Singer-Songwriter Roger Whittaker, 1936-2023
Roger Whittaker, a Nairobi, Kenya-born and raised British singer-songwriter and musician, died September 13, 2023 at the age of 87. A resident of southern France, where he and his wife Natalie had retired to in 2012, Whittaker was an internationally acclaimed artist whose career spanned six decades. His music was a mix of folk and easy listening-style pop songs, both original compositions and choice covers.
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Singer-Songwriter Jim Post, 1939-2022
Jim Post, a singer-songwriter who was a fixture on the folk music scene in Chicago for more than 50 years, died on September 14, 2022 following a long illness.
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David Olney, Beloved Singer-Songwriter, 1948-2020
David Olney, a revered folk and Americana singer-songwriter, died after suffering an apparent heart attack on Saturday night, Jan. 18, while onstage at the 30A Songwriters Festival in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida. During a musical career that spanned more than four decades, Olney, 71, recorded and released more than 20 albums and had his songs covered or co-written by such other notable artists as Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Laurie Lewis, Del McCoury, and Linda Ronstadt.
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Remembering Rosalie Sorrels, 1933-2017
Rosalie Sorrels, an Idaho songbird who wrote heartfelt, expressive, often deeply personal songs of love and loss, loneliness, poverty and social injustice, and sung them in her fluid, mellifluous yet sometimes heartbreaking voice, passed away June 11 at the Reno, Nevada home of her daughter, where she had been living for the past several years.
[To read an article about the much-admired singer-songwriter and storyteller, from which the above is excerpted, click on the headline.]
Remembering Oscar Brand, 1920-2016
Oscar Brand may well have been the first folksinger and songwriter who I saw perform live when I was a youngster. My parents brought me to see him at a local library on Long Island, NY, where Brand, who died of pneumonia Sept. 30 at age 96, also lived with his family. Over the years, I saw him perform in concert and at festivals and special events many times -- most recently at the opening reception for the “Folk City” exhibit at The Museum of the City of New York last year.
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Theodore Bikel, 1924-2015
Acclaimed actor and folksinger Theodore Bikel, best known for his performance as Tevye in the Broadway hit Fiddler on the Roof, died at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, California on July 21, 2015. He was 91.
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Remembering Jean Ritchie, 1922-2015
Jean Ritchie, the Kentucky-born folksinger, songwriter and song collector who helped to popularize hundreds of traditional Appalachian ballads and spur the so-called folk revival of the mid-20th century in the U.S., died June 1, 2015 at her home in Berea, KY. Ritchie, 92, was surrounded by members of her family, who sang at her bedside during her last hours.
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Remembering Richie Havens, 1941-2013
I wasn’t at Max Yasgur’s Farm in 1969 when Richie Havens impressed throngs of people at the Woodstock festival. I was just a youngster then. But I did get to hear him up close and personal in the late 1970s at my alma mater, Huntington High School, in Huntington, New York. He was performing in the auditorium, along with Harry Chapin, at one of the late singer-songwriter’s many benefit concerts. Richie joined his fellow Brooklyn NY-born folksinger in heaven or wherever kindhearted gentle souls go, on April 22, after suffering a heart attack at home in Jersey City, New Jersey. He was 72.
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Jack Hardy, Singer-Songwriter and Fast Folk Founder, 1947-2011
Jack Hardy, a singer-songwriter who played a pivotal role in the New York folk/songwriting scene for several decades and influenced and inspired many other songwriters, died on March 11. His death at age 63 sent shockwaves through the folk community, with many posting short remembrances and tributes on Facebook -- the social networking platform.
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