Billboard Bits: Vibe Awards, Moby, Don Gibson
R. Kelly and 50 Cent and G-Unit have been added to the performance schedule for the inaugural Vibe Awards, set for Thursday (Nov. 20) at the Santa Monica (Calif.) Civic Center. They join 18 B-Sides + DVD” package hits stores today (Nov. 18), Moby will celebrate its release tonight with a 45-minute screening at the Apple Store in New York’s Soho neighborhood. The artist will then answer questions from fans and sign autographs. A similar event is planned for Dec. 4 at Los Angeles’ Apple Store.
The DVD features videos for each song from the “18” (V2) album, as well as behind-the-scenes video footage, comedy bits and remixes. As previously reported, Moby has reactivated his Voodoo Child alter ego for the album “Baby Monkey,” due Jan. 27 via V2. The 12-track set is the seven-years-in-the-making follow-up to Voodoo Child’s lone full-length, 1996’s “The End of Everything.”
— Troy Carpenter, N.Y.
— Chris Morris, L.A.
Country songwriter/vocalist Don Gibson died yesterday (Nov. 17) of natural causes in Nashville. He was 75. Gibson made his mark in 1956 on MGM with the hit self-penned ballad “Sweet Dreams,” which Faron Young and Patsy Cline also took into the top-10. In 1957, after being signed to RCA by Chet Atkins, Gibson scored the two-sided hit “Oh Lonesome Me” and “I Can’t Stop Loving You”; the latter became a crossover pop smash for Ray Charles in 1962.
Gibson’s mellifluous voice propelled 14 more singles, most of which he also wrote, into the country top-10. Many of his compositions became much-covered standards. His career was derailed by substance-abuse problems in the late ’60s, but he recovered and recorded for Hickory Records through the ’70s. He withdrew from regular performing during the ’80s and was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2001.
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