Judy Raphael, L.A. music figure

Raphael died in her sleep last Saturday in a hospice in Palm Desert, following what Todd Everett calls "a long and excruciating illness." She was a contributor in the early years at the LA Weekly, apparently writing about Dwight Yoakam before most in the media discovered him, and also had pieces in The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Westways, and Inside Hollywood. Everett blogs:

Her father, Fred Raphael, moved the family to Hollywood when Judy was about seven. He ran Disney's music publishing for some years (Disney, Judy recalled, affectionately referred to him as "My Jew"), then started his own company.

Judy attended UCLA's film school; then ran off to join the counterculture in New York and San Francisco: singing, working as a topless dancer, protesting, and doing whatever else aware, socially-conscious young women did in those days.

In Michael Walker's new book Laurel Canyon, Raphael figures in the canyon's 1960s rock scene. She worked at The Troubadour and described the sensation that swept the canyon when Linda Ronstadt first sang at a Monday night amateur Hoot. Raphael had an afternoon fling with Stephen Stills and recalled being at UCLA when Ray Manzarek, the cameraman on her student film, announced that he and classmate Jim Morrison were going to start The Doors. She asked if she could join and was told, "No, there aren't any girls in rock bands." She also described the career-smothering effect that the Beatles' runaway success had on female musicians in the canyon. Suddenly all the bands with folk roots switched to rock, and as Walker blogs:

This was unquestionably good for the music but had the effect of diminishing the inroads women had made during the folk boom; rock and roll was the ultimate boys club, and Judy was disappointed to discover that at the dawn of modern feminism women in the canyon and on the L.A. music scene—save precious exceptions like Joni Mitchell and Cass Elliot—were too often expected to be tie-dyed cheerleaders and unquestioning sexual helpmates.

"Suddenly, ambition was a downer," she lamented.

Neither blogger knew Raphael's age.

Previous L.A. obituaries.