Donald "Duck" Dunn, R.I.P.

 

As a member of Rock'n'Roll Hall Of Famers Booker T. & The MGs, Donald "Duck" Dunn was house bass player at the legendary Soul/R'n'B label, Stax, where his meaty playing helped define one of the most distinctive and enduring sounds in popular music. Among the timeless recordings Dunn held down the bottom end of, are Respect, Dock Of The Bay and I've Been Loving You Too Long, by Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett's In The Midnight Hour, and Hold On I'm Coming by Sam and Dave, not to mention sessions with Neil Young, Eric Clapton and Jerry Lee Lewis.

Dunn kept the classic Stax sound alive and kicking as part of The Blues Brothers Band. Originally hand picked by John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd - the Jake and Elwood characters in cult film, The Blues Brothers.

duckdunn

Maurice Sendak, R.I.P.

Maurice Sendak, widely considered the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century, who wrenched the picture book out of the safe, sanitized world of the nursery and plunged it into the dark, terrifying and hauntingly beautiful recesses of the human psyche, died on Tuesday in Danbury, Conn. He was 83 and lived in Ridgefield, Conn.

NYT

Levon Helm, R.I.P. Updated

Woodstock's Levon Helm, who was as much beloved for his salt of the earth integrity as he was for his earthen voice and in-the-pocket drumming, died Thursday afternoon in New York.

Helm was surrounded by friends and family, including his wife Sandy and daughter Amy, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. There will be a memorial service, but details have yet been finalized.

recordonline.com

Update: This from Charles Pierce is worth a read:

It was a hot summer night very long ago, when my career in this racket was brand-new and distinctly alternative. I was in a beneath-the-sidewalk joint in Harvard Square called Jonathan Swift's, and I was listening to Levon Helm play with the Cate Brothers, who were formidable players in their own right, and old friends of Levon's from Arkansas. We were all deep into the howl of the evening when it occurred to my friend and I that we were enjoying the show so much that we really ought to buy Levon a beer. So we ordered one up, and the waitress brought it out to the stage and Levon took a long pull, looked down at the two of us, touched his drumstick to his forehead and said, "Thank you, neighbor."

It was what they were all about, Levon and the rest of The Band, in 1968, when the country was coming apart at the seams. Nothing was holding, least of all Mr. Yeats's center. There were tanks in Prague and there was blood on a balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. The traditional American values of home and family and neighborhood were being fashioned into cheap weapons to use against the people who saw the death and gore as the deepest kind of betrayal of the ideals that made those values worth a damn in the first place. The music was disparate and fragmented; the Beatles were producing masterpieces that they couldn't or wouldn't take on the road. Brian Wilson was long gone, spelunking through the canyons of what was left of his mind. Jim Morrison, that tinpot fraud, was mixing bullshit politics with kindergarten Freudian mumbo-jumbo and his band didn't even have a damn bass player. Elsewhere, there was torpid, silly psychedelia. The British were sort of holding it together, but, in America, even soul was coming apart. Nothing seemed rooted. Nothing abided. Nothing seemed to come from anything else. The whole country was bleeding from wounds nobody could find.

h/t Doug Noon

Dick Clark, R.I.P.

Dick Clark, the music industry maverick, longtime TV host and powerhouse producer who changed the way we listened to pop music with "American Bandstand," and whose trademark "Rockin' Eve" became a fixture of New Year's celebrations, died today at the age of 82.

ABC

Jim Marshall Of Marshall Amplifiers, R.I.P.

James Charles "Jim" Marshall, OBE (July 29, 1923 – April 5, 2012), known as The Father of Loud or The Lord of Loud, was an English businessman, and pioneer of guitar amplification. His company, Marshall Amplification, has created kit used by some of the biggest names in rock, producing amplifiers with an iconic status. Marshall received an OBE honour for "services to the music industry and to charity". Marshall has been listed as one of the four forefathers of rock music equipment along with Leo Fender, Les Paul and Seth Lover.

Earl Scruggs: R.I.P.

Earl Eugene Scruggs (January 6, 1924 – March 28, 2012) was an American musician noted for perfecting and popularizing a three-finger banjo-picking style (now called Scruggs style) that is a defining characteristic of bluegrass music. Although other musicians had played in three-finger style before him, Scruggs shot to prominence when he was hired by Bill Monroe to fill the banjo slot in his group, the Blue Grass Boys.

Wikipedia

Davy Jones, R.I.P.

Davy Jones of the Monkees has died of an apparent heart attack at age 66. The singer – who had been on a solo tour this month - complained of chest pains last evening and was admitted to a hospital this morning in Stuart, Florida.

RS

Whitney Houston Could Sing. RIP

Don Cornelius, R.I.P.

Don Cornelius, the producer and television host who created the television dance show “Soul Train,” was found shot dead in his Los Angeles home on Wednesday morning, and detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department were trying to determine if his death was a suicide.

NYT

Etta James, R.I.P.

At Last

Etta James has died at the age of 73.

The legendary "At Last" singer died from complications from leukemia; she also suffered from dementia and hepatitis C.

“This is a tremendous loss for the family, her friends and fans around the world,” her Lupe De Leon said in a statement. “She was a true original who could sing it all – her music defied category.”

huffpo

I saw Etta James with the Grateful Dead during the New Year's run in SF Oakland back in the day '82. Wow.

 

Hard To Handle W/ The Grateful Dead

 

Etta's Notes from the show

Kim Jong Il Is Dead. Can We Feed North Koreans Now?

Usually I use "RIP" in the headlines of obits. Not this time. I'm not much of a dancer, nor do I condone killing people, but I would dance on this fucker's grave.

Kim Jong-il, also written as Kim Jong Il, birth name Yuri Irsenovich Kim (according to Soviet records)^[2][3][4][5] (16 February 1941/2 – 17 December 2011),^[6] was the supreme Leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea). He was the General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, the ruling party since 1948, Chairman of the the National Defence Commission of North Korea, and the Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army, the fourth-largest standing army in the world.

In April 2009, North Korea's constitution was amended to refer to him implicitly as the "Supreme Leader".^[7] He was also referred to as the "Dear Leader", "our Father", "the General" and "Generalissimo".^[8] His son Kim Jong-un was promoted to a senior position in the ruling Workers' Party and is heir apparent.^[9] In 2010, he was ranked 31st in Forbes Magazine's List of The World's Most Powerful People.^[10] The North Korean government announced his death on 19 December 2011.^[6]

Details surrounding Kim Jong-il's birth vary according to source. Soviet records show that he was born in the village of Vyatskoye, near Khabarovsk, in 1941,^[11] where his father, Kim Il-sung, commanded the 1st Battalion of the Soviet 88th Brigade, made up of Chinese and Korean exiles. Kim Jong-il's mother, Kim Jong-suk, was Kim Il-sung's first wife.

Kim Jong-il's official biography^[12] states that he was born in a secret military camp on Baekdu Mountain in Japanese Korea on 16 February 1942.^[13] Official biographers claim that his birth at Baekdu Mountain was foretold by a swallow, and heralded by the appearance of a double rainbow over the mountain and a new star in the heavens.^[14]

In 1945, Kim was three or four years old (depending on his birth year) when World War II ended and Korea regained independence from Japan. His father returned to Pyongyang that September, and in late November Kim returned to Korea via a Soviet ship, landing at Sonbong (선봉군, also Unggi). The family moved into a former Japanese officer's mansion in Pyongyang, with a garden and pool. Kim Jong-il's brother, "Shura" Kim (the first Kim Jong-il, but known by his Russian nickname), drowned there in 1948. Unconfirmed reports suggest that five-year-old Kim Jong-il might have caused the accident.^[15] In 1949, his mother died in childbirth.^[16] Unconfirmed reports suggest that his mother might have been shot and left to bleed to death.^[15]

wikipedia

Vaclav Havel, R.I.P.

Vaclav Havel, the former dissident playwright who led Czechoslovakia's 1989 "Velvet Revolution" against communism and then served as his country's president, died Sunday. He was 75.

Havel, a former chain smoker with chronic respiratory problems, had been in failing health the past few months and died at his weekend home in Hradecek in the northern Czech Republic, his assistant, Sabina Tancevova, told the Associated Press.

LAT

Christopher Hitchens, R.I.P.

Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an English^[7] author and journalist^[8] whose books, essays, and journalistic career spanned more than four decades. He was a columnist and literary critic at The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, and became a media fellow at the Hoover Institution in September 2008.^[9] He was a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits and in 2005 was voted the world's fifth top public intellectual in a Prospect/Foreign Policy poll.^[10][11]

Hitchens was known for his admiration of George Orwell, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson and for his excoriating critiques of, among others, Mother Teresa,^[12] Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Henry Kissinger. His confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure. As a political observer, polemicist and self-defined radical, he rose to prominence as a fixture of the left-wing publications in his native Britain and in the United States. His departure from the established political left began in 1989 after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the Western left following Ayatollah Khomeini's issue of a fatwā calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie. The September 11 attacks strengthened his internationalist embrace of an interventionist foreign policy, and his vociferous criticism of what he called "fascism with an Islamic face." His numerous editorials in support of the Iraq War caused some to label him a neoconservative, although Hitchens insisted he was not "a conservative of any kind."^[13]

Wikipedia

I think this was his last article. It's a good one that talks about things that don't kill you make you stronger. Or not. I loved Hitch.

Harry Morgan, R*I*P

Harry Morgan (April 10, 1915 – December 7, 2011)[1] was an American actor known for his roles as Colonel Sherman T. Potter in M*A*S*H (1975–1983), Pete Porter in both Pete and Gladys (1960–1962) and December Bride (1954–1959), Detective Bill Gannon on Dragnet (1967–1970), and Amos Coogan on Hec Ramsey (1972–1974). He appeared in more than 100 films.

Patrice O'Neal, R.I.P.

Patrice O'Neil suffers a stroke

10/26/2011 

Brian Tam 

Beloved comedian Patrice O’Neal suffered a stroke last Wednesday. The news was not confirmed until this morning on The Opie and Anthony Show. Fellow comic Jim Norton revealed the tragic news on air, sending his condolences to his friend.

According to Norton, Patrice's health condition is currently a mystery, as details about his state of recovery are still unknown.

"We don't know how he is. We don't know how he's going to be," said Norton. "I didn't want to do this by myself. I wish we had more news for you."

UpRoxx reported that Norton had made the announcement on air because he didn't want the information leaked by someone alien to Patrice.

"We wanted it to come from us," he said.

According to MSNBC, Patrice has received some words of kindness from avid fans. An email account, LoveForPatrice@gmail.com, has been set up for those who want to write something endearing.

CelebrityCafe

Joe Frazier, R.I.P.

Joseph William "Joe" Frazier (January 12, 1944 – November 7, 2011[1]), also known as Smokin' Joe, was an Olympic and Undisputed World Heavyweight boxing champion, whose professional career lasted from 1965 to 1976, with a brief comeback in 1981.

Frazier emerged as the top contender in the late 1960s, defeating the likes of Jerry Quarry, Oscar Bonavena, Buster Mathis, Eddie Machen, Doug Jones, George Chuvalo and Jimmy Ellis en route to becoming undisputed heavyweight champion in 1970, and followed up by defeating Muhammad Ali on points in the highly-anticipated "Fight of the Century" in 1971. Two years later Frazier lost his title when he was knocked out by George Foreman. He fought on, beating Joe Bugner, losing a rematch to Ali, and beating Quarry and Ellis again.

Andy Rooney, R.I.P.

Andy Rooney died November 4th at the age of 92. I grew up watching him. I thought he was cool and funny. I will miss him.

Muammar Gaddafi, Dead

Muammar Gaddafi was killed. I'm not in favor of killing. I don't mind this one, though.

Steve Jobs: R.I.P.

Cliff Robertson: R.I.P.

Clifford Parker "Cliff" Robertson, III (September 9, 1923 – September 10, 2011) was an American actor with a film and television career that spanned half of a century. Robertson won the 1968 Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in the movie Charly. His last film role was "Uncle Ben Parker" in the Spider-Man film series.

With great power comes great responsibility. Remember that, oligarchs.