REST IN POWER

Betty Davis, Iconic Funk Singer, Has Died

Amanda Wicks, Madison Bloom

 - Wednesday
Pitchfork

© Betty Davis, February 1976 (Fin Costello/Redferns)

NEW YORK - 1st FEBRUARY: American singer Betty Davis posed in New York in February 1976. (Photo by Fin Costello/Redferns)

Iconic funk singer Betty Davis has died, Rolling Stone reports. The news was confirmed to Rolling Stone by Davis’ close friend, Danielle Maggio (an ethnomusicologist who has been researching the singer’s body of work), as well as Allegheny County communications director Amie Downs, who said that Davis died of natural causes.

Davis’ records were distinctive thanks to her wild and overtly sexual vocal performances. The first, her self-titled debut, arrived in 1973. She followed it with two more: 1974’s They Say I’m Different and 1975’s Nasty Gal. Before her own music career took off, Davis married Miles Davis in 1968. The couple remained together for only one year, but it proved to be an influential relationship for the jazz musician. She introduced him to the rock icons of the time, including guitarist Jimi Hendrix. And, not only did Miles go include Betty on the cover of his 1968 album Filles de Kilimanjaro, but also the album contained the song “Mademoiselle Mabry.”

Born in North Carolina, Betty Mabry ended up slightly farther north in Pittsburgh, where she spent her childhood. She eventually moved to New York in the 1960s, and flourished within the city’s artistic scene. For her debut album, Davis worked with bassist Larry Graham and drummer Greg Errico (of Sly and the Family Stone), keyboardist Merl Saunders, and guitarists Neal Schon and Douglas Rodriguez. Slow sales plagued the album, as well as her two follow-ups, and she slowly receded from view. All three albums were later reissued along with her early sessions with Miles Davis and a previously unreleased 1976 LP, Crashin’ from Passion.

A documentary about Davis’ life premiered in 2017. And, in 2019, Davis returned with the new song “A Little Bit Hot Tonight.” Davis wrote, arranged, and produced the track, which was sung by Danielle Maggio.

See the video on YouTube.




Pioneer in electronic and electro-acoustic music dies

Wednesday

A composer, professor and pioneer in electronic and electro-acoustic music, who helped develop the Synclavier, an early digital synthesizer, has died.

Jon Appleton died Jan. 30 in White River Junction, Vt., at the age of 83, his son JJ Appleton said Wednesday.

Appleton, who was born in Los Angeles, became part of the faculty at Dartmouth College in 1967 and developed one of the first programs and studios for electronic music in the country.

“That really was a pioneering vision of his to create a center for electronic music at Dartmouth and it propelled Dartmouth very quickly to the forefront of the work in electronic, electro-acoustic music,” said colleague and friend Theodore Levin, the Arthur R. Virgin Professor of Music at Dartmouth.

While he was a musical visionary and one of the pioneers of electronic and electro-acoustic music, he “wasn't a geek or a gearhead ... whirling knobs and moving slider bars to make weird sounds,” contrary to stereotypes, particularly in the early years, Levin said.

“He couldn’t have been farther from that. He was at heart a kind of musical romantic,” he said.

Appleton's interest in electronic music was on the side of electro-acoustic, “as a way to extend the expressive possibilities and potential of acoustic musical instruments and the human voice,” Levin said.

“I think he regarded his electronic music as a kind of folk music for our age,” he said.

The Synclavier, developed in 1975 by Appleton, Dartmouth Thayer School of Engineering research professor Sydney Alonso and student Cameron Jones, went on to become the Rolls Royce of the music industry, selling for $75,000 to $500,000, and used by Sting, Stevie Wonder, Frank Zappa, and many other musicians, according to Dartmouth Engineer Magazine.

At Dartmouth, Appleton was the Arthur R. Virgin Professor of Music Emeritus and the Ted and Helen Geisel Professor in the Humanities Emeritus. He also had been a visiting professor at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan; the University of California, Santa Cruz; the Moscow Conservatory in Russia and the University of Hawaii.

He was beloved by many of his students, said JJ Appleton.

“He was a composer, a very accomplished one, but he was also a very accomplished professor and mentor to a lot of people,” he said.

Lisa Rathke, The Associated Press



'2001,' 'Blade Runner' effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull dies

Tuesday


Douglas Trumbull, a visual effects master who showed movie audiences indelible images of the future and of space in films like “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Blade Runner,” has died. He was 79.

His wife Julia Trumbull said he died Monday of complications from mesothelioma.

Director Edgar Wright tweeted, “RIP to an actual visionary, Doug Trumbull...he directed a childhood favourite of mine, the sci fi gem ‘Silent Running.’ Watch it tonight.”

Producer and documentarian Charles de Lauzirika, who worked with Trumbull on “Blade Runner: The Final Cut,” tweeted that, “He wasn’t just innovating magnificent visuals, but also pursuing the big ideas behind whatever story he was telling.”

Born in Los Angeles in 1942, Trumbull’s father was visual effects supervisor Donald Trumbull, who worked on “The Wizard of Oz.” He got his start at Graphic Works Films, where a short of his caught the attention of Stanley Kubrick who was beginning work on “2001: A Space Odyssey.” At 23 years old, he not only talked himself into a key job on “2001" but helped innovate the process that would be used to create the iconic star-gate sequence.

"It was a really unique time because we were at these Borehamwood Studios outside of London and it was a highly unionized studio," he said in an interview. “Here I am, this weird, L.A., young 23-year-old cowboy kid that they took on as kind of a mascot more than anything. It didn’t frighten them that I would crossover between all these different departments and get components built for me to do the things I wanted to do. They were totally supportive and thought it was funny and weird and whatever, and this kid’s going to do it and Kubrick says it’s okay, so we’ll do it, and we did some pretty amazing stuff that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.”

Over the course of his career, which recently included work on Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” he pushed forward filmmaking techniques like slit-scan photography, which was used for “2001." He also developed the Showscan film process, in which 70mm film is projected at 60 frames per second to create a sense of heightened reality.

After he made a name for himself on “2001,” he worked on Robert Wise's adaptation of “The Andromeda Strain,” Steven Spielberg's “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” Wise's “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” and Ridley Scott's “Blade Runner.”

He made his directorial debut with “Silent Running,” a dystopian sci-fi film starring Bruce Dern in which plant life is becoming extinct on earth. Roger Ebert, in his review, wrote that Trumbull “is one of the best science-fiction special-effects men. ‘Silent Running,’ which has deep space effects every bit the equal of those in ‘2001,’ also introduces him as an intelligent, if not sensational, director.”

He also directed the 1983 sci-fi film “Brainstorm,” which had the distinction of being Natalie Wood’s last role. Wood died during a break in production after most of her scenes had been completed. The tragic death and the subsequent fights with MGM soured Trumbull on the business and he said in an interview that he had no interest in doing another Hollywood feature.

“I just had to stop,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2013. “I had been a writer-director all my life, and I decided it wasn’t for me because I was put through a really challenging personal experience. I do not think the story has ever been told. I don’t know the story myself, but I know what my experience was. I decided to leave the movie business.”

He didn't exactly retire though — he developed the “Back to the Future” ride at Universal Studios in Orlando and Los Angeles from his new home in the Berkshires. And Trumbull would eventually return to Hollywood films after some 30 years with work on “Tree of Life," where he consulted on the beginning of the universe sequence, and an experimental sci-fi short “UFOTOG" among other projects.

Trumbull got three Academy Award nominations for visual effects (for “Blade Runner,” “Star Trek” and “Close Encounters”) and, in 1992, a special scientific and engineering award for his work helping to design the CP-65 Showscan Camera System for motion picture photography.

In 2012, he received the Academy’s Gordon E. Sawyer Award, a special technical Oscar for his contributions to the industry. More recently, he was at work on a documentary about “2001” and developing a sci-fi script with John Sayles.

The family said in a statement that, “In Trumbull’s memory and his love of the giant screen, we hope that you will support your local theaters.”

Lindsey Bahr, The Associated Press