Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 30, 1991 TAG: 9103300330
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
During Mardi Gras, Henry's ruptured disc worsened to the point that he had to sing and play the piano from a wheelchair.
Neurosurgeon Frank Culicchia volunteered to help when he learned the Frogman had no health insurance.
"He told me his pay would be to see me back singing and playing piano," Henry said after Tuesday's surgery at Meadowcrest Hospital in suburban New Orleans.
Henry claims to be 54, but his physician suspects he's older. The performer, known for his gap-toothed grin, has produced five albums and 36 singles since entering show business at age 6.
The doctor is prescribing physical therapy, and Henry hopes to be well enough to perform at next month's New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.
\ Kenny Rogers is among the country music stars who will perform at a benefit concert for the families of Reba McEntire's road manager and band members, who died in a plane crash last month.
McEntire's road manager, seven members of her band and two pilots were killed when their plane crashed March 16 near San Diego. McEntire, a four-time winner of the Country Music Association's female vocalist of the year award, was not aboard.
The concert, scheduled April 22 at the Nashville, Tenn., Municipal Auditorium, is being organized by Rogers' booking agent, C.K. Spurlock.
The Oak Ridge Boys, Eddie Rabbitt, Ricky Van Shelton and Patty Loveless also will perform.
\ Sylvester Stallone says a Los Angeles car-crunching confrontation with a photographer reminded him of the chase in "The French Connection," with the photographer playing the bad guy. But the photographer remembers it differently.
Police said the photographer, whom they would not identify, accused Stallone and his bodyguard, Gary Compton, of deliberately crashing their cars into his after Stallone left a Sunset Boulevard bar with an unidentified woman early Thursday.
But Stallone says the photographer followed him from the bar, made an obscene gesture and then smashed his Honda Civic repeatedly into Stallone's Mercedes-Benz.
"It was like an excerpt out of the `French Connection,"' the star of the "Rocky" and "Rambo" movies said in a telephone interview. The 1971 movie starring Gene Hackman includes a wild car chase through the streets of New York.
No charges were filed pending further investigation.
\ Garth Brooks, Vince Gill, Joe Diffe and\ Restless Heart are coming home to Oklahoma to help the state's farmers.
The country musicians have agreed to perform at a May 26 Oklahoma City benefit organized by the state's Rural Crisis Task Force. The group was formed in 1989 after a study of suicide among Oklahoma farmers.
"The percentage of suicides by farmers was approximately 5 percent greater than the average for the state of Oklahoma," said task force chairman Charles Anderson.
The money will pay for a telephone hot line for legal assistance and for temporary hospitalization insurance, he said.
by CNB