Oldest American man; British rocker; Polish poet, translator

• Joe Cocker, the raspy-voiced British singer known for his frenzied cover of "With a Little Help From My Friends," the teary ballad "You Are So Beautiful" and a contorted performing style uncannily parodied by John Belushi on "Saturday Night Live," has died. He was 70.

His London-based agent, Barrie Marshall, said Cocker died Monday of lung cancer in Colorado, where he has lived for the past two decades.

Cocker, an interpreter more than a writer, became a star through his dazzling transformation of the Beatles' "With a Little Help From My Friends." Featuring a gospel-styled arrangement and furious call and response between Cocker and the backup singers, the song became a No. 1 hit in England and the highlight of his characteristically manic set at the Woodstock festival in 1969.

In a statement Monday, Paul McCartney remembered hearing Cocker's cover of the song he and John Lennon co-wrote for Ringo Starr and finding it "just mind blowing," a "soul anthem."

"I was forever grateful for him for doing that," McCartney said. "I knew him through the years as a good mate, and I was so sad to hear that he had been ill and really sad to hear today that he had passed away."

Cocker's "Mad Dogs & Englishmen" tour and travelling party of 1970, featuring Leon Russell and numerous top session musicians, produced a film and a recording that went gold. But future success was more sporadic, and Cocker suffered from both drug and financial problems.

He had a top 10 hit in 1975 on "You Are So Beautiful," his voice cracking on the final, emotional note, and won a Grammy Award in 1983 for his "Up Where We Belong" duet with Jennifer Warnes, the theme of the movie "An Officer and a Gentleman."

His cover of Bryan Adams' "When the Night Comes" was featured in the film "An Innocent Man" and became a top 20 single in 1990.

Cocker, who received an Order of the British Empire in 2011 for his contribution to music, released 40 albums and continued to tour after the hits stopped. His other popular covers included "Feelin' Alright," "The Letter" and "Cry Me a River," a song previously recorded by one of Cocker's greatest influences, Ray Charles.

• Poland's outstanding poet, translator and dissident and a former Harvard lecturer Stanislaw Baranczak has died at his U.S. home, Poland's leading daily Gazeta Wyborcza said. He was 68.

Since the 1990s, Baranczak suffered from Parkinson's disease, which made him quit his Harvard job in 1997 after 16 years there. He died in Newtonville near Boston.

His poems written in Poland in the 1960s and '70s ridiculed the absurdity of the communist system and its artificial language. He co-founded the Workers' Defense Committee in 1977, following a brutal communist crackdown on protesting workers. For his activity he was fired from his job at the Adam Mickiewicz University in his native Poznan and his writings were barred from print in Poland.

In 1981 he got a three-year contract as lecturer at Harvard but stayed on, as Poland's communists imposed martial law against the Solidarity freedom movement that year.

He translated many authors from Polish to English and from English to Polish, including works by Shakespeare, John Donne, Emily Dickinson and Bob Dylan. He also translated from Russian and from Lithuanian. He had the rare talent of preserving the spirit and the beauty of the language of the original.

• Former Harlem Globetrotter Robert "Showboat" Hall, who spent nearly three decades with the team, has died in his hometown of Detroit.

Hall attended and played basketball at the former Miller High School in Detroit. He joined the Globetrotters in 1949, and in 1955 succeeded Reece "Goose" Tatum as the team's primary showman. Hall became player-coach in 1968.

The team says the 6-foot 2-inch Hall played in more than 5,000 games before his 1974 retirement.

• Renowned jazz clarinetist Buddy DeFranco, who led the way on his instrument in the transition between the swing and bebop eras, has died at the age of 91.

DeFranco, who began his professional career as a teenager in the late 1930s, made both concert and recording appearances with many of the top singers and musicians of his era, including Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Oscar Peterson and Art Tatum.

"We have received condolences from around the world," said Joyce DeFranco. She said her husband's influences on music will last long beyond his lifetime.

"Buddy DeFranco almost single-handedly was the clarinetist who moved the harmonic and rhythmic language forward from where Benny Goodman left off into the much more adventurous territory of bebop and beyond, while never forgetting his roots in swing music," said leading jazz clarinetist Ken Peplowski in an email to the AP. "He was also unfailingly kind and supportive to every other clarinetist who came after him."

In the 1940s, DeFranco appeared in top swing bands led by Gene Krupa, Charlie Barnet and Tommy Dorsey. In 1950, as the big band era was in decline, he joined the Count Basie Septet.

Meanwhile, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie were leading a modern jazz revolution, and DeFranco became excited about the improvisatory freedom in the new style known as bebop after hearing Parker play at Minton's club in Harlem.

"When I heard Charlie Parker, I knew that that was going to be the new wave, the new way to play jazz," said DeFranco in the 2007 NEA interview. "From that point on, I was sold with ... the idea of bebop. But that presented another problem with the clarinet because ... it was much more difficult to play. It was treacherous in many ways as far as fingering and articulation."

In the 1950s, DeFranco performed with Parker, Gillespie and other bebop legends. He formed his own quartet with drummer Art Blakey, pianist Kenny Drew and bassist Eugene Wright, and toured Europe with Holiday in 1954. Jazz at the Philharmonic producer Norman Granz paired DeFranco with pianists Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson for memorable recordings.

DeFranco never lost his affinity for swing music, and led the Glenn Miller Orchestra from 1966 to 1974. He also worked extensively in the studios and on television, and had his own show, "The Buddy DeFranco Jazz Forum" on public television.

In 2007, DeFranco was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, the nation's highest jazz honor.

• Joe Macko, who hit 306 home runs in nearly 2,000 minor league games before a long career as a clubhouse manager with the Texas Rangers, has died. He was 86.

Macko played in the farm systems of Cleveland and the Chicago Cubs from 1948-64 and was a coach for the Cubs briefly in the big leagues.

• J. Robert Beyster, a scientist-turned-entrepreneur who founded a small technology firm called Science Applications International Corp. and built it into one of the largest, most influential defense contractors in the country, has died at age 90.

The entrepreneur, who held a doctorate in physics from the University of Michigan, worked for Los Alamos National Laboratory, Westinghouse and San Diego-based General Atomics before deciding to form his own company in 1969.

Beyster began SAIC as an employee-owned business, which he said provided him the means to recruit the most talented and motivated employees.

"Someone who is involved with the company should own a piece of it," he once said. "People involved in the company should share in its success."

Today, SAIC says on its website, it is a leader in designing, developing and sustaining efforts "that empower diplomatic missions, support warfighter requirements and advance exploration from the ocean floor to outer space."

When the company was split into two businesses in 2013, it had $11 billion in annual revenues and 44,000 employees.

• James B. Edwards, South Carolina's first Republican governor since Reconstruction and later energy secretary for two years in the Reagan administration, has died. He was 87.

Edwards, an oral surgeon, helped build the modern Republican Party in South Carolina, serving as Charleston County party chairman and supporting Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign in the 1960s. He later won a seat in the state Senate and then, in 1974, was elected governor.

• A northern Illinois resident recognized as the oldest man in the U.S. has died at 110.

The Rockford Register Star reports C. Conrad Johnson died Tuesday.

The Swedish-born Johnson worked as a carpenter and lived in Rockford most of his life.

Senior database administrator for the national Gerontology Research Group, Robert Young, says Johnson was the oldest verified American man. Several women are older.

• Paul Walther, who played six seasons in the NBA in the 1950s after a stellar college career at Tennessee, has died. He was 87.

Walther played from 1949-50 to 1954-55 for the Minneapolis Lakers, Indianapolis Olympians, Philadelphia Warriors and Fort Wayne Pistons. He scored more than 2,800 points for his career. He started for the West in the 1952 All-Star game.

• A 114-year-old woman who challenged Facebook after the social media site wouldn't let her list her real age has died in Minnesota.

Anna Stoehr, one of the nation's oldest residents, drew national attention this year after KARE-TV reported about her attempt to create a Facebook account. The social media site wouldn't let her enter a birth year before 1905, so she listed her age as 99 - but she wrote a letter to the company saying, "I'm still here."

In response, Facebook sent her a bouquet of 114 flowers for her most recent birthday, her son said.

Born in Iowa in 1900, Anna Stoehr's family moved to Wisconsin and South Dakota before settling in Ridgeway, Minnesota, in 1919. She lived in Minnesota the rest of her life, her son said.

The Gerontology Research Group, which tracks many of the world's longest-living people, said Anna Stoehr was the oldest verified resident of Minnesota. She also was the seventh oldest person verified to be living in the U.S. and 12th oldest in the world, according to Robert Young, a senior database administrator for the research group.

• Former longtime Chicago Alderman Bernie Stone has died.

During his tenure, he was known for being outspoken, particularly against late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington. Stone was a Democrat but briefly joined the Republican Party in the 1980s.

He lost his council seat in 2011 to Debra Silverstein.

• British actress Billie Whitelaw, who collaborated closely with Irish playwright Samuel Beckett and appeared on stage and screen for decades, has died in a London nursing home at age 82.

Whitelaw was well known for her roles in a number of films, including "The Omen" and most recently "Hot Fuzz," and for her regular work with Beckett, who once described her as the "perfect actress."

Their association began with her appearance in Beckett's "Play" in 1964. Her work in Beckett's "Not I" inspired the playwright to produce a piece specially for her, "Footfalls."

She also appeared in his "Happy Days" and "Rockaby."

Whitelaw first appeared on radio when she was 11 and made her stage debut in 1950. She made more than 50 movies, including Alfred Hitchcock's "Frenzy" in 1972, and worked with a number of film greats, including Albert Finney in "Charlie Bubbles."

• Udo Juergens, an Austrian-born star who dominated pop music in the German-speaking world and sold more than 100 million records in a career spanning five decades, has died at age 80.

Juergens was recognized for bringing piano artistry and clever, introspective lyrics to German "Schlager" (hit) songs. He burst onto the scene in the 1960s with a number of catchy tunes and later infusing his music with a growing social consciousness.

His early career took off after a series of impressive performances in the annual Eurovision Song Contest during the mid-1960s, culminating in his 1966 victory for Austria with "Merci, Cherie" ("Thanks, Darling").

"Warum nur, warum" became a No. 1 hit in France. "Walk Away," an English-language version sung by Matt Monroe, went to No. 1 in Britain and No. 2 in the United States, selling 1.5 million records.

Despite settling in Switzerland, he remained passionate about Germany and its politics. He butted heads with the Roman Catholic Church over abortion, right-wing extremists for using one of his songs, and the government in Berlin over economic and social questions.

• Mike Mokrzycki, a former journalist and election polling specialist at The Associated Press who later started his own survey research business, died of an apparent heart attack, his wife said. He was 52.