In passing

Hugh Sidey, 78; Time correspondent

Washington Hugh Sidey, whose personal portraits of America’s chief executives appeared in Time magazine’s “The Presidency” column over four decades, died Monday. He was 78.

Relatives said Sidey had suffered a heart attack in Paris. He lived in suburban Potomac, Md.

Sidey, who served as Time’s White House correspondent and its Washington bureau chief, wrote “The Presidency” from 1966 to 1996. He was a contributing editor to the newsweekly at the time of his death.

Reflecting on the presidents in a 2003 interview, Sidey said: “They are not as tall or articulate as you think they should be. And they’re not super people, so that is a bit of a letdown. Then you begin to understand, though, when you write about them as I have, how vital they are to the American system.”

Beginning with John F. Kennedy, Sidey enjoyed unusual access to the presidents. Sidey was on hand for many of the triumphs and tragedies the presidents experienced.

He was in Dallas when Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, traveled extensively with Lyndon B. Johnson – whom he considered the most fascinating person he ever knew – and flew to China with Richard M. Nixon in 1972. He walked through Moscow’s Red Square with Ronald Reagan in 1988 and, last year, was aboard the plane that carried Reagan’s body to California.

Link Wray, 76; rock ‘n’ roll pioneer

Copenhagen, Denmark Link Wray, the rock guitar pioneer who gave birth to the aggressively primal sound known as the power chord on his 1958 instrumental hit “Rumble” and influenced two generations of rock guitarists, has died. He was 76.

Wray died Nov. 5 at his home in Copenhagen, Denmark, his family reported on his Web site. Although no cause of death was given, his wife, Olive, and son, Oliver, wrote that the North Carolina native’s heart was “getting tired.”

Robert Hilburn, the Los Angeles Times’ pop music critic, said that Wray “was one of the key figures who helped establish the guitar as the instrument of choice in rock.”

Indeed, the legendary three-chord riff that Wray used in “Rumble,” his signature tune and biggest seller, has reverberated through the decades.

“Without the power chord, punk rock and heavy metal would not exist,” said Dan Del Fiorentino, historian for the Museum of Making Music, in Carlsbad, Calif. Countless musicians, including Jimmy Page, Bruce Springsteen and Jeff Beck, are said to have been influenced by Wray.

Half Shawnee Indian, Wray was born in Dunn, N.C., in 1929. At age 8, a traveling guitarist named Hambone introduced him to the blues, giving him lessons on his front porch.

Wray followed up the success of “Rumble” with the more modest hits “Rawhide” (1959) and “Jack the Ripper” (1963). In recent years, his music has been featured in movies such as “Pulp Fiction,” “Independence Day” and “Desperado.”

Wray moved to Denmark in 1978 and moved into a house on an island where Hans Christian Andersen once lived.

John Elliott Jr., 84; advertising executive

Mount Kisco, N.Y. John “Jock” Elliott Jr., former chairman of the leading advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather and an authority on the history of Christmas, has died. He was 84.

Elliott died of a cerebral hemorrhage Oct. 29 at a hospital in Mount Kisco, N.Y., said his wife, Eleanor Thomas Elliott.

After heading the agency’s American operations for a decade, Elliott chaired its worldwide division from 1975 until he retired in 1982.

Under the leadership of the tough-minded ex-Marine, the agency won accounts including IBM and American Express and more than tripled its earnings, to $2 billion.

“Big ideas are so hard to recognize, so fragile, so easy to kill,” he said in 1981 when he announced his retirement. “Don’t forget that, all of you who don’t have them.”

After Elliott became an advertising executive, he decided to focus his penchant for collecting on Christmas-related ephemera. His trove included the manuscript of “The Christmas Carol” that author Charles Dickens used at public readings and the 17th-century book in which the words “merry” and “Christmas” are said to have first appeared together.

The collection of more than 3,000 pieces formed the basis of Elliott’s book “Inventing Christmas: How Our Holiday Came to Be,” published in 2002.