DEATHS ; Notable Passings; The Thread to Pay Last Respects

[Miss Stella]

Her passing made me sooo very nostalgic and sad....
Lol and yes, Melanie...she was a piece of vintage movie work, wasn’t she? But yet, that was what I first remembered when I heard the news today...

 

[pgoat]

Green never attained the superstar status of his contemporaries, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, partly because of mental illness, but he was regarded as a "musician's musician."

When Fleetwood Mac had their biggest period of success (mid-late 70s with Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham), there was renewed interest via lots of books being published, which naturally spent a chapter or two charting the odd and unlikely transformation over several thousand miles, geographically and quite a musical shift in a decade or so. Lots of the old Peter Green recordings were re-released and it was thus (with a shockingly un-Stevie Nicksesque reissued double album recorded live at Chess Studios w/several Chicago blues legends) that my 13 year old mind was blown. I starting digging back for every recording I could find of the old band.

Over the next few years as I began playing myself around NYC (often drawing a lot of inspiration from Green and fellow FM guitarist Danny Kirwan), I'd bring the old band up with other musicians. Pretty much no one, not even blues aficionados, knew what I was talking about. I think, in addition to the mental illness and interpersonal issues that caused problems and rapid personnel departures within the band, the old Fleetwood Mac was always better known in UK.

In any case, in recent years, if only because Gary Moore became so huge and was linked to PG by playing his old Gibson Les Paul (now owned by Kirk Hammet of Metallica), Green gradually became much more known to a new generation of musicians. Between that exposure and royalties from his many well-covered songs, it looked like he may have lived his last years in much more secure style than he did in the 70s and 80s.

Kirwan did not fare as well; without a solid connection to anyone else of renown and no real songwriting revenues, he spent decades in obscurity until his death a few years prior to Green's passing.

These were immensely talented men, imo. I highly recommend most of the live recordings now available. The Boston Tea Party gigs are great, for example.

RIP, Peter and Danny.

 

[pgoat]

Golden age Hollywood legend Olivia de Havilland!

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/n...ind-adventures-robin-hood-star-was-104-720040

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/26/movies/olivia-de-havilland-dead.html

As a little boy, I had such a crush on her after seeing "The Adventures of Robin Hood."

 

[belfastboy]

Toronto Maple Leaf great ...Eddie Shack.....clear the track here comes Shack! As a west coast native I had great antipathy towards anything Toronto, especially the Leafs. But dammit you couldn't help but like Eddie. ....I guess unless you were playing against him at the time.

 

[MisterCairo]

Toronto Maple Leaf great ...Eddie Shack.....clear the track here comes Shack! As a west coast native I had great antipathy towards anything Toronto, especially the Leafs. But dammit you couldn't help but like Eddie. ....I guess unless you were playing against him at the time.

I was too young to watch Eddie Shack play, but I do recall his many tv commercials, particularly for The Pop Shoppe, a chain (in Ontario at least) of small warehouse-style shops where you could fill a plastic case with individual bottles of old fashioned pop in a variety of flavours the big players did not sell, like grapefruit and pineapple, in addition to colas and root beer and the like.

His catch phrase - "I've got a nose for value"!

Yes, he did indeed...

Four Stanley Cups to boot as well...

 

[MisterCairo]

Actor John Saxon has died in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, at the age of 83. Saxon's wife Gloria told the Hollywood Reporter that her husband died from pneumonia. Bummer. Mr. Saxon has been one of my favorite character actors since I was very young.

You did not upload a photo, but I immediately saw his face in my mind.

Our youth is passing away with these folks.

As it does.

 

[belfastboy]

I was too young to watch Eddie Shack play, but I do recall his many tv commercials, particularly for The Pop Shoppe, a chain (in Ontario at least) of small warehouse-style shops where you could fill a plastic case with individual bottles of old fashioned pop in a variety of flavours the big players did not sell, like grapefruit and pineapple, in addition to colas and root beer and the like.

His catch phrase - "I've got a nose for value"!

Yes, he did indeed...

Four Stanley Cups to boot as well...

View attachment 250088 View attachment 250089 View attachment 250090

It is a good thing he could play hockey cuz he sure wasn't about to become a matinee idol Funny story about retired hockey players and commercials. I mentored a 9 year old in school for two years. Outside his classroom was a bulletin board of essays written by students about their hero. A picture accompanied each essay. One was about Wayne Gretzky a few years after he retired when he was on TV a lot plugging Ford cars. I called James over and asked if he liked Gretzky...he looked puzzled, looked at the picture and said..."Yeh, I know him, he is the guy on TV selling cars....he's okay I guess." I thought, damn, celebrity is a short term gig I guess!

 

[Lean'n'mean]

British filmmaker, Alan Parker, has passed away after a long illness. He was 76.
Just for 'Angel Heart' (1987) his life was not in vain.

 

[Zombie_61]

Actor Wilford Brimley has died at the age of 85. Brimley's manager Lynda Bensky said the actor died Saturday morning in a Utah hospital. He was on dialysis and had several medical ailments, she said.

 

[Woodtroll]

Actor Wilford Brimley has died at the age of 85. Brimley's manager Lynda Bensky said the actor died Saturday morning in a Utah hospital. He was on dialysis and had several medical ailments, she said.

That’s sad news indeed. I enjoyed his acting, and he always seemed to me to be a decent, straightforward person.

 

[belfastboy]

That’s sad news indeed. I enjoyed his acting, and he always seemed to me to be a decent, straightforward person.

and a hat guy too!

 

[Zombie_61]

That’s sad news indeed. I enjoyed his acting, and he always seemed to me to be a decent, straightforward person.

I don't know much about him, but I always had a strong feeling that he was pretty much like many of the characters he portrayed--a decent, affable guy, but no nonsense when it came time to "take care of business". I had seen him in The China Syndrome (1979) and Brubaker (1980), but it was his performance as Assistant U.S. Attorney General Wells in Absence of Malice (1981) that really made me sit up and take notice. "Now we'll talk all day if you want to. But, come sundown, there's gonna be two things true that ain't true now. One is that the United States Department of Justice is goin' to know what in the good Christ--excuse me, Angie--is goin' on around here. And the other is I'm gonna' have somebody's ass in my briefcase." I know he didn't write the dialogue, but his delivery was just brilliant.

 

[Frunobulax]

I don't know much about him, but I always had a strong feeling that he was pretty much like many of the characters he portrayed--a decent, affable guy, but no nonsense when it came time to "take care of business". I had seen him in The China Syndrome (1979) and Brubaker (1980), but it was his performance as Assistant U.S. Attorney General Wells in Absence of Malice (1981) that really made me sit up and take notice. "Now we'll talk all day if you want to. But, come sundown, there's gonna be two things true that ain't true now. One is that the United States Department of Justice is goin' to know what in the good Christ--excuse me, Angie--is goin' on around here. And the other is I'm gonna' have somebody's ass in my briefcase." I know he didn't write the dialogue, but his delivery was just brilliant.

I just read a bit of a bio on him, which I was unfamiliar with. Apparently, he owned a horse ranch and wrangled for Hollywood productions in the '60s, in addition to stunt work and being hired to be one of the guys on the horses in scenes. He joked he'd ride over this hill one way as an Indian, change, and ride back over the hill the other way as a cowboy being chased. After meeting Robert Duvall, he got interested in acting, and Duvall encouraged him. One day, he asked for Jack Lemmon's autograph, Lemmon asked him if he'd ever acted. After he said he'd thought about it, Lemmon told the director to hire him.

 

[Trenchfriend]

My thoughts to Beirut.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_nitrate_disasters

 

[Fading Fast]

Pete Hamill, legendary New York columnist, dies at 85

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/p...st-dies-at-85-2020-08-05?mod=newsviewer_click

One of my favorite newspaper columnists and authors whose opinions I often times didn't agree with, but whose writing talents I greatly respect.

For a very Fedora Lounge look at NYC in the '30s, I recommend his book "North River."

 

[Trenchfriend]

And the cruiseship ex-Vistamar, which was very popular in Europe, was heavy damaged by the blast and capsized.

https://www.svz.de/img/deutschland-...gebaeude-nach-einer-exp-202008051911-full.jpg

Maybe, they can save her...

 

[OldStrummer]

Trini Lopez, singer, guitarist and actor, "Lemon Tree" was perhaps his best known song. He had two guitars he designed for Gibson that considered collectors' items. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trini_Lopez

He was 83. They say "complications from COVID-19."

 

[MisterCairo]

Dale Hawerchuk, Canadian hockey legend with the Winnipeg Jets and other teams, has died aged only 57 from stomach cancer:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Hawerchuk

 

[Zombie_61]

Actor Ben Cross had died at the age of 72. Mr. Cross died in Vienna "following a short illness" according to his agent Ed Smith.

 

[Tiki Tom]

R.I.P.
In Vienna of all places. I wonder what he was doing here? Maybe something to do with his considerable music talents.