RIP

[Virago]

Legendary playwright Edward Albee dead at 88

(CNN) — Legendary playwright Edward Albee, widely considered one of the greats of his generation, has died at the age of 88, according to his personal assistant Jakob Holder.

Albee, a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, died Friday afternoon at his home in Montauk, New York. Albee died after a short illness, according to Holder.

Albee's career spanned five decades. His first play, "The Zoo Story," came out in the late '50s and centered on two men who have a chance encounter on a New York City park bench. It has a violent conclusion but helped set the tone for Albee's raw and uncompromising works to come.

His best known work is arguably "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" an intimate portrait of a volatile marriage.

It was after that play that Albee began drawing comparisons to the likes of August Wilson, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams.

The play was adapted into a film in 1966. It starred Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, who both went on to be nominated for Academy Awards.

Though the play had been out for years, the film itself was the subject of controversy due to its use of profanity — like "screw you." Warner Bros. agreed to put a warning on the film that moviegoers under the age of 18 would not be admitted without an adult. R ratings did not exist at the time.

Albee's work could hit nerves like no other.

"If you're going to spend $100 or more to go to the theater, something should happen to you," he told Charlie Rose in 2008. "Maybe somebody should be asking you some questions about your values or the way you think about things and maybe you should come out of the theater (with) something having happened to you. Maybe you should be changing or thinking about change. But if you go there and the only thing you worry about is where you left the damn car, then you wasted your $100."

He was also known for the plays "A Delicate Balance" and "Seascape," among others.

Notable figures in theater have already begun to mourn Albee's passing.

[Kobi]

Arnold Palmer, one of the greatest golfers ever to pick up a club and the object of a massive fan base that called itself “Arnie’s Army” as he recorded seven major victories, died Sunday at 87 in Pittsburgh.

Born in Latrobe, Pa., Palmer’s endearing personality and skill on the links earned him the nickname “The King,” during a career whose beginning coincided with the birth of television sports. Along the way, he became one of the wealthiest celebrity endorsers, a philanthropist, golf course designer and pilot.

Palmer’s long string of victories on the PGA tour began in 1955, and he became one of the sport’s most recognizable personalities, along with Jack Nicklaus. Palmer’s charismatic personality also made him a sought after pitchman, for several products, perhaps most famously Quaker State motor oil.

"Arnold Palmer was the everyday man's hero," Nicklaus said. "From the modest upbringing, Arnold embodied the hard-working strength of America."

Palmer’s importance to subsequent generations of golfers was evident Sunday, as tributes poured in via social media.

Palmer won the PGA Tour Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998, and in 1974 was one of the 13 original inductees into the World Golf Hall of Fame.

Palmer learned to play from his father, Milfred "Deacon" Palmer, who the club pro and greenskeeper at Latrobe Country Club. It was ten that he developed his trademark pigeon-toed putting stance.

He earned a scholarship to Wake Forest, but left to join the U.S. Coast Guard in the late 1940s. He returned to school three years later, and won the 1954 U.S. Amateur championship.

Palmer turned pro a year later, winning the1955 Canadian Open the first of a string of championships. Three years later, he won the Masters Tournament, cementing his place among the sport’s greats.

Palmer won 62 titles on the PGA Tour, with the final one coming in the 1973 Bob Hope Desert Classic. Among his wins were four at the Masters, two at the British Open and one at the U.S. Open. He finished second in the U.S. Open four times, was runner-up three times in the PGA Championship.

Palmer’s best years were in the early 1960s, but he remained an immensely popular figure for the rest of his life. In 2000, Golf Digest raked him the sixth greatest player of all time. Although his biggest purse, $50,000, came when he won the Westchester Classic in 1971, Palmer’s popularity allowed him to earn as much as $30 million per year in endorsements and business deals as recently as a few years ago.

Palmer was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009.

Palmer’s friendly and folksy manner made him a favorite of the press, and his quips and quotes were as legendary as his short game.

[not2shygrrl]

This link is all I have found on Amanda and I feel it is quite appropriate here. So sad at such a young, promising and impressionist style to now be gone.



Editor’s Note: We are deeply saddened by the passing of Amanda Arkansassy Harris. Amanda was a talented artist, a beacon for the queer femme community and an absolute joy to work with. Our hearts go out to everyone in mourning.

https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/2016/07/12...nsassy-harris/

[Kobi]

The grand dame of daytime television drama, Agnes Nixon liked to say that “everyone's life is a soap opera.” For proof, she offered up her own.

She had an “abandonment complex” because her parents divorced soon after she was born. Growing up in an Irish-Catholic enclave in Nashville in the 1930s and 1940s, she felt painfully different because the other children all seemed to have fathers. Hers was “nearly psychotic” and schemed to crush her post-collegiate dream of being a writer.

He wanted his daughter to follow him into his burial garments business and arranged for her to meet Irna Phillips, a pioneering writer of radio serials her father was certain would “set me straight” regarding the foolishness of a writing career, Nixon often said.

And then Nixon invariably inserted a soap opera staple into the story — the plot twist. During the meeting, Phillips looked up from reading the sample script that was Nixon's resume and asked, “How would you like to work for me?”

"It was one of the greatest moments of my life,” Nixon later said. “It was freedom.”

Although her characters were inevitably embroiled in melodrama, Nixon was repeatedly honored for elevating soaps during a television career that spanned more than 60 years. She pioneered socially relevant themes and dealt with them seriously, bringing attention to such once-taboo topics as racism, AIDS, lesbian relationships and teenage prostitution.

In 1962, Nixon wrote a story line for “The Guiding Light” on CBS about a character who develops uterine cancer and has a life-saving hysterectomy. The network and show sponsor Proctor & Gamble agreed to the plot only if the words “cancer,” “uterus” and “hysterectomy” were not used.

When “One Life to Live” debuted in 1968, it featured a complicated story aimed at making viewers confront their prejudices, Nixon later said. It involved a young black woman that the audience is led to believe is white; she plans to marry a white doctor, but later falls in love with a black resident.

When Nixon was recognized in 2010 with a Daytime Emmy for lifetime achievement, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences said that she had “totally changed the traditionally escapist nature of daytime serials while straining to make the world a better place.”

She wasn’t trying to “break barriers,” Nixon said in 1999 on the TV biography “Intimate Portraits,” but thought it was insane “to say that entertainment and public service can never be in the same story.”

In 1981, the television academy had given Nixon its highest honor, the Trustees Award, for “distinguished service to television and the public.” She was the first woman to receive the distinction, joining an elite group that includes Edward R. Murrow and Bob Hope.

After writing the initial weeks of “Search for Tomorrow” for CBS in 1951, she played a role in the success of six other soap operas.

She helped Phillips launch “As the World Turns” on CBS in 1956 and, two years later, joined the network’s “Guiding Light” as head writer. In 1964, she took charge of NBC’s ratings-challenged “Another World” and turned it around.

Within four years, ABC came calling with a powerful enticement — creative control. Her husband, Robert Nixon, left his job as a Chrysler Corp. executive, and the couple formed a company to produce her first solo effort, “One Life to Live.”

The show quickly won praise for realism after premiering in 1968. A story on teenage venereal disease caused 50,000 viewers to write in, and an official at the Centers for Disease Control told Nixon: “You've shown us how to reach the teenagers of America,” the Los Angeles Times said in 1991.

When ABC wanted a second daytime drama, Nixon came up with “All My Children” in 1970. She also co-created a third soap for the network, “Loving,” that aired from 1983 to 1995.

Nixon readily acknowledged “All My Children” as her favorite dramatic offspring. The show was set in Pine Valley, the presumptive dramatic equivalent of Rosemont, the Philadelphia suburb where Nixon lived in a pre-Revolutionary War home. She based archvillain Adam Chandler, who didn't “know how to love,” on her father and gave her favorite character, wickedly manipulative Erica Kane, abandonment issues.

Susan Lucci became one of daytime’s most popular stars playing Erica from the show’s earliest days until the program’s end in September 2011. She repeatedly called Nixon “a genius as a storyteller.”

When “One Life to Live” left the air in early 2012, few network soap operas remained. As women increasingly entered the workforce, viewership eroded and the genre continued to lose ground to cable and offerings on the Internet.

“The name of entertainment is escape,” Nixon said in 1981 in People magazine, and it made her wealthy, one excruciatingly slow plot turn at a time. In the mid-1970s, Nixon had sold both “One Life” and “All My Children” to ABC for an undisclosed sum.

“I loved the writing and I hated the business,” Nixon told The Times in 1998, when it was reported that she earned more than $1 million a year.

She was born Agnes Eckhardt on Dec. 10, 1922, in Chicago, to Harry and Agnes Eckhardt and grew up in Nashville living with her bookkeeper mother and extended family. Previous reports put her year of birth as 1927 but the announcement of her funeral Mass said she was born five years earlier.

At Northwestern University, she studied drama alongside Charlton Heston and Patricia Neal but felt “outclassed,” as an actor, Nixon later said, and turned to writing.

Days after earning a bachelor's degree in the late 1940s, Nixon was writing for Phillips on a radio soap. When Phillips headed west to work in television, Nixon moved to New York to write for early prime-time TV dramas.

On a blind date in 1950, she met her future husband and soon agreed to marry him on one condition — that she could continue her career. They settled in the Philadelphia area and had four children in five years. With no time to travel to New York City for work, she returned to Phillips and soaps, writing at home and mailing in her scripts.

Having a bustling career in the “pre-Betty Friedan days” was tough and made her feel like a misfit, she told the Washington Post in 1983.

For years, she and her husband split their time between the Philadelphia area and New York City. After he died in 1996, Nixon said she found writing “All My Children” therapeutic.

By then, she had long devoted herself to long-range plotting and still followed her mentor’s maxim: “We don’t just live the high points and low points, we live minute by minute.”

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituar...nap-story.html

[Kobi]

Gloria Naylor, whose debut novel "The Women of Brewster Place," became a bestseller, a National Book Award winner and a TV miniseries released through Oprah Winfrey's production company, has died at the age of 66.

Naylor's other books included "Linden Hills," ''Mama Day" and "Bailey's Cafe."

"The Women of Brewster Place" is Naylor's self-described "love letter" to a determined community of seven African American women in a decaying housing project, the exact location unspecified. It was published in 1982 and praised by the New York Times as "emotionally satisfying and technically accomplished," with Brewster Place itself the narrative's star. "Brewster Place" won the National Book Award for best first fiction and was often likened to novels by Toni Morrison and Alice Walker among others as landmark books by black women.

Naylor, who grew up in New York City, would credit her mother for making "Brewster Place" possible.

"Realizing that I was a painfully shy child, she gave me my first diary and told me to write my feelings down in there," Naylor said in her National Book Award acceptance speech. "Over the years that diary was followed by reams and reams of paper that eventually culminated into 'The Women of Brewster Place.' And I wrote that book as a tribute to her and other black woman who, in spite of the very limited personal circumstances, somehow manage to hold a fierce belief in the limitless possibilities of the human spirit."

Winfrey was among the novel's many fans and the miniseries came out in 1989, with a cast including Winfrey, Cicely Tyson and Robin Givens. "The Women of Brewster of Place" was also adapted into a musical, and Naylor revisited the setting in her 1998 novel "The Men of Brewster Place."

Naylor was an undergraduate at Brooklyn College and received a master's from Yale University in African American studies, a degree earned around the time "Women of Brewster Place" was published. By the late 1970s, she had published stories in Essence magazine that would later become part of "Brewster Place."

In college, she had vowed to write at least four novels, and at least one that would outlast her. Her fiction often centered on a common meeting place, like the diner in "Bailey's Cafe," and her characters tended to be dreamers whose fantasies reflected Naylor's early love for fairy tales.

"It runs throughout my work, the theme of dreaming," she told The Associated Press in 1992. "I ask myself why it always seems important. I am a daydreamer and I once was an avid daydreamer. I would dream in serials, the daydreams would start where the others left off."

"I was still reading (fairy tales) ... at age 16. You wanted Prince Charming and I looked too long. At some point, an adult woman has to wake up and smell the coffee."

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituar...nap-story.html

[Kobi]

Joan Marie Johnson Faust, one of the founding members of the New Orleans girl group the Dixie Cups, died Oct. 5, 2016, according to multiple news sources. She was 72.

Sisters Barbara Ann and Rosa Lee Hawkins formed the Dixie Cups along with Faust, their cousin. In June 1964, the trio famously kicked the Beatles out of the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart with the song “Chapel of Love.” It proved to be their biggest hit, selling more than 1 million copies.

Faust and her cousins had several other hits including 1964’s “People Say,” which reached No. 12, and “You Should Have Seen the Way He Looked at Me,” which made it into the Top 40. In 1965, the Dixie Cups had a top-20 hit with their version of a traditional New Orleans song “Iko Iko.”

Faust became a member of the Jehovah’s Witness religious denomination and left the Dixie Cups after the trio stopped recording temporarily in 1966.

In 2007, the Dixie Cups were inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.

[Kobi]

Tom Hayden, an activist, politician, and author who was one of the famed "Chicago Seven" who protested the 1968 Democratic National Convention, died Oct. 23, according to his wife, Barbara Williams. He was 76.

The former husband of actress and fellow activist Jane Fonda, Hayden was one of the giants of the counterculture in the 1960s, a radical anti-war protester who advocated for civil rights and an end to the Vietnam War. Later in life, he developed a career in California politics and wrote a number of books.

Hayden's activism began in the 1950s as he attended the University of Michigan, where in 1960 he was among the founders of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). As a member of SDS, Hayden wrote the Port Huron Statement, the group's manifesto, in which he railed against U.S. foreign policy and politics, racial discrimination, and business, while advocating for civil disobedience and political reform.

Hayden would become president of the SDS in 1962 after returning from a trip south as one of the Freedom Riders who challenged the legitimacy of segregation on buses. In 1965, he took his activism even further afield, traveling for the first time to North Vietnam, where he toured villages and met with an American POW. About his experiences, Hayden wrote the 1966 book "The Other Side," the first of his publications.

The fight to end the Vietnam War took place at home, too, and it was there that Hayden and a number of his fellow activists rose up in protest at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois. With the goal of protesting President Lyndon B. Johnson's Vietnam War policies, Hayden and the rest of the Chicago Seven organized a rally in Grant Park – a rally that ended up playing host to 15,000 protesters who turned it into a riot.

Hayden, along with Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, John Froines, and Lee Weiner, was charged with conspiracy and inciting to riot for his actions in organizing the DNC protest. The men became known as the Chicago Seven as they fought their case to federal court, where it dragged on for months as many counterculture icons of the day were called upon to testify and the defendants pulled stunts including appearing in judicial robes with police uniforms underneath.

In the end, all seven of the defendants were acquitted of the conspiracy charge, though Hayden and four others were convicted of inciting a riot, sentenced to five years in prison and fines of $5,000 each. Upon appeal, the convictions were reversed.

It was 1972 before the appeals of the Chicago Seven trial were complete. That same year, Hayden and Fonda traveled to Vietnam in a highly controversial visit that left her dubbed "Hanoi Jane" and angered many in the U.S. But it would only be a few years before Hayden began to tone down his rhetoric as a budding politician.

Hayden's first political run came in 1976, when he made a bid for the U.S. Senate and came in second in the primary. In 1982, he was successfully elected to the California State Assembly, where he served until 1992, when he was elected to the California State Senate. He served through 2000, during which time he attempted runs for California Governor and Mayor of Los Angeles, both of which were unsuccessful.

In 1998, Hayden wrote the Hayden Act, am animal welfare act that extends the minimum amount of time an animal in a public pound or shelter has before being euthanized. The act was made California law in 1999.

Hayden taught at a number of colleges and universities, including UCLA and Harvard, and he wrote books including "Reunion: A Memoir" (1988), "Ending the War in Iraq" (2007), and "The Long Sixties: From 1960 to Barack Obama" (2009).

[Kobi]

Bobby Vee, the 1960s pop singer whose hits inlcuded "Take Good Care of My Baby" and "Run to Him," has died at 73 from complications of Alzheimer's disease.

Born in Fargo, North Dakota, as Robert Velline, Vee's big break came on the heels of a tragedy: he was hired at 15 to fill a concert bill in Moorhead, Minnesota, for what had been intended to be the next show on the 1959 Winter Dance Party Tour after the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens.

Following the exposure he received from that performance, Vee recorded a single, Suzie Baby, that did well in the upper Midwest and landed him a contract with Liberty Records. Vee reached the top ten in 1960 with "Rubber Ball" and "Devil or Angel," and 1961 saw him notch a number one hit with "Take Good Care of My Baby" and a number two hit with "Run to Him."

Vee continued to release hits through the 1960s, more than three dozen in the top 100 in total, including "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes," "Come Back When You Grow Up" and "Charms."

Though his run of hits ended after 1970, Vee performed until 2011, when he announced his retirement due to a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease.

[ProfPacker]

Omg, Tom Hayden and Bobby Vee in one day? Having spent my college years in Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor was very involved with the war and civil rights movement. Our campus SDS rep. was Diana Orton who died in a townhouse that blew up in Greenwich Village.

We learned so much from Tom Hayden. Thank you Tom for being brave and true, you opened up an entire generation to owning and having agency in our lives.

Tom Hayden started by speaking and organizing at Univ of Mich. It was the time that formed me at someone with a social conscience and possibly a future social worker who never gave up the concept of social justice for psychotherapy.

Very sad day indeed.

Bobby Vee was part of my initial music way before the Beatles and Stones.

[Gemme]

Janet Reno passed away this morning due to complications from Parkinson's.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/jan...D=ansmsnnews11

[Cin]

Leonard Cohen died. I really will miss his poetry, his lyrics, his golden voice. He was something special. I didn't know I could be much sadder than I already was these past couple of days. I was wrong.

[Stone-Butch]

OMG Leonard is gone? I loved his music and lyrics more than any singer of his genre. I own most of his music and listen often. Bless you Leonard for all you have given in your career of all your music and that wonderful voice.

[Cin]

Originally Posted by Stone-Butch

OMG Leonard is gone? I loved his music and lyrics more than any singer of his genre. I own most of his music and listen often. Bless you Leonard for all you have given in your career of all your music and that wonderful voice.

Me too. I will miss him so much. He just put out a new dvd titled "You Want It Darker". Here's some of the words from the title track. I think he was ready.

If you are the dealer, I'm out of the game
If you are the healer, it means I'm broken and lame
If thine is the glory then mine must be the shame
You want it darker
We kill the flame
Magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name
Vilified, crucified, in the human frame
A million candles burning for the help that never came
You want it darker
Hineni, hineni
I'm ready, my lord
There's a lover in the story
But the story's still the same
There's a lullaby for suffering
And a paradox to blame
But it's written in the scriptures
And it's not some idle claim
You want it darker
We kill the flame
They're lining up the prisoners
And the guards are taking aim
I struggled with some demons
They were middle class and tame
I didn't know I had permission to murder and to maim
You want it darker
Hineni, hineni
I'm ready, my lord
Magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name
Vilified, crucified, in the human frame
A million candles burning for the love that never came
You want it darker
We kill the flame
If you are the dealer, let me out of the game
If you are the healer, I'm broken and lame
If thine is the glory, mine must be the shame
You want it darker
Hineni, hineni
Hineni, hineni
I'm ready, my lord

[CherryWine]

The man was brilliant.

Aside from the original, I've heard many beautiful renditions of his most well-known song, "Hallelujah", but I recently discovered this one. It's incredibly moving.



May his soul rest in peace.

[~ocean]

RIP Leonard , amazing artist ~ on your behalf I am going to sleep to your music

[Orema]

Gwen Ifill, an award-winning television journalist for NBC and PBS, former reporter for The New York Times and author who moderated vice-presidential debates in 2004 and 2008, died on Monday in Washington. She was 61.



Her death, at a hospice facility, was announced by Sara Just, executive producer of “PBS NewsHour.” The cause was cancer, PBS said.

Ms. Ifill was the moderator and managing editor of Washington Week and the co-anchor and co-managing editor, with Judy Woodruff, of PBS NewsHour, the culmination of a career that began in 1981 at The Baltimore Evening Sun. Both she and Ms. Woodruff moderated a Democratic debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in February.

Ms. Ifill later reported for The Washington Post and The Times, covering Congress, presidential campaigns and national political conventions.

She is also the author of “The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama,” which was published on inauguration day in 2009.

A full obituary will appear soon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/14/bu...fill-dies.html

[clay]

I just saw news headline that Leon Russell has passed away...74 I think it said. OMG I LOVE his music.... RIP Leon

[Kobi]

Actor Robert Vaughn, known for roles on television's "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." and movies such as "The Magnificent Seven" and "Superman III," died Friday, Nov. 11, 2016, of leukemia. He was 83.

Vaughn began his acting career in the 1950s, his first film role an uncredited appearance in "The Ten Commandments" in 1956. In 1959, he was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actor for his role in "The Young Philadelphians." The next year, he appeared as Lee in "The Magnificent Seven." Before his death, Vaughn was the last surviving actor of those who portrayed the movie's seven main characters.

But it was Vaughn's role as Napoleon Solo on the TV spy drama "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." that cemented his fame. Running for four seasons, from 1964 to 1968, the show was instantly popular and spawned numerous spy genre copycat shows.

In the 1980s, Vaughn appeared in a recurring role on the final season of "The A-Team," and as villain Ross Webster in the movie "Superman III." Continuing to act late in life, he co-starred as a grifter on the British television show "Hustle" from 2004 to 2012.

[Kobi]

Dawn Coe-Jones, a Canadian professional golfer, died Saturday, Nov. 12, 2016, after a battle with brain cancer. She was 56.

Dawn Coe was born Oct. 19, 1960, in Campbell River, British Columbia. As a teenager, she worked at a nearby golf course as a groundskeeper. She attended Lamar University, where she was an All-American golfer, and graduated with a degree in elementary education. She won several amateur events, including the Canadian Women’s Amateur in 1983.

She joined the LPGA tour in 1984 and would continue to tour until 2008. During that time, she won three events: the 1992 Women’s Kemper Open, the 1994 HealthSouth Palm Beach Classic, and the 1995 Chrysler-Plymouth Tournament of Champions. She amassed more than $3.3 million in winnings during her career.

Coe-Jones was inducted into the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame in 2003.

[Orema]

(Sharon Jones performing at Radio City Music Hall in 2009. Credit Nicholas Roberts for the New York Times)

Sharon Jones, the soul singer and powerful voice of the band the Dap-Kings, died on Friday of pancreatic cancer that had been in remission but returned last year. She was 60.

Ms. Jones’s death was confirmed by Judy Miller Silverman, her publicist. She said Ms. Jones was surrounded by members of the Dap-Kings and other loved ones when she died.

She continued performing throughout the summer, even while undergoing chemotherapy that she said caused neuropathy in her feet and legs and restricted her movements onstage. But Ms. Jones remained undeterred.

“Getting out on that stage, that’s my therapy,” Ms. Jones said in a New York Times interview published in July. “You have to look at life the way it is. No one knows how long I have. But I have the strength now, and I want to continue.”

The summer tour promoted “I’m Still Here,” a single with the Dap-Kings that detailed Ms. Jones’s birth in a brutally segregated South, a childhood in the burned-out Bronx, and a career hampered by record executives who considered her “too short, too fat, too black and too old.”

Ms. Jones was that rare music star who found fame in middle age, when she was in her 40s.

In addition to working as a correction officer at Rikers Island and an armed guard for Wells Fargo, Ms. Jones, who had grown up singing gospel in church choirs, initially dabbled in professional music as a session singer and the vocalist in a wedding band, Good N Plenty.

After meeting Gabriel Roth, the producer and songwriter also known as Bosco Mann, Ms. Jones made the leap from backup singer to main attraction. Desco Records released her debut 7-inch vinyl single, “Damn It’s Hot,” in 1996. She was 40.

With the encouragement and songwriting of Mr. Roth, who co-founded the Brooklyn soul and funk revival label Daptone Records and serves as the bandleader of the Dap-Kings, Ms. Jones’s full-length debut, “Dap Dippin’ with Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings,” came out in 2002. She would go on to release four more studio albums and two compilations on the small label, a point of pride for the fiercely independent Ms. Jones.

“A major label’s going to do what?” she said to Billboard last year. “I sing one or two songs, they give me a few million dollars, which they’re going to want back, and then the next thing you know, the next record don’t sell, and then they’re kicking me to the curb. With us, this is our label, this is our project.”


(Ms. Jones in 2007. She fought pancreatic cancer after a 2013 diagnosis. Chester Higgins, Jr. for the New York Times)

Sharon Lafaye Jones was born on May 4, 1956, in Augusta, Ga., though her family lived just across the border in North Augusta, S.C. In “Miss Sharon Jones!” the singer recalled that her mother had needed a cesarean section, but because of segregation in the Jim Crow south, she was not allowed in the hospital’s main unit and was instead relegated to a storage room.

After her parents separated, Ms. Jones, the youngest of six children, moved with her mother to New York and was raised in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. “But New York in 1960, no peace to be found,” she sang on “I’m Still Here.” “Segregation, drugs and violence was all around.”

She went on to attend Brooklyn College and acted in “Sister Salvation,” an Off-Broadway play, before turning her focus to music.

With her late start, Ms. Jones recorded and performed at an unrelenting pace, and in the last year and a half of her life she made two albums, opened two national tours for Hall & Oates, was featured in a television commercial for Lincoln (performing the Allman Brothers’ “Midnight Rider”) and starred in “Miss Sharon Jones!,” a documentary about her life.

The film traced her life from the diagnosis of Stage 2 pancreatic cancer in 2013 through her triumphant return to the stage in 2015. Ms. Jones is survived by four siblings, seven nieces and three nephews.

“Sharon is always up,” the film’s director, Barbara Kopple, said at the time of its release. “Even when she’s in the room where people are getting chemo, she’s the sunshine.”

During her illness, Ms. Jones and the Dap-Kings earned a Grammy nomination in 2015 for best R&B album with “Give the People What They Want.” (“Why is there not a category for soul?” Ms. Jones told Billboard at the time. “That’s my goal. Put me in the right category.”)

The singer, who also collaborated live and on tour with Lou Reed, Phish, Michael Bublé and David Byrne, publicly announced the return of her cancer in September 2015 at the film’s first showing at the Toronto International Film Festival. Doctors, she said, had found a spot on her liver. “I didn’t want people to come up and congratulate me on beating cancer when it’s back,” she said.

That recurrence was treated with radiation. But in May, while she was on tour, cancer cells were found in her stomach, lymph nodes and lungs. Chemotherapy was required, although Ms. Jones changed the regimen to give her greater freedom of movement.

“I need to dance onstage,” she said. “I don’t want something that makes me bedridden. I want to live my life to the fullest.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/19/ar...T.nav=top-news