Kenny Rankin died he was 69

Kenny Rankin died he was an American pop and jazz singer and songwriter from the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City, New York.
(Los Angeles, February 10, 1940 - June 7, 2009)
Rankin appeared on The Tonight Show more than twenty times. Host Johnny Carson was so impressed by him that he wrote the liner notes to Rankin's 1967 debut album Mind Dusters, which featured the single "Peaceful." Helen Reddy would reach #2 Adult Contemporary and #12 Pop in 1973 with a cover of it, released as her follow-up single to "I Am Woman". Georgie Fame also had a hit with this song in 1969, his only songwriting credit to hit the British charts reaching number sixteen and spending 9 weeks on the chart.[1]
Rankin was raised in New York and was introduced to music by his mother who sang at home and for friends. Early in his career he worked as a singer-songwriter, and developed a considerable following during the 70s with a steady flow of albums, three of which broke into the Top 100 of the Billboard Album Chart. His liking for jazz was evident from an early age but the times were such that in order to survive his career had to take a more pop-oriented course. By the 90s, however, he was able to angle his repertoire to accommodate his own musical preferences and to please a new audience while still keeping faith with the faithful. Rankin's warm singing style and his soft, nylon-stringed guitar sound might suggest an artist more attuned to the supper-club circuit than the jazz arena, but his work contains many touches that appeal to the jazz audience.
His accompanists might include Alan Broadbent, Mike Wofford and Bill Watrous, and on such occasions the mood slips easily into a jazz groove. His compositions have been performed by artists such as Mel Tormé and Carmen McRae, while Stan Getz said of him that he was "a horn with a heartbeat". Stephen Bishop had a major hit in 1977 with his song "On and On", which was a #11 hit in the U.S. Rankin is deeply interested in Brazilian music and his Here In My Heart, on which he used jazz guests including Michael Brecker and Ernie Watts, was recorded mostly in Rio De Janeiro. More contemporary songs were given an airing following his move to Verve Records, including the Beatles' "I've Just Seen A Face" and Leon Russell's magnificent "A Song For You".
Rankin's own unique gift for reworking classic songs such as The Beatles' "Blackbird," which he recorded for his Silver Morning album, so impressed Paul McCartney that he asked Rankin to perform his interpretation of the song when McCartney and John Lennon were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Rankin died in Los Angeles from lung cancer on June 7, 2009. He was 69 years old.[2]

Kenny Rankin: Haven't We Met


Kenny Rankin-Catfish


Blackbird - Kenny Rankin


Kenny Rankin - Why Do Fools Fall In Love?

Jeff Hanson died he was 31

Jeff Hanson died he was 31. Hanson was a singer-songwriter, guitarist, and multi-instrumentalist whose voice was described in a 2005 Paste review as an "angelic falsetto, a cross between Alison Krauss and Art Garfunkel that's often (understandably) mistaken for a female contralto."
(1978 – June 5, 2009)
Hanson was born Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He started learning guitar at four years old and by the age of 13 formed the emo/indie rock band M.I.J. Seven years later the band released a 7", an EP and a full album on Caulfield Records.
He began a solo career in 2003 and was signed to Kill Rock Stars Records after sending in an unsolicited demo tape. He has since released three albums for the label, Son in 2003 and Jeff Hanson in 2005. His third album for Kill Rock Stars titled Madam Owl was released on August 19 2008. Hanson's solo albums were recorded at Presto! Recording Studios.
Since 1996 Hanson resided in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Hanson was found dead on June 5, 2009 in his St. Paul apartment into which he had recently moved. The cause was a possible fall or other accident.[1]

Rajeev Motwani died he was 47

Rajeev Motwani died he was 47. Motwani was a professor of Computer Science at Stanford University whose research focused on theoretical computer science. He was an early advisor and supporter of companies including Google and PayPal, and a special advisor to Sequoia Capital. He was a winner of the Gödel Prize in 2001.
Rajeev Motwani was born in Jammu & Kashmir. His father was in the Indian Army. He has two brothers. As a child, inspired by luminaries like Gauss, he wanted to become a mathematician.
(March 26, 1962 – June 5, 2009)

He went to St Columba's School, New Delhi. He completed his B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Kanpur in 1983 and got his Ph.D. in Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley in 1988.

Motwani joined Stanford soon after U.C. Berkeley. Motwani was one of the co-authors (with Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Terry Winograd) of an influential early paper on the PageRank algorithm, the basis for Google's search techniques. He also co-authored another seminal search paper What Can You Do With A Web In Your Pocket with those same authors.[1]
He was also an author of two widely-used theoretical computer science textbooks, Randomized Algorithms (Cambridge University Press 1995, ISBN 978-0521474658, with Prabhakar Raghavan) and Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation (2nd ed., Addison-Wesley, 2000, with John Hopcroft and Jeffrey Ullman).
Prior to his involvement with Google, Motwani founded the Mining Data at Stanford project (MIDAS), an umbrella organization for several groups looking into new and innovative data management concepts. His research included data privacy, web search, robotics, and computational drug design.
He was an avid angel investor and had funded a number of successful startups to emerge from Stanford, including Google. He sat on the boards of Google, Kaboodle, Mimosa Systems, Adchemy, Baynote, Vuclip, NeoPath Networks (acquired by Cisco Systems in 2007), Tapulous and Stanford Student Enterprises among others. He was also active in the Business Association of Stanford Entrepeneurial Students (BASES).[2][3][4]
He was a winner of the Gödel Prize in 2001 for his work on the PCP theorem and its applications to hardness of approximation.[5][6]
He served on the editorial boards of SIAM Journal on Computing, Journal of Computer and System Sciences, ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data, and IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering.


Motwani, and his wife Asha Jadeja, had two daughters named Naitri and Anya.[7]
Motwani was found dead in his pool in the backyard in his Atherton home on June 5, 2009, after apparently falling in, but the cause of death is not certain. He could not swim, but was planning on taking lessons, according to his friends.[8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]

Shih Kien died he was 96

Shih Kien was a veteran Chinese actor from Hong Kong. He is sometimes credited as Shek Kin (Cantonese pronunciation) or Kien Shih (in the Western order).
Shih starred in many of the early Hong Kong Cantonese Wuxia films. His name has become synonymous with "villainy" as he played the roles of villains most of the time. In Hong Kong, there is a slang expression for comparing one's evil deeds with Shih Kien's, despite the fact that those deeds were committed by the villains he played. Shih was well-respected within the Hong Kong motion picture industry and recognised as a kind and passionate person.

(January 1913 - 3 June 2009)
Shih's works dated back to the black and white Wuxia era. He played the roles of villains in almost all of the Wuxia classic films of that time, such as Yu Lai Shan Jeung (1964) and Luk Ji Kam Mo (1965). Later in his career, he took on a comedic role with Jackie Chan in The Young Master. Shih Kien also played dramatic roles in non-Wuxia films as well, such as Hong Kong 1941.
Shih Kien is probably best known to Western audiences for his role as the villain Han in Bruce Lee's 1973 martial arts epic Enter the Dragon. Shih was trained at the Shanghai Chin Woo Association in martial arts. He received instructor certification in a number of styles, including Eagle Claw and Choy Lay Fut. His students included Lee Koon Hung, grandmaster of Choy Lay Fut.
Shih Kien appeared in the 2003 documentary Chop Socky: Cinema Hong Kong at the age of 90.
Kien died of kidney failure on June 3, 2009 at the age of 96.[1][2] At the time of his death, Shih was believed to be one of the oldest living successful actors in China. [

David Carradine died he was 73

David Carradine died he was 73. Carradine, 2][3] was an American actor, best known for his work in the 1970s television series Kung Fu and more recently in the movie Kill Bill. He appeared in more than 100 feature films[4] and was nominated four times for a Golden Globe Award.[5]
December 8, 1936 – June 3, 2009

Carradine was born in Hollywood, California, the son of Ardanelle Abigail (née McCool) (25 January 1911 - 26 January 1989)[6] and noted American actor John Carradine.[7] He was the brother of Bruce Carradine and half-brother of Keith and Robert Carradine, as well as the uncle of Ever Carradine and Martha Plimpton. Carradine had Irish, English, Scottish, Welsh, German, Spanish, Italian, Ukrainian and Cherokee ancestry.[8] Carradine attended Oakland Junior College[1] and later studied drama at San Francisco State College[1] before working as an actor on stage and in television and cinema. He changed his given name to David after starting his career.

Carradine was known for his role as Kwai Chang Caine in the 1970s television series Kung Fu; he starred in the 1990s spinoff Kung Fu: The Legend Continues as the grandson of his original character.

Kung-fU - David Carradine KungFu
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In movies, he starred as 'Big' Bill Shelly in Martin Scorsese's Boxcar Bertha (1972), folksinger Woody Guthrie in Bound for Glory (1976), Abel Rosenberg in Ingmar Bergman's The Serpent's Egg (1977), and as Bill in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill, Vols. 1 & 2 (2003, 2004, respectively).
Other notable roles included the lead in Shane (the 1966 television series based upon the 1949 novel of the same name) and a gunslinger in Taggart, a 1964 western film based on a novel by Louis L'Amour. He also starred in the Broadway version of the play The Royal Hunt of the Sun in 1965. More recently, he portrayed Tempus, a powerful demon with the ability to manipulate time, on the popular television series Charmed, as well as Conrad in the television series Alias. Carradine twice played a supernatural being with the power to control time: "Tempus" on Charmed and "Clockwork" on Danny Phantom.
Carradine appeared in an episode of the Disney Channel series Lizzie McGuire (in which his half-brother Robert was a series regular), and also provided his voice for the King of the Hill episode, Returning Japanese, in which he voiced the character of Hank's Japanese half-brother. He provided the voice for Lo Pei, the ancient warrior who was responsible for Shendu's petrification in the animated series Jackie Chan Adventures.
Carradine produced and starred in several exercise videos teaching the martial arts of Tai chi and Qi Gong. Carradine actually had no knowledge of martial arts prior to starring in the series Kung Fu, but developed an interest in it after this experience and became an avid practitioner.
Carradine appeared as the host of Wild West Tech on the History Channel, taking over the duties from his brother Keith. He narrated the PBS anthropology series "Faces of Culture". In 2006, he became the spokesman for Yellowbook, a publisher of independent telephone directories in the United States. He was also the TV spokesperson for Lipton[9] ("This ain't no sippin' tea"), in a memorable commercial where he paid homage not only to Kung Fu, but also to the Three Stooges.
Carradine also appeared in the music video for "Minus You" by the southern California band Chapel of Thieves, which was co-directed by the YouTube personality Boh3m3. He also worked with the Jonas Brothers in their video Burnin' Up, playing a Kung Fu Master, and planned to work with Miley Cyrus. In 2009, he played a 100 year-old Chinese gangster in Crank: High Voltage.

Carradine was married five times and had two daughters, Calista Miranda and Kansas.[1] Each of his first four marriages ended in divorce. On December 26, 2004, he married Annie[1] at the seaside Malibu home of his friend, Michael Madsen. The ceremony was performed by his attorney and his wife's longtime friend, Vicki Roberts. The marriage lasted until Carradine died.

On June 4, 2009, Carradine was found dead in his room at the Swissotel Nai Lert Park Hotel on Wireless Road, near Sukhumwit, in central Bangkok, Thailand.[2][3] The initial police report indicated that Carradine had committed suicide by hanging himself; he was found by a hotel maid sitting in a wardrobe with a cord around his neck and body.[3][4] Carradine was in Bangkok to shoot his latest movie, Stretch, but the film crew were aware of his absence when they went to dine out at a restaurant on June 3.[2]

Wayman Tisdale died he was 44

Wayman Lawrence Tisdale died he was 44, Tisdale was an American professional basketball player in the National Basketball Association and a smooth jazz bass guitarist. A three-time All American at the University of Oklahoma,[1] he was elected to the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame in 2009.[2]
(June 9, 1964 – May 15, 2009)
Tisdale was born in Fort Worth, Texas.[1] His father, Louis Tisdale, was a well-known pastor in Tulsa, Oklahoma, serving for 21 years as senior pastor of Friendship Church;[3] after his death in 1997, the former Osage Expressway in Tulsa was named L. L. Tisdale Parkway in his honor.[4] Wayman's older brother Weldon has been pastor of the church since 1997.[5][6]
Growing up, Tisdale was not interested in basketball; when Weldon and another older brother, William, played pickup games in their yard, he usually quit before they finished, retreating to the family's sandbox. However, Tisdale began taking to the sport in the eighth grade when he first learned to dunk.[5]
He met his future wife Regina in April 1981 at church. At the time, they were juniors at different Tulsa high schools, and she did not know he was one of the most heavily-recruited basketball players in the country.[5]
Tisdale called music his "first love". He learned to play music by watching Elvis Presley; he never took any lessons, never knew what key any of the pieces he played is written in, or even the names of the notes. Throughout his youth, continuing through his college basketball career, he played bass guitar at his father's church.
Music and church were so important to Tisdale that after recruiting him to the University of Oklahoma, Sooners head coach Billy Tubbs changed the team's practice schedule to accommodate Tisdale, moving the team's Sunday practice from the morning to the evening to allow him to play in the Sooners' band and at morning services in his father's church in Tulsa.[5]


Tisdale graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he grew up. As a college player at Oklahoma from 1983 to 1985, he was a three-time Big Eight Conference Player of the Year and the first player in collegiate history to be named a first-team All American by the Associated Press in his freshman, sophomore, and junior seasons.[7] He still holds the record at Oklahoma for the most points scored by any player through his freshman and sophomore seasons. He won a gold medal as a member of the 1984 U.S. Olympic basketball team coached by Indiana University's Bobby Knight, and the Indiana Pacers made Tisdale the second overall pick in the 1985 NBA Draft.
As a center and power forward, Tisdale averaged over 15 points and six rebounds per game in a 12-season professional career with the Indiana Pacers, Sacramento Kings and Phoenix Suns. His best season was in 1989–90 with the Kings, when he averaged 22.3 points and 7.5 rebounds a game. Tisdale and Mitch "The Rock" Richmond combined to form one of the most dynamic duos in the NBA. In 1997, Tisdale retired to focus on his musical career.
In 1997, Tisdale became the first player in any sport to have his jersey number (23) retired by the University of Oklahoma.[8] When Blake Griffin was granted permission to wear it during his career at OU (2007–2009), he sought and received Tisdale's blessing before accepting it.



Wayman Tisdale and Dave Koz at the Dave Koz & Friends Smooth Jazz Cruise 2006.
Tisdale launched his music career with Power Forward in 1995 on the Motown Label. Primarily a bass player, he recorded eight albums, with the 2001 release Face to Face climbing to No. 1 on Billboard's contemporary jazz chart.[9] In 2002, he was awarded the Legacy Tribute Award by the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame. In an ESPN internet chat, Tisdale said his musical influences include funk bands of the 1970s.[10] His most recent release, Rebound, was written and released after he had been diagnosed with cancer.
Tisdale was well known for his optimistic outlook.[5] Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry appointed him to be a member of the Oklahoma Tourism and Recreation Commission in 2003.[2][11]


In March 2007, Tisdale underwent treatment for cancer in his knee (osteosarcoma), which was discovered after he fell down a flight of stairs in his home on February 8, and broke his leg.[12] In May, Tisdale announced on his website that he was recovering from a procedure to remove the cyst, and expected to recover 100%.[13] He and Regina agreed not to tell their children about his diagnosis until the fall of that year, when the entire family was together (their oldest daughter lives in Atlanta and their second-oldest was attending college at the time). However, the first round of chemotherapy was unsuccessful, leading to a second round. As Tisdale recalled later, "The doctor had never given anyone chemo that was my size. They just calculated how much chemo to give me and said, 'We hope it doesn't mess up your kidneys. If it does, sorry."[5] He drew on some of the challenges he faced during his basketball career to battle the disease, specifically recalling, "I had some coaches that literally didn't want me to make it, and one in particular was Bobby Knight. At the time, I frowned on that … I look at it today that had I not persevered through a lot of the stuff he put me through, I probably wouldn't be here today. I thank God for that dude because he pushed me."[5]
In August 2008, Tisdale had part of his right leg amputated because of the bone cancer.[12] On his web site, Tisdale said removing a portion of the leg would be the best way to ensure that the cancer would not return.[14] In a video message at halftime of a September 28 Sooners' football game, Tisdale affirmed he was doing well and that he was at peace following the operation.[15]
Shortly after the operation, he was fitted for a prosthesis. Scott Sabolich, the clinical director, said that in his 21-year career, he had never created a prosthesis as large as the one he had to design for Tisdale. At the same time, Sabolich noted that it typically takes a new amputee from three to six months to acclimate to a prosthesis, while it took Tisdale a month. He proved to be equally quick in learning to walk on his new limb; a physical therapist Tisdale has been working with in Tulsa said that he was months ahead of a typical patient in that respect. Tisdale's experience led him to establish the Wayman Tisdale Foundation to raise funds to help amputees with the prosthetic process, which is not always covered by health insurance.[5]
In April 2009, Tisdale accepted an award from the Greenwood Cultural Center in Tulsa, and then set off on a 21-date national concert tour.[16]


Tisdale died at age 44 on the morning of May 15, 2009 at St. John Medical Center in Tulsa, where his wife had taken him when he had trouble breathing. Tisdale's agent described his death as a "great shock" and noted that Tisdale had been planning to go into the recording studio the following week for a project with jazz guitarist Norman Brown.[17] As yet, it is unconfirmed whether his death was related to his battle with cancer.[1][18] Tisdale and his wife Regina had four children.[1]
On May 21, 2009, 4,000 mourners attended Tisdale's memorial service at the BOK Center in Tulsa.[19]

Discography
Power Forward (1995)
In The Zone (1996)
Decisions (1998)
Face to Face (2001)
Presents 21 Days (2003)
Hang Time (2004)
Way Up! (2006)
Rebound (2008)

Wayman Tisdale - Let's Do It Again

Koko Taylor died she was 80

Cora Walton died she was 80. Ofcourse the world knew Cora as Koko Taylor, Taylor was an American blues musician, popularly known as the "Queen of the Blues." She was known primarily for her rough powerful vocals and traditional blues stylings.

September 28, 1928 – June 3, 2009

Born in Shelby County, Tennessee, Taylor left Memphis for Chicago, Illinois in 1952 with her husband, truck driver Robert "Pops" Taylor. In the late 1950s she began singing in Chicago blues clubs. She was spotted by Willie Dixon in 1962, and this led to wider performances and her first recording contract. In 1965, Taylor was signed by Chess Records, for which her single "Wang Dang Doodle" (written by Dixon, and a hit for Howlin' Wolf five years earlier) became a major hit, reaching number four on the R&B charts in 1966, and selling a million copies. Taylor recorded many versions of this Dixon-penned song over the past few decades and has added more material, both original and covers, but never repeated that initial chart success.

National touring in the late 1960s and early 1970s improved her fan base, and she became accessible to a wider record-buying public when she signed with Alligator Records in 1975. She recorded nine albums for Alligator, 8 of which were Grammy-nominated), and come to dominate the female blues singer ranks, winning twenty five W. C. Handy Awards (more than any other artist). After her recovery from a near-fatal car crash in 1989, the 1990s found Taylor in films such as Blues Brothers 2000, and she opened a blues club on Division St. in Chicago in 1994, but it closed in 1999.

Taylor influenced musicians such as Bonnie Raitt, Shemekia Copeland, Janis Joplin, Shannon Curfman, and Susan Tedeschi. In the years prior to her death, she performed over 70 concerts a year and resided just south of Chicago in Country Club Hills, Illinois.

In 2008, the Internal Revenue Service said that Taylor owed $400,000 in back taxes, penalties and interest. Her tax problems concerned 1998, 2000 and 2001; for those years combined, her adjusted gross income was $949,000.[2]

Taylor died on June 3, 2009, after complications from a surgery for gastrointestinal bleeding on May 19, 2009. Her final performance was at the Blues Music Awards, on May 7, 2009.


Awards
Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album - 1985
Howlin' Wolf Award - 1996
Blues Hall of Fame - Inducted 1997
Blues Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award - 1999
NEA National Heritage Fellowship - 2004
Blues Music Award (formerly the W. C. Handy Award) - 24 times, including the following categories:
Contemporary Blues Female Artist
Entertainer of the Year
Female Artist
Traditional Blues Female Artist
Vocalist of the Year
At age 76 in 2004, she appeared as a special guest with Taj Mahal on an episode of Arthur.
At age 80 in 2008, she appeared as a special guest with Umphrey's McGee at their New Year's Eve performance at the Auditorium Theater in Chicago, IL.

Love You Like a Woman (Charly Records) - November 30, 1968
Koko Taylor (MCA/Chess) - 1969
Basic Soul (Chess) - 1972
South Side Lady (Evidence Records) - 1973
I Got What It Takes (Alligator) - 1975
Southside Baby (Black & Blue) - 1975
The Earthshaker (Alligator) - 1978
From The Heart Of A Woman (Alligator) - 1981
Queen of the Blues (Alligator) - 1985
An Audience with Koko Taylor (Alligator) - 1987
Live from Chicago (Alligator) - 1987
Love You Like a Woman (Charly Records) - November 30, 1968
Wang Dang Doodle (Huub Records) - 1991
Jump for Joy (Alligator) - 1992
Force of Nature (Alligator) - 1993
Royal Blue (Alligator) - 2000
Deluxe Edition (Alligator) - 2002
Old School (Alligator) - 2007

Koko Taylor ft. Little Walter - Wang Dang Doodle



Koko Taylor, "Voodoo Woman"