History > 2007 > UK / USA > Music (I)

Colorado Police

Link Rise in Violence to Music

September 3, 2007
The New York Times
By DAN FROSCH

COLORADO SPRINGS, Aug. 30 — The D.J. puts on the popular song “No Problem” by Lil Scrappy, and a sea of young men and women rush the dance floor.

As the party anthem bursts through the speakers and Lil Scrappy drawls, “But you don’t want no problem, problem,” the crowd swerves in a sweaty, liquor-soaked rhythm. The scene, heavy with the sweet smoke of cigarillos and exploding with hip-hop’s unmistakable pounding bass, could be almost anywhere: New York, Chicago, Memphis, Oakland, Calif.

The only sign that this is Colorado Springs is that two churches sit adjacent to the club, La Zona Roja, in an empty strip mall.

The club is part of a thriving hip-hop community that has grown as Colorado Springs, known for its military installations and evangelical groups, has grown. But not everyone is happy that hip-hop has taken root here.

After a spate of shootings, and with a rising murder rate, the police here are saying gangsta rap is contributing to the violence, luring gang members and criminal activity to nightclubs. The police publicly condemned the music in a news release after a killing in July and are warning nightclub owners that their places might not be safe if they play gangsta rap.

“We don’t want to broad-brush hip-hop music altogether,” said Lt. Skip Arms, a police spokesman, “but we’re looking at a subcomponent that typically glorifies, promotes criminal behavior and demeans women.”

The actions of the police have angered the hip-hop community here, mostly blacks and Latinos, many of whom live in this city because of ties to the Army and Air Force bases here.

“If we were talking about a rock bar or a country bar here, none of this would be happening,” said James Baldrick, who runs a local hip-hop promotions company, Dirty Limelight.

“This city wants to shut down hip-hop,” said Mike Cross, 26, who was outside Eden Nite Club, a popular downtown venue that plays hip-hop, with a group of friends on a recent night. “They don’t want it to survive.”

Calling the police’s approach ignorant, a group of club promoters and rappers in Colorado Springs organized a night of hip-hop performances and music at La Zona Roja last month, seeking to prove that such events could occur without incident.

“When two cowboys got into an argument at a saloon, went outside and had a draw, nobody blamed the music that was playing at the saloon,” said a local rapper known as B. Serious, who performed at the event.

But with 19 homicides already this year, compared with 15 in 2006, the police insist on a correlation between gangsta rap and violence, and point to three recent shootings.

On April 17, a stray bullet killed a taxi driver during a fight between two groups who had left Eden Nite Club. After a fight at a concert at a local park on Memorial Day, a man was shot to death in a nearby liquor store parking lot. On July 9, a former high school football star, Diontea Jackson-Forrest, was shot and killed. The authorities said the suspect was involved in an altercation at Eden before the shooting.

Two days after Mr. Jackson-Forrest’s death, the police issued a news release blaming the violence on gangsta rap. The release mentioned an event planned at Eden, called a “Pimp, Thug and Ho Party,” as the “type of behavior that causes concern.” The club’s owners called off the party.

Mr. Baldrick noted that the shooting after the Memorial Day concert, which his company sponsored, occurred two hours after the event, yet the police linked the two. He said that since the authorities began speaking out against gangsta rap, there had been a drop in attendance at events promoted by Dirty Limelight, down to 200 from about 700 per event.

But Lt. Thomas Harris, who leads a unit that deals with gangs, drugs and guns, insisted there was a link between the violence and the music.

“When you have music that says it’s basically O.K. to treat women poorly, to steal things and to confront and shoot police officers,” said Lt. Harris, “you’ll attract a small percentage of the population that wants to lead the thug life.”

Others here say the police are focusing on hip-hop instead of addressing the growing pains of this largely white, conservative city, home to the evangelical groups Focus on the Family and New Life Church.

Since 1990, the metropolitan area of Colorado Springs, which sits south of Denver, has swollen to nearly half a million from 397,000. Though outright racial tensions, which led to marches here in the 1970s and ’80s, are largely of the past, there remains a sense of benign neglect toward minorities, said Dr. José J. Barrera, former director of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. That neglect has translated into a chasm between the city and its minority youth, Dr. Barrera said.

“If you examine the history of ethnic and race relations in this community, you will detect a pattern of ignorance of minority cultures and problems,” Dr. Barrera said. “No serious observer believes that current manifestations of youth culture and pop culture actually fuel criminal activity.”

At the recent hip-hop showcase at La Zona Roja, the genre’s positive side eclipsed all else.

After the show, the crowd tumbled out of the club. Young men politely chatted up a group of women. A couple tried to coordinate a ride home. Two men exchanged solemn stories of prison.

The only sign of trouble was a flat tire on someone’s customized sedan.

Colorado Police Link Rise in Violence to Music, NYT, 3.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/03/us/03hiphop.html

Hilly Kristal, 75,

Catalyst for Punk at CBGB, Dies

August 30, 2007
The New York Times
By BEN SISARIO

Hilly Kristal, who founded CBGB, the Bowery bar that became the cradle of New York punk and art-rock in the 1970s and was the inspiration for musician-friendly rock dives around the world, died in Manhattan on Tuesday. He was 75.

The cause was complications of lung cancer, his son, Dana, said yesterday.

Looking more like a lumberjack than a punk rocker, with his bushy beard and ever-present flannel shirt, Mr. Kristal cut an unusual figure as the paterfamilias of the noisy downtown music scene. But for nearly 33 years his club was an incubator for generations of New York rock bands, and performing within its dank, flier-encrusted walls became a bragging right for musicians everywhere.

Thousands of bands played CBGB, from its opening in December 1973 until a dispute with its landlord forced it to close last October. In the 1970s and early ’80s, the bar became by default the headquarters for innovative local groups like the Ramones, Patti Smith, Blondie, Television, Talking Heads and Sonic Youth, who in the club’s early days had few other places to play.

“There was no real venue in 1973 for people like us,” Ms. Smith said in an interview yesterday. “We didn’t fit into the cabarets or the folk clubs. Hilly wanted the people that nobody else wanted. He wanted us.”

Hillel Kristal grew up on a farm in Hightstown, N.J., and studied classical violin as a child. He moved to New York and sang in the chorus at Radio City Music Hall and managed the Village Vanguard before he opened his Bowery bar. A lifelong lover of folk music, he kept an acoustic guitar at his desk and named the club CBGB & OMFUG, an abbreviation for the kind of music he had intended to present there: “country, bluegrass, blues and other music for uplifting gourmandizers.”

Within months after CBGB opened, young musicians and poets like Tom Verlaine and Ms. Smith became curious about the bar as they passed it on their way to visit the beat writer William S. Burroughs, who lived a few blocks down the Bowery. Mr. Verlaine persuaded Mr. Kristal to book his band, Television, and others followed suit, including Ms. Smith and her band, which had a seven-week residency in 1975. Record executives soon joined the neighborhood punks as habitués at CB’s, as it was familiarly called.

Mr. Kristal was quick to recognize the new scene’s potential, and though he professed a cantankerous distaste for some of the music, he had a keen ear.

“He might have tried to give the impression of being outside of it,” said Tom Erdelyi, a k a Tommy Ramone, the Ramones’ first drummer and only surviving original member. “But I don’t think that was the case. He understood instinctively that what was going on was something special and important.”

Mr. Kristal decreed that bands had to perform original material. His policy fostered creativity, but it was also a way to avoid paying performance royalties. Mr. Kristal had other schemes. In the ’70s he ran a moving company that hired some CB’s regulars, and in time the club’s distinctive logo became a valuable copyright to exploit for T-shirts and other memorabilia. By 2005 he was making $2 million a year through his CBGB Fashion line.

As time left its mark on CBGB’s walls in the form of stickers and taped-up fliers left by musicians and fans — as well as damage to its notoriously unpleasant bathrooms — the club’s interior itself became a tourist draw, as both a relic of rock history and a kind of living museum of graffiti. Mr. Kristal, who kept office hours until the end, answering the phone “CB’s” in a phlegmatic baritone, resisted any changes to the club, a narrow, dark room that still held remnants of its history as a 19th-century saloon.

In the ’80s and ’90s, the club began presenting metal bands and especially young, hard-core punk groups in all-ages matinees. Though less celebrated than the ones in the club’s 1970s glory days, these shows drew in new generations of fans. They also allowed the club to book two shows a day, one in the afternoon for fans under 21, and another at night for a drinking crowd. Critics began to complain that CBGB had lost its edge.

In 2005, Mr. Kristal became embroiled in a real-estate battle with the club’s landlord, the Bowery Residents’ Committee, a nonprofit group that aids homeless people. The committee said that CBGB owed $75,000 in unpaid rent increases. Mr. Kristal, disputing that claim, fought the landlord in court and in the news media for months, enlisting the help of celebrities like David Byrne of Talking Heads and Steven Van Zandt of the E Street Band and “The Sopranos.”

At the prodding of a judge, Mr. Kristal agreed to close the club. Ms. Smith played its final show, on Oct. 15. The exterior of the club, at 315 Bowery, at Bleecker Street, is now a frequent stop on walking tours of the Lower East Side and East Village.

Besides his son, of Manhattan, Mr. Kristal is survived by a daughter, Lisa Kristal Burgman, also of Manhattan; a former wife, Karen; and two grandchildren.

Facing eviction, Mr. Kristal frequently said that he was considering reopening CBGB in Las Vegas, Tokyo or any other city that would have him. But in an interview at the club with The New York Times, as tourists walked in and out and bought T-shirts, he said that he wanted to hold onto the corner of the Bowery that he had made famous.

“Millions and millions of musicians in this world think of CBGB as a home base,” he said.

    Hilly Kristal, 75, Catalyst for Punk at CBGB, Dies, NYT, 30.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/30/arts/music/30kristal.html?hp

Hilly Kristal, CBGB Founder, Dies at 75

August 29, 2007
The New York Times
By BEN SISARIO

Hilly Kristal, who founded CBGB, the Bowery bar that became the cradle of punk and art-rock in New York in the 1970s and served as the inspiration for musician-friendly rock dives throughout the world, died in Manhattan on Tuesday. He was 75.

His son, Mark Dana Kristal, told The Associated Press that the cause was complications from lung cancer.

From its opening in late 1973, when Mr. Kristal, a lover of acoustic music, gave the club its name, an abbreviation of the kinds of music he originally intended to feature there — country, bluegrass and blues — until a dispute with its landlord forced the club to close last October, CBGB presented thousands of bands within its eternally crumbling, flyer-encrusted walls.

Most famously, it served as the incubator for the diverse underground scene of New York in the 1970s and early ’80s, with acts like the Ramones, Patti Smith, Blondie, Television, Talking Heads and Sonic Youth playing some of their earliest and most important concerts there, at a time when there were few outlets in the city for innovative rock music.

“There was no real venue in 1973 for people like us,” Ms. Smith said today. “We didn’t fit into the cabarets or the folk clubs. Hilly wanted the people that nobody else wanted. He wanted us.”

Besides his son, Mr. Kristal is survived by a daughter, Lisa Kristal Burgman, and two grandchildren.

    Hilly Kristal, CBGB Founder, Dies at 75, NYT, 29.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/29/arts/music/29cnd-kristal.html?hp

CBGB Founder Hilly Kristal Dies

August 29, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:03 p.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- Hilly Kristal, whose dank Bowery rock club CBGB served as the birthplace of the punk rock movement and a launching pad for bands like the Ramones, Blondie and the Talking Heads, has died. He was 75.

Kristal, who lost a bitter fight last year to stop the club's eviction from its home of 33 years, died Tuesday at Cabrini Hospital after a battle with lung cancer, his son Mark Dana Kristal said Wednesday.

Last October, as the club headed toward its final show with Patti Smith, Kristal was using a cane to get around and showing the effects of his cancer treatment. He was hoping to open a Las Vegas incarnation of the infamous venue that opened in 1973.

''He created a club that started on a small, out-of-the-way skid row, and saw it go around the world,'' said Lenny Kaye, a longtime member of the Patti Smith Group. ''Everywhere you travel around the world, you saw somebody wearing a CBGB T-shirt.''

While the club's glory days were long past when it shut down, its name transcended the venue and become synonymous with the three-chord thrash of punk and its influence on generations of musicians worldwide.

The club also became a brand name for a line of clothing and accessories, even guitar straps; its store, CBGB Fashions, was moved a few blocks away from the original club, but remained open.

''I'm thinking about tomorrow and the next day and the next day, and going on to do more with CBGB's,'' Kristal told The Associated Press last October.

Kristal started the club in 1973 with the hope of making it a mecca of country, bluegrass and blues -- called CBGB & OMFUG, for ''Other Music For Uplifting Gourmandisers'' -- but found few bands to book. It instead became the epicenter of the mid-1970s punk movement.

''There was never gourmet food, and there was never country bluegrass,'' his son said Wednesday.

Besides the Ramones and the Talking Heads, many of the other sonically defiant bands that found frenzied crowds at CBGB during those years became legendary -- including Smith, Blondie and Television.

Smith said at the venue's last show that Kristal ''was our champion and in those days, there were very few.''

Throughout the years, CBGB had rented its space from the building's owner, the Bowery Residents' Committee, an agency that houses homeless people.

In the early 2000s, a feud broke out when the committee went to court to collect more than $300,000 in back rent from the club, then later successfully sought to evict it. By the time it closed, CBGB had become part museum and part barroom.

At the club's boarded-up storefront Wednesday morning, fans left a dozen candles, two bunches of flowers and a foam rubber baseball bat -- an apparent tribute to the Ramones' classic ''Beat on the Brat.'' A spray-painted message read: ''RIP Hilly, we'll miss you, thank you.''

Other survivors include his wife, Karen, and daughter, Lisa.

----

On the Net:

http://www.cbgb.com

    CBGB Founder Hilly Kristal Dies, NYT, 29.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Obit-Hilly-Kristal.html

Stevie Wonder Plans U.S. Tour

August 3, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:51 a.m. ET
The New York Times

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Stevie Wonder will go on his first U.S. tour in more than a decade, starting next month in San Diego.

The 57-year-old singer made the announcement at an outdoor performance in Los Angeles on Thursday.

''A Wonder Summer's Night'' will feature 13 concerts from Aug. 23 to Sept. 20 in eight states. Stops in California include San Diego, Lake Tahoe, Concord, Santa Barbara, Saratoga and Los Angeles. Other cities include Portland, Ore.; Woodinville, Wash.; Chicago; Detroit; Atlanta; and Baltimore. The final concert will be in Boston.

Tickets will be available beginning Aug. 11. Ticket prices weren't immediately released.

Although Wonder has given numerous performances worldwide, his last full-scale tour in the U.S. was in 1995.

The Motown legend has some two dozen Grammy Awards and dozens of hits. His song ''I Just Called to Say I Love You,'' featured in the movie ''The Woman in Red,'' won the Academy Award for best original song in 1985.

------

On the Net:

Stevie Wonder:

http://www.steviewonder.net/

    Stevie Wonder Plans U.S. Tour, NYT, 3.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-People-Wonder.html

Elvis Managers Plan Graceland Overhaul

August 1, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:52 a.m. ET
The New York Times

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) -- The thousands of Elvis Presley fans descending on Memphis for the 30th anniversary of his death Aug. 16 won't see much sign of it, but plans are moving along for big-time changes at Graceland.

Managers of Presley's famous home want to overhaul its tourist complex -- with a new visitors center bigger than a football field, a convention hotel and high-tech museum displays that can give a new, digital life to the King himself.

All it will take to bring about those wonders is $250 million or so; the total reorganization of CKX Inc., the New York-based company that controls all things Elvis; and a publicly supported facelift for Graceland's struggling neighborhood.

The obstacles are far from small, but the people behind the plans, led by CKX Chairman Robert F.X. Sillerman, have a history of putting together big deals and making money for investors.

Sillerman, a multimillionaire dealer in media and entertainment assets, took over Graceland in 2005 when he bought the rights to Elvis' name and image from daughter Lisa Marie, Presley's sole heir.

When Presley died, his finances were in sad shape. Led by his ex-wife Priscilla Presley, the estate formed Elvis Presley Enterprises, opened Graceland to the public and solidified the legal rights to make money on Elvis' name and image.

Last year, Graceland took in $27 million in revenue, and the overall Elvis business brings in more than $40 million a year. That made him the second-highest grossing dead celebrity in 2006, behind only Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, according to Forbes.

Lisa Marie Presley still owns her father's house and 15 percent of Elvis Presley Enterprises, but CKX controls Graceland and its sprawling complex of souvenir shops and memorabilia museums.

''As great as it is,'' Sillerman said after a recent visit to Graceland, ''it can be so much better.''

The big, white-columned house Presley bought in 1957 for just over $100,000 draws close to 600,000 visitors a year, and for a week around the anniversary of his death on Aug. 16, 1977, it attracts legions of his still-adoring fans.

Graceland's current visitors center, souvenir shops and museums were cobbled together by renovating a small strip mall across the street from what the Elvis faithful affectionately call ''the mansion.''

The new plans call for leveling all that and building a 80,000-square-foot visitors center designed from the ground up for handling big crowds and high-tech exhibits.

''To put that in perspective, that's about six or seven times the size of the mansion,'' Sillerman said.

The center will be equipped for the kind of technical wizardry that allowed singer Celine Dion to recently perform what appeared to be a live duet with Elvis on the ''American Idol'' TV show, which CKX also owns.

''People will actually think Elvis is there,'' Sillerman said. ''It's going to be, 'Oh, wow,' I can tell you that.''

For years, Elvis Presley Enterprises, now a CKX subsidiary, has been buying land for expansion and has put together 100-acres needed for the renovation, which would move the tourist center to the same side of Elvis Presley Boulevard as Graceland.

''We've continued all these years to be a major destination attraction with a busy, pretty unattractive street running right through the middle of it,'' said Jack Soden, EPE's top executive and a major player in opening Graceland to the public in 1982.

Graceland's 128-room Heartbreak Hotel, also on the wrong side of the four-lane street, is to be replaced by a convention hotel, on the better side, with up to 500 rooms.

No timeline for the expansion has been set, Soden said.

''But moving straight ahead, with every intention of keeping the ball moving, we're probably looking at something in the neighborhood of a three-year process,'' he said.

Top CKX managers, led by Sillerman, want to buy the company for $1.3 billion, at $13.75 a share plus stock equaling 25 percent of FX Luxury Realty, an affiliate with plans to develop hotels, casinos or other such projects with CKX.

Shareholders are expected to vote on the proposal perhaps in October, said Sillerman, the company's largest stockholder with 34 percent.

The plan is to take CKX private, with a small group of big-dollar investors including Sillerman and ''American Idol'' creator Simon Fuller, and continue its focus on intellectual property and entertainment content.

Fuller is chief executive of CKX subsidiary 19 Entertainment, the company's biggest revenue source and owner of the ''American Idol'' franchise. After the buyout, CKX would become 19X.

FX Luxury Realty, as FXLR, would remain public with a much broader shareholder base to develop real estate projects in Memphis, Las Vegas and elsewhere, including abroad.

CKX, which also owns the rights to former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali's name and image, might have a better shot at other such deals as a private company, since celebrities are often reluctant to have their financial dealings made public, said Bear Stearns analyst Christopher Ensley.

Bear Stearns, which is not involved in the buyout, predicts a total cost, including expenses, of $1.5 billion, with $600 million in equity and $950 million in debt. CKX management is expected to provide $200 million with the rest coming from institutional investors.

With Sillerman and other CKX managers holding more than 45 percent of its shares, approval for the buyout is likely, with a closing perhaps by the end of the year, Ensley said.

''I looked at the transaction several different ways, and I thought the valuation was full and fair to investors,'' he said.

Sillerman's past success in putting together investment packages may help attract buyout backers, Ensley said.

In the 1990s, Sillerman helped put together a group of radio stations that sold for $2 billion, and he was a leading founder of a SFX Entertainment, a sports and live concert company that sold for $4 billion in 2000.

Graceland managers have been working on their expansion plans for more than a year, and Sillerman has come to Memphis to talk with city, county and state officials about their assistance.

CKX wants a ''mutual cooperation agreement'' with local government for major highway and utility improvements and renovation help for other businesses in the area, particularly along Elvis Presley Boulevard, a once vibrant commercial strip now dotted with used-car lots and empty buildings.

''We don't want to create an island,'' Soden said. ''We want to be a catalyst for the right kind of growth and the right kind of revitalization of the commercial corridors.''

------

On the Net:

CKX Inc.: http://ir.ckx.com/

Elvis Presley Enterprises: http://www.elvis.com/

    Elvis Managers Plan Graceland Overhaul, NYT, 1.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Graceland-Overhaul.html

Songwriter Ron Miller Dies at Age 74

July 24, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:17 a.m. ET
The New York Times

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) -- Songwriter Ron Miller, whose tunes included pop classics ''Touch Me in the Morning'' and ''For Once in My Life,'' has died, his daughter said.

Miller died Monday of cardiac arrest at Santa Monica UCLA Medical Center after a long battle with emphysema and cancer, Lisa Dawn Miller said. He was 74.

Miller got his professional start in the music business in the 1960s, when Motown founder Berry Gordy saw him perform at a piano bar and invited him to Detroit as one of the label's first songwriters and record producers.

His songs have been recorded by many leading artists, including Judy Garland, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross and Ray Charles.

''For Once in My Life,'' written with Orlando Murden, is one of the most recorded songs in history, with more than 270 versions, according to All Music Guide. A rendition by Tony Bennett and Wonder won a Grammy award this year.

In 2005, Charles' and Gladys Knight's version of Miller's ''Heaven Help Us All'' picked up the best gospel performance Grammy.

Born in Chicago, Miller was a die-hard Cubs fan, who wrote his first sad song as a child about his beloved but hapless team, his daughter said.

Before meeting Gordy at the piano bar, Miller made ends meet by selling washing machines and taking odd jobs. He served in the Marines, as well, and was stationed all over the world.

Throughout the 1970s, Miller wrote the book and lyrics to many musicals, including ''Daddy Goodness'' and ''Cheery,'' based on William Inge's ''Bus Stop.'' Barbra Streisand recorded ''I've Never Been A Woman Before,'' from the musical, for her ''The Way We Were'' album.

''My father will be reborn every time someone sings one of his songs,'' Lisa Dawn Miller said. ''When they feel joy or sadness or any emotion, that will be my dad and his words.''

Miller is survived by his wife, Aurora Miller, and six children.

A memorial service was scheduled for Aug. 4.

    Songwriter Ron Miller Dies at Age 74, NYT, 24.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Obit-Miller.html

Beverly Sills, the All-American Diva, Is Dead at 78

July 3, 2007
The New York Times
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

Beverly Sills, the acclaimed Brooklyn-born coloratura soprano who was more popular with the American public than any opera singer since Enrico Caruso, even among people who never set foot in an opera house, died last night at her home in Manhattan. She was 78.

The cause was inoperable lung cancer, said her personal manager, Edgar Vincent.

Ms. Sills was America’s idea of a prima donna. Her plain-spoken manner and telegenic vitality made her a genuine celebrity and an invaluable advocate for the fine arts. Her life embodied an archetypal American story of humble origins, years of struggle, family tragedy and artistic triumph.

During her day, American opera singers routinely went overseas for training and professional opportunities. But Ms. Sills was a product of her native country and did not even perform in Europe until she was 36. At a time when opera singers regularly appeared as guests on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” Ms. Sills was the only opera star who was invited to be guest host. She made frequent television appearances with Carol Burnett, Danny Kaye and even the Muppets.

Indeed, while she was still singing, and before her 10-year tenure as general director of the New York City Opera, Ms. Sills for nearly two years was host of her own weekly talk show on network television. After leaving her City Opera post, she continued an influential career as an arts administrator, becoming the chairwoman first of Lincoln Center and then of the Metropolitan Opera.

During her performing career, with her combination of brilliant singing, ebullience and self-deprecating humor, Ms. Sills demystified opera — and the fine arts in general — in a way that a general public audience responded to. Asked about the ecstatic reception she received when she made a belated debut at La Scala in Milan in 1969, Ms. Sills told the press, “It’s probably because Italians like big women, big bosoms and big backsides.”

Along with Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland, she was an acknowledged exponent of the bel canto Italian repertory during the period of its post-World War II revival. Though she essentially had a light soprano voice, her sound was robust and enveloping. In her prime her technique was exemplary. She could dispatch coloratura roulades and embellishments, capped by radiant high D’s and E-flat’s, with seemingly effortless agility. She sang with scrupulous musicianship, rhythmic incisiveness and a vivid sense of text.

Moreover, she brought unerring acting instincts to her portrayals of tragic leading roles in Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” and “Anna Bolena,” Bellini’s “Puritani,” Massenet’s “Manon” and many other operas in her large repertory. And few singers matched her deadpan comic timing and physical nimbleness in lighter roles like Rosina in Rossini’s “Barbiere di Siviglia,” whom Ms. Sills portrayed as a ditsy yet determined young woman, and Marie, the tomboylike heroine raised by a military regiment in Donizetti’s “Fille du Régiment.”

In 1955 Ms. Sills joined the New York City Opera, which then performed in the City Center building on West 55th Street. Her loyal commitment to what at the time was an enterprising but second-tier company may have prevented her from achieving wider success earlier in her career. By the time Ms. Sills finally captured international attention, her voice had started to decline.

As early as 1970, reviews of her work were mixed. Harold C. Schonberg, then the chief music critic of The New York Times, fretted in his columns about Ms. Sills’s inconsistency. Yet reviewing her as Donizetti’s Lucia at the City Opera in early 1970, Mr. Schonberg wrote: “The amazing thing about her Lucia is not so much the way she sings it, though that has moments of incandescent beauty, but the way she manages to make a living, breathing creature of the unhappy girl.” He added that Ms. Sills “delivered by far the most believable mad scene I have ever seen in any opera house.”

That fall Mr. Schonberg’s quite negative review of Ms. Sills’s singing as Queen Elizabeth I in Donizetti’s “Roberto Devereux” was strongly countered by other critics, notably Alan Rich in New York magazine. Mr. Rich reported that he had left the performance “in a state of euphoria bordering on hysteria.” A magnificent opera, he added, had been “rescued from oblivion and accorded superb treatment.” It was an “extraordinary accomplishment” for Ms. Sills, he felt.

For the rest of her singing career, Ms. Sills elicited divergent reactions from critics. But the public, by and large, adored her. Though most of her fans knew that her struggle to the top had been long and tough, few realized just how long and how tough.

An Early Start

Beverly Sills was born Belle Silverman on May 25, 1929, in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. Her father, Morris, was an insurance broker whose family had emigrated from Bucharest, Romania. Her mother, Shirley, was born Sonia Markovna in the Russian city of Odessa. Ms. Sills was nicknamed Bubbles at birth because, her mother said, she emerged from the womb with bubbles in her mouth, and the name stuck.

Because Morris Silverman worked on commission, the family’s income fluctuated wildly, and they moved often. The first apartment Ms. Sills recalled living in was a one-bedroom flat where she shared the bedroom with her parents while her older brothers, Sidney and Stanley, slept on a Hide-a-Bed in the foyer.

Shirley Silverman was an unabashed stage mother who thought her talented little girl with the golden curls could become a Jewish Shirley Temple. So with the stage name Bubbles, Ms. Sills was pushed into radio work. At 4 she made her debut on a Saturday morning children’s show called “Uncle Bob’s Rainbow House,” quickly becoming a weekly fixture on the show. At 7 she graduated to the “Major Bowes Capital Family Hour,” on which she tap-danced and sang coloratura arias that she had learned phonetically from her mother’s Amelita Galli-Curci records. She won a role on a radio soap opera, “Our Gal Sunday,” where for 36 episodes she portrayed a “nightingirl of the mountains.”

But her father put an end to her child-star career when she was 12 so that she could concentrate on her education at Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn and the Professional Children’s School in Manhattan. She devoted herself to her voice lessons with Estelle Liebling, which had begun when Ms. Sills was just 9. Liebling had coached Galli-Curci and was Ms. Sills’s only vocal teacher.

When Ms. Sills graduated from the professional school in 1945, at 16, she began 10 years of grinding work, including long stints with touring opera companies, performing Gilbert and Sullivan operettas and, later, leading roles like Violetta in Verdi’s “Traviata.” Recounting these tours for a Newsweek interview in 1969, Ms. Sills said, “I had my first high heels, my first updo hair style, my first strapless dress, and I didn’t know what to hold up first.”

A Triumphant Debut

In 1955, after seven previous unsuccessful auditions over a three-year period, Ms. Sills was accepted into the New York City Opera. Her debut as Rosalinde in “Die Fledermaus” was enthusiastically received by critics.

On tour with the City Opera in Cleveland in 1955, Ms. Sills met Peter B. Greenough, a Boston Brahmin descendant of John Alden, whose family holdings included The Plain Dealer of Cleveland. With a degree from Harvard and a master’s degree from the Columbia School of Journalism, Mr. Greenough was then an associate editor at The Plain Dealer. When he met Ms. Sills, he was going through a difficult divorce. Eight weeks after it was made final, he married Ms. Sills in a small civil ceremony at Liebling’s New York studio.

Suddenly Ms. Sills found herself the stepmother to three daughters and the mistress of a 23-room house in Cleveland. She hated the city, as she acknowledged in “Beverly: An Autobiography,” her blunt 1987 memoir: “Peter was ostracized by Cleveland’s rinky-dink version of high society because he had the nerve to fight for custody of his children.”

During this period Ms. Sills regularly commuted to New York to perform with the City Opera, which was experiencing hard times. The problems came to a head in 1956 when the conductor Joseph Rosenstock, the company’s general director, resigned. Ms. Sills was one of a core group of singers who met with board members to find a way to save it. This led to the appointment of the pragmatic, take-charge conductor Julius Rudel, who spearheaded a revival, as general director in 1957.

In 1959 Ms. Sills gave birth to a daughter, Meredith Holden Greenough. Two years later she gave birth to the couple’s second child, a son, Peter Bulkeley Greenough Jr. At the time Meredith, called Muffy, was 22 months old but unable to speak. Tests revealed that she had a profound loss of hearing.

Just as Ms. Sills and her husband were absorbing their daughter’s deafness, it became clear that their son, called Bucky, now 6 months old, was significantly mentally retarded, with additional complications that eluded diagnosis. “They knew nothing about autism then,” Ms. Sills later wrote.

With support, their daughter thrived over time. But the boy’s problems were severe, and he was eventually placed in an institution.

The diagnoses of her children’s disabilities had come within a six-week period. For months thereafter, Ms. Sills turned down all singing engagements to be at home. Mr. Rudel, convinced that going back to work would help her cope, sent lighthearted letters addressed to “Dear Bubbala,” suggesting absurd roles for her to sing, like Boris Godunov, and sharing opera gossip. He then tried to insist that Ms. Sills had a contract to fulfill. When she reported for work, she felt like a totally different artist.

“I was always a good singer,” she said in the Newsweek interview, “but I was a combination of everyone else’s ideas: the director, the conductor, the tenor. After I came back, I talked back. I stopped caring what anyone else thought.” But she managed to rid herself of bitterness.

“I felt if I could survive my grief, I could survive anything,” she said. “Onstage I was uninhibited, and I began to have a good time.”

Her Breakthrough Role

The Newhouse newspaper chain bought The Plain Dealer in 1967 for $58 million, a substantial portion of which went to Mr. Greenough. The family, extremely wealthy, lived in Milton, outside Boston. He was a financial columnist at The Boston Globe from 1961 to 1969.

There Ms. Sills formed a close working relationship with the conductor and stage director Sarah Caldwell, who then ran the Opera Company of Boston, and stretched herself in operas like Rameau’s “Hippolyte et Aricie.” At the City Opera, Ms. Sills scored a notable success singing the three heroines in Offenbach’s “Tales of Hoffmann.” But her breakthrough came in the fall of 1966, when she helped to inaugurate the City Opera’s residency at its new Lincoln Center home, the New York State Theater, singing Cleopatra in Handel’s “Giulio Cesare,” the first production of a Handel opera by a major New York company in living memory. In snagging that role for herself, Ms. Sills demonstrated a fierce determination born of long frustration.

Mr. Rudel had conceived the production as a vehicle for the bass-baritone Norman Treigle, who was to sing the title role. For Cleopatra he had selected the soprano Phyllis Curtin, who joined the City Opera two years before Ms. Sills but who had been singing with the Metropolitan Opera since 1963.

Ms. Sills felt that Cleopatra was ideally suited to her and that the role might lift her to star status. Moreover, she felt she had earned the role because of her loyalty as a company member. After unproductive talks with Mr. Rudel, Ms. Sills told him that she would resign from the City Opera if he did not give her the role, and that her husband would secure Carnegie Hall for a recital in which she would sing five of Cleopatra’s arias. “You’re going to look sick,” she told him. Mr. Rudel relented.

Ms. Sills was correct about the effect that singing Cleopatra would have on her career. In a move that Handel purists today would consider sacrilege, Mr. Rudel and the stage director, Tito Capobianco, cut the lengthy opera to a workable three hours. The international press was in town to cover the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera House, which was presenting the premiere of Samuel Barber’s “Antony and Cleopatra.” Many critics also checked out the other Cleopatra opera across the plaza at Lincoln Center.

Ms. Sills won the greatest reviews of her career. Critics praised her adroit handling of the music’s florid fioritura, her perfect trills, her exquisite pianissimo singing and her rich sound. Beyond the vocal acrobatics, she made Cleopatra a queenly, charismatic and complex character. The production employed vocal transpositions and other alterations that would be frowned on today, in the aftermath of the early-music movement, which has enhanced understanding of Handelian style and Baroque performance practice. Still, at the time, the production and Ms. Sills’s portrayal were revelations. Suddenly she was an opera superstar.

In 1968 she had another enormous success in the title role of Massenet’s “Manon.” When the production was revived the next year, the New Yorker critic Winthrop Sergeant wrote: “If I were recommending the wonders of New York City to a tourist, I should place Beverly Sills as Manon at the top of the list — way ahead of such things as the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building.”

In April of 1969 Ms. Sills made her La Scala debut, prompting a Newsweek cover story about America’s favorite diva and her European triumph. The opera was Rossini’s “Siege of Corinth,” which had not been performed at La Scala since 1853. A leading Italian critic, Franco Abbiati of Milan’s Corriere della Serra, commented: “In many ways she reminds me Callas — good presence, good face and, above all, a beautiful voice. She’s an angel of the lyric phrase, with great sweetness, delicacy and technical bravura.”

An Overdue Milestone

Her acclaimed debut at London’s Covent Garden came with Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” in December 1973. But the one company notably missing from her international schedule was the Metropolitan Opera. Rudolf Bing, who ran the Met during Ms. Sills’s prime years at the City Opera, later conceded that he had never managed to walk across the Lincoln Center plaza and hear her City Opera triumphs. He had invited her several times to sing with the Met, Bing later said. But either the invitations conflicted with Ms. Sills’s other bookings or the offered repertory did not interest her.

In 1975, three years after Bing retired, Ms. Sills finally made her Met debut in the opera of her La Scala success, “The Siege of Corinth.” In interviews she tried to play down the significance of this overdue milestone. The next season she repeated her role in “The Siege of Corinth” for the Met’s prestigious opening night. In the spring of 1976 she sang Violetta in “La Traviata” at the Met, having gotten the company to agree to invite her longtime colleague Ms. Caldwell to conduct, making her the first woman to take the Met’s podium.

But now that this kind of clout and acclaim had come to her, she started experiencing vocal unevenness. Ms. Sills continued to sing with a communicative presence and charisma that reached audiences. But in 1978 she announced that she would retire in 1980, when she would be 51. “I’ll put my voice to bed and go quietly and with pride,” she said in an interview with The New York Times. . It was announced at the same time that she would become co-director of the City Opera.

The plan was for her to ease into the general director’s post, sharing it with Mr. Rudel. But in 1979 he officially left the City Opera, and Ms. Sills assumed the post. She inherited a company burdened with debt and unsure of its direction.

Her vision for revitalizing the City Opera included offering unusual repertory and making the company a haven for talented younger American artists. Under her, the repertory significantly diversified, with productions of rarities like Wagner’s early opera “Die Feen,” Verdi’s “Attila” and Thomas’s “Hamlet,” as well as new operas like Anthony Davis’s “X (The Life and Times of Malcolm X).”

To entice new audiences, she reduced ticket prices by 20 percent. A $5.3 million renovation of the New York State Theater in 1982 improved the look and efficiency of the building, though not its problematic acoustics. In 1983 the City Opera became the first American company to use supertitles. The company had a sense of mission and vitality. But the deficit grew to $3 million. Then a devastating warehouse fire destroyed 10,000 costumes for 74 productions.

Still, Ms. Sills was a prodigious fund-raiser and a tireless booster. When she retired from her post in early 1989, she had on balance a record of achievement. The budget had grown from $9 million to $26 million, and the $3 million deficit had become a $3 million surplus.

She then took her skills as a fund-raiser, consultant and spokeswoman to the entire Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts organization. In 1994 she was elected the chairwoman of the board, an unpaid but influential post. In 2002 she announced her retirement from arts administration.

But six months later she was persuaded to become the chairwoman of the Met. Her most significant act was to talk the board into hiring Peter Gelb as general manager, starting in 2006. During these years, she remained the host of choice for numerous arts programs on “Live from Lincoln Center” television broadcasts.

In retirement she continued a life of charitable work, notably as chairwoman of the board of trustees of the March of Dimes for several years, until 1994.

Ms. Sills’s two children, both of Manhattan, survive her, as do her stepchildren, Lindley Thomasett, of Bedford, N.Y.; Nancy Bliss, of Woodstock, N.Y.; and Diana Greenough, of Lancaster, Mass. Her husband, Mr. Greenough, died last year after a long illness.

In a conversation with a Times reporter in 2005, reflecting on her challenging life and triumphant career, Ms. Sills said, “Man plans and God laughs.” She added: “I have often said I’ve never considered myself a happy woman. How could I, with all that’s happened to me. But I’m a cheerful woman. Work kept me going.”

    Beverly Sills, the All-American Diva, Is Dead at 78, NYT, 3.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/arts/music/03sills.html?hp

'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' Singer Dies

June 23, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:33 p.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- Hank Medress, whose vocals with the doo wop group the Tokens helped propel their irrepressible single ''The Lion Sleeps Tonight'' to the top of the charts and who produced hits with other groups, has died of lung cancer. He was 68.

Medress died Monday at his Manhattan home, relatives said.

He was a teenager at Brooklyn's Lincoln High School when he launched his vocal quartet in 1955 with Neil Sedaka, performing as the Linc-Tones. When Sedaka departed for a successful solo career, lead singer Jay Siegel joined brothers Mitch and Phil Margo and Medress to become the Tokens.

It wasn't until 1961 that the group scored its singular smash, its hypnotic ''Wimowehs'' derived from a traditional Zulu melody. The Weavers had made the song a folk staple in the '50s, but the Tokens brought their version to No. 1 on the pop charts.

The band had other minor Top 40 hits, including ''I Hear the Trumpets Blow'' in 1966 and ''Portrait of My Love'' in 1967 -- but never recaptured the success of its enduring single.

Medress would return to the charts, though, when the Tokens landed a production deal. The all-girl vocal group the Chiffons benefited from his studio touch with the classic '60s singles ''He's So Fine'' and ''One Fine Day.''

After splitting with the Tokens in the 1970s, Medress worked with a record company executive named Tony Orlando, persuading him to handle vocals on ''Knock Three Times'' -- a move that catapulted the song into pop history. Medress and production partner Dave Appell also produced the Orlando and Dawn hit ''Candida.''

In the 1980s, Medress helped former New York Dolls lead singer David Johansen reinvent himself as lounge lizard hipster Buster Poindexter, producing his debut album and the single ''Hot, Hot, Hot.''

From 1990-92, he served as president of EMI Music Publishing Canada. More recently, he worked as a consultant to Sound Exchange, a nonprofit group helping musicians collect royalties.

He was survived by four children and two grandchildren.

    'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' Singer Dies, NYT, 23.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Obit-Medress.html

Katrina Victim Fats Domino Performs

May 20, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:37 a.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Fats Domino took the stage before a sold-out crowd of hundreds in a New Orleans nightclub Saturday, marking the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer's first public performance since Hurricane Katrina.

Dressed in a snappy white jacket, the 79-year-old New Orleans icon was crisp and energetic as he sang and played the piano. The crowd jumped and screamed when he belted out ''Blueberry Hill.'' Domino was accompanied by his longtime friend and musical partner saxophonist Herbert Hardesty. The pair have been playing together since the mid-1940s.

Fans who for years longed to see Domino perform such hits as ''Blueberry Hill,'' ''Blue Monday,'' ''Ain't That a Shame'' and ''Walkin' to New Orleans'' finally got their wish.

Domino, whose real name is Antoine, lost his home, his pianos, his gold and platinum records, and much of the city he loves during Katrina. He was rescued by boat from his flooded 9th Ward home after the storm struck on Aug. 29, 2005.

Domino last performed in public on Memorial Day 2005 at a casino on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, said Haydee Ellis, a close friend of Domino.

The Tipitina's Foundation, which put on Saturday night's show, is working with such artists as Elton John, Tom Petty, Bonnie Raitt, Willie Nelson, B.B. King and others to record a tribute album of Domino's songs.

Proceeds will benefit the foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to providing the city's public schools with musical instruments and helping artists recover from the hurricane. Roughly 25 percent of the proceeds will go toward the restoration of Domino's home, said Bill Taylor, the foundation's executive director.

So far, the house's interior studs and beams have been rid of mold, and workers have begun installing new drywall. The back end of a pink 1959 Cadillac that for years sat in the living area and served as a couch is being restored. The room's walls will be painted to match their pre-storm pink color.

Domino's house is still surrounded by blocks of abandoned homes -- many untouched since Katrina. For more than a year, he has been living in a gated community in a New Orleans suburb.

Domino is expected to move back into his 9th Ward home later this year -- a sign of hope for many in the heavily devastated neighborhood, which some have said shouldn't be rebuilt.

------

On the Net:

Tipitina's Foundation: http://www.tipitinasfoundation.org 

    Katrina Victim Fats Domino Performs, NYT, 20.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Fats-Domino.html

Maestro Thomas Meets `Godfather of Soul'

May 18, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:12 p.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- When conductor Michael Tilson Thomas was a music student, he practically broke into a cold sweat the first time he heard James Brown on the radio.

''I was so struck by it that I actually had to pull to the side of the road, because I thought, `I can't concentrate on my driving and listen to this,''' the San Francisco Symphony music director recalls in an upcoming segment of ''The MTT Files,'' a series of radio shows he hosts.

The hour-long show -- called ''We Were Playing Boulez, But We Were Listening to James Brown'' -- includes an interview Thomas conducted with Brown in April 2006, eight months before the death of the ''Godfather of Soul'' at age 73.

''From the first day I heard James Brown's music, I waited anxiously for each new song he would release. He became a hero of mine,'' Thomas, 62, tells the audience.

Brown's song ''Cold Sweat'' in particular made a big impact.

''This music completely knocked me out. I wanted to share it with all my classical music colleagues,'' Thomas says.

''And it turned out all the hipper ones already knew the music. We were all amazed by the level of energy, the attacks, the precision, the syncopation, the wonderful empty spaces, the amazing singing, and the way you could use your ears to go down inside the music and explore all the amazing levels it had.''

Thomas asks Brown whether he realized what power he wielded over his audiences because of his intensity.

''Well, I think more like Moses. Moses didn't have power, he had influence. Only God's got power. What I tried to do was make them listen to me,'' Brown replied. ''That's a hard thing, to get people's attention.''

Brown then breaks into his soulful shout, ''Please, please, please, please'' and adds: ''I'm trying to get them excited, watching their faces, to show the unknown.''

''The MTT Files,'' produced by American Public Media and the San Francisco Symphony, is part of Thomas' multimedia ''Keeping Score'' education project about music. Check local public radio station listings for air times for the James Brown interview, the seventh of eight programs.

------

On the Net:

Keeping Score:

http://www.keepingscore.org/

    Maestro Thomas Meets `Godfather of Soul', NYT, 18.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-People-Brown-MTT.html

Musicians Stage Jazz Funeral for Batiste

May 12, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:09 p.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- A white and black-clad band led a hearse carrying the body of clarinetist Alvin Batiste and hundreds of mourners attached themselves to the jazz funeral Saturday for one of the city's most revered musicians.

In the morning, crowds lined up to pay homage to the jazz pioneer, whose body was laid out in Gallier Hall, an elegant Greek Revival building in the heart of the financial district.

A jazz procession complete with grand marshals twirling umbrellas then poured into the street, where traffic backed up for blocks.

Batiste, who toured with Ray Charles and Cannonball Adderley, recorded with Branford Marsalis and taught pianist Henry Butler, died May 6 of an apparent heart attack, hours before he was to perform with Harry Connick Jr. and Marsalis at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Though his age was not precisely known, festival officials said he was born in New Orleans in 1932.

Batiste was considered one of the founders of the modern jazz scene in the city. A longtime teacher at Southern University in Baton Rouge, he created the Batiste Jazz Institute -- one of the first programs of its kind in the nation -- and taught jazz at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts.

Although Batiste toured with Charles in 1958, he remained largely unknown until he recorded with Clarinet Summit in the 1980s. The quartet also included John Carter, David Murray, and Jimmy Hamilton.

Marsalis' record label released Batiste's latest CD, ''Marsalis Music Honors Alvin Batiste,'' just a few weeks ago. Marsalis also played on the album.

    Musicians Stage Jazz Funeral for Batiste, NYT, 12.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Batiste-Funeral.html

Guitar Innovator Les Paul Returns Home

May 11, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:53 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WAUKESHA, Wis. (AP) -- Guitar legend Les Paul enthralled a hometown crowd Thursday night at a concert that raised more than $100,000 for an exhibit on his life.

The 91-year-old Grammy winner hadn't played in Waukesha in decades. Even though he claimed earlier he's never nervous before going on stage, he admitted ''I was lying. I'm nervous tonight.''

Wearing a blue turtleneck and black slacks, Paul dazzled the crowd with his playing and with stories from his long career.

During his hour and a half concert, he joined his jazz trio in playing such tunes as ''Tennessee Waltz,'' ''Lady Is a Tramp'' and ''Embraceable You'' as the crowd paid rapt attention.

After ''Somewhere Over the Rainbow,'' Paul got emotional, telling the crowd it was his mother's favorite song.

''You have no idea what it means to be back here,'' he said.

At one point, he jokingly accused his piano player of missing a note but added that he's missed his share, too.

''All the time I've been playing the guitar, the notes I missed, I say I'm saving them for the next album,'' he cracked.

Paul said at an earlier news conference that his trip was stirring up memories, including the motivation to invent the solid-body electric guitar in the 1940s.

He recalled coming home from a gig after an audience member told him his guitar needed to be louder.

''I went home and I said to my mother, 'I've got a critic and the critic has something to say. It's up to me to do something about it. So I'll make an electric guitar,''' he said.

The invention caught on and helped Paul and his wife at the time, Mary Ford, record a series of hit records in the 1950s. Guitar-maker Gibson began mass-producing the Les Paul model in 1952. Many rock musicians became famous playing on the model.

''Thank God the younger generation latched onto it and said 'Look what we got here,''' he said.

Tickets for Paul's performance Thursday ranged from $300 to $375. All 350 tickets were sold, with all the money going to the Waukesha County Historical Society & Museum, which is raising money for the Les Paul exhibit. In March, Paul donated $25,000 to the museum.

Paul is also known for developing recording techniques such as close miking, multitracking and use of echo and delay. He's credited with introducing the first eight-track tape player in 1950s and building an early model synthesizer.

He's often called the ''Wizard of Waukesha,'' though he said he's not sure where it came from.

''I didn't create it. I don't care ... but if the shoe fits,'' he said with a laugh.

Paul, who lives in Mahwah, N.J., has donated many artifacts and memorabilia for the planned exhibit, a $3 million project expected to open in 2010.

Paul didn't need much warm-up time Thursday. He has played twice every Monday night with his trio at the Iridium Jazz Club in New York since 1996.

He said he had one regret about the hometown concert -- he wished some of his friends, who have since died, could have been around for it. Still, he was happy to come home.

''I think of the wonderful days I had and the people who taught me and who I grew up with,'' he said.

------

On the Net:

Waukesha County museum: http://www.wchsm.org/

    Guitar Innovator Les Paul Returns Home, NYT, 11.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Les-Paul.html

Thousands Bid Farewell to Singer Don Ho

May 6, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:26 a.m. ET
The New York Times

HONOLULU (AP) -- Thousands of people, some in electric wheelchairs and others in bikinis, gathered Saturday for a sunset memorial service on the beach at Waikiki for legendary Hawaiian crooner Don Ho.

As they have for decades, fans of different generations brought flowers and reminisced about the late entertainer's earlier years.

''I remember my mom would swoon every time she heard him sing. My dad would get so mad,'' said Rick Williams, of Visalia, Calif., who was wearing a T-shirt with Ho's unforgettable smile. ''Hawaii was two things back then: Don Ho and Pearl Harbor.''

Officials expected as many as 25,000 people to attend, which city officials said would make it one of the largest crowds ever in Waikiki. The city arranged extra buses, parking and traffic control.

Ho, known for his catchy signature tune ''Tiny Bubbles,'' died April 14 of heart failure at age 76.

At an earlier private ceremony on the grounds of the Sheraton Waikiki, guests included politicians, musicians and family members, all of whom where dressed in white, except for Ho's wife, Haumea, who wore a floral orange dress and a maile lei.

Some of his 10 children sang songs during the tearful ceremony. An Air Force honor guard presented a 21-gun salute and handed a U.S. flag to Ho's family. Ho had been a retired Air Force pilot.

Pastor Tom Ainucci called Ho an ''ambassador of the aloha spirit,'' who welcomed everyone and made the world a better place.

After the ceremony, Ho's ashes were taken by a double-hulled canoe about a quarter mile off Waikiki and scattered. The canoe was accompanied by dozens of surfers and a flotilla of other canoes.

Following the private ceremony, several island entertainers were to perform, with one of Ho's songs, ''I'll Remember You,'' sung by his 25-year-old daughter, Hoku.

Fans converged on every open spot of sand in Waikiki. Waves gently rolled in as Ho's playful music could be heard coming from several outdoor bars.

Connie Algoflah flew in Thursday from Buckeye, Ariz., just to attend the memorial. She arrived at the balmy beach seven hours before the 5 p.m. tribute, to stake out a front-sand seat.

Algoflah, 43, said she had a huge crush on Ho and used to skip school as a teenager in Oklahoma to watch ''The Don Ho Show.''

''We were extremely poor in this little run-down apartment. He was my escape into something beautiful,'' she said.

Waikiki was special to Ho, the face and voice of Hawaii to the world for decades.

''Waikiki to me is like a magnet for the world,'' he said in a 2005 interview with The Associated Press. ''Waikiki is a beacon. It's like a shining light.''

Ho had a breakout year in 1966, when appearances at the Coconut Grove in Hollywood helped him build a mainland following, and the release of ''Tiny Bubbles'' gave him his greatest recording success.

Soon he was packing places such as the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. Stars including Lucille Ball, Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra took in his shows.

Ho also became a TV star, hosting the ''The Don Ho Show'' on ABC during 1976-77.

Besides ''Tiny Bubbles,'' his other well-known songs include ''With All My Love,'' and the ''Hawaiian Wedding Song.''

Ho had suffered from heart problems for the past several years, and a pacemaker was implanted last fall. In 2005, he underwent an experimental stem cell procedure on his ailing heart in Thailand.

In one of his first interviews after the procedure, Ho told The AP that he couldn't wait to get back on stage. And he did, returning on a limited schedule less than two months later.

''A lot of people out there come every year to get their 'Tiny Bubbles' fix,'' he said then. ''So as long as they keep coming, I might as well keep doing it.''

    Thousands Bid Farewell to Singer Don Ho, NYT, 6.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Don-Ho-Memorial.html

Zola Taylor, 69, R&B Singer, Is Dead

May 2, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

LOS ANGELES, May 1 (AP) — Zola Taylor, the first woman to be a member of the 1950s R&B group the Platters and who was later one of three women claiming to be the widow of the pop idol Frankie Lymon, died on April 30 in Riverside, Calif. She was 69.

The cause was complications of pneumonia, said her nephew, Alfie Robinson. She had suffered several strokes in the past.

Herb Reed, a founding member of the Platters, said he spotted Ms. Taylor, the sister of Cornell Gunter of the Coasters, rehearsing with an all-female group in 1955.

The Platters, then all men, had just signed with the Mercury label after its single “Only You” topped the charts, and its manager thought they needed a woman’s voice to soften their sound. “She had this baby voice that everyone liked,” Mr. Reed said.

Mr. Reed said that Ms. Taylor, a contralto, turned out to be a great fit, charming audiences with both her smile and her vocal harmony. The group’s next hit, “The Great Pretender,” raced to the No. 1 spot on both R&B and pop music charts. Their success also inspired many other African-American groups to add female singers.

The popularity of the Platters began to fizzle after 1959, when four members were arrested in a Cincinnati hotel and accused of using drugs and soliciting prostitutes. Ms. Taylor was back in the spotlight in 1968, when she and two other women who claimed to be Mr. Lymon’s widow became embroiled in a bitter legal battle for his royalties. Mr. Lymon, a teen pop sensation in the 1950s with hits like “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?,” had died of a drug overdose in 1968 at age 25.

Ms. Taylor’s nephew said she told him that the two wed in Mexico while she was touring with the Platters and forgot to file papers in San Diego. The court found in favor of one of the other women. The drama was a focus of the 1998 Lymon biopic “Why Do Fools Fall in Love.” Halle Berry played Ms. Taylor.

Mr. Robinson, who was Ms. Taylor’s closest known living relative, said his aunt continued touring with other lesser-known acts until 1996 and married two other times. Her last husband died in 1982, he said. She had no children.

    Zola Taylor, 69, R&B Singer, Is Dead, NYT, 18.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/obituaries/02taylor.html?ex=1335758400&en=57888a1854d6e60b&ei=5088&printing=true

McCartney Is No. 3 on Music Rich List

April 27, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:26 a.m. ET
The New York Times

LONDON (AP) -- Paul McCartney is ranked third in an annual list of Britain's richest musical figures, with a fortune estimated at $1.4 billion.

The Sunday Times' annual Rich List, released Friday, said the former Beatle's fortune was down $200 million from last year, due to the estimated cost of his upcoming divorce from Heather Mills.

Clive Calder, the former Zomba records label boss whose acts included Britney Spears and 'N Sync, was at the top of the music list, with a fortune estimated at $2.6 billion.

Andrew Lloyd Webber was in second place at $1.5 billion. The composer has had a good year thanks to his role as producer of a West End revival of ''The Sound of Music,'' whose star was chosen by a reality TV program.

The list also includes: theater producer Cameron Mackintosh; ''American Idol'' impresario Simon Fuller; pop queen Madonna and her husband, Guy Ritchie; Elton John; Mick Jagger; entertainment entrepreneur Robert Stigwood; crooner Tom Jones; and Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards.

    McCartney Is No. 3 on Music Rich List, NYT, 27.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-People-McCartney.html

Punk icon Iggy Pop turns 60, dives off stage

Sun Apr 22, 2007
3:45AM EDT
Reuters
By Dean Goodman

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Iggy Pop marked his 60th birthday on Saturday just like any other respectable senior citizen would.

The eerily athletic "Godfather of Punk" stripped down to a tight pair of blue jeans and dived off the stage into the arms of his adoring fans during a concert in San Francisco with his reunited band the Stooges.

Towards the end of the 80-minute show, the crowd at the Warfield theater sang along as his bandmates struck up "Happy Birthday," and Pop was surprised as balloons bearing his image dropped from the ceiling.

A fan also handed him a white T-shirt inscribed "Birthday Boy Iggy," which the singer proudly displayed to his unimpressed bandmates.

Pop, whose real name is Jim Osterberg, seemed thrilled by all the attention, but did not dwell too much on the special occasion. He muttered a few thanks along the way before resuming his usual routine: manic singing and dancing, spitting into the crowd, scampering onto the speakers and throwing his microphone stand around the stage.

During the song "No Fun," he invited fans in the mosh pit to jump onto the stage, and generously shared his microphone with the motley troupe he termed the "Bay Area Dancers."

Pop no longer carves up his chest with a steak knife, rolls around in cut glass, smears himself in peanut butter, or follows a drug regimen that makes Keith Richards look like a choirboy. But the Michigan trailer-park kid otherwise outruns rockers one-third his age.

Pop is back on tour with the Stooges, the band with which he first made a splash in the late 1960s. Their enthusiastic garage rock, a dissonant distillation of Chicago blues and British Invasion rock, helped pave the way for punk rock bands like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols.

The Stooges self-destructed in 1974 after releasing three albums whose influence was not reflected by their meager sales. Pop ended up penniless in the gutters of the Sunset Strip, and checked into a psychiatric hospital. He launched a comeback in 1977 with the help of David Bowie, with whom he co-wrote such tunes as "Lust for Life" and "China Girl."

A prolific recording artist and touring act, he reunited with Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton and his brother, drummer Scott Asheton, in 2003. With California punk veteran Mike Watt subbing for late bass player Dave Alexander, they last month released their first album in 33 years, "The Weirdness."

After their North American tour ends on May 4 at the Beale Street Music Festival in Memphis, they will launch a brief summer tour of European festivals.

Reuters

    Punk icon Iggy Pop turns 60, dives off stage, R, 22.4.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN2029103520070422

Jazz Pianist - Composer Andrew Hill Dies

April 21, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:03 a.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- Jazzman Andrew Hill, a groundbreaking pianist and composer known for his complex post-bop style, died early Friday, his record label announced. He was 75.

Hill, who had been diagnosed with lung cancer three years ago, died at his Jersey City, N.J., home, according to Cem Kurosman of Blue Note Records. He had released his final album, ''Time Lines,'' in early 2006, a farewell that earned him album of the year honors from Down Beat magazine.

He was still performing just three weeks ago, when Hill appeared with his trio at a Manhattan church.

Hill was widely lauded within the jazz community; Blue Note founder Alfred Lion once described him as ''the next Thelonious Monk.'' But he was often overlooked by mainstream audiences which focused on contemporaries like Miles Davis and Charlie Parker. Hill had performed with both while a young man.

''In a jazz world that often celebrates imitators, Hill stands as a genuine original,'' said the announcement accompanying his 2003 International Jazzpar Prize, given by a Danish organization to recognize an active jazz performer.

Hill came to New York in 1961 to work with singer Dinah Washington. In 1963, he began a long association with Blue Note, where he released a series of post-bop albums that included the 1964 ''Point of Departure,'' which The New York Times hailed in 2000 as his greatest album.

But Hill spent most of the '70s and '80s teaching, releasing only occasional albums. After nearly a decade away from recording, Hill resurfaced in recent years with three new albums: ''Dusk'' with his Point of Departure Sextet in 2000; ''A Beautiful Day'' in 2002; and ''Time Lines'' last year.

In addition, his ''Passing Ships'' was released in 2004, 35 years after it was recorded. It had been shelved in 1969 because Blue Note considered it noncommercial.

Born in Chicago in 1931, Hill said he ''could play the piano as long as I've been talking.'' His professional career began in 1952, and he worked with Parker, Davis and tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins before releasing his debut album three years later.

------

On the Net:

http://www.andrewhilljazz.com

    Jazz Pianist - Composer Andrew Hill Dies, NYT, 21.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Obit-Hill.html

Music Execs Discuss Rap Lyrics

April 19, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:11 a.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- In the wake of Don Imus' firing for his on-air slur about the Rutgers women's basketball team, a high-powered group of music-industry executives met privately Wednesday to discuss sexist and misogynistic rap lyrics.

During the furor that led to Imus' fall last week from his talk-radio perch, many of his critics carped as well about offensive language in rap music.

The meeting, called by hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons' Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, was held at the New York home of Lyor Cohen, chairman and chief executive of U.S. music at Warner Music Group. The summit, which lasted several hours, did not result in any specific initiative.

Organizers billed the gathering as a forum to ''discuss issues challenging the industry in the wake of controversy surrounding hip-hop and the First Amendment.'' Afterward, they planned to hold a news conference at a Manhattan hotel to discuss ''initiatives agreed upon at the meeting.'' But by early afternoon, the news conference was postponed, because the meeting was still going on.

After the meeting ended, it was unclear whether there would be another one. Simmons' publicist released a short statement that described the topic as a ''complex issue that involves gender, race, culture and artistic expression. Everyone assembled today takes this issue very seriously.''

Although no recommendations emerged, the gathering was significant for its who's-who list of powerful music executives.

According to a roster released by Simmons on Wednesday, attendees included: Kevin Liles, executive vice president, Warner Music; L.A. Reid, chairman of Island Def Jam Music Group; Sylvia Rhone, president of Motown Records and executive vice president of Universal Music Group; Mitch Bainwol, chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America; and Damon Dash, Jay-Z's former Roc-A-Fella Records partner. Top-selling rapper T.I. also attended, organizers said.

Simmons declined to comment through a spokeswoman. But he appeared this week with others at a two-day town hall meeting on ''The Oprah Winfrey Show'' to discuss the issue. While Simmons, Liles and the rapper Common agreed ''there is a problem,'' Simmons cautioned against trying to limit rappers' free-speech rights.

He said that ''poets'' always come under fire for their unsanitized descriptions of the world.

''We're talking about a lot of these artists who come from the most extreme cases of poverty and ignorance ... And when they write a song, and they write it from their heart, and they're not educated, and they don't believe there's opportunity, they have a right, they have a right to say what's on their mind,'' he said.

''Whether it's our sexism, our racism, our homophobia or our violence, the hip-hop community sometimes can be a good mirror of our dirt and sometimes the dirt that we try to cover up,'' Simmons said. ''Pointing at the conditions that create these words from the rappers ... should be our No. 1 concern.''

Common said criticism of rappers and their music should come with love. ''When I talk to the cats, regardless of rap, when I talk to cats on the street, they don't wanna be in that situation,'' the rapper said. ''We don't wanna be in this painful situation. We want it to heal. And we are apologizing for ... the disrespect that does come from the mouths of men to women whatever color.''

Meanwhile, the Rev. Al Sharpton, who said he planned to challenge the recording industry on denigrating lyrics, announced he had suspended plans to honor Def Jam's L.A. Reid during this week's convention of his National Action Network in New York. Sharpton was among Imus' most vocal critics and demanded his firing.

Several rappers under Reid's label frequently use racial and sexual epithets.

Imus was fired last week by CBS, which owned his radio show, and MSNBC, which produced the TV simulcast, for having referred to the Rutgers players as ''nappy-headed hos.''

    Music Execs Discuss Rap Lyrics, NYT, 19.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Rap-Language.html

Merigold Journal

At Night, Farmer Trades His Tractor for the Blues

March 2, 2007
The New York Times
By ERIK ECKHOLM

MERIGOLD, Miss. — Thursday is known as “family night” at Po’ Monkey’s juke joint here, but that doesn’t mean you should bring your kids to this patched-up sharecropper shack that has swayed with rhythms and blues for nearly 50 years.

The distinction here is with Monday, the only other night that Po’ Monkey né Willie Seaberry, 65 and a farmworker by day, opens his little club. On Mondays, the strippers make the two-hour drive from Memphis to work a raunchier crowd for tips.

Not that some Thursday patrons, mostly black men and women, middle-age and up, aren’t above a little dirty dancing themselves, although fully clothed. The D.J. stretches his definition of the blues, playing modern R&B that has every bottom shaking.

If there is a floor show on Thursdays at this club, one of the last old-style juke joints, the kind where the Delta blues once incubated, it is offered by Mr. Seaberry himself.

Around 9 p.m., as patrons begin to fill a room decorated with toy monkeys, beer posters and a silver disco ball, Mr. Seaberry emerges in a startling suit of red with white pinstripes and a snazzy white hat, and smoking a cheroot.

He works the crowd, which includes retired teachers, current and former farmworkers and a sheriff from Greenville, as he ferries $2 cans of beer.

An irrepressibly smiley man with a trimmed moustache, Mr. Seaberry grew up in a nearby shack, at the tail of the era when mechanization of cotton farming and the lure of Chicago depopulated the region.

But he has never let poverty stop him from strutting.

Later, he disappears to his bedroom at the back and re-emerges, now wearing a white suit; soon, he changes into a plaid suit with a red derby, and still later into dark pink.

“If I don’t get out there acting like a clown, people think there’s something wrong with me,” Mr. Seaberry explained. He said he owned more than 100 suits.

“A lot of folks wanted to get out, listen to the blues and fight and shoot,” he said of the onetime proliferation of such clubs, adding that his own has never seen much violence.

For much of the last century, juke joints were the main nightspots for rural blacks. Now, with the casinos of Greenville a half-hour away and younger blacks into hip-hop, Mr. Seaberry does not open his club on weekends.

The word “juke” is believed to be derived from the African-influenced Gullah dialect of the Southeast coast, in which “jook” means “disorderly” or “wicked.” In 1934, the folklorist Zora Neale Hurston wrote, “Jook is a word for a Negro pleasure house,” often a “bawdy house” where black workers “dance, drink and gamble.”

In the Delta of northwest Mississippi, an alluvial plain where cotton and sharecropping long ruled, juke joints were condemned by preachers as the houses of the devil, but they offered welcome relief from drudgery. Touring these clubs in the early 20th century, men like Charlie Patton, Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson pioneered the blues as an art form.

Just when did Mr. Seaberry start the club? His own memories can be vague.

“I don’t know exactly to a T,” he said. “Maybe 40 or 50 years ago.”

And what is the source of the name?

“Po’ Monkey is all anybody ever called me since I was little,” he said. “I don’t know why, except I was poor for sure.”

He doesn’t recall any blues stars ever playing at his club, which has live music on special occasions. The place doesn’t make much, he said — guests pay $5 to enter and can buy beer or bring their own liquor and buy mixers. The pool table costs 75 cents a game.

“I was going to get married once, even got a license,” he said, “but we started getting into it, and the preacher never did register that license.”

He has farmed all his life. Now, on the adjacent corporate farm, he spends these days in overalls on a tractor, preparing fields for soybean planting.

Alfred Kemp, 67, who was helping serve drinks, said, “I grew up here with Willie, chopping and picking cotton.” He thinks the club opened around 1961.

“When I was a boy, there was a juke joint every five miles,” he said. “Now this is the only one around.”

In earlier, tenser days, the local white people seldom ventured to Po’ Monkey’s, but in the last decade some have started dropping in.

Blues fans from Japan and Europe have also found their way down the unmarked gravel track off Highway 61, seeking an authentic juke joint experience as they tour Delta landmarks. But on the music front they may be disappointed. Although Mr. Seaberry said, “I love all music as long as it’s the blues,” the line drawn in his club is at hip-hop culture. Hand-lettered signs say “No Rap Music, Just Blues,” and ban baggy, falling-down pants.

The other night, the 38-year-old D.J. spun nary a B. B. King song, let alone the earlier blues that grew out of gospel, field chants and brilliant guitar innovations.

“Let’s hear some oldies,” the D.J. announced as he put on a Bobby Bland song from the 1960s and then a revved-up version of Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get it On,” a 1970s hit.

“No one really wants to hear the old blues any more,” Mr. Kemp, Po’ Monkey’s boyhood friend, said.

But he added, “For almost 50 years, we’ve been having a good time here.”

    At Night, Farmer Trades His Tractor for the Blues, NYT, 2.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/us/02jukejoint.html

Denny Doherty, 66,

Mamas and Papas Singer, Dies

January 20, 2007
The New York Times
By BEN SISARIO

Denny Doherty, a founding member of the 1960s folk-pop band the Mamas and the Papas, died yesterday at his home in Mississauga, Ontario. He was 66.

The cause was not immediately known, his daughter Emberly said. But she said her father had recently suffered kidney failure after surgery for a stomach aneurysm.

With chiming guitars and rich, meticulous harmonies that could be tinged with darkness, the Mamas and the Papas became one of the most popular and influential American bands of the era between the Beatles’ arrival and Woodstock. Their enduring hits, like “California Dreamin’,” “Monday, Monday” and “Dedicated to the One I Love,” mixed the gentle jangle of folk with a rock backbeat and sweet, layered pop vocals.

Though John Phillips was the group’s principal songwriter, Mr. Doherty sang most of the male leads, in a clear, friendly tenor that he occasionally punctuated with rock ’n’ roll growls. In “California Dreamin’,” the group’s first hit, the singers harmonize about being stuck among the brown leaves and cold gray skies of winter, and pining for sunny respite. But Mr. Doherty’s lead on the verse suggests that his wishes may go unfulfilled:

Well, I got down on my knees

And I pretend to pray

You know the preacher likes the cold

He knows I’m gonna stay

The song was released in late 1965 after the group signed with the Dunhill label. After stalling at first, it entered the charts the next year in the dead of February — with particular popularity in the Northeast — and reached No. 4.

The Mamas and the Papas, who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, were one of the first major rock groups to include both women and men in equal performing roles, with Mr. Doherty, Mr. Phillips, Michelle Phillips and Cass Elliot striking an image of casual, collegiate friendship. In reality, they were a destructive tangle of love affairs, accompanied by plenty of drugs and alcohol.

“It was an untenable situation,” Mr. Doherty said in an interview with The New York Times in 2000. “Cass wanted me, I wanted Michelle, John wanted Michelle, Michelle wanted me, she wanted her freedom. ...”

In 1968, the Phillipses divorced and the group dissolved, but it had a brief reunion in the early ’70s.

Though the Mamas and the Papas became associated with Los Angeles, the group had its origins in the Greenwich Village folk scene of the early ’60s. Mr. Doherty, who was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, was playing in a group called the Halifax Three. After it broke up, he joined Ms. Elliot’s band, the Big Three, which changed its name to the Mugwumps and went electric.

Mr. Phillips, meanwhile, was playing in the Journeymen with Ms. Phillips, and after the Mugwumps disbanded, Mr. Doherty joined them in the New Journeymen. With Ms. Elliot in tow, the new group went to St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands to rehearse, and eventually moved to Los Angeles. (The whole picaresque history, with shout-outs to former band mates like John Sebastian of the Lovin’ Spoonful, is recounted in the group’s “Creeque Alley,” a No. 5 hit in 1967.)

Mr. Doherty, who used some of the riches the group collected to buy a house in the Laurel Canyon section of Los Angeles that had once been owned by the Hollywood actress Mary Astor, released two solo albums in the early ’70s and starred in a Broadway show, “Man on the Moon,” written by Mr. Phillips and produced by Andy Warhol. It began performances in late 1974 and closed five weeks later.

Ms. Elliot died in 1974, and Mr. Phillips died in 2001.

The Mamas and the Papas had another reunion in the early ’80s, with Mr. Phillips, Mr. Doherty, Mr. Phillips’s daughter Mackenzie and Elaine (Spanky) McFarlane.

After returning to Canada, Mr. Doherty pursued his acting career, starring in “Theodore Tugboat,” a popular children’s television show produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Company, which ran for most of the 1990s. As the only human on the show, he played the character of the Harbor Master, introducing each segment. It was broadcast on about 200 PBS affiliates and was shown in 80 countries.

Mr. Doherty also developed an autobiographical stage show, “Dream a Little Dream: The Nearly True Story of the Mamas and the Papas,” starting it in Halifax in 1999. He performed it Off Broadway at the Village Theater in 2003.

In addition to Emberly, Mr. Doherty’s survivors include another daughter, Jessica Woods, and a son, John Doherty, also of Mississauga; and three sisters and a brother.

Denny Doherty, 66, Mamas and Papas Singer, Dies, NYT, 20.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/20/arts/music/20doherty.html