2024 In Memoriam Part 1: Looking back on local luminaries we lost in the past year

The annual “in memoriam” roundups usually get assembled around Christmas, meaning people who die at the end of the year often get the short shrift.

Shecky Greene, one of the greatest stand-up comedians of all time, died Dec. 31, 2023, meaning he only got a last-minute insertion into my 2023 list of celebrity deaths.

That’s why he’s leading off my list of notable desert residents who died in the past 12 months. The first nine are presented in the order of their deaths. The last six will post tomorrow.

Shecky Greene, 97, of natural causes in Las Vegas. Shecky moved to Rancho Mirage around 1985 after marrying Marie Musso, whose father, Vido, was Frank Sinatra’s roommate in the Harry James Big band. Frank asked him to play a benefit for Temple Isaiah’s Jewish Community Center that December and, to borrow one of Shecky’s old jokes, Shecky said yes because Sinatra once saved his life. Five guys were beating him up and Sinatra said, “OK, he’s had enough.”

I did a great telephone interview with Shecky to advance that benefit and, when he said he was looking forward to seeing me there, I told him I unfortunately wasn’t invited. He said, “If you’re not going, I’m not going,” and the next day, Rabbi Joe Hurwitz called to invite me.

I had my ups and downs with Shecky. He blamed me for a bad writeup by one of my society writers and literally charged me at Bob Hope’s 2003 funeral in Toluca Lake – in a church!

But in 1999, my wife, Jane, and I were standing in a valet line with Shecky and singer-comedian Ralph Young after a benefit at Indian Wells Country Club. Shecky jumped into a golf cart and told his wife, “Come on, honey, our car’s here!” Then he saw Ralph in line. So he gets out of the cart, takes Ralph’s ticket and gives it to the valet. Seeing how that worked for the Youngs, Jane also gives him our ticket and Shecky gives it to the valet. Then a third person gives Shecky a ticket and Shecky says, “No. That guy gave me a writeup.” That was Shecky, just a bit whacky.

Greg McDonald, 74, of cancer Feb. 2 at his Palm Desert home. Greg was a protégé of Elvis Presley’s manager, Col. Tom Parker, who was vilified for exploiting Elvis. Industry leaders appreciated what he taught them and often called him “like a father to me.” But Parker was like an adoptive father to Greg. His real dad was a traveling Pentecostal preacher and, when Greg wasn’t setting up tents for him on the road, he was taking care of his air-conditioning business in Palm Springs. Greg met Elvis servicing the AC at his rental house. Elvis thought he had so much in common with Parker (who got his start producing tent shows), he introduced them. Greg had stopped going to high school and Parker saw so much potential in him, he told Greg he could live and work for him in Palm Springs if he’d finish school. So Greg lived with Parker and learned the business. When former teen idol Rick Nelson asked the Colonel to manage him, Parker gave him to Greg, who managed Nelson for the rest of his life.

Greg also became one of Sonny Bono’s mayoral campaign managers and, after Sonny won, he helped bring rock and roll to Palm Springs, booking name acts in the Palm Springs Convention Center and Palm Springs Stadium. He bought Presley’s house on Chino Canyon Road and built a studio in downtown Palm Springs, called Sun Studios, where he recorded the likes of Eric Burdon of the Animals and Eddie Kendricks of the Temptations. He also produced a syndicated TV show starring pioneering shock jock Morton Downey Jr.

When Sonny died in 1998, Greg moved to Florida and helped Lou Pearlman produce ‘NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys. When Pearlman went to prison for running a Ponzi scheme, McDonald returned to Palm Desert and devoted himself to rehabilitating Parker’s reputation. He and Marshall Terrill released a book to that end titled “Elvis and the Colonel,” on Nov. 28. Greg and I were making plans to promote it at his old Elvis house as a benefit for Amy’s Purpose when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He died less than two months later. His friend, Joni Ravenna, is now co-writing and producing a musical about Greg titled “The Manager.” I’d love to see it get produced by the Coachella Valley Rep.

Chan Romero, 82, April 21 at his Cathedral City home of natural causes. Chan became inspired by rock and roll in Billings, Montana, in 1956 after watching Elvis perform “Hound Dog” (to a hound dog) on “The Steve Allen Show.” But he didn’t know of any Latinos similarly inspired by the rockabilly king. It wasn’t until he hitchhiked to L.A. two years later and heard Ritchie Valens singing “Come On, Let’s Go” that Chan realized a Latino could be a rock star. He grabbed his cousin’s electric guitar and, in 30 minutes, wrote a song called “The Hippy, Hippy Shake.” Del Fi, which recorded Valens before his death in a plane crash that also killed Buddy Holly, recorded and distributed it internationally. Paul McCartney heard it and added it to The Beatles’ setlists in Liverpool and Germany. It’s on The Beatles’ “Live at the BBC” double LP. Chan wrote hundreds of songs but became an ordained minister instead of pursuing music full time. He became one of the first two Latino artists inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame in 2007.

John Norman, 96, May 20 in Salinas, California of complications from COPD. John, who had a Ph.D. in music and piano performance, was an early College of the Desert faculty member who became head of its music department in 1962. But he was much more than a teacher and department head. He became chairman of COD’s Division of Fine Arts and, in that capacity, inspired his instructors to create extraordinary programs that lent prestige to the performing arts center on its campus: the McCallum Theatre. Theater teachers Terry Nicholson and Darlene Romano produced professional-level plays and musicals, often featuring stars like Nehemiah Persoff, and Ruta Lee, to build an audience for the McCallum. Norman and Joanna Hodges founded a piano competition at COD that filled the McCallum for its finale, generating international respect as an event now called the Palm Springs International Piano Competition. The McCallum’s Choreography Festival was founded by Shea New — a COD dance instructor.

Norman was beloved for the European tours he organized for local choirs. His affinity for European culture may have inspired him to champion avant garde Austrian composer Ernst Krenek, who was highly decorated in Europe before the Nazis declared his music “decadent,” forcing him to flee to America and settle in Palm Springs. I helped Norman plan a three-day Ernst Krenek Music Festival for an National Endowment of the Arts grant to help Krenek regain his international recognition. Unfortunately, it was rejected by the Reagan ERA NEA.

Manuel Montoya, 69, June 8 of sepsis. Manny was like a Greg McDonald of Latino music. He was a hustling manager and promoter, but he helped Latino music cross cultural barriers. He started with A&M Records in the 1970s, handling North and South American Hispanic artists with Col. Parker-like ingenuity. When he couldn’t get Mexico City radio stations to play popular Norte Americano artist Antonio de Jesus in the ’80s, he gave a DJ 400 de Jesus LPs in exchange for an in-station promotion. The DJ announced de Jesus would sign free albums for the first 400 fans to come to the station and so many people showed up, a newspaper reported police had to use tear gas to get them to disperse. Mexico City radio stations then played de Jesus’ music.

Montoya eventually formed his own label, Golden Dreams, in Palm Springs. He ran his Montoya Entertainment Group from a Palm Canyon Drive office, managing Lalo Guerrero after Lalo received a National Medal of Arts from President Bill Clinton in 1996. It was Manny who got the Rockabilly Hall of Fame to admit Chan Romero as a full member. He was working on Chan’s memorial service when he got sick and was hospitalized.

Willie Mays, 93, June 18 of natural causes in Palo Alto. Willie didn’t spend much time at his Rancho Mirage home in the 21^st century, but he had been an avid golfer in many local celebrity tournaments, including the Bob Hope Desert Classic, the Frank Sinatra Celebrity Invitational, the Dinah Shore Pro-Am, the Don Drysdale Hall of Fame Golf Classic, and the American Airlines Golf Classic, featuring baseball and football stars in the ’70s.

I was thrilled to get to interview Willie when he appeared at his friend, Pete Carlson’s sporting goods store in Palm Desert to promote his authorized biography. He didn’t like talking about his legacy or who was New York’s best centerfielder: Mickey Mantle, Duke Snider or Willie? “Between us, there was no rivalry,” he said. “We’d all meet up in the All-Star Game or the World Series. There was no bad blood or anything. It was just fun.”

But he said being a great baseball player didn’t give him special privileges breaking into professional baseball with the Birmingham Black Barons in the Negro League.

“We couldn’t stay in certain places,” he said. “You had to make sure that wherever you go you had to be careful getting home. I don’t see no privileges that I had was different from anybody else at that particular time.”

Gena Rowlands, 94, Aug. 14 at her Indian Wells home of complications from Alzheimer’s. If John Cassavettes was the king of independent cinema, his wife, Gena, was the queen. She won four Emmys and was nominated for Best Actress honors for “A Woman Under the Influence” in 1974 and “Gloria” in 1980. And she never did a Marvel or DC comic book movie.

I first interviewed her in 2007 when she became the first recipient of a Palm Springs Women in Film & Television award named after her. She said she never chose film or TV projects based on money. Her first love was acting for anthology TV in New York in the 1950s.

“It’s hard for anybody who wasn’t there to understand the excitement of it,” she said. “It was all live TV with all of the best authors in literature and there was so much work, you just ran from one thing to another. It was quite a shock when, in the 1960s, it all switched out here (to L.A.).”

Gena appeared at Coachella Valley events ranging from the Palm Springs International Film Festival to the 2007 Christmas Tree Lane benefit for ACT for MS. I got to call her just to ask things like, “Who’s going to win the Academy Awards?” In 2009, she said Kate Winslet deserved the Oscar for “The Reader,” but Meryl Streep would win for “Doubt.” Turned out the voters agreed with her about Winslet.

Peter Marshall, 98, Aug. 15 at his Encino home. When Peter died after a long struggle with health issues, I wrote, “The big band era officially died Thursday morning.”

Peter started as a “boy singer” in New York in 1942 with Bob Chester, a big band leader whose career went back to the 1920s. In the 21^st century, Peter was still touting swing music with his PBS-TV show, “The Big Band Years,” a 2009 film titled “My Music: The Big Band Years,” and a collection of DVDs titled “The Big Band Years – A Sentimental Journey.”

But Peter had one of the most diverse careers in show biz. He was best known as the congenial host of “The Hollywood Squares” from 1966-1981, but he also played Broadway, made movies, toured the standup comedy circuit and was a ubiquitous host of local charity events and celebrity acts at his short-lived Rancho Mirage supper club, Basin Street West. I always wanted to interview Peter and his late friends, comic singer Kaye Ballard and “Love Boat” star Gavin MacLeod because together they could have given an oral history of show biz from 1900.

Jeanie Cunningham, 68, Nov. 16 in Palm Springs of a leaky heart valve. Jeanie had a career as a working songwriter and singer-guitarist before endearing herself to the Coachella Valley philanthropy community. She wrote songs for corporate product campaigns and NASA astronaut “wake-up calls.” She toured internationally with her all-female band, The Cherries, as a guitarist for Lionel Richie and as an opening act for her friend, David Crosby. She was a producer at the nationally-recognized Cherokee Studios in Hollywood. She interviewed songwriters for an Internet series called “Composer’s Corner” and wrote a musical about the legend of Tom Dooley, which premiered in Dallas in 2015.

I met Jeanie when she taught music for Matt Naylor’s Academy of Performing Arts while my wife, Jane, taught youth theater there. Matt became heavily involved with the Well in the Desert to help the homeless and Jeanie did, too, although I’m not sure who the late Arlene Rosenthal recruited first  for that endeavor. Jeanie also was a force for the Steinway Society, taking delight in not just promoting piano music, but also teaching children and adults how to play the ukulele. When the Steinway Society honored Jim Fitzgerald last year, she even got me on stage to join their little ukulele band. Later in the year, she debuted a musical she co-wrote and acted in at Palm Springs’ Revolution Stage theater, called “Off the Street,” which raised funds for Well in the Desert.

The Revolution Stage Company is hosting a memorial today so Jeanie’s many local friends could say goodbye to this woman with a heart that was just too big to go on beating. The event, from 4 p.m. until 6 p.m. will livestream starting at 3:45 p.m. at https://www.youtube.com/@PalmSpringsPointofView

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