In Memoriam|

Ellyn Rucker, Fb, 03/02/16: Computers. mine has been quiet for a week. I haven’t been able to express my deep sadness regarding Jack MacCutchan’s passing Monday night. He was the gold standard for being the best friend you ever had. Funny, kind, considerate, always there for people, universally loved… oh, and he lived to play drums, and to sing, and to talk about music. Loved to share that love. Soulful, wonderful human being. We’ll miss you, JackieMac, more than you’ll ever know.

Chuck Abernathy: To yet another musician: Rejoice in Paradise. I know the band is cookin’ wherever you are.

Julie Fredericksen: Ellyn, thank you for sharing those special and beautiful memories of Jack. A beautiful Soul Swingin’ in “The Big Band in The Sky

Nancy Zevely: Thanks for sharing Ellyn. So honored to have sat in with him the night before at the Crown, so honored to have known him – he was definitely a prince and a gem and will be greatly missed.

Terri Jo Jenkins: I’m shocked! I didn’t know. He was so sweet to me when I was working at Dazzle. This makes me so sad.

Jude DeLorca: Oh no! Just heard him up in Golden – sweetest guy ever and he loved his fellow musicians … and the beat! To be sorely missed.

Mark Diamond: I got to know Jack during the Shakespeare’s gig days. You are right on every count! He will be missed.

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JOEY + RORY’S JOEY MARTIN FEEK DIES AT 40 AFTER BATTLE WITH CANCER

The country music community is in mourning following the death of singer-songwriter Joey Martin Feek, who died after a battle with cervical cancer, according to a post on Joey + Rory’s Facebook page. She was 40.

A native of Indiana, the singer made the move to Nashville in the late 1990s, where she met songwriter Rory Feek — who would become her husband (in June 2002) and then duet partner. She released a solo album, Strong Enough to Cry, on the Giantslayer label in 2005. However, as time progressed, the two began to work together more and more — eventually performing on the CMT show Can You Duet? in 2008. A third-place finish on the program earned them a recording contract with Sugar Hill Records.

Their first album as a duo, The Life of a Song, was released in October 2008 and peaked at No. 10 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart. The first single from the project, the infectious “Cheater, Cheater,” garnered attention at radio as well, peaking at No. 30 on the singles chart. The video featured a guest cameo from Naomi Judd, one of the celebrity judges on the CMT series.

The success of their music led to winning top new vocal duo at the 2010 Academy of Country Music Awards. Their sophomore album, simply titled Album Number Two, also hit the top 10 on the albums chart upon its release later that year, though they never hit the top 40 on the airplay lists again. In fact, eight of their albums made the chart, with the most recent being Hymns, which debuted at No. 1 on Top Country Albums and Top Christian Albums.

“I communicated to my wife, Joey, the good [chart] news about ‘her record,'” Rory Feek told Billboard at the time. “I call it her project, because the Hymns album is one that she has always wanted to make, and she’s worked so hard to make it happen, in spite of the difficult circumstances she’s facing. Her response, through tears, was, ‘No, honey, this is God’s record. He’s gonna be the one that gets all the glory.’ And she’s right. Only God could make something like this happen.”

The duo also made a name for themselves through their countless TV appearances, including their own weekly music program on the RFD-TV network and a successful string of commercials for Overstock.com. Both were filmed at their home, located about an hour south of Nashville. It was just a few miles from there that the couple established their own restaurant, Marcy Jo’s, which Feek said was a true labor of love for the couple. In fact, visitors to the eatery might find themselves waited on by the singer herself.

“We opened this little place down by our farmhouse about three years ago,” she said in 2011. “It was at a time when I had nothing going on in music, and we weren’t even singing together. It was a place that his sister Marcy wanted to open up — it was her dream. It’s been neat to feel a community around you that didn’t exist before. It was just an empty building. We opened it up wanting to know who our neighbors were. We’ve been down there for about eight years, and we only knew about four people. We opened the doors, and hundreds of people start showing up. Then, when the TV show hit, people from everywhere wanted to come and see our little slice of heaven.”

The singer had been waging a courageous battle against cervical cancer since 2014. She underwent surgery for the disease that summer, but it returned in 2015. After undergoing another round of treatments, tests showed that the cancer had spread in October, prompting the couple to stop all treatments. On November 9, it was announced that Hospice care had been called in for the family following a brief hospitalization while visiting family in Indiana the week before.

Reflecting on their sometimes unique musical style, Feek said in 2012, “We don’t ever take ourselves too seriously. We’re human, and just like anybody, we’re going to make mistakes. But, at the end of the day, we’re just trying to be honest with who we are and ourselves — to keep our marriage intact, and to go down this path together and enjoy the ride while we have the opportunity to do so.”

Music was definitely something that helped to ease her troubles. Her last project with her husband was a Gospel standards project, for which no release date has been set. In a previous interview, Feek said that she was grateful for the stories fans would tell the couple about how their music affected them — even if the songs weren’t radio hits. “Usually those songs turn out to be a ballad or deeper, and for whatever reason, they’re not exposed to them through the radio. But, people pick up on them because it touches them so deeply. It affects them. To me, music has always been a healing tool. If you have a bad day, you just turn the radio on, have a good cry to a great song. It’s going to be ok. It’s all going to be alright.”

The singer is survived by her husband, daughter Indiana, and two step-children, Hopie and Heidi. Arrangements are pending.

http://www.aol.com/article/2016/03/04/joey-rorys-joey-martin-feek-dies-at-40-after-battle-with-canc/

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WORLD RENOWNED BEATLES’ PRODUCER GEORGE MARTIN DIES AT 90

LONDON – George Martin, the Beatles’ urbane producer who guided, assisted and stood aside through the band’s swift, historic transformation from rowdy club act to musical and cultural revolutionaries, has died, his management said Wednesday. He was 90.

“We can confirm that Sir George Martin passed away peacefully at home yesterday evening,” Adam Sharp, a founder of CA Management, said Wednesday in an email.

He called Martin “one of music’s most creative talents and a gentleman to the end.”

He said Martin started producing records for EMI’s Parlophone label in 1950, working on comedy recordings with Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and others. Martin had his first No. 1 hit in 1961 with The Temperance Seven and, with The Beatles, “helped revolutionize the art of popular music recording.”

“In a career that spanned seven decades he was an inspiration to many and is recognised globally as one of music’s most creative talents,” Sharp said. Too modest to call himself the “Fifth Beatle,” a title many felt he deserved, the tall, elegant Londoner produced some of the most popular and influential albums of modern times – “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” ”Revolver,” ”Rubber Soul,” ”Abbey Road” – elevating rock LPs from ways to cash in on hit singles to art forms, “concepts.” He won six Grammys and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in 1999. Three years earlier, he was knighted.

Martin both witnessed and enabled the extraordinary changes of the Beatles and of the 1960s. From a raw first album in 1962 that took just a day to make, to the months-long production of “Sgt. Pepper,” the Beatles advanced by quantum steps as songwriters and sonic explorers. They not only composed dozens of classics, from “She Loves You” to “Hey Jude,” but turned the studio into a wonderland of tape loops, multi-tracking, unpredictable tempos, unfathomable segues and kaleidoscopic montages. Never again would rock music be defined by two-minute love songs or guitar-bass-drums arrangements. Lyrically and musically, anything became possible.

“Once we got beyond the bubblegum stage, the early recordings, and they wanted to do something more adventurous, they were saying, ‘What can you give us?'” Martin told The Associated Press in 2002. “And I said, ‘I can give you anything you like.'”

Read the whole story at:
http://www.10tv.com/content/stories/2016/03/09/ap-beatles-producer-george-martin-dies.html

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Game Of Thrones Fan Confusion Over George Martin’s Death

The death of legendary Beatles producer George Martin has caused not a little consternation among ‘Game of Thrones’ fans mistaking him for the fantasy series writer.

George R.R. Martin is alive and well and holed up in Sante Fe, penning his next book set in the fictional world of Westeros.

But even with the missing ‘RR’, many have taken to Twitter to share both their condolences, and also fears that that the ‘GOT’ series will now never see its conclusion.

‘Game of Thrones’ returns to screens next month. Check out the first proper trailer [in the original article].

By Ben Arnold

https://www.yahoo.com/news/game-of-thrones-fan-confusion-over-george-martins-103217202.html

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Other Notable Musicians’ Deaths…

March 2016

9: Naná Vasconcelos, 71, Brazilian percussionist and vocalist, lung cancer.

8: Ross Hannaford, 65, Australian musician (Daddy Cool), cancer; Andrew Loomis, 54, American rock drummer (Dead Moon) (death announced on this date); Sir George Martin, 90, British record producer (The Beatles), composer, arranger and engineer.

7: Koyo Bala, 32, South African musician, anal cancer; Bruce Geduldig, 63, American experimental synth musician (Tuxedomoon).

6: Aaron Huffman, 43, American rock bassist (Harvey Danger) and art director (The Stranger), respiratory failure; Kalabhavan Mani, 45, Indian actor and singer, liver cirrhosis and methyl alcohol poisoning; Ireng Maulana, 71, Indonesian jazz guitarist, heart attack.

5: Nikolaus Harnoncourt, 86, Austrian conductor and cellist (Vienna Symphony), founder of Concentus Musicus Wien; Chip Hooper, 53, American musical agent (Dave Matthews, Phish), cancer.

4: Bankroll Fresh, 28, American rapper, shot; Joey Feek, 40, American country singer (Joey + Rory), cervical cancer; Ekrem Jevric, 54, Montenegrin singer, heart attack; Zhou Xiaoyan, 98, Chinese vocal pedagogue and classical soprano.

3: Gwyneth George, 95, British concert cellist and music academic; John Thomas, 63, Welsh guitarist (Budgie).

2: (none listed)

1: Gayle McCormick, 67, American singer (Smith), cancer.

Although not directly music related, we owe a LOT to this guy…
3/05: Ray Tomlinson, 74, American computer programmer, invented system to send first email and assigned use of @ sign, heart attack.

From http://www.wikipedia.com

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