people you thought were dead but aren't

Sometime in the past few years I seem to have acquired a false memory of Jonas Mekas dying. Then about a year ago I was pleasantly surprised to see he was about to celebrate his 90th.

I see him puttering around Anthology Film Archives now and then, even doing an intro to a screening (and he still makes films).

Chuck, Fats, Jerry Lee and Little Richard are gonna form a great jam band in heaven someday.

yeah and Janis Joplin will be on backing vocals cos she's the only girl i've ever heard of

Alain Delon!

Horace Silver

Peter O'Toole

Peter O'Toole

whoa.
I can't believe Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard are still hanging in there.
― pplains, Tuesday, 10 December 2013 15:59

Something I think about too, and which I specifically called my class's attention to when I talked about Little Richard on his birthday 10 days ago. I wrote the names of Elvis, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee, and Little Richard on the board, and I said that these were the four guys who invented rock and roll 60 years ago, and three of the four are still alive.

(I realize that's a very simplified version of how rock and roll came into being. They're 12-year-olds--more than adequate enough.)

Something I think about too, and which I specifically called my class's attention to when I talked about Little Richard on his birthday 10 days ago. I wrote the names of Elvis, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee, and Little Richard on the board, and I said that these were the four guys who invented rock and roll 60 years ago, and three of the four are still alive.

Momentarily misread this as "and all four are still alive."

There was a sad piece about Little Richard in a recent Rolling Stone. Apparently he had a bad hospital experience a couple years ago (went in for one thing, then several worse things happened) and can't perform much anymore. You get this feeling that he's in pain all the time and is basically waiting to die.

That's sad to hear. Saw Chuck Berry play in 2008. Was a bit of a carnival attraction air about it, but still, great to see him. Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Joan Fontaine and her sister Olivia de Havilland are the six I keep in my head as sort of hoping they go on for ever.

On a different note, I heard an interesting Radiolab episode recently about the Heimlich manoeuvre, which started with raised eyebrows that Henry Heimlich wasn't someone who 100 years ago. He's now 93.

who 100 = who died 100

Bishop Desmond Tutu

He's like my piano teacher, someone who I thought was just plain ancient when I was a kid and now I realize that hey, he was only something like 50 years old at the time.

Shirley Temple Black

Mickey Rooney

Mickey Rourke.

On a different note, I heard an interesting Radiolab episode recently about the Heimlich manoeuvre, which started with raised eyebrows that Henry Heimlich wasn't someone who (died) 100 years ago. He's now 93.

This is genuinely interesting to know, I had no idea either.

Wait, Chuck Berry's still alive?

I was surprised that both Galton and Simpson are still alive

This is useful dead pool 2014 research, you guys, keep 'em coming!

Incidentally, we were out with a few friends this afternoon when one friend told us that Peter O'Toole had died. Was pretty much an even split between "aw no, what a shame" and "was he not dead already?".

Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Joan Fontaine and her sister Olivia de Havilland are the six I keep in my head as sort of hoping they go on for ever.

RIP :(

alba you're the fucken angel of death. alba = white

Shit, did Alba just kill Joan Fontaine like that time Tuomas killed Michael Jackson?

lol xpost

Oh, this is bad. RIP Joan Fontaine.

Horace Silver

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Sunday, December 15, 2013 11:57 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.jazzwisemagazine.com/news-mainmenu-139/70-2013/12947-horace-silver-dies-aged-85

I was going to say Mose Allison, but it seems like tempting fate now.

Horace Silver is still alive. Gonna keep on fearlessly naming people I assumed were dead.

http://jacketupload.macmillanusa.com/jackets/high_res/jpgs/9780312642686.jpg

Mort Drucker

Richard Kiel

I remember being surprised Pharoah Sanders was still alive (and gigging!) a couple years ago when I saw him on the bill at a local jazz club. Looking at his wiki I see he's not even that old, 73 now.

I'm really thrown by Mort Drucker for some reason

Jack Davis is still alive too!

Al Jaffee still draws for Mad and turns 93 next March, what the hell.

James Garner. Im shocked

you shouldn't be, dude was in space cowboys and the notebook. you're not a man if you haven't seen the former and you haven't really fucked a woman if you haven't seen the latter.

I'm still pulling for Chuck Yeager to outlive the entire Mercury 7 (only one left - John Glenn)

Chuck Yeager is still alive!?!? He looked ancient in those car parts ads, and those were in the '80s!

Yeager should go on the people who know how to live list

GRASS VALLEY, Calif. – In the parking lot of this small Sierra Nevada town's airfield, a decommissioned F-104 Starfighter jet looms over a series of plaques. They honor the exploits of one Charles Elwood Yeager, better known as Chuck.

But while the display has a posthumous vibe, the local legend in question is very much alive and well, sitting in his hanger a few yards up the road.

"I'll be 90 in February, and while I'm not gonna run no marathon I still hunt and fish and fly," says Yeager, resting in the shade of a tail-dragger prop plane that he solos in regularly. Parked nearby is an old pickup whose plate reads BELL X1, the rocket plane he rode into history when it broke the sound barrier in 1947.

Living legend is an overused term, but it applies to this American original indelibly captured by Sam Shepard in 1983's The Right Stuff. Not that Yeager is remotely Hollywood. For him, life boils down to "duty, it's that simple."

The General, as he prefers to be called, doesn't particularly enjoy interviews; navel-gazing isn't his style. But he agreed to speak with USA TODAY to draw attention to the foundation that bears his name, which supports a scholarship program at Marshall University in his native West Virginia as well as the Young Eagles, a non-profit program chaired by pilot Sully Sullenberger that gets kids airborne (Yeager is Eagles' chairman emeritus).

Yeager may be in a dogfight with Father Time, but his bearing is still ramrod straight. He says his famously acute 20/10 vision remains sharp, although his ears are another matter. "I can't hear well," he growls in his iconic drawl. "Damn P-51 Mustang noise. You go sit behind that engine for eight hours, with a leather helmet on. But that's a handicap that came with the job."

...

Yeager's name popped back onto the cultural radar Oct. 14, the anniversary of his first supersonic flight. On that day in New Mexico, Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner made history when he jumped out of a capsule at nearly 130,000 feet and broke the speed of sound on his descent.

While some 8 million people watched Baumgartner jump live on YouTube, Yeager wasn't one of them. He was over at Nellis Air Force Base outside of Las Vegas, strapped into a borrowed F-15 fighter. He proceeded to repeat his own record flight by laying down "a big ol' sonic boom over Edwards" Air Force base in the Mojave desert, where he'd run a pilot training program a half-century ago.

Always on the go, a few days later Yeager was hunting deer with the governor of West Virginia, and a week after that he was grand marshal of the Veterans Day parade in San Diego.

Coulda sworn Ronnie died a couple of years ago.

Ronnie Biggs that is.

Lata Mangeshkar

paul sorvino

Richard Hoggart!

ariel sharon until today

Dick Gregory?

I remember being a bit surprised when I found out Doris Day is still alive. For some reason I seem to assume every celebrity who had his or her heyday before the 60s must be dead by now.

― Tuomas, Friday, August 8, 2008 2:48 AM (5 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

She's still alive! Still a surprise to me.

Prince Buster! He wrote a piece for the Mojo 20th Anniversary issue.