NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — Raymond A. Brown, a veteran New Jersey defense lawyer whose high-profile clients included former boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, has died. He was 94.
Brown, a Montclair resident, died Friday from pulmonary disease, said his son and law partner Ray Brown Jr. He had practiced law for 59 years and had continued working until March.
Carter was convicted along with another man of murdering three people in a Paterson bar in 1966. Their convictions were overturned in 1975, but both were found guilty a second time in 1976. After serving 19 years, Carter was freed in 1985 when a federal judge overturned the second convictions.
Brown also represented Joanne Chesimard, a Black Liberation Army member who was convicted of gunning down a state trooper in 1973. She fled to Cuba after escaping prison in 1979 and is now known as Assata Shakur.
Family members and colleagues say Brown's well-known cases were just one aspect of a career that was fueled by a desire to defend the defenseless.
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Luis Aguile
MADRID (AP) — Luis Aguile, an Argentine singer-songwriter whose career blossomed after he moved to Spain, died in a Madrid hospital on Saturday, his manager said. He was 73.
Best known for worldwide hit song "Cuando Sali de Cuba" ("When I Left Cuba"), the baritone had been suffering from stomach cancer. He was being treated at Sanchinarro Hospital in a northern suburb of Madrid, where he died, said manager Victor Saboya.
Born Luis Maria Aguilera Picca on Feb. 24, 1936, in Buenos Aires, Aguile moved to Spain in 1963 just in time to benefit from the birth of popular music television programs that suited his lighthearted, polished style perfectly.
The singer-songwriter composed some 400 songs and recorded twice that number in a career that also encompassed the Spanish operetta style known as "zarzuela."
Aguile had been working on two major projects before his death, Saboya said.
The first, a zarzuela entitled "Viva Madrid, Grandes exitos de Broadway" ("Long Live Madrid, Big Broadway Hits"), was approaching completion and the other, an homage to "Martin Fierro" an epic work by Argentine poet Jose Hernandez, had long been Aguile's cherished personal ambition.
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YVERDON-LES-BAINS, Switzerland (AP) — Jacques Chessex, one of French-speaking Switzerland's leading novelists and the first non-Frenchman to receive the prestigious Prix Goncourt, has died, officials said Saturday. He was 75.
Chessex collapsed Friday evening while participating in a public discussion about a play that had been adapted from one of his novels, said Daniel von Siebenthal, mayor of the western Swiss city of Yverdon. He told local radio that the author died shortly afterward.
Chessex was among French-speaking Switzerland's leading writers and was honored in 1973 with the Prix Goncourt literary award for his novel "L'ogre" ("The Ogre"), a largely autobiographical account of a difficult father-son relationship. All previous winners had been French.
The novelist sparked heated debate this year with his last book, "A Jew Must Die," which recounted the 1942 killing of Jewish cattle trader Arthur Bloch in Chessex's hometown of Payerne. It was not warmly received by locals.
Chessex was born on March 1, 1934, the son of a high school director whose suicide in 1956 caused deep trauma for the budding writer.
He had already become known locally with his collection "Poems" as an 18-year-old, but broke through as a prose writer with a series of books in his 30s that made him popular in the French-speaking world.
His 1967 book "The Confession of Father Burg" debuted as a play on Thursday, the night before his collapse at Yverdon's city library.
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MILWAUKEE (AP) — Marvin Fishman, one of the original owners of the Milwaukee Bucks, died Friday at a southeast Wisconsin hospital following a stroke, his daughter said Saturday. He was 84.
Fishman was instrumental in raising money to bring the Bucks to Milwaukee in 1968. The next year, the team drafted Lew Alcindor, who later changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The Bucks won an NBA title in 1971.
The team released a statement Saturday expressing its sympathies to Fishman's wife and three children.
Leslie Hayes of Whitefish Bay said her father sold his interest in the team in the mid-1970s. She remembered her father having players over to their house and taking them out after games.
Fishman served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. Afterward, he earned a bachelor's degree in marketing and master's degree in business administration from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
He started a real estate company in 1952 and later branched out into developing subdivisions.
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LANCASTER, Calif. (AP) — Bluesman Abu Talib, who recorded and toured with Ray Charles and Little Walter under his given name, Freddy Robinson, has died. He was 70.
His daughter, Linda Chaplin, said Talib died of cancer Thursday at a hospital in Lancaster, about 70 miles north of Los Angeles.
Talib was born Fred Robinson in Memphis, Tenn., and changed his name to Abu Talib in the 1970s when he converted to Islam.
Chaplin said her father first heard the blues when her grandfather took him along to a "juke joint." He was too young to go in but he'd watch the musicians through a window. That inspired him to build an instrument out of bailing wire when he was nine.
His former manager, Vernell Jennings, said Talib saved his money and ordered his second guitar from the Sears catalog at age 13.
Talib could play well by ear, and he was always in demand at clubs, Chaplin said. When he moved to Chicago, he had to go to school to learn how to read music.
He played with Ray Charles, Howlin' Wolf and pianist Monk Higgins and recorded and wrote several songs including "Black Fox," "At the Drive-In," "Bluesology" and the blues instrumental, "After Hours."
Recently, Talib recorded a jingle for Southwest Airlines, and dressed up in a funky suit for the commercial, she said.
Source: AP News
