Continental Confidential 

Michael Jackson's death most shocking of an entertainer since John Lennon
June 25, 2009

BY RICHARD ROEPER Sun-Times Columnist

It’s the most shocking death of an entertainment superstar since John Lennon in 1980.

All due respect to the memories of Kurt Cobain, Heath Ledger, Chris Farley, Aaliyah, Selena and the far too many other celebrities who died suddenly, Michael Jackson was in another universe as an entertainer. He has had his health problems over the years, but we had no inkling he was anything but healthy before Thursday afternoon.

The pop entertainment world was still paying tribute to the late Farrah Fawcett when the shocking news about Jackson was delivered. Within the span of just a few hours, we heard paramedics had been called to Jackson’s home, that Jackson was in cardiac arrest — and then, according to TMZ.com, he was gone. Mainstream news outlets were rightfully cautious, reporting Jackson was in a coma, making sure the story was confirmed before proceeding with their obituaries.

Wow. Michael Jackson gone. He was only 50, but he was world-famous for more than 90 percent of his life. And what a life. What an amazing, inspiring, impressive, frightening, sad, wonderful, terrible, troubled, bizarre, sweet, beyond-strange life.

He was reportedly abused as a child — and he was either a great friend or a dangerous predator to children as an adult.

What's beyond dispute: Jackson's showbiz resume is first-ballot Hall of Fame stuff.

He was one of the most talented child stars we’d ever seen, delighting TV audiences and record-buyers as the front-kid for the Jackson 5. He was a sex symbol as a young man. In the 1980s, he was the biggest star in the world — one of the biggest stars ever. On a par with Elvis, the Beatles, Sinatra. More dominant than any entertainer who has come along since then.

“Thriller” is one of the Top 10 albums of all time. Singles such as “Billie Jean” and “Beat It” and “Thriller” will live on for the next century. Jackson revolutionized the music video. He was the Jackie Robinson of MTV. His appearance on the Motown anniversary special in 1983 was the stuff of legend, with nearly 50 million tuning in to see his famous moonwalk.

“The Wiz” and the nearly forgotten “Captain EO” notwithstanding, Jackson never made the transition to movies. Had he not undergone the multiple surgical procedures, had he not affected that persona that went from Peter Pan to Pure Creepy, maybe he could have done some decent films. Some kind of musical, perhaps. But in the end, he was just too weird even for Hollywood.

The marriage to Lisa Marie Presley, with that infamous kiss on TV? We didn’t buy it. The interview with Diane Sawyer, in which Michael wore gold-plated shinguards? Chilling in its wackiness.

And of course there were the charges, the denials, the trial and the lingering doubts. We’ll never know the truth about what happened or didn’t happen, but the known facts are troubling enough. It’s just not right for a grown man to host children for overnights at a home called Neverland.

In the end, ours is not to judge. We mourn the entertainer, and we should respect that his family and many friends loved him. Michael Jackson was one of the most beloved and one of the most ridiculed figures of the last 100 years. His music delighted tens of millions of fans the world over, and he did an enormous amount of charity work — but he creeped us out with the statues to himself and the faux-military uniforms and most of all, with the questions about the kids he befriended.

Nevertheless, it comes as a shock to hear he is gone. He was the father of three children. He was a greatly gifted artist. He had every right to believe he had decades of life ahead of him. It is a shame he's gone.

Nobody has a guarantee on tomorrow. When someone ridiculously famous dies, the best reaction is to say a prayer for that person — and to vow to treasure the people you really love, not in an “I love his music” way, but in a real, human way. The people in your own life.

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R.I.P. Sky Saxon

By Joe Gross, Austin360.com | Thursday, June 25, 2009, 10:18 AM

Sky Saxon, founder of the brilliant ’60s garage band the Seeds, died Thursday morning at St. David’s Hospital.

The newly minted Austinite, born Richard Marsh, was hospitalized Monday with what doctors suspected was an infection of the internal organs, but cause of death has not yet been released.

Saxon fell ill last Thursday, but performed at Saturday at Antone’s with recent Austin collaborators Shapes Have Fangs.

Sky’s wife Sabrina Saxon posted news of his passing on Facebook this morning: “Sky has passed over and YaHoWha is waiting for him at the gate. He will soon be home with his Father. I’m so sorry I couldn’t keep him here with us. More later. I’m sorry.”

We are sorry as well.

Saxon was the founder of the Seeds, one of the all-time great first-wave garage rock bands. If the Rolling Stones was the sound of five British guys trying to imitate Muddy Waters and Howlin Wolf and failing in new and strange ways, ’60s garage rock was the sound of American kids trying to imitate the Stones and (similarly, brilliantly) missing the mark.

The Seeds fell together in 1965 around a core of Saxon and guitarist Jan Savage with keyboardist Daryl Hooper and drummer Rick Andridge. The bands’s first couple of singles — ‘Can’t Seem To Make You Mine’ and ‘Pushin’ Too Hard’ — are ’60s punk classics, snotty and fuzzy and brief. Check out their first two albums — ‘The Seeds’ and ‘A Web of Sound,’ both from that magic rock year 1966 — for perfect examples of proto-psychedelic roar.

After a few more records, Saxon broke up the Seeds in 1970, joined the spiritual commune the Source Family, adopted the name Sunlight and played with the Source Family band YaHoWha 13 now and then.

He continuted to make albums since with various lineups, distributing his music via the Internet at www.skysaxon.com. He came to Austin in March for the second annual Psych Fest and never really left, according to his publicist, keeping a very low profile until recently.

We profiled him here in March.

By Joe Gross, Austin360.com

Used by Permission, Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Farrah Fawcett, whose luxurious tresses and blinding smile helped redefine sex appeal in the 1970s as one of TV's "Charlie's Angels," died Thursday after battling cancer. She was 62.

The pop icon, who in the 1980s set aside the fantasy girl image to tackle serious roles, died Thursday shortly before 9:30 a.m. PDT in a Santa Monica hospital, spokesman Paul Bloch said.

She burst on the scene in 1976 as one-third of the crime-fighting trio in TV's "Charlie's Angels." A poster of her in a clingy swimsuit sold in the millions.

She left the show after one season but had a flop on the big screen with "Somebody Killed Her Husband." She turned to more serious roles in the 1980s and 1990s, winning praise playing an abused wife in "The Burning Bed."

She had been diagnosed with anal cancer in 2006. As she underwent treatment, she enlisted the help of actor Ryan O'Neal, who had been her longtime companion and was the father of her son, Redmond, born in 1985.

This month, O'Neal said he asked Fawcett to marry him and she agreed. They would wed "as soon as she can say yes," he said.

Her struggle with painful treatments and dispiriting setbacks was recorded in the television documentary "Farrah's Story." Fawcett sought cures in Germany as well as the United States, battling the disease with iron determination even as her body weakened.

"Her big message to people is don't give up, no matter what they say to you, keep fighting," her friend Alana Stewart said. NBC estimated the May 15, 2009, broadcast drew nearly 9 million viewers.

In the documentary, Fawcett was seen shaving off most of her trademark locks before chemotherapy could claim them. Toward the end, she's seen huddled in bed, barely responding to a visit from her son.

Fawcett, Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith comprised the original "Angels," the sexy, police-trained trio of martial arts experts who took their assignments from a rich, mysterious boss named Charlie (John Forsythe, who was never seen on camera but whose distinctive voice was heard on speaker phone.)

The program debuted in September 1976, the height of what some critics derisively referred to as television's "jiggle show" era, and it gave each of the actresses ample opportunity to show off their figures as they disguised themselves in bathing suits and as hookers and strippers to solve crimes.

Backed by a clever publicity campaign, Fawcett — then billed as Farrah Fawcett-Majors because of her marriage to "Six Million Dollar Man" star Lee Majors — quickly became the most popular Angel of all.

Her face helped sell T-shirts, lunch boxes, shampoo, wigs and even a novelty plumbing device called Farrah's faucet. Her flowing blond hair, pearly white smile and trim, shapely body made her a favorite with male viewers in particular.

A poster of her in a dampened red swimsuit sold millions of copies and became a ubiquitous wall decoration in teenagers' rooms.

Thus the public and the show's producer, Spelling-Goldberg, were shocked when she announced after the series' first season that she was leaving television's No. 5-rated series to star in feature films. (Cheryl Ladd became the new "Angel" on the series.)

But the movies turned out to be a platform where Fawcett was never able to duplicate her TV success. Her first star vehicle, the comedy-mystery "Somebody Killed Her Husband," flopped and Hollywood cynics cracked that it should have been titled "Somebody Killed Her Career."

The actress had also been in line to star in "Foul Play" for Columbia Pictures. But the studio opted for Goldie Hawn instead. "Spelling-Goldberg warned all the studios that that they would be sued for damages if they employed me," Fawcett told The Associated Press in 1979. "The studios wouldn't touch me."

She finally reached an agreement to appear in three episodes of "Charlie's Angels" a season, an experience she called "painful."

She returned to making movies, including the futuristic thriller "Logan's Run," the comedy-thriller "Sunburn" and the strange sci-fi tale "Saturn 3," but none clicked with the public.

Fawcett fared better with television movies such as "Murder in Texas," ''Poor Little Rich Girl" and especially as an abused wife in 1984's "The Burning Bed." The last earned her an Emmy nomination and the long-denied admission from critics that she really could act.

As further proof of her acting credentials, Fawcett appeared off-Broadway in "Extremities" as a woman who is raped in her own home. She repeated the role in the 1986 film version.

Not content to continue playing victims, she switched type. She played a murderous mother in the 1989 true-crime story "Small Sacrifices" and a tough lawyer on the trail of a thief in 1992's "Criminal Behavior."

She also starred in biographies of Nazi-hunter Beate Klarsfeld and photographer Margaret Bourke-White.

"I felt that I was doing a disservice to ourselves by portraying only women as victims," she commented in a 1992 interview.

In 1995, at age 50, Fawcett posed partly nude for Playboy magazine. The following year, she starred in a Playboy video, "All of Me," in which she was equally unclothed while she sculpted and painted.

She told an interviewer she considered the experience "a renaissance," adding, "I no longer feel ... restrictions emotionally, artistically, creatively or in my everyday life. I don't feel those borders anymore."

Fawcett's most unfortunate career moment may have been a 1997 appearance on David Letterman's show, when her disjointed, rambling answers led many to speculate that she was on drugs. She denied that, blaming her strange behavior on questionable advice from her mother to be playful and have a good time.

In September 2006, Fawcett, who at 59 still maintained a strict regimen of tennis and paddleball, began to feel strangely exhausted. She underwent two weeks of tests and was told the devastating news: She had anal cancer.

O'Neal, with whom she had a 17-year relationship, again became her constant companion, escorting her to the hospital for chemotherapy.

"She's so strong," the actor told a reporter. "I love her. I love her all over again."

She struggled to maintain her privacy, but a UCLA Medical Center employee pleaded guilty in late 2008 to violating federal medical privacy law for commercial purposes for selling records of Fawcett and other celebrities to the National Enquirer.

"It's much easier to go through something and deal with it without being under a microscope," she told the Los Angeles Times in an interview in which she also revealed that she helped set up a sting that led to the hospital worker's arrest.

Her decision to tell her own story through the NBC documentary was meant as an inspiration to others, friends said. The segments showing her cancer treatment, including a trip to Germany for procedures there, were originally shot for a personal, family record, they said. And although weak, she continued to show flashes of grit and good humor in the documentary.

"I do not want to die of this disease. So I say to God, 'It is seriously time for a miracle,'" she said at one point.

Born Feb. 2, 1947, in Corpus Christi, Texas, she was named Mary Farrah Leni Fawcett by her mother, who said she added the Farrah because it sounded good with Fawcett. She was less than a month old when she underwent surgery to remove a digestive tract tumor with which she was born.

After attending Roman Catholic grade school and W.B. Ray High School, Fawcett enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin. Fellow students voted her one of the 10 most beautiful people on the campus and her photos were eventually spotted by movie publicist David Mirisch, who suggested she pursue a film career. After overcoming her parents' objections, she agreed.

Soon she was appearing in such TV shows as "That Girl," ''The Flying Nun," ''I Dream of Jeannie" and "The Partridge Family."

Majors became both her boyfriend and her adviser on career matters, and they married in 1973. She dropped his last name from hers after they divorced in 1982.

By then she had already begun her long relationship with O'Neal. The couple never married. Both Redmond and Ryan O'Neal have grappled with drug and legal problems in recent years.

Used by Permission, Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press

Sam Butera, former Louis Prima saxophonist, dies in Las Vegas at age 81
Posted by Keith Spera, The Times-Picayune

Sam Butera, the hard-driving, hard-swinging New Orleans saxophonist who was Louis Prima's longtime musical partner, died Wednesday in Las Vegas following a long illness. He was 81.

Mr. Butera joined Prima's band in 1954. With singer Keely Smith, they built one of the most popular acts in the golden age of Las Vegas. Mr. Butera cooked up the arrangements that gave the likes of "Just a Gigolo," "I Ain't Got Nobody" and "Jump Jive An' Wail" maximum impact.

"Louis's ace-in-the-hole was Sam Butera," said Gia Prima, the fifth of Louis's five wives and the singer in his band from 1962 to 1975. "That animal attraction that they had, with Sam's honking sax and Louis's jumping and jiving - without Sam, Louis couldn't have pulled it off."

Mr. Butera grew up in the 7th Ward. His father owned Poor Boys Grocery & Meat Market. One evening the elder Butera took his son to see a big band, and asked the boy which horn he liked the best.

"The saxophones were closest, so I pointed to the saxophones," Mr. Butera recalled in a 1996 interview. "The next day I had a horn."

A prodigy, he turned pro at 14, serving as the human jukebox for strippers on Bourbon Street. "I worked at every joint on that street," he recounted. "You name it and I worked it. All those girls wanted to do was mother me."

At 18, he was voted the "Outstanding Teenage Musician in America" by Look Magazine at Carnegie Hall in New York. After graduating from Holy Cross High School, he considered Notre Dame University scholarships for music and track and a career in mechanical engineering. Instead he hit the road with big bands led by Ray McKinley, Tommy Dorsey and Al Hirt.

By late 1954, he'd cut several records under his own name. He often performed at the 500 Club on Bourbon Street, which was owned by Prima's brother Leon. Looking to staff his new band at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas, Prima scouted Mr. Butera at the 500 Club and offered him a job.

Mr. Butera had never been to Vegas, then a desert stopover with 30,000 inhabitants. He banked as much as $700 a week backing Lili Christine the Cat Girl and other strippers on Bourbon Street; his first Sahara paycheck was $250. His wife, Vera Marie, wanted to return to New Orleans; Mr. Butera insisted they stay.

"I thought it would be a good move," he said.

It was. Mr. Butera started writing arrangements for Prima's band, the Witnesses. "That's when it happened," he said. "The sound, you know?"

That sound was an explosive mixture of jump blues, jazz, top-notch crooning and no-holds-barred entertainment. During a seven-year run at the Sahara with the Witnesses, they defined Las Vegas cool. On-stage, Mr. Butera and Prima cut up big-time, blazing away at each other during trumpet and sax duels, thrashing around, stomping through the crowd.

"His contributions to Louis are immeasurable," said Ron Cannatella, a radio host and director of the Louis Prima archives. "They were a team. They worked perfectly together."

Mr. Butera's enormous tone stood toe-to-toe with Prima's manic energy. But for all the antics, Mr. Butera was also a serious musician who insisted the music be correct.

"Every night before the shows, you could hear Sam in the dressing room running scales and fussing over his reeds," Gia Prima recalled. "He wanted everything to be perfect. I don't think there's another tenor sax man that could touch him."

Their popularity extended far beyond Vegas. After scoring a national hit with "That Old Black Magic" in 1959, they sold out as many as four shows nightly at New York's Copacana - more than even Frank Sinatra.

"We had fun, and we played good music, what the people wanted to hear," Mr. Butera said in 1996. "And it was our own thing. Then everybody started copying our style of music."

After Louis Prima fell into an irreversible coma in 1975, Mr. Butera continued to record and tour with Frank Sinatra and others. Merv Griffin, Johnny Carson, Dinah Shore and Dean Martin solicited Mr. Butera as guests on their TV shows.

In 1985, former Van Halen singer David Lee Roth launched his solo career with a copy of Mr. Butera's "Just a Gigolo" / "I Ain't Got Nobody" arrangement. Ex-Stray Cats frontman Brian Setzer scored a Grammy for his cover of the Prima/Butera classic "Jump Jive An' Wail."

During the swing revival of the 1990s, Mr. Butera was perceived as one of the music's originators. He and his band, the Wildest, enjoyed long, successful residencies in Nevada, Atlantic City and elsewhere, perpetuating the swing and shtick of vintage Vegas.

"He carried the legacy on," Gia Prima said. "Sam could really reproduce that sound. If you wanted to hear that music, you had to go see Sam. It was amazing that he kept on as long as he did."

He made his New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival debut in 2002. In the Economy Hall Tent, a tuxedoed Mr. Butera declared his intention to play "music you can relate to. All old songs. None of that new s---."

He delivered his usual repertoire of lounge-worthy Viagra jokes and airtight versions of "Jump Jive An' Wail," "Just a Gigolo" and "Down On Bourbon Street." "That's happy music, folks," he said.

During occasional New Orleans visits, Mr. Butera often purchased pastries for his mother at Angelo Brocato Ice Cream & Confectionery on North Carrollton Avenue. The title of his 1996 CD proclaimed that "The Whole World Loves Italians." He last came to town in 2003 to be induced into the Italian-American Hall of Fame. Nancy Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Jerry Lewis sent tributes; Pete Fountain presented the award.

When failing health made travel difficult, Mr. Butera retired. He entered a Las Vegas hospital in January, and never left.

Next year is the 100th anniversary of Louis Prima's birth. Gia Prima is planning numerous commemorations. With news of Mr. Butera's passing, "my heart is saddened," she said. "For me it's almost like losing Louis again."

Survivors include his wife of 60 years, Vera, two sons and two daughters. Funeral arrangements are incomplete.

Posted by Keith Spera, The Times-Picayune

Chicago blues legend Koko Taylor dies at 80
Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune

Koko Taylor more than once said she hoped that when she died, it would be on stage, doing the thing she loved most: Singing the blues.

She nearly got her wish. The Chicago musical icon died Wednesday at age 80 of complications from gastrointestinal surgery less than four weeks after her last performance, at the Blues Music Awards in Memphis, Tenn. There she collected her record 29th Blues Music Award, capping an era in which she became the most revered female blues vocalist of her time with signature hits "Wang Dang Doodle," "I'm a Woman" and "Hey Bartender."

Taylor died at Northwestern Memorial Hospital 15 days after her May 19 surgery. She appeared to be recovering until taking a turn for the worst Wednesday morning, and was with friends and family when she died.

“Koko Taylor’s life and music brought joy to millions of people all around the world and Chicago is especially honored that she called our city her home for more than 50 years,” Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley said. “The strength of her style was formed in the night clubs of Chicago’s South Side and she carried that spirit with her wherever she went. She was an ambassador for our city and truly was the queen of a kind of music that makes people think of Chicago whenever they hear it.”

Among those with her Wednesday was Bruce Iglauer, owner of Chicago-based Alligator Records, who was her producer, manager and friend since 1974.

He recalled that Taylor had a similar surgery in 2004 and was on a ventilator for nearly a month. “The doctors were very discouraged then about her coming back, and she willed herself back to life,” Iglauer said. “We were hoping she would do the same this time.”

Born Cora Walton in 1928 in Memphis, Tenn., Taylor literally got up off her knees to become a blues icon.

Growing up on a sharecropper's farm outside Memphis, young Cora and her three brothers and two sisters slept on pallets in a shotgun shack with no running water or electricity. By the time she was 11, both her parents had died. She picked cotton to survive, and moved to Chicago in the early '50s to be with her future husband, Robert "Pops" Taylor, who died in 1989. She found a job working as a domestic, scrubbing floors for rich families.

She had sung gospel music in church while living in the South, and on weekends would attend the blues clubs on Chicago’s burgeoning South Side scene, the heyday of Chess Records and such stalwarts as Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Willie Dixon. She would occasionally sit in and caught the ear of Dixon, who approached her in the early ‘60s about recording one of his songs, “Wang Dang Doodle.”

"I didn't know Willie Dixon from Adam's house cat," Taylor recalled in an interview with the Tribune. "But he says to me, 'I love the way you sound' and, 'We got plenty of men out here singing the blues, but the world needs a woman like you with your voice to sing the blues.' ”

Taylor’s 1965 hit recording of “Wang Dang Doodle” launched her career, and established her sound: a gruff, no-nonsense roar that was the female equivalent of Howlin' Wolf's baritone growl. By becoming a band leader and a powerful voice in a male-dominated scene, she broke down barriers for many female entertainers who followed.

“Some of the lady singers who were working little local clubs, or maybe just attempting to sing in choirs and churches, they got into the blues scene because of Koko,” said Bob Koester, founder of Delmark Records. “Zora Young, Big Time Sarah, Shirley Johnson - they were inspired to try to come out and sing blues because of Koko's success. Without Koko, that might not have happened."

But when Chess folded in the early ‘70s, Taylor was back where she started, scrapping for a living.

"It was a devastating time for my mom," Taylor's daughter, Joyce "Cookie" Threatt, once told the Tribune. "Then she met Bruce [Iglauer]. It was like God put him there."

Iglauer had never worked with a female vocalist before on his fledgling label, which was dominated by guitar-playing men. But he was impressed by Taylor’s moxie and her sound.

“She was of the same generation as Muddy and Wolf, she had those [Mississippi] Delta roots,” he said Wednesday. “Even though she had been living in Chicago since the ‘50s, her music was still deeply rooted in the South. She had that rhythmic sense, that sense of where you lay the words and how the band locks in around the singer, that intensity of people who have lived that life.”

Taylor was already a distinctive artist when she came to Alligator, and with Iglauer's help began exploring a more vulnerable side to her persona on select ballads such as her epochal version of the Etta James hit "I'd Rather Go Blind." Even when recording other people's material, the singer put her idiosyncratic touch on it, usually singing it a cappella in the studio, with the musicians following her.

Taylor never adopted the blues lifestyle of hard drinking and philandering that consumed some of her peers. She was a devout woman, but at the same deeply appreciative of how the blues communicated honestly and directly about everyday life.

As her daughter once told the Tribune: “She grew up singing in [the Baptist] church in Memphis, and people come into church to get washed. They don't come in there already clean."

At the same time, she was not one to mince words. She could be devastatingly direct with anyone who crossed her.

“She was meticulous about her music, so if her band screwed up, they would hear about it,” Iglauer said. “She would not bite her tongue.”

For her, the blues was life. She bounced off her death bed in 2004 to write and record another album, the aptly titled “Old School,” released in 2007 on Alligator. It would prove to be her final recording, though Iglauer said that in recent months Taylor was calling him and singing new songs over the phone.

“She was scheduled to go to Spain next week,” he said. “She was still performing. At the Blues Awards in Memphis a few weeks ago, she was absolutely glowing. She would be exhausted standing by the edge of the stage, but when the lights went up, she would hop up and dance as soon as the music started. She would always say, ‘If I can brighten one person’s day with my music, that’s what I live for.’ ”

Survivors include her husband, Hays Harris; daughter Joyce Threatt; son-in-law Lee Threatt; grandchildren Lee Jr. and Wendy; and three great-grandchildren.

Funeral arrangements are pending.

Additionally....

Excerpted from: Koko Taylor, Queen of Chicago Blues, Is Dead at 80
By Peter Keepnews, NY Times

... Ms. Taylor won a Grammy Award in 1985 and was nominated for eight others. She also won the Blues Music Award (formerly known as the W. C. Handy Award) 29 times, more than any other performer, and a number of lifetime achievement honors, including a Pioneer Award from the Rhythm & Blues Foundation in 2003.

Performing at that awards ceremony in New York, she declared, “I’m 74, but I feel like I’m 19.”

Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune

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Music History 101: June 25—July 2