Where Are They Buried? (76 page)

On a Sunday afternoon, John practiced touch-and-go landings with his new Long EZ at Monterey Airport in California. After accomplishing a few go-rounds, he went for a spin down the coast. Minutes later, at an altitude of only 500 feet, the engine of his plane started sputtering, starved for fuel. As John reached around to turn the fuel valve, his foot pressed on the right rudder, the
plane rolled to the right, and within three seconds it obliterated itself in a full-speed nosedive into the choppy Pacific waters.

What remains could be recovered were cremated, and John’s ashes were scattered at his ranch in his adopted hometown of Aspen, Colorado. He was 53.

APRIL 25, 1918 – JUNE 16, 1996

Sliding effortlessly from bebop to ballad and employing endlessly inventive vocal improvisations over three full octaves, Ella Fitzgerald thrilled audiences on her way to becoming the preeminent jazz singer of her generation.

A 1938 swing version of the classic nursery rhyme “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” became her first hit recording and made her a national star but, by the forties, Ella had already moved to “scat” singing, a form based on the complex and spontaneous instrumental style of Dizzy Gillespie’s band. The war years were spent with various road shows and, in 1955, signing with the Verve record label, she recorded a series of “songbook” albums, each devoted to the work of a particular composer. These recordings are generally regarded as her best work.

In the ’60s, Ella attempted to broaden her range into pop recordings, releasing a country album and a record of Christmas music. She returned to jazz in the seventies, but this era marked the decline of her beautiful voice and of her health. She experienced eyesight problems and other ailments, complicated by the diabetes that would require the amputation of her lower legs in 1992.

By the end of her career, Ella had recorded over 2,000 songs, sold some 40 million albums, and won 13 Grammy Awards.

Ella died of complications from diabetes at 79 and is buried at Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From I-405, exit at La Tijera Boulevard and head east. After a half-mile turn right onto Centinella Avenue and follow it to Florence Avenue. Turn left and the cemetery is a half-mile on the right at #720.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the park and turn right. The Sunset Mission Mausoleum is 200 feet ahead on the right. Walk in the entrance on the front right and proceed down the Sanctuary of El Sereno hall. Go up the stairs and turn left at the top. This is
the Sanctuary of Bells, and Ella’s crypt is on the right, second row from the bottom.

OCTOBER 21, 1917 – JANUARY 6, 1993

Jazz trumpeter John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie set new standards for horn players as a prime architect of the 1940s movement from swing to bebop. As an arranger and composer, Dizzy wrote some of the greatest jazz tunes of his era, including “Groovin’ High” and “A Night in Tunisia,” and later, his interest in Cuban and African music helped introduce that music to a mainstream American audience. But despite his contributions to the art, Dizzy is best remembered for his zany antics; it was no accident that he was nicknamed “Dizzy,” a moniker inspired by his “happy clown” personality.

As a kid, Dizzy had first been interested in the trombone, but he gave it up after realizing his arms were too short to play it well. By 1935 18-year-old Dizzy was an up-and-coming jazz figure known for his high-spirited disposition. His antics even got him fired once: In 1941 the equally silly, zoot-suited, bandleader Cab Calloway, never one to appreciate being upstaged, canned Dizzy for his excessive showmanship after Dizzy “just nicked” Calloway’s posterior with a knife during a performance. It took ten stitches to close the “nick.” (The two jokers later reconciled.)

In 1953 Dizzy’s stage appearance, which already featured black horn-rimmed glasses and a beret, was further peculiarized by his instrument itself, its bell bent at a heavenward 45-degree angle. The bend in his horn was originally accidental, caused by another musician falling on his trumpet during an episode of backstage roughhousing. Without another instrument available, Dizzy went onstage with his bent trumpet and was happy to find that he could hit some notes a little softer due to its slightly restricted airway. A trumpet manufacturer began bending Dizzy’s trumpet bells upward and that, along with his impossibly bulbous cheeks, became his visual trademark.

In 1956 Dizzy became bandleader for a state department jazz band that made goodwill and diplomatic performances on tours of the Middle East and South America. Upon his return to America, he recorded and toured as a leader of various combos and appeared occasionally in all-star groups with other bebop legends. Dizzy’s clean lifestyle and good audience rapport was rewarded, and in his final years he basked in high regard as one of the true elder statesmen of jazz.

After a bout with pancreatic cancer, Dizzy died at 75 and was buried at Flushing Cemetery in Queens, New York.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From I-495, take Exit 25 and follow Utopia Parkway north for a half-mile to Pigeon Meadow Road. Turn left on Pigeon Meadow and, after a mile, it will intersect with 46th Avenue, where you’ll make a right turn into the cemetery.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery, bear left and stay left all the way to the back of the cemetery. At Section 30, look for the “Tassa” stone on your left, next to the curb. Dizzy lies 150 feet behind the Tassa stone, four rows from the back fence. His plot is number 1252.

MAY 9, 1909 – JUNE 13, 1986

Struggling to raise a family of eleven on sweatshop wages in Chicago’s impoverished Jewish ghetto, Benny Goodman’s father believed music might be a ticket out of poverty for his eldest sons. He enrolled them in the free music classes that were offered at a local synagogue when Benny was just ten and, as his older brothers were given a tuba and a trombone, little Benny was handed a clarinet. He hardly let go of for the rest of his life.

Benny dropped from school at fifteen to establish himself as a professional musician and, by seventeen, was a member of the Ben Pollack Orchestra in Los Angeles. The Swing era was an exciting time for music in America. A stepchild of jazz, swing was born around 1930 and was characterized by very large, bass-heavy bands whose musicians took alternating solos, in contrast to group improvisation. The rhythms of big band swing jazz quickened the pulse of a generation determined to jitterbug their way through the Depression, and it initiated a culture of defiant dress and “hipster” attitude. Swing’s frenzied followers, “bobbysoxers,” answered to no one except their own “King of Swing,” who by the mid-1930s was clearly Benny Goodman.

With clarinet in hand, the tall, apple-cheeked Benny and his various bands were greeted with near pandemonium wherever they played. Through swing, Benny led jazz into the commercial mainstream, was the first major bandleader to put black and white musicians together on stage, and even introduced the common man’s music to the sanctity of Carnegie Hall, blowing wide its staid walls with a performance whose live recording later became one of the best-selling jazz albums of all time.

But for all its excitement and spirit, swing jazz faded just as quickly as it had come into prominence, and by the 1940s big bands had been eclipsed by a new jazz form, bebop. Benny formed a small group that performed selected television engagements and toured throughout the 1950s and ’60s and his life story,
The Benny Goodman Story
, became a celluloid box office hit in 1955. Compared to his wildest days as the King of Swing, Benny was no longer in great demand, but there was still a place for his music; Benny’s last days were spent as a goodwill ambassador at occasional musical engagements.

Tireless in a quest for impeccable music structure, Benny demanded excellence from band members who, at times, wearied of his meticulous temperament. After Benny’s death, one of his pianists remarked, “With him, perfection was always just around the corner. I figured Benny would die in bed practicing that damn clarinet.” As it turns out, he wasn’t too far off. After rehearsing a Brahms sonata for an upcoming performance at Lincoln Center, Benny lay down on his couch and expired of a heart attack in his sleep.

At 77, Benny was buried at Long Ridge Cemetery in Stamford, Connecticut.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From the center of Stamford, follow Route 104 north for five miles. Turn left onto Erskine Road and the cemetery is a short distance on the left.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Benny’s grave is in the third row from the back, approximately halfway along the cemetery’s length. It’s marked with a flat stone and a small bench.

AUGUST 9, 1963 – FEBRUARY 11, 2012

With a choir-trained voice of brilliant tone, and the talent, looks, and pedigree of a superstar, Whitney Houston emerged in the 1980s as one of pop’s greatest vocalists. After hearing her perform in a New York City nightclub, record producer Clive Davis signed her on the spot and two years later, in 1985, her debut album
Whitney Houston
was released. The album placed her polished voice in sweet and catchy songs that straddled pop and R&B. It sold some twelve million copies, and included three number-one singles: “Saving All My Love for You,” “How Will I Know,” and “The Greatest Love of All.” Her second album,
Whitney,
surpassed her debut and featured four number-one singles, while her third effort spawned yet another pair of hit singles.

Cultivating the image of a fun-loving but ardent good girl while dressed in everything from formal gowns to T-shirts, Whitney’s popularity was boundless and during the 1990s she parlayed it into the movie business. She displayed a strong and convincing performance in
The Bodyguard,
a 1992 movie about a love affair between a singer and her hired protector, while her octave-stretching version of the soundtrack’s “I Will Always Love You” became another of her calling cards. In quick succession, the movies
Waiting To Exhale
and
The Preacher’s Wife
gave Whitney occasion for two more hit albums.

But by the mid-1990s, Whitney had become, as she described to Oprah Winfrey during an interview, a “heavy” user of marijuana and cocaine. In 1992 she married the singer Bobby Brown and she described their relationship—which at one point was documented in a forgettable reality-TV series named
Being Bobby Brown
—as passionate yet turbulent, marred by drug use and by his professional jealousy as well as psychological and physical abuse. Whitney even confessed that Brown had spit on her. “I was horrified,” she told Winfrey. “He spit on me, in my face.” They divorced in 2007.

By the 2000s she was struggling. Her voice grew smaller, scratchier, and less secure, and fans grumbled of live performances that were less than stellar. New albums in 2002 and 2009 were billed as “comebacks” while their singles slipped quickly and quietly from the charts. Tabloids swarmed and
The National Enquirer
ran a photo of her bathroom showing drug paraphernalia. But despite concerns for her difficulties over the years, Whitney was still revered for her once soaring and heavenly female voice and remained a cherished queen of pop.

As the music industry descended on Los Angeles for the annual celebration of the Grammy Awards in 2012, Whitney was found
dead, submerged in the bathtub of Suite 434 of the Beverly Hilton. She had arrived early to attend a pre-Grammy party. Police reported there were no signs of criminal intent, and two days later the coroner’s office reported her cause of death as drowning due to the “effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use.” Later toxicology tests revealed the presence of Benadryl, Xanax, Flexeril, and marijuana in her system.

At 48, Whitney was buried alongside her father at Fairview Cemetery in Westfield, New Jersey.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
Take Exit 138 off the Garden State Parkway and follow Kenilworth Boulevard west for three miles. Turn left on East Broad Street, pass the cemetery entrances, and then turn left onto Gallows Hill Road. Proceed down Gallows and enter the cemetery at the drive across from Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Whitney is buried in the cemetery’s East Ridge section. In the cemetery, make two quick rights and follow Memorial Drive around its sharp left-hand bend. After about 500 feet is a drive that intersects on the left—don’t turn at that left, but at that point begin counting rows of gravestones on the right-hand lawn. In the tenth row, you’ll find Whitney.

JUNE 15, 1937 – FEBRUARY 13, 2002

With long hair, a black hat, and a bearded, scowling face, Waylon Jennings was one of the first musicians to bring real attitude to country music. By the time he came along in the mid-1960s, country had already had its share of rogues, from Hank Williams to Johnny Cash, but Waylon institutionalized the unapologetic swagger and menacing overtones of “Outlaw” country music and helped sow the seeds for the country megastars who would burst onto the scene two decades later.