The Mental Nomad Podcast: Podsafe music from all over the world. Pod Across America: A journey across America, one state at a time. And other feats yet to be revealed.
In today's episode, we look back at luminaries famous, infamous, beloved, reviled and all points in between who died in the year 2009. (Special kudos to Jason Beirens for creating today's logo -- click to open a larger image so you can more easily make out the faces therein.)
Tracks 1-2, 6-7 and 9 come via the IODA Promonet and may be downloaded below for as long as their promotions remain in effect. Everything else comes via Music Alley. Track 3 was previously featured in Pod Across America #16 (the North Carolina show), and track 7 previously appeared in Mental Nomad Podcast #79.
... And yes, there's a thread there. Alan Lomax, Nina Simone, Rory Gallagher, Koko Taylor, Sean Costello, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Vic Chesnutt are all deceased -- Taylor and Chesnutt having departed this year, Costello last year.
Click the "deaths in 2009" tag at the bottom of this entry to read the six retrospective entries on this year's passings, and of course the Amazon carousel will let you buy some of the music featured in today's show.
I should note here that regularly scheduled programming has been pre-empted for all of January, but that you should come back Jan. 1 to see what I'm doing instead. (The Canadian Vagabond/Vagabond Canadien series will now start in late March instead of, urm, today.)
Here's wishing you a safe and happy New Year's Eve and brighter and better things for all of us in 2010.
Concluding a look back at people from a variety of walks of life who died in 2009, taken from news reports and Wikipedia.
November:
Lou Filippo, who died Nov. 2 at age 83, was a member of the World Boxing Hall of Fame and appeared as a referee in the first five Rocky films. On the same day, we lost prolific British bassist and music producer Mark Smith (who played with The Waterboys late on in his life) at age 49.
Sheldon Dorf died at age 76 on Nov. 3. He founded the wildly popular comic book convention Comic-Con International. Comic Carl Ballantine, who starred in McHale's Navy, died the same day at age 92.
Iranian physician Ramin Pourandarjani was poisoned -- and I think we all know it was by his government -- Nov. 10 after he revealed the police had tortured Iranian activists following this year's rigged presidential election. He was 26.
Paul Wendkos, a TV and film director whose credits included Gidget, died Nov. 12 at age 84.
Ken Ober, who hosted the 1980s MTV game show Remote Control, died Nov. 15 at age 52. (His co-host Jenny McCarthy is still running around, at best skewing the Darwin Awards bell curve, at worst endangering others a little more each day.)
British actor Edward Woodward -- who often played tough guys, including a long run on American TV as the star of The Equalizer -- died Nov. 16 at age 79.
Al Alberts, a member of the vocal group Four Aces (who recorded "Love Is a Many Splendored Thing"), died Nov. 27 at age 87. Leaving us the same day at age 88 were both American comic book artist Irving Tripp, who drew Little Lulu; and American folklorist and musician Bess Lomax Hawes (sister to musicologist Alan Lomax).
And British science fiction author Robert Holdstock died Nov. 29 at the relatively young age of 61 from an E. coli infection.
December:
American honky tonk singer "Big Bill" Lister died Dec. 1 at age 86, the same day we lost songwriter Aaron Schroeder (who penned Elvis Presley's hit "It's Now or Never") at age 84.
British actor Richard Todd (The Longest Day and other works) died Dec. 3 at age 90.
On Dec. 4, we lost of the last of the Irish folksinging troupe the Clancy Brothers when Liam Clancy died at age 74. On the same day, actor Vyacheslav Tikhonov (star of an Oscar-winning Russian production of War and Peace) died at age 81.
Snappily dressed TV action star Gene Barry (of Bat Masterson and Burke's Law fame) died Dec. 9 at age 90.
On Dec. 12, we lost Robert G. Heft -- you won't know his name, but every time you see the 50-star American flag, you see the fruits of his eye for design -- at age 67.
Alt-country bassist Chris Feinstein -- best known for his work with Ryan Adams & The Cardinals, though he also played on much of the I Am Sam soundtrack of Beatles covers -- died Dec. 14 at age 42.
If there were a hell, televangelist and "faith healer" Oral Roberts would have taken the express elevator there Dec. 15. The charlatan was 91. On the same day we were rid of that liar, we also lost a truth teller: author C.D.B. Bryan, whose book Friendly Fire exposed the truth behind the accidental death of an American solder in Vietnam. Bryan was 73.
Media executive Roy E. Disney, who died Dec. 16 at age 79, was the nephew of studio creator Walt Disney and a behind-the-scenes mover and shaker at the company. Also making their exits on the same day: 64-year-old Bob Waldmire, whose artistic creations kept alive the mystique of America's famed Route 66; and British politician Dame Victoire Bennett, Lady Ridsdale, at age 88. The Lady Ridsdale was an intelligence operative during World War II and a purported inspiration for the character Miss Moneypenny in the James Bond tales.
Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Jones -- perhaps best remembered for her star turn in The Song of Bernadette, though she had a prolific career -- died Dec. 17 at age 90. On the same day, we lost Hollywood screenwriter Dan O'Bannon (who wrote the scripts for Alien and Total Recall) and Sesame Street actress Alaina Reed Hall, both at age 63.
Savant Kim Peek -- whose life inspired the Dustin Hoffman character in Barry Levinson's movie Rain Man -- died of a heart attack Dec. 19 at age 58.
Iran's Grand Ayatolla Hossein Ali Montazeri, who was part of the fundamentalist takeover of the country in the 1970s but more recently a guiding force of the country's reform movement, died Dec. 20 at age 87. On the same day, we lost 32-year-old actress Brittany Murphy under causes that are yet to be determined, and 91-year-old actor Arnold Stang (who was in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, perhaps the funniest movie ever created).
Singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt died Dec. 25 after falling into a coma brought on by a drug overdose that some friends have characterized as a suicide. He was 45. Chesnutt lost the use of his legs in an automobile accident when he was 18 and really gained widespread attention when fellow musicians covered his songs for the album Sweet Relief II: The Gravity of the Situation to help him out financially.
South African poet Dennis Brutus, who was an active opponent of Apartheid and kept raising hell against injustice in the years since that victory, died Dec. 26 at age 85.
Australian musician and songwriter Rowland S. Howard died Dec. 30 of liver cancer, an artist whose name I'd never noticed but who's been part of a lot of music I really enjoyed. Among them, he was part of The Birthday Party with Nick Cave, part of Crime and the City Solution, sang backing vocals of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' album Let Love In, and worked with Nikki Sudden and Lydia Lunch.
And philanthropist Ruth Lilly, heir to a pharmaceutical empire, died Dec. 30 at age 94 after giving away the majority of her wealth to Indiana causes in her lifetime. Among the causes she supported: A poetry journal that had repeatedly rejected her submissions in her youth. That's a good woman, an example of how those who are born to good fortune should be. Rest in peace, Ms. Lilly.
(See also: chapters 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 in this series focusing on deaths in 2009, and of course, today's year-end episode of the Mental Nomad Podcast will feature my thoughts on some, though certainly not all, of the people recognized in these entries.)
Note: No Bizarro Files entry today. And I'll be doing something different, something perhaps crazy, in January that will pre-empt both the Mental Nomad Podcast AND Pod Across America. Canadian Vagabond/Vagabond Canadien, which was set to start today, will begin at the end of March. Ye Olde Podcaster and his imaginary staff of thousands wish all of you a safe and happy New Year's Eve.
Continuing a look back at people from a variety of walks of life who died in 2009, taken from news reports and Wikipedia.
September:
Jamaican keyboardist and music producer Wycliffe Johnson died Sept. 1 at age 47.
British playwright and author Keith Waterhouse, whose works included the novel Billy Liar, died Sept. 4 at age 80.
For more than half a century, Army Archerd kept his thumb on Hollywood's pulse and reported his findings in a Daily Variety column. He died Sept. 8 at age 87.
You probably don't know the name Frank Batten Sr., but any time you've locked in to The Weather Channel in a sleepless night or during a storm, you've benefited from the media mogul's life's work. The founder of media company Landmark Communications died Sept. 10. He was 82.
These are people who died ... and one of them was poet, novelist and punk rocker Jim Carroll, who recorded the song "People Who Died" and wrote the book The Basketball Diaries (later a movie starring a pre-Titanic Leonardo Dicaprio). Carroll died of a heart attack on Sept. 11 at the relatively young age of 60.
Also dying on Sept. 11, that most ominous of days for Americans: Former textile worker Crystal Lee Sutton, at 68, the union organizer whose struggle inspired the film Norma Rae, and Larry Gelbart, a stage and screen writer whose credits included Tootsie and M*A*S*H. He was 81.
Iowa farm child turned agricultural scientist Norman Borlaug died Sept. 12 at age 95. Not a household name, but he was easily the single most significant person on the entire list of people who died this year. Borlaug developed a variety of wheat that thrives in climates where the crop would normally fail. He's saved millions of lives around the world. What have YOU done? ... None of us match this man's legacy.
Paul Burke, who died Sept. 13 at age 83, received two Emmy nominations for playing the tough Det. Adam Flint (even the name was manly) on the TV crime drama Naked City.
A sex symbol and a funny man left us on Sept. 14. Patrick Swayze started out as a dancer, turned movie superstar and (with less lasting impact, singer), and spent part of his last year turning in what should have been a career-redefining performance on the A&E crime drama The Beast (subsequently canceled after his death from pancreatic cancer). He was 57.
Henry Gibson, who died at 73 on Sept. 14, was a wee little man who is best remembered by the generation before mine for reciting weird poetry on Laugh-In. I'll always remember him as an often baffled (and outraged!) judge on Boston Legal.
We lost two dramatists on Sept. 15. Jamaican playwright Trevor Rhone, who was 69, co-wrote The Harder They Come, a movie that helped turn America on to reggae. Troy Kennedy Martin, a British screenwriter who died at 77, wrote the script for the original The Italian Job after a distinguished career writing for television.
W. Horace Carter died Sept. 16 at age 88. The North Carolina newspaper publisher won a Pulitzer -- and no doubt a few enemies closer to home -- with his jeremiads against the Ku Klux Klan.
Also leaving us on Sept. 16 was folk singer Mary Travers, of the trio Peter, Paul and Mary. She was 72.
Dick Durock, who died Sept. 17 at age 72, was probably most famous for you not seeing him. He acted and worked as a stunt man, including wearing heavy, heavy prosthetics to play the Swamp Thing in two regrettable movies and a regrettable TV series that happened to come along and play the camp angle about the time Alan Moore was turning the comic book The Saga of the Swamp Thing into one of the highest forms of literature ever attempted in the four-color pages. Nothing against his performance as Swampy -- he worked with what he had, which happened to be written in the wrong style for the time. (Wikipedia notes that Durock appeared in more than 80 movies and more than 700 episodes of television shows.)
Also leaving us Sept. 17 was 49-year-old Frank Deasy, an Irish screenwriter who won an Emmy Award here in the States for the TV miniseries Prime Suspect: The Final Act.
Next time you look around at how fucked up America is, thank Irving Kristol, the editor regarded as the godfather of the neoconservative movement. He died Sept. 18 at age 89, sadly leaving much of his legacy alive to plot their return to sink us even deeper into the morass.
American actor John Hart, who picked up Clayton Moore's spurs and mask for two seasons as The Lone Ranger after Moore left during a salary dispute, died Sept. 20 at age 91. One of his last appearances -- the last in a movie -- was in the 1981 film The Legend of the Lone Ranger, playing a newspaper editor.
Lucy Vodden, who died Sept. 22 of lupus at age 46, inspired the classic Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."
Two beloved father figures whose influence extended far beyond those whom they met in real life left us on Sept. 24. Timothy J. Russert, aka "Big Russ," died at age 85; he was the father of the much-missed newsman Tim Russert, who wrote about his dad in the book Big Russ & Me.
The other was the Rev. Forrest Church, minister emeritus of All Souls Unitarian Church in New York City, an author and theologian who beat a terminal cancer diagnosis once through the use of an experimental treatment, but the beast eventually took him. His book Love and Death is a prime example of what George Harrison called "the art of dying" -- and a book that he lived long enough to see released to wide acclaim, much as did Warren Zevon with his intended posthumous album The Wind some years back.
(Full Disclosure Dept.: Ye Olde Podcaster is a Unitarian Universalist, a member of the same liberal religion as the late Rev. Church and his congregation.)
Spanish pianist Alicia de Larrocha died Sept. 25 at age 86.
And Pulitzer-winning New York Times columnist William Safire -- whose politics I detested, but whose interest in language I admired in equal measure -- died Sept. 27 at age 79.
October:
Two unexpected "war heroes" died Oct. 2. Marek Edelman, who lived to 90, was the last surviving leader of the ultimately unsuccessful Warsaw ghetto uprising against the Nazis back in 1943. Peg Mullen, who ded at age 92, was a mother who didn't settle for the official story of her son's death in Vietnam, inspiring the book and movie Friendly Fire.
Argentine folksinger Mercedes Sosa's influence on pro-democracy activists earned her the nickname the "Voice of Latin America." The UNICEF ambassador died Oct. 4 at age 74.
American music producer Shelby Singleton, who died Oct. 7 at age 77, owned the Sun Records label that gave us Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and others.
American writer Stuart M. Kaminsky, who died Oct. 9 at age 75, was a prolific author of mystery novels. British television actor, director and producer Barry Letts, who died the same day at age 84, long had a hand in Doctor Who and various spin-offs of the franchise.
Joe Rosen, who left us Oct. 12, put the words in the mouth of many characters in the Golden Age of American comic books. The lettering legend was 88.
Singer Al Martino, who played a Frank Sinatra-esque character in The Godfather and was the first person to top the UK Singles Chart, died Oct. 13 at age 82. Also exiting on the same day was 77-year-old Daniel Melnick, who produced the critically hailed movies Straw Dogs and Network.
Collin Wilcox-Paxton died Oct. 14 at age 74, perhaps best known as the accuser in the movie To Kill a Mockingbird.
Comic book artist George Tuska, who started in the Golden Age of comics and later drew Iron Man, died Oct. 15, at age 93.
You've probably never heard of Dr. Ignacio V. Ponseti, and neither had Ye Olde Podcaster until he compiled this list. Ponseti perfected a treatment for clubfoot, improving the lives of children around the world. He died Oct. 18 at age 95.
Joseph Wiseman, who died Oct. 19 at age 91, played the title villain in the James Bond film Dr. No.
Soupy Sales took a zillion pies in the face on the road to fame and fortune, and apparently it was good for a guy: He was 83 when he died Oct. 22. Also entering the history books on that date was Bowling Green State scholar Ray Browne, 87, who purportedly coined the term "popular culture."
Maine girl Shiloh Pepin, was merely 10, when she died Oct. 23 after becoming a television and Internet figure. She was born with fused legs, also called "mermaid syndrome." At the other end of the age spectrum, we also lost actor Lou Jacobi (who was in Arthur, among other things) at age 95 on the same day.
Sonic Drive-In founder Troy Smith died Oct. 26 at age 87. (Love the food, hate -- HATE -- the TV commercials.)
Canadian singer-songwriter Taylor Mitchell died Oct. 28 at age 19, only the second known person in North America to be killed in a coyote attack -- after a toddler several years ago. Quite sad, actually.
Continuing a look back at people from a variety of walks of life who died in 2009, taken from news reports and Wikipedia.
July:
Karl Malden first entered my consciousness the same way I'd wager he entered the awareness of others of Ye Olde Podcaster's generation: Through voiceovers on American Express Travelers Cheque commercials showing Americans traveling abroad and losing their cash or checks. Later would I learn he was an Oscar-winner, later would I see the majesty that was his performance in A Streetcare Named Desire. He was a towering example of the Everyman, and his death July 1 at age 97 left a void that won't be filled for a long time, if ever.
Prisoner rights' advocate Barbara Margolis -- also an official greeter for New York City -- died July 3 at age 79.
Former Tennessee Titans quarterback Steve McNair died July 4 of sheer stupidity with a complication of hubris. OK, the physical reason was gunshot wounds from a mistress, who then killed herself. But really, the stupidity of not realizing what he had -- the hubris, the sense of "I'm too good to limit my love to one person" -- that's what led him to that penthouse.
Allen Klein died the same day at age 77, having survived managing both the Beatles AND the Rolling Stones.
Robert McNamara, who died July 6 at age 93, was like a figure out of Greek tragedy -- the Pentagon head who oversaw the stepped-up U.S. involvement in Vietnam even though he suspected it would never work.
Sam Church, a former United Mine Workers president, spent years trying to improve the pensions of those who toil in such dangerous workplaces. He died July 7 at age 72.
Walter Cronkite, who died July 17 at age 92, WAS television news. He was also, in his retirement years, a fearless critic who drew on years of observation of political leaders and a friend to the Interfaith Alliance in its efforts to preserve the proper relationship between church and state (summed up in one word: separate).
Gordon Weller, who died the same day as Cronkite, was probably a lesser light. He was half of a British Invasion duo called Peter and Gordon, and I can't tell you another song they recorded besides "A World Without Love," but it was a good enough tune, with nice harmonies. Weller was 64.
Retiree Frank McCourt won a Pulitzer for his childhood memoir, Angela's Ashes, and kept writing from there. He died July 19 at age 78.
On July 21, we lost a couple of different mind-blowers. Graphic designer Heinz Edelmann (who died at age 75) was the art designer for the 1968 Beatles animated movie Yellow Submarine. John "Marmaduke" Dawson, who died at age 64, was a founder of the psychadelic country group New Riders of the Purple Sage.
Also on July 21, a 15-year-old American chihuahua named Gidget -- the talking chihuahua in a bunch of Taco Bell commercials -- died of a stroke. There were probably some psychadelic drugs involved in launching that ad campaign, come to think of it.
E. Lynn Harris, who died of heart disease on July 23 at age 54, was a a "best-selling author of gay black fiction," the Associated Press notes. He's also the only author of gay black fiction whom Ye Olde Podcaster has ever heard of, and that just now. Given the homophobia that's entrenched in much of black American culture -- reinforced by both preachers and rappers -- it took a pretty damn brave man to do what he did.
And if there was a hell, the "prosperity gospel" con man called Reverend Ike (born Frederick J. Eikerenkoetter II) would have descended there on the express elevator on July 28. The con man died at age 74, and it's a shame he didn't take all his thieving kin with him.
August:
Corazon Aquino, who died Aug. 1 at age 76, was a former president of the Philippines, who ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. Dying the same day: Naomi Sims, 61, a black model who broke boundaries in the 1960s.
Retired FBI agent Jim Ingram died Aug. 2 at age 77, having helped reopen the cases of Mississippi civil rights killings and secure justice for the dead decades after the death of Jim Crow.
Writer-director John Hughes, who died of a heart attack on Aug. 6 at age 59, peaked early in Ye Olde Podcaster's opinion, with films such as The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Later years saw him doing more kid-oriented fare such as Home Alone -- which he did well, but I preferred the works that skewed older, perhaps because I'm an old meanie. Either way, he's missed.
Mike Seeger, a folk musician and historian who helped found the traditional folk band The New Lost City Ramblers, died Aug. 7 at age 75. He was a younger half-brother to folk legend Pete Seeger.
Special Olympics founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver died Aug. 11 at age 88, and I'll break the chronological order here to also note the death two weeks later to the day -- Aug. 25 -- of her brother, 77-year-old Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.
Listing these two here in such a brief form amidst all these others in this and the other "deaths in 2009" entries -- some of whose names you might never have heard -- seems odd on the one hand, but fitting on the other. The Kennedy legacy stood for offering opportunities for the unheard Americans to rise up and better themselves, and as such, mentioning them as just part of the tapestry would have suited them well, I think.
Les Paul died Aug. 13 at age 94. HIS name is one that rings out even to people who don't know there was a person by the name; the guitar maestro invented the solid-body electric guitar (one of the most beloved of which bears his name) and multitrack recording, to boot.
Playboy model Jasmine Fiore was murdered Aug. 16 at age 28.
A dissident turned South Korean president, Kim Dae-jung died Aug. 18 at age 85. His efforts to make peace and end the decades-old war with North Korea garnered him a Nobel Peace Prize, even though they were unsuccessful as of this time.
Conservative pundit Robert Novak, who died Aug. 18 at age 78, didn't die in prison for his role in the act of treason through which Vice President Dick Cheney blew the cover of an undercover CIA agent in Novak's newspaper column as an act of petty retaliation against the agent's former ambassador husband, who'd told the truth about the Bush White House's lies used to get us into the Iraq war -- but he should have died in prison, as should Cheney, his former aide Scooter Libby, and anyone else involved in that treason.
60 Minutes creator Don Hewitt, who produced the news program for 36 years, died Aug. 19 at age 86, one of the last old-time TV newsmen.
Doo-wop singer Johnny Carter's voice was heard in two of the most successful vocal groups in that genre -- The Flamingoes and The Dells. He died Aug. 21 at age 75.
Stanley H. Kaplan, who died Aug. 23 at age 90, founded a company that has sought to help countless students boost their college admissions scores over the years.
I'd never heard the name Ellie Greenwich until she died, but her body of work as a songwriter (or co-writer) lives on in 1960s tunes such as "Be My Baby." She died Aug. 26 at age 68.
On the same day, we lost best-selling author and sometime TV personality Dominick Dunne, who lost a child to murder and spent his remaining years detailing crimes committed by those who are rich, famous and thus often immune to prosecution (see Robert Novak, Dick Cheney and Michael Jackson, who died later in the year). Dunne was 83.
And Chris Connor, a jazz singer gifted with a bourbon-tinged voice, died Aug. 29 at age 81.
Look for a new Mental Nomad Podcast and the next entry in this series tomorrow -- no Bizarro Files this week, though. And the series concludes Thursday, on New Year's Eve.
Vic Chesnutt
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