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Current Issue: November 2008 |
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 L.A. Focus Mourns the Passing Of Jheryl Busby
LA Focus mourns the passing of Jheryl Busby, LA Focus COO and former Motown Records CEO and founder of Umbrella Recordings. Busby, who was battling diabetes, died Tuesday morning, November 4 at his Malibu home. He was 59.
Busby earned the distinction of being one of the most powerful blacks in the record industry starting in the mid-80s when, as president of MCA Records black music division, he experienced an unprecedented streak of success on the Billboard charts with acts like New Edition, Patti LaBelle, Stephanie Mills, Bobby Brown, Pebbles and Jody Watley.
While sitting at the helm of Motown Records as president and CEO for five years, the down-to-earth, Watts-native helped to foster a new era of Motown legends with acts like Boys II Men and raised the selling price of the company to $300 million in 1993 from what had been $61 million |
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Yvonne Burke Reflects on Four Decades Of Public Service |
For the better part of the year right up the November 4 election much of the attention relative to the L.A. County Board of Supervisors has been focused on the hotly contested race to replace Second District Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke, but in the days and weeks following the election, the attention will inevitably shift to defining Burke, as one of the longest chapters the city's African American political history comes to a close.
A near iconic personality on the Los Angeles political landscape, Burke has—in four decades of service— won ten elections, including one that in 1972 made her the first African American woman--west of the Mississippi River--to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. |
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Through the Storm: With Faith, Gospel Star Overcomes Extortion Plot |
Imagine waking up one morning to read in bold headlines that you are the target of a sordid scandal and extortion plot unfolding very publicly and seemingly in unison on the front page of every major newspaper in New York City, the news wires and national TV broadcasts.
It’s the stuff most of us see happen to others. But on one November morning in 2004, it happened to DeLeon Richards and her husband, then all-star baseball Yankees slugger, Gary Sheffield.
It couldn’t have been a more unlikely scenario for Richards-Sheffield, a second generation “PK” who’d grown up singing gospel in the church and on the national stage, becoming at five, the youngest artist |
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