Here's hoisting one for them at the party:
"Joe Cocker, at 70; rocker with distinctive voice, mannerisms" by Ben Sisario, New York Times December 23, 2014
NEW YORK — Joe Cocker, the gravelly British singer who became one of pop’s most recognizable interpreters in the late 1960s and ’70s with passionate, idiosyncratic takes on songs like the Beatles’ “With a Little Help From My Friends,” died on Monday at his home in Crawford, Colorado. He was 70.
The cause was lung cancer, his booking agent Barrie Marshall said.
Mr. Cocker had been a journeyman singer in Britain for much of the 1960s, building a reputation as a soulful barreler with full-throated versions of Ray Charles and Chuck Berry songs. But he became a sensation after his performance of “With a Little Help From My Friends” at the Woodstock music festival in 1969.
His appearance there, captured in the 1970 concert film “Woodstock,” established him as one of pop’s most powerful and irrepressible vocalists. With his tie-dyed shirt and shaggy muttonchops soaked in sweat, Mr. Cocker, then 25, pleadingly teased out the song’s verses — “What would you do if I sang out of tune?/Would you stand up and walk out on me?” — and threw himself into repeated climaxes, lunging and gesticulating in ways that seemed to imitate a guitarist on a heroic solo.
On Twitter, Ringo Starr wrote on Monday, “Goodbye and God bless to Joe Cocker from one of his friends.” In a statement, Paul McCartney recalled hearing the recorded version of Mr. Cocker’s cover, saying, “It was just mind-blowing, totally turned the song into a soul anthem, and I was forever grateful for him for having done that.”
After Woodstock, Mr. Cocker toured widely and took his place as perhaps the rock world’s most distinctive interpreter of other musicians’ songs — an art then going out of fashion with the rise of folk-inspired singer-songwriters and groups, like the Beatles, that wrote their own material.
His other hits included a version of the Box Tops’ hit “The Letter” and the standard “Cry Me a River” in 1970, and “You Are So Beautiful” in 1975. His only number one was “Up Where We Belong,” recorded as a duet with Jennifer Warnes for the 1982 film “An Officer and a Gentleman,” for which Mr. Cocker won his only Grammy Award.
Almost from the start of his fame, Mr. Cocker struggled with alcohol and drug addiction.
“If I’d been stronger mentally, I could have turned away from temptation,” he said in an interview last year with The Daily Mail, the British newspaper. “But there was no rehab back in those days. Drugs were readily available, and I dived in head first. And once you get into that downward spiral, it’s hard to pull out of it. It took me years to get straight.”
His early tours — particularly “Mad Dogs & Englishmen” in 1970, which was documented in a live album and film of the same name — were rowdy affairs awash in both drugs and the artistic excesses of the era. The sprawling “Mad Dogs” entourage included not only more than 30 musicians, among them keyboardist and songwriter Leon Russell and drummer Jim Keltner, but also spouses, babies and pets.
At the same time, Mr. Cocker’s onstage contortions had, for better or worse, become his signature. John Belushi performed a sendup on “Saturday Night Live” in 1975 that ended with him convulsing on the floor; the next year Mr. Cocker performed Traffic’s “Feelin’ Alright” on the show, joined by Belushi in imitation.
Asked about his mannerisms in an interview last year with The Guardian, Mr. Cocker said that they “came with my frustration at having never played guitar or piano,” and added, “It’s just a way of trying to get feeling out — I get excited and it all comes through my body.”
John Robert Cocker was born on May 20, 1944, in Sheffield, England, and began playing drums and harmonica in 1959 with a group called the Cavaliers. Influenced by Ray Charles and skiffle stars like Lonnie Donegan, he soon switched to lead vocals and rebranded himself Vance Arnold — a name inspired by both the American country singer Eddy Arnold and a character from the Elvis Presley film “Love Me Tender.”
While still a budding teenage performer, Mr. Cocker had kept his day job as a gas fitter for the East Midlands Gas Board. He was given a six-month leave when he was signed to Decca in 1964. But his version of the Beatles “I’ll Cry Instead” and a tour slot opening for Manfred Mann drew little notice, so he went back to gas fitting for a time.
Mr. Cocker’s career began to take shape around 1965 when he and the keyboardist Chris Stainton formed the Grease Band, which played Motown covers in pubs throughout northern England before relocating to London two years later. In 1968, the group’s single “Marjorine,” released under Mr. Cocker’s name, became a minor hit, and a version of “With a Little Help From My Friends” — with Jimmy Page on guitar and B.J. Wilson, from Procol Harum, on drums — went to number one in England.
Woodstock made Mr. Cocker a worldwide star, but throughout the 1970s his career was dogged by problems with drugs. He sometimes forgot the words to songs onstage, and while on tour in Australia in 1972 he was arrested for possession of marijuana.
“Up Where We Belong” resuscitated Mr. Cocker’s career in 1982, leading to numerous other songs in film soundtracks, among them Randy Newman’s “You Can Leave Your Hat On” in “9 ½ Weeks” (1986) and “When the Night Comes,” from “An Innocent Man” (1989), which went to number 11 on Billboard’s pop chart.
Meanwhile, Mr. Cocker was reaching millions of younger fans as the Woodstock version of “With a Little Help From My Friends” was used as the theme song to the ABC television show “The Wonder Years,” which started in 1988. He performed at Woodstock ’94, the 25th-anniversary version of the festival.
In all, Mr. Cocker released more than 20 studio albums, most recently “Fire It Up” in 2012.
He leaves his wife, Pam; a brother, Victor; a stepdaughter, Zoey Schroeder; and two grandchildren.
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"Mary Ann Mobley, at 77; Miss America who starred with Elvis" by Adam Bernstein, Washington Post December 23, 2014
WASHINGTON — Mary Ann Mobley, a raven-haired and statuesque Mississippian who was crowned Miss America in 1958 and parlayed her victory into an acting career, twice appearing in movie musicals starring Elvis Presley, died Dec. 9 in Beverly Hills, Calif. She was 77.
The cause was breast cancer, said a spokesman for the University of Mississippi, where Ms. Mobley graduated the year of her beauty contest triumph. She was the first woman from her state to hold the Miss America title.
Trained in drama at Ole Miss, Ms. Mobley sang the Puccini aria ‘‘Un Bel Di’’ and a sultry version of the jazz standard ‘‘There’ll Be Some Changes Made’’ in the talent portion of the competition. She debuted on Broadway in ‘‘Nowhere to Go But Up,’’ a short-lived 1962 musical, then lit out for Los Angeles to break into movies and TV.
Over the decades, she was a guest star on shows including ‘‘Perry Mason,’’ ‘‘Mission: Impossible,’’ ‘‘Love, American Style,’’ and ‘‘Falcon Crest.’’ In 1985 and 1986, she had a recurring role in the final season of the sitcom ‘‘Diff’rent Strokes’’ as the wife of a New York industrialist played by Conrad Bain.
Ms. Mobley performed in many stage and film musicals, starring and singing the title song in ‘‘Get Yourself a College Girl’’ and appearing in the Jerry Lewis comedy ‘‘Three on a Couch.’’
She peaked as a screen personality in two Presley musicals from 1965, in ‘‘Girl Happy’’ and then as a starring role in ‘‘Harum Scarum’’ as a princess bedecked in what she described as ‘‘about 17 million yards of orange chiffon and I don’t know how many pounds of fake hair.’’
She told the Memphis Commercial Appeal decades later that Presley, who also was born in Mississippi, put on his finest Southern manners with her and did all he could to help her overcome her nervousness before the camera. His efforts perhaps worked too well; she accidently beaned him with a vase while filming a scene in ‘‘Girl Happy.’’
‘‘It was one of those sugar vases that doesn’t hurt you, but I’m supposed to miss him,’’ she recalled. ‘‘He said, ‘Mary Ann, you’re supposed to miss me,’ and I said, ‘Yeah, but you forget I played softball in Brandon, Mississippi.’ ’’
In 1967, she wed actor Gary Collins, who went on to host daytime talk shows. He died in 2012, a year after he and Ms. Mobley reportedly separated.
Ms. Mobley leaves their daughter, Clancy Collins White; two stepchildren; a sister; and two grandsons.
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