » Tue Mar 14, 2023 7:31 pm

We didn't have crash pads at school, only sand pits, so weren't adventurous when doing PT.

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Re: Departed During 2023

#62 Post by G-CPTN » Tue Mar 14, 2023 8:01 pm

In my day there was no 'foam' landing - just sand and grass on compacted soil.

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Re: Departed During 2023

#63 Post by PHXPhlyer » Fri Mar 17, 2023 2:39 pm

Jim Gordon, drummer who played on 'Layla' and Beach Boys records before he killed his mother, dies at 77
Gordon can be heard on George Harrison’s first post-Beatles album “All Things Must Pass,” The Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds” album and Steely Dan’s 1974 song “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ji ... -rcna75421

LOS ANGELES — Jim Gordon, the famed session drummer who backed Eric Clapton and The Beach Boys before being diagnosed with schizophrenia and going to prison for killing his mother, has died. He was 77.

Gordon died Monday at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation confirmed Thursday. It’s believed he died of natural causes, but the official cause will be determined by the Solano County coroner.

Gordon was the drummer in the blues-rock supergroup Derek and the Dominos, led by Clapton. He played on their 1970 double album “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs” and toured with them.

Gordon was credited with contributing the elegiac piano coda for “Layla.” The group’s keyboardist Bobby Whitlock later claimed Gordon took the piano melody from his then-girlfriend, singer Rita Coolidge, and didn’t give her credit.

Coolidge wrote in her 2016 memoir “Delta Lady” that the song was called “Time” when she and Gordon wrote it. They played it for Clapton when they went to England to record with him.

“I was infuriated,” Coolidge wrote. “What they’d clearly done was take the song Jim and I had written, jettisoned the lyrics, and tacked it on to the end of Eric’s song. It was almost the same arrangement.”

Coolidge said she took solace in the fact that Gordon’s song royalties went to his daughter, Amy.

Gordon can be heard on George Harrison’s first post-Beatles album “All Things Must Pass,” The Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds” album, and Steely Dan’s 1974 song “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number.”

He also worked with Joan Baez, Jackson Browne, The Byrds, Judy Collins, Alice Cooper, Crosby Stills & Nash, Delaney & Bonnie, Neil Diamond, Art Garfunkel, Merle Haggard, Hall & Oates, Carole King, Harry Nilsson, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Barbra Streisand, among others.

Gordon’s mental health eventually declined.

In 1970, Gordon was part of Joe Cocker’s famed “Mad Dogs & Englishmen” tour, along with Coolidge, then a backup singer before going on to a successful solo career.

She wrote in her memoir that one night in a hotel hallway, Gordon hit her in the eye “so hard that I was lifted off the floor and slammed against the wall on the other side of the hallway.” She was briefly knocked unconscious.

It wasn’t until after his arrest for second-degree murder that Gordon was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Gordon was sentenced to 16 years to life in prison with the possibility of parole. However, he was denied parole several times after not attending any of the hearings and remained in prison until his death.

Born James Beck Gordon on July 14, 1945, in the Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, he began his professional career at age 17, backing The Everly Brothers.

Gordon was a member of The Wrecking Crew, a famed group of Los Angeles-based session musicians who played on hundreds of hits in the 1960s and ’70s.

He was a protégé of drum legend Hal Blaine.

“When I didn’t have the time, I recommended Jim,” Blaine told Rolling Stone in 1985. “He was one hell of a drummer. I thought he was one of the real comers.”

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Re: Departed During 2023

#64 Post by PHXPhlyer » Sat Mar 25, 2023 3:19 am

Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, author of ‘Moore’s Law’ that helped drive computer revolution, dies at 94

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/24/tech/gor ... index.html

Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, a pioneer in the semiconductor industry whose “Moore’s Law” predicted a steady rise in computing power for decades, died Friday at the age of 94, the company announced.

Intel (INTC) and Moore’s family philanthropic foundation said he died surrounded by family at his home in Hawaii.

Co-launching Intel in 1968, Moore was the rolled-up-sleeves engineer within a triumvirate of technology luminaries that eventually put “Intel Inside” processors in more than 80% of the world’s personal computers.

In an article he wrote in 1965, Moore observed that, thanks to improvements in technology, the number of transistors on microchips had roughly doubled every year since integrated circuits were invented a few years before.

His prediction that the trend would continue became known as “Moore’s Law” and, later amended to every two years, it helped push Intel and rival chipmakers to aggressively target their research and development resources to make sure that rule of thumb came true.

“Integrated circuits will lead to such wonders as home computers - or at least terminals connected to a central computer - automatic controls for automobiles, and personal portable communications equipment,” Moore wrote in his paper, two decades before the PC revolution and more than 40 years before Apple launched the iPhone.

After Moore’s article, chips became more efficient and less expensive at an exponential rate, helping drive much of the world’s technological progress for half a century and allowing the advent of not just personal computers, but the internet and Silicon Valley giants like Apple (AAPL), Facebook (FB) and Google (GOOG).

“It sure is nice to be at the right place at the right time,” Moore said in an interview around 2005. “I was very fortunate to get into the semiconductor industry in its infancy. And I had an opportunity to grow from the time where we couldn’t make a single silicon transistor to the time where we put 1.7 billion of them on one chip! It’s been a phenomenal ride.”

In recent years, Intel rivals such as Nvidia (NVDA) have contended that Moore’s Law no longer holds as improvements in chip manufacturing have slowed down.

But despite manufacturing stumbles that have caused Intel to lose market share in recent years, current CEO Pat Gelsinger has said he believes Moore’s Law still holds as the company invests billions of dollars in a turnaround effort.

‘Accidental entrepreneur’
Even though he predicted the PC movement, Moore told Forbes magazine that he did not buy a home computer himself until the late 1980s.

A San Francisco native, Moore earned a Ph.D. in chemistry and physics in 1954 at the California Institute of Technology.

He went to work at the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory where he met future Intel cofounder Robert Noyce. Part of the “traitorous eight,” they departed in 1957 to launch Fairchild Semiconductor. In 1968, Moore and Noyce left Fairchild to start the memory chip company soon to be named Intel, an abbreviation of Integrated Electronics.

Moore and Noyce’s first hire was another Fairchild colleague, Andy Grove, who would lead Intel through much of its explosive growth in the 1980s and 1990s.

Moore described himself to Fortune magazine as an “accidental entrepreneur” who had no burning urge to start a company – but he, Noyce and Grove formed a powerhouse partnership.

While Noyce had theories about how to solve chip engineering problems, Moore was the person who rolled up his sleeves and spent countless hours tweaking transistors and refining Noyce’s broad and sometimes ill-defined ideas, efforts that often paid off. Grove filled out the group as Intel’s operations and management expert.

Moore’s obvious talent also inspired other engineers working for him, and, under his and Noyce’s leadership, Intel invented the microprocessors that would open the way to the personal computer revolution.

He was executive president until 1975 although he and CEO Noyce considered themselves equals. From 1979 to 1987 Moore was chairman and CEO and he remained chairman until 1997.

In 2023 Forbes magazine estimated his net worth at $7.2 billion.

Moore was a longtime sport fisherman, pursuing his passion all over the world and in 2000 he and his wife, Betty, started a foundation that focused on environmental causes. The foundation, which took on projects such as protecting the Amazon River basin and salmon streams in the US, Canada and Russia, was funded by Moore’s donation of some $5 billion in Intel stock.

He also gave hundreds of millions to his alma mater, the California Institute of Technology, to keep it at the forefront of technology and science, and backed the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence project known as SETI.

Moore received a Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, from President George W. Bush in 2002. He and his wife had two children.

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Re: Departed During 2023

#65 Post by Woody » Wed Mar 29, 2023 7:19 am

As has been mentioned elsewhere Paul O Grady aka Lily Savage has passed away. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but anyone from Merseyside knows someone with this personality.

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Re: Departed During 2023

#66 Post by Boac » Wed Mar 29, 2023 7:36 am

The effort he put in to rescue dogs at Battersea was outstanding.

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Re: Departed During 2023

#67 Post by Woody » Wed Mar 29, 2023 2:44 pm

Paul Grayson at his best ^:)^ ^:)^

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Re: Departed During 2023

#68 Post by OneHungLow » Fri Mar 31, 2023 12:51 am

We will have none of this!


https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/ ... e-pianists

"She had piano and violin lessons at a classical conservatoire in Cairo (learning under the Polish violinist Alexander Kontorowicz), immersing herself in the music of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and Schumann. "



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Re: Departed During 2023

#69 Post by OneHungLow » Sun Apr 02, 2023 3:34 pm

Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Ryuichi Sakamoto https://g.co/kgs/cRsfQg

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Re: Departed During 2023

#70 Post by Alisoncc » Sun Apr 02, 2023 11:54 pm

More Paul O'Grady. With Cilla.

Rev Mother Bene Gesserit.

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Re: Departed During 2023

#71 Post by llondel » Tue Apr 04, 2023 3:08 am


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Re: Departed During 2023

#72 Post by Woody » Sun Apr 09, 2023 8:09 am

Ben Ferencz: Last surviving Nuremberg prosecutor dies, aged 103


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-65223756
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Re: Departed During 2023

#73 Post by PHXPhlyer » Mon Apr 10, 2023 3:36 pm

ABBA’s long-term guitarist Lasse Wellander dies

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/10/entertai ... index.html

ABBA’s long-term guitarist Lasse Wellander has died after a short battle with cancer, his family announced.

The Swedish pop group described Wellander’s talent as “immense,” and paid tribute to a “dear friend, a fun guy and a superb guitarist.”

“It is with indescribable sadness that we have to announce that our beloved Lasse has fallen asleep. Lasse recently fell ill in what turned out to be spread cancer and early on Good Friday he passed away, surrounded by his loved ones,” a statement posted to the guitarist’s Facebook page on Sunday said.

“You were an amazing musician and humble as few, but above all you were a wonderful husband, father, brother, uncle and grandfather,” the statement added.

“Kind, safe, caring and loving … and so much more, that cannot be described in words. A hub in our lives, and it’s unbelievable that we now have to live on without you.”

“Lasse was a dear friend, a fun guy and a superb guitarist,” ABBA said in a statement to CNN Monday.

“The importance of his creative input in the recording studio as well as his rock solid guitar work on stage was immense.

“We mourn his tragic and premature death and remember the kind words, the sense of humour, the smiling face, the musical brilliance of the man who played such an integral role in the ABBA story. He will be deeply missed and never forgotten.”

Born in 1952, Wellander did his first session with Swedish pop legends ABBA in October 1974, when songs “Intermezzo No.1” and “Crazy World” were recorded. Soon after, he became the main guitarist on the group’s albums, and toured with them in 1975, 1977, 1979 and 1980, according to the band’s website.

Even after Anni-Frid “Frida” Lyngstad, Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus and Agnetha Fältskog went their separate ways in 1982, Wellander stayed in the fold, working with Benny and Björn.

He appeared on a number of albums, including the “Chess” concept album, two “Gemini” albums and the soundtracks for the films “Mamma Mia” and “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” as well as the ABBA album “Voyage,” released in November 2021.

Wellander played with several groups during the 80s, including Low Budget Blues Band, Zkiffz, Little Mike and the Sweet Soul Music Band and Stockholm All Stars, according to the biography on his official website.

A celebrated musician in his own right, Wellander released seven studio albums, two of which made the Top 40 album charts, according to his biography on ABBA’s website.

He received the Albin Hagström Memorial Award from The Royal Swedish Academy of Music in 2005 and 13 years later was awarded the Swedish Musicians Union’s prestigious special prize Studioräven Award for his work as a session musician.

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Re: Departed During 2023 - Belgian pilot Etienne Verhellen

#74 Post by OneHungLow » Mon Apr 17, 2023 4:36 pm

Pointed out by another Yak owner to me today!
Yesterday (13 April) at Valenciennes-Denain airport (LFAV) in Prouvy, France, 58-year-old Belgian pilot Etienne Verhellen died after an accident that occurred in the afternoon, where he was caught by a propeller of one of his planes. He succumbed to his injuries in the evening.

The accident happened on the tarmac of the airport, as the aviator, trained in the Belgian Air Force and former British Airways Boeing 747 pilot continued to fly for fun. “He was passionate about aviation and aerobatics,” says Laurent Deprez, organiser of the Prouvy air meeting. “Apart from aviation, nothing much interested him, he used to fly at several air shows, including this one in Prouvy.”

In the afternoon, when starting the engine of one of the aircraft (a Yakovlev Yak-52 registered F-WRUX), he was caught by the propeller. Etienne succumbed to his injuries in the evening, in the emergency room of Valenciennes hospital. “There is always a risk when you do aviation, it happened and it touches us very deeply,” mourns Laurent Deprez.

The organiser of the Prouvy air meeting considered the Belgian aviator to be a friend: “We met at air shows and we grew closer over time. We saw each other regularly. Etienne always came by plane.”

Source: Happé par l’hélice de son avion, il meurt à l’hôpital de Valenciennes (La Voix du Nord)

Etienne was well-known and befriended many members of the Aviation24.be team. We extend our sincere condolences to the members of his family.

In 2017, Etienne Verhellen escaped from a crash with a Yak-52 tourist plane in Couvin, Belgium after an engine stall. He got stuck with his legs and was extracted from the aircraft by emergency services.

https://www.aviation24.be/miscellaneous ... al-france/
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Re: Departed During 2023 - Belgian pilot Etienne Verhellen

#75 Post by OneHungLow » Mon Apr 17, 2023 6:02 pm

OneHungLow wrote:
Mon Apr 17, 2023 4:36 pm
Pointed out by another Yak owner to me today! - Etienne Verhellen's videos are interesting,
The impossible turn...

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Departed During 2023 - Mark Stewart

#76 Post by OneHungLow » Sat Apr 22, 2023 8:17 am

Mark Stewart, Pop Group frontman and revered countercultural musician, dies aged 62
Bristol-born vocalist celebrated for political lyricism and highly expressive style was influential both with the Pop Group and a long solo career


Mark Stewart, who was celebrated for his dizzying and politicised blend of post-punk, dub and funk as frontman of the Pop Group and in a solo career, has died aged 62.

News of his death was confirmed by his label Mute, who wrote: “In honour of this original, fearless, sensitive, artistic and funny man, think for yourself and question everything. The world was changed because of Mark Stewart, it will never be the same without him.” No cause of death has been given.

Stewart was born in 1960 and raised in Bristol, where he formed the Pop Group in 1977 with youth club friends John Waddington and Simon Underwood, soon adding Gareth Sager and Bruce Smith to complete the lineup.

With their somewhat ironic band name – though with a hint of bright pop music nonetheless – they embraced the iconoclasm of the punk movement of the time, and had been inspired by seeing the Clash. Stewart later explained: “There is the arrogance of power and what we got from punk was the power of arrogance.”

But the band deviated from punk’s music, using jazzy, improvisatory arrangements, funk basslines and noisy abstraction. Stewart’s beautifully, starkly expressive vocals, like a highly musical form of ranted speech, helped them stand out all the more, and their 1979 debut album Y – made with dub producer Dennis Bovell – is regarded as a high point in the post-punk movement.

Their divisive 1980 follow-up For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder? was more commercial, with tighter funk rhythms and a presaging of the industrial music of the rest of the decade. It also featured a collaboration with US group the Last Poets, regarded as the forefathers of hip-hop.

After playing a vast CND rally in Trafalgar Square, the Pop Group split up later that year, and Stewart, along with Smith and Waddington, joined New Age Steppers, a dub music collective headed up by Adrian Sherwood that also included other post-punk luminaries such as the Slits’ Ari Up and Viv Albertine and Public Image Ltd’s Keith Levene.

Stewart continued to collaborate with Sherwood on solo releases as Mark Stewart & the Maffia, which advanced his interest in dub. Beginning with the 1985 album As the Veneer of Democracy Starts to Fade, he also continued the connection with US hip-hop by using a backing band with guitarist Skip McDonald, bassist Doug Wimbish and drummer Keith LeBlanc, who had played on Sugar Hill Records releases such as White Lines and The Message.

Backed again by McDonald, Wimbish and LeBlanc and with Sherwood as producer, his self-titled solo album in 1987 also featured contributions from the late Ryuichi Sakamoto and riffed on the music of Erik Satie. He released two more albums with this lineup – Metatron (1990) and Control Data (1996) – and also collaborated with the likes of Daddy G from fellow Bristolians Massive Attack.

The 2005 compilation Kiss the Future chimed with a then-resurgent punk-funk sound and earned him a new audience, ahead of another solo release in 2008, Edit.

The Pop Group reformed in 2010 for live shows, released the compilation We Are Time in 2014 and then a brand new studio album in 2015, Citizen Zombie, helmed by Oscar-winning Adele producer Paul Epworth. A final album came the following year, Honeymoon on Mars.

Stewart also collaborated with artists such as Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie and experimental film-maker Kenneth Anger on his final solo album, 2012’s The Politics of Envy.

He explained his highly cosmopolitan style in an interview that year: “I think I just make sparks and try to push things together that don’t necessarily fit. I’m happy to put a booty bass bassline on top of a Slayer guitar – for me it comes back to cut and paste and doing a punk collage, putting Ronald Reagan’s head on top of a gay cowboy model or something.

“I’ve been messing about doing things like that since I was about six. To a certain extent, people are contained, but for me I can listen to some footwork stuff, some mad Japanese noise or a bubblegum pop song all in the same 10 minutes.”

His music was also avowedly political, castigating injustice, capitalism and authoritarian cruelty while celebrating art as an escape – sometimes within the space of a single song, as with the Pop Group classic We Are All Prostitutes.

“Arguments are good,” he said in 2008. “People are brainwashed to think that these things are out of your control; in the shops round here people say ‘I don’t want to think about politics’ – they are taught, it’s kept behind the curtains.”

Daniel Miller, the head of Mute, paid tribute, saying: “His musical influence has been much greater than is often acknowledged … I can’t imagine you being anything other than restless but I hope you find your very special peace.”

Sherwood called Stewart “the biggest musical influence in my life and our extended family will miss you so so much,” while the Pop Group’s Gareth Sager said: “Mark was the most amazing mind of my generation.”
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/ ... es-aged-62
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Re: Departed During 2023 - Barry Humphries..

#77 Post by OneHungLow » Sat Apr 22, 2023 10:58 am

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Re: Departed During 2023 - Barry Humphries..

#78 Post by Woody » Sat Apr 22, 2023 11:55 am

OneHungLow wrote:
Sat Apr 22, 2023 10:58 am
RIP Mr Humphries.

https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/c ... ab4a34b04b
Saw him as Sir Les Patterson live in London :)) :)) :))

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Re: Departed During 2023

#79 Post by PHXPhlyer » Tue Apr 25, 2023 3:27 pm

Harry Belafonte, calypso star and civil rights champion, dies at 96
The iconic "Day-O" singer died at his home in New York City, according to longtime spokesperson Ken Sunshine.

https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop ... -rcna42389

Harry Belafonte, the effortlessly graceful singer credited with popularizing calypso in the U.S. in the 1950s who then marched at the forefront of the country’s civil rights struggle for half a century, died Tuesday, according to his spokesperson.

He was 96.

Belafonte died of congestive heart failure at his home in New York City, longtime spokesperson Ken Sunshine confirmed to NBC News.

Belafonte’s legacy as an arresting, charismatic singer and actor, which was sealed with the release of the landmark album “Calypso” in 1956, spanned more than six decades.

Active almost to the very end
As recently as 2018 he made a bone-chilling appearance in the movie “BlacKkKlansman,” portraying an older civil rights leader who recounts the judicial railroading and brutal lynching of Jesse Washington, a Black teenage farmhand, in Waco, Texas, in 1916.

Belafonte, after several years of poor health, had to get his doctor’s permission to shoot the scene. The movie’s director, Spike Lee, told Deadline.com: “I said, ‘Thank you, Jesus.’ And I said to the crew: ‘When you come to the set tomorrow, I want you to have a suit on, a tie, wear your Sunday best. If you dress lazy, don’t come to work, because we have a very special guest.’”

Belafonte was born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr. in New York’s Harlem, in 1927, the son of Harold George Bellanfanti Sr., a Martinique-born chef, and Melvine Bellanfanti, a Jamaica-born housekeeper. Between the ages of 8 and about 13, he lived in Jamaica with his mother, returning to the U.S. to continue high school before he served in the Navy during World War II.
Belafonte attended the Dramatic Workshop of the New School for Social Research on the G.I. Bill, in a class that included Marlon Brando, Walter Matthau and Sidney Poitier, who would become a lifelong friend.

On the side, he sang in New York nightclubs, where he found his first success turning his smooth, elegant renditions of pop, jazz and folk classics into an engagement at the Village Vanguard, where he was soon spotted by RCA Victor and signed to a record contract in 1952.

An EGOT winner and a lifetime of awards
Belafonte received most of the major honors the U.S. reserves for its revered artists and performers, among them the Kennedy Center Honors in 1989, the National Medal of Arts in 1994, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000, the BET Humanitarian Award in 2006, the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP in 2013 and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Motion Picture Academy in 2014.

That honorary Oscar meant Belafonte has awards in all four major major entertainment competitions, earning him the rare EGOT honor.

Belafonte was urged by the Black novelist and songwriter William Attaway to “view folk songs as a body of social knowledge, a collective resource open to all,” the University of Massachusetts scholar Judith E. Smith wrote in her 2014 biography, “Becoming Belafonte: Black Artist, Public Radical.”

Belafonte thereafter focused on vernacular and folk music, much of it expressions of the Black and Caribbean experience. Within a year, he had a hit single, “Matilda,” which would stay in his repertoire for decades. By 1954, he had hit No. 3 on the album charts with “Mark Twain and Other Folk Favorites.”

He had also scored on Broadway, winning a Tony for best performance by an actor in a leading role in a musical in 1954 for the revue “John Murray Anderson’s Almanac.”

And then came 1956, when he ruled the music world with two No. 1 albums, “Belafonte” and “Calypso,” a landmark in American popular music that was the first LP record to be certified with sales of 1 million or more.

Best known for "Day-O"
The album — which included Belafonte’s signature number, “Day-O (Banana Boat Song),” with its unforgettable Jamaican dockworker’s lament — spent 99 weeks on the charts, 31 of them at No. 1, which remains the fourth-longest run in Billboard chart history.

It also established calypso, an African Caribbean folk blend rooted in Trinidad and Tobago, as an enduring component of the American music scene, earning him the nickname the “King of Calypso.”

It paved the way for a wave of folk acts that dotted the charts through the beginning of the British music invasion of the mid-1960s and continues to influence folk and “island music” artists like Jimmy Buffett, Alison Hinds, Buster Poindexter, Mighty Sparrow, the Mighty Vikings and David Rudder.

“Years later, it remains a record of inestimable influence, inspiring many folk singers and groups,” the noted music historian and writer Cary Ginell wrote of “Calypso.”

Belafonte established himself on television during the 1950s and ‘60s, receiving an Emmy in 1960 for his performance in the musical special “Tonight With Belafonte,” which made him the first Black artist to win an Emmy. He followed it up with another nomination the next year.

By 1954, Belafonte was in the movies, as well, having won a prized lead role in the film adaptation of “Carmen Jones,” the all-Black Broadway musical re-imagining of Georges Bizet’s opera “Carmen.”

Despite his record sales and his Tony Award for a musical revue, Belafonte wasn’t allowed to sing in the movie — his songs were dubbed by the opera singer LeVern Hutcherson.

Seeking to take control of his career, Belafonte mounted his own movie production in 1959, “Odds Against Tomorrow,” a gritty film noir written by the blacklisted screenwriter Abe Polonsky and backed by a John Lewis score.

The film, about a Black nightclub entertainer’s clashes with a racist white bank robber, was well reviewed, and it was nominated for a Golden Globe, but it flopped at the box office.

Always a trailblazer
It was one of many boundary-pushing moments throughout Belafonte’s life and career — in April 1968, for example, a TV special starring Belafonte and the white pop singer Petula Clark created a national stir because Clark briefly touched Belafonte’s arm during a duet.

Such incidents only empowered Belafonte, whose social consciousness began to emerge during the early 1950s under the guidance of Paul Robeson, the polymath singer, artist and activist he called his mentor.

From 1954 until 1961, Belafonte refused to perform in the Deep South, making him a target of white racist commentators and landing him for a time on Hollywood’s notorious blacklist during the McCarthy era.

By the early 1960s, Belafonte had become a force in the civil rights movement. Already a confidant to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., he campaigned for Sen. John F. Kennedy during the 1960 presidential campaign, and after Kennedy was elected, he became an intermediary between King and Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

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Re: Departed During 2023

#80 Post by PHXPhlyer » Tue Apr 25, 2023 3:28 pm

Harry Belafonte
Part 2

Harry Belafonte, calypso star and civil rights champion, dies at 96

The iconic "Day-O" singer died at his home in New York City, according to longtime spokesperson Ken Sunshine.

https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop ... -rcna42389

At the forefront of the Civil Rights Era
It was Belafonte who put up the money in 1963 to bail King out of jail in Alabama, where King most forcefully articulated the civil rights strategy of nonviolence in his “Letter From Birmingham Jail.”

Belafonte became associated with King in 1956 at a New York fundraising event for activists working in Montgomery, Alabama. King later said Belafonte was “a key ingredient to the global struggle for freedom and a powerful tactical weapon in the civil rights movement here in America,” adding: “We are blessed by his courage and moral integrity.”

King and his wife, Coretta Scott King, so trusted Belafonte that after King was assassinated in 1968, Belafonte was appointed as the executor of King’s estate.

“Whenever we got into trouble or when tragedy struck, Harry has always come to our aid, his generous heart wide open,” Coretta Scott King wrote in her 1969 autobiography, “My Life With Martin Luther King, Jr.“

Belafonte supported a wide variety of civil rights causes throughout the 1960s — as a main financier of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, he even flew to Mississippi to join the organization’s Mississippi Freedom Summer campaign in 1964.

His attentions soon broadened to encompass human rights around the world, especially in Africa.

He received his second Grammy for the 1965 album “An Evening With Belafonte/Makeba,” a collection of folk and protest songs that he recorded with the South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba. (Belafonte’s first Grammy was awarded for “Swing Dat Hammer,” in the ethnic or traditional folk recording category in 1961.)

It began a long period of advocacy for the oppressed Black majority of South Africa’s apartheid government, a time highlighted by his years as a board member of TransAfrica Forum, founded by Randall Robinson in 1977.

In 1985, Belafonte was arrested in a protest outside the South African Embassy in Washington. The same year, he led the effort to bring the African relief music project Band Aid to the U.S. from Britain, resulting in the monumental USA for Africa fundraising concerts and the single “We Are the World,” for which he recruited almost all of the leading singers of the day.

Belafonte sang in the chorus on the record, and during its recording, the assembled superstars — among them Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Bruce Springsteen, Diana Ross and Bob Dylan — spontaneously broke out into “Day-O (Banana Boat Song)” in tribute.

Belafonte accepted that his activism would overshadow his music, but the USA for Africa project reignited interest in his artistry. He signed a new record deal with EMI and, in 1988, released his first album in nearly a decade, a collection of apartheid songs titled “Paradise in Gazankulu.”

A concert video of world music shortly followed, and in 1988, the director Tim Burton included a number of Belafonte’s songs, such as “Day-O (Banana Boat Song)” and “Jump in the Line,” in his soundtrack for the movie “Beetlejuice.”

“The Long Road to Freedom: An Anthology of Black Music,” a collection of songs recorded over 20 years featuring Belafonte, was released in 2001 and was nominated for a Grammy for best historical album.

Over the years, Belafonte battled prostate cancer, and, true to his nature, became a prominent advocate for cancer research.

Protested war in Iraq and called Trump a 'cancer'
In 2007, he announced his retirement, although he continued a strenuous load of appearances for causes he supported well into his later years, especially targeting the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush, whom he considered a warmonger, and Donald Trump, whom he called a “cancer” and likened in 2017 to Hitler.

Survivors include his third wife, Pamela Frank; three daughters, Adrienne Belafonte Biesemeyer and Shari Belafonte and Gina Belafonte, both actors; and a son, the actor and producer David Belafonte; two stepchildren, Sarah Frank and Lindsey Frank; and eight grandchildren.

In a May 1989 interview for the PBS civil rights series “Eyes on the Prize II,” archived in the Henry Hampton Collection at Washington University in St. Louis, Belafonte summed up his philosophy:

“I would say that you are really responsible for the world in which you live. If others happen to come along and join you in the spirit of your endeavor and your objectives to make the world a better place, then you’re the richer for it.”

PP

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