AP News, May 9th, 2007
Carey Bell
CHICAGO (AP) _ Carey Bell, a blues harmonica player who performed with both Muddy Waters' and Willie Dixon's bands, has died. He was 70.
Bell died Sunday of heart failure at Kindred Hospital, according to Alligator Records, which released several of Bell's albums.
Carey Bell Harrington was born in Macon, Miss., and wanted a saxophone but his family couldn't afford one. Instead, his grandfather bought him a harmonica. He was playing the harmonica by age 8, and in 1956, at age 19, he moved to Chicago with his godfather, pianist Lovie Lee.
Soon, he was supporting himself as a professional musician, playing on the street for tips, said label president Bruce Iglauer. Bell met and learned from Marion "Little Walter" Jacobs and Sonny Boy Williamson II, but found a special fatherly mentor in Big Walter Horton, Iglauer said.
Bell was a bridge, Iglauer said, between the styles of first-generation Chicago blues players such as Jacobs and Horton and the players who followed, such as Billy Branch.
Bell spent 1971 traveling and recording with Muddy Waters, and can be heard on Waters' "The London Sessions." He worked regularly in the 1970s with Willie Dixon's Chicago Blues All-Stars.
___
Diego "Chico" Corrales
LAS VEGAS (AP) _ Diego "Chico" Corrales, who fought in one of the most exciting boxing matches in recent years, has died in a high-speed motorcycle crash, police said. He was 29.
Corrales was riding a new motorcycle Monday evening when he drove into the back of a car while trying to pass at high speed on a busy residential street west of the Las Vegas Strip, police said.
He was thrown from the motorcycle, which collided with an oncoming car, and pronounced dead at the scene, police said. The driver of the oncoming car escaped injury and the driver of the car that Corrales tried to pass reported a minor shoulder injury, police said.
Corrales, who fought most of his career at 130 pounds, was a big puncher best known for getting up after two 10th-round knockdowns to stop Jose Luis Castillo on May 7, 2005. Boxing Writers Association of America and numerous boxing publications called it the fight of the year.
Corrales was born in Sacramento, Calif., and lived in Las Vegas in recent years. He won his first 33 fights and held a piece of the 130-pound title before he was stopped by Floyd Mayweather Jr. in a unification fight in January 2001.
Corrales was knocked out by Castillo in the rematch and then had three straight fights undermined at the weigh-in.
___
Joe Duskin
CINCINNATI (AP) _ Big Joe Duskin, a boogie-woogie piano man known for playing the blues with an upbeat spirit, has died. He was 86.
Duskin died Sunday at his home of complications from diabetes, family spokesman Keith Little said.
Duskin's style mixed elements of the blues, jazz, ragtime and stride piano. The Alabama native with the booming singing voice played local clubs as well as the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and clubs in London, Berlin and Paris. He was featured in a British documentary, "The History of Boogie Woogie."
Duskin returned to gospel roots on his final album, the 2005 release "Big Joe Jumps Again!" that included an appearance by rock guitarist Peter Frampton. On the recording's closing track, Duskin played the traditional religious song: "Just a Closer Walk With Thee."
Duskin's playing time had fallen off in recent years as he battled diabetes. Duskin was scheduled to have his legs amputated Monday, Gorman said.
___
Alan V. Lowenstein
MAPLEWOOD, N.J. (AP) _ Alan V. Lowenstein, one of the founders of law firm Lowenstein Sandler and a leader of Newark's charter reform movement, died Tuesday. He was 93.
Lowenstein had been hospitalized several weeks ago after a fall and then diagnosed with pneumonia, but he opted for hospice care and died in his Maplewood home, said Michael L. Rodburg, the firm's managing director.
Born in Newark, Lowenstein was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Michigan, then went on to Harvard Law School. He also received a master's degree in political science from the University of Chicago.
Lowenstein's law career started in 1940 in Newark, and he was among the group that founded Lowenstein Sandler in Newark in 1961. He oversaw the firm's expansion from five founding attorneys to more than 250.
Lowenstein helped draft the Banking Act of 1948 and served as chairman of the New Jersey Corporation Law Revision Commission from 1963 to 1971.
He also was a leader in the Newark charter reform movement, which helped change the city's governmental structure, and was active on the board of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, serving as its president from 1970-73.
In 1999, the Alan V. and Amy Lowenstein Foundation established the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, an organization that works through the Legislature and the courts to assure freedom from discrimination and equal access to the judicial system.
___
Yahweh Ben Yahweh
MIAMI (AP) _ Yahweh Ben Yahweh, a former cult leader who was linked to nearly two dozen gruesome killings in the 1980s and said to have ordered victims' ears cut off as proof they were killed, has died, his attorney said. He was 71.
Yahweh, who had been fighting prostate cancer, died Monday in his sleep, attorney Jayne Weintraub said.
The self-proclaimed "Black Messiah" founded the Nation of Yahweh and preached religious separatism for blacks. At the group's height, it claimed thousands of followers in Miami and elsewhere.
The group was praised for its rehabilitation of Miami neighborhoods, promotion of family values and stance against drugs. But Yahweh was later accused of sending close followers to kill "white devils" and bring back body parts as proof.
He served 11 years of an 18-year federal prison sentence for a racketeering conspiracy conviction stemming from his role in up to 23 killings and was released from prison in September 2001.
He was never convicted on murder charges.
Yahweh was born Hulon Mitchell Jr. in Oklahoma. The eldest of 15 children, he became a preacher in Oklahoma, Weintraub said.
He married and had four children but divorced before moving to Miami in the late 1970s, she said. In Miami he changed his name to the Hebrew words for "God, son of God."
Ultimately, his group built a modest empire of businesses _ motels, restaurants, homes and stores _ said at the time to be worth $8 million.
