The ALL DEAD Club

Quincy Jones Dies: 28-Time Grammy Winner And Music Icon Was 91

Any one on the long list of Jones’ accomplishments could make a career for another artist. He produced Thriller, which won eight Grammys and became a cultural milestone. He also produced two more of Jackson’s bestselling albums, Off the Wall and Bad.

His work with Sinatra spanned decades. In 1964, he arranged and conducted Sinatra’s second album with Count Basie titled It Might as Well Be Swing. Two years later he collaborated with Sinatra on the live album, Sinatra at the Sands. Jones later produced what was to become the singer’s final album, L.A. Is My Lady, in 1984.

He also convinced Miles Davis to record what would be Davis’ final album, Miles & Quincy: Live at Montreux, three months before the jazz great’s death in 1991.

Jones wrote music and scores for dozens of films, including In the Heat of the Night, In Cold Blood, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, The Out-of-Towners, They Call Me Mr. Tibbs, The Wiz and The Color Purple. Jones also produced the latter (his first such film credit) and its 2023 reimagining. His 1962 song “Soul Bossa Nova” later became the theme for Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. Jones later played himself in Goldmember.

On the small screen, Jones EP’d The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Mad TV, The Jenny Jones Show and the Oscars (in 1996) and wrote music or scores for Ironside, The Bill Cosby Show, Roots, Mad TV and, most famously, Sanford & Son.

In 1985, he was a driving force behind “We Are the World,” producing the single with Michael Omartian to raise money for those beset by famine in Ethiopia. Among the artists who participated were Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, Billy Joel, Diana Ross, Cyndi Lauper, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen and Tina Turner.

Jones was nominated for seven Oscars over the course of his career and received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1995.

He also won an Emmy in the category of Outstanding Musical Composition for a Series for Roots and a Tony in the category of Best Revival of a Musical for The Color Purple.

Jonathan Haze, who originated the Seymour role in cult classic 1960 horror comedy The Little Shop of Horrors during a long collaboration with its director Roger Corman, has died. He was 95.

Tyka Nelson, the Minneapolis-based singer and sister of the late superstar Prince, died Monday. She was 64.

Tyka Nelson recorded four albums between 1988 and 2011. She performed sporadically in recent years, including once in 2008 at the Minneapolis club Bunkers and then 10 years later in Australia. She was planning to appear at a farewell concert last June at the Dakota jazz club in Minneapolis but was too ill to attend; the event went on as a tribute to her.

Tyka, along with five of Prince’s partial siblings, were ruled to be the legal heirs to the considerable Prince estate (he died at 57 in 2016), though legal wrangling continued for years. Two years ago, holdings of the estate valued at more than $150 million were split between a group representing some of the half-siblings and another group identified with Primary Wave publishing; Primary Wave had bought out Tyka Nelson’s interests some years earlier.

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*Chauncy Glover, a news anchor at KCBS and KCAL in Los Angeles, has died unexpectedly. He was 39.

Tony Todd Dies: ‘Candyman’ Star Whose Hundreds Of Credits Include ‘Final Destination’ Films & ‘Platoon’ Was 69

Born on December 4, 1954, in Washington, D.C., Todd pursued acting at the Eugene O’Neill National Actors Theatre Institute and Trinity Rep Conservatory, where he honed his skills and developed his commanding style. Among his first screen roles was playing the heroin-addicted Sergeant Warren in Oliver Stone’s Best Picture Oscar-winning Vietnam War classic Platoon.

Todd went on to guest on such popular 1980s and ’90s series as 21 Jump Street, Night Court, MacGyver, Matlock, Jake and the Fatman, Law & Order, The X-Files, NYPD Blue, Beverly Hills 90210, Xena: Warrior Princesss and Murder, She Wrote and Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager. He also recurred as pesky TV news reporter Matt Rhodes on Homicide: Life on the Street and as Gus Rogan in more than a dozen 2013 episodes of The Young and the Restless.

All the while, Todd continued to act for the big screen. He appeared in 1980s dramas Lean on Me, Colors and Charlie Parker biopic Bird, starring Forest Whitaker. But his best-known film roles came during the following decade.

The 6-foot-5 Todd starred in the 1990 remake Night of the Living Dead as Ben, the role played by Duane Jones in George A. Romero’s iconic 1968 original. His next big role likely is his most famous — playing the mythical title creep with a hook for a hand in Candyman (1992) — a character he reprised in the 2021 sequel of the same name.

Todd continued to work steadily in film, TV and video games throughout the 21st century, including a recurring gig as the CIA director on NBC’s Chuck, Freeform’s Dead of Summer and MTV/VH1’s Scream. His silver-screen roles mainly were in B-movies.

He also was a sought-after voice actor, lending his rich and resonant pipes to dozens of roles ranging from Star Trek and Call of Duty games to TV’s Transformers Prime and Be Cool, Scooby-Doo and such films as Transformers: Rise of the Fallen.

*John D. Kimble, a longtime talent agent who worked for the William Morris Agency and helped launch Triad Artists in the mid-1980s, died November 10 in Dallas, where he retired in 2022 to be close to family. He was 79.

Timothy West Dies: British Theater And Screen Actor Was 90

West was one of the UK’s most beloved actors, known on-screen for roles in soaps EastEnders and Coronation Street, comedy-drama Brass and for Channel 4’s Great Canal Journeys, a touching series in which he traveled around the country on a boat with his wife, Fawlty Towers actress Prunella Scales. He also had many theater roles in productions such as Macbeth and King Lear.

*John Peaslee, a longtime comedy writer best known for his work on Coach and According to Jim, died November 11 of natural causes at his Sherman Oaks, CA. home. He was 73.

*George Miller "Huckleberry” Fox, the former actor best known for playing the youngest son of Debra Winger and Jeff Daniels in Terms of Endearment, died Nov. 3 in Washington, DC. He was 50.

*Shel Talmy, the influential rock producer who cut such classics as The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me” and “Waterloo Sunset” and The Who’s “My Generation” and “I Can’t Explain,” died during Wednesday at his Los Angeles home after a stroke over the weekend. He was 87.

*French singer-writer-composer Charles Dumont, who is best known for co-writing Édith Piaf classic Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien, has died at the age of 95 after a long illness.

*Paul Teal, an actor with a recurring role on One Tree Hill, has died. He was 35.
Aside from One Tree Hill, Teal had small roles on shows like Good Behavior (2016), Shots Fired (2017), Dynasty (2019), The Walking Dead: World Beyond (2020), USS Christmas (2020), Outer Banks (2021), American Rust (2021), Deep Water (2022), The Staircase (2022), George & Tommy (2023), Descendants: The Rise of Red (2024), Lilly (2024).

*Colin Petersen, the original Bee Gees drummer who played on such classic 1960s tracks as “I Started a Joke,” “To Love Somebody” and “I Just Gotta Get a Message to You,” died Monday. He was 78.

Dan Hennessey, a voice actor and director for animated shows, has died. He was 82. Hennessey is best known for voicing Braveheart Lion in the Care Bears animated series from the 1980s, Chief Quimby in Inspector Gadget (1983), and the voice director for the X-Men animated TV series from the 90s.

Other animated shows where Hennessey lent his voice included RoboCop, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, ALF: The Animated Series, Beetlejuice, C.O.P.S., Dog City, My Pet Monster, Rescue Heroes, Ultraforce, Dinosaucers, Mythic Warriors, The Raccoons, and The Adventures of Tintin (1991) among many others.

*Andy Paley, a prolific songwriter, producer and musician who collaborated with such artists as Brian Wilson, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Ramones, Madonna, Elton John, Patti Smith and Deborah Harry and composed the scores for SpongeBob SquarePants and other TV shows, died Wednesday of cancer. He was 72.

*Cal Boyington, a veteran TV talent and packaging agent at ICM Partners and Paradigm who co-founded Vital Artists Agency and also worked on The Osbournes and executive-produced TV series including Workaholics, died November 18 in Los Angeles. He was 53.

*Matthew Byars, a talent manager who appeared on Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Potomac, has died. He was 37

*Colin Chilvers, a pioneering, Oscar-winning Hollywood visual effects artist who created movie magic for Superman, apocalyptic scenarios and even The Who’s Tommy, died November 19 in Fort Erie, Ontario, where he lived. He was 79.

*Larry Auerbach, former powerhouse agent at the William Morris Agency who segued to a second career helping USC students break into into the entertainment industry, passed away peacefully this morning, Nov. 23. He was 95.