Charlie Lourie, a Founder of Mosaic Jazz Label, Dies at 60
By Ben Ratliffe, courtesy of The New York Times
January 4, 2001 - Charlie Lourie, a co-founder of the jazz reissue label Mosaic, died on Sunday at his home in Stamford, Conn. He was 60.
Michael Cuscuna, his partner at Mosaic, said Mr. Lourie had been suffering from scleroderma, a rare viral disease, for the last three years.
Mosaic, started 17 years ago by Mr. Lourie and Mr. Cuscuna, is the most distinctive reissue label in jazz - a successful operation by and for hard-core enthusiasts.
Sold only by mail order, its CD and vinyl-record box-sets are uniform, monolithic, and serious. They have ranged in size from a 2-CD Don Cherry set to an 18-CD Nat (King) Cole set.
Printed in limited-edition quantities, mostly of 500 copies, and decorated with black-and-white images only, the Mosaic reissues tend to collect all the existing recordings of an artist on a particular label, or within a particular time frame; they come with 10,000-word essays by jazz critics and historians.
Many of the photographs draw from the archives of Francis Wolff, who covered jazz sessions from the 1940's to the 70's, and the images are printed from original negatives on glossy paper. The partners' 105 projects have included major reissues of Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Herbie Nichols, Count Basie and Andrew Hill, among others.
The company, which began with no outside financing, is now half owned by EMI. Its Nat Cole set, from 1990, with a list price of $270, sold 6,000 copies.
Mr. Lourie came to a career in the jazz-record industry through an early life as a clarinetist, both jazz and classical. He was born in Boston and attended the New England Conservatory. In the 1960's he worked throughout the Boston area with chamber groups, symphony orchestras, and jazz ensembles.
In 1968 Mr. Lourie moved to New York, filling the position of manager of contemporary artist relations at Columbia Records. By the early 70's he was in charge of the merchandising department at Columbia's sub- label, Epic. In 1974 he moved to Los Angeles and became head of marketing at Blue Note records, and in the late 70's he was hired by Warner Bros., where he was made director of jazz and progressive music. He founded Mosaic records in 1983 with Mr. Cuscuna, operating out of Santa Monica, Calif., and moving to Stamford in 1985.
He is survived by a daughter, Sarah; a son, David; a brother, Alan, of Washington, and his mother, Rose, of Boston.
Kirsty MacColl, Pop Singer and Songwriter, Dies at 41
By Jon Pareles, courtesy of The New York Times
December 20, 2000 - Kirsty MacColl, a singer and songwriter with a string of hits in Britain, died on Monday in Mexico while vacationing in Cozumel. Reuters reported that her manager, Kevin Nixon, said that she was believed to have been hit by a speedboat in an area reserved for swimmers. She was 41 and lived in London.
Ms. MacColl's songs were rooted in folk-rock and girl-group pop, and they tempered romance with realism, often merging witty but unflinching lyrics with buoyant choruses. She sang with a rich, smoky voice.
"Unpretentious, inimitable, writes like a playwright, sings like an angel," the songwriter Billy Bragg wrote for her 1995 compilation album, "Galore" (I.R.S.).
Ms. MacColl was the daughter of the folk songwriter Ewan MacColl. She began performing as a teenager in a punk band, the Drug Addix, which released an EP on the independent British label Chiswick. Her first single under her own name, "They Don't Know," was released by Stiff in 1979; it later became a major hit for Tracey Ullman.
Ms. MacColl had a Top 20 hit in Britain in 1981 with "There's a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop (Swears He's Elvis)," followed by the album Desperate Characters.
She married the producer Steve Lillywhite in 1984. She had a British hit single with her version of the Kinks' song "Days" in 1989; the album that included it, Kite (Virgin), also featured songs written with the guitarist Johnny Marr from the Smiths, a frequent collaborator.
Mr. Lillywhite produced Ms. MacColl's 1991 album, Electric Landlady (Virgin); it was followed by Titanic Days (I.R.S.) in 1993.
She and Mr. Lillywhite divorced in 1997. In March 2000, she released Tropical Brainstorm (V2), which drew on Cuban and Brazilian music. She made a radio documentary series on Cuban music, "Kirsty MacColl's Cuba," that was to be broadcast this week on BBC Radio 2, but has been postponed.
Ms. MacColl sang with the Pogues on "Fairytale of New York," a 1987 British hit, and on the AIDS-relief album Red Hot and Blue. She also did backup vocals on albums by the Rolling Stones, Morissey, Robert Plant, Simple Minds and Talking Heads. Bette Midler's album Bette includes a version of Ms. MacColl's song "In These Shoes?"
She is survived by two sons, Jamie and Louis.
Libertad Lamarque, Mexican Star, Dies at 92
By Simon Romero, courtesy of The New York Times
December 25, 2000 - Libertad Lamarque Bouza, a singer and actress whose career ranged from the gritty days of early tango recordings in Argentina to the contemporary daily soap operas produced for mass audiences in the Spanish-speaking world, died on Dec. 12 in Mexico City. She was 92.
Ms. Lamarque gained renown after leaving Argentina for Mexico in 1946, following an incident on the Buenos Aires set of the 1944 movie The Circus Procession. She was said to have quarreled with a young actress named Eva Duarte.
The next year Duarte married Col. Juan Domingo Peron, and in 1946, Per—n became president of Argentina. Exercising her power as first lady, Eva Duarte Peron effectively prevented any studio in Argentina from hiring Ms. Lamarque.
After she moved to Mexico City in the 1940's, during the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, Ms. Lamarque's career blossomed. She acted in the first film that the Spanish director Luis Bu–uel made in Mexico, "The Great Casino," and appeared in some 60 other films.
"Strangely, even with a strong Argentine accent that never quite went away, she became the darling of Mexican cinema," said Carl Mora, an expert on Latin American film at the University of New Mexico. "Her magnetic presence made for quite a life trajectory."
It was in Rosario, the provincial Argentine city where Ms. Lamarque was born, that she began her artistic career. Her father was Gaudencio Lamarque, a Uruguayan descendant of French immigrants and a militant anarchist. Because he was imprisoned at the time of her birth, his daughter was named Libertad, or Liberty. Together with six half- brothers and -sisters, she began acting as a child in plays inspired by anarchist ideas.
In 1926, when Ms. Lamarque turned 18, her family moved to Buenos Aires. She soon found work singing in comedy shows. Then a music studio hired her to record tango songs, and she began to attract attention. Ms. Lamarque also started acting, making her debut in the 1929 silent film Adios, Argentina, which was made by the Italian director Mario Parpagnoli in a single day. In 1932 she starred in Tango, Argentina's first sound film.
Ms. Lamarque's first marriage, to Emilio Romero, who worked as a prompter in the theater, turned sour shortly after they exchanged vows in 1928. Still, because divorce was illegal at the time in Argentina, it took Ms. Lamarque 12 years to become legally separated from him.
In 1935 she was reported to have attempted suicide while on tour in Chile. That same year her husband took their daughter, Mirtha, with him to live in neighboring Uruguay. After an effort involving a lawyer and several friends, including Hector Artola, her new romantic partner and future husband, Ms. Lamarque succeeded in gaining custody of her daughter.
While in Argentina, Ms. Lamarque acted in more than 20 movies, including Honeysuckle, When I Return to Your Side and In This Gray Afternoon. But it was in Mexico that she took her place as a leading figure in Latin American cinema, and later in the melodramatic world of daily telenovelas, or soap operas. In later years she divided her time between Mexico City and Miami, but refused to retire.
Earlier this year the Mexican Academy of Cinema Arts and Sciences awarded her a lifetime achievement award. At the time of her death she was playing a Mother Superior in "Angelface," a popular telenovela.
Ms. Lamarque is survived by her daughter, Mirtha Romero Lamarque, of Argentina.
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