B. J. Thomas was an American singer best known for interpreting the song “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head”, a song written by by Hal David and Burt Bacharach.
Tag Archives: 1942
RIP Gene Youngblood (1942 – 2021)
Gene Youngblood is an American writer best known for his book Expanded Cinema (1970). The book is a typical product of 1960s counter-cultural utopianism.
Contrary to the usual 1960s utopianism, Youngblood’s utopianism is not focused on politics but on form.
Central to this book is the predicted advent of a new noosphere. Noosphere is a concept coined by Teilhard de Chardin (along with Vladimir Vernadsky).
RIP Norman J. Warren (1942 – 2021)
Norman J. Warren was an English film director known for such films as Satan’s Slave (1976), Prey (1977) and Terror (1978).
He is also credited with one of the first narrative sex films, Her Private Hell.
He is interviewed in the Doing Rude Things 1995 documentary from 28:45 onwards.
RIP Larry Flynt (1942 – 2021)
Larry Flynt was the publisher of American pornographic magazine Hustler, founded in 1974 in the slipstream of the sexual revolution.
I show you an interview from 2014.
In the opening splash you see — at the right hand side — the controversial cover of a woman who is fed to a meat grinder.
Flynt was a rebel. Many pornographers were. That’s what used to make pornography so interesting during the early modern period up until the sexual revolution.
RIP Len Barry (1942 – 2020)
RIP Jerry Jeff “Mr. Bojangles“ Walker (1942 – 2020)
Jerry Jeff Walker was an American musician best known for writing “Mr. Bojangles“.
Walker recorded “Mr. Bojangles” too, but when I hear that song I’m invariably only reminded of the heavily orchestrated version by the great Nina Simone.
The Nina Simone version wormed itself into my head in 2006 via the compilation Nova Classics 07 released on Radio Nova, keepers of musical taste in the early 2000s.
Nina first released on her cover album Here Comes the Sun from 1971.
RIP Mac ‘In the Ghetto’ Davis (1942 – 2020)
Mac Davis was American singer-songwriter best-known for writing “In the Ghetto“.
RIP Shere Hite (1942 – 2020)
Shere Hite (1942 – 2020) was a American-born German sex educator and feminist. Her sexological work focused primarily on female sexuality.
She is best-known for her book The Hite Report on Female Sexuality (1976) which is in several ways a successor to Masters and Johnson’s Human Sexual Response (1966) and Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953).
In this book, she permanently devaluated the coitus in favour of more attention for the clitoris.
She is the last great feminist. Perhaps only equalled by Camille Paglia (born 1947). Nancy Friday (1933 – 2017) is another famous feminist of that generation.
RIP Toots ‘Maytal’ Hibbert (1942 – 2020)
Toots Hibbert was a Jamaican singer and songwriter, leader for the band Toots & the Maytals. He is best-known for such songs as “54-46 That’s My Number” (1968), “Pressure Drop” (1970) and “Funky Kingston” (1972).
Hibbert was one of the first artists to use the word “reggae” in 1968’s “Do the Reggay”.
RIP Dobby Dobson (1942 – 2020)
Dobby Dobson was a Jamaican reggae singer and record producer.
His signature song was “Loving Pauper” (c. 1970)