David Cassidy of ‘Partridge Family’ Fame Dies at 67

THIS ONE HITS HOME …

Sadly, David Cassidy has passed away at the age of 67. Cassidy died surrounded by his loved ones from organ failure. David Cassidy stared on the 70′s TV show ‘The Partridge Family’ as oldest brother Keith Partridge. Doesn’t that bring back memories of a day gone by. I can remember my older sister having his posters on her wall and a crush on him like every other girl of that day. May they both rest in peace.

His publicist JoAnn Geffen confirmed his death, with a statement from his family. “On behalf of the entire Cassidy family, it is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our father, our uncle, and our dear brother, David Cassidy. David died surrounded by those he loved, with joy in his heart and free from the pain that had gripped him for so long. Thank you for the abundance and support you have shown him these many years.”

He had been hospitalized for several days with organ failure. Cassidy announced his diagnosis with dementia in early 2017. He performed at the B.B. King Blues Club & Grill in New York in March, talking about his dementia, and said his arthritis made playing guitar an ordeal.

With pretty-boy good looks and a long mane of dark hair, Cassidy was every girl’s favorite teen crush in the early 1970s and drew screaming crowds at concert appearances. David Cassidy was part of a show business family that included his father, Tony-winning actor Jack Cassidy, stepmother Shirley Jones, half-brother Shaun Cassidy and daughter, actress Katie Cassidy.

I Think I Love You

The ABC sitcom was loosely based on real-life family musical act the Cowsills, and ran from 1970 to 1974. The show became popular for its squeaky clean portrayal of life on the road as a family rock band in a brightly painted bus. In addition to Cassidy and Jones, “The Partridge Family” starred Susan Dey, Danny Bonaduce and Suzanne Crough as the family’s other children, and Dave Madden as manager Ruben Kincaid.

Cassidy and Jones were the only cast members who were allowed to actually sing; the other kids lip-synced, while the Wrecking Crew provided musical backup. Theme song “C’mon Get Happy” became one of TV’s most enduring songs, and helped launch Cassidy’s musical career.

After the singles “I Think I Love You” and “Cherish” took off, Cassidy began working on solo albums as well. He regularly sold out stadiums, leading to commentators to coin the phrase “Cassidymania.” Several of his shows resulted in riots or mass hysteria, including one notable 1974 performance in Australia, which garnered calls for Cassidy to be deported from the country.

Neal McCoy’s New Country Music single takes aim at NFL Kneeling during National Anthem … “Take a Knee, My Ass!”

AMEN BROTHER!!!

Via NBC4:

An East Texas country music star has released a new song taking aim at those who take a knee during the National Anthem.

Neal McCoy debuted his new single, “Take a Knee, My Ass (I Won’t Take a Knee)” on Facebook Live.

“I’ve been on 15 USO tours,” McCoy says. “I’ve entertained our troops in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and all over the world. So, no, this is not a money grab. This is a guy that believes in our country, that does not like people kneeling, not standing with their hands over their hearts, for the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Anthem. That’s what I’m about.”

Music Legend Tom Petty Dies at Age 66, RIP

ANOTHER MUSIC LEGEND PASSES AWAY AND FAR TOO EARLY …

Caught up in all of the news vacuum from tragedy from Las Vegas, music legend Tom Petty of Tom Petty and the Heatbreakers has passed away at the age of 66 on Monday evening. According to accounts, Petty suffered a cardiac arrest at his home in Malibu, CA and was taken to UCLA Medical Center but could not be revived. Petty died peacefully at 8:40pm PT surrounded by family, his bandmates and friends.

He will be so missed. Tom Petty’s music was simply amazing and so many of his songs were a part of the mosaic of my life. On a personal level this death truly does hurt, his music was phenomenal, meaningful and spoke to so many. I remember the events in my like by his songs and there were so many. I can’t even begin to think which one of his many songs were my favorite as the list is endless of American Girl, Don’t Do Me Like That, Here Comes My Girl, The Waiting,  Learning to Fly, Free Falling, Dont Come Around Here No More, Refugee, You Got Lucky, I Won’t Back Down, Into the Great Wide Open, You Don’t Know How It Feels, Mary Jane’s Last Dance, Running Down a Dream and so many more. My heart does break today, I say a prayer for his family, friends and his fans that loved him so much. Rest in Peace Tom Petty.

Good bye for now, your music will live on with all of us.

Tom Petty, whose Florida-bred quintet the Heartbreakers was one of the defining arena-rock acts of the 1970s with hits like “Breakdown,” died of a heart attack on Monday evening, the longtime manager of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers confirmed. He was 66.

“On behalf of the Tom Petty family we are devastated to announce the untimely death of of our father, husband, brother, leader and friend Tom Petty,” said Tony Dimitriades in a statement.” “He suffered cardiac arrest at his home in Malibu in the early hours of this morning and was taken to UCLA Medical Center but could not be revived. He died peacefully at 8:40pm PT surrounded by family, his bandmates and friends.”

Police responded to his home at 10:50 p.m. Sunday night and he was transferred to UCLA-Santa Monica Medical Center, where he was on life support.

Here Comes My Girl

From Variety:

In 2002, Petty and the Heartbreakers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Petty was awarded UCLA’s George and Ira Gershwin Award for lifetime achievement in 1996.

He was born Oct. 20, 1950, in Gainesville, Fla. A poor student, he caught the rock ‘n’ roll bug after he was introduced by his uncle to Elvis Presley, who was shooting the picture “Follow That Dream” on location in nearby Ocala. Like many other boyish rock aspirants, he began working on music in earnest after witnessing the Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in February 1964.

The Waiting

Playing guitar and bass, he cut his teeth in cover bands like the Epics and the Sundowners. In his late teens, he became a top local attraction on the fertile Gainesville music scene (which produced members of the Flying Burrito Brothers, the Eagles and new wave act the Motels) as front man and songwriter for Mudcrutch, an outfit that also included guitarist Campbell and keyboard prodigy Benmont Tench.

American Girl

Rolling Stone:

Thomas Earl Petty was born in Gainesville, Florida, the son of an insurance salesman, on October 20th, 1950. His father beat him and he didn’t perform well in school, according to The New York Times, but he found solace in music. In 1961, he met Elvis Presley, who was shooting a film in Ocala, Florida, and it became a “life-altering moment” for the young Petty. Soon after, he got his first guitar as a preteen and joined his first band in the mid-Sixties. He quit high school at age 17 to join the southern-rock group Mudcrutch, which was taking off at the time. The group’s lineup featured guitarist Mike Campbell and keyboardist Benmont Tench, two musicians Petty would collaborate with for much of the next five decades. But while the band was taking off, they broke up upon moving to Los Angeles in the early Seventies.

Petty started his solo career in earnest in 1975 when he cut a demo with Campbell and Tench that also featured bassist Ron Blair and drummer Stan Lynch. They called themselves the Heartbreakers and, thanks to a label that signed Mudcrutch and retained only Petty on contract after they broke up, they recorded their debut, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, which came out in 1976. It failed to make an impact at the time – the album’s lead single “Breakdown” didn’t even chart – but they picked up heat after touring England as support for future E Street Band member Nils Lofgren. They soon became headliners on the tour, with the album topping the U.K. chart.

You Don’t Know How It Feels

The label reissued “Breakdown” in the U.S. and it reached the bottom rung of the Top 40 a year after its release. Subsequent singles from the group’s second LP, You’re Gonna Get It!, such as “Listen to Her Heart” and “I Need to Know” charted in the upper half of the pop chart. Around this time, one of Petty’s most apparent influences, the Byrds’ Roger McGuinn, recorded a cover of the self-titled album’s closing track, “American Girl,” proving Petty’s ability to write hits. Around this time, the first of a number of bad business deals stung Petty, according to the Times: He’d signed away all of the publishing rights to his songs to his label for $10,000 and had to negotiate a new deal where he got half of the royalties on songs after his fourth LP came out.

But before the decade was up, Petty found himself bankrupt after the record label MCA attempted to buy out his contract from ABC Records, which distributed Petty’s original label. It took nine months of litigation for Petty to secure a new deal so he could release the biggest record of his career, 1979′s Damn the Torpedoes, which reached Number Two on the album chart and has since been certified triple-platinum. The album contained the singles “Don’t Do Me Like That” and “Refugee,” establishing him as a full-fledged hitmaker.

Into the Great Wide Open

Rock ’n’ Roll Pioneer Chuck Berry Dies at 90 … RIP

ROCK ‘N ROLL ICON CHUCK BERRY HAS PASSED AWAY …

Chuck Berry, one of the pioneer’s and icons of Rock n’ Roll music has passed away at the age of 90. The music legend was best known for “Johnny B. Goode,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Maybellene” and “My Ding-a-Ling” to name just a few. In 1986 Chuck Berry became one of the first inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and in 1985 he also received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. However, better than words to describe Chuck Berry, it is better to just play his music.

Johnny B. Goode

Chuck Berry, the singer, songwriter and guitar great who practically defined rock music with his impeccably twangy hits “Maybellene,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Memphis,” “My Ding-a-Ling” and “Sweet Little Sixteen,” has died. He was 90.

The singer/songwriter, whose classic “Johnny B. Goode” was chosen by Carl Sagan to be included on the golden record of Earth Sounds and Music launched with Voyager in 1977, died Saturday afternoon, St. Charles County Police Department confirmed. The cause of death was not revealed.

NY Times Obit:

While Elvis Presley was rock’s first pop star and teenage heartthrob, Mr. Berry was its master theorist and conceptual genius, the songwriter who understood what the kids wanted before they knew themselves. With songs like “Johnny B. Goode” and “Roll Over Beethoven,” he gave his listeners more than they knew they were getting from jukebox entertainment.

His guitar lines wired the lean twang of country and the bite of the blues into phrases with both a streamlined trajectory and a long memory. And tucked into the lighthearted, telegraphic narratives that he sang with such clear enunciation was a sly defiance, upending convention to claim the pleasures of the moment.
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In “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “You Can’t Catch Me” and other songs, Mr. Berry invented rock as a music of teenage wishes fulfilled and good times (even with cops in pursuit). In “Promised Land,” “Too Much Monkey Business” and “Brown Eyed Handsome Man,” he celebrated and satirized America’s opportunities and class tensions. His rock ’n’ roll was a music of joyful lusts, laughed-off tensions and gleefully shattered icons.

Roll Over Beethoven – Chuck Berry Live

Mr. Berry was already well past his teens when he wrote mid-1950s manifestoes like “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Rock and Roll Music” and “School Day.” Born Charles Edward Anderson Berry on Oct. 18, 1926, in St. Louis, he grew up in a segregated, middle-class neighborhood there, soaking up gospel, blues, and rhythm and blues, along with some country music.

He spent three years in reform school after a spree of car thefts and armed robbery. He received a degree in hairdressing and cosmetology and worked for a time as a beautician; he married Themetta Suggs in 1948 and started a family. She survives him, as do four children: Ingrid Berry, Melody Eskridge, Aloha Isa Leigh Berry and Charles Berry Jr.

By the early 1950s, he was playing guitar and singing blues, pop standards and an occasional country tune with local combos. Shortly after joining Sir John’s Trio, led by the pianist Johnnie Johnson, he reshaped the group’s music and took it over.

From the Texas guitarist T-Bone Walker, Mr. Berry picked up a technique of bending two strings at once that he would rough up and turn into a rock ’n’ roll talisman, the Chuck Berry lick, which would in turn be emulated by the Rolling Stones and countless others. He also recognized the popularity of country music and added some hillbilly twang to his guitar lines. Mr. Berry’s hybrid music, along with his charisma and showmanship, drew white as well as black listeners to the Cosmopolitan Club in St. Louis.

Remembering Those We Lost in 2016 … IN MEMORIAM

IN MEMORIAM : 2016

We sadly lost too many of those that we grew up with idolizing in sports, movies, music and entertainment in 2016. Honestly, I cannot remember a year that more people from my childhood were lost.  From music icons like David Bowie, Prince, Glenn Frey and Merle Haggard, to sports giants like Muhammad Ali,  Arnold Palmer and Mr. Hockey, Gordie Howe, to all too many actors, actresses and celebrities that we grew up with like Florence Henderson, Dan Haggerty, Carrie Fisher, Alan Thicke to the voice of baseball when I was a kid, Joe Garagiola . We lost former First lady Nancy Reagan and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. We lost the greatest female basketball coach Pat Summit.  And we lost an American hero, John Glenn.

God bless all and may you rest in eternal peace …

Sadly we lost such Hollywood actors like Gene Wilder, Alan Rickman, Florence Henderson, Garry Shandling, Alan Thicke, Patty Duke, Garry Marshall (director, producer & actor), Kenny Baker (R2-D2), Robert Vaughn, Ron Glass, Margaret Whitton, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Ken Howard, George Kennedy, Carrie Fisher, Doris Roberts, Steven Hill, Abe Vigota, Debbie Reynolds and far too many more …

IMDB’s In Memoriam: Stars We Lost in 2016

Actors and Actresses we lost in 2016

THE LOST LEGENDS OF 2016: IN MEMORIAM