NASHVILLE, Tenn.:
Country songwriter Bill Owens, who was a mentor and early songwriting partner to his niece Dolly Parton and helped start her career in country music, has died. He was 85.
Parton’s publicist confirmed his death on Wednesday, and Parton wrote a lengthy eulogy for her uncle, saying “I wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t been there.”
Owens helped Parton at the age of 10 get her first radio performance on the “Cas Walker Farm and Home Hour” radio show in Knoxville, Tennessee. He encouraged her to practice her guitar and often drove her to local shows where she could perform.
“It’s really hard to say or to know for sure what all you owe somebody for your success,” Parton wrote of her uncle. “But I can tell you for sure that I owe Uncle Billy an awful lot.”
They wrote songs together, including Parton’s very first single “Puppy Love,” which came out in 1959 when Parton was just 13. Owens eventually started taking her to Nashville to pitch songs to record labels and publishing companies.
Owens and Parton were signed as songwriters by Fred Foster, a legendary country producer, to his publishing company Combine Music, and Foster signed Parton as an artist to his Monument Records label in 1965. (AP)
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va.:
Grammy award-winning musician Pharrell Williams has called for a federal investigation into the fatal police shooting of his cousin along the Virginia coast.
Williams made the call in an Instagram post on Monday after attending his cousin’s funeral in Virginia Beach, where Williams grew up.
“I had to speak at my cousin’s funeral, and was choked up with emotions,” he wrote on the social media post. “Too many unanswered City and State questions. Respectfully, I am calling for a Federal investigation. I also humbly ask that you all keep the family in prayer.”
An email to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia was not immediately returned.
Donovon Lynch, 25, was killed in the early morning hours of March 27 along the city’s popular oceanfront strip of hotels and restaurants shortly after two other nearby shootings unleashed chaos. Police said Lynch, a Black man, had a handgun and that it was recovered from the scene. But the officer’s body camera had not been activated. The officer who killed Lynch is also Black.
The city’s police department recently turned over the investigation into Lynch’s death to the Virginia State Police. (AP)
US
Alcee Hastings of Florida.
During the report, the network aired archived video of US Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi. The report correctly included some still pictures of Hastings.
MSNBC tweeted an apology on Tuesday.
The mistake “never should have happened,” the network’s Hallie
Jackson said on the air Wednesday. “We are sorry it did. Congressman Hastings served the state of Florida for nearly three decades and the House and deserves a tribute worthy of that service.”
Hastings, a former federal judge who had been impeached, was first elected to Congress in 1992. He announced two years ago that he had pancreatic cancer. (AP)