Our Daily Dead

NY Times
Eugene Record, the leader of the 1970’s harmony group the Chi-Lites, which scored hits with mellifluous soul ballads like “Oh Girl” and “Have You Seen Her?,” died yesterday. He was 64.

The cause was cancer, Jack Bart, the president of the group’s booking agency, told The Associated Press. The place of death was not announced.

With smooth, yearning vocals and streamlined arrangements, the Chi-Lites, named after the group’s hometown, Chicago, mingled sentimental street-corner doo-wop with the sounds of Motown and funk to create a sleek new soul style in the early 70’s. “Oh Girl” became a No. 1 hit in 1972, and 11 of the group’s songs reached the Top 20 on the R&B charts from 1969 to 1974.

Mr. Record wrote or helped to write many of the group’s most popular songs and frequently sang the lead as well, in a velvety and often melancholic tenor. He sometimes sang in a euphoric falsetto, as he did in “Stoned Out of My Mind,” which he wrote with his former wife and songwriting partner, Barbara Acklin.

Another device favored by Mr. Record was the pensive spoken verse, which he used in “Have You Seen Her?” and “A Letter to Myself.”

The Chi-Lites’ biggest hits have remained radio staples for decades, and the group’s songs have frequently been covered by other performers. In 1990 MC Hammer recorded a popular version of “Have You Seen Her?,” and in 2003 Beyoncé Knowles’s song “Crazy in Love,” a blockbuster hit, sampled the horn fanfare in “Are You My Woman? (Tell Me So),” a Chi-Lites song written by Mr. Record. When “Crazy in Love” won a Grammy Award for best R&B song, the prize was shared by Mr. Record; Ms. Knowles; her producer, Rich Harrison; and Shawn Carter, better known as Jay-Z, who contributed a rap.

NY Times
David Daiches, who was an authority on Scotch whiskey as well as Scottish and English literature, died on July 15 in Edinburgh. He was 92.

A prolific literary biographer, historian, essayist, critic and poet, he was a former director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at Edinburgh University and a professor emeritus and former dean of the School of English Studies at the University of Sussex.

“Scotch Whisky: Its Past and Present,” his loving tribute and connoisseur’s guide to Scotland’s native distillate, is considered a standard reference work on the subject.

He was known in America for his books on writers, notably Robert Burns. He also wrote a Baedeker-style guide to his adopted hometown, “Edinburgh” (1978), and companion volumes like “Glasgow” (1977) and “Literary Landscapes of the British Isles: A Narrative Atlas” (1979), which he compiled with John Flowers.

Anyway, did an ODD thing on the back of a basically bombproof horse
. (No, we are in no way referring to a very sick puppy
in Seattle.)

Happy trails
. We ODDfellows be pooped. Time to put on the Chi Lites, miss Eugene Record (cancer strikes again) and think about David Daiches, although we still haven’t figured out how to enjoy Scotch whiskey
. Alternatively, try out a decent Kentucky bourbon
(okay, so we’re redundant—get it, get it?.) Friendly chemicals, friendly chemicals.

The outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man. (Forgive the gender-specific reference all you adrift in P.C. land
.)

NY Times
Charles Chibitty, the last survivor of the Comanche code talkers who used their native language to transmit messages for the Allies in Europe during World War II, died Wednesday in Tulsa. He was 83.

His death was announced by Cathy Flynn, administrative assistant in the Comanche Nation tribal chairman’s office.

The Army selected a group of Comanche Indians from the Lawton, Okla., area for special duty to provide the Allies with a language that the Germans could not decipher. Like the larger group of Navajo Indians who performed a similar service in the Pacific theater, the Comanches were called code talkers.

“It’s strange, but growing up as a child I was forbidden to speak my native language at school,” Mr. Chibitty said in 2002. “Later my country asked me to. My language helped win the war, and that makes me very proud. Very proud. ”

He once told a gathering, “I wonder what the hell Hitler thought when he heard those strange voices.”

Mr. Chibitty was born on Nov. 20, 1921, near Medicine Park, Okla., and attended high school at Haskell Indian School in Lawrence, Kan. He enlisted in 1941.

In 1999, he received the Knowlton Award, which recognizes individuals for outstanding intelligence work, during a ceremony at the Pentagon’s Hall of Heroes.

“We could never do it again,” Mr. Chibitty told Oklahoma Today magazine. “It’s all electronic and video in war now.”

NY Times
James N. Aparo, an illustrator for DC Comics for more than 30 years who drew Batman, the Green Arrow and other action heroes, died at his home here on Tuesday. He was 72.

His death followed a short illness, said his daughter, Donna Aparo.

Mr. Aparo, who grew up in New Britain, Conn., brought characters to life in his home studio in Southington, corresponding with DC through the mail. He retired about four years ago, his daughter said.

Besides working on Batman and the Green Arrow, Mr. Aparo worked on the comic books Aquaman, The Brave and the Bold, The Phantom Stranger and The Spectre.

His big break came in the late 1960’s when he was working for Charlton Comics and his editor, Dick Giordano, got a job at DC and took Mr. Aparo with him.

In a 2000 interview with Jim Amash for Comic Book Artist magazine, Mr. Aparo said that he had gone to Hartford Art School for a semester but was mostly self-taught.

Time has come today

Young hearts can go their way

Can’t put it off another day

I don’t care what others say

They say we don’t listen anyway

Time has come today

The rules have changed today (Hey)

I have no place to stay (Hey)

I’m thinking about the subway (Hey)

My love has flown away (Hey)

My tears have come and gone (Hey)

Oh my Lord, I have to roam (Hey)

I have no home (Hey)

I have no home (Hey)

Thinking about the subway…’nff said.

LA Times
James Doohan, the veteran actor best known for his role on “Star Trek” as the Starship Enterprise’s chief engineer who responded to the famous command, “Beam me up, Scotty,” died Wednesday. He was 85.

Doohan died at his home in Redmond, Wash. Doohan’s agent and friend, Steve Stevens Sr., said the cause of death was pneumonia and Alzheimer’s disease. Doohan’s wife of 28 years, Wende, was at his side.

“Star Trek,” first beamed into American living rooms on NBC in 1966, starred William Shatner as James T. Kirk, the captain of the starship U.S.S. Enterprise, and Leonard Nimoy as the pointy-eared Mr. Spock, Kirk’s alien first officer.

The show, in which Doohan played Lt. Cmdr. Montgomery “Scotty” Scott, ran only three years.

But the series took on a life of its own as a cult favorite that spawned constant reruns, an animated cartoon series, movies and television spinoffs.

For Doohan, the enduring popularity of “Star Trek” meant reprising his Scotty role in seven “Star Trek” movies featuring original cast members.

He also made countless appearances at “Star Trek” conventions, where thousands of the show’s fans, known as “Trekkies,” gave him and his fellow original cast members heroes’ welcomes.

Doohan’s portrayal of the Enterprise’s affable engineer with a Scottish brogue even led to his being awarded an honorary degree in engineering from the Milwaukee School of Engineering, where half the students polled reportedly said they were inspired by Doohan’s character to enter the field.

He later said he never tired of having people approach him and say the line, “Beam me up, Scotty.”

In fact, he said, “It’s been said to me at 70 miles an hour across four lanes on the freeway. I hear it from just about everybody.”

“Jimmy was Scotty,” George Takei, who played chief navigator Sulu on “Star Trek,” told The Times on Wednesday. “He’s really Irish-Canadian, but he’s world-renowned as a Scotsman. His claim was he imbibed enough of Scotland libations to be Scottish.

“What I really enjoyed the most was Jimmy’s personality. He was a fun-loving guy.”
Star Trek Phaser Remote
STAR TREK VOICE-CONTROL LAMP DIMMER

NY Times
Gerry Thomas, who designed clever packaging for a frozen meal and called it the TV dinner, died on Monday in Phoenix, Ariz. He was 83.

The cause was cancer, his wife, Susan Mills Thomas, said.

In the early 1950’s, Mr. Thomas was a salesman for C. A. Swanson & Sons, a frozen food company in Omaha. The company found itself one year with an oversupply of turkeys, so many that they were piled aboard refrigerated railroad cars and were being shuttled around to keep them cool.

Mr. Thomas happened to have visited the food kitchen of Pan American Airways. He noticed the aluminum trays used for the airline meals and asked for a sample. During his flight home, he tinkered with the sample, designing a three-compartment tray.

“I spent five years in the service, so I knew what a mess kit was,” he said in a 1999 Associated Press interview. “You could never tell what you were eating because it was all mixed together.”

First sold in 1954, just as television was becoming the dominant family pastime, the Swanson TV Dinner was packaged in a box designed to look like a TV screen. Swanson’s first TV dinner consisted of turkey, cornbread dressing and gravy, buttered peas and sweet potatoes.

The TV dinner was a landmark for the frozen food industry, said Chris Krese, senior vice president for industry affairs of the American Frozen Food Institute in McLean, Va., a trade group representing the industry.

From a small start in the 1930’s, frozen foods grew to exceed $1 billion a year in sales in the 1950’s. Today, frozen foods bring in about $30 billion each year, according to the trade group’s Web site.

So how about we cozy up on the settee with our TV dinners while we watch a few Star Trek reruns? Romance is our middle name.

James Doohan wasn’t a Scotsman. Oop! Ack! One of life’s cherished delusions wrecked. He was of Canadian-Irish or Irish-Canadian or Canadian-Mist or some combination like that. But his claim was that he imbibed enough of Scotland’s Water of Life to be an honorary Scotsman.

And here’s a brief Where Are They Now? for the original Star Trek crew

Apparently Scotty was also given an honorary Engineering Degree by the Milwaukee School of Engineering. Seems no end of students there were inspired to the engineering field by Scotty.

Time out for a shameless advert - remember you can never have too many Star Trek collectibles.

So hunker down on your settee, but before you dig into your Swansons, raise a glass of your favorite whatnot to Scotty - he’s been beamed up for the last time.