Saturday Reads

 Obituary:  Australian singer Judith Durham, 79, died as a result of lung disease.  She is famous for being the lead singer of the 1960s folk group, The Seekers.  She was a very good singer.  I have a number of their recordings.

Snip:

Durham helped open the door for Australian artists to achieve international fame. The Seekers, formed in 1962, were considered the first Australian pop band to achieve mainstream success in the United Kingdom and the United States.

The group's hits included "Georgy Girl" and "A World of Our Own."

Durham left The Seekers to pursue a solo career in 1968 and released several solo albums but continued to reunite and tour with the band in the decades after.

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The state legislatures are screwing democracy over. They are even more on the take from corrupt interests than the national government.

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Accused double murderer Dana Chandler's second trial started yesterday.  She is accused of killing her ex-husband Mike Sisco and his fiancee Karen Harkness back in 2002.  She had been previously convicted of both crimes, but her conviction was thrown out by the Kansas Supreme Court thanks to prosecutorial misconduct in the first trial.

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Another obituary:  Actor Clu Gulager, 93, passed away at his L.A. home according to his son and daughter-in-law.  He was in movies like The Last Picture Show, but he was more familiar to people like me for his television appearances, especially in westerns like The Virginian.

He was born William Martin Gulager, but his nickname, a Cherokee nickname, was given to him from childhood.  It stuck.  The nickname was for clu-clu birds which is another word for martens, and of course, his middle name was "Martin."  

He was married many (over 50) years to Miriam Byrd-Nethery, but she passed away in 2003.  

Snip:

Part Cherokee, the playful Gulager burst on the scene in September 1960 when he starred as Billy the Kid opposite Barry Sullivan as Pat Garrett in NBC’s The Tall Man. Two seasons later, the series was canceled in part because Congress objected to the notorious outlaw Billy “inaccurately” being portrayed as a hero to young viewers.

“But they left The Untouchables on, which was very violent,” Gulager noted in a 2015 interview. “I played a character on that called ‘Mad Dog’ Coll [in 1959] where I shot a horse in a horse race, killed a little boy in Brooklyn and cut off a bartender’s fingers. But they left that on because they thought that show was historically accurate.”

After guest-starring on two episodes of NBC’s The Virginian, Gulager arrived in Medicine Bow, Wyoming, for the start of the series’ third season in 1964 as Deputy Sheriff Emmett Ryker. He appeared with James Drury and Doug McClure on more than 50 episodes before departing in 1968.

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