(01-30-2021 04:02 AM)johncatworth Wrote:  John Chaney longtime Temple OWLS MBB coach.
https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basket...basketball

I remember his Owls were often pretty good. RIP, coach.

Jim Weatherly (March 17, 1943 – February 3, 2021) was an American singer-songwriter that wrote mostly pop and country music. He played quarterback at the University of Mississippi, while also writing music with his own bands. He subsequently chose songwriting over a football career.

Good choice, Jim!

Jim Weatherly, Pontotoc native and Hall of Fame songwriter, dies

Weatherly wrote songs for almost 50 years. His best-known song is "Midnight Train to Georgia", recorded by Gladys Knight & the Pips. It peaked to number 1 on the pop and R&B charts, and went on to win a Grammy Award. The song was subsequently inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999, and was chosen by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Recording Industry Association of America as No. 29 of the 365 Songs of the Century. Ray Price has recorded 38 of Weatherly's songs. Both Gladys Knight & the Pips (in 1972) and Bob Luman (in 1973) had top five records with "Neither One of Us". Other artists who have recorded Weatherly's songs include: Glen Campbell, Kenny Rogers, Asha Puthli, Neil Diamond, Kenny Chesney and Garth Brooks.

Gladys Knight and the Pips have recorded twelve other Weatherly compositions, such as "Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye)" and "Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me". That version of "Neither One of Us" became his first number one pop record in Cashbox and Record World magazine charts, and became a number one R&B record. It was followed by "Where Peaceful Waters Flow"," Midnight Train to Georgia" and "Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me", which were all pop and R&B hits. Weatherly's catalog includes songs that have been performed by Ray Price, Lynn Anderson, Brenda Lee, Bob Luman, and Batdorf & Rodney.

(02-04-2021 12:58 PM)GoodOwl Wrote:  Jim Weatherly (March 17, 1943 – February 3, 2021) was an American singer-songwriter that wrote mostly pop and country music. He played quarterback at the University of Mississippi, while also writing music with his own bands. He subsequently chose songwriting over a football career.

Good choice, Jim!

Jim Weatherly, Pontotoc native and Hall of Fame songwriter, dies

Weatherly wrote songs for almost 50 years. His best-known song is "Midnight Train to Georgia", recorded by Gladys Knight & the Pips. It peaked to number 1 on the pop and R&B charts, and went on to win a Grammy Award. The song was subsequently inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999, and was chosen by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Recording Industry Association of America as No. 29 of the 365 Songs of the Century. Ray Price has recorded 38 of Weatherly's songs. Both Gladys Knight & the Pips (in 1972) and Bob Luman (in 1973) had top five records with "Neither One of Us". Other artists who have recorded Weatherly's songs include: Glen Campbell, Kenny Rogers, Asha Puthli, Neil Diamond, Kenny Chesney and Garth Brooks.

Gladys Knight and the Pips have recorded twelve other Weatherly compositions, such as "Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye)" and "Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me". That version of "Neither One of Us" became his first number one pop record in Cashbox and Record World magazine charts, and became a number one R&B record. It was followed by "Where Peaceful Waters Flow"," Midnight Train to Georgia" and "Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me", which were all pop and R&B hits. Weatherly's catalog includes songs that have been performed by Ray Price, Lynn Anderson, Brenda Lee, Bob Luman, and Batdorf & Rodney.

From my mom's hometown. The song he wrote and recorded (before Gladys Knight and the Pips) was "Midnight Plane to Houston". It didn't quite have an R&B sound, so the title and refrain were changed for Gladys Knight.

(02-05-2021 12:58 AM)WRCisforgotten79 Wrote:  

(02-04-2021 12:58 PM)GoodOwl Wrote:  Jim Weatherly (March 17, 1943 – February 3, 2021) was an American singer-songwriter that wrote mostly pop and country music. ...

Jim Weatherly, Pontotoc native and Hall of Fame songwriter, dies

Weatherly wrote songs for almost 50 years. His best-known song is "Midnight Train to Georgia", recorded by Gladys Knight & the Pips. It peaked to number 1 on the pop and R&B charts, and went on to win a Grammy Award. The song was subsequently inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999, and was chosen by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Recording Industry Association of America as No. 29 of the 365 Songs of the Century. ...

...The song he wrote and recorded (before Gladys Knight and the Pips) was "Midnight Plane to Houston". It didn't quite have an R&B sound, so the title and refrain were changed for Gladys Knight.

All because Farrah Fawcett answered his phone call to Lee Majors (her boyfriend) and "she mentioned she was packing her clothes and she was going to take the midnight plane to Houston to visit her family,” Mr. Weatherly later recalled. “ ‘Midnight plane to Houston’ got kind of stuck in my mind in bold letters. When I got off the phone, I wrote ‘Midnight Plane to Houston’ in about 30 to 45 minutes.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obi...story.html

Washington Post Wrote:Mr. Weatherly thought he had written a country love song, a potential hit for a guitar-picking crossover artist like Glen Campbell. He recorded it himself to attract attention — “L.A. proved too much for the girl,” he sang in the opening lines, “so she’s leaving the life we’ve come to know” — and his publisher soon got a call from Sonny Limbo, an Atlanta producer who wanted to record it with soul singer Cissy Houston, the mother of Whitney.

There was just one problem. As Houston later told the Wall Street Journal, “My people are originally from Georgia and they didn’t take planes to Houston or anywhere else. They took trains.” What about changing the song’s title to “Midnight Train to Georgia”?

And Gladys Knight tells the same story. :-)

(https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertain...story.html)

Quote:Q: Let’s talk about your hits. “Midnight Train to Georgia” seemed very personal.

A: It really was. When we got it, it was called “Midnight Plane to Houston.” We didn’t fly much during that time and we didn’t know much about Houston; we’re from Atlanta, Georgia. And during my early days of touring, we always rode the train because my grandfather was a Pullman porter.

So we called Jim Weatherly, the writer of the song and asked him, “Can we make it Georgia? And we take the train?” And he said, “Yeah! Go ahead! Give it a shot!” So we did, and that’s how it became “Midnight Train to Georgia.”

Former heavyweight champion Leon Spinks dies at 67


FILE - In this Feb. 15, 1978, file photo, Leon Spinks, right, connects with a right hook to Muhammad Ali, during the late rounds of their championship fight in Las Vegas. Former heavyweight champion Leon Spinks Jr. died Friday night, Feb. 5, 2021, after battling prostate and other cancers. He was 67. (AP Photo/File)

“In that fight everything clicked,” Bob Arum said. “He came in with a game plan and he beat Ali. It wasn’t that Ali wasn’t at his best, but Leon shocked everybody with how good Leon was.”

Suddenly, Spinks was the heavyweight champion of the world at the age of 25.

“I'm not The Greatest,” Spinks said afterward. “Just the latest.”

Among the notable people in Spinks’ entourage was Lawrence Tureaud, who would later be known as the actor Mr. T and served as bodyguard for the champion.

Mary Wilson, 76, one of the three original members of The Supremes. Flo Ballard died in 1976 at the age of 32 (heart attack). Only Diana Ross survives.

Marty Schottenheimer, 77, of Alzheimer's. He was diagnosed in 2014.

I've worked on Neve consoles...magnificent! Sorry to see him go. Thanks, Rupert.





Rupert Neve (31 July 1926 – 12 February 2021), born in Newton Abbot, England, was a British electronics engineer and entrepreneur, who was particularly known as a pioneering designer of professional audio recording equipment. Neve died on 12 February 2021 in Wimberley, Texas, U.S., due to pneumonia and heart failure.

Pioneering audio equipment engineer Rupert Neve dies aged 94

Quote:Neve is known for his work on microphone preamplifiers, equalizers, compressors and early large format mixing consoles. Many of his classic products are considered classic equipment and are very highly sought after by the professionals in the recording industry. This has resulted in several companies releasing products that are Neve replicas or clones. He is often credited as the man who made the recording console. In 1989 he became an inducted member of the Mix Hall of Fame, and in 1997 he was the third person to receive a Technical Grammy Award. In a 1999 survey conducted by Studio Sound magazine he was selected by his peers as the number one audio personality of the 20th century. He was interviewed in the 2013 documentary Sound City.

At 17 years of age he volunteered as a sailor for the Royal Navy and soon after settled in England where he built a mobile recording studio in which he recorded choirs, operas, and public addresses.

In the 1950s, Neve worked for Rediffusion, primarily a forerunner in early cable TV systems. Neve left the company, and formed CQ Audio, a company specializing in the manufacture of hifi speaker systems. In the early 1960s, he designed and built a mixing console for a composer named Desmond Leslie, from Castle Leslie, Ireland, where the original desk is still housed. In 1961, he formed Neve Electronics.

In 1964, Neve built a transistor-based mixing console with an equalizer for Phillips Recording Studio in London. As demand for consoles increased, Neve started a life of manufacturing and designing audio recording equipment. Neve has founded or been involved with several companies, most recently Rupert Neve Designs, based in Wimberley, Texas, United States, where he has resided with his wife Evelyn since they became U.S. citizens in 2002.

Leslie E. Robertson, structural engineer of the World Trade Center, passes away at 92

Quote:Leslie Earl Robertson (February 12, 1928 – February 11, 2021) was an American engineer. He was the lead structural engineer of the Twin Towers of the original World Trade Center in New York City, and served as structural engineer on numerous other projects, including the U.S. Steel Tower in Pittsburgh, Shanghai World Financial Center, and the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong.

Robertson's engineering career began in 1952, when he joined Kaiser Engineering. He worked as a mathematician, structural engineer, and electrical engineer during this time. He was also part of the investigation team studying the collapse of an offshore drilling platform. He later went on a road trip and ran out of funds in Seattle, where he then joined the Seattle-based structural and civil engineering firm Worthington and Skilling in 1958.

When Seattle-born American architect Minoru Yamasaki won the competition to design the World Trade Center, Robertson and his firm Worthington, Skilling, Helle, and Jackson (WSHJ) got the engineering contract. Designed between 1966 and 1971, this was the firm's and Robertson's first high rise construction. His interactions with Yamasaki led to the conceptualization of the tube design for the buildings with exterior columns that were two feet apart along the building's height, specifically designed to provide a sense of enclosure for people in the building. This also meant that, unlike most skyscrapers of the time that were supported by concrete or steel frames with columns interrupting the interiors, the WTC design permitted column-free interiors, with the weight being handled by the exterior columns and the steel and concrete cores. Steel trusses supported the floors and connect exterior columns and the central cores.

In addition to the World Trade Center, he was involved in structural engineering and design for other skyscrapers including; the U.S. Steel Headquarters in Pittsburgh, the Shanghai World Financial Center, and the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong designed by the Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei, and Puerta de Europa in Madrid. Further Robertson engineered the building of museums in Seattle, Portland, Maine, and Berlin in addition to theaters and bridges. Robertson structurally engineered the installation of American sculptor Richard Serra's works.

In 'The Structure of Design', Leslie Earl Robertson recounts a storied career in engineering which has generated among the most innovative and formally daring buildings of the modern era, as well as his extensive collaborations with several titans of the practice: Minoru Yamasaki, Philip Johnson, Max Abramovitz, Romaldo Giurgola, I. M. Pei, Pei Partnership, KPF, Kiyonori Kikutake, and Gunnar Birkerts. Robertson's large-scale projects with some of the leading sculptors of the day, including Richard Serra and Beverly Pepper, display the range of this engineer's craft. As a restless student from modest origins, Robertson's first encounters with engineering were almost accidental, yet he would go on to be lead engineer of the landmark IBM buildings in Pittsburgh and Seattle while still in his early thirties. Immediately thereafter he embarked on what would become his most renowned project, the World Trade Center, to be followed by scores of major buildings around the world.

Neville O'Riley Livingston OM OJ (10 April 1947 – 2 March 2021), known professionally as Bunny Wailer, was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and percussionist. He was an original member of reggae group The Wailers along with Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. A three-time Grammy Award winner, he is considered one of the longtime standard-bearers of reggae music. He was also known as Jah B, Bunny O'Riley, and Bunny Livingston.

Discography

Sam Dede mourns Reggae legend Bunny Wailer

Stephen D. Bechtel Jr. 1925- 2021



from Bechtel site:

Quote:Active in civic affairs, Steve Jr. served on six presidential commissions for three U.S. presidents.

Steve Jr. also contributed his wisdom in advisory roles at the California Institute of Technology, Purdue, MIT, and Stanford and its Hoover Institution. A life-long Boy Scout, he achieved Eagle rank in 1940 and has been recognized by the Boy Scouts of America with both the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award and the Silver Buffalo Award. He attended the 2013 National Jamboree at the Summit Bechtel Family National Scout Reserve with 40,000 other scouts.

From 1948 to 1960, he worked his way up the Bechtel ladder from field engineer to chairman and CEO. Under his leadership, Bechtel’s sales improved eleven-fold, its workforce grew five-fold, and the number of major projects increased from 18 to 119. Although Bechtel had a proud history of megaprojects in the United States, such as the Hoover Dam and San Francisco Bay Bridge caisson, Steve Jr. extended the firm’s footprint around the world and took on efforts of increasing technical sophistication. Beyond geographic expansion and engineering excellence, Steve Jr. used his personal values to create a corporate culture based on honesty, merit, teamwork, and fair dealing.

Steve Jr. retired as CEO at age 65 in 1990.

"Enjoy your work and show your enthusiasm for it. It will be infectious to those around you."
--Stephen D. Bechtel Jr.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, Brown & Root was regarded as the democrats' favorite big project firm (NASA Houston, Cam Ranh Bay, others) because of George Brown's long-term friendship with LBJ. The republicans' favorites were Bechtel (George Schultz) and Fluor.

Halliburton (parent of Brown & Root) hired Dick Cheney to get them into the good graces of the republicans. He obviously succeeded.

Add Elgin Baylor to the list. https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/3111...or-dies-86

Jack Laurenzo, former Rice running back and son of Ninfa.

Actor/musician George Segal, 87. One of my favorites - versatile actor.

[quote='Owl 69/70/75' pid='17345642' dateline='1616543398']
Jack Laurenzo, former Rice running back and son of Ninfa.
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Jack was a fine guy, a sentiment pretty much universally held among us Men of Lovett who were there with him his two years at Rice.

Died at age 71 after an ordeal with brain cancer. I had fallen out of touch and was not aware he was sick until a couple of weeks ago. Called to see about dropping by to visit him, but the family basically said, too late.

During that three win streak his sophomore year, Jack played a major role in those victories. Really pretty much the entire backfield were Lovett sophomores...Jack, Mike Spruill, Cliff Crabtree, Kim Malone. Philip Wood at QB, although I draw a blank as to who started at quarterback those last three games.

Jack departed Rice at the end of that school year under circumstances that were extremely unfair to him. I blame Dean Weirum, a total SOB. As close as Jack was to his family, I couldn’t see him having left Rice and the city of Houston without pressure having been applied.

Some may recall that he wound up at Boston College – he had family connections there — and wound up earning two more letters. Senior year BC went 9-2. Graduated with honors.

There’s a really nice obituary in the Chronicle that’s worth a read. Couldn’t patch a link here on my iPad but it’s easily looked up by any search engine.

Old Jack… I think he was probably the most well liked guy in our Lovett College ‘72 group. Optimist, upbeat, wry sense of humor.

I was really bummed when he left.

(03-24-2021 02:20 AM)Ricefootballnet Wrote:  Jack departed Rice at the end of that school year under circumstances that were extremely unfair to him. I blame Dean Weirum, a total SOB. As close as Jack was to his family, I couldn’t see him having left Rice and the city of Houston without pressure having been applied.

I always wondered what happened. I was away in the Navy by then, but it just seemed really weird. No need to elaborate, you've shared enough.

Jessica Walter

I was a big fan of Arrested Development.

In keeping with the theme of this thread title....

He's not dead but William Shatner turned 90 4 days ago. And Leonard Nimoy (who did die 6 years ago) would have turned 90 today. It's interesting that they were born 4 days apart. I don't believe I knew that until right now.

Writer Larry McMurtry, 84.