Thursday, 31 October 2019

Norman Wright born 31 October 1937


Norman Wright (October 31, 1937 – April 23, 2010) was a lead tenor of the popular Doo-Wop quintet The Del-Vikings.

The Del-Vikings (also known as The Dell-Vikings) were an American doo-wop musical group that recorded several hit singles in the 1950s and continued to record and tour with various line-ups in later decades. The group is notable for the hit songs "Come Go
with Me" and "Whispering Bells", and for having been a successful racially mixed musical group during a period of time when such groups were rare.

he Del-Vikings members in their classic lineup: Corinthian "Kripp" Johnson (born May 16, 1933, Cambridge, MA; died June 22, 1990, Pontiac, MI); vocals (first tenor). David Lerchey (born February 3, 1937, New Albany, IN; died Jan. 31, 2005, Hallandale, FL); vocals (second tenor / baritone). Don Jackson: vocals (baritone). Clarence Quick (born February 2, 1937, Brooklyn, NY; died May 5, 1983, Brooklyn, NY): vocals (bass) and Joe Lopes (born 1934, Cambridge, MA): guitar and Norman Wright : vocals (lead tenor).

The group was founded by airmen at a Pittsburgh base who recruited Philadelphia-born Norman when their tenor singer became stationed in Germany. Norman Wright had started a group with Lawrence "Prince" Lloyd called The Valverteens from Amarillo Air Force Base, Texas before joining The Del-Vikings. Their victories in several talent contests (including the All Air Force competition in New York City) earned them a recording session with Fee Bee Records where "Come Go With Me," with Norman on lead, was cut in 1956.


                             

Originally recorded accapella, the label added instrumentation and it soon became so popular that the master was leased to Dot Records for national distribution in January 1957, The song was written by Clarence Quick and featured Norman Wright on lead vocals. In 1957, the song became a hit, peaking at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc. Rolling Stone listed "Come Go With Me" as no. 447 on its list of the 500 greatest songs of all time. 


It was the first top ten hit for a racially-mixed group in the U.S. But by the time Dot released "Whispering Bells" (#9 Pop, #5 R&B), Soon after, Jackson left the band and was replaced by Gus Backus, the group's second white member. A management switch from Barry Kaye to an Air Force lawyer named Alan Strauss meant that every member under 21, as legal minors, was suddenly no longer beholden to the Fee Bee contract. Strauss got everyone underage a better national label switch from Dot to Mercury, leaving only Kripp to carry on. Norman and three of the four other group split for Mercury Records where they competed with their Dot recording with "Cool Shake" (#12 Pop, #9 R&B). 

There was now both a Del-Vikings group (led by Quick) and a Dell-Vikings group (led by Kripp), and a series of recordings flooded the market -- various combinations of members, jobs backing other singers, even solo and duet performances, all on several different labels, some credited to the group, some not, others partially. To make matters worse, their former manager overdubbed a full band into those original demos and released them as an album!

By the end of 1957, with the breakup of the Dell-Vikings, the madness persisted even after the hits dried up: Fee Bee and Mercury kept reissuing old records under the group name, whether or not they were actually on them, and by the time Kripp rejoined Quick in the early '60s, it was anyone's guess who was who.

Mercury sued, claiming it had sole rights to any spelling of the group's name, and the Dell-Vikings briefly became The Versatiles, with singles being billed to "Kripp Johnson and the Versatiles" or "Chuck Jackson and the Versatiles".

When Kripp returned to the original group, making them a sextet, they signed to ABC Records (ABC-Paramount). While the nucleus of the group was back, they weren't able to chart any more hits, and the group split up in 1965.

The Del-Vikings were back in 1970 with a near original line-up of Clarence Quick, Kripp Johnson, Norman Wright, Dave Lerchey, and William Blakely. The group re-recorded many of their old hits for Scepter Records; a new version of "Come Go With Me" made the Bubbling Under The Hot 100 chart in 1973 (it also wound up on the Easy Listening chart, where it peaked that year at #32). Norman and the Del Vikings were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2005.


Norman, who was the last of the original founding members of The Del Vikings, died from bone cancer April 23, 2010 in New Jersey after a long illness. He was 72 years old. He is survived by his two sons Norman Jr. and Anthony, who both toured and performed with Norman during his last 10 plus years. (Edited mainly from Wikipedia & liveabout.com)

Here’s a clip from the 1957 movie "The Big Beat" L-R Dave Lerchey, Norman Wright,  Kripps Johnson, Gus Backus & Clarence Quick.

Tuesday, 29 October 2019

Frida Bocarra born 29 October 1940


Danielle Frida Hélène Boccara (29 October 1940 – 1 August 1996) was a French singer of Italian descent and born in Casablanca, who performed and recorded in a number of languages, including French, Spanish, English, Italian, German, Dutch and Russian. She recorded more than thirty albums in thirty years of career.
Boccara was born in Casablanca, Morocco, into a Jewish family of Italian origin that lived in Tunisia before they settled down in Morocco. 

She started a vocal and instrumental trio with her brother and sister in Casablanca, with some success. But she knew she would have to try her chance in Paris, where she was taken on by the celebrated teacher of chanson singing and composition, Mireille, who in 1954 had founded her Petit Conservatoire de la Chanson in the rue de l'Universite, where she used her unique training methods to help talented youngsters discover their true musical abilities and personalities.



In 1964, Boccara had submitted the song Autrefois to the French Eurovision Song Contest selection panel, but she was unsuccessful. Through Mireille, Frida soon began making music-hall appearances and recordings, and was launched on an international career, for at first she appeared mainly outside France, in tours of Eastern Europe, and performed in jazz festivals like the one in Sofia in 1967.


                              

She also travelled to Australia, Canada and Central and South America, where several of her hit numbers became successful: "Cent millions chansons" ("One Hundred Thousand Songs"), and "Les Moulins de mon coeur" ("The Windmills of my Heart"), 
Frida with Eddy Marnay
written and composed especially for her warm, intimate, caressing voice by Eddy Marnay and Emile Stern, her permanent parolier and composer.

One of the very few really memorable songs of the deplorable Eurovision Song Contest (Grand Prix, 1969) was "Un Jour un enfant", and in those days, when a triumph on television truly mattered, it shot Boccara to even greater fame. Her song shared first place along with the entries from the Netherlands, the UK, and Spain.
She won the prestigious Prix de l'Academie Charles Cros, and was also honoured with a number of golden discs.  She never forgot her classical roots, and some of her later songs were set to music by Telemann and other great classics, always by her parolier Eddy Marnay.

Most of the songs performed by Boccara were written by Marnay, but she also performed songs composed by Jacques Brel, Georges Brassens, Charles Aznavour, Émile Stern, Michel Legrand, Michel Magne, Nino Rota and Mikis Theodorakis.

In the late 1960s, she also recorded "Un pays pour nous", a song that was a French version of "Somewhere" (from the musical West Side Story). Leonard Bernstein, who composed the original melody, declared that Boccara's version was his favourite. Other of her famous songs include "L'enfant aux cymbales" (1969), "Belle du Luxembourg" (1969), "La croix, l'étoile et le croissant" (1970), 
"Venise va mourir" (1970), "Trop jeune ou trop vieux" (1971), "Valdemosa" (1976), "L'année où Piccolli... (Jouait Le choses de la vie)" (1978), "Un monde en sarabande" (1979) and "La prière" (1979).

During the 70's she was a popular guest on many TV shows in Canada, Australia, South America and the Netherlands. In Russia she sold over a million records. Boccara renewed her links with Eurovision by participating in the French national finals of 1980 – performing "Un enfant de France" – and 1981 – with "Voilà comment je t'aime". However, neither song won.

When success slowed down Frida withdrew from the music business. She died in 1996 in Paris, France, aged 55, from a pulmonary infection, after some health problems.

(Edited mainly from Wikipedia )

Sunday, 27 October 2019

Boyd Raeburn born 27 October 1913


Boyd Albert Raeburn (October 27, 1913 – August 2, 1966) was an American jazz bandleader and bass saxophonist.

Though not well remembered today bandleader Boyd Raeburn blazed trails in progressive jazz that took his music in directions beyond even those explored by such adventurous types as Stan Kenton and Tom Talbert. Raeburn, however, did not start out to be a jazz innovator. For many years he operated a successful society orchestra before making a big leap into the unknown.

Born in Faith, South Dakota, Boyd Raeburn moved to Chicago where he was educated at the University of Chicago. Here the music bug bit him and he formed a dance band which performed at the 1933 Chicago World Fair. The music was evidently of its time, and fot the remainder of the decade, he led a society dance band. In the 1940s, he re-organized his outfit, first playing swing (1942-1944), then more innovative jazz (1944-1950).


In 1944 he scrapped his dance orchestra completely and formed a forward-looking swing band that included at various times such players as Sonny Berman, Al Cohn, Benny Harris, the Johnny Hodges-influenced Johnny Bothwell, Serge Chaloff, Roy Eldridge, Trummy Young, and Handy on piano, playing arrangements from George Williams, Eddie Finckel, and Handy. The group overall was influenced by Count Basie, but they were also the first to record Dizzy Gillespie's "Night in Tunisia"; Dizzy even guested with the band.



                               

The new group wowed the critics, producing sounds far more modern than any other orchestra of its day. Unfortunately a fire at the Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey destroyed the band's book and some of its instruments.

Raeburn reorganized in 1945 and took his group a step further, relying on composer and arranger George Handy, who wrote extremely complex and dissident charts. Handy's work, however, did not go over well with the public, and eventually he was replaced by Johnny Richards and Ralph Flanagan. Johnny Mandel joined the orchestra in 1945.

Even though it was a constant struggle to keep the orchestra together, Raeburn's band actually grew in size during 1946, with reed players doubling on woodwinds and the addition of French horns and a harp. Such players as Lucky Thompson, Dodo Marmarosa, Ray Linn, and Buddy DeFranco were among the many who passed through the band.

His band had three themes: "Man with a Horn", "Raeburn's Theme" and "Over the Rainbow". Vocalists included David Allen, Don Darcy, Johnny Darcy, June Christy (at that time known as Sharon Leslie), and Ginny Powell, whom Raeburn later married. He was previously married to Lorraine Anderson, with whom he had one child; that union ended in divorce.

Several well-known jazz bandleaders helped Raeburn out every time his band went bankrupt, among them Billy Eckstine, Jack Teagarden and especially Duke Ellington, all of whom believed in what he was doing and helped to revive his career, but it just wasn’t enough.

Raeburn organized shot-​lived touring outfits in 1949 and 1950, with Powell as vocalist. After working mostly as an arranger in the early 1950s, he returned to his roots in 1956 and formed a new dance orchestra. Powell again served as vocalist.  Raeburn was invited by Columbia Records to make three albums with an 
orchestra of top New York session players. A&R man, Mitch Miller, insisted that he record fairly bland arrangements of other bands’ hits from the 1940s. Not only did the records not sell well, but former Raeburn fans who did buy them were bitterly disappointed.

Unsuccessful in resurrecting his career he left the music business entirely. He pursued business interests in New York and the Bahamas where he moved to with his wife in 1959 who sadly she passed away later that year. During 1965 Raeburn was involved in a serious automobile accident. He survived but later died in Lafayette, Los Angeles, August 2, 1966 after suffering a heart attack.

Boyd’s earlier bands are represented on sessions for Musicraft and Savoy, radio transcriptions put out by Circle, and broadcasts released by IAJRC and Hep. His son, Bruce Boyd Raeburn of New Orleans, is the curator of the William Ransom Hogan Archive of New Orleans Jazz at the Tulane University in New Orleans.

(Edited from Parabrisas, All Music & artmusiclounge)         

Saturday, 26 October 2019

Mahalia Jackson born 26 October 1911


Mahalia Jackson (October 26, 1911** – January 27, 1972) was an American gospel singer. Possessing a contralto voice, she was referred to as "The Queen of Gospel." She became one of the most influential gospel singers in the world and was heralded internationally as a singer and civil rights activist. She was
described by entertainer Harry Belafonte as "the single most powerful black woman in the United States". She recorded about 30 albums (mostly for Columbia Records) during her career, and her 45 rpm records included a dozen "golds"—million-sellers.

To speak of Mahalia Jackson's voice is to speak of magic and mystery and majesty. Hers is not a voice. It is a force of nature. It moves with the power of a tornado and soothes with the tenderness of a spring rain. In describing the legendary gospel singer, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said: "A voice like hers comes along once in a millennium."

Mahalia was born in new Orleans , Louisiana and was the third child to John A. Jackson, a barber and preacher, and Charity Clark, who died at the age of 25 when Mahalia was four years old. In 1916, her father sent her to live with her aunt Mahalia "Duke" Paul. Aunt Duke didn't allow secular music in her house, but Mahalia's cousin would sneak in records. Even at a very young age, Mahalia had a booming voice and she would sing hymns and old-time gospel tunes around the house. She attended the McDonough School No. 24 in New Orleans through the eighth grade.

Mahalia is viewed by many as the pinnacle of gospel music. Her singing began at the age of four in her church, the Plymouth Rock Baptist Church in New Orleans. Her early style blended the freedom and power of gospel with the stricter style of the Baptist Church. As a teenager, through her cousin's aid, she was influenced by such famous singers as Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, Enrico Caruso and Ma Rainey, and her own style began to emerge into a more soulful expression.

In 1927, at the age of 16, she moved to Chicago and found work as a domestic. But soon after, she found plenty of work as a soloist at churches and funerals after joining the Greater Salem Baptist Church choir. 
Her unique contralto voice caught the attention of many small churches from coast to coast. Larger, more formal churches frowned upon her energetic renditions of songs.

After performing with the Prince Johnson Singers, she began recording for Decca Records in 1937. When the records did not sell as well as expected, she became a beautician. However, after five years of touring with composer Thomas A. Dorsey at gospel tents and churches, Mahalia's popularity and success garnered her another record contract, this time with Apollo Records, from 1946 to 1954. She then switched to Columbia Records, from 1954 to 1967, where she attained broad recognition as a spiritual singer.


                               

Throughout the 1950s, Mahalia's voice was heard on radio, television and concert halls around the world. Her shows were packed in Europe, and her audience very enthusiastic at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival, at a special all-gospel program she
Eddie Fisher with Mahalia
requested. In 1954, she began hosting her own Sunday night radio show for CBS. She performed on the Ed Sullivan show in 1956 where she catapulted gospel music into America's mainstream. She sang for President Dwight Eisenhower and at John F. Kennedy's inaugural ball in 1960.

From the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott until her death, Mahalia was very prominent in the Civil Rights Movement. Very close with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., she often performed at his rallies--even singing an old slave spiritual before his famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington in 1963. She also sang at his funeral five years later. 
She sang to crowds at the 1964 New York World's Fair and was accompanied by "wonderboy preacher" Al Sharpton She toured Europe again in 1961 (Recorded Live in Europe 1961), 1963–64, 1967, 1968 and 1969. In 1970, she performed for Liberian President William Tubman. At much the same time Jackson went through a messy and very public divorce, prompting a series of heart attacks and the rapid loss of over a hundred pounds.

Jackson's last album was What The World Needs Now (1969). The next year, in 1970, she and Louis Armstrong performed "Just a Closer Walk with Thee" and "When the Saints Go Marching In" together. She ended her career in 1971 with a concert in Germany, and when she returned to the U.S., made one of her final television appearances on The Flip Wilson Show.

She devoted much of her time and energy to helping others. She established the Mahalia Jackson Scholarship Foundation for young people who wanted to attend college. For her efforts in helping international understanding, she received the Silver Dove Award. Chicago remained her home until the end. 
She opened a beauty parlor and a florist shop with her earnings, while also investing in real estate ($100,000 a year at her peak).


She died on January 27, 1972, at Little Company of Mary Hospital in Evergreen Park, Illinois, of heart failure and diabetes complications.

 (Edited from info from Wikipedia &  Women In History).**(some sources  give October 16, and 1912 as birth date).


Wednesday, 23 October 2019

Gary McFarland born 23 October 1933


Gary Robert McFarland (October 23, 1933 – November 3, 1971) was a composer, arranger, vibraphonist and vocalist. Largely forgotten now, Gary McFarland was one of the more significant contributors to orchestral jazz during the early '60s. He had an unfortunately short career. But he was surprisingly productive in the brief decade he was captured on record (1960-70). An "adult prodigy," as Gene Lees once noted, McFarland was an ingenious composer whose music revealed shades of complex emotional subtlety and clever childlike simplicity.

While in the Army, he became interested in jazz and attempted to play trumpet, trombone, and piano. In 1955, he took up playing the vibes. Displaying a quick ability for interesting writing, he obtained a scholarship to the Berklee School of Music. He spent one semester there and with the encouragement of pianist John Lewis, concentrated on large-band arrangements of his own compositions.

He attained early notoriety and success working with Gerry Mulligan, Johnny Hodges, John Lewis, Stan Getz, Bob Brookmeyer, and Anita O'Day. unique arrangements and an early devotion and sympathetic understanding of the bossa nova. McFarland began devoting more attention to his own career and in 1963 released what is often regarded as his most significant recording -- The Gary McFarland Orchestra/Special Guest Soloist: Bill Evans -- a sublime, evocative score that revels in its simplicity. He also started recording in small-group settings which began to feature his own vibes playing (Point of Departure).

In 1964, shortly after staging his own ballet, Reflections in the Park, McFarland issued Soft Samba, a set of pop-rock covers featuring some of the earliest jazz covers of popular Beatles tunes. The controversial album featured pleasant samba-like rhythms enhanced by wordless vocals and whistling and minimal improvising. While Soft Samba attracted a sizable and appreciative audience, the jazz press and McFarland's early admirers were harshly dismissive. But McFarland experienced his first real hit and a taste of considerable popularity.

The success of Soft Samba allowed McFarland to form his first performing group. The band toured clubs across America during the summer of 1965 and recorded an album similar -- but superior -- to Soft Samba, called The In Sound. Here, McFarland mixed his brand of pop vocalese with the substantial improvisational talents of unique accompanists, most notably Gabor Szabo.

The following year found McFarland devoting his talents to the large-scale orchestras which provided his initial notoriety. A February 6, 1966, performance at New York's Lincoln Centre yielded the record Profiles, which collected New York's finest jazz musicians and soloists. 


                     

McFarland went on that year to record an album of blatant, Beatlesque pop with Gabor Szabo (Simpatico), a soundtrack for a David Niven film and wrote and arranged the highly regarded The October Suite for pianist Steve Kuhn, an outstanding set of lyrical and moody tone poems in a chamber jazz setting. He also recorded Zoot Sims in an orchestral ("sax with strings") setting for the lovely Impulse album Waiting Game.

McFarland then teamed with guitarist Gabor Szabo and vibist Cal Tjader in 1968 to form the Skye Recordings label under the direction of their mutual manager Norman Schwartz. McFarland recorded several titles of his own for the label; a few overtly pop-jazz endeavors (Does The Sun Really Shine on The Moon, Today), a soundtrack (Slaves) and his critically acclaimed orchestral work, America the Beautiful.

McFarland acted as "artists and repertoire" man for each Skye recording. Whether performing, arranging and/or producing, McFarland, unlike the other principals of Skye, participated in each of Skye's 20-something recordings (also including Szabo, Tjader, percussionist Armando Peraza, vocalist Grady Tate and blues singer Ruth Brown).

The Skye label lasted less than two years and McFarland, Tjader and Szabo went their separate ways - never to work together again. McFarland went on to compose another film score (Who Killed Mary What's 'Er Name), record a folk-pop record with cartoonist Peter Smith (Butterscotch Rum),  arrange a Steve Kuhn pop album and supervise the Broadway musical To Live Another Summer/To Pass Another Winter.

By late 1971, McFarland was working hard toward making a name for himself in Broadway and film, two areas he'd hoped to explore in greater depth. But on the afternoon of November 2, while with friends in a New York City bar,he suffered a fatal heart attack and died instantly. He was declared dead at New York City's St. Vincent Hospital that day. The official cause of death was a heart attack, but it soon became apparent that the seizure had been triggered by liquid methadone that was added to his drink and those of two friends who were with him. One of them, jazz drummer Gene Gammage, barely survived but never disclosed the events of that day, while the other, writer David Burnett, went into a coma and died several days later.The police never investigated.  

(Edited from Wikipedia & AllMusic& Jazzwax)

Here’s a Fresca TV ad that McFarland wrote, arranged and conducted in 1966. It was posted by Kristian St. Clair, who directed the documentary This Is Gary McFarland.

Monday, 21 October 2019

Georgia Brown born 21 October 1933


Georgia Brown (21 October 1933 – 5 July 1992) was an English singer and actress.

Born Lilian Klot in Whitechapel, east London, in 1933, she became the most successful product of the Brady School, a training ground for impoverished East-Enders, and was justifiably proud of having made it against all the odds. As a teenager she performed at youth 
clubs while learning the rag trade by day, and by the time she was 17 she was working at the Stork Club in London and appearing in television variety shows, having assumed a name taken from one of her numbers 'Sweet Georgia Brown'.

Her early influences were jazz singers, but her earthy, energetic delivery made her equally at home with music hall in the Marie Lloyd tradition, while when singing popular standards her interpretative skill was comparable to Piaf or Garland. 
If she lacked the vulnerability of those ladies it only gave her more sentimental moments and added pathos. Nobody has ever sung 'As Long As He Needs Me' as well as Georgia Brown.

Signed to Decca Records she released her first single in 1955, " My Crazy L'il Mixed Up Heart. " Although it was a mid-tempo number with good lyrics delivered with Georgia's zest to a jazzy arrangement it didn't chart. The follow up bombed as well! (She released a few albums and more singles with Decca until 1962).


                              

In 1956 she was cast as Lucy in The Threepenny Opera at the Royal Court, the start of a long association with the works of Brecht, and the following year she succeeded Beatrice Arthur in the show's off-Broadway production. She returned to the Royal Court in The Lily White Boys with Albert Finney, then came Oliver.

Georgia Brown, Lionel Bart & Judy Garland
After the Broadway production she elected to stay in the US, turning down the show Lionel Bart created for her, Maggie May, though she replaced its star, Rachel Roberts, six months into the London run. She maintained an affection for life in the United States which American show-business never managed adequately to reciprocate. The impetus in her career created by Oliver gradually faltered and, despite steady work and respect within the profession, the enormous potential was never fully realised.

She made more records, did more Brecht - The Baby Elephant upstairs at the Royal Court in 1971 and, later the same year, Man is Man in the main theatre. She sang Anna in the Royal Ballet's Seven Deadly Sins in 1973/74 and played in Mother Courage on television. Television work also included Sartre's Roads to Freedom. Her films included A Study in Terror (1965), The Fixer (1968), Bart's Lock up Your Daughters (1969), Galileo (1975), and The Seven Per Cent Solution (1976), in which she introduced Stephen Sondheim's blatantly risque I Never Do Anything Twice.

That same year she settled permanently in Los Angeles. She returned to Broadway in two new musicals, but neither was successful. Carmelina (1979), based on the Gina Lollobrigida film Buona Sera, Mrs Campbell, had songs by Burton Lane and Alan Jay Lerner, but, with a poor production and Jose Ferrer's leaden direction, it lasted only 17 performances.

Five years later Brown was due to open in Roza at the Adelphi in London when financing was suddenly withdrawn. In 1987, directed by Harold Prince, it opened on Broadway with Brown playing a role Simone Signoret had enacted in the film Madam Rosa (based on a novel, La Vie Devant Soi, by Romain Gary). The show's score by Gilbert Becaud and Julian More was too pop-orientated for Broadway taste, its book too flimsy and despite 
outstanding personal reviews for Brown it closed after 12 performances.

In London she starred in 42nd Street but, though nominally the leading role, the part of an ageing and temperamental star was a thanklessly underwritten and unsympathetic one. In 1980 Brown had played the twin roles of Mother/Sphinx in Steven Berkoff's Greek for its brief New York run and when the play came to London in 1988 she successfully repeated her powerful performance.

In her later years she limited herself to concerts, cabaret appearances, and guest spots on television series such as Great Performances, Murder, She Wrote and Cheers; she earned an Emmy Award nomination for her role as Carla Tortelli's spiritual adviser Madame Lazora in 1990, and reprised the role in 1991.
Lynsey de Paul and Georgia Brown
 She made two appearances in Star Trek: The Next Generation ("New Ground" and "Family") portraying Helena Rozhenko, Worf's adoptive mother.

Brown died at the age of 58 in London on 5 July 1992. Although she had become a permanent US resident and lived in Hollywood, she had flown to London to appear on the bill for a tribute to Sammy Davis, Jr. held that week at the Drury Lane Theatre. Before the date of the tribute she became ill, and underwent emergency surgery to remove an intestinal obstruction at Charing Cross Hospital where she died from complications. She was interred at Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery.

(Edited from Wikipedia but mainly from Tom Vallance @ The Independent)