Abbey Lincoln, 80, a jazz singer and songwriter known for her phrasing, emotion and uncompromising style, died Saturday in New York.
She had been declining in health for the past year. Her death was confirmed by friend and filmmaker Carol Friedman, who has been working on a documentary on Lincoln’s life.
Lincoln made records and acted in films in the 1950s and ’60s and saw her career surge again in the 1990s when she found new voice as a songwriter.
Lincoln acted with Sidney Poitier and collaborated in music with the drummer Max Roach, whom she married in 1962 and later divorced. In later years, she had chart-topping albums with “You Gotta Pay the Band,” which she recorded with Stan Getz, and “Devil’s Got Your Tongue,” in which she rebuked some rappers, comics and filmmakers for profiting from the denigration of black culture.
David Wolper, 82, an award- winning movie and television producer best known for the groundbreaking miniseries “Roots,” died Tuesday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif.
The cause was congestive heart failure and complications of Parkinson’s disease, said his publicist, Dale Olson.
Wolper produced hundreds of films and television shows, including the hit 1983 miniseries “The Thorn Birds.” But the work with which he was most closely associated was “Roots,” the saga of an African-American family’s journey from Africa to slavery and emancipation, shown in eight parts on ABC in 1977.
Dr. Thomas C. Peebles, 89, a World War II bomber pilot who isolated the measles virus, setting the stage for development of the vaccine that freed the world from the deadly scourge, died July 8 at his home in Port Charlotte, Fla.
Peebles also led a team that showed the tetanus vaccine could be given every decade instead of every year, developed a way to add fluoride to children’s vitamins to prevent tooth decay and founded one of the country’s first health maintenance organizations.
Elaine Koster, 69, a publisher and literary agent with a knack for new talent who gave a second chance to an obscure horror writer named Stephen King and took on an unknown Khaled Hosseini and “The Kite Runner,” died Tuesday.
As publisher of the New American Library in the 1970s, Koster paid a then-enormous $400,000 for the paperback rights to King’s “Carrie.” In 1998, she started the Elaine Koster Literary Agency. Her most notable find was Hosseini, whose manuscript for “The Kite Runner” had been turned down by numerous other agents.
Denver Post wire services
