Wilson, jazz singer & TV personality, dead

Half of Bert & I duo dies

LOS ANGELES, Dec 15, (Agencies): Nancy Wilson, one of the most revered jazz singers of the 20th century, has died, her manager told the Associated Press. She was 81.

The singer passed away at her home in Pioneertown, a small California community north of Palm Springs, after a long illness, according to manager Devra Hall.

Wilson’s three Grammy awards spanned a more than 40-year period, with her first coming in 1965 in the Best Rhythm & Blues category for her Capitol single “How Glad I Am”. Her last was in 2007, awarded for Best Jazz Vocal Album for “Turned to Blue”, her final release. (She had seven nominations in all.) Wilson’s recording career actually dates back to 1959, when she released “Like in Love”, an album arranged by the legendary Billy May.

Outside of the music intelligentsia, Wilson may be remembered by millions of TV viewers who recall her 1974-75 NBC variety series, “The Nancy Wilson Show”. She was frequently a guest herself on the variety shows hosted by Carol Burnett, Andy Williams and Flip Wilson as well as acting on “The Cosby Show” and dramatic series like “The F.B.I.” and “Hawaii 5-O”.

From 1996 through 2005, Wilson was familiar to NPR listeners as the host of “Jazz Profiles”, a documentary series that produced more than 190 episodes. The Peabody-winning series remains available as a podcast.

She retired in 2011 after performing her last concert in Athens, Ohio, saying, “I’m not going to be doing it anymore, and what better place to end it than where I started – in Ohio.”

Wilson began her career on television in Columbus, Ohio as a teenager before moving to New York City in her 20s, following the advice of Cannonball Adderley, with whom she would later record a collaborative album. Her first record deal was with the Dot label, but upon signing with Capitol, Wilson’s early-’60s sales were said to be behind only the Beatles and ahead of Frank Sinatra’s.

Writing about her in 1964, Time magazine said her records should be filed under “See Fitzgerald, Ella, Heir Apparent To”. The publication wrote, “At her opening at Los Angeles’ Coconut Grove last week, the crowd of 1,000 voted her everything but the deed and title to the place. In the ‘great tradition’ of blues, torch and jazz singers that began with Billie Holiday, Nancy Wilson leans toward the left wing, where pop meets jazz, a translator of popular standards into the jazz idiom. Her repertory is a treatise on variety and taste, spun by a voice of agile grace and knowing jazz inflection and phrasing. Yet heard in person, she poses a problem. Willowy, tawny, perfectly featured and somehow kissed by ice, she seems sometimes too beautiful for the consistently fey interpretation she gives to the lyrics of her songs.”

Wilson has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame – and can also be found on the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame, honoring her participation in the integration marches of the 1960s. She was also the recipient of a NAACP Lifetime Achievement Award, the United Negro College Fund Trumpet Award and the Oprah Winfrey Legends Award.

Wilson

Bob Bryan, one half of the comedy duo Bert and I, which had fun at the expense of Maine Yankees and popularized the immortal punchline, “You can’t get there from here,” has died at his home in Quebec. He was 87.

Bryan and the late Marshall Dodge created punch lines in a dormitory room at Yale University, and their 1958 album was the first of several that shaped the state’s humor and image.

Uttered in exaggerated Down East accents, the jokes have withstood the test of time, including the one about the tourist who befuddled a Mainer by asking for directions. The native concludes with a famous punchline: “Come to think of it, you can’t get there from here.”

Bryan, who died Wednesday in Sherbrooke, was a native of Long Island, New York, who picked up the local vernacular during summers spent on a lake near Ellsworth, Maine.

The stories, often involving a fancy-pants tourist and a laconic Mainer who gets the last word, set the stage for regional humorists who followed.

“They didn’t write from scratch all of these stories. They adapted them. A lot of them were off color, from lumber camps or fishing wharfs. They’d rewrite them. They took them to the next level,” said Dean Lunt from Islandport Press, which sells the “Bert and I” albums.

Humorist and storyteller Garrison Keillor recalled playing cuts of the “Bert and I” albums during his early stints as a morning disc jockey. And the original “Bert and I” album made comedian-magician Penn Jillette’s list of the top 12 comedy albums of all time.

The pair set off in different directions after selling hundreds and thousands of albums.

Dodge toured the country as a comedian before his death in 1982 in Hawaii, where he was struck by a hitand-run driver while bicycling.

Pat Gelbart, widow of late “MASH” creator Larry Gelbart, died surrounded by family at her home in Westwood, Calif on Dec 11. She was 94.

Gelbart was born in Minneapolis, Minn in 1928 as Marriam Patricia Murphy. When she met her husband, Gelbart was an actress, known for the 1947 musical “Good News”, in which she played the third in a love triangle between June Allyson and Peter Lawford. She also appeared in “MASH” in 1972 and “The Prisoner of Second Avenue” in 1975. She was a house singer on Steve Allen’s “Tonight Show”, and appeared in Broadway shows “The Pajama Game” and “Mr Wonderful” in the 1950s.

Actor, activist and influentials member of the Japanese American community, Rodney Kageyama, died in his sleep Dec 9. He was 77.

The SAG member was known for roles in “Karate Kid IV” with Hillary Swank, Ron Howard’s film “Gung Ho” and the spinoff sitcom, and the TV movie “Hiroshima: Out of the Ashes” with Max Von Sydow.

Kageyama was an important activist for the Asian American community. He was a regular emcee in downtown Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo, and was praised for using his voice to advocate for Asian American representation in the entertainment industry. A member of several social activist groups and community organizations, Kageyama was associated with The Asian American Pacific Artists Association, The Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment (CAPE), East West Players, The Japanese American National Museum, and Nisei Week Japanese Festival.