{"id":2398144,"date":"2026-05-01T18:49:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T18:49:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2398144"},"modified":"2026-05-01T18:49:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T18:49:15","slug":"family-confirms-saturday-night-live-alums-passing-georg-wadenius-was-80","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/family-confirms-saturday-night-live-alums-passing-georg-wadenius-was-80\/","title":{"rendered":"Family Confirms &#8216;Saturday Night Live&#8217; Alum&#8217;s Passing: Georg Wadenius Was 80"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Sweden-born musician Georg \u201cJojje\u201d Wadenius, best known for his work with Blood, Sweat &amp; Tears and the <em>Saturday Night Live <\/em>Band, has died. He was 80. <\/p>\n<p>Wadenius\u2019 family confirmed the artist\u2019s \u201csudden passing\u201d on the morning of May 1, but didn\u2019t share any details about his cause of death.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is with great sorrow that Jennifer Gilman and I share the news of our father, Georg Wadenius\u2019s sudden passing,\u201d his family wrote on Facebook in an announcement translated from Swedish. \u201cOur family will share more information about memorial ceremonies and ways to honor his legacy and memory soon.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-embed-handler wp-block-embed-embed-handler\"\/>\n<p>Born on May 4, 1945, in Stockholm, Sweden, Wadenius attended Adolf Fredrik\u2019s Music School before going on to appear on a number of Swedish hit records while playing with Swedish supergroups Made in Sweden and Solar Plexus in the early 1970s. <\/p>\n<p>He then moved to the U.S., where he played with Blood, Sweat &amp; Tears as the lead guitarist from 1972 to 1975. <\/p>\n<p>In 1979, Wadenius joined the <em>Saturday Night Live <\/em>Band, playing with the NBC sketch show\u2019s house band until 1985.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">UNITED KINGDOM \u2013 MAY 07:  Photo of BLOOD SWEAT AND TEARS; Georg Wadenius  and Larry Ellis (vocals) performing on stage  (Photo by David Warner Ellis\/Redferns)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Wadenius went on to work with other well-known artists as a session player and touring musician, including Steely Dan, Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, Dr. John, David Sanborn, James Brown, Marianne Faithfull, Paul Simon, Joe Thomas, Dionne Warwick, Roberta Flack, Donald Fagen, Doug Katsaros, Michael Franks, and Luther Vandross, as well as other Swedish artists. <\/p>\n<p>Wadenius also went on to have a prolific career as a children\u2019s musician, releasing albums such as <em>Goda, Goda<\/em> and <em>Puss, Puss, Sant, Sant<\/em> with lyrics by Barbro Lindgren. <\/p>\n<p>Wadenius continued to play music professionally until his death, performing less than a week before his passing with Swedish singer Helen Sj\u00f6holm.<\/p>\n<p>He is survived by daughters Annika Wadenius Erlich and Jennifer Gilman.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source popculture.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sweden-born musician Georg \u201cJojje\u201d Wadenius, best known for his work with Blood, Sweat &amp; Tears and the Saturday Night Live Band, has died. He was 80. Wadenius\u2019 family confirmed the artist\u2019s \u201csudden passing\u201d on the morning of May 1, but didn\u2019t share any details about his cause of death. \u201cIt is with great sorrow that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2398145,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25177],"tags":[22062,21890],"class_list":["post-2398144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities","tag-celebrity-deaths","tag-saturday-night-live"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Family-Confirms-Saturday-Night-Live-Alums-Passing-Georg-Wadenius-Was.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2398144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2398144"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2398144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2398146,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2398144\/revisions\/2398146"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2398145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2398144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2398144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2398144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}