Having owned Cinnamon Hill, his family’s Jamaican vacation home overlooking the Caribbean, since 1975, Johnny Cash embraced a much-needed serenity there and a deep affinity for Jamaica’s people. Singer Paulette McWilliams on Her Years With Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson, and Steely Dan 'Silence of the Lambs': The Complete Buffalo Bill Story As International Reggae Day turns 25 this week, we look back at 10 classic country songs transformed by popular reggae, ska, and rocksteady artists, vibrant examples of the cultural cross-pollination that takes place when country’s torch and twang meets reggae’s irresistible rhythms. Since July 1st, 1994, when it was first introduced in Kingston, Jamaica, International Reggae Day has honored Jamaican music and culture with a global media event for fans around the world to join in the celebration. Like country, reggae is more than just a musical genre it is a way of life, encompassing food, fashion, dance, language, and social interaction. Yet with two Tennessee stations carrying a powerful clear-channel signal over thousands of miles - the other being Nashville’s WLAC, which programmed country music mainly on Saturdays in the early Forties - the hillbilly and early Countrypolitan sounds most associated with Music City had been available to, and popular with, Jamaicans for decades. In addition to his wife and stepson, Whorf is survived by his daughters Maggie (and her husband Serge) and Madison son Elliot Alexander’s wife, Katja and brother David and his wife, Laurel.ĭonations can be made in his memory to the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance.In June 1964, a country music fan in Jamaica who regularly listened to Nashville’s 50,000-watt radio station WSM sent a letter to the editor of Billboard, who proclaimed it the first such correspondence they had ever received from someone tuning into the country station from the Caribbean island nation. music business, Whorf and his wife, Betsy, retired to Baja Sur, Mexico, and later to Seattle. That led to work with noted designers Charles and Ray Eames on the IBM Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair, with the Rex Goode design organization on Warner Bros.’ Burbank headquarters and with architect William Pereira on the master plan for Los Angeles International Airport.įollowing four decades of working in the L.A. Whorf attended The Lawrenceville School and Stanford University and later studied architecture at USC.
Painter John Whorf and linguist Benjamin Whorf were his uncles.
Whorf was the son of Richard Whorf, an actor who played famed Broadway producer Sam Harris opposite James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and went on to direct episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies, Gunsmoke and My Three Sons. He also did work on albums recorded by John Denver, Donna Summer, James Taylor and George Clinton. Among the many honors he received during his career was The New York Art Directors Gold Medal. As Bogart’s vp creative services, Whorf developed both companies’ visual identities, from packaging and advertising to music videos.