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When you see a documentary about a game-changing pop star, you assume you’re going to get the story of the music, and also a good look at the life, and that there’ll be enough (on both counts) to go around. I was eager to see “Let the Canary Sing,” a documentary portrait of Cyndi Lauper, because it’s directed by Alison Ellwood, who made “The Go-Go’s” a few years back, and that movie had everything: the drama, the trauma, the saga of a total pop-music reset, as we watched the Go-Go’s bust down doors that had been too tightly shut for too long. Cyndi Lauper was no less revolutionary a figure, arriving in the early ’80s, along with Madonna, to announce that we were in the midst of a seismic new definition of what it meant to be a female pop star. The definition was: a star...

Ralph Schuckett, a keyboard player best known as a member of Todd Rundgren’s Utopia as well as an in-demand session player and producer and, later, composer for “Pokemon” and other animation projects, died Sunday at 73.

No cause of death was immediately given, although he was known to have been ill. When a Utopia reunion tour was announced in early 2018, Schuckett was announced as part of the lineup and even met with other members for a publicity photo, but he was forced to withdraw shortly before rehearsals began.

Among his early studio credits prior to joining Utopia were Carole King’s first three albums, including the landmark “Tapestry.”

“Ralph Schuckett was a sweet guy, a great friend, and a very talented cat,” King said in a statement Wednesday morning. “That’s his sparkling piano on ‘Smackwater Jack.’ Rest In Peace and love.”

#RalphSchuckett was a sweet guy, a great friend,...