Comedian Soupy Sales, who died last Thursday at the age of 83, was a fixture on TV during the ’60s and ’70s known for his trademark of getting blasted in the face with custard pie. Mostly though he was just funny, which is enough to remember him for. Sales had lots of connections to the world of music too: He was signed to Reprise and Motown, he was was a huge jazz fan who incorporated lots of the style into his show, he appeared on Hullabaloo in the mid-60s and he made a bunch of novelty records. One of them, “Do the Mouse,” almost was a hit despite being pretty awful (in a good way). He also had two sons, Hunt and Tony, who played with Iggy and Bowie. Let’s take a minute to pay tribute to Sales with some videos …
In 2005, I reviewed an album by a great roots and rockabilly band The Two Timin’ Three. As sometimes happens to music writers, I lost track of the band. In 2007, I heard a few tracks posted on their Myspace page that hinted at a new, innovative sound that looked toward alt-rock while retaining much of what made them a first-rate roots band. Then, in late 2008 I was shocked to discover that 27-year-old Laufer, a motorcycle enthusiast, had been killed earlier in the year in a hit-and-run homicide while stopped at a red light on his bike. Laufer’s killer had been driving a truck and has still not been brought to justice.
Laufer’s family has spearheaded an email campaign to try and get his story on America’s Most Wanted. They are encouraging anyone who cares to email producers at AMW today (Sept. 10) and ask them to produce Eric’s story on the show in hopes of finding his killer.
Of all the great jazz vocalists of the 1950s and ’60s, Chris Connor is perhaps the least well-known today. Despite making a string of classic records for Atlantic, she always seems to be mentioned (if at all) after June Christy, Carmen McRae, Chet Baker, Anita O’Day or even Julie London when lists of the top singers of the era are compiled. Still, she was quite popular at the time, and it’s very easy to hear why. Though she could swing with anyone, her true greatness came on the slow songs, the torchy ones that come from broken hearts and messed-up lives, and sound best filtered through the blue haze of smoke and low lights. Connor could sing these ballads like Hank Aaron hit home runs: effortlessly and with loads of power. Her deep and rich voice caressed the words tenderly and with great care, giving the feeling that she was singing to you and you alone. Her death this week gives us a chance to look back on some wonderful performances and celebrate her all-too-short career.
Ellie Greenwich had a hand in some of the greatest songs ever recorded. In the early to mid-’60s, she and her husband Jeff Barry cranked out an incredible string of songs that, when listed back to back, truly seems to be impossible. Check this short list and see if you can believe it. The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” and “Baby I Love You,” the Crystals’ “Then He Kissed Me” and “Da Do Ron Ron,” the Dixie Cup’s “Chapel of Love,” Manfred Mann’s “Do Wah Diddy,” Ike and Tina Turner’s “River Deep Mountain High,” Leslie Gore’s “Maybe I Know” and the Shangri-Las’ “Leader of the Pack,” “Out in the Streets” and “Train from Kansas City.” Whew! The duo (as well as the producers and singers they wrote for) created music so epically joyous, so ridiculously heartbreaking, and so true that to call it “oldies” seems like a crime. They are timeless songs that capture the feelings of teenage love, real love and real heartaches simply and perfectly..
This morning, a Google search revealed hundreds of obits for Willy DeVille from American news sources. This past Friday morning, the day after his death from pancreatic cancer in a hospital bed in New York City, there were less than a handful. All of them were in European languages. In America, Willy DeVille was a footnote to rock & roll history; known for fronting Mink DeVille, one of the early bands in the late-’70s CBGB’s era, and for a couple songs on Cabretta, the band’s debut on Capitol produced by Jack Nitzsche — most notably, the killer cover of Moon Martin’s “Cadillac Walk,” and DeVille’s own “Spanish Stroll,” one of the true groundbreaking, genre-blurring songs he composed, and a mark that set Mink DeVille apart. For the general populace, it was the crossover pop hit “Storybook Love,” and only because it appeared in the film The Princess Bride. (Never mind that it was a song from Miracle, his first solo album, produced by Mark Knopfler.)
“Cadillac Walk”
“Spanish Stroll”
“Storybook Love”
In Europe, however, DeVille was, and will rightfully remain, a legend for his massive talent as a songwriter, as a vocal stylist (his growls and croon are instantly recognizable and his phrasing is unlike anyone else’s in the history of rock), as a street poet who was equal parts Dion DiMucci and Jacques Brel, and as an entertainer who could captivate an audience from beginning to end. His catalog is more diverse than virtually any other modern performer. The genre span of the songs he’s written is staggering. From early rock and rhythm & blues styles, to Delta-styled blues, from Cajun music to New Orleans second line, from Latin-tinged folk to punky salseros, to elegant orchestral ballads — few people could write a love song like DeVille. He was the embodiment of rock & roll’s romance, its theater, its style, its drama, camp, and danger.
Assorted German, French, and Dutch news outlets are reporting the passing of Willy DeVille, one of America’s true outsider rock & roll poets, at the age of 55. We will have an in-depth post from Allmusic’s Thom Jurek early next week. In the meantime, here is a feature and interview, written by Jurek, we published in May 2006, just after DeVille had released his Live in the Lowlands DVD. It was one of his last U.S. interviews — if not the last.
On a rainy, noisy New York City afternoon, rock & roll singer and perennial romantic troubadour Willy DeVille is screaming at garbage trucks out in the street beneath him: “Shut up, you noisy motherf*ckers! I’m tryin’ to do an interview here!” The sounds of chaos are everywhere around him, a Chihuahua’s yapping full bore, people are coming and going; he holds two conversations simultaneously besides the one we’re having. He’s exhaling cigarette smoke wearily yet he’s animated: “So where were we?” he says in a slightly raspy vocal register that’s not far from the one he uses on-stage, the place where he holds court and mesmerizes European crowds by the thousands; here, outside of New York and New Orleans, in the hundreds — if he’s lucky. The stage is DeVille’s kingdom — he is one of the sharpest dressers in rock & roll history, and had the refined Little Richard look long before Prince. He’s regal in pointed Italian shoes, stovepipe trousers, silk, blouse-like shirts or all colors, with scarves, hats, and canes for props, like a riverboat gambler from the last century or looking like a pirate thief from the docks of European fiction and movies. Yet he can sing like a street-corner balladeer without ever stretching it.
With the entertainment world shaken to the core by the sudden plethora of celebrity deaths this July, one late entry is particularly devastating to the world of dance. Merce Cunningham was the crown prince of modern American dance, a choreographer whose pedigree ran back to Ted Shawn, the legendary dance pioneer who founded the Jacob’s Pillow Festival during the Depression, through Shawn’s protégé Martha Graham, and finally to his own company, which Cunningham founded at Black Mountain College in 1953. As a dancer, Cunningham was tall, thin, and strong as an ox, but light as a feather in leaps and could seemingly turn innumerable tight spins without growing dizzy or breaking out of the pattern abruptly. At the most, Cunningham’s Dance Company never employed more than 14 dancers, and a spot in the ensemble was a hard won prize, as Cunningham’s standards for agility and perfection — even in the face of critics who accused his choreography of constituting chaos — were at the premium level.
Sky Saxon, lead singer with 60s garage punk legends the Seeds, died on the morning of June 25, 2009 (or as his official web site put it, he “passed over to be with YaHoWha”); as it happened, he died the same day as both Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, ensuring that the entertainment press, who might have been expected to treat his passing like a one-line filler item, didn’t even give it that much attention. But Saxon hadn’t been a celebrity in the traditional sense for a very long time. Sky may have been a rock star for about two years on the strength of the singles “Pushin’ Too Hard” and “Can’t Seem To Make You Mine,” but after those twenty-four months as a bargain-basement Mick Jagger, he evolved into Flower Power’s Last Man Standing, a guy who let his freak flag fly with a wild-eyed sincerity that made most of his peers from the Sunset Strip scene look like weekenders, and transformed his story into something far more interesting than the typical two-hit wonder and cult hero.
Comedian Soupy Sales, who died last Thursday at the age of 83, was a fixture on TV during the ’60s and ’70s known for his trademark of getting blasted in the face with custard pie. Mostly though he was just funny, which is enough to remember him for. Sales had lots of connections to the world of music too: He was signed to Reprise and Motown, he was was a huge jazz fan who incorporated lots of the style into his show, he appeared on Hullabaloo in the mid-60s and he made a bunch of novelty records. One of them, “Do the Mouse,” almost was a hit despite being pretty awful (in a good way). He also had two sons, Hunt and Tony, who played with Iggy and Bowie. Let’s take a minute to pay tribute to Sales with some videos …
In 2005, I reviewed an album by a great roots and rockabilly band 
Of all the great jazz vocalists of the 1950s and ’60s, 
This morning, a Google search revealed hundreds of obits for 
Assorted German, French, and Dutch news outlets are reporting the passing of Willy DeVille, one of America’s true outsider rock & roll poets, at the age of 55. We will have an in-depth post from Allmusic’s Thom Jurek early next week. In the meantime, here is a feature and interview, written by Jurek, we published in May 2006, just after DeVille had released his Live in the Lowlands DVD. It was one of his last U.S. interviews — if not the last.
With the entertainment world shaken to the core by the sudden plethora of celebrity deaths this July, one late entry is particularly devastating to the world of dance. 
