Richie Havens

Richie Havens performing at the Rainbow theatre in London in 1972.

Richie Havens, who has died of a heart attack aged 72, is best known for his opening performance at the historic 1969 Woodstock festival. He had been scheduled to go on fifth, but major traffic snarl-ups delayed many of the performers, so he was put on first and told to perform a lengthy set.

He entranced the audience for three hours, being called back time and again for encores. With his repertoire exhausted, he improvised a song based on the spiritual Motherless Child. This became Freedom, his best known song and an anthem for a generation. His inclusion on the subsequent film of the festival – where he can be seen strutting around the stage, pouring every ounce of emotion into the song – further enhanced his reputation. The song was included on the soundtrack of Quentin Tarantino's 2012 slavery-era film Django Unchained.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, the eldest of nine children, Havens formed street corner doo-wop groups with his friends, and sang with the McCrea Gospel Singers at the age of 16. Although he had already visited the artistic hotbed Greenwich Village, to read poetry, he was 20 before he moved there to live, soon learning to play the guitar and performing in the Village's folk venues, where this 6ft 6in tall African American stood out in the largely white clubs.

His distinctive guitar playing and soulful, gruff singing style quickly marked him out as a performer to watch, and after a couple of albums on the Douglas label, Havens was signed up by Bob Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman, who secured a record deal with Verve Records.

The first album with Verve, Mixed Bag (1967), included his own anti-war ballad, Handsome Johnny (co-written with the actor Louis Gossett Jr), and a handful of covers, including John Lennon and Paul McCartney's Eleanor Rigby and Dylan's Just Like a Woman. As with all his subsequent covers, he made the songs his own, with his highly rhythmic guitar accompaniment.

In 1968, he told the American folk music magazine Sing Out! that he wanted to put "the intonations of America" on Eleanor Rigby and other Lennon and McCartney songs. A couple more albums were released before Woodstock – Something Else Again (1968) and Richard P Havens, 1983 (1969). The latter included an apocalyptic vision of the future inspired by George Orwell and was his first album to make the US top 100 charts.

His Woodstock success encouraged Havens to found his own record label, Stormy Forest, and although the first album, Stonehenge (1970), was more subdued than his Woodstock audience expected, his next record, Alarm Clock (1971), indeed became a wake-up call: it was his highest charting album, and a single of George Harrison's Here Comes the Sun made the US top 20.

Havens went on to release several more albums through the mid-1970s, although it was his live performances that earned the greatest praise. In the same year as Woodstock, he appeared at the Isle of Wight festival, and the studio audience for his appearance on The Johnny Carson Show in the US was so enthusiastic that Carson invited him back the following evening – only the second time this had ever happened.

During the 1970s, Havens diversified into acting. He starred in the original stage performance of the Who's Tommy in 1972 and took the lead role in Catch My Soul, the 1974 film based on Othello. He co-starred with Richard Pryor in the 1977 film Greased Lightning.

Into the 1980s, Havens continued to tour and record, although he never improved on his previous chart success. His voice was heard on McDonald's adverts all over America, singing Here Comes the Sun, and he collaborated with the British electronic music duo Groove Armada – their song Hands of Time featured on the soundtrack of the Tom Cruise film Collateral (2004).

From the 1970s, Havens became concerned about educating young people about ecological issues. He co-founded a children's oceanographic museum in the Bronx, the North Wind Undersea Institute, and encouraged young people to have a hands-on role in making a positive contribution to improving the environment.

His 1993 retrospective album, Resume: The Best of Richie Havens, did much to remind a new audience of his back catalogue. In the year it was released, he appeared alongside Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins and Arlo Guthrie at the Troubadours of Folk festival in Los Angeles. A capacity audience would not let him leave the stage at the end of his concert. He later described it as a "Greenwich Village class reunion".

Havens sang at Bill Clinton's 1993 presidential inauguration and also performed several times for the Dalai Lama. He appeared at the 30th and 40th Woodstock anniversary celebrations, and at Dylan's 30th anniversary concert in 1992, where he sang Just Like a Woman. His autobiography, They Can't Hide Us Anymore, was published in 1999; the title refers to his thoughts during his helicopter ride over the Woodstock crowds in 1969. His last album was Nobody Left to Crown (2008).

Havens's repertoire was always a mixture of his own compositions and covers of other songwriters: he had a special talent for interpreting other people's songs, always delivered in his soulful, fiery and passionate vocal style with his attacking, urgent, rhythmic guitar accompaniment.

After kidney surgery in 2010, Havens retired from touring. He is survived by four daughters.

• Richard Pierce Havens, folk singer and guitarist, born 21 January 1941; died 22 April 2013

George Jones

The clash between God and the devil, drink and the divine, was the touchstone for George Jones's talent.

George Jones, who has died aged 81, was country music's most stylish and emotional singer. Less well-known outside the genre than his one-time wife Tammy Wynette, he had one of the finest voices of the 20th century. He was the king of honky-tonk, the raw electric country style, and was in a direct line from Ernest Tubb and Hank Williams.

The youngest of eight children, Jones was born in Saratoga, east Texas, in a region known as Big Thicket, a wooded oil-rich backwater on the edge of the Louisiana bayous. His father, also George, was a truck driver and oil worker who took solace in his guitar and the bottle. His mother, Clara, found comfort in music, sobriety and fundamentalist religion.

The young George absorbed all his parents' influences. He sang at church, got his first guitar at nine and was busking on the streets of Beaumont by the age of 11. He married his first wife, Dorothy, when he was 19; they divorced within a year and he joined the marines soon after.

He was in thrall to Roy Acuff and Williams; the latter told Jones not to copy him but to find his own voice. Jones listened but like Williams headed straight for the honky-tonk. Jones's raw emotions fought through knots in his stomach and twists in his heart. Like Jerry Lee Lewis, the clash between God and the devil, drink and the divine, was the touchstone for his talent.

Shaping his style, Jones became a master of melisma, a gospel technique that involved the stretching of a syllable across several musical notes that were decorated and feathered at their ends for maximum emotional impact. His voice started with an open-throated wail, then clamped down with a keening tug as he rose into a cry, then swooped down into his rich baritone. The voice pines, the tension is never released and the emotion remains undiluted.

Out of the marines, Jones had his first country hit in 1955 with Why Baby Why, released on the Starday label. While Elvis Presley and rock'n'roll emerged, Jones plunged deeper into hard country. He went on to record for Mercury, United Artists, Musicor and Epic and enjoyed a long string of hits including White Lightning (1959), Tender Years (1961), She Thinks I Still Care (1962), Walk Through This World with Me (1967) and The Grand Tour (1974), all of which reached No 1 in the US country charts.

When Jones released I'll Share My World with You in 1969, his fans knew it was Wynette he was singing about. She appeared on the cover of the album of the same name. Jones, after a divorce from his second wife, Shirley, married Wynette in 1969. Jones and Wynette were Mr and Mrs Country Music and their life together became a country soap opera, with every bottle drunk and thrown, every twist and turn in the road documented in song. Their divorce was marked by another gut-wrenching single, Golden Ring, released in 1976 – the year after they divorced. They christened their daughter Tamala Georgette; she later became the country singer Georgette Jones.

After their divorce, Wynette and Jones continued to tour and record together. Jones survived alcohol and cocaine abuse in the 1970s to enjoy a renaissance the following decade with hits such as the Grammy award-winning He Stopped Loving Her Today (1980), Still Doin' Time (1981) and I Always Get Lucky with You (1983). He sang of loss and denial, encyclopedically detailing alcoholism on songs such as the 1981 single If Drinkin' Don't Kill Me (Her Memory Will). "With the blood from my body," he sang in that song, "I could start my own still." His intense, heartbreaking honky-tonk still rang true through the subsequent decades when country music became "new country" and went limp.

Known as both Possum and No Show Jones, he could disappear before a show and be found two weeks later in a motel room with a bottle of whisky. His life stabilised after he married Nancy Sepulvado in 1983 and she became his manager. Even so, in 1999 – the year he won a Grammy for Choices – after being sober for 13 years, he got drunk and smashed his car into a bridge. He entered rehab and proclaimed, "The Lord still has work for me to do." He continued to tour and record and, in 2012, won a Grammy for lifetime achievement. "Who's gonna fill their shoes?" he sang on his 1985 single of the same name. The answer is no one.

As well as his daughter with Wynette, Jones had a daughter, Susan, from his first marriage and two sons, Jeffrey and Brian, from his second marriage. He is survived by Nancy and his children.

• George Glenn Jones, country singer, born 12 September 1931; died 26 April 2013

Jonathan Winters, who has died aged 87, was a moon-faced American comedian with a remarkable gift for mimicry which he deployed in manic improvisations featuring a cast of misfit characters that ranged from delinquent old ladies to country bumpkins.

Jonathan Winters in It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World 

He came to notice in Britain when he played the slow-witted removal lorry driver in It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), an ensemble film with an all-star cast, mainly comedians and comic actors chosen for their verbal skills.

Once defined as “more intense than Bob Hope, more restless than George Burns or Jack Benny, more fleeting than Lenny Bruce or Richard Pryor”, Winters was an energetic pioneer of impromptu standup comedy in the 1950s with an outlandish line in free-form monologues.

But while he was raising laughs with his unscripted verbal flights of fancy, facial contortions and self-generated sound effects like dripping taps and rushing waterfalls, the pressure of touring led to a mental breakdown, and he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Rejecting the conventional stand-up comedian’s reliance on quick-fire jokes, Winters entertained in a stream-of-consciousness style that could stray into the surreal. As well as his remarkable ear for voices and characters, he could transform the most mundane object into an instrument of mirth. On one American television show, Winters was handed a foot-long stick and became in turn a fisherman, violinist, lion tamer, canoeist, bullfighter, flautist, delusional psychiatric patient, British headmaster and Bing Crosby’s golf club. “Improvisation is about taking chances,” he would say, “and I was ready to take chances.”

Jonathan Harshman Winters was born on November 11 1925 in Dayton, Ohio. An only child in a prosperous family, whose parents divorced when he was seven, he spent much time entertaining himself. He described his father as an alcoholic, and regarded his paternal grandfather — an eccentric extrovert as well as proprietor of the local bank — as his principal influence.

At 17 Jonathan left Dayton High School, joined the Marines and served two years in the South Pacific during the Second World War. On his return he attended the Dayton Art Institute, where he developed his keen observational skills, and met and married a fellow student, Eileen Schauder.

At her suggestion, he entered a talent contest and won first prize (a wristwatch) by doing impressions of film stars. This led to a job presenting the early morning show on a Dayton radio station in which he would create characters and interview them using two voices.

Winters moved to New York where he soon made a reputation in stand-up comedy clubs. One night after a show, an old man sweeping up suggested that instead of mimicking the rich and famous, he should draw on people he knew. Within a couple of days, Winters had devised one of his most famous characters: a hard-drinking, dirty old woman called Maude Frickert, modelled in part on his own mother and an aunt.

High-profile appearances on television specials and chat shows followed and Winters soon built a following. But his career faltered in 1959 when he succumbed to depression and drink, and he burst into tears on stage at a nightclub in San Francisco. Taken into custody by police who found him climbing the rigging of an old sailing ship, and claiming he was from outer space, Winters spent eight months in a psychiatric hospital.

A turning point in his recovery was his role as the browbeaten furniture removal man Lennie Pike in the slapstick film caper It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. “I was fresh out of the hospital. I didn’t know if I was up to doing a picture such as this,” he recalled. But he took the part at his wife’s insistence, and “I finally opened up, I realised I was back, and I was in charge of myself and my mind”.

Roles in other films followed — he played two brothers in the film adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One in 1964 — as did further television shows, including his own. In 1981 Winters was cast in the sitcom Mork and Mindy, teamed with Robin Williams, an admirer whose own gift for off-the-wall improvisation made him the Jonathan Winters of his generation.

In later years, Winters contributed to numerous cartoons and animated films, playing three characters in the film The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle in 2000. His recent work included voicing Papa Smurf in the 2011 live action film The Smurfs, and a sequel due to be released in July.

Winters won two Grammys, and an Emmy for best supporting actor as Randy Quaid’s father in the American sitcom Davis Rules (1991). He was awarded the Kennedy Centre’s second Mark Twain Prize for Humour in 1999, a year after Richard Pryor.

As a trained artist, he often introduced humour into his pictures and sketches. Among his books was a collection of short stories called Winters’ Tales (1987).

Jonathan Winters’ wife, Eileen, died in 2009. Their two children survive him.

Jonathan Winters, born November 11 1925, died April 11 2013

Milo O’Shea

Milo O’Shea, the Irish character actor, who has died aged 86, made his breakthrough from stage into films playing Leopold Bloom in the controversial 1967 adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Milo O'Shea

With what one admirer described as his “God-given gift of a pair of bushy black eyebrows that seem to have a life of their own”, O’Shea also starred in the 1960s BBC Television sitcom Me Mammy. In America, where he lived for nearly 40 years, he appeared in the hit comedy Cheers and the political drama The West Wing.

O’Shea memorably played a mad scientist in Roger Vadim’s fantasy Barbarella, and a paedophile priest in Neil Jordan’s 1997 film The Butcher Boy. He also deployed his considerable comic talents in character parts on the stage.

His most notable film role was as the cuckolded Leopold Bloom in Joseph Strick’s adaptation of Ulysses. Described as “unfilmable”, the novel had fomented controversy since its publication in 1922 .

Though the novel was never banned in Ireland, the film was prohibited for more than 30 years, being awarded a certificate only in 2000.

Co-starring Barbara Jefford as Bloom’s adulterous wife, Molly, the movie tracked Bloom’s circuitous odyssey around Dublin’s pubs and brothels. While critics complained that it failed to offer the flavour or power of Joyce’s novel, O’Shea himself turned in a compelling performance.

When the British Board of Film Censors demanded 29 cuts to remove strong language and sexual references, Strick replaced the offending scenes with blank footage and a soundtrack of shrieks. It was eventually passed uncut and given an X-certificate, one of the first films to feature the “f-word”.

Although a contender for the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1967, Ulysses was dramatically withdrawn halfway through the screening when Strick realised that the French subtitles had been erased. He stormed up to the projection room and tried to switch off the film, and was thrown down the stairs, breaking an ankle.

Milo O’Shea was born on June 2 1926 in Dublin and educated at the Synge Street Christian Brothers School. Early acting successes at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, were repeated in London, where he made an impact in 1961 with Glory Be! at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East.

His success as Bloom in Ulysses led to a starring role on Broadway in the drama Staircase, an early attempt to depict homosexual men in a serious way, and he co-starred alongside Yootha Joyce in the BBC sitcom Me Mammy, which ran between 1968 and 1971.

Created by his friend Hugh Leonard, this series featured O’Shea as a lecherous company executive, Bunjy Kennefick, whose jet-setting bachelor lifestyle is hobbled by his moralising Irish Catholic mother, played by Anna Manahan (who was actually only two years older than O’Shea).

Meanwhile, his film career continued to thrive, with roles as the well-intentioned Friar Laurence in Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968) and as the evil dictator Dr Durand Durand trying to kill Jane Fonda’s character by making her die of pleasure in Roger Vadim’s counterculture classic Barbarella (also 1968). In the 1980s O’Shea’s character inspired the name of the pop band Duran Duran, and in 1984 he reprised the role for the group’s concert film Arena.

In 1976 O’Shea moved to the United States, took American citizenship and became a familiar face in films and on television.

He took a memorable supporting role as the trial judge in the legal drama The Verdict (1982), starring Paul Newman , and on television was cast as the Chief Justice of the United States, Roy Ashland, in The West Wing. In 1992 he was a guest star in the final series of the sitcom Cheers .

Milo O’Shea’s first wife, the actress Maureen Toal, died last year. The couple divorced in 1974, and he is survived by his second wife, the actress Kitty Sullivan, with whom he appeared in a Broadway revival of My Fair Lady in 1981, and his two sons.

Milo O’Shea, born June 2 1926, died April 2 2013

Jane Henson

Jane Henson, who has died aged 78, was a puppeteer and co-creator of the Muppets; her early designs for characters on the television programme Sam and Friends shaped the unique style of her husband Jim’s internationally successful Muppet Show.

Jane and Jim Henson with the cast of 'Sam and Friends'

When the pair met in a puppeteering class at the University of Maryland, Jim Henson was 19, two years her junior, and had made his television debut in his last year of high school. From 1955 to 1961, Jane was his performing partner on Sam and Friends, a twice-daily, five-minute show that aired live .

Together they pioneered a new performance style that gave their puppets a realistic edge. While most puppeteers of the era were still using theatrical techniques, hiding behind a screen or sitting onstage with the puppet, Jane and Jim worked with a viewing monitor below camera-level, holding the puppets high above their heads. The characters lip-synched to popular songs and performed sketches that spoofed other television shows.

“We were mostly doing it just to entertain ourselves,” Jane later claimed; but the show’s manic energy won many supporters, and its bizarre cast of characters included an early prototype for the Muppets’ biggest star — Kermit the Frog.

Jane Nebel was born on June 16 1934 in St Albans, New York City, the youngest of three children. Her father, Adalbert, was an astrologer who worked under the name Dal Lee. She majored in Fine Art at the University of Maryland, and was intent on a teaching career when she met Jim Henson, who was studying to be a commercial artist. He was then working part-time for WRC-TV’s weekday show Afternoon, and needed a partner for a regular feature entitled Inga’s Angle. Jane agreed to work alongside him, and their success soon gave them their own slot for Sam and Friends.

With Jim’s friend Bob Payne, they spent many hours preparing each skit, rehearsing and making puppets. In 1956 Jim and Jane were asked to perform on Steve Allen’s Tonight show. Jim, as Kermit the Frog, and Jane, as the purple skull-like Yorick, performed I’ve Grown Accustomed to Your Face.

The success of Sam and Friends paved the way for further television ventures, including an advertising contract with Wilkins Coffee. When Jim set off on a tour of Europe in 1958, he handed control of the show to Jane. By the time he returned, Sam and Friends had been nominated for an Emmy award. Jane became Henson’s formal business partner in the same year.

After graduation, Jane studied Fine Art at Catholic University in Washington, DC, and she and Jim married in 1959. To prepare for the occasion, Jim shaved off his beard and sent her the clippings with a note reading: “From Samson to Delilah.” Their first child was born a year later, and Jane retired from puppetry in 1961 to become a full-time mother (they would have five children together.)

The family moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, in January 1964. There, Jane Henson was an assistant art teacher at the Mead School for Human Development. She continued to have an active role behind the scenes of the Jim Henson Company, collaborating with him on projects such as The Art of the Muppets touring exhibit, which debuted at the Lincoln Center in New York in 1979, and the Sesame Street Live arena stage shows. She also made occasional appearances on Sesame Street, providing the movements for various Muppets. From 1982 she served on the board of the Jim Henson Foundation, established to promote the art of puppetry in the United States.

Jim Henson died in 1990 aged 53, after developing a bacterial infection that led to sepsis. Though they had separated by the time of his death, Jane Henson was determined to celebrate and preserve his life’s work.

In 1992 she founded the Jim Henson Legacy, which continues to publicise his creative influence through exhibitions and presentations.

In 2010 she donated several of the Muppets from Sam and Friends — including the original Kermit the Frog — to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

Once asked for her reaction to seeing the Henson collection on display, she replied: “I don’t think of it as historical. It’s my life.”

Her children survive her.

Jane Henson, born June 16 1934, died April 2 2013