Françoise Hardy [1944-2024]

Artist: Françoise Hardy

LP: The Best of Françoise Hardy

Song: "Only You Can Do It (Je Veux Qu'il Revienne)"

[ listen ]

Song: "I Still Love Him (Pourtant Tu M'Aimes)"

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I was sad to hear that French singer-actress-icon Françoise Hardy died on Tuesday of this past week after a years-long battle with cancer. Hardy passed away on the same day I was with my mother, celebrating her 81st birthday. 

 

I really didn't know very much about the life and career of Françoise Hardy until reading all about her today on her Wikipedia page. But what I did know is that whenever I found any of her records for sale, I should just go ahead and buy them. They're guaranteed beautiful, moody, ultra-cool pop tonic every time. There's a wonderful piece here from The New York Times that explores what it means to the French to have lost at this particular time their "voice of melancholy cool." 

 

Françoise Hardy

[ January 17, 1944 — June 11, 2024 ]

We will miss you, Françoise.

B. J. Thomas [1942-2021]

Artist: B. J. Thomas

LP: Most Of All

Song: "Rainy Day Man"

[ listen ]

Song: "Most Of All"

[ listen ]

 

I was sad to hear today that raindrops will never again keep falling on this guy's head for the rest of time. I posted tracks from this 1970 LP back in October of 2015...but I don't have any other B. J. Thomas records, so here it is again. In "Most Of All," B. J. sings that he's at the railway station in St. Paul. I was just there! You can read the New York Times obituary for this handsome crooner here. 

B. J. Thomas

[ August 7, 1942 — May 29, 2021 ]

We will miss you, Billy Joe.

Mary Wilson [1944-2021]

Artist: The Supremes

LP: Floy Joy

Song: "A Heart Like Mine"

[ listen ]

Song: "Automatically Sunshine "

[ listen ]

I was sad to awaken today to news of the death of Mary Wilson, the most supreme member of the legendary Motown girl group The Supremes. Wilson was the only founding member of The Supremes to remain with the group from the beginning (as The Primettes in Detroit in 1959) to the end, when the group disbanded in 1977. 

 

The Supremes' lineup for their 1972 "Floy Joy" LP is Jean Terrell (she handled most lead vocals after coming aboard to replace Diana Ross, who had left the group in 1970 for a solo career), Mary Wilson, and Cindy Birdsong. In fact, Birdsong was exiting The Supremes to focus on raising a family at the time "Floy Joy" was released. She was "great with child" at the time of the album photo shoot, so it's her replacement, Lynda Laurence, standing in on the LP cover (far left, holding a drink) despite the fact that she hadn't actually contributed anything to the record. Mary Wilson is pictured seated on the cover, with Jean Terrell standing to her right (well, to her left, but to our right). 

 

With her misty dry-ice-vapors-on-the-dance-floor voice, Wilson takes center stage on the lovely ballad "A Heart Like Mine." Her vocals are featured again, as co-lead with Terrell, on one of the album's singles, "Automatically Sunshine," which peaked at #37 on the Billboard Hot 100, at #21 on the R&B singles chart, and made it all the way to #10 on the singles charts in the U.K. "Floy Joy" was produced by Smokey Robinson. You can find Mary Wilson's obituary in the New York Times here.

 

Mary Wilson

[ March 6, 1944 — February 8, 2021 ]

We will miss you, Mary.

Charley Pride [1934-2020]

 

Artist: Charley Pride

LP: Christmas In My Home Town

Song: "Christmas In My Home Town"

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Song: "Santa and the Kids"

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Song: "O Holy Night"

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Country music legend Charley Pride died earlier this week from illness related to COVID-19. Reading about his career on Wikipedia just now, I learned a number of things (the number 4) about Charley that I hadn't known before: 

 

1.) Before his music career took off, Charley Pride played professional baseball! He pitched for teams in places like Memphis, Tennessee; Boise, Idaho; Fond du Lac, Wisconsin; Louisville, Kentucky; Missoula, Montana. When Charley was let go from the team in Missoula...

 

2.) Charlie Pride and his family lived in Helena, Montana for a number of years (the number 9), from 1960 to 1969, where Charlie did hard labor in a smelter during the day, while pursuing his dreams of a career in the arts at night (sound familiar?). 

 

3.) Though I knew Charley Pride was black, of course, I'd never before considered what it must have been like for him to have to face a crowd of (it's safe to assume) mostly all-white country music fans who may not have been aware of this fact in the early days of Pride's success in the mid-to-late 1960s. According to Wikipedia: In the late summer of 1966, on the strength of his early releases, [Charley] was booked for his first large show, in Detroit's Olympia Stadium. Since no biographical information had been included with those singles, few of the 10,000 country fans who came to the show knew Pride was black, and discovered the fact only when he walked onto the stage, at which point the applause trickled off to silence. "I knew I'd have to get it over with sooner or later," Pride later remembered. "I told the audience: 'Friends, I realize it's a little unique, me coming out here — with a permanent suntan — to sing country and western to you. But that's the way it is.'" 

 

4.) Charley had 30 hits that reached the top of the country music charts in the USA, and one of them, "Kiss An Angel Good Mornin'," was also a top 40 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 pop charts, reaching #21 in early 1972.

 

Charlie Pride's one and only Christmas album was released in 1970, and I found this pristine copy earlier today at Golden Oldies Records in Wallingford. The New York Times obituary for Charlie Pride can be found here.

 

Charley Pride

[ March 18, 1934 — December 12, 2020 ]

We will miss you, Charley.

Harold Budd [1936-2020]

Artist: Harold Budd . Elizabeth Fraser . Robin Guthrie . Simon Raymonde

LP: The Moon and the Melodies

Song: "Sea, Swallow Me"

[ listen ]

Song: "Why Do You Love Me?"

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Ambient composer and musician Harold Budd has died from COVID-19. I first heard Harold's music when he joined forces with Cocteau Twins for "The Moon and the Melodies," released toward the end of 1986, right after I'd started working at Budget Tapes & Records in Yakima, WA. Budd went on to collaborate with Cocteau Twins guitarist Robin Guthrie for other albums after the Twins were separated in 1996, and I've been reminding myself that I must hear these. The latest one, "Another Flower," was released just earlier this year. 

 

In my senior year of high school, I had a highly unpleasant alarm clock that would begin buzzing faintly at first, but then the sound would grow in intensity until it seemed like I was about to be set upon by a flock of murder hornets. My solution was to queue up "Sea, Swallow Me" on the turntable across the room, and then slightly unplug my record player at the outlet next to my bed. (There was only one electrical outlet in my entire bedroom in that old farmhouse, and, fortunately, it happened to be right beside my bed.) Then, when the alarm began its light buzzing in the morning, I'd slap it down to stop it before it got any louder, and then I'd reach down to plug in my record player and slowly awaken for the day while listening to side one of "The Moon and the Melodies." It's a blissful memory, and I'd like to thank Harold Budd for getting me going each day in such a lovely way during my formative high school years. (I still don't see why class leadership chose Bon Jovi's "Livin' On a Prayer" as our graduation theme song, instead of "Sea, Swallow Me," as I suggested.) If God has even a shred of good taste (it's debatable; look around), Harold's own compositions surely were wafting through the clouds as he ascended to heaven yesterday.

 

Harold Budd

[ May 24, 1936 — December 8, 2020 ]

We will miss you, Harold.

Sean Connery [1930-2020] / Matt Monro

Artist: Matt Monro / John Barry
 LP: From Russia With Love

Song: "From Russia With Love"

[ listen ]

Song: "James Bond With Bongos"

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Song: "Opening Titles - James Bond Is Back"

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This morning I woke to the sad news that actor Sean Connery had died; he was 90 years old. I grew up watching the 007 films and for me Connery was the REAL James Bond. "From Russia With Love" is my favorite Bond film. British crooner Matt Monro does a fine job on the film's theme song (with John Barry doing dynamite work with the music for the film), but sadly, the Bond film tradition of having the vocal version of the theme song blazing hypnotically over the film's sexy opening title sequence hadn't yet taken hold when this second 007 film was released in 1963. (It was the next film that began the trend, when Shirley Bassey crooned the immortal "Goldfinger" over that film's opening credits in 1964.) If I remember correctly, Matt Monro's theme song for "From Russia With Love" is merely heard (only partially) in a beach scene, playing through the speaker of an AM radio stuck in the sand. 

 

Unfortunately, when I told my work colleague Amir, who is from the Middle East, about Connery's passing, I ended up with my foot in my mouth again in another of my infamous and regrettable situations where I'm accidentally racist because I'm just no good at comprehending foreign accents. Amir expressed sadness over Connery's passing, and then told me he really liked the actor in the film "Zurock." He asked me if I'd seen it, and I repeated the title several times aloud, trying to recall if I'd even heard of it before: "Zurock...Zurock..." I told Amir I'd seen Connery in the strange '70s sci-fi film "Zardoz" and asked it that's the movie he was talking about. It wasn't. As I was busy assuming that "Zurock" was some small-scale, made-for-cable film Connery had been in, probably about some conflict in an Iraqi city called Zurock that I'd never heard of before, Amir was on his phone looking up the film he was trying to tell me about: It was this one. Embarrassed, I told him I absolutely loved it. 

 

You can read about Sean Connery's life and career on Wikipedia here, find his BBC obituary here, see a sexy photo of Sean without a shirt on here, and read all about singer Matt Monro over here.

 

[ Matt Monro: December 1, 1930 — February 7, 1985 ]

 

Sean Connery

[ August 25, 1930 — October 31, 2020 ]

We will miss you, Sean.

Eddie Van Halen [1955-2020]

Artist: Van Halen

LP: 7" single

Song: "Pretty Woman"

[ listen ]

 

I have to admit, I've never been a huge Van Halen fan or anything, but still I was sad to hear that guitar virtuoso Eddie Van Halen died yesterday after a long battle with cancer. Everyone else seemed to be jumping online to post eulogies to Van Halen today, so I figured... might as well jump. 

 

"Pretty Woman" was the first Van Halen song I became aware of; it was played on the radio a lot when my brother Matt and I first began paying rapt attention to pop music in late 1981 and early 1982. ("Pretty Women" peaked at #12 on the Billboard Hot 100 in '82.) You can read all about Van Halen here, and go here to find a nice obituary for Eddie in the NY Times. I didn't know he had been married to Valerie Bertinelli!

 

[ L to R: Michael Anthony, Alex Van Halen, David Lee Roth, Eddie Van Halen ]

 

Eddie Van Halen

[ January 26, 1955 — October 6, 2020 ]

We will miss you, Eddie.

ABBA / Matt Williams [1967-2020]

Artist: ABBA

LP: Super Trouper
Song: "Super Trouper"

[ listen ]

Speaking of "family vibes," my brother Matt died suddenly of a heart-attack this past Saturday morning down in Portland, Oregon. I could write 100+ paragraphs filled with all the memories I have of him, but I'm just gonna mention one. And then I'm going to post 100+ photos instead.

Matt loved ABBA. I mean, he didn't dress up like them or anything, but I remember when he was about 13 years old in the early '80s, he had ABBA's "Super Trouper" on cassette and played it a lot. Well at age 11, I was just hip enough to know that ABBA had gone slightly out of fashion, so I teased him in front of his friends: "You like ABBA! You like ABBA!" Now of course I have all of ABBA's albums and recognize that they are actually one of the coolest things ever to come out of Europe...and also that another one of the coolest things ever is to be slightly out of fashion. My brother was way ahead of me.

Matt liked the album's title track in particular...and I do too. If anyone was a Super Trouper, it was Matt. In spite of  whatever I or anyone else believes, I like to think that now lights are gonna' find him shining like the sun, smiling, having fun, feeling like a #1. And I hope he won't ever feel blue, like he'd sometimes be, 'cause somewhere in the crowd there's me.

[ As a young lad, sittin' on the shag ]

[ Bug eyes ]

[ Photo for the cover of our first LP ]

[ Matt the baker boy ]

[ Matt and his glass ]

[ Out at the farm, slightly overdressed ]

[ Marching to the beat of our own drum ]

[ Okay, actually maybe Matt DID dress like ABBA ]

[ ABBA ]

[ Brothers at the oven ]

 [ Brothers at the campground ]

 

[ The Williams Family siblings ]

[ Happy to be taking care of his little brother ]

[ Matt with friends, champions at the table ]

[ At the table with mom ]

[ At Original Hotcake & Steak House in Portland, OR ]

[ Matt turns six ]

Matthew Lawrence Williams
[ January 21, 1967 — May 30, 2020 ]

We will miss you, Matt. Please let me know when you've seen this.