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It has been a bad year so far for music deaths. Some of Donna Summer's 70s work with Moroder was excellent, especially this mighty extended version of I Feel Love.

I somehow wonder if the irony of playing "Staying Alive" as a tribute has been lost on the radio schedulers. Although it does give me the chance to link to the use of that music in one of the undisputably greatest films of all time!

I couldn't believe the 'stayin' alive' puns after he woke from his coma, but if you have a hit song with that kind of title, it's inevitable.

My favorite version of To Love Somebody -- The Sweet Inspirations (Cissy Houston's group).

Yeah, James Carr was the real deal.
But there are lots of lesser-known soul singers I champion.
Sam Baker out of Nashville (Sound Stage 7 records)
Check out I Love You, or It's All Over. Just classic, albeit unknown, soul.
Here's a link to an MP3 of Sam Baker's Sometimes You Have To Cry. Give a listen. Fantastic stuff.

Darrell Banks like Carr had late 60's success, until Banks was shot by a policeman fooling around with his girlfriend. Or some such.
Barbara Lynn is much under-appreciated.

Probably the two soul singers I listen to the most are Arthur Alexander and Howard Tate who are only half-forgotten. (And Jerry Butler, who remains well-known)

From Robin Gibb's solo work Juliet is one of my favorites.

Lemmy Caution wrote:Probably the two soul singers I listen to the most are Arthur Alexander and Howard Tate who are only half-forgotten.

I'm also under the impression that Howard Tate WANTED to remain forgotten. He wasn't into the fame...

Back on topic, didn't The Bee Gees write "To Love Somebody" hoping Otis would record it...which didn't happen because of his death?

Lemmy Caution wrote:My favorite version of To Love Somebody -- The Sweet Inspirations (Cissy Houston's group).

Yeah, James Carr was the real deal.
But there are lots of lesser-known soul singers I champion.
Sam Baker out of Nashville (Sound Stage 7 records)
Check out I Love You, or It's All Over. Just classic, albeit unknown, soul.
Here's a link to an MP3 of Sam Baker's Sometimes You Have To Cry. Give a listen. Fantastic stuff.

Darrell Banks like Carr had late 60's success, until Banks was shot by a policeman fooling around with his girlfriend. Or some such.
Barbara Lynn is much under-appreciated.

Probably the two soul singers I listen to the most are Arthur Alexander and Howard Tate who are only half-forgotten. (And Jerry Butler, who remains well-known)

Great names! And here's one for you in case you may have missed him: O.V. Wright, who recorded out of Royal Studio in Memphis for producer Willie Mitchell.

Lemmy Caution wrote:My favorite version of To Love Somebody -- The Sweet Inspirations (Cissy Houston's group).

Yeah, James Carr was the real deal.
But there are lots of lesser-known soul singers I champion.
Sam Baker out of Nashville (Sound Stage 7 records)
Check out I Love You, or It's All Over. Just classic, albeit unknown, soul.
Here's a link to an MP3 of Sam Baker's Sometimes You Have To Cry. Give a listen. Fantastic stuff.

Darrell Banks like Carr had late 60's success, until Banks was shot by a policeman fooling around with his girlfriend. Or some such.
Barbara Lynn is much under-appreciated.

Probably the two soul singers I listen to the most are Arthur Alexander and Howard Tate who are only half-forgotten. (And Jerry Butler, who remains well-known)

An excellent summation of singers who should be much more celebrated for their talent.

If you have a few hours to spare, jump soul-deep into this site: http://www.sirshambling.com/

A labour of love if there ever was one.

Bonello's House of Tolerance tipped me off onto Lee Moses, who really is fantastic.

Doc Watson's version of Omie Wise is one of the most haunting songs I've ever heard. RIP.

Here I was thinking he was immortal. Haven't really liked his films, but it's hard to argue against such a huge influence.

knives wrote:Here I was thinking he was immortal. Haven't really liked his films, but it's hard to argue against such a huge influence.

Kaneto Shindo was one of the first, if not the first, Japanese filmmaker I watched after 'discovering' Kurosawa. Thanks not in part, but in full, to Eureka. Thinking about it now, Kurosawa lead to Shindo, who lead to Imamura. Imamura opened the door to a lifelong passion for Japanese filmmaking. Returning to Shindo has been a more profound and moving experience, if less a less frequent one, than has Kurosawa. (gramma is up to shit, but it's been a long day!)

At 100, it is not a feeling of sadness or loss, but one of reflection on the life of a filmmaker who did his own thing, and did it wonderfully. A fine, humane filmmaker, and I can only summise, a decent and very-well respected man.

...and one who kept working until the very end! I remember watching the Tokyo International Film Festival prizegiving in 2010 where Shindo accepted a prize for "Post Card" in a wheelchair and announced his retirement on stage. What energy and drive. He was one of the last links to classic Japanese filmmaking. RIP.

I'm glad he was able to do some audio commentary tracks before his death. Hopefully more will be available in subtitled form in the future.

Bradbury was my first favorite writer, the first literary author I consciously noticed and sought out, when I was in grade school. A master of the short story. I can still remember the impact of my first experience with stories like "The Veldt" and "All Summer In A Day." One of my favorites is a relatively late story called "The Toynbee Convector." It's the hundreds of excellent stories and The Martian Chronicles rather than his more famous novels that mean the most to me. I still think about passages from his memoir Dandelion Wine too. There's something unique in its poetic evocation of a mid-century American childhood that's equaled maybe only in The Tree Of Life. I'll also remember him as a lover of libraries, an autodidact, a champion of the imagination who'd rush from his hypnagogic morning waking straight to the typewriter every single day and a contrarian Angeleno who never bothered learning how to drive.

Ray Bradbury Theater was another good entry in that late 80s/early 90s TV anthology horror boom too. I read the Illustrated Man last year and enjoyed it quite a bit as well. He looked pretty bad in that videoconference thing he participated in not too long ago, so I can't say this is too surprising, but a sad announcement indeed

Thanks for reminding me about this, domino. When I think of his TV work, I tend to think of The Twilight Zone, but the stuff he did for The Ray Bradbury Theater was arguably the best film/TV incarnation of his work. I especially loved "The Screaming Woman" and "Gotcha!" the latter of which is actually not an adaptation so much as a wholesale rewrite and recombination of two of his previous short stories. Along with Haneke's The Piano Teacher, "Gotcha!" has one of the all-time greatest "coming out" scenes ever.

Well, this is a disappointment. I know that the political right is second only to the Mormon church in postmortem conversions, but I'm pretty sure that the author's right here. I already knew about the Moore kerfuffle and I remember seeing him on Politically Incorrect about maybe 15 years ago, telling Bill Maher that there was no such thing as sexual harassment. Indeed, he maintained that a secretary should take it as a compliment if she got a slap on the rear. About a year or two ago, I also happened to catch him on Dennis Miller's radio show. I only heard the tail end of the interview, in which he discussed his TCM picks (two Lon Chaney flicks, btw!), but for all I know, they may have talked politics before that...

Actually while on the subject of his politics it's worth noting that Bradbury always vehemently denied the reading of Fahrenheit 451 that placed it as a dystopian political allegory. He maintained that it was just a story about the damned popularity of televisions.