Snuff Garrett Dies

So I heard a rumor from Cher scholar Robrt that around December 18 Snuff Garrett had passed away. I did a short search for online obituaries that day but couldn’t find anything and then I went on a two-week vacation. I finally rechecked and indeed Snuff Garrett did pass away on Dec 16 or 17 depending upon the article. The New York Times obit says Dec 16 so let’s go with that.

We’ve lost many to cancer in December and January and I’m feeling somewhat soul depleted already; but I'm taking Snuff Garrett's passing especially hard. Over the last few years I've been having a bad feeling that we wouldn't have him around for long to discuss Cher history and this was a most important Cher record producer (beyond Sonny) who didn’t get nearly enough credit for shaping her image in the early to mid 1970s.

Image may be king but music moves the heavens.

However, I want to do a more considered post about Garrett than I’m prepared to do now. More later. In the meantime, here are some of his obits:

The New York Times

Contact Music

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Best Classic Bands

Times Record News

Passings: Producer "Snuff" Garrett (1939 - 2015) ~ VVN Music

  

Cher Sends Water to Flint, Michigan, and Twitter Stumbles

If you've been following Cher's tweets or the news, you've been reading about the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, (the same town Michael Moore filmed about in his first movie, Roger and Me by the way). Cher has been very vocal in tweets about the mess and Michigan’s governor Rick Snyder. Finally last week she took matters into her own hands and sent truck loads of bottled water to Flint citizens in conjunction with Icelandic Glacial bottled water company (see the water below).

Icelandic water! Yummy. It was huge news.

Cher on The View  (Thanks to Dishy for the heads up on this)

ABC News

NBC News

The Huffington Post

Vogue

Michigan Radio

The Hill (I love it when she makes The Hill)

Channel 21 Nebraska!

MSNBC

The Oakland Press (with talks about how Cher plans to do more)

Despite all the water shipping and governor scolding, Cher did not forget to continue her tweets against Donald Trump.

Pink News

The Huffington Post

In fact last week Cher called herself the “Crazy old Aunt of Twitter” in The Huffington Post.

And all this while Twitter seems to be imploding. Cher may soon need to find a new platform for expressing herself.

  

Cher Among Billboard Record Breakers

I subscribed to a year of Time Magazine last year and I'm still catching up on it. Sometime last spring there was a short column on Barbra Streisand being the Platinum album queen, the woman with the most platinum albums in history with 31. Reba McEntire has 19. She's also only artist to have at least one top album in six consecutive decades. The column went on to state that “Cher holds the same distinction, but for singles rather than albums.” There are men with more platinum albums than Streisand: George Strait (33), The Beatles (42), Elvis Presley (52).

Cher is in good company with this list.

 

 

Cher's Big Hair Day

Cher Scholar’s friend Christopher came across some Cher references online over the holiday.

This first piece is about the fact that a love of Cher in the 1970s might constitute a clue that young man might be gay.

Christopher also sent me his ode to the video "We All Sleep Alone."  He reminded me that it’s the 30th anniversary of Cher’s 80s comeback. Wah?? I’m so damn old! Christopher calls this era the "Jovi/Desmond Child" period. I would call it the "Jovi/Child/Diane Warren" period although the Warren is lingering. How shall we celebrate it, he asks me knowing full well that this is not my favorite era of Cher and I am not inclined to celebrate it.

He also wants to commemorate Cher’s big 80s hair of that same period (okay, something I CAN get behind).  Of the “gargantuan” wig she wears in “We All Sleep Alone” he says, “It is truly stupendous, particularly as she is wearing it without irony--it is like the greatest, grandest expression of 'Big 80s Hair' I can think of.  The Wilson sisters probably had the biggest real hair, but Cher beats them handily if wigs are factored in.”

Christopher also had some good things to say about the video itself and why it’s his favorite video of Cher’s:

• "The apocalyptic feel of the set:  very Mad-Max-boudoir, with the scaffolding, the tattered, torn grey sheets."
• The aforementioned hair.
• It's one of his favorite Cher songs of all time. He loves its "atmospheric, dramatic, truthful qualities and the way the song is a strange blend of the quiet and the bombastic.  Bonus points for all the heavy bleating."
• "The canoodling with Rob (full-on mullet, natch)."
• "That she had the balls to base a whole video around the concept of her writhing around in a negligee on a satin-sheeted bed (I know the song is about "sleeping," but still...).  Bonus points for the tastefully glittery effect on the negligee and that the sheets are black satin (so Goth!)."
• "Her astonishing body, which might be seen as being in its most impressive incarnation during this period; i.e., it's one thing to be in your 20s and have the astounding body she had on her TV shows in the 1970s, but another thing altogether to be 40 and still look like this.  It defies reason."
• "That the song proved prophetic in terms of her own journey.  Unlike Babs, she really does sleep alone at this point in time." [We guess, but we don’t really know because Cher has been private about it for years. CS doubts this is the case.]

Happy New Year, New Cher Scholar Web Sites, New Tweets, More Fanny

Happy new year!

I’m back from my work vacation which I spent most of adding analytics to my websites and giving them responsive themes so they’ll work on mobile devices well enough that Google won’t shun me in search results. Whew!

Everything went pretty well until I tried to post pictures of my Cher tree on Facebook (see left). I went to Google search my page on www.cherscholar.com about Cher doll outfits to find the name of this year’s new Cher doll dress on my tree (Gown of Paradise). It was then that I discovered my site had been hacked and was redirecting people to porn sites. On Christmas of all things!

So I spent the whole weekend after Christmas re-creating Cherscholar.com in a content managed, secured, responsive place. Anyway, along with the blog, the mama site has a whole new look and the job gave me a list of other things to update over there. So more to come.

Meanwhile, news kept happening in Cherland.

Twitterspats

Trump tweets

Tweet drama over Michigan governor Rick Snyer

Cher v. Ted Cruz

• CNN
• Bustle
• Washington Post

Cher's reaction to Tamir Rice ruling  (Billboard, thanks Christopher)

Movie Memorializing

Mermaids: Where Are They Know (dammit I feel old). 

The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour

More articles appeared on the band Fanny. June Millington’s biography has come out and it’s a hefty thing I can’t afford right now but reviews so far have been good:

From Pitchfork

From NPR

The NPR article talks about how bad-ass Fanny was and how they knew how to set themselves up and carry their own equipment. The article compares Fanny to both the current band Haim and the 70s The Band and surmises the reason they never broke into success was because they were too good, not gimmicky enough, more committed to their competent jams and funky breakdowns. But being bi-racial and bi-cultural, they were ahead of their time. The article laments that in the digital music age there are no record bins for young people to browse and discover Fanny.

Here's a look at Cherscholar.com website as it has evolved over the years:

 

 

 

 

 

 

RIP David Bowie, Natalie Cole, Wayne Rogers and Pat Harrington Jr.

Today is a sad day for rock and roll fans. David Bowie was a 1970s and 80s icon to diverse groups of people.

From The New York Times today:

"David Bowie, his generation’s standard-bearer for rock music as theater, died on Sunday, two days after his 69th birthday. He had cancer. He released his 25th album, “Blackstar,” on Friday and has a show, “Lazarus,” running Off Broadway. He’ll be honored at Carnegie Hall with a concert on March 31." Watch Cher and David Bowie in 1975.

Cher tweeted: “DEVASTATED…A LEGEND IS GONE”

Singer Natalie Cole and television star Wayne Rogers also both died on December 31.

Most remember Wayne Rogers from the show M*A*S*H although I was also a fan of his show with Lynn Redgrave, House Calls. Cher fans will remember him from multiple appearances on the Cher show. See him to the right with Raquel Welch, Cher and Tatum O'Neal.

Cher tweeted about Natalie Cole:

"NATALIE COLE …..A VOICE FROM HEAVEN HAS BEEN CALLED HOME."

And I know they say these celebrity passings come in threes, but we actually had four over the holiday. Pat Harrington, Jr. (who played Schneider on the show One Day at a Time) also died January 6.

We are losing a lot of 70s icons!

As you may know, one particular supermarket rag was once again hastening Cher's demise on its cover last week. It's the third alarming "Cher is dying" report since the illness that cancelled her tour in 2014.  It is just a tabloid story but still...it can't help but make you feel nervous. David Bowie, at 69, is just a little over a year younger than Cher.