Any Major Dude With Half A Heart

RCA Studios, New York. Monday, 2 July 1956. Elvis turned up for his third and final recording session there to lay down the tracks for “Hound Dog”, the song’s eventual b-side, “Don’t Be Cruel”, and the ballad “Any Way You Want Me”.

By now, Elvis had become confident enough to take charge of the session, for all intents and purposes acting as the producer. He had decided which songs to record, and would run through as many takes as necessary for the perfect recording. Occasionally, when a backing musician would make a mistake, he would sing a note out of key or commit another error, forcing another take. In the seven-hour session, 31 takes of Hound Dog were recorded (and 28 of Don’t Be Cruel). Elvis listened to them all, narrowed down the choices. Eventually, he settled for take 18 of Hound Dog (some sources say it was number 28, others yet suggest the final one).

Before the session, the story goes, RCA had procured the first recording of the Leiber/Stoller composition, Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton’s blues rendition from 1953, to know their star was planning to record. Everybody was aghast: they thought it was horrible, and were unable to comprehend why Elvis would want to record that, as Gordon Stoker of the vocal backing group The Jordanaires later recalled. Stoker and the other puzzled people in the studio obviously did not watch TV.

Almost a month before the recording session, on 5 June, Elvis had performed the song, hip-swivellingly, on The Milton Berle Show, more or less the way he was going to record it on 2 July. DJ Fontana had already introduced the drum roll between the verses, and Scotty Moore the guitar solo. He performed the song again on TV the day before the recording session: the performance on The Steve Allen Show when, wearing a tuxedo, Presley had to sing the song to a bemused, top-hatted basset hound. Elvis was a good sport about it, at one point even laughing at the absurd set-up. He later recalled it as the most peculiar experience of his career—and that presumably includes all those bizarre movies. The Berle performance, seen by a reported 40 million people, had created a storm of protest by the guardians of morality at Elvis’ “vulgarity”. Could anybody really have been so oblivious as to regard Rainey’s record as a blueprint, as if Elvis had no idea what to do with the song?

The truth is that Elvis didn’t base his version on Big Mama Thornton at all. In fact, the song had crossed the tracks within weeks of Thornton’s record, with versions by country acts such as Eddie Hazelwood, Betsy Gay, Bob Wills, Jack Turner and Billy Starr. But it was a 1955 cover by Freddie Bell and the Bellboys which provided the template for Elvis’ interpretation. Elvis had seen the Italo-American band during his discouraging concert engagement in Vegas in April/May 1956. Having ascertained that Bell wouldn’t mind, Elvis quickly included their reworked “Hound Dog” in his setlist.

Elvis probably was aware of Thornton’s version, and perhaps heard some of the country covers that had been released; one source says Elvis was familiar with in 1953. But Elvis’ “Hound Dog” is entirely a cover of the Bellboys’ template, incorporating their sound and modified lyrics (“Cryin’ all the time” for “Snoopin’ round my door”, “You ain’t never caught a rabbit, and you ain’t no friend of mine” for “You can wag your tail, but I ain’t gonna feed you no more” and so on). Happily Elvis dispensed with the lupine howls. What he produced was arguably the first ever punk song.

Bell and his band enjoyed a mostly undistinguished recording career, with only one real hit, “Giddy Up A Ding Dong”, which was much bigger in Europe than it was in the US, in 1956. Adapted lyrics notwithstanding, Bell received no writing credit for Elvis’ “Hound Dog”. The writing credit remained entirely with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who were still R&B-obsessed teenagers when in 1952 they were commissioned by the producer Johnny Otis to write a song for Big Mama Thornton. They did so in 15 minutes. Otis claimed co-authorship, and his co-credit appeared on the label of the Thornton single. Leiber & Stoller fought him in court, and won. Thornton’s recording became a #1 hit on the R&B charts in 1953. Her 12-bar blues inspired a plagiarised response song, which turned out to be the first ever record released by Sun Records, Sam Phillips’ label which would go on to discover Elvis.

Three years after Thornton’s hit, Stoller honeymooned on board of the sinking Andrea Doria. His life was spared. Returning to New York, he was greeted at the pier by Leiber with the news that “Hound Dog” had become a smash hit. “Mama Thornton?” Stoller asked. “No, some white kid named Elvis Presley,” replied Leiber.

The songwriters, R&B purists both, resented Elvis’ version. When, inevitably, they were commissioned to write for Elvis a year later, for the Jailhouse Rock film, they were not particularly happy. As a form of revenge, Leiber wrote for Elvis to sing this line in the title track: “You’re the cutest little jailbird I ever did see.” The prison in Jailhouse Rock was not co-ed. When they finally met Elvis, the songwriters realised that Elvis was a kindred spirit who genuinely shared their love for R&B, and they became good friends. Stoller even appeared in the film, as a piano player.

There have been many cover versions of “Hound Dog”, drawing from both Thornton’s and Presley’s templates (but not from the country versions that came after the former and before the latter). The division is fairly predictably between those who are ejecting a freeloader and those who note in the titular canine an Elmer Fuddian rate of failure in hunting down rabbits.

Blues aficionadoes like Eric Clapton will opt for the Big Mama original, with its coherent lyrics in which the term “hound dog” serves as a euphemism for something quite rude — “something like motherfucker”, according to Leiber. The Elvis fans tend to pay tribute to his doggerel version — and to him. In his live version John Lennon drawls “Elvis, I love ya”. The Rolling Stones in their horrible 1978 live version from Memphis provide an example of when a tribute is exactly the opposite.

Jerry Lee Lewis borrows from Elvis’ sound but goes with Thornton’s lyrics. Conversely, blues master Albert King’s version is melodically closer to Thornton, but uses the Presley lyrics. And the Everly Brothers employ a martial beat.

Pat Boone, on an Elvis tribute album whose cover references the gold suit sleeve, croons to a pseudo baroque backing before shifting gear into what might be called an easy listening rock & roll groove which even by 1963 would have sounded hopelessly dated. At one point Patrick sings one of the aggressively ungrammatical lines of the Presley version, and then “corrects” it: “You have not never caught a rabbit and you aren’t no friend of mine.” One suspects that Boone did not cherish the song. Rockin’ Rocky Rockwell also betrayed no fondness for the song in what appears to be a mocking take on the Lawrence Welk Show in 1956. Chubby Checker’s Hound Dog is, obviously, “twisting all the time”.

If the twisting and surfing versions provide a time capsule, then so might the 1977 version by the Puhdys, East Germany’s leading rock band at the time. One might imagine Erich Honecker and Leonid Brezhnev boogying along to it after a hard day of watching goose-stepping soldiers and interminable processions of tanks on the International Day of Glorious Proletarian Combine Harvester Soviet Friendship Parade.

Obviously Shakin’ Stevens did a version, and does well with a rough-vocaled uptempo boogie treatment, also from 1977. T. Rex’s outtake came out only in 1993; I don’t know when it was recorded, but it regrettably defies all glam expectations as Bolan comes across all whiney folk singer with “Hound Dog”.

Sigue Sigue Sputnik did their version in 2001, performing it in the way their 1980s incarnation might have expected music to sound like in the year 2000, while Tom Jones’ take sounds exactly as you’d think it would, as do both Jimi Hendrix versions sound as you might imagine them to, even if they are very different from one another (1969’s “Hound Dog Blues” features Traffic’s Chris Woods on sax).

Among the best re-imaging is, surprisingly, James Taylor’s 2009 take. I rather like Betty Everett’s soul cover (like Taylor’s, using Thornton lyrics) from 1964’s It’s In His Kiss LP, or the burning southern soul track by Ruby Andrews, whose invitation to “wag your tail” might mean exactly what we think it does. But the best version of “Hound Dog” is the one which Elvis Presley recorded that summer’s day in 1956 in New York, take number 18.

And count the number of versions in which some barking, woofing or howling takes place — starting with the original.

Big Mama Thornton (1953) • Billy Starr (1953) • Eddie Hazelwood (1953) • Betsy Gay (1953) • Jack Turner (1953) • Little Esther (Phillips, 1953) • Freddie Bell & the Bellboys (1956) • Elvis Presley (Milton Berle Show, June 5, 1956) •  Elvis Presley (Steve Allen Show, July 1, 1956) • Elvis Presley (1956) • Rockin’ Rocky Rockwell (1956) • Gene Vincent and The Blue Caps (1956) • Jimmy Breedlove (1958) • Chubby Checker (1960) • Sammy Davis Jr (as part of a medley with “What’d I Say, 1961) • Don Lang & The Twisters (1962) •  Pat Boone (1963) • Betty Everett (1964) • The Surfaris (1964) • Little Richard (1964) • Big Mama Thornton with Buddy Guy (1965) • The Easybeats (1966) • Chuck Jackson (1966) • Duffy’s Nucleus (1967) • Jimi Hendrix Experience (1967) • Jimi Hendrix (as Hound Dog Blues, 1969) • Albert King (1969) • Ruby Andrews (1972) • Conway Twitty (1972) • John Lennon (live 1972) • John Entwistle (1973) • Jerry Lee Lewis (1974) • Elvis Presley (live in Chicago, November 1976) • Puhdys (1977) • Shakin’ Stevens (1977) • The Rolling Stones (live in Memphis, 1978) • Sha-Na-Na (1978) • Scorpions (1978)• James Booker (1982) • Link Wray (1982) • Junior Wells (1983) • Tales Of Terror (1984) • Hugo Strasser und sein Tanzorchester (1978) • Lonnie Mack (as Hound Dog Man, with Stevie Ray Vaughan Man, 1985) • The Delmonas (1986) • Arthur Brown (1988) • Eric Clapton (1989) • Jeff Beck (1992) • Eddy Clearwater (1992) • Koko Taylor (1993) • T.Rex (released 1993) • Carl Perkins (1994) • Bryan Adams (1994) • Susan Tedeschi (1995) • Tom Jones (1999) • The Residents (2000) • Etta James (2000) • Status Quo (2002) • Sigue Sigue Sputnik (2002) • Robert Palmer (2003) • The Stray Cats (2004) • Macy Gray (2004) • James Taylor (2009)

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(PW in comments)

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More Song Swarms

Their goals might cause you distress, if they are scored against your team. But no torment the stars of football (or soccer, as some call it) might inflict upon you can compare to the furious torture I am unleashing with this mix of unmitigated crap. And yet, if you are football fan, you might actually want to hear it.

In fact, you should. Art consists not only of beauty, but also expresses the dissonant dystopian future/present in which we are caught. And few do so more eloquently than football legend Johan Cruyff in his oompah-band stomper “Oei Oei Oei (Dat was me weer een loei)”, for in no language can you locate greater dystopian dissonance than in Dutch. Be careful, you might sing along with the honey-voiced Johan.

On July 7 the world will observe the 40th anniversary of West Germany beating the Netherlands 2-1 in the World Cup final (and let’s put to rest the legend of lucky Germany: in the second half they had a clear goal disallowed and an obvious penalty denied. So, 4-1). The winner was scored in the 43^rd minute by Gerd Müller, the greatest goal scorer ever, who anticipated his subsequential valiance in flat monotone in the same year of Cruyff’s aural assault.

The captain in 1974 was Franz Beckenbauer, who stayed clear from footballing sentiment in his heavy-accented 1966 Schlager hit. It nevertheless kicks off with the rhythmic clapping which seems to begin every football song of the era, just in case we mistake Franz for a serious singer. Which, it must be said, is fair enough.

More lately, players have turned to hip hop and dance music, usually with the help of some friends. France’s Karim Benzema did so to best effect in 2010, using the platform with French rapper Rohff to slag off previous France coach Raymond Domenech and express his dislike for Barcelona.

Not everybody shares Benzema’s bad-minding ways. On his record with something called Brings, Germany’s Lukas Podolski is asked whether he can sing. Podi responds, bright as a flash, by asking whether Brings can play football. It’s a relevant point to raise, in the event that Brings ever try to enter the world of professional football. The song is quite deplorable, so perhaps Brings might indeed be urged to seek a different career.

Unbelievably, some footballers genuinely thought that they had the talent to contribute to the world of pop in ways beyond the disposable arena of novelty. Kevin Keegan, with his Smokie-produced effort comes closest, but there is a reason why the whole world didn’t luvv it, just luvved it.

The contributions by Ruud Gullit (that cover!),  Andy Cole (doing bad things to the Gap Band) and Ian Wright are pretty dismal, but none was as appalling as Glenn Hoddle & Chris Waddle’s UK #12 hit “Diamond Lights”, a mulletted horror so offensive I felt compelled to exclude it from this CD-R timed mix for reasons of lacking in quality, for crying out loud (it’s there as a “bonus”, as is the worthy anti-apartheid “South Africa”, which Gullit recorded with reggae outfit Revelation Time).

Cameroon legend Roger Milla does a straight song, about fatherhood. He has no discernible musical talent, however; the whole debacle is mitigated by the vocals of the talented Senegalese singer Julia Sarr. This was a single from Milla’s album Saga Africa. Imagine what the rest is like!

In the late 1980s, John Barnes was British football’s King of Rap. To this day, British hip hop fans whisper in hushed tones: “Before Dre, before Pac, before Snoop, before MC Hammer, there was Liverpool attacking midfield sensation John Barnes.” Barnes rapped on the notorious “Anfield Rap”, which reached #3 in the UK charts, in anticipation of Liverpool’s defeat to AFC Wimbledon in the FA Cup final. Britain remembered, and in 1990 he was allowed to rap on New Order’s World Cup song “World In Motion”. He gave us what one night describe as a sing-song accumulation of words which is a lot worse than the middle-age white dudes’ conception of rap as perpetrated in the box-office hit Three Men and A Little Lady of the same year.

What John Barnes could do, Paul Gascoigne thought he could do better. So he ventured into the sidestreet as rapping icon Gazza, and enriched the body of hip hop with the incisive social commentary of “Gazza’s Rap”. The backing track exploits every cliché of early 1990s dance music; Gazza’s rapping draws its influence from Kenny Everett’s “Snot Rap” from 1983.

One can laugh at almost every vocally-disoriented, good-sense-deprived footballer featured here, but Clint Dempsey’s rap gets a bye —he sounds even scarier than John Barnes and might seek me out to bust a cap in my ass, to employ the jargon of the circles in which Dempsey moves. There is no cause for mirth in Pelé’s bossa nova number; dude can’t sing, but it is quite nice.

Cristiano Ronaldo: Your moms want to bang him.

The biggest laugh must be reserved for Cristiano Ronaldo’s bid at usurping Julio Iglesias’ crooner crown. It might have been for a TV commercial, but if Portugal’s Banco Espírito Santo in their best judgment thought it was okay to unleash the crooning talents of young Ron upon the world, I don’t think I would trust them with my hard-earned cash.

This whole catastrophe is timed to fit on a CD-R, though I cannot conceive of any earthly circumstances which might drive you to committing this on to a disc. So I have not bothered to make home-scored covers. PW in comments.

1. New Order feat. John Barnes – World In Motion (1990)
2. Edcity & Ronaldinho – Vai Na Fé (2014)
3. Pelé & Gracinha – Meu Mundo é Uma Bola (1977)
4. Cristiano Ronaldo – Amor mio (2009)
5. Canelita feat Sergio Ramos – A Quien Le Voy A Contar Mis Penas (2012)
6. Castro feat. Asamoah Gyan – African Girls (2011)
7. Youri (Djourkaeff) – Vivre dans ta lumière (2000)
8. Andy Cole – Outstanding (1999)
9. Kevin Keegan – Head Over Heels In Love (1979)
10. Ruud Gullit – Not The Dancing Kind (1984)
11. Ian Wright – Do The Right Thing (1993)
12. Brings feat. Lukas Podolski – Halleluja (2012)
13. Rohff feat. Karim Benzema – Fais moi la passe (2010)
14. Clint Dempsey – Don’t Tread On This (2011)
15. Jay Jay Okocha – I I Am Am J J (1994)
16. TKZee & Benni McCarthy – Shibobo (1998)
17. Roger Milla – Sandy (1991)
18. Gazza (Paul Gascoigne) – Geordie Boys (1990)
19. Johan Cruyff – Oei Oei Oei (Dat was me weer een loei) (1969)
20. Franz Beckenbauer – Gute Freunde kann niemand trennen (1966)
21. Gerd Müller – Dann macht es bumm (1969)
Bonus: Glenn (Hoddle & Chris (Waddle) – Diamond Lights (1987)
Bonus: Revelation Time & Ruud Gullit – South Africa (1988)

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More Mix-CD-Rs

Sunday is Father’s Day in many countries. There are a lot of songs that are about fatherhood, or about being the children of fathers. This mix includes just a few of them.

Some are obvious (“Father And Son”), others not immediately so, such as Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide”, which Stevie Nicks has said is about her dad. Some of the songs are about fathers, others are from the perspective of fathers. As a father myself, I have a particular fondness for the latter category, songs like Lennon’s “Beautiful Boy”, and especially Gil Scott-Heron’s wonderful “Your Daddy Loves You”.

Not all songs speak of love and respect; some acknowledge tension between fathers and their children. For example, Springsteen declares his independence from his dad. But the biggest fuck-you to a father is in The Cardigan’s quite brutal song. Clearly their father was nothing like that of The Winstons or George Strait. Loudon Wainwright III, whose daughter Martha has in a song called him pretty much every bad word, nails the difficult type of father-child relationships with this line: “maybe it’s hate, but probably it’s love”.

Even though I lost my father many years ago, I’m still always deeply moved by Luther Vandross’ “Dance With My Father”.  But the sentiment isn’t only for my loss, but also for the emotion my eventual passing might provoke (especially since I actually was a dancing father).

And then there is the tale of divorced dad, O.C. Smith’s touching “Daddy’s Little Man”. Bet he wishes that he had married Gladys Knight instead of his ex.

The mix ends on a light note, with Shel Silverstein’s follow-up to his hit song “A Boy Named Sue”. Here the story is presented from the perspective of Sue’s father. Be assured that the father of a boy named Sue deserves no “Dad of the Year” beer mugs.

I have plenty left-overs for another mix next year. In the interim: Happy Father’s Day to all us dads.

As always: CD-R, covers etc. PW in comments.

1. Ben Folds – Still Fighting It (2001)
2. Ron Sexsmith – Michael And His Dad (2011)
3. The Cardigans – Don’t Blame Your Daughter (Diamond) (2005)
4. Conner Reeves – My Father’s Son (1997)
5. Luther Vandross – Dance With My Father (2003)
6. John Lennon – Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy) (1980)
7. Bruce Springsteen – Independence Day (1980)
8. Loudon Wainwright III – A Father And A Son (1992)
9. Emmylou Harris – To Daddy (1978)
10. George Strait – Love Without End, Amen (1990)
11. Dan Fogelberg – Leader Of The Band (1981)
12. Gil Scott-Heron/Brian Jackson – Your Daddy Loves You (1973)
13. The Winstons – Color Him Father (1969)
14. O.C. Smith – Daddy’s Little Man (1969)
15. Clarence Carter – Patches (1970)
16. Gladys Knight & The Pips – This Child Needs Its Father (1973)
17. Bobbie Gentry – Papa, Won’t You Let Me Go To Town With You (1967)
18. Fleetwood Mac – Landslide (1975)
19. Everything But The Girl – The Night I Heard Caruso Sing (1988)
20. Kristin Chenoweth – Fathers And Daughters (2011)
21. Cat Stevens – Father And Son (1970)
22. Shel Silverstein – Father Of A Boy Named Sue (1978)

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More Mix-CD-Rs

Drummer Bobby Gregg, who has died at 78, played on such classics as Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rollin’ Stone” — the famous snare drum shot that opens the song is his timeless contribution to rock music lore — and Simon & Garfunkel’s “Sound Of Silence”. Briefly a member of The Hawks, who would become The Band, he was also a producer.

Jazz trumpeter Joe Wilder, dead at 92, boasted an impressive resumé, having played with the likes of Count Basie, Jimmy Lunceford, Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Dizzy Gillespie, Bill Evans, Benny Goodman, Shirley Scott and Houston Person, and backing such vocalists as Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Dinah Washington, Johnny Mathis, Etta Jones, Harry Belafonte, Chris Connor and Tony Bennett. Many times he was Quincy Jones’ go-to man, and in 1986 he played in the Malcolm X Orchestra for the Spike Lee film on the slain activist. And he was among the first thousand African-Americans to serve in the US marines in World War 2.

Jessica Cleaves  was an early member of Earth, Wind & Fire, but departed before the Chicago group hit the big time. Before that she was the female lead of the Friends of Distinction, and later performed with Parliament/Funkadelic. Blessed with a gorgeous, rich voice, not dissimilar to later stars such as Cheryl Lynn and Anita Baker, Cleaves never had a solo career, which is a pity.

He was one of the most popular crooners in the 1950s and ’60s, but I suspect most people would recognise Jerry Vale from countless mafia movies in which he appeared in singing roles, including GoodFellas, Casino and Donnie Brasco, and apparently in several episodes of The Sopranos (though I don’t remember that at all).

French composer, arranger and screenwriter André Popp wrote several entries for the Eurovision Song Contest, long before the advent of bearded ladies or even glittery platform boots. Among these compositions was “L’amour Est Bleu”, performed by Greek singer Vicky Leandros in 1967 for Luxembourg. Vicky and the song finished fourth — France’s entry won — but the song became a massive hit in Paul Mauriat’s instrumental version which we know as “Love Is Blue”.  A Popp composition was also famous in the Soviet Union, where an instrumental version of his “Manchester et Liverpool”, written for Marie Laforêt, was used as the theme tune for the nightly weather forecast.

I normally don’t include producers of music videos, but there must be an exception for Tessa Watts, who was responsible for many iconic 1980s videos, including that for Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” and the Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me”. Before populating the MTV playlist, Watts was a press officer with the fledgling Virgin record label — the story goes that the idea for the name of what would become Richard Branson’s behemoth was hers (Branson was thinking of going for the unsexy Slipped Disc). In that position she was responsible for the media the Sex Pistols received after signing for the label, having been dismissed by EMI.

Juan Formell, 71, bassist and leader of Cuban band Los Van Van, on May 1

Jessica Cleaves, 65, singer with soul band The Friends of Distinction, on May 2
The Friends Of Distinction – I Really Hope You Do (1969)
Earth Wind & Fire – I’d Rather Have You (1972)

Lester Armistead, 71, bluegrass musician, on May 2

Chino Montero, 52, Hawaiian singer and guitarist, on May 2

Bobby Gregg, 78, session drummer and producer, on May 3
Bob Dylan – Subterranean Homesick Blues (1965)

Jair Rodrigues, 75, Brazilian musician and singer, on May 8

Joe Wilder, 92, jazz trumpeter, on May 9
Lionel Hampton and his Orchestra – Don’t Let The Landlord Gyp You (1946)
Dinah Washington – You Let My Love Get Cold (1956)

André Popp, 90, French keyboardist, arranger and composer, on May 10
Marie Laforêt – Manchester et Liverpool (1966, as composer)
Vicky Leandros – L’amour est bleu (1967, as composer)

Marlow Tackett, 69, country singer, on May 10

Ed Gagliardi, 62, bass guitarist with Foreigner, on May 11
Foreigner – Hot Blooded (1978)

Alan Wills, 52, ex-drummer of English band Shack, founder of Deltasonic label, on May 11

Ernie Chataway, 62, guitarist of first incarnation of Judas Priest, on May 12

Nash the Slash, 66, masked musician with Canadian prog-rock band FM, on May 12

Tessa Watts, 68, British music video producer, on May 13
Human League – Don’t You Want Me (1981, as video producer)

Akihiro Yokoyama, 49, bassist of Japanese metal band United, on May 13

Bongani Masuku, 50, South African singer with Johnny Clegg, shot dead on May 17

Jerry Vale, 83, crooner, on May 18
Jerry Vale – You Don’t Know Me (1956)

Randy Coven, 54, bassist for Steve Vai, Yngwie Malmsteen, on May 20

Martin Lister, 51, keyboardist of German pop band Alphaville (1995-2014), on May 21

Herb Jeffries, 100, jazz/pop singer and actor, on May 25
Herb Jeffries – When I Write My Song (1947)

Tommy Blom, 67, member of influential Swedish rock band The Tages, on May 25
The Tages – I Read You Like An Open Book (1968)

DJ Father Shaheed, 45, DJ and rapper with Poor Righteous Teachers, on May 26
Poor Righteous Teachers – Rock Dis Funky Joint (1990)

Janice Scroggins, 58, jazz pianist, on May 27

Ruth Flowers, 74, septuagenarian British house DJ, on May 27

Gustavo Lezcano, 59, member of Miami Sound Machine, on May 28
Miami Sound Machine – Dr Beat (1984, on harmonica)

Christine Charbonneau, 70, Canadian singer and songwriter, on May 30

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(PW in comments)

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