Susan Wojcicki, who served as CEO of YouTube for nine years and was one of Google’s first hires, died on Friday at age 56 after a battle with cancer, her family announced.
Wojcicki’s husband, Dennis Troper, announced her death in a post on Friday evening on Facebook.
“It is with profound sadness that I share the news of Susan Wojcicki passing. My beloved wife of 26 years and mother to our five children left us today after 2 years of living with non-small cell lung cancer,” Troper wrote in the post. “Susan was not just my best friend and partner in life, but a brilliant mind, a loving mother, and a dear friend to many. Her impact on our family and the world was immeasurable.”
“We are heartbroken, but grateful for the time we had with her. Please keep our family in your thoughts as we navigate this difficult time,” he added.
Former CEO of YouTube Susan Wojcicki has died after a two-year battle with cancer.
Mateusz Wlodarczyk/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Wojcicki joined Google in 1999 as the company’s 16th employee, becoming the search engine’s first marketing executive. She helped launch Google Video and oversaw the company’s 2006 purchase of YouTube, a then-fledgling rival video-upload site, Variety reported.
She was named CEO of YouTube in 2014 and led the video-sharing platform through immense growth. She stepped down in February 2023 to “start a new chapter focused on my family, health, and personal projects.”
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan paid tribute to his predecessor in a post on social media.
“I had the good fortune of meeting Susan 17 years ago … I am forever grateful for her friendship and guidance,” Mohan wrote in part. “I am forever grateful for her friendship and guidance. I will miss her tremendously. My heart goes out to her family and loved ones.”
Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google and Alphabet, said in a post on that he was “unbelievably saddened by the loss” of Wojcicki.
“She is as core to the history of Google as anyone, and it’s hard to imagine the world without her.” Pichai wrote. “She was an incredible person, leader and friend who had a tremendous impact on the world and I’m one of countless Googlers who is better for knowing her. We will miss her dearly. Our thoughts with her family. RIP Susan.”
Wojcicki was born on July 5, 1989 in Santa Clara, California. Her father, Stanley Wojcicki, was a physics professor at Stanford and her mother, Esther Wojcicki, was a teacher. She attended Harvard University and earned a masters degree in economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She received an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Wojcicki is survived by her husband and four children. Her son Marco, 19, died of a drug overdose at UC Berkeley in February.
Lucia Suarez Sang is an associate managing editor at CBSNews.com. Previously, Lucia was the director of digital content at FOX61 News in Connecticut and has previously written for outlets including FoxNews.com, Fox News Latino and the Rutland Herald.
DJ Randall, the influential UK drum’n’bass DJ and producer, has died, Mixmag reports, citing his representatives. He was 54 years old.
Born in east London, Randall became a fixture of the UK dance scene in the late 1980s and early ’90s, helping shepherd acid house towards breakbeat, hardcore, and jungle in warehouse venues and on pirate radio. Mixtapes capturing his jungle sets—and his occasional standalone singles—became formative documents of the era, while sets at venues like London’s Blue Note further incubated the dominant underground dance sounds of the ’90s. He founded his own label, Mac2 Recordings, with Cool Hand Flex in 1996, and continued to DJ at major dance festivals until his death.
Metalheadz, the label of another Blue Note staple, Goldie, said on social media: “Everyone at Metalheadz is absolutely devastated to learn of the passing of one of our own. A uniquely loveable character with a heart of gold, we will miss you very much Randall.” Nia Archives, Paul Woolford, and DJ Zinc were also among those to pay tribute.
Martin Phillipps, the singer-guitarist and founder of the New Zealand jangle-pop band the Chills, has died. The band’s official social media accounts shared the news today, stating, “It is with broken hearts the family and friend of Martin Phillipps wish to advise Martin has died unexpectedly. The family ask for privacy at this time.” Phillipps was 61.
A cause of death was not shared in the statement, but in the 2019 documentary The Chills: The Triumph & Tragedy of Martin Phillipps, it was revealed that the late musician underwent liver failure after a life-threatening experience with hepatitis C in the 1990s. Phillipps battled liver disease for several years afterwards, confirms RNZ.
The Chills were revered for their sharp and otherworldly take on jangle pop and indie rock that regularly sounded effortless in practice. As the primary songwriter, singer, and guitarist, Phillipps was behind much of the band’s success, including three Top 10 albums on their local New Zealand charts. The band earned international breakout fame with “Heavenly Pop Hit,” the Chills’ biggest song to date and the lead single from 1990’s Submarine Bells, which climbed radio charts in the U.S., U.K., and Australia in addition to New Zealand.
Phillipps formed the Chills in 1980 in Dunedin, New Zealand when he was just 17 years old. From the jump, the Chills underwent regular breakups and lineup changes throughout their entire existence, with the exception of Phillipps, who remained the main songwriter and lone consistent member. Among the notable former members of the band are the Clean’s Peter Gutteridge and David Kilgour, the Verlaines’ Jane Dodd, Luna’s Justin Harwood, and Phillipps own sister Rachel Phillipps.
A staple of Flying Nun Records, the Chills helped define the label’s sound—as well as their own—with a memorable run of records that have gone on to become cult favorites, beginning with 1982’s Dunedin DoubleEP, 1985’s The Lost EP, 1986’s compilation album Kaleidoscope World, and their 1987 debut LP Brave Words. The strength of singles like “Pink Frost” and “I Love My Leather Jacket” drew major label attention and ultimately landed the Chills a deal with Warner Bros. imprint Slash Records. After rolling out Submarine Bells and Soft Bomb, the Chills disbanded in 1992 and Phillipps joined Kilgour in his 1960s covers band the Pop Art Toasters.
Upon their revival two years later, the Chills rejoined Flying Nun to release their 1996 album Sunburnt, only to split up once more. Phillipps kept busy with other bands and side projects, including his solo album of demos Sketch Book: Volume One, before he picked the moniker back up and assembled a fresh lineup. The Chills went on to record the Stand By EP in 2004 and three more albums over a decade later: 2015’s Silver Bullets, 2018’s Snow Bound, and 2021’s Scatterbrain.
Toumani Diabaté, Malian master of the traditional, 21-stringed West African instrument the kora, has died, The New York Times reports. Diabaté’s manager Saul Presa confirmed the news to The Times, stating that the musician died on Friday, July 19, in a hospital in Bamako, Mali, due to kidney failure. Toumani Diabaté was 58 years old.
Diabaté’s legacy as a 71st-generation kora player was indebted to traditional applications of the classical instrument—including spiritual and meditative music—but Diabaté also adored the cross-pollination of modern sounds. Throughout his decades-long recording career, he collaborated with Björk, Taj Mahal, Damon Albarn, Béla Fleck, Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré, and many others.
Born in Bamako in 1965, Diabaté descended from a long line of griots—West African historian-musicians who maintain oral traditions, often with the accompaniment of the kora or the xylophone-like balafon. Diabaté’s father, Sidiki Diabaté Sr., was a celebrated maestro of the kora, and his mother, Nene Koita, was a singer. Despite living in close proximity to a kora aficionado, however, Toumani Diabaté taught himself by listening to his father and grandfather play. Toumani’s son Sidiki is also primarily self-taught; they played together on two of Diabaté’s albums, Toumani & Sidiki, from 2014, and 2017’s Lamomali.
Diabaté began his professional career when he was just 13, playing with a group from Koulikoro, Mali. At age 19, he joined a backing band for Malian singer and kora player Kandia Kouyaté. In the late 1980s, Diabaté moved to London for a brief period after meeting British producer and musicologist Lucy Durán, who worked on many of Diabaté’s albums throughout the years, starting with his solo debut, Kaira, in 1988.
In addition to albums with blues legend Taj Mahal and banjoist Béla Fleck, Diabaté cut two LPs with the celebrated Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré: 2005’s In the Heart of the Moon and 2010’s Ali and Toumani, both of which won Grammy Awards for Best Traditional World Music Album. Diabaté also recorded on Björk’s 2007 album, Volta, and joined her live in concert the following year.
Gorillaz and Blur’s Damon Albarn was also a friend and collaborator of the late musician. Albarn enlisted Diabaté for his 2016 Mali Music project, and, in turn, performed at Festival Acoustik Bamako—an event co-created by Diabaté in response to the deadly attack on a Bamako hotel in 2015.
In a 2007 interview with Pitchfork, Diabaté elaborated on his love of intertiwining culutures and genres: “Music has been created as its own language, you know? The ‘G’ on the kora is the same ‘G’ that’s on a piano. It’s the same ‘G’ that Carlos Santana was playing. The ‘B’ on the kora is the same as the one that the hip hop people have.”
“Sadly, I have to relate that legendary Moby Grape guitarist Jerry Miller passed away last night,” a post from July 21 reads on the Moby Grape fan page. “(Miller’s wife) Jo and the family are asking for everyone to please give them some privacy and respect, and Jo asked that people cease phone calls for the time being. Thank you. R.I.P., JERRY.”
Miller will be remembered as a guitarist’s guitarist, boosting a fan base that includes some of the finest fret men in popular music history. Many of these admirers are Rock and Roll Hall of Famers, including Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead and Eric Clapton.
It’s the latter who reportedly once referred to Miller as the “best guitar player in the world.” That’s incredibly high praise coming from the only-three-time inductee to the Rock Hall as well as man who himself is routinely rated among the best guitarists of all time.
Miller would showcase that guitar work with such aplomb and impact on Moby Grape’s 1967 debut, which reached as high as No. 24 on the album charts and positioned the group as one of the key acts in the burgeoning “San Francisco Sound” movement of the era. In comparison, the debut album from the Grateful Dead — one of Moby Grape’s key contemporaries on the ’60s Bay Area scene — only climbed to No. 73 upon being released that same year.
Unlike the Grateful Dead, however, Moby Grape only managed to stay together for a relatively short time during its initial go-around. They formed in 1966 — bringing together such experienced players as Skip Spence from Jefferson Airplane and Peter Lewis of the Cornells — and originally called it quits by 1969. During that time span, however, the group released four studio albums — 1967’s “Moby Grape and 1968’s “Wow/Grape Jam” as well “Moby Grape ’69” and “Truly Fine Citizen,” both from 1969.
The first album was a stone cold classic, one that is still cherished to this day by fans of heavy duty psychedelic/blues/acid rock. Indeed, the record — which featured a group shot on the cover by legendary Bay Area rock photographer Jim Marshall — came in at No. 121 on Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” list in 2003, more than 35 years after “Moby Grape” was released.
Miller’s guitar work was a huge factor in what made that first album so special, taking the captain’s chair — alongside Skip Spence and Peter Lewis — in a three-guitar attack that still sounds so powerful to this day.
“Wow/Grape Jam” was another success for the band, reaching as high as No. 20, but the two discs that followed were commercial disappointments and failed to even crack the top 100. As the gas tank began to run dry on the ’60s — and a legal battle with their former manager heated up — the storyline had changed from high hopes to “what could’ve been” for Moby Grape. The band folded in 1969, but would regroup several times over the decades.
“The Grape’s saga is one of squandered potential, absurdly misguided decisions, bad luck, blunders and excruciating heartbreak, all set to the tune of some of the greatest rock and roll ever to emerge from San Francisco,” music historian Jeff Tamarkin wrote. “Moby Grape could have had it all, but they ended up with nothing, and less.”
Born in Tacoma, Washington on July 10, 1943, Miller began playing in bands in the ’50s and would find some success as a member of The Frantics. In 1966, the Pacific Northwest rock outfit headed south to San Francisco — where a music revolution was blooming — and its nucleus went on to help form Moby Grape.
Besides playing with Moby Grape, the acclaimed guitarist — who also sang — performed with the Santa Cruz act known as the Rhythm Dukes and well as his own Jerry Miller Band.
There has been no word yet on any possible public memorial services at this point.
“Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Blake, Blind Boy Fuller… all the blind guys.” That’s how the multi-instrumentalist John Mayall, one of the chief architects of the British blues revival of the 1960s, who died at 90 yesterday at his home in California, described the influences that shaped his musical tastes and inspired a career that stretched across six decades. That career, which started well before Mayall formed his famous Bluesbreakers in 1963, was not defined by blindness so much as by a single-minded, near-messianic vision that the music created by Black artists of the Mississippi Delta and Chicago’s South Side possessed beauty, honesty, and strength that transcended race, age, and geography. And so, thanks to Mayall—along with the like-minded musician Alexis Korner and a growing number of aficionados—American blues took root in London’s coffee bars, the domain of trad jazz. From there it migrated to subterranean clubs packed with sweaty youths, and on to record players and radios in bedsitter flats from Bournemouth to Belfast.
Soon, a generation had its mojo working as the British R&B scene exploded: the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, Them, and much of what came after, including Cream and Fleetwood Mac, two epochal rock bands that Mayall had a hand in creating. The blues-focused vision that Mayall brought to popular music in the 1960s turns out to have been, in retrospect, 20/20.
In the 21st century, conversations about the British blues boom have focused on these important foundational aspects—and raised thorny questions regarding cultural appropriation. But there is no doubt that Mayall’s adoration of the blues was genuine and uncynical, not to mention daring, vanguard, and subversive—an important dent in the armor of postwar, stiff-upper-lip, class-divided Britain. As Mayall and other proselytizers brought the work of Otis Rush, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, and Elmore James to ravenous young audiences on the other side of the Atlantic, those blues legends began to find themselves in demand as concert attractions, sought out as musical mentors, and anointed as cultural icons in Europe, America, and, in time, across the globe.
John Mayall was born in 1933 and grew up in the town of Cheadle Hulme, outside of Manchester. His parents divorced when he was a boy. The best-known exploit of Mayall’s childhood was that he built a treehouse out of window frames and tarps in a sturdy oak behind his mother’s house, outfitting it with a bed and paraffin lamp. This, he said, “became my room, my world.” (In 1970, he wrote a song about it, “Home in a Tree.”) His father made a hobby out of jazz guitar and, the young Mayall, at age 12, had likewise begun to play the instrument, along with the piano. By the late 1940s, he had become besotted with jazz, Hoovering up 78 rpm records. And then he stumbled on the blues—the genre that would transfix him for the rest of his days.
As a white suburban kid growing up in England after the war, listening to the blues brought Mayall face to face with the genre’s outsized personalities and the harsh conditions they often sang about. As Mayall told the Guardian in 2021, “So-called ‘race records’ told the story of the vile lynchings and racial injustices in the south that were a black man’s reality in the early 20th century. Not many other people I knew were all that interested in this music, but it was something I was really passionate about.”
In 1956, Mayall had returned from national service in Korea to attend art college in Manchester, forming his first band, the Powerhouse Four. This was followed by the Blues Syndicate, which traveled to London in 1961, whereupon Mayall met Korner, who encouraged him to move south. Mayall threw himself into the London blues scene, forming his Bluesbreakers and becoming a mainstay at such clubs as the Marquee. If the blues-infused Rolling Stones were on a trajectory of international pop stardom, the Bluesbreakers were musician’s musicians, all about integrity—the spirit of the blues. They were the perfect band for record-collecting blues trainspotters, a group that would never be tainted by huge commercial success: the stuff of the purist, not the tourist.
Mayall’s Bluesbreakers were a clearinghouse for generational talent. Eric Clapton quit the Yardbirds and joined the band; his playing was featured on its debut LP, released in 1966. When Clapton left, Peter Green, later to found Fleetwood Mac, joined. And when Green left, Mick Taylor, later of the Rolling Stones, joined. Mayall was to British blues guitarists what Leo Castelli was to New York painters; his group was the blue-chip gallery you wanted to show your work in. The bassist Jack Bruce met Clapton in the Bluesbreakers, then went on to found Cream. Other future rock stars who were Mayall alumni: Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, later of Fleetwood Mac, and the well-traveled drummer Aynsley Dunbar. In these Bluesbreakers incarnations, and in many more that would follow, Mayall moved between guitar and keyboards, with spotlight moments to demonstrate his prowess on harmonica. Even so, Mayall’s chief talent may have been his uncanny, unselfish capacity for spotting it in others.
In the late ’60s, Mayall expatriated to California, moving into a house in Laurel Canyon that became affectionately known as The Brain Damage Club, based on the kind of personalities and diversions one could find there. The house burned to the ground in the 1979 Kirkwood Bowl-Laurel Canyon Fire, which consumed all of Mayall’s archives, along with the trove of vintage erotica his father had amassed. (“My father was a pornography collector,” Mayall would unabashedly say. “A totally irreplaceable collection.”) Throughout the ensuing decades, there were more concerts, tours, collaborations, and albums, as Mayall became invariably known as the Godfather of the British Blues. In 2005, he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire. A 35-disc boxed set of Mayall’s work was released in 2021. Three years later he was inducted, at age 90, into the Rock & Roll Hall of fame. Mayall married twice; he had six children and several grandchildren.
A cornerstone of the Mayall songbook was “Room to Move,” powered by his propulsive, almost orgiastic harmonica. But if one song defined him, it was perhaps “All Your Love,” a mambo-inflected Chicago blues classic by Otis Rush, which was the Bluesbreakers’ calling card and an early showcase for Clapton’s fretboard pyrotechnics. (Peter Green recast “All Your Love” as “Black Magic Woman,” which became a 1968 single for Fleetwood Mac and a subsequent signature for Carlos Santana.)
In February of 2020, on the eve of the coronavirus pandemic, Mayall, shockingly spry at 86, sang “All Your Love” with gusto at the London Palladium as part of an all-star tribute concert organized by Mick Fleetwood to celebrate Green’s music. (Green died about five months later.) It would be difficult to conjecture how many times Mayall performed that number and others like it—typically three-chord, 12-bar blues songs.
When a reporter once asked John Mayall about his unwavering fidelity to the blues, the music that took him from a tree house in a Manchester suburb to concert stages around the world, Mayall responded, “There’s nothing else I can play.”
Bob Newhart, the actor and comedian who starred in “The Bob Newhart Show” and “Newhart,” has died, his publicist confirmed to CBS News. He was 94.
Newhart’s career in show business began in earnest in 1960, when at age 30 his album “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart” rose to No. 1 on the Billboard charts, the first comedy album to ever hit the top spot.
Newhart released his next album, “The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back,” later that same year. It too proved to be a chart-topper and the two albums led to three Grammy Award wins for Newhart in 1961: best new artist, album of the year and best comedy performance.
Following the success of his first two albums, Newhart briefly hosted an NBC variety show, “The Bob Newhart Show.” Running from late 1961 through the summer of 1962, the show didn’t last long, but it earned critical praise and an Emmy nomination for outstanding writing for a comedy series at the 1962 award ceremony. Newhart also continued putting out comedy albums throughout the ’60s, during which he also made a few more TV appearances.
In the 1970s, he made the jump to television stardom, playing Dr. Bob Hartley on CBS’ somewhat confusingly titled “The Bob Newhart Show” from 1972 to 1978. From 1982 to 1990, he starred in the CBS sitcom “Newhart,” playing Dick Loubin, an author who moves from New York City with his wife to Vermont to operate a historic inn.
Bob Newhart arrives at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards at Microsoft Theater on Sept. 10, 2016 in Los Angeles.
Emma McIntyre / Getty Images
“The Bob Newhart Show” earned an Emmy nomination for best comedy in 1977, while Newhart’s costar Suzanne Pleshette, who played Hartley’s wife, Emily, was nominated for best actress in a comedy series that same year.
Newhart himself earned three consecutive nods for best actor in a comedy series in 1985, 1986 and 1987 for his role on “Newhart,” but he lost out each time.
His first and only Emmy win came in 2013, when he took home the award for best guest actor in a comedy for his role as Arthur Jeffries, aka Professor Proton, on “The Big Bang Theory.” He would be nominated two more times for the role in 2014 and 2016.
Newhart also filled in for Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show” 87 times throughout the years, Newhart’s publicist said.
In addition to his TV success, Newhart appeared in numerous films throughout his decadeslong career, including the 1970 adaptation of Joseph Heller’s classic “Catch-22” and 2003’s “Elf,” in which he played Papa Elf, who also serves as the film’s narrator.
Newhart continued to perform standup comedy throughout his career, only stopping when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
“People would say, ‘Why do you still do it?’ I say, ‘Yeah, you’re right, I’m tired of making people laugh. I hate it!’” he joked to CBS “Sunday Morning.”
“I have this theory that when it’s all over, for death, and you go up I’ve been led to believe to heaven and there’s a God and he says, ‘What did you do?’ And I say, ‘I made people laugh.’ ‘Yeah, get in that real short line over there.’”
Before his success, Newhart was drafted into the Army in 1952 during the Korean War and served as a personnel manager until he was discharged in 1954. He then worked as an accountant in Chicago while honing his craft as a comedian at night.
“Mr. Wilkinson — I still remember his name — he said, ‘Jeez, these are not sound accounting principles,’” Newhart told “Sunday Morning” about his first profession. “I said, ‘I don’t think I’m cut out for accounting.’ And that’s when I decided, OK, let’s find out if I’m any good [at comedy].”
Bob Newhart is survived by his children, Jennifer, Courtney, Timothy and Robert. His wife, Virginia “Ginnie” Newhart, died in 2023. They had been married for 60 years.
Jordan Freiman is a news editor for CBSNews.com. He covers breaking news, trending stories, sports and crime. Jordan has previously worked at Spin and Death and Taxes.
Longtime film producer Jon Landau passed away at 63 years old. Per TheWrap, sources explained that he’d been battling cancer. Landau is best known for being the producer on a number of films at 20th Century Fox like the Avatar movies and Titanic.
Born July 30, 1960, he was the son of Ely and Edie Landau, who were film producers themselves. His first producer role was the 1987 film Campus Man from Paramount. By 1997, he became EP of feature film production for Fox, in turn making him a collaborator with James Cameron. The two have been a successful duo thanks to the aforementioned films, which became box office hits and awards darlings (Titanic was the first film to ever cross $1 billion worldwide), and some of the biggest movies of all time. He also produced 2002’s Solaris (directed by Steven Soderbergh), co-produced Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Dick Tracy,and oversaw Fox’s Power Rangers movie, True Lies, and Last of the Mohicans.
Landau became a steward of the Avatar franchise in recent years, and helped Cameron and Disney come up with the sequel movies and the Avatar theme park attractions. As COO of Lightstorm Entertainment, Landau led Avatar’s transmedia expansion into comics from Dark Horse and video games, including 2023’s Avatar: Frontiers of Pandorafrom Ubisoft.
io9 Senior Reporter Germain Lussier recalled being on the set of Alita Battle Angel (which Landau also produced) and being in awe of him. “He sat us down in a room and went over the whole movie with us,” Lussier recalled. “Even though it was already in production, it almost felt like he was pitching us on it. Explaining the story and why it meant so much to him. He was so assured and smart and articulate, I walked out of the room thinking two things. One – if the movie is half as good as that, it’s gonna be fantastic. And two – no wonder he’s one of the best producers in the world.”
At time of writing, Titanic star Frances Fisher was one of the first people to memorialize Landau on social media. Cameron has yet to say anything about his passing, but we’ll update when he does. Until then, we extend our condolences to Landau’s family and otheer loved ones.
World War II Air Force veteran Major Richard Olson never discussed his military service with his son, Dick Olson.
“I didn’t have all that much time to be asking these questions while he was at home,” Dick, a Westminster resident, told the Denver Post in an interview. “He was a distant father, and I imagine a lot of that came from what happened to him during the war and in service.”
After Richard died, Dick turned to military archives, old photos and interviews with the surviving members of his father’s B-24 Liberator airplane crew to learn about the veteran’s journey. Through his research, Dick discovered that his father, despite being seriously injured in a plane crash before enduring months as a prisoner of war, had never received a Purple Heart.
For seven years, Dick worked to correct the oversight. In April, the Air Force agreed to posthumously award Richard a Purple Heart.
The veteran was 22 years old when he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps in February 1941, according to his son. The service was renamed the U.S. Army Air Forces in June of that year and became the U.S. Air Force in 1947.
“He grew up through the Depression and everything else,” Dick told The Post. “I think he joined because he was looking for three square meals a day.”
Courtesy of Dick Olson
Richard Olson (bottom center) poses with a B-24 crew after completing a six hour training flight. (Photo credit: Courtesy of Dick Olson)
Olson later became the co-pilot of a B-24 bomber plane in the 484th Bombardment Group combat unit. A week after D-Day, while stationed in southern Italy, his crew was shot down over the Adriatic Sea by eight German fighter planes while flying to Munich.
“They lost an engine, and they couldn’t keep up with the rest of the bombers, so they had to turn around to go back,” Dick said. “Two of the gunners were killed on the plane. And then the plane was set on fire and I think they had two more engines shot out.
“But there was a big fire in the bomb bay so they had to get out of the plane. So they did, and everybody bailed out, the ones that were still alive.”
Shell fragments struck Olson’s leg and he sustained a back injury that left him with chronic pain.
Most of the men landed on the Italian coastline northeast of Venice, according to conversations Dick had with B-24 crew member John Hassan. He was transferred to two other POW camps and after 10 months of incarceration, Olson was liberated on April 29, 1945, from Moosburg, Germany.
“He just said it was a very dull existence and of course they were hungry all the time,” Dick told The Post. “There was not a whole lot to do there. They played sports and the American Red Cross supplied them with books and boardgames and sporting equipment and different things to keep their morale up.”
Courtesy of Dick Olson
Richard Olson’s identification card from his time as a POW in Stalag Luft III. (Photo credit: Courtesy of Dick Olson)
Olson stayed in the Air Force for 16 years after his liberation from the POW camp and became a major, father and husband before leaving the military in 1961, according to his obituary.
“My parents split when I was about 13,” Dick said. “He moved away from the household and they got divorced.”
After the divorce in 1969, Dick saw Richard three more times before the veteran passed away in 1996 from multiple myeloma.
“I was always interested in his Air Force career. And since he never talked about these other guys, I wanted to find them and talk to them myself,” Dick said.
He connected with John Hassan, the navigator in Richard’s B-24 crew, in 1997. “Going through some of his papers, I found a phone number for John and called him up and started looking for all the other crew members also,” Dick said, “I eventually did make contact with the ones that were living or family members for the ones who had passed away.
“John was my dad’s best friend on the crew and we became really good friends,” Dick added. “He pretty much had a photographic memory, so that’s how I know an awful lot about that crew.”
While researching the crew, Dick helped the plane’s bombardier, Walter Chapman, get a Distinguished Flying Cross he should have been awarded decades prior.
Like Chapman, Olson was also missing an award: a Purple Heart for sustaining an injury while in the line of duty.
“There was mention of everything else, like the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medals,” Dick said. “All the ribbons and medals that he was entitled to, except for the Purple Heart.”
A collection of medals, honors and other items made by Dick Olson for his late father WWII veteran Major Richard Olson at his home in Westminster, Colorado, on Jun 19, 2024. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post)
Olson’s capture as a POW right after the B-24 crash meant his wounds went undocumented. In 2017, Dick decided to file a claim with the Air Force Board for Correction of Military Records and prove that his father had been injured. “I thought to myself, this is unfinished business, I’ve got to see if I can get this thing,” Dick said.
After an extensive filing process, the Board for Correction rejected Dick’s request in 2020.
Brian Schenk, founder of Midwest Military and Veterans Law, agreed to work with Dick pro bono and together, they took the Board for Correction to federal court, determined to prove that Olson had been injured during active duty.
“Dick Olson’s father was a war hero and he had such extreme humility that he himself never sought a Purple Heart,” Schenk told the Denver Post.
“I thought to myself, the old man went through the wringer, and he deserves to have this,” Dick said. “I told the Air Force in the letter that I wrote with my first application that I’m doing it for his legacy and for posterity. People should know that he was injured fighting for his country.”
On April 23, Dick won his case and the Board for Correction agreed to posthumously grant Olson a Purple Heart Award.
“He would have been real happy to wear this purple heart,” Dick said. “I think he would have been pretty proud of the fight we put up to make this happen.”
Robert Towne, the Oscar-winning screenplay writer of “Shampoo,” “The Last Detail” and other acclaimed films whose work on “Chinatown” became a model of the art form and helped define the jaded allure of his native Los Angeles, has died. He was 89.
Towne “passed away peacefully surrounded by his loving family” Monday at his home in Los Angeles, his publicist Carri McClure, told CBS News in a statement. She did not provide a cause of death.
In an industry which gave birth to rueful jokes about the writer’s status, Towne for a time held prestige comparable to the actors and directors he worked with. Through his friendships with two of the biggest stars of the 1960s and ’70s, Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson, he wrote or co-wrote some of the signature films of an era when artists held an unusual level of creative control. The rare “auteur” among screen writers, Towne managed to bring a highly personal and influential vision of Los Angeles onto the screen.
Writer Robert Towne in audience during the 36th AFI Life Achievement Award tribute to Warren Beatty held at the Kodak Theatre on June 12, 2008 in Hollywood, California.
Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for AFI
“It’s a city that’s so illusory,” Towne told The Associated Press in a 2006 interview. “It’s the westernmost west of America. It’s a sort of place of last resort. It’s a place where, in a word, people go to make their dreams come true. And they’re forever disappointed.”
Recognizable around Hollywood for his high forehead and full beard, Towne won an Academy Award for “Chinatown” and was nominated three other times, for “The Last Detail,” “Shampoo” and “Greystoke.” In 1997, he received a lifetime achievement award from the Writers Guild of America.
“His life, like the characters he created, was incisive, iconoclastic and entirely (original),” said “Shampoo” actor Lee Grant on X.
Towne was born Robert Bertram Schwartz in Los Angeles and moved to San Pedro after his father’s business, a dress shop, closed down because of the Great Depression. His father changed the family name to Towne.
Towne’s success came after a long stretch of working in television, including “The Man from U.N.C.L.E” and “The Lloyd Bridges Show,” and on low-budget movies for “B” producer Roger Corman. In a classic show business story, he owed his breakthrough in part to his psychiatrist, through whom he met Beatty, a fellow patient. As Beatty worked on “Bonnie and Clyde,” he brought in Towne for revisions of the Robert Benton-David Newman script and had him on the set while the movie was filmed in Texas.
Towne’s contributions were uncredited for “Bonnie and Clyde,” the landmark crime film released in 1967, and for years he was a favorite ghost writer. He helped out on “The Godfather,” “The Parallax View” and “Heaven Can Wait” among others and referred to himself as a “relief pitcher who could come in for an inning, not pitch the whole game.” But Towne was credited by name for Nicholson’s macho “The Last Detail” and Beatty’s sex comedy “Shampoo” and was immortalized by “Chinatown,” the 1974 thriller set during the Great Depression.
“Chinatown” was directed by Roman Polanski and starred Nicholson as J.J. “Jake” Gittes, a private detective asked to follow the husband of Evelyn Mulwray (played by Faye Dunaway). The husband is chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and Gittes finds himself caught in a chaotic spiral of corruption and violence, embodied by Evelyn’s ruthless father, Noah Cross (John Huston).
Influenced by the fiction of Raymond Chandler, Towne resurrected the menace and mood of a classic Los Angeles film noir, but cast Gittes’ labyrinthine odyssey across a grander and more insidious portrait of Southern California. Clues accumulate into a timeless detective tale, and lead helplessly to tragedy, summed up by one of the most repeated lines in movie history, words of grim fatalism a devastated Gittes receives from his partner Lawrence Walsh (Joe Mantell): “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.”
The back story of “Chinatown” has itself become a kind of detective story, explored in producer Robert Evans’ memoir, “The Kid Stays in the Picture”; in Peter Biskind’s “East Riders, Raging Bulls,” a history of 1960s-1970s Hollywood, and in Sam Wasson’s “The Big Goodbye,” dedicated entirely to “Chinatown.” In “The Big Goodbye,” published in 2020, Wasson alleged that Towne was helped extensively by a ghost writer — former college roommate Edward Taylor. According to “The Big Goodbye,” for which Towne declined to be interviewed, Taylor did not ask for credit on the film because his “friendship with Robert” mattered more.
The studios assumed more power after the mid-1970s and Towne’s standing declined. His own efforts at directing, including “Personal Best” and “Tequila Sunrise,” had mixed results. “The Two Jakes,” the long-awaited sequel to “Chinatown,” was a commercial and critical disappointment when released in 1990 and led to a temporary estrangement between Towne and Nicholson.
Around the same time, he agreed to work on a movie far removed from the art-house aspirations of the ’70s, the Don Simpson-Jerry Bruckheimer production “Days of Thunder,” starring Tom Cruise as a race car driver and Robert Duvall as his crew chief. The 1990 movie was famously over budget and mostly panned, although its admirers include Quentin Tarantino and countless racing fans. And Towne’s script popularized an expression used by Duvall after Cruise complains another car slammed him: “He didn’t slam into you, he didn’t bump you, he didn’t nudge you. He rubbed you.
“And rubbin,′ son, is racin.’”
Towne later worked with Cruise on “The Firm” and the first two “Mission: Impossible” movies. His most recent film was “Ask the Dust,” a Los Angeles story he wrote and directed that came out in 2006. Towne was married twice, the second time to Luisa Gaule, and had two children. His brother, Roger Towne, also wrote screenplays, his credits include “The Natural.”
Martin Mull, whose droll, esoteric comedy and acting made him a hip sensation in the 1970s and later a beloved guest star on sitcoms including “Roseanne” and “Arrested Development,” has died, his daughter said Friday. He was 80.
Mull’s Daughter, TV writer and comic artist Maggie Mull, said her father died at home on Thursday after “a valiant fight against a long illness.”
Mull, who was also a guitarist and painter, came to national fame with a recurring role on the Norman Lear-created satirical soap opera “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” and the starring role in its spinoff, “Fernwood 2 Night,” on which he played the host of a satirical talk show.
Martin Mull at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival premiere of the Netflix film “A Futile And Stupid Gesture at Eccles Center Theatre” on January 24, 2018, in Park City, Utah.
Mat Hayward/Getty Images for Netflix
“He was known for excelling at every creative discipline imaginable and also for doing Red Roof Inn commercials,” Maggie Mull said in an Instagram post. “He would find that joke funny. He was never not funny. My dad will be deeply missed by his wife and daughter, by his friends and coworkers, by fellow artists and comedians and musicians, and —the sign of a truly exceptional person— by many, many dogs.”
Melissa Joan Hart, who acted alongside Mull in the series “Sabrina the Teenage Witch,” paid tribute to him on Instagram on Friday, calling him “a wonderful man who I am better for knowing.”
“I have such fond memories of working with him and being in awe of his huge body of work,” she wrote.
Fellow “Sabrina” actress Caroline Rhea described Mull as “brilliantly funny and kind” in her own social media post.
“Your impact on the world will never be forgotten,” Rhea wrote. “What a gift it was to know you Martin.”
Known for his blonde hair and well-trimmed mustache, Mull was born in Chicago, raised in Ohio and Connecticut. He studied art in Rhode Island and Rome. He combined his music and comedy in hip Hollywood clubs in the 1970s.
“In 1976 I was a guitar player and sit-down comic appearing at the Roxy on the Sunset Strip when Norman Lear walked in and heard me,” Mull told The Associated Press in 1980. “He cast me as the wife beater on ‘Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.’ Four months later I was spun off on my own show.”
In the 1980s he appeared in films including “Mr. Mom” and “Clue,” and in the 1990s had a recurring role on “Roseanne.”
He would later play private eye Gene Parmesan on “Arrested Development,” and would be nominated for an Emmy in 2016 for a guest turn on “Veep.”
“What I did on ‘Veep’ I’m very proud of, but I’d like to think it’s probably more collective, at my age it’s more collective,” Mull told the AP after his nomination. “It might go all the way back to ‘Fernwood.’”
Other comedians and actors were often his biggest fans.
“Martin was the greatest,” “Bridesmaids” director Paul Feig said in an X post. “So funny, so talented, such a nice guy. Was lucky enough to act with him on The Jackie Thomas Show and treasured every moment being with a legend. Fernwood Tonight was so influential in my life.”
The Lone Star State lost an iconic public figure on Thursday when musician, humorist and one-time gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman died at his Echo Hill ranch in Medina, Texas, after a years-long battle with Parkinson’s disease. The country and western satirist dandy was known for his unique brand of folksy-kitsch storytelling and living a glamorous raconteur lifestyle in the company of friends and collaborators including Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan and T-Bone Burnett…
Kinky Friedman, the tongue-in-cheek humorist and alt-country musician of the Texas Jewboys, has died, bandmate Little Jewford confirmed to The New York Times. “Kinky Friedman stepped on a rainbow at his beloved Echo Hill surrounded by family & friends,” reads a statement posted to the late artist’s social media. “Kinkster endured tremendous pain & unthinkable loss in recent years but he never lost his fighting spirit and quick wit. Kinky will live on as his books are read and his songs are sung.” Friedman was 79.
Born Richard Samet Friedman on Halloween in 1944, he was raised by his parents—both the children of Russian Jewish immigrants—in Chicago, Illinois, before the family moved to Texas Hill Country when Friedman was a young boy. While majoring in psychology at University of Texas at Austin, Friedman formed his first band, the surf-rock parody group King Arthur & the Carrots, whetting his appetite for satirical music. He graduated in 1966 with his degree and the nickname “Kinky,” given to him by fellow student and musician Chinga Chavin for his curly hair.
Come 1973, he started Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys, a country rock group bent on parodying taboo subjects and everyday topics alike. Friedman initially found underground fame as a Western singer, and a charmed Commander Cody (of Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen) connected him with Vanguard Music, on which Friedman released his debut, Sold American. The next year, Kinky Friedman, the highest-charting album of his career, came out on ABC Records. After releasing Lasso From El Paso, in 1976, Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys were invited to open the second leg of Bob Dylan’s famed Rolling Thunder Revue tour.
With the Texas Jewboys, Friedman regularly sang about taking pride in his Jewish heritage, often funneled through raucous jokes (“They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore”) and occasionally sobering tributes (“Ride ’Em Jewboy”). His lyrics also took aim at social prejudices (“We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to You”), mass shooters (“The Ballad of Charles Whitman”), and feminism (“Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns into Bed”), among other topics.
While Friedman’s lyrics were intended to lampoon subjects, not everyone was laughing. During a 1973 concert in Buffalo, New York, a group of women whom Friedman described as “cranked-up lesbians” got into a fight with his band during their performance of “Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns into Bed,” forcing the show to end early. Later that year, the National Organization for Women awarded Friedman the Male Chauvinist Pig Award, much to his delight. Two years later, Buffy Sainte-Marie stormed the stage at Friedman’s San Francisco show to seize the war bonnet off his head; Friedman had donned the garment while performing “Miss Nickelodeon,” a song parodying Indigenous people.
Executive producer Peter Lenkov, who worked with Wily on both “Hawaii Five-0” and “Magnum P.I.,” said on Instagram that he was “devastated” and “heartbroken” by Wily’s death.
“You charmed me into making you a regular… on the show… and in my life,” Lenkov wrote in a second post, alongside a slideshow of images of himself and Wily. “You were family. And I will miss you every day, brother.”
Taylor Wily attends the Sunset on the Beach event celebrating season 8 of “Hawaii Five-0” at Queen’s Surf Beach on Nov. 10, 2017 in Waikiki, Hawaii.
Darryl Oumi / Getty Images
Wily was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. Before entering the film and television industry, he had a career as a sumo wrestler and mixed martial artist.
Wily had a recurring role on “Hawaii Five-0,” playing the character of Kamekona Tupuola for 171 episodes. He also reprised the role in “MacGyver” and “Magnum P.I.” He also played a role in the film “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and appeared during the 20th season of “The Amazing Race.”
Wily is survived by his wife, Halona, and their two children, KITV reported.
Kerry Breen is a news editor at CBSNews.com. A graduate of New York University’s Arthur L. Carter School of Journalism, she previously worked at NBC News’ TODAY Digital. She covers current events, breaking news and issues including substance use.
Kevin Ransom, a renowned freelance journalist from Dearborn celebrated for his engaging and unforgettable music writing, died from hypertensive cardiovascular disease, Wayne County officials told Metro Times on Thursday.
Because of his health problems, Ransom had gained a lot of weight but recently lost about 30 pounds by adopting a new diet and cutting out alcohol, according to his friend Matt Roush, a longtime tech journalist who is now managing editor of Lawrence Technological University’s media services for Yellow Flag Productions.
In the latter stages of his life, Ransom lost touch with his family and many of his friends, and a funeral was never held.
Although Ransom was a prolific writer on numerous subjects, he was most known for his compelling, in-depth music writing. He admired local music and helped shine a light on bands that weren’t yet nationally known. He was particularly fond of folk, roots, blues, alternative, and 1960s rock.
Ransom also wrote about the auto industry, entertainment, business, the environment, and general features. His work appeared in more than two dozen publications, including Rolling Stone, The Detroit News, Ann Arbor News, Guitar Player, Automotive News, Heritage Newspapers, and Ford World.
He had been a freelance reporter for decades.
Despite his popularity among music fans, Ransom had financial troubles. He lived in a modest bungalow in Dearborn, which was originally built by his grandparents in 1949. He bought the house in 2002 after the death of his grandmother.
In the years before his death, Ransom sported a big, white flowing beard.
When it came to skill sets in baseball, Willie Mays possessed them all: he was a consistent hitter with power, a marvel on defense, a speedy baserunner, and a clutch performer in all facets of the game. The remarkable statistics he compiled only provide an iota of the excitement he generated over a long and productive career, mostly with the New York and San Francisco Giants.
Mays, 93, died Tuesday afternoon in Palo Alto, California surrounded by friends and family members. His son, Michael Mays, said, “My father has passed away peacefully and among loved ones. I want to thank you all from the bottom of my broken heart for the unwavering love you have shown him over the years. You have been his life’s blood.”
For 22 years, Mays was the tireless and talented lifeblood of Major League Baseball, leaving a lifetime batting average of .301, 660 home runs, 1909 RBIs, 3,292 hits, 2062 runs, and 338 stolen bases. He was an all-star nearly every year, a recipient of 12 Gold Glove Awards, and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, in the first year of his eligibility in 1979. Additional numbers now may be added with the inclusion of statistics from the Negro Leagues incorporated into MLB record books. Mays spent two years in the Negro Leagues with the Birmingham Black Barons.
He was born on May 6, 1931, in Westfield, Alabama, and in his autobiography Say Hey, after a favorite expression of his, written with Lou Sahadi, he said, “I was fifteen, and baseball had come to mean more to me than just about anything else. That summer I played in the Industrial League with my father. He was slowing down by then, and they put him in leftfield while I was in centerfield. My father had always been a symbol of strength to me, strength and ability. I measured my own talent by his. But one day you grow up and you surpass your father.” When his father wasn’t on the ball field he was a porter on the train from Birmingham to Detroit and later at the steel mills. His mother, Ann, was a high school track star.
Not only did he surpass his father’s phenomenal talent, he surpassed nearly all those he competed with and against. His first year with the Barons wasn’t an easy one, most glaringly his inability to hit the curveball. But thanks to advice from his manager Piper Davis he matured as a hitter. “In 1949, he elevated his batting average to .311 and continued to raise it in 1950, hitting .330 with good power,” wrote James A. Riley in The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues. A year later, at 20, he was called up from the minor leagues to the New York Giants.
Mays, then called “Buck,” and later the “Say Hey Kid,” had been the youngest player on the Barons and in 1948 played in the last Negro World Series. “After Negroes got into the big leagues, all the Black fans wanted to see the big league teams,” he wrote in his autobiography. “Ironically, Blacks getting into major league baseball cost hundreds of other Black players their jobs,” he added — to say nothing of the coaches, managers, and owners.
His first year with the Giants in 1951 was much like his first year with the Barons, but after getting only one hit in 25 times at bat, he finally got his first hit and his streak continued just in time to revive the Giants and put them back in the pennant chase against the Dodgers. Most folks remember the dramatic home run Bobby Thomson hit that year off Ralph Branca, giving the Giants the National League Pennant. It was a different story when they played the Yankees in the World Series. Even so, it was a great year for Mays — he was named the National League’s Rookie of the Year.
“That first summer in New York was terrific,” Mays said. “I stayed with a couple named David and Anna Goosby. They had a house on St. Nicholas and 151 St.” It was in this neighborhood where Detroiter Dan Aldridge, who lived in Harlem then, first met Mays and spent time with him and his wife, Marguerite, watching television or attending the basketball tournament at nearby Rucker playground. “Willie was really personable and truly related to the community,” Aldridge says in a phone call.
In 1952, he played in only 34 games before being drafted into the Army. After two years in the service, he was back with the Giants to help them in pursuit of another pennant. “I played in my first All-Star game that year,” Mays recalled, “and I never missed another one as long as I played; I made 24 of them and we won 17. At the time I retired, I had played in more All-Star games than anyone else in baseball history.”
Of all Mays’ stellar moments, none is more unforgettable than the catch he made against the Cleveland Indians in the World Series in 1954 at the Polo Grounds. Here is how Mays remembered that sensational catch. “I played [Vic[ Wertz to pull the ball slightly,” he began. “He had been getting around well all day, and in this situation, two runners on, I figured he’d be likely to hit behind them so they could advance. Also, I knew that most hitters like to swing at a relief pitcher’s first pitch, and that crossed my mind as [Don] Liddle was warming up.”
Mays continued, “And that’s what happened. He swung at Liddle’s first pitch. I saw it clearly. As soon as I picked it up in the sky, I knew I had to get over toward straightaway centerfield. I turned and ran at full speed with my back to the plate… I looked over my left shoulder and spotted the ball. I timed it perfectly and it dropped into my glove maybe 10 or 15 feet from the bleacher wall. At the same moment, I wheeled and threw in the same motion and fell to the ground. I must have looked like a corkscrew. I could feel my hat flying off, but I saw the ball heading straight to Davey Williams on second.” The Giants won the series and two former Detroit Tigers were on the Indians’ team — Wertz who hit the ball Mays caught, and Hal Newhouser, who came in as a relief pitcher.
It should be noted that Mays was also a creative showman. Many fans have memories of his hat flying from his head as he rounded the bases or ran down a fly ball. He confessed that the hat flying from his head was something he planned. To accomplish this feat, he often wore a hat too large.
There is not enough space here to recount even a portion of Mays’ often spectacular career, and he died two days before a game between the Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals to honor the Negro Leagues at Rickwood Field in Birmingham and where he and his father played.
Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred spoke at the occasion, noting that “All of Major League Baseball is in mourning today as we are gathered at the very ballpark where a career and a legacy like no other began. Willie Mays took his all-around brilliance from the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro American League to the historic Giants franchise. From coast to coast … Willie inspired generations of players and fans as the game grew and truly earned its place as our National Pastime. … We will never forget this true Giant on and off the field.”
And many New Yorkers in the neighborhood where he lived are fond of recalling those moments when he played stickball with the kids on the block. Whether on the streets or in the stadiums, baseball was all Mays ever wanted to do. “Of course, if you ask me what I’d really like to be doing, the answer is simple,” he said at the close of his autobiography. “All I ever wanted was to play baseball forever. Leo [Durocher] always thought I could.”
Howard Fineman, the longtime Washington scribe who mastered a multitude of different mediums over the course of several distinguished decades in journalism, died Tuesday evening at 75 after a two-year-long fight with pancreatic cancer. The news was announced by his wife, Amy Nathan.
Howard was likely a familiar figure to you all. Not only was he a ubiquitous presence on MSNBC and a prolific writer for Newsweek magazine during its golden age, but he also played a prominent role at HuffPost, having served as the site’s global editor for a time.
Global is a good way to describe Howard. He had a gravitational pull about him. He was a man in perpetual motion, reporting and writing and pundit-ing — seemingly unsatisfied unless he was contributing to the day’s conversation.
“I’ve gone from the manual typewriter to Twitter,” he told me of his career when we spoke for this piece. “I’ve done everything but skywriting.”
Stricken with terminal cancer, he said he’d try it in his remaining time. It was a joke, of course. But at that moment, it wasn’t hard to envision him up in the plane. There were few stories he wouldn’t chase.
I first met Howard as a researcher for his book, “The Thirteen American Arguments.” It was a lofty project, trying to distill roughly 250 years of history into an arbitrary number of neatly tailored, binary disputes. He would confide later that it was “classically overwrought.” Nonetheless, it was a best-seller.
From there, Howard played an outsized role in my professional life, helping me get into the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (where he had also gone) and Newsweek’s internship program. He then joined me at HuffPost, where I served as politics editor at the time.
Howard Fineman (right) with Sam Stein (center) and Ryan Grim on June 11, 2014.
Despite all that overlapping history, it was in the years after we both left HuffPost that we grew closer. Bumping into him around the neighborhood or sitting over coffee, I developed an immense fondness for Howard. He was a mensch in the truest sense. He loved mentoring younger reporters, and we, in turn, grew attached to him.
I began to recognize that this person who I had, for so long, seen as an emblem of the D.C. establishment was, in fact, discomforted by it. He wanted to witness history, not be a part of it. He had gone into journalism because it let him scratch his curiosities and (like so many in the field) channel his insecurities. He had a virtuous view of the line of work. I’m not sure he could have enjoyed anything else.
“I’m not the world’s most social person by nature,” he told me. “The way I could square being an outsider and being part of the human race was by being in a newsroom.”
Howard was born on Nov. 17, 1948, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His mother was an English teacher, and his father was a shoe company manufacturer’s representative. From an early age, it was clear the career path he’d chart.
On election night in 1956, he, an 8-year-old, converted the den of his home into a makeshift newsroom where he broadcast the results to his parents and laid out piles of paper to look like the cards the networks fed into their rudimentary computers.
“It was really one of the nerdiest things you could imagine,” Howard recalled.
He attended Colgate University, where he was the editor-in-chief of The Colgate Maroon, and graduated from the Columbia Journalism School in 1973. From there, he went to The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky.
A Jewish kid from Squirrel Hill may have seemed like an odd fit for bourbon country. But the paper would be the spiritual tent pole of his career. Southern politics was unnerving — he covered a Klan rally during the day because his editor forbade him from doing so at night — but it had its undeniable charms. A “porchfront style,” as he put it, that was ripe for “storytelling.”
“In many ways, that was the best,” he said of his Louisville days. “The irony is for many reporters back then who were hungry to come to Washington they didn’t realize how lucky they were. It was wonderful, and I loved every minute of it.”
I always wondered why Howard didn’t just stay in Louisville, given the sentimentality he felt for his time there. But he flicked away such hypotheticals like pesky gnats. D.C. was his goal. He saw the city as “an imperium not unlike Rome,” where “all the vectors of power in the country intersect.” And he wanted to be at that intersection.
In 1977, he joined the Courier-Journal’s Washington bureau and, within three years, was at Newsweek. His trajectory continued from there: labor reporter, political correspondent, chief political correspondent, senior editor, and then deputy Washington bureau chief.
Howard Fineman with Arianna Huffington on Jan. 11, 2016, in New York City.
To chart that path required obvious skill, and Howard certainly had that. But it also required a bit of professional ferocity too. Colleagues described an intensity to Howard that I saw later in his career. He wanted to have the best Rolodex and the best assignments. He had a well-known competitive streak that fed his work ethic. He labored late into the night to practice for TV hits the next morning. And he litigated everything — a byproduct of the law degree he had earned taking night classes at the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville.
“He was a force of nature,” recalled Jonathan Alter, his colleague for years at Newsweek. “He knew everybody in Washington. He not only knew them but had a sophisticated take on who they were and what they were doing. He was extraordinarily politically shrewd.”
But Howard also benefited from larger, tectonic changes in the media industry. News magazines were elevating their correspondents into bonafide must-reads. Broadcast news was turning to younger on-air talent. Watergate had given reporting moral virtue and real celebrity.
“I went into Columbia wanting to be Teddy White and came out wanting to be Woodward and Bernstein,” Howard told me. “They had saved, one might argue, the American constitutional government. And they became famous also, let’s say that.”
Howard continued moving with those tectonic shifts: becoming one of the most recognizable pundits on cable news and then joining the online journalism wave right as it was peaking. But he had — what seemed to me, at least — a complicated relationship with that concept of fame. I asked him once if he had been motivated by it.
“If you do that to me, I’m going to come back from the grave and kill you,” he shot back. Minutes later, he acknowledged the appeal.
For Howard, the discomfort was not in the fame he had rightfully achieved but in the suggestion that he had moved on from his Pittsburgh roots and Louisville molding for something facile.
In our talks, he repeatedly described himself as an “outsider.” It was not lost on him that Newsweek was the scrappy underdog next to the Time and that HuffPost was the renegade among its peers. He took pride in those fits. And he was critical, too, of reporters who didn’t share his conviction that the profession was not part of power but a check on it.
“In Washington,” he said, “we delude ourselves as journalists into thinking we are part of the establishment. We really, ultimately, are not.”
It was for this that I came to not just appreciate Howard but love him. He was righteous about the right things and dogged in the right ways. He had big thoughts and surprising depths. He had a value system in an industry and town where that can often get lost. Of all the pieces he wrote, the presidents he’d interviewed, and the places he’d been, it was his reflection on the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue — where he’d been bar mitzvah-ed — that he regarded as his best work.
He never truly left that den in his home in Pittsburgh.
I will miss my friend. But, more importantly, we in political journalism will miss the example he set. Goodbye, Howard.
Mark D. Ross, best known as the rapper Brother Marquis in 2 Live Crew, has died, according to a social media post by the group and TMZ confirms. “Mark Ross AKA Brother Marquis of the 2 Live crew has went to the upper room,” 2 Live Crew wrote on Instagram. He was 58.
Born Mark D. Ross in April 1966, Brother Marquis grew up in Rochester, New York with his mother before moving to Los Angeles, California as a teenager. While still in Junior High, he crossed paths with rapper Rodney-O and the two started the Caution Crew, releasing a handful of 12″ singles like “Westside Storie” and “Rhythm Rock.”
The late Fresh Kid Ice—who died in 2017—formed 2 Live Crew with DJ Mr. Mixx and Amazing Vee in Riverside, California 1984, but Amazing Vee dipped out shortly afterwards. Miami rapper Luke Skyywalker invited 2 Live Crew to relocate to his Florida city and, when they obliged, he joined their ranks as a hype man and label owner. The group had already recorded a few songs, including “Trow the D,” before DJ Mr. Mixx crossed paths with Brother Marquis at parties. Impressed by his sense of humor, they invited the 19-year-old to join 2 Live Crew in 1986 and help shape the direction of 2 Live Crew Is What We Are, their debut LP. While the Miami bass group courted plenty of controversy with that album and its breakout hit, “We Want Some P**sy,” it was their next string of records—1988’s Move Somethin’, 1989’s As Nasty as They Wanna Be, and 1990’s Banned in the U.S.A.—that propelled their raunchy hip-hop to national fame with songs like “Me So Horny” and “Banned in the U.S.A.”
2 Live Crew were proud to make history with those latter two records: As Nasty as They Wanna Be was the first album to be declared legally obscene (a judgment that was later overturned), and the cheekily titled follow-up Banned in the U.S.A. was the first album to sport the black-and-white “Parental Advisory” sticker from the Recording Industry Association of America. 2 Live Crew got into legal trouble again with a parody cover of Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman,” which appeared on As Nasty as They Wanna Be. It spawned the Supreme Court case Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., which ultimately deemed that a commercial parody falls under the doctrine of fair use.
Kevin Ransom was a celebrated freelance journalist and music writer from Dearborn.
Kevin Ransom, an iconic, Dearborn-based freelance journalist known for his captivating and memorable music writing, has died.
He was 69.
Dearborn police found Ransom dead at his Dearborn home on Saturday afternoon. His cause of death wasn’t immediately known.
Ransom had chronic fatigue syndrome and severe sleep apnea, forcing him to retire from journalism about nine years ago.
His friend, Matt Roush, called police to do a welfare check on Saturday after not hearing from Ransom for several days. Ransom had asked Roush to pick up medication for him at the pharmacy. After Ransom didn’t respond to Roush’s message and phone calls since Thursday, Roush called the police.
Roush, a longtime tech journalist who is now managing editor of Lawrence Technological University’s media services for Yellow Flag Productions, befriended Ransom several years ago on Facebook after noticing that the pair had a lot in common. Roush often gave Ransom rides to the pharmacy and store, and they would sit in the car talking.
“He was a really good storyteller,” Roush tells Metro Times. “All of those trips to the grocery store lasted longer than they had to, which was a good thing. He would tell great stories about all of the rock ’n’ rollers he interviewed, like Bonnie Raitt and the Band, which was his favorite. He talked about all the people he had interviewed. When a song came on the radio, no matter what song it was, he said he talked to that person or that band. His background was amazing. He was fun to be around.”
In addition to music, Ransom also wrote about the auto industry, entertainment, business, the environment, and general features. His work appeared in more than two dozen publications, including Rolling Stone, The Detroit News, Ann Arbor News, Guitar Player, Automotive News, Heritage Newspapers, and Ford World.
He had been a freelance reporter for decades.
Although Ransom was a prolific writer on numerous subjects, he was most known for his compelling, in-depth music writing. He admired local music and helped shine a light on bands that weren’t yet nationally known. He was particularly fond of folk, roots, blues, alternative, and 1960s rock.
“He was always a champion of local music and local musicians,” Michigan folk legend Matt Watroba tells Metro Times. “You could always count on him to write good, insightful pieces about local stuff.”
“He was a very deep music writer,” Watroba says. “He was a huge fan of music, and therefore had a deep understanding of it. He wrote eloquently about it.”
Despite his popularity, Ransom had financial troubles. He lived in a modest bungalow in Dearborn, which was originally built by his grandparents in 1949. He bought the house in 2002 after the death of his grandmother.
When his health began to deteriorate nearly a decade ago, he struggled to make ends meet. But because of his connection to musicians, they came out when he most needed it. In August 2015, numerous bands came together to perform a benefit concert for Ransom at The Ark in Ann Arbor. The bands included the Chenille Sisters, Peter Madcat Ruth, Matt Watroba, Rev. Robert Jones, Dave Boutette, Jo Serrapere & John Devine, and Katie Geddes.
In the years before his death, Ransom sported a big, white flowing beard.
Because of his health problems, Ransom had gained a lot of weight but recently lost about 30 pounds by adopting a new diet and cutting out alcohol, Roush says.
Politically, Ransom was progressive and opinionated and could be prickly about conservatives.
“His favorite word for them was ‘imbeciles,’” Roush says. “He was very progressive.”
Ransom received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Western Michigan University.
“Kevin Ransom is an extraordinarily gifted journalist — reliable, insightful, on time, an expert interviewer, and highly personable,” Jas Obrecht, a nationally known music journalist, wrote on LinkedIn. “I’ve given him many assignments for national publication, and he has excelled in all of them. He’s also great at newspaper work.”
Bill Walton, the college basketball superstar who went on to win two NBA titles and followed that up with a successful broadcasting career, has died at age 71 following a battle with cancer. Elise Preston takes a look back at the sports icon, activist and noted deadhead’s legacy.
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