Daniel “Danny” Pappas, late lead singer of My Own Iris
From Jessica Pappas on Facebook: Hello everyone. We’ve picked a date for Danny’s service. Please share this as I know I don’t know everyone he knew. We truly appreciate the love and support you’ve all shown me and my family.
Come celebrate my brother’s life:
Monday October 10th, 6:00 p.m.
Ellis Family Services
13436 West Arbor Place
Littleton, CO 80127
Quote from Christopher Walken: “Someday you will be faced with the reality of loss. And as life goes on, days rolling into nights, it will become clear that you never really stop missing someone special who’s gone, you just learn to live around the gaping hole of their absence. When you lose someone you can’t imagine living without, your heart breaks wide open, and the bad news is you never completely get over the loss. You will never forget them. However, in a backwards way, this is also the good news. They will live on in the warmth of your broken heart that doesn’t fully heal back up, and you will continue to grow and experience life, even with your wound. It’s like badly breaking an ankle that never heals perfectly, and that still hurts when you dance, but you dance anyway with a slight limp, and this limp just adds to the depth of your performance and the authenticity of your character. The people you lose remain a part of you. Remember them and always cherish the good moments spent with them.”
Michael LeBois wrote a beautiful poem in memoriam of Danny:
Our last conversation played in my head yesterday,
Words of respect exchanged,
We were there to support friends,
Though different people,
Same goal.
The ribbing always jovial,
Never sadistic,
Never one to tear someone down,
Always quick to aid in the growth,
Of others.
One night,
Surprised to see a brotherhood of 4,
Standing there watching listening,
But he noticed,
He laughed because we never,
Came out in public,
Respect to the fraternity.
Now we walk this earth,
You buried in our hearts and minds,
No longer the physical specimen you,
One were a giant,
Now,
Just a thought.
Heartache fades,
As does sorrow,
But the pain will remain
Lost love never truly gets better,
But it becomes
A new normal
Rest in Paradise Danny Pappas
No more words left my friend.
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From Dani Hamilton: This is especially relevant after the events of this past weekend. Life is short. We don’t know the pain others are hiding, so treat them kindly. Figure out who your real friends and family are and be there for them whenever you can. I’m sorry we missed it, Danny Pappas. You deserved better.
“Before that day comes, let us live.”
Trevor Lawrence Saunders: Second day in a row I wake up with one of your hooks stuck in my head, like the night after a show, but the ringing in my head isn’t from the amplifiers. It’s so hard to accept something that you don’t want to believe as truth. I’m sorry we couldn’t help. I’m sorry you couldn’t be convinced just to wait it out. I hope you’ve found the peace you need. Rest easy Danny Pappas – my heart breaks for you and your family. You touched so many people… maybe if you had known how much you meant…
http://www.facebook.com/daniel.resonance
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Rod Temperton
“Thriller” Writer Rod Temperton Dies
Rodney Lynn “Rod” Temperton (9 October 1949 – 5 October 2016) was an English songwriter, record producer, and musician from Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, England. He initially made his mark as the keyboardist and main songwriter for the R&B funk/disco band Heatwave before writing several internationally known songs performed by Michael Jackson, including mega-hit “Thriller” as well as “Off the Wall”, “Rock with You,” and numerous others. His death from cancer was reported by his publisher on 5 October 2016.
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He said in an interview that he was a musician from an early age; “My father wasn’t the kind of person who’d read you a story before you went off to sleep – he used to put a transistor radio in the crib, right on the pillow, and I’d go to sleep listening to Radio Luxembourg and I think that had an influence”. Temperton attended De Aston Grammar School, Market Rasen and he formed a group for the school’s music competitions. He was a drummer at this time. “I’d get in the living room with my snare drum and my cymbal and play along to the Test Card, which was all kinds of music they’d be playing continuously.” On leaving school he started working in the office of a frozen food company in Grimsby, Lincolnshire.
Heatwave
He soon became a full-time musician however, a keyboard player now, and played in several dance bands, and this took him to Worms in Germany. In 1972 Temperton and guitarist Bernd Springer formed a soul cover band called Sundown Carousel. With Temperton on an old Hammond organ the band performed in clubs and GI bars in cities such as Mannheim. In 1974 he answered an advert in Melody Maker placed by Johnnie Wilder, Jr. and so became a member of the popular funk/disco band, Heatwave which Wilder was putting together at the time. “He was the first British guy that I had ever met personally. He spoke kind of funny but he had a good sense of humour and he was a very friendly guy. After meeting him and then seeing him play I kind of determined he was a good enough player and entertainer and I just knew he would fit in the group”, said Wilder. Temperton played tunes he had been composing to Johnny Wilder, Jr.: “I was very interested because we were doing a lot of cover tunes – we weren’t doing a lot of original material – I was really interested.” The songs provided material for 1976’s Too Hot to Handle including “Boogie Nights”, which broke the band in Britain and the United States, and the ballad, “Always and Forever” – both tracks were million-sellers in the US.
Despite the slick American sound, Temperton’s working surroundings were still far from glamorous. Alan Kirk, a Yorkshire musician with Jimmy James and the Vagabonds who toured with Heatwave in the mid 1970s remembered: “The Always and Forever track was written on a Wurlitzer piano at the side of a pile of pungent washing – sorry to disappoint all the romantics.” And producer Barry Blue recalled: “He had a very small flat, so everything had to be done within one room and he had piles of washing, and had the T.V. on top of the organ. It was a nightmare (…) he had trams running outside (…) but he made it, he just absorbed himself in the music and Rod seemed to come up with these amazing songs”. In 1977 Heatwave followed up the success of their first L.P. with their second, Central Heating, Barry Blue again producing, and Temperton behind the majority of the songs. It included “The Groove Line”, another huge selling hit single with the by now familiar Heatwave sound and Rod Temperton hook.
In 1978 Temperton decided to concentrate on writing and left Heatwave though he continued to write for the band.
Songs written for Michael Jackson
Temperton’s work attracted the attention of Quincy Jones, and he asked his engineer Bruce Swedien to check out the Heatwave album. “Holy cow! I simply loved Rod’s musical feeling – everything about it – Rod’s arrangements, his tunes, his songs – was exceedingly hip,” recalled Swedien. In 1979, Temperton was recruited by Quincy Jones to write for what became Michael Jackson’s first solo album in four years, and his first full-fledged solo release for Epic Records, entitled Off the Wall. Temperton wrote three songs for the album, including “Rock with You” which became the second US No. 1 single from the album.
In the early 1980s Temperton left Germany and moved to Beverly Hills, California. In 1982 Temperton wrote three songs, including the title track, for Jackson’s next LP, Thriller, which became the biggest-selling album of all time. On coming up with the title Thriller, Temperton once said:
I went back to the hotel, wrote two or three hundred titles and came up with Midnight Man. The next morning I woke up and I just said this word. Something in my head just said, ‘This is the title’. You could visualize it at the top of the Billboard charts. You could see the merchandising for this one word, how it jumped off the page as ‘Thriller’
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Read more here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Temperton
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Other Notable Musicians’ Deaths…
October 2016
5: Joan Marie Johnson, 72, American singer (The Dixie Cups), heart failure; Rod Temperton, 66, English keyboardist (Heatwave) and songwriter (“Rock with You”, “Give Me the Night”, “Thriller”), cancer (death announced on this date).
4: Caroline Crawley, British singer and musician (Shelleyan Orphan, This Mortal Coil); Donald H. White, 95, American composer.
3: Ljupka Dimitrovska, 70, Macedonian-born Croatian singer.
2: Steve Byrd, 61, English guitarist (Gillan, Kim Wilde), heart attack; *Sir Neville Marriner, 92, British conductor (Amadeus), founder of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields; Thomas Round, 100, British opera singer.
* Sir Neville Marriner’s first wife was the cellist Diana Carbutt. They had two children, Susie, a writer, and Andrew, a clarinettist who often worked with his father and who is now principal clarinet of the London Symphony Orchestra. The marriage ended in divorce. His second wife was Elizabeth Mary Sims, known as Molly; they married in 1957. Asked for an epitaph for his gravestone, he replied simply: “Follow the beat.”
1: Toni Williams, 77, Cook Islands-born New Zealand singer.
September 2016:
30: Oscar Brand, 96, Canadian-born American folk singer-songwriter, author and radio broadcaster (WNYC); Michael Casswell, 53, English guitarist.
29: Lecresia Campbell, 53, American gospel singer, pulmonary embolism; Nora Dean, 72, Jamaican singer; Royal Torrence, 82, American soul music singer (Little Royal and The Swingmasters); Laura Troschel, 71, Italian actress (Four Flies on Grey Velvet), singer, and model.
28: Märta Schéle, 80, Swedish singer (death announced on this date).
27: Jonathan David Brown, 60, American record producer and audio engineer; Aurelian Preda (ro), 46, Romanian folk singer, cancer; Mike Taylor, British vocalist (Quartz).