Alex Williams

His group notched smooth hippie-era hits like “Up, Up and Away” and “The Age of Aquarius” in embracing a genre-blurring sound they called “champagne soul.”

His tenor anchored generational hits like “Joy to the World” and “One” by one of pop music’s commercial powerhouses of the early 1970s.

An Emmy-winning comedian with oddball charm, she got her start with the influential Canadian sketch comedy series “SCTV.”

One of the most influential voices of the seminal magazine The Source, he chronicled rap’s rise and its explosion into the cultural mainstream.

In 1970, he founded London’s Young Vic, an adventurous “people’s theater” (the Who took the stage at one point) before shaking up the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

One of the first jazz musicians from Poland to gain an international following, he recorded more than 60 albums and played with stars like Miles Davis.

With his producing partner, Jeffry Katz, he made lightweight ditties like “Yummy Yummy Yummy” that soared up the charts in the late 1960s.

A self-taught session man extraordinaire, he played with a constellation of stars, including Michael Jackson, Curtis Mayfield, Chaka Khan and Dizzy Gillespie.

In her 40s, the self-described New Jersey housewife started building a women’s fiction empire, churning out dozens of popular books.

Fleeing an abusive home life, she went on to win a national Space Invaders tournament, taught herself to program and left a trail of popular games in her wake.