Tokin' Women and Others We Lost in 2024

Sadly, this page will be updated throughout 2024. 

Eric Carmen

August 11, 1949 – March 11, 2024

Carmen began his musical education with violin lessons from his aunt Muriel, who played with the Cleveland Orchestra. After hits with The Raspberries like "Go All the Way" (in which it is the woman who makes the suggestion), he had a pair of solo hits—"All By Myself" and "Never Gonna Fall in Love Again"— playing the piano on two borrowed Rachmaninov melodies. 

Juli Lynne Charlot 

October 26, 1922 – March 3, 2024

Singer and actress Charlot sang with Xavier Cugat’s orchestra performed with the Marx Brothers in their act at military bases during World War II. But she is best known as the inventor of the poodle skirt, a '50s phenomenon that celebrated the return of prosperity and the availability of lots of fabric. Unable to afford a dress for a Christmas party, Charlot, who refused to learn to sew so that she wasn't a drone like her embroiderer mother, took a large piece of felt and cut a circle in it, adding appliques that soon tended towards poodles, and a phenomenon that twirled at many a sock hop was born. Charlot also designed contemporary renditions of traditional Mexican wedding dresses and died at age 101 at her home in Tepoztlán, Mexico. 

Richard Lewis

June 29, 1947 – February 27, 2024

Lewis, who called himself "The Prince of Pain," made a career being hilariously upfront about his neuroses and his struggles with addictions to alcohol, cocaine, and crystal meth. In his 2000 book, The Other Great Depression, he joked that in college, "I didn't smoke a lot of pot because I was too paranoid to begin with and strong grass made me think I was stalking myself." Of his early days in stand-up comedy when he sipped wine and "occasionally smoked a joint" he wrote, "it was a real pleasure to get a nice buzz... and to be in a head space where I felt so loose and self-confident that I actually might have been legitimately relaxed and happy." His former girlfriend Debra Winger and co-star Jamie Lee Curtis wrote tributes to Lewis on on Instagram, with Curtis adding, "He also is the reason I am sober." (Photo: Bonnie Schiffman, who brilliantly put him in Munch's painting "The Scream.")

Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt

February 8, 1932 – February 26, 2024

Employed as an office manager, Wolf-Rehfeldt was a self-taught artist working under a regime of strict surveillance in the former German Democratic Republic. She turned herself into a typist—a stereotypical female job—and is known particularly for a period of geometric and poetic typewriter graphics art that she called "typewritings" produced between the 1970s and 1990, mostly as part of Mail Art collaborations, which allowed artists living under totalitarian regimes to communicate and form networks, even as they engaged with conditions of official surveillance. Her work addressed cybernetics, environmental issues and human rights.  Photo: Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, Information, 1970s. 

Aaron Bushnell

(1998 - February 25, 2024)

Images of the horrific event weren't able to be shown on TV, but social media broadcasted 25-year-old Bushnell's video wherein he self-immolated in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC to protest the war in Gaza. An active-duty member of the US Air Force, Bushnell grew up in a religious community on Cape Cod called the Community of Jesus, whose former members have come forward alleging abuse and a rigid social structure. He repeatedly yelled, "Free Palestine!" during his protest. Days later, President Biden announced (while eating an ice cream cone with Seth Meyers) that he expected an agreement on a ceasefire within a week.

Nancy Udell
(1973 - February 24, 2024)

Longtime Empire State NORML co-director and treasurer "loved to march in the annual NYC Cannabis Parade and spent many lobby days in Albany prior to legalization," wrote Steve Bloom of Celebstoner. Born in Atlantic Beach, Udell was a graduate of  NYU and the University of Denver and  worked for many years as a paralegal. She was often quoted in stories about marijuana legalization in New York, always arguing for equity, reason and fairness. Photo: Luna Rouge

Alexei Navalny

(June 4, 1976 – February 16, 2024)

Navalny’s death at age 47 has deprived the Russian opposition of its most well-known and inspiring politician less than a month before an election that will give President Vladimir Putin another six years in power. Navalny had been jailed since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin. He was later convicted three times, saying each case was politically motivated, and received a sentence of 19 years for extremism. He died at a remote Arctic penal colony, reportedly two days after he was put in a "punishment cell" there. Over 400 people were detained in Russia while paying tribute to Navalny. The film Navalny won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature in 2023. Souce.  

Bob Moore

(February 15, 1929 – February 10, 2024) 

Moore and his wife Charlee "developed a passion for whole grains that coincided with parenthood," and opened a flour mill in Redding, CA. "The first whole grain loaf of bread that came out of my wife Charlee’s oven on our five-acre farm back in the ‘60s was the most delicious loaf of bread I can ever remember smelling and eating," Bob later recalled. After moving to Milwaukie, Oregon to attend seminary school and read the Bible in its original language, the couple founded Bob’s Red Mill in 1978, and grew it into a leading global food brand offering 200+ products in more than 70 countries. On his 81st birthday, Moore established an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), transferring ownership of the company to its 700 employees, saying, "The Bible says to do unto others are you would have them do unto you." The Moores were named honorary Beavers for their significant donations to Oregon State University, where they helped fund the Moore Family Center for Whole Grain Foods, Nutrition, and Preventive Health. Charlee died in 2018, when Bob retired; he remained a Board Member of the Red Mill until his death at just before his 95th birthday. 

 

 

Isabel Mijares
(1942 – February 10, 2024)

After finishing her Bachelor's degree in Chemistry at the Complutense University of Madrid, Mijares applied to continue studying at the Perfume Institute in Paris and at the Oenology Institute at the University from Bordeaux. She was accepted in both, but finally, in 1967 opted for Bordeaux, where she graduated in Oenology [the study of wines] with a Higher Diploma in Wine Tasting. In 1970, she completed her doctorate in Oenology and became the first female winemaker in Spain, the first to run a winery, and the first president of an appellation of origin (Valdepeñas) in all of Europe, back in 1982. She traveled extensively in the wine regions of Mexico, Argentina, and Chile; chaired juries, fairs, forums and specialized salons; and was known for her erudition, irony, and humor. Source.

 

Toby Keith

(July 8, 1961 – February 5, 2024)

You can pour me some old whiskey river, my friend

But I'll never smoke weed with Willie again.

Keith died of stomach cancer at the age of 62. (Nelson turned 90 last year.) Sad that Keith didn't choose the healthier inebriant. 

Don Murray 

(July 31, 1929 – February 2, 2024)

After earning an Oscar nomination for his film debut opposite Marilyn Monroe in "Bus Stop" (1956), Murray went on to a career playing roles with social significance, such as a young husband hiding a morphine addiction from his wife (Eva Marie Saint) in “A Hatful of Rain” (1957, pictured). He played a priest who counsels former convicts in "The Hoodlum Priest" (1961), for which he bought out his film studio contract to produce it independently.  In "Advise & Consent" (1962) he played a US Senator being blackmailed over a gay encounter in his past and his TV series "The Outcasts" (1968-69) addressed racial tensions as the first show with black and white co-stars. As the entertainment industry became less daring and significant, Murray traded on his looks in shows like the nighttime TV soap "Knott's Landing," in which his character was controversially killed off after Murray left the show.  Speaking at the LA opening of the play "Marilyn, Forever Blonde" in 1962, he expressed dismay that Monroe hadn't been nominated for her "astonishing" performance in "Bus Stop," kind of like how Ken was nominated this year but not Barbie. 

Chita Rivera

(January 23, 1933 – January 30, 2024)

Ten-time Tony award nominee and the winner of two Tony awards plus the Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement, the fabulous actress/singer/dancer Chita Rivera was the first Latino American to receive a Kennedy Center Honor in 2002, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. On Broadway, she originated the role of Anita in West Side Story (1957), Rosie in Bye Bye Birdie (1960), Velma in Chicago (1975), and the title role in Kiss of the Spider Woman (1993, at the age of 60). Rivera acted in the film Sweet Charity (1969) and appeared in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978). Her autobiography, Chita: A Memoir, published in 2023, tells a story about being taken to Charlie Parker's hotel room in 1956, where she was offered a joint (until a friend intervened). In a "Forbidden Broadway" skit portraying Rivera and Rita Moreno, who played Anita in the West Side Story movie, Rita sings: "When people smoke too much pot, Chita / They're think you're me and I'm not Rita." As Anita, in the song "America", Rivera sang: "I like the island Manhattan / Smoke on your pipe and put that in!" and in "All that Jazz" from Chicago: "Lucky Lindy never flew so high." 

Melanie
(February 3, 1947 – January 23, 2024)

Bothered by being pegged by her high school classmates as a "beatnik" in school, Melanie Safka ran away to California but returned to New Jersey where she began performing at The Inkwell, a coffee house in Long Branch, NJ and later, at the folk clubs of Greenwich Village. In 1969, Melanie had a hit in the Netherlands with "Beautiful People" and was one of only three solo women who performed at the Woodstock festival. Her first US hit, "Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)" was inspired by the Woodstock audience lighting candles during her set. When first released, her sweet song "Brand New Key" was banned by some radio stations as containing a sexual innuendo. In 2015, she dueted with Tokin' Woman Miley Cyrus on "Look What They've Done to My Song, Ma," still sounding great (in English and French). When she died, Melanie was working on a new record of cover songs, titled "Second Hand Smoke," for the Cleopatra label. She opened at Woodstock, and at Carnegie Hall, singing "Close to it All" with her signature, unique phrasing: 

If I had my dream it would not fall down
If I could live high on the ground, the sound 

Of high is a good one to many around 

When they want to be close to it all

Mary Weiss
(December 28, 1948 – January 19, 2024)

Lead singer Weiss and her booming voice made loving bad boys cool with the Shangri-Las hit "Leader of the Pack," recorded when she was 15 in 1963, the year after Shelly Fabares had a hit with the sappy and virginal "Johnny Angel." After shocking James Brown when he found out they weren't black, and churning out hits like "Remember (Walking in the Sand)" and "Give Him a Great Big Kiss," the group, made up of Mary's sister Betty and their twin friends Mary Ann and Margie Ganser, broke up over legal issues that left Weiss unable to record for 10 years. She moved to San Francisco and then to New York, where she cut a critically acclaimed solo record, "Dangerous Game," in 2007. "We are deeply saddened to hear the news of Mary Weiss’ passing," the official Ronnie Spector tweeted. "She and Ronnie were kindred spirits; two fearless bad girls of the 60s. Join us as we spin the Shangri-Las in her honor." (We lost Ronnie on 1/12/2022.) 

Mari Kane
(July 24, 1959 – January 11, 2024)

A photographer and writer, Kane read Jack Herer’s “The Emperor Wears No Clothes” and soon published the first trade journal and directory for the hemp industry, HempWorld magazine, from 1994-1998. She went on to blog about wine, food, travel, her life, and her cancer. Her portfolio includes studio-style portraits of Deadhead families and cover portraits for Wine Spectator magazine. In 2014 she published, "Create a WordPress Website in Ten Easy Steps." She took time to congratulate Tokin' Woman on our 10th anniversary and 420th post in 2021. "Mari was such a wonderful person and a very important part of the hemp industry," said Eric Steenstra of VoteHemp.

April Ferry
(October 31, 1932 – January 11, 2024)

After a career as a dancer where she became enamored of the costume process, Ferry began her costume-designing career working on TV shows like The Sonny & Cher Show and Laugh In and movies like The Rose (1979),  The Big Chill (1983), and Brokedown Palace (1999). Ferry's first TV series. Rome. was "one of the shows which redefined television" and won her an Emmy. (It also showed Roman women smoking hemp, and whatever Cleopatra was inhaling.) Ferry took over for Michelle Clapton for the 6th season of Game of Thrones, and in 2014 she received the CDG’s Career Achievement Award. When asked what she sacrificed for her art, she replied, “A regular life. I spent a lot of my time on location. But it has meant I’ve traveled all over the world—I wouldn’t exactly call it a sacrifice.”  

Germana Caroli
(August 18, 1931 – January 7, 2024)

Caroli, an Italian singer, was popular in the 1950s. 

Joan Acocella
(April 13, 1945 – January 7, 2024)

Best known as the dance critic from The New Yorker (from 1998-2019), Acocella began her writing career authoring a psychology textbook, and in 1999 wrote Creating Hysteria: Women and Multiple Personality Disorder, in which she examines the "Sybil-ing" of American: over diagnosing women with MPS. In 2008 she published, Twenty-eight Artists and Two Saints: Essays covering Joan of Arc and Mary Magdeline (the saints), and artists like Dorothy Parker, Martha Graham, Twyla Tharp and Susan Sontag. A new collection of Acocella’s writings on literature, The Bloodied Nightgown and Other Essays, is to be published this year.

 

Glynis Johns
(October 5, 1923 – January 4, 2024)

Best known for playing the suffragette Mrs. Banks in "Mary Poppins," Johns had a long and impressive acting career.  "Send in the Clowns" was written for her and she won a Tony for that role in "A Little Night Music." She was charming and spirited in "The Card" with Alec Guinness, and opposite Danny Kaye in "The Court Jester," and was nominated for an Oscar for "The Sundowners," as well as playing an irresistable mermaid in "Miranda." She celebrated her 100th birthday last year.