NEW YORK TIMES: George Jones, the definitive country singer of the last half-century, whose songs about heartbreak and hard drinking echoed his own life, died on Friday in Nashville. He was 81. Mr. Jones — nicknamed Possum for his close-set eyes and pointed nose and later No-Show Jones for the concerts he missed during drinking and drug binges — was universally respected and just as widely imitated. With a baritone voice that was as elastic as a steel-guitar string, he found vulnerability and doubt behind the cheerful drive of honky-tonk and brought suspense to every syllable, merging bluesy slides […]

Amen, brother. ASSOCIATED PRESS: His performance at the three-day 1969 Woodstock Festival, where headliners included Jimi Hendrix, was a turning point in his career. He was the first act to hit the stage, performing for nearly three hours. His performance of “Freedom” — based from the spiritual “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” — became an anthem. Woodstock remains one of the events that continues to define the 1960s in the popular imagination. Performers included The Who, Janis Joplin, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and dozens of others, and the trippy anarchy of Woodstock has become legendary. There was […]

  GOLLANCZ: Paul Williams died yesterday, aged 64.  I don’t expect this means anything to most people who visit this blog, but you should honour his memory for various reasons. In the wider realm of popular culture, you should honour him as the founding father of rock journalism.  The magazine he founded as a 17-year-old college student in 1966, Crawdaddy!, was the first publication to focus on serious writing about the then-new music.  It launched the career of writers such as Jon Landau (who went on to become Bruce Springsteen’s manager), Sandy Pearlman, and Richard Meltzer.  It was the inspiration […]

  The Troggs were the party in Austin Powers’ pants. Let the record show that Reg Presley’s libidinous lead vocal on The Troggs’ primal, garage-rock-defining stomp through “Wild Thing” remains the second or third greatest rock n’ roll vocal of all time. Right up there with Richard Berry’s gloriously indecipherable blurt on The Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie” and Little Richard’s rawboned shriek on “Lucille.” Also, The Troggs is the best band name ever. He will be missed. REUTERS: Presley announced in January 2012 that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer after falling ill during a performance in Germany. He began […]

  INQUIRER: By the early 1960s, she had achieved unparalleled local fame and, arguably, the status of most beloved figure in Philadelphia broadcasting history. On any given afternoon a sizable percentage of local kids (and, often, their stay-at-home moms) were tuned in to “Popeye Theater.” She was so instrumental in introducing the Three Stooges to a new generation of fans that, in 1965, the comedy troupe invited her to appear as gunslinger Belle Starr in their final film, “The Outlaws Is Coming.” Even in a market that boasted such kiddie-show heavy hitters as Happy the Clown, Gene London, Chief Halftown, […]

  TIME: The love-to-hate-him (her) character is by now a staple of TV. But rarely has there been an actor who so palpably enjoyed being love-to-hated as Larry Hagman. Hagman died of throat cancer Friday at age 81, in the place where he spent much of his childhood and working life, and the place where Americans came to hiss-applaud him as oil tycoon J.R. Ewing—Dallas. Hagman was born near Fort Worth in 1931, into a part-showbiz family—his mother was a Broadway actress—and spent his childhood in Texas, California and New York. He kicked off his showbiz career in Dallas, working […]

  NEW YORK TIMES: Arlen Specter, the irascible senator from Pennsylvania who was at the center of many of the Senate’s most divisive legal battles — from the Supreme Court nominations of Robert H. Bork and Clarence Thomas to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton — only to lose his seat in 2010 after quitting the Republican Party to become a Democrat, died Sunday morning at his home in Philadelphia. He was 82. The cause was complications of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, his son Shanin said. Mr. Specter had previously fought Hodgkin’s disease, and had survived both a brain tumor and heart […]

Illustration by ALEX FINE We just learned the sad news that New Jersey medical marijuana activist Diane Riportella succumbed to ALS on August 31st. Riportella’s struggle with ALS and her quest to get medical marijuana legislation passed was the subject of a July 2010 cover story we wrote for PW. Here is an excerpt: Of all the shitty ways to die, ALS is arguably the shittiest. Also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, ALS stands for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and in short it is slow death brought on by the steady and methodical withering of the nerves that control your muscles. […]