Joe South Dies At 72; Singer-Songwriter Did ‘Games People Play’
Joe South also wrote ‘Down In The Boondocks,’ ‘Hush’ and other pop-rock hits in the 1960s and 1970s. He won two Grammy Awards for ‘Games People Play.’
September 06, 2012 | Los Angeles Times staff and wire reports
Joe South(Click on image for larger view).
Joe South, a versatile singer-songwriter who penned “Games People Play,” “Down In The Boondocks” and other pop-rock hits in the 1960s and ’70s, has died. He was 72.
South died at his home in Buford, Georgia, northeast of Atlanta, said Butch Lowery, president of the Lowery Group. The company published South’s music. Marion Merck of the Hall County coroner’s office said South died of natural causes stemming from a heart attack.
Beginning in the late 1960s, South rode a wave of success with his combination of melodic tunes and compelling lyrics. Billy Joe Royal scored a hit with his cover of “Down In The Boondocks” in 1965, and Deep Purple had one with “Hush.” Then South won Grammy Awards for song of the year and best contemporary song of 1969 for his own recording of “Games People Play.” He had hits with “Don’t It Make You Want To Go Home” and “Walk A Mile In My Shoes.” He collected a Grammy nomination for country singer Lynn Anderson’s recording of “(I Never Promised You A) Rose Garden.”
“The Grammy Awards are a very nice gesture by the record industry, but they can really mess up your head,” South told Times rock-critic Robert Hilburn in 1970, months after he accepted the honors for “Games People Play.”
“The Grammy is a little like the crown, After you win it, you feel like you have to defend it. In a sense, I froze. I found it hard to go back into the recording studio because I was afraid the next song wouldn’t be perfect.”
He struggled emotionally after his brother, Tommy Souter, committed suicide in 1971. Drug abuse derailed South’s career, and he disappeared from the stage and recording studio while living in Maui in the early 1970s. His first marriage ended in divorce, and he made comeback attempts to little notice.
He eventually went through drug rehabilitation programs and married his second wife, Jan, in 1987.
Born Joseph Souter in Atlanta on February 28, 1940, he began playing guitar when he was about 11. He was later signed to a recording and publishing contract by country music disc jockey Bill Lowery.
In 1958, South recorded his debut single, a novelty song called “The Purple People Eater Meets The Witch Doctor.” His hit songwriting abilities were next on display in 1962 when the Tams reached No. 1 with their R&B recording of “Untie Me.”
South worked as a session musician for a time, playing gutiar on Aretha Franklin’s “Chains Of Fools,” Bob Dylan’s “Blond On Blond,” Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sounds Of Silence” and albums by Eddie Arnold, Marty Robbins and other country, R&B and rock bands.
South was an inductee in the Nashville Songwriters Hall Of Fame and the Georgia Music Hall Of Fame.
HAL DAVID SUCCUMBS IN LA AT 91, TEAMED WITH SONGWRITER BURT BACHARACH IN THE ’60s AND ’70s
By BOB THOMAS and CHRISTOPHER WEBBER | Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — (AP) Hal David, the stylish, heartfelt lyricist who teamed with Burt Bacharach on timeless songs for movies, movies and a variety of recordings artists in the 1960s and beyond, has died. He was 91.
Songwriter Hal David poses for photographers as the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce honors him with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles, California, on October 14, 2011.
David died of complications from a stroke Saturday morning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, according to his wife Eunice David. He had suffered a major stroke in March and was stricken again on Tuesday, she said.
“Even at the end, Hal always had a song in his head,” Eunice David said. “He was always writing notes,”, or asking me to take a note down, so he wouldn’t forget a lyric.”
Bacharach and David were among the most successful teams in modern history, with top 40 hits including “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head,” (by B. J. Thomas) “(They Long To Be) Close To You” (by the Carpenters) and “”That’s What Friends Are For” (by Dionne Warwick). Although most associated with Dionne Warwick, their music were recorded by many of the top acts of their time, from Barbra Streisand to Frank Sinatra and Aretha Franklin. They won an Oscar for “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” (from the movie “Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid”), Grammys and Tonys for the songs from the hit Broadway musical, “Promises, Promises.”
David joined the board of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers in 1974 and served as president 1980 to 1986. He was head of the Songwriters Hall of Fame from 2000 to 2011, and was Chairman Emeritus until the time of his death.
“As a lyric writer, Hal was simple, concise and poetic — conveying volumes of meaning in fewest possible words and always in service to the music,” ASCAP’s current president, the songwriter Paul Williams, said in a statement. “It is no wonder many of his lyrics has become part of our everyday vocabulary and his songs… the backdrop of our lives.”
In May, Bacharach and David received the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song during a White House tribute concert attended by President Barrack Obama.
Bacharach, 83, thanked Obama, saying the award for his life’s work topped even the Oscars and Grammys he won for individual accomplishments. David could not attend because he was recovering from a stroke. Eunice David accepted in his behalf.
“It was thrilling,” she said. “Even though he wasn’t there, Hal said it was the highest honor he ever received.”
More than 55 years after their first songs hit the airwaves, Obama said “these guys have still got it.” He noted their music is still being recording by such artists as Alicia Keys and John Legend.
“Above all, they stayed true to themselves,” Obama said. “And with an unmistakable authenticity,” they captured the emotions of our daily lives — the good times, the bad times, and everything in between.”
David and Bacharach met when both worked in the Brill Building, New York’s legendary Tin Pan Alley where songwriters cranked out songs and attempted to sell them to music publishers. They scored their first big hit with “Magic Moments,” a million-selling record for Perry Como.
In 1962 they begin writing for a young singer named Dionne Warwick, whose versatile voice conveyed the emotions of David’s lyrics and easily handled the changing patterns of Bacharach’s melodies. Together the trio created a succession of popular songs including “Don’t Make me Over,” “Walk On By,” “I Say A Little Prayer,” “Do You Know The Way To San Jose,” “Trains And Boats And Planes,” “Anyone Who Had A Heart,” “You’ll Never Get To Heaven” and “Always Something There To Remind Me,” a hit in the 1980s for the synth pop band Naked Eyes.
Bacharach and David wrote or numerous other singers: “This Guy’s In Love With You” (trumpeter Herb Alpert in his vocal debut), “Make It Easy On Yourself” (Jerry Butler), “What The World Need Now Is Love” (Jackie DeShannon) and “Wishin’ And Hopin'” (Dusty Springfield). The duo also turned out title songs for the movies “What’s New, Pussycat” (Tom Jones), and “Wives And Lovers” (Jack Jones).
Singer Smokey Robinson praised David’s musical legacy. “I hope that the music world will join together in celebrating the life of one of our greatest composers ever,” he said.
In a 1999 interview, David explained his success as a lyricist this way: “Try and tell a narrative. The songs should be like a little film, told in three or four minutes. Try to say things as simply as possible, which is probably the most difficult thing to do.”
The writer, who lived in New York, often flew to Los Angeles, where he and Bacharach would hole up for a few weeks of intense songwriting. Sometimes they conferred by long-distance telephone; “I Say A Little Prayer” was written that way.
David would recall working on a song that seemed to go nowhere. They stuck it in a drawer and left it there for months.
“This was particularly disappointing to me. I had thought of the idea at least two years before showing it to Burt,” David wrote in a brief essay on his website. “I was stuck. I kept thinking of lines like, ‘Lord we don’t need planes that fly higher and faster….’ and they all seemed wrong. Why, I didn’t know. But the idea stayed with me.
“Then, one day, I thought of ‘Lord we don’t need another mountain,’ and all at once I knew how the lyric should be written. Things like planes and trains are man-made, and things like mountains and rivers and valleys are created by someone or something we call God. There was now a oneness of idea and language instead of a conflict. It had taken me two years to put my finger on it.”
And so they had another smash: “What The World Needs Now Is Love.”
The hit-making team broke up after the 1973 musical remake of “Lost Horizons.” They had devoted two years to the movie, only to see it scorned by critics and audiences alike. Bacharach became so depressed he sequestered himself in his vacation home and refused to work.
Bacharach and David sued each other and Warwick sued them both. The cases were settled out of court in 1979 and the three went their separate ways thereafter. They reconciled in 1992 for Warwick’s recording of “Sunny Weather Lover.”
David, meanwhile, went on to collaborate with successfully with several other composers: John Barry with the title song of the James Bond film “Moonraker;” Albert Hammond with “To All The Girls I loved Before,” which Julio Iglesias and Willie Nelson sang as a duet; and Henry Mancini with “The Greatest Gift” in “The Return Of The Pink Panther.”
Born in New York City, David had attended public schools before studying journalism at New York University. He served in the Army during World War II, mostly as a member of an entertainment unit in the South Pacific. After the war, he served as a copywriter at the New York Post, but music was his passion and he had written lyrics for Sammy Kaye, Guy Lombardo and other bandleaders before hooking up with Bacharach years later.
He married Anne Rauchman in 1947 and the couple had two sons.
(This AP article was published in the Detroit Free Press, Sunday, September 2, 2012).
Burt Bacharach, left, and Hal David pose with singer Dionne Warwick at the “Love, Sweet Love” musical tribute to Hal David on his 90th birthday in Los Angeles, California. David died Saturday, September 1, 2012.
SCOTT McKENZIE, SINGER OF ’67 ‘SUMMER OF LOVE’ BALLAD, DIES AT 73
By LESLIE KAUFMAN / Published: August 20, 2012
Scott McKenzie, who performed the 1967 ballad “San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair),” which became a defining hit for the counterculture generation and helped draw tens of thousands to the Haight-Ashbury district for the Summer Of Love, died on Saturday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 73.
Scott McKenzie 1939 – 2012 (Click on image for larger view).
The cause was unknown, said Dr. Frank Snyder, one of his physicians. A web site devoted to Mr. McKenzie said that he had been ill for several weeks and that he suffered from Guillian-Barre Syndrome, a disorder that causes the immune system to attack the nervous system.
“San Francisco” was written by John Phillips, founder of the Mamas and the Papas, who had been a friend of Mr. McKenzie’s since high school. The two started a band called the Journeymen, which recorded several albums in the 1960s.
In the song, Mr. McKenzie sang lyrics like these with a slow, almost mournful cadence:
All across the nation, such a strange vibration.
People in motion.
There’s a whole generation, with a new explanation.
“San Francisco” hit a nerve with people looking to protest what they saw as an unjust social order, and it rocketed to the No. 4 position on the pop charts in 1967.
But despite the song’s success anda subsequent tour with the Mamas and the Papas, Mr. McKenzie never had another hit single. He took a break from the music business and moved to Virginia Beach, where he was married briefly to Anzy Wells, Dr. Snyder said.
In the late 1980s he made a comeback of sorts. He toured with a reconstituted Mamas and the Papas and, with Mr. Philips, Mike Love and Terry Melcher, wrote “Kokomo,” an upbeat love song that became a No. 1 hit for the Beach Boys.
Born Philip Blondheim on January 10, 1939, in Jacksonville, Fla., Mr. McKenzie grew up under difficult circumstances. His father died before he was 2, and his mother was forced to travel for work, so he was raised by his grandmother. No immediate family members survive.
In discussions with friends, he expressed mixed feelings about the song that defined his career and life. Fame in the short run had been overwhelming and even terrifying. He found it “sick” and “perverse” that strange women wanted to sleep with him.
But over time, his view of the song changed.
Chris Campion, who is writing a biography of John Phillips, interviewd Mr. McKenzie this year and said that the singer had told him that soldiers returning from Vietnam would sing the song on the airplane to San Francisco. He later became friends with some of those veterans and would tour the Vietnam Veterans Memorial with them.
“He was grateful that he had an opportunity to have such an impact on their lives,” Mr. Campion said.
From left, Denny Doherty, Michelle Gilliam, Scott McKenzie, Cass Elliot and John Phillips in London in 1967.
(This article previously published August 20, 2012 in The New York Times).
Herb Alpert ‘Whipped Cream’ Lady Now 76, Living In Longview and Looking Back
Erik Lacitis | Seattle Times staff reporter; August 15, 2012
The lady who was the model on the memorable LP cover of the 1965 A&M Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass’ “Whipped Cream And Other Delights” is now 76 and living in Longview. Dolores Erikson wants to tell all you teen-dreamers, “Enjoy the memories.”
SEATTLE — Guys, the girl of your teen dreams now is 76.
Her name is Dolores Erikson and she has been living in Longview for around 35 years, after a career that included being an Eileen Ford model in New York.
She appeared at a Seattle record store Wednesday and wants to tell you teen dreamers, “Enjoy the memories.”
Remember first seeing this? Guys who could ever forget (drooling over) this classic album cover! Herb Alpert’s ‘Whipped Cream And Other Delights,’ A&M Records 1965.(Click on image for larger view)
You don’t know her by name — maybe as “The Whipped Cream Lady” — but certainly by the album cover on which she is featured: the 1965 Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass’ “Whipped Cream And Other Delights.”
There she sits, seemingly naked but covered in what is suppose to be whipping cream looking at YOU.
Whenever a list of the most memorable album covers is put together, that album is right at the top.
How did a New Yorker magazine article explain the impact of that photo?
Oh yes, it: “fogged the minds of many young men, as they gazed at the… personalized come-hitherhood to the woman starring back… the inner portion of a bare breast protrudes from the foamed cream. She is licking cream from the index finger from her right hand… in the virtually pornless atmosphere of the suburban mid-sixties it was… the pinnacle of allure.”
The record spent 141 weeks on the Billboard’s Top 40 albums chart.
In later years, at concerts, Alpert would tell audiences, “Sorry, but I can’t play the album cover for you.”
Erikson drove up here to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Golden Oldies, the used-record store in Wallingford. A steady stream of fans stopped by, surprisingly, even women.
Toni Weschler, 56, got signed copies for her brothers. She remembers growing up in New York and playing the album.
She remembers how her brothers couldn’t take their eyes off the LP. “They starred at it constantly. It was very risque. They hadn’t seen this much breast in their life.”
For Erikson, this photo shoot was one of many in her career.
She is a 1954 Cleveland High School graduate, and her modeling began when she was 14 and won a contest at the venerable Frederick and Nelson department store in downtown Seattle.
Her modeling career blossomed, and she ended up a staff model for Macy’s in San Francisco, in the days when department stores could afford such things.
Erikson spent time in Los Angeles, signed to contracts with Paramount and then Warner Bros., but her movie and TV career mostly consisted of bit parts.
At age 24, she went to New York City and ended up being signed by Eileen Ford. She was in ads for Max Factor and was in all the women’s magazines. Erikson is 5 feet 7, with dark brown hair and green eyes, and still weighs about the same as in her modeling days, which is around 119 pounds.
But she’s cognizant of time having gone by. “Please don’t do any close-ups,” she tells a photographer.
In 1965, she got a call to fly to Los Angeles to do a photo shoot for A&M Records, a new label started by Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss. The photographer was Peter Whorf, with whom she had done other covers. Payment would be around $1,500 ($11,000 in today’s dollars), plus expenses. The shooting began mid-morning and lasted through the afternoon. Erikson put on a bikini, but with the straps down.
She was 29 and three months pregnant. “But I wasn’t showing,” she said.
Erikson sat on a stool and from the waist down, Whorf placed on her a white Christmas tree blanket.
Then shaving cream was sprayed on Erikson. Under the bright lights, whipping cream would melt, although it was real whipping on top of her head.
The shoot kept going, Erikson remembers, and she didn’t notice that the shaving cream kept slipping down. Moths later, Whorf mailed her two outtakes.
“He sent them to me. And it did shock me. I screamed,” says Erikson. “I was a Christian girl.”
Erikson has kept a copy of one of the outtakes, and it is a bit more revealing, but not by that much. But she worried that her then-husband, a New York shoe-manufacturer, and “conservative,” would become upset. She hid the two photographs behind the refrigerator at a girlfriend’s home. Later, she’d tear up the photo she deemed most revealing.
In the mid-70s, raising a young son, Erikson moved to Longview to be near her sister, and for years, ran an art studio.
Actually, it was by happenstance that back in 2000, while visiting there, that recognition began for Erikson’s role on that memorable album cover. She had stopped by Golden Oldies to buy some used copies of “Whipped Cream.” She didn’t have any copies herself and wanted to sign some for friends. Before that, the album’s importance in pop culture hasn’t registered with her.
But when Dave Silverstone, owner of Golden Oldies, found out he was actually dealing with the actual Whipped Cream lady, he thought, “it was like finding a jewel that’s been buried in the desert for over 40 years. Everybody knows about the album cover but nobody knows about her.”
By 2012 standards, that album cover is demure. Yet it endures. Teen dreams. “I looked at it as being an ice cream sundae,” Erikson says.
Dolores Erikson appeared on the cover of Herb Alpert’s ‘Whipped Cream And Other Delights’ LP in 1965. The former model Erikson is now 76 and living in Longview. (Photo: Greg Gilbert/The Seattle Times)
(This article originally published August 15, 2012 in The Seattle Times).
