Galt MacDermot
Arthur Terence Galt MacDermot (December 18, 1928 – December 17, 2018) was a Canadian-American composer, pianist and writer of musical theater. He won a Grammy Award for the song "African Waltz" in 1960. His most-successful musicals were Hair (1967; its cast album also won a Grammy) and Two Gentlemen of Verona (1971). MacDermot also composed music for film soundtracks, jazz and funk albums, and classical music, and his music has been sampled in hit hip-hop songs and albums. He is best known for his work on Hair, which produced three number-one singles in 1969: "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In", "Good Morning Starshine", and the title song "Hair".
Galt MacDermot
December 17, 2018 (aged 89)
5
Terence MacDermot (father)
- Musical theater
- jazz
- funk
- classical music
- film score
- Composer
- pianist
1954–2018
Death[edit]
MacDermot died at his home in Staten Island, New York on December 17, 2018, the day before his 90th birthday.[1][9]
His identical twin daughters and caregivers,
Bonnie "Nummy" Jolanthe MacDermot and Sarah "Sassy" Rowena MacDermot,
died one day apart in November 2020 at the age of 55, also in Staten Island, New York, where they were born on February 8, 1965. Sarah died on November 7 from undisclosed causes, and Jolanthe -- who had battled stage four breast cancer -- died one day later, on November 8, 2020.[10]
Samples and other use[edit]
MacDermot's music is popular with collectors of jazz and funk. Working with jazz musicians such as Bernard Purdie, Jimmy Lewis, and Idris Muhammad, MacDermot created pieces that prefigured the funk material of James Brown. In more-recent decades, his work became popular with hip hop musicians including Busta Rhymes, who sampled "Space" from MacDermot's 1969 record Woman Is Sweeter for the smash-hit "Woo-Hah!! Got You All in Check", and Run DMC, which sampled the Hair song "Where Do I Go?" in its Grammy Award-winning "Down with the King".[3] Handsome Boy Modelling School ("The Truth"), DJ Vadim, DJ Premier and Oh No have all sampled the same segment from "Coffee Cold", from Shapes of Rhythm (1966).[11]
Scottish electronica duo Boards of Canada used a loop in their track "Aquarius" (Music Has the Right to Children) which was sampled from MacDermot's song of the same name from the 1979 soundtrack of the film Hair.[12]
As part of his Special Herbs series, rapper MF DOOM sampled three MacDermot songs from Woman Is Sweeter: "Cathedral" for his song "Pennyroyal", "Space" for "Cinquefoil", and "Princess Gika" for "Styrax Gum".[13] "Cathedral" is also sampled in Westside Gunn's "Dear Winter Bloody Fiegs" for his 2015 mixtape Hitler Wears Hermes 3. In 2006, rapper and producer Oh No released an album produced completely with MacDermot samples, titled Exodus into Unheard Rhythms.[14]
(excluding cast albums and soundtracks)