Sylvia Robinson, pioneer of rap music dies

 

The Sugar Hill Gang were the first group to score a top 40 hit with a rap record

Sylvia Robinson, known to many as the mother of hip-hop, has died aged 75.

The former soul singer set up trail-blazing record label Sugar Hill Records in 1979 with her husband Joe.
She produced hip-hop's first commercially successful single, Rapper's Delight, and co-wrote Grandmaster and Melle Mel's anti-drugs anthem White Lines (Don't Do It).
Robinson died of congestive heart failure in New Jersey, said her publicist Greg Walker.

Early success
Born Sylvia Vanterpool in New York, she had a long career in the music industry before the arrival of rap.
She scored several novelty hits in her teens as Little Sylvia, but scored a huge hit with Love Is Strange in 1957, recorded with her guitar teacher McHouston "Mickey" Baker.
The pair's song, with its suggestive "how do you call your loverboy" refrain, is known to millions from its use in Dirty Dancing.

It was co-written by Bo Diddley, after Robinson secured permission from the bluesman to reversion one of his stage instrumentals into a jukebox smash.
The duo had a few more modest hits before they broke up, while Robinson achieved sporadic success in the 60s as a writer and producer.

Club revelation
As a solo artist, she had a hit in 1973 with the sexually suggestive Pillow Talk, an early prototype of disco music, and a direct influence on Donna Summer's heavy-breathing hit Love To Love You Baby.
But it was 1979 when she first experienced rap and latched on to its potential.
It was at a club called Harlem World in Manhattan, where a DJ called Lovebug Starski was talking and chanting over a mix of R&B records.
"I saw him talking to the kids and saw how they'd answer back," she told Vanity Fair magazine in 2005.

 

DJ Grandmaster Flash was an early signing to the Sugar Hill label

 

"He would say something every now and then, like 'Throw your hands in the air,' and they'd do it. If he'd said, 'Jump in the river,' they'd have done it.
"A spirit said to me, 'Put a concept like that on a record and it will be the biggest thing you ever had.'"
Robinson recruited three unknown MCs - Big Bank Hank, Wonder Mike and Master Gee - and recorded Rapper's Delight, 15 minutes long and backed by a sample from Chic's Good Times.
A seven-minute edit was put together and the song crossed over to the mainstream, eventually charting at 36 in the Billboard Hot 100.
"When it came out, nothing was the same afterwards," hip-hop historian Harry Allen told US radio network NPR in 2000.
"By making it palpable, it made hip-hop as a commercial medium possible."
Although the Sugar Hill Gang never equalled the success of their debut, the label continued to score hits.
Among them were Apache, That's The Joint and The Message - the song widely credited with bringing social consciousness to hip-hop and the first rap song ever added to the US National Archive.
Sugar Hill Records was eventually closed in 1986, and its studios in Englewood, New Jersey burned down in 2002.
Sylvia Robinson is survived by her sons Joey, Leland and Rhondo and 10 grandchildren. Mr Robinson died of cancer in 2000.

David Z Goodman

David Z Goodman, who died on September 26 aged 81, wrote the screenplay for the controversial thriller Straw Dogs (1971), one of the great banned films of the 1970s, which revealed rural Britain to be just as brutal as the mean streets of downtown America.

Starring Dustin Hoffman as an American mathematician living with his British wife (the then unknown Susan George) in a fictional village in Cornwall, Straw Dogs marked a watershed in the way sexual violence is depicted in the cinema. Because it featured two disturbing and graphic rape scenes, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) only agreed to its uncut release on video some 30 years later.

David Zelag Goodman (right) with Sam Peckinpah

 

Goodman's screenplay depicted a middle-class couple besieged by a sexually ravening gang of yokels. Though based on The Siege Of Trencher's Farm, a 1969 novel by the Scottish author Gordon Williams, the director, Sam Peckinpah, ordered Goodman to write in some controversial scenes that do not occur in the original.

"They've added a rape scene, an act of buggery and lots of violence," Williams complained.

"Mr Williams has a penchant for his own work," Peckinpah retorted. "I don't."

When Peckinpah, who urged more violence than Goodman cared for, was advised by the BBFC's newly-installed secretary, Stephen Murphy, to make some changes, he produced a final cut (approved for theatrical release) in which Susan George's character appeared to enjoy being violated. Fleet Street erupted. Thirteen reviewers wrote to The Times, condemning Straw Dogs for being "dubious in its intention [and] excessive in its effect".

The notice that most upset Goodman was written by the American Pauline Kael. In an otherwise positive review, Kael concluded that Peckinpah had made "the first American film that is a fascist work of art".
All this caused enormous controversy, bracketing the film alongside The Devils, Family Life and A Clockwork Orange (all also released in 1971) in terms of its sexually violent content. Uncut, Straw Dogs was not approved for release on video in Britain until 2002.
David Zelag Goodman was born on January 15 1930 in New York. His orthodox Jewish parents wanted him to become a rabbi, sending him to a yeshiva to be trained. But at 18 he became totally secular, took a degree in English at Queens' College, studied Drama at Yale University, and became a playwright.
In 1954, when he was 24, Goodman's anti-war drama High Named Today was produced off-Broadway, The New York Times reviewer hailing him an "original" and "talented" writer.
His film breakthrough came in England in 1959, at the Bray studios in Berkshire, with the script for the Hammer adventure film Stranglers of Bombay. During the 1960s he wrote American television episodes of The Untouchables, Combat! and Mr Broadway.
For Hollywood Goodman scripted the mystery thriller Man on a Swing (1974), starring Cliff Robertson, and Farewell, My Lovely (1975), a remake of the Raymond Chandler story starring Robert Mitchum as Philip Marlowe.
His first venture into science fiction, Logan's Run (1976), starring Michael York, was the result of Goodman being brought in after several other writers had failed to deliver; in the end he earned sole credit for the script.
As a "script doctor" Goodman demonstrated a knack of quickly identifying screenplay flaws, as when Sherry Lansing brought him in to work on the thriller Fatal Attraction. According to his friend, the film and television producer Zev Braun, Goodman said to Lansing of the Glenn Close character: "You can't let her off the hook. You should kill her. Let's drown her!"
Braun worked with Goodman on Freedom Road, a 1979 miniseries with Muhammad Ali and Kris Kristofferson. With Braun as co-writer, Goodman also scripted Cover, the story of the poisoning of the Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, which is currently in pre-production.
Goodman's work has lasted: Monte Walsh was remade in 2003 as a television film; a remake of Straw Dogs was released a fortnight ago; and a remake of Logan's Run is in production at Warner Bros.
David Zelag Goodman is survived by Marjorie, his London-born wife of 61 years, and their daughter, Professor Kevis Goodman, a scholar of British Romanticism who teaches English at the University of California, Berkeley.

Implantable pacemaker inventor Wilson Greatbatch dies

 

The pacemaker was named one of society's 10 most important recent engineering contributions

 

The man who invented the first successful implantable cardiac pacemaker, Wilson Greatbatch, has died in Buffalo, New York, aged 92.

His pacemaker was first implanted in humans in 1960 and keeps the heart beating in a regular rhythm.
Now, hundreds of thousands of people receive pacemakers every year.
Greatbatch's cause of death is not known. But Larry Maciariello, his son-in-law, told reporters his health had been "intermittent".
He held more than 150 patents.
The first successful implant of a pacemaker took place at the Buffalo Veterans' Affairs Hospital. The 77-year-old patient lived for 18 months after the device was implanted.
In 2010, Greatbatch marked the 50th anniversary of the medical device.
His company Greatbatch Ltd - formerly Wilson Greatbatch Ltd - was founded in 1970 and manufactures batteries for the implantable pacemaker.
Inventing was Greatbatch's lifelong passion. In 1998 he was admitted to the National Inventors' Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio.
In 1983, the implantable pacemaker was named one of the 10 great engineering contributions to society in the part 50 years, by the National Society of Professional Engineers.
"Nine things out of 10 don't work," Greatbatch told the Associated Press in 1997. "The 10th one will pay for the other nine."
In his later years, Greatbatch worked on possible cures for Aids.
He was awarded the Lemelson-MIT Prize for lifetime achievement in 1996, aged 76.
He also challenged the next generation of inventors to develop nuclear fusion using a type of helium found on the moon.
Fossil fuels, Greatbatch believed, will be exhausted by 2050.
Greatbatch studied electrical engineering at Cornell University and the University of Buffalo, where he then taught engineering between 1952 and 1957.
Greatbatch served in the Navy as a rear gunner and dive bomber during World War II. He also taught in the Navy's radar school.
Greatbatch was married to his wife, Eleanor for more than 60 years. They had five children together.

Dad's Army co-writer David Croft dies at the age of 89

Television writer David Croft dies aged 89

David Croft, co-writer and producer of classic comedies including 'Allo 'Allo and Hi-de-Hi has died at the age of 89, his family has announced.

He died peacefully in his sleep at his home in Portugal. His family called him a "truly great man" in a statement.
Croft's military sitcoms It Ain't Half Hot Mum and Dad's Army, written with Jimmy Perry, were hits in the 1970s.
He is also credited with Are You Being Served and its 1990s spin-off Grace and Favour.
Actor Melvyn Hayes, one of the stars of It Ain't Half Hot Mum, called Croft a "genius" and said it was "a privilege to work with" him.
"There were no swear words in his shows. His programmes were the kind of thing you could sit in front of the TV and watch with your grandmother and grandchildren," he said.
Welsh actress Ruth Madoc, who played Gladys Pugh in Hi-de-Hi, also paid tribute to the writer.

He just knew what tickled people, what made people smile”

Ian Lavender, Private Pike in Dad's Army

 

"He'd let you look in the camera lens and he'd teach you about that shot.
"He was a very, very clever man and not only did he do television but he slipped so easily into producing, writing and directing theatre, too."
Jon Plowman, former head of comedy at the corporation, said Croft "invented a whole genre of comedy that was all his own".
"The world is a less funny place for his going," he added.
Croft, who was awarded an OBE in 1978 for services to television, worked alongside Jeremy Lloyd on both the department store sitcom and wartime farce 'Allo 'Allo, which was set in Nazi-occupied France.
Comedians and writers have taken to Twitter to post tributes. David Walliams wrote: "Such sad news," while Doctor Who writer Paul Cornell added: "His best monument is that his shows are still repeated."
Fruitful partnership
All of Croft's hits were produced for the BBC, the last being Oh, Doctor Beeching in 1993 - after which he retired from the corporation.
A decade later, Croft was honoured with a lifetime achievement award at the British Comedy Awards.
Croft was born as David John Sharland to stage actress Annie Croft and Reginald Sharland, a successful Hollywood radio actor.
He enlisted in the army during World War II, which was to provide some of his later comic inspiration for Dad's Army and It Ain't Half Hot Mum.

 

Wartime sitcom Dad's Army was one of Croft's most enduring creations

Dad's Army was the first of his series to come to TV screens, in 1968, and marked the start of his fruitful and long-lived comic partnership with Jimmy Perry.
The BBC initially had misgivings about the concept - which followed the fortunes of a Home Guard platoon, the last line of defence should the Germans have invaded Britain during World War II.
But the affection with which the characters were treated soon endeared the show to audiences and corporate bosses alike.
The series went on to gain the creative partnership a trio of awards from the Writers' Guild of Great Britain in 1969-71.
More than 40 years after it was first screened, the sitcom is still being shown.
Ian Lavender, who played the hapless Private Pike in the series said Croft was "a great comic writer".
"He just knew what tickled people, what made people smile," he said.
"I have never come across anyone in the Home Guard who said Dad's Army was a disgrace.
"They say they all had a Mainwaring in their platoon. We were laughing with them, not at them."
Among Croft's other achievements, he wrote scripts for numerous well-loved pantomimes and produced television shows in Hollywood and Australia.
The statement posted on his official website by his family added: "He was a truly great man, who will be missed by all who had the great fortune of knowing and loving him."
It added that he would have been "proud that you had all been watching", a nod to the tagline that appeared at the end of Croft's TV sitcoms.

Wade Mainer

Mainer’s idiosyncratic technique created a softer sound than the three-fingered style formerly associated with bluegrass, and represented a significant change from the heavier drop-thumb style known as “clawhammer”. His style of playing and his skill at translating traditional songs into sounds akin to modern country influenced better-known musicians such as Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt. As a result, his versions of songs such as Maple on the Hill and Take Me in the Lifeboat later became bluegrass standards.

Wade Mainer

 

Mainer reached the summit of his fame in the early 1940s, but never fully adapted to his life as a celebrity. In 1941 the American folklorist Alan Lomax arranged for Mainer to entertain Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt at “An Evening of American Folklore” at the White House. Mainer turned up in bib overalls with a red bandanna in his pocket and, at supper after the show, spilt ice cream on the First Lady’s dress: “I started to wipe it off and she said 'Oh, don’t bother.’” The next thing Mainer knew, the president’s wife had made a swift exit. “She said, 'Excuse me,’ then went off and came back with a fresh dress,” he recalled.

The following year Mainer sang with Woody Guthrie in the folk musical Chisholm Trail on CBS radio – an engagement that Mainer had almost missed out on due to his moral rectitude. “They gave me a song to sing called Dodge City Jail that had a lot of rough talk,” Mainer recalled. “I said, 'No, I don’t want to do that,’ and Woody stepped in and said, 'If you play the banjo, I’ll sing it.’”

Some attributed Mainer’s comparatively low musical profile to the fact that he failed to make it to the Grand Ole Opry at this early stage in his career. The show’s director invited Mainer to come and play in 1941, but the musician was under contract to a radio station in Knoxville at the time, and was prevented from going to Nashville by his boss.

By the late 1940s Mainer’s brand of old-time music was being overshadowed by modern country and, in 1953, he gave up. Resigned to the idea that he would never make it as a musician, he moved to Michigan and worked in obscurity at a General Motors plant.

Wade Mainer was born in Buncombe County, North Carolina, on April 21 1907 and grew up in a poor farming community. He taught himself to play the banjo on an instrument made from a groundhog’s hide and, while working as a labourer, would perform at corn-shuckings and bean-stringings.
In the mid-1920s Mainer joined his older brother Joseph (“JE”), who worked at a cotton mill in Concord and played the fiddle. They formed a band called The Mountaineers and by 1934 had landed a slot on the local radio station.
By the mid-1930s the Mainers were one of the most popular country acts in the south-eastern United States. “People would come to our shows after riding two hours on horses,” Mainer said. “Some would walk to the shows carrying lanterns so they could see their way back home.” By 1937 Wade had formed his own group, The Sons of the Mountaineers, with which he made more than 100 recordings for RCA’s Bluebird subsidiary.
In 1937 he married Julia Brown, who performed as “Hillbilly Lily” on a local radio station and with whom he had five children.
During the folk revival of the 1960s a generation of younger fans rediscovered Mainer and, with his wife on guitar, he became a regular performer at bluegrass festivals. In 2002, 60 years after he had first been refused permission to perform there, he finally appeared at the Grand Ole Opry.
“Don’t complain and tell people your problems,” Mainer liked to say, “’cause half the people don’t want to hear them and the other half are glad you got ’em.”
He is survived by his wife and by three sons and a daughter. Another son predeceased him.

Kenya's Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai dies aged 71

 

Wangari Maathai was an inspiration for many women across Africa

Kenya's Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai has died in Nairobi while undergoing cancer treatment. She was 71.

She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for promoting conservation, women's rights and transparent government - the first African woman to get the award.
She was elected as an MP in 2002 and served as a minister in the Kenyan government for a time.
Ms Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, which has planted 20-30 million trees in Africa.

'Role model and heroine' "It is with great sadness that the family of Professor Wangari Maathai announces her passing away on 25 September, 2011, at the Nairobi Hospital, after a prolonged and bravely borne struggle with cancer," 
"Her loved ones were with her at the time.
"Professor Maathai's departure is untimely and a very great loss to all who knew her - as a mother, relative, co-worker, colleague, role model, and heroine; or who admired her determination to make the world a more peaceful, healthier, and better place."

The organisation did not provide further details.
Ms Maathai, who was a professor of veterinary anatomy, rose to international fame for campaigns against government-backed forest clearances in Kenya in the late 1980s-90s.
Under the former government of President Daniel Arap Moi, she was arrested several times, and vilified.
In 2008, Ms Maathai was tear-gassed during a protest against the Kenyan president's plan to increase the number of ministers in the cabinet.
In her speech accepting the Nobel prize, Ms Maathai said she hoped her own success would spur other women on to a more active role in the community.
"I hope it will encourage them to raise their voices and take more space for leadership," she said.

Beatles photographer Robert Whitaker dies aged 71

 

Robert Whitaker exhibited his work all over the world

Photographer Robert Whitaker, best known for this work with The Beatles during the 1960s, has died aged 71.

Whitaker took many pictures of the Fab Four, including a cover for the album Yesterday and Today featuring meat and dismembered dolls.
But the controversial image was pasted over with a much less graphic shot of the band for the album's US release.
Whitaker captured other acts including Cream and Mick Jagger and covered the war in Cambodia and Vietnam.
The British photographer also worked during the conflict between Pakistan and Bangladesh in the 1970s.
Whitaker first photographed the Beatles on their visit to Australia in 1964 where he had been working for the Melbourne Jewish News.
'Hard work'
Their manager Brian Epstein gave him the job of staff photographer for his company, leading him to work with other artists including Cilla Black.
He chronicled The Beatles' concerts at New York's Shea Stadium and on their final world tour in 1966.
The photographer was also on hand to capture them in more informal poses during this period.
Whitaker said that it had been "hard work" to set up the Yesterday and Today "butcher" pose, in which the band members wore white coats.
"I had to go to the local butcher and get pork. I had to go to a doll factory and find the dolls. I had to go to an eye factory and find the eyes. False teeth.
"There's a lot in that photograph," he said.
The image was published on a number of occasions in the music press before being withdrawn on grounds of taste.
Towards the twilight of his career, Whitaker was engaged in creating a digital archive of his body of work.