Singer Johnny Maestro, who performed the 1958 doo-wop hit “16 Candles” with The Crests and enjoyed a decades-long career with The Brooklyn Bridge, has died of cancer. He was 70. …
Robert Culp, the veteran actor best known for starring with Bill Cosby in the classic 1960s espionage-adventure series “I Spy” and for playing Bob in the 1969 movie “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice,” died Wednesday morning. He was 79. …
Stewart L. Udall, an ardent conservationist and a son of the West, who as interior secretary in the 1960s presided over vast increases in national park holdings and the public domain, died Saturday at his home in Santa Fe, N.M. The last surviving member of the original Kennedy cabinet, he was 90. …
Fess Parker, whose star-making portrayal of frontiersman Davy Crockett on television in the mid-1950s made him a hero to millions of young baby boomers and spurred a nationwide run on coonskin caps, died Thursday. He was 85. …
Charlie Gillett was a broadcaster, journalist and author who played a significant role in shaping the tastes of several generations of music fans. After writing The Sound of the City, one of the first books to attempt a serious survey of the early history of rock’n’roll, he began his broadcasting career on BBC Radio London, presenting the weekly Honky Tonk show throughout most of the 1970s. The programme became hugely influential, popularising American roots music and unearthing British acts such as Dire Straits, Elvis Costello and Graham Parker, all of whom received their first exposure on his show before any of them had signed a recording contract. He also co-managed Ian Dury and discovered Lena Lovich. …
The urgent, jangling power-pop that Alex Chilton made with his band Big Star turned him into a cult icon and inspired the sound of a raft of bands that followed, from REM to Teenage Fanclub. …
Peter Graves, the rugged actor who starred in the hit TV series “Mission: Impossible” and whose career took a comic turn in the disaster spoof “Airplane!” has died. He was 83. …
Merlin Olsen, the Hall of Fame tackle who anchored the Los Angeles Rams’ Fearsome Foursome, the line that glamorized defensive play in the National Football League, died early Thursday at a hospital in Duarte, Calif. He was 69. …
After starring in the sub-John Hughes teen-comedy Lucas (1986) he fought teenage vampires in The Lost Boys (1987). A cult hit, it made Haim and his co-stars teen idols. It also introduced him to some important long-term friends and collaborators, notably Corey Feldman. …
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