Favorite Seventies Artists In The News

Posted by Administrator on March 17th, 2021

An undergarments company called Stance unveiled a new line of Grateful Dead-inspired socks in the third week of March. Featuring five unique designs -- ranging from a red, white and blue skull logo and grey tie-dye "dancing Dead" pattern to a blue tie-dye band signature "American Beauty" rose logo -- the collection ranges in price from $16.99 to $29.99, with the unisex socks available in men's sizes 3-13 and women's sizes 5-14. All the socks can be viewed on the Stance.com website. Stance is also offering a reversible Grateful Dead face masks in support of their Stance for Scrubs campaign, an initiative that donates a pair of socks to healthcare workers for every mask sold. The adjustable mask features a blue tie-dye and a sleek black design to choose from. - Billboard, 3/16/21...... As Black Sabbath recently reissued deluxe editions of three of its titles -- including 1972's Vol. 4, 1980's Heaven and Hell, and 1981's Mob Rules, co-founding bassist Geezer Butler says he has fond memories of the recording of all three albums -- particularly the Vol. 4 session in Los Angeles when the band was all living together in the same house. "It was mental. Completely mental!" Butler told Billboard.com. "We used to have bucketloads of cocaine there, and we had this big bowl in the middle of the table, full of cocaine. One day Ozzy [Osbourne] noticed this button below one of the windows; He kept pressing it, 'I wonder what this does?' The next thing, the police turned up -- it was a panic button. And there was us with this great big bowl of cocaine in the middle. So we dumped all the cocaine down the toilet and ran upstairs to get rid of our own stashes. The coppers went, 'What's the problem?' 'Oh, nothing...' 'OK, see ya...' And we'd dumped about five grams of cocaine down the bog!" Meanwhile, co-founding Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi has revealed that a Black Sabbath biopic has been discussed, following in the footsteps of such hit rock biopics showcasing Queen and Elton John. "Yes, there was talk of it, and I don't know what happened," Iommi told Spin magazine.. "It sort of went out the window when all this thing [coronavirus pandemic] started. But we were talking about probably 18 months ago, about doing the biopic. I haven't heard much else." Talking to SiriusXM radio show host Eddie Trunk in another interview, Iommi said he was "not at all happy" about the leak of a previously unheard Black Sabbath song called "Slapback," which was uploaded to YouTube earlier in March. "I'm not at all happy with it at all," Iommi told Trunk when asked about the track. "And it's left a really bad taste in my mouth," he added about the song, which features the late Ronnie James Dio on vocals and reportedly dates from the sessions for 1979's Heaven and Hell. "That is actually Ronnie playing bass on that. And that was just in the lounge recorded on a cassette," Iommi said. xplaining why the track was not previously released, he said: "We had one or two things that we'd jam around on and play on and stuff, but it wasn't right for the album, so we didn't put it into shape; we didn't record it or anything," he explained. - Billboard/New Musical Express, 3/15/21...... In other Sabbath-related news, Ozzy Osbourne's wife Sharon Osbourne has clarified her stance following accusations of racism on the weekday The Talk program, which she co-hosts. Osbourne was among those who publicly defended combative UK television host Piers Morgan following his remarks about Meghan Markle and subsequent exit from ITV's Good Morning Britain. Osbourne had tweeted earlier: "After some reflection, after sitting with your comments & sitting with my heart I would like to address the discussion on 'The Talk' this past Wednesday. I have always been embraced with so much love & support from the Black community & I have deep respect & love for the Black community. To anyone of color that I offended and/or to anyone that feels confused or let down by what I said, I am truly sorry. I panicked, felt blindsided, got defensive & allowed my fear & horror of being accused of being racist take over. There are very few things that hurt my heart more than racism so to feel associated with that spun me fast! I am not perfect, I am still learning like the rest of us & will continue to learn, listen and do better." Morgan then sprung to Sharon's defense on Twitter and demanded an apology from Sharon's "bullies": "Sharon's been shamed & bullied into apologizing for defending me against colleagues accusing me of racism because I don't believe Meghan Markle's bullsh--," he tweeted. "This is where we've reached. I demand an apology from those @TheTalkCBS bullies for their disgraceful slurs against ME." Morgan and Osbourne served together as judges on America's Got Talent. - Reuters/Variety.com, 3/12/21...... A rare master Betacam digital tape of a documentary which told the story of the Sex Pistols' rise to fame (or infamy) in the 1970s is expected to reach up to £10,000 at auction. The tape contains footage of Julien Temple's 2000 Sex Pistols documentary The Filth & The Fury: A Sex Pistols Film, which is readily available on DVD but without the master tape's 12-minutes of videos made for the songs "God Save the Queen," "Pretty Vacant" and "Holidays in the Sun," interspersed with interviews with Johnny Rotten [John Lydon] and co. and the band's management. Claire Howell, a music memorabilia consultant at Hansons, described the tape as "an exceptionally rare piece of musical history celebrating an iconic group who smashed their way to fame in the mid-70s and broke the mould when it came to music, fashion, style and attitude. The vendor firmly believes it is a one-off master tape as it came directly from the production company, Resolution Studios. The 'rockumentary' was made in 2000 but it was actually released on DVD on September 24, 2007 which is why the tape coming up for auction is dated 2007." Howell added that the tape is being sold by a private memorabilia collector who previously discovered it at an auction in Retford, Nottinghamshire. It is now set to go under the hammer on Mar. 23, with initial estimates placing it between £5000 - £10,000. Meanwhile, shooting began earlier in March in London on the Danny Boyle-directed Sex Pistols documentary Pistol which is slated to air in 2022 on FX on Hulu. - NME, 3/16/21...... In a new interview with OK! magazine, Cliff Richard admitted that it used to "bother" him that he never had a big fanbase in the US but lately he's thankful for that because it means he can go unrecognized when he's traveling in the States. "I never broke America -- when I was young that used to bother me but now I'm glad that I never did because I can walk around there in peace and quiet," Sir Cliff noted. "My US label weren't bothered about releasing I'm Nearly Famous [in 1975], so Elton [John] put it out in the US on his Rocket label and 'Devil Woman', the single taken from it, went top 10 there," he added. Elton's decision to release Richard's album on his record label and Richard's disire to see it do well saw the Christian crooner tagged with a new nickname from Sir Elton. "Elton likes calling his male friends by female names -- he always calls Rod Stewart 'Phyllis' and he called me 'Silvia Disc' because he said I was always ringing his management office to ask if my record had gone silver yet," Richard said, adding "Is that true? I couldn't possibly comment." - Music-News.com, 3/14/21...... Eddie Van Halen's son Wolf Van Halen has revealed that he passed on the opportunity to perform a tribute to his late father at the 2021 Grammys. While the Mar. 14 awards ceremony featured performances honouring the late John Prine, Little Richard, Kenny Rogers and Gerry Marsden, pundits and VH fans were left scratching their heads when rock guitar virtuoso Eddie Van Halen, who passed away in October 2020 following a battle with throat cancer, was not given the same kind of tribute. Wolf took to Twitter to clarify his decision not to perform a tribute to his father at the Grammys, who he says had approached him to perform VH's classic "Eruption." I declined. I don't think anyone could have lived up to what my father did for music but himself," Van Halen explained in an extended Twitter post. Wolf said in declining, he presumed that another tribute would be organized. Instead, the Grammys included a short clip of Eddie Van Halen in its "In Memoriam" section and only briefly displayed his guitar on stage. "I didn't realize that they would only show Pop for 15 seconds in the middle of 4 full performances for others we had lost. What hurt the most was that he wasn't even mentioned when they talked about artists we lost in the beginning of the show. I know Pop would probably just laugh it off and say 'Ehh who gives a shit?' He was only about the music anyway. The rest didn't matter," Wolf said, adding that he hoped he would have "the opportunity to speak with The Recording Academy not only about the legacy of my father, but the legacy of the rock genre moving forward." - NME, 3/16/21...... '80s rocker Jon Bon Jovi has recalled the time when Mick Jagger once pretended to be in a band with Bon Jovi before the New Jersey rocker skyrocketed to fame. Appearing on Gary Kemp and Guy Pratt's Rockonteurs podcast, Bon Jovi recalled the time he spent working at The Power Station recording studio in New York when he was just 18 years old: "I'll never forget this, I was outside paying my cabby... and The [Rolling] Stones got out of whatever car it was they were getting out of," he explained. "At the same time, they were going into the studio and a photographer jumps out of a trash bin and the paparazzi starts taking pictures. I swear to god this is true. The Stones, they open up the door of the studio... [Bill] Wyman, Mick and Keith [Richards]. They go into the studio." He continued: "The photographer is screaming, 'Mick, Mick, Mick! Give us a picture!' and I swear to you, he grabs me and these kids and he says, 'Here's my new band, The Frogs' And we took a f----ing picture." Bon Jovi also recalled witnessing the famous collaboration of David Bowie and Queen's Freddie Mercury at the same studio. He said he spotted the pair at the studios one night as they recorded their 1981 collaboration "Under Pressure." "No one believes what I saw," he said. - NME, 3/15/21...... Speaking of Queen, a new set of collectible statues of the band are set to be released later in 2021. Limited edition statues of Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon are currently in production by KnuckleBonz. The hand-crafted pieces are modelled on the band from their 1981 concert in Montreal. Officially licensed and approved by Queen, each statue is hand-painted, numbered and comes with a certificate of authenticity on the base. Limited to 3000, the Rock Iconz series celebrates the world's greatest music performers in a limited-edition collector series. The statues can be pre-ordered on the Knucklebonz.com site. - NME, 3/14/21...... On Mar. 16, Elton John criticised the Vatican over its decision not to allow gay marriage in the Catholic church. Replying to a question on whether Catholic priests could bless homosexual couples, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) said the day earlier that same-sex nuptials "cannot be considered licit." The formal response from the Vatican's orthodoxy office, which has been approved by Pope Francis, claimed that "God does not and cannot bless sin". In 2020, the pope endorsed gay civil unions during a documentary interview. Taking to Instagram, John shared screenshots of news articles on the Vatican's response while highlighting its apparent "hypocrisy." "How can the Vatican refuse to bless gay marriages because they 'are sin', yet happily make a profit from investing millions in Rocketman - a film which celebrates [me] finding happiness from my marriage to David [Furnish]??," Elton wrote. The Rocketman signed off with the hashtag "#hypocrisy" before tagging the accounts of his husband, Vatican News, Pope Francis and the Catholic Church. John, who has long been an advocate for LGBTQ rights, tied the knot to his partner Furnish in 2014 -- the year that same-sex marriage became legal in England and Wales. The pair had previously been in a civil partnership since 2005. - NME, 3/15/21...... The guitar famously played by Elvis Presley during his 1968 "Comeback Special" will go under the hammer during live bidding on Mar. 27. Presley's flaming red Hagstrom Viking II guitar, which was also featured on the cover of his From Elvis in Memphis LP in 1969, is being auctioned by Kruse GWS Auctions. The eye-catching instrument was used by the king of rock 'n' roll during his nationally televised 1968 NBC special after the star had devoted much of the previous seven years to his movie career. The guitar first belonged to American guitarist Al Casey, who was asked by producers to let Elvis use it during his TV special because of the guitar's flashy and fiery appeal. According to the auctioneers, it has not been offered for auction since the 1990s. It will have a starting bid of $250,000 in the auction, which will also sell such collectables as Michael Jackson's crystal-studded glove, Elizabeth Taylor's blue pearl drop earrings, and a 1950 Cadillac Fleetwood featured in the 1972 movie The Godfather. - CNN.com, 3/14/21...... Sally Grossman, the wife of Bob Dylan's former manager Albert Grossman and who was immortalized on the sleeve of Dylan's 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home, has died aged 81. Ms. Grossman's niece Anna Buehler confirmed to Rolling Stone magazine that that she died in her sleep at home in Woodstock, N.Y., on Mar. 10. Few knew who Ms. Grossman was when she appeared next to Dylan on the striking cover of the Bringing It All Back Home LP, but it was revealed in time that she was the wife of Dylan's then-manager Albert Grossman. The Grossmans both had a significant impact on Dylan's career and also worked with Janis Joplin, The Band and Todd Rundgren, among others. After her husband's death from's heart attack on a flight from the U.S. to Europe in 1986, Ms. Grossman carried on his legacy by overseeing his legendary studio Bearsville and associated record label Bearsville Records. A tribute to Ms. Grossman has been shared on Twitter by author Neil Gaiman, who wrote: "I'm sad to hear that Sally Grossman has passed away. She was funny, salty, sometimes grumpy (but I think she liked me) a smart businesswoman and a fount of stories. No more lunches at the Little Bear. The couch (her wedding present from Mary Travers) is empty now." - NME, 3/15/21...... Veteran actor Yaphet Kotto, most famous for starring as a villainous kingpin in the 1973 James Bond movie Live And Let Die, has passed away at age 81 at his home in the Phillipines. The news was broken by Mr. Kotto's wife Tessie Sinahon on Facebook on Mar. 15. "I'm saddened and still in shocked of the passing of my husband Yaphet of 24 years," she posted. "He died last night around 10:30pm Philippine time... You played a villain on some of your movies but for me you're a real hero and to a lot of people also. A good man, a good father, a good husband and a decent human being, very rare to find. One of the best actor in Hollywood a Legend. Rest in Peace Honey, I'm gonna miss you everyday, my best friend, my rock," she added. As well as starring in Live and Let Die -- in which he pulled double duty playing dictator Dr. Kananga and his alter ego Mr. Big -- Mr. Kotto famously played technician Dennis Parker in 1979 movie Alien, and appeared opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1987 action film The Running Man. He also enjoyed success on the small screen, starring as Al Giardello in the series Homicide: Life on the Street from 1993 to 1999. Mr. Kotto's final role before his death saw him voice the character of Parker once again for the "Alien: Isolation" video game. He is survived by his wife and six children. - WENN/Canoe.com, 3/16/21...... It has been announced that UK actress Nicola Pagett, best known for playing the rebellious and thoroughly spoiled Elizabeth Bellamy on the beloved British television series Upstairs, Downstairs, died on Mar. 3 at a hospice center in suburban London. She was 75. Pagett's daughter, Eve Swannell, says her mother's cause of death was a brain tumor. Although Pagett once said she preferred the stage, she won praise for her work in Upstairs, Downstairs as well as the title role in an acclaimed BBC version of Anna Karenina. - The New York Times, 3/17/21.

Paul McCartney announced on Mar. 11 that he'll release a "reimagined" version of his 2020 album McCartney III with collaborations from the likes of alternative fave Beck and such rising artists as St Vincent, Damon Albarn, Phoebe Bridgers, Josh Homme and many more. Due on Apr. 16 in digital and July 23 on CD and vinyl, McCartney III Imagined will also feature Dominic Fike's hypnotic cover of McCartney III's "The Kiss of Venus," a video of which Fike has shared on YouTube. Confirmation of McCartney III Imagined came after Macca took to Instagram on Mar. 10 to share a short video clip that sees handfuls of multi-coloured dice rolled into different positions. In addition to the number three, the dice also featured the names of the artists taking part. - New Musical Express, 3/11/21...... In a new interview with Guitar Player magazine, David Gilmour of Pink Floyd quashed a potential Floyd reunion, admitting he "absolutely" doesn't want to perform stadium gigs again and is enjoying his freedom. "It has run its course, we are done," Gilmour told the magazine. "I'm all for Roger [Waters] doing whatever he wants to do and enjoying himself. But I absolutely don't want to go back. I don't want to go and play stadiums. I'm free to do exactly what I want to do and how I want to do it," he added. Gilmour's comments come after Waters revealed in a 2020 interview that he unsuccessfully attempted to make peace with Gilmour and their bandmate Nick Mason. "About a year ago, I convened a sort of Camp David for the surviving members of Pink Floyd at a hotel at an airport in London, where I proposed all kinds of measures to get past this awful impasse that we have and the predicament we find ourselves in," said Waters, who went on to criticize Gilmour and accuse him of "banning" him from the official Pink Floyd website. Waters added that Gilmour "thinks he owns" Pink Floyd and that "it seems to me that it would be fair and correct if we should have equal access to you all and share our projects." "I think he thinks that because I left the band in 1985, that he owns Pink Floyd, that he is Pink Floyd and I'm irrelevant and I should just keep my mouth shut," Waters said. While a reunion might not be forthcoming, Pink Floyd fans can at least take comfort in listening to the band's hallowed 1990 gig at Knebworth which is being released as a full live album in April. Pink Floyd - Live At Knebworth 1990 will be released via Warner Music on CD, double vinyl and digital versions on Apr. 30. The band headlined the Silver Clef Award Winners concert at Knebworth House, Hertfordshire in June 1990, which also featured live performances from the likes of Paul McCartney, Dire Straits and Phil Collins with Genesis. - NME, 3/11/21...... Kenneth Branagh, the Oscar-nominated director of such acclaimed films as Dunkirk, Wallander and Henry V, has been tapped to direct the upcoming Bee Gees biopic, it was reported on Mar. 11. A deal for the as-yet-untitled film was made back in 2019 when it was announced that Graham King -- who produced the Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody -- had teamed up with Paramount Pictures to create the project. Producing the project will be Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, alongside GK Films and the production company Sister. Sole surviving Bee Gees member Barry Gibb, who participated in the 2020 Bee Gees documentary How Can You Mend a Broken Heart, will serve as an executive producer. Paramount has also acquired the rights to Bee Gees songs from the Gibb estate on behalf of King, allowing the trio's extensive back catalogue to be used in the movie. Casting and a release date for the film have yet to be announced. - NME, 3/11/21...... In an act of unity and support, New Zealand's tourism arm 100% Pure New Zealand has invited Rod Stewart to surprise America's Cup teams with a "dock out" serenade of his 1975 hit song "Sailing" at the upcoming 36th America's Cup competition. The "Rock the Dock" event will see Sir Rod perform a powerful and emotive rendition of "Sailing" from London, with the recorded performance beamed onto the Te Wero big screen in Auckland's America's Cup Village, and broadcast by official programming partner, TVNZ. The performance will take place on Mar. 13 at 1:30 a.m. GMT. With the event being one of few global events to currently take place during the current coronavirus lockdown, it is expected that thousands of people around the world will watch this special message from New Zealand. "We think Rod performing 'Sailing' really captures this notion with its poignant and fitting lyrics, as well as Rod's connection to New Zealand," says Tourism New Zealand's Ren de Monchy. The iconic rocker had a message for kiwis, rallying them to singalong with him wherever they are in a show of unity and support for the teams and their fans around the world. "I'm excited to be performing for the America's Cup in New Zealand and 'Sailing' is the perfect fit. With fans being unable to travel, I'm hoping that this special performance will remind us that we re all in this together," Stewart said in a statement. - Music-News.com, 3/11/21...... Alice Cooper's latest studio LP Detroit Stories has debuted atop Billboard's Top Album Sales chart for the week dated Mar. 13, the shock-rocker's first chart-topper in the 29-year history of that chart. Detroit Stories sold 13,000 copies across all available formats (CD, vinyl LP, digital download) in the week ending Mar. 4, according to MRC Data. Of that starting sum, 9,500 were sold via CD and 2,000 came via vinyl LP. The remaining 1,500 were digital albums. It also bowed at No. 1 on the Tastemaker Albums chart, which ranks the top-selling albums at independent and small chain music stores. On the all-genre Billboard Hot 200 albums chart, Detroit Stories entered at No. 47, marking Cooper's 27th chart entry, stretching back to 1969's Pretties for You. (From 1969 through 1973, Alice Cooper charted six albums as a band. Then, from 1975 onwards, Cooper charted as a soloist.) Detroit Stories has also debuted at No. 2 on the Hard Rock Albums chart, No. 5 on the Top Rock Albums chart and No. 18 on the Vinyl Albums chart. Meanwhile, Cooper has revealed the identity of his only fellow rocker calls him by his birthname of Vincent Damon Furnier. In an interview with the UK paper The Sun, "The only person who calls me Vince is Keith Richards. He'll say, 'Vinnie, Vinnie, how long has it been since you had a drink? And I'll reply, 'More than 30 years.' And he goes, 'Ah, begs the question, why?'" says Cooper, who has been sober for 38 years. Cooper also recently hit back at Gene Simmons after the KISS bassist recently claimed that rock music is "dead." "There's a bunch of 18-year-kids in there with guitars and drums and they're learning hard rock," Alice told the UK's New Musical Express. "It's the same with the United States: there's all these young bands that want to resurge that whole area of hard rock." Simmons has recently clarified his comments in a new interview: "The point is, yeah, rock is dead because if we play the game from 1958 until 1988, which is 30 years, you had Elvis, The Beatles, The Stones, Pink Floyd, and on and on and on," Simmons said. "And then from 1988 until today, who's the new Beatles?" - Billboard/NME, 3/9/21...... The latest trailer for the upcoming Tina Turner documentary Tina has been shared on YouTube. In it, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame member sits down to discuss her past abusive relationship with then-husband and other half of the Ike & Tina Turner duo and how she struggled to make a name for herself. "I had an abusive life. There's no other way to tell the story," Turner says in the clip. "The divorce, I got nothing. No money, no house. So I said, 'I'll just take my name.'" Tina later explains in a voiceover that her dream was to become "the first Black rock 'n' roll singer to pack places like the [Rolling] Stones." And she made it happen: The eight-time Grammy winning-artist's final 90-show tour, the "Tina!: 50th Anniversary Tour," is one of the highest grossing tours of all time and was the No. 9 top-grossing tour of 2009. Tina will premiere on Mar. 27 at 8 ET on HBO, and will be available to stream on HBO Max. - Billboard, 3/10/21...... The '70s UK ska group Madness will be the subject of a new three-part AMC documentary Before We Was We: Madness By Madness. The documentary -- adapted from the 2019 memoir of the same name -- will chronicle the rise of the Camden ska legends, who have released 12 studio albums since forming in 1976. According to a press release, each hour-long episode features original footage as well as new interviews with band members past and present -- including Chris Foreman, Mike Barson, Lee Thompson, Graham McPherson, Daniel Woodgate, Mark Bedford and Carl Smyth. The musicians will recount stories from across Madness' 40-plus-year career, with the film also capturing the cultural and political upheaval of the times. Before We Was We... will air exclusively on BT TV at 9:00 p.m. on May 1. Fans will also be able to watch on-demand via the BT Player. - NME, 3/11/21...... Rising artist Phoebe Bridgers has teamed up with Jackson Browne for a new, "sadder" version of her song "Kyoto." The collaborative reworking of the track -- the original of which appears on Bridgers' second album Punisher -- is available for streaming on Spotify.com. The new "Kyoto" features an intimate acoustic guitar instrumental, with Browne contributing backing vocals in its hushed chorus. - NME, 3/9/21...... Michael Stanley, a Cleveland-based rocker and radio personality who with his namesake band reached the Top 40 in the 1980s with the hits "He Can't Love You" and "My Town" before going on to a long career as a radio disc jockey," died on Mar. 4 after a seven-month battle with lung cancer. He was 72. The Cleveland legend released his first album while still in college and formed the Michael Stanley Band in 1974. After a brief period of national popularity in the early '80s, sales fell off and the band broke up in 1987. Stanley, also a songwriter, continued to record and tour, and remained beloved in his hometown as a radio and television personality, performer and recording artist. "He was so emblematic of that raging heart that doesn't care that it's gonna lose -- it's still gonna leave everything on the field. And when he wrote those songs, those kids in a city where the river caught on fire and the lake died, they felt like their lives mattered," music critic and author Holly Gleason told Cleveland.com. "If you were a kid coming of age in Cleveland in the '70s or the '80s, he was our hand on the brass ring," she added. A private funeral for Stanley, who worked at Cleveland's WNCX radio station for 30 years, has been planned. - Associated Press, 3/8/21...... Dutch engineer Lou Ottens, who is credited with the invention of the audio cassette tape, has died aged 94. Mr. Ottens started working for electronics manufacturer Phillips in 1952, and by 1960 had been promoted to head of product development. It was there, along with his team, that he developed the world's first portable tape recorder. In 1963, he introduced the first cassette tape at the Berlin Radio Show electronics fair, which superseded the cumbersome reel to reel systems used until that time. The following year, the name "Compact Cassette" was trademarked. After making a deal with Sony, Mr. Ottens' design then became the standard cassette used across the globe despite competition from imitators. An estimated 100 billion have since been sold. Later in his career, while technical director of Phillips Audio, Mr. Ottens played a key role in Phillips and Sony's joint development of the compact disc in 1979. At least 200 billion CDs have been sold since they were made available to the public in 1982. - NME, 3/10/21...... Roger Mudd, the CBS newsman whose political reporting and substitute anchoring on The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite made him a familiar and respected face to tens of millions of Americans in the 1960s and 1970s, died on Mar. 9 of complications from kidney failure at his home in McLean, Va. He was 93. On Nov.4, 1979, Mr. Mudd had perhaps his single biggest political interview and one of the most famous in presidential politics when he anchored and reported CBS REPORTS: Teddy, an hour-long look at Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. Mr. Mudd, with his concise interviewing style, homed in on a very basic question Sen. Kennedy was caught unprepared for: "Senator, why do you want to be president?" Kennedy rambled on awkwardly in a public moment of weakness that stopped his political momentum -- he would go on to lose the Democratic nomination to Jimmy Carter. In another singular moment with a Kennedy, Mr. Mudd was covering the 1968 presidential campaign of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and was one of the last to interview him at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, minutes before aspiring presidential candidate was murdered on June 5, 1968. Other big events he anchored or reported on included the triple Emmy-winning coverage of the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew; Emmy-winning coverage of the shooting of George Wallace; Memphis in the aftermath of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; and the resignation speech of Pres. Richard Nixon. Mr. Mudd also anchored The CBS Evening News with Roger Mudd on Saturdays from Feb. 1966 to July 1973 and on Sundays from Jan. 1970 to Sept. 1971. "Roger was a hero in the CBS News Washington bureau," said Susan Zirinsky, president and senior executive producer of CBS News. He was a journalist of enormous integrity and character. He would not budge if he believed he was right and would not compromise his ethical standards. He was an inspiration to all of us in the bureau." Mr. Mudd was pre-deceased by his wife of 54 years, Emma Jeanne Spears Mudd, with whom he had four children, all of whom survive him. - CBSnews.com, 3/10/21.