newsmakers

newsmakers

Elton John falls sick, cancels 3 shows

LAS VEGAS

Elton John is canceling three Las Vegas performances on doctors’ orders after being hospitalized with a respiratory infection.

Officials with Caesars Entertainment said the Thursday, Saturday and Sunday performances of “The Million Dollar Piano” were being canceled.

Show officials say John came down with the infection last weekend and was admitted Wednesday to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Doctors have recommended he not perform for a week and take antibiotics.

The singer says in a statement that he’s sorry he can’t be with his fans at The Colosseum.

Ticket holders are eligible for refunds or exchanges at the site where they bought tickets.

“The Million Dollar Piano” launched in September for a three-year run and features the singer’s classic songs.

Man who named self for band dies

CHICAGO

Led Zeppelin II has died.

Not the album ... the man.

Zeppelin, of Bethalto, Ill., near St. Louis, was known most of his life as George Blackburn before officially changing his name last fall.

“He and Mom got divorced and he wanted to start his life over, like a new chapter,” said daughter Mindy Baker, of Seattle, adding that her father had seen Jimmy Page and Robert Plant’s English rock band about 20 times in its heyday of the late 1960s and early ’70s. “He had always liked Led Zeppelin since they came out, and it was just time to do it.

“My mom says that he talked about it for probably five years before the divorce.”

The 64-year-old Zeppelin “climbed the ‘Stairway to Heaven’” on May 18 at Alton Memorial Hospital, according to a death notice published in newspapers. He died of a heart attack, his daughter said.

Zeppelin was born in 1947 in Milwaukee and raised in Chicago. He worked 32 years for TWA in Chicago, until about 1983, his daughter said, and then in St. Louis. He retired in 1997.

“Led Zeppelin II,” released in 1969, included such familiar songs as “Whole Lotta Love” and “Ramble On.”

McGraw giving homes to military members

NASHVILLE, Tenn.

Tim McGraw will be saluting veterans in a big way while on tour this summer.

The country music superstar is giving away 25 mortgage-free houses — one for each stop on his upcoming “Brothers of the Sun” tour with Kenny Chesney — to wounded or needy service members.

McGraw will kick off the campaign with a Memorial Day concert for military members at New York City’s Beacon Theatre during Fleet Week.

“My sister’s a veteran, my uncle’s a veteran, my grandfather was a veteran, one of my best friends is a veteran,” McGraw said in an interview. “I’ve known people my whole life who are in service to America. And I think in my position to be able to do something like that is probably the ultimate thing. So to be able to go on tour and provide sort of a stable foundation for a veteran and their family is something I really look forward to.”

Actress addresses her alma mater

CENTRAL FALLS, R.I.

Viola Davis on Thursday addressed graduating seniors at the high school in the struggling Rhode Island city where she grew up, urging them to treasure “hard times and joyous moments” and telling them that the “privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”

The Academy Award nominee addressed Central Falls High School’s class of 2012, student actors and members of student government nearly 30 years after receiving her own diploma there. She also was inducted into the school’s Alumni Hall of Fame.

A member of the class of 1983, Davis has continued to support the city of 19,000 just north of Providence, which is being run by a state receiver who filed for bankruptcy on the city’s behalf last year.

Davis was the Rhode Island favorite for best actress in this year’s Academy Awards for her performance as a black maid in “The Help,” but she lost out to Meryl Streep.

Streep later made $10,000 donations in Davis’ name to a charter school Davis has supported and to the Upward Bound scholarship fund that the actress established with her sister.

Central Falls, a 1.3-square-mile city about a 15-minute drive north of Providence, found itself the subject of national headlines over its floundering finances and a high school so troubled that all its teachers were fired in one fell swoop in 2010, but eventually rehired.

Associated Press