The Rest In Peace & Remembrance Thread #2

Man, I miss the "Hippie Era" and I was just a kid, about 5 years old when it got started bigtime! Anybody here knows if Three Dog Night are still out there?

Also, if you kind people don't mind, I want to pay my respects to Jimmy Ellis of "The Trammps" Man, I love that Disco Inferno song on the "Saturday Night Fever" Soundtrack. Man, as I am posting tonight, now in to the wee hours of the morning, I cranked up another disco record called, "The Groove Line" by a band called Heatwave. That was another big disco/pop hit!

Rest in Peace Jimmy rock and dance us out with "Disco Inferno" and rock us with the Bee Gees! That whole movie and album was great and I still hear song from it on the radio!

Peace
 
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Samuel Glazer, co-founder of Mr. Coffee, dies at 89

http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2 ... id=twitter

Mr. Coffee, dies at 89
Richard Drew / AP

Samuel Glazer, a co-founder of Mr. Coffee, one of the first automatic drip coffee makers, has died. He was 89.

Glazer and his business partner Vincent Marotta, Sr. first introduced their drip coffee machines in 1972. They dreamed up the idea of adapting an industrial coffeemaker for home use and hired engineers to invent it, The New York Times reports.

Within a few years the traditional way of making coffee -- with a percolator or using instant coffee -- had virtually disappeared and automatic drip coffee makers had taken over.

Glazer and Marotta sold the company to a securities firm in an $82 million leveraged buyout in 1987, The Times said. It is now a brand of the Sunbeam Corporation.

Former New York Yankees player Joe DiMaggio was a spokesperson for the “Mr. Coffee” brand for many years, appearing in a number of commercials.
 
Bluegrass legend Earl Scruggs dies at 88 in Tenn.
Mar 28, 10:27 PM (ET)
By CHRIS TALBOTT


NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - It is impossible to overstate the importance of Earl Scruggs to American music. A pioneering banjo player who helped create modern country music, his sound is instantly recognizable and as intrinsically wrapped in the tapestry of the genre as Johnny Cash's baritone or Hank Williams' heartbreak.

Scruggs passed away Wednesday morning at 88 of natural causes. The legacy he helped build with bandleader Bill Monroe, guitarist Lester Flatt and the rest of the Blue Grass Boys was evident all around Nashville, where he died in an area hospital. His string-bending, mind-blowing way of picking helped transform a regional sound into a national passion.

Full story at AP/Iwon News.
 
Ferdinand Alexander Porsche, designer of the Porsche 911, dies at 76

By Justin Hyde | Motoramic – 3:50 pm



For a rich kid kicked out of design school, Ferdinand Alexander Porsche created one of the greatest legacies in automotive design with the Porsche 911 — one that will survive far beyond Porsche's death today at the age of 76.

The son of company founder Ferry Porsche, F.A. or "Butzi" as he was known spent most of his career at his eponymous firm Porsche Design, where he oversaw the styling of thousands of products from watches to yachts, many with the tag "Designed by F.A. Porsche."

But it's the 911's emergence in 1964, when Butzi Porsche was just 25 years old, that made him a historic figure. While his father and grandfather had been famous German engineers — the original Ferdinand Porsche engineered the first Volkswagen Beetle — F.A. Porsche chose to study design. A year after enrolling in a prestigious school, Porsche was in his own words "kicked out," and took at job at his father's fledging car business in 1957.

At the time, Ferry Porsche had created the successful Porsche 356, but needed a follow-up model. He set the car's basic layout —a rear engine, a short wheelbase for agile handing — but pushed the designers and engineers to fashion a more sporting look than the men who built the Beetle had produced so far.

Prowling the auto shows of Europe, F.A. Porsche formed an idea of how the car should look as a smooth, curving fastback, rejecting the flat angles popular in American cars of the era. "I just think you start creating edges when the body of a car is bad…they are lines that support something that ties the designer down," Porsche would say years later.

The new car's design spurred a dispute with the older designers in Ferry Porsche's shop, to such a degree Ferry went around them, taking his son's blueprints to the body fabricator. The first production-ready model, called the 901, appeared at the Frankfurt Auto Show in September 1964, and after Peugeot objected to the name, Porsche changed it to 911. Despite the timelessness of the 911's shape, F.A. Porsche believed his greatest design came a few years later, with the Porsche 904 race car.

When the company went public in 1971, the Porsche family withdrew from management roles — although F.A. Porsche would remain a presence on the company's board and in its design studios. "He established a design culture in our company that has shaped our sports cars to this very day," said Matthias Müller, President and Chief Executive Officer of Porsche AG. "His philosophy of good design is a legacy to us that we will honor for all time."
 
Thomas Kincaid, 54, artist

(CNN) - Thomas Kinkade, one of the most popular artists in America, has died (April 6) at his California home, his family said. He was 54.

"Thom provided a wonderful life for his family,'' his wife, Nanette, said in a statement late Friday night. "We are shocked and saddened by his death.''

His death at his Los Gatos home appeared to be from natural causes, according to the family. More details will be released in the days ahead.

Art from the self-described "painter of light" adorns many living rooms in America. It emphasizes simple pleasures and warm, positive images of idyllic cottages, lighthouses and colorful gardens.

"My mission as an artist is to capture those special moments in life adorned with beauty and light," Kinkade said in a message on his website. "I work to create images that project a serene simplicity that can be appreciated and enjoyed by everyone. That's what I mean by sharing the light."

Kinkade was also an author, and his top sellers included "Masterworks of Light" and "The Artist's Guide to Sketching."

He painted more than 1,000 pieces on various topics, including cabins, nature scenes, seascapes and classic Americana.

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Jim Marshall, 88, entrepreneur/founder of Marshall Amplification

(NY Times) - Jim Marshall, 88, who made rock and roll rawer and noisier by inventing the amplifier that helped define guitarists from Jimi Hendrix to members of countless garage bands, died of cancer Thursday (April 5) at a hospice in London.

Mr. Marshall was part of the English music scene as a drummer, drumming teacher, and owner of a store in London that sold drums as the new rock music was gathering momentum in the early 1960s. Musicians urged him to add guitars and amplifiers to his wares. One of them, Pete Townshend of the Who, said he told Mr. Marshall that he wanted something "bigger and louder."

"I was demanding a more powerful machine gun" to "blow people away all around the world," Townshend told NPR in 2002. "I wanted it to be as big as the atomic bomb had been."

With his sixth prototype, Mr. Marshall and his helpers came up with a harmless-looking black box with a speaker inside and controls on top. It would become the basis for the formidable wall of amplifiers used by Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and almost every other major rock guitarist in the '60s and '70s and by the next generation of guitarists as well, including Kurt Cobain, Eddie Van Halen and Slash.

This acoustic artillery came to be called the "wall of Marshalls" or "Marshall stacks." Mr. Marshall became known as "the father of loud."

The Marshall amps were cheaper than the ones made by Fender, which produced a more precise sound. But the emerging rockers wanted something rougher and rowdier. In a tribute on Twitter, Motley Crue's bassist, Nikki Sixx, said Mr. Marshall had been "responsible for some of the greatest audio moments in music's history - and 50 percent responsible for all our hearing loss."

Mr. Marshall was born in London to parents who owned a fish-and-chips shop. He was stricken with tuberculosis of the bones and spent much of his early youth in a plaster cast from his knees to his armpits. When he was 13, sinking family fortunes forced him to take jobs in a scrap-metal yard, a jam factory and a shoe shop.

During World War II, he worked at an engineering firm after failing his draft physical and read engineering books on his own. After the war, he taught drumming and eventually had 65 students.

A connoisseur of Cuban cigars and a single-malt Scotch bottled for him, Mr. Marshall many times refused to sell Marshall Amplification. "You can't take it with you, you can only live in one house and drive one car at a time," he said. "It's the name that means something to me - because it is my name."

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Chief Jay Strongbow (Joe Scarpa), 83, professional wrestler

(Yahoo! Sports) - Chief Jay Strongbow, the celebrated wrestler from the 60s and 70s, passed away (April 3) at the age of 83. The news was first reported by WWE broadcast announcer Jim Ross. Strongbow, whose real name was Joe Scarpa, undertook wrestling in the late 40s and lasted until the early 80s. Strongbow then labored for Vince McMahon and the World Wrestling Federation for a brief period in various positions. As Chief Jay Strongbow, the Italian Joe Scarpa hit his stride in the 70s as he choreographed the Native American character. He held several championships, including the WWF Tag Team Championship with Jules Strongbow. The beloved wrestler was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 1994.

Strongbow was one of, if not the most popular Native American wrestling character. He inspired numerous other Native American characters throughout the years. He also performed for the NWA and acquired the companies prestigious titles. The Chief also held several regional titles across the nation, during a time when the territorial wrestling system was active. Strongbow later inspired several young WWE acts including The Hardy Boyz.
 
Mike Wallace (93) Vetern News Caster and of Founding Member of 60 Minutes dies.

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/ ... llace-dies

Veteran CBS journalist Mike Wallace died Saturday evening at the age of 93, CBS announced Sunday morning.

Wallace was on the founding staff of "60 Minutes" and quickly became known for his tough interviews.

"It was 65 years from Mike's first appearance on camera -- a World War II film for the Navy -- to his last television appearance, a '60 Minutes' interview with Roger Clemens, the baseball star trying to fight off accusations of steroid use," colleague Morley Safer wrote in a tribute on CBSNews.com.

Wallace contributed periodically to "60 Minutes" until 2008 after retiring as a regular correspondent in 2006.

"It's strange," Safer wrote, "but for such a tough guy, Mike's all-time favorite interview was the one with another legend, pianist Vladimir Horowitz. The two of them, forces of nature both: Sly, manic, egos rampant. For Mike -- a red, white and blue kind of guy -- Horowitz played 'The Stars and Stripes Forever.'

"It almost brought tears to the toughest guy on television," Safer added.

In almost 40 years on "60 Minutes," Wallace worked on some 800 reports, won 21 Emmys and developed a relentless on-air style that often was more interrogation than interview.

Wallace also drew criticism for his go-for-the-throat style and the theatrics that sometimes accompanied it. He also became caught up in a $120 million libel suit that resulted in no judgment against him or CBS but triggered a case of depression that led him to attempt suicide.

Wallace interviewed every U.S. president since John F. Kennedy - with the exception of George W. Bush - and dozens of other world leaders like Yasser Arafat, Ayatollah Khomeini and Deng Xiaoping.

Other interview subjects included everyone from Malcolm X to singer Janis Joplin, Martin Luther King Jr. to television star Johnny Carson and Playboy founder Hugh Hefner.

Wallace died at a care facility in New Haven, Conn., with his family at his side, Bob Schieffer announced Sunday morning on CBS' "Face the Nation."
 
Computer Pioneer, Commodore Founder Jack Tramiel Dies at 83

By Fred O'Connor and Agam Shah, IDG News
Apr 9, 2012 5:50 pm

Jack Tramiel, a pioneer in the computing industry and founder of Commodore, died on Sunday at age 83, his son Leonard Tramiel confirmed Monday.

Tramiel's Commodore International in 1982 released the Commodore 64, a home computer that became one of the most popular models of all time, selling close to 17 million units between 1982 and 1994.

Tramiel was born in Lodz, Poland, in 1928 to a Jewish family. He survived the Auschwitz concentration camp, after which he emigrated to the U.S. in 1947.

Tramiel claimed that after surviving the Holocaust he could survive just about anything. The Auschwitz survivor undoubtedly survived the computer industry, including being ousted as chief executive officer (CEO) of the company he established. His Commodore Business Machines International grew from a small Canadian company manufacturing typewriters and adding machines to producing electronic calculators to developing computers. Tramiel's first introduction to typewriters came after he joined the U.S. Army in 1948 and was assigned to repairing typewriters in New York area offices. He moved to Toronto in 1955 and founded Commodore Business Machines after realizing the Canadian law would allow him to exclusively import Italian typewriters. The company advanced from typewriter importing to manufacturing the devices and adding machines. Tramiel embraced the burgeoning electronics movement and moved in the late 1960s to Silicon Valley, where Commodore began manufacturing electronic calculators. The company's success almost forced its demise. Texas Instruments, which supplied Commodore with semiconductor chips for its calculators, began manufacturing its own calculators and selling the models at prices Commodore could not match.

Never wanting to be held hostage by a vendor again, Tramiel purchased chip manufacturer MOS Technology to supply Commodore with the needed parts. Tramiel shut down most of MOS' research and development projects, but allowed the microcomputer project to continue.The project produced PET, Personal Electronic Transactor. PET helped Commodore earn US$700 million in sales in fiscal 1983 and $88 million in profits.In 1984, as the company's profits approached $1 billion, Tramiel butted heads with a stockholder and was fired as CEO. Tramiel purchased Atari Corp. from Time Warner Communications later that year. However the company, despite some financial success, never steadily operated in the black and Tramiel sold Atari to JTS, a disk-drive manufacturer he helped fund, but he did not hold any operational role.
 
Dick Clark dead at 82

Dick Clark, the music industry maverick, longtime TV host and powerhouse producer who changed the way we listened to pop music with American Bandstand, and whose trademark Rockin' Eve became a fixture of New Year's celebrations, died today at the age of 82, ABC News has learned.

Clark, who suffered a serious stroke in 2004 but returned to the airwaves, reportedly died from a heart attack.

Born in Mount Vernon, N.Y., on Nov. 30, 1929, Richard Wagstaff Clark began his lifelong career in show business began before he was even out of high school. He started working in the mailroom of WRUN, a radio station in upstate New York run by his father and uncle. It wasn't long before the teenager was on the air, filling in for the weatherman and the announcer.

Clark pursued his passion at Syracuse University, working as a disc jockey at the student-run radio station while studying for his degree in business. After graduating in 1951, Clark went back to his family's radio station, but within a year, a bigger city and bigger shows were calling.

Clark landed a gig as a DJ at WFIL in Philadelphia in 1952, spinning records for a show he called Dick Clark's Caravan of Music. There he broke into the big time, hosting Bandstand, an afternoon dance show for teenagers.

Within five years, the whole country was watching. ABC took the show national, and American Bandstand was born.

Blazing a New Trail in Pop Music

American Bandstand's formula was simple. Clean-cut boys and girls danced to the hottest hits and the newest singles. In between, Clark chatted with the teens, who helped "rate-a-record," turning songs into sensations. Everyone showed up on American Bandstand: from Elvis Presley to Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry to Chubby Checker.

When Dick Clark moved to Hollywood in 1963, American Bandstand moved with him. He started Dick Clark Productions, and began cranking out one hit show after another; his name became synonymous with everything from the $25,000 Pyramid to TV's Bloopers & Practical Jokes to the American Music Awards. In 1972, Dick Clark became synonymous with one of the biggest nights of the year.

New Year's Rockin' Eve

Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve on ABC became a Dec. 31 tradition, with Clark hosting the festivities for more than three decades, introducing the entertainment acts and, of course, counting down to midnight as the ball dropped in New York's Times Square.

But the traditional celebration saw a temporary stop in 2004, when Clark suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed and struggling to speak. Regis Philbin stepped in. But by the next New Year's Eve, Dick Clark was back, his speech still impaired. In halting words, he told the audience, "I had to teach myself how to walk and talk again. It's been a long, hard fight. My speech is not perfect but I'm getting there."

But that didn't stop him: he returned each year, and recently he was joined by Ryan Seacrest.

The Museum of Broadcast Communications has done the math, and figures that Dick Clark Productions has turned out more than 7,500 hours of television programming, including more than 30 series and 250 specials, as well as more than 20 movies for theatre and TV.

All this earned Clark a long list of awards and accolades: Emmys, Grammys, induction in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It also made him one of the richest men in Hollywood; he also had stakes in a wide range of businesses, including restaurants, theatres and real estate.

In March of (2012/this year), he put one of his homes on the market, asking $3.5 million for a one-of-a-kind house on 22 acres in Malibu, modeled after Fred and Wilma's house on "The Flintstones."


"America's Oldest Teenager"

Clark, whose eternally youthful look earned him the nickname "America's Oldest Teenager", is survived by his three children and his third wife, Keri Wigton, married to him since 1977. He credited his appearance to good genes, once saying "if you want to stay young looking, pick your parents very carefully."

Now, America's Oldest Teenager is gone, leaving his indelible mark on generations of fans, and helping change rock 'n' roll and TV forever. His signature sign-off was always "For now, Dick Clark… so long," said with a salute. Today, generations of Americans are saluting back.
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Susan
 
It's not often that a person and their parents liked the same things when they were teenagers, but both my mom and I were big American Bandstand fans. RIP to a true, multi-generational legend.
 
Levon Helm, key member of The Band, dies at 71
Apr 19, 6:40 PM (ET)
By MICHAEL HILL

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - With songs like "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,""The Weight" and "Up on Cripple Creek," The Band fused rock, blues, folk and gospel to create a sound that seemed as authentically American as a Mathew Brady photograph or a Mark Twain short story.

In truth, the group had only one American - Levon Helm.

Helm, the drummer and singer who brought an urgent beat and a genuine Arkansas twang to some of The Band's best-known songs and helped turn a bunch of musicians known mostly as Bob Dylan's backup group into one of rock's most legendary acts, has died. He was 71.

Helm, who was found to have throat cancer in 1998, died Thursday afternoon of complications from cancer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, said Lucy Sabini of Vanguard Records. On Tuesday, a message on his website said he was in the final stages of cancer.

Helm and his bandmates - Canadians Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, Robbie Robertson and Richard Manuel - were musical virtuosos who returned to the roots of American music in the late 1960s as other rockers veered into psychedelia, heavy metal and jams. The group's 1968 debut, "Music From the Big Pink," and its follow-up, "The Band," remain landmark albums of the era, and songs such as "The Weight,""Dixie Down" and "Cripple Creek" have become rock standards.

Full story at Iwon/AP News.
 
The Killers Saxophonist Commits Suicide

Tommy Marth, saxophonist for The Killers, committed suicide earlier this week, a spokeswoman for the Clark County Coroner's Office in Las Vegas confirms to E! News.

The musician's body was found in his Las Vegas-area home Monday morning. He was 33. "Last night we lost our friend Thomas Marth. Our prayers are with his family," the band tweeted Monday. "There's a light missing in Las Vegas tonight. Travel well, Tommy."

Marth joined The Killers' Brandon Flowers, Dave Keuning, Ronnie Vannucci, Jr. and Mark Stoermer in the recording studio beginning in 2005 and played on their second and third albums, Sams' Town and Day & Age. Marth was part of the band's touring lineup from 2008-2010.

The band -- known for hits like "Mr. Brightside" and "Human" -- also expressed their condolences via Facebook.
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another one:

Ex-Tour Saxophonist for The Killers found Dead

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A saxophone player who toured with The Killers has been found dead in Las Vegas in an apparent suicide.

The Clark County coroner's office confirmed Thursday that 33-year-old Thomas Christian Marth was pronounced dead of a gunshot wound to the head on Monday. He was found in the backyard, though it's unclear whose.

A tweet from the band's official Twitter account earlier this week announced Marth's passing, saying the band's prayers are with his family and that "there's a light missing in Las Vegas tonight."

Band spokeswoman Jen Appel says Marth was not a full member of the Las Vegas-based rock band, but played saxophone on their 2006 album "Sam's Town" and their 2008 album "Day & Age."

He also played on the band's tour for "Day & Age."
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Susan
 
George Lindsey, Known as Goober Pyle Dies at 83

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — George Lindsey, who spent nearly 30 years as the grinning Goober on "The Andy Griffith Show" and "Hee Haw," has died. He was 83.

A press release from Marshall-Donnelly-Combs Funeral Home in Nashville said Lindsay died early Sunday morning after a brief illness. Funeral arrangements were still being made.

Lindsey was the beanie-wearing Goober on "The Andy Griffith Show" from 1964 to 1968 and its successor, "Mayberry RFD," from 1968 to 1971. He played the same jovial character — a service station attendant — on "Hee Haw" from 1971 until it went out of production in 1993.
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Susan
 
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