RIP Olivia de Havilland (1916 – 2020)

Olivia de Havilland was a French-British-American actress.

She is best known for her part in Gone with the Wind (1939).

However, I remember her most fondly for her part in the psychological horror movie Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). In that film she is the evil Miriam Deering.

Above is the scene in Hush … Hush in which Olivia and Bette Davis get rid of the supposedly dead body.

RIP Brigid Berlin (1939 – 2020)

Brigid Berlin was an American artist and Warhol superstar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4N4y03nUys
Andy Warhol and Brigid Berlin are interviewed on the process of creating Electric Chair and Flowers

After moving to Hotel Chelsea, Brigid Berlin took on the nickname Brigid Polk because of her habit of giving out ‘pokes’, injections of Vitamin B and amphetamines provided to her by the many Dr. Feelgoods New York sported at the time. One of these Dr. Feelgoods was Max Jacobson.

RIP J. J. Lionel (1947 – 2020)

La danse des canards” (1981)

J. J. Lionel was a Belgian musician whose song “La danse des canards” (1981) is one of the best-selling singles ever in France.

There is popular music and and then there is “danse des canards” popular, almost as popular as “Hava Nagila”.  

Both are songs everyone knows but no one can remember where it originates.

RIP Ennio Morricone (1928 – 2020)

“Ma Non Troppo Erotico” (1971)

Ennio Morricone was an Italian composer, a veritable monument.

He composed over 400 scores for cinema and television, as well as over 100 classical works.

“Dies Irae Psichedelico” (1968)

He is best known for the characteristic sparse and memorable soundtracks of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns: “Man with a Harmonica” from Once Upon a Time in the West and the theme to “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”. The first has a haunting harmonica and the second an immediately recognizable flute/whistle.

When I compiled the Jahsonic 1000, I also included “Dies Irae Psichedelico” (1968) and “Ma Non Troppo Erotico” (1971).

RIP Max Crook (1936 – 2020)

Max Crook was an American musician whose name is virtually unknown.

“Runaway” keyboard solo.

Some research yields his co-authorship of “Runaway” (1961), the Del Shannon song.

In that song he also plays the keyboard solo.

That solo was played on a self-invented electric keyboard called the “Maximillian” which was based the clavioline, which was in turn a variation on the Musitron.