Fontella Bass & Jack Klugman
Click to viewFontella Bass is dead at 72. Being black and female, as usual she got super double extra badly screwed by those running the record labels. Unlike many of her contemporaries, she successfully fought back-in 1990 Ogilvy & Mather blithely used "Rescue Me" in an American Express TV commercial without Bass' required permission. In 1993 Bass sued and won, and was then able to address the many needs of her dilapidated house. Some history in this badly-copyedited excerpt from somebody's MSU thesis.
In tangentially-related recent news, Jack Klugman is dead at 90; the actor well loved for his roles in "12 Angry Men", "The Odd Couple", and "Quincy, M.E." lost one of his vocal cords to throat cancer caused by cigarettes, but retaught himself how to speak (in a quiet, raspy voice) and carried on.