obit Archives - Page 8 of 24 - Ramblin' with Roger

Rev. Robert Pennock (1926 – 2019)

The funeral of Robert Pennock will be on Saturday, February 16 at our old stomping grounds, Trinity UMC.

Bob Pennock The third funeral I will sing at this calendar year is for the Rev. Robert Pennock.

At the FOCUS churches service in early February, I happened to be sitting behind Nancy, an alto at Trinity United Methodist Church in Albany. I used to sing with Nancy there until 2000 and “the troubles.”

Nancy enjoyed my familiar voice behind her. It prompted me to say that back in the 1990s, that Trinity choir was really good. And Bob Pennock was a large part of that.

I generally sat near Bob in the choir loft. When I joined the ensemble in early 1983, my choir singing skills were rusty. As the bass soloist and section leader, he was quite helpful in getting me on track.

He and his wife Holly often hosted choir functions at their home. I watched his younger kids, David and Jessica, grow up in the church.

There was a move at Trinity in 1997 or early 1998 to consider changing the organizational structure of Trinity. It was allowed by the United Methodist governing body. But it was Bob who rightly said, “Where are the checks and balances?” The proposed plan, it seemed, gave too much power to the pastor.

As a minister ordained the year I was born, he immediately recognized the potential for usurpation of congregational authority. He voiced what I, who had served as chair of the Administrative Board, had only been thinking.

Someone said, “Give [the new structure] a chance,” and it was passed. Just as predicted by Bob, the pastor achieved more control without accountability, which led to my departure and that of others less than three years later.

I would see Bob only sporadically after that, including at least twice at a small rural church he served as pastor in the early 2000s.

The funeral of Robert Pennock will be on Saturday, February 16 at our old stomping grounds, Trinity UMC. We will sing two John Rutter pieces, The Lord is My Shepherd from the Requiem, and The Lord Bless You and Keep You, music I first learned while I was singing with Bob and Holly.

Backup singer Clydie King (8/21/1943 – 1/7/2019)

Clydie King recorded with Phil Spector, B.B. King, Steely Dan, Barbra Streisand, Linda Ronstadt, Joe Cocker, Dickey Betts, Joe Walsh, Arlo Guthrie, Graham Nash, Elton John, Phil Ochs, Carly Simon, Neil Diamond, and Ringo Starr, among others.

I’m writing about the late Clydie King by request. Someone I know IRL saw and liked the piece I had done about composer Norman Gimbel, another obscure but important musical force who had also recently passed.

Again, you may not know her, but the backup singer warranted an extensive obituary in the New York Times. As is true of many black singers of that era, she grew up in the church. “After her mother’s death was raised by her older sister.” She toured with artists such as Ray Charles, Joe Cocker, and Bob Dylan.

Clydie recorded with Phil Spector, B.B. King, Steely Dan, Barbra Streisand, Linda Ronstadt, Joe Cocker, Dickey Betts, Joe Walsh, Arlo Guthrie, Graham Nash, Elton John, Phil Ochs, Carly Simon, Neil Diamond, and Ringo Starr, among others. She was one of The Blackberries, a trio which backed Humble Pie. In a 1971 interview, she estimated that she had sung on 300 records by then.

She is so noteworthy that she could/should have been in 20 Feet from Stardom, a great documentary about the supporting singers. I don’t believe she was in it, but her friend Merry Clayton was represented. They both sang on Rolling Stones albums. It was King who cajoled Clayton to sing with her on the Lynyrd Skynyrd anthem Sweet Home Alabama.

“Like other backup singers, King’s attempt to carve out her own career resulted in several solid, but commercially unsuccessful, albums.” You can find her discography here and on her Wikipedia page.

The Rolling Stone piece has links of Dylan and King singing together, mostly in his born-again period. .”She was my ultimate singing partner,” says Dylan. “No one ever came close. We were two soulmates”

The Definitely Dylan radio show connects to several tracks, not all related to Bob. In several articles, there are references to a romantic relationship between Dylan and King.

Listen to:

About Love – #45 on the soul charts in 1971
Loneliness (Will Bring Us Together Again) – Brown Sugar (Clydie King), #44 on the soul charts in 1973

Reverend Bob Lamar (1922-2019)

Bob Lamar had become the senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Albany in 1958, and served in that capacity until 1992.

Long before I started attending First Presbyterian Church in Albany in 2000, I knew Bob Lamar. My previous church, Trinity United Methodist, only two blocks away, was part of something called the FOCUS churches. FOCUS was where faith communities of different backgrounds (initially Baptist, Presbyterian and Methodist) worked together to create a food pantry and other needed functions. Bob Lamar was instrumental in bring that about.

Periodically, there would be joint FOCUS services, so I got to sing at First Presbyterian, my current church, and see the then-current pastor, Reverend Lamar. I wouldn’t know for another decade and a half why he was so interested in the folks in the other choirs. It was that he himself had a beautiful singing voice – I saw him perform with his old quartet when he was in his eighties, and he sounded quite good – and had other musical talents as well.

His oldest son Paul is quoted in a news article that his father “knew from when he was a teenager he wanted to go into the ministry.” Robert Clayton Lamar graduated from Yale University (1943) and Yale Divinity School (1946).

After a stint in a Connecticut church, Bob had become the senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Albany in 1958, and served in that capacity until 1992. He was instrumental in developing an interfaith community in the Capital District with then-Bishop Howard Hubbard of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany and the late Rabbi Martin Silverman. After leaving the first Pres pulpit, Bob became executive director of the Capital Area Council of Churches. He was a lion in the ecumenical movement, not just locally but nationwide.

A bit of his history I only discovered recently is that Bob Lamar rose to become moderator of the United Presbyterian Church in 1974. He was co-chair of of the Joint Committee on Presbyterian Reunion from 1969-83 that resulted in the unification of the southern and northern branches of the church. Being a Methodist, I knew that denomination had its own racial and geographic skeletons before the United Methodist Church was created in 1968.

He was always very active in social justice concerns, both locally and nationally. He served as an officer and/or board member for a slew of organizations way too numerous to mention here. So he had a lot of amount of gravitas by the time I was attending First Pres.

But I never found pompous or self-absorbed. He was genuinely interested in what others had to say, even this former Methodist. As his obituary read, he had “lived a life of faith, gratitude and grace.” I’m pleased to be part of the choir honoring him on January 25 at 11 a.m. at FPC.

Norman Gimbel: Happy Days; Killing Me Softly

Norman Gimbel wrote English lyrics for Michel Legrand’s music from Jacques Demy’s romantic 1964 French film Les Parapluies de Cherbourg

One of the deaths of 2018 I managed to miss until recently was that of Norman Gimbel at the age of 91. You say you never heard of him? That’s possible, but surely you’ve heard his output.

“Norman Gimbel was born in Brooklyn on Nov. 16, 1927. His parents — Morris Gimbel, who was in the restaurant business, and Lottie (Nass) Gimbel — were Jewish immigrants from Austria.” He studied English at Baruch College and Columbia University..

He “wrote lyrics for two Broadway musicals, ‘Whoop-Up’ (1958) and ‘The Conquering Hero’ (1961), working with the composer Moose Charlap. The first show, set on an American Indian reservation, earned two Tony nominations; the second, starring Tom Poston as a fake war hero, had a book by Larry Gelbart. Despite positive reviews, both musicals flopped at the box office and closed early.

“Both of Mr. Gimbel’s marriages, to the fashion model Elinor Rowley and to Victoria Carver, a lawyer, ended in divorce. In addition to his son Tony, survivors include another son, Peter; two daughters, Nelly Gimbel and Hannah Gimbel Dal Pozzo; and four grandchildren.

“Mr. Gimbel gave relatively few interviews. In a six-minute segment as a contestant (alongside Burt Bacharach and Jerry Leiber) on ‘Play Your Hunch,’ an early Merv Griffin game show, he spoke only three words.”

Norman Gimbel was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1984.

LISTEN TO THESE – His writing partner is Charles Fox, unless otherwise indicated. Chart action is generally the Billboard pop charts.

Ricochet – Teresa Brewer, #2 for two weeks in 1953, written with Larry Coleman and Joe Darion

Sway – Dean Martin with the Dick Stabile orchestra, #15 in 1954 “Sway” – “Quién será?” is a bolero-mambo written by Mexican composer Luis Demetrio, who sold the rights to fellow songwriter Pablo Beltrán Ruiz

Canadian Sunset- Andy Williams, #7 in 1956, with music by jazz pianist Eddie Heywood

I Will Follow Him – Little Peggy March, #1 for three weeks pop, #1 soul in 1963 – first recorded in 1961 by Franck Pourcel, as an instrumental titled “Chariot”. The music was written by Pourcel (using the pseudonym J.W. Stole) and Paul Mauriat (using the pseudonym Del Roma).

The Girl From Ipanema – Astrud Gilberto & Stan Getz, #5 in 1964 -written in 1962, with music by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Portuguese lyrics by Vinicius de Moraes

I Will Wait for You – Nana Mouskouri and Michel Legrand (1973). Gimbel wrote English lyrics for Legrand’s music from Jacques Demy’s romantic 1964 French film Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg)

Jim Croce – I Got a Name, #10 in 1973, from the movie The Last American Hero

Killing Me Softly With His Song – Roberta Flack, #1 for five weeks pop, #2 for four weeks soul. “Lori Lieberman, a California bistro singer, had recorded the song first (Mr. Fox and Mr. Gimbel were her producers and managers) and she said that the lyrics had been based on a poem she had written about attending an emotionally stirring Don McLean concert.”

Happy Days – Pratt & McClain, #5 in 1976, the theme song to a popular TV show

Laverne & Shirley Opening Theme Song

Wonder Woman TV theme (1975)

Ready to Take a Chance Again – Barry Manilow, #11 in 1978. Oscar-nominated song from the 1978 movie Foul Play

It Goes Like It Goes – Jennifer Warnes . Oscar-winning song from the 1979 movie Norma Rae, music by David Shire

The Paper Chase 1979 CBS Episode Preview & Opening Credit, performed by Seals & Crofts

Killing Me Softly With His Song – the Fugees, #2 for three weeks pop, #1 for five weeks soul in 1996

Dr. Charlie Kite (Aug 15, 1949-Jan 4, 2019)

The funeral of Charlie Kite is scheduled for January 20, 2019 at First Presbyterian Church.,

Charlie Kite Dr. Charles Havener Kite Sr was a pillar at my church, an ordained elder and deacon. When his grandson, who is in the third grade, received his own Bible this past fall, Charlie proudly held up the Bible HE got when he was a kid.

Charlie Kite was very helpful to me when my sister Leslie had her bicycle accident in June 2018. He explained that the fact that the brain bleed was detected for only a short time was a good sign. I was happy to get feedback from a neurosurgeon and a respected faculty member in the anatomy program at Albany Medical College.

The interesting thing I that I didn’t ask him straight out. I had put put Leslie on the church prayer list and was musing about her condition during coffee hour. Charlie, and/or his wife Tara, who also teaches at the medical college, would give me the 411.

Sometime in the past couple years, my wife noted, in his presence, some pain she was having, and he’d suggest how long one could take some over-the-counter medicines at a slightly higher dosage without causing other damage.

I’ll always remember that I found out that Charlie had metastatic pancreatic cancer when he announced it at the semiannual breakfast of the Bible Guys in early December. My contact with him that day was brief but meaningful to us both.

His family, literally and figuratively, rallied around him, most visibly at church. At the first service after his diagnosis was made public, there were nearly two dozen Kites in the front of the sanctuary for an Advent candle lighting and reading. But Charlie alone got the honor of reading.

After the initial shock and sorrow, he seemed liberated to say what was truly on his mind. During December, he spoke to me every week, telling me to fight the good fight online. He specifically enjoyed the jabs I took at a certain orange-haired persona. He would have enjoyed what former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, experiencing the same medical diagnosis, had to say.

Charlie was an unabashed liberal. His late mother Dorothy (1923-2011), who I remember well, was a real advocate for civil rights and social justice. He supported LGBTQ rights, the local Planned Parenthood, the FOCUS Churches outreach programs, and the American Civil Liberties Union.

I knew very little about the signs of pancreatic cancer except that most of them mimic other diseases. In other words, “many of these symptoms are more likely to be caused by other conditions,” so it’s tricky to diagnose early.

The funeral of Charlie Kite is scheduled for this Sunday afternoon, January 20, 2019 at First Presbyterian Church at 3 p.m., with the choir singing. Double-digit inches of snow are forecast.