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Shirley Bassey
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dame Shirley Veronica Bassey, DBE (born January 8, 1937), is a Welsh singer, perhaps best-known for performing the theme songs to the James Bond films Goldfinger (1964), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), and Moonraker (1979). She is the only singer to have recorded more than one James Bond theme song.



Life and career

Birth to 1960

Bassey was born at 182 Bute Street, Tiger Bay, Cardiff to a Nigerian father who was a seaman, while her mother came from Yorkshire, North England. She grew up in the notorious working-class district of Tiger Bay, Cardiff, as the youngest of seven children. Her father left when she was two years old.

Bassey attended Moorland Primary School, Splott, Cardiff.

Bassey first found employment packing in a local factory when she left school at the age of fifteen. She enjoyed singing while she packed enamel pots, and to supplement her wage she sang in local pubs and clubs. In 1953, she signed up for the revue Memories of Jolson, a musical based on the life of Al Jolson. She next took up a professional engagement in Hot From Harlem, which ran until 1954.

By this time Bassey had become sick of show business, and had become pregnant at 16 years old with her daughter Sharon (whos son Nathan is a crazy porn star), so she went back to waitressing in Cardiff. However, in 1955, a chance recommendation of her to Michael Sullivan, a Streatham-born booking agent, put her firmly on course for her destined career. He saw talent in Bassey, and decided he would make her a star. She toured various theatres until she got an offer of the show that put her firmly on the road to stardom, Al Read's Such Is Life. While she starred in this show, Philips A&R and record producer Johnny Franz spotted her on television, was impressed, and offered her a record deal.

Bassey recorded her first single, entitled "Burn My Candle", and Philips released it in February 1956, when Bassey was just nineteen. Owing to the suggestive lyrics, the BBC banned it, but it sold well nonetheless, backed with her powerful rendition of "Stormy Weather". Further singles appeared, and, in February 1957, Bassey scored her first hit with "Banana Boat Song", which peaked at number 8 on the UK singles chart. During that year, she also recorded under the direction of U.S. producer Mitch Miller in America for the Columbia label, producing the single "If I Had A Needle And Thread"/"Tonight My Heart She Is Crying".

In mid-1958, she recorded two singles that would end up as classics in the Bassey catalogue. "As I Love You" appeared as a b-side to another ballad, "Hands Across The Sea". It did not sell well at first, but, after a chance appearance at the London Palladium, things began to pick up. In February 1959, it made number one and stayed there for 4 weeks. Bassey also recorded "Kiss Me, Honey Honey, Kiss Me" at this point, and while "As I Love You" raced up the charts, so too did this record, with both songs being in the top three at the same time.

A few months later, Bassey signed to EMI Columbia, and the second phase in her recording career had begun.


1960 to 1980

Throughout the 1960s, Bassey scored with numerous hits on the British charts and, in 1965, scored her only U.S. Top Ten hit with the title song of the James Bond film, Goldfinger. Owing to the success of that song, she appeared frequently on many American television talk shows hosted by the likes of Johnny Carson and Mike Douglas. She signed with the United Artists label in the late sixties and in 1970 released the album "Something", which showcased a new modern Bassey style. The single of the same name was more successful in the UK charts than the original Beatles recording. The success of "Something" spawned a series of hugely successful albums on the UA label.


In 1971 she recorded the title theme for "Diamonds Are Forever", later sampled by Kanye West for his 2005 hit "Diamonds From Sierra Leone". Bassey recorded her final title theme for the Bond films with Moonraker in 1979. Between 1970 and 1979, Bassey had 18 hit albums in the UK charts and starred in two highly rated BBC TV series.


1980 onwards

Throughout most of the 1980s, Bassey focused on charitable works and performing occasional concert tours throughout Europe and the United States. She recorded less often, but released an album in 1984 of her most famous songs, I Am What I Am, performed with the London Symphony Orchestra. She released a single in 1986 "There's No Place Like London", written by Lynsey De Paul and Gerard Kenny. In 1987, she provided vocals for Swiss artists Yello on "The Rhythm Divine", a song co-written by Scottish singer Billy Mackenzie. Also in 1987, she released an album La Mujer sung entirely in Spanish. In 1996, she collaborated with Chris Rea in the movie La Passione appearing in the film as herself and releasing the single "Disco La Passione". In 1997, she caused a sensation in the UK with her song "History Repeating" with the Propellerheads which scored a #1 ranking on the British Dance Music Charts, introducing Bassey to a new generation of fans. The liner notes of the Propellerheads' album Decksandrumsandrockandroll included the line 'We would like to extend our maximum respect to Shirley Bassey for honouring us with her performance. We are still in shock...'. During her UK Tour in 1998, 120,000 people saw Dame Shirley live and she smashed her own record in London for the longest run by a solo artist at the Royal Festival Hall with ten sold out shows.


In 2003, Bassey celebrated 50 years in showbusiness and released the CD, Thank You For The Years which entered the Top 20 of the album chart. A Gala Charity Auction of her stage costumes at Christie's "Dame Shirley Bassey: 50 Years of Glittering Gowns" raised £250,000 to go towards the Dame Shirley Bassey Scholarship at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and the Noah's Ark Children's Hospital Appeal.

With thirty-one hits in the UK Singles Chart, which span a record forty-two year period for a female vocalist, plus thirty five hit LPs in the corresponding UK Albums Chart, she has become Britain's most successful female chart artist of all time.


Lately

Two very popular Audiences With Shirley Bassey have aired on British TV, the most recent being in March 2006. Dame Shirley Bassey returned to perform in five arenas around the UK in June 2006, which culminated at Wembley on 9 June. She also performed a concert in front of 10,000 people at the Bryn Terfel Faenol Festival in North Wales which was broadcast by BBC Wales on 30 August 2006.

"Where Do I Begin (Away Team Remix)," from Shirley's 2001 remix album, The Remix Album: Diamonds Are Forever, is featured in one episode of Showtime's The L Word, Season 2.

Marks & Spencer signed her for their Christmas 2006 "James Bond style" TV advertising campaign. Bassey is seen singing a cover version of Pink's song, "Get the Party Started" wearing an M&S gown. The advert, launched in November 2006, also includes famous models, such as Twiggy.

A new single, "The Living Tree" is due for release around the time of her seventieth birthday in January 2007, with an album of new material due soon after.


Personal life

She has been married twice. The first time was to Kenneth Hume (from 1961 to 1965, when they divorced). Her second husband, Sergio Novak, was the father of her younger daughter, Samantha, who was found dead in 1985 after having apparently jumped from the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, England. Bassey has always insisted the death of her daughter was not suicide[1]. Bassey and Novak were married from 1968 until they divorced in 1977.

In recognition of her career longevity, endurance and a particular admiration from the Royal Family, Bassey was created a Dame Commander of the British Empire (the female equivalent of a Knight Commander) on 31 December 1999 by HM Queen Elizabeth II.

She was invited to perform in 2002 at the Party at the Palace, a public celebration of Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee. She was also awarded France's top honour, the Legion d'Honneur, to signify her enduring popularity and importance in the culture of France.

She now resides in Monaco, and has recently sold her London apartment. Many of its furnishings were auctioned for charity.

Yvette Mimieux
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Birth name Yvette Mimieux
Born January 8, 1942
Hollywood, Los Angeles, California



Yvette Mimieux (born January 8, 1942 in Los Angeles, California) is an actress with a French father and a Mexican mother. In 1960, she appeared in the hugely popular teen movie Where The Boys Are as well as George Pal's 1960 motion picture version of H.G. Wells' classic 1895 novel, The Time Machine, co-starring Rod Taylor. This was followed by The Light in the Piazza (1962) with Olivia de Havilland. In 1963, Mimieux appeared in Diamond Head and Toys in the Attic. During the 1960s, Mimieux was widely regarded as a sex symbol, and this may have affected her acting career, in which serious roles became increasingly elusive. Many of the films in which she appeared after 1963 were both critical and commercial failures. She later appeared in numerous television series and made-for-television movies.

In later life, the 5 ft 4 in tall Mimieux co-starred in the first PG-rated Walt Disney Productions feature, The Black Hole. In 1984, she starred in Obsessive Love, a television movie about a female stalker, which she co-wrote and co-produced. Her last film, in 1992, was Lady Boss, with Joan Collins.

Aside from her acting career, she is also an anthropologist and a real estate investor. She was married to film director Stanley Donen from 1972 to 1985, and is currently married to Howard Ruby (1986-present), chairman of Oakwood Worldwide, a corporate housing provider.


Films

Lady Boss (1992)
Obsessive Love (1984)
The Black Hole (1979)
Jackson County Jail (1976)
Journey Into Fear (1975)
The Neptune Factor (1973)
Skyjacked (1972)
The Delta Factor (1970)
The Picasso Summer (1969)
Three in the Attic (1968)
The Mercenaries (1968)
The Caper of the Golden Bulls (1967)
Monkeys, Go Home! (1967)
The Reward (1965)
Joy in the Morning (1965)
Looking for Love (1964)
Toys in the Attic (1963)
Diamond Head (1963)
The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962)
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962)
The Light in the Piazza (1962)
Where the Boys Are (1960)
The Time Machine (1960)
Platinum High School, aka Young and Deadly (1960)

Funny Geek Stuf


Tech support: What kind of computer do you have?
Female customer: A white one...

===============

Customer: Hi, this is Celine. I can't get my diskette out.
Tech support: Have you tried pushing the button?
Customer: Yes, sure, it's really stuck.
Tech support: That doesn't sound good; I'll make a note.
Customer: No .. wait a minute... I hadn't inserted it yet...
it's still on my desk... sorry....

===============

Tech support: Click on the 'my computer' icon on to the left
of the screen.
Customer: Your left or my left?

===============

Tech support: Good day. How may I help you?
Male customer: Hello... I can't print.
Tech support: Would you click on "start" for me and...
Customer: Listen pal; don't start getting technical on
me! I'm not Bill Gates, dammit!

===============

Customer: Hi, good afternoon, this is Martha, I can't print.
Every time I try, it says 'Can't find printer'. I've even
lifted the printer and placed it in front of the monitor, but
the computer still says he can't find it...

===============

Customer: I have problems printing in red...
Tech support: Do you have a color printer?
Customer: Aaaah....................thank you.

===============

Tech support: What's on your monitor now, ma'am?
Customer: A teddy bear my boyfriend bought for me at the 7-11.

===============

Customer: My keyboard is not working anymore.
Tech support: Are you sure it's plugged into the computer?
Customer: No. I can't get behind the computer.
Tech support: Pick up your keyboard and walk 10 paces back.
Customer: OK
Tech support: Did the keyboard come with you?
Customer: Yes
Tech support: That means the keyboard is not plugged in.
Is there another keyboard?
Customer: Yes, there's another one here. Ah...that one does
work...

===============

Tech support: Your password is the small letter a as in apple,
a capital letter V as in Victor, the number 7.
Customer: Is that 7 in capital letters?

===============

Customer: I can't get on the Internet.
Tech support: Are you sure you used the right password?
Customer: Yes, I'm sure. I saw my colleague do it.
Tech support: Can you tell me what the password was?
Customer: Five stars.

===============

Tech support: What anti-virus program do you use?
Customer: Netscape.
Tech support: That's not an anti-virus program.
Customer: Oh, sorry...Internet Explorer.

===============

Customer: I have a huge problem. A friend has placed a
screen saver on my computer, but every time I move the mouse,
it disappears.

===============

Tech support: How may I help you?
Customer: I'm writing my first e-mail.
Tech support: OK, and what seems to be the problem?
Customer: Well, I have the letter 'a' in the address,
but how do I get the circle around it?

===============

A woman customer called the Canon help desk with a problem
with her printer. Tech support: Are you running it under
windows? Customer: "No, my desk is next to the door, but
that is a good point. The man sitting in the cubicle next
to me is under a window, and his printer is working fine."

===============

And last but not least... Tech support: "Okay Bob, let's
press the control and escape keys at the same time. That
brings up a task list in the middle of the screen. Now type
the letter "P" to bring up the Program Manager."
Customer: I don't have a P.
Tech support: On your keyboard, Bob.
Customer: What do you mean?
Tech support: "P".....on your keyboard, Bob.
Customer: I'M NOT GOING TO DO THAT!

not too late for me, bob. in honor of Elvis, would you care for a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich?

Good morning, WA2K listeners and contributors.

He's late, he's late for a very important date.
No time to say hello goodbye, he's late-he's late-he's late-he's late.
He's overdue, he's in a rabbit stew, etc.

Hey hawkman. There's nothing like a geek bearing bio's. Hilarious, buddy, and thanks again for the great info about the celebs.

My word, Turtle, that looks like a lunch even catsup can't save. I wonder if Oliver Twist would want some more of that.

So, folks, since I did get the man who played Fagin in Oliver....

Oliver! (as in Oliver Twist)


(Music and lyrics by Lionel Bart)
For what you are about to receive,
may the Lord make you truly thankful.
Amen.
Please sir, I want some more.
What?
Please sir, I want some more.
More?

Catch him!
Snatch him!
Hold him!
Scold him!
Pounce him
Trounce him
Pick him up and
Bounce him

Wait
Before we put the boy to task
May I be so curious as to ask his name?
Oliver!
Oliver, Oliver
Never before has a boy wanted more.
Oliver, Oliver
Won't ask for more once he sees what's in store
There's a dark thin winding
Stairway without any banister
Which we'll throw him down and
Feed him on cockroaches served in a canister
Oliver, Oliver
What will he do when he's turned black and blue
He will curse the day
Somebody named him Oliver.

Oliver, Oliver
Never before has a boy wanted more.
Oliver, Oliver
He won't ask for more once he sees what's in store
There's a sooty chimney
Long overdue for a sweeping out
Which we'll push him up and
One day next year with the rats he'll be creeping out

Oliver, Oliver
What will he do in this terrible stew
He will rue the day
Somebody named him
Oliver!

Well, folks. My snow dance came close to working, because today in my little area of our cyber station:

High: 65
Low: 37

Breaking News:

Scooby doobie do where are you?

Scooby-Doo Creator Dies at 81

Tuesday January 9, 2007 11:31 AM




By DAISY NGUYEN

Associated Press Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) - In a career that spanned more than six decades, Iwao Takamoto assisted in the designs of some of the biggest animated features and television shows, including ``Cinderella,'' ``Peter Pan,'' ``Lady and the Tramp'' and ``The Flintstones.''

But it was Takamoto's creation of Scooby-Doo, the cowardly dog with an adventurous heart, that captivated audiences and endured for generations.

Takamoto died Monday of heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Warner Bros. spokesman Gary Miereanu said. He was 81.

Born in Los Angeles to parents who had emigrated from Japan, Takamoto graduated high school when World War II began. He and his family were sent to the Manzanar internment camp in the California desert, where he learned the art of illustration from fellow internees.

Good morning WA2K. Well, PA has some bitsy snow flakes flurrying and as long as that's all they intend to do, that's all right with me.

Sorry to hear about Scooby Doo.

I have just one birthday wish today, but it's a special one, because it's to one of my favorite performers.

A Happy 66th (I know we keep asking, but where did that time go?) to Joan Baez.




My favorite Baez song - one she wrote for her son some time ago.

The grey quiet horse wears the reins of dawn,
and nobody knows what mountain he's from.
In his mouth he carries the golden key,
and nobody sees him but Gabriel and me.
Gabriel and me.

His nose is silver and his mane is white,
his eyes are black and starry like night.
So softly he splashes his hoofs in the sea,
that nobody hears him but Gabriel and me.
Gabriel and me.

He comes in the morning when the air is still,
he races the sun and he always will.
We raise up the window and call through the trees,
oh we'd love to fly with you, Gabriel and me.
Gabriel and me.

For your back is wingless and there's room for two,
we'll mount from a tree and ride straight on through.
But I guess you're wiser than I thought you'd be,
for you never will listen to Gabriel and me.
Gabriel and me.

For you know that one day we'll forget to wake,
call it destiny, call it fate.
You'll nuzzle us softly and so silently,
we'll ride in the morning, Gabriel and me,
with the golden key.
Gabriel and me,
forever to the sea

Ah, Raggedy, Joan is worth showing several times over. Thank you for her lovely visage, PA. That song really made me lacrymose. It is so lovely. What a wonderful legacy for Gabriel.

Shirley Bassey and Diane Krall did this one, folks, and I still love it:

Let's Face The Music And Dance Lyrics
by Diana Krall

There may be trouble ahead
But while there's music and moonlight and love and romance
Let's face the music and dance

Before the fiddlers have fled
Before they ask us to pay the bill and while we still have the chance
Let's face the music and dance

Soon we'll be without the moon, humming a different tune and then
There may be teardrops to shed
So while there's moonlight and music and love and romance
Let's face the music and dance

Yes, you have to hear Joan sing that one, Letty.

I also love "Let's Face the Music and Dance".
It's from the movie "Follow the Fleet" (1936) which was on TCM a short time ago.

I didn't see that movie, Raggedy, and I had no idea from whence came that song. It just surfaced in my mind one day, and when I saw it on my Diana Kraal cd, it was one of those Aha moments.

I vaguely remember that Fred Astaire had a role in "On the Beach", and the book was among those that was on my students' reading list when we did a unit on war.

Strange, folks, that I can remember so many things and yet cannot remember learning to read.

Irving Berlin was a fantastic creator, and I don't think there is a person here who hasn't heard his music in one fashion or another.

Poem for the day:

Nefarious War

by Li Po

Translated from the Chinese by Shigeyoshi Obata

Last year we fought by the head-stream of the So-Kan,
This year we are fighting on the Tsung-ho road.
We have washed our armor in the waves of the Chiao-chi lake,
We have pastured our horses on Tien-shan's snowy slopes.
The long, long war goes on ten thousand miles from home.
Our three armies are worn and grown old.

The barbarian does man-slaughter for plowing;
On his yellow sand-plains nothing has been seen but blanched skulls and bones.
Where the Chin emperor built the walls against the Tartars,
There the defenders of Han are burning beacon fires.
The beacon fires burn and never go out.
There is no end to war!--

In the battlefield men grapple each other and die;
The horses of the vanquished utter lamentable cries to heaven,
While ravens and kites peck at human entrails,
Carry them up in their flight, and hang them on the branches of dead trees.
So, men are scattered and smeared over the desert grass,
And the generals have accomplished nothing.

Oh, nefarious war! I see why arms
Were so seldom used by the benign sovereigns.

Simone de Beauvoir
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Name: Simone de Beauvoir
Birth: January 9, 1908 ( Paris, France )
Death: April 14, 1986 ( Paris, France )

Simone de Beauvoir (January 9, 1908 - April 14, 1986) was a French author and philosopher. She wrote novels, monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues, essays, biographies, and an autobiography. She is now perhaps best known for her metaphysical novels, including She Came to Stay and The Mandarins, and for her 1949 treatise The Second Sex, a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism.



Early years

Simone Lucie-Ernestine-Marie-Bertrand de Beauvoir was born on January 9, 1908 in Paris to Georges Bertrand and Françoise (Brasseur) de Beauvoir. The elder of two daughters of a conventional family from the Parisian 'bourgeoisie', she depicts herself in the first volume of her autobiography (Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter) as a girl with a strong commitment to the patriarchal values of her family, religion, and country. From the outset, she is subject to the opposing influences of her agnostic father and her devoutly Catholic mother. The two formative peer-relationships of her childhood and adolescence involve her sister Hélène (whom she calls Poupette) and her friend Zaza. She traces back to her relationship with Poupette, whom she sought to teach and influence from an early age, her taste for teaching, and it is the tragic life and death of Zaza that forms the subject matter for her first, unsuccessful, literary endeavors, which she published later in her career.



Middle years

After passing the baccalauréat exams in mathematics and philosophy, she studied mathematics at the Institut Catholique and literature/languages at the Institut Sainte-Marie, then philosophy at the Sorbonne. In 1929, while at the Sorbonne, she gave a presentation on Leibniz and was thereafter pursued by Jean-Paul Sartre. It is a common misconception that de Beauvoir studied at the Ecole Normale. She was, however, well acquainted with the school and its curriculum, thanks to Sartre and others within their philosophic circle.

In 1929, de Beauvoir also became the youngest person ever to obtain the agrégation in philosophy. Sartre was first that year, but she was a close second. Certain people hold that de Beauvoir was in fact first in philosophy: they simply placed Sartre first due to the obvious aspect of being a man. Sartre took the exam the year before, when he failed, much to the surprise of his colleagues.

While at the Sorbonne, she acquired her lifelong nickname, Castor, the French word for "beaver" given to her because of the resemblance of her surname to the English word "beaver".


She Came to Stay and The Mandarins

In 1943, de Beauvoir published She Came to Stay, a fictionalized chronicle of her and Sartre's relationship with Olga Kosakiewicz and Wanda Kosakiewicz. Olga was one of her students in the Rouen secondary school where she taught during the early 30s. She grew fond of Olga. Sartre tried to pursue Olga but she denied him; he began a relationship with her sister Wanda instead. Sartre supported Olga for years till she met and married her husband, Beauvoir's lover Jacques-Laurent Bost. At Sartre's death, he still supported Wanda. In the novel, Olga and Wanda are made into one character with whom fictionalized versions of de Beauvoir and Sartre have a ménage à trois. The novel also delves into de Beauvoir and Sartre's complex relationship and how it was affected by the ménage à trois.

De Beauvoir's metaphysical novel She Came to Stay was followed by many others, including The Mandarins, which won her the prestigious Prix Goncourt, France's highest literary prize. The Mandarins is set just after the end of World War II, whereas The Second Sex is set just before the dawn of that war. The Mandarins depicted Sartre, Nelson Algren, and many philosophers in Sartre and de Beauvoir's intimate circle.



Existential Ethics

In 1944 de Beauvoir wrote Pyrrhus et Cinéas, a discussion of an existential ethics, which inspired her to write more on the subject. This book, Pour Une Morale de L'ambiguïté (The Ethics of Ambiguity, 1947) is perhaps the most accessible point of entry into French existentialism. Its simplicity keeps it understandable, in contrast to the obtuse nature of Sartre's Being and Nothingness. The ambiguity about which de Beauvoir writes clears up some inconsistencies that many, Sartre included, have found in major existential works such as Being and Nothingness.


Sexuality, Existential Feminism, and The Second Sex

De Beauvoir was uninhibitedly bisexual. However, she did not attain her first full orgasm until 1947, after meeting Nelson Algren while on an American lecture series. In Chicago, Algren helped de Beauvoir achieve this elusive orgasm which in part inspired her to write The Second Sex, which was originally published as a two-volume book in France. These works were very quickly published in America as The Second Sex due to the quick translation by Howard Parshley, as prompted by Blanche Knopf, wife of publisher Alfred A. Knopf.

In her own way, de Beauvoir anticipated the sexually charged feminism of Erica Jong and Germaine Greer. Algren, no paragon of primness himself, was outraged by the frank way de Beauvoir later described her American sexual experiences in The Mandarins (dedicated to Algren and on whose character Lewis Brogan is based) and in her autobiographies, venting his outrage when reviewing American translations of her work. Much bearing on this episode in de Beauvoir's life, including her love letters to Algren, entered the public domain only after her death.

In the essay Woman: Myth and Reality, de Beauvoir argued that men had made women the "Other" in society by putting a false aura of "mystery" around them. And she argued that men used this as an excuse not to understand women or their problems and not to help them and to subjugate them. She argued that this stereotyping was always done in societies by the group higher in the hierarchy to the group lower in the hierarchy so that the lower group became the "other" and had a false aura of mystery around it. And she said that this also happened with other things such as race, class, and religion. But she said that it was nowhere more true than with sex in which men stereotyped women and used it as an excuse to organize society into a patriarchy.

De Beauvoir's The Second Sex, published in French in 1949, sets out a feminist existentialism which prescribes a moral revolution. As an existentialist, de Beauvoir accepts the precept that existence precedes essence; hence one is not born a woman, but becomes one. Her analysis focuses on the concept of The Other. It is the (social) construction of Woman as the quintessential Other that de Beauvoir identifies as fundamental to women's oppression.

De Beauvoir argues that women have historically been considered deviant, abnormal. She submits that even Mary Wollstonecraft considered men to be the ideal toward which women should aspire. De Beauvoir says that this attitude has limited women's success by maintaining the perception that they are a deviation from the normal, and are outsiders attempting to emulate "normality". For feminism to move forward, this assumption must be set aside.

De Beauvoir asserted that women are as capable of choice as men, and thus can choose to elevate themselves, moving beyond the 'immanence' to which they were previously resigned and reaching 'transcendence', a position in which one takes responsibility for oneself and the world, where one chooses one's freedom.


Les Temps Modernes

At the end of World War II, de Beauvoir and Sartre edited Les Temps Modernes, a political journal Sartre founded along with Maurice Merleau-Ponty and others. De Beauvoir used Les Temps Modernes to promote her own work and explore her ideas on a small scale before fashioning essays and books. De Beauvoir remained an editor until her death.


Later years

De Beauvoir wrote popular travel diaries about her travels in the United States and China, and published essays and fiction rigorously, especially throughout the 1950s and 1960s. She published several volumes of short stories, including The Woman Destroyed, which, like some of her other later work, deals with aging.

In 1979 she published When Things of the Spirit Come First, a set of short stories centered around and based upon important women to her earlier years. The stories were written well before the novel She Came to Stay, but de Beauvoir did not think they were worthy of publication until about forty years later.

Sartre and Merleau-Ponty had a longstanding feud, which led Merleau-Ponty to no longer work with Les Temps Modernes. De Beauvoir sided with Sartre and ceased to associate with Merleau-Ponty. In de Beauvoir's later years, she hosted the journal's editorial meetings in her flat and contributed more than Sartre, who she often had to force to offer his opinions.

De Beauvoir also notably wrote a five-volume autobiography, consisting of: Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter; The Prime of Life; After the War; Hard Times; and All Said and Done. After the War and Hard Times are two parts of a volume called The Force of Circumstance; these two parts are typically published separately.

In the 1970s de Beauvoir became active in France's women's liberation movement. She signed the Manifesto of the 343 in 1971, a list of famous women who claimed, mostly falsely, to have had an abortion. De Beauvoir had not actually had an abortion. Signers were diverse as Catherine Deneuve, Delphine Seyrig, and de Beauvoir's sister Poupette. In 1974, abortion was legalized in France.

Her 1970 novel The Coming of Age is a very rare instance of an intellectual meditation on the decline and solitude all humans experience if they do not die before about age 60. In 1981 she wrote La Cérémonie Des Adieux (A Farewell to Sartre), a painful account of Sartre's last years. In the opening of Adieux, de Beauvoir notes that it is the only major work of hers Sartre did not read before its publication. She and Sartre always read one another's work.

After Sartre died, De Beauvoir published his letters to her with edits to spare the feelings of some people in their circle who were still living. After de Beauvoir's death, Sartre's adopted daughter and literary heir Arlette Elkaïm would not let many of Sartre's letters be published in unedited form. Most of Sartre's letters available today have de Beauvoir's edits, which include a few omissions but mostly the use of pseudonyms. Duane H. Davis was one of few scholars Elkaïm allowed to publish Sartre's unedited letters (but to Merleau-Ponty, not de Beauvoir). De Beauvoir's adopted daughter and literary heir Sylvie Le Bon, quite unlike Elkaïm, published de Beauvoir's unedited letters to both Sartre and Algren.


Death and afterwards

She is buried next to Sartre at the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris. Since her death, her reputation has grown, not only because she is seen as the mother of post-1968 feminism, especially in academia, but also because of a growing awareness of her as a major French thinker, existentialist philosopher and otherwise. There is much contemporary discussion about the influences of de Beauvoir and Sartre on one another. She is seen as having influenced Sartre's masterpiece, Being and Nothingness, while also having written much on philosophy that is independent of Sartrean existentialism. Some scholars have explored the influences of her earlier philosophical essays and treatises upon Sartre's later thought. She is studied by many respected academics both within and outside of philosophy circles, including Margaret A. Simmons and Sally Scholtz. De Beauvoir's life has also inspired numerous biographies.

Gypsy Rose Lee
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Born January 9, 1911
Seattle, Washington
Died April 26, 1970
Los Angeles, California

Gypsy Rose Lee (also known as Rose Louise Hovick and Louise Hovick) (January 9, 1911 - April 26, 1970) was an American actress and burlesque entertainer, whose 1957 memoir, which included a scathing portrait of her domineering mother, was made into the stage musical and film Gypsy.




Rose Louise

Born Rose Louise Hovick in Seattle, Washington, Gypsy was initially known by her middle name, Louise. Her mother, Rose Thompson Hovick, was fifteen when she married John Hovick, who, according to Rose's 1911 birth certificate, was an ad salesman with a newspaper. Rose Thompson Hovick was the classic example of a smothering stage mother, though the more horrid details were reportedly whitewashed in Gypsy's memoirs. A second daughter, Ellen Hovick (better known as actress June Havoc), was born in 1916. She, too, would be known by her middle name, June (some sources indicate that Ellen Hovick's middle name was "Evangeline"). After Rose T. Hovick divorced her husband John, the girls earned the family's money by appearing in vaudeville where June's talent shone while Louise remained in the background. At the age of 16, June married a boy in the act named Bobby Reed, whom Mother Rose had arrested and met at the police station with a hidden gun. She pulled the trigger but the safety was on and Bobby was freed. June left the act and went on to give birth to April Reed.


The Advent of Gypsy

Louise's singing and dancing talents were insufficient to sustain the act without June. Eventually, it became apparent that Louise could earn money in burlesque, which earned her legendary status. Her innovations were an almost casual strip style, compared to the herky-jerky styles of most burlesque strippers (she emphasised the tease in "striptease") and she brought a sharp sense of humor into her act as well. She became as famous for her onstage wit as for her strip style, and--changing her stage name to Gypsy Rose Lee--she became one of the biggest stars of Minsky's Burlesque where she performed for four years. She was frequently arrested in raids against the Minsky brothers' shows.

Gypsy Rose Lee had relationships with an assortment of characters from comedian Rags Ragland to Eddy Braun. She eventually traveled to Hollywood, where she was billed as Louise Hovick and she married Arnold "Bob" Mizzy on August 25, 1937 at the insistence of the film studio. Her acting was generally panned. So, she returned to New York City and invested in Michael Todd (1909-1958). She eventually appeared as an actress in many of his film productions.

In 1941, Gypsy Rose Lee wrote, with Craig Rice, a mystery thriller called The G-String Murders which was made into the 1943 film: Lady of Burlesque starring, Barbara Stanwyck. Trying to describe what Gypsy was (a "high-class" stripper), H. L. Mencken coined the term ecdysiast. Her style of intellectual recitation while stripping was spoofed in the number "Zip!" from Rodgers and Hart's Pal Joey, a play in which her sister June appeared. Gypsy can be seen performing an abbreviated version of her act (intellectual recitiation and all) in the 1943 film, Stage Door Canteen. Gypsy's second murder mystery, Mother Finds a Body, was published in 1942.


Love, Marriage, and Goodbye, Mother

In love with Michael Todd and in an attempt to make him jealous, Gypsy Lee married William Alexander Kirkland in 1942. They divorced in 1944. While married to Kirkland, she bore a son with Otto Preminger; he was named Erik Lee, and has been known successively as Erik Kirkland, Erik de Diego, and Erik Preminger. Gypsy Lee was married for a third time in 1948 to Julio de Diego, but they eventually divorced.

Gypsy Lee and sister June, who also became a successful performer, continued to get demands for money from their mother, who had opened a lesbian boardinghouse in a ten-room apartment on West End Avenue in New York City. This property and a farm in Highland Mills, New York, had been rented for Mother Rose by Gypsy Lee. Mother Rose shot and killed one of her guests (according to Erik Preminger, she killed her own lover, who had made a pass at Gypsy) at the boardinghouse. This incident was explained as a suicide. As Mother Rose was dying of colon cancer, her final words, in 1954, were for Gypsy Lee: "Wherever you go... I'll be right there. When you get your own private kick in the ass, just remember: it's a present from me to you."


The Later Years

With their mother dead, the sisters now felt free to write about her without risking a lawsuit. Gypsy's memoirs, titled Gypsy, were published in 1957 and were taken as inspirational material for the Jule Styne, Stephen Sondheim, and Arthur Laurents musical Gypsy: A Musical Fable. Sister June did not like the way she was portrayed in the piece, but she was eventually persuaded not to oppose it for her sister's sake. The play and the subsequent movie deal assured Gypsy a steady income. The sisters became estranged.

Gypsy Rose Lee went on to host an AM San Francisco KGO-TV television talk show, Gypsy. A smoker, she was diagnosed in 1969 with metastatic lung cancer, which prompted her to reconcile with June before her death. "This is my present, you know," she told June. "My present from Mother."

The walls of her Los Angeles home were adorned with pictures by Joan Miro, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, and Dorothea Tanning, all of which were reportedly gifts to her by the artists themselves.

In 1970, she died in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 59, and was buried in Inglewood Park Cemetery, Inglewood, California.

Fernando Lamas
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fernando Alvaro Lamas (January 9, 1916 - October 8, 1982) was an Argentine actor and director.



Early years and career

Lamas was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. By 1942, he was an established movie star in Argentina. In 1951, he signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and went to the United States to play "Latin Lover" roles.


Personal life

Lamas was married four times, to Pearl Mux (married 1940-divorced 1944), Lydia Barachi (married 1946-divorced 1952), actress Arlene Dahl (married 1954-divorced 1960), and swimmer and actress Esther Williams (married 1969-his death 1982).

He and Mux had one daughter. He and Barachi had one daughter. And he and Dahl had one son, actor Lorenzo Lamas (b. January 20, 1958).


Directing career

Lamas directed for the first time in 1963. It was a Spanish movie titled Magic Fountain starring his wife Esther Williams. He was most active directing on television, doing episodes that included Mannix, The Violent Ones, Alias Smith and Jones, Starsky and Hutch and Falcon Crest. The latter show co-starred his son, Lorenzo.


Later years

Lamas lived on in popular culture via the "Fernando" character developed by Billy Crystal on Saturday Night Live in the mid-1980s. The character was outlandish and exaggerated, but reportedly inspired by a remark Crystal heard Lamas utter on The Tonight Show; "It is better to look good than to feel good." This was one of the Fernando character's two catchphrases along with the better-remembered "You look marvelous!"

Fernando Lamas died of pancreatic cancer in Los Angeles, California at the age of 66.

Lee Van Cleef
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Lee Van Cleef (January 9, 1925 - December 16, 1989) was an American film actor, who appeared mostly in Western and action pictures. His sharp features and piercing eyes made him an ideal "bad guy," though he was occasionally cast in a hero's role (For a Few Dollars More).




Biography

Early life

Van Cleef was born in Somerville, New Jersey to Marion Lavinia Van Fleet and Clarence Leroy Van Cleef, Sr; the family's ancestry was mostly Dutch, Swedish, Belgian and English.[1] Van Cleef served in the United States Navy during World War II and became an actor after a brief career as an accountant. His first film was the classic Western High Noon, in which he played a villain. He also had a bit part as the sharpshooter in the climax of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms around the same time. In 1956 he co-starred with Peter Graves in the B-grade Sci-Fi movie It Conquered the World.


Career

Van Cleef played different minor characters on four episodes of the TV series The Rifleman between 1959 and 1962. He played one of Lee Marvin's villainous henchmen in the 1962 John Ford classic The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, with James Stewart and John Wayne. He had a small, uncredited role as one of the river pirates in 1962's How the West Was Won.

Van Cleef appeared in several Spaghetti westerns, including For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (both co-starring Clint Eastwood), as well as The Big Gundown and The Sabata Trilogy. Van Cleef also had a supporting role in John Carpenter's cult hit Escape from New York. He also appeared as a villainous swindler in the Bonanza episode, The Bloodline (December 31, 1960), along with 90 movie roles and 109 other television appearances over a 38-year span.

In the early 1980s he played John Peter McCallister, the "first Occidental to become a ninja" in NBC's The Master. His last television appearance was in 1984 when he left the show The Master.[1] Episodes of the show were later remarketed as made-for-TV movies (by editing two episodes together), two of which were featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000.


Personal life

Lee Van Cleef died from a heart attack in Oxnard, California and was interred in Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles. His gravestone says "Lee Van Cleef Jan 9, 1925 - Dec 16, 1989 'Best of the Bad' Love and Light".

He lost the tip of his middle finger on his right hand while building a playhouse for his daughter. This can be seen in the close-up shots of his hand during the gunfights in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.


Popular Culture

The gun toting villain "Revolver Ocelot" from the popular videogame series Metal Gear Solid is said to have been loosely based on Lee Van Cleef.
The character from the same videogame series, "Old Snake", that appears in Metal Gear Solid 4, is also based on Lee Van Cleef.[citation needed]
In another game "World of Warcraft", there is a pirate boss named "Van Cleef".
The Simpsons used a character rather like Van Cleef in their spoof of the Clint Eastwood musical (which was an adaptation of a stage show), Paint Your Wagon.
In the Lucky Luke comic book story Chasseur de primes (Bounty hunter), the bounty hunter Elliot Belt is an easily identifiable caricature of Van Cleef.
Van Cleef was listed as one of the dedicatees at the end of Quentin Tarantino's 2004 film Kill Bill Vol. 2.

Joan Baez
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia




Background information

Birth name Joan Chandos Baez
Born January 9, 1941
Origin Staten Island, New York

Joan Chandos Baez (born January 9, 1941) is an American folk singer and songwriter known for her highly individual vocal style. She is a soprano with a three-octave vocal range and a distinctive throat vibrato. Many of her songs are topical and deal with social issues.

She is best known for her seventies hits "Diamonds & Rust" and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" -- and to a lesser extent, "Sweet Sir Galahad" and "Joe Hill" (songs she performed at the 1969 Woodstock festival). She is also well known due to her early and long-lasting relationship with Bob Dylan and her even longer-lasting passion for activism, notably in the areas of nonviolence, civil and human rights and, in more recent years, the environment. She has performed publicly for nearly fifty years, released over thirty albums and recorded songs in over eight languages. She is considered a folksinger although her music has strayed from folk considerably after the sixties, encompassing everything from rock and pop to country and gospel. Although a songwriter herself, especially in the mid-seventies, Baez is most often regarded as an interpreter of other people's work, covering songs by The Beatles, Jackson Browne, Paul Simon, The Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder and myriad others. In more recent years, she has found success interpreting songs of diverse songwriters such as Steve Earle, Natalie Merchant and Ryan Adams.




Biography

The Beginning

Joan Baez's father, Albert Baez, was born in Puebla, Mexico. His father (and Joan's grandfather) had left the Catholic faith to become a Methodist minister and moved to the U.S. when Albert was two. Albert Baez grew up in Brooklyn and considered becoming a minister as well before he turned to the study of mathematics and physics.

Baez's mother, Joan Bridge Baez (often referred to as Joan Senior or "Big Joan" due to her daughter's fame) was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, the second daughter of an Episcopal minister. Joan Senior and Albert met at a High School dance in Madison, New Jersey and quickly fell in love. After their marriage, the newlyweds moved to California. Due to Albert's work in education and with UNESCO, the couple moved around the country (and around the world) bringing with them their growing brood of three young daughters; Pauline Thalia, Joan Chandos and Mimi Margharita.


Early life & political influences: "I am not a saint. I am a noise."

Joan Baez was born on Staten Island to a Quaker family of Mexican, English and Scottish descent. Her father Albert Baez, a physicist (co-inventor of the x-ray microscope and author of one of the most widely used physics textbooks in the U.S.), refused to work on the "Manhattan Project" to build an atomic bomb at Los Alamos, a decision which had a profound effect on young Joan and which greatly influenced her in the future, and also refused lucrative defense industry jobs during the height of the Cold War. The family, frequently having to move by reason of his work, lived in different towns across the United States, in France, Switzerland, Italy, the Middle East, and Iraq, where they stayed in 1951. Baez, at the time only ten years old, was deeply influenced by the poverty and inhumane treatment suffered by the local population in Baghdad. While there, she saw animals beaten to death, people beaten to death, legless children dragging themselves down filthy streets and begging for money. Baez wrote that she felt a certain affinity with the beggars in the streets and that Baghdad and the suffering of its people became a "part" of her.

It was in 1956 that Baez first heard a young Martin Luther King, Jr speak about nonviolence, civil rights and social change, and the speech brought tears to her eyes. Several years later, the two would become friends and would march and demonstrate together on numerous occasions. That same year, Baez also bought her first guitar and began entertaining fellow students at school by singing and playing. It was her only means of making friends, as she was often alienated by both the Mexican-American students for not speaking Spanish and by the white students for her dark skin and Mexican last name and heritage. In 1957, at age 16, Joan committed her first act of civil disobedience by refusing to leave her Redlands Sr. High School classroom in Southern California for an air-raid drill. After the bells rang, students were to leave school, make their way to their home air-raid shelters and pretend they were surviving an atomic blast. Knowing full well that the time it would take to race home would not be enough if a missile were in fact fired from Moscow, Baez protested the misleading propaganda and refused to leave her seat when instructed and instead continued reading. For the act she was punished by school officials and osctracized by the local population for being a "communist infiltrator."

That same year, for 50 dollars, Baez bought her first Gibson guitar. At her aunt's behest, Baez attended a concert by the "daddy of folk music," Pete Seeger and soon began practicing the songs of his repertoire and performing them publicly. She also began teaching herself the ukulele, and before long began singing for her classmates.

In 1958, Dr. Baez accepted a faculty position at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and moved his family to Belmont in the Boston area. The area was at the time the center of the up-and-coming folk music scene, and Joan began busking locally in the Boston/Cambridge area, also performing in clubs, and attending Boston University (which she later quit attending in order to concentrate on her career.) It was in '58, at the Club 47 Mount Auburn in Cambridge (which would later become her most noted venue), where she gave her first concert. The audience consisted of Baez's two parents, her sister Mimi, and a small group of friends (a grand total of eight patrons.) She was paid ten dollars. Baez was later asked back and began performing twice a week for $20 per show. A scant few months later, Baez and two other folk enthusiasts made plans to record an album in the cellar of a friend's house. The three sang solos and duets, a family friend designed the album cover, and it was released that same year as Folksingers 'Round Harvard Square. Baez later met Bob Gibson (musician) and the reigning queen of folk Odetta, whom Baez cites as a primary influence alongside Marian Anderson and Pete Seeger. Gibson invited Baez to perform alongside him at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival, where the two did two duets to "Virgin Mary Had One Son" and "We Are Crossing Jordan River." The performance generated substantial buzz for the "barefoot Madonna" with the otherworldly voice and it was this appearance that led to Baez signing with Vanguard Records the following year (although not before the more established label, Columbia Records tried to nab her for their own. Baez later claimed that she felt she would be given more artistic license at a more "low key" label.)

Amidst this, Baez met her first real boyfriend -- and first lover -- , a young man by the name of Michael, who, in 1979, inspired her song "Michael". Michael was a fellow student from the West Indies who, like Baez, only attended classes occasionally. The two spent a considerable amount of time together, but Baez was unable to balance her blossoming career and her relationship. The two bickered and made love back and forth, but it was apparent to Baez that Michael was beginning to resent her success and newfound local celebrity. One night she saw him kissing another woman on a street corner. The relationship remained intact for several years, long after the two moved to California together in 1960. Baez also had a relationship with a woman named Kim, and in later years told reporters that she considered herself bisexual.


First albums & 1960s breakthrough: "You've got a helluva voice, kid. Don't sign cheap!"

Baez' true professional career began at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival; she recorded her first album for a major label, Joan Baez, the following year on Vanguard Records. The collection of traditional folk ballads, blues and laments sung to her own guitar accompaniment sold moderately well. The album featured many popular Child Ballads of the day, such as "Mary Hamilton" and was recorded in only four days in the ballroom of New York's Manhattan Towers Hotel. The album also included "El Preso Numero Nueve," a song sung entirely in Spanish. The same song would later appear on Baez' 1974 Spanish-language album, "Gracias A La Vida."

Her second release, Joan Baez, Vol. 2 in 1961 went gold, as did Joan Baez in Concert, Parts 1 and 2 (released in 1962 and 1963, respectively). Like its immediate predecessor, Joan Baez, Vol. 2 containted strictly traditional material. Her two albums of live material, Joan Baez in Concert and its second counterpart, were unique in that, unlike most live albums, they contained only new songs, rather than established favorites. It was the second installment of "In Concert" that features Baez' first ever Bob Dylan cover. From the early to mid-1960's, Baez emerged at the forefront of the American roots revival, where she introduced her audiences to the then-unknown Bob Dylan (the two became romantically involved in late 1962, remaining together through early 1965), and was emulated by artists such as Emmylou Harris, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell and Bonnie Raitt.


Pack up Your Sorrows, French single, 1966Baez first got a taste of commercial success when the single "There But For Fortune" became a top-ten hit in the UK in 1964. Baez was profoundly influenced by the British Invasion and began augmenting her acoustic guitar on 1965's Farewell Angelina, which features a number of Dylan songs interspersed with more traditional fare. Deciding to experiment after having exhausted the "folksinger with guitar" format, Baez turned to Peter Schickele, a classical composer, who in turn provided classical orchestration for her next three albums: 1966's Noël, 1967's Joan and 1968's Baptism. Noël was a Christmas album of traditional material, while Baptism was akin to a concept album; it featured Baez reading and singing poems written by world-famous poets such as James Joyce, Federico García Lorca and Walt Whitman.

In the tumultuous year that was 1968, Baez traveled to Nashville, where a marathon recording-session resulted in not one, but two albums: Any Day Now, a record consisting exclusively of Dylan covers (one, "Love Is Just A Four-Letter Word," was never recorded by Dylan and has become a Baez staple) and the country-fused David's Album recorded for husband David Harris, a prominent anti-Vietnam War protester and organizer eventually imprisoned for draft resistance. The pair married in 1968 and divorced in 1973. Harris, a country music fan, turned Baez toward more complex country rock influences beginning with David's Album. In 1969, Baez' appearance at the historic Woodstock music festival in upstate New York afforded her an international musical and political podium, particularly upon the successful release of the like-titled documentary film. Her 1971 cover of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" was a top 10 hit in the United States. In 1972, Baez recorded two songs, "Rejoice in the Sun" and "Silent Running," for the highly-regarded eco-science fiction film, Silent Running. Beginning in the late 1960s, Baez began writing many of her own songs, beginning with "Sweet Sir Galahad" and "A Song For David" (the latter written after husband David Harris was imprisoned for draft-evasion.) Her most famous self-penned tune is "Diamonds & Rust", which is theorized to be a wistful recollection of her affair with Dylan.


Baez and David Harris: "The Wedding Of The Century"

In October, 1967, Baez, her mother, and nearly seventy other women had been arrested for supporting young men who refused military induction. They were esconced in the Santa Rita Rehabilation Center and it was here that Baez met David Harris, who was kept on the men's side but who still managed to visit with Baez regularly. The two formed a close bond upon their release and Baez moved into his resistance commune in the hills above Stanford. The pair had only known each other for three months when they decided to wed. After confirming the news to the Associated Press, media outlets began dedicating ample press to the impending nuptials (at one point, Time magazine referred to it as the "Wedding of the century".)

After finding a pacifist preacher, a church outfitted with peace signs and perfecting a blend of Episcopalian and Quaker wedding vows, Baez and Harris married in New York City. Baez's good friend and fellow folkie Judy Collins sang at the ceremony. After the wedding, Joan Baez-Harris and her husband moved into a home in the Los Altos Hills on a quarter-acre of land called Struggle Mountain next to a commune, where they tended gardens and were strict vegetarians. A short time later, Harris refused induction and was indicted. On July 15, 1969, a patrol car came rumbling up Struggle Mountain and carried Harris away, leaving Baez alone -- and pregnant. (Son Gabriel Harris was born in December 1969.) She would be very visibly pregnant in public in the months that followed, most notably at the Woodstock festival, where she performed a handful of songs in the early morning. Among the Baez compositions written about this strained time of her life are "A Song For David," "Myths," "Prison Trilogy (Billy Rose)" and "Fifteen Months," (the amount of time Harris was imprisoned.)

Harris was released from his Texas prison and the relationship began to dissolve amicably and the couple divorced in 1973. Although Baez had been unfaithful while Harris was away, the reason for the split was due in large part to Baez's admission that she belonged alone. "I am made to live alone," Baez writes in her autobiography. She has never remarried.


Motherhood, music & moog synthesizers: the end of the Vanguard years

Baez decided in 1971 to cut ties with Vanguard Records after eleven years, the label which had released her albums since her first in 1960. She delivered one last success for them in the form of the gold-selling record Blessed Are... which spawned a top-ten hit in "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" With 1972's Come from the Shadows, Baez switched to A&M Records, where she remained for four years and six albums. 1973's Where Are You Now, My Son? featured a 23-minute title song which took up all of side B of the album. Half spoken word poem and half tape recorded sounds, the song documented Baez' visit to Hanoi, North Vietnam in December 1972, in which she and her traveling companions survived a week long bombing campaign. 1974's Gracias A La Vida followed and was a success in both the United States and Latin America. Flirting with mainstream pop music as well as writing her own songs for her best-selling 1975 release Diamonds & Rust, the album became the highest selling of Baez' career and spawned a second top-ten single in the form of the title track, a nostalgic piece about her ill-fated relationship with Bob Dylan. After Gulf Winds, an album of entirely self-composed songs, and From Every Stage, a live album that had Baez performing songs 'from every stage' of her career, Baez again parted ways with a label when she moved on to CBS Records for 1977's Blowin' Away and 1979's Honest Lullaby. Baez later found herself without an American label for the release of 1984s Live -Europe '83. She didn't have an American release until 1987's Recently on Gold Castle Records. She recorded two more albums with Gold Castle, Speaking of Dreams, (1989) and Brothers in Arms (1991 compilation), then landed a contract with a major label, Virgin Records, recording Play Me Backwards for Virgin in 1992 shortly before the company was bought out by EMI. She then switched to Guardian, with whom she produced a live CD (Ring Them Bells) and a studio CD, Gone from Danger. Her 2003 album, Dark Chords on a Big Guitar, found her performing songs by composers half her age, while a November 2004 performance at New York's Bowery Ballroom was recorded for a 2005 live release, Bowery Songs.


Rippin' along towards middle-age: The eighties

In 1980, Joan was given Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees by both Antioch University and Rutgers University for her political activism and the "universality of her music." In 1983, she appeared on the Grammy Awards for the first time, performing Bob Dylan's anthemic "Blowin' In The Wind," a song she first performed twenty years earlier. Baez also played a significant role in the 1985 Live Aid concert for African famine relief, opening the U.S. segment of the show in Philadelphia. She also has toured on behalf of many other causes, including Amnesty International's 1986 A Conspiracy of Hope Tour and a guest spot on their subsequent Human Rights Now! Tour.

In 1987, Baez' second autobiography And a Voice to Sing With was published and became a New York Times bestseller. That same year, she traveled to the Middle-East to visit with and sing songs of peace for the people of Israel, Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

In 1988, Baez was invited to perform at a communist music festival in communist Czechoslovakia. While there, she met future president Vaclav Havel, who she let carry her guitar so as to prevent him from being arrested by government agents. During her performance, she greeted members of Charter 77, a dissident human rights group, which resulted in her microphone being shut off abruptly. Baez then proceeded to sing a cappella for the nearly four thousand gathered. Havel (who was in attendance) cited Baez as a great inspiration and influence in that country's so-called Velvet Revolution, the bloodless revolution in which the Soviet-dominated communist government there was overthrown.


The '90s & beyond: "We probably won't overcome. We're in such a pickle."

At the invitation of Refugees International and sponsored by The Soros Foundation, Joan travelled to the war-torn Bosnia-Herzegovina region in an effort to help bring more attention to the suffering there. She was the first major artist to perform in Sarajevo since the outbreak of the civil war. In October of that year, Baez became the first major artist to perform in a professional concert presentation on Alcatraz Island (former Federal Penitentiary) in San Francisco in a benefit for her sister Mimi Fariña's Bread & Roses organization.

In August, 2001 Vanguard Records begin re-releasing Baez' first 13 albums that she recorded with them between 1960 and 1971 as part of their Original Master Series. Each reissue features digitally restored sound, unreleased bonus songs, new and original artwork, and new liner notes essays written by Arthur Levy. Likewise, her six A&M records were reissued in 2003.


On January 13, 2006, Baez performed at the funeral of singing legend Lou Rawls, where she led Jesse Jackson, Stevie Wonder, and others in the singing of "Amazing Grace". On June 6th, Baez joined Bruce Springsteen onstage at Springsteen's San Francisco concert, where the two performed the rolling anthem "Pay Me My Money Down." The title track of Springsteen's latest album, "We Shall Overcome", was popularized by Baez in the early sixties, at the height of the Civil Rights movement. On July 17, Baez received the Distinguished Leadership Award from the Legal Community Against Violence. At the annual dinner event they honored Joan for her lifetime of work against violence of all kinds. In September, Baez contributed a live, retooled version of her classic song "Sweet Sir Galahad" to Starbucks' exclusive XM Artist Confidential CD. In the new version, Joan changes the lyric "here's to the dawn of their days" to "here's to the dawn of her days," a tribute to sister Mimi Fariña, who died in 2001. The song, written by Baez in 1969, tells of Fariña's remarriage after the death of her first husband, folk singer-songwriter and author Richard Fariña, who died in 1966.

On October 8th, 2006, Baez appeared as a special surprise guest at the opening ceremony of the Forum 2000 international conference in Prague. Baez' performance was kept secret from former President Vaclav Havel until the moment she appeared onstage. Havel remains a great admirer of both Baez and her work.

On December 2nd, Joan made a guest appearance at the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir's Christmas Concert in Oakland, California, at the Paramount Theatre. Joan's participation included versions of "Let Us Bread Bread Together" and "Amazing Grace," and she joined the choir in the finale of "O Holy Night."


The Future: Lifetime Achievement & 'Ring Them Bells' Reissued

In late November, 2006, it was announced that Baez's 1995 live album Ring Them Bells, which featured memorable duets with songstresses ranging from Dar Williams and Mimi Fariña to The Indigo Girls and Mary Chapin Carpenter, would be re-released on February 12th, 2007 on Proper records. The reissue will feature a 16-page booklet and 6 unreleased live tracks from the original recording sessions. The unreleased songs now included are "Love Song To A Stranger," "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere," "Geordie," "Gracias A La Vida," "The Water Is Wide" and "Stones In The Road," bringing the total tracklisting to 21 songs (on two discs). As Proper is a European label, it is presumed the reissue will only be available in European territories (although available to others over the internet.)

In addition, Baez has recorded a duet with John Mellencamp called "Jim Crow," which will appear on Mellencamp's album "Freedom Road" (due in January, 2007.) Mellencamp has called the album a "Woody Guthrie rock album" heavily influenced by albums from the '60s and this is why he invited an icon of that era to appear with him on "Jim Crow."

It was announced that Baez would be honored at the 2007 Grammy Awards ceremony with a Lifetime Achievement Award.


Social & political involvement

During the early years of her career, as the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights struggle in the United States both became more prominent issues, Baez focused more of her attention on both areas, until eventually her music and her political involvement became inseparable. Her performance of "We Shall Overcome," the civil rights anthem popularized by Pete Seeger, at Martin Luther King's March on Washington permanently linked her with the anthem --she sang it again in Sproul Plaza during the UC Berkeley Free Speech Movement-- and she was frequently highly visible in civil rights marches. She also became more vocal about her disagreement with the U.S. war in Vietnam, publicly disclosing that she was withholding sixty percent of her income taxes (as that was the figure commonly determined to fund the military), and encouraging draft resistance at her concerts. In 1965 she founded the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence. In 1967, she was arrested twice --and jailed for a month-- for participating in civil disobedience against the Vietnam War, blocking the entrance of the Armed Forces Induction Center in Oakland, California.

During Christmas of 1972, she joined a peace delegation traveling to North Vietnam, both to address human rights in the region, as well as to deliver Christmas mail to American POW's. During her time there, she was caught in the U.S. military's "Christmas bombing" of Hanoi, during which the city was bombed for eleven straight days. She also devoted a substantial amount of her time in the early 1970s to helping establish a U.S. branch of Amnesty International, and has since worked on improving human rights in Latin America, Southeast Asia, South Africa, Europe, and the United States. Her disquiet at the human rights violations of communist Vietnam made her increasingly critical of its government and she organized the publication, on May 30, 1979, of a full-page advertisement, published in four major U.S. newspapers, in which the communists were described as having created a nightmare (which put her at odds with a large segment of the domestic left wing, who were uncomfortable criticizing a leftist regime. In a letter of response, Jane Fonda said she was unable to substantiate the "claims" Baez made regarding the atrocities being committed by the Khmer Rouge). This experience ultimately led Baez to found her own human rights group, Humanitas International, whose focus was to target oppression wherever it occurred, criticizing right and left wing regimes equally. She toured Chile, Brazil and Argentina in 1981, but was prevented from performing in any of the three countries, fearful her criticism of their human rights practices would reach mass audiences if she were given a podium. While there, she was surveiled and subjected to death threats. (A film of the ill-fated tour, There but for Fortune, was shown on PBS in 1982.)

In a second trip to Southeast Asia, Joan assisted in an effort to take food and medicine into the western regions of Cambodia and participated in a United Nations Humanitarian Conference on Kampuchea (Cambodia).

Baez has also been prominent in the struggle for gay and lesbian rights. In 1978, she performed at several benefit concerts to defeat Proposition 6 ("the Briggs Initiative"), which proposed banning all openly gay people from teaching in the public schools of California. Later that same year, she participated in memorial marches for the assassinated San Francisco city supervisor, openly gay Harvey Milk. In the 1990s, she appeared with her friend Janis Ian at a benefit for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a gay lobbying organization, and performed at the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride March. Her song "Altar Boy and the Thief" from 1977's Blowin' Away was written as a dedication to her gay fanbase.

On Earth Day, 1998, Baez and her friend Bonnie Raitt were hoisted by a giant crane to the top of a redwood tree to visit environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill[1], who was camped out in the ancient tree in order to protect it from loggers. In early 2003, Baez performed at two rallies of hundreds of thousands of people in San Francisco protesting the U.S. invasion of Iraq (as she had earlier done before smaller crowds in 1991 to protest the Persian Gulf War). In August of 2003, she was invited by Emmylou Harris (who also credits her as a primary influence) and Steve Earle to join them in London at the Concert For a Landmine Free World. In the summer of 2004, she joined Michael Moore's "Slacker Uprising Tour" on American college campuses, encouraging young people to get out and vote for peace candidates in the upcoming national election. In August 2005, Baez appeared at the Texas anti-war protest that had been started by Cindy Sheehan. The following month, she sang "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and "Amazing Grace" at the Temple in Black Rock City during the annual Burning Man festival as part of a tribute to New Orleans and the victims of Hurricane Katrina, and during that month she also performed several songs at the Operation Ceasefire rally [2] against the Iraq War in Washington, DC.

In December 2005, Baez appeared at the California protest at San Quentin prison against the execution of Tookie Williams. [3] There, she sang "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot". She had previously performed the same song at San Quentin at the 1992 vigil protesting the execution of Robert Alton Harris, the first man to be executed in California after the death penalty was reinstated.

On May 23, 2006, Baez once again joined prominent environmental activist Julia "Butterfly" Hill, this time in a "tree sit" in a giant tree on the site of the South Central Farm in a poor neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles. Baez and Hill were hoisted into the tree, where they remained overnight. The women, in addition to many other activists and celebrities, were protesting the imminent eviction of the community farmers and demolition of the site, which is the largest urban farm in the state. Due to the fact that many of the South Central Farmers are immigrants from Central America, Baez sang several songs from her 1974 Spanish-language album, Gracias A la Vida, including the title track and "No Nos Moveran" ("We Shall Not Be Moved").


Relationship with Bob Dylan

Baez first met Bob Dylan in 1961 at Gerde's Folk City in Greenwich Village. At the time, Baez had already released her debut album and her popularity as the emerging 'Queen of Folk' was on the rise. Baez was initially unimpressed with the "urban hillbilly" but was impressed with one of Dylan's first compositions, "Song to Woody" and remarked that she would like to record it (though she never did). At the start, Dylan was more interested in Baez's younger sister, Mimi, but under the glare of media scrutiny that began to surround Baez and Dylan, their relationship began to blossom into something more. By 1963, Baez had already released three albums, two of which had been certified Gold, and she invited Dylan onstage to perform alongside her. The two performed the Dylan composition "With God On Our Side", a performance which set the stage for many more duets like it in the months and years to come. Typically while on tour, Baez would invite Dylan to sing onstage partly by himself and partly with her, much to the chagrin of Baez's fans, who often found themselves booing him. Before meeting Dylan, Baez's topical songs were few and far between: "Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream," "We Shall Overcome" and an assortment of black spirituals. Baez would later say that Dylan's songs seemed to update the topics of protest and justice.


By the time of Dylan's 1965 tour of England, his and Baez' relationship had slowly begun to fizzle. After having been romantically involved off-and-on for nearly two years, Dylan had begun seeing another woman at the same time (his future wife Sara) and likewise treated Baez badly. The tour and simultaneous disintegration of Baez and Dylan's relationship was documented in the rock-doc Don't Look Back. Although bad-blood existed between the two for a short time, the pair managed to bury the hatchet and tour together as part of Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975 and 1976. Her later reflections on this relationship appear in Martin Scorsese's 2005 documentary No Direction Home.

Family & personal life

Baez is one of three sisters, her older sister being Pauline Baez; her younger sister was singer, guitarist, and activist Mimi Fariña, founder of the organization Bread and Roses. [4] Mimi had been married to singer/songwriter Richard Farina, who was killed in a motorcycle crash shortly after publishing his only novel, on Mimi's 21st birthday. Mimi died in July 2001 of neuroendocrine cancer [5]. Her parents, noted physicist Albert Vinicio Baez and Joan Bridge Baez are both still living and in their nineties. Joan Baez has a son, Gabriel Harris, and is a grandmother to Gabriel's daughter, Jasmine.

The mathematical physicist and Usenet guru, John C. Baez, is her cousin, as is well-known medical marijuana activist Peter Baez. [6] She dated Apple Computer cofounder Steve Jobs. She was a frequent authorized guest in the highly-secret lab of the Macintosh project, at a time when most Apple employees were refused admission. It is believed that Jobs asked her to marry him and that she refused.

Baez is a resident of Woodside, California and lives with her nearly-100-year-old mother in a house complete with a backyard treehouse, which she spends a good deal of time in, meditating, writing, and "being close to nature." [7] She is a graduate of Peninsula School and Palo Alto High School. Her son, Gabriel Harris, has also attended Peninsula School.


Trivia

When designing the poster for her first concert in 1958, Baez flirted with the idea of changing her performing name to either Rachel Sandperl or Mariah (from the song "They Call The Wind Mariah" by The Kingston Trio.) She later opted against it, fearful people would accuse her of changing her last name because it was Mexican, a la Ritchie Valens.
She has been nominated for a Grammy Award six times but never won. In recent years during live performances of "Diamonds & Rust", Baez is fond of changing the final lyric to "If you're offering me diamonds and rust... I'll take the Grammy."
Baez is fond of inserting spot-on Dylan impressions into her recordings of his songs, the earliest being in her up-tempo version of "Simple Twist Of Fate." In later years, she has given the same treatment to "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" and "Love Is Just A Four-Letter Word".
Her only music video to date is for 1992's "Stones In The Road."
She stars as the "Woman In White" in Bob Dylan's 1978 film "Renaldo And Clara."
Led Zeppelin recorded "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" for their 1969 debut album after hearing Baez' version of the song from her 1962 album Joan Baez in Concert.
Paul McCartney has stated on several occasions that the tune for The Beatles' "I'll Get You" was inspired after hearing Baez' "All My Trials".
Emmylou Harris taught herself to play the guitar to Baez's "Silver Dagger".
Judas Priest covered Baez's "Diamonds & Rust" and the song has since become a concert staple of theirs.
Linda Ronstadt cites Baez's 1974 Spanish-language album Gracias a la Vida as a primary influence in her decision to record her own album in Spanish, 1987's Canciones de Mi Padre.
The Paul Simon song "A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara'd Into Submission)", generally thought to be a parody of Bob Dylan's work, contains the line "I been Mick Jaggered, 'Silver Dagger'ed." "Silver Dagger" is one of Baez's most well-known early songs, appearing on her 1960 debut album.

Pop culture

In the 1994 film Forrest Gump, Forrest's love Jenny reveals that she wants "to be a famous folksinger. Like Joan Baez." A Baez tour poster can be seen above her dorm room bed in the same scene. A live Baez version of "Blowin' In The Wind" is featured on the film soundtrack.
In the 1991 Vietnam War-era drama Dogfight, a copy of Baez' debut album can be seen on the protagonist's nightstand beside her bed. Baez's song "Silver Dagger" appears on the soundtrack.
In the 2004 film Eulogy, Hank Azaria's character gets high while Baez's song "Diamonds & Rust" plays. The song also appears on the film's soundtrack.
"Here's To You," a song Baez originally wrote for the 1971 Italian film Sacco e Vanzetti, also appears on the movie soundtrack for the 2004 film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. The song is also played over the credits of the 1977 quasi-documentary Deutschland im Herbst.
The 1972 comedy album National Lampoon's Radio Dinner includes a Baez parody, "Pull the Tregroes", performed by Diana Reed.
In a 2003 episode of the HBO series Six Feet Under, a character, after watching the film Silent Running, comments "I've always loved Joan Baez." Joan's song "Rejoice In The Sun" can be heard in the background.
In an episode of the '70s series The Partridge Family, David Cassidy's character says "One lousy sit-in and suddenly she's Joan Baez."
Spike Lee used Baez's 1964 recording of Richard Fariña's "Birmingham Sunday" as the opening song in his 1997 film 4 Little Girls.
Baez has been lampooned multiple times on Saturday Night Live, by comedienne Nora Dunn. One skit features a game show entitled "Make Joan Baez Laugh!" where a dour Baez is ushered onstage while celebrity guests try their hand at getting her to a crack a smile.
Her name appears under the "Special thanks" section of Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11; Baez dedicated her 2003 album Dark Chords on a Big Guitar to Moore.

Susannah York
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Susannah York (born Susannah Yolande Fletcher on January 9, 1939) is an English actress.



Biography

Early life

York was born in London, England. Her father, Simon Fletcher, divorced from her mother circa 1947, and was rarely present during York's childhood. York studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.


Career

In 1960, York made her second movie, Tunes of Glory, costarring with Alec Guinness and John Mills. She appeared in the notable films A Man for All Seasons (1966), The Killing of Sister George (1968) and Battle of Britain (1969). She was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969). In 1972 she won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival for her role in Images.

Her writing career is less well-known. In the 1970s she wrote two children's fantasy novels, In Search of Unicorns (1973), revised (1984), allegedly filmed as Images, and Lark's Castle (1976), revised (1986).

She, according to Italian symphonic metal band Rhapsody of Fire website (previously known as Rhapsody), has been recruited for a narrated part on the band's next full-length album Triumph or Agony, which will also include Christopher Lee to return as the Wizard King.


Personal life

In 1960, York married Michael Wells. The couple had two children, Orlando and Sasha, but they divorced in 1976. In the 1984 TV adaptation of A Christmas Carol, she played Mrs. Cratchit and both of her children co-starred as Cratchit offspring. Her son, Orlando Wells, starred in the Channel 4 teen drama, As If.

Politically, she is a leftist who has publicly supported Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli dissident who revealed Israel's nuclear weapons programme.

There's these animals in a restaurant. The waiter comes over at the
end of the night ...

The skunk says 'Don't look at me, I haven't got a scent'

The duck says 'Just put it on my bill'

The cow says 'You'll have to ask one of the udders'

The deer says 'I had a buck last week and I'm expecting a little doe
soon'

The giraffe says 'Well, I guess the high balls are on me then'

The frog says, "I've got one greenback"

The vampire bat is thinking, "Which one can I stick for the drink
today?"

The snake says, "I guess I can't hold my liquor."

Another snake says: " If you think I'm paying that, you can kiss my
Asp."

No, the snake said, "It's hiss turn to pay."

The Rhinocerous says: "Don't worry. When the waiter comes I'll just
charge it."

The amoeba said, "I've got to split now."

The paramecium said, "I'll split it with him."

The groundhog said, "If you let me go I shadow you a favor."

The turtle said, "I shell pay next time."

The chicken said, "I hope it's cheep."

The elephant said, "But I've hardly trunk a drop."

The dachshund said, "I've got be to getting a long now."

The manx cat said, "I know you've probably heard this tail before,
but I'm a little short."

The chicken said, "If feather I pay it'll be a cold day in hell."

And the snail said, "No, you shell out the same as me"!

And the trotters said "take 50 cents from two quarterhorses" .

The beaver said, "Dam if I'll pay".

The cows said "We got plenty o' mooolah".

The bumblebee said "Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzz zzzzzzzzzz zzzzzz zzzzz
zzzzzz z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z zzzzzzz off

They each said, "Ask some otter animal."

But the lion said, "I'll pay--I've still got my pride."

and Letty the leach said, "Those are bloody funny, Bob."

(smile, simile, and metaphor)

Thanks, hawkman, for the bio's. Our Raggedy has already done a song from Joan, so let's hear one from Gypsy:

You Gotta Have A Gimmick

Mazeppa
You can pull all the stops out
Till they call the cops out
Grind your behind till you're bend.
But you gotta get a gimmick
If you wanna get a hand.
You can sacrifice your sacharo
Working in the back row.
Bump in a dump till you're dead.
Kid you gotta have a gimmick
If you wanna get ahead.
You can uh...You can uh...
You can uh...uh...uh...
That's how Burlesque was born.
So I uh...and I uh...
And I uh...uh...uh...
But I do it with a horn...
Once I was a Schleppa,
Now I'm Miss Mazzeppa,
With my revolution in dance.
You gotta have a gimmick
If you wanna have a chance!

Electra
She can uh... She can uh...
She can uh...uh...uh...
They'll never make her pitch.
Me, I uh... and I uh...
And I uh...uh...uh...
But I do it with a switch.
I'm electrifying
And I ain't even trying.
I never had to sweat to get paid
'Cause if you got a gimmick
Gypsy girl, you got it made.

Tessie Tura
All them uh and then uh...
And that uh...uh...uh...
Ain't gonna spell success.
Me, I uh... and I uh...
And I uh...uh...uh...
But I do it with finesse.
Lady Tura is so much more then purer
Than all them other ladies because-
You gotta get a gimmick
If you wanna get applause.

ALL
Do something special
Anything special
And you'll get better because
Come on and just do mimic
When you gotta gimmick
Take a look how different we are!

Electra
If you wanna make it,
Twinkle while you shake it.

Tura
If you wanna grind it,
Wait till you refined it.

Mazeppa
If you wanna stump it,
Bump it with a trumpet!

ALL
Get yourself a gimmick and you too,
Can be a star!

We did that one in a little theater presentation in Virginia.

our bob is always clever

i tried to be clever this morning, with less than stellar results

this should make up for it

Sixteen Tons
Tennessee Ernie Ford

Some people say a man is made outta mud
A poor man's made outta muscle and blood
Muscle and blood and skin and bones
A mind that's a-weak and a back that's strong

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

I was born one mornin' when the sun didn't shine
I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine
I loaded sixteen tons of number nine coal
And the straw boss said "Well, a-bless my soul"

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

I was born one mornin', it was drizzlin' rain
Fightin' and trouble are my middle name
I was raised in the canebrake by an ol' mama lion
Cain't no-a high-toned woman make me walk the line

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

If you see me comin', better step aside
A lotta men didn't, a lotta men died
One fist of iron, the other of steel
If the right one don't a-get you
Then the left one will

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store