How long was nick ashford sick

What age did Ashford Simpson die? He was He had throat cancer. What happened Nickford Ashford? Ashford had throat cancer and was undergoing treatment at a New York hospital, but the cause of his death was not immediately reported.

His death was announced by the music publicist Liz Rosenberg. Is both Ashford and Simpson still alive? He grew up in Willow Run, Mich. He briefly attended Eastern Michigan University before moving to New York to pursue a career as a dancer. He slept on park benches and had been homeless for several months when he met Simpson at a Harlem church.

Diana Ross was born on. She was the second eldest of six children for her mother Ernestine and father Fred Ross. Though Sumlin never attained a fraction of the fame of his celebrated boss, he is revered by fellow blues musicians. He later became a record executive and had a successful acting career. Full obituary Notable music deaths of File photo. Roger Williams was of the most popular instrumentalists of the midth century and hit No.

Robinson owned Sugar Hill Records. She was He was the last of the bluesmen from his generation. Full obituary Notable deaths of Los Angeles Times. King and many other artists. Above, Leiber, right, with Elvis and Stoller in Full obituary Notable deaths of Michael Ochs Archives. Between and , the Four Freshmen won the DownBeat magazine Readers Poll as best vocal group of the year five times.

Full obituary Notable deaths of Full obituary Notable deaths of John Scarpati. He also wrote tunes for the Tonight Show Band. Full obituary Notable deaths of Associated Press. Full obituary Notable deaths of Mischa Richter. Full obituary Notable film and television deaths of She had suffered a brain hemorrhage in January Raised in poverty in the West Virginia coal country, she formed a popular bluegrass singing duo with Alice Gerrard before continuing as a solo artist.

A: Oh, we knew that it was a hit. Sometimes you have real gut feeling about something. Then it becomes a question of what do you do with it, and who can carry it the furthest, and you start designing how you can get it to as many people as possible. The story goes that Berry Gordy didn't like the way you arranged it with the spoken-word interludes and the extended orchestration.

Did you know he didn't like it? A: Oh, yeah, he held it back. He didn't see it as a single, but the DJs around the country heard it and played it.

It was Nick's idea to lengthen it. We were still in the three-minute-song era at Motown, but Isaac Hayes was doing longer songs for Stax Records in Memphis , and Nick wanted the talking part up front. Q: Ross has a reputation as a diva, difficult to work with. How was she working with you? A: She came in prepared, she knew the songs, knew her lyrics. When you work with someone who knows what they want, even if she is a diva, we knew how to finesse it, how to stroke her. She also wanted hits, and she was very much about business.

Q: There are some Motown people who contend that near the end of Tammi Terrell's life she died in at age 24 of cancer , you had to step in and do some of her vocal parts on the albums with Marvin Gaye because she was too ill to perform. A: Tammi was very ill. We would have everything ready, the track and Marvin's vocal, and then I'd get her alone in the studio and we'd go line by line. There were a couple things that were tweaked, but not a lot.

I couldn't just sing like Tammi. People give me the credit of thinking I could be Tammi Terrell, but it's just not true. We did some production edits to fix things, but that's about it. A: We loved it. We incorporated it into our show for a while.

We'd start it off that way, and then go into the traditional version. I'm a big Mary J. It was summertime when it came out, and it seemed to play constantly. There's a certain monotony to those types of songs sometimes, but because of those chords being what they are, that's a good type of monotony. Those are four good chords. Q: Do you feel you got enough credit for your role in creating that song? A: They didn't shout us out when they got the Grammy Award for best rap performance by a duo or group , but we got the check laughs.

Q: Do you feel your songs have benefited from being sampled so extensively during the hip-hop era? A: In so many instances it's like having a second song. In most instances, they use four bars and build another melody and title on it. If it's a strong four bars it'll often send the young listener back to the original song. It's like a musical history lesson. Q: When you and Nick wrote together, would you ever argue? A: Oh, yeah, sure. Sometimes you want a person to read your mind and the other person can't.

Nick would say, "Those chords don't have enough purple in them. But we didn't ever think anything was finished or couldn't be re-approached, or be made better. Even if I can't find that chord today, it might come to me tomorrow.

We'd rewrite the same song several times. It's easy to take it personally, but it helps if you know you have more than one idea. I always knew there'd be another approach.

And he was enough of an artist that I would want to make him happy. To me something might be good, but if he's not feeling it, it made me want to work harder to find another way to do it.

Q: You also had quite a bit of success singing jingles in the '60s and '70s. How did you juggle that with your songwriting career? A: In the early part of it I was very active. In fact, it almost became a bone of contention. I was making so much money doing jingles, these and second things, that it drove Nick to work with another producer at Motown for a while.

It made me realize I was going to lose my writing partner if I didn't take my work with Nick more seriously.