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POP MUSIC
Jo Stafford, 91, known as "GI Jo" for her soulful crooning of WWII hits, had a pop smash in the early '50s with You Belong to Me. She and her band-leader husband, Paul Weston, created the one of the first consciously-bad musical parody acts, the night-club duo Jonathan and Darlene Edwards. A 1960 Edwards LP won a Grammy.
One urban legend about Peruvian soprano Yma Sumac, 86, was that she was really Amy Camus (spelled backwards) from Brooklyn; another was that she had a five-octave range. Neither was true, but Sumac's unusual voice and multinational repertoire made her a popular 50s curio. She was an exotic singer the way other women were exotic dancers.
Now, about that "half of the Kingston Trio"... When founder Dave Guard left the group in 1960, John Stewart replaced him, joining Nick Reynolds and Bob Shane. The Trio was a late-'50s chart sensation that helped establish the album, not the single, as the unit of pop music. Reviled and/or envied by purists, the group nonetheless got a myriad of kids hooked on traditional music. They were the training wheels of the folk movement, and kept wearing their smiles and striped shirts for decades as a tribute band to themselves. Reynolds was 75, Stewart 69.
Erik Darling, 74, was a member of four significant folk groups: the Folksay Trio, whose version of Tom Dooley was imitated by the Kingston Trio in their first hit single; the Tarriers (a threesome that included the young Alan Arkin), whose The Banana Boat Song, aka Day-O, was a top-of-the-pops calypso hit; the Weavers, with Darling replacing Pete Seeger in 1958; and the Rooftop Singers, which had a No.1 pop hit with Darling's 12-string-guitar arrangement of Walk Right In. One way Darling wasn't a regimental folkie: his politics were libertarian, of the Ayn Rand stripe.
Running Atlantic Records with Ahmet Ertegun, Jerry Wexler, 91, launched the pop careers of R&B giants Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin, made a crossover star of Bobby Darin, kept the Drifters a top act through ever-changing personnel and in the '70s signed the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. Wexler produced Dusty Springfield's Dusty in Memphis LP and Bob Dylan's first Grammy-winning album, the 1979 Slow Train Coming.
Levi Stubbs, 72, lead singer of The Four Tops, gave Motown its most urgent growl of machismo. The lyrics of Reach Out I'll Be There are meant to be consoling, but Stubbs' shouted "Just look ovah yo' shoulda" makes the singer sound like a stalker. In the movies he was the voice of Audrey II, the voracious plant ("Feed me!") that's really a Mean Green Mother From Outer Space in Little Shop of Horrors. Another Motown treasure, songwriter-producer Norman Whitfield (I Heard It Through the Grapevine, Papa Was a Rollin' Stone, War), died at 67.
Sing heartfelt farewells to Israel "Cachao" Lopez, 89, the Cuban-born pioneer of mambo music; to classic one-hit wonder Jody Reynolds, 75, whose Endless Sleep had a suicide theme and haunting guitar thrum; to Eddy Arnold, 89, country music's chart-topping "Tennessee Plowboy" whose early career was managed by Elvis' Svengali, Col. Tom Parker; to Jerry Reed, 71, the Nashville session guitarist with the foolin'-around grin, who became a country star with When You're Hot, You're Hot, and played Burt Reynolds' rowdy pal in Gator and Smokey and the Bandit; and to Larry Levine, indispensible audio engineer for Phil Spector's Wall of Sound epics and the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds LP. He died on his 80th birthday.
AND...
Leonard Rosenman, 83, was writing chamber music when a young actor named James Dean helped him get jobs writing the scores for East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause. He won Oscars in consecutive years for Barry Lyndon and Bound for Glory. Rosenman's themes for movies (Fantastic Voyage) and TV (Combat!) were more hummable than dramatic. It was just the opposite for the theme that Alexander Courage wrote for the original Star Trek series, or the jaunty whistling jingle that Earle Hagen composed for The Andy Griffith Show. (In a more serious, romantic vein, Hagen wrote Harlem Nocturne.) Both music men were 88.
Long before Fox News, TV was a medium of talk. Actress Dody Goodman, 93, played Louise Lasser's mother on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, but was better known as dizzy racontress on Jack Paar's late-night couch. Les Crane, 74, filled ABC's 11:30 slot against Johnny Carson with an issues show, contentiously thrusting his boom mike into the audience. Four decades later, the folksier Tony Snow, 53, hosted a Fox show as an out-of-town tryout for his job as White House Press Secretary. Jack Narz, 85, hosted the "fixed" game show Dotto; got rehabilitated and hosted Concentration. A "so long, folks" to three top sportscasters: ABC's Wide World of Sports' Jim McKay, 86, and warmly remembered baseball announcers Skip Caray, 68, of the Atlanta Braves, and all-time Yankee Bobby Murcer, 62.
For instantly recognizable vocal talent, you went to Don LaFontaine, 68, who was The Voice — deep, whispery, authoritative — for some 5,000 Hollywood trailers. In a Geico commercial he is ID'd as as "that announcer guy from the movies" and famously intones: "In a world where both of our cars were totally underwater..." A nice guy, LaFontaine would do voice-mail messages for fans. He died of a collapsed lung.
Three deaths that are no laughing matter: Harvey Korman, 81, the brilliant supporting clown for Carol Burnett and Mel Brooks; Dick Martin, 86, the actor and director who, with his comedy partner Dan Rowan, co-hosted the Vietnam-era gigglefest Laugh-In; and Will Elder, 86, one of the artists who elevated Harvey Kurtzman's Mad comic book to the level of sublime satire. He later collaborated with Kurtzman on the lavish Little Annie Fannie comic strip for Playboy.
Small businesses can build fan bases that rival any cult star's. Two of the best closed up over the holidays. Depression Modern, 29, was a mecca for collectors of Deco furniture and artifacts; each Saturday morning, dozens of the faithful would gather outside Michael Smith's Lower Manhattan store, ready to rush in and claim his latest treasures. (I could name two TIME movie critics, one in New York, one in L.A., whose homes are little museums of Depression Modern pieces.) When a leap in rent shuttered this SoHo landmark, Smith retreated to his other boutique, Adelaide, in the West Village. (Disclosure: Mary Corliss, an occasional contributor to TIME.com and a full-time contributor to my well-being, is the co-owner of Adelaide.)
Over in the East Village, Mondo Kim's was New York's premier video rental outlet; its trove of 55,000 items included all manner of ancient, foreign or just plain weird movies in DVD or, bless 'em, VHS format. Netflix, a more convenient but much less comprehensive service, killed off owner Youngman Kim's rental business, and with it a unique source for voracious cinephile. Don't ask me why, but the whole collection was bought by the Sicilian town of Salemi, and will be shown in what the burghers call the Neverending Festival. It's a sign that, at least for strange old movies, there is life after death.