Johnny Griffith, 66, a keyboard player with the Funk Brothers, the highly skilled group of Detroit studio musicians who helped create and define the legendary Motown sound, died of a heart attack Sunday at a Detroit hospital.
His death occurred hours before the local premiere of Standing in the Shadows of Motown, a documentary film that gives belated recognition to the anonymous studio band that furnished much of the instrumental sound for Motown.
A racially integrated collective of about a dozen top jazz and R&B; musicians in Detroit who worked at Motown from 1959 to 1972, the Funk Brothers provided the background music for greats including Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross and the Supremes, Smokey Robinson, the Temptations, the Four Tops and Stevie Wonder.
Mr. Griffith most notably played electric piano on Mr. Gaye's "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" and the Temptations' "Ain't Too Proud to Beg," the swirling organ on The Supremes' "Stop in the Name of Love" and the organ and shotgun effects on Junior Walker and the All-Stars' "Shotgun."
Margaret "Peg" Phillips, 84, a retired accountant who took acting classes at age 65 and won fame as tart-tongued shopkeeper Ruth-Anne Miller in the television series Northern Exposure, died Thursday at a Seattle health-care center. A smoker, she had lung disease.
CBS issued a statement saying, "Peg Phillips' memorable portrayal of Ruth-Anne Miller ... left an indelible imprint with the millions of loyal fans of this groundbreaking series, as well as with everyone at the network who had the opportunity to know and work with her."
In 1990, she was cast in what was supposed to be an intermittent role in the CBS series on the fish-out-of-water travails of a New York doctor working off his student loan in the fictional town of Cicely, Alaska. Shot in Washington state, the show began as a summer replacement series but became so strong in the ratings it ran through 1995.
Similarly, Ms. Phillips made her character so popular she was given a regular role. On occasion, she wrote her own lines. Criticized for smoking in one episode, she retorted: "I've been smoking since I was 13 years old, and during the Eisenhower administration I peaked at three packs a day. I'm not about to stop now."
Scorning pretension, she wore blue jeans, a red and white checked blouse, blue suspenders and brown sandals to the Emmy Awards ceremony when she was nominated for best supporting actress in 1993. When asked who designed her outfit, she replied, "Me."
Jerry Sohl, 88, a science fiction writer whose books included The Transcendent Man and The Altered Ego, died Nov. 5 in Thousand Oaks, Calif.
Mr. Sohl, also a scriptwriter for television shows including Star Trek and The Twilight Zone, was a Los Angeles native who grew up in Chicago and dropped out of college for a career in journalism. He worked as a photographer, police reporter, critic and reviewer for several Midwest papers after World War II service in the Army Air Forces.
Other Sohl books included The Mars Monopoly, The Lemon Eaters, The Resurrection of Frank Borchard and The Spun Sugar Hole.
John Lynker, 75, a veteran broadcaster who wound up his career at Washington's all-news WTOP radio, died Monday at a hospital in Middletown, Conn. He had heart and lung disease.
Mr. Lynker worked at numerous radio stations across the country during a career that spanned half a century. His final stop was WTOP, where he had first worked in 1969. He returned in 1980 as a news anchor and automotive reporter and stayed until semiretiring in October of last year.