Ghédalia Tazartès was a French musician known for his guttural singing.
He is on the famous Nurse with Wound list.
Tag Archives: 1947
RIP Guem (1947 – 2021)
Guem was an Algerian musician, composer and dancer.
Guem is best known for his cult dancefloor recording “Le Serpent” (1978).
“Le Serpent” is a sibling to “Jingo” (1959) by Candido Camero, “New Bell” (1972) by Manu Dibango and “Road Close” (1984) by Tony Allen, who all died last year.
RIP J. J. Lionel (1947 – 2020)
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 Kevin Rafferty (1947 – 2020)
Kevin Rafferty was an American filmmaker, best known for his 1982 documentary The Atomic Cafe.
The Atomic Cafe is a portrait of the United States in the 1950s, especially the nuclear threat and arms race of the Cold War.
The film makes use of archival government footage and propaganda.
RIP Keith Tippett (1947 – 2020)
Keith Tippett was a British jazz pianist and composer who appeared and recorded in many settings, including a duet with Stan Tracey, duets with his wife Julie Driscoll), solo performances, and as a bandleader, and appeared on three King Crimson albums.
YouTube has the full album of You Are Here… I Am There (1970)
RIP Florian ‘Kraftwerk’ Schneider (1947 – 2020)
Florian Schneider was a German musician, known for his work with Kraftwerk.
Of interest in my book is the connection of Kraftwerk to Afro-American music as noted in “Planet Rock”.
Jon Savage noted in his piece “Machine Soul: A History Of Techno” (1993) that:
“In 1981, Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force, together with producer Arthur Baker, paid tribute [to Kraftwerk with] “Planet Rock,” which used the melody from “Trans-Europe Express” over the rhythm from “Numbers.” In the process they created electro and moved rap out of the Sugarhill age.”
Simon Reynolds in Energy Flash (1998) similarly remarked:
“In New York, the German band almost single-handedly sired the electro movement: Afrika Bambaataa and Soulsonic Force’s 1982 smash “Planet Rock” stole its doomy melody from “Trans-Europe Express” and its beatbox rhythm from Kraftwerk’s 1981 track “Numbers.””–Generation Ecstasy (1998) by Simon Reynolds
Apparently, none of Kraftwerk’s material was actually sampled, all was emulated.
RIP Millie “My Boy Lollipop” Small (1947 – 2020)
Millie Small was the singer of “My Boy Lollipop” (1964), her only hit.
She was the first Jamaican artist to break through to an international audience.
Did this mean international recognition for ska and reggae?
Well, not exactly, “My Boy Lollipop” was considered a novelty song rather than ska or reggae.
Thus reggae’s invasion into the mainstream actually only began that same year in the United Kingdom with songs such as “Al Capone” (1964) and “Guns of Navarone” (1964).
But in the United States, the wait was for 1969 with “The Israelites” (1968) to give reggae international repute and recognition.
RIP Ryo Kawasaki (1947 – 2020)
Ryo Kawasaki was a Japanese jazz fusion guitarist, composer and band leader of international acclaim.
His best known compositions are “Bamboo Child” (1976), “Trinkets and Things” (1978) and “Hawaiian Caravan” (1982).
Stanislaw Fernandes did the artwork for the album Juice (1976).
RIP Stuart Gordon (1947 – 2020)
Stuart Gordon is a film director is best-known for his Re-Animator (1985), based on H. P. Lovecraft’s “Herbert West—Reanimator” (1922).
The story starts with these lines ominous lines, in keeping with Lovecraft’s sinister oeuvre:
“Of Herbert West, who was my friend in college and in after life, I can speak only with extreme terror. This terror is not due altogether to the sinister manner of his recent disappearance, but was engendered by the whole nature of his life-work, and first gained its acute form more than seventeen years ago, when we were in the third year of our course at the Miskatonic University Medical School in Arkham. While he was with me, the wonder and diabolism of his experiments fascinated me utterly, and I was his closest companion. Now that he is gone and the spell is broken, the actual fear is greater. Memories and possibilities are ever more hideous than realities.”
H. P. Lovecraft’s “Herbert West—Reanimator” (1922)
The television documentary series Incredibly Strange Film Show did a special on Gordon in 1989 where they interviewed him in the La Brea Tar Pits
RIP Flavio Bucci (1947 – 2020)
Flavio Bucci was an Italian actor known in my canon for his tiny part in the metafilm Closed Circuit (1978).
I wrote about that film here.
In that film Flavio Bucci sports thick glasses and plays the part of a nerdy sociologist who takes notes of the audience’s reactions during the screening of the film.
Afterwards he is interrogated by the police. Has he seen anything which can solve the murder of a man in the audience by a gun man IN the film?
You can see Mr. Bucci from 27:20 onwards.
Mr. Bucci also played in the sex comedy Gegè Bellavita (1978) which can be found in full on YouTube.