Notable deaths: Chef brought Cajun cooking to rest of America

• At his New Orleans restaurant, legendary chef Paul Prudhomme proudly showed off dishes and ingredients from his upbringing in Louisiana's rural Cajun country: blackened redfish, jambalaya and sweet potato pecan pie drew diners by the droves to his K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen.

Such fare, in turn, helped launch Prudhomme as a culinary superstar who brought Cajun cuisine into the mainstream. At a time when the country's top restaurants served virtually nothing but European food, Prudhomme's message to diners and other chefs was simple.

Prudhomme died Thursday after a brief illness. He was 75.

"'Be proud of our local cuisine, local culture, local accents.' Paul was the catalyst that made that happen," said fellow New Orleans chef John Folse.

Folse is one of the legions of culinary masters and Cajun food fans who are mourning the loss of Prudhomme.

In 1979, Prudhomme opened K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen, a French Quarter diner that served the meals of his childhood and helped launch him into culinary superstardom.

The distinctly American chef had no formal training, but he stirred up a nationwide appetite for Cajun food by serving dishes - gumbo, etouffee and jambalaya - that were once largely unknown outside Louisiana.

"He was always on a mission and nothing was impossible for Paul. He did things his way and let the food speak for itself," said chef Frank Brigtsen, who worked for Prudhomme for seven years. "He changed the way we eat in New Orleans in a major way, by bringing Acadian or Cajun cuisine to the restaurants of the city."

• Harry Gallatin, the Hall of Fame basketball player who was a seven-time All-Star forward for the New York Knicks in the 1950s, has died at 88.

The Knicks and Southern Illinois-Edwardsville, where Gallatin was a former coach and athletic director, confirmed the death through Gallatin's family. He died in Edwardsville.

Gallatin spent nine seasons with the Knicks, one in the Basketball Association of America and eight in the NBA, and finished his career in 1957-58 with the Detroit Pistons. The former Truman State star averaged 13.3 points and 11.9 rebounds in 630 regular-season NBA games. He led the league in rebounding with a 15.3 average in 1953-54 and was an All-NBA first-team selection that season.

Called "The Horse" for his rugged play, the 6-foot-6 Gallatin never missed a game or practice in his career. He played 610 consecutive games with the Knicks, a team record that still stands, and was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame in 1991.

Gallatin coached at Southern Illinois-Carbondale from 1958-1962, going 79-36 with the Salukis. He then coached in the NBA, going 111-82 in 2 1/2 seasons with the St. Louis Hawks and 25-38 in parts of two seasons with the Knicks.

• The manager for Three 6 Mafia founding member Robert "Koopsta Knicca" Phillips says the Memphis rapper has died.

Joe Robbins says Phillips suffered a stroke before dying early Friday morning at a Memphis hospital. He was 40 years old.

The Commercial Appeal reports Phillips recorded the well-regarded solo album "Da Devil's Playground" in 1999. He left Three 6 Mafia the following year.

• The Secret Service agent credited with saving President Ronald Reagan's life on the day he was shot outside a Washington hotel has died.

The retired agent, Jerry Parr of Washington, District of Columbia, died at the age of 85.

Parr was in charge of Reagan's detail on March 30, 1981, when a young man with mental problems shot the president outside the Washington Hilton. When the shots rang out, Parr pushed Reagan inside the presidential limousine and it sped away for the White House.

After Reagan complained of chest pains and showed blood on his lips, Parr redirected the limousine to George Washington Hospital. As it turned out, Reagan had been hit in the chest and was bleeding internally. Doctors later said that any delay would have cost the president his life.

• Former British Treasury chief Geoffrey Howe, a prominent figure in Margaret Thatcher's government who helped bring about her downfall after they parted ways over policy toward Europe, has died at 88.

Howe died suddenly of a suspected heart attack late Friday at his home in Warwickshire, north of London, after returning from a jazz concert with his wife Elspeth, his family said Saturday.

Prime Minister David Cameron, also a Conservative, called Howe "the quiet hero of the first Thatcher government" who had shown "huge courage and resolve" in helping save the floundering British economy.• Dave Meyers, the star forward who led UCLA to the 1975 NCAA basketball championship as the lone senior in coach John Wooden's final season and later played for the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks, died Friday. He was 62.

Meyers died at his home in Temecula after struggling with cancer for the last year, according to UCLA.

He played four years for Milwaukee after being drafted second overall by the Los Angeles Lakers. Shortly after, Meyers was part of a blockbuster trade that sent him to the Bucks in exchange for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

• Larry Rosen, one of the most influential and tech-savvy modern jazz producers who co-founded GRP Records with pianist Dave Grusin, died Friday, his publicist said. He was 75.

Against the advice of their financial advisers and lawyers, Rosen and Grusin mortgaged their homes to borrow money to launch GRP as an independent label in 1982.

"It was two musicians who just believed in the music and merging technology with quality product," Rosen recalled in a 2012 interview with Billboard Magazine on the 30th anniversary of the label's founding. "We wanted to see if audiences would like it and they did."

• Lindy Infante, the hard-luck former coach of the Green Bay Packers and the Indianapolis Colts, has died at 75.

Infante was a head coach for six years in the NFL, compiling a 36-60 record. He was the NFL Coach of the Year in 1989 with Green Bay, but his only postseason appearance came in 1996 when his Colts lost a wild card game to Pittsburgh, 42-14.

"He was the consummate father, husband & coach," Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh said on Twitter.

Harbaugh was the Colts' starting quarterback in 1996. The next year, the Colts finished 3-13 and Infante was out of a job after two seasons with a 12-20 record. Indianapolis drafted quarterback Peyton Manning the following offseason.

• Gail Zappa, the widow of music legend Frank Zappa, has died at her Los Angeles home. She was 70.

She was 22 when she married Frank Zappa, a prolific songwriter, musician and head of the band Mothers of Invention. They had four children: Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet and Diva.

Frank Zappa died of prostate cancer in 1993. His widow, as head of the Zappa Family Trust, continued to promote his work, putting out dozens of posthumous albums and licensing his image.

• Billy Joe Royal, a pop singer who popularized the song "Down in the Boondocks," and crossed over into country music, has died. He was 73 years old.

The Georgia-born singer debuted on Columbia Records with "Down in the Boondocks" in 1965, which reached No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100. But he struggled to match his initial success with his subsequent records and starting in the late 1980s, he reinvented himself as a country singer.

He was known for songs like "I'll Pin a Note on Your Pillow," "Tell it Like it is," and "Till I Can't Take it Anymore." He was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 1988.

• The Belgian avant-garde filmmaker Chantal Akerman, whose patient, personal reflections on the lives of women made her a leading figure of arthouse cinema, has died. She was 65.

Belgium's minister of francophone culture, Joelle Milquet, lauded Akerman for films "often experimental and without concessions," adding that her work "will have its place in world cinema."

Her unexpected death reverberated across the film world. The Toronto International Film Festival in a statement called Akerman "one of the greatest filmmakers and artists of our time."

"Daring, original, uncompromising, and in all ways radical, Akerman revolutionized the history of cinema not only with her masterpiece 'Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles' but also with the sustained urgency of her brilliance," said the festival. "Akerman created new formal languages and consistently expanded cinema's reach with her restless curiosity and willingness to wade into taboo subjects."

• Arpad Goncz, a much-loved Hungarian writer and translator who survived a communist-era life sentence for taking part in the 1956 anti-Soviet revolt and later become Hungary's first democratically chosen president, has died at age 93.

Parliament deputy speaker Istvan Hiller announced the death to lawmakers, adding, "he was a legend already during his lifetime." Lawmakers stood for a minute of silence in honor of his memory.

As World War II drew to a close, Goncz was called up to fight for Hungary - then allied with Nazi Germany - but escaped from his unit and joined the anti-Nazi resistance, helping to rescue Jews and others being persecuted.

He remained politically active during the turmoil that followed the war, becoming secretary of the populist Independent Smallholders Party. The party scored a landslide victory in the first postwar election, but it never was able to govern effectively as the Communists steadily usurped power, finally eliminating all opposition in rigged elections in 1948.

• Neal Walk, a tough center on the early Phoenix Suns teams who became an inspirational speaker after losing the use of his legs, has died at age 67.

Walk lost the use of his legs in a surgery to remove a tumor from his spine in 1987.

Phoenix drafted Walk as the No. 2 pick overall in 1969 after losing the coin flip with Milwaukee to draft Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (then Lew Alcindor).

"My answer to the coin toss," he once told azcentral sports, "was always, 'I didn't toss it and I didn't make the call. I just play basketball."'

Walk averaged 20.2 points and 12.4 rebounds in the 1972-73 season. Charles Barkley is the only other Sun to top the 20-point, 10-rebound average.

• Henning Mankell, the internationally renowned Swedish crime writer whose books about the gloomy, soul-searching police inspector Kurt Wallander enticed readers around the world, died early Monday, his publisher said. He was 67.

Mankell wrote some 50 novels and numerous plays, selling more than 40 million copies worldwide.

Following in the footsteps of the popular 1960s Swedish crime-writing duo of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, Mankell's Wallander series helped define the Scandinavian genre that became known as Nordic noir. Set in the bleak landscapes of southern Sweden, the series drew on the dark, morally complex moods of its main protagonist and was heavily infused with social commentary.

Mankell married and divorced three times before his final lasting marriage in 1998 with Eva Bergman, the daughter of film legend Ingmar Bergman. Together the couple worked on various charities in Africa. The author was particularly involved in a project in Uganda of so-called "memory books," in which parents dying of AIDS were encouraged to record their life stories for the children they leave behind.

• Al Abrams, the founding press officer and publicist for Motown Records, died Saturday following a battle with cancer, his wife said. He was 74.

Born in Detroit, Al Abrams was the first employee of Motown founder Berry Gordy Jr. - before the company officially existed. Abrams promoted records to Detroit disc jockeys and went on to direct media relations at the label that included Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, the Miracles and the Supremes.

"His greatest accomplishment at Motown was actually starting at the age of 18," his wife, Nancy Abrams, told The Associated Press. "It kind of snowballed. He knew what he wanted to do with his life at that point."