Word: pop
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...brief sketches that follow are meant to remind readers of the breadth and depth of pop culture, and the impact, ephemeral or lasting, made by some of actors, directors, writers, musicians and other show people who died in 2008. They deserve long goodbyes, but these haiku sendoffs will have to do. The Internet Movie Database lists more than 2,000 celebrities who got their final call last year; alas, most of them didn't make my final cut. I just wish I could say this list is as definitive as Rex Reed's, in this week's New York Observer...
...POP MUSIC...
...Stafford, 91, known as "GI Jo" for her soulful crooning of WWII hits, had a pop smash in the early '50s with You Belong to Me. She and her band-leader husband, Paul Weston, created the one of the first consciously-bad musical parody acts, the night-club duo Jonathan and Darlene Edwards. A 1960 Edwards LP won a Grammy...
...about that "half of the Kingston Trio"... When founder Dave Guard left the group in 1960, John Stewart replaced him, joining Nick Reynolds and Bob Shane. The Trio was a late-'50s chart sensation that helped establish the album, not the single, as the unit of pop music. Reviled and/or envied by purists, the group nonetheless got a myriad of kids hooked on traditional music. They were the training wheels of the folk movement, and kept wearing their smiles and striped shirts for decades as a tribute band to themselves. Reynolds was 75, Stewart...
...member of four significant folk groups: the Folksay Trio, whose version of Tom Dooley was imitated by the Kingston Trio in their first hit single; the Tarriers (a threesome that included the young Alan Arkin), whose The Banana Boat Song, aka Day-O, was a top-of-the-pops calypso hit; the Weavers, with Darling replacing Pete Seeger in 1958; and the Rooftop Singers, which had a No.1 pop hit with Darling's 12-string-guitar arrangement of Walk Right In. One way Darling wasn't a regimental folkie: his politics were libertarian, of the Ayn Rand stripe...