Music Notes

This was no contest.

Shut down by the coronavirus crisis, Europe's annual musical spectacular that pits countries against one another instead sought to unite them Saturday.

The Eurovision Song Contest whose final was scheduled for Saturday night was canceled amid restrictions aimed at reining in the global pandemic.

So rather than judging songs from 41 artists from Albania to the United Kingdom and having countries allocate points to elect a winner, organizers created a two-hour show called "Eurovision: Europe Shine A Light" that was broadcast in more than 40 countries.

Underscoring the effects of the coronavirus, the show opened with a montage of videos of the deserted streets of European cities before cutting to an almost empty studio in the Netherlands.

It was a stark contrast to the frenetic scenes of flag-waving, screaming fans that form the backdrop for normal Eurovision finales.

Part of the Ahoy convention center in the port city of Rotterdam that was to have hosted the contest was transformed earlier this year into a makeshift care center to ease strain on regular hospitals treating COVID-19 patients.

Saturday's show featured appearances by past favorites as well as the artists that were to have taken part in this year's competition jointly performing 1997's winning song, "Love Shine a Light."

From humble beginnings in 1956, the contest has become a vector of camp and kitsch with almost 200 million viewers tuning in for the finale.

Johnny Logan of Ireland, who won twice as a singer and once as a writer, opened Saturday's show with a performance of his 1980 winning song, "What's Another Year," accompanied by Eurovision fans on screens like a Zoom meeting and the three Dutch presenters of the show. Organizers called it "a huge Eurovision choir."

Måns Zelmerlöw of Sweden sang his 2015 winning song, "Heroes," dedicated to health care workers battling the virus.

Snippets of the 41 songs that were to have taken part in this year's contest were played throughout the show with recorded messages from the performers.

The Mamas, Sweden's entry, urged viewers to stay safe and wash their hands.

Little Richard, one of the chief architects of rock 'n' roll whose piercing wail, pounding piano and towering pompadour irrevocably altered popular music while introducing black R&B to white America, died Saturday after battling bone cancer. He was 87.

Pastor Bill Minson, a close friend of Little Richard's, told The Associated Press that Little Richard died Saturday morning. His son, Danny Jones Penniman, also confirmed his father's death, which was first reported by Rolling Stone.

Bill Sobel, Little Richard's attorney for more than three decades, told the AP in an email that the musician died of bone cancer at a family home in Tullahoma, Tennessee. 

"He was not only an iconic and legendary musician, but he was also a kind, empathetic, and insightful human being," Sobel said. 

Born Richard Penniman, Little Richard was one of rock 'n' roll's founding fathers who helped shatter the color line on the music charts, joining Chuck Berry and Fats Domino in bringing what was once called "race music" into the mainstream. Richard's hyperkinetic piano playing, coupled with his howling vocals and hairdo, made him an implausible sensation — a gay, black man celebrated across America during the buttoned-down Eisenhower era. 

He sold more than 30 million records worldwide, and his influence on other musicians was equally staggering, from the Beatles and Otis Redding to Creedence Clearwater Revival and David Bowie. In his personal life, he wavered between raunch and religion, alternately embracing the Good Book and outrageous behavior and looks - mascara-lined eyes, pencil-thin mustache and glittery suits.

"Little Richard? That's rock 'n' roll," Neil Young, who heard Richard's riffs on the radio in Canada, told biographer Jimmy McDonough. "Little Richard was great on every record." 

It was 1956 when his classic "Tutti Frutti" landed like a hand grenade in the Top 40, exploding from radios and off turntables across the country. It was highlighted by Richard's memorable call of "wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lop-bam-boom." 

A string of hits followed, providing the foundation of rock music: "Lucille," "Keep A Knockin'," "Long Tall Sally," "Good Golly Miss Molly." More than 40 years after the latter charted, Bruce Springsteen was still performing "Good Golly Miss Molly" live.

The Beatles' Paul McCartney imitated Richard's signature yelps — perhaps most notably in the "Wooooo!" from the hit "She Loves You." Ex-bandmate John Lennon covered Richard's "Rip It Up" and "Ready Teddy" on the 1975 "Rock and Roll" album. 

When the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame opened in 1986, he was among the charter members with Elvis Presley, Berry, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Sam Cooke and others. 

"It is with a heavy heart that I ask for prayers for the family of my lifelong friend and fellow rocker Little Richard," said Lewis, 84, in a statement provided by his publicist. "He will live on always in my heart with his amazing talent and his friendship! He was one of a kind and I will miss him dearly. God bless his family and fans."

Mick Jagger called Little Richard "the biggest inspiration of my early teens" in a social media post Saturday. 

"His music still has the same raw electric energy when you play it now as it did when it first shot through the music scene in the mid 50's," Jagger wrote. "When we were on tour with him I would watch his moves every night and learn from him how to entertain and involve the audience and he was always so generous with advice to me. He contributed so much to popular music. I will miss you Richard, God bless."

Few were quicker to acknowledge Little Richard's seminal role than Richard himself. The flamboyant singer claimed he paved the way for Elvis, provided Mick Jagger with his stage moves and conducted vocal lessons for McCartney. 

"I am the architect of rock 'n' roll!" Little Richard crowed at the 1988 Grammy Awards as the crowd rose in a standing ovation. "I am the originator!" 

Richard Wayne Penniman was born in Macon, Georgia, during the Great Depression, one of 12 children. He was ostracized because he was effeminate and suffered a small deformity: his right leg was shorter than his left. 

The family was religious, and Richard sang in local churches with a group called the Tiny Tots. The tug-of-war between his upbringing and rock 'n' roll excess tormented Penniman throughout his career. 

Penniman was performing with bands by the age of 14, but there were problems at home over his sexual orientation. His father beat the boy and derided him as "half a son." 

Richard left home to join a minstrel show run by a man known as Sugarloaf Sam, occasionally appearing in drag. 

In late 1955, Little Richard recorded the bawdy "Tutti Frutti," with lyrics that were sanitized by a New Orleans songwriter. It went on to sell 1 million records over the next year. 

When Little Richard's hit was banned by many white-owned radio stations, white performers like Pat Boone and Elvis Presley did cover versions that topped the charts. 

Little Richard went Hollywood with an appearance in "Don't Knock the Rock." But his wild lifestyle remained at odds with his faith, and a conflicted Richard quit the business in 1957 to enroll in a theological school and get married. 

Richard remained on the charts when his label released previously recorded material. And he recorded a gospel record, returning to his roots. 

A 1962 arrest for a sexual encounter with a man in a bus station restroom led to his divorce and return to performing.

He mounted three tours of England between 1962 and 1964, with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones serving as opening acts. Back in the States, he put together a band that included guitarist Jimi Hendrix — and later fired Hendrix when he was late for a bus. 

In 1968, Richard hit Las Vegas and relaunched his career. Within two years, he had another hit single and made the cover of Rolling Stone. 

By the mid-1970s, Richard was battling a $1,000-a-day cocaine problem and once again abandoned his musical career. He returned to religion, selling Bibles and renouncing homosexuality. For more than a decade, he vanished. 

"If God can save an old homosexual like me, he can save anybody," Richard said. 

But he returned, in 1986, in spectacular fashion. Little Richard was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and appeared in the movie "Down and Out in Beverly Hills." 

A Little Richard song from the soundtrack, "Great Gosh A'Mighty," even put him back on the charts for the first time in more than 15 years. Little Richard was back to stay, enjoying another dose of celebrity that he fully embraced. 

Macon, Georgia, named a street after its favorite son. And Little Richard was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In August 2002, he announced his retirement from live performing. But he continued to appear frequently on television, including a humorous appearance on a 2006 commercial for GEICO insurance.

Richard had hip surgery in November 2009 at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, and asked fans at the time to pray for him. He lived in the Nashville area at the time. 

Former Associated Press writer Larry McShane; AP writer Anthony Izaguirre in Charleston, West Virginia; and AP Music Writer Mesfin Fekadu in New York contributed to this report.

A California appeals court on Tuesday overturned most of a 2017 jury verdict awarding Quincy Jones $9.4 million in royalties and fees from the Michael Jackson estate over the use of Jones-produced Jackson hits in the concert film "This Is It" and two Cirque du Soleil shows.

The state's 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled that the jury misinterpreted a contract that was the judge's job to interpret anyway. It took away $6.9 million that jurors had said MJJ Productions owed Jones for his work on "Billie Jean," "Thriller," and more of Jackson's biggest hits. 

The appeals court found that the jury wrongly granted Jones money from licensing fees, wrongly went beyond the 10% royalty rate Jones was owed for record sales, and incorrectly granted Jones money for remixes of Jackson's master recordings. 

The court kept intact $2.5 million of the award, which Jones said he was owed for the use of his masters in "This Is It" and other fees. 

The court also rejected a counter-appeal from the 87-year-old Jones arguing that the trial court should have allowed him to make a claim of financial elder abuse.

"While we disagree with portions of the Court's decision and are evaluating our options going forward, we are pleased that the Court affirmed the jury's determination that MJJP failed to pay Quincy Jones more than $2.5M that it owed him," Jones' attorney J. Michael Hennigan said in a statement. 

Jones, who was already a music business giant when he produced the classic Jackson albums "Off the Wall," "Thriller" and "Bad," had sought $30 million from the estate when he first filed the lawsuit in 2013. 

"Quincy Jones was the last person we thought would try to take advantage of Michael Jackson by filing a lawsuit three years after he died asking for tens of millions of dollars he wasn't entitled to," Jackson attorney Howard Weitzman said in a statement. "We knew the verdict was wrong when we heard it, and the court of appeal has completely vindicated us."

On the stand during the trial, Jones was asked by Weitzman whether he realized he was essentially suing Jackson himself.

Jones angrily disagreed.

"I'm not suing Michael," he said. "I'm suing you all."

The trial centered on the definitions of terms in the two contracts Jackson and Jones signed in 1978 and 1985.

Under the deals, for example, Jones is entitled to a share of net receipts from a "videoshow" of the songs. The Jackson attorneys argued that the term was meant to apply to music videos and not feature films like "This Is It."

The film was created from rehearsal footage for a comeback tour that Jackson was working toward when he died in 2009 at age 50. 

"So many people have tried to take advantage of Michael and mischaracterize him since his death," Jackson estate co-executor John Branca said in a statement Tuesday. "It's gratifying that in this case the court in an overwhelmingly favorable and just decision, recognizes that Michael Jackson was both an enormous talent and an extremely fair business executive."

Colin Poulton moved to Nashville in 2008 to study commercial guitar. He dropped out of college but stuck with the city and the guitar, first playing in a series of original bands and more recently making his living in the honky-tonks of Lower Broadway along with "a few wedding bands and some other bands."

All those gigs ended abruptly when the coronavirus hit. The clubs shut down on March 16 to slow the spread, and Nashville's normally packed downtown streets are all but deserted. Poulton applied for unemployment as soon as Congress passed the federal relief bill extending benefits to nontraditional workers. He's been without steady work for five weeks now but so far has received nothing. 

"A lot of us went from having anywhere from four to seven gigs a week to nothing," Poulton said.

With its vibrant music industry, Nashville is a magnet for people like Poulton. Music City is known as the home of country music in the U.S., but tens of thousands of professional musicians of all kinds live there, drawn to the plentiful job opportunities and the camaraderie of a community of artists. Now they're caught up in an unemployment system that's not geared toward them.

"There's a lot of confusion and, frankly, fear rampant in the community because they don't know if they're going to get something and, if so, how much," said Dave Pomeroy, president of the Nashville Musicians Association, the local union. Pomeroy said probably 100,000 people in Nashville play music professionally, although they may not all be full-time musicians. 

The state isn't sure how many nontraditional workers have applied for unemployment, but it has received about 75,000 claims that were initially deemed ineligible. The majority of those are assumed to be from nontraditional workers, Department of Labor and Workforce Development spokesman Chris Cannon said. 

For many of Nashville's musicians, there's an additional hitch. Their income is from a mix of sources, some treating them as employees and others treating them as independent contractors or self-employed. 

Cannon said workers who have any money coming in on a W-2 and are eligible for traditional state unemployment can't claim the new federal unemployment benefits from their contract work, even if that makes up the majority of their income. But many musicians don't know that. 

"It's created a real black hole for these people," said Pomeroy, who's been trying to act as a liaison with the state to provide musicians with answers about unemployment.Session bassist Eli Beaird said his W-2 work makes up only about 10% of his income, but it allowed him to apply for unemployment through the state system. He hasn't received anything yet, but the system shows him as eligible for $50 per week in unemployment benefits. That's far short of the state's $275 weekly maximum, which is what he would likely receive if he could base his benefits off his contractor work. 

Fortunately, anyone receiving unemployment from either traditional or nontraditional work is also eligible for a $600 per week coronavirus supplement, although Beaird hasn't received that either. 

Beaird said he is lucky to earn most of his incoming from recording, which will probably bounce back more quickly than performing. 

"Live music sounds terrifying right now," he said. He has friends who tour with country star Miranda Lambert. "When's the next time any of us thinks it's going to be safe to put 40,000 people in a room together?" 

The state started distributing benefits to the self-employed, independent contractors and gig workers this week and Cannon said most should have their benefits by early next week, but Poulton said Friday that he still wasn't finding himself in the state's system. 

Poulton lives with his girlfriend and their son and says they have enough money to meet expenses for about a month. He's worried but still thinks thinks shutting the clubs was the right thing to do. 

"I was anxious going into that petri dish," he said.