Deaths (Obituaries)

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      D’Wayne Wiggins, One Third of the R&B Group Tony! Toni! Toné!, Dies at 64

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      As a paragon of the New Jack Swing sound, the band recorded three platinum albums and a slew of hits, including “Feels Good.”D’Wayne Wiggins, who brought his smooth baritone to millions of fans as a founding member and the lead singer of the R&B trio Tony! Toni! Toné!, which had three platinum albums and a slew of hits in the 1980s and ’90s including “Feels Good” and “The Blues,” died on Friday at his home in Oakland, Calif. He was 64.His family said in a statement on social media that the cause was bladder cancer.Mr. Wiggins was born and raised in Oakland and lived there most of his life, absorbing and blending the blues, funk and hip-hop sounds that he encountered on the city’s streets and in its clubs, where his father, a blues guitarist, was a regular performer.He formed Tony! Toni! Toné! in 1986 with his half brother, Charles Ray Wiggins (later known as Raphael Saadiq), who sang and played bass, and their cousin Timothy Christian Riley, who played drums.Tony! Toni! Toné! backstage in Milwaukee in 1991. From left: Timothy Christian Riley, Raphael Saadiq and Mr. Wiggins.Paul Natkin/Getty ImagesThe trio first found success performing around the San Francisco Bay Area, but they did not release their first album, “Who?,” until 1988. It was an immediate hit: Their debut single, “Little Walter,” reached No. 1 on the Billboard R&B chart; three more singles from the album reached the Top 10; and the album was certified gold.“Who?” leaned into the traditional blues sound that the trio had grown up with, but their next three albums ventured into new territory, incorporating hip-hop, upbeat soul and dance-pop — a blend that came to be known as New Jack Swing.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Roy Ayers, Vibraphonist Who Injected Soul Into Jazz, Dies at 84

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      He helped introduce a funkier strain of the music in the 1970s. He also had an impact on hip-hop: His “Everybody Loves the Sunshine” has been sampled nearly 200 times.Roy Ayers, a vibraphonist who in the 1970s helped pioneer a new, funkier strain of jazz, becoming a touchstone for many artists who followed and one of the most sampled musicians by hip-hop artists, died on Tuesday in New York City. He was 84.His death was announced on his Facebook page. The announcement said he died after a long illness but did not specify a cause or say where in New York he died.In addition to being one of the acknowledged masters of the jazz vibraphone, Mr. Ayers was a leader in the movement that added electric instruments, rock and R&B rhythms, and a more soulful feel to jazz. He was also one of the more commercially successful jazz musicians of his generation.He released nearly four dozen albums, most notably 22 during his 12 years with Polydor Records. Twelve of his Polydor albums spent a collective 149 weeks on the Billboard Top 200 chart. His composition “Everybody Loves the Sunshine,” from a 1976 album of the same name, has been sampled nearly 200 times by artists including Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre, Mary J. Blige and Snoop Dogg. The electric piano hook from “Love,” on his first Polydor album, “Ubiquity” — which introduced his group of the same name — was used in Deee-Lite’s 1990 dance hit “Groove Is in the Heart.”“Roy Ayers is largely responsible for what we deem as ‘neo-soul,’” the producer Adrian Younge, who collaborated with Mr. Ayers and Ali Shaheed Muhammad of the hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest in 2020 on the second album in the “Jazz Is Dead” series, which showcases frequently sampled jazz musicians, told Clash magazine. “His sound mixed with cosmic soul-jazz is really what created artists like Erykah Badu and Jill Scott. It was just that groove.“That’s not to say people around then weren’t making music with a groove,” he added, “but he is definitely a pioneer.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Carl Dean, Dolly Parton’s Husband of Nearly 60 Years, Dies at 82

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      Mr. Dean, who inspired songs including “Jolene” and “From Here to the Moon and Back,” was known to shy away from the spotlight as his wife rose to fame.Carl Dean, an asphalt paver who met his future wife, Dolly Parton, outside a Nashville laundromat more than six decades ago and quietly championed her as she rose to superstardom, died on Monday. He was 82.Ms. Parton announced his death in a statement shared on social media. No cause was given.While his wife was a world-famous star, Mr. Dean was a private man who kept a low profile. In a 2020 interview with Entertainment Tonight, Ms. Parton said her husband had never wanted to be in the spotlight.“It’s just not who he is,” Ms. Parton said. “He’s like, a quiet, reserved person and he figured if he ever got out there in that, he’d never get a minute’s peace and he’s right about that.”Mr. Dean was born to Virginia Bates Dean, known as Ginny, and Edgar Henry Dean, according to Ms. Parton’s website. He lived in East Ridge, Tenn., as a child, Ms. Parton told a local news channel in Chattanooga, Tenn. While Ms. Parton became a country star, he pursued a quiet life owning an asphalt-paving business.The couple met outside the WishyWashy Laundromat the day she moved to Nashville in 1964, according to Ms. Parton’s website, when Ms. Parton was 18 and Mr. Dean was 21. They married two years later on Memorial Day in 1966 in Ringgold, Ga., with only Ms. Parton’s mother, a preacher and his wife in attendance.Dolly Parton and Carl Dean got married on Memorial Day in 1966 in Ringgold, Ga., and they renewed their vows 50 years later in 2016.FacebookWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Khalil Fong, Hong Kong Singer-Songwriter, Dies at 41

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      Singing in both Mandarin and English, he brought a soul and R&B sensibility to Chinese pop.Khalil Fong, a Hong Kong singer-songwriter who infused a soul and R&B sensibility into Chinese pop songs, died on Feb. 21. He was 41.His death was announced on Saturday by his record label, Fu Music. The announcement did not say where Mr. Fong had died or specify a cause of death, but it said he had battled a “relentless illness” for five years.Beloved for its soulful vocals and distinctive blend of soul and Mandarin pop, Mr. Fong’s music found an audience in Hong Kong, mainland China and much of the wider Chinese-speaking world.“Trying to introduce soul music, or soul R&B, was not the easiest thing,” he said in a 2016 interview with The South China Morning Post, noting that the genre was not widely embraced in the region. “One of the things I wanted to do was to introduce this type of music within the context of Chinese language.”He broke into the popular music scene in 2005, when Warner Music Hong Kong released his funky, syncopated debut album, “Soulboy.” In the following decade, he released eight albums and performed in stadiums and large concert halls around the world, wearing his signature thick black glasses.But Mr. Fong’s career was cut short by health problems, and in recent years he had largely retreated from the public eye. Inspiration never stopped flowing, however, and he sporadically released singles.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Angie Stone, Hip-Hop Pioneer Turned Neo-Soul Singer, Dies at 63

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      After having success as a member of the Sequence, an early female rap group, she re-emerged in the 1990s as a practitioner of sultry, laid-back R&B.Angie Stone, a hip-hop pioneer in the late 1970s with the Sequence, one of the first all-female rap groups, who later switched gears as a solo R&B star with hits like “No More Rain (In This Cloud)” and “Wish I Didn’t Miss You,” died on Saturday in Montgomery, Ala. She was 63.Her agent, Deborah Champagne, said she died in a hospital after being involved in a car crash following a performance.Alongside musicians like Erykah Badu, Macy Gray and Lauryn Hill, Ms. Stone was part of the neo-soul movement of the late 1990s and 2000s, which blended traditional soul with contemporary R&B, pop and jazz fusion. Her first album, “Black Diamond” (1999), was certified gold, as was her sophomore effort, “Mahogany Soul” (2001).A prolific songwriter with a sultry alto voice, Ms. Stone specialized in songs that combined laid-back tempos with layered instrumentation and vocals.“Angie Stone will stand proud alongside Lauryn Hill as a songwriter, producer and singer with all the props in place to become a grande dame of the R&B world in the next decade,” Billboard magazine wrote in 1999.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Overlooked No More: Maria W. Stewart, Trailblazing Voice for Black Women

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      She was the first Black woman to publicly address other women, using essays and lectures in the 1830s to champion their rights and challenge oppression.This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.One day in 1831, Maria W. Stewart walked into the Boston offices of the publisher William Lloyd Garrison with a manuscript in hand that she was hoping he would print in his recently launched newspaper, The Liberator.Garrison was a famous white abolitionist; Stewart was a 28-year-old former indentured servant. In her manuscript, a political manifesto, she recounted her upbringing and described the conditions for Black women in an oppressive America.She also argued for equal opportunity for Black Americans, and she did something no Black woman had done before: speak directly and publicly to other women, urging them to educate themselves, “to promote and patronize each other” and, even more, “to sue for your rights and privileges.” As the historian Kristin Waters, the author of “Maria W. Stewart and the Roots of Black Political Thought” (2022), told Worcester State University in 2022, Stewart was “one of the very first writers to express what we would now call ‘feminism.’”Garrison didn’t hesitate to publish Stewart’s “Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality, the Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build,” as well as many more of her essays, in what would become America’s pre-eminent abolitionist newspaper.The masthead of the Oct. 8, 1831, issue of the Liberator, which contained Stewart’s first essay.The LiberatorWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Joseph Gitnig, Central Park Minstrel Known as Pegasus, Dies at 95

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      For nearly two decades, he delighted children and adults in New York City with songs and silly antics. He also scored a victory for free speech.Pegasus, the mythological winged stallion, symbolized divine inspiration and boundless freedom. So did Joseph Gitnig, the itinerant minstrel who called himself Pegasus and delighted children and adults who gathered spontaneously for nearly two decades to see him perform at the Central Park Zoo.Pegasus, the stallion, achieved immortality when Zeus transformed him into a constellation in the northern sky. Pegasus, the man, died on Sunday in Tilburg, the Netherlands, where he had lived since he gave up his New Age performance art in 1984. He was 95.Tineke Gitnig-Bertrums, his wife and only immediate survivor, said the cause was kidney failure.Pegasus — referring to him formally as Mr. Gitnig would be demystifying — epitomized a more innocent era, or at least one in which children, and adults, could be distracted and even entertained by a ballad, a soap bubble or a balloon and other less mind-blowing diversions than violent video games, Super Bowl halftime pyrotechnics and Las Vegas extravaganzas.“I’m a poet, writer, actor, dancer, and I put it all together in the package of a clown,” he told The New York Times in 1974. He once told Dramatics magazine, “I’ve been called an astronaut of inner space, a cosmonaut of the imagination, bard of brotherhood, troubadour, rhapsodist, folklorist and the indefinable fool.”Whatever you want to call him, he did more than entertain. After being arrested twice in the mid-1970s, he helped establish a precedent for free speech: For better or worse, according to Arthur Eisenberg, executive counsel of the New York Civil Liberties Union, the city agreed that performance art in parks and other public spaces is a form of free expression protected by the First Amendment.“Creative Sharer” was how he described himself on the business cards that he handed out, hoping to be booked at children’s parties and other events as a way to supplement the up to $3,000 a year in coins and small bills he collected in a basket at the zoo. He made a living in the off-season as a clerk and shoe salesman.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Al Trautwig, a Mainstay in the TV Booth at Madison Square Garden, Dies at 68

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      The Long Island native covered 16 Olympics, and had cameos in the movie “Cool Runnings” and the TV show “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”Al Trautwig, who brought sports fans along with him to New York’s Canyon of Heroes, champagne-doused locker rooms and the medal podium at the Olympics over a broadcast career that spanned more than three decades, died at his home on Long Island on Sunday. He was 68.His death was confirmed on Monday by his son, Alex Trautwig, who said that the cause was complications from cancer.In the largest U.S. media market, one where no detail is too minute for newspaper back pages and sports talk radio, Mr. Trautwig was a familiar face on New York Rangers and Knicks broadcasts for a generation on MSG Networks. He also covered Yankees games before the team created its own cable network in 2002.Al Trautwig, right, after the Yankees won the 2000 World Series.Steve Crandall/Getty ImagesThe son of Long Island had a wider audience: he covered 16 Olympics, most recently for NBC and focusing on gymnastics. His work earned him four national Emmys and more than 30 New York Emmys, his son said. He was also named New York Sportscaster of the Year in 2000.Mr. Trautwig’s death was announced earlier on Monday by Alan Hahn, an ESPN Radio host and a studio analyst for MSG Networks, who described him in a social media post as a mentor and teacher.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More