Buddy Miles, Drummer and Voice of the California Raisins Passes Away at 60

From Times Staff and Wire Reports
February 28, 2008

Buddy Miles, the rock and R&B drummer, singer and songwriter whose eclectic career included stints playing with Jimi Hendrix and as the lead voice of the California Raisins, the animated clay figures that became an advertising phenomenon in the late 1980s, has died. He was 60.

Miles died Tuesday of congestive heart failure at his home in Austin, Texas, according to an announcement on his website.

A massive man with a distinctive, sculpted afro, Miles hit his peak of popularity when he joined Hendrix and bassist Billy Cox to form Hendrix's Band of Gypsys, which the New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll called "the first black rock group." Miles had played with Hendrix on the guitarist's influential "Electric Ladyland" album released in 1968.

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(ed. note: This is a sad day for rock and roll fans everywhere. As a Jimi Hendrix fan, I am deeply saddened at the passing of this great pioneer and entertainer.)

William F. Buckley Jr., 82; author and founder of modern conservative movement

By Scott Kraft, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 28, 2008

William F. Buckley Jr., the columnist, novelist, television talk show host and tireless intellectual who founded the modern conservative movement and was its articulate voice for nearly six decades, died Wednesday. He was 82.

Buckley, who had been ill with emphysema, died while at work in his study in Stamford, Conn., according to Richard Lowry, the editor of National Review, the magazine Buckley founded in 1955.

An urbane pundit with a lacerating wit, Buckley was the intellectual heart of American political conservatism in the 1960s and '70s. His ardent friends and admirers came to include a California governor, Ronald Reagan, who sought Buckley's counsel frequently during his campaign and presidency, calling him "perhaps the most influential journalist and intellectual in our era." Buckley also inspired generations of conservatives, who now fill think tanks and write for National Review, the Weekly Standard and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal.

"It's not lonely the way it was 45 years ago," Buckley said in an interview with The Times a few years ago, "when there was really nothing, certainly no journal of opinion on conservative thought. There are tons of people here now."

"Without Bill, there'd be no conservatism as we know it today," said Lowry. "One of his earliest achievements was to forge this coalition of social conservatives, national security hawks and economic libertarians. That became the conservative coalition, and there would not be one today without it.

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