Pat Woodell obit

Petticoat Junction star Pat Woodell dies at 71

She was not on the list.

Pat Woodell, who played Bobbie Jo Bradley on the 1960s sitcom Petticoat Junction, died of cancer on Sept. 29 at her home in Fallbrook, California, The Associated Press reports. She was 71.

Born in Winthrop, Mass., Woodell played the brunette brainiac Bobbie Jo on the first two seasons of Petticoat Junction, which aired on CBS from 1963 to 1970. She left the show because she wanted to focus on her singing, and was replaced by Lori Saunders. Woodell went on to tour with comedian Jack Benny, and performed on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 with the Ladybugs, a take on The Beatles that featured Woodell and her onscreen sisters, Linda Kaye and Jeannine Riley.

She also starred in movies including Twilight People and The Big Doll House, before she retired from acting in the mid-1970s and went on to co-found a consulting firm.

After leaving Petticoat Junction, Woodell went on to have guest roles on a season-three episode of The Hollywood Palace in 1965, and in the last episode of The Munsters in 1966. She then toured as a singer, with Jack Benny, and recorded an album, but she did not achieve great popularity as a vocalist. In 1968, she voiced "Bunny" to Mel Blanc`s "Claude" in two Looney Tunes cartoons (released in 1969). In 1971, Woodell made her film debut in The Big Doll House, followed by four more "exploitation" type films, including The Woman Hunt (1972), The Twilight People (1972), Class of '74 (1972), and The Roommates (1973), but she did not break into mainstream feature films.

Woodell retired from acting in 1973, after appearing on an episode of The New Perry Mason, entitled "The Case of the Murdered Murderer". She soon went to work for Werner Erhard, in his est seminar organization, and subsequently cofounded a consulting firm, retiring in 2013. Woodell never returned to acting, but appeared in a few documentaries about her days on Petticoat Junction.

Woodell is survived by her husband, Vern McDade.

Actress

Monte Markham in The New Perry Mason (1973)

The New Perry Mason

Jenny

TV Series

1973

1 episode

 

The Roommates (1973)

The Roommates

Heather

1973

 

The Woman Hunt (1972)

The Woman Hunt

McGee

1972

 

Class of '74 (1972)

Class of '74

Heather

1972

 

The Twilight People (1972)

The Twilight People

Neva Gordon

1972

 

The Big Doll House (1971)

The Big Doll House

Bodine

1971

 

Bright Promise (1969)

Bright Promise

Barbara Jenkins (1969)

TV Series

1969

 

The Great Carrot-Train Robbery (1969)

The Great Carrot-Train Robbery

Bunny (voice)

Short

1969

 

Bunny and Claude: We Rob Carrot Patches (1968)

Bunny and Claude: We Rob Carrot Patches

Bunny (voice)

Short

1968

 

The Munsters (1964)

The Munsters

Miss Thompson

TV Series

1966

1 episode

 

Higgins in Petticoat Junction (1963)

Petticoat Junction

Bobbie Jo Bradley

TV Series

1963–1965

74 episodes

 

Ed Sullivan in The Ed Sullivan Show (1948)

The Ed Sullivan Show

Singer (as The Ladybugs)

TV Series

1964

1 episode

 

Edd Byrnes, Roger Smith, and Efrem Zimbalist Jr. in 77 Sunset Strip (1958)

77 Sunset Strip

PollySuzie

TV Series

1962–1963

2 episodes

 

G.E. True (1962)

G.E. True

Alice (as Patricia Woodell)

TV Series

1963

1 episode

 

William Windom in The Gallant Men (1962)

The Gallant Men

Gina (as Patricia Woodell)

TV Series

1963

1 episode

 

Robert Conrad, Anthony Eisley, Poncie Ponce, and Connie Stevens in Hawaiian Eye (1959)

Hawaiian Eye

Suzee WaltersSuzie (as Patricia Woodell)

TV Series

1962–1963

2 episodes

 

Red Nightmare (1962)

Red Nightmare

Linda Donavan (as Patricia Woodell)

Short

1962

 

Clint Walker in Cheyenne (1955)

Cheyenne

Gail Evans (as Patricia Woodell)

TV Series

1962

1 episode

Phil Woods obit

Legendary jazz saxophonist Phil Woods dies; featured on Billy Joel hit

 

He was not on the list.

Phil Woods, a leading alto saxophonist in mainstream jazz for more than 60 years whose piercing solos could also be heard on hit records by Billy Joel and Paul Simon, has died. He was 83.

Woods died Tuesday in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, said Philip Bensing, owner of the Bensing-Thomas Funeral Home.

Woods gave his last concert on Sept. 4 in Pittsburgh, using oxygen to complete a performance of the classic album “Charlie Parker With Strings” with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. That night he announced he had emphysema and was retiring.

Woods grew up in the Swing Era where his early influences included alto saxophonists Benny Carter and Johnny Hodges. He made his name as a fiery disciple of bebop pioneer Charlie “Bird” Parker, earning the nickname “the new Bird” after Parker’s untimely death in 1955. He was married to Parker’s widow, Chan, for 17 years.

Woods released more than 50 albums as a leader and many more as a sideman with such jazz luminaries as Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans and Clark Terry. He won four Grammys.

But Woods was perhaps best known outside the jazz world for his alto sax solo at the end of Joel’s 1977 hit recording “Just the Way You Are.” He also performed on recordings by Paul Simon (“Have a Good Time”) and Steely Dan (“Doctor Wu”).

Philip Wells Woods was born on Nov. 2, 1931 in Springfield, Mass. After inheriting an alto sax from his uncle, he began taking lessons at the age of 12. As a teenager in 1945, he heard Parker’s bebop recordings with trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie.

“It was some truly new music and just completely freaked me out,” Woods recalled in a 1992 AP interview.

After graduating high school, he moved to New York where he studied classical music by day at Juilliard and jazz in the clubs at night.

In the mid-1950s, Woods began leading his own combos. He got his big break when Quincy Jones asked him to join a 1956 State Department-sponsored world tour with Gillespie’s big band.

“There was a very specific reason Phil played on nearly every album I’ve made since 1956, because he not only was the best jazz alto sax player there was, he was a truly beautiful person,” Jones said in a statement released Tuesday.

Woods toured Europe with Jones’ big band in 1959, and three years later took part in Benny Goodman’s historic tour of Russia.

Back in the United States, Woods found fewer chances to play pure jazz and grew disenchanted with studio work. In 1968, he moved to Europe where he formed his more adventurous European Rhythm Machine which incorporated some electronic and free-jazz elements.

In the mid ’70s, Woods and his wife and manager, Jill Goodwin, settled in Delaware Water Gap in eastern Pennsylvania, where he co-founded the long-running Celebration of the Arts festival.

Woods was voted the top alto sax player nearly 30 times in Downbeat magazine’s annual readers’ poll starting in 1975. His quintet — which included brother-in-law drummer Bill Goodwin, bassist Steve Gilmore, and other musicians such as trumpeter Brian Lynch and pianist Bill Charlap — was named the top small combo several times.

Woods, who was also a prolific composer and arranger, was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2007. Upon receiving the nation’s highest jazz honor, Woods said, “Jazz will never perish, it’s forever music, and I like to think that my music is somewhere in there and will last, maybe not forever, but may influence others.”

Alexander Faris obit

Alexander Faris: Composer who penned the themes to Upstairs, Downstairs and The Duchess of Duke Street

Faris's two biggest musical loves were Gilbert and Sullivan and their great influence Offenbach, the German-born French composer whose music found favour at the court of Napoleon III 

He was not on the list.

Alexander Faris, who has died aged 94, was the composer and conductor best known for creating the theme tunes to the 1970s television series Upstairs, Downstairs and The Duchess of Duke Street.

Faris, known as Sandy, was born in Caledon, Northern Ireland in 1921, the son of a Presbyterian minister and a school teacher. When his father died of pernicious anaemia, his resourceful mother moved the family to Belfast, where she became headmistress of Victoria College girls' school.

His mother noticed Faris, at the age of four, following the tunes of church hymns, and asked her school's music teacher, Miss Bell, to give him his first piano lesson. “My mother was amazing, a polymath,” he recalled. “She could teach anybody anything – and she couldn't have picked a better teacher for a child than Miss Bell.”

In October 1932, aged just 11, Faris watched Edward Elgar conduct a performance of his Enigma Variations at the Ulster Hall in Belfast. He was spellbound and resolved to make a career of music. His first performances were with family and friends in his homemade group the Nutcracker Orchestra.

He was called up for military service in 1943 and joined the Irish Guards as a lieutenant, taking part in the 1944 liberation of Brussels. On demob, he studied at the Royal College of Music and found work as a chorus master with the Carl Rosa Opera Company. He made his London debut in 1949 as a conductor in a revival of the operetta Song of Norway by Robert Wright and George Forrest, at the Palace Theatre.

Faris's two biggest musical loves were Gilbert and Sullivan and their great influence Offenbach, the German-born French composer whose music found favour at the court of Napoleon III. His biography of Offenbach, published in 1980, remains one of the most important references on the composer's life and work, in which Faris suggests a number of links between the works of his favourite musicians. For example, Offenbach's Ba-ta-clan, a satirical operetta, shows considerable influence on Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado, created some three decades later.

Faris's first performances of Gilbert and Sullivan were in the early 1960s: he conducted The Gondoliers, The Mikado and The Pirates of Penzance with the German Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Linden Singers. During the mid-60s he wrote film scores for The Quare Fellow (1962) – an adaptation of Brendan Behan's play – Georgy Girl (1966), and He Who Rides the Tiger (1965), starring Tom Bell and Judi Dench.

Faris's peak came with “The Edwardians”, his theme tune for the hit television series Upstairs, Downstairs, first broadcast in 1971. Originally intended for just six episodes, the programme was an unexpected success, running for five series until 1975. When a first attempt at the theme tune had been turned down by the producer, John Hawkesworth, Faris worked overnight to create the music which became his best-known composition.

“It became a hit and did 74 episodes,” he recalled in a later interview, “They [gave me] a full screen credit. They wanted music which echoed Edwardian times.” He went on to win an Ivor Novello award in 1976 for the Best Theme from TV or Radio.

The tune's appeal has endured well after the programme was first shown on television and was retained for the Upstairs, Downstairs remake in 2010. Upshares, Downshares, Radio 4's daily business and economics slot, which charted the economic crisis during 2008-2010 as part of the PM programme, also adopted the Upstairs, Downstairs theme.

Nils Blythe, who presented the slot with Eddie Mair, told The Independent: “Out of the blue, a listener sent in his own version of the theme. I believe it was a reggae version. We played it and suddenly lots of people started sending in their own versions. We had the theme played on the banjo and as an organ fugue. We had a bossa nova version and a steel band version, a capella, morris dance... Both the Upshares Downshares name and the idea of having many different versions of the theme tune came from listeners.

”In all, over 83 different versions were played. We discovered that Sandy Faris was still alive although he must have been close to 90. He had heard about this whole extraordinary flowering of listener creativity and Eddie went to interview him. He was pleasantly bemused by the whole thing and gave us some wry comments on some of the versions.“

In October 2010, with Faris's blessing, a CD containing these many variants of the theme tune was released to raise money for BBC Children in Need. More than 7000 copies were sold, making some £70,000 for the charity.

When Hawkesworth went on to make The Duchess of Duke Street for the BBC in 1976, starring Gemma Jones as the eponymous Duchess, Faris was the logical choice to provide the theme music. His autobiography, Da Capo Al Fine: A Life in Music, was published in 2009.

Samuel Alexander Faris (Sandy Faris), composer and conductor: born Caledon, Northern Ireland 11 June 1921; died 28 September 2015.

Composer

Sandy's Last Stand

Video

Composer

2006

 

The Story of Upstairs Downstairs (2005)

The Story of Upstairs Downstairs

8.1

Video

Composer

2005

 

Fanny by Gaslight (1981)

Fanny by Gaslight

6.3

TV Mini Series

Composer

1981

4 episodes

 

Wings (1977)

Wings

7.7

TV Series

Composer

1977–1978

24 episodes

 

The Duchess of Duke Street (1976)

The Duchess of Duke Street

8.3

TV Series

Composer

1976

1 episode

 

Upstairs, Downstairs (1971)

Upstairs, Downstairs

8.4

TV Series

Composer

1971–1975

66 episodes

 

Baleia! Baleia!

Short

Composer

1971

 

Lynn Redgrave in Georgy Girl (1966)

Georgy Girl

6.9

Composer

1966

 

He Who Rides a Tiger (1965)

He Who Rides a Tiger

7.0

Composer

1965

 

The Quare Fellow (1962)

The Quare Fellow

6.8

Composer

1962

 

Rowlandson's England

7.6

Short

Composer

1955

 

Music Department

Upstairs Downstairs (2010)

Upstairs Downstairs

7.4

TV Series

composer: theme music

2010

3 episodes

 

Trial by Jury (1984)

Trial by Jury

6.6

TV Short

conductor

1984

 

Ruddigore (1983)

Ruddigore

6.2

TV Movie

conductor

1983

 

The Mikado (1983)

The Mikado

6.9

TV Movie

conductor

1983

 

Bernard Miles and Piers Eady in Treasure Island (1982)

Treasure Island

6.3

TV Movie

conductor

1982

 

The Pirates of Penzance (1982)

The Pirates of Penzance

6.5

TV Movie

conductor

1982

 

The Yeomen of the Guard (1982)

The Yeomen of the Guard

7.0

TV Movie

conductor

1982

 

H.M.S. Pinafore (1982)

H.M.S. Pinafore

6.0

TV Movie

conductor

1982

 

The Gondoliers (1982)

The Gondoliers

8.3

TV Movie

conductor

1982

 

The Sorcerer (1982)

The Sorcerer

7.2

TV Movie

conductor

1982

 

Patience (1982)

Patience

7.3

TV Movie

conductor

1982

 

Cox and Box (1982)

Cox and Box

8.1

TV Movie

conductor

1982

 

Laurence Dale in Princess Ida (1982)

Princess Ida

7.2

TV Movie

conductor

1982

 

Fanny by Gaslight (1981)

Fanny by Gaslight

6.3

TV Mini Series

music conducted by

1981

4 episodes

 

Priest of Love (1981)

Priest of Love

6.0

conductor

orchestrator

1981

 

Wings (1977)

Wings

7.7

TV Series

composer: theme music

1977–1978

25 episodes

 

The Duchess of Duke Street (1976)

The Duchess of Duke Street

8.3

TV Series

composer: theme music

1976–1977

29 episodes

 

Glyn Owen and John Thaw in The Capone Investment (1974)

The Capone Investment

6.3

TV Series

composer: theme music

1974

6 episodes

 

Upstairs, Downstairs (1971)

Upstairs, Downstairs

8.4

TV Series

music theme

1972

1 episode

 

Lynn Redgrave in Georgy Girl (1966)

Georgy Girl

6.9

conductor

1966

 

He Who Rides a Tiger (1965)

He Who Rides a Tiger

7.0

musical director

1965

 

Robert and Elizabeth

TV Movie

musical director

orchestrations

1965

 

Iolanthe

TV Movie

conductor

1964

 

The Quare Fellow (1962)

The Quare Fellow

6.8

conductor

1962

 

Orpheus in the Underworld

9.0

TV Movie

conductor

1961

 

Romance in Candlelight

TV Movie

conductor

1955

 

Additional Crew

Ruddigore (1983)

Ruddigore

6.2

TV Movie

introductory material

1983

 

The Mikado (1983)

The Mikado

6.9

TV Movie

introductory material

1983