Where Are They Buried? (75 page)

But the ride to success was bumpy and, for a time, it seemed that John’s personal troubles would derail his career. Those concerns were realized when Miles Davis, who had already beaten his own heroin addiction, fired John in 1956 for his assorted dependencies. But with the support of his Christian mother and his Muslim wife, John experienced a spiritual awakening the next year and he quit doing drugs. Still, though, John’s personal life contrasted with his professional good fortune; in 1959 he lost his front teeth due to the residual effects of his heroin addiction, in 1964 he was agitated by a divorce that was prompted by him twice impregnating pianist Alice McLeod (who would later become his second wife), and in 1965 John began a struggle to control his weight.

In 1967 John and Alice were living on Long Island with their three children, but John was not well; his weight problem was worse than ever and he was nagged by a constant pain in his side. After a trip to Japan he collapsed on his porch from the pain, which had become unbearably acute. At the hospital it was discovered that a tumor had attached itself to his grossly cirrhotic liver, and three weeks later, John was dead.

At 40, John was buried at Pinelawn Memorial Park in Farmingdale, New York.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
Take Exit 39 off I-495, follow Pinelawn Avenue for two miles, and the park is on the left. (Note: In this
area there are nine different cemeteries that border each other. Make sure you turn into the correct one.)

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the park at the main entrance, which is William H. Locke Drive. Turn at the second left after the office onto Walt Whitman Drive, then turn at the second right onto Oak Drive. After a hundred yards, park at the turnout on the right. Across the drive is a brick wall, and John’s grave is 24 rows beyond the wall.

MAY 18, 1912 – MAY 12, 2001

As a twenty-year-old barber, Italian-American Pierno Como grew tired of cutting the hair of western Pennsylvania coal miners, and instead struck out for Cleveland, where he had an offer to sing with a big band of the day. After the orchestra broke up in 1942, the young and charming Perry showcased his melodic baritone as the host of a regional radio show,
Supper Club
, which attracted recording executives from every label.

Perry began recording, and his watershed came in 1945 when his dreamy rendition of “Till the End of Time” from the film
A Song to Remember
spent ten weeks at the top of the charts, making it the biggest hit of the year. Confessing that his relaxed style was a direct emulation of Bing Crosby, Perry competed with his mentor for recognition as the era’s top crooner, and his songs became a mainstay of radio and jukeboxes. But throughout his life, he was never particularly impressed with his own success, and in fact seemed surprised by it. “I don’t have a lot to tell the average interviewer. I’ve done nothing that I can call exciting. I was a barber. After that I’ve been a singer. That’s it.”

In 1948, Perry crossed over to the emerging medium of television with the
Chesterfield Supper Club
, one of the earliest variety programs. Perpetually tanned and bedecked in cardigan sweaters, the youthful-looking Perry soon switched networks for his own
Perry Como Show
. Perry later began to indulge in lighter novelty fare, the titles often comprising nonsense words like “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” and “Hot Diggity Dog Ziggity Boom.” These songs cemented Perry’s reputation as a king of middle-of-the-road pop. To his credit, Perry openly disdained the lightweight numbers but good-naturedly patronized audiences by continuing to perform them.

By 1960, as rock and rollers crowded out screaming bobbysoxers, the appeal of Perry’s breezy songs began to wane. In 1963 he gave up his regular television show and retreated to gala appearances and Christmas specials. But he returned in 1970 with a world tour, and his single “It’s Impossible” made it to the top ten. Still, his ultra-mellow stage manner clashed with the day’s popular music and he became an obvious target for critics. Perry’s resurgence was short-lived.

In 1974 he retired to Florida with his wife of more than 60 years. One Friday afternoon, after sharing ice cream with his daughter and grandson, Perry went for a nap and died of natural causes at 88.

Perry is buried at Riverside Memorial Park in Tequesta, Florida.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
The park is located on the northbound side of Highway 1, about 1½ miles north of its intersection with Route 706.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery and turn left at the flagpole. Past the two mausoleum buildings there is a section of upright granite headstones on the right, and that’s where you’ll find Perry. His stone is nearly at the halfway mark, and not far from the road.

MAY 2, 1901 – OCTOBER 14, 1977

Harry Crosby’s lifelong moniker, Bing, was adopted from a popular comic strip he enjoyed as a child,
Bingville Bugle
.

During the 1920s when lung power and projection were important to pop singers, Bing developed a nightclub act with a piano player, and became one of the earliest performers to take advantage of electronic amplification. Relying on a microphone to carry his subtle inflections, Bing’s apparent informality and almost conversational, fireside style tugged heartstrings. His croonings were a welcome reprieve for audiences suffering the blues during the Depression and, while World War II raged, his renditions of “Silent Night” and “White Christmas” conveyed the sorrows resulting from the war’s separation of loved ones more poignantly than any other pieces of music.

Soon Bing was a box-office attraction, too. He appeared in more than 60 motion pictures, and among his most popular features were his “road” movies with Bob Hope,
The Road to Singapore
and
The Road to Zanzibar
, among others. In 1944 Bing even won an Oscar for
his role as a priest in
Going My Way
. Since he was still recording and performing—he recorded some 1,600 songs in his lifetime—Bing was at this time easily the number-one star in show business. By the 1960s, though, Bing’s brilliant career wound down as ballads gave way to rock and roll, the tastes of movie audiences changed, and the younger generation moved in.

As one of the best-paid entertainers in the country, Bing was also one of the shrewdest. Over the years he invested his show business fortune and amassed an even greater fortune through a wide range of business interests in everything from frozen orange juice to oil wells, from cattle and race horses to prizefighters, and from professional baseball and hockey teams to banks.

By the 1970s Bing’s health was a bit shaky; a tumor was removed from his lung in 1973, and he was later hospitalized for a month after falling headfirst into an orchestra pit. After a two-week engagement at the London Palladium, Bing, an expert golfer, traveled to Spain to play La Morajela golf course near Madrid. After scoring an 85 and defeating two Spanish pros, Bing sauntered toward the clubhouse and collapsed from a massive heart attack.

Like many of his contemporaries, throughout his professional life Bing conveniently adjusted his date of birth by a few years. He was 76 when buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California, not 72 or 73 as he’d led most to believe.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From I-405, follow Slauson Avenue east for a half-mile and the cemetery is on the left at #5835.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery, turn left, and start up the hill. One hundred yards to the left is the Grotto lawn and altar, and four rows from the altar is Bing’s grave.

MAY 25, 1926 – SEPTEMBER 28, 1991

Fiercely independent throughout a four-plus decade jazz career, trumpeter Miles Davis followed no one. He came of age in the bebop era but refused to settle into one style. Every few years Miles created a new format, each one instigating a new round of short-lived negative critical reaction. Over the course of his 45 years in jazz, Miles’ playing fell into five distinct, sometimes overlapping phases: bebop (1945–1948), cool jazz (1948–1958), hard bop (1952–1963), modal (1958–1968), and electric or fusion (1969–1991).

Generally, Miles definitively declared his new phases with landmark works including
The Birth of the Cool
in 1949,
Milestones
in 1958, and
Bitches Brew
in 1969. This last work became the
standard for the nascent jazz-fusion movement, and was an especially important milestone because its abrupt commingling of jazz, rock, and funk (not to mention its freaky cover art) crossed over to rock audiences; Miles was “discovered” by a new, far-out generation. In the first five years of the 1970s he leaned toward rock, was overtly influenced by Jimi Hendrix, and even shared a bill with the Grateful Dead.

Although he had created yet another musical genre, Miles left it, and everything he had created before, in 1975 when he dropped out of music and went into retirement for five years. His battles against heroin and alcohol addiction, his unmerciful quest for perfection, and a relentless touring schedule had taken their tolls on his health, and Miles suffered from ulcers, throat nodes, and bursitis. He claimed not to have touched his trumpet even once in those years. But as fusion sputtered in the early 1980s, Miles emerged again to return to an approach that was successful during the 1950s bop years, bravely embracing and reinterpreting popular songs. In Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” and Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature,” Miles reminded audiences that his piercing sound, more than any voice, could touch the soul.

After a variety of health problems, Miles died of respiratory failure at 65 and was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
Woodlawn is located at 233rd Street and Webster Avenue immediately off the Bronx River Expressway’s 233rd Street exit.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Woodlawn Cemetery is enormous with 350,000 guests on 400 acres. If there’s someone in the booth at the front gate, stop and get a map. Otherwise, just proceed past
the booth and keep the fence on your left. At Robin Avenue turn right, merge onto Knollwood, then turn left onto Heather Avenue. Miles is in the Alpine Section along Heather Avenue. You won’t miss his stone adjacent to Duke Ellington’s.

DECEMBER 31, 1943 – OCTOBER 12, 1997

A folk-pop balladeer with a breezy voice and an almost childlike love of nature, Henry John Deutschendorf Jr., better known as John Denver, earned international acclaim as a singer, songwriter, and humanitarian. John’s first big break came in 1967 while making the rounds on the lonely folk nightclub scene; Peter, Paul, and Mary took one of his singles, “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” and turned it into a number one hit. John’s songwriting abilities soon became obvious to music companies, he secured a record deal, and over the next decade was a
Billboard
mainstay for such hits as “Rocky Mountain High,” “Country Roads,” and “Sunshine on My Shoulders.”

With his wholesome good looks, hippie-ish wire-rimmed glasses, and aw-shucks disposition, John was a natural star of the television era and there became a fixture, harmonizing with everyone from George Burns to Kermit the Frog to Jacques Cousteau.

John’s musical passions provided him the monetary means to pursue another of his passions: flying. By 1997 John was a very experienced pilot and had turned from traditional Cessnas to more esoteric craft, including an experimental, fiberglass aircraft called the Long EZ. This plane had a fuel selection valve located inside the cockpit that allowed the pilot the choice of drawing fuel from either the left or right tanks. However, the valve was located behind the pilot’s left shoulder, and the only way to manipulate it was for the pilot to release the flight controls, twist around to the left, and turn the valve with his right hand. Further, in order to twist around, it was necessary for the pilot to brace his right foot, which was very difficult to accomplish without pressing the right rudder pedal all the way to the floor.