The Monkees star Davy Jones dead at 66

Davy Jones, a former actor turned singer who helped propel the TV rock band The Monkees to the top of the pop charts and into rock 'n' roll history, has died in Florida at the age of 66.

Jones, lead singer of the 1960s group, died of a massive heart attack in Indiantown where he lived, his publicist Helen Kensick confirmed.

US media quotes the local sheriff's office saying a witness was with Jones when the star "began to complain of not feeling well and having trouble breathing".

Jones was a former jockey-turned-actor who soared to fame in 1965 when he joined The Monkees and they embarked on an adventure that included a wildly popular US television show. Jones sang lead vocals on songs like I Wanna Be Free and Daydream Believer.

The band was assembled as an American version of the Beatles, with its personnel designed to be the instant stars of an American TV series seeking to evoke the "British invasion" of the US music charts.

Auditions for The Monkees attracted about 500 applicants. Jones - who was born December 30, 1945, in Manchester, England - had stylishly long hair and a British accent that helped with his selection. He would go on to achieve heart-throb status in the US.

Nonetheless, musical ability wasn't paramount in the casting decisions. While Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork had some musical experience, Mickey Dolenz had been a child actor, as had Jones.

In August 1966, the Beatles performed in San Francisco, their last touring appearance for a paying audience. The same month, the Monkees released their first album, introducing the world to the group that would star in the NBC series when it premiered in September 1966.

Despite being dismissed as the "pre-fab four" by some critics, the first single, Last Train to Clarksville, became a No 1 hit, and the show caught on with audiences, featuring fast-paced, helter-skelter comedy inspired as much by the Marx Brothers as the Beatles.

It ws a shrewd case of cross-platform promotion. As David Bianculli noted in his Dictionary of Teleliteracy, "The show's self-contained music videos, clear forerunners of MTV, propelled the group's first seven singles to enviable positions of the pop charts: three number ones, two number twos, two number threes."

And though initially the Monkees weren't allowed to play their own instruments, they were supported by enviable talent: Carole King and Gerry Goffin wrote Pleasant Valley Sunday, and Neil Diamond penned I'm a Believer.

Musicians who played on their records included Billy Preston (who later played with the Beatles), Glen Campbell, Leon Russell, Ry Cooder and Neil Young.

After two seasons, the TV series had flared out and was cancelled. But the Monkeys kept recording and performing and remained a nostalgia act for decades.

According to The Monkees website, Monkees.com, Jones left the band in late 1970. In the summer of 1971, he recorded a solo hit Rainy Jane and made a series of appearances on American variety and television shows, including Love American Style and The Brady Bunch.

Jones played himself in a widely popular Brady Bunch episode, which aired in late 1971. In the episode, Marcia Brady, president of her school's Davy Jones fan club, promised she could get him to sing at a school dance.

Amid lingering nostalgia for the Monkees, by the mid-1980s, Jones teamed up with former Monkee Peter Tork, Micky Dolenz and promoter David Fishof for a reunion tour. Their popularity prompted MTV to re-air The Monkees series, introducing the group to a new audience.

In 1987, Jones, Tork and Micky Dolenz recorded a new album, Pool It. Two years later, the group received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

In the late 1990s, the group filmed a special called Hey, Hey, It's the Monkees.

Jones is survived by his wife, Jessica.

Whitney Houston dead at 48

Whitney Houston, who reigned as pop music's queen until her majestic voice and regal image were ravaged by drug use, erratic behavior and a tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown, has died. She was 48.

The singer's publicist, Kristen Foster, confirmed the news.

US police said Houston was found dead in a room at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Los Angeles. Her cause of death is unknown.

At her peak, Houston was the golden girl of the music industry. From the middle 1980s to the late 1990s, she was one of the world's best-selling artists. She wowed audiences with effortless, powerful, and peerless vocals that were rooted in the black church but made palatable to the masses with a pop sheen.

Her success carried her beyond music to movies, where she starred in hits like The Bodyguard and Waiting to Exhale.

She had the perfect voice and the perfect image: a gorgeous singer who had sex appeal but was never overtly sexual, who maintained perfect poise.

She influenced a generation of younger singers, from Christina Aguilera to Mariah Carey, who when she first came out sounded so much like Houston that many thought it was Houston.

But by the end of her career, Houston became a stunning cautionary tale of the toll of drug use. Her album sales plummeted and the hits stopped coming; her once serene image was shattered by a wild demeanour and bizarre public appearances. She confessed to abusing cocaine, marijuana and pills, and her once pristine voice became raspy and hoarse, unable to hit the high notes as she had during her prime.

"The biggest devil is me. I'm either my best friend or my worst enemy," Houston told ABC's Diane Sawyer in an infamous 2002 interview with then-husband Brown by her side.

It was a tragic fall for a superstar who was one of the top-selling artists in pop music history, with more than 55 million records sold in the United States alone.

She seemed to be born into greatness. She was the daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston, the cousin of 1960s pop diva Dionne Warwick and the goddaughter of Aretha Franklin.

Houston first started singing in the church as a child. In her teens, she sang back-up for Chaka Khan, Jermaine Jackson and others, in addition to modeling. It was around that time when music mogul Clive Davis first heard Houston perform.

"The time that I first saw her singing in her mother's act in a club ... it was such a stunning impact," Davis told Good Morning America.

"To hear this young girl breathe such fire into this song. I mean, it really sent the proverbial tingles up my spine," he added.

Before long, the rest of the country would feel it, too. Houston made her album debut in 1985 with Whitney Houston, which sold millions and spawned hit after hit. Saving All My Love for You brought her her first Grammy, for best female pop vocal. How Will I Know, You Give Good Love and The Greatest Love of All also became hit singles.

Another multiplatinum album, Whitney, came out in 1987 and included hits like Where Do Broken Hearts Go and I Wanna Dance With Somebody.

The New York Times wrote that Houston "possesses one of her generation's most powerful gospel-trained voices, but she eschews many of the churchier mannerisms of her forerunners. She uses ornamental gospel phrasing only sparingly, and instead of projecting an earthy, tearful vulnerability, communicates cool self-assurance and strength, building pop ballads to majestic, sustained peaks of intensity",

Her decision not to follow the more soulful inflections of singers like Franklin drew criticism by some who saw her as playing down her black roots to go pop and reach white audiences. The criticism would become a constant refrain through much of her career. She was even booed during the Soul Train Awards in 1989.

"Sometimes it gets down to that, you know?" she told Katie Couric in 1996. "You're not black enough for them. I don't know. You're not R&B enough. You're very pop. The white audience has taken you away from them."

Some saw her 1992 marriage to former New Edition member and soul crooner Bobby Brown as an attempt to refute those critics. It seemed to be an odd union; she was seen as pop's pure princess while he had a bad-boy image, and already had children of his own. (The couple had a daughter, Bobbi Kristina, in 1993.) Over the years, he would be arrested several times, on charges ranging from DUI to failure to pay child support.

But Houston said their true personalities were not as far apart as people may have believed.

"When you love, you love. I mean, do you stop loving somebody because you have different images? You know, Bobby and I basically come from the same place," she told Rolling Stone in 1993. "You see somebody, and you deal with their image, that's their image. It's part of them, it's not the whole picture. I am not always in a sequined gown. I am nobody's angel. I can get down and dirty. I can get raunchy."

It would take several years, however, for the public to see that side of Houston. Her moving 1991 rendition of The Star Spangled Banner at the Super Bowl, amid the first Gulf War, set a new standard and once again reaffirmed her as America's sweetheart.

In 1992, she became a star in the acting world with The Bodyguard. Despite mixed reviews, the story of a singer (Houston) guarded by a former Secret Service agent (Kevin Costner) was an international success.

It also gave her perhaps her most memorable hit: a searing, stunning rendition of Dolly Parton's I Will Always Love You, which sat atop the charts for weeks. It was Grammy's record of the year and best female pop vocal, and The Bodyguard soundtrack was named album of the year.

She returned to the big screen in 1995-96 with Waiting to Exhale and The Preacher's Wife. Both spawned soundtrack albums, and another hit studio album, My Love Is Your Love, in 1998, brought her a Grammy for best female R&B vocal for the cut It's Not Right But It's Okay.

But during these career and personal highs, Houston was using drugs. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2010, she said by the time The Preacher's Wife was released, "[doing drugs] was an everyday thing. ... I would do my work, but after I did my work, for a whole year or two, it was every day. ... I wasn't happy by that point in time. I was losing myself."

In the interview, Houston blamed her rocky marriage to Brown, which included a charge of domestic abuse against Brown in 1993. They divorced in 2007.

Houston would go to rehab twice before she would declare herself drug-free to Winfrey in 2010. But in the interim, there were missed concert dates, a stop at an airport due to drugs, and public meltdowns.

She was so startlingly thin during a 2001 Michael Jackson tribute concert that rumours spread she had died the next day. Her crude behaviour and jittery appearance on Brown's reality show, Being Bobby Brown, was an example of her sad decline. Her Sawyer interview, where she declared "crack is whack", was often parodied. She dropped out of the spotlight for a few years.

Houston staged what seemed to be a successful comeback with the 2009 album I Look To You. The album debuted on the top of the charts, and would eventually go platinum.

Things soon fell apart. A concert to promote the album on Good Morning America went awry as Houston's voice sounded ragged and off-key. She blamed an interview with Winfrey for straining her voice.

A world tour launched overseas, however, only confirmed suspicions that Houston had lost her treasured gift, as she failed to hit notes and left many fans unimpressed; some walked out. Cancelled concert dates raised speculation that she may have been abusing drugs, but she denied those claims and said she was in great shape, blaming illness for cancellations.