Re: Destiny's Child May Get A New Member Next Year
 

Was her first album a hit? Why are they trying again? Solange is no Beyonce...they need to accept that and move on. It's a shame that have that girl out there releasing those horrible songs and telling her she's going to be like her sister. The most I see coming from her is a spot in DC.

This is about business at this point. They have a contract to complete. You don't get to decide that you aren't going to do your job because you aren't friends with your coworkers. That's how people get sued. For her sake, I hope they remain friends, cause that would be a sorry testimony in the trial..."your honor, I didn't want to do anymore albums because we weren't friends." That just sounds so juvenille :rolleyes:

R.I.P. Katharine Hepburn
 

Hollywood Loses Katharine Hepburn

Photos

E! Online Photo



Sun Jun 29, 8:25 PM ET


Four-time Oscar winner Katharine Hepburn--the 20th century's most celebrated screen actress, one-half of the century's most storied offscreen love story and an enduring role model for generations of women--died Sunday afternoon. She was 96.

Cynthia McFadden, the ABC News reporter and executor of Hepburn's estate, said the actress died at 2:50 p.m. at her Connecticut home, surrounded by family and friends. Hepburn, who had been in ill health in recent years, simply succumbed to old age--an atypically quiet end to an extraordinarily feisty life. Per her wishes, there will be no funeral or memorial service.

Hepburn was the Academy Awards' gold standard. She set the record for most acting nominations, 12, a mark only eclipsed this year by Meryl Streep. And Hepburn still owns the record for acting wins, four.

Her résumé is its own classic film festival: The African Queen, The Philadelphia Story, Bringing Up Baby, Holiday, Little Women. Visit for more:

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She took Best Actress awards for 1933's Morning Glory, 1967's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, 1968's The Lion in Winter and 1981's On Golden Pond. Never one for Hollywood schmoozing, Hepburn accepted not one of those Oscars in person. In fact, she attended the Academy Awards ceremony just once--in 1974--to present the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award to producer Lawrence Weingarten. (And, yes, she wore pants.)

In 1999, the American Film Institute selected Hepburn as the 20th century's greatest screen actress. (Her male counterpart was Humphrey Bogart, her old African Queen shipmate.)


In all, she appeared in 58 films and TV movies. Nine of those films shared bills with Spencer Tracy, her real-life lover of 35 years.

"He was a baked potato: solid, and you can have them without salt and pepper or butter. I was a fancy dessert: mocha-chip ice cream," Hepburn once remarked of their relationship.

Onscreen, Tracy and Hepburn crackled in genre-defining romantic comedies such as Woman of the Year (1942) and Adam's Rib (1949). Their pairing guaranteed a fair-fight-style battle of the sexes. In a Tracy-Hepburn film, she wore pants, too.

Offscreen, their chemistry was just as strong. Hepburn and Tracy met on the set of Woman of the Year. He was a fortysomething, two-time Oscar winner. She was a thirtysomething, one-time Oscar winner. She wore heels at their first confab. He promised to cut her down to size.

There were complications, the biggest of which was his marriage: Tracy had a wife and two kids. Mrs. Tracy was a Catholic who didn't believe in divorce. And so, Mr. Tracy was a married man who never divorced. Not that his social life suffered.

Hepburn and Tracy were Hollywood's most married unmarried couple until his death in 1967, days after they completed work on Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, the socially minded race drama that brought Tracy his ninth (and final) Best Actor Oscar nomination and Hepburn her second Best Actress statue.

While the couple's love affair was an open secret, it wasn't until playwright and friend Garson Kanin's 1971 memoir, Tracy and Hepburn, that it was definitively outed.

In later years, Hepburn broke her silence on the subject in her autobiographical books, Me (1991) and The Making of the African Queen (1987).

A prototype of the thoroughly modern "That Single Girl," Hepburn never apologized for her love of another woman's husband. She never gushed about it, either. Kate was Kate.

Katharine Houghton Hepburn was born May 12, 1907, in Hartford, Connecticut, prime breeding ground for the high cheekbones and can-do-Yankeeism that were integral to her persona.

Ever blunt, Hepburn once said of her early ambition: "I didn't have any desire to be an actress or two learn how to act. I just wanted to be famous."

Apparently to help ensure success, the resourceful Hepburn slashed two and a half years off her age, passing herself off to studio execs, columnists and biographers as being born in November 1909. It was a fib she perpetuated for more than 50 years.

Of undeniable fact is that Hepburn made her film debut in 1932, in the melodrama A Bill of Divorcement. A year later, she had the Oscar for Morning Glory. But what came fast went almost as fast.

A string of flops (chiefly 1935's cross-dressing Sylvia Scarlett) and a notorious Broadway bomb (1934's The Lake, which prompted wit Dorothy Parker to crack, "Miss Hepburn runs the gamut of emotions from A to B") had her courting the dreaded "box-office poison" label.

She took her tattered career into her hands. In 1938, she bought herself out of her RKO contract rather than be forced to appear in the thespian hell that was Mother Carey's Chickens. That same year, she snapped up the film rights to her old stage hit, Holiday. With costar Cary Grant, the film became a classic of the screwball comedy form. Hepburn's bad-luck run at the box office continued unabated, however. Holiday bombed.

Undeterred, Hepburn used a similar hands-on approach with the comedy The Philadelphia Story. The role of icy socialite Tracy Lord was one she had originated on Broadway. Hepburn again purchased the film rights--and, in the process, bought herself another classic screen role.

Few films have matched Philadelphia Story's star troika of Hepburn, Grant (as the ex-husband who wants her back) and Jimmy Stewart (as the reporter who plain wants her).

Hepburn worked steadily through the early 1960s, when she declined roles to care for the increasingly frail Tracy. By the time cameras rolled on Guess Who's Coming to Dinner in 1967, she had been away from the big screen for five years.

Following Tracy's death, she returned to Broadway to unleash her distinctive, quasi-singing voice on audiences in Coco, about designer Coco Chanel. For her spunk and usual gall, she received a Tony Award nomination.

To mark her stage career, nearly as storied as her film work, the lights will dim on Broadway at 8 p.m. Tuesday in her honor.

Hepburn's work ethic never wavered. She won her fourth Oscar at age 73 for On Golden Pond, which paired her with contemporary Henry Fonda in his final film.

In the 1990s, when her famed upper-crust voice quivered under the strains of old age (but not Parkinson's disease as was widely believed), she continued to venture before the camera, mainly in TV movies but also for a big-screen cameo in 1994's An Affair to Remember remake--Love Affair, with Warren Beatty and Annette Bening.

"This is the first time she has...looked small and frail," critic Roger Ebert wrote of that appearance. "Yet the magnificent spirit is still there--and the romantic fire."

Hepburn retired to her seaside retreat in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, in the late 1990s, only making headlines when various ailments--including arthritis and pneumonia--sent her to the nearby hospital in Hartford. In July 2001, she endured a one-week hospiital stay for a urinary tract infection.

Hepburn was legally married just once--in 1928--to businessman Ludlow Ogden Smith. The union ended in 1934.

But there was none of this no-regrets business for Hepburn. Of regrets, she said, she had more than a few. (And if you didn't have any, she suggested, "maybe you're stupid.")

But in the end, there were at least two things Hepburn never regretted--her love for Tracy and her non-love of the media that covered the two of them, separately and together, for decades.

"Death will be a great relief," she once said. "No more interviews."

Are 50 Cent & Mya an item?
 

From yahoo.com:

wish I had a dollar for all of rap superstar 50 Cent's women! Recently, we had him pursuing Beyonce Knowles, but the hip-hop Romeo's latest love is Mya. The pair was spotted together at the W Hotel in L.A., and she's often seen in his backstage dressing room and accompanying him on tour.

R.I.P. Buddy Hackett
 

Comic Buddy Hackett Dies
Jul 1, 9:02 AM EST

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Comedian Buddy Hackett, known for his rubbery face and sometimes raunchy jokes, never strayed far from a punch line, often peppering friends and family with his humor.

"If I was going to a corporate job somewhere, I'd call him up, and he'd rattle off 10 jokes," his son, Sandy Hackett, 47, recalled. "He never called just to say, 'Hello.' He'd call and say: 'A guy walks into a bar....'"

The elder Hackett, who appeared for more than 50 years as a top act in nightclubs, in Broadway shows, on television and in movies, died at his Southern California beach house late Sunday or early Monday. He was 78.

The cause of death was not immediately known, but his son said Hackett suffered from diabetes.

Hackett began his career playing for small money on the Borscht Circuit for New York City vacationers in the Catskill Mountains, he learned to get laughs with his complaints about being short, fat and Jewish.

When "Curly" Howard, the one who got slapped in the comedy team The Three Stooges, suffered a stroke in 1946, Hackett was invited to take his place but declined, believing he could develop his own comedy style.

His career grew with appearances on the TV shows of Jack Paar, Arthur Godfrey and others. Soon he was making big money across the country, and audiences called for his most noted routine, the Chinese waiter.

In the beginning, his material was suitable for family audiences, but in later years nightclubs advertised his show "For Mature Audiences Only." His performances in those days were noted for their prolific use of four-letters words at a time when that just wasn't done.

"Compared to motion pictures, I'm very mild these days," he remarked in 1996.

In 1954, playwright Sidney Kingsley persuaded Hackett to appear on Broadway in "Lunatics and Lovers." Brooks Atkinson, writing in The New York Times, described Hackett as "a large, soft, messy comic with a glib tongue and a pair of inquiring eyes."

He also appeared on the New York stage in "Viva Madison Avenue" (1960) and "I Had a Ball" (1964).

Hackett made his film debut in 1953 with "Walking My Baby Back Home." His most notable roles came in "The Music Man," "The Love Bug" and "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World."

Among his other movies: "Fireman Save My Child," "God's Little Acre," "All Hands on Deck," "The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm," "Muscle Beach Party," "Loose Shoes," "Scrooged" and Disney's "The Little Mermaid," as the voice of Scuttle. He played comic Lou Costello in the 1978 film "Bud and Lou."

On television, he starred in the short-lived series "Stanley" from 1956 to 1957 and made numerous guest appearances on other shows, appearing in recent years on "Just Shoot Me" and "Sabrina The Teenage Witch" and, in a recurring bit called "Tuesdays With Buddy," on "The Late Late Show With Craig Kilborn."

He was born Leonard Hacker in a Jewish section of New York City's borough of Brooklyn on Aug. 31, 1924. For a time he apprenticed in his father's upholstery shop, but at school he found he had a talent for making fellow students laugh. He used humor to offset the taunts about his roly-poly shape.

When he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame a few years ago, Hackett quipped that he had left Brooklyn "to get away from the subway" only to discover that his star had been placed above the one in Los Angeles.

"It's a damn circle," he joked.

After graduating from high school, he spent three years in the military during World War II, then reinvented himself as Buddy Hackett, standup comedian.

Hackett had flopped using joke writers, and he soon came to realize that only he could write for Buddy Hackett. Doing so, he moved on to Los Angeles, where he scored at a small showcase club.

Besides his son, Hackett is survived by his wife, Sherry, whom he met in the Catskills, and daughters Ivy Miller of Denver and Lisa Hackett of Los Angeles.

———

Shaq's Moms gets a degree, Tim Reid speaks
 

B-CC woos actor Reid, who counsels grads
Shaq also on hand to watch mom graduate

By RYAN JUSTIN FOX
Staff Writer

Last update: 28 June 2003


For a usually low-key summer graduation ceremony that barely fills an aging gymnasium, Bethune-Cookman College's commencement Saturday featured some high-profile participants.

Actor-director Tim Reid delivered the address and basketball and film star Shaquille O'Neal watched his mother graduate.

Perched directly behind the podium in the front row of honored guests was Reid, whom older generations might recognize as the outlandish Venus Flytrap on the hit television series "WKRP in Cincinnati." Younger people might know him as the uptight single father, Ray, on "Sister, Sister."

Behind Reid was his long-time business partner and wife, actress Daphne Maxwell Reid, whom most of the summer graduates probably would know from her work on TV's "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" as Vivian Banks -- the second one.

Tucked in the back corner of the stage, as inconspicuous as possible, sat 7-foot-1 NBA megastar O'Neal, on hand to support his mother, Lucille, who received a bachelor of science degree in business administration. "Mama Shaq" graduated cum laude. :D :D

The college played host to a luncheon for the Reids at a beachside resort Friday, partly in hope of cultivating an ongoing relationship with them.

"We're excited to have (the Reids) here," said B-CC's social science chairwoman, Dr. Sheila Flemming, during the luncheon. A group headed by Flemming is courting Tim Reid and his production company to film a documentary in honor of the college's centennial and founder, Mary McLeod Bethune.

Friday's luncheon featured B-CC's top brass as well as Volusia County officials, Daytona Beach Mayor Bud Asher and West Volusia Film Authority President and Lake Helen Mayor Mark Shuttleworth. .

"Having (the Reids) here is very gratifying," Shuttleworth said. "Filmmaking in Volusia County has struggled the past couple of years."

Shuttleworth recently donated a few props to B-CC from the acclaimed 1997 movie "Rosewood," which was shot in West Volusia.

Reid, who said his New Millennium Studios in Petersburg, Va., is the only black production studio in the country, has made it his agenda to mold a new generation of filmmakers.

"Today's filmmakers are probably the worst filmmakers in the history of filmmaking," Reid said during the luncheon. "We're trying to get them to be responsible for the images they perpetuate."

Saturday, however, belonged to the 81 graduates, who waited years for the day. After they listened to Reid preach about the importance of dreaming, the annoyance of constant whining, and the proper way for younger men to wear their pants, they received their diplomas. Some paused the procession to pose for quick snapshots for future family photo albums.



ryan.fox@news-jrnl.com

Re: Shaq's Moms gets a degree, Tim Reid speaks
 

^5, MAMA SHAQ!!! It's NEVER too late!! :D :D :D

Mama Shaq did the dayum thang!!!!!! :D :D :D

Some arrests.....
 

Rapper DMX Arrested
Jun 30, 6:20 AM EST
ST. KITTS (AP) -- Authorities arrested American rapper DMX on Saturday for using profanity during a concert the night before on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts and Nevis, police said.
DMX, whose real name is Earl Simmons, was released on bail of $376 until Monday, when he is due in Basseterre Magistrate's Court.
The 32-year-old rapper left the Caribbean island on Saturday afternoon, but he pledged to return for his court date.
"I'll go to court on Monday," he said before leaving. "I just want to thank all my fans for showing the support they did show," he said. "It feels good to get out of jail, but it feels a thousand percent better when you get out of jail to see everybody say they love you."
The rapper, who was nominated last year for a Grammy for best rap solo performance for "Who We Be," performed an hourlong concert Friday night before an enthusiastic crowd of about 3,000 at St. Kitts' annual music festival.
Organizers said they warned DMX he would not be allowed to use obscenities on stage, which is a misdemeanor in this former British Caribbean colony of about 40,000 people.
"There was a contract signed in which it was made very clear long before the arrival of the artists that there are laws in St. Kitts that do not take kindly to the use of indecent language on stage," Information Minister Jacinth Henry Martin said Saturday.
DMX, however, said he signed no such contract, and he would not have performed if he had been forced to censor his language. He did not say where he was going Saturday afternoon.
Last year, DMX was fined and ordered by a U.S. court to make public service announcements for the Humane Society after police found pipes for smoking crack cocaine, a 9 mm pistol and 13 pit bulls on June 28, 1999, at his home in Teaneck, N.J.
DMX pleaded guilty to animal cruelty, disorderly conduct and possession of drug paraphernalia in that case.
DMX costarred with the late Aaliyah in the movie "Romeo Must Die" and appeared with Steven Seagal in "Exit Wounds." This year, he co-stars with martial arts heavyweight Jet Li in "Cradle 2 The Grave."

Suge Knight Jailed
Jun 30, 1:51 PM EST
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Rap impresario Marion "Suge" Knight reportedly has been arrested a second time this year for allegedly violating parole.
Police arrested the 37-year-old founder of Death Row Records Friday evening, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday.
Calls to the police and the district attorney weren't immediately returned Monday.
The Times reported that Knight was jailed without bail, but the county jail inmate information Web site didn't show a booking. Knight's lawyer, Robin Yanes, said Sunday he wasn't notified that his client had been arrested.
Knight completed 61 days in jail earlier this year after a state prison board found that he'd associated with a known gang member in violation of his probation.
At the height of its success in the mid-1990s, Death Row Records, now called Tha Row, had rap superstars such as Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg on its roster. But it lost its luster in the late '90s when Shakur was gunned down on a Las Vegas street, and Knight was sent to prison on a probation violation for brawling in the hours before Shakur's death. He was released from prison in 2001.

Re: Some arrests.....
 

Didn't he get arrested last year for the same thing? Doesn't he know NOT to curse there?

Re: Re: Some arrests.....
 

Shoot, Suge is another one who should know better!!!:mad:

Beyonce Throws Ladies' Night Party With Missy Elliott, MC Lyte, Free
 

PASADENA, California — Missy Elliott, MC Lyte and Free have collaborated with Beyoncé for her next single, the title track from the upcoming soundtrack to "The Fighting Temptations."

The ladies gathered recently in an abandoned mansion near Los Angeles to shoot the video with director Antti Jokinen (Wyclef Jean, Brian McKnight), who will meld performance footage seamlessly with clips from the movie.

"Basically, it's kind of like a ladies' night 'cause it's all us females and the song is about basically all these temptations you have with this guy and you're kind of fighting it," Beyoncé explained on the set. "The house came from the movie because it kind of reminds me a lot of the house that we filmed in for the movie."

"The Fighting Temptations," which opens September 19, stars Beyoncé as a nightclub singer who is persuaded by a New York advertising director (played by Cuba Gooding Jr.) to join a small town gospel choir he is directing in order to collect an inheritance (see "Beyonce Transforms Into Bohemian, Motherly Nightclub Singer").

Beyoncé took on the role after playing Foxy Cleopatra in "Austin Powers in Goldmember."

"I consciously, for my next film, wanted to play someone that was not glamorous, someone that was regular," she said. "I didn't wear any makeup. I was just a southern girl with a child out of wedlock. I wanted to play someone with real things that people really go through. And it was easy for me and I really, really liked it."

Beyoncé is thinking about touring in September for a few months and then making another movie, but she may flip the plan around depending on the parts available. She's currently reading scripts and talking to several directors.

"Some are romantic comedies, some are dramas, I don't even know what to call one of them," she said. "I want to do everything. I really don't know exactly what I can do ... I'm just starting and this is like a whole new challenge for me. So, I want to do a suspense film, I want to play a villain one day."

Along with her thespian aspirations, Beyoncé also has plans to launch a fashion line some time before the end of the year. "We're talking with a lot of different people to partner up with," she said. "My mom would definitely be a part of that. She's sketching up some ideas so we can know exactly what we want and we can be on the same page."

Whatever ventures the singer takes on, she will set them aside next year when she reunites with Destiny's Child (see "Destiny's Child May Get A New Member Next Year"), and whatever happens in between, Beyoncé is ready to go.

"In this business you can't really map anything out because you never know what's going to happen," she said. "I actually planned for my record, [Dangerously in Love], to come out a long time ago, so I didn't plan for my album to come out right before the movie, even though it ended up being a great thing. I just kind of take everything as I go, make the decisions as I go. I've been really, really blessed and hopefully I'll keep making the right decisions."

DMX Wants Apology From Caribbean Isle ... Or Else
 

DMX wants the promoters of the St. Kitts Music Festival to formally apologize for arresting him on obscenity charges. And if they don't, his manager says he may consider taking legal action.

The rapper was arrested Saturday morning for using foul language onstage, though he claims that he had permission to get profane as long as the dirty words were said in the context of a song. And he's got a videotape to prove it.

Basically, it was understood by DMX that if the lyrics contained profanity, it was allowed. What
wasn't allowed was DMX's use of swear words in any kind of banter with the audience. Concert organizers claim DMX signed a contract to that effect, though his manager said the written agreement didn't go into detail about the foul
language. That stipulation was only expressed to X verbally, his manager said.

Filmed backstage prior to X 's performance, the videotape shows DMX and his entourage speaking with a couple of men claiming to be in charge.
He then explains to one of the men what to expect onstage, before getting what appears to be the go-ahead from the official.

"I don't curse for nothing," DMX said, alluding to the stipulation about ad-libbed swear words, "but in the song, there are curses. So you're not going to arrest me, right?"

The man nodded, then asked for clarification. "In all the songs?"

"Yes," X said.

Only in one instance during the show did DMX's mouth run afoul of the
law, and he had issued a warning to officials in advance about that.

DMX: I got this one song called "What These Bitches Want," and before the song comes on, I say to the guys, "Fellas, what do these bitches want from a n---a?" And then the song comes on. That's the only time I curse without singing."

DMX Associate: So he'll say "bitch" and "n---a." That's it.

OFFICIAL #1 [giving a thumbs up]: Good.

Although some parts of the tape are inaudible, it appears that the word authorities found most objectionable was the f-bomb.

DMX: I say some bad curses in the song.

OFFICIAL #1: Like what?

DMX: Mother----er.... Bitch-ass n---a... Suck my di--, I say that a few times.

OFFICIAL #1: [inaudible, though he appears to only object to the word mother----er.]

DMX: But it's part of the song. And the crowd is going to end up singing it.

OFFICIAL #2: Then the best thing for you to do is let the crowd sing it.

DMX: I can't do that ... OK, let me know now if [the curse words] are good or not, because if there are any problems with me cursing, I won't
perform.

OFFICIAL #2: What words are you saying?

DMX: I'm saying everything. I say it all … but in the song.

OFFICIAL #1: I'm telling you, the only thing we have a problem with is [inaudible].

DMX: I say that.

OFFICIAL #1: Anything else — n---a, bitches, stuff like that — is OK. But you said the music will be playing?

DMX: At all times when I curse... I don't do it a lot. I'll try to.... Just don't lock me up, OK?

OFFICIAL #2: OK.

And the two men shake on it.

DMX's manager wants the St. Kitts Music Festival organizers to apologize to DMX and issue a formal apology to the press. If they don't, he warned, he'll consider taking legal action.

The St. Kitts police officers that arrested DMX were unavailable at press time.

Foul language doesn't seem to fly in the Caribbean. Two years ago, at the Reggae Sumfest festival in Jamaica, Ja Rule, Snoop Dogg and Beenie Man were each issued summonses for using their potty mouths onstage.

—Joe D'Angelo

Legally Blonde II premier photos
 

Regina King:
http://www.nysocialdiary.com/Partypi...3/IMG_6297.jpg

Soror Star Jones:
http://www.nysocialdiary.com/Partypi...3/IMG_6377.jpg

Star Reese Witherspoon and that femmy-looking (IMO) husband of hers, Ryan Phillipe:
http://www.nysocialdiary.com/Partypi...3/IMG_6356.jpg

RIP Herbie Mann
 

Jazz Flutist Herbie Mann Dies at 73
17 minutes ago

By DEBORAH BAKER, Associated Press Writer

SANTA FE, N.M. - Herbie Mann, the versatile jazz flutist who combined a variety of musical styles and deeply influenced genres such as world music and fusion, has died. He was 73.



Mann, who had battled prostate cancer (news - web sites) since 1997, died late Tuesday, according to a friend, Sy Johnson. A funeral home in Santa Fe said it was making arrangements with Mann's family.


Mann had moved to Santa Fe in the late 1980s after spending most of his life in his native New York City.


Mann always performed different styles, then combined them. He did bebop and cool jazz, and toured Africa, Brazil and Japan listening for new music.


"I just think he was a wonderful Pied Piper of jazz, drawing our attention what's happening around the world and the country," said Johnson, a New York City composer who had known Mann for some 40 years. He called Mann "a guy who loved music of all kinds an and eager to explore it all."


Family of Mann, formed in 1973, played world music before it was called that. Mann's best-selling "Memphis Underground" was a founding recording of fusion.


If a genie offered Mann anything he wanted, he said in a 1995 Associated Press interview, he would choose a big band including three rhythm sections for straight-ahead jazz, Brazilian (news - web sites) music and soul.


"I'd be able to play all that music; I wouldn't have to play any one thing all the time," he said. "And I would always like to try to evolve the music to another step. Once you reach the point where you play it perfectly in a genre, to me it gets boring. Then I want to try to evolve by combining things."


When he left Atlantic Records in 1979 he started producing his own records, and later he launched his own label, Kokopelli. In all, he made more than 100 albums as leader.


Touring, he said, was "a killer, the hours and food. I always thought if you made good records your records could do the traveling for you."


Album titles reflect Mann's versatility: "At the Village Gate" (1962); "African Suite" (1959); "Brasil, Bossa Nova & Blues" (1962); "Latin Mann" 1965; "Memphis Two Step" (1971); and "Eastern European Roots" (2000).


"As much as I love music, I never really thought it was my life. I thought it was the vehicle I used to express my life," he said.


Born Herbert Solomon in Brooklyn in 1930, he started his career when he was 15, playing in groups at Catskill Mountain resorts for the summer. He studied saxophone but preferred flute. In the 1950s, after three years in the Army playing with the Army Band in Trieste, Italy, Mann toured France and Scandinavia.


He credited visits to Africa and Brazil in the early 1960s with changing his musical outlook.


"When I came back (from Africa), I hired (Babatunde) Olatunji, a Nigerian drummer living here, and we started doing music based on African motifs," he told the AP.


As for the Brazil tour, he said, "Revelation doesn't touch it. Up to that point, the ethnic music I had heard had 14 drums playing different parts but the melodies were very simple. Then I saw the `Black Orpheus' movie and heard multiple rhythm parts along with the most beautiful melodies in the world.


He returned and recorded with Brazilian musicians, including Antonio Carlos Jobim and a 19-year-old Sergio Mendes.





At 70, he put out a CD called "Eastern European Roots."

"I've played Cuban music, but I'm not Cuban," he told the Rocky Mountain News. "I've played Brazilian music, but I'm not Brazilian. I've played jazz, but I'm not African-American. What I am is an Eastern European Jew. I love all the music I've played, but I wanted something that is mine. ... I had been writing this music for years, but I never thought there was a place for me to play it."

"I'm playing better than I've ever played," Mann said in the 1995 Associated Press interview.

"As far as I'm concerned, almost everything I've done in the past has been on the surface or just a hair below," he said. "Now I'm getting serious."

His last live gig was May 3 at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, where "he got a standing ovation for five minutes," Johnson said.

"He had a lot of plans," Johnson said. "His time may have been limited and he knew it, but he was a man of energy and an active life that would constantly churn up things," Johnson said.

Johnson said Mann is survived by his wife, Janeal Arison; sons Paul and Geoff; daughters Claudia Mann-Basler and Laura Mann; his mother, Ruth Solomon; and a sister, Judy Burnstein.

____

'Idol' Star Gets Violation
Jul 2, 7:23 AM EST

ARLINGTON, TX (AP) -- Justin Guarini was ticketed by Grand Prairie police after witnesses said he almost ran over a young girl with a personal watercraft at Joe Pool Lake, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.

Guarini, 24, was the runner-up on Fox's "American Idol" last year. He was with winner Kelly Clarkson — his co-star in the new film "From Justin to Kelly" — and about five friends at the lake Saturday, when the incident allegedly occurred.

Publicists representing Guarini and Clarkson couldn't be reached for comment Tuesday by The Associated Press.

The citation was issued at Loyd Park on the lake's west side about 7 p.m. Saturday, said Sgt. Chris Chopin, lake patrol supervisor. He said Guarini and Clarkson "didn't understand what the laws were."

Clint Heizer said Guarini ran the watercraft up on shore, stopping a few feet short of his 5-year-old daughter, Allison.

"I was in Justin's face talking to him about what he had just done, and that's when I realized who he was," Heizer, a city marshal in North Richland Hills, told the newspaper in Tuesday's editions.

Guarini rolled off the moving watercraft before it stopped and ran away laughing, Heizer said.

If convicted of unsafe boat operation, Guarini faces a fine of up to $2,000 and a maximum 180 days in jail, according to a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department Web site.