The Beatles’ ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ Headed Back to Movie Theaters
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In celebration of the film’s 50th anniversary, cities across the U.S. will screen movie on Fourth of July weekend
by Kory Grow
April 29, 2014 8:25 AM ET
The Beatles’ silver-screen debut A Hard Day’s Night will return to theaters this summer to mark the 50th anniversary of its premiere at London’s Pavilion Theatre. Janus Films has digitally restored the movie’s picture and hired Giles Martin – son of Beatles producer George – to remix and remaster its soundtrack for 5.1 sound systems at Abbey Road, Los Angeles Times reports.
(MCRFB: For the rest on this 4/29/14 Rolling Stone Music articlego here).
A New York City theater world-premiere, Thursday, August 13, 1964
Phil Everly Succumbs to Respiratory Failure — Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
January 3, 2014, 5:34 p.m. | L.A. Times and REUTERS News Services
This July 31, 1964 file photo shows The Everly Brothers, Don and Phil, performing on stage. Everly, who with his brother Don formed an influential harmony duo that touched the hearts and sparked the imaginations of rock ‘n’ roll singers for decades, including the Beatles and Bob Dylan, died Friday, Jan. 3, 2014. He was 74. Everly died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at a Burbank hospital, said his son Jason Everly.(AP Photo)
Phil Everly, who with his brother, Don, made up the most revered vocal duo of the rock-music era, their exquisite harmonies profoundly influencing the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Byrds and countless younger-generation rock, folk and country singers, died Friday in Burbank of complications from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, his wife, Patti Everly, told The Times. He was 74.
“We are absolutely heartbroken,” she said, noting that the disease was the result of a lifetime of cigarette smoking. “He fought long and hard.”
During the height of their popularity in the late 1950s and early 1960s, they charted nearly three dozen hits on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, among them “Cathy’s Clown,” “Wake Up Little Susie,” “Bye Bye Love,” “When Will I Be Loved” and “All I Have to Do Is Dream.” The Everly Brothers were among the first 10 performers inducted into theRock and Roll Hall of Famewhen it got off the ground in 1986.
“They had that sibling sound,” said Linda Ronstadt, who scored one of the biggest hits of her career in 1975 with her recording of “When Will I Be Loved,” which Phil Everly wrote. “The information of your DNA is carried in your voice, and you can get a sound [with family] that you never get with someone who’s not blood related to you. And they were both such good singers–they were one of the foundations, one of the cornerstones of the new rock ‘n’ roll sound.”
Robert Santelli, executive director of the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, said Friday, “When you talk about harmony singing in the popular music of the postwar period, the first place you start is the Everly Brothers…. You could say they were the vocal link between all the 1950s great doo wop groups and what would come in the 1960s with the Beach Boys and the Beatles. They showed the Beach Boys and the Beatles how to sing harmony and incorporate that into a pop music form that was irresistible.”
The Everly Brothers profoundly influenced 1960s-era groups and singer-songwriters ranging from Beatles John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who early in their careers called themselves the Foreverly Brothers, to Simon and Garfunkel, the Byrds, the Hollies and the Beach Boys.
“Perhaps even more powerfully than Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers melded country with the emerging sound of Fifties rock & roll,” Rolling Stone magazine said in placing the brothers at No. 33 on its list of the “100 Greatest Artists.”
Phil and Don had an onstage breakup in 1973 that led to a decade-long estrangement, but Phil told Time magazine their relationship had endured.
“Don and I are infamous for our split,” Phil said, “but we’re closer than most brothers. Harmony singing requires that you enlarge yourself, not use any kind of suppression. Harmony is the ultimate love.”
In addition to his wife, Everly is survived by his brother, Don, their mother, Margaret, sons Jason and Chris, and two granddaughters. Funeral services will be private.
A full obituary will appear in Saturday’s Times. END
Eydie Gorme, ‘Blame it on the Bossa Nova’ Singer, Dies at 84
The Associated Press | Published NYT/Entertainment / August 11, 2013
LOS ANGELES — Eydie Gorme, a popular nightclub and television singer who had a huge solo hit in 1963 with “Blame it on the Bossa Nova,” died Saturday. She was 84.
Eydie Gorme in 1956.
Her publicist, Howard Bragman, said Ms. Gorme, who performed as a solo act and as a team with her husband, Steve Lawrence, died at Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas after a brief, undisclosed illness.
Ms. Gorme was a successful band singer and nightclub entertainer when she was invited to join the cast of Steve Allen’s local New York television show in 1953.
She sang solos and did duets and comedy skits with Mr. Lawrence, a young singer who had joined the show a year earlier. When the program became NBC’s “Tonight Show” in 1954, the young couple went with it.
They married in Las Vegas in 1957.
“Eydie has been my partner on stage and in life for more than 55 years,” Mr. Lawrence said in a statement. “I fell in love with her the moment I saw her and even more the first time I heard her sing. While my personal loss is unimaginable, the world has lost one of the greatest pop vocalists of all time.”
Although usually recognized for her musical partnership with Mr. Lawrence, Ms. Gorme broke through on her own with the Grammy-nominated “Blame it on the Bossa Nova.” The bouncy tune about a dance craze of the time was written by the songwriting team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.
Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme circa 1962(click image for larger view).
Her husband had had an equally huge solo hit in 1962 with “Go Away Little Girl,” written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King.
Ms. Gorme would score another solo hit in 1964, but this time for a Spanish-language recording.
Ms. Gorme, who was born in New York City to Sephardic Jewish parents, grew up speaking both English and Spanish. When she and her husband were at the height of their career as a team in 1964, the president of Columbia Records Goddard Lieberson suggested she put that Spanish to use in the recording studio.
The result was “Amor,” recorded with the Mexican combo Trio Los Panchos.
The song became a hit throughout Latin America, which resulted in more recordings for the Latino market, and Mr. Lawrence and Ms. Gorme performed as a duo throughout Latin America.
“Our Spanish stuff outsells our English recordings,” Mr. Lawrence said in 2004. “She’s like a diva to the Spanish world.”
The couple had an impressive, long-lasting career in English-language music as well, encompassing recordings and appearances on TV, in nightclubs and in concert halls.
Throughout it, they stuck for the most part with the music of classic composers like Berlin, Kern, Gershwin, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and other giants of Broadway and Hollywood musicals. They eschewed rock ‘n’ roll and made no apologies for it.
“People come with a general idea of what they’re going to get,” Mr. Lawrence said of their show in a 1989 interview. “They buy a certain cereal, and they know what to expect from that package.”
Soon after their marriage, the pair had landed their own TV program, “The Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme Show,” which was a summer replacement for Mr. Allen.
Not long after that, however, Mr. Lawrence entered the Army, and Ms. Gorme went on the nightclub circuit as a soloist until his return two years later. Their careers took off.
They appeared at leading nightclubs in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and Las Vegas, combining music with the comedy bits they had learned on Mr. Allen’s show.
With nightclubs dwindling in popularity in the 1980s, they moved their act to large theaters and auditoriums, drawing not only older audiences but also the baby boomers who had grown up on rock ‘n’ roll.
Eydie Gorme’s ‘I Feel So Spanish!’ UA LP from 1961.
Ms. Gorme was born Aug. 16, 1928 and began to consider a music career while still a student at William Taft High School in the Bronx, where she had been voted the “Prettiest, Peppiest Cheerleader.”
After graduation, she worked as a Spanish interpreter for a time but also sang on weekends with the band of Ken Greenglass, who encouraged her and eventually became her manager.
Her first big break came when she landed a tour with the Tommy Tucker band, and she followed that up with gigs with Tex Beneke, Ray Eberle and on radio and television.
Early in her career, Ms. Gorme considered changing her name, but her mother protested.
“It’s bad enough that you’re in show business. How will the neighbors know if you’re ever a success?” she told her, so Ms. Gorme decided to keep the family name but changed her given name from Edith to Edie.
Later, having grown tired of people mistaking it for Eddie, she changed the spelling to Eydie.
Survivors include her husband, Mr. Lawrence, her son David and a granddaughter. Another son, Michael, died of heart failure in 1986 at age 23.
(Article reprint from AP wire services and nytimes.com online August 11, 2013).
‘Ray was a huge part of my life and I will always miss him,’ says Doors guitarist Robby Krieger
By Andy Greene | May 20, 2013 5:50 PM ET
Doors co-founder and keyboardist Ray Manzarek died today in Rosenheim, Germany, after a long battle with bile duct cancer. He was 74.
“I was deeply saddened to hear about the passing of my friend and bandmate Ray Manzarek today,” Doors guitarist Robby Krieger said in a statement. “I’m just glad to have been able to have played Doors songs with him for the last decade. Ray was a huge part of my life and I will always miss him.”
Manzarek grew up in Chicago, then moved to Los Angeles in 1962 to study film at UCLA. It was there he first met Doors singer Jim Morrison, though they didn’t talk about forming a band until they bumped into each other on a beach in Venice, California, in the summer of 1965 and Morrison told Manzarek that he had been working on some music. “And there it was!” Manzarek wrote in his 1998 biography, Light My Fire. “It dropped quite simply, quite innocently from his lips, but it changed our collective destinies.”
They quickly teamed up with drummer John Densmore and guitarist Robby Krieger and began playing gigs around Los Angeles. About a year later, the Doors recorded their debut album for Elektra Records. “We knew once people heard us, we’d be unstoppable,” Manzarek wrote in his memoir. “We knew what the people wanted: the same thing the Doors wanted. Freedom.”
The Doors didn’t have a bassist, so Manzarek often played the bass parts on his Fender Rhodes piano. He also played a Vox Continental organ, which can be heard on the famous intro to “Light My Fire” and numerous other Doors classics. The group shared credit on most songs and split all profits evenly.
The group carried on for two more albums after Jim Morrison died in July of 1971, but they split in 1973. Manzarek remained extremely busy, producing albums for X and playing with Iggy Pop, Echo and the Bunnymen and others. In 2002, he began touring as the Doors of the 21st Century with Krieger and Cult frontman Ian Astbury. Doors drummer John Densmore filed a lawsuit over the use of the name and it lead to a protracted legal battle.
“Morrison required all three of us diving into his lyrics and creating music that would swirl around him,” Manzarek told Rolling Stone in 2006. “Without Jim, everybody started shooting off in different directions. . . The Doors was the perfect mixture of four guys, four egos that balanced each other. There were never any problems with ‘You wrote this’ or ‘I wrote that.’ But [after Jim died] the whole dynamic was screwed up, because the fourth guy wasn’t there.”
By Richard Horgan on May 17, 2013 7:10 AM | Fishbowl LA
One can only imagine the great radio tales Paul Drew regaled fellow residents with at Victor Royale Assisted Living, an airy facility in the south end of Glendale just a few blocks away from Forest Lawn. Per an orbit in Billboard by Gail Mitchell, this early architect of the top-40 format knew many of the great ones:
Drew, a graduate of Wayne State University in his native Detroit, began his professional radio career in 1961 as a DJ with Atlanta station WAKE. He later moved crosstown to WGST and then WQXI, where he was promoted to program director. Leaving WQXI in 1967, Drew moved on to programming gigs at CKLW in Windsor, Ontario-Detroit, WIBG in Philadelphia, KFRC in San Francisco and former Los Angeles powerhouse top 40 KHJ.
In the early ‘70s, he was appointed VP of programming for RKO Radio, a nationwide chain whose roster at one time included KHJ and sister KRTH, KFRC, WOR & WXLO (99X) New York and WHBQ Memphis, among other stations in Chicago, Boston and Washington, D.C. Their formats ranged from top 40 and adult contemporary to classical, oldies and talk.
During the course of his career, Drew worked with and/or mentored a diverse array of radio personalities, programmers, consultants and industry writers. That list includes consultants Jerry Clifton and Guy Zapoleon, writers Gerry Cagle (Network 40), Walt “Baby” Love (Radio & Records) and Jerry Del Colliano (Inside Radio), as well as air personalities Rick Dees, Dr. Don Rose, Jay Thomas and Charlie Van Dyke.
The Detroit native’s various radio programming assignments included stints with KFRC in San Francisco and KHJ-AM in Los Angeles. The latter at 930 AM is now a Spanish-language station known as “La Ranchera,” but back in the day, it was a Top 40 power house dubbed “Boss Radio” and buffeted by some great Johnny Mann Singers jingles.
Another highlight of Drew’s career occurred in 1984, when President Reagan appointed him as the first head of a pet foreign-aid project, Radio Marti. The initiative involved beaming U.S. radio programming into Cuba by means of a government-operated radio station. Drew, 78, died of natural causes.
Drew is survived by his former wife, Ann. Funeral arrangements are private. RIP.
Top 40 radio pioneer Paul Drew passed away yesterday, May 16
(News source: BillboardBiz; May 16, and Mediabistro.com FishbowlLA; May 17, 2013).
One of Country’s Greatest Died of Irregular Blood Pressure Today
Brian Mansfield, Special to USA TODAY | 10:42 a.m. EDT April 26, 2013
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — George Jones, whose supple Texas voice conveyed heartbreak so profound that he became perhaps the most imitated singer in country music, died Friday at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville after being hospitalized with high fever and irregular blood pressure. He was 81.
Country singer George Jones
Hank Williams may have set country music’s mythology and Johnny Cash its attitude, but Jones gave the genre its ultimate voice. With recordings that spanned 50 years, including Number One singles “White Lightning,““She Thinks I Still Care” and “He Stopped Loving Her Today,“ Jones influenced generations of country singers and was considered by many to be the greatest of them all.
Jones’ life also included legendary battles with substance abuse, mostly alcohol, and four marriages, including one to fellow singer Tammy Wynette and another, his last and longest, to Nancy Sepulvado.
Ultimately, though, it was that voice that won Jones two Grammys, got him into the Country Music Hall of Fame and made him an American musical icon. That plaintive voice that seemed to break down at will and wallow in sorrow. That voice of honky-tonk eloquence that held tortured echoes of heroes like Williams, Roy Acuff and Lefty Frizzell. That finely nuanced voice that offered thrill rides of emotions, with twists and turns, slippery, bending notes and sudden drops.
Jones’ performances weren’t just an emotional rollercoaster, they were the whole theme park.
Born in a log cabin in the “Big Thicket” region of East Texas, Jones grew up idolizing Acuff and bluegrass great Bill Monroe. In his youth, he played on the streets of downtown Beaumont for tips. He met Williams at a local radio station in 1949, and the singer advised young Jones to stop singing like Acuff and start singing like himself.
By the time he began recording for Pappy Dailey’s Starday Records in 1954, Jones had married and divorced and served a stint with the Marines in Korea. He first hit the national country charts in 1955 – the same year that Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash made their chart debuts – with Why Baby Why, a honky-tonk record featuring a double-tracked vocal. Jones’ recording eventually was eclipsed by Webb Pierce and Red Sovine’s cover, which topped the charts, while his stalled at No. 2.
His first Number One came with “White Lightning,“ a moonshine novelty with an oddball, hiccupping hook. By this time, Jones already was a binge drinker and, according to his 1997 autobiography I Lived to Tell It All, he was heavily under the influence during the recording session and required 83 takes to get a usable version. White Lightning came out in March 1959, one month after its writer – J.P. Richardson, aka The Big Bopper – was killed in a plane crash along with Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens.
The flat-topped singer placed multiple singles on the country charts each year during the ’60s – ballads like “The Window Up Above” and “If My Heart Had Windows”;“The Race Is On,“ with its rumbling, six-string bass solo; duets with Melba Montgomery and pop singer Gene Pitney. Occasionally, Jones topped the charts with “Tender Years,” “She Thinks I Still Care” and “Walk Through This World With Me.“
In 1969, Jones married Tammy Wynette – one of the most famous country music marriages ever, though it would last just six years. Jones followed Wynette to Epic Records and soon began working with her producer, Billy Sherrill, who would be responsible for his biggest hits of the ’70s and ’80s.
Jones and Wynette recorded a series of duet singles – including chart-toppers Golden Ring, Near You and We’re Gonna Hold On – that outlined a fictive version of the couple’s often-volatile relationship. The duets continued for several years after they divorced in 1975, and the two reunited professionally for a final album together, One, in 1995.
During the ’90s, Jones released an album, followed by an autobiography, called I Lived to Tell It All – the irony in the title coming precisely because so many people hadn’t expected him to.
His drinking and, eventually, his cocaine use, caused him to miss so many concerts that he earned the nickname No-Show Jones (he was also, more kindly, called The Possum).
He got in fights and destroyed motel rooms. He ventilated his tour bus by emptying the chambers of a pistol into its floor. He drove to a liquor store on a riding lawnmower when his second wife, Shirley Corley, hid all the car keys. At his most inebriated, he insisted on singing in the voice of a duck named Deedoodle.
Jones recounted multiple brushes with death in his book, but his best-known one came in 1999, when he crashed his Lexus SUV into a bridge abutment near Franklin, Tenn., while talking on his cellphone. Jones suffered a collapsed lung and ruptured liver and spent two weeks in a Nashville hospital.
Police found a partially empty bottle of vodka under the front passenger’s seat, and Jones later pled guilty to driving while impaired and acknowledged that he had fallen off the wagon.
Even at the height of his substance abuse, Jones’ personal troubles couldn’t always overshadow his talent.
His name has appeared on more charting singles – 168, spanning 55 years – than any other country singer’s, from 1955’s Why Baby Why to Aaron Lewis’ 2010 hit Country Boy, where he was a featured vocalist with Charlie Daniels.
He was a Kennedy Center honoree in 2008 and received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012.
Jones’ greatest artistic achievement came with Billy Sherrill, his regular producer for much of the 1970s and ’80s. Sherrill, an admirer of Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound” musical architecture, constructed his own masterpieces using Jones’ voice as scaffolding. Instead of competing with the singer’s dramatic delivery, Sherrill complemented it with vocal choruses, theatrical string sections and tensile pedal steel guitar lines. Sherrill’s lavish productions didn’t bury Jones, they revealed previously unheard subtleties of expression.
The pair reached their peak with the 1980 release of He Stopped Loving Her Today, widely considered to be the greatest country record ever made and one that, according to many involved with its creation, took more than a year to get on tape because Jones was so wrecked by cocaine and bourbon.
“He said I’ll love you ’til I die/She told him you’ll forget in time,” Jones sang as he began the Bobby Braddock/Curly Putman tune, needing only three minutes and 15 seconds to convey a lifetime of emotional devastation, the kind that takes hold of a man and doesn’t let go, not ever.
He Stopped Loving Her Today revived Jones’ career and perhaps saved his life. It gave him his first number-one hit in five years and won four awards from the Country Music Association, including Song of the Year twice. It also gave him the first of his two Grammys – he won again in 2000 for the post-wreck Choices.
In his later years, Jones often complained about the directions contemporary country music took, especially after radio stopped playing his records. But younger stylists revered him, particularly during country’s commercial boom of the late ’80s and early ’90s. Several, including Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson and Vince Gill sang with him on 1992’s I Don’t Need Your Rockin’ Chair, released the same year Jones was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In the last 10 years of his career, he recorded with Shooter Jennings and Staind frontman Aaron Lewis, as well as with Dolly Parton and Merle Haggard.
Now, that voice has gone silent. They may lay a wreath upon his door. Soon, they’ll carry him away.
But we will not stop loving him today.
George Jones and Tammy Wynette
(Article originally published in the online edition of USA Today; Friday, April 26, 2013).
Funicello was known as “America’s Sweetheart.” Her acting career started in 1955 when Walt Disney recruited her at 12 years old. She went on to become a successful film star, starring with Frankie Avalon in the Beach Party films.
Extra reports that her family confirmed she died from complications of MS. Variety reports she was taken off life support Monday morning.
She was 70.
Variety adds:
” ‘Annette was and always will be a cherished member of the Disney family, synonymous with the word Mousketeer, and a true Disney Legend,’ said Disney chairman-CEO Robert Iger. ‘She will forever hold a place in our hearts as one of Walt Disney’s brightest stars, delighting an entire generation of baby boomers with her jubilant personality and endless talent. Annette was well known for being as beautiful inside as she was on the outside, and she faced her physical challenges with dignity, bravery and grace.’
“Diane Disney Miller, daughter of Walt Disney, praised Funicello as a ‘consummate professional’ who demonstrated ‘great loyalty’ to Disney.”
Funicello is survived by her husband, Glen Holt, and three children from a previous marriage.
Update at 1:41 p.m. ET. Annette Ballet:
Jimmie Dodd, the host of The Mickey Mouse Club and the composer of its theme, wrote a special song for Annette.
“Who’s the little lady who’s as dainty as a dream? Who’s the one you can’t forget? I’ll give you just three guesses. Annette, Annette, Annette!” he sang. Here’s video of Annette dancing to the song:
Annette Funicello in 1966
(Article adapted from NPR.com; NPR Breaking News, Monday, April 8, 2013).
BASS DIES AT A ST. LOUIS HOSPICE; COMPLICATIONS FROM HEART ATTACK SUFFERED WEEKS PRIOR
From USA Today and AP services:Wednesday, December 26, 2012
January 1966 photo of Fontella Bass. (Photo below: Popperfoto/Getty Images)
Fontella Bass in 1966 (Click image for larger view)
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Fontella Bass, a St. Louis-born soul singer who hit the top of the R&B charts with Rescue Me in 1965, has died. She was 72.
Bass died Wednesday night at a St. Louis hospice of complications from a heart attack suffered three weeks ago, her daughter, Neuka Mitchell, said. Bass also had suffered a series of strokes over the past seven years.
“She was an outgoing person,” Mitchell said of her mother. “She had a very big personality. Any room she entered she just lit the room up, whether she was on stage or just going out to eat.”
Bass was born into a family with deep musical roots. Her mother was gospel singer Martha Bass, one of the Clara Ward Singers. Her younger brother, David Peaston, had a string of R&B hits in the 1980s and 1990s. Peaston died in February at age 54.
Bass began performing at a young age, singing in her church’s choir at age 6. She was surrounded by music, often traveling on national tours with her mother and her gospel group.
Her interest turned from gospel to R&B when she was a teenager and she began her professional career at the Showboat Club in north St. Louis at age 17. She eventually auditioned for Chess Records and landed a recording contract, first as a duet artist. Her duet with Bobby McClure, Don’t Mess Up a Good Thing, reached No. 5 on the R&B charts and No. 33 on the Billboard Top 100 in 1965.
She co-wrote and later that year recorded Rescue Me, reaching No. 1 on the R&B charts and No. 4 on the Billboard pop singles chart. Bass’ powerful voice bore a striking resemblance to that of Aretha Franklin, who often is misidentified as the singer of that chart-topping hit.
Bass had a few other modest hits but by her own accounts developed a reputation as a troublemaker because she demanded more artistic control, and more money for her songs. She haggled over royalty rights to Rescue Me for years before reaching a settlement in the late 1980s, Mitchell said. She sued American Express over the use of Rescue Me in a commercial, settling for an undisclosed amount in 1993.
Rescue Me has been covered by many top artists, including Linda Ronstadt, Cher, Melissa Manchester and Pat Benatar. Franklin eventually sang a form of it too — as Deliver Me in a Pizza Hut TV ad in 1991.
Bass lived briefly in Europe before returning to St. Louis in the early 1970s, where she and husband Lester Bowie raised their family. She recorded occasionally, including a 1995 gospel album, No Ways Tired, that earned a Grammy nomination.
Bass was inducted into the St. Louis Hall of Fame in 2000.
Funeral arrangements for Bass were incomplete. She is survived by four children. Bowie died in 1999.
Fontella Bass in 1970
(Article originally published in the Thursday, December 27, 2012 edition of USA Today).
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Jazz composer and pianist Dave Brubeck, whose pioneering style in pieces such as “Take Five” caught listeners’ ears with exotic, challenging rhythms, has died. He was 91.
Brubeck died Wednesday morning at Norwalk Hospital of heart failure after being stricken while on his way to a cardiology appointment with his son Darius, said his manager Russell Gloyd. Brubeck would have turned 92 on Thursday.
Emmy-winning TV Host and ‘Moon River’ Crooner Died Tuesday Night, September 25
By Los Angeles Times Staff | September 26, 2012; 7:47 a.m.
Andy Williams 1927 – 2012
LOS ANGELES — Andy Williams, whose soothing baritone and relaxed performing style made him one of America’s top pop vocalist and a popular TV variety-show host in the 1960s when he recorded hits such as “Moon River” and “Days Of Wine And Roses,” has died. He was 84.
Williams, who announced in late 2011 that he had been diagnosed with bladder cancer, died Tuesday at his home in Branson, Mo., his family announced.
The Iowa-born Williams began singing professionally as a boy in with his three older brothers in the 1930s, and he went solo when the quartet broke up in the early ’50s.
After becoming a regular featured singer on Steve Allen’s “Tonight” show in 1954, Williams had hits with songs such as “Canadian Sunset,” “Butterfly,” “Are You Sincere,””Hawaiian Wedding Song” and “The Village Of St. Bernadette.”
He continued to turn out hits in the 1960s and ’70s, including “Can’t Get Used To Losing You,” “Dear Heart,” “Charade,”“Music To Watch Girls By” and “(Where Do I Begin) Love Story.“
The singer hosted “The Andy Williams Show” on NBC from 1962 to 1967. After doing three specials a year for two years, he returned to the weekly series from 1969 to 1971.
“The Andy Williams Show” won three Emmy Awards, and its casual, sweater-wearing host received two Emmy nominations.
“In some cases, people who go on television, their record sales drop off; mine seemed to go up,” Williams told the Orlando Sentinel in 1991.
“I think it’s because the music is kinda soft and easy and it’s not jamming down anybody’s throat. It’s just there and people find it pleasant and they go out and buy the albums.”
“The Andy Williams Show” featured established entertainers such as Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Jonathan Winters and Phyllis Diller as well as newer talents such as Linda Ronstadt, the Mamas and the Papas, Elton John and the Jackson 5.
Williams also regularly featured the Osmond Brothers, who were initially billed as “a youthful barbershop harmony group from Ogden, Utah” when they debuted on the show in 1962.
A popular feature of Williams’ TV program was the annual Christmas show, on which he would be surrounded by his family members.
So popular were the Christmas shows that when the weekly series went off the air, Williams told the Chicago-Sun Times in 2000, “we got thousands of pieces of mail” asking him to come back, which he did by hosting annual Christmas TV specials for many years. He later did Christmas shows in theaters around the country as well.
Williams said he never tired of singing “Moon River,” whose melody he considered “beautiful” and whose lyrics he viewed as “timeless.”
“You wouldn’t believe how ‘Moon River’ became a hit,” he said in a 1989 interview with the Chicago Tribune. “I was having dinner with (songwriters) Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer, who had just finished recording the movie, ‘Breakfast At Tifanny’s,’ with Audrey Hepburn singing ‘Moon River’ out on the balcony with a guitar.
“So Mancini and Mercer played this song for me, which I thought was great. But my record company was really into singles then, and they said: ‘I don’t think phrases like ‘my Huckleberry friend’ will make it with the kids — they won’t know what it means.”
But about four weeks before the 1962 Academy Awards program, he recalled, “I was invited to sing ‘Moon River’ on the Oscars show, and so Columbia Records decided we ought to rush a ‘Moon River’ album into the stores, because that song looked like a shoo-in for the ‘best song’ Oscar.
“So they quickly put out an album, had it in the stores on the day of the Oscars, and the next morning it sold 500,000 copies.”
The son of a railroad mail clerk, Williams was born December 3, 1927, in Wall Lake, Iowa. As a boy, he began singing with his three older brothers — Bob, Don and Dick — in the local Presbyterian church choir.
“The very first time he heard his four sons harmonize together, my dad became a man with a dream and a mission in life, convinced we had a future as professional singers,”Williams wrote in his 2009 memoir “Moon River And Me.”
With their father as their manager and “driving force,” the Williams landed a 15-minute show every weekday morning on radio WHO in Des Moines in 1936 when he was 8.
In 1941, the family moved to Chicago, where the Williams brothers began singing on the popular “National Barn Dance” on WLS Radio, for which they also did a weekday morning show.
The family later moved to Cincinnati, where the Williams Brothers did a morning radio show on WLW and made guest appearances on the station’s other programs. In early 1944, after two years in Cincinnati, the family headed west.
In Hollywood, the Williams Brothers got two big breaks: Bing Crosby hired them to do the backing vocals on his 1944 vocal hit, “Swinging On A Star” and MGM signed them to a contract. They appeared in a half a dozen forgettable movies, including “Kansas City Kitty.”
In 1947, the Williams Brothers teamed with singer comedienne Kay Thompson to form a critically acclaimed nightclub act that toured the country for a number of years. The Williams Brothers split up in 1953.
After 2 1/2 years as a regular on Steve Allen’s “Tonight” show, Williams hosted summer replacement variety series in 1957, ’58 and in ’59, before launching his long-running NBC variety show in 1962.
In 1961, he marries Paris-born Claudine Longet, then a young Las Vegas dancer, with whom he had three children, Noelle, Christian and Bobby. Bobby was named after their close friend, Bobby Kennedy.
Williams and Longet were divorced in 1975. When Longet was charged in 1976 with the shooting death of her boyfriend, skiing champion Vladimir (Spider) Sabich, Williams offered her his support.
He later said he received only positive feedback for publicly supporting his ex-wife, who claimed the pistol went off by accident. She was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide, a misdemeanor, and sentenced to 30 days in jail in 1977.
Williams was the first performer to headline Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas when it first opened in 1966, and he remained a headliner there for two decades.
Williams’ survivors include his second wife, Debbie; his three children, Robert, Noelle and Christian; six grandchildren; and brothers Don and Dick. His sister Jane and brother Bob have passed on.
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(Article was edited and condensed; article appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Wednesday, September 26, 2012)
Singer Andy Williams performs during a concert tour in 2004 at Bangkok Convention Center in Centeal Plaza, Bangkok, Thailand. July 21, 2004
