Music Men & More
RIP dream weaver Gary Wright, 80, keyboardist extraordinaire. Born in Jersey, he was in show business at seven, making his debut on Captain Video and His Video Rangers. He was on Broadway in 1954, in Fanny, playing the son of the title character played by Florence Henderson, a role he performed with her on The Ed Sullivan Show. He was thinking about a career in psychology and completed his studies in Berlin. He turned to music full time in 1967 while in Europe. His work with the band Spooky Tooth was lauded by critics but only modestly successful commercially. He was a sessionist for George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Ronnie Spector, B.B. King, Jerry Lee Lewis and Harry Nilsson. Leading the band Wonderwheel, he did another album that failed to chart despite an appearance on The Dick Cavett Show, arranged by George Harrison, who played guitar during the group’s performance. He reformed Spooky Tooth, but record sales were weak. The Dream Weaver album was issued in 1975, powered by the single that peaked at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100. The album climbed to #7 and went double platinum. Love Is Alive, the second single from the LP, hit #2. His follow up release, The Light of Smiles, peaked at #23, its only single, Phantom Writer, hit #43. 1981’s The Right Place climbed to #79, the single Really Wanna Know You hit #16. He then focused on film soundtracks and world music, and he continued to play with many artists. In all, he released twelve solo albums and 19 singles. There are 58 titles under his name at IMDb in the category of Soundtrack, five of Composer. He was a father of two. Well done, Sir. Photo from Google Images:
Ozzy Osbourne with grandson, photo from GI:
Headline from nypost.com: “Delta flight forced into emergency landing by passenger’s diarrhea: ‘This is a biohazard’.” All together — ewwwww!
From NYP: “Vaping can shrink testicles, cause sperm counts to plummet: new research.” According to the article by Hannah Sparks: “…the impact of conventional cigarette smoke, as previous studies suggest, is even worse on the male organ…” Vaping is still the lesser of two evils — and it doesn’t stink!
My thanks to the kind folks who bought, donated and swapped books on this hot day. Here’s what sold: five books in Russian, one in Hebrew; The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger; Jackie and Me by Louis Bayard; Victims by Jonathan Kellerman; I Dreamed of Flying Like a Bird: My Adventures Photographing Wild Animals from a Helicopter by Robert Haas; Tailspin by Catherine Coulter; Charley’s Web by Joy Fielding; a college Physics textbook; two cook books; American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America by Robert Hughes; and Louis-Ferdinand Céline — The two masterpieces: Journey to the End of the Night & Death on the Installment Plan. I am blessed.
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