Tag: Dies

Categories
Health

Jim Klobuchar Dies at 93; Minnesota Newspaperman and Amy’s Father

Jim Klobuchar Dies at 93; Minnesota Newspaperman and Amy’s Father

Jim Klobuchar was a noted sports journalist and general interest columnist in Minnesota for decades.

He was celebrated for his Derring-Do directly from the central casting: He once held a piece of chalk between his lips while a sniper was aiming at it. He was a finalist for NASA’s initiative to send a journalist into space until the 1986 Challenger explosion ended the program. He climbed the Matterhorn eight times and Kilimanjaro five times.

And he made readers cry when he wrote of a 5-year-old girl with a brain tumor who loved to ride on rails: “She was cradled in her mother’s lap on the Hiawatha observation car on Milwaukee Road, one neat young lady. A dying little girl making her last train ride. “

It wasn’t until 2018, when his daughter, Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat of Minnesota, mentioned him on television during the controversial television hearings about Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court that he became aware of national attention.

During her interview with the candidate, Ms. Klobuchar found that her then 90-year-old father was a recovering alcoholic who was still attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. She asked Judge Kavanaugh if he had ever drank so much that he couldn’t remember events. He turned the question back to her, a violation of propriety for which he later apologized. She accepted the apology, adding, “If you have a parent who is an alcoholic, you are pretty careful about drinking.”

At this point, her father had been sober for more than 25 years. When she ran for the 2020 Democratic President nomination, Senator Klobuchar often spoke of his successful treatment and suggested spending billions of dollars on substance abuse treatment.

Mr Klobuchar died Wednesday in a care facility in Burnsville, a suburb of the Twin Cities. He was 93 years old. Senator Klobuchar, who announced his death on Twitter, gave no cause but said he had Alzheimer’s. He survived a fight with Covid-19 last year.

Mr. Klobuchar was long popular in Minnesota, even a folk hero. In addition to his newspaper columns – 8,400 of which when he retired from The Minneapolis Star Tribune in 1995 – he wrote 23 books, ran a women’s soccer clinic, hosted talk shows, and ran Jaunt with Jim annually for nearly four decades. Bike rides across the state, stopping at payphones along the road to call his column and dictate. After he and his first wife, Rose (Heuberger) Klobuchar, divorced in 1976, he and Amy began long distance cycling tours to bond with each other.

As a young journalist for The Associated Press, he had a particularly exhilarating moment the day after the 1960 presidential election, when John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon were neck to neck and three states were still not reporting results. Mr. Klobuchar wrote the statewide bulletin announcing that Mr. Kennedy Minnesota had won and gave him enough votes to win the presidency. The bullet appeared in newspapers across the country.

James John Klobuchar was born on April 9, 1928 in Ely, a small town in the Iron Range in northern Minnesota, where he grew up. His father Michael Klobuchar worked in the iron ore mines. His mother Mary (Pucel) Klobuchar was a housewife.

From an early age, Jim read The Duluth Herald and his mother encouraged him to pursue a career in journalism, wrote Senator Klobuchar in her 2015 essay, The Senator Next Door.

He graduated from Ely Junior College (now Vermilion Community College) in 1948, then enrolled at the University of Minnesota, graduating with a degree in journalism in 1950.

He got a job as an editor at The Bismarck Daily Tribune. Six months later he was drafted into the army and assigned to a new psychological war unit in Stuttgart, where he wrote anti-communist material.

He briefly returned to the Bismarck newspaper and was then recruited by The Associated Press in Minneapolis, where he completed his election campaign. He joined The Minneapolis Tribune as a sports reporter in 1961 and focused on the Minnesota Vikings.

He left The Tribune in 1965 for the rival St. Paul Pioneer Press, but it wasn’t long before The Minneapolis Star lured him away by giving him a column to write about anything he wanted.

This was the heyday of print journalism when newspapers sent their star authors all over the world. During the height of the Cold War, Mr. Klobuchar reported from Moscow. In 1978 he reported on the murder and funeral of Aldo Moro, the former Italian prime minister. He challenged pool hustler Minnesota Fats to a game. He wrote about a flight service that employed topless flight attendants. He played a reporter in the 1974 film “The Wrestler” with Ed Asner.

But it wasn’t all smooth sailing. He was suspended twice, once for writing a speech for a politician and once for writing a quote in what he thought was an overt satire.

He also drank too much, his daughter said in her book. For a while, heavy drinking was part of his colorful public role. Not much happened when he was charged with some alcohol-related driving offenses in the mid-1970s.

However, public attitudes towards drinking and driving changed radically. When he was arrested for driving under the influence in 1993, he lost his driver’s license and was threatened with prison. He wrote a front-page apology to his readers. On an accompanying note, the newspaper’s editor, Tim McGuire, said Mr. Klobuchar had “put his life at risk” and that the newspaper insisted he seek treatment.

He followed. He entered an inpatient rehabilitation center, attended anonymous alcoholic meetings, and found God. Mrs. Klobuchar wrote that his readers had forgiven him.

“It was precisely his mistakes that made my father so attractive to her,” she said. “His hard life and personal struggles had a huge impact on his writing. That’s why he was at his best writing about what he called “the heroes among us” – ordinary people doing extraordinary things. “

In addition to Senator Klobuchar, another daughter, Meagan, survives; his wife Susan Wilkes; his brother Dick; and a granddaughter.

When he decided to retire from The Star Tribune in 1995, Mr Klobuchar told his office mates that he didn’t want any fuss just to go quietly. After packing his things and walking to the door, an editor got into the sound system and announced, “This is Jim Klobuchar’s last day. That’s 43 years of journalism. “

Everyone stood up and applauded.

Categories
Entertainment

Jack Terricloth, Punk Rocker With a Cabaret Air, Dies at 50

Jack Terricloth, Punk Rocker With a Cabaret Air, Dies at 50

To old friends who met him backstage, he was Pete Ventantonio, a punk rocker from Bridgewater, New Jersey. On his records he sometimes preferred bizarre credits such as Marcello DiTerriclothia or Favorite Singer who goes with everything.

But to the fans who raved about his concerts, he was Jack Terricloth: the singing, roaring, devilishly smarmy singer and ringleader of the World / Inferno Friendship Society, a band with a constantly changing line-up that defies punk with the decadent theatrics of Weimar merged with cabaret.

For more than 20 years, the group built an iconic following with a rock sound embellished by piano, violin, and a brass section. His live shows – with Jack Terricloth in a dark suit and combed hair like a 1930s dandy – were key to the rise of the so-called punk cabaret movement in the mid-2000s, which included Gogol Bordello and the Dresden Puppen .

While Brooklyn-based World / Inferno is largely ignored by the mainstream music industry, it has made its way into one of Jack Terricloth’s key projects with major art institutions such as the Public Theater in New York and the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, SC: an exploration of the life of Peter Lorre, known for actors like “Casablanca” and “M.” well-known character actor with glasses eyes.

“I find Peter Lorre an oddly charismatic, extremely creepy person who I think most punk rockers can relate to,” he said in a 2009 interview with the New York Times. He’s the outsider, the outsider. “

For fans and fellow musicians, Jack Terricloth was an inspiring, albeit distant, personality who preached what he saw as the central philosophical doctrine of rock’n’roll: the freedom to reject society’s programming and reinvent yourself.

He was found dead Wednesday at his home in Ridgewood, Queens. He was 50 years old. His sister Lisa Castano said the cause was hypertensive cardiovascular disease.

He was born Peter James Ventantonio on June 11, 1970 and grew up in Bridgewater. His father, James Ventantonio, was a lawyer and local judge; his mother, Anita (Winkler) Ventantonio, was a primary school teacher.

As a teenager, he took inspiration from punk rock and stars like David Bowie creating their own roles, said Mike Cavallaro, a childhood friend who played with him in Sticks and Stones in the 1980s and 1990s.

In the mid-90s, when punk became mainstream, Peter began conceiving a genre offshoot that would include theatrical presentation and a charismatic, world-weary frontman character. The World / Inferno Friendship Society’s first album, “The True Story of the Bridgewater Astral League,” in the style of a musical, was released in 1997.

“We’re a punk rock band and we play punk rock shows, but our music couldn’t be more different,” he told the Times. “Children see us and think, ‘Boys in suits and makeup on a hardcore show? Come on.’ But we always have them on the third song and then they have to accept something that affects the punk rock scene and the world. We have now entered the great dialogue that is our culture. “

The album “Addicted to Bad Ideas: Peter Lorre’s 20th Century” (2007) became the band’s greatest moment. It has been converted into a self-described “punk song game” of the same title that has been performed in rock clubs and in high profile art series such as Peak Performances at Montclair State University in New Jersey.

After their concerts, the group often mingled with their fans – who called themselves Infernites. Performances, such as the lavishly staged annual Halloween shows, were viewed as shared rituals by both the audience and other musicians.

“He made you feel like you were part of a secret society,” said Franz Nicolay, who played keyboard in the band in the 2000s, in an interview.

In addition to his sister, Jack Terricloth survived his partner Gina Rodriguez.

The group’s self-mythologization sometimes clouded their history. Even the name Jack Terricloth has various apocryphal origins. Mr. Cavallaro remembered that his friend had bought it from an old friend. Others said he took the name to differentiate himself from another Pete in his early days in the New Jersey punk demimonde.

The ultimate reason seemed less important than the act of self-invention, and its audience was there.

At the beginning of last year the World / Inferno Friendship Society released an album entitled “All borders are porous for cats” and, like artists everywhere, was founded by the pandemic. But Jack Terricloth was determined to find a way to keep his Halloween tradition alive for his biggest fans, said Bill Cashman, his friend and manager of the group.

So the band developed a scavenger hunt, with clues to the location of an outdoor performance scattered across Brooklyn. Roughly 50 to 60 fans reached the show on the roof of the Brooklyn Children’s Museum.

“It meant a lot to us to do this, even if we did it for a small number of people,” said Cashman. “Just to do our thing.”

Categories
Business

Bob Koester, Revered Determine in Jazz and Blues, Dies at 88

Bob Koester, Revered Figure in Jazz and Blues, Dies at 88

Bob Koester, who founded the influential Chicago blues and jazz label Delmark Records and also owned an equally influential record store where players and fans mingled while looking for new and vintage sounds, died Wednesday at a care center in Evanston, Illinois., Near his home in Chicago. He was 88 years old.

His wife, Sue Koester, said the cause was complications from a stroke.

Mr. Koester was a key figure in Chicago and beyond, posting early efforts by Sun Ra, Anthony Braxton, Jimmy Dawkins, Magic Sam, and numerous other jazz and blues musicians. He captured the sound of Chicago’s lively blues scene in the 1960s on records such as Hoodoo Man Blues, a highly admired 1965 album by singer and harmonica player Junior Wells with guitarist Buddy Guy.

“Bob told us,” Play me a record like you played at the club last night, “recalled Guy in a 2009 interview with the New York Times, and somehow caught the electric feeling of a live Performance 1. In 2008 the record was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Around the same time, Delmark took up early examples of avant-garde jazz, which pianist Muhal Richard Abrams and other members of the Chicago Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, founded in 1965, generally proclaimed the high-volume style.

“If he thought something mattered, he wouldn’t think about whether it would sell,” Ms. Koester said over the phone. “He wanted people to hear it and know the meaning.”

Howard Mandel, the jazz critic and author, said in a telephone interview: “He was following his own star. He wasn’t interested in trends at all. “

For decades, Mr. Koester’s record store, Jazz Record Mart, provided enough financial support to allow Delmark to make records that did not sell many copies. The shop was more than a point of sale for Delmark’s artists; It was packed with all kinds of records, many of them from collections Mr. Koester had bought or traded on.

“The place was just an amazing crossroads of people,” said Mr Mandel, who worked there for a while in the early 1970s. Music lovers would look for obscure records; Tourists would come for the reputation of the business; Musicians would come to share stories and ideas.

“Shakey Walter Horton and Ransom Knowling hung out there, and Sunnyland Slim and Homesick James kept dropping by,” harmonica player and bandleader Charlie Musselwhite, who was a clerk at the store in the mid-1960s, told The Times in 2009, rattling the names of some blues musicians. “You never knew what fascinating characters you would wander into, so I always felt like I was in the eye of the storm.”

Mr. Mandel said part of the fun is tapping into Mr. Koester’s deep reservoir of arcane musical knowledge.

“You’d get into a conversation with him,” he said, “and in ten minutes he was talking about an obscure wormhole on a serial number on a press.”

Ms. Koester said the store held a special place in her husband’s heart – so much so that when he finally closed it in 2016, citing rising rents, he almost immediately opened another, Bob’s Blues and Jazz Mart.

“He loved going to the studio in the days when he picked up Junior Wells and Jimmy Dawkins,” she said, “but retail was in his blood.”

He especially loved talking to customers.

“Often times they would come into the store looking for something,” she said, “and he would point them in another direction.”

Robert Gregg Koester was born on October 30, 1932 in Wichita, Kan. His father Edward was a petroleum geologist and his mother Mary (Frank) Koester was a housewife.

He grew up in Wichita. A 78-rpm record by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in his grandfather’s collection fascinated him when he was young, he said in an oral story recorded by the National Association of Music Merchants in 2017. But, he told Richard Marcus in an interview for blogcritics.com in 2008, further musical exploration is not easy.

“I never liked country music, and when I grew up in Wichita, Kansas, there wasn’t much else,” he said. “The names of these old blues guys – Speckled Red, Pinetop Perkins – had a mystery that made them sound really appealing. Probably something to do with a suppressed Catholic upbringing. “

The college at Saint Louis University, where he enrolled to study cinematography, expanded his musical possibilities.

“My parents didn’t want me to go to school in a big city like New York or Chicago because they didn’t want music to distract me from my studies,” he said. “Unfortunately there were black jazz clubs all over the university.”

He also joined the St. Louis Jazz Club, a jazz recognition group. And he started collecting records, especially traditional jazz 78s, from his dormitory and swapping them. The rapidly growing record business ousted his studies.

“I was with for three years Saint Louie U, ”he said in the oral tradition. “They told me not to come back for a fourth year.”

His dormitory business turned into a business selling both new and used records.

“I would regularly walk all the thrift stores, Father Dempsey’s charities, go to places like this, and buy used records,” he told The St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1993 for an article marking the 40th anniversary of its record label. “And I would order records in the mail. Then I would sell records at the jazz club meetings. That was the beginning of my retail business. “

He had also started recording musicians. He originally named his label Delmar after a boulevard in St. Louis, but when he moved to Chicago in the late 1950s he added the K.

In 1959 he bought a Chicago record store from a trumpeter named Seymour Schwartz and soon turned it into the Jazz Record Mart. His label not only recorded the player of the day, but also reissued older recordings.

“He loved obscure record labels from the 30s and 40s and bought several of them,” said Mandel. “He’s re-edited a lot of stuff from pretty obscure artists who recorded independently. He saved her best work. “

Mr. Koester was white; Most of the artists he dealt with were black.

“He was totally into black music,” said Mr. Mandel. “Not just black music, but he definitely blamed black music in a way that other labels didn’t.”

That made Mr. Koester special in Chicago when he explored the city’s sampling talent.

“When a white man showed up in a black bar, it was assumed he was either a cop, a bill collector, or looking for sex,” Koester told blogcritic.com. “When they found out you were there to listen to music and for no other reason you were a friend. The worst times I’ve had were from white cops trying to kick me out of the bars. You probably thought I was there to trade drugs or something. “

It was the atmosphere of these nightclubs that he tried to capture in his recording studio.

“I don’t believe in the production,” he said. “I’m not going to bring in some stuff that you can’t hear from a guy when he’s on stage.”

In addition to his wife, whom he met while working across the street from his shop and whom he married in 1967, Mr. Koester survives a son, Robert Jr .; a daughter, Kate Koester; and two grandchildren.

Ms. Koester said her son will continue to run Bob’s Blues and Jazz Mart. Mr Koester sold Delmark in 2018.

Mr Koester’s record company played an important role in documenting two genres of music, but his wife said that not only did he play a little piano, but he was also untrained himself.

“He would say his music was listening,” she said.

Categories
Politics

Damon Weaver, Youngster Reporter Who Interviewed Obama, Dies at 23

Damon Weaver, Child Reporter Who Interviewed Obama, Dies at 23

Damon Weaver, who was one of the youngest to interview a seated president at age 11 and later attracted attention for conducting other high-profile interviews with celebrities like Dwyane Wade and Oprah Winfrey, died on May 1. He was 23 years old.

The death was confirmed by Candace Hardy, Mr. Weaver’s sister. The cause was not disclosed.

Ms. Hardy told WPTV-TV in West Palm Beach, Fla. That her brother texted her while she was working that he was in the hospital. He had already died when she visited him, she said.

In 2009, then 11-year-old Weaver conducted a session interview with President Barack Obama in the diplomatic room of the White House, questioning him on topics such as the Obama administration’s efforts to improve education in lower-income areas, such as: Weaver’s hometown, Pahokee, Florida, and Mr. Obama’s basketball skills.

“You did a great job on this interview, so someone has to be doing something right at this school,” Mr. Obama told Mr. Weaver after the 11-year-old was invited to visit Kathryn E. Cunningham / Canal Point Elementary School South Florida.

Prior to his meeting with Mr. Obama, Mr. Weaver received considerable attention through a 2008 interview with Mr. Obama’s then-comrade-in-arms Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Damon Lazar Weaver Jr. was born on April 1, 1998 according to his funeral announcement. His sister told WPTV that Mr. Weaver was “a light” and “the life of the party”. According to the station, Mr. Weaver graduated from high school on a full scholarship from Albany State University in Georgia. He graduated from university in 2020, according to a post on his Instagram page.

“Everyone couldn’t wait to be around,” Ms. Hardy told WPTV. “Family reunions, they were always fun just because of his presence.”

Information on Mr. Weaver’s survivors was not immediately available.

Mr. Weaver also covered Mr. Obama’s inauguration as the 44th President on his school’s television newscast and interviewed attendees and celebrities at the inauguration, including Ms. Winfrey and Samuel L. Jackson. In an interview with The Associated Press before going to Washington, Mr. Weaver highlighted what he enjoyed most about being a reporter.

“I liked seeing people on TV so I thought I might do this job one day,” said Weaver. “I like being a reporter because you can learn a lot, meet nice people and travel a lot.”

Mr Weaver said that his favorite subjects at school at the time were reading and math and that his goal was to one day become a journalist and maybe even a soccer player, astronaut or president.

“I’m very proud of him,” said Regina Weaver, the mother of Mr. Weaver, to The AP.

Categories
Business

Leigh Perkins, Who Constructed Orvis Right into a Way of life Model, Dies at 93

Leigh Perkins, Who Built Orvis Into a Lifestyle Brand, Dies at 93

In the 1980s, Orvis expanded beyond waders and shotguns to offer women’s clothing and lifestyle items. The catalog also included etched whiskey mugs, duck-baited telephones, and even firewood lighting, inspired by the trees on Mr. Perkins’ property in Florida.

Dog beds were particularly popular, as were weatherproof jackets from the English clothing manufacturer Barbour, which became mandatory clothing for employees in Midtown Manhattan in bad weather. Some die-hard sports customers complained, but the business continued to grow.

Mr. Perkins insisted on conservation as a company value and donated to wildlife organizations before such practices became widespread.

“It’s the right thing and it’s good business too,” said Simon Perkins. “If people don’t have places to fish or hunt, you don’t have a great future in the world trying to sell fly fishing.”

Mr Perkins is survived by his third wife, Anne (Ireland) Perkins; three children from his first marriage, Leigh Jr., who go by Perk, David, and Molly Perkins; a daughter, Melissa McAvoy, from his second marriage to Romi Myers; three stepchildren, Penny Mesic, Annie Ireland, and Jamie Ireland; 11 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. A son from his first marriage, Ralph, died in 1969.

According to his son Perk, fishing for Mr. Perkins was not a competition but a restorative affair. Up until the 1990s, Mr. Perkins trundled to Battenkill on summer evenings – with a rod and a cocktail – to look for trout at sunset.

“There’s only one reason in the world to go fishing: to enjoy yourself,” Perkins told the New York Times in 1992.

Categories
Health

Eula Corridor, One-Lady Reduction Company in Appalachia, Dies at 93

Eula Hall, One-Woman Relief Agency in Appalachia, Dies at 93

She ended up working in a canning and ammunition factory outside of Rochester, NY. But she found the conditions unsafe and unfair, and organized some of the workers on strike without realizing the pointlessness of making demands of the federal government in wartime.

She was arrested and charged with instigating a riot. But the booking agent realized she was younger than claimed and sent her back to Kentucky instead of locking her up. It was a test run to tell the truth to the Force, which it would do all of its life.

At home she found work as a domestic servant, cooked, cleaned and looked after children, all without electricity, water or cooling.

“Eula found consolation in helping neighbors in difficult times,” wrote Bhatraju.

She married her first husband, McKinley Hall, a miner in 1944. He was a heavy drinker who was more interested in making moonshine than mining coal, and he physically abused her, according to her bio. Her neighbors took care of them and she took care of them. She gradually became the local fixer for people in trouble.

This included that a very pregnant neighbor was taken to several hospitals, which the woman refused because she did not have a family doctor and could not pay. At the last hospital, Mrs. Hall yelled at the admission nurse and threatened to call the local newspaper if the staff didn’t help. They did, the birth went well, and Mrs. Hall took the woman’s plight to a meeting of hospital officials where it caused a shame on her for making people suffer.

She read two influential books that enhanced her courage to speak: “Night Comes in the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Territory” (1963) by Harry Caudill and “The Other America” ​​(1962) by Michael Harrington. Both books inspired President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty – and Mrs. Hall.

She took part in miners’ strikes across the region. She was elected president of the Kentucky Black Lung Association and organized frequent bus trips to Washington, where she campaigned for better miners and widow benefits. She was often the only woman at the table.

Categories
Business

Barbara Stone, Modeling Agent to American Beauties, Dies at 87

Barbara Stone, Modeling Agent to American Beauties, Dies at 87

In 1968, Cybill Shepherd, then only 18, won the pageant.

Cheryl Tiegs, the California girl who later became a household name for Cover Girl’s makeup, was in college when she met Ms. Stone. Ford courted her too, but she picked Stewart Models because Ms. Stone reassured her:

“I was painfully shy and she was warm and took me under her wing. There were certain photographers that she said about, “No, I don’t want you to go there.” She would speak to my parents. That was helpful for the mothers, because back then we seldom picked up the phone and called home.

“Barbara let me be who I was,” continued Ms. Tiegs, “which I found uncomfortable and shy. Much later, when I went to Ford because Barbara was turning away from her business, I sent her a letter to let her know. I knew if I saw her in person she would talk me out of it, and I wasn’t strong enough to beat Barbara Stone. “

Barbara Sue Thorbahn was born in Philadelphia on November 20, 1933. Her father Stewart was a newspaper reporter and editor; Her mother Alice (McGinley) Thorbahn was a housewife.

Barbara grew up in Swarthmore and graduated from Swarthmore High School, where she was most likely voted for success, before attending Gettysburg College. An early marriage to George Frederic Pelham III ended in divorce. In 1964 she married Richard Stone, who was then an illustrator and later a commercial director and painter. He survived her along with her daughter and a son, Lucas.

Ms. Stone left the modeling business in the mid-1970s. She ran a production company for a while, doing short beauty spots for television. She also worked for Maybelline and was a brief real estate agent. From 1996 to 2003 she published a literary magazine, Hampton Shorts, which included short stories by writers such as Bruce Jay Friedman, Judith Rossner, Joseph Heller, and Spalding Gray.

In her modeling days – when she was “the vice president” of her agency, as a male reporter for The Daily News once described her – she and her husband lived in El Dorado in Central Park West and without exception one or more of them would be their models stay, an in-loco Parentis arrangement that was beginning to affect Ms. Stone’s real family.

Categories
Entertainment

Curtis Fuller, a Highly effective Voice on Jazz Trombone, Dies at 88

Curtis Fuller, a Powerful Voice on Jazz Trombone, Dies at 88

Curtis Fuller, a trombonist and composer whose expansive sound and powerful swing made him a driving force in post-war jazz, died on May 8 in a Detroit nursing home. He was 88 years old.

His daughter Mary Fuller confirmed the death but did not give the cause.

Mr. Fuller came to New York in the spring of 1957 and almost immediately became the leading trombonist of the hard-bop movement, which emphasized jazz’s roots in blues and gospel while delivering crisp and humble melodies.

By the end of the year he had recorded no fewer than eight albums as a leader or co-leader for the independent labels Blue Note, Prestige and Savoy.

In the same year he also appeared on saxophonist John Coltrane’s “Blue Train”, one of the most famous albums in jazz, on which Mr. Fuller developed a series of timeless solos. On the title track, which is now a jazz standard, its trombone plays a central role in carrying the bold, declarative Melody.

Mr. Fuller’s five-choir solo in “Blue Train” begins by playing the final notes of trumpeter Lee Morgan’s improvisation, as if curiously picking up an object a friend had just put down. Then he moves through a spontaneous repertoire of syncopated phrases and skillfully crafted flourishes.

In his book, Jazz From Detroit (2019), critic Mark Stryker wrote, “The excitement, authority, and construction of Fuller’s solo explain why he became a major influencer.”

Mr. Fuller was also responsible for naming “Moment’s Notice”, another now classic Coltrane composition on this album. “I made a comment,” Fuller said in a 2007 interview for the National Endowment for the Arts, recalling the scene at the Van Gelder Studio in New Jersey. ‘John, you put this music on us in no time. We have three hours to rehearse this music and we are going to record? ‘And that became the title of the song. “

Mr. Fuller carried his talent for a precisely set melody and for elegantly tracing the harmonic seams of a melody into his work as a composer. His many original pieces include “À La Mode”, “Arabia” and “Buhaina’s Delight”, all of which are now considered standards.

These three pieces found their way into the repertoire of drummer Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Hard Bop’s flagship ensemble, of which Mr. Fuller was a core member from the early to mid-1960s. The band was arguably at its peak in those years when their membership included trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist Cedar Walton, and bassist Jymie Merritt (later replaced by Reggie Workman).

“I owe Art Blakey a lot in many ways,” said Fuller. “We were all driven by the fact that he encouraged us all to write. There was no leader. “

In 2007, Mr. Fuller was named NEA Jazz Master, the country’s highest official award for a living jazz musician.

In addition to his daughter Mary, seven other children survive, Ronald, Darryl, Gerald, Dellaney, Wellington, Paul and Anthony; nine grandchildren; and 13 great-grandchildren. His first marriage to Judith Patterson ended in divorce. His second wife, Catherine Rose Driscoll, died in 2010 after 30 years of marriage.

Curtis DuBois Fuller was born on December 15, 1932 in Detroit. (His year of birth was incorrectly stated throughout his life – a discrepancy that was not resolved until after his death – in part because at 17 he had exaggerated his age by two years and could enter the world of work.)

His father John, who was from Jamaica, worked at a Ford Motor Company plant but died of tuberculosis before Curtis was born. His mother, Antoinette (Heath) Fuller, a housewife, had come north from Atlanta. She died when Curtis was 9 years old and he spent the next several years in a Jesuit orphanage.

During his mother’s lifetime, she paid for Curtis’ sister Mary to take piano lessons. He listened through the wall and learned the basics of second hand music. He showed interest in the violin at the orphanage, but became discouraged after a teacher told him it was an unsuitable instrument for blacks.

Shortly thereafter, he saw JJ Johnson, the leading trombonist of Bebop, in concert with saxophonist Illinois Jacquet, and he was fascinated by the “majestic sound” of the trombone, he said in an interview with Mr. Stryker.

“Illinois Jacquet was an act: honking and screaming, biting reeds, squeaking and such. The crowd was going to go wild, ”said Mr. Fuller. “But JJ just stood there and played and he looked like the guy who really knew what he was doing.”

He was also impressed by the local trombonist, Frank Rosolino, whom he soon heard performing and who became his teacher. He met a group of young jazz musicians in Detroit, many of whom were destined for jazz notoriety, including pianist Barry Harris and guitarist Kenny Burrell.

“It was like a network in Detroit. We generally stuck together, “he said in 2007.” There was a lot of love and real closeness. “

in the In 1953, Mr. Fuller was drafted into the army, where he joined one of the last all-black military bands, the other members of which were future stars Cannonball Adderley and Junior Mance.

After leaving the armed forces, he returned to the Detroit scene before traveling to New York in 1957 with saxophonist Yusef Lateef’s band. When Miles Davis offered him a job, he decided to stay.

Playing with Davis led to his meeting two particularly important people: Coltrane, the band’s tenor saxophonist, and Alfred Lion, a founder of Blue Note Records, who heard Mr. Fuller on stage with Davis’ band and invited him for the Record label.

As he made a name for himself as a band leader, Mr. Fuller also found work alongside celebrity musicians such as Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie and James Moody.

Holiday, who became a mentor, encouraged him to consider the range and tempo of his own voice when improvising. “When I came to New York, I always tried to impress people and play long solos as quickly as possible – lightning fast,” Fuller said in 2007. “And suddenly Billie Holiday said, ‘When you’re playing, you’re talking to me People. So learn how to edit your thing you know ‘ That I have learned. “

In 1959 Savoy released The Curtis Fuller Jazztet, a lively album that featured saxophonist and composer Benny Golson. Soon afterwards, Mr. Golson and the trumpeter Art Farmer formed their own band under the name Jazztet with Mr. Fuller as a side musician. It would be one of the epitome of the 1960s jazz ensemble, but Mr. Fuller soon moved on to other endeavors. (He and Mr. Golson remained close friends until his death.)

The untimely death of Coltrane, who was also a dear friend, and Mr. Fuller’s sister in 1967 plunged him into a depression, and he left the music business and took a job at the Chrysler Corporation in downtown Manhattan. But about a year later, Gillespie persuaded Mr. Fuller to join his band on a world tour, and he re-entered the jazz scene for good.

In the mid-1970s he spent two years in Count Basie’s orchestra and again directed his own ensembles.

In the 1990s, he survived a battle with lung cancer (although he had never smoked) and had part of a lung removed. He spent two years reinventing his trombone technique to accommodate his impaired breathing ability. He succeeded and released a number of well-received albums in the late 1990s and 2000s.

But as his health continued to deteriorate, he devoted himself more to teaching, transferring to faculty at Hartford University’s Hartt School of Music and the Kennedy Center’s Betty Carter Jazz Ahead program.

When asked in 2007 to describe the distinctive sound that had so indelibly shaped jazz, Mr. Fuller mentioned the importance of accepting one’s own identity. “I’m trying to be warm. Warm and effective, you know. And sometimes I feel cold and defective, ”he said. “This is how water runs. I am not God, I am not perfection. I’m just me “

Categories
Business

Helmut Jahn, ‘Conference-Busting’ Architect, Dies at 81

Helmut Jahn, ‘Convention-Busting’ Architect, Dies at 81

Helmut Jahn, a German-born architect who designed buildings around the world but was most influential in his adopted home of Chicago, where he designed an extravagant downtown home for the state government and the United Airlines terminal at O’Hare International Airport , died on Saturday in a traffic accident near the horse farm he lived on in St. Charles, Illinois. He was 81 years old.

His wife Deborah (lamp) Jahn confirmed the death. He had been riding a bike in the suburbs of Campton Hills when he was hit by two cars going in opposite directions. A press release from the local police authority said that Mr. Jahn could not brake at a stop sign.

A modernist who began a long flirtation with postmodernism in the 1970s, Mr. Jahn (pronounced “Yahn”) designed the Xerox Center, an elegant 45-story office tower with a glass and aluminum curtain wall, a rounded corner, and a two-story street front that billows inward and opened in Chicago’s Loop in 1980.

In 1982 Newsweek called Mr. Jahn the “Flash Gordon of American Architecture”. Three years later GQ showed it on its cover and wore a dashing Fedora with the headline “Helmut Jahn has a building complex”.

In the accompanying article, famous architect Philip Johnson called Mr. Jahn “a real genius” and “a comet that twinkles in the sky,” although he added, “I don’t know about him yet.”

By that time, construction of Mr. Jahn’s futuristic design of the State of Illinois Center – a government and retail complex – in the middle of the loop was almost complete. The facade is a mixture of reflective bluish-turquoise glass; Inside the circular atrium is a mix of salmon-colored and blue metal panels. Multi-colored granite lines the base.

In his 1985 New York Times review, architecture critic Paul Goldberger said that the “squat shape of the complex, tumbling around a corner in a 16-story curve, is part Pompidou Center, part Piranesi, and part kitsch revival 1950s. He added, “It is not surprising that even this relatively refined city has become breathless.”

The response to Mr. Jahn’s Chicago building ranged from “dazzling” to the critical observation that it “has nothing to do with anything else in all of Western civilization.”

Mr. Jahn had nothing against the criticism. “I’d rather people talk about buildings than say, ‘Well, that’s just another building I haven’t seen,” he told GQ.

In 1987 the United Terminal One opened, an extensive homage to the train stations of the 19th century. A riot of glass and exposed steel scaffolding, it has curves that allow for varying ceiling heights and black and white floors with red stitching.

Paul Gapp, the architecture critic of The Chicago Tribune, called it “one of the most aesthetically extraordinary terminals in the nation”. In The Times, Goldberger wrote that it was “the most ambitious effort in airport architecture” since Eero Saarinen’s designs for Dulles International Airport in Washington and the TWA Flight Center at Kennedy International Airport in New York.

Helmut Jahn was born on January 4, 1940 in Nuremberg and grew up in a nearby suburb. His father Wilhelm was a special educator. His mother, Lena (Werth) Jahn, was a housewife.

As a boy, Helmut loved drawing and painting, but aspired to become an airline pilot. “But he wasn’t very good at languages, which disqualified him as a pilot for Lufthansa,” said his wife, “so he decided on architecture because it involved a lot of drawing.”

After graduating from the Technical University in Munich, he obtained a master’s degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture. After graduating in 1967, he was hired by Gene Summers, formerly the right man of the modernist giant Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, at the venerable Chicago architecture firm CF Murphy Associates.

With Mr. Summers, Mr. Jahn helped design the new McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago, replacing the one destroyed by fire in 1967. In 1973, when Mr. Summers left, Mr. Jahn became the company’s director of planning and design.

In 1974, the Kemper Arena (now Hy-Vee Arena) in Kansas City, Missouri, opened with a modernist design by Mr. Jahn that included a roof suspended from external steel trusses – not the traditional internal pillars – and offered unobstructed views . But five years later the roof collapsed in a rainstorm.

It was found that the failure was caused by the breakage of high-strength screws that helped hang the roof.

1981 Murphy Associates Murphy / Jahn; A year later, Mr. Jahn became president of the company and acquired it in 1983. In 2012 it was renamed Jahn.

Based on the design by the State of Illinois Center (which was renamed the James R. Thompson Center for the Republican Governor of Illinois who supported it), Mr. Jahn worked with Donald J. Trump to design a 150-story tower that that would have been the centerpiece of a mega-complex on the west side of Manhattan called Television City.

That plan never came to fruition, and the site later became a reduced development called Riverside South.

Jahn’s other Manhattan projects included the 70-story CitySpire in Midtown behind the city center and 425 Lexington Avenue, which architecture critic Carter Horsley dismissed in The City Review in 1987 for its “roto-rooted top” looked like a ” crushed slide for the unbridled upward thrust of the Chrysler Building just across 43rd Street “.

Other key designs by Mr. Jahn included designs for One Liberty Place, Philadelphia’s tallest building at the time of its completion in 1990; the Sony Center in Berlin (2000); Apartments in Warsaw (2013); and 50 West Street, a luxury condominium tower in Lower Manhattan.

Back in Chicago, he designed the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library at the University of Chicago (2011) with an elliptical 40-foot high dome that covers a 180-seat reading room and an underground automated storage and retrieval machine.

Critic Blair Kamin wrote in The Chicago Tribune, describing the library as a “blown-up marvel” that “students seem to love because it lets natural air in and clears them from the dimly lit reading rooms of the university.”

Mr. Jahn worked on drafts until the end of his life.

“He was so obsessed with doing his job,” said Ms. Jahn over the phone. “It was just a one-man show. He had so many ideas in mind. “

In addition to his wife, whom he met as an interior designer for McCormick Place, his son Evan, a partner in the company, Mr. Jahn, survived. two granddaughters; and a brother, Otmar.

Long after its completion, the 17-story Thompson Center was a valued historic property on Mr. Jahn’s résumé. Over the years, governors have talked about selling it to developers who might destroy it and build a new office tower.

“He was very upset about it,” said Ms. Jahn. “It was his hope to save it.”

Earlier this month, Governor JB Pritzker’s administration accelerated the process and sent developers a call for proposals to sell the building, which was deemed too costly to maintain.

Last year, Mr. Jahn suggested saving the building by adapting it to create new offices, a hotel and apartments, and adding an office tower on the southwest corner of West Randolph and North LaSalle Streets. He also suggested removing the building’s front doors and turning the huge atrium into a covered outdoor area.

“Not only would it take a long time to demolish and replace it would seek high density without considering the public benefits,” he wrote in his proposal. We don’t need larger buildings, but buildings that improve public space. “

Categories
Entertainment

Martin Bookspan, Cultured Voice of Lincoln Heart Telecasts, Dies at 94

Martin Bookspan, Cultured Voice of Lincoln Center Telecasts, Dies at 94

Martin Bookspan, who turned a classical music childhood into a career as an announcer for the television shows “Live From Lincoln Center” and radio shows for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic, died on April 29 at his Aventura home. Fla. He was 94 years old.

The cause was heart failure, said his daughter Rachel Sobel.

Mr Bookspan started violin lessons at the age of 6, but when he entered college he realized that he would never be the next Fritz Kreisler or Jascha Heifetz. After an early career behind the scenes at radio stations in Boston and New York, he established himself as a steadfast contributor to Live From Lincoln Center, the PBS show that became America’s premier source of classical music on radio television. He joined the program when it aired in 1976.

“Live From Lincoln Center” was not much different to him than radio – it was heard but not seen. He opened the show and then handed it over to presenters such as Beverly Sills, Dick Cavett or Hugh Downs.

“The camera was never on Marty,” said John Goberman, the program’s longtime executive producer. But, he added, Mr. Bookspan “was more than just the announcer. The convenient and familiar part of every show was Marty Bookspan. “

Mr. Bookspan’s voice “didn’t sound like a lion,” said Mr. Goberman. “He spoke in a very uncomplicated, friendly and talkative manner.” The Palm Beach Post, describing Mr. Bookspan’s voice after an interview in 1994, said, “Even on the phone, it’s a voice that resonates with the undiluted atmosphere of high culture, the kind of voice you get on a public Hear TV promises could drive. But it’s not so stuffy that you can’t imagine delivering your favorite team’s game after game. “

Mr Bookspan himself said: “If I have a technique, it is the sportcaster technique.”

“With sports promoters bringing the game to life, I hope I’ve brought concerts to life,” he said in 2006 as he prepared to leave Live From Lincoln Center after 30 years. “I want the audience to be engaged and love what they hear.”

By then, Live From Lincoln Center audiences were used to hearing his warm-up exercises before the concert and his withdrawals after the concert. With a well-dressed crowd in the audience and well-known actors on stage, the action had an air of glamor, but not necessarily for Mr. Bookspan. He and his microphone were sometimes installed in locker rooms and closets – even in Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center, in a women’s bathroom. He was connected to the stage through his headphones and a video monitor.

Martin Bookspan was born on July 30, 1926 in Boston. His father Simon was a dry goods salesman who later switched to selling insurance. his mother Martha (Schwartz) Bookspan was a housewife. Simon Bookspan was passionate about Jewish liturgical music and took his son to hear prominent cantors.

At Harvard, Martin did not study music, but German literature. He graduated with honors in 1947.

He could also be heard on the campus radio station, where he conducted his first important interview in 1944. His guest was composer Aaron Copland, who revealed he was considering writing a piece for choreographer Martha Graham. It turned out to be the ballet “Appalachian Spring”.

In his future radio career, Mr. Bookspan interviewed more than 1,000 performers and composers, from the conductor Maurice Abravanel to the composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.

After working as music director at WBMS, a classical music broadcaster in Boston, he joined the Boston Symphony staff in 1954 as radio, television and recording coordinator. In 1956 he moved to New York to become director of music recording at WQXR, then owned by the New York Times.

At WQXR he hired John Corigliano, then a young composer, as an assistant. He turned out to be a concerned boss.

Mr Corigliano called sick one summer morning. “I should have known better because Marty was so considerate that he called later that afternoon,” said Corigliano, who won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Music, in an interview. “I went to the beach. Marty called and my roommate answered the phone. Marty said, “How is John doing?” My roommate said, “Oh, he’s great. He’s on the beach. ‘

“I came in the next day. There is Marty. I approached him slowly and said, ‘I’ll never do it again.’ “

Mr. Bookspan left WQXR in 1967 and joined the ASCAP music licensing agency as the coordinator for symphony and concert activities. He later was Vice President and Director of Artists and Repertoire at Moss Music Group, an artist management agency. He was also an Associate Professor of Music at New York University.

In the 1960s and 1970s, he was an art critic for several television networks, including WABC and WPIX in New York and WNAC (now WHDH) in Boston. He hosted “The Eternal Light,” an NBC program produced with the Jewish Theological Seminary, and announced the CBS soap opera “The Guiding Light” in the 1990s and early 2000s.

He also wrote reviews of recordings for the New York Times (on open-role tapes in the 1960s and on CDs in the 1990s). He wrote several books, including “101 Masterpieces of Music and Its Composers” (1968) and, with Ross Yockey, biographies of the conductors André Previn and Zubin Mehta. He oversaw radio broadcasts for the Boston Symphony and later for the New York Philharmonic.

His wife, Janet Bookspan, died in 2008. In addition to Mrs. Sobel, a son, David, survived; another daughter, Deborah Margol; six grandchildren; and a great grandson.

Tenor Jan Peerce called Mr. Bookspan’s musical knowledge “encyclopedic,” and it served him well when he had to ad libitum.

One night in 1959 he was the announcer for a program on the Boston Symphony in which pianist Rudolf Serkin played Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2. Mr. Bookspan made his usual introduction before Serkin and conductor Charles Munch took the stage. Mr. Bookspan told The Berkshire Eagle in March that after the immersion, she said, “I did what I learned that I should never do it again: I left my booth.”

He went into the green room with Serkin, who “struck off with all his might, hit the pedals for everything they were worth, got caught up in work and didn’t notice anything else” – as Mr. Bookspan recalled in another interview to chat with Aaron Copland who was on hand for the concert.

Suddenly there was silence in Brahms’s second movement.

“I ran across the stage and up the stairs, tapping the news that there was a problem with the piano,” he told The Eagle. “I went to the microphone and puffed and puffed and said, ‘There was a problem with the piano’ and that ‘as soon as I catch my breath I’ll tell you what’s going on.'”

Mr. Bookspan spoke non-stop for more than 15 minutes until the piano was repaired and Serkin and the orchestra started playing again.