Jeff Cook, co-founder of country band Alabama, dies at 73
Guitarist Jeff Cook, who co-founded the successful country group Alabama and steered them up the charts with such hits as “Song of the South” and “Dixieland Delight,” has died. Cook had Parkinson's disease and disclosed his diagnosis in 2017. Tributes poured in from country stars, including Travis Tritt who called Cook “a great guy and one heckuva bass fisherman” and Charlie Daniels, who tweeted that “Heaven gained another guitar/fiddle player today.”
news.yahoo.comJimmy Buffett looks at 50 years after his 1st Key West gig
A profane phone call and Jimmy Buffett’s inability to keep his daily planner organized 50 years ago in Miami set in motion events that changed the music world. Those events made the singer-songwriter one of the most beloved entertainers in America. And one of the wealthiest, with a net worth around $600 million.
Country Hall of Famer, actor Kris Kristofferson has retired
FILE - Singer Kris Kristofferson performs at the Glastonbury music festival at Worthy Farm, in Somerset, England, on June 23, 2017. Kristofferson has retired after five decades. A statement from his publicist said the Country Music Hall of Famer and Grammy winner retired in 2020. The Texas-born Oxford scholar brought introspective and poetic lyrics to country music with songs like Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down and Me and Bobby McGee. He has starred in 70 films and earned a Golden Globe for his performance in “A Star is Born.”He was inducted to the Country Music Hall of Fame and was awarded the Johnny Mercer Award from the Songwriter Hall of Fame.
Kenny Chesney group helps install artificial reef in Florida
Chesneys No Shoes Reefs organization is helping to have an artificial reef installed off of Floridas Atlantic Coast. The organization and other marine groups donated and installed 13 reef balls on the ocean floor off of Delray Beach in Palm Beach County. (Photo by Rick Scuteri/Invision/AP, File)DELRAY BEACH, Fla. – Country music superstar Kenny Chesney's No Shoes Reefs organization is helping to install an artificial reef off of Florida's Atlantic coast. It will make up a 32-acre (13-hectare) underwater reef park known as No Shoes Reef 4. AdDelray Beach is located south of West Palm Beach.
Country star and hit Elvis songwriter Mac Davis dies at 78
FILE - Musician Mac Davis performs at the Texas Film Awards in Austin, Texas on March 6, 2014. Davis, a country star and Elvis songwriter, died on Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2020 after heart surgery. (Photo by Jack Plunkett/Invision/AP, File)NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Country star Mac Davis, who launched his career crafting the Elvis hits “A Little Less Conversation” and “In the Ghetto,” and whose own hits include “Baby Don't Get Hooked On Me,” has died. He was named 1974’s entertainer of the year by the Academy of Country Music and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. “A small town boy who’d achieved the greatest kinds of fame, he remained a good guy, a family man,” said country star Kenny Chesney.
Headline-making missteps put focus on newsroom diversity
In electronic media, 12 percent of broadcast journalists are black, similar to the national population figure of 13 percent. It's not only insulting to me, but to black journalists around the country.A failure to include journalists of many different backgrounds means missing stories. Hardy, who just left a job in Greenville, S.C., said that without black journalists there, stories about gentrified neighborhoods would have gone untold. The sweep of national protests following the death of George Floyd has news leaders talking to their staffs about how the story affects them. An internal outcry over the essay wasn't apparent until a number of black journalists tweeted that Cotton's argument in favor of using federal troops to quell violence made them feel unsafe, and others throughout the newsroom supported them.
Shouts of solidarity for black reporter pulled from protests
A black reporter from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette was told she could not cover the citys protests over the death of George Floyd because of a tweet, and now dozens of her colleagues, fellow journalists, her union and even the citys mayor are speaking out in support of her. On Sunday, Johnson posted four photos that show trashed public spaces in the aftermath of a crowd. Guild President Michael A. Fuoco, who is also a Post-Gazette reporter, told the AP that guild leaders were appalled by the move, and the papers editors have not yielded at all in discussions about Johnsons status. We feel taking a black woman off the most monumental national story about civil rights in the last 50 years is punishment, Fuoco said. We have very few black journalists.