Oakland Raider Ben Davidson dies at 72

Ben Davidson, the iconic face of a 1960-Oakland Raiders and later became a fixture in popular ads for Miller Lite, has died. He was 72.

Davidson, who had been treated for prostate cancer, died Monday night, former Raiders coach John Madden told KCBS radio in San Francisco.

If the deceased Al Davis was the creator of Renegade Raiders, then Davidson might be considered one of the founding fathers, by cutting a strip larger than life with his mustache and intimidating 6-foot-8 with end of the physical presence defense.

The 11-year career as a professional footballer began with the Green Bay Packers.

After one season there and two with the red leather-Washington, who fled when he moved to the AFL and the Raiders in 1964. "It was an AFL All-Star three times and played in Super Bowl II with the Raiders.

The career of Davidson was rarely predictable. Born June 14, 1940, in Los Angeles, did not play sports as a child growing up in Boyle Heights and would not give up football after his freshman year at East Los Angeles College.

"I think I decided I would try," he told The Times in an interview in 2010 home in San Diego. "I did not know the positions. I knew the center was probably in the middle, but I had one or two games."

Davis was shot in the eye back to Davidson when Davis was an assistant coach at USC. Davidson moved from East Los Angeles College, University of Washington and has won two Rose bowls with Huskies in 1960 and 1961.

Davis and Davidson were finally able to join forces in Oakland, after Davidson arrived a year after Davis.

"We had fun," Davidson said in an interview in 2010.

That was an understatement. The sense of fun and Davidson football made him a person was denied a natural firaire television after his football career, most prominently in ads for Miller Lite.

His first film role was the 1970 Robert Altman's "MASH", which brought a slice of the Raider Nation 4077, playing in a football game intersquad.

"I hate to say this to the press," Davidson said in an interview in 2010. "But I have 70 years and have never had a real job."

His most important moment of controversy in the field was in 1970. It was then pulled the Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Len Dawson, the end of a game, Dawson dives in with his helmet when Dawson was on the floor. Chiefs receiver Otis Taylor said open, so that in a deck of banks.

Finally, a 17-14 lead into the final of the leaders and the Raiders 17-17 to win the AFC West.

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Actor Andy Griffith dies at 86

Andy Griffith, actor tempering the South so fascinated the public for over 50 years on Broadway, in film, on record, especially on television - especially as the sheriff of the small town in the sitcom long duration that bears his name - died Tuesday at home in Roanoke Island, North Carolina.

He was 86 years.

His death was confirmed by the Dare County Sheriff Doug Doughtie.

Griffith was already a star with rave reviews on Broadway in "No time for sergeants" and Elia Kazan movie "A Face in the crowd" when "The Andy Griffith Show" made its debut in autumn of 1960. He loved a later generation of viewers in 1980 and 90 in the role of legal drama "Matlock."

But his fame has never been as great as it was in 1960 when he starred for eight years as Andy Taylor, Commissioner of intelligent fiction southern town of Mayberry, current herd includes a weekly eccentric as his deputy ineffective Barney Fife and the ingenuity of the gas station attendant Gomer Pyle and, as a widower, patiently raising a young son, Opie.

"The Andy Griffith," Monday night on CBS was No. 4 ranking in the Nielsen its first year and never fell below the Top 10. It was No. 1 in 1968, his last season. After the race ended with episode No. 249, the show lived series spin-off, endless repetition and even Sunday school classes organized around their moral lessons rustic.

The show imagined a world soothing soak holes, ice cream social events and rock hard for over a decade of family values ​​that has grown increasingly turbulent. His vision of rural simplicity is part of a trend that began with the TV show "The McCoy" on ABC in 1957 and later included "The Beverly Hillbillies," "Green Acres", "Petticoat Junction" and "Hee Haw".

But at the end of 1960, the networks have appreciated younger viewers Cornpone despised, and Andy decided to go to the movies after the 1966-67 season. CBS made a very lucrative offer for him to do another season, and "The Andy Griffith Show" has become the No. 1 series in the 1967-68 season.

But Mr. Griffith had decided to go ahead, and so also the spirit of the age. "Rowan & Martin Laugh-In" with his statements about drugs and Vietnam, and "The Mod Squad", an integrated police force, have been grabbing a new generation of viewers.

But the characters of "The Andy Griffith Show" - Barney (Don Knotts), Gomer (Jim Nabors), Opie (Ron Howard), Aunt Bee (Frances Bavier), and the rest, including Gomer Pyle's cousin Goober (George Lindsey, who died in May) - has remained temptadorament real lovers who still collect online and sometimes in person at the club fans to see replays.

Andy Griffith was much more complex than Andy Taylor and his fellow residents of Mayberry, but the show was based in his hometown, Mount Airy, North Carolina

Since the initiative in the Elia Kazan movie "A Face in the crowd" in 1957, the story of a TV character who becomes a crude power-mad megalomaniac, Mr. Griffith has authenticity to their roles given a dark intelligent.

From 1970 to 1990, Mr. Griffith has starred in six films with the "murder" or "kill" in their titles. In 1983, in "Murder in County Cowetta" has played an evil man who is terribly cold stone while he was tied to the electric chair.

Mr. Griffith, the fans probably imagined as a taujà happy, but he liked the life in Hollywood and he knew his way around a wine list.

His career was controlled by a personal manager, Richard O. Linke, which prohibited Mr. Griffith to request the views of anyone, not even his wife.

"If there is ever a question about something, I'll do what he wants me to do," Griffith said in an interview with the New York Times Magazine in 1970. "If not for him I would have gone to the toilet."

Far from relaxing, sociable Taylor, slurred Andy, Mr. Griffith was a lonely and anxious. When you reach a door in anger, and two episodes of the second season of "The Andy Griffith Show" had a bandaged hand (explained in the program as Sheriff Taylor suffered an injury while stopping criminals).

But the 35 million viewers of "The Andy Griffith Show" was reassuring to know that, even at the height of his popularity, Mr. Griffith was driving a Ford pickup truck and bought the clothes hanger. He said that his honor is preferred, 10-mile stretch of road in North Carolina that bears his name in 2002. (That was before President George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005.

As TV Guide reporter put it in an article in 1963 about the popularity of the series: "The dialogue - read with joy by Griffith intelligent, uncompromising seriousness Knotts - requires an exceptionally high level of performance of comedy and solid understanding of the subtleties of character. "

Considered the driving force behind the series, Griffith was heavily involved with the production of the show and helped shape the script and characters.

George Lindsey, who joined the series in 1965 as Goober, told the Times in 1993: "He is probably the best script constructionist who ever lived." Griffith added, "I found 110% since we took him to his level."

Ron Howard, who grew up to become one of Hollywood directors, Griffith believes that "such a wonderful guy for me."

Howard told People magazine in 1986 that Griffith "created an atmosphere of fun and hard work to try to make my films."

When Griffith and most of the major cast members met to "Return to Mayberry" in 1986, was one of television's top rated movie of the year.

"The backbone of our show is love," Griffith once said. "There's something Mayberry and Mayberry folk who do not leave you."

The small town atmosphere represented in Mayberry was not far from his childhood Griffith in Mount Airy, North Carolina, a small village at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where he was born on 1 June 1926.

An only child, Griffith grew up singing and playing guitar with his mother. He learned to tell funny stories of his father, who made their living modestly in Mount Airy Furniture Co.

Griffith holds a BA in music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and dreamed of becoming a professional singer on stage. On a whim, she auditioned for a campus production of Gilbert and Sullivan "The gondolers".

"I liked it," Griffith recalled in a 1996 interview with National Public Radio. "I had two songs, both alone. I have received good reviews. He said I had a great time and represented the comedy is leading all the Gilbert and Sullivan did while I was there."

After graduating in 1949, Griffith teaches music at a high school in Goldsboro, NC, but he and his first wife, Barbara, singer and musician who was a member of the university theater group, continued to perform at Carolina North annual popular outdoor theater, "The Lost Colony" at Roanoke Island.

One thing that has always bothered Griffith was recruiting people that their interpretation of Sheriff Taylor was practically the same game. He said not only was devoted to the creation of a character designed for the small town sheriff, but also co-wrote almost every episode - even if not received credit for writing.

"You're supposed to believe in the character," said Griffith. "You must not think: 'Hey, Andy makes a storm."

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Virtuoso of Latin Music Yomo Toro Dies at 78

Yomo Toro, a force in the Latin music scene in New York since 1950 and a virtuoso player of the left hand of four, an instrument of Puerto Rico mandolinlike, died Saturday in the Bronx. He was 78 years.

The cause was kidney failure, said his friend Aurora Flores, writer, journalist and musician.

Salsa, a dance orchestra music that took place in ambitious composer, jazz harmony and Cuban roots, moved to his best solo instrumental to the fore in the 60 and 70.

The records with Willie Colón, Hector Lavoe, Larry Harlow and the supergroup known as the Fania All-Stars, the sound became Mr. Toro, instantly recognizable.

He played the guitar and the rules of the guitar requinto smaller, but better known as cuatrista. Associated with popular culture and music of Puerto Rican jibaro or inside mountains, the four have 10 strings in five groups of two octaves, unisons or both.

Mr. Toro could be cut with an orchestra, especially once you have started adding an electric truck and connected to an amplifier.

In the records as Mr. Columbus "Dona Tona" and "La Murga" and the Fania All-Stars "Take off you" - taken from a 1971 performance at the Cheetah Club in New York that was filmed for the documentary "Our Latin Thing" - has appeared as soloist with great thrust and swing.

Influenced by Cuban musician Arsenio Rodriguez, who played three (analogous to Cuba in four), was closed to the rhythm section vampires burst into frantic strumming and brilliant or improvised melodically, landing his notes between beats.

Mr. Toro was born Victor Guillermo Toro Vega Ramos Rodríguez Acosta July 26, 1933, in Ensenada, the municipality of Guánica, near the southwestern Puerto Rico. His father, Alberto, has led to a truck for sugarcane mills in southern Puerto Rico Company and four played in a band with Mr. Toro uncles.

Mr. Toro followed his father to the parts of the house and began learning to play the requinto and four very young. In his teens he moved to Saint John to work with the band Los Quatro aces (four aces), led by singer reported sold. The group's work led him to New York for the first time in 1953, and had settled there permanently in 1957.

Mr. Toro of Puerto Rico and the traditional Mexican music played on guitar and four in New York through the 1950 and '60 - with singers Odilio Gonzalez and Victor Santiago and Los Panchos Rolón, the trio internationally renowned Mexican bolero, among others.

In the 60's hosted his own television Channel 41 in New York, "The Show of Yomo Toro", and has fully achieved with the sauce, which was becoming both a musical and a progressive grassroots movement.

It's been hired to play in a salsa album with Christmas themes by Mr. Dove, "Christmas Assault", which included songs of celebration of Puerto Rico, or the tradition of Christmas carols. It became one of the most successful albums of Fania, the label's largest salsa, and his reputation was solidified the role of four in the sauce.

Album of success has spawned a sequel in 1973, and a third holiday album in 1979 with Mr. Lavoe and singer Daniel Santos. (From the covers of these two albums represent Mr. Toro is dressed as Santa Claus. Short, round, happy and rarely seen without a hat after 1970, fits this role and went on to attend holiday concerts .

Mr. Bull is a personality remains modest compared to some of the other superstars of the sauce. "We sat in the living room and play like he played at Madison Square Garden," said Flores. "He brought the salt-of-the-ground mentality jibaro music. In this way, culture has taught us that we can be proud of the culture."

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