tagged w/ Throat cancer
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The New York Times...
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August 22, 2011
Nick Ashford, of Motown Writing Duo, Dies at 70
By BEN SISARIO
Nick Ashford, who with Valerie Simpson, his songwriting partner and later wife, wrote some of Motown’s biggest hits, like “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough“ and “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing,” and later recorded their own hits and toured as a duo, died Monday at a hospital in New York City. He was 70 and lived in Manhattan.
Mr. Ashford had throat cancer and was undergoing treatment, but the cause of his death was not immediately known. His death was announced by Liz Rosenberg, a friend who is a longtime music publicist.
One of the primary songwriting and producing teams of Motown, Ashford & Simpson specialized in romantic duets of the most dramatic kind, professing the power of true love and the comforts of sweet talk. In “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” from 1967, their first of several hits for Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, lovers in close harmony proclaim their determination that “no wind, no rain, no winter’s cold, can stop me, baby,” but also make cuter promises: “If you’re ever in trouble, I’ll be there on the double.”
Gaye and Terrell also sang the duo’s songs “Your Precious Love,” “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing” and “You’re All I Need to Get By.” Diana Ross sang their “Reach Out and Touch Somebody’s Hand,” and when she rerecorded “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough“ in 1970, it became the former Supreme’s first No. 1 hit as a solo artist.
“They had magic, and that’s what creates those wonderful hits, that magic,” Verdine White of Earth, Wind and Fire told The Associated Press after learning of his friend’s death. “Without those songs, those artists wouldn’t have been able to go to the next level.”
Nickolas Ashford was born in Fairfield, S.C., and raised in Willow Run, Mich., where his father, Calvin, was a construction worker. He got his musical start at Willow Run Baptist Church, singing and writing songs for the gospel choir. He briefly attended Eastern Michigan University, in Ypsilanti, before heading to New York, where he tried but failed to find success as a dancer.
In 1964, while homeless, Mr. Ashford went to White Rock Baptist Church in Harlem, where he met Ms. Simpson, a 17-year-old recent high school graduate who was studying music. They began writing songs together, selling the first bunch for $64. In 1966, after Ray Charles sang “Let’s Go Get Stoned,” a song Ashford & Simpson wrote with Joey Armstead, the duo signed on with Motown as staff writers and producers.
They wrote for virtually every major act on the label, including Gladys Knight and the Pips (“Didn’t You Know You’d Have to Cry Sometime”) and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles (“Who’s Gonna Take the Blame”).
While writing for Motown, Ashford & Simpson nursed a desire to perform, which Berry Gordy Jr., the founder and patriarch of the label, discouraged. They left the label in 1973 and married in 1974.
Ashford & Simpson’s initial collaborations sold poorly, but by the late ‘70s, songs like “Don’t Cost You Nothing,” “It Seems to Hang On” and “Found a Cure” became hits on the R&B charts. Their biggest hit as a solo act was “Solid,” which reached No. 12 on the pop chart and No. 1 on the R&B chart in 1984.
They also continued to write hits for other people. “I’m Every Woman“ was a hit for Chaka Khan in 1978, and later for Whitney Houston on the soundtrack to the 1992 film “The Bodyguard.” In 1996, they opened the Sugar Bar on West 72nd Street in Manhattan, where they often presided over open mic nights. Recently, they received a songwriting credit on Amy Winehouse’s song “Tears Dry on Their Own,” which contains a sample from “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.”
Besides his wife, Mr. Ashford is survived by two daughters, Nicole and Asia; his brothers Paul, Albert and Frank; and his mother, Alice Ashford.
Ashford & Simpson toured throughout their career, their harmony and vocal interplay illustrating the passion of their lyrics and of their life together.
“When Ms. Simpson sits down at the piano and begins to sing in a bright pop-gospel voice, unchanged since the 1970s,” Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote in a review in 2007, “she awakens the spirit and tosses it to Mr. Ashford, whose quirkier voice, with its airy falsetto, has gained in strength from the old days. Soon they are urging each other on. By the time their romantic relay winds to a close, both are sweating profusely, and the audience is delirious.”
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PHOTO: Richard Termine for The New York Times
Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson performing in 2006 at the Regency Hotel in Manhattan.
.The New York Times...
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August 22, 2011
Nick Ashford, of Motown Writing Duo,... more
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Hollywood mega star Michael Douglas is cancer free. Douglas said that the tumor that plagued him for months has disappeared and he has beaten throat cancer, according to multiple media reports.Hollywood mega star Michael Douglas is cancer free. Douglas said that the tumor that... more
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PHOTO: Film critic Roger Ebert lost his jaws to complications from a head and neck cancer.
By Madison Park, CNN
February 19, 2010 11:05 a.m. EST
(CNN) -- It brought a tough, All-Star NBA coach to tears this week. And it stilled the voice of a famous film critic.
Head and neck cancers are rare, but known to be severe -- they can strip away a person's voice, distort the face and rob the basic abilities to eat, drink and swallow. The cancer can be so disfiguring, some patients seldom appear in public.
In a tear-filled press conference this week, Denver Nuggets coach George Karl announced he has a type of neck and throat cancer.
Karl said he will continue to coach, but will miss some games and practices. His type of cancer -- a squamous cell tumor found on his right tonsil -- is the most common and expected to be treatable with radiation and chemotherapy.
Also this week, Esquire profiled film critic Roger Ebert, who also had a head and neck cancer. He suffered complications from surgery to treat the cancer that had spread to the salivary gland. The magazine published a full-page photo of the film critic, who no longer has a lower jaw.
Ebert spent little time feeling sorry for himself: "If we think we have physical imperfections, obsessing about them is only destructive. Low self-esteem involves imagining the worst that other people can think about you. That means they're living upstairs in the rent-free room," he wrote on his blog after the photo published.
While Ebert cannot speak, he continues to lambaste bad movies online.
Head and neck cancers include abnormalities in the nasal cavity, sinuses, lips, mouth, tongue, esophagus, salivary glands, throat, and voice box.
These types of cancers tend to affect men in their 60s who had histories of alcohol and tobacco, but, they are also striking younger people who don't drink or smoke. This is believed to be related to the human papillomavirus
"Now there's a viral cause to the cancer," said Dr. Carol Bradford, director of the head and neck oncology program at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer. "It is not viewed as patients causing their own cancer."
There are about 50,000 cases of head and neck cancers every year, compared with 200,000 new cases for breast and prostate cancer.
Because of its rarity, there is less awareness of head and neck cancers, said Dr. Christine Gourin, director of the clinical research program in head and neck cancer at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
"There aren't many celebrities or public figures who have head and neck cancers that we can hold up as an example," she said. "If you see patients when they come with advanced tumors, they can't breathe, they can't swallow their saliva, they look disfigured and their speech is abnormal, their breathing is affected. I don't think there are many people who want to go out and be a poster child -- so there's little attention."
The disease and subsequent treatments could result in disfigurement.
More so than any other cancer, people who get head and neck cancer have a visible disability, said Dr. M. Boyd Gillespie, a past president of the South Carolina Head and Neck Cancer Alliance.
"There's a higher rate of people not being able to resume their professional life after the treatment, because nowadays the service economy and communication is so important," he said.
Even the process of eating can appear distressful.
Some patients do not want to be seen in restaurants choking, coughing and having difficulty eating, said Gillespie, who is an associate professor of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery at the Medical University of South Carolina.
"It just takes away your dignity, your ability to go out in public and do simple things -- like you can't go out to dinner," Gourin said. "It takes away things we take for granted -- eating, speech and appearance."
After the cancer has been removed, doctors can try to reconstruct the affected areas by using tissue and bone from other areas of the body. Ebert had several surgeries to reconstruct his throat and jaw by taking tissue and bone from his back, arm, and legs. But the reconstructions did not last, according to Esquire.
If the cancer is treatable with radiation and chemotherapy, the recovery is more positive.
The cancer affecting Karl is believed to be caused by a virus. This means he has a better prognosis, his doctor, Jacques Saari said in a news conference.
The five-year survival rate for viral-related cancer is 80 percent compared with 40 to 50 percent for nonviral-related cancer.
A doctor discovered a large lump, measuring two inches in diameter in Karl's neck in December.
Karl's treatment will force him to miss some games. He expressed hopes to recover in time to coach the Nuggets in the playoffs.
"I think the major desire for me is to kick this cancer's butt," Karl said in this week's press conference. In 2005, he underwent surgery for prostate cancer.
The radiation and chemotherapy have side effects, such as burnt tissue, redness, inflammation of the lining of the mouth, permanent dry mouth, weight loss and difficulty swallowing. Taste buds can be permanently damaged in some cases.
Through the typical seven weeks of treatment, most people continue to work.
"Some feel the need to work during treatment to retain normalcy," Gourin said.
The voice box is usually not affected, so Karl could do what head coaches often do -- yell at referees.PHOTO: Film critic Roger Ebert lost his jaws to complications from a head and neck... more
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The story of Babe Ruth's bittersweet farewell at Yankee Stadium has been part of sports lore for generations. Shockingly stooped and frail, the slugger came to the Bronx ballpark on June 13, 1948, to put on the pinstriped uniform a last time and hear the roar of the faithful once more.
He died only two months later, on August 16, at age 53, by most accounts of throat cancer, brought on at least in part by a well-chronicled fondness for tobacco and liquor. But that's all wrong, says a Westchester County, N.Y., dentist with a passion for baseball history. And he's trying to set the record straight.
They all said he had throat cancer -- an easy conclusion because he was well-known for drinking, smoking and using tobacco. In fact, he died of a very rare cancer. And what I found out was that this larger-than-life celebrity was a pioneer in early cancer research."
"I was stunned," says granddaughter Linda Ruth Tosetti. "It was the first I was reading that my grandfather did not have throat cancer. My mother, Dorothy, always thought it was throat cancer. So did the whole country."
Maloney uncovered little-known information about the experimental treatment that the doomed baseball titan agreed to take part in, the kindness Ruth showed toward medical staff during his difficult final days and the rare form of cancer he actually died from, nasopharyngeal carcinoma (it causes less than 1 percent of the cancer deaths in the U.S. today).
And although the exact cause of Ruth's death had been noted in the scientific community -- it was the subject of an article by a group of San Francisco doctors who turned up his autopsy results in 1998 -- biographies about Ruth all but missed it.
"They completely skip over his illness, and they got it all wrong," Maloney says. "They all said he had throat cancer -- an easy conclusion because he was well-known for drinking, smoking and using tobacco. In fact, he died of a very rare cancer. And what I found out was that this larger-than-life celebrity was a pioneer in early cancer research."
Ruth agreed to take part in an experimental drug trial, one that had never been tried on humans. A number of doctors warned against it in an age when medical experimentation was far less regulated. The story of Babe Ruth's bittersweet farewell at Yankee Stadium has been part of... more
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Cases of throat cancer are rising fast in the UK while falling in some European countries, reports the Daily Telegraph.
Gullet or oesophageal cancer is the sixth most common cause of cancer deaths in England and Wales and accounts for more than 6,000 deaths annually.
Over the last twenty years cases have risen by 87 per cent in men and 40 per cent in women but it is not clear why.
Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson (he's had a busy day: http://current.com/items/89103394_young_drivers_to_be_banned_from_drinking) highlighted the case of 32-year-old Ben Chandler, a soldier who has served in Iraq and Afghanistan who had problems swallowing and was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer. He suffered a major bleed and went into cardiac arrest but survived and is now receiving treatment.
Sir Liam said cases of gullet cancer are 'sky high' in the UK compared to much of Europe. Cases are also high in Japan, China and India.
The causes of gullet cancer include smoking, drinking, lack of fresh fruit and vegetables and gastric reflux which is associated with obesity.
Smoking, drinking and poor diet: often the domain of the young. Are generations destined to be affected by this still-mysterious form of cancer?
Cases of throat cancer are rising fast in the UK while falling in some European... more
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