Amazingly, the passing of the talented singer and actress at age 72 can be considered the completion of not one, but two show business "They Die in Threes" trifectas.
In 1969, Barbara McNair became one of the first black entertainers to get her own musical variety show. Before that, she'd appeared as a guest star in classic Sixties series like I Spy, Hogan's Heroes and Dr. Kildare. With a slight stretch of the qualifications, she joins Tige Andrews and Lee Bergere in the rash of deaths among "familiar figures from TV's Golden Age of trashy pop culture."
However, as an African American singer whose repertoire occasionally dipped into "soul," she also fits into the third slot of a still-developing Black History Month "They Die in Threes" musical category...
The deaths of two soul and R&B greats were announced this weekend.
Billy Henderson, 67, a co-founder of the band the Spinners, who sang "I'll Be Around" and other hits, died Friday. And Joe Hunter, Motown's first bandleader and a three-time Grammy winner with the Funk Brothers, was found dead Friday at his Detroit apartment. He was 79.
Because McNair was female, the imminent death of a male Sixties TV fixture in his 80s or an old soul musician could bounce from either category (just as Lionel from The Jeffersons lost his spot alongside James Brown, upon the deaths of heads of state Gerald Ford and Saddam Hussein). Until then... there seems to be something to this "They Die in Threes" thing... after all.
No?
(Barbara McNair also co-starred alongside Mary Tyler Moore in the 1969 Elvis Presley flick, A Change of Habit).