B-List Tributes

Sharing stories of those not soon forgotten.

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Alfred Hitchcock and Cary Grant shadows.

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on the set of The Shining (1980) Directed by Stanley Kubrick

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Paul Buckmaster, 1946-2017

It has been a while, but I felt compelled this morning to offer a small tribute to composer Paul Buckmaster, a man who built a career upon the daunting task of adding orchestral embellishment to (mostly) rock music. How good was he? Well, check out this list of his work and see if he didn't make a little dent upon your cultural soul:

David Bowie - Space Oddity Elton John - Your Song, Border Song, the entire brilliant Tumbleweed Connection album, Levon, Tiny Dancer, and much more Harry Nilsson - Without You (!) Carly Simon - You're So Vain Rolling Stones - Moonlight Mile and Sway off the Sticky Fingers album Grateful Dead - the sweeping, majestic Terrapin Station second side Train - Drops of Jupiter (he won a Grammy for that one) Ben Folds / Ben Folds Five - lots of stuff, including Landed and The Luckiest, which is one of the greatest love songs ever written.

And that's just a start - other artists like Guns n Roses, Leonard Cohen, Miles Davis, Idina Menzel and Taylor Swift have found their art boosted by Mr. Buckmaster's brilliant orchestral enhancements. Music lost a great one with his passing.

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Sean Whitesell – Actor / Writer / Producer (March 11, 1963 – December 28, 2015)

Sean Whitesell was more than just a great character actor. He was a writer, a producer, a veritable architect of culture whose work resonates through some of the finest television of the last quarter-century.

One look at his face may give you chills of a faint-remembered terror if you were a fan of HBO's Oz in the late 90s. He played the creepy cannibal Donald Groves, whose tenure in the show's eponymous prison was cut short by his execution in the first season. Perhaps you remember him as Dr. Eli Devilbiss, who popped up on eight episodes plus the TV movie of Homicide: Life on the Street.  

But you may not know that his textured dialogue was also smattered all over the TV airwaves, not only on both of those shows but for nine episodes of Cold Case, as well as a sampling of Boston Public, The Killing and House. He also had a hand in producing every one of those series at one time or another. Mr. Whitesell's influence covered the airwaves throughout his short career, from networks to cable and back again.

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Clarence Reid / Blowfly – Musician / Songwriter (February 14, 1939 – January 17, 2016)

 When Clarence Reid moved to Florida in the middle of the 1960s he did so hoping he’d launch a successful career as a singer. He put in the time, played the gigs, laid down a number of tracks onto wax but the big break never came. He ventured into the world of songwriting and things began to happen.

His music was recorded by the likes of Sam & Dave and Wilson Pickett. He put pen to paper and came up with the ultra-groovy “Rockin’ Chair” for Gwen McCrae. He also gets credit as the main writer on Betty Wright’s “Clean Up Woman”, one of my personal favorite two-minutes-forty-four seconds of music ever. He helped to shape the early sound of KC & The Sunshine Band. Had he stuck exclusively to writing funk and dance songs, he’d have already earned a hearty B-List salute.

But then along came Blowfly.

With the aim of conjuring up a few laughs at parties, Mr. Reid wrote a few sexually explicit versions of hit songs. Tracks like “Shitting On The Dock of the Bay”, “Spermy Night in Georgia”, “The First Time Ever You Sucked My Dick” and “It’s a Faggot’s World” (that’s “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” by James Brown, but… different). That cool – we all like the guy at a party who can whip up a song about defecating into a large body of water, right?

Right around the time Ms. Wright was sprinkling the magic of “Clean Up Woman” onto vinyl, Mr. Reid and a few musician friends wandered into the studio to create The Weird World of Blow Fly, a full-length album of vulgar parodies that became a weirdly beloved underground hit. Suddenly Clarence Reid was out, Blowfly was in. He continued touring and recording under that persona for most of his remaining years (of which there were about 45).

Blowfly’s influence stretched beyond comedic performers like Weird Al Yankovic or ultra-vulgar rappers like 2 Live Crew. Chuck D of Public Enemy cites Blowfly’s “Rapp Dirty” single as the inspiration for “Fight the Power.”

Sometimes the road to the top is a weird one, and sometimes “the top” doesn’t look anything like you thought it would. But for Clarence Reid, a.k.a. Blowfly, it was a pretty impressive peak.

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Aura Lewis – Singer (March 4, 1947 – December 28, 2015)

 Reggae music can be seen as the gateway between the head and the heart – where ideas, pleas and protests swarm atop melodies and grooves that surpass the secular, appearing to draw from the earth's most primal and exalted life energy. Aura Lewis had the fortuitous opportunity to dip her fingers into this spiritual funk in the peak of its global golden age.

Having moved from South Africa to New York on a scholarship from Hunter College in 1968, Ms. Lewis married into the world of music when she wed jazz drummer Art Lewis in 1972. From there she began writing songs of her own, and soon she was singing backup for Jimmy Cliff as he toured West Africa. When the tour wrapped up she found herself in a London studio, watching as the great Bob Marley worked with Lee "Scratch" Perry on a track for what would become his Exodus album.

Ms. Lewis was invited to sing backup on the track. Though "Punky Reggae Party" never appeared on the album, it was released as the B-side to "Jammin'" in some countries, then as a successful 12" single on its own in the UK. Ms. Lewis was then invited by Mr. Perry to join his project called Full Experience, with which she recorded one album.

Aura Lewis continued to work with Jimmy Cliff, and then forged her own dent on the local music scenes in Paris, Brussels and ultimately back to Johannesburg. She played a part in bringing greatness to the world, and for that she has earned a holy 

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Vilmos Zsigmond – Cinematographer (June 16, 1930 – January 1, 2016)

The turn of this year was absolutely devastating to movie-lovers. We lost two legendary cinematographers in a row, two men whose ability to harness their directors’ vision whilst tweaking and wringing our emotions through their immaculate sense of the visual. Haskell Wexler passed away on December 27; Vilmos Zsigmond left us only five days later.

At its finest, Mr. Zsigmond’s work left movie-goers with visuals they couldn’t shake from their brains for days. Picture the haunting snowscape of Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller, the eerie tracking shots through the trees in John Boorman’s Deliverance, the larger-than-life mothership arrival in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (which was the film that earned him an Oscar). Mr. Zsigmond’s technique left a massive imprint on the industry, and influenced scores of aspiring cinematographers who hoped to squeeze just a fraction of that power from their own visuals.

He was an innovator, crafting his own color palette from the depths of his experimentation. He made use of the technique called ‘pre-fogging’, in which he’d expose his film negatives to just enough light so that it would mute the colors and create a somewhat ethereal aesthetic. Picture the outdoor shots in the steel town in The Deer Hunter, another example of Mr. Zsigmond’s finest work.

The palette of his career is wide and vibrant: he was the cinematographer on The Long Goodbye, Heaven’s Gate, The Rose, The Witches of Eastwick, Jersey Girl and a trio of Woody Allen’s post-2000 films. If you haven’t been moved by any of Mr. Zsigmond’s work then you simply haven’t seen enough great cinema.

Our collective lens on the world simply won’t see the same without him.

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John Bradbury – Drummer (February 16, 1953 – December 28, 2015)

The beast that was the British music scene in the 1970s was fiery and entrancing: its head bubbled with rocksteady and ska, adopted from its Jamaican roots and transformed into something electric; its heart thumped and screeched with venomous punk; its feet pummeled dance floors with the forceful thud of Northern Soul – an exquisite collection of American non-hits, milked for its carnal essence and unrelenting backbeat.

Where these three influences met, magic was born. One of the few bands who rode this beast into greatness was the Specials, a band whose reach began in Coventry and stretched around the globe. John Bradbury was the second drummer to command the group's rhythm section, but his work lay beneath the band's finest records. Mr. Bradbury figured out how to harness the visceral backbeat of Northern Soul and translate it into a reggae groove.

Mr. Bradbury played on the group's self-titled 1979 album, produced by Elvis Costello. His drumming on that record, as on everything else the Specials put out prior to their breakup in 1981, is inarguably a key ingredient in the group's sound. It's hard to imagine someone else devising the beat behind songs like "A Message to You, Rudy", "Ghost Town", "Too Much Too Young" or "Rat Race".

It's sad to lose someone who had contributed so much greatness to their little corner of the music world, and even more tragic when they were poised on the verge of further magnificence, as the Specials were about to reunite to unleash fresh tunes upon us. Mr. Bradbury will be missed, and his music will remain eternal.

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Robert Stigwood – Producer / Impresario (April 16, 1934 – January 4, 2016)

 There’s simply no way I’m going to be able to cram all of Robert Stigwood’s accomplishments into one little tribute. In his early twenties he moved from Australia to England, and before long he had started his own little theatrical agency. From this humble origin the guy went on to build a substantial portion of our popular culture.

One of Mr. Stigwood’s first triumphs was redefining the nature of what an agent would do. When John Leyton, one of the actors in his little corral of British stage talent, had a surprise musical hit it transformed Mr. Stigwood and his partner into independent record producers. He quickly came to know the music industry in a more intimate way than many of his contemporaries, and that opened the door for… well, everything.

One of his little sleeve-tricks was to change the way his British musical acts chose their songs. At the time it was commonplace to cover American hits – what better way to slice off a little sliver of success than to copy someone else’s? Mr. Stigwood’s idea involved several trips to America to discover fresh records that hadn’t yet hit the charts, then get British bands to cover those. If he picked the tunes wisely, his groups would have the first hit.

Let’s hammer through some of Robert Stigwood’s legacy: in 1966 he became the Who’s booking agent and his very own Reaction Records label hosted their smash hit “Substitute”. Later that year he became the manager of a brand new British super-group, Cream. In 1967 he merged his company with Brian Epstein’s NEMS Enterprises, thereby linking him with the toppermost of the music world, the Beatles. Not long afterward, Mr. Stigwood took on the representation of the teenage vocal group the Bee Gees.

Other artists he was involved with managing or promoting? Blind Faith, Eric Clapton, David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart… but there’s more. Remember RSO Records, with the weird red cow logo on the label? That stood for Robert Stigwood Organization. So that would include Clapton’s 461 Ocean Boulevard and the soundtracks to The Empire Strikes Back and Fame, among numerous other titles.

Speaking of musicals, let’s take a moment to mention just a few of the theatrical productions Mr. Stigwood produced and unleashed upon the world: Hair, Sweeny Todd, Pippin, Oh! Calcutta! and Evita. And what about film? Mr. Stigwood was responsible for Jesus Christ Superstar, Grease, Saturday Night Fever, Staying Alive and the dreadful Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (we’ll forgive him for that one).

Love him or hate him – and I have no doubt many people in the business did both – Robert Stigwood was one of the foremost architects of our shared cultural experience. Hell, with Saturday Night Fever he pretty much helped disco to become an international phenomenon. Again… we can forgive him for that.

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Meadowlark Lemon – Basketball Player (April 25, 1932 – December 27, 2015)

 One of the things that separates professional basketball from other sports is its penchant for theatrics. I'm not talking about a soccer player feigning a crippling wound because an opponent breathed on him, or Terrell Owens turning the end zone into a vaudeville stage after catching a touchdown pass. Basketball has legitimized a slapsticky, over-the-top version of itself, and millions have paid money to enjoy it.

Meadowlark Lemon was one of the Harlem Globetrotters during its golden era, and by that I mean the era in which they were immortalized in a Saturday morning cartoon (starring Scatman Crothers as Mr. Lemon). For anyone somehow unfamiliar, the Globetrotters are a team that travels around the world, perpetually conquering its staged opponents with gimmickry and hilarity. Mr. Lemon played for the team for 22 years. He was known as the 'Clown Prince' of the unit, nudging sport past the threshold of entertainment and hypnotizing audiences with his superlative showmanship.

Mr. Lemon was arguably the biggest draw for much of his tenure with the team. He'd taunt the refs, flip a casual (yet successful) hook shot from the center line, then mock his opponents whilst spinning the ball on the tip of his finger. The aim of the Globetrotters was never spirited competition, but rather comedic mastery. Meadowlark Lemon excelled at this.

Of course, a Globetrotter must be adept at combining schtick with supreme athleticism, and Mr. Lemon was no slouch at either. Wilt Chamberlain told the Associated Press he felt Mr. Lemon was the best player of all time. Michael Jordan called him an inspiration. To those who followed his sermons after he'd retired from basketball and taken up the role of an ordained minister in 1986 he provided a different type of inspiration.

But for most of us, Meadowlark Lemon will always represent that brilliant intersection where comedy and sport meet. His legacy will ripple through both worlds for generations of fans.

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Haskell Wexler – Cinematographer (February 6, 1922 – December 27, 2015)

To deem Mr. Wexler – one of cinema's most esteemed cinematographers – into the 'B-List' category is something I hesitate to do. Film fanatics drool over his work, cinemaphiles utter his name with a breathy swirl of reverence, yet most folks have no clue who he was and what aesthetically thunderous feats he accomplished throughout his career.

Haskell Wexler rose to prominence in the 1960s, first as the cinematographer who helped director Elia Kazan score an Oscar nomination for America America in 1963, then as the winner of the last ever Academy Award for Best Cinematography (Black & White) for Mike Nichols' Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1966.  

He guided the camera for 1967's In The Heat of the Night, then shot most of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest before being fired by director Milos Forman for artistic differences or political reasons, depending on whom you ask. He piloted the newly-minted Steadicam through its first use in a major feature, Bound For Glory, then took over for Nestor Almendros on Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven, the film shot with such exquisite precision it is often taught as the example of cinematography in introductory film classes (it was for mine).

Haskell Wexler's work speaks for itself. He was cinematographer on films praised specifically for their expert camera work, films that pop up in greatest-ever lists all the time. His name in a film's credits is reason enough to see the movie. Upon the celluloid canvas of the 20th century's preeminent art form, Mr. Wexler's brush cast a bold and indelible swoop. His artistry will be missed.

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Jack Hammer – Singer/Songwriter (September 16, 1925 – April 8, 2016)

With a name like Jack Hammer, you’d better contribute something truly indelible to the rock ‘n roll landscape.  

Okay, it’s a stage name, but one that was custom picked for the new sound of music that was bubbling through radio speakers around the country. His first big success was “Fujiyama Mama”, which was recorded to sheer perfection by Wanda Jackson in 1957. Sure, it’s a white woman singing about her nonexistent Japanese heritage, but it’s the way she sings it. This was a rock song designed for a woman who can rake her vocal gravel and swat her guitar strings with the best of them.

Mr. Hammer’s biggest claim to fame arrived via a collaboration with legendary songwriter Otis Blackwell – “Great Balls of Fire”, forged into eternity at the fingertips of Jerry Lee Lewis that same year.

When you stand the 60-year-plus history of rock music upright, the bricks around the first floor will be adorned with a smattering of those ethereal songs that undeniably set the course of everything that was to follow. "Great Balls of Fire" is one of those bricks.  

Mr. Hammer’s subsequent career didn’t rattle the annals of history too much – he sang with the Platters for a spell in the 60s, starred in the Broadway production of Bubblin’ Brown Sugar in the 70s and almost played Jimi Hendrix in a bio-pic that was never made – but a co-writing credit on a song this important is enough to make the man a legend.

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Takeharu Kunimoto – Musician (November 1, 1960 – December 24, 2015)

 If we can learn anything from the life of Takeharu Kunimoto it’s that if you can speak the universal language of music, you can travel anywhere. Also, the more open your musical sensibilities are to the world around you, the more of that world you will absorb and reflect.

When he was 14 years old, Mr. Kunimoto attended a Bill Monroe concert, which led to him becoming a devout fan of bluegrass music. Keep in mind, his instrument of choice was the shamisen, a three-stringed guitar with a distinctive Japanese sound. Mr. Kunimoto learned to pluck those strings as one might pluck those of a banjo, immediately developing a new sound that fused the two cultures in a surprisingly perfect way.

He was also adept in the tradition of rokyoku singing, a traditional form of musical story-telling that could easily find parallels with the folk, country and blues music from the early 20th century, when rokyoku was at its peak popularity. When you punch his name into Youtube, the first video that pops up features Mr. Kunimoto on a Japanese TV show in 1999, rocking out a tale (which, knowing roughly three words in Japanese that don’t pertain to the cuisine, I cannot understand) overtop a punchy blues groove.

The man had some serious skills.

As an exchange student at East Tennessee State University in 2009, he soaked up as much as he could in the Bluegrass, Old Time & Country Music Studies department. He then formed his own bluegrass band – Takeharu Kunimoto & The Last Frontier – and set out to spread the magic of the shamisen to North American audiences while also bringing the glory of bluegrass back home to Japan. He was a musical ambassador, building a bridge between disparate genres and fortifying that bridge with track after track of delightful tuneage.

Taken from this spinning rock much too soon, Mr. Kunimoto left a magnificent legacy. Seriously, you have got to check this guy out. Even with no genre to define it, great music is great music.

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Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc – Journalist (September 13, 1941 – December 24, 2015)

 Not many people enter the world of journalism believing they’d one day play a pivotal part in taking down a corrupt administration. But when the opportunity pops up, a society is fortunate if they’ve got someone as fearless and tenacious as Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc sitting behind the right editorial desk, willing to do what needs to be done.

Passionate about journalism since childhood and educated at St. Teresa’s College in Manila, followed by a masters at the University of Missouri, Ms. Jimenez-Magsanoc was only in that key editorial position under initial protest. She was a journalist, she wanted to write about issues and engage the minds of her readers, not sift through reporters’ typos and juggle page layouts. But when she ascended to the editorial position at Panorama, at that time the Philippines’ most popular weekly issues magazine, she quickly re-worked the position so that her editorials could be splashed across the pages.

She had a good five year run. From 1976 to 1981 Ms. Jimenez-Magsanoc poked her journalistic sword at the increasingly corrupt and outright criminal dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. After what many felt was a rigged third election, Ms. Jimenez-Magsanoc made a point of blatantly mocking the inauguration ceremony. Marcos found her words to be blasphemous, and this led to her dismissal.

But her article was the crucial domino that set the others a-tumblin’. Writers opened journalistic fire upon the administration, leading to libel cases, arrests and subversion charges and even military interrogation of columnists and editors. Ms. Jimenez-Magsanoc moved on to become the editor of Mr. & Ms Special Edition, where she continued to write critical pieces about the Marcos crew, all while fuelling the growing opposition.

While it’s not fair to say that Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc caused the downfall of the Marcos kleptocracy, there’s no question she played a huge part. She is a personification of the pen’s might, a heroine of the free press. Her reward for her efforts was a nearly 25-year run as the editor-in-chief of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the country’s top newspaper.

Actually, the real reward was undoubtedly the knowledge that she played a part in ousting one of her nation’s biggest scoundrels from power. For those of us who toss words at a page every day, Ms. Jimenez-Magsanoc is a true hero.

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Billie Allen – Actress / Director (January 13, 1925 – December 29, 2015)

 Chances are you’ve never heard of Billie Allen.

But that’s the beautiful thing about our culture: it’s often the people you never hear about who poke and prod at the status quo to advance us to the next level. Ms. Allen showed up in New York in the 1940s, a time when females were mostly powerless in the theatre world and black females even more so. She was an actress and a dancer, and her undeniable talent got her onstage in a number of Broadway shows.

She studied with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio, and in 1959 she ascended from the ranks of understudy to make it in front of an audience in the powerful debut run of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun as Beneatha, the protagonist’s sister.

Ms. Allen didn’t play a lot of lead roles; she was Henry Fonda’s maid in Critic’s Choice and Jackie Mason’s love interest’s mother in A Teaspoon Every Four Hours. But every production in which she played a part was elevated by her honest and powerful performance.

On television she made a steady living demonstrating the benefits of Tide detergent or Pampers diapers in commercials, but she stood out as a member of the Women’s Army Corps on The Phil Silvers Show. She was one of the first black performers – male or female – with a recurring, credited role on a network TV series. It was an ensemble role, sure, but historically speaking it was probably one of the most important ensemble roles of the 1950s.

Ms. Allen’s interests turned to directing off-Broadway later in life, but she continued to act, appearing in The Wiz, Black Like Me, and on TV shows like Car 54, Where Are You? and Law & Order.

Billie Allen’s performances lit up both screen and stage, but she should also be remembered for being one of the guiding souls in the painfully gradual integration of show business. Her spark will be missed 

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Robert Hayling – Civil Rights Activist (November 20, 1929 – December 20, 2015)

 If you’re an African-American man in Florida in 1960 and you manage to beat the odds and the woefully ingrained institutional racism to achieve a Doctor of Dental Surgery degree, you might call it a win. You might see yourself as the victor over a very shitty and unbalanced system and leave it at that – get on with your career, your home in the suburbs, and deal with that other strain of racism, the kind reserved for black people who have succeeded in the still-segregated south.

Robert Hayling saw things differently. His grand scholastic accomplishment was merely the starting point of his true calling.

He was the adult advisor to the Youth Council of the NAACP, encouraging lunch counter sit-ins and vehement Civil Rights protests at the city of St. Augustine holding a whites-only banquet to celebrate its 400th birthday.

In 1963 he and three others were kidnapped, dragged to a Ku Klux Klan rally and beaten nearly to death. The authorities stepped in, but they did so only to charge Dr. Hayling and his fellow beating victims with assaulting the KKK. To say the system was rigged is a nauseating overstatement.

We have to remember that, as tragic as it may be (and it sure as hell is) that our music icons appear to be dropping off the mortal stage with alarming rapidity this year, we are also losing some of the folks who spent the 1960s trying to make this world a little less biased, a little less unfair to certain oppressed members of the populace. We lost Ozell Sutton, Tony Carroll and Robert Hayling all within the last two weeks of 2015. These are the humanist revolutionaries of our time.

Dr. Hayling was largely responsible for inviting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. down to St. Augustine in the spring of 1964, which led to the town becoming the primary battleground for forcing the passage of the Civil Rights Act that year. Dr. Hayling’s home was shot up, his practice was annihilated, and Dr. Hayling was forced to relocate to Cocoa Beach.

As we see rather often, history eventually wandered around to side with Dr. Hayling and his cause. We’ll see this again someday when we look back at North Carolina suing the federal government so that the state can boast the right to fairly and justly discriminate  with unflinching cruelty against some of their residents: history will eventually reveal the heroism in those who stand up for themselves and for others.

And the real heroes are the ones who won’t wait for history, the ones who try to nudge it along from the dark into the light. Dr. Robert Hayling is absolutely one of those heroes.

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Robert Balser – Animator (March 25, 1927 – January 4, 2016)

In the 1950s, animation was a fresh-faced industry, and one needed a working knowledge of graphic design and technology, along with an astute sense of artistry to be a success. Robert Balser didn’t have any plans to leap into this field until the final course of his Bachelor of Arts degree at UCLA – that’s when he learned about animation from Bill Shull, who worked for Disney.

Then everything clicked.

Soon he was a freelance animator working wherever he could (mostly TV commercials and low-budget documentaries). He landed a prize gig working under Saul Bass on the end-of-film title sequence for Around the World in 80 Days in 1956. For those not familiar with Saul Bass, he’s the guy who created every kick-ass title sequence in the world of film from the 50s through the early 90s. Working with him was a fantastic score for Mr. Balser.

His big break came in 1968 when, along with British animator Jack Stokes he was hired as one of the animation directors for the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine film. Over eleven months he and Mr. Stokes created a piece of pure pop art, awash in music, color and indelible imagery. His work made a goofy movie (with voice actors providing the Beatles' parts) into something incredible, unlike anything that had come before.

After that film, Mr. Balser continued his successful career, producing The Jackson 5ive, a Saturday morning cartoon that also featured voice actors playing pop stars. He produced the 1979 made-for-TV animated retelling of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, as well as several episodes of CBS’s mid-80s attempt to cash in on the Peanuts strip, The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show.  

The one constant throughout all of these endeavors is a sense of true artistry in the visuals. Mr. Balser didn’t churn out predictable product. He aimed to tickle his audience’s eyeballs with color and imagination. He explored several different worlds in his work and brought each of them to life. He was, without question, a true artist in his medium.