Favorite Seventies Artists In The News

Posted by Administrator on January 7th, 2022

Pioneering African-American actor Sidney Poitier, who broke through racial barriers to become the first Black winner of the Oscar and inspired a generation during the civil rights movement, died on Jan. 7. He was 94. Born in Miami on Feb. 20, 1927, and raised on a tomato farm in the Bahamas, Mr. Poitier had just one year of formal schooling. He moved to New York at 16, lying about his age to sign up for a short stint in the Army and then working at odd jobs, including dishwasher, while taking acting lessons. He got his first break when he met the casting director of the American Negro Theater and became the understudy of Harry Belafonte, taking over when Belafonte fell ill. Mr. Poitier went on to success on Broadway in "Anna Lucasta" in 1948 and, two years later, got his first movie role in No Way Out with Richard Widmark. Mr. Poitier won a Best Actor Oscar in 1963 for his role in Lilies of the Field, and created a distinguished film legacy four years later when segregation prevailed in much of the United States. In Lilies of the Field, he played a handyman who helps German nuns build a chapel in the desert. Five years before that the actor had been the first Black man nominated for a lead actor Oscar for his role in The Defiant Ones. In 1967's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner he played a Black man with a white fianceé and In the Heat of the Night he was Virgil Tibbs, a Black police officer confronting racism during a murder investigation. He also played a teacher in a tough London school that year in To Sir, With Love. His Virgil Tibbs character from In the Heat of the Night was immortalized in two sequels -- They Call Me Mr. Tibbs! in 1970 and The Organization in 1971 -- and became the basis of the television series In the Heat of the Night starring Carroll O'Connor and Howard Rollins. He picked his roles with care, burying the old Hollywood idea that Black actors could appear only in demeaning contexts as shoeshine boys, train conductors and maids. In all, he acted in more than 50 films and directed nine, starting in 1972 with Buck and the Preacher in which he co-starred with Belafonte. In 1992, Mr. Poitier was given the Life Achievement Award by the American Film Institute, the most prestigious honor after the Oscar, and in 2002, an honorary Oscar recognized "his remarkable accomplishments as an artist and as a human being." Mr. Poitier was knighted by Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in 1974 and served as the Bahamian ambassador to Japan and to UNESCO, the U.N. cultural agency. He also sat on Walt Disney Co's board of directors from 1994 to 2003. In 2009, he was awarded the highest U.S. civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, by Pres. Barack Obama. The 2014 Academy Awards ceremony marked the 50th anniversary of Mr. Poitier's historic Oscar and he was there to present the award for Best Director. Tributes to Mr. Poiter on Twitter included posts by Whoopi Goldberg, who quoted the chorus from Lulu's 1967 hit "To Sir, With Love," and his fellow Oscar winner Viola Davis, who tweeted, "The dignity, normalcy, strength, excellence and sheer electricity you brought to your roles showed us that we, as Black folks, mattered!!!" - Reuters, 1/7/22...... Oscar-nominated director Peter Bogdanovich, the director and screenwriter of the acclaimed 1971 film The Last Picture Show, died on Jan. 6 at his home in Los Angeles of natural causes. He was 82. With a career in Hollywood spanning more than 50 years. Mr. Bogdanovich is best known for his beloved run of comedies and dramas in the late '60s and '70s, including Last Picture Show, the 1972 screwball hit What's Up Doc? with Barbra Streisand, Ryan O'Neal and Madeline Kahn, and 1973's Depression-era comedy Paper Moon, when he reunited with O'Neal and also starring O'Neal's daughter Tatum O'Neal who at age 10 became the youngest person in history to win a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Mr. Bogdanovich was nominated for Best Director and Adapted Screenplay Oscars for The Last Picture Show, a coming-of-age drama set in small-town 1950s Texas. The black-and-white film starred Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges and Ellen Burstyn and picked up eight Oscar nods including Best Picture, winning two for Best Supporting Actor (Ben Johnson) and Supporting Actress (Cloris Leachman). In 1998, the movie was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress for its historic and cultural significance. In addition to directing, Mr. Bogdanovich had a prolific career as an author, film historian, journalist and actor. Fans of HBO's The Sopranos will remember his recurring role in the early 2000s as the concerned Dr. Elliot Kupferberg, therapist to Tony Soprano's psychiatrist Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Bracco). More recently, he made a meta cameo in the 2019 horror film It: Chapter Two, playing a film director. Born in Kingston, N.Y. in 1939, Mr. Bogdanovich got his start as a film critic and programmer, working at New York's Museum of Modern Art in the early 1960s. Inspired by the likes of Orson Welles, Howard Hawks and John Ford, he transitioned to directing in 1968, winning mostly positive reviews for his shocking lone shooter thriller Targets. His personal life was filled with as much intrigue as his movies. He had a well-publicized affair with Cybil Shepherd, then a 21-year-old model, during the making of Last Picture Show, which led to his divorce from his first wife, collaborator Polly Platt. During production of 1981's They All Laughed, he struck up a relationship with Playboy Playmate-turned-actress Dorothy Stratten, who was murdered by her estranged husband shortly after filming completed. Mr. Bogdanovich married Stratten's younger sister, Louise, in 1988, but the couple divorced in 2001. He is survived by his two daughters, Sashy and Antonia, from his marriage to Platt. After his death, Shepherd, who had her first film role in The Last Picture Show, described him as her first acting teacher, "a blessing of enormous proportion." "There are simply no words to express my feelings over this deepest of losses," she told Deadline.com in a statement. "May Peter live long in all our memories." - USA Today, 1/6/22.

A major publishing acquisition has been announced only three days into the new year, with Warner Chappell, the publishing arm of Warner Music Group, announcing that it has acquired the rights to David Bowie's song catalog from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member's estate. The deal reportedly includes every song written by Bowie for his own solo albums, plus those he wrote for his band Tin Machine and various soundtrack projects. Warner Chappell co-chair and CEO Guy Moot says his company is "immensely proud that the David Bowie estate has chosen us to be the caretakers of one of the most groundbreaking, influential, and enduring catalogs in music history" that Bowie's songs "are not only extraordinary songs, but milestones that have changed the course of modern music forever." After signing some bad deals early in his career before he shot to fame in the early 1970s, Bowie became savvy about monetizing the rights to both his songs and his recordings, to which he was able to get back the rights. In 1997, he signed a 15-year deal to license his catalog to EMI Music and financialized some of his future royalties as "Bowie bonds," which raised $55 million some of which he used to buy his former manager's share of his back catalog. Warner Music Group had alredy acquired some rights to Bowie's catalog when it bought Parlophone Label Group from Universal Music Group, which had to sell some assets as a condition of its purchase of EMI. In 2021, Warner signed a global deal to license Bowie's recorded music catalog, starting in 2023, and it already has most of those rights now. That means the company is now home to both Bowie's recording and publishing rights. - Billboard, 1/3/22...... Although she's been writing her own songs since 1967, folk-rock icon Judy Collins has never put out an album comprised solely of her own compositions -- until now. Spellbound, due Feb. 25, will mark the 82-year-old singer's first release on which she composed every song herself. Collins explains that "things happen when something shifts in your life and you put another discipline in, which leads you to dig out things that might never have happened." "The pandemic gave me a chance to actually sit with things that were cooking and get them cooked so they were well enough to go into the studio and record them," she says of the Spellbound project, which she formally began work on in 2019. Collins has dedicated Spellbound's 12 songs to early influences like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. "So Alive" paints a lyrical picture of Greenwich Village during the 1960s folk explosion, while her sometimes wayward youth informs tracks such as "Grand Canyon," "Hell on Wheels," "Arizona" and "When I Was a Girl in Colorado," which was written just before Spellbound's final recording session. Collins has shared "When I Was a Girl in Colorado" on YouTube. Collins -- who returned to live performing in 2021 and has shows scheduled throughout 2022 -- also says she has "hundreds of starts for a new book," though she's not sure what direction her next one will take. Collins also shared her thoughts about the recent death of composer Stephen Sondheim, whose "Send in the Clowns," originally from the 1973 musical "A Little Night Music", became a Top 20 hit for her in 1977 and won Sondheim a Grammy Award in 1976 for Song of the Year. "He was wonderful and funny and delicious and amusing, always -- and so, so, so smart... If I did anything that could be seen as helping Stephen Sondheim, that's a true honor," she says. - Billboard, 1/6/22...... The U.K.'s Official Charts Company has verified that ABBA's 2021 comeback LP Voyage was the best-selling vinyl album in the country for 2021. The OCC says Voyage shifted over 40,000 vinyl units since its release on Nov. 5, when it bowed at No. 1 on the Official Albums Chart, with physical sales accounting for 90% of its first week tally. The Swedish pop foursome's hits compilation Gold is already the only album in history to log 1,000 weeks on the Official Albums Chart (it's now up to 1,026 weeks, and counting). And prior to its release, Voyage set a new mark for its label with more than 80,000 pre-orders in the U.K. in just three days. ABBA is set to appear in virtual form for a residency this spring in London, featuring their latest and greatest tunes. - Billboard, 1/6/22...... The Disney+ streaming service announced on Jan. 5 that The Beatles' full 1969 Apple Corps rooftop concert highlighted in director Peter Jackson's acclaimed three-part documentary The Beatles: Get Back is getting a limited theatrical release in IMAX. The famed 60-minute farewell performance will premiere on Jan. 30, on the 53rd anniversary of the public performance in London. Following the concert film, Jackson will participate in a Q&A session that is set to broadcast to all participating IMAX theaters. "The Rooftop Concert" will then get another limited theatrical release from Feb. 11 through 13. Premiering in November, The Beatles: Get Back showcased the Fab Four's fascinating songwriting process, friendship and struggles during the recording of their Let It Be LP, which was released in 1970. The Beatles: Get Back will be released on Blu-ray and DVD in the United States on Feb. 8. - Billboard, 1/5/21...... An infectious pop ditty by the early '70s one-hit wonder group Edison Lighthouse has become the latest song to explode on the TikTok social media platform. "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)," a bubblegum smash that reached No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart in March 1970, has seen an explosion in its streaming consumption after the song started getting adapted into a TikTok meme of users posting clips and photos of themselves to accompany the song's lyrics -- usually the opening lines, "She ain't got no money/ Her clothes are kinda funny/ Her hair is kinda wild and free/ Oh but love grows where my Rosemary goes..." (one sample can be viewed on YouTube). Over the 10-day period from Dec. 25 to Jan. 3, "Love Grows" received a combined 2.705 million on-demand audio streams, according to MRC Data. That number is up from a mere 170,000 on-demand audio streams from the prior 10-day period (Dec. 15-24), a staggering growth of 1,490%. The song has also moved onto Spotify's daily US top 200 chart, just outside the top 100 as of its Jan. 4 listing. "Love Grows" marked one of just two Hot 100 appearances for the British pop/rock quartet Edison Lighthouse -- the other coming in early 1971 with the No. 72-peaking "It's Up to You Petula." But the group's frontman, Tony Burrows, was perhaps the most prolific bubblegum singer of his era, becoming known as "The Man of 1,000 Voices." His vocals can also be heard on other top 20 hits, including "My Baby Loves Lovin'" by White Plains (No. 13, 1970), "United We Stand" by Brotherhood of Man (No. 13, 1970), "Gimme Dat Ding" by The Pipkins (No. 9, 1970), and "Beach Baby" by First Class (No. 4, 1974). Burrows also provided backing vocals on Elton John's "Levon" and "Tiny Dancer." "Love Grows" follows the viral success of Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams" on TikTok in 2020, after user doggface208 posted a massively popular video on the platform. "Dreams" then re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart in Oct. 2020, eventually climbing back as high as No. 12. - Billboard, 1/5/22...... A woman who accused Bob Dylan of sexually abusing her as a child last summer has amended the time frame in which the alleged incident took place. In the initial lawsuit, filed back in August, an anonymous claimant identified in documents as "J.C." alleged that over the course of six weeks between April and May of 1965, Dylan (then in his mid-20s) "befriended and established an emotional connection" with the girl, aged 12 at the time, before abusing her both physically and emotionally. J.C. alleged that she "sustained physical and psychological injuries, including but not limited to, severe emotion and psychological distress, humiliation, fright, dissociation, anger, depression, anxiety, personal turmoil and loss of faith, a severe shock to her nervous system, physical pain and mental anguish, and emotional and psychological damage." After a representative for Dylan dismissed the allegations, calling them a "56-year-old claim [that] is untrue and will be vigorously defended," Dylan biographer Clinton Heylin began to question the woman's claim, citing her timeline of events. "Dylan was touring England during that time," Heylin told The Huffington Post, "and was in Los Angeles for two of those weeks, plus a day or two at Woodstock. The tour was 10 days, but Bob flew into London on April 26 and arrived back in New York on June 3. If Dylan was in New York in mid-April, it was for no more than a day or two. Woodstock was where he spent most of his time when not touring." In response, the accuser's lawyer, Daniel Isaacs, said that he and his client "stand by the pleading". The New York Post's Page Six column reports that Isaacs has now altered the wording in his client's lawsuit, amending the allegations to claim that her and Dylan's encounters spanned "a period of several months in the spring of 1965." n response to the updated filing, a representative for Dylan said: "The amended complaint recycles the same fabricated claims as the original complaint filed in August. They were as false then as they are now. We will pursue all legal options, including pursuing sanctions against the attorneys behind this shameful, defamatory and opportunistic case." J.C. is seeking unspecified damages and a jury trial. - NME, 1/5/22...... A Tennessee medical examiner has ruled that late country singer/songwriter Tom T. Hall died by suicide. Hall, the composer of such huge country and pop hits as Jeannie C. Riley's "Harper Valley P.T.A." and his own "I Love," died Aug. 20, 2021 in Franklin, Tenn., at age 85. According to the medical examiner's report, Hall "sustained an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound." During his career, Hall earned seven CMA Awards nominations, including an Entertainer of the Year nomination in 1973. He earned three song of the year nominations, for his work on "Harper Valley P.T.A.," "The Year Clayton Delaney Died" and "(Old Dogs, Children and) Watermelon Wine." He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1978 and into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2008. - Billboard, 1/5/22...... Eddie Van Halen's ex-wife Valerie Bertinelli has shared the late iconic guitarist and bandleader's final words to her and their song Wolfgang Van Halen in her new memoir, Enough Already: Learning to Love the Way I Am Today. An excerpt from the book in the latest People magazine recalls Bertinelli weepily telling her first husband, "Maybe next time. Maybe next time, we'll get it right as Van Halen, 65, lay dying from cancer. "I loved Ed more than I know how to explain... I loved his soul," Bertinelli, 61, told the mag. The couple were married in 1981, and welcomed their son, Wolfgang, 10 years later. Through the ups and downs which led to a divorce in 2007, Bertinelli said she always considered Eddie her "soulmate. "We were portrayed as a mismatch, she writes in the book of the couple's early years," she said. "The bad boy rock star and America's sweetheart but privately, Ed wasn't the person people thought he was and neither was I," she added. Though both remarried after their split, Bertinelli writes that as Eddie's cancer spread and his situation deteriorated, they got closer again. She describes a Thanksgiving 2019 visit from Eddie to her home where he asked if they could chat in private. It was then that Van Halen handed his ex-wife a small bag with a pendant-sized gold bar he'd bought while getting cancer treatments in Germany. "I hope you don't think it's weird, you know, that I bought my ex-wife this gift and didn't get my wife anything," he told her tearily. "I just love you." Bertinelli writes that Van Halen wanted her to know that he'd "messed up during their marriage," admitting that she was sorry for contributing to their troubles as well. Bertinelli writes "'I love you' are the last words Ed says to Wolfie and me & and they are the last words we say to him before he stops breathing," as she, Wolfie, and other family members visited him in the hospital every day. Bertinelli's memoir is due out on Jan. 18. - Billboard, 1/5/22...... In other Van Halen-related news, former VH singer David Lee Roth has apparently taken an early retirement, canceling the remaining dates on his residency at Las Vegas' House of Blues at Mandalay Bay. Roth, 66, had been scheduled to cap his long career with a string of five shows at the venue in January after canceling his planned New Year's Eve and New Year's Day shows at the venue due to the rapid spread of the Omicron COVID-19 variant. Now a rep for the House of Blues says that Roth's entire run has been canceled, putting on ice shows booked for Jan. 5, 7 and 8, as well as Jan. 14-15 and Jan. 21-22. In October 2021, Roth announced he would end his musical career after the Vegas residency, announcing, "I am throwing in the shoes. I'm retiring This is the first, and only, official announcement. You've got the news. Share it with the world... these are my last five shows." Roth also did not appear to have confirmed the news, though on Jan. 3 he posted a cryptic watercolor image on Twitter of a city seen from above with the message, "a funny thing happened on the way to Las Vegas." - Billboard, 1/4/22...... Drummer Bill Kreutzmann of the Grateful Dead spin-off band Dead & Company took to Twitter on Jan. 3 to tell fans that he has to sit out the band's upcoming "Playing In the Sand" vacation shows in Mexico due to health complications. "Playing in the Sand has become my favorite tour stop in recent years and there's so much about it that's just so great. And thus, it is with a heavy and still recovering heart that I have to relay a note that I received from my doctor this morning ordering me to sit this one out," Kreutzmann tweeted. "As many of you know, I had some health issues this past fall. After a lifetime of playing special beats, it's almost no wonder that my heart came up with its own idea of rhythm," he quipped, then added: "All jokes aside, my doctor has ordered me to take it easy (and stay safe) through the end of January so that I can continue to drum and play for you for many tours to come. I have a lot of music left in me and there's no stopping me from playing it. I've never been one to obey orders or play by the rules but in the interest of longevity, I hope you'll understand." Before signing off, he gave a special shout-out to his bandmates and fans, asking everyone to "stay safe out there so that we can do it all again." Meanwhile, Dead & Company member John Mayer has tested positive for Covid and will no longer perform as part of the Playing In The Sand event. Dead & Company are due to kick off the first leg of their destination festival at the Moon Palace resort in Cancun, Mexico on Jan. 7. A second run will take place the following weekend (Jan. 13-16). - Billboard, 1/4/22...... Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford has told a Spanish media outlet how he's managed to achieve 36 years of sobriety. "I think about it all the time," he told Spain's Mariskal Rock. "It's an addiction. When I'm watching the Phoenix Cardinals play on TV the other day, there's constantly adverts for beer and for alcohol and stuff. And I know it's there. And it's a temptation. So you have to have all of the mental tools ready to get you through that instance. 'Cause it's all about instances." "I've lived one day at a time for 35 years now," Halford continued. "And that's all that matters. It's the moment. You live in the moment -- not yesterday, not tomorrow; it's now. And you have to be ready for when that little beer devil comes on your shoulder and goes, 'Come on, Rob. Have a little drink of beer.' 'F--- off.' [Laughs] Because I don't wanna feel that way again, man." Halford will celebrate the 36th anniversary of getting sober on Jan. 6. - NME, 1/3/22...... Ted Nugent took to YouTube on Dec. 30 to deliver his latest gripe -- this time about Joan Jett being included in a 2010 Rolling Stone magazine list of the "Top 100 Greatest Guitarists." "When you see the Rolling Stone magazine list of greatest guitar players, they list Joan Jett but not Tommy Shaw [of Styx]," Nugent huffed. "How do you list the top 100 guitar players and not list Derek St. Holmes? How do you do that? You do that by lying. The same way you get Grandmaster Flash in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. You do that by lying. You have to be a liar. You have to have shit for brains, and you have to be a soulless, soulless prick to put Joan Jett...," he added. He then stressed that his gripe with Jett being on the list has nothing to do with her sexuality. "[I] love Joan. Some of my greatest memories include lesbians. I love the lesbians; it's a cocktail of wonderment," he said. - NME, 1/3/22...... Speaking to People magazine as she discussed beauty risks, tips and tricks on the heels of her M.A.C. Cosmetics' "Challenge Accepted" campaign with Saweetie, Cher revealed that she'll "never go gray." Though many stars have been rocking a more natural style due to the pandemic, Cher says she's not into the gray-haired trend. "[Going gray] is fine for other girls. I'm just not doing it!," she said. Something she is into, however, is being unapologetically creative. That's why M.A.C. Cosmetics chose the 75-year-old diva for their new beauty campaign, which encourages fans to share their best M.A.C. makeup looks with the hashtag #macchallengeaccepted. "It's all about having fun," Cher added about beauty. "I just think that people who worry about the way someone puts on their makeup should get a life." A video of Cher accepting the M.A.C. challenge has been shared on YouTube. - Billboard, 1/4/22...... A collection of rare Lou Reed demos were released over the holiday period and then quickly withdrawn in an apparent copyright dump. According to Variety, RCA/Sony Music uploaded a 17-track album of Lou Reed demos to iTunes in Europe on Dec. 23 titled I'm So Free: The 1971 RCA Demos. It was then removed a couple of days later. The reason for the brief release looks to be an apparent copyright dump to extend RCA/Sony Music's ownership of the recordings. Copyright-extension releases have become commonplace in recent years. Sound recordings are protected for 50 years after they are published, and can be extended to 70 years as long as they are "lawfully communicated to the public" within the first 50 years. Reed died of liver disease on Oct. 27, 2013. - NME, 1/3/22...... Stephen J. Lawrence, a Daytime-Emmy-winning composer for Sesame Street, died on Dec. 30 at Clara Maas Medical Center in Belleville, N.J., of as yet undislcosed causes. He was 82. Mr. Lawrence served as a composer, music director, arranger and conductor on the longtime children's TV series Sesame Street for more than 30 years, composing over 300 songs and scores for the program, including "Fuzzy and Blue (and Orange)," co-written with David Axelrod. He received three Daytime Emmy awards for outstanding achievement in music direction and composition for his work on the show. With an interest in children's education, Mr. Lawrence also collaborated with The Jim Henson Company when composing the score for The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss. He later co-founded the nonprofit Quill Entertainment Company with Granville Burgess in 1998. In addition to Sesame Street, Mr. Lawrence is also recognized as the musical director and co-music producer on the 1972 gold album Free to Be You and Me in which he composed the title song, as well as "When We Grow Up" and "Sisters and Brothers." Other composer credits include the 1973 Robert DeNiro-starrer Bang the Drum Slowly, One Summer Love (1976), the cult horror film Alice, Sweet Alice (1976), the live-action musical "Red Riding Hood" and the 1991 HBO animated musical The Tale of Peter Rabbit, starring Carol Burnett. He is survived by his wife, Cantor Cathy Lawrence; brother Robert; daughter Hannah Jones Anderson; son-in-law Seth Anderson; grandson Arthur, and stepsons Sam and Nick Kline. - The Hollywood Reporter, 1/2/22.