Ballroom show to hit Broadway amid dance popularity
NEW YORK (Reuters) – After performing in more than 30 countries, ballroom dance company "Burn The Floor" debuts on Broadway on Sunday with producers saying the time -- and the timing -- is right.
Reality
"Maybe 10 years ago (ballroom dancing) didn't have much street cred," said Jason Gilkison, who started with "Burn The Floor" as a dancer when it was founded in London in 1999. He is now the company's choreographer and director.
"But now to see your favorite celebrity do it on TV you can go out and learn swing and salsa. All of a sudden everyone seems to be dancing," he said. "When we first started the show 10 years ago it was the blue rinse set and now when we were in Japan last time it was screaming teenagers."
"Burn The Floor" producer and founder Harley Medcalf and Carrie Ann Inaba, also a producer of the Broadway show and a judge on "Dancing with the Stars," both said "the time is right" for a ballroom dancing production on Broadway.
"If you said to someone a couple of years ago 'What's the Paso Doble?' they would have been like 'what?'" said Medcalf, referring to a dance style modeled on a Spanish bullfight. "But now through the reality TV shows everyone is educated and they can see the dimension and the meaning (of dance)."
The program for "Burn The Floor," which will perform an initial three-month run on Broadway, also explains the different styles of dance performed in the show.
"What America and the world is learning when you watch great choreography and great dancers perform great choreography it's just beautiful," said Inaba.
"Dancing with the Stars" grew from the British TV show "Strictly Come Dancing" and the format has been licensed in more than 30 countries, while "So You Think You Can Dance" premiered in the United States in 2005 and local versions have and are being developed in more than 10 other countries.
DANCE NOT LIMITING
At The Ailey Extension, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater program of dance classes for the general public, there has been an increase in students in 2009 of more than 40 percent compared to last year, said director Yvette Campbell.
Every month, more than 2,400 people take classes at the New York City-based group, up to 800 of whom are new students.
Campbell said the program's popularity was in part boosted when Alvin Ailey dancers were guest performers on "So You Think You Can Dance" a year ago.
"Whenever you're sitting on your sofa watching these television shows you think 'I can take a class,'" she said.
"It's back to a time where it's very romantic and very inspiring to dance like that," Campbell said. "We don't dance together anymore, as a culture we don't do partner dancing anymore ... . Now we do kind of a disco thing where everyone dances together on the floor but we don't touch each other."
She said The Ailey Extension even offers an Indian dance class, which began after the success of Oscar-winning film "Slumdog Millionaire."
"This whole Bollywood dance theme has become very popular in the United States, so I started offering this class which is totally sold out," Campbell said.
Joseph Roach, a theater professor at Yale University, said that an increase in the popularity of dance is "in part a direct challenge to the mind-body split, the basis of Western metaphysics, now obsolete."
Susan Ohmer, of the University of Notre Dame's Department of Film, Television and Theater, said she believes audiences admire the skill and focus of dancers in the reality TV shows and that it has become more acceptable because of some of the competitors, which include athletes such as football players.
"Dancing is not limited to a particular class or to people with lots of leisure time," she said. "It can be learned in a short period of time by people with athletic abilities, and that gives it a more populist appeal."
(Editing by Doina Chiacu)
Cy Coleman Echoes in New Revue, 'Best Is Yet to Come'
The show will continue to Aug. 2 in a production by Rubicon Theatre Company in Ventura, CA. New York producers are already pricking up their ears, Playbill.com has learned.
Zippel is the Tony Award-winning lyricist of To
Here's how Rubicon bills the show: "In a career spanning seven decades, Cy Coleman created a glittering string of standards and popular music classics, as well asÖCity of Angels, Sweet Charity, Barnum, The Life, Little Me, On the Twentieth Century and Will Rogers Follies. ÖZippel pays homage to Coleman with an elegant new musical revue performed by six singers accompanied by an eight-piece swing band. The sparkling score includes as-yet unpublished Coleman works, as well as songs made famous by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Barbara Streisand."
The Best Is Yet to Come (the title is drawn from a lyric by Carolyn Leigh) has musical direction, musical supervision and vocal arrangements by Billy Stritch, orchestrations by Don Sebesky and choreography by Lorin Latarro. Assistant musical director is Christopher Marlowe.
Lillias White won the Tony as Best Lead Actress in a Musical for Coleman's The Life. Sally Mayes (Urban Cowboy, Closer Than Ever) starred in Coleman's 1989 Broadway musical Welcome to the Club, about divorce. David Burnham appeared in Broadway's The Light in the Piazza and Wicked. Graae, a stage and cabaret mainstay (Broadway's Falsettos, A Grand Night for Singing), recently starred in the York Theatre Company concert of the revised version of Jerry Herman's The Grand Tour. Murney starred in Wicked (on Broadway and the road) and starred in Andrew Lippa's The Wild Party Off-Broadway.
For tickets and more information, call the Rubicon box office at (805) 667-2900 or visit rubicontheatre.org.
As previously reported on Playbill.com, The Best is Yet to Come will dip into the deep well of Coleman's catalog, offering classic and obscure numbers he wrote with a variety of lyricists, including Carolyn Leigh, Dorothy Fields, Comden and Green, Michael Stewart, Zippel and others.
"His body of work was so extraordinary it would be exciting to see it in revue form, and I had had talked to Cy about it years ago," Zippel told Playbill.com. "He told me: 'That's for after I'm gone; let's write something new.'"
Zippel, who, with Coleman, also wrote the yet-to-be produced comic Napoleon musical, N, contacted the composer's widow, Shelby, and she enthusiastically agreed to move forward with a revue, the lyricist said.
The Best is Yet to Come takes its title seriously and will include songs from Coleman musicals that may yet surface (N, Pamela's First Musical and the Marilyn and Alan Bergman collaboration known as In the Pocket or Like Jazz).
Expect a classic revue form, Zippel said, where "the juxtaposition of the songs and the personalities" create fresh contexts for the songs while honoring the craft.
Zippel said The Best is Yet to Come will be divided between Coleman's pop standards (think "Witchcraft" or the title song), show music (Sweet Charity, Little Me, Seesaw, Barnum, I Love My Wife and more) and past Carolyn Leigh obscurities or songs that have yet to dawn.
Coleman died in 2004. He won Tony Awards for his scores to The Will Rogers Follies (1991, with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green); City of Angels (1990, with lyrics by David Zippel); and On the Twentieth Century (1978, with lyrics by Comden and Green).
He was Tony-nominated for the book and score of The Life (about Times Square hookers and hustlers circa 1980); the score of Barnum (about showman P.T. Barnum, with lyrics by Michael Stewart); I Love My Wife (about wife-swapping in suburban New Jersey, with lyrics by Stewart); Seesaw (based on the play Two for the Seesaw, with lyrics by Dorothy Fields); Sweet Charity and Little Me (1963). He also served as a producer on some of his Broadway projects.
Coleman, a native New Yorker, was born Seymour Kaufman. He played classical music at Carnegie Hall and Town Hall as a child, but as an adult heard the siren call of jazz, pop and theatre music and never looked back. Working with the lyricist Carolyn Leigh in his early writing career in the late 1950s and '60s, he penned such hits as "Witchcraft," "The Best Is Yet to Come," "You Fascinate Me So" and "When in Rome."
Leigh and Coleman would venture into the musical theatre, writing the scores to the Lucille Ball vehicle Wildcat (which offered the tune "Hey, Look Me Over!") and Little Me (which boasted "Real Live Girl" and "I've Got Your Number"). There was friction in the relationship. Pianist Coleman and his Cy Coleman Trio were playing engagements around the country, and Leigh wanted him to stay put in New York and focus on writing musicals.
Though Coleman did settle down to a theatre-writing life, he and Leigh did not write another show. With the legendary lyricist Dorothy Fields, he wrote "Where Am I Going?," "If My Friends Could See Me Now," "Big Spender" and "There's Gotta Be Something Better Than This" for Sweet Charity, Bob Fosse and Neil Simon's 1966 reimagining of Federico Fellini's "Nights of Cabiria." In the musical fable, Gwen Verdon starred as a dance hall hostess named Charity Hope Valentine (in the film, Cabiria is a prostitute).
The show's second Broadway revival (Fosse staged it in 1987) surfaced in 2004-05, months after Coleman's death.Those who only knew Cy Coleman as a Tony Award winning composer caught a rare glimpse of the pre-Broadway Coleman when he returned to his jazz piano roots in October 2004 for a gig at Feinstein's at the Regency.
The engagement represented life as Coleman lived it some 40 years earlier - performing not just his own jazz waltzes and songs but tunes by other writers. His October 2004 songlist included "Green Dolphin Street," "But Not for Me," "Comin' Home," "Mean to Me" and more. His side men were Gary Haase (on bass) and Buddy Williams (on drums).
The Feinstein's run (with the composer playing piano and singing) conjured Coleman's milieu of the 1950s and '60s, when he played smoke-filled rooms in Florida, hotels in Detroit and even his own 75-seat 58th Street nightclub, The Playroom, which he ran with partners in the late 1950s. William Holden had his own barstool there, Coleman told Playbill.com.
A couple of jazz performance albums from that era have been re-released for CD, but Coleman once said he'd like to unearth some others and get them on the market.
Why did Coleman stop performing? It's not that people stopped asking, he said. The Emmy-wining, Oscar nominated and Grammy-winning composer grew so busy creating and/or rehearsing musicals, from the film of "Sweet Charity" to Seesaw and beyond (including such unproduced shows as Eleanor, about Mrs. Roosevelt), that it became impractical to accept bookings.
"I never lost my love of playing," Coleman once said. "I've always worked from that base, as a musician."
One of the things that distinguished Coleman (beyond his pure, confident tunefulness) is the range of styles he used: A touch of folk and country in Will Rogers Follies, comic opera in On the Twentieth Century, vocalese and jazz in City of Angels, '60s disco in Sweet Charity, R&B in The Life, circus chase in Barnum, a country song in I Love My Life, and more.
For his late-career musical, The Great Ostrovsky, which won him a Barrymore Award in Philadelphia, he used klezmer and a Yiddish theatre music sound from the early 20th century.
"He was trying to reinvent his sound, he was always doing different style of theatre music - I think he was very proud of that," said Mary-Mitchell Campbell, a friend, pianist and music director who worked on a number of Cy Coleman projects, including Grace, a Dutch-language musical about Grace Kelly, Hitchcock and the royals of Monaco that bowed in Amsterdam in 2001.
Of Grace, Coleman had said, "Musically, I wanted to do a meld of European style and American style - the European feeling along with American pizzazz. That fascinated me."
Jackson's public memorial strikes a spiritual note
LOS ANGELES – Michael Jackson was eulogized in words and song Tuesday by an all-star list of musicians, athletes and other celebrities during a mournful ceremony in downtown Los Angeles, with the most poignant moment deli
"I just want to say ever since I was born, Daddy has been the best father you can ever imagine. And I just wanted to say I love him so much," Paris-Michael Jackson said before almost collapsing in the arms of her aunt Janet Jackson.
Watched by millions around the world, the memorial struck a tone more spiritual than spectacular Tuesday, opening with a church choir serenading his golden casket and continuing with somber speeches and gospel-infused musical performances.
The Rev. Lucious W. Smith of the Friendship Baptist Church in Pasadena gave the greeting on the same stage where Jackson had been rehearsing for a concert series in the days before his June 25 death at age 50. Then Mariah Carey sang the opening performance with a sweet rendition of the Jackson 5 ballad "I'll Be There," a duet with Trey Lorenz.
"We come together and we remember the time," said Smith, riffing on one of Jackson's lyrics. "As long as we remember him, he will always be there to comfort us."
Millions of fans around the world gathered at odd hours to watch the ceremony, which was broadcast by the major TV networks and cable channels from Tokyo to Paris to New York and streamed everywhere online in one of the biggest celebrity send-offs ever seen.
Among those who saluted Jackson were Motown music mogul Berry Gordy Jr., Brooke Shields, the Rev. Al Sharpton and basketball greats Magic Johnson and Kobe Bryant. Jennifer Hudson sang Jackson's hit "Will You Be There" and John Mayer played guitar on a whisper-light rendition of "Human Nature."
"This is a moment that I wished I didn't live to see," Stevie Wonder said before his performance. Usher broke down in tears after singing "Gone Too Soon."
Although the event was billed as a celebration, some speakers took the occasion to come to the defense of Jackson, whose life was marked as much by criticism and scorn as scintillating talent.
Gordy said that despite what he called "some sad times and maybe some questionable decisions on his part," the title King of Pop wasn't good enough for Jackson. "I think he is simply the greatest entertainer that ever lived," Gordy said.
Emotions rose when Sharpton delivered a fiery eulogy highlighting all the barriers Jackson broke and the troubles he faced. "Every time he got knocked down, he got back up," Sharpton said, and the applauding crowd jumped to its feet.
Sharpton rode the moment, building to a crescendo. "There wasn't nothing strange about your daddy," he said later, addressing Jackson's three children in the front row. "It was strange what your daddy had to deal with!" After he left the stage, chants of "Mi-chael! Mi-chael!" filled the arena.
The ceremony wrapped up with group performances of "We Are the World" and "Heal the World" sung by Lionel Richie, Hudson and Jackson family members — including his children — before a backdrop of symbols of religions from around the world. They were joined onstage by children in white and several other people who had participated in the ceremony. Then members of Jackson's family took the stage to thank the crowd and share their own thoughts, barely able to hide their emotion as they hugged in the ceremony's final moments.
An estimated 20,000 people were in the Staples Center as Jackson's flower-draped casket was brought to the venue in a motorcade under law enforcement escort. Those who gathered constituted a visual representation of Jackson's life: black, white and everything in between, wearing fedoras and African headdresses, sequins and surgical masks.
Fans with a ticket wore gold wristbands and picked up a metallic gold program guide on their way in. Acting as pallbearers, Jackson's brothers each wore a gold necktie and, in a touch borrowed from their brother, a single spangly white glove and sunglasses.
Brother Jermaine Jackson took the stage and sang the standard "Smile" as he fought back tears.
Jackson's hearse had been part of a motorcade that smoothly whisked his body 10 miles across closed freeways from a private service at a Hollywood Hills cemetery to his public memorial and awaiting fans.
The traffic snarls and logistical nightmares that had been feared by police and city officials did not materialize. Traffic was actually considered by police to be lighter than normal.
"I think people got the message to stay home," said California Highway Patrol Officer Miguel Luevano.
Deputy Police Chief Sergio Diaz, operations chief for the event, said authorities had expected a crowd of 250,000. Besides reporters and those with tickets to the memorial service, the crowd around the Staples Center perimeter numbered only about 1,000, he said.
Outside the Staples Center, Claudia Hernandez, 29, said she loved Jackson's music as a girl growing up in Mexico. Now a day-care teaching assistant in Los Angeles, Hernandez said she cried watching TV coverage of his death.
"I'm trying to hold in my emotions," said Hernandez, wearing a wristband to allow her admittance to the service and holding a framed photograph of Jackson. "I know right now he's teaching the angels to dance."
More than 1.6 million people registered for the lottery for free tickets to Jackson's memorial. A total of 8,750 were chosen to receive two tickets each.
"There are certain people in our popular culture that just capture people's imaginations. And in death, they become even larger," President Barack Obama told CBS while in Moscow. "Now, I have to admit that it's also fed by a 24/7 media that is insatiable."
The city of Los Angeles set up a Web site Tuesday to allow fans to contribute money to help the city pay for his Staples Center memorial service. Mayoral spokesman Matt Szabo estimated the service will cost $1.5 million to $4 million.
It was not clear what will happen to Jackson's body. The Forest Lawn Memorial Park Hollywood Hills cemetery is the final resting place for such stars as Bette Davis, Andy Gibb, Freddie Prinze, Liberace and recently deceased David Carradine and Ed McMahon.
Jermaine Jackson has expressed a desire to have him buried someday at Neverland, his estate in Southern California.
Midway during the memorial service, police Officer April Harding told the media gathered at the gates of Forest Lawn to disperse. Asked if Jackson's body was going to be returned to the cemetery after the memorial, she replied: "His body is not going to be returned here." She did not say where it would be taken.
___
AP Entertainment writer Sandy Cohen, AP Music writer Nekesa Mumbi Moody, AP Special Correspondent Linda Deutsch, Associated Press writers Solvej Schou, Christina Hoag, Amy Taxin, Andrew Dalton, Anthony McCartney, Danica Kirka, and AP researcher Monika Mathur contributed to this report.
Police tow car, seek clues in Jackson death
LOS ANGELES – Police towed the car of a doctor from Michael Jackson's home Friday and said it could contain drugs or other evidence offering clues in the pop star's death.
Los Angeles police spokeswoman Karen Rayne
"His car was impounded because it may contain medications or other evidence that may assist the coroner in determining the cause of death," Rayner said.
As medical examiners prepared an autopsy for Jackson, a chorus of grief for the pop king spread around the world, from statesmen to icons of music to legions of heartbroken fans.
"I can't stop crying. This is too sudden and shocking," said Diana Ross, who helped launch Jackson's career. "I am unable to imagine this. My heart is hurting."
Los Angeles County coroner's watch commander Lt. Brian Elias said Friday morning the autopsy would begin shortly and take several hours, but he said other tests would take longer and determining the official cause of death would take weeks or more.
Brian Oxman, a former Jackson attorney and a family friend, said Friday he had been concerned about Jackson's use of painkillers and had warned the singer's family about possible abuse.
"I said one day, we're going to have this experience. And when Anna Nicole Smith passed away, I said we cannot have this kind of thing with Michael Jackson," Oxman said on NBC's "Today" show. "The result was, I warned everyone, and lo and behold, here we are. I don't know what caused his death. But I feared this day, and here we are."
Oxman claimed Jackson had prescription drugs at his disposal to help with pain suffered when he broke his leg after he fell off a stage and for broken vertebrae in his back.
After Jackson was acquitted on child molestation charges in 2005, prosecutors argued against returning to Jackson items including syringes, the drug Demerol and prescriptions for various drugs, mainly antibiotics, in different people's names.
Jackson died Thursday afternoon at UCLA Medical Center after being stricken at his rented home in the posh Los Angeles neighborhood of Holmby Hills. Paramedics tried to resuscitate him for three-quarter of an hours there before rushing him to the hospital.
His brother Jermaine said Jackson apparently suffered cardiac arrest, an abnormal heart rhythm that stops the heart from pumping blood to the body. It can occur after a heart attack or be caused by other heart problems.
Jackson was preparing for a monster comeback bid — a series of 50 concerts that was to begin next month in London.
A handful of bleary-eyed fans camped out throughout the night with media outside the Jackson family house in the San Fernando Valley and near his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. People heading to work in New York stopped to pay respects outside Harlem's Apollo Theater, where Jackson performed as a child.
"When the autopsy comes, all hell's going to break loose, so thank God we're celebrating him now," Liza Minnelli told CBS' "The Early Show" by telephone.
A producer said Sunday's BET Awards would be dedicated to Jackson because of his influence on music and pop culture. And a screening of Universal Pictures' "Bruno" in Los Angeles on Thursday night cut a scene involving Jackson's sister La Toya.
Jackson's death brought a tragic end to a long, bizarre, sometimes farcical decline from his peak in the 1980s, when he was popular music's premier all-around performer. His 1982 album "Thriller" — which included the blockbuster hits "Beat It," "Billie Jean" and "Thriller" — is the best-selling album of all time worldwide.
Yet after selling more than 61 million albums in the U.S. and having a decade-long attraction open at Disney theme parks, Jackson died reportedly awash in about $400 million in debt, on the cusp of a final comeback after well over a decade of scandal.
The public first knew Jackson as a boy in the late 1960s, when he was the precocious, spinning lead singer of the Jackson 5, the singing group he formed with his four older brothers out of Gary, Ind. Among their No. 1 hits were "I Want You Back," "ABC" and "I'll Be There."
He was perhaps the most exciting performer of his generation, known for his backward-gliding moonwalk, his feverish, crotch-grabbing dance moves and his high-pitched singing, punctuated with squeals and titters. His single sequined glove, tight, military-style jacket and aviator sunglasses were trademarks, as was his ever-changing, surgically altered appearance.
"For Michael to be taken away from us so suddenly at such a young age, I just don't have the words," said Quincy Jones, who produced "Thriller." "He was the consummate entertainer and his contributions and legacy will be felt upon the world forever. I've lost my little brother today, and part of my soul has gone with him."
Jackson ranked alongside Elvis Presley and the Beatles as the biggest pop sensations of all time. He united two of music's biggest names when he was briefly married to Presley's daughter, Lisa Marie. Jackson's sudden death immediately evoked comparisons to that of Presley himself, who died at age 42 in 1977.
"I am so very sad and confused with every emotion possible," Lisa Marie Presley said in a statement. "I am heartbroken for his children who I know were everything to him and for his family. This is such a massive loss on so many levels, words fail me."
As years went by, Jackson became an increasingly freakish figure — a middle-aged man-child weirdly out of touch with grown-up life. His skin became lighter, his nose narrower, and he spoke in a breathy, girlish voice. He often wore a germ mask while traveling, kept a pet chimpanzee named Bubbles as one of his closest companions and surrounded himself with children at his Neverland ranch, a storybook playland filled with toys, rides and animals. The tabloids dubbed him "Wacko Jacko."
After the enormous success of "Thriller," Jackson had strong follow-up albums with 1987's "Bad" and 1991's "Dangerous," but his career began to collapse in 1993 after he was accused of molesting a boy who often stayed at his home.
The singer denied any wrongdoing, reached a settlement with the boy's family, reported to be $20 million, and criminal charges were never filed.
Jackson caused a furor in 2002 when he playfully dangled his infant son, Prince Michael II, over a hotel balcony in Berlin while a throng of fans watched from below.
In 2005, he was cleared of charges that he molested a 13-year-old cancer survivor at Neverland in 2003. He had been accused of plying the boy with alcohol and groping him, and of engaging in strange and inappropriate behavior with other children.
The case followed years of rumors about Jackson and young boys. In a TV documentary, he acknowledged sharing his bed with children, a practice he described as sweet and not at all sexual.
Despite the acquittal, the lurid allegations that came out in court took a fearsome toll on his career and image, and he fell into serious financial trouble.
Jackson married Lisa Marie Presley in 1994, and they divorced in 1996. Later that year, Jackson married Deborah Rowe, a former nurse for his dermatologist. They had two children together: Michael Joseph Jackson Jr., known as Prince Michael, now 12; and Paris Michael Katherine Jackson, 11. Rowe filed for divorce in 1999.
Jackson also had a third child, Prince Michael II, now 7. Jackson said the boy, nicknamed Blanket as a baby, was his biological child born from a surrogate mother.
Billboard magazine editorial director Bill Werde said Jackson's star power was unmatched. "The world just lost the biggest pop star in history, no matter how you cut it," Werde said. "He's literally the king of pop."
Jackson's 13 No. 1 one hits on the Billboard charts put him behind only Presley, the Beatles and Mariah Carey, Werde said.
"He was on the eve of potentially redeeming his career a little bit," he said. "People might have started to think of him again in a different light."
Autopsy planned after Jackson's sudden death
LOS ANGELES – Authorities are seeking to clear up the mystery surrounding Michael Jackson's death, including whether prescription drugs could have been a factor.
An autopsy was to begin Friday, though results weren
In a press conference Friday, Lt. Ed Winter, assistant chief coroner, said the likelihood was slim that the coroner's office would have anything to release today and said results could take 6-8 weeks.
"We're conducting it as we do any other exam," said Winter.
Police said they were investigating, standard procedure in high-profile cases.
Brian Oxman, a former attorney of Jackson's and a family friend, said he was concerned about Jackson's use of painkillers and he warned the singer's family about possible abuse.
"I said one day, we're going to have this experience. And when Anna Nicole Smith passed away, I said we cannot have this kind of thing with Michael Jackson," Oxman said Friday on NBC's "Today" show. "The result was, I warned everyone, and lo and behold, here we are. I don't know what caused his death. But I feared this day, and here we are."
The 50-year-old musical superstar died Thursday, just as he was preparing for a series of 50 concerts starting July 13 at London's 02 arena.
He died at UCLA Medical Center after being stricken at his rented home in the posh Los Angeles neighborhood of Holmby Hills. Paramedics tried to resuscitate him for nearly three-quarters of an hour, then rushed him to the hospital, where doctors continued to work on him.
His brother Jermaine said it was believed that Jackson suffered cardiac arrest at his home. Cardiac arrest is an abnormal heart rhythm that stops the heart from pumping blood to the body. It can occur after a heart attack or be caused by other heart problems.
A handful of bleary-eyed fans camped out throughout the night with media outside the Jackson family house in the San Fernando Valley and near his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. People heading to work in New York on Friday were stopping at a makeshift memorial outside Harlem's Apollo Theater, where Jackson performed as a child.
Oxman, who said he was speaking on behalf of no one but himself, and other friends made the rounds among the news outlets Friday, adding to the intrigue of Jackson's early demise. Oxman claims Jackson had prescription drugs at his disposal to help with pain suffered when he broke his leg after he fell off a stage and for broken vertebrae in his back.
"When the autopsy comes, all hell's going to break loose, so thank God we're celebrating him now," Liza Minnelli told CBS' "The Early Show" by telephone.
In 2007, Jackson settled a lawsuit filed by a Beverly Hills pharmacy that claimed he owed more than $100,000 for prescription drugs over a two-year period.
After Jackson was acquitted on child molestation charges in 2005, Santa Barbara County District Attorney Tom Sneddon argued against returning some items belonging to Jackson he labeled "contraband." Sneddon said those included syringes, the drug Demerol and prescriptions for various drugs, mainly antibiotics, that were in different people's names.
Stephen Hill, an executive producer for the BET Awards, said Sunday's show would be dedicated to Jackson because of his influence on music and pop culture.
"I think what you're going to find is that acceptance speeches for awards will have nothing to do about the artists themselves, but about the influence that Michael Jackson had on them," Hill said in a phone interview.
Universal Pictures' "Bruno" screened in Los Angeles on Thursday night with a scene involving Jackson's sister La Toya Jackson cut from the movie. A spokesman for Universal said the studio had no comment.
Jackson's death brought a tragic end to a long, bizarre, sometimes farcical decline from his peak in the 1980s, when he was popular music's premier all-around performer, a uniter of black and white music who shattered the race barrier on MTV, dominated the charts and dazzled even more on stage.
His 1982 album, "Thriller" — which included the blockbuster hits "Beat It," "Billie Jean" and "Thriller" — is the best-selling album of all time worldwide.
Yet after selling more than 61 million albums in the U.S. and having a decade-long attraction open at Disney theme parks, Jackson died reportedly awash in about $400 million in debt, on the cusp of a final comeback after well over a decade of scandal.
As word of his death spread, MTV switched its programming to play videos from Jackson's heyday. Radio stations began playing marathons of his hits. Hundreds of people gathered outside the hospital. In New York's Times Square, a low groan went up in the crowd when a screen flashed that Jackson had died, and people began relaying the news to friends by cell phone.
The public first knew him as a boy in the late 1960s, when he was the precocious, spinning lead singer of the Jackson 5, the singing group he formed with his four older brothers out of Gary, Ind. Among their No. 1 hits were "I Want You Back," "ABC" and "I'll Be There."
He was perhaps the most exciting performer of his generation, known for his backward-gliding moonwalk, his feverish, crotch-grabbing dance moves and his high-pitched singing, punctuated with squeals and titters. His single sequined glove, tight, military-style jacket and aviator sunglasses were trademarks, as was his ever-changing, surgically altered appearance.
"For Michael to be taken away from us so suddenly at such a young age, I just don't have the words," said Quincy Jones, who produced "Thriller." "He was the consummate entertainer and his contributions and legacy will be felt upon the world forever. I've lost my little brother today, and part of my soul has gone with him."
Jackson ranked alongside Elvis Presley and the Beatles as the biggest pop sensations of all time. He united two of music's biggest names when he was briefly married to Presley's daughter, Lisa Marie. Jackson's sudden death immediately evoked comparisons to that of Presley himself, who died at age 42 in 1977.
"I am so very sad and confused with every emotion possible," Lisa Marie Presley said in a statement. "I am heartbroken for his children who I know were everything to him and for his family. This is such a massive loss on so many levels, words fail me."
As years went by, Jackson became an increasingly freakish figure — a middle-aged man-child weirdly out of touch with grown-up life. His skin became lighter, his nose narrower, and he spoke in a breathy, girlish voice. He often wore a germ mask while traveling, kept a pet chimpanzee named Bubbles as one of his closest companions and surrounded himself with children at his Neverland ranch, a storybook playland filled with toys, rides and animals. The tabloids dubbed him "Wacko Jacko."
Jackson caused a furor in 2002 when he playfully dangled his infant son, Prince Michael II, over a hotel balcony in Berlin while a throng of fans watched from below.
In 2005, he was cleared of charges that he molested a 13-year-old cancer survivor at Neverland in 2003. He had been accused of plying the boy with alcohol and groping him, and of engaging in strange and inappropriate behavior with other children.
The case followed years of rumors about Jackson and young boys. In a TV documentary, he acknowledged sharing his bed with children, a practice he described as sweet and not at all sexual.
Despite the acquittal, the lurid allegations that came out in court took a fearsome toll on his career and image, and he fell into serious financial trouble.
Michael Joseph Jackson was born Aug. 29, 1958, in Gary. He was 4 years old when he began singing with his brothers — Marlon, Jermaine, Jackie and Tito — in the Jackson 5. After his early success with bubblegum soul, he struck out on his own, generating innovative, explosive, unstoppable music.
The album "Thriller" mixed the dark, serpentine bass and drums and synthesizer approach of "Billie Jean," the grinding Eddie Van Halen guitar solo on "Beat It" and the hiccups and falsettos on "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'."
The peak may have come in 1983, when Motown celebrated its 25th anniversary with an all-star televised concert and Jackson moonwalked off with the show, joining his brothers for a medley of old hits and then leaving them behind with a pointing, crouching, high-kicking, splay-footed, crotch-grabbing run through "Billie Jean."
The audience stood and roared. Jackson raised his fist.
During production of a 1984 Pepsi commercial, Jackson's scalp sustained burns when an explosion set his hair on fire.
He had strong follow-up albums with 1987's "Bad" and 1991's "Dangerous," but his career began to collapse in 1993 after he was accused of molesting a boy who often stayed at his home. The singer denied any wrongdoing, reached a settlement with the boy's family, reported to be $20 million, and criminal charges were never filed.
Jackson expressed anger over the allegations on the 1995 album, "HIStory," which sold more than 2.4 million copies, but by then, the popularity of Jackson's music was clearly waning even as public fascination with his increasingly erratic behavior was growing.
Jackson married Lisa Marie Presley in 1994, and they divorced in 1996. Later that year, Jackson married Deborah Rowe, a former nurse for his dermatologist. They had two children together: Michael Joseph Jackson Jr., known as Prince Michael, now 12; and Paris Michael Katherine Jackson, 11. Rowe filed for divorce in 1999.
Jackson also had a third child, Prince Michael II, now 7. Jackson said the boy, nicknamed Blanket as a baby, was his biological child born from a surrogate mother.
Billboard magazine editorial director Bill Werde said Jackson's star power was unmatched. "The world just lost the biggest pop star in history, no matter how you cut it," Werde said. "He's literally the king of pop."
Jackson's 13 No. 1 one hits on the Billboard charts put him behind only Presley, the Beatles and Mariah Carey, Werde said.
"He was on the eve of potentially redeeming his career a little bit," he said. "People might have started to think of him again in a different light."
Michael Jackson, `King of Pop,' dead at 50
LOS ANGELES – Michael Jackson's 50-concert comeback bid in London next month was intended to wash away the taint of freakish scandals and restore him to glory as the "King of Pop." But the curtain will never rise.
"I can't stop crying over the sad news," Madonna said in a statement. "The world has lost one of the greats, but his music will live on forever."
Said Dick Clark: "Of all the thousands of entertainers I have worked with, Michael was the most outstanding. Many have tried and will try to copy him, but his talent will never be matched."
Jackson, 50, died at UCLA Medical Center after being stricken at his rented home in Holmby Hills. Paramedics tried to resuscitate him at his home for nearly three-quarters of an hour, then rushed him to the hospital, where doctors continued to work on him.
"It is believed he suffered cardiac arrest in his home. However, the cause of his death is unknown until results of the autopsy are known," his brother Jermaine said. Police said they were investigating, standard procedure in high-profile cases.
Jackson's death brought a tragic end to a long, bizarre, sometimes farcical decline from his peak in the 1980s, when he was popular music's premier all-around performer, a uniter of black and white music who shattered the race barrier on MTV, dominated the charts and dazzled even more on stage.
His 1982 album "Thriller" — which included the blockbuster hits "Beat It," "Billie Jean" and "Thriller" — is the best-selling album of all time, with an estimated 50 million copies sold worldwide.
At the time of his death, Jackson was rehearsing hard for what was to be his greatest comeback: He was scheduled for an unprecedented 50 shows at a London arena, with the first set for July 13.
As word of his death spread, MTV switched its programming to play videos from Jackson's heyday. Radio stations began playing marathons of his hits. Hundreds of people gathered outside the hospital. In New York's Times Square, a low groan went up in the crowd when a screen flashed that Jackson had died, and people began relaying the news to friends by cell phone.
"No joke. King of Pop is no more. Wow," Michael Harris, 36, of New York City, read from a text message a friend had sent him. "It's like when Kennedy was assassinated. I will always remember being in Times Square when Michael Jackson died."
The public first knew him as a boy in the late 1960s, when he was the precocious, spinning lead singer of the Jackson 5, the singing group he formed with his four older brothers out of Gary, Ind. Among their No. 1 hits were "I Want You Back," "ABC" and "I'll Be There."
He was perhaps the most exciting performer of his generation, known for his backward-gliding moonwalk, his feverish, crotch-grabbing dance moves and his high-pitched singing, punctuated with squeals and titters. His single sequined glove, tight, military-style jacket and aviator sunglasses were trademarks, as was his ever-changing, surgically altered appearance.
"For Michael to be taken away from us so suddenly at such a young age, I just don't have the words," said Quincy Jones, who produced "Thriller." "He was the consummate entertainer and his contributions and legacy will be felt upon the world forever. I've lost my little brother today, and part of my soul has gone with him."
Jackson ranked alongside Elvis Presley and the Beatles as the biggest pop sensations of all time. He united two of music's biggest names when he was briefly married to Presley's daughter, Lisa Marie, and Jackson's death immediately evoked comparisons to that of Presley himself, who died at age 42 in 1977.
As years went by, Jackson became an increasingly freakish figure — a middle-aged man-child weirdly out of touch with grown-up life. His skin became lighter, his nose narrower, and he spoke in a breathy, girlish voice. He often wore a germ mask while traveling, kept a pet chimpanzee named Bubbles as one of his closest companions, and surrounded himself with children at his Neverland ranch, a storybook playland filled with toys, rides and animals. The tabloids dubbed him "Wacko Jacko."
"It seemed to me that his internal essence was at war with the norms of the world. It's as if he was trying to defy gravity," said Michael Levine, a Hollywood publicist who represented Jackson in the early 1990s. He called Jackson a "disciple of P.T. Barnum" and said the star appeared fragile at the time but was "much more cunning and shrewd about the industry than anyone knew."
Jackson caused a furor in 2002 when he playfully dangled his infant son, Prince Michael II, over a hotel balcony in Berlin while a throng of fans watched from below.
In 2005, he was cleared of charges he molested a 13-year-old cancer survivor at Neverland in 2003. He had been accused of plying the boy with alcohol and groping him, and of engaging in strange and inappropriate behavior with other children.
The case followed years of rumors about Jackson and young boys. In a TV documentary, he acknowledged sharing his bed with children, a practice he described as sweet and not at all sexual.
Despite the acquittal, the lurid allegations that came out in court took a fearsome toll on his career and image, and he fell into serious financial trouble.
Michael Joseph Jackson was born Aug. 29, 1958, in Gary. He was 4 years old when he began singing with his brothers — Marlon, Jermaine, Jackie and Tito — in the Jackson 5. After his early success with bubblegum soul, he struck out on his own, generating innovative, explosive, unstoppable music.
The album "Thriller" alone mixed the dark, serpentine bass and drums and synthesizer approach of "Billie Jean," the grinding Eddie Van Halen solo on "Beat It," and the hiccups and falsettos on "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'."
The peak may have come in 1983, when Motown celebrated its 25th anniversary with an all-star televised concert and Jackson moonwalked off with the show, joining his brothers for a medley of old hits and then leaving them behind with a pointing, crouching, high-kicking, splay-footed, crotch-grabbing run through "Billie Jean."
The audience stood and roared. Jackson raised his fist.
By then he had cemented his place in pop culture. He got the plum Scarecrow role in the 1978 movie musical "The Wiz," a pop-R&B version of "The Wizard of Oz," that starred Diana Ross as Dorothy.
During production of a 1984 Pepsi commercial, Jackson's scalp sustains burns when an explosion sets his hair on fire.
He had strong follow-up albums with 1987's "Bad" and 1991's "Dangerous," but his career began to collapse in 1993 after he was accused of molesting a boy who often stayed at his home. The singer denied any wrongdoing, reached a settlement with the boy's family, reported to be $20 million, and criminal charges were never filed.
Jackson's expressed anger over the allegations on the 1995 album "HIStory," which sold more than 2.4 million copies, but by then, the popularity of Jackson's music was clearly waning, even as public fascination with his increasingly erratic behavior was growing.
Jackson married Lisa Marie Presley in 1994, and they divorced in 1996. Later that year, Jackson married Deborah Rowe, a former nurse for his dermatologist. They had two children together: Michael Joseph Jackson Jr., known as Prince Michael, and Paris Michael Katherine Jackson. Rowe filed for divorce in 1999.
Cardiac arrest is an abnormal heart rhythm that stops the heart from pumping blood to the body. It can occur after a heart attack or be caused by other heart problems.
Billboard magazine editorial director Bill Werde said Jackson's star power was unmatched. "The world just lost the biggest pop star in history, no matter how you cut it," Werde said. "He's literally the king of pop."
Jackson's 13 No. 1 one hits on the Billboard charts put him behind only Presley, the Beatles and Mariah Carey, Werde said.
"He was on the eve of potentially redeeming his career a little bit," he said. "People might have started to think of him again in a different light."
___
Associated Press Writers Derrik J. Lang, Solvej Schou and Thomas Watkins in Los Angeles and Virginia Byrne, Hillel Italie, Nekesa Mumbi Moody and Jocelyn Noveck in New York contributed to this report.
Autopsy set after Michael Jackson's sudden death
LOS ANGELES – Michael Jackson, defined in equal parts as the world's greatest entertainer and perhaps its most enigmatic figure, was about to attempt one of the greatest comebacks of all time. Then his life was cut shocki
The 50-year-old musical superstar died Thursday, just as he was preparing for what would be a series of 50 concerts starting July 13 at London's famed 02 arena. Jackson had been spending hours and hours toiling with a team of dancers for a performance he and his fans hoped would restore his tarnished legacy to its proper place in pop.
An autopsy was planned for Friday, though results were not likely to be final until toxicology tests could be completed, a process that could take several days and maybe weeks. However, if a cause can be determined by the autopsy, the results will be announced, said Los Angeles County Coroner Investigator Jerry McKibben.
Police said they were investigating, standard procedure in high-profile cases.
Jackson died at UCLA Medical Center after being stricken at his rented home in the posh Los Angeles neighborhood of Holmby Hills. Paramedics tried to resuscitate him at his home for nearly three-quarters of an hour, then rushed him to the hospital, where doctors continued to work on him.
"It is believed he suffered cardiac arrest in his home. However, the cause of his death is unknown until results of the autopsy are known," his brother Jermaine said.
Cardiac arrest is an abnormal heart rhythm that stops the heart from pumping blood to the body. It can occur after a heart attack or be caused by other heart problems.
Jackson's death brought a tragic end to a long, bizarre, sometimes farcical decline from his peak in the 1980s, when he was popular music's premier all-around performer, a uniter of black and white music who shattered the race barrier on MTV, dominated the charts and dazzled even more on stage.
His 1982 album, "Thriller" — which included the blockbuster hits "Beat It," "Billie Jean" and "Thriller" — is the best-selling album of all time, with an estimated 50 million copies sold worldwide.
Yet after selling more than 61 million albums in the U.S. and having a decade-long attraction open at Disney theme parks, Jackson died reportedly awash in about $400 million in debt, on the cusp of a final comeback after well over a decade of scandal.
Stephen Hill, an executive producer for the BET Awards, said Sunday's show would be dedicated to Jackson because of his influence on music and pop culture.
"I think what you're going to find is that acceptance speeches for awards will have nothing to do about the artists themselves, but about the influence that Michael Jackson had on them," Hill said in a phone interview.
As word of his death spread, MTV switched its programming to play videos from Jackson's heyday. Radio stations began playing marathons of his hits. Hundreds of people gathered outside the hospital. In New York's Times Square, a low groan went up in the crowd when a screen flashed that Jackson had died, and people began relaying the news to friends by cell phone.
"No joke. King of Pop is no more. Wow," Michael Harris, 36, of New York City, read from a text message a friend had sent him. "It's like when Kennedy was assassinated. I will always remember being in Times Square when Michael Jackson died."
The public first knew him as a boy in the late 1960s, when he was the precocious, spinning lead singer of the Jackson 5, the singing group he formed with his four older brothers out of Gary, Ind. Among their No. 1 hits were "I Want You Back," "ABC" and "I'll Be There."
He was perhaps the most exciting performer of his generation, known for his backward-gliding moonwalk, his feverish, crotch-grabbing dance moves and his high-pitched singing, punctuated with squeals and titters. His single sequined glove, tight, military-style jacket and aviator sunglasses were trademarks, as was his ever-changing, surgically altered appearance.
"For Michael to be taken away from us so suddenly at such a young age, I just don't have the words," said Quincy Jones, who produced "Thriller." "He was the consummate entertainer and his contributions and legacy will be felt upon the world forever. I've lost my little brother today, and part of my soul has gone with him."
Jackson ranked alongside Elvis Presley and the Beatles as the biggest pop sensations of all time. He united two of music's biggest names when he was briefly married to Presley's daughter, Lisa Marie. Jackson's sudden death immediately evoked comparisons to that of Presley himself, who died at age 42 in 1977.
"I am so very sad and confused with every emotion possible," Lisa Marie Presley said in a statement. "I am heartbroken for his children who I know were everything to him and for his family. This is such a massive loss on so many levels, words fail me."
As years went by, Jackson became an increasingly freakish figure — a middle-aged man-child weirdly out of touch with grown-up life. His skin became lighter, his nose narrower, and he spoke in a breathy, girlish voice. He often wore a germ mask while traveling, kept a pet chimpanzee named Bubbles as one of his closest companions and surrounded himself with children at his Neverland ranch, a storybook playland filled with toys, rides and animals. The tabloids dubbed him "Wacko Jacko."
"It seemed to me that his internal essence was at war with the norms of the world. It's as if he was trying to defy gravity," said Michael Levine, a Hollywood publicist who represented Jackson in the early 1990s. He called Jackson a "disciple of P.T. Barnum" and said the star appeared fragile at the time but was "much more cunning and shrewd about the industry than anyone knew."
Jackson caused a furor in 2002 when he playfully dangled his infant son, Prince Michael II, over a hotel balcony in Berlin while a throng of fans watched from below.
In 2005, he was cleared of charges that he molested a 13-year-old cancer survivor at Neverland in 2003. He had been accused of plying the boy with alcohol and groping him, and of engaging in strange and inappropriate behavior with other children.
The case followed years of rumors about Jackson and young boys. In a TV documentary, he acknowledged sharing his bed with children, a practice he described as sweet and not at all sexual.
Despite the acquittal, the lurid allegations that came out in court took a fearsome toll on his career and image, and he fell into serious financial trouble.
Michael Joseph Jackson was born Aug. 29, 1958, in Gary. He was 4 years old when he began singing with his brothers — Marlon, Jermaine, Jackie and Tito — in the Jackson 5. After his early success with bubblegum soul, he struck out on his own, generating innovative, explosive, unstoppable music.
The album "Thriller" alone mixed the dark, serpentine bass and drums and synthesizer approach of "Billie Jean," the grinding Eddie Van Halen guitar solo on "Beat It" and the hiccups and falsettos on "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'."
The peak may have come in 1983, when Motown celebrated its 25th anniversary with an all-star televised concert and Jackson moonwalked off with the show, joining his brothers for a medley of old hits and then leaving them behind with a pointing, crouching, high-kicking, splay-footed, crotch-grabbing run through "Billie Jean."
The audience stood and roared. Jackson raised his fist.
During production of a 1984 Pepsi commercial, Jackson's scalp sustained burns when an explosion set his hair on fire.
He had strong follow-up albums with 1987's "Bad" and 1991's "Dangerous," but his career began to collapse in 1993 after he was accused of molesting a boy who often stayed at his home. The singer denied any wrongdoing, reached a settlement with the boy's family, reported to be $20 million, and criminal charges were never filed.
Jackson expressed anger over the allegations on the 1995 album, "HIStory," which sold more than 2.4 million copies, but by then, the popularity of Jackson's music was clearly waning even as public fascination with his increasingly erratic behavior was growing.
Jackson married Lisa Marie Presley in 1994, and they divorced in 1996. Later that year, Jackson married Deborah Rowe, a former nurse for his dermatologist. They had two children together: Michael Joseph Jackson Jr., known as Prince Michael, now 12; and Paris Michael Katherine Jackson, 11. Rowe filed for divorce in 1999.
Jackson also had a third child, Prince Michael II, now 7. Jackson said the boy, nicknamed Blanket as a baby, was his biological child born from a surrogate mother.
Billboard magazine editorial director Bill Werde said Jackson's star power was unmatched. "The world just lost the biggest pop star in history, no matter how you cut it," Werde said. "He's literally the king of pop."
Jackson's 13 No. 1 one hits on the Billboard charts put him behind only Presley, the Beatles and Mariah Carey, Werde said.
"He was on the eve of potentially redeeming his career a little bit," he said. "People might have started to think of him again in a different light."
__
AP Special Correspondent Linda Deutsch and AP writers Derrik J. Lang, Solvej Schou, Anthony McCartney and Thomas Watkins in Los Angeles; and Virginia Byrne, Hillel Italie, Nekesa Mumbi Moody, Jocelyn Noveck and Mesfin Fekadu in New York contributed to this report.
Police focus on medical treatment in Jackson death
LOS ANGELES – Police investigating Michael Jackson's death looked into his medical treatment Friday, seeking to interview one of the pop king's doctors and seizing a car that they said may contain drugs or other evidence.
As medical examiners began an autopsy for Jackson, police towed a BMW from rented home "because it may contain medications or other evidence that may assist the coroner in determining the cause of death," police spokeswoman Karen Rayner said.
She said the car belongs to one of Jackson's doctors whom police wanted to interview. Rayner said she did not know the doctor's identity and stressed the doctor was not under criminal investigation.
The autopsy began Friday morning and was expected to last several hours. An official determination on cause of death was not expected for weeks or longer, until more sophisticated tests are completed.
In a 911 call released by fire officials, a caller reports Jackson was on a bed and not breathing or responding to CPR. The unidentified caller said Jackson only was with his personal doctor at the time. The pop star died later Thursday afternoon at UCLA Medical Center.
As stores reported they were inundated with orders for Jackson's music, a chorus of grief for the megastar spread around the world, from statesmen to icons of music to legions of heartbroken fans.
"I can't stop crying. This is too sudden and shocking," said Diana Ross, who helped launch Jackson's career. "I am unable to imagine this. My heart is hurting."
Lisa Marie Presley, briefly married to the pop icon in the mid-1990s, said he had confided to her 14 years ago that he worried about facing the same tragic fate as her father, Elvis Presley, who died of a drug overdose at age 42.
"The world is in shock but somehow he knew exactly how his fate would be played out some day more than anyone else knew, and he was right," she wrote in a long, emotional statement on her MySpace page online.
The White House also weighed in for the first time, with a spokesman saying President Barack Obama saw Jackson as a spectacular performer and music icon whose life nonetheless had sad and tragic aspects. The House of Representatives observed a moment of silence.
Brian Oxman, a former Jackson attorney and a family friend, said Friday he had been concerned about Jackson's use of painkillers and had warned the singer's family about possible abuse.
"I said one day, we're going to have this experience. And when Anna Nicole Smith passed away, I said we cannot have this kind of thing with Michael Jackson," Oxman said on NBC's "Today" show. "The result was, I warned everyone, and lo and behold, here we are. I don't know what caused his death. But I feared this day, and here we are."
Oxman claimed Jackson had prescription drugs at his disposal to help with pain suffered when he broke his leg after he fell off a stage and for broken vertebrae in his back.
After Jackson was acquitted on child molestation charges in 2005, prosecutors argued against returning to Jackson items including syringes, the drug Demerol and prescriptions for various drugs, mainly antibiotics, in different people's names.
Jackson died after being stricken at his rented home in the posh Los Angeles neighborhood of Holmby Hills. Paramedics tried to resuscitate him for three-quarter of an hours there before rushing him to the hospital.
His brother Jermaine said Jackson apparently suffered cardiac arrest, an abnormal heart rhythm that stops the heart from pumping blood to the body. It can occur after a heart attack or be caused by other heart problems.
Jackson was preparing for a monster comeback bid — a series of 50 concerts that was to begin next month in London.
A handful of bleary-eyed fans camped out throughout the night with media outside the Jackson family house in the San Fernando Valley and near his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. People heading to work in New York stopped to pay respects outside Harlem's Apollo Theater, where Jackson performed as a child.
"When the autopsy comes, all hell's going to break loose, so thank God we're celebrating him now," Liza Minnelli told CBS' "The Early Show" by telephone.
A producer said Sunday's BET Awards would be dedicated to Jackson because of his influence on music and pop culture. And a screening of Universal Pictures' "Bruno" in Los Angeles on Thursday night cut a scene involving Jackson's sister La Toya.
Jackson's death brought a tragic end to a long, bizarre, sometimes farcical decline from his peak in the 1980s, when he was popular music's premier all-around performer. His 1982 album "Thriller" — which included the blockbuster hits "Beat It," "Billie Jean" and "Thriller" — is the best-selling album of all time worldwide.
Yet after selling more than 61 million albums in the U.S. and having a decade-long attraction open at Disney theme parks, Jackson died reportedly awash in about $400 million in debt, on the cusp of a final comeback after well over a decade of scandal.
The public first knew Jackson as a boy in the late 1960s, when he was the precocious, spinning lead singer of the Jackson 5, the singing group he formed with his four older brothers out of Gary, Ind. Among their No. 1 hits were "I Want You Back," "ABC" and "I'll Be There."
He was perhaps the most exciting performer of his generation, known for his backward-gliding moonwalk, his feverish, crotch-grabbing dance moves and his high-pitched singing, punctuated with squeals and titters. His single sequined glove, tight, military-style jacket and aviator sunglasses were trademarks, as was his ever-changing, surgically altered appearance.
"For Michael to be taken away from us so suddenly at such a young age, I just don't have the words," said Quincy Jones, who produced "Thriller." "He was the consummate entertainer and his contributions and legacy will be felt upon the world forever. I've lost my little brother today, and part of my soul has gone with him."
Jackson ranked alongside Presley and the Beatles as the biggest pop sensations of all time. He united two of music's biggest names when he was briefly married to Presley's daughter, Lisa Marie. Jackson's sudden death immediately evoked comparisons to that of Presley himself, who died at age 42 in 1977.
As years went by, Jackson became an increasingly freakish figure — a middle-aged man-child weirdly out of touch with grown-up life. His skin became lighter, his nose narrower, and he spoke in a breathy, girlish voice. He often wore a germ mask while traveling, kept a pet chimpanzee named Bubbles as one of his closest companions and surrounded himself with children at his Neverland ranch, a storybook playland filled with toys, rides and animals. The tabloids dubbed him "Wacko Jacko."
After the enormous success of "Thriller," Jackson had strong follow-up albums with 1987's "Bad" and 1991's "Dangerous," but his career began to collapse in 1993 after he was accused of molesting a boy who often stayed at his home.
The singer denied any wrongdoing, reached a settlement with the boy's family, reported to be $20 million, and criminal charges were never filed.
Jackson caused a furor in 2002 when he playfully dangled his infant son, Prince Michael II, over a hotel balcony in Berlin while a throng of fans watched from below.
In 2005, he was cleared of charges that he molested a 13-year-old cancer survivor at Neverland in 2003. He had been accused of plying the boy with alcohol and groping him, and of engaging in strange and inappropriate behavior with other children.
The case followed years of rumors about Jackson and young boys. In a TV documentary, he acknowledged sharing his bed with children, a practice he described as sweet and not at all sexual.
Despite the acquittal, the lurid allegations that came out in court took a fearsome toll on his career and image, and he fell into serious financial trouble.
Jackson married Lisa Marie Presley in 1994, and they divorced in 1996. Later that year, Jackson married Deborah Rowe, a former nurse for his dermatologist. They had two children together: Michael Joseph Jackson Jr., known as Prince Michael, now 12; and Paris Michael Katherine Jackson, 11. Rowe filed for divorce in 1999.
Jackson also had a third child, Prince Michael II, now 7. Jackson said the boy, nicknamed Blanket as a baby, was his biological child born from a surrogate mother.
Billboard magazine editorial director Bill Werde said Jackson's star power was unmatched. "The world just lost the biggest pop star in history, no matter how you cut it," Werde said. "He's literally the king of pop."
Jackson's 13 No. 1 one hits on the Billboard charts put him behind only Presley, the Beatles and Mariah Carey, Werde said.
"He was on the eve of potentially redeeming his career a little bit," he said. "People might have started to think of him again in a different light."
Murney, Graae, Burnham, White, Mayes, Stritch to Star in Coleman Revue, 'Best Is Yet to Come'
The show will bow July 9-Aug. 2 in a production by Rubicon Theatre Company in Ventura, CA. New York producers are already pricking up their ears, Playbill.com has learned.
Zippel is the Tony Award-winning lyricist of Ton
Here's how Rubicon bills the show: "In a career spanning seven decades, Cy Coleman created a glittering string of standards and popular music classics, as well asÖCity of Angels, Sweet Charity, Barnum, The Life, Little Me, On the Twentieth Century and Will Rogers Follies. ÖZippel pays homage to Coleman with an elegant new musical revue performed by six singers accompanied by an eight-piece swing band. The sparkling score includes as-yet unpublished Coleman works, as well as songs made famous by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Barbara Streisand."
The Best Is Yet to Come (the title is drawn from a lyric by Carolyn Leigh) has musical direction, musical supervision and vocal arrangements by Billy Stritch, orchestrations by Don Sebesky and choreography by Lorin Latarro. Assistant musical director is Christopher Marlowe.
Lillias White won the Tony as Best Lead Actress in a Musical for Coleman's The Life. Sally Mayes (Urban Cowboy, Closer Than Ever) starred in Coleman's 1989 Broadway musical Welcome to the Club, about divorce. David Burnham appeared in Broadway's The Light in the Piazza and Wicked. Graae, a stage and cabaret mainstay (Broadway's Falsettos, A Grand Night for Singing), recently starred in the York Theatre Company concert of the revised version of Jerry Herman's The Grand Tour. Murney starred in Wicked (on Broadway and the road) and starred in Andrew Lippa's The Wild Party Off-Broadway.
For tickets and more information, call the Rubicon box office at (805) 667-2900 or visit rubicontheatre.org.
As previously reported on Playbill.com, The Best is Yet to Come will dip into the deep well of Coleman's catalog, offering classic and obscure numbers he wrote with a variety of lyricists, including Carolyn Leigh, Dorothy Fields, Comden and Green, Michael Stewart, Zippel and others.
"His body of work was so extraordinary it would be exciting to see it in revue form, and I had had talked to Cy about it years ago," Zippel told Playbill.com. "He told me: 'That's for after I'm gone; let's write something new.'"
Zippel, who, with Coleman, also wrote the yet-to-be produced comic Napoleon musical, N, contacted the composer's widow, Shelby, and she enthusiastically agreed to move forward with a revue, the lyricist said.
The Best is Yet to Come takes its title seriously and will include songs from Coleman musicals that may yet surface (N, Pamela's First Musical and the Marilyn and Alan Bergman collaboration known as In the Pocket or Like Jazz).
Expect a classic revue form, Zippel said, where "the juxtaposition of the songs and the personalities" create fresh contexts for the songs while honoring the craft.
Zippel said The Best is Yet to Come will be divided between Coleman's pop standards (think "Witchcraft" or the title song), show music (Sweet Charity, Little Me, Seesaw, Barnum, I Love My Wife and more) and past Carolyn Leigh obscurities or songs that have yet to dawn.
Coleman died in 2004. He won Tony Awards for his scores to The Will Rogers Follies (1991, with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green); City of Angels (1990, with lyrics by David Zippel); and On the Twentieth Century (1978, with lyrics by Comden and Green).
He was Tony-nominated for the book and score of The Life (about Times Square hookers and hustlers circa 1980); the score of Barnum (about showman P.T. Barnum, with lyrics by Michael Stewart); I Love My Wife (about wife-swapping in suburban New Jersey, with lyrics by Stewart); Seesaw (based on the play Two for the Seesaw, with lyrics by Dorothy Fields); Sweet Charity and Little Me (1963). He also served as a producer on some of his Broadway projects.
Coleman, a native New Yorker, was born Seymour Kaufman. He played classical music at Carnegie Hall and Town Hall as a child, but as an adult heard the siren call of jazz, pop and theatre music and never looked back. Working with the lyricist Carolyn Leigh in his early writing career in the late 1950s and '60s, he penned such hits as "Witchcraft," "The Best Is Yet to Come," "You Fascinate Me So" and "When in Rome."
Leigh and Coleman would venture into the musical theatre, writing the scores to the Lucille Ball vehicle Wildcat (which offered the tune "Hey, Look Me Over!") and Little Me (which boasted "Real Live Girl" and "I've Got Your Number"). There was friction in the relationship. Pianist Coleman and his Cy Coleman Trio were playing engagements around the country, and Leigh wanted him to stay put in New York and focus on writing musicals.
Though Coleman did settle down to a theatre-writing life, he and Leigh did not write another show. With the legendary lyricist Dorothy Fields, he wrote "Where Am I Going?," "If My Friends Could See Me Now," "Big Spender" and "There's Gotta Be Something Better Than This" for Sweet Charity, Bob Fosse and Neil Simon's 1966 reimagining of Federico Fellini's "Nights of Cabiria." In the musical fable, Gwen Verdon starred as a dance hall hostess named Charity Hope Valentine (in the film, Cabiria is a prostitute).
The show's second Broadway revival (Fosse staged it in 1987) surfaced in 2004-05, months after Coleman's death.Those who only knew Cy Coleman as a Tony Award winning composer caught a rare glimpse of the pre-Broadway Coleman when he returned to his jazz piano roots in October 2004 for a gig at Feinstein's at the Regency.
The engagement represented life as Coleman lived it some 40 years earlier - performing not just his own jazz waltzes and songs but tunes by other writers. His October 2004 songlist included "Green Dolphin Street," "But Not for Me," "Comin' Home," "Mean to Me" and more. His side men were Gary Haase (on bass) and Buddy Williams (on drums).
The Feinstein's run (with the composer playing piano and singing) conjured Coleman's milieu of the 1950s and '60s, when he played smoke-filled rooms in Florida, hotels in Detroit and even his own 75-seat 58th Street nightclub, The Playroom, which he ran with partners in the late 1950s. William Holden had his own barstool there, Coleman told Playbill.com.
A couple of jazz performance albums from that era have been re-released for CD, but Coleman once said he'd like to unearth some others and get them on the market.
Why did Coleman stop performing? It's not that people stopped asking, he said. The Emmy-wining, Oscar nominated and Grammy-winning composer grew so busy creating and/or rehearsing musicals, from the film of "Sweet Charity" to Seesaw and beyond (including such unproduced shows as Eleanor, about Mrs. Roosevelt), that it became impractical to accept bookings.
"I never lost my love of playing," Coleman once said. "I've always worked from that base, as a musician."
One of the things that distinguished Coleman (beyond his pure, confident tunefulness) is the range of styles he used: A touch of folk and country in Will Rogers Follies, comic opera in On the Twentieth Century, vocalese and jazz in City of Angels, '60s disco in Sweet Charity, R&B in The Life, circus chase in Barnum, a country song in I Love My Life, and more.
For his late-career musical, The Great Ostrovsky, which won him a Barrymore Award in Philadelphia, he used klezmer and a Yiddish theatre music sound from the early 20th century.
"He was trying to reinvent his sound, he was always doing different style of theatre music - I think he was very proud of that," said Mary-Mitchell Campbell, a friend, pianist and music director who worked on a number of Cy Coleman projects, including Grace, a Dutch-language musical about Grace Kelly, Hitchcock and the royals of Monaco that bowed in Amsterdam in 2001.
Of Grace, Coleman had said, "Musically, I wanted to do a meld of European style and American style - the European feeling along with American pizzazz. That fascinated me."
Real `Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' gravely ill
LONDON – They were childhood chums. Then they drifted apart, lost touch completely, and only renewed their friendship decades later, when illness struck.
Not so unusual, really.
Except she is Lucy Vodden
They are linked together by something that happened more than 40 years ago when Julian brought home a drawing from school and told his father, "That's Lucy in the sky with diamonds."
Just the sort of cute phrase lots of 3- or 4-year-olds produce — but not many have a father like John Lennon, who used it as a springboard for a legendary song that became a centerpiece on the landmark album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."
"Julian got in touch with me out of the blue, when he heard how ill I was, and he said he wanted to do something for me," said the 46-year-old Vodden, who has lupus, a chronic disease where the immune system attacks the body's own tissue.
Lennon, who lives in France, sent his old friend flowers and vouchers she could use to buy plants at a local gardening center, since working in her garden is one of the few activities she is still occasionally well enough to enjoy. More importantly, he has offered her friendship and a connection to more carefree days. They communicate mostly by text message.
"I wasn't sure at first how to approach her. I wanted at least to get a note to her," Julian Lennon told The Associated Press. "Then I heard she had a great love of gardening, and I thought I'd help with something she's passionate about, and I love gardening too. I wanted to do something to put a smile on her face."
Vodden admits she enjoys her association with the song, but doesn't particularly care for it. Perhaps that's not surprising. It was thought by many at the time, including BBC executives who banned the song, that the classic was a paean to LSD because of the initials in the title. Plus, she and Julian were 4 years old in 1967, the "Summer of Love" when "Sgt. Pepper" was released to worldwide acclaim. She missed the psychedelic era to which the song is indelibly linked.
"I don't relate to the song, to that type of song," said Vodden, described as "the girl with kaleidoscope eyes" in the lyrics. "As a teenager, I made the mistake of telling a couple of friends at school that I was the Lucy in the song and they said, 'No, it's not you, my parents said it's about drugs.' And I didn't know what LSD was at the time, so I just kept it quiet, to myself."
There's no doubt the fanciful lyrics and swirling musical effects draw heavily on the LSD experiences that were shaping Lennon's artistic output at the time — although many of the musical flourishes were provided by producer George Martin, who was not a drug user.
"The imagery in the song is partly a reflection of John's drug experiences, and partly his love of `Alice in Wonderland,'" said Steve Turner, author of "A Hard Day's Write," a book that details the origins of every Beatles song. "At the time it came out, it seemed overtly psychedelic, it sounded like some kind of trip. It was completely new at the time. To me it is very evocative of the period."
Turner said his research, including interviews with Vodden and Julian Lennon, confirm that she is the Lucy in the song. He said it was common for John Lennon to "snatch songs out of thin air" based on a simple phrase he heard on TV or an item he read in the newspapers. In this case, Turner said, it was the phrase from Julian that triggered John's imagination.
Veteran music critic Fred Schruers said Julian Lennon's reaching out to help Vodden as she fights the disease is particularly moving because of the childlike nature of the song.
"It's enormously evocative but with a tinge of poignancy," he said. "It's the lost childhood Julian had with that little Lucy and the lost innocence we had with the psychedelic era, an innocence we really cherished until it was snatched away."
Vodden was diagnosed with lupus about five years ago after suffering other serious health problems. She has been struggling extreme fatigue, joint pain, and other ailments.
"She's not given up, she's a fighter, and she has her family backing her, that's a good thing," said Angie Davidson, campaign director for St. Thomas' Lupus Trust, which funds research. "We need more people like her, more Lucys."
Davidson, who also has the disease, said it affects each person differently, typically causing exhaustion and depression. When the disease kills, she said, it does so by attacking the body's internal organs.
It has become difficult for Vodden to go out — most of her trips are to the hospital — but recently she and her husband went to a bookstore and heard the song playing over the store's music system. When they went to another shop, the song was on there as well.
"That made me giggle," she said.
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