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Entertainment

Paul Oscher, Blues Musician in Muddy Waters’s Band, Dies at 74

Paul Oscher, Blues Musician in Muddy Waters’s Band, Dies at 74

An uncle gave Paul a harmonica when he was 12, but he didn’t learn how to make the most of it until one day when he was delivering groceries after school. A customer who happened to be a blues musician overheard him trying to play “Red River Valley” and taught him the ropes.

Updated

April 26, 2021, 11:15 p.m. ET

By the age of 15 he was playing in black clubs in Brooklyn and had become part of a network of musicians in that scene. He was 17 when he was introduced to Mr. Waters one night after a Waters show at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Three years later, when Mr. Waters returned to perform in New York City and did not have a harmonica player, he invited Mr. Oscher to sit down. At the end of the show, Mr. Waters offered him a job.

For a while, Mr. Oscher lived in the basement of Mr. Waters ‘house in Chicago and shared the room with Otis Spann, the well-known Chicago blues pianist and member of Mr. Waters’ band. Mr. Oscher later said that he learned his blues timing from Mr. Spann.

He toured Europe and the United States with the band, often dressed like his bandmates in a red brocade Nehru jacket. (Mr. Waters was wearing a black suit.) When they reached the segregated south, he was usually not allowed to stay in the same hotel as his bandmates, and he remembered one day the group fell silent on the street when they saw a sign stopped by explaining, “You are entering Klan County.”

Mr. Oscher left the band in the early 1970s to pursue a solo career in New York City. Over the years he has performed with Eric Clapton, Levon Helm, T-Bone Walker, John Lee Hooker and many others.

In addition to the harmonica, he often played the piano and guitar at the same time – his harmonica in a neck stand, his guitar on his lap and one hand on the keyboard. He also played the accordion and vibraphone.

In the late 1990s, Mr. Oscher was playing in Frank’s Cocktail Lounge in Brooklyn when he met Suzan-Lori Parks, the playwright and author, and she asked him to teach her to play the harmonica. They married in 2001 and separated amicably in 2008. They later divorced but remained friends. Mr. Oscher had no immediate survivors.

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Health

Nick Springer, Paralympic Gold Medalist, Dies at 35

Nick Springer, Paralympic Gold Medalist, Dies at 35

After a three day 30 mile hike, he experienced flulike symptoms that continued to worsen over the next 16 hours. There were purple spots on his stomach, indicating blood clots. All were symptoms of meningococcal meningitis, a bacterial infection that causes swelling of the protective membranes that cover the brain and spinal cord.

Up to one in five people who survive meningitis can experience amputation, deafness, and brain and kidney damage. According to the National Meningitis Association, 10 to 15 percent die even with rapid treatment.

Springer was rushed to a hospital in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and then quickly flown to another in Springfield, where his organs began to fail and his blood pressure dropped to near zero. He was given a 10 percent chance of survival.

He was taken to a Manhattan hospital where he underwent amputations in a medically induced coma that would last eight weeks.

After waking up, according to the 2003 New York Times article, he said to his father, “Dad, I don’t think I have fingers. I think I know about my legs too. “Mr. Springer remembered:” My wife and I looked at each other and said: ‘This is our new normal. ‘Because Nick is alive. He’s still Nick. “

Springer refused to wear prostheses or use an electric wheelchair. And he played wheelchair rugby relentlessly.

“At a very high level, it can be very violent and that’s what people like about it,” said his friend Scott Hogsett. “Who doesn’t want to see two people collide as hard as possible in a wheelchair?”

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Entertainment

Shock G, Frontman for Hip-Hop Group Digital Underground, Dies at 57

Shock G, Frontman for Hip-Hop Group Digital Underground, Dies at 57

When it was Mr. Shakur’s turn he quickly released a thoughtful verse about the dangers of success: “Get some fame, people change.”

Mr. Shakur had auditioned for Shock G and was hired as a member of the group’s street crew. He ended up performing and recording with Digital Underground. He appeared in the groups “This Is an EP Release” (Tommy Boy) and “Sons of the P” (Tommy Boy), which were nominated for a Grammy Award.

In 1991, Mr. Shakur started a solo career with the album “2Pacalypse Now” (Interscope), which sold half a million times. It included two humble hits, “Trapped” and “Brenda’s Got a Baby,” a song about the plight of an unmarried teenage mother. Before the album was released, he also began a career as a film actor, playing the violent, unpredictable bishop in the Ernest Dickerson film “Juice”.

Until 1993, Mr. Shakur was a rising star. Shock G and another member of the Digital Underground, Money B, appeared on Mr. Shakur’s album and helped create his first big hit, “I Get Around,” a poolside hymn with a relaxed beat. But now it was Shock G with an Afro T-shirt and an oversized purple T-shirt that said, “Now you can tell from my everyday seizures that I’m not rich man caught in the mix / Tryna makes 15 cents one dollar. “

Shock G was born in Brooklyn on August 25, 1963, and his musical instincts were shaped by a childhood spent moving around the country. His mother, Shirley Kraft, was a television producer; his father, Edward Racker, was a senior executive in computer administration. After the couple divorced, “I spent most of my time in Tampa, but I also lived in New York, Philly, and California,” Shock G told the Times. “I was always interested in music and played in bands when I was 10 or 11 years old.”

His grandmother, Gloria Ali, was a pianist and cabaret singer in Harlem in the 1950s. She taught him how to play Thelonious Monk’s “Round Midnight” on the piano. When hip-hop picked up speed in New York in the late 1970s, Shock G, who lived there at the time, recalled: “All my friends and I sold our instruments to buy mixers and turntables.”

Shock G is survived by his parents; his sister Elizabeth Racker; and his brother Kent Racker.

Shock G saw music as expansive, inclusive, and experimental. “Funk can be rock, funk can be jazz and funk can be soul,” he told the Times. “Most people have a checklist of what makes a good pop song: It has to be three minutes long, have a repeatable chorus, and have a catchy catch. That makes music stale. We say, “Do what feels good.” If you like it for three minutes, you will love it for 30 minutes. “

Christina Morales and Jesus Jiménez contributed to the coverage.

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Health

Thomas Brock, Whose Discovery Paved the Method for PCR Exams, Dies at 94

Thomas Brock, Whose Discovery Paved the Way for PCR Tests, Dies at 94

PCR technology, which requires cycles of extreme heating and cooling, can multiply small segments of DNA millions or even billions of times in a short period of time. It has proven crucial in many ways, including identifying DNA at a crime scene and, more recently, determining if someone has Covid-19.

“PCR is fundamental to everything we do in molecular biology today,” said Yuka Manabe, professor of medicine in the Infectious Disease Department at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “Mullis would not have been able to perform PCR without a rock-stable enzyme.”

Updated

April 22, 2021, 7:27 p.m. ET

Thomas Dale Brock was born in Cleveland on September 10, 1926. His father, Thomas, an engineer who ran a hospital boiler room, died when Tom was 15 years old, driving him and his mother, Helen (Ringwald) Brock, a nurse, into poverty. Tom, an only child, took jobs in stores to help her.

When he was a teenager, his interest in chemistry led him to set up a small lab with a friend in the attic of a barn behind his house in Chillicothe, Ohio, where he and his mother lived after his father died. There they experimented with explosives and toxic gases.

After completing his training in the Navy’s electronics training program, Dr. Brock received three degrees from Ohio State University: a bachelor’s degree in botany and a master’s and Ph.D. in mycology, the study of fungi.

Dr. Brock spent five years as a research microbiologist with the Upjohn Company before being hired as an assistant professor of biology at Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve University) in Cleveland. After two years he became a postdoctoral fellow at the university’s medical faculty. In 1960 he moved to the bacteriology department at Indiana University in Bloomington, where he taught medical microbiology.

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Entertainment

Monte Hellman, Cult Director of ‘Two-Lane Blacktop,’ Dies at 91

Monte Hellman, Cult Director of ‘Two-Lane Blacktop,’ Dies at 91

“We thought it was good advertising,” Hellman said of the Esquire problem in a 1999 Los Angeles Times interview when Two-Lane Blacktop finally made it on video. “In retrospect, we wouldn’t have done it. I think that raised people’s expectations. They couldn’t accept the film for what it was. “

French film critics did, and their enthusiasm spread to the United States. As the 1970s became recognized as the golden age of independent film, the reputation of the film and that of its director rose. In 2005 Cahiers du Cinéma magazine declared it was “one of the greatest American films of the 1970s”.

Monte Himmelbaum was born July 12, 1929 in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and grew up in Albany, NY, where his father ran a small grocery store. When he was s6 the family moved to Los Angeles.

He studied language and theater at Stanford University, where he directed radio plays, and after graduating in 1951, studied film at the University of California in Los Angeles. Around this time he changed his last name.

In 1952, Mr. Hellman helped found the Stumptown Players, a summer theater company, in Guerneville, California. Carol Burnett was a member. He has directed numerous productions and appeared as an actor when necessary.

His first marriage was to one of the theater’s actresses, Barboura Morris. The marriage ended in divorce. He was married three more times, said his daughter. In addition to his daughter, he is survived by a son, Jared, and a brother, Herb.

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Business

Mariano Puig, Scion of a Spanish Vogue Home, Dies at 93

Mariano Puig, Scion of a Spanish Fashion House, Dies at 93

MADRID – Mariano Puig, who helped transform his family-owned Spanish perfume maker into an international fashion house that includes the Paco Rabanne, Nina Ricci, Carolina Herrera and Jean Paul Gaultier brands, died in Barcelona on April 13th. He was 93 years old.

Puig, the company that bears the family name, confirmed the death.

As a member of the second generation to run the company, Mr. Puig built his overseas presence significantly, particularly in the 1960s when Puig opened offices in the United States and formed an alliance with Mr. Rabanne, a Spanish fashion designer whose celebrity status in Paris gave Puig better access to the French market.

Puig eventually took over Paco Rabanne and other major brands. One of Mr Puig’s five children, Marc Puig, is the current chairman and managing director of the company, which was founded in 1914 by Mariano Puig’s father, Antonio.

In 2019, Puig achieved sales of around 2 billion euros or 2.4 billion US dollars. It’s one of the few big fashion companies still owned by its original family in a luxury goods sector dominated by conglomerates like Kering and LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.

Mariano Puig Planas was born in Barcelona on December 8, 1927. His father at the time imported and sold products and materials such as rubber, perfumes and books. His mother, Júlia Planas, was a housewife.

In his youth, Mariano was a member of the Spanish water ski team and won national championships twice. He graduated from the Sarrià Chemical Institute in Barcelona in 1949 and studied at the IESE Business School in the 1950s shortly after it opened there. Today it is one of the two leading international business schools in Barcelona alongside Esade.

Antonio Puig lost his business when a German submarine sank a ship with an uninsured shipload of his goods at the beginning of the First World War. After starting over, he introduced the first lipstick made in Spain under the brand name Milady in 1922.

After the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, Antonio Puig consolidated his perfume business by selling a lavender-scented eau de cologne called Agua Lavanda. Cologne, developed with the French perfumer Segal, became a major seller in Spain.

From the 1950s, Antonio Puig gradually passed control to his four sons and died in 1979. Mariano Puig joined the company as a chemical engineer while studying.

He was the second oldest son and the one most determined to grow the company overseas. “Spain was small and closed, and that made me think about what we wanted to do and be,” he said, according to an excerpt from a book that Puig published on the occasion of the company’s 100th anniversary.

In business today

Updated

April 21, 2021, 3:24 p.m. ET

Mr. Puig acquired the rights to distribute well-known foreign brands in Spain at a time when the country was under military dictatorship. With his wife María Guasch he traveled to Los Angeles to sign a contract with Max Factor for the distribution of his cosmetics in Spain.

Mr Puig’s greatest coup was to convince Mr Rabanne, the fashion designer, to diversify – to add perfumery to his haute couture lines – and to work with Puig, who at the time only had about 50 employees. Shortly after agreeing to a fragrance joint venture in 1968, the two men were at dinner when Mr. Rabanne sketched the outline of the United Nations building in New York on a paper tablecloth. The drawing became the design for the bottle of their first successful perfume called Calandre. Puig eventually took over the entire business from Mr. Rabanne, including his fashion house.

Mr. Puig followed a similar path with Carolina Herrera, the Venezuelan fashion designer who had become famous in New York in the 1980s. They founded a perfume brand together before Puig also took over her fashion house in 1995.

Mr. Puig was the company’s managing director until 1998 and then chairman of Exea, the holding company over which his Puig family controlled, for another five years.

He was a proponent of the family business and helped found the Spanish Institute for Family Business in Barcelona. José Luis Blanco, its general manager, paid tribute to Mr Puig as a key player in the overhaul of Spanish industry, which had been torn by the civil war and lacked funds from the Marshall Plan after World War II.

Together with several other business leaders of his generation, Mr. Puig succeeded in “transforming this nation from ruins into the modern and dynamic country that we have today,” said Mr. Blanco.

Together with his son Marc, Mr. Puig is survived by his wife; a brother, José María; four other children, Marian, Ana, Ton and Daniel; and nine grandchildren.

As one of the most famous business tycoons in Barcelona, ​​Mr. Puig helps fund several local art foundations and museums as well as IESE.

He wanted to stay away from politics and regretted the decades-long conflict of secession in Catalonia, which peaked in 2017 when the Catalan regional government made a failed attempt to declare an independent Catalan republic with Barcelona as its capital.

In a letter published earlier this year in La Vanguardia, the Barcelona-based newspaper, Mr Puig wrote: “I feel very Catalan, I feel very Spanish and I have a deep love for my city. But recently we’ve seen a contradiction that can only make me sad. “

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Business

Chuck Geschke, Father of Desktop Publishing, Dies at 81

Chuck Geschke, Father of Desktop Publishing, Dies at 81

Dr. Geschke had the opportunity to “look around the corner,” said Shantanu Narayen, the current CEO of Adobe. “Civilization is all about written material,” he said. “Chuck and John brought this into the modern age.”

Charles Matthew Geschke was born on September 11, 1939 in Cleveland. His mother, Sophia (Krisch) Geschke, worked as a paralegal for the Cleveland Bankruptcy Court. His father Matthew was a photo engraver and helped prepare the plates needed for printing newspapers and magazines.

Matthew Geschke often told his son that there were two things to avoid: the printing business and the stock market. For a while, Chuck Geschke followed his father’s advice.

He was raised Roman Catholic, attended a Jesuit college in Cleveland, and attended a Jesuit seminary after graduation. But he dropped out before the end of his fourth year. He often said that he and the Jesuits had reached a mutual decision that the priesthood was not for him.

Building on his years of studying Latin in high school and seminary, he enrolled at Xavier University in Cincinnati, graduating with a degree in classical music. He then did a Masters in Mathematics before working as a mathematics professor at John Carroll University, a small Catholic university in Cleveland.

In the mid-1960s, his life took a different turn when he told a struggling student to leave university. The next year the student returned and said to him, “The best thing you ever did was kick me out.” The student had found a high-paying job selling computers for General Electric and was soon teaching his former professor how to write a computer program on the giant mainframes of the day.

Among the simple programs Chuck Geschke wrote, summer was a way to print envelopes to announce the birth of his daughter. Not long after that, he enrolled as a Ph.D. Student in the new computer science department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, one of the first in the country.

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Politics

Walter Mondale, Ex-Vice President Below Jimmy Carter, Dies

Walter Mondale, Ex-Vice President Under Jimmy Carter, Dies

One of his proudest legislative accomplishments, he said, was his leadership role in making it easier for the Senate to cut off a filibuster with 60 votes due to a rule change instead of a two-thirds vote as it was previously required. One of his greatest regrets, he said, was his delay until 1969 when he turned against the Vietnam War.

In the 1970s, Mr. Mondale’s name was on the list of possible candidates for national office. He dutifully wrote a campaign book entitled “The Accountability of Power: Towards a Responsible Presidency” (1975), in which he criticized the “Imperial Presidency” of Richard M. Nixon and then competed for the nomination of President 1976 joined.

The campaign was going nowhere. “I remember being six points behind ‘don’t know’ after a year,” said Mondale in an interview in 2010. He ended the offer early in 1974. When he withdrew, he said he lacked an “overwhelming desire to To become president “. The comment would haunt him.

The Democratic victor, Mr. Carter, a conservative southerner, was looking for a liberal northerner who could help him find support in the industrialized world. Mr Mondale was high on everyone’s list, but he had mixed feelings until he got an agreement from the candidate that he would play a full political role, augmented by the largely ceremonial roles assigned to most vice presidents.

Mr. Mondale’s chief of staff, Richard Moe, said Mr. Humphrey had been just as persuasive. “‘Fritz,’ he said, ‘if you have the chance to become Vice President you should take it,'” recalled Mr. Moe.

In office, Mr. Carter was true to his word when he made important assignments in the White House, said Mr. Mondale in 2010. “Carter listened to me a lot, I think,” he said. “I was trying to avoid a win-loss record. But he was wonderful for me and for Joan. They have never offended our independence, integrity or position. “

Some in the presidential circle, such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security advisor, later downgraded Mr Mondale’s contribution as it consisted largely of political advice. In one case, Mr Mondale unsuccessfully spoke out against the imposition of a grain embargo on the Soviet Union after its invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979.

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Politics

White Home warns Russia will face penalties if Alexei Navalny dies

White House warns Russia will face consequences if Alexei Navalny dies

WASHINGTON – White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Sunday the Biden government warned the Russian government not to let jailed Putin critic Alexei Navalny die in custody.

“We have told the Russian government that what happens to Mr. Navalny in their care is their responsibility and that they will be held accountable by the international community,” Sullivan said on CNN’s State of the Union program.

“We have announced that there will be consequences if Mr Navalny dies,” he added.

Navalny flew to Russia from Berlin earlier this year after recovering for nearly six months from nerve agent poisoning that occurred last August. He was arrested at passport control and later sentenced to more than two years in prison.

Last month, the United States sanctioned seven members of the Russian government for alleged poisoning and subsequent imprisonment of Navalny. The sanctions were the first to be directed against Moscow under Biden’s leadership. The Trump administration has taken no action against Russia because of the situation in Navalny.

State Secretary Antony Blinken wrote in a separate statement that the sanctions would send “a clear signal” to Russia that the use of chemical weapons and human rights violations are having grave consequences.

“Any use of chemical weapons is unacceptable and violates international standards,” wrote Blinken.

The Kremlin has repeatedly denied playing a role in Navalny’s poisoning.

A spokesman for Navalny said the Russian opposition leader’s health had deteriorated since his detention. Navalny went on a hunger strike to force his prison guards to access outside medical care to relieve back pain and leg pain. A Navalny lawyer said he had two spinal hernias, AP reported.

Continue reading: The US was concerned about the deteriorating health of incarcerated Kremlin critic Navalny

The Russian authorities have previously stated that they have offered Navalny adequate medical care but continue to refuse it. The prison has refused to allow a doctor, chosen by Navalny, from outside the facility to carry out his treatment.

On Saturday, doctor Yaroslav Aschikhmin said the test results he received from Navalny’s family show that the detained critic has elevated potassium levels that can trigger cardiac arrest. Navalny also has elevated creatinine levels which indicate possible kidney failure.

“Our patient could die at any moment,” said Ashikhmin in a Facebook post.

In an interview with the BBC on Sunday, the Russian Ambassador to Britain accused Navalny of dramatizing his condition to attract attention.

“Of course he can’t die in prison, but I can say that Mr. Navalny is acting absolutely like a hooligan,” said Andrei Kelin. “His goal for all of this is to get him noticed, including by saying that his left hand is sick today and his leg is sick tomorrow and all that stuff, so the journalists pay attention.”

“Navalny was treated in the hospital, which is not far from where he is serving his sentence, and I understand he is no longer complaining,” added Kelin.

Last week, the Biden administration hit Russia with a string of US sanctions for human rights abuses, widespread cyberattacks and attempts to influence the US elections.

In a speech on Thursday, Biden said he was ready to take further action against Moscow.

“If Russia continues to interfere with our democracy, I am ready to take further action to respond. It is my responsibility as President of the United States to do so,” said White House Biden.

“It was clear to President Putin that we could have gone further, but I decided against it, I chose to be proportionate,” Biden said of the measures, adding that he did not “want to initiate an escalation cycle and.” Conflict with Russia. “

Continue reading: The West is waiting for Putin’s next move as tensions between Russia and Ukraine mount

Biden also said that in a phone conversation with Putin, he suggested that the two meet in person in Europe this summer to discuss a number of pressing issues.

Sullivan told CNN that the Biden-Putin summit would be discussed but would not provide additional details.

“There’s no summit on the books right now, it’s something we’re talking about. Obviously, this summit would have to be held under the right circumstances in a way that could actually advance the relationship,” Sullivan said.

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Entertainment

Liam Scarlett, Famed Choreographer Accused of Sexual Misconduct, Dies at 35

Liam Scarlett, Famed Choreographer Accused of Sexual Misconduct, Dies at 35

Alastair Macaulay wrote in 2012 for the New York Times about “Viscera,” the piece Mr. Scarlett later created for the Miami City Ballet, that its “images, constructions and textures” showed why Mr. Scarlett had “achieved the status of an important choreographer of classical ballet. “

Speaking to The Times about Mr. Villella in 2014, Mr. Scarlett said, “I owed Eddy a lot because I was very aware that American executives would all watch to see what the outcome would be. After this piece everyone called. “

Mr Scarlett ended his dance career in 2012 and became the Royal Ballet’s first artist in residence that same year. Over the next seven years, he not only created numerous pieces for his home company, but also choreographed works for the Norwegian National Ballet, New York Ballet, American Ballet Theater, England National Ballet, San Francisco Ballet and the Royal New Zealand Ballet Queensland Ballet, BalletBoyz and Texas Ballet Theater.

Although he was invited to create abstract works as a guest choreographer, his pieces for the Royal Ballet showed his fondness for storytelling. With works such as “Sweet Violets” (2012), a story of Jack the Ripper and murder in Victorian England, “Hansel and Gretel” (2013) and “The Age of Anxiety”, a ballet on the subject of war based on the poem by WH Auden based Mr. Scarlett, who had the same title and was seated on Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 2, showed that he was part of a long tradition of dance drama at the Royal Ballet.

In 2016 he created his first full-length work, Frankenstein, a retelling of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel based on a score commissioned by Lowell Liebermann. It received lukewarm reviews both in London and when it was performed by the San Francisco Ballet in 2018. His new version of Swan Lake, performed for the Royal Ballet in 2018, was received with more warmth.

“It’s far from a radical reinvention – the setting and choreography remain close to the nineteenth-century original – but what sets it apart from so many other swan lakes is its attention to dramatic detail,” wrote Judith Mackrell in The Guardian.