The 2012 Off Topic Celebrity Dead Pool

[Uncle Sparky]

18 Oct 2012
Sylvia Kristel, who has died at aged 60, was the star of infamous soft-porn film Emmanuelle (1974).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturevideo/filmvideo/9618033/Sylvia-Kristel-Emmanuelle-original-theatrical-US-trailer.html

[Uncle Sparky]

Songwriter Bill Dees, who co-wrote 'Oh, Pretty Woman' and toured with Roy Orbison, dies at 73
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/art...176710211.html

[molly bloom]

The lost chord, or, Musical Obituaries I Missed Due To Unforeseen Circumstances:

Odyssey singer Lillian Lopez (Collazo Jackson)

Lillian Lopez, one of the founding members of the dance group Odyssey, passed away on Tuesday from cancer. She was 76.

Her son, Steven Andre, announced her death on the band's Facebook tribute page:


It is with tremendous sadness that I announce the passing of my Mother, my mentor, and my very best friend, the founder and first voice of ODYSSEY, Lillian Lopez Collazo Jackson, who died peacefully in hospice on September 4th due to stage four cancer at the age of 76... She will live on in spirit through Annis, Anne, and me as we endeavour to carry on her legacy; to continue the musical journey that is, and always was, ODYSSEY... And of course, her magical voice can still be heard on practically any day, anywhere in the UK: When next you do, and if you can, TURN IT UP! She'd like that... Goodbye Ma, and Thank You...
Also posting a tribute was former Odyssey singer William "Bill" McEachern:

To Lillian,

Rest in peace. The work you've done, speaks for you. Thank you for the opportunity to sing with you and Louise. I am grateful for all that we were able to share with the world together.
I hope to sing with you again, when I see you in heaven.

Thank God, our music still lives,

Bill McEachern

My condolences to the entire family
Odyssey was the brainchild of sisters Lillian and Louise Lopez, although Louise would leave the group before it broke out. Tony Reynolds came on board for their first album, Odyssey, which produced their biggest U.S. hit, Native New Yorker (1977/#21 Pop/#6 R&B/#3 Dance/#5 U.K.) along with the single Weekend Lover (1977/#57 Pop/#37 R&B).

McEachern replaced Reynolds starting with the second album, 1978's Hollywood Party Tonight, and would stay with them through the rest of their contract with RCA. They never had another Pop or R&B hit in the U.S. but scored well in the U.K. with Use It Up and Wear It Out (1980/#1 U.K.), If You're Lookin' For a Way Out (1980/#8 U.K.), Going Back to My Roots (1981/#4 U.K.) and Inside Out (1982/#3 U.K.).

Lillian continued to tour Europe and the Middle East with Al Jackson and Steven Collazo as Odyssey until 2000 when she married Jackson and retired from the business. She went on to become an author, writing the books Bowling Green (2003) and Eight Short Stories For Children (2011).

http://www.vintagevinylnews.com/2012/09/lillian-lopez-lead-singer-of-odyssey.html

Joe South, singer-songwriter, guitarist:

When people think of Joe South, they generally think first of Games People Play, one of the most successful protest-related songs of the late 1960s, with its distinctive electric sitar accompaniment, played by the singer and composer himself, and a bitingly prescient lyric directed at pseudo-hippy types who "while away the hours / In their ivory towers / Till they're covered up with flowers / In the back of a black limousine."

South, who has died aged 72 of heart failure, won a Grammy for that million-seller and went on to write many other fine songs, including Walk a Mile in My Shoes, Down in the Boondocks, Hush and (I Never Promised You a) Rose Garden.

A member, like Eddie Hinton, Dan Penn and Troy Seals, of a generation of US southern white boys who grew up listening to rhythm and blues, South was a fine guitarist who became a popular session man, performing on a series of important records, starting with Sheila, a hit in 1962 for Tommy Roe, a fellow native of Atlanta, Georgia. In 1966 he played bass guitar on much of Bob Dylan's album Blonde on Blonde, and the following year he created the shivering, menacing bottom-string guitar licks that opened and underpinned Aretha Franklin's classic Chain of Fools.

It is South's playing that gives a clue to the spontaneity of the Blonde on Blonde sessions, which often lasted late into the night. The musicians were obliged to follow Dylan wherever his songs led, resulting in the occasional mistakes and missed changes – as when South fails to spot Dylan's chord shift in the second verse of Visions of Johanna, taking half a bar to adjust under the line about the nightwatchman clicking his flashlight.

South was born Joseph Souter and was given a guitar by his father at the age of 11. He built a small radio station on which he played his own songs and had modified his name when, still in his teens, he had his first minor hit in 1958 with The Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor, co-written with the Big Bopper (JP Richardson) to capitalise on current novelty hits. The following year Gene Vincent recorded two of his songs, I Might Have Known and Gone Gone Gone.

He had made a successful career as a session musician in Muscle Shoals and Nashville when Games People Play brought him to international attention. Its title borrowed from a successful book on transactional analysis by the psychiatrist Eric Berne, the song took an unusual approach to the social tensions of the day, more oblique and unpredictable than other Dylan-influenced protest songs which topped the charts. But when it won a Grammy for best song of 1969, his problems began.

"The Grammy is a little like a crown," he told Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times. "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."

None of South's subsequent records made the top 20, but Walk a Mile in My Shoes was recorded by Elvis Presley (and later by Bryan Ferry and Coldcut), Hush took the British progressive rock band Deep Purple into the top 5 in the US and Canada in 1968, and the lilting Rose Garden gave the country singer Lynn Anderson a worldwide hit in 1971. He also produced records by the singer Sandy Posey and the folk-rock duo Friend and Lover.

The suicide in 1971 of his brother, Tommy Souter, who had been the drummer in his road band, brought on a depression that curtailed South's recording career. After struggling to overcome a drug habit, he re-emerged for an album titled Midnight Rainbows with Island, the British label, in 1975, and another, You're the Reason, for the Gusto label the following year. In 1979 he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters' Hall of Fame. His final recording, of a song titled Oprah Cried, was added in 2009 to a repackage of two of his early albums.

Twice married, he is survived by a son and a granddaughter.

• Joe South (Joseph Alfred Souter), singer, songwriter and guitarist, born 28 February 1940; died 5 September 2012

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/sep/12/joe-south

Lou (Louis) Martin, blues musician:

Sadly, I have received the news of 'Lou' Michael Martin's passing, he died at 3:30 a.m. this morning (17th August '12), at a hospital in Bournemouth.


Lou had been ill for many years, having suffered a number of strokes and he battled with cancer also, may he now rest in peace.


One of the finest piano and keyboard players that I have ever heard his talent incorporated a rainbow of styles from blues to classical, jazz to orchestral but in a rock 'n roll way.


Working with Lou was a honour, he was a 'true' gentleman and a professional. Aside from the numerous great gigs I listened to him play with my brother, it was a privilege also to be in his 'after hours' company, 'tinkling the ivories' in some hotel bar or playing country in some honky-tonk late-night bar.


Ironically, I'm writing this piece close to the spot where Rory composed "A Million Miles Away" and am "looking out on the deep blue sea", listening of Lou's magically keyboard work on that number and to his many other extraordinary recorded performances.

My sincere condolences to Lou's mother and his other family members.

Rest in peace dear 'Lou'.

Dónal

http://www.rorygallagher.com/#/news/2012/08/a_blue_day_for_the_blues_-_lou_martin_rip

[molly bloom]

The death of someone whose music has meant a great deal to me, since I first heard a track when I was just a schoolboy, on Alan Freeman's Saturday afternoon show on Radio One:

From his beginnings in jazz, folk and soul music onwards, the singer and guitarist Terry Callier, who has died aged 67 after suffering from throat cancer, struggled to find the popular recognition his varied talents deserved. Nonetheless he released a string of enduring and influential albums and, during the 1990s, enjoyed a creative rebirth in the UK when his supple, soulful music was feted by the acid-jazz movement and he collaborated with Beth Orton and Massive Attack.

Callier was born in Chicago and raised in the north side of the city. Partly inspired by his mother's enthusiasm for singers such as Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, he sang in amateur doo-wop groups in his teens, and found himself in the midst of a remarkable group of local musicians including Curtis Mayfield, Jerry Butler and Ramsey Lewis.

In 1964, he was signed to Prestige Records by the producer Samuel Charters, with whom he cut his first album, The New Folk Sound of Terry Callier. Featuring just an acoustic guitar, two bass players (an idea Callier borrowed from the jazzman John Coltrane) and Callier's gentle but hugely expressive voice, the album stands today as a minor masterpiece. However, it was not released until 18 months later because in the meantime Charters had disappeared to Mexico, taking the master tapes with him. Look at Me Now, Callier's debut single, came in 1968, when he signed with Chicago's renowned blues label, Chess.

Callier earned a living by playing gigs in New York and Chicago until he was contacted by Butler in 1970 and recruited to his salaried group of songwriters. "Our job was just to write songs and learn about the music business," Callier told the journalist Angus Batey. "That was incredible." The following year, the Chess producer Charles Stepney approached Callier for songs. Callier supplied The Love We Had (Stays On My Mind), which was recorded by the Dells and was successful enough to prompt a recording contract for Callier from the Chess subsidiary Cadet. He made three solo albums under Stepney's guidance: Occasional Rain, What Color Is Love and I Just Can't Help Myself; commercial reward did not match their critical acclaim and Cadet ended Callier's contract.

Hope was rekindled when Elektra Records came calling in 1977, though Callier refused to have any truck with the prevailing disco boom, and his two Elektra albums continued his string of commercial flops. His Elektra mentor, Don Mizell, quit the label in 1979, and Callier was dropped shortly afterwards.

When his daughter, Sundiata, who was living with Callier's ex-wife, told him she wanted to stay in Chicago to attend school, Callier realised he had to have a steady income. "She needed me and the music business just didn't seem like a viable option at that point," he said. He secured a staff job as a computer programmer at the University of Chicago, and relegated music to a mere hobby for the next decade and a half.

However, as the 90s dawned, Callier was amazed to be told that he had become an icon of the British soul-jazz scene, thanks to a single, I Don't Wanna See Myself (Without You), on an obscure label. This had caught the ear of cutting-edge DJs such as Eddie Piller, who dropped in on Callier in Chicago and invited him to perform at the 100 Club in London. His subsequent string of shows at the Jazz Cafe became legendary for the devotion he aroused in his listeners.

Callier sang two songs with Orton on her EP Best Bit and he was signed to Gilles Peterson's Talkin' Loud label, for which he cut the albums Timepeace (featuring Orton) and Lifetime, both suffused with a sense of faith and yearning for redemption. After his record deal collapsed following a round of record company mergers, the independent label Mr Bongo stepped into the breach and released the live album Alive and a studio album, Speak Your Peace, which featured a duet performed and co-written with Paul Weller.

Callier was sacked from his computer programmer's job and concentrated once more on music, dividing his time between the UK and the US. He recorded six acclaimed albums between 1999 and 2009. The last of these was Hidden Conversations, on which he was joined by Massive Attack, with whom he had collaborated on the single Live With Me, a Top 20 hit in 2006. "You can make accessible music and still sing about love and peace and truth and life and death," said Callier in 1996. "In the end, those are the only things that matter."

He is survived by his daughter.

• Terry Callier, musician, born 24 May 1945; died 28 October 2012

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/oct/30/terry-callier

[SlowwHand]

Smurfette has lost her voice.

Lucille Bliss had a career that spanned more than 60 years, and her face may not always be the most recognized, but her voices certainly are. Bliss, the voice of Smurfette, died on Nov. 8, 2012 at the age of 96. It was first announced by the Orange County coroner on Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2012.

Bliss died from natural causes at an assisted living center in Costa Mesa. She had actually been working as recently as last month.

Known greatly for her vocal role of Smurfette in the eighties hit animated series "The Smurfs," Bliss also did a huge number of other jobs. She was the voice of the character Crusader Rabbit in the first animated series produced specifically for television.“

"Actors from her generation who came up in live radio, you'd do one or two takes with Lucille and she'd just nail it," said David Scheve, who owns TDA Animation and worked with Bliss. "She could do three or four characters in one [scene] and you'd never know they were all her. She was terrific."

During her long career, she also provided the voices for characters such as stepsister Anastasia in Disney's "Cinderella" and also the original Elroy in "The Jetsons."

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Last week I jotted down a few possibilities for next year's list, and one was Sven Hassel.

It turns out that he died in September, though. Inconsiderate git.

[snoopy369]

Sounds like you should get bonus points for picking someone who died early!

[Thorn]

Here is an idea, maybe too radical for this group, but instead of just posting who died, why not YOU write an article celebrating what good they did in their life... for each one... so this thread isn't just a statistical crap shoot.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Do we get bonus points for making them scurrilous and packed with loads of blatant lies?

[Uncle Sparky]

http://entertainment.nbcnews.com/_ne...ies-at-81?lite

Updated at 3:10 a.m. ET: Actor Larry Hagman — who became a global icon playing the cunning J.R. Ewing in the television series "Dallas" — died on Friday at the age of 81, NBC Dallas-Fort Worth reported.

Hagman was at Medical City Dallas Hospital when he died Friday afternoon from complications of his recent battle with cancer, the Dallas Morning News reported, citing members of his family.

Linda Gray, who played J.R.'s long-suffering wife, Sue Ellen, was with Hagman in Dallas when he died, the actress' spokesman, Jeffrey Lane, said in an email.

"Larry Hagman was my best friend for 35 years," Gray said in a statement. "He was the Pied Piper of life and brought joy to everyone he knew. He was creative, funny, loving and talented, and I will miss him enormously."

[SlowwHand]

Damn.

[Ming]

Updated at 3:10 a.m. ET: Actor Larry Hagman — who became a global icon playing the cunning J.R. Ewing in the television series "Dallas" — died on Friday at the age of 81, NBC Dallas-Fort Worth reported.

SCOREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!

ABOUT ****ING TIME. IT'S BEEN YEARS!

Granted, he was number 20 on my list... but...


SCOREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!

OH, and RIP, he will be missed.

[Sparrowhawk]

Sorry Ming, no points can be awarded until it is conclusively determined that no rules were violated in this death, and we may spend the next season year trying to determine...."Who shot J.R.?"

[Lord Avalon]

RIP.

I remember they filmed everyone shooting JR, so no one knew who was going to be the one. They had a special during the offseason, IIRC, where they showed all those clips, and it ended with JR pulling the trigger, and having a perplexed expression after.

[Berzerker]

rip