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LONDON — A Pink Floyd spokesman says founding member Richard Wright has died. He was 65.

Wright died Monday after a battle with cancer at his home in Britain. His family did not want to give more details about his death. The spokesman is Doug Wright, who is not related to the artist.

Richard Wright met Pink Floyd members Roger Waters and Nick Mason at college and joined their early band Sigma 6.

Sigma 6 eventually became Pink Floyd and Wright wrote and sang some of the band’s key songs. He wrote “The Great Gig In The Sky” and “Us And Them” from Pink Floyd’s 1973 “The Dark Side Of The Moon.”

He left the group in the early 1980s to form his own band but rejoined Pink Floyd for their 1987 album “A Momentary Lapse of Reason.”

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Pervis Jackson, the baritone vocalist for The Spinners, best known for his “12:45…” line in “They Just Can’t Stop It (Games People Play)”, has died at 70. You can see Jackson lip-sync his legendary part at the 2:09 mark in the following clip. See if you can control yourself from trying to sing along with him.

After years as a second-rate act on Motown, The Spinners found their sound in Philadelphia in the early ’70s, when they fell under the production of Philadelphia International’s Thom Bell and the MSFB studio musicians. Their numerous hits on Atlantic Records are among my favorite sounds of my preteen and early teen years. Lovely, romantic stuff! For those of you with a taste for this sort of sophisticated ’70s soul, I heartily recommend A One of a Kind Love Affair: The Anthology. It collects the best of the band’s work from their stops in both the Motor City and the so-called City of Brotherly Love.

The band also knew how to have a good time. Have any of you ever heard The Rumour‘s cover of the following song?

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My apologies to The Great 48 and the Halls of Rock for not visiting the e-mail account where “G48” sent me the following report and tracks. Thanks, Great One.

The Great 48 wrote:

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I realize this is not Jazz Town Hall, but allow me a moment. I discovered tonight [6/17] that my favorite contemporary jazz musician, the Swedish pianist Esbjorn Svensson, died over the weekend in a scuba diving accident outside Stockholm.

Svensson was the leader of the Esbjorn Svensson Trio (more commonly shortened to E.S.T.), whose albums I recommend unreservedly. A lyrical pianist in the style of Bill Evans, Vince Guaraldi, or Tommy Flanagan, Svensson was capable of spiky free improv or speedy bop-influenced showboating, but his natural style fell towards the melodic and stately. He didn’t really go towards pretty for pretty’s sake, but he understood that jazz doesn’t have to be “difficult” to be good. He will be missed.

MP3s are from E.S.T.’s 2004 album Seven Days of Falling.

E.S.T., “Ballad for the Unborn”

E.S.T., “Why She Couldn’t Come”

Previously, in the News!