ASSOCIATED PRESS: Joe Paterno, who racked up more wins than anyone else in major college football but was fired from Penn State amid a child sex abuse scandal has died. He was 85. His family released a statement Sunday morning to announce his death. Paterno’s son Scott announced Nov. 18 that his father was being treated for lung cancer, which was diagnosed in mid-November during a follow-up visit for a bronchial illness. The storied career of “JoePa” included 409 wins in 46 seasons and two national championships. But his reputation for success with honor was shattered when a former assistant […]
RIP: Alex Chilton, Pop Auteur, Dead At 59
MEMPHIS COMMERCIAL APPEAL: Alex Chilton, the pop hitmaker, cult icon and Memphis rock iconoclast best known as a member of 1960s pop-soul act the Box Tops and the 1970s power-pop act Big Star, died Wednesday at a hospital in New Orleans. The singer, songwriter and guitarist was 59. “I’m crushed. We’re all just crushed,” said John Fry, owner of Memphis’ Ardent Studios and a longtime friend of Chilton’s. “This sudden death experience is never something that you’re prepared for. And yet it occurs.” Chilton and Big Star had been scheduled to play Saturday as part of the South by Southwest […]
RIP: Actor Peter Graves Dead At 83
NEW YORK TIMES: Peter Graves, the cool spymaster of television’s “Mission: Impossible” and the dignified host of the “Biography” series, who successfully spoofed his own gravitas in the “Airplane!” movie farces, died on Sunday. He was 83. He died of a heart attack at his home in Pacific Palisades, Calif., said Fred Barman, his business manager. It was a testament to Mr. Graves’s earnest, unhammy ability to make fun of himself that after decades of playing square he-men and straitlaced authority figures, he was perhaps best known to younger audiences for a deadpan line in “Airplane!” (“Joey, do you like […]
RIP: Jack Rose, Kensington Bluesman, Dead At 38
SPINNER: Jack Rose, a renowned Philadelphia-based acoustic guitarist, has died of a heart attack at 38, the Philadelphia Daily News reports. Rose was considered instrumental in bringing ragtime into the modern era and transforming it into something that was both referential and original. But as a self-taught player proficient on the guitar, including the 6-string, 12-string and lap steel, he brought a wide range of influences to his music. Explaining his process in a 2007 interview, Rose said his favorite music was “anything that’s pre 1942; Cajun, Country, Blues, Jazz all that stuff… that’s my favorite kind of music.” Rose […]
RIP: Folk Singer Mary Travers Dead At 72
LOS ANGELES TIMES: It wasn’t all free love and hallucinogens in the ’60s. Hundreds of thousands marched for civil rights and peace, and folk music was the galvanizing voice of freedom and change. Peter, Paul and Mary, the legendary trio who helped promulgate that spirit of activism, could be considered relics of a decade of chaos and transmutation, but for the fact that they’ve kept the faith for more than 30 years. Together and separately, Peter Yarrow, Noel (Paul) Stookey and Mary Travers have raised their voices for peace, for a nuclear-free America, to support the homeless and to protest […]
TRAGIC: Bettie Page Is Dead
LOS ANGELES TIMES: Bettie Page, the brunet pinup queen with a shoulder-length pageboy hairdo and kitschy bangs whose saucy photos helped usher in the sexual revolution of the 1960s, has died. She was 85. Page, whose later life was marked by depression, violent mood swings and several years in a state mental institution, died Thursday night at Kindred Hospital in Los Angeles, where she had been on life support since suffering a heart attack Dec. 2, according to her agent, Mark Roesler. A cult figure, Page was most famous for the estimated 20,000 4-by-5-inch black-and-white glossy photographs taken by amateur […]