1928 James Brown R B singer/songwriter/dancer, b. (near) Barnwell, SC, USA. He has been variously tagged as the Godfather of Soul , Mr.
Dynamite , the Original Disco Man , and Soul Brother Number One .
Soul Brother Number One, the Godfather of Soul, the Hardest Working Man in Show Business, Mr. Dynamite -- those are mighty titles, but no one can question that James Brown has earned them more than any other performer.
Other singers were more popular, others were equally skilled, but few other African-American musicians have been so influential on the course of popular music. And no other musician, pop or otherwise, put on a more exciting, exhilarating stage show; Brown's performances were marvels of athletic stamina and split-second timing.
Through the gospel-impassioned fury of his vocals and the complex polyrhythms of his beats, Brown was a crucial midwife in not just one, but two revolutions in American black music.
He was one of the figures most responsible for turning R B into soul; he was, most would agree, the figure most responsible for turning soul music into the funk of the late '60s and early '70s. Since the mid-'70s, he's done little more than tread water artistically; his financial and drug problems eventually got him a controversial prison sentence. Yet in a sense his music is now more influential than ever, as his voice and rhythms were sampled on innumerable rap and hip-hop recordings, and critics have belatedly hailed his innovations as among the most important in all of rock or soul.
Brown's rags-to-riches-to-rags story has heroic and tragic dimensions of mythic resonance. Born into poverty in the South, he ran afoul of the law by the late '40s on an armed robbery conviction. With the help of singer Bobby Byrd's family, Brown gained parole, and started a gospel group with Byrd, changing their focus to R B as the rock revolution gained steam.
The Flames, as the Georgian group were known in the mid-'50s, were signed by Federal/King, and had a huge R B hit right off the bat with the wrenching, churchy ballad Please, Please, Please. By now the Flames had become James Brown the Famous Flames, the charisma, energy, and talent of Brown making him the natural star attraction.
All of Brown's singles over the next two years flopped, as he sought to establish his own style, recording material that was obviously derivative of heroes like Roy Brown, Hank Ballard, Little Richard, and Ray Charles.
In retrospect, it can be seen that Brown was in the same position as dozens of other R B one-shots; talented singers in need of better songs, or not fully on the road to a truly original sound. What made Brown succeed where hundreds of others failed was his superhuman determination, working the chitlin circuit to death, sharpening his band, and keeping an eye on new trends. He was on the verge of being dropped from King in late 1958 when his perseverance finally paid off, as Try Me became a number-one R B (and small pop) hit, and several follow-ups established him as a regular visitor to the R B charts.
Brown's style of R B got harder as the '60s began, as he added more complex, Latin- and jazz-influenced rhythms on hits like Good Good Lovin', I'll Go Crazy, Think, and Night Train, alternating these with torturous ballads that featured some of the most frayed screaming to be heard outside of the church. Black audiences already knew that Brown had the most exciting live act around, but he truly started to become a phenomenon with the release of Live at the Apollo in 1963. Capturing a James Brown concert in all its whirling-dervish energy and calculated spontaneity, it reached number two in the album charts, an unprecedented feat for a hardcore R B LP.
Live at the Apollo was recorded and released against the wishes of the King label. It was these kinds of artistic standoffs that led Brown to seek better opportunities elsewhere. In 1964, he ignored his King contract to record Out of Sight for Smash, igniting a lengthy legal battle that prevented him from issuing vocal recordings for about a year.
When he finally resumed recording for King in 1965, he had a new contract that granted him far more artistic control over his releases.
Brown's new era had truly begun, however, with Out of Sight, which topped the R B charts and made the pop Top 40. For some time, Brown had been moving toward more elemental lyrics which threw in as many chants and screams as words, and more intricate beats and horn charts that took some of their cues from the ensemble work of jazz outfits.
Out of Sight wasn't called funk when it came out, but it had most of the essential ingredients. These were amplified and perfected on 1965's Papa's Got a Brand New Bag, a monster that finally broke Brown to the white audience, reaching the Top Ten. The even more adventurous follow-up, I Got You (I Feel Good), did even better, making number three.
These hits kicked off Brown's period of greatest commercial success and public visibility. From 1965 to the end of the decade, he was rarely off the R B charts, often on the pop listings, and all over the concert circuit and national television, even meeting with Vice President Hubert Humphrey and other important politicians as a representative of the black community. His music became even bolder and funkier, as melody was dispensed with almost altogether in favor of chunky rhythms and magnetic interplay between his vocals, horns, drums, and scratching electric guitar (heard to best advantage on hits like Cold Sweat, I Got the Feelin', and There Was a Time ).
The lyrics were now not so much words as chanted, stream-of-consciousness slogans, often aligning themselves with black pride as well as good old-fashioned (or new-fashioned) sex. Much of the credit for the sound he devised belonged to (and has now been belatedly attributed) his top-notch supporting musicians, such as saxophonists Maceo Parker, St. Clair Pinckney, and Pee Wee Ellis; guitarist Jimmy Nolen; backup singer and longtime loyal associate Bobby Byrd; and drummer Clyde Stubblefield.
Brown was both a brilliant bandleader and a stern taskmaster, leading his band to walk out on him in late 1969. Amazingly, he turned the crisis to his advantage by recruiting a young Cincinnati outfit called the Pacemakers, featuring guitarist Catfish Collins and bassist Bootsy Collins. Although they only stayed with him for about a year, they were crucial to Brown's evolution into even harder funk, emphasizing the rhythm and the bottom even more.
The Collins brothers, for their part, put their apprenticeship to good use, helping define '70s funk as members of the Parliament/Funkadelic axis.
In the early '70s, many of the most important members of Brown's late-'60s band returned to the fold, to be billed as the J.B's (they also made records on their own).
Brown continued to score heavily on the R B charts throughout the first half of the 1970s, the music becoming even more and more elemental and beat-driven. At the same time, he was retreating from the white audience he had cultivated during the mid- to late '60s; records like Make It Funky, Hot Pants, Get on the Good Foot, and The Payback were huge soul sellers, but only modest pop ones. Critics charged, with some justification, that the Godfather was starting to repeat and recycle himself too many times.
It must be remembered, though, that these songs were made for the singles-radio-jukebox market and not meant to be played one after the other on CD compilations (as they are today).
By the mid-'70s, Brown was beginning to burn out artistically. He seemed shorn of new ideas, was being out-gunned on the charts by disco, and was running into problems with the IRS and his financial empire.
There were sporadic hits, and he could always count on enthusiastic live audiences, but by the 1980s, he didn't have a label. With the explosion of rap, however, which frequently sampled vintage JB records, Brown was now hipper than ever. He collaborated with Afrika Bambaataa on the critical smash single Unity, and re-entered the Top Ten in 1986 with Living in America.
Rock critics, who had always ranked Brown considerably below Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin in the soul canon, began to reevaluate his output, particularly his funk years, sometimes anointing him not just as Soul Brother Number One, but as the most important black musician of the rock era.
In 1988, Brown's personal life came crashing down in a well-publicized incident in which he was accused by his wife of assault and battery. After a year skirting hazy legal and personal troubles, he led the police on an interstate car chase after allegedly threatening people with a handgun.
The episode ended in a six-year prison sentence that many felt excessive; he was paroled after serving two years.
It's probably safe to assume that Brown will not make any more important recordings, although he continues to perform and release new material like 1998's I'm Back. Yet his music is probably more popular in the American mainstream today than it has been since the 1970s, and not just among young rappers and samplers.
For a long time his cumbersome, byzantine discography was mostly out of print, with pieces available only on skimpy greatest-hits collections. A series of exceptionally well-packaged reissues on PolyGram has changed the situation; the Star Time box set is the best overview, with other superb compilations devoted to specific phases of his lengthy career, from '50s R B to '70s funk.
1915 Betty Comden, composer, b.
New York, NY, USA. née: Betty Cohen. Part of the team of Comden And Green - One of the real treasures of the musical stage.
The songwriting and screenwriting duo of Betty Comden and Adolph Green created some of the most enduring and beloved musical comedies of the post-war era, reaching their apex with 1952's Singin' in the Rain, widely acclaimed as the greatest film musical ever made. Comden was born Elizabeth Basya Comden on May 3, 1919, in New York City, studying science before pursuing a career in acting; during the late '30s, she befriended Green, himself an aspiring actor as well, and together they formed the Revuers with pal Judy Tuvim. Financial limitations forced the trio to compose their own material and together, Comden and Green became increasingly adept at writing lyrics and librettos; their friend Leonard Bernstein was sufficiently impressed enough to invite the duo to work on his musical adaptation of the Jerome Robbins ballet Fancy Free, retitled On the Town.
The musical premiered on Broadway in 1944 and was an immediate smash; Comden and Green next collaborated with composer Morton Gould on 1945's Million Dollar Baby before heeding the call of Hollywood for the 1947 screen musical Good News. Both The Barkleys of Broadway and Take Me Out to the Ball Game debuted two years later, along with the film adaptation of On the Town; ironically, Singin' in the Rain was not a box-office success at the time of its original release, but is now the gold standard by which movie musicals are judged.
After completing work on another film masterpiece, 1953's The Band Wagon, Comden and Green returned their focus to Broadway, reuniting with Bernstein for Wonderful Town; an extended collaboration with Jule Styne yielded a series of hits, including Two on the Aisle, Peter Pan, Hallelujah, Baby!
, and Bells Are Ringing, the latter featuring fellow Revuers alum Tuvim (or, as she was now much better known, Judy Holliday). 1955's It's Always Fair Weather closed out the duo's long run at MGM and they moved to Warner Bros. for 1958's Auntie Mame, concurrently co-starring in their own two-person stage show.
1964's satirical What a Way to Go was their final screen collaboration and in the decades to follow, their stage projects appeared less frequently as well, although 1970's Applause and 1978's On the Twentieth Century recaptured the glories of their past. With 1991's The Will Rogers Follies, Comden and Green returned to their rightful prominence, earning a Tony Award for their efforts; that same year, they were also announced as recipients of the annual Kennedy Center Honors. Additionally, she is a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Theatre Hall of Fame and in 1995, Comden published her autobiography Off Stage.
1903 Bing Crosby, Vocals/actor, b. 1112 North J Street, Tacoma, WA, USA. d.
Oct. 14, 1977, Madrid, Spain (Coronary - on the golf course), né: Harry Lillis Crosby. (Note: Many sources show Bing born in 1904.
However, he never had a birth certificate, and thought that he was born in 1904. After his demise, a Roman Catholic priest (Tacoma, WA) made Church baptismal records public showing Bing's actual birthdate as May 3, 1903.) In 1924, the vocal act was Crosby and Rinker - working locally around Tacoma, in Washington state.
Only one year later, 1925, they were working in what was arguably the most famous band in America - Paul Whiteman's Orch. (Whiteman introduced Bing and Rinker as A couple of kids I picked up in a Walla Walla (WA) soda store. ) With Whiteman's band, Crosby and Rinker are a big hit at Chicago's Tivoli theatre, but they Bomb at New York's Paramount theatre.
They are saved when composer/entertainer Harry Barris joins them and they are again successful. (Matty Malneck introduced Barris, to Bing and Al Rinker.) 'The Rhythm Boys' (Bing, Harry and Al) left Whiteman and joined Gus Arnheim's band in 1930 at Hollywood's Cocoanut Grove nightclub.
Little recalled today, 'The Rhythm Boys' also toured (by themselves) as an act in vaudeville.) Bing died on Oct. 14, 1977, in an ambulance on way to hospital in Madrid, Spain.
An interesting sidelight is that famed vocalist Mildred Bailey (part Native American and later Red Norvo's wife) was Al Rinker's sister. And, she too gained her fame as a vocalist with Whiteman's band. Another interesting sidelight is that on September 2, 1931, Crosby made his solo radio debut for the CBS Nstwork.
By 1936, Crosby was host of NBC's Kraft Music Hall, and now a major recording star. In 1946, Crosby proffered Kraft and NBC the then very new concept of pre-recorded Tape shows. (Crosby was an investor in the Ampex Corporation, perhaps the earliest Tape Recorder maker in the USA.
) When both Kraft and NBC balked at the idea, Crosby left NBC, and began working at the ABC Network, where his tape transcribed 'Philco Radio Time' show's success ushered in a new era of pre-recorded programming. Bing recorded an estimated 2,600 songs in his life time.
Bing Crosby was, without doubt, the most popular and influential media star of the first half of the 20th century.
The undisputed best-selling artist until well into the rock era (with over half a billion records in circulation), the most popular radio star of all time, and the biggest box-office draw of the 1940s, Crosby dominated the entertainment world from the Depression until the mid-'50s, and proved just as influential as he was popular. Unlike the many vocal artists before him, Crosby grew up with radio, and his intimate bedside manner was a style perfectly suited to emphasize the strengths of a medium transmitted directly into the home. He was also helped by the emerging microphone technology: scientists had perfected the electrically amplified recording process scant months before Crosby debuted on record, and in contrast to earlier vocalists, who were forced to strain their voices into the upper register to make an impression on mechanically recorded tracks, Crosby's warm, manly baritone crooned contentedly without a thought of excess.
Not to be forgotten in charting Bing Crosby's influence is the music itself. His song knowledge and sense of laid-back swing was learned from early jazz music, far less formal than the European-influenced classical and popular music used for inspiration by the vocalists of the 1910s and '20s. Jazz was by no means his main concentration, though, especially after the 1930s; Crosby instead blended contemporary pop hits with the best songs from a wide range of material (occasionally recording theme-oriented songs written by non-specialists as well, such as Cole Porter's notoriously un-Western Don't Fence Me In ).
His wide repertoire covered show tunes, film music, country western songs, patriotic standards, religious hymns, holiday favorites, and ethnic ballads (most notably Irish and Hawaiian). The breadth of material wasn't threatening to audiences because Crosby put his own indelible stamp on each song he recorded, appealing to many different audiences while still not endangering his own fan base. Bing Crosby was among the first to actually read songs, making them his own by interpreting the lyrics and emphasizing words or phrases to emphasize what he thought best.
His influence and importance in terms of vocal ability and knowledge of American popular music are immense, but what made Bing Crosby more than anything else was his persona -- whether it was an artificial creation or something utterly natural to his own personality. Crosby represented the American everyman -- strong and stern to a point yet easygoing and affable, tolerant of other viewpoints but quick to defend God and the American way -- during the hard times of the Depression and World War II, when Americans most needed a symbol of what their country was all about.
Bing Crosby was born Harry Lillis Crosby in Tacoma, WA, on May 3, 1903.
(Bingo was a childhood nickname from one of his favorite comic strips.) The fourth of seven children in a poverty-level family who loved to sing, he was briefly sent to vocal lessons early on by his mother, until he grew tired of the training. An early admirer of Al Jolson, Crosby saw his hero perform in 1917.
Crosby sang in a high-school jazz band, and when he began attending nearby Gonzaga College (he had grown up practically in the middle of the campus), he ordered a drum set through the mail and practiced on the set. Introduced to a local bandleader named Al Rinker, he was invited to join Rinker's group, the Musicaladers, singing and playing drums with the group throughout college.
Though the Musicaladers broke up soon after his graduation in 1925, Bing Crosby was ready to stick with the music business.
Crosby had made quite a bit of money during the band's career, and he and Rinker -- who was the brother of Mildred Bailey -- were confident they could make it in California. They packed up their belongings and headed out for Los Angeles, finding good money working in vaudeville until they were hired by Paul Whiteman, leader of the most popular jazz band in the country (and known as the King of Jazz in an era when black pioneers were mostly ignored since they were unmarketable). For a few songs during Whiteman's shows, Rinker and Crosby sang as the Rhythm Boys with Harry Barris (a pianist, arranger, vocal effects artist, and songwriter later renowned for I Surrender Dear and Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams ).
With their clever songwriting and stage routines, the trio soon became one of the Paul Whiteman Orchestra's most popular attractions, and Crosby took a vocal on one of Whiteman's biggest hits of 1927-1928, Ol' Man River. Besides appearing on record with Whiteman's orchestra, the Rhythm Boys also recorded on their own, though an opportunity for Crosby to enlarge his part in the 1930 film King of Jazz with a solo song went unrealized, as he sat in the clink for a drunk-driving altercation.
When Whiteman again hit the road in 1930, the Rhythm Boys stayed behind on the West Coast.
After Crosby hired his big brother Everett as a manager, he began recording consistently as a solo act with Brunswick Records in early 1931, and by year's end had chalked up several of the year's biggest hits, including Out of Nowhere, Just One More Chance, I Found a Million-Dollar Baby, and At Your Command. He appeared in three films that year, and in September began a popular CBS radio series. Its success was similarly unprecedented; in less than a year, the show was among the nation's most popular and earned Crosby a starring role in 1932's The Big Broadcast, which brought radio stars like Burns Allen to the screen.
By the midpoint of the decade, Crosby was among the top ten most popular film stars. His musical success had, if anything, gained momentum during the same time, producing some of the biggest hits of 1932-1934: Please, Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?, You're Getting to Be a Habit With Me, Little Dutch Mill, Love in Bloom, and June in January.
June in January, itself the biggest hit at that point in Crosby's young career, signaled a turn in his career. Brunswick executive Jack Kapp had just struck out on his own with an American subsidiary of the British Decca Records, and Crosby was lured over with the promise of higher royalty rates. Though his initial releases on Decca were recordings from his films of the year -- June in January was taken from Here Is My Heart -- Crosby began stretching out with religious material (such as Silent Night, Holy Night, which became one of his biggest sellers, estimated at up to ten million).
Late in 1935, he signed a contract for a radio show with NBC called Kraft Music Hall, an association that lasted into the mid-'40s. After his first musical director, Jimmy Dorsey, left, Crosby's songwriter friend Johnny Burke recommended John Scott Trotter (previously with the Hal Kemp Orchestra) as a replacement. Trotter quickly cinched the job when his arrangements for the 1936 film Pennies from Heaven produced the biggest hit of the year in its title song.
(He would continue as Bing's orchestra arranger and bandleader into the mid-'50s.)
After the biggest hit of 1936, Bing Crosby followed up with -- what else? -- the biggest of 1937, just months later.
Sweet Leilani, from the similarly Hawaiian film Waikiki Wedding, showed Bing the direction his career could take over the course of the 1940s and '50s. Though he had recorded several cowboy songs earlier in the 1930s as well as the occasional song of inspiration, Crosby began covering everything under the sun, the popular hits of every genre of contemporary music. These weren't castoffs, either; many of his 1940s country western covers were hits, such as New San Antonio Rose, You Are My Sunshine, Deep in the Heart of Texas, Pistol-Packin' Mama, San Fernando Valley, and Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy.
With the advent of American involvement in World War II, Bing Crosby entered the peak of his career. Arriving in 1940 was the first of his popular Road movies with old friend Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour, along with three of the biggest hits of the year ( Sierra Sue, Trade Winds, Only Forever ). Crosby and Hope had first met in 1932, when the two both performed at the Capitol Theater in New York.
They reunited later in the '30s to open a racetrack, and after reprising some old vaudeville routines, a Paramount Pictures producer decided to find a vehicle for the pair and came up with The Road to Singapore.
More popular success followed in 1941 with the introduction of the biggest hit of Papa Bing's career, White Christmas. Written by Irving Berlin for 1942's Holiday Inn (a film that featured a Berlin song for each major holiday of the year), the single was debuted on Bing's radio show on Christmas Day, 1941.
Recorded the following May and released in October, White Christmas stayed at number one for the rest of 1942. Reissued near Christmas for each of the next 20 years, it became the best-selling single of all time, with totals of over 30 million copies. It was a favorite for soldiers on the various USO tours Crosby attended during the war years, as was another holiday song, I'll Be Home for Christmas.
Crosby's popular success continued after the end of the war, and he remained the top box-office draw until 1948 (his fifth consecutive year at number one).
As with all the jazz-oriented stars of the first half of the 20th century, Crosby's chart popularity was obviously affected by the rise of rock roll in the mid-'50s. Though 1948's Now Is the Hour proved his last number one hit, the lack of chart success proved to be a boon: Crosby now had the time to concentrate on album-oriented projects and collaborations with other vocalists and name bands, definitely a more enjoyable venture than singing pop hits of the day on his radio show, ad nauseam.
Inspired by the '50s adult-oriented album concepts of Frank Sinatra (who had no doubt been inspired by Bing in no small way), Crosby began to record his most well-received records in ages, as Bing Sings Whilst Bregman Swings (1956) and Bing With a Beat (1957) returned him to the hot jazz he had loved and performed back in the 1930s. His recording and film schedule began to slow in the 1960s, though he recorded several LPs for United Artists during the mid-'70s (one with Fred Astaire) and returned to active performance during 1976-1977. While golfing in Spain on October 14, 1977, Bing Crosby collapsed and died of a heart attack.
SEE BING SING with the RYTHM BOYS!
Sung by Bing Crosby, Al Rinker and Harry Barris, with Al Rinker and Harry Barris on piano. Singing (in both English and German) and dancing by the Sisters G (Eleanor and Karla Gutchrlein) (2:07).
1952 Mary Hopkins,, vocals, b. Pontardawe, Wales. UK.
Her big break came when 'Twiggy', the British supermodel, told the Beatle's Paul McCartney about her talent. Her first ballad Those Were the Days, (released by the Apple label in 1968) was a worldwide smash hit. Interestingly, it even knocked the Beatle's recording of Hey Jude out of first place in the UK.
Paul McCartney continued to help Hopkins composing her second single, Goodbye, and even producing her first album. Still, none of her works ever made it into the American Top 40 again (although she did have several more hit singles in the U.K.
). In the early 1970s, the Apple label's fortunes slowly faded, as did Hopkin's. Hopefully, we will hear more of her in the coming years.
It was the British supermodel Twiggy who alerted Paul McCartney to the Welsh singer Mary Hopkin when Apple Records was looking for talent in 1968. The waifish soprano scored a huge, worldwide smash with her first Apple single, the melancholy but rabble-rousing ballad Those Were the Days, in late 1968; it actually knocked the Beatles' own Hey Jude out of the number one position in the U.K.
Paul McCartney lent Hopkin a further hand by producing her first album and writing her second single, Goodbye, which was also a hit. More comfortable with refined, precious ballads and folky pop than rock, Hopkin scored several more hit singles in the U.K.
, although she never entered the American Top 40 again. Her commercial success diminished as Apple's fortunes dwindled in the early '70s.
1911 'Yank' Lawson, Trumpet,b.
(HOOOOOO HOOOO!!) Trenton, MO, USA, d.
Feb. 18, 1995. A very popular Jazz sidemen, early on 'Yank' had played in such big bands as those of Ben Pollack (1933-1935), Bob Crosby, Tommy Dorsey (1935-1938), and Benny Goodman (1942), among others.
In the 1950s, he was a staff musician at NBC, and at about the same time, he and Bob Haggart co-led a jazz band on a very successful series of LP recordings. In 1965 a wealthy Jazz fan, Dick Gibson, helped to organize The World's Greatest Jazz Band , with Lawson and Haggart co-leading. Among those in the band at that time were Lou McGarity, Bud Freeman, Carl Fontanna, Billy Butterfield, Bob Wilber, Ralph Sutton, Morey Feld, and singer Maxine Sullivan.
The (mostly) Haggart and Wilber arrangements allowed plenty of solo space for all. It was a hugely popular band, touring both in the USA and abroad, but by early 1975, the increasingly frequent turnovers, death and defections had taken a toll leaving only the leaders, and they finally disbanded. Fortunately, they left the world a legacy of excellent recordings.
An exciting Dixieland trumpeter with an appealing tone and strong melodic ideas, Yank Lawson was a popular attraction on the Dixieland scene for decades. He was with Ben Pollack's band during 1933-1935 and when it broke up, he was one of the many sidemen who became founding members of the Bob Crosby Orchestra. Lawson was featured on many records, both with the big band and Bob Crosby's Bobcats, during 1935-1938.
He was with Tommy Dorsey during 1938-1939 and had plenty of solo space with Dorsey's Clambake Seven. After a period back with Crosby (1941-1942) and with Benny Goodman (1942), Lawson became a studio musician and started leading his own Dixieland sessions. He recorded extensively with Bob Haggart in the Lawson-Haggart band during the 1950s, had reunions with Crosby, played the musical part of King Oliver on Louis Armstrong's A Musical Autobiography, and had sessions with Eddie Condon, playing at Condon's club regularly during 1964-1966.
In 1968, he and Haggart put together the World's Greatest Jazz Band, an all-star Dixieland group that was together for ten years. He continued playing with Haggart and other top Dixieland players at festivals and jazz parties up until his death at age 83. Yank Lawson recorded as a leader through the years for Bob Thiele's various labels (including Signature), Decca, Everest, ABC-Paramount, Project 3, Atlantic, World Jazz Records, Audiophile, and Jazzology.
1920 John Lewis, Piano/arranger/composer, b. La Grange, IL, USA. d.
March 29, 2001. A native of La Grange, IL, he grew up in Albuquerque, NM, where he began piano lessons at age 7. Later, he studied music and anthropology at the Univ.
Of New Mexico. During WWII, he served in the U. S.
Army, European Theater of Operations, where he met drummer Kenny Clarke. Post war, Clarke joined Dizzy Gillespie's big band in New York, and urged Lewis to also relocate to New York where he could submit his arrangements to Dizzy. Dizzy not only used Lewis' arrangements, but eventuallty hired him to replace his pianist Thelonius Monk.
Lewis became a busy NYC sideman, often working with such greats as Ella Fitzgerald, and other musicians such as Charlie Yardbird Parker, and Lester the Prez Young. In the early 1950s, Lewis formed 'The Modern Jazz Quartet', which would symbolize the epitome of 'Cool Jazz' to many musicians. The other members of the MJQ , as it came to be called, were vibraphonist Milt Jackson, bassist Percy Heath, and the drummer (for most of the MJQs existence) Connie Kay.
It was a cooperative group but Lewis, more than anyone else, was responsible for groups arrangements and compositions. And he came to be (rightly) most identified with the group. The MJQ made their first recordings in 1952, and would remain the premiere concert groups from the 1950s to the 1990s (except for a 7 year layoff), and becoming the most celebrated small Jazz group.
John Lewis was 80 when he died.
1910 Curtis Masses, C W vocals, b. Midland, TX, USA.
Member group: Louise Massey the Westerners .
1919 Pete Seeger, folksong singer, b. New York, NY, USA.
Mostly solo but has appeared with such groups as 'The Weavers', and The Almanac Singers.
Perhaps no single person in the 20th century has done more to preserve, broadcast, and re-distribute folk music than Pete Seeger, whose passion for politics, the environment, and humanity have earned him both ardent fans and vocal enemies since he first began performing in the late '30s. His never-ending battle against injustice led to his being blacklisted during the McCarthy era, celebrated during the turbulent '60s, and welcomed at union rallies throughout his life.
His tireless efforts regarding global concerns such as environmentalism, population growth, and racial equality have earned him the respect and friendship of such political heroes as Martin Luther King, Jr., Woody Guthrie, and Cesar Chavez, and the generations of children who first learned to sing and clap to Seeger's Folkways recordings must number in the millions. Rising above all of Seeger's political ideals and his passion for authentic folk music is his clear voice and chiming banjo which both sing out with a clarity that rings true.
Pete Seeger was born May 3, 1919, in Patterson, NY. The son of Charles and Constance Seeger, Pete grew up in a household filled with both music (his mother was a violinist and teacher, his father was a musicologist and conductor, both of whom had served on the faculty at Juilliard) and political activism (his father worked as a teacher at the University of California at Berkeley, where his pacifism earned him so many enemies that he resigned in the fall of 1918). The youthful Pete initially rebelled against his parents passion for music, but upon hearing a five-string banjo for the first time at the Folk Song and Dance Festival in Asheville, NC, his dream of becoming a painter was pushed aside.
He studied sociology at Harvard University beginning in 1936, but left just before his final exams two years later, choosing instead to roam the American South making field recordings with music scholar Alan Lomax. These experiences were the foundation of Seeger's repertoire of work songs, lullabies, folk songs, and ballads that he would revisit throughout his musical career.
Seeger was drafted into the army in 1942, spending much of his time performing to troops in the South Pacific, and in 1943 he got married to Toshi Ohta (who has remained his wife for more than 50 years).
After his discharge he continued his travels throughout the U.S., but as a performer instead of a scholar, performing wherever people were gathered, from taverns to churches.
On March 3, 1940, he met Woody Guthrie at a migrant worker benefit concert, and soon after the two helped form the Almanac Singers, a loosely organized musical collective that included Lee Hays, Millard Lampell, Sis Cunningham, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Leadbelly, Josh White, Burl Ives, and Richard Dyer-Bennett at different times. The Almanac Singers' career was brief (lasting just over a year), but their pacifist attitudes and their ability to draw large crowds brought them under the scrutiny of the political powers of the time. Upon the dissolution of the Almanacs, Seeger, and Hays formed the Weavers with Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman who found universal success with their bright renditions of folk songs and spirituals like Kisses Sweeter Than Wine, Wimoweh, Goodnight Irene, and On Top of Old Smoky.
Unfortunately, Seeger and Hays' leftist leanings had long been under the scrutiny of the FBI, and ironically, their straightforward and innocuous performances were drawing disdain from the diehard leftist press. In 1955 Seeger was brought before the House of Un-American Activities Committee and his testimony resulted in his being blacklisted for 17 years (and not officially cleared on charges of contempt until 1962).
Seeger left the Weavers in 1958, for a solo career just as the seeds of the music they planted were beginning to take root on college campuses and in coffeehouses across the U.
S. He spent much of the '60s in the South, marching in civil rights protests and arranging an old spiritual into what he named We Shall Overcome, which has become the anthem of the pursuit for equality worldwide. In 1962, he put the words to a portion of the book of Ecclesiastes to music, capturing the feel of the changing climate of the youth movement in his song Turn!
Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season).
In addition to the countless social rallies he organized and participated in at this time, Seeger also had a hand in many of the Newport Folk Festivals in the early and mid-'60s. His adherence to the sanctity of folk music came to a boiling point with the advent of folk-rock, and this was visibly demonstrated when he tried to pull the plug on Bob Dylan's very electrified set with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in 1965. His objection to the Vietnam War was made evident during an appearance on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1967 where he attacked Lyndon Johnson's war policies during his performance of the song Waist Deep in the Big Muddy.
Seeger focused his attention on environmental issues in the '70s and '80s, notably with the launch of the sloop Clearwater (a floating classroom, laboratory, stage, and speaker's forum) into the Hudson River in 1969. He also remained active on the festival circuit, appearing at outdoor folk concerts and organizing rallies for any number of causes, from labor unions to anti-pollution legislation. The '90s saw Seeger on-stage receiving awards as often as performing music; with honors including receiving the nation's highest artistic honors at the Kennedy Center, gaining entry into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and earning the Harvard Arts Medal (despite the fact that he opted not to graduate from the university).
He also won a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album of 1996, and in 1999 he traveled to Cuba to accept the Felix Varela Medal (Cuba's highest honor for his humanistic and artistic work in defense of the environment and against racism ). His ceaseless passion for reaching the hearts and minds of those who will listen is summed up by the inscription on his banjo which reads This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender. Pete Seeger's music does not force hate to surrender with muscle or intimidation, but with Seeger's simple honesty and pure-hearted clarity which has truly changed the course of history during the 60-plus years that he has been performing.
1937 Frankie Valli, vocals, b. Newark, NJ, USA. né: Francis Casteluccio.
Best known as part of 'The Four Seasons' vocal group.
Frankie Valli, the lead singer of the Four Seasons, launched a solo career in 1965 after several years of chart-topping success, while still continuing with the group which was re-billed as Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. He had actually begun as a solo, releasing the 1953 single My Mother's Eyes under the name Frankie Valley.
His debut solo single was (You're Gonna) Hurt Yourself at the end of 1965, but his first solo success came with the gold-selling Can't Take My Eyes Off You (June 1967), which appeared on his first solo album, Frankie Valli--Solo (July 1967). This was followed by Timeless (1968). Valli discontinued solo work for half a dozen years, concentrating on the group.
But he returned to solo recordings in the mid-'70s. His subsequent solo hits included the number one My Eyes Adored You (November 1974), Swearin' to God (May 1975), Our Day Will Come (October 1975), and the number one Grease (May 1978).
and more currently with Uri Thrall.
His current project is Forms of Things Unknown.
I am going to go!!
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