His credits include the campy 1972 horror film "The Thing With Two Heads."
Robert O. Ragland, a film composer for such 1970s cult movies as The Thing With Two Heads and Grizzly, died April 18 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 80.

Ragland was preceded in death by his wife Martha Montgomery, who married Ragland in 1972 after the death of her husband, nine-time Oscar-winning film composer Alfred Newman (The King and I).

A native of Chicago, Ragland served as a musical arranger for the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra before entering the advertising business. He then came to Hollywood in the late 1960s and wound up scoring more than 50 films.

In addition to the The Thing With Two Heads (1972), starring Ray Milland and Roosevelt Grier, and Grizzly (1976), which saw Christopher George battle an out-of-control bear in a state park, Ragland composed music for such films as Project: Kill (1976) starring Leslie Nielsen, Q (1982), 10 to Midnight (1983) with Charles Bronson, No Place to Hide (1993), The Raffle (1994), Top of the World (1997), Menahem Golan's Crime and Punishment (2002) and Downtown: A Street Tale (2004).

He is survived by his brother Alan.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/robert-o-ragland-film-composer-315022

Ap.org...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Charles “Skip” Pitts, the longtime Memphis guitar
player for Isaac Hayes whose distinctive sound helped define soul and
make “Shaft” cool, has died. He was 65.


Tim Sampson, communication director with the Stax Museum of American
Soul Music, said Pitts died Tuesday in Memphis after a long struggle
with cancer.


Pitts was responsible for the unforgettable wah-wah pedal guitar sound
on Hayes’ ”Theme from Shaft,” the ‘70s Blaxploitation film that
remains a memorable moment in American popular culture — mostly due to
the enduring popularity of the song. Pitts’ 1971 riff was angry and
bristling with menace, capturing a dangerous vibe that transcended the
screen and translated to the streets of a tense nation.


He also was responsible the guitar line from The Isley Brothers’ ”It’s
Your Thing,” also a distinctive, influential moment in American music.


Schooled by neighbor Bo Diddley while growing up in Washington, D.C.,
Pitts first recorded when he was 15 and had a long, historic run in
Memphis after moving there to join Hayes. He played with the deep-
voiced soul singer for nearly four decades, worked as a session
musician for Stax Records where some of America’s greatest music was
made and logged time with many significant soul and blues acts,
including Al Green, Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave, Rufus Thomas and
Albert King.


Late in his career, he made appearances in movies like “Black Snake
Moan,” to which he also contributed three soundtrack entries, and
“Soul Men” and performed on the score for “Hustle and Flow.”


Most recently he appeared on Green’s “I Can’t Stop” and Cyndi Lauper’s
“Memphis Blues,” both of which were nominated for Grammy Awards. He
also released an album last fall with his band The Bo-Keys.

Actress Patricia Medina dies at 92
Starred in 'Mr. Arkadin,' adventure films
By Variety Staff

Patricia Medina, an actress best known for lead roles in Orson Welles' "Mr. Arkadin" and a variety of adventure films of the 1950s and for her marriage to actor Joseph Cotten, died Saturday, April 28, in Los Angeles of natural causes. She was 92.
Medina played Kitty in the 1948 version of "The Three Musketeers" that starred Gene Kelly and Lana Turner, starred opposite Donald O'Connor in 1950's "Francis," the first in the talking mule comedy film series, starred with Karl Malden in the Edgar Allan Poe-based mystery horror film "Phantom of the Rue Morgue" (1954) and was the female lead in Welles' 1955 "Mr. Arkadin" (aka "Confidential Report").

The beautiful actress with the dark, exotic looks was very busy in the early 1950s, starring in swashbuckling adventures "Fortunes of Captain Blood" (1950), "The Lady and the Bandit" (1951), "Lady in the Iron Mask" (1952) and "Captain Pirate" (1952), all opposite actor Louis Hayward. She also starred in "Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion," "Aladdin and His Lamp" and "Siren of Bagdad," among others.

The British-born Medina began her movie career with small roles in English film in the late 1930s. She worked steadily during the 1940s and had her first lead role in British comedy "Don't Take It to Heart" opposite Richard Greene, the British actor whom she had married in 1941. Medina's first American film was the 1946 Claudette Colbert-Walter Pidgeon starrer "The Secret Heart." She had a supporting role in "The Foxes of Harrow," starring Rex Harrison, the following year. Her first lead role in a Hollywood film was in "Francis."

By the mid-'50s Medina was transitioning into roles on American television, appearing on "The Ford Television Theatre," "G.E. True Theater," "Perry Mason" and the TV series adaptation of "The Third Man." She also recurred on "Zorro."

Medina had divorced Richard Greene in 1951, and she married actor Joseph Cotten in 1960 at a ceremony held at the Beverly Hills home of David O. Selznick and Jennifer Jones. The Cottens subsequently toured in several plays together; Medina made her Broadway debut in 1962 in the mystery play "Calculated Risk," starring Cotten.

Returning to the bigscreen, the actress had an interesting supporting role as a dominatrix in Robert Aldrich's controversial 1968 lesbian melodrama "The Killing of Sister George."

Also during the 1960s she guested on TV series including "Rawhide," "Have Gun -- Will Travel," "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour" and "The Man From U.N.C.L.E."

Patricia Paz Maria Medina was born in Liverpool to an English mother and Spanish father. She remained married to Cotten until his death in 1994.

Her memoir "Laid Back in Hollywood" was published in 1998.

There are no immediate survivors.

John Cowsill posted on facebook that drummer Buddy Saltzman passed away. "For those of you who don't know his legacy...he was the main drummer on all the four season records and countless others. He also was the man on all our early Cowsill records."

All Music:

In the realm of studio drumming and hit records, Buddy Saltzman is best-known for the type of records where many listeners don't even notice the drums. This was quite often an aspect of a folk-rock hit, an irony since one of the so-called revolutionary aspects of the style was adding a drum set to a folkie combo. Saltzman was the guy asked to bring his, setting up his drums on records by artists such as the Cyrkle, Peter, Paul & Mary, and Ian & Sylvia. His sensitive style, friendly in the dynamics department, was also just what was needed for the unique, haunting works of some of the best singer/songwriters from the '60s and '70s, including Janis Ian, Tim Hardin, and Laura Nyro. All in all, despite a background that also included R&B hits by the Coasters, Saltzman's reputation could be summarized as more of a groovy drummer than a big-beat man.

This description might be withdrawn in light of the revelation that he recorded on bongos more than once. If that isn't enough to take back a "groovy," it was also Saltzman, along with peers such as guitarists Hugh McCracken and Dave Appell, bassist Chuck Rainey, and fellow drummer Gary Chester, who provided the instrumental backup on records by the Archies. Chester is another studio drummer whose career overlaps with Saltzman, and students of rock drumming can try to figure out which one of the two is playing on sides by the Monkees. When it comes to the Four Seasons, however, Saltzman seems to have been a favorite of the group's creator, Frankie Valli. The subsequent string of hits features the drummer's most aggressive and bombastic work, inspiring the following description of Saltzman over cyberspace: "God as a drummer." The point is well-taken. If God played drums, he most certainly would be sensitive to dynamics.