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Isadora Duncan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Isadora Duncan (May 26, 1877 - September 14, 1927) was an American dancer.

Born Dora Angela Duncan in San Francisco, California, she is considered the Mother of Modern Dance. Although never very popular in the United States, she entertained throughout Europe, and moved to Paris, France in 1900. There, she lived at the apartment hotel at no. 9, rue Delambre in Montparnasse in the midst of the growing artistic community gathered there. She told friends that in the summer she used to dance in the nearby Luxembourg Garden, the most popular park in Paris, when it opened at five in the morning.



Personal Life

Both in her professional and her private life, she flouted traditional mores and morality. One of her lovers was the theatre designer Gordon Craig; another was Paris Singer, one of the many sons of Isaac Singer the sewing machine magnate; she bore a child by each of them. Her private life was subject to considerable scandal, especially following the tragic drowning of her children in an accident on the Seine River in 1913.

In her last United States tour in 1922-23, she waved a red scarf and bared her breast on stage in Boston, proclaiming, "This is red! So am I!". She was bisexual which was not uncommon in early Hollywood circles. She had a lengthy lesbian affair with poet Mercedes de Acosta, and was possibly involved with writer Natalie Barney.

Career

Montparnasse's developing Bohemian environment did not suit her, and in 1909, she moved to two large apartments at 5 Rue Danton where she lived on the ground floor and used the first floor for her dance school. She danced her own style of dance and believed that ballet was "ugly and against nature" and gained a wide following that allowed her to set up a school to teach. She became so famous that she inspired artists and authors to create sculpture, jewelry, poetry, novels, photographs, watercolors, prints and paintings. When the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées was built in 1913, her face was carved in the bas-relief by sculptor Antoine Bourdelle and painted in the murals by Maurice Denis.

In 1922 she acted on her sympathy for the social and political experiment being carried out in the new Soviet Union and moved to Moscow. She cut a striking figure in the increasingly austere post-revolution capital, but her international prominence brought welcome attention to the new regime's artistic and cultural ferment. She married the Russian poet Sergei Yesenin, who was 17 years her junior. Yesenin accompanied her on a tour of Europe, but his frequent drunken rages, resulting in the repeated destruction of furniture and the smashing of the doors and windows of their hotel rooms, brought a great deal of negative publicity. The following year he left Duncan and returned to Moscow where he soon suffered a mental breakdown and was placed in a mental institution. Released from hospital, he immediately committed suicide on December 28, 1925. The Russian government's failure to follow through on extravagant promises of support for Duncan's work, combined with the country's spartan living conditions, sent her back to the West in 1924.

Throughout her career, Duncan disliked the commercial aspects of public performance, regarding touring, contracts, and other practicalities as distractions from her real mission: the creation of beauty and the education of the young. A gifted if unconventional pedagogue, she was the founder of three schools dedicated to inculcating her philosophy into groups of young girls (a brief effort to include boys was unsuccessful). The first, in Grunewald, Germany, gave rise to her most celebrated group of pupils, dubbed "the Isadorables," who took her surname and subsequently performed both with Duncan and independently. The second had a short-lived existence prior to World War I at a chateau outside Paris, while the third was part of Duncan's tumultuous experiences in Moscow in the wake of the Russian Revolution.

Duncan's teaching, and her pupils, caused her both pride and anguish. Her sister, Elizabeth Duncan, took over the German school and adapted it to the Teutonic philosophy of her German husband. The Isadorables were subject to ongoing hectoring from Duncan over their willingness to perform commercially (and one, Lisa Duncan, was permanently ostracized for performing in nightclubs); the most notable of the group, Irma Duncan, remained in the Soviet Union after Duncan's departure and ran the school there, again angering Duncan by allowing students to perform too publicly and too commercially.

Later life

By the end of her life, Duncan's performing career had dwindled, and she became as notorious for her financial woes, scandalous love life, and all-too-frequent public drunkenness as for her contributions to the arts. She spent her final years moving between Paris and the Mediterranean, running up debts at hotels or spending short periods in apartments rented on her behalf by an ever-decreasing number of friends and supporters, many of whom attempted to assist her in writing an autobiography, in the hope that it would be sufficiently successful to support her.

Duncan often wore scarves which trailed behind her, and this caused her death in a freak accident in Nice, France. She was killed at the age of 49 when her scarf caught in the open-spoked wheel of her friend Ivan Falchetto's Amilcar automobile, in which she was a passenger. As the driver sped off, the long cloth wrapped around the vehicle's axle. Duncan was yanked violently from the car and dragged for several yards before the driver realized what had happened. She died almost instantly from a broken neck. The tragedy gave rise to Gertrude Stein's mordant remark that "affectations can be dangerous."

The memoir, given the title Ma Vie, that was meant to have been her financial savior, was published posthumously. Its fervor, if not its prose or its accuracy, won the book critical success; Dorothy Parker, reviewing the book (published in English as My Life), called it "an enormously interesting and a profoundly moving book. Here was a great woman: a magnificent, generous, gallant, reckless, fated fool of a woman...She ran ahead, where there were no paths."

Her life story was made into a movie, Isadora (with Vanessa Redgrave, in the title role, more memorable than either the script or its execution), in 1968.

Isadora Duncan was cremated, and her ashes were placed in the columbarium of Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, France.

Miscellaneous

Isadora Duncan was introduced to a generation of alternative comedy fans when reference to her scarf-induced death was used in an episode of The Mighty Boosh on BBC Radio. Character Vince Noir, played by Noel Fielding, was warned by his fellow zookeeper Howard Moon, played by Julian Barratt, about the dangers of neck apparel.

Howard: "You shouldn't wear long, flowing scarves near fast moving vehicles. Are you aware of Isadora Duncan?"

Vince: "Never heard of her. Who is she?"

Howard: "She was a ballet dancer. She was great; she was the toast of the town. One day she was doing a press call. There she was waving to the cameras; long, flowing scarf got caught in the wheel of a car and her head came clean off."

Vince: "No way! What happened?"

Howard: "Well... She never danced again."

Al Jolson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Al Jolson
Origin Lithuania
Years active 1898-1950

Al Jolson (born Asa Yoelson to Moshe Reuben Yoelson and Naomi Etta Cantor - the original family name was Hesselson - in Seredzius, Lithuania, on May 26, 1885 or 1886, and died in San Francisco, California, October 23, 1950) was an American singer and the son of Jewish immigrants. He was one of the most popular entertainers of the 20th century.

Early life and career

The son of the Rabbi of the Talmud Torah Synagogue (now Ohev Sholom Talmud Torah) in Washington, D.C., Jolson became a popular singer in New York City in 1898, and gradually developed the key elements of his performance: blackface makeup; exuberant gestures; operatic-style singing; whistling and directly addressing his audience.

By 1911, he had parlayed a supporting appearance in the Broadway musical La Belle Paree into a starring role. He began recording and was soon internationally famous for his extraordinary stage presence and personal rapport with audiences. His Broadway career is unmatched for length and popularity, having spanned close to 30 years (1911-1940). However, he is best known today for his appearance in one of the first "talkies" The Jazz Singer, the first feature film with sound to enjoy wide commercial success, in 1927. In The Jazz Singer Jolson performed the song "Mammy" in blackface. In truth, Jolson's singing was never jazz, indeed his style remained forever rooted in the vaudeville stage at the turn of 20th century.

While no official Billboard magazine chart existed during Jolson's career, their staff archivist Joel Whitburn used a variety of sources such as Talking Machine World's list of top-selling recordings, and Billboard's own sheet music and vaudeville charts to estimate the hits of 1890-1954. By his reckoning, Jolson had the equivalent of 23 No. 1 hits, the 4th-highest total ever, trailing only Bing Crosby, Paul Whiteman, and Guy Lombardo. Whitburn calculates that Jolson topped one chart or another for 114 weeks.


Al Jolson wearing blackface and white gloves in The Jazz Singer, 1927.Among the many songs popularized by Jolson were "You Made Me Love You," "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With A Dixie Melody," "Swanee" (songwriter George Gershwin's first success), "April Showers," "Toot, Toot, Tootsie, Goodbye," "California, Here I Come," "When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob-Bob-Bobbin' Along," "Sonny Boy" and "Avalon."

Jolson was a political and economic conservative, supporting Calvin Coolidge for president of the United States in 1924 (with the ditty "Keep Cool with Coolidge") unlike most other Jews in the arts, who supported the losing Democratic candidate, John William Davis.

Jolson was married to actress/dancer Ruby Keeler from 1928 to 1940, when they divorced. The couple had adopted a son, Al Jolson Jr., during their marriage, but when he was 14 the boy changed his name to Peter Lowe after his mother's second husband, John Lowe.

After leaving the Broadway stage, Jolson starred on radio. The Al Jolson Show aired 1933-1939, 1942-1943, and 1947-1949, and these shows were typically rated in the top ten. However, Jolson scored what many believe to be the greatest comeback in show business history when Columbia Pictures produced the film biography The Jolson Story in 1946, which starred Larry Parks as Jolson, lip-synching to Jolson's voice. Jolson himself made a short appearance in the film. A box office smash (it was the highest grossing film since Gone with the Wind), "The Jolson Story" led to a whole new generation who became enthralled with Jolson's voice and charisma. Despite such singers as Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and Perry Como being in their primes, Jolson was voted the "Most Popular Male Vocalist" in 1948 by a Variety poll.

His legacy is considered by many to be severely neglected today because of his use of stage blackface, at the time a theatrical convention used by many performers (both white and black), but today viewed by many as racially insensitive. Jolson was billed as "The World's Greatest Entertainer," which is how many of the greatest stars (including Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Elvis Presley, Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart, Jackie Wilson) referred to him. A life-long devotion to entertaining American servicemen and -women (he first sang for servicemen of the Spanish-American War as a boy in Washington, D.C.) led Jolson, against the advice of his doctors, to entertain troops in Korea in 1950 when his heart began to fail.

Death

Jolson died on October 23, 1950, in San Francisco, at the age of 64, apparently of a heart attack, and was interred in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California, where a statue of Jolson beckons visitors to his crypt. On the day he died, Broadway turned off its lights for 10 minutes in Jolson's honor.


This US stamp featuring Al Jolson was part of a series of stamps devoted to great singers.Al Jolson has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame:

For his contribution to the motion picture industry at 6622 Hollywood Blvd.;
For his contribution to the recording industry at 1716 Vine St.;
For his contribution to the radio industry at 6750 Hollywood Blvd.

Forty-four years after Jolson's death, the United States Postal Service acknowledged his contribution by issuing a postage stamp in his honor. The 29-cent stamp was unveiled by Erle Jolson Krasna, Jolson's fourth wife, at a ceremony in New York City's Lincoln Center on September 1, 1994. This stamp was one of a series honoring popular American singers, which included Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Ethel Merman, and Ethel Waters. Al Jolson is one of Mr. Burns' (from The Simpsons) favorite actors - he still believes that he is alive. Jolson's song I'm Sitting on Top of the World was played during the opening montage of 1930's New York City in the 2005 remake of King Kong.

John Wayne
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


U.S. John Wayne stamp from 2004John Wayne (May 26, 1907 - June 11, 1979), popularly known as "The Duke",[1] was an American film actor whose career began in silent films in the 1920s.


Life and career

John Wayne's birthplace in Winterset, IowaJohn Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison in Winterset, Iowa in 1907, but the name became Marion Mitchell Morrison when his parents decided to name their next son Robert. His family was Presbyterian; father Clyde Leonard Morrison was of Irish and Scottish descent and the son of an American Civil War veteran while mother Mary Alberta Brown was of Irish descent. Wayne's family moved to Glendale, California in 1911; it was neighbors in Glendale who started calling him "Big Duke" because he never went anywhere without his Airedale Terrier dog, who was Little Duke. He preferred "Duke" to "Marion", and the name stuck for the rest of his life.

Duke Morrison's early life was marked by poverty; his father was a man who did not manage money well. Duke was a good and popular student. Tall from an early age, he was a star football player for Glendale High School and was recruited by the University of Southern California.

Wayne claimed that he nearly gained admission to the U.S. Naval Academy. He instead attended the University of Southern California, where he was a member of the Trojan Knights and joined the Sigma Chi Fraternity. Wayne also played on the USC football team under legendary coach Howard Jones. An injury while supposedly swimming at the beach curtailed his athletic career, however; Wayne would later note that he was too terrified of Jones' reaction to reveal the actual cause of his injury. He lost his athletic scholarship and with no funds was unable to continue at USC.

While at the university, Wayne began working around the local film studios. Western star Tom Mix got him a summer job in the prop department in exchange for football tickets, and Wayne soon moved on to bit parts, establishing a long friendship with director John Ford. During this period, Wayne appeared with his USC teammates as one of the featured football players in Columbia Pictures' Maker of Men (filmed in 1930 and released in 1931), which starred Richard Cromwell and Jack Holt. In the film, Wayne was billed with his given name of Marion Morrison.

After two years working as a prop man at the William Fox Studios for $35 a week, his first starring role was in the 1930 movie The Big Trail; the director of that movie, Raoul Walsh, (who "discovered" Wayne) gave him the stage name "John Wayne", after Revolutionary War general "Mad Anthony" Wayne. His pay was raised to $75 a week. He was tutored by the studio's stuntmen in riding and other western skills.

The Big Trail, the first "western" epic sound motion picture, established his screen credentials, although it was a commercial failure. Nine years later, his performance in the 1939 film Stagecoach made him a star. In between, he made westerns, most notably at Monogram Pictures, and serials for Mascot Studios, where he played the role of d'Artagnan in The Three Musketeers, set in modern North Africa, with co-stars Ray Corrigan and Max Terhune. In this same year (1933), Wayne had a small part in Alfred E. Green's succes de scandale Baby Face.

Beginning in 1928, Wayne appeared in more than twenty of John Ford's films over the next 35 years, including Stagecoach (1939), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), The Quiet Man (1952), The Searchers (1956), The Wings of Eagles (1957), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).

According to the Internet Movie Database, Wayne played the male lead in 142 of his film appearances.

One of Wayne's most praised roles was in The High and the Mighty (1954), directed by William Wellman and based on a novel by Ernest K. Gann. His portrayal of a heroic airman won widespread acclaim. Island in the Sky (1953) is related to it, and both films were made one year apart with the same producers, director, writer, cinematographer, editor, and distributor.

John Wayne won a Best Actor Oscar in True Grit (1969). Many believe that award was given in recognition of his forty-year career, since his performance in the film was over-the-top and he had given better performances in Red River (1948) and The Searchers (1956). Wayne was also nominated for Best Actor in Sands of Iwo Jima, and as the producer of Best Picture nominee The Alamo, one of two films he directed. The other was The Green Berets (1968), the only film made during the Vietnam War to show American soldiers in a positive representation and supported the conflict.

Batjac, the production company co-founded by Wayne, was named after the fictional shipping company in The Wake of the Red Witch.

In 1964 Wayne was diagnosed with lung cancer, and underwent surgery to remove his entire left lung and two ribs. Rumors circulated that his illness was caused by filming The Conqueror (1956) in Utah, where the US government had tested nuclear bombs. Wayne himself however did not believe this, as from the early 1930s until his operation in 1964 he had smoked between three and five packs of cigarettes a day.

Perhaps due to his sheer popularity, or his status as the most famous Republican star in Hollywood, the Republican Party asked Wayne to run for President in 1968. He declined because he did not believe the public would take seriously an actor in the White House. He did support his friend Ronald Reagan's runs for Governor of California in 1966 and 1970, however. In 1968 Wayne was also asked to be conservative Democratic governor George Wallace's running mate in the presidential election; however, this too did not come to pass.

John Wayne died of stomach cancer on June 11, 1979. He was interred in the Pacific View Memorial Park cemetery in Corona del Mar, Orange County, California. On June 9, 1979, the Archbishop of Panama arrived at the hospital and baptized Wayne into the Roman Catholic Church, at the request of his eldest son Michael, who gave him a Catholic funeral service.

Wayne was married three times, always to Spanish-speaking brides; to Josephine Alicia Saenz, Esperanza Baur, and Pilar Palette. He had four children with Josephine and three with Pilar, most notably actor Patrick Wayne and Ayissa Wayne, who wrote a memoir of her life as the daughter of John Wayne.

His romance with Josie Saenz began when he was a college student and continued for seven years before their marriage. Miss Saenz was 15 or 16 at their first meeting at a beach party at Balboa. The daughter of a successful Spanish businessman, Josie resisted considerable opposition from her family to maintain her relationship with Duke. In the years prior to his death, Wayne was happily involved with his former secretary Pat Stacy.

At the time of his death, John Wayne resided in a bayfront home in Newport Beach, California. His home remains a point of interest in Newport Harbor.

Various things have been named in memoriam of John Wayne. They include John Wayne Airport, in Orange County, California, and the 100-plus mile trail named the "John Wayne Pioneer Trail" in Washington state's Iron Horse State Park.

Draft Controversy

Wayne did not serve in the U.S. military in World War II. This fact has been controversial, particularly in light of his political positions. Wayne was throughout his life an outspoken supporter of anti-communism, patriotism, and the military, perhaps most well known through directing The Green Berets (1968) and his criticism of Jane Fonda. He also often was critical of those who objected to the Vietnam-era draft, calling them cowards. Wayne did not serve in the military, despite being of legal draft age at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. Wayne was thirty-four when the U.S. entered the war and was raising four children, and when he requested deferment, he was granted a 3-A status ("deferred for [family] dependency reasons"). Other actors with children, for example 37-year-old Henry Fonda, did serve throughout the conflict. Later in the war, his Selective Service Classification was changed to 2-A ("deferred in support of [the] national . . . interest"). (Note: This classification does not exist today) A month later the Selective Service reclassified him 1-A. Wayne's studio appealed and his status was reverted to 2-A status. Despite not serving, Wayne did support the military through participation in USO shows for U.S. servicemen.[2]

Wayne later claimed to have applied and narrowly missed out on attending the U.S. Naval Academy, whose graduates are required to serve in the United States Navy.

Robert Morley
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Robert MorleyRobert Morley (May 26, 1908 - June 3, 1992) was an Oscar-nominated British actor who, often in supporting roles, was usually cast as a pompous English gentleman representing the Establishment. In his Movie Encyclopedia, film critic Leonard Maltin describes Morley as "recognizable by his ungainly bulk, bushy eyebrows, thick lips, and double chin, […] particularly effective when cast as a pompous windbag".

Born Robert Adolph Wilton Morley in Semley, Wiltshire, England, he attended Wellington College, RADA and made his West End stage debut in 1929 and his Broadway debut in 1938 but was soon won over to the big screen. A versatile actor who, especially in his younger years, played roles as divergent as those of Louis XVI, for which he received an Academy Award Nomination as Best Supporting Actor(Marie Antoinette, 1938), Oscar Wilde (1960) and a missionary in The African Queen (1951), Morley personified the conservative Englishman in many comedy and caper films. Later in his career, he received numerous critical accolades for "Who Is Killing The Great Chefs Of Europe?" Renowned for repartee and generally being an eloquent conversationalist, Morley gained the epitheton of being a "wit".

His son, Sheridan Morley, is a well-known writer and critic.


Trivia:

Peter Grant, later manager of Led Zeppelin, was often Morley's film stand-in.

Jay Silverheels
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jay Silverheels (June 26, 1912 - March 5, 1980) was a Canadian Mohawk Indian actor.

He was born Harold J. Smith on the Six Nations Indian Reserve, in Brantford, Ontario, Canada.

Silverheels died in Woodland Hills, California and was cremated. His ashes were returned home and scattered in Canada. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6538 Hollywood Boulevard.

Best known for his many appearances as the Lone Ranger's friend Tonto, Jay Silverheels starred in other films such as:

Broken Arrow - (1950) with Jimmy Stewart
War Arrow - (1953) with Maureen O'Hara, Jeff Chandler and Noah Beery, Jr.,
Walk the Proud Land - (1956) with Audie Murphy and Anne Bancroft
Alias Jesse James (1959)
The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold (1958)
Indian Paint (1964) with Johnny Crawford

In 1993, Silverheels was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Peter Cushing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Peter Cushing OBE

Cushing (left) in the television adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four in the winter of 1954 on BBC Television.Peter Cushing, OBE, (26 May 1913-11 August 1994) was an English actor, best known for playing Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, and for playing Baron Frankenstein and Professor van Helsing in Hammer films, often appearing opposite his close friend Christopher Lee (a typical example being Horror Express, 1973).

Cushing was born in Kenley in Surrey on 26 May 1913. He was raised in Kenley and Dulwich, South London. He left his first job as a surveyor's assistant to take up a scholarship at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. After working in repertory theatre, he left for Hollywood in 1939, but returned in 1941 after roles in several films. His first major film part was as Osric in Hamlet (1948) with Laurence Olivier.

In the 1950s he worked in television, most notably as Winston Smith in the BBC's 1954 adaptation of the George Orwell novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, scripted by Nigel Kneale. Cushing drew much praise for his performance in this production, although he always felt that his performance in the existing version of the play ?- it was performed twice in one week and only the second version survives in the archives ?- was inferior to the first. During many of his small screen performances, Cushing also starred as Fitzwilliam Darcy in the BBC's 1952 production of Pride and Prejudice.

Hammer Horror

His first appearances in his two most famous roles were in Terence Fisher's films The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958).

Cushing will always be associated with playing Victor Frankenstein and Van Helsing in an unending string of quota quickie horror films produced by Hammer Horror. These provided him with 20 years of steady employment despite being of often middling quality. Although talented as an actor, he admitted that career decisions for him meant choosing roles where he knew the audience would accept him. "Who wants to see me as 'Hamlet'? Very few. But millions want to see me as Frankenstein so that's the one I do." He also said "If I played Hamlet, they'd call it a horror film."

Reportedly, he thought The Blood Beast Terror (1968) to be the worst film in which he participated. Compact at 5'8", a mane of increasingly iron-grey hair and wiry, his unemotional, meticulous delivery gave him an energetic on screen presence, and he often performed stunts on camera. Cushing was blessed with a high crown but full head of hair and he was often cast opposite to the 6'5" Christopher Lee, with whom he became great friends.

"People look at me as if I were some sort of monster, but I can't think why. In my macabre pictures, I have either been a monster-maker or a monster-destroyer, but never a monster. Actually, I'm a gentle fellow. Never harmed a fly. I love animals, and when I'm in the country I'm a keen bird-watcher," he said in an interview published in ABC Film Review in November 1964.

In the mid-1960s, he played the eccentric Dr. Who in two movies (Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks ?- Invasion Earth 2150 AD) based on the television series Doctor Who. He also appeared twice in cult series The Avengers. In 1986 he played the role of Colonel William Raymond in 'Biggles'. In Space: 1999 he appeared as a Prospero-like character called Raan.

He was one of many stars to guest on The Morecambe and Wise Show ?- the standing joke in his case being the idea that he was never paid for his appearance.

Cushing played Sherlock Holmes many times, starting with Hammer's The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), the first colour Holmes film. He followed this up with a performance in 16 episodes of the BBC series Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes (1968), of which unfortunately only six episodes survive. Finally, towards the end of his life, Cushing played the detective in old age, in The Masks of Death (1984) for Channel 4.

Although madness was always a stronghold for Cushing, he was also regarded by many as one of the most "grandfatherly" horror actors on the screen. During movies such as "Dracula A.D. 1972," the audience was often far more capitavated by his sweet sensibility, than his races through mod London.

Death of his wife

In 1971, Cushing withdrew from the film Blood from the Mummy's Tomb when his wife died. He and actress Helen Beck had been married since 1943. The following year, he was quoted in the BBC Radio Times as saying "Since Helen passed on I can't find anything; the heart, quite simply, has gone out of everything. Time is interminable, the loneliness is almost unbearable and the only thing that keeps me going is the knowledge that my dear Helen and I will be united again some day. To join Helen is my only ambition. You have my permission to publish that... really, you know dear boy, it's all just killing time. Please say that."

A half-dozen years later, his feelings were unchanged: "When Helen passed on six years ago I lost the only joy in life that I ever wanted. She was my whole life and without her there is no meaning. I am simply killing time, so to speak, until that wonderful day when we are together again." The following year, he was cast in Star Wars, which was shooting in London.

Star Wars

Peter Cushing as Grand Moff TarkinIn 1977 he appeared in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope as one of his (now) most recognized characters, Grand Moff Tarkin despite having originally been considered for the role of Obi-Wan. Cushing found accepting the role in a science fiction fantasy easy. "My criterion for accepting a role isn't based on what I would like to do. I try to consider what the audience would like to see me do and I thought kids would adore Star Wars."

Costuming difficulties resulted in an endearing piece of trivia about Star Wars. He was presented with ill-fitting Wellington boots for the Moff Tarkin role and they pinched his feet so much that he was given permission to play the role in slippers. The camera operators filmed him above the knees. A star-struck Carrie Fisher found it hard to seem terrified in his presence because of his comfortable slippers and due to the fact that she found Peter to be so polite and charming off camera. She also said that the lines that she was given were ridiculous. She reported that he smelled of linen and lavender.

Later career

After Star Wars, he continued appearing in films and televisions, but would retire in another nine years. His longtime friend and contemporary Christopher Lee, in comparison, has continued acting.

In 1989 Cushing was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. He retired to Whitstable (where he had bought a seafront house in 1959) to continue his hobby of birdwatching, and to write two autobiographies. His love for his deceased wife became one of the most warmly regarded aspects of his star persona, and he famously named a rose after her on the BBC programme Jim'll Fix It. Cushing died in Canterbury from cancer in 1994, aged 81.

Lee remarked on his friend's death: "I don't want to sound gloomy, but, at some point of your lives, every one of you will notice that you have in your life one person, one friend whom you love and care for very much. That person is so close to you that you are able to share some things only with him. For example, you can call that friend, and from the very first maniacal laugh or some other joke you will know who is at the other end of that line. We used to do that with him so often. And then when that person is gone, there will be nothing like that in your life ever again".

A person can learn so much from this thread. Thank you.




MOLLY AND TENBROOKS
(Bill Monroe)

(This is a Bill Monroe classic bout two great race horses
One of them named Tenbrooks from Kentucky
The other named Molly from Rhode Island, and Molly was livin' in California while the Tenbrooks was raised in Kentucky
And they heard about how fast each other was, and it was long way back in them days between Kentucky and California
So they met half way and they had a race. It's the true story)


Hey run ol' Molly run run ol' Molly run
Tenbrooks gonna beat you to the bright and shinin' sun
To the bright and shinin' sun oh Lord to the bright and shinin' sun

Tenbrooks was big bad horse he had a shaggy mane
He run all round to Memphis he'd beat the Memphis train
Beat the Memphis train oh Lord beat the Memphis train

See that train a comin' it's comin' round the curb
See ol' Tenbrooks runnin' he's strainin' every nerve
Strainin' every nerve oh Lord strainin' every nerve

[ mandolin ]
Out in California well Molly done as she pleased
Come back to ol' Kentucky got beat with all ease
Beat with all ease oh Lord beat with all ease

Kiper Kiper you're not ridin' as right
Molly's beatin' ol' Tenbrooks clear her out of sight
Clear her out of sight oh Lord clear her out of sight

Kiper Kiper Kiper my son
Your ol' Tenbrooks provide her let ol' Tenbrooks run
Let ol' Tenbrooks run oh Lord let ol' Tenbrooks run

[ fiddle ]
The women all're laughin' the children all're cryin'
Men're a hollerin' ol' Tenbrooks is flyin'
Ol' Tenbrooks is flyin' oh Lord ol' Tenbrooks is flyin'

Well goin' catch ol' Tenbrooks and hitch him in the shade
We gonna bury ol' Molly in coffin ready made
Coffin ready made oh Lord coffin ready made

Peggy Lee
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born
May 26, 1920
Jamestown, North Dakota
Died
January 21, 2002
Los Angeles, California

Peggy Lee (May 26, 1920 - January 21, 2002) was an American jazz singer and songwriter. She was famous for her "soft and cool" singing style, which she is thought to have developed in response to noisy nightclub audiences.

Life

Lee was born Norma Deloris Egstrom in Jamestown, North Dakota. After her mother died her father remarried and her stepmother was very cruel to her. So she left home, and in 1941, she joined Benny Goodman's band?-then at the height of its popularity?-and for over two years toured the United States with it. In early 1942, Lee had her first # 1 hit, "Somebody Else Is Taking My Place," followed by 1943's "Why Don't You Do Right?," which sold over a million copies and made her famous. She sang with Goodman in two 1943 films, "Stage Door Canteen" and "The Powers Girl." In March 1943, Lee married Dave Barbour, the guitarist in Goodman's band.

In 1944, Lee began to record for Capitol Records, for whom she produced a long string of hits, many of them with lyrics and music by Lee and Barbour, including "I Don't Know Enough About You," "It's a Good Day," and the #1-selling record of 1948, "Mañana." She is most famous for her cover version of the Little Willie John hit "Fever" and her rendition of Leiber and Stoller's "Is That All There Is?" Her relationship with the Capitol label spanned almost three decades, apart from a brief but artistically rich detour (1952-1956) at Decca Records, where she recorded one of her most acclaimed albums, "Black Coffee," and had hit singles with "Lover" and "Mr. Wonderful." She was also known as a songwriter with such hits as the songs from the Disney movie Lady and the Tramp, which she also sang. Her many songwriting collaborators, in addition to Dave Barbour, included Laurindo Almeida, Harold Arlen, Sonny Burke, Cy Coleman, Gene DiNovi, Duke Ellington, Dave Grusin, Dick Hazard, Quincy Jones, Francis Lai, Jack Marshall, Johnny Mandel, Marian McPartland, Willard Robison, Lalo Schifrin, Hubie Wheeler, and Victor Young.

Lee also acted in several films. In 1953, she played opposite Danny Thomas in a remake of the early Al Jolson film, The Jazz Singer. In 1955, she played a despondent and alcoholic blues singer in Pete Kelly's Blues (1955), for which she was nominated for an Oscar.

Lee was nominated for twelve Grammy Awards, winning Best Contemporary Vocal Performance for her 1969 hit "Is That All There Is". In 1995 she was given the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

In the early 1990s, she retained famed entertainment attorney Neil Papiano, who, on her behalf successfully sued Disney for royalties on Lady and the Tramp. Lee's lawsuit claimed that she was due royalties for video tapes, a technology that did not exist when she agreed to write and perform for Disney.

She continued to perform into the 1990s and still mesmerized audiences and critics alike. As was the case with fellow musical legends Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, Lee turned to acting skills and showmanship as her voice diminished.

After years of poor health, Lee died from complications from diabetes and cardiac disease at the age of 81 in 2002. She is survived by Nicki Lee Foster, her daughter with Dave Barbour. She is interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, California.

Peggy Lee is a recipient of the state of North Dakota's Roughrider Award; the Pied Piper Award from The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP); the Presidents Award, from the Songwriters' Guild of America; the Ella Award for Lifetime Achievement, from the Society of Singers; and the Living Legacy Award, from the Women's International Center. In 1999 she was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.


Fever :: Peggy Lee

Never know how much I love you,
Never know how much I care.
When you put your arms around me,
I get a fever that's so hard to bear.

You give me fever,
When you kiss me,
Fever when you hold me tight.
Fever! In the morning,
Fever all through the night.

Sun lights up the daytime
And moon lights up the night..
I light up when you call my name
And you know I'm gonna treat you right

You give me fever
When you kiss me,
Fever when you hold me tight.
Fever! In the morning,
And fever all through the night

Everybody's got the fever
That is something you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago

Romeo loved Juliette
Juliette she felt the same
When he put his arms around her he said,
"Julie, Baby , you're my flame

"Thou giveth fever
"When we kisseth
"Fever with thy flaming youth
"Fever! I'm afire,
"Fever, yeah, I burn, forsooth."

Cap'in Smith and Pocahontas had a very mad affair
When her daddy tried to kill him
She said,
"Daddy, oh, don't you dare!

"He gives me fever
"With his kisses
"Fever when he holds me tight
"Fever! I'm his misses, So
"Daddy, Won't you treat him right?"

Now you've listened to my story,
Here's the point that I have made:
Chicks were born to give you fever,
Be it Fahrenheit or Centigrade

They give you fever
When you kiss them
Fever if you live and learn
Fever! 'till you sizzle
what a lovely way to burn
what a lovely way to burn
what a lovely way to burn
what a lovely way to burn

James Arness
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

James Arness (originally Aurness) (born May 26, 1923 in Minneapolis, Minnesota) is an actor best known for portraying Marshal Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke for 20 years, a record length for prime time shows that is shared with Kelsey Grammer's portrayal of Dr. Frasier Crane. Arness's parents were Rolf Cirkler Aurness and Ruth Duesler, descendants of German and Norwegian immigrants. Arness is the older brother of actor Peter Graves. He was the tallest actor ever to play a lead role, standing 6' 7" (2.01 m).

Though primarily identified with Westerns, he also is remembered for appearing in two science fiction films, The Thing from Another World and Them!

James Arness served in the United States Army during World War II and was severely wounded at the Battle of Anzio. He was a close personal friend of John Wayne's and co-starred with him in Big Jim McLain.

Since Gunsmoke ended, Arness has continued to perform primarily in western-themed movies and television series, including How the West Was Won, and five made-for-television Gunsmoke reunion movies between 1987 and 1994. A notable exception was a brief turn as a big city policeman in the short-lived 1981 series, McClain's Law.

For his contribution to the television industry, James Arness has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1751 Vine Street. In 1981, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Miles Davis
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Davis' 1959 album Kind of Blue, likely the best-selling jazz album ever.Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926 - September 28, 1991) was one of the most influential and innovative musicians of the 20th century. A trumpeter, bandleader and composer, Davis was at the forefront of almost every major development in jazz after World War II. He played on some of the important early bebop records and recorded the first cool jazz records. He was partially responsible for the development of modal jazz, and jazz fusion arose from his work with other musicians in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Free jazz was the only post-war style not significantly influenced by Davis, although some musicians from his bands later pursued this style. His recordings, along with the live performances of his many influential bands, were vital in jazz's acceptance as music with lasting artistic value. A popularizer as well as an innovator, Davis became famous for his languid, melodic style and his laconic, and at times confrontational, personality. As an increasingly well-paid and fashionably-dressed jazz musician, Davis was also a symbol of jazz music's commercial potential.

Davis was late in a line of jazz trumpeters that started with Buddy Bolden and ran through Joe "King" Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Gillespie. He has been compared to Duke Ellington as a musical innovator: both were skillful players on their instruments, but were not considered technical virtuosos. Ellington's main strength was as a composer and leader of a large band, while Davis had a talent for drawing together talented musicians in small groups and allowing them space to develop. Many of the major figures in post-war jazz played in one of Davis's groups at some point in their career.

Davis was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 13, 2006. He has also been inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame, and the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame.

Life

Early life (1926 to 1945)

Miles Davis was born into a relatively wealthy African-American family living in Alton, Illinois. His father, Miles Henry Davis, was a dentist, and in 1927 the family moved to a white neighborhood in East St. Louis. They also owned a substantial ranch, and Davis learned to ride horses as a boy.

Davis's mother, Cleota, wanted Davis to learn the violin?-she was a capable blues pianist, but kept this hidden from her son, feeling that "negro" music was not sufficiently genteel. At the age of nine, one of Davis's father's friends gave him his first trumpet, but he did not start learning to play seriously until the age of thirteen, when his father gave him a new trumpet and arranged lessons with local trumpeter Elwood Buchanan and, later, a man named Mone Peterson. Against the fashion of the time, Buchanan stressed the importance of playing without vibrato, and Davis would carry his clear signature tone throughout his career.

Clark Terry was another important early influence and friend of Davis's. By the age of sixteen, Davis was a member of the musician's union and working professionally when not at high school. At seventeen, he spent a year playing in bandleader Eddie Randle's "Blue Devils". During this time, Sonny Stitt tried to persuade him to join the Tiny Bradshaw band then passing through town, but Cleota insisted that he finish his final year of high school.

In 1944, the Billy Eckstine band visited St. Louis. Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker were members of the band, and Davis was taken on as third trumpet for a couple of weeks because of the illness of Buddy Anderson. When Eckstine's band left Davis behind to complete the tour, the trumpeter's parents were still keen for him to continue formal academic studies.

Bebop and the birth of the cool (1944 to 1955)

CD reissue of Davis's 1957 LP Birth of the Cool, collecting much of his 1949 to 1950 work.In 1944 Davis moved to New York City, ostensibly to take up a scholarship at the Juilliard School of Music. In reality, however, he neglected his studies and immediately set about tracking down Charlie Parker. His first recordings were made in 1945, and he was soon a member of Parker's quintet, appearing on many of Parker's seminal bebop recordings for the Savoy and Dial labels. Davis's style on trumpet was already distinctive by this point, but as a soloist he lacked the confidence and virtuosity of his mentors, and was known to play throttled notes (a trademark of Davis's) and to sometimes stumble during his solos.

By 1948 he had served his apprenticeship as a sideman, both on stage and record, and a recording career of his own was beginning to blossom. Davis began to work with a nonet that featured then-unusual instrumentation such as the French horn and tuba. The nonet featured a young Gerry Mulligan and Lee Konitz. After some gigs at New York's Royal Roost, Davis was signed by Capitol Records. The nonet released several singles in 1949 and 1950, featuring arrangements by Gil Evans, Gerry Mulligan and John Lewis. This began his collaboration with Evans, with whom he would collaborate on many of his major works over the next twenty years. The sides saw only limited release until 1957, when eleven of the twelve were released as the album Birth of the Cool (more recent issues collect all twelve sides).

Between 1950 and 1955, Davis mainly recorded as a leader for Prestige and Blue Note records in a variety of small group settings. Sidemen included Sonny Rollins, John Lewis, Kenny Clarke, Jackie McLean, Art Blakey, Horace Silver, Thelonious Monk, J. J. Johnson, Percy Heath, Milt Jackson and Charles Mingus. Davis was influenced at around this time by pianist Ahmad Jamal, whose sparse style contrasted with the "busy" sound of bebop.

Playing in the jazz clubs of New York, Davis was in frequent contact with users and dealers of drugs, and by 1950, in common with many of his contemporaries, he had developed a serious heroin addiction. For the first part of that decade, although he gigged a great deal and played many sessions, they were mostly uninspired, and it seemed that his talent was going to waste. No one was more aware of this than Davis himself, and his wife. In the winter of 1953-1954 he returned to East St. Louis and locked himself in a guest room in his father's farm for seven days until the drug was fully out of his system.

After overcoming his heroin addiction, Davis made a series of important recordings for Prestige in 1954, later collected on Bags' Groove, Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants and Walkin'. At this time he started to use the Harmon mute to darken and subdue the timbre of his trumpet, and this muted trumpet tone was to be associated with Davis for the rest of his career.

However, the 1954 recordings were not released immediately, and the recovery of his popularity with the jazz public and critics had to wait until July 1955, when he played a legendary solo on Monk's "'Round Midnight" at the Newport Jazz Festival. This performance thrust Davis back into the jazz spotlight, leading to George Avakian signing Davis to Columbia and the formation of his first quintet.

First quintet and sextet (1955 to 1958)

In 1955, Davis formed the first incarnation of the renowned Miles Davis Quintet. This band featured John Coltrane (tenor saxophone), Red Garland (piano), Paul Chambers (double bass) and Philly Joe Jones (drums). Musically, the band picked up where Davis's late 1940s sessions had left off. Eschewing the rhythmic and harmonic complexity of the then-prevalent bebop, Davis was allowed the space to play long, legato, and essentially melodic lines in which he would begin to explore modal music. Davis still admired Ahmad Jamal, and the quintet's music reflects his influence as well.


Davis's 1958 album Milestones.The first recordings of this group were made for Columbia Records in 1955, released on 'Round About Midnight. Davis was still under contract to Prestige, but had an agreement that he could make recordings for subsequent releases using his new label. His final recordings for Prestige were the product of two days of recording in 1956, released as Relaxin' with the Miles Davis Quintet, Steamin' with the Miles Davis Quintet, Workin' with the Miles Davis Quintet and Cookin' with the Miles Davis Quintet.

Though today it is often regarded as one of the greatest groups in jazz history, Davis's choice of sidemen received some criticism at the time. Additionally, the quintet was never stable; several of the other members used heroin, and the Miles Davis Quintet disbanded in early 1957.

In 1958, the quintet reformed as a sextet, with the addition of Julian "Cannonball" Adderley on alto saxophone, and recorded Milestones. Musically, it encompasses both the past and the future of jazz. Davis showed that he could play both blues and bebop (ably assisted by Coltrane), but the centerpiece is the title track, a Davis composition centred on the Dorian and Aeolian modes and featuring the free improvisatory modal style that Davis would make his own. One of the tracks, "Billy Boy", features just the rhythm section, without horns?-a very unusual feature in itself. Another unusual feature of the song "Billy Boy," if listened to closely, one can hear sobbing in the background for the duration of the song.

Recordings with Gil Evans (1957 to 1963)

Davis's 1960 album Sketches of Spain.In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Davis recorded a series of albums with Gil Evans, often playing flugelhorn as well as trumpet. The first, Miles Ahead (1957), showcased his playing with a jazz big band and a horn section beautifully arranged by Evans. Tunes included Dave Brubeck's "The Duke", as well as Léo Delibes's "The Maids Of Cadiz", the first piece of European classical music Davis had recorded.

In Davis and Evans's Porgy and Bess, a 1958 arrangement of George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, the framework of the Gershwin songs provided ample space for Davis to improvise, showing his mastery of variations and expansions on the original themes, as well as his original melodic ideas.

Sketches of Spain (1959 to 1960) featured tunes by contemporary Spanish composers Joaquin Rodrigo and Manuel de Falla, as well as Gil Evans originals with a Spanish theme. Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall (1961) includes Rodrigo's "Concierto de Aranjuez", along with other tunes recorded at a concert with an orchestra under Evans's direction.

Sessions in 1962 and 1963 resulted in the album Quiet Nights, a short collection of bossa nova tunes which was released against the wishes of both Evans and Davis. An unsuccessful session in 1968 was the last time the two men collaborated.

Kind of Blue (1959 to 1964)

After recording Milestones, Garland and Jones were replaced by Bill Evans and Jimmy Cobb. Davis probably hired Evans for his harmonically sophisticated approach. For various reasons, Evans's stay in the group was relatively brief, and he departed late in 1958, replaced by Wynton Kelly.

In March and April 1959, Davis re-entered the studio with his working sextet and Bill Evans to record what is widely considered his masterpiece, Kind of Blue. The album was planned around Evans's piano style. It was also influenced by concepts that Evans had learned while working with George Russell on the earliest recordings of modal jazz and passed on to the sextet. Kelly only played on "Freddie Freeloader", and was not present at the April session. So What and All Blues had been played by the sextet at performances prior to the recording sessions, but for the other three compositions, Davis and Evans prepared skeletal harmonic frameworks which the other musicians saw for the first time on the day of recording, in order to generate a fresh and spontaneous improvisational approach. The resulting album is probably the best-loved and (according to the RIAA) best-selling jazz album ever, and also has proven to be a huge influence on other musicians.

The same year, while taking a break outside the famous Birdland night club in New York City, Davis was beaten by the New York police and subsequently arrested. Believing the assault to have been racially motivated, he attempted to pursue the case in the courts, before eventually dropping the proceedings. Such treatment was markedly at odds with his treatment outside the U.S., and especially on his regular European tours, where he was fêted by society.

Coltrane, who had been eager to form his own group, was convinced by Davis to play with the group on one final European tour in the spring of 1960. He then departed to form his classic quartet, although he returned for some of the tracks on the 1961 album Someday My Prince Will Come. Davis tried various replacement saxophonists, including Sonny Stitt and Hank Mobley. The quintet with Hank Mobley was recorded in the studio and on several live engagements at Carnegie Hall and the Black Hawk supper club in San Francisco. Stitt's playing with the group is found on the Live in Stockholm CD.

In 1963, Davis's long-time rhythm section of Kelly, Chambers and Cobb departed. He quickly got to work putting together a new group, including tenor saxophonist George Coleman and bassist Ron Carter. Davis, Coleman, Carter and a few other musicians recorded half an album in the spring of 1963. A few weeks later, drummer Tony Williams and pianist Herbie Hancock joined the group, and soon thereafter Davis, Coleman and the young rhythm section recorded the rest of the Seven Steps to Heaven album.

The young rhythm section clicked very quickly with each other and the horns; the group's rapid evolution can be traced through the aforementioned studio album, In Europe (July 1963), My Funny Valentine, and Four and More (both February 1964). The group played essentially the same repertoire of bebop and standards that earlier Davis bands did, but tackled them with increasing structural and rhythmic freedom and (in the case of the up-tempo material) breakneck speed.

Coleman left in the spring of 1964, to be replaced by avant-garde saxophonist Sam Rivers, on the suggestion of Tony Williams. Davis, however, who knew of Rivers's leanings toward free jazz, a genre which Davis disdained, knew that Rivers was not the ideal replacement he was looking for. Rivers remained in the group only briefly, but was recorded live with the quintet in Japan; the group can be heard on In Tokyo (July 1964).

By the end of the summer, Davis had managed to convince Wayne Shorter to quit Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, a reluctant decision because Shorter had become musical director of that group. Shorter's arrival completed the trumpeter's Second Great Quintet. Surely enough, Shorter became the principal composer of Miles's quintet, and some of his compositions of this era ("Footprints", "Nefertiti") are now standards. While on tour in Europe, the group quickly made their first official recording, Miles in Berlin (Fall 1964).

Second quintet (1965 to 1968)

By the time of E.S.P. (1965) the lineup (Davis's second great quintet, and the last of his acoustic bands) consisted of Wayne Shorter (saxophone), Herbie Hancock (piano), Ron Carter (bass) and Tony Williams (drums).

A two-night Chicago gig by this band in late 1965 is captured on the 8-CD set The Complete Live at The Plugged Nickel 1965 released in 1995. Unlike the group's studio albums, the live engagement still shows the group playing primarily standards and bebop tunes, albeit with a greater degree of freedom than in previous years.

This was followed by a series of strong studio recordings: Miles Smiles (1966), Sorcerer (1967), Nefertiti (1967), Miles in the Sky (1968) and Filles de Kilimanjaro (1968). The quintet's approach to improvisation came to be known as "time no changes," because while they retained a steady pulse, they abandoned the chord-change-based approach of bebop. Through Nefertiti, the studio recordings consisted of primarily originals composed by Wayne Shorter, and to a lesser degree the other sidemen. In 1967, the group began the unusual practice of playing their live concerts in continuous sets, with each tune flowing into the next and only the melody indicating any sort of demarcation; Davis's bands would continue to perform in this way until his retirement in 1975.

Miles in the Sky and Filles de Kilimanjaro, on which electric bass, electric piano and guitar were tentatively introduced on some tracks, clearly pointed the way to the subsequent fusion phase in Davis's output. Davis also began experimenting with more rock-oriented rhythms on these records, and by the time the second half of Filles de Kilimanjaro had been recorded, Dave Holland and Chick Corea had replaced Carter and Hancock in the working band, though both Carter and Hancock would contribute to future recording sessions. Davis soon began to take over the compositional duties of his sidemen.

Electric Miles (1969 to 1975)

Davis's first jazz fusion album, In a Silent Way (1969).Recent boxed sets have shown that Davis's progression from the "free-bop" (or postbop) of the Second Quintet to the dense, rhythmic world of fusion was much less abrupt than it seemed initially, when In a Silent Way followed Filles de Kilimanjaro. Miles's influences, widely attributed to the tastes of his future wife Betty Mabry, were the late 1960s acid, funk and rock heroes, namely Sly and the Family Stone, James Brown and Jimi Hendrix. Slightly later, most prominently on 1972's On the Corner, the influence of Karlheinz Stockhausen became evident. This transition required that Davis and his band adapt to modern, electric instruments in both live performances and the studio.

By the time In a Silent Way had been recorded in February 1969, Davis had augmented his standard quintet with additional players. Hancock and Joe Zawinul were brought in to assist Corea on electric keyboards, and the young guitarist John McLaughlin made the first of his many appearances with Miles at this time. By this point, Wayne Shorter was also doubling on soprano saxophone. After the recording of this album, Tony Williams left to form his group Lifetime and was replaced by Jack DeJohnette.

Six months later, an even larger group of musicians, including Jack DeJohnette, Airto Moreira and Bennie Maupin, recorded Bitches Brew. These two records were the first truly successful amalgamations of jazz with rock music, laying the groundwork for the genre that would become known simply as "fusion".

Both Bitches Brew and In a Silent Way feature "extended" (more than 20 minutes each) compositions which were never actually "played straight through" by the musicians in the studio. Instead, Miles and producer Teo Macero selected musical motifs of various lengths from recorded extended improvisations and edited them together into a musical whole which only exists in the recorded version. Bitches Brew, in particular, is a case study in the use of electronic effects, multi-tracking, tape loops and other editing techniques.


Bitches Brew (1970), Davis's first Gold album.During this period, Davis toured with the "Lost Quintet" of Shorter, Corea, Holland and DeJohnette. Though Corea played electric piano and the group occasionally hinted at rock rhythms, the music was edgy, uncompromising post-bop that frequently spilled over into full-blown free jazz. The group's repertoire included material from Bitches Brew, In a Silent Way, the 1960s quintet albums, and an occasional standard.

Both records, especially Bitches Brew, proved to be huge sellers for Davis, and he was accused of "selling out" by many of his former fans, while simultaneously attracting many new fans who listened to Davis alongside the more popular rock acts of the late 1960s.

Davis reached out to new audiences in other ways as well. Starting with Bitches Brew, Davis's albums began to often feature art much more in line with psychedelic or black power movements than with his earlier albums' art. He took significant cuts in his usual performing fees in order to open for rock groups like the Steve Miller Band, the Grateful Dead and Santana. (Carlos Santana has stated that he should have opened concerts for Davis, rather than the other way around.) Several live albums were recorded during the early 1970s at such performances: It's About That Time (March 1970; Shorter's last appearance with the group), Black Beauty (April 1970; Steve Grossman replacing Shorter on saxophones) and At Fillmore (June 1970; Keith Jarrett joining the group as a second keyboardist). In contrast with the Lost Quintet, the music on these albums is funkier and more rock-oriented, with relatively few free jazz tendencies. Corea began to rely heavily on effects like ring modulation, and Dave Holland shifted to the electric bass (having primarily played acoustic bass for the previous year).

By the time of Live-Evil (December 1970; Jarrett as the only keyboardist, Gary Bartz replacing Grossman on saxophones, and Michael Henderson replacing Holland on electric bass), Airto Moreira percussion. Davis's ensemble had transformed into a much more funk-oriented group. Davis began experimenting with wah-wah effects on his horn. The ensemble with Bartz, Jarrett and Henderson, often referred to as the "Cellar Door band" (the live portions of Live-Evil were recorded at a club by that name), never recorded in the studio, but is documented in the six CD Box Set "The Cellar Door Sessions" which was recorded over four nights in December of 1970.

1970 saw Davis contribute extensively to the soundtrack of a documentary about the great African-American boxer Jack Johnson. A devotee of boxing, Davis drew parallels between Johnson, whose career had been defined by the fruitless search for a Great White Hope to dethrone him, and Davis's own career, in which he felt the establishment had prevented him from receiving the acclaim and rewards that were due him. The resulting album, 1971's A Tribute to Jack Johnson, contained two long pieces that utilised the talents of many musicians, some of whom were not credited on the record itself, including the guitarists John McLaughlin and Sonny Sharrock. Working with producer Teo Macero, Davis created what many critics regard as his finest electric, rock-influenced album, though its use of editing and studio technology would be fully appreciated only upon the release of the five-CD The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions in 2003.

Davis refused to be confined by the expectations of his traditional audience or music critics, and continued to explore the possibilities of his new band. As he stated in his autobiography, he wanted to made music for the young afro-american audience. On The Corner (1972) showed a seemingly effortless grasp of funk without sacrificing the rhythmic, melodic and harmonic nuance that had been present throughout his entire career. The album also showed the influences of Paul Buckmaster's studio arrangements and Stockhausen in its layered recording and post-production editing. This album was highlighted by the appearance of saxophonist Carlos Garnett.This record provoked fierce disparagement from many critics, with one British critic noting: "I love Miles, but this is where I get off." Miles Davis in his autobiography stated that this criticism was made because no critic could categorized this music and complained that On the Corner was promoted by the "traditional" jazz radio stations, therefore not to young afro-americans. Miles himself thought that the record would be "something for black people to remember me by".

After recording On the Corner, Davis put together a new band, with only Michael Henderson, Carlos Garentt and percussionist Mtume returning from the Cellar Door band. This band included guitarist Reggie Lucas, tabla player Badal Roy, sitarist Khalil Balakrishna and drummer Al Foster. The band was unusual in that none of the sidemen were major jazz instrumentalists; as a result, the group's music emphasized rhythmic density and shifting textures instead of individual solos. This group, which recorded in the Philharmonic Hall for the album In Concert (1972), was unsatisfactory to Davis. Through the first half of 1973, he dropped the tabla and sitar, took over keyboard duties, and added guitarist Pete Cosey to the group. The Davis/Cosey/Lucas/Henderson/Mtume/Foster ensemble would remain virtually intact over the next two years. Initially, Dave Liebman played saxophones and flute with the band; in 1974 he was replaced by Sonny Fortune.

By the mid-1970s, Davis's previous rate of production was falling. Big Fun (1974) was a double album containing four long jams, recorded between 1969 and 1972. Similarly, Get Up With It (1975) collected recordings from the previous five years. Get Up With It included "He Loved Him Madly", a tribute to Duke Ellington, as well as one of Davis's most lauded pieces from this era, "Calypso Frelimo". Contemporary critics complained that the album had too many underdeveloped ideas. This was his last studio album of the seventies.

In 1974 and 1975, Columbia recorded three double-LP live Davis albums: Dark Magus, Agharta and Pangaea. Dark Magus is a 1974 New York concert; the latter two are recordings of consecutive concerts from the same February 1975 day in Osaka, Japan. At the time, only Agharta was available in the US; Pangaea and Dark Magus were initially released only by CBS/Sony Japan. All three feature at least two electric guitarists (Reggie Lucas and Pete Cosey, deploying an array of post-Jimi Hendrix electronic distortion devices; Dominique Gaumont is a third guitarist on Dark Magus), electric bass (Davis still relying on the funk-tinged, stripped-down playing of Michael Henderson), drums, reeds, and Davis on trumpet (also electrified) and organ. These albums, documenting the working bands Miles was leading at that point, were the last music he was to record for five years.

Troubled by osteoarthritis (which led to a hip replacement operation in 1976, the first of several), bursitis, rheumatism and a renewed dependence on illegal drugs, Davis withdrew almost completely from the public eye for five years. As Gil Evans said, "His organism is tired. And after all the music he's contributed for 35 years, he needs a rest."

While in retirement, Davis saw the fusion music that he had spearheaded over the past decade firmly enter into the mainstream. Whether played by Davis's many protégés, including Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea with his groundbreaking fusion group Return to Forever, John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra, and the Weather Report (founders Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul both spent time in Davis's bands), Davis's influence could be heard everywhere, much as it could after each of his previous revolutionary advances.

Davis's 1970s recordings have in recent years undergone a fairly radical reassessment, and are now seen by many as a significant body of work comparable to that of his earlier periods, and as an extremely interesting mixture of ideas gleaned from jazz, funk and rock music, as well as from experimental, "process-oriented" European composers. Recently, Dave Douglas, Wadada Leo Smith, Mark Isham, Tim Hagans, Nicholas Payton and others have recorded albums more or less indebted to Davis's electric era.

Last Decade (1981 to 1991)

As always, Davis assembled his bands from among the finest musicians available, including the saxophonist Bill Evans (no relation to the pianist) and a young bass player named Marcus Miller who would become one of Davis's most regular collaborators throughout the decade. Davis's first new studio album, The Man With The Horn (1981), was relatively poorly received. The same year, Davis prepared to tour again, and formed a touring band with largely different members from those who had played on the album. In May, they played two dates as part of the Newport Jazz Festival, and the concerts, as well as the live recording We Want Miles from the ensuing tour, were well reviewed.

By the time of Star People (1983), Davis's band included guitarist John Scofield, with whom Davis worked closely on both Star People and 1984's Decoy, an underdeveloped, experimental mixture of soul music and electronica. Despite the uneven quality of much of his recorded output, live Davis was still capable of moments, and entire concerts, of great inspiration. With a seven-piece band, including Scofield, Evans, drummer Al Foster and bassist Darryl Jones (later of The Rolling Stones), he played a series of European gigs to rapturous receptions. While in Europe, he took part in the recording of Aura, an orchestral tribute to Davis composed by the Danish trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg.

Back in the studio, You're Under Arrest (1985) included another stylistic detour: interpretations of contemporary pop songs in Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time" and Michael Jackson's "Human Nature", for which he would receive much criticism in the jazz press, although the record was otherwise well-reviewed. Davis also noted that many accepted jazz standards were in fact pop songs from Broadway theatre, and that he was simply selecting more recent examples of pop songs to perform. You're Under Arrest would also be Davis's final album for Columbia, due to the long-term deterioration of his relationship with the label; Columbia's strong promotion of Wynton Marsalis was a factor in Davis's departure from the label. A delay in the release of Aura, possibly the most highly regarded album of his last decade, was also a factor.

Again demonstrating his eclecticism during this time period, Davis collaborated with a number of figures from the British new wave movement, including Scritti Politti. Davis ?- at the invitation of producer Bill Laswell ?- recorded some trumpet parts during sessions for Public Image Ltd.'s Album album, according to Public Image's John Lydon in the liner notes of their Plastic Box box set, although in Lydon's words, "strangely enough, we didn't use (his contributions)." (Also according to Lydon in the Plastic Box notes, Davis favorably compared Lydon's singing voice to his trumpet sound.)[1]

Having first taken part in the Artists United Against Apartheid recording, Davis signed with Warner Brothers records and reunited with Marcus Miller. The resulting record, Tutu (1986), would be his first to feature modern studio tools?-programmed synthesizers, samples and drum loops?-to create an entirely new setting for Davis's playing. Ecstatically reviewed on its release, the album would frequently be described as a modern version of the classic Sketches of Spain, and won a Grammy award in 1987.

He followed Tutu with the soundtracks to two movies, Street Smart and Siesta, with neither the films nor Davis's scores being particularly noteworthy (other than Morgan Freeman's celebrated turn as "Fast Black" in Street Smart), but he continued to tour with a band of constantly rotating personnel and a critical stock at a level higher than it had been for fifteen years.

He was married to actress Cicely Tyson in 1981, and they were divorced in 1988.

Miles Davis continued to tour and perform regularly through the last years of his life. He died from a stroke in September 28, 1991 at the age of 65. He is interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York.

Sally Ride
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Astronaut
Nationality: American
Date of birth: May 26, 1951
Place of birth: Encino, Los Angeles, California
Previous Occupation: Physicist

Sally Kristen Ride (b. May 26, 1951) is a former astronaut and became the first American woman to reach outer space, in 1983. She was preceded by two Soviet women, Valentina Tereshkova (1963) and Svetlana Savitskaya (1982). She was married for a time to NASA Astronaut Steve Hawley.

Career

Ride was born in Encino, Los Angeles, California and attended high school at Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles (now Harvard-Westlake School). In addition to being interested in science she was a nationally ranked tennis player. She initially attended Swarthmore College but received her bachelor's degrees (in English and physics) from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. She then received a master's degree and a Ph.D. in physics at the same institution, while doing research in astrophysics and free-electron laser physics.

Ride joined NASA in 1978 as part of the first astronaut class to accept women. As part of her training she was the Capsule Communicator (CapCom) for the second and third Space Shuttle flights (STS-2 and STS-3) and helped develop the Space Shuttle's robot arm. On June 18, 1983 she became the first American woman in space as a crewmember on Space Shuttle Challenger for STS-7. On that flight, the 5-person crew deployed two communications satellites, conducted pharmaceutical experiments, and was the first to use the robot arm to release a satellite into space and the first to use the arm to retrieve a satellite. Her second space flight was in 1984, also on board the Challenger. She has cumulatively spent more than 343 hours in space. Ride was 8 months into training for her third flight at the time of the Space Shuttle Challenger accident. She was named to the Presidential Commission investigating the accident, and headed its Subcommittee on Operations. After the investigation, Ride was assigned to NASA headquarters in Washington, DC. There she led NASA's first strategic planning effort, authoring a report entitled "Leadership and America's Future in Space", and founded NASA's Office of Exploration.

In 1987, Ride left NASA to work at the Stanford University Center for International Security and Arms Control. In 1989, she became a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego and Director of the California Space Institute. In 2003, she was asked to serve on the Space Shuttle Columbia Accident Investigation Board. She is currently on leave from the university and is the President and CEO of Sally Ride Science, a company that creates entertaining science programs and publications for upper elementary and middle school students, with a particular focus on girls.

Ride has received numerous honors and awards, including the Jefferson Award for Public Service, the von Braun Award, the Lindbergh Eagle, and the NCAA's Theodore Roosevelt Award. She has been inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame and the Astronaut Hall of Fame, and has twice been awarded the National Spaceflight Medal. Ride is the only person to serve on both of the panels investigating Shuttle accidents (those for the Challenger explosion and the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster).

Ride has long been an advocate for improved science education and has written several children's books about space exploration, including The Third Planet, Exploring Earth from Space, To Space and Back, Voyager, and The Mystery of Mars.

Lenny Kravitz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



(José Cruz/ABr)Leonard Albert Kravitz (born May 26, 1964) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and guitarist whose retro-style amalgam of rock, pop, funk, and even techno is inspired by such music icons as Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon. Like Prince and Sly Stone before him, Kravitz uses a multi-ethnic, mixed-sex group back-up band.

Biography

Early life

Kravitz was born in New York City, and is the son of Russian-Jewish American film producer Sy Kravitz and Bahamian American actress Roxie Roker, best known as Helen Willis, a regular character on The Jeffersons. Kravitz was named after his uncle, Pfc. Leonard Kravitz, who was killed in action in Korea while suppressing a Chinese attack and saving most of his platoon; he was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. Some believe the Medal of Honor has been denied to Pfc. Kravitz because he was Jewish, citing similar circumstances in which others have been posthumously awarded the honor.

His parents moved to California. Having taught himself bass, piano, guitar, and drums at an early age and developed his singing voice in the California Boys Choir and the Metropolitan Opera, he attended Beverly Hills High School and performed under the artist name, Romeo Blue. At that stage, he was heavily influenced by Prince. His parents were friends with jazz greats Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Bobby Short, and Miles Davis so he grew up in a musical household although he would pursue a career in rock rather than jazz.

In the late 1980s, Kravitz returned to New York to pursue a musical career. He ended up sharing a house with Lisa Bonet of The Cosby Show. The two would fall in love and marry on November 16, 1987, Lisa's 20th birthday; they are divorced and have a daughter called Zoe. Kravitz would broaden his influences beyond Prince to classic rock and soul artists such as Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield and Bob Marley. He signed a contract with Virgin Records.

Early career

Let Love Rule album coverHis 1989 debut album Let Love Rule was a moderate success, reaching #61 on the US Billboard album charts. The title track would reach #89 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #5 on the modern rock charts. The second single, "I Build This Garden For Us" reached #25 on the modern rock charts.

Kravitz gained greater recognition when Madonna reached number one with a cover version of his song, "Justify My Love" on her 1990 Immaculate Collection album. Kravitz's marriage to Lisa Bonet ended in the same year.

The following year, his second album, Mama Said reached the top 40 of the Billboard album charts and songs on the album were influenced by his divorce from Bonet. It contained the hit single "It Ain't Over Til It's Over", which reached #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #10 on the Billboard R&B charts. "Always On The Run" featured Slash of Guns N' Roses and reached #8 on the modern rock charts and #40 on the mainstream rock charts. "Stand By My Woman" would scrape the lower reaches of the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #76, while "What Goes Around Comes Around" reached the top 40 of the Billboard R&B chart. The album would also feature a contribution by Sean Lennon which was his first appearance on record.

In 1993, Are You Gonna Go My Way was released, reaching #12 on the Billboard 200 and Kravitz earned a Brit Award for best international male artist in 1994. The title track won a MTV Video Music Award for Best Male Video for the video produced by Mark Romanek, in which Kravitz slung his dreadlocks and wore platform boots. The single would reach #1 on the Australian and Billboard mainstream rock charts and #2 on the modern rock charts. Several singles from the album would follow including:

"Believe" #60 on the Billboard Hot 100, #15 on the mainstream rock charts and #10 on the modern rock charts;
"Is There Any Love In Your Heart" would reach #19 on the mainstream rock charts; and
"Heaven Help/Spinning Around Over You" reached #80 on the Billboard Hot 100 and "Heaven Help" reached #92 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles charts.
Kravitz covered the Kiss song "Deuce" for a tribute album, with the track reaching #15 on the Billboard rock chart. He released the Circus album in 1995, which reached number 10 on the Billboard chart on the back of his past achievement. However, it only had two singles: "Rock And Roll Is Dead" peaked at #75 on the Billboard Hot 100, #4 on the mainstream rock chart and #10 on the modern rock charts. "Can't Get You Off My Mind" reached #62 on the Billboard chart and #36 on the US adult chart.

Later career

With 5 (1998), Kravitz embraced digital technology such as synthesizers and tape loops for the first time. 5 introduced his music to an even wider audience, particularly in Europe, thanks to the hit single "Fly Away" being featured prominently in both car manufacturer and airline commercials. 5 would reach #28 on the Billboard 200, with "Fly Away" reaching #12 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1999 and #1 on the modern and mainstream charts. He would win the first of his four consecutive Grammy for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance at the Grammy Awards of 1999. Other hits from the album included:

"If You Can't Say No" reached the top 40 on the Billboard mainstream rock chart in 1999 - dance producer Brian Transeau would remix the track; and "I Belong To You" would reach #71 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #15 on the Billboard adult chart in 2000.

His cover version of The Guess Who's hit "American Woman" won him another Grammy for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance at the Grammy Awards of 2000 and helped The Guess Who find a new audience. The song originally came from the soundtrack of Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and was added to the 5 album as a bonus track in 1999. The song would reach #49 on the Billboard 100, #3 on the Billboard modern rock chart and #7 on the Billboard mainstream rock chart.

Kravitz released a Greatest Hits compilation. It proved to be his most successful album, reaching #2 on the Billboard 200 and Canadian album charts and achieve triple platinum status. The single "Again" reached #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #1 on a world adult composite chart (based on the US, UK, Canada, Germany, France and Australia) and US adult chart. The track would also earn him his third consecutive Grammy for the Best Male Rock Vocal in the Grammy Awards of 2001.


Kravitz released his sixth album Lenny in October 2001. It reached #12 on the Billboard 200 and #9 on the Canadian charts. The first single from the album "Dig In" reached #31 on the Billboard 100 and went top ten in the world adult and US adult charts. It also reached #1 in Argentina, went top 5 in Portugal and top 10 in Italy. He won his fourth consecutive Grammy for Best Male Rock Vocal at the Grammy Awards of 2002. Subsequent singles included:

"Stillness of Heart" went top 10 in Italy, top 20 in the US and world adult charts and Argentina and top 40 in Canada and the UK;
"Believe in Me" reached #1 in Portugal, went top 10 in the Netherlands, top 20 in Italy and Germany and reached the top 100 world sales and airplay charts; and "If I Could Fall In Love" reached the US adult top 40.
Jay-Z invited Kravitz to appear on the track "Guns and Roses" on his 2002 Blueprint 2: the Gift and the Curse. Kravitz would also join P. Diddy, Pharrell Williams and Loon on the track "Show Me Your Soul" from the Bad Boys 2 soundtrack. In 2004, he would appear on a track on N.E.R.D's album Fly or Die. Jay-Z would appear on the track "Storm" on Kravitz's 2004 Baptism album.

In early 2003, Kravitz released the track "We Want Peace" as a download-only track as a protest against the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The track reached #1 on the world internet download charts and MP3.com download chart. Kravitz also appeared on Unity, the official album of the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Also in 2003, Kravitz worked with Michael Jackson on a song titled "Another Day". Kravitz said of the experience, "working with Michael Jackson was probably the best recording experience of my life. He was totally cool, absolutely professional and a beautiful, beautiful guy. And let's not forget, Michael is a musical genius." The song, "Another Day," which Kravitz co-wrote and produced with Jackson, was set to appear on Jackson's long-awaited new album. But the album, set for release in late 2003, was cancelled.

Kravitz's seventh album Baptism was released in May 2004. On his website, Kravitz says that he chose the title because "I've made my first record all over again. That's how it feels, as pure as the beginning." Baptism would debut at number 14 on the US album charts, in the top 50 of the Australian album charts and in the top 75 of the UK album charts. The first single, "Where Are We Running," reached #69 on the Billboard Hot 100, top 25 on a composite European chart and top 20 on Internet charts, Argentina, Italy and the world and US top 20 as of the end of May 2004. "Storm," featuring Jay-Z, reached the top 100 of the Billboard Hot 100 and the top 50 of the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop charts. However, "Lady" became the album's surprise hit, making the US Top 30 and propelling "Baptism" to gold status. From March 2005, Lenny toured all over the world with the tour Electric Church, which ended at the Brixton Academy, London in July 2005. Kravitz is currently serving as the opening act for Aerosmith on their fall 2005 tour.

Kravitz's latest project is a charity single for Hurricane Katrina victims. The single titled "From The Bottom Of My Heart" is a song written and composed by Michael Jackson. Kravitz traveled to London, along with other recording artists, to record the song. The single was anticipated to be released towards the end of 2005 but has been delayed to 2006.

A mother and her very young son were flying Southwest Airlines from
Kansas City to Chicago. The little boy (who had been looking out the
window) turned to his mother and asked, "If big dogs have baby dogs,
and big cats have baby cats, why don't big airplanes have baby
airplanes?"

The mother (who couldn't think of an answer) told her son to ask the
stewardess.

So the boy went down the aisle and asked the stewardess. The
stewardess, who was very busy at the time, smiled and said, "Did your
Mom tell you to ask me?" The boy said, "yes she did." "Well, then, you
go and tell your mother that there are no baby airplanes because
Southwest always pulls out on time. Have your Mom explain that to
you."

here's an obvious tribute

Mustang Sally, think you better slow your mustang down.
Mustang Sally, think you better slow your mustang down.
You been running all over the town now.
Oh! I guess I'll have to put your flat feet on the ground.

All you want to do is ride around Sally, ride, Sally, ride.
All you want to do is ride around Sally, ride, Sally, ride.
All you want to do is ride around Sally, ride, Sally, ride.
All you want to do is ride around Sally, ride, Sally, ride.
One of these early mornings, oh, you gonna be wiping your weeping eyes.

I bought you a brand new mustang 'bout nineteen sixty five
Now you come around signifying a woman, you don't wanna let me ride.
Mustang Sally, think you better slow your mustang down.
You been running all over the town now.
Oh! I guess I'll have to put your flat feet on the ground.

All you want to do is ride around Sally, ride, Sally, ride.
All you want to do is ride around Sally, ride, Sally, ride.
All you want to do is ride around Sally, ride, Sally, ride.
All you want to do is ride around Sally, ride, Sally, ride.

Wow! Lots of things goin' on here in our studio. Thanks, Try, for that Monroe classic. Don't know it, because it was not among the ones that surfaced during the blue grass come back.

Well, Bob be finished with that "Go ask your mother" joke. Very good, hawkman. Sure beats the rhythm method. The turtle and the hawk are being baaaaaaddddddd today.

Now I remember Isadora, folks, I saw the movie, but the only thing that I can remember is the woman standing in an open car and getting her long scarf caught in the tire wheel, thus breaking her neck. From what I read of Boston Bob's info, she went out just as she danced, with panache.

Well, Yit, I know that song as well as Bob's "Fever" and Miss Peggy may have done this one:

I Can Sing a Rainbow:


Red and yellow and pink and green,
Purple and orange and blue,
I can sing a rainbow,
Sing a rainbow,
Sing a rainbow too!

Listen to your heart,
Listen to your heart,
And sing everything you feel,
I can sing a rainbow,
Sing a rainbow,
Sing a rainbow too

Alternate Version:

Red and yellow and pink and green
Purple and orange and blue
I can sing a rainbow,
sing a rainbow,
sing a rainbow too.

Listen with your eyes,
Listen with your ears,
and sing everything you see,
I can sing a rainbow,
sing a rainbow,
sing along with me.

Red and yellow and pink and green,
Purple and orange and blue,
I can sing a rainbow,
sing a rainbow,
sing a rainbow too!

BLUEGRASS FESTIVAL IN THE SKY
(Tom T. Hall)


In the sweet by and by at that Bluegrass Festival in the sky…

There'll be Monroe Flatt Scruggs and the Stanleys
The Lonesome Pine Fiddlers and the whole McGranner's Family
Molly and the Stonemans and Martin and Crow
Dillard and Thompson and Smiley and Reno

(And we will sing)
In the sweet by and by at that Bluegrass Festival in the sky…

[ banjo - fiddle ]
There'll be old Tige and Baker and Clements and Warren
Richmond and Harold Carl Story and Dorrin
Acker McMagaha Wiseman and Gray
The Osbornes Bill Clifton Sprung and Uncle Day

(And we will sing)
In the sweet by and by at that Bluegrass Festival in the sky...

Old man rhythm is in my shoes
No use t'sittin' and a'singin' the blues
So be my guest, you got nothin' to lose
Won't ya let me take you on a sea cruise
Oo-ee, oo-ee baby
Oo-ee, oo-ee baby
Oo-ee, oo-ee baby
Won't ya let me take you on a sea cruise

Feel like jumpin' baby won't ya join me please
I don't like beggin' but I'm on bended knee
I got to get t'rockin get my hat off the rack
I got to boogie woogie like a knife in the back
So be my guest, you got nothin' to lose
Won't ya let me take you on a sea cruise
Oo-ee, oo-ee baby
Oo-ee, oo-ee baby
Oo-ee, oo-ee baby
Won't ya let me take you on a sea cruise

I got to get t'movin' baby I ain't lyin'
My heart is beatin' rhythm and it's right on time
So be my guest, you got nothin' to lose
Won't ya let me take you on a sea cruise
Oo-ee, oo-ee baby
Oo-ee, oo-ee baby
Oo-ee, oo-ee baby
Won't ya let me take you on a sea cruise

Feel like jumpin' baby won't ya join me please
I don't like beggin' but I'm on bended knee
Oo-ee, oo-ee baby
Oo-ee, oo-ee baby
Oo-ee, oo-ee baby
Won't ya let me take you on a sea cruise

You know, Try. That blue grass "by and by" reminded me of a bit of history:




The Future in Song: A Yesterday's Tomorrows Discography
Lori Elaine Taylor, Ph.D.

Every forward-looking segment of the population that makes music has made music out their futures feared or futures hoped for. There were unions: members of the Industrial Workers of the World, Wobblies, sang Ralph Chaplin's "Solidarity Forever." Religious movements imagined their messianic futures on earth or in a better world after death. Many union songs were satires of the better world promised by churches. In Joe Hill's "The Preacher and the Slave," the long-haired preacher promises the wage slaves "pie in the sky when you die." By the end of the Wobbly song, it is the union members, of course, who gain the wealth and feed the people. "You will eat, by and by "In that glorious land above the sky "Work and pray, live on hay "You'll get pie in the sky when you die."

Sound familiar, listeners?

And for shari:


Crazy rhythm, here's the doorway
I'll go my way, you'll go your way
Crazy rhythm, from now on
We're through.
Here is where we have a showdown
I'm too high-hat, you're too low-down
Crazy rhythm, here's goodbye to you!
They say that when a high-brow meets a low-brow
Walkin' along Broadway
Soon the high-brow
He has no brow
Ain't it a shame?
And you're to blame
What's the use of prohibition?
You produce the same condition
Crazy rhythm, from now on, we're through
Crazy rhythm, I've gone crazy.

Anyone know the etymology of high brow/low brow?

Sorry, not me.


I DON'T WANT MY GOLDEN SLIPPERS
(Tom T. Hall)

I don't want my golden slippers when I reach my heaven's home
I just want to see my Jesus sitting there upon his throne
I don't want no fancy mansions just a place to rest my head
Where I rest in peace eternal when I pay my earthly debt

I don't want my golden slippers when I enter heaven's door
I'll be free to sing his praises where the sun shines evermore
Just a plain and simple cottage down the street from Jesus' door
Where I'll visit with my loved ones who had journeyed on before

[ ac.guitar ]
I don't want my golden slippers just a plain and simply shoes
I don't want my golden pathways just a country road or two
Love to see the devil tremble when he sees me on my knees
I don't want my golden slippers I'm just longing to be free

Well, Try, you are a high brow. Just look at that avatar:

Intellectual and aristocratic. Seriously, listeners, I have heard all my life that a high forehead is the sign of a large and active brain. Old wive's tail, perhaps? It does seem, however, that our Try has a SEG on his face.

In looking around our vast audience, I see so many tributes to the children, so I think we should follow suit.

For bean, Mo, and little Jane and any others that I have missed:

Where are you going my little one, little one
Where are you going my baby my own
Turn around and you're two, turn around and you're four
Turn around and you're a young girl going out of the door

Turn around (turn around)
Turn around (turn around)
Turn around and you're a young girl goin' out of the door

Where are you going my little one, little one
*Dirndls* and petticoats, where have you gone
Turn around and you're tiny, turn around and you're grown
Turn around and you're a young wife with babes of your own


Turn around and you're a young wife with babes of your own

Where are you going my little one, little one
Where are you going my baby my own
Turn around and you're two, turn around and you're four
Turn around and you're a young girl going out of my door