Lounge Musica

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

John Levy, Bassist and Talent Manager, Dies at 99 in 24/01/2012

Jimmy Jones and John Levy, 1947.

John Levy, a bassist and pioneering talent manager whose roster included some of the biggest names in jazz, notably Nancy Wilson, Joe Williams, Cannonball Adderley and Wes Montgomery, died on Friday at his home in Altadena, Calif. He was 99.
Widely credited as the first African-American personal manager in jazz, Mr. Levy entered that profession by happenstance: he was a member of the original George Shearing Quintet in the late 1940s, and by virtue of his diligent practicality, he gradually found himself entrusted with most of the group’s business decisions. He established his management company, John Levy Enterprises, in 1951; Shearing, the British pianist then still riding the momentum of an international hit, “September in the Rain,” became his first client.

He would go on to represent singers like Betty Carter, Abbey Lincoln and Shirley Horn; pace-setting bandleaders like Ahmad Jamal, Ramsey Lewis, Freddie Hubbard and Herbie Hancock; and crossover stars like Roberta Flack and Les McCann.

Larry Butler dies at 69

Larry Butler, the producer of some of Kenny Rogers’s biggest hits and the only Nashville session leader ever to win a Grammy Award for producer of the year, died on Friday at his home in Pensacola, Fla. He was 69.
His death was from natural causes, said Jana Talbot, a friend of the family. He died in 24/01/2012.

As a musician, producer, songwriter and record executive, Mr. Butler had a hand in creating significant country recordings that also became major pop hits in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s.

He played piano on Bobby Goldsboro’s “Honey,” the maudlin ballad that reached No. 1 on both the country and the pop charts in 1968. With the producer Chips Moman he wrote B. J. Thomas’s 1975 hit, “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song,” another single that reached the top of the country and pop charts.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Thursday, December 1, 2011

The Night Before Christimas - Vcitor Salon Orchestra

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Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Saturday, November 26, 2011

A Taste of honey

Shelagh Delaney, a British playwright and screenwriter who reached the height of her literary fame at 19 as an “angry young woman” — a characterization she detested — with the premiere of her play “A Taste of Honey,” died on Sunday (24 november) at her daughter’s home in Suffolk, England. She was 72 and lived near Filey, a village in Yorkshire. The cause was heart failure and breast cancer, her daughter, Charlotte Jo Delaney, said.
A precocious young woman with a keen eye for detail and a gift for naturalistic dialogue, Ms. Delaney — her first name is pronounced Sheila — said she wrote “A Taste of Honey” in just two weeks in 1958. She had been spurred by her dislike of the genteel stage writing of Terence Rattigan, specifically the play “Variation on a Theme,” which Rattigan intended to be socially bold but which dealt only covertly with its themes of homosexuality, promiscuity and bisexuality.
“A Taste of Honey,” which was revived on Broadway in 1981 with Amanda Plummer as Jo, was the pinnacle of Ms. Delaney’s playwriting career. But though she is often listed among one-hit wonders, she wrote several screenplays, including “The White Bus” (1967), directed by Lindsay Anderson, which she adapted from one of her short stories; “Charlie Bubbles” (1967), with Albert Finney (who also directed) and Liza Minnelli, about a successful young writer who returns home from London to Manchester and struggles to cope with his good fortune in the world of commonplace deprivation he encounters there; and “Dance With a Stranger,” Mike Newell’s 1985 film, starring Miranda Richardson and Rupert Everett, about Ruth Ellis, who murdered her lover and in 1955 became the last woman to be executed in Britain.
In addition to her daughter, Ms. Delaney, who never married (and who always said that “A Taste of Honey” was not autobiographical), is survived by three grandchildren.