In passing
Shirley Horn, 71; jazz singer, pianist
Washington Shirley Horn, the Grammy-winning singer and pianist whose richly expressive vocal style made her one of the most popular performers in jazz, died Thursday night in her hometown of Washington. She was 71.
Horn had been ill for some time. She lost her right foot to diabetes in 2001 and later much of her right leg. She had also battled breast cancer and arthritis over the last few years.
“We’ve lost the last of the great ones from that generation,” said composer Johnny Mandel, who arranged her albums “Here’s to Life” and “You’re My Thrill.” “I think she was the best singer there was.”
Horn studied music at Howard University’s School for Gifted Children. She was a devotee of Rachmaninoff and Debussy but also favored jazz greats Erroll Garner, Ahmad Jamal and Oscar Peterson. She switched to jazz when she was 17 and won a scholarship to the Juilliard School of Music, but had to decline for financial reasons. She went instead to Howard.
In 1954, Horn put together her first trio. To avoid the rigors of the road, she generally confined her performances to the Washington and Baltimore area.
Her first album, “Embers and Ashes,” recorded in 1961 on a small label called Stereo-Craft, caught the attention of the trumpeter Miles Davis, who insisted that she come to New York and open for him at the Village Vanguard. Quincy Jones, who caught one of the Vanguard shows, became an admirer of her music and produced two of her albums.
Horn was nominated for eight Grammy Awards. In 1988, she won the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Performance for her tribute recording to Miles Davis.
Other honors include a 2003 Jazz at Lincoln Center Award for Artistic Excellence and was named a 2005 NEA Jazz Master, the nation’s highest honor for jazz composers and musicians. In 2004 she was honored at the Kennedy Center with an all-star concert.
Horn’s husband, Shepherd Deering, and their daughter, Rainy, survive her as well as several grandchildren.
Alexander Yakovlev, 81; Gorbachev reform guru
Moscow Alexander Yakovlev, a strong advocate of democracy and human rights who crafted many of the perestroika policies instituted by former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, died Tuesday in Moscow. He was 81.
Hard-liners blamed Yakovlev, the philosopher-ideologist of Gorbachev’s reforms, for the Soviet Union’s 1991 disintegration and for the defeat of Marxism-Leninism in its global struggle with capitalism.
During the 1990s, he worked to awaken the Russian people to the crimes of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, and in recent years he accused Russian President Vladimir V. Putin of rolling back democratic reforms in a drift toward political authoritarianism.
Yakovlev’s death, of an unspecified illness, “is a great loss for all those devoted to the cause of democracy and freedom in Russia,” Gorbachev said in a statement.
Gordon Lee, 71; actor in ‘Little Rascals’
Minneapolis Gordon Lee, the chubby child actor who played Spanky McFarland’s little brother, “Porky,” in “Little Rascals” comedies, has died. He was 71.
Lee died Oct. 16 in a Minneapolis nursing home after battling lung and brain cancer, said Janice McClain, his partner of 13 years.
Lee played one of the younger members in the “Our Gang” shorts in the 1930s, appearing in more than 40 of them from 1935 to 1939. The comedies, produced by Hal Roach, became known as “The Little Rascals” when shown on TV in the 1950s.
In a 1998 interview with the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, the Texas-born Lee said he was 2 years old when his mother sent his picture to studio executives who were seeking an actor to play McFarland’s brother.
“We were on the next train to L.A. and I had a contract within a few days,” Lee said. “Fat kid got lucky.”
Lee told friends his career ended when a growth spurt made him thinner. “They wanted Porky to be a chunky fellow, so they looked for someone else,” McClain said.
As an adult, Lee was a schoolteacher, living in Colorado for a time. He moved to Minnesota after he retired to be closer to his only son, Douglas, said a friend, Tracy Tolzmann. In recent years, Lee sold autographed photos of himself as Porky, Tolzmann and McClain said.