Dead Celebrity Alert

Oklahoma City-born country music singer Henson Cargill — known best for his hit “Skip A Rope” — dies at age 66 from complications following surgery. … Read full obituary

Herman Stein, whose spooky music scores raised the hair on the back of moviegoers’ necks for decades, has died at his home in Los Angeles at 91. … Read full obituary

Luther Ingram, best known for his passionate turn on the 1972 R&B/pop hit “(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don’t Want to be Right,” has died. The 69-year-old singer/songwriter succumbed to kidney disease yesterday (March 19) in St. Louis. He had undergone a kidney transplant several years ago. …” Read full obituary

Ernst Haefliger, the Swiss tenor noted for his interpretations of oratorio and lieder, died on Saturday at age 87, reports the Associated Press. … Read full obituary

Former Boston lead singer Brad Delp’s death at his Atkinson, N.H., home was the result of suicide, Delp’s family and police said. … Read full story

Related:
Brad Delp, lead singer of Boston, 55

Brad Delp, the lead singer for the rock band Boston, was found dead on Friday in his home in Atkinson, N.H. The Associated Press reported that a police spokesman said Mr. Delp apparently died alone and that there was no indication of foul play. The cause of death is under investigation and a report is to be released Monday, The A.P. reported. Mr. Delp was 55. … Read full obituary

Australian rock legend Billy Thorpe has died after suffering a major heart attack.

“Mr Billy Thorpe did pass away at St Vincent’s Hospital in the early hours of this morning,” St Vincent’s spokesman David Faktor told the Nine Network. … Read full obituary

Popular singer of the 1950s (e.g., “I Believe,” “Rawhide”).

Barbara McNair, the pioneering black singer-actress who hosted her own TV variety show and starred with Sidney Poitier in the early 1970s, has died, her sister said Monday. She was 72. … Read full obituary

Composer Gian Carlo Menotti, the founder of the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, died Thursday at a hospital in Monaco, his son said. He was 95. … Read full obituary

PLACENTIA, California (AP) — Brent Liles, a former bassist for the 1980s punk rock group Social Distortion, was struck and killed by a truck while riding a bicycle, authorities said Wednesday. He was 43. … Read full obituary

MISSISSAUGA, Ontario: Denny Doherty, one-quarter of the 1960s folk-rock group the Mamas and the Papas, known for their soaring harmony on hits like “California Dreamin’” and “Monday, Monday,” died Friday at 66. … Read full obituary

“Sneaky” Pete Kleinow, a steel guitar prodigy who rose to fame as one of the original members of the Flying Burrito Brothers, has died. He was 72.

Kleinow, who also worked in film as an award-winning animator and special effects artist, died Saturday at a Petaluma convalescent home near the skilled nursing facility where he had been living with Alzheimer’s disease since last year, his daughter Anita Kleinow said. … Read full obituary

ATLANTA — James Brown, the legendary singer known as the “Godfather of Soul,” has died, his agent said early Monday. He was 73. … Read full obituary

Betty Comden, whose more than 60-year collaboration with Adolph Green produced the classic New York stage musical “On the Town,” as well as “Singin’ in the Rain,” has died. She was 89. … Read full obituary

Anita O’Day, whose sassy renditions of “Honeysuckle Rose,” “Sweet Georgia Brown” and other song standards that made her one of the most respected jazz vocalists of the 1940s and ’50s, has died. She was 87. … Read full obituary

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Paul Mauriat, a French conductor whose arrangement of “Love is Blue” topped U.S. charts in the 1960s and who garnered a large following in Japan, has died. He was 81. … Read full obituary

His family tells Channel 3 News it appears died in his sleep, possibly of a heart attack. He was 40 years old. …

Gerald was the son of Eddie Levert, a founder and lead singer of the O’Jays. … Read full obituary

Fans of Australian rock music have lost one of their most revered figures, with Ian Rilen’s death from cancer yesterday.

Rilen, 58, was a founding member of Rose Tattoo and best known as the co-writer — with Pete Wells — of Bad Boy for Love. Wells died of prostate cancer in March. … Read full obituary

Tommy Johnson, the tuba player who brought the tension to John Williams’ score with that dum-dum, dum-dum sound, has died. The Los Angeles Times reports today that he passed away Oct. 16 at the age of 71. … Read full obituary

SAN DIMAS, California (AP) — Sandy West, whose ferocious drumming fueled the influential all-female ’70s rock band the Runaways, which she co-founded with Joan Jett, has died of lung cancer. She was 47. … Read full obituary

More at the official Runaways site

Freddy Fender, the “Bebop Kid” of the Texas-Mexico border who later turned his twangy tenor into the smash country ballad “Before the Next Teardrop Falls,” died Saturday. He was 69. … Read full obituary

Veteran Dobro musician Burkett Howard Graves, known as country music’s “Uncle Josh,” has died at 79, his family said Monday. … Read full obituary

Played saxophone and uttered the word “Tequila!” in the pop song “Tequila”; of complications from pneumonia, at Huntington Beach Hospital in California.