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Good morning WA2K.

Wishing a Happy 76th to Dean Jones and 69th to Etta James:



Poet Robert Burns and authors W. Somerset Maugham and Virginia Woolf were born on this date, too.

Well, there's our Raggedy with her famous photo's.

We're looking at Dean and Etta. Great, PA

I adore Somerset Maugham, especially his very humorous piece called "The Luncheon." That short story is quite a deviation from his usual writings.

Here's a great song from Etta James:

~ Etta James

At last
my love has come along
my lonely days over
and life is like a song

Ooh At last
the skies above are blue
well my heart was wrapped up in clover
the night I looked at you

I found a dream
that I could speak to
a dream that I could call my own
I found a thrill
to press my cheek to
a thrill that I have never known

well

You smile
you smile
oh and then the spell was cast
and here we are in heaven
for you are mine at last

I found a dream
that I could speak to
a dream that I
could call my own
I found a thrill
to press my cheek to
a thrill that I have never known

well

You smile
you smile
oh and then the spell was cast
and here we are in heaven
for you are mine at last

ooo yea
you are mine
you are mine
at last
at last
at last
at last

W. Somerset Maugham
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Born: January 25, 1874
Paris, France
Died: December 16, 1965
Nice, France

Occupation(s): Playwright, novelist, short story writer
William Somerset Maugham, CH (January 25, 1874 - December 16, 1965) was an English playwright, novelist, and short story writer. He was one of the most popular authors achieving recognition as the highest paid of his profession during the 1930s [1].





Childhood and education

Maugham's father was an English lawyer handling the legal affairs of the British embassy in Paris[2]. Since French law declared that all children born on French soil could be conscripted for military service, Robert Ormond Maugham arranged for William to be born at the embassy, technically on British soil, saving him from conscription into any future French wars[3]. His grandfather, another Robert, had also been a prominent lawyer and cofounder of the English Law Society,[4] and it was taken for granted that William would follow in their footsteps. Events were to ensure this was not to be, but his older brother Frederic Herbert Maugham did enjoy a distinguished legal career, becoming Lord Chancellor between 1938-1939.

Maugham's mother Edith Mary (née Snell) was consumptive, a condition for which the doctors of the time prescribed childbirth. As a result Maugham had three older brothers, already enrolled in boarding school by the time he was three and Maugham was effectively raised as an only child. Sadly, childbirth proved no cure for tuberculosis, and Edith Mary Maugham died at the age of 41, six days after the stillbirth of her final son. The death of his mother left Maugham traumatized for life, and he kept his mother's photograph by his bedside until his own death[5] at the age of 91 in Nice, France.

Two years after his mother's death, Maugham's father died of cancer. Willie was sent back to England to be cared for by his uncle, Henry MacDonald Maugham, the Vicar of Whitstable, in Kent. The move was catastrophic. Henry Maugham proved cold and emotionally cruel. The King's School, Canterbury, where Willie was a boarder during school terms, proved merely another version of purgatory, where he was teased for his bad English (French had been his first language) and his short stature, which he inherited from his father.

It is at this time that Maugham developed the stammer that would stay with him all his life, although it was sporadic and subject to mood and circumstance[6].

Life at the vicarage was tame, and emotions were tightly circumscribed. Maugham was forbidden to lose his temper, or to make emotional displays of any kind -- and he was denied the chance to see others express their own emotions. As a quiet, private but very curious child, this denial of the emotion of others was at least as hard on him as the denial of his own emotions.

The upshot was that Maugham was miserable, both at the vicarage and at school, where he was bullied because of his small size and his stammer. As a result, he developed a talent for applying a wounding remark to those who displeased him. This ability is sometimes reflected in the characters that populate his writings.

At sixteen, Maugham refused to continue at The King's School and his uncle allowed him to travel to Germany, where he studied literature, philosophy and German at Heidelberg University. It was during his year in Heidelberg that he met John Ellingham Brooks, an Englishman ten years his senior, and with whom he had his first sexual experience[7].

On his return to England his uncle found Maugham a position in an accountant's office, but after a month Maugham gave it up and returned to Whitstable. His uncle was not pleased, and set about finding Maugham a new profession. Maugham's father and three older brothers were all distinguished lawyers and Maugham asked to be excused from the duty of following in their footsteps.

A career in the church was rejected because a stammering minister might make the family seem ridiculous. Likewise, the civil service was rejected -- not out of consideration for Maugham's own feelings or interests, but because the recent law requiring civil servants to qualify by passing an examination made Maugham's uncle conclude that the civil service was no longer a career for gentlemen.

The local doctor suggested the profession of medicine and Maugham's uncle reluctantly approved this. Maugham had been writing steadily since the age of 15 and fervently intended to become an author, but because Maugham was not of age, he could not confess this to his guardian. So he spent the next five years as a medical student in London[2].


Career

Early works

Many readers and a few critics have assumed that the years Maugham spent training to be a medical doctor were a kind of creative dead end. But Maugham himself felt quite the contrary. He was able to live in the lively city of London, to meet people of a "low" sort that he would never have met in one of the other professions, and to see them in a time of heightened anxiety and meaning in their lives. In maturity, he recalled the literary value of what he saw as a medical student: "I saw how men died. I saw how they bore pain. I saw what hope looked like, fear and relief..."

There was then a vogue of books, most written by men and women living in comfort, describing the moral value of a life of suffering -- but Maugham saw clearly, again and again, how corrosive to human values suffering was, how bitter and hostile sickness made people, and he never forgot it. Here, finally, was "life in the raw" and the chance to see the whole range of human emotions.

Maugham kept his own lodgings, took pleasure in furnishing them, filled many notebooks with literary ideas, and continued writing nightly while at the same time studying for his degree in medicine. In 1897, he presented his second book for consideration. (The first had been a biography of Meyerbeer written by the 16-year-old Maugham in Heidelberg).

Liza of Lambeth, a tale of working-class adultery and its consequences, drew its details from Maugham's experiences as a medical student doing mid-wifery work in the London slum of Lambeth. The novel is of the school of social-realist "slum-writers" such as George Gissing and Arthur Morrison. Frank as it is, Maugham still felt obliged to write near the opening of the novel: "...it is impossible always to give the exact unexpurgated words of Liza and the other personages of the story; the reader is therefore entreated with his thoughts to piece out the necessary imperfections of the dialogue."

Liza of Lambeth proved popular with both reviewers and the public, and the first print-run sold out in a matter of weeks. This was enough to convince Maugham, who had qualified as a doctor, to drop medicine and embark on his sixty-five year career as a man of letters. Of his entry into the profession of writing he later said, "I took to it as a duck takes to water."

The writer's life allowed Maugham to travel and live in places such as Spain and Capri for the next decade, but his next ten works never came close to rivalling the success of Liza. This changed dramatically in 1907 with the phenomenal success of his play Lady Frederick; by the next year he had four plays running simultaneously in London, and Punch published a cartoon of Shakespeare biting his fingernails nervously as he looked at the billboards.


Popular success, 1914-1939

By 1914 Maugham was famous, with 10 plays produced and 10 published novels. Too old to enlist when World War I broke out, Maugham served in France as a member of the British Red Cross's so-called "Literary Ambulance Drivers", a group of some 23 well-known writers including Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, and E. E. Cummings. During this time he met Frederick Gerald Haxton, a young San Franciscan who became his companion and lover until Haxton's death in 1944 (Haxton appears as Tony Paxton in Maugham's 1917 play, Our Betters). Throughout this period Maugham continued to write; indeed, he proof-read Of Human Bondage at a location near Dunkirk during a lull in his ambulance duties[8].

Of Human Bondage (1915) initially received bad criticism both in England and America, with the New York World describing the subject of the main protagonist Philip Carey as the sentimental servitude of a poor fool. However the influential critic, also a novelist Theodore Dreiser rescued the novel refering to it as a work of genius, and comparing it to a Beethoven symphony. This criticism gave the book the lift it needed and it has since never been out of print. [9].

The book appeared to be closely autobiographical (Maugham's stammer is transformed into Philip Carey's club foot, the vicar of Whitstable becomes the vicar of Blackstable, and Philip Carey is a doctor) although Maugham himself insisted it was more invention than fact. Nevertheless, the close relationship between fictional and non-fictional became Maugham's trademark, despite the legal requirement to state that "the characters in [this or that publication] are entirely imaginary". In 1938 he wrote: "Fact and fiction are so intermingled in my work that now, looking back on it, I can hardly distinguish one from the other."

Maugham returned to England from his ambulance unit duties to promote Of Human Bondage but once that was finalised, he became eager to assist the war effort once more. As he was unable to return to his ambulance unit, Syrie arranged for him to be introduced to a high ranking intelligence officer known only as "R", and in September 1915 he began work in Switzerland, secretly gathering and passing on intelligence while posing as himself - that is, as a writer.

Although Maugham's first and many other sexual relationships were with men, he also had sexual relationships with a number of women. Specifically his affair with Syrie Wellcome, daughter of orphanage founder Thomas John Barnardo and wife of American-born English pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome, produced a daughter named Liza (born Mary Elizabeth Wellcome, 1915-1998).[10] Henry Wellcome then sued his wife for divorce, naming Maugham as co-respondent. In May 1917, following the decree nisi, Syrie and Maugham were married. Syrie became a noted interior decorator who popularized the all-white room in the 1920s.

In 1916, Maugham travelled to the Pacific to research his novel The Moon and Sixpence, based on the life of Paul Gauguin. This was the first of those journeys through the late-Imperial world of the 1920s and 1930s which were to establish Maugham forever in the popular imagination as the chronicler of the last days of colonialism in India, Southeast Asia, China and the Pacific, although the books on which this reputation rests represent only a fraction of his output. On this and all subsequent journeys he was accompanied by Haxton, whom he regarded as indispensable to his success as a writer. Maugham himself was painfully shy, and Haxton the extrovert gathered human material that Maugham steadily turned into fiction.

In June, 1917 he was asked by Sir William Wiseman, chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service (later named MI6), to undertake a special mission in Russia[11] to keep the Provisional Government in power and Russia in the war by countering German pacifist propaganda [12]. Two and a half months later the Bolsheviks took control. The job was probably always impossible, but Maugham subsequently claimed that if he had been able to arrive six months earlier, he might have succeeded.

Quiet and observant, Maugham had a good temperament for intelligence work; he believed he had inherited from his lawyer father a gift for cool judgement and the ability to be undeceived by facile appearances.

Never losing the chance to turn real life into a story, Maugham made his spying experiences into a collection of short stories about a gentlemanly, sophisticated, aloof spy, Ashenden,a volume which influenced the Ian Fleming James Bond series.[13]

In 1922 Maugham dedicated On a Chinese Screen, a book of 58 ultra-short story sketches collected during his 1920 travels through China and Hong Kong, to Syrie, with the intention of later turning the sketches into a book. [14]

Syrie and Maugham divorced in 1927-1928 after a tempestuous marriage complicated by Maugham's frequent travels abroad and strained by his relationship with Haxton.

In 1928, Maugham bought Villa Mauresque on twelve acres at Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera, which would be his home for most of the rest of his life, and one of the great literary and social salons of the 1920s and 30s. His output continued to be prodigious, producing plays, short stories, novels, essays and travel books. By 1940, when the collapse of France forced Maugham to leave the French Riviera and become a well-heeled refugee, he was already one of the most famous writers in the English-speaking world, and one of the wealthiest.


Grand Old Man of letters

Maugham, by now in his sixties, spent most of World War II in the United States, first in Hollywood (he worked on many scripts, and was one of the first authors to make significant money from film adaptations) and later in the South. While in the US he was asked by the British government to make patriotic speeches to induce the US to aid Britain, if not necessarily become an allied combatant. Gerald Haxton died in 1944, and Maugham moved back to England, then in 1946 to his villa in France, where he lived, interrupted by frequent and long travels, until his death.

The gap left by Haxton's death in 1944 was filled by Alan Searle. Maugham had first met Searle in 1928. Searle was a young man from the London slum area of Bermondsey and he had already been kept by older homosexuals. He proved a devoted if not a stimulating companion. Indeed one of Maugham's friends, describing the difference between Searle and Haxton, said simply: "Gerald was vintage, Alan was vin ordinaire."[15]

Maugham's love life was almost never smooth. He once confessed: "I have most loved people who cared little or nothing for me and when people have loved me I have been embarrassed... In order not to hurt their feelings, I have often acted a passion I did not feel."

Maugham's last years were sadly marred by several quasi-scandals which can probably be set down to an itch for attention mixed with cloudy thinking from approaching dementia. The younger Maugham was far too wise and discreet to have made such basic errors in judgement. The worst of these quasi-scandals, and one which cost him many friends, was a bitter attack on the deceased Syrie in his 1962 volume of memoirs, Looking Back. In his last years Maugham adopted Searle as his son in order to ensure that he would inherit his estate, a move hotly contested by his daughter Liza and her husband, Lord Glendevon, and which exposed Maugham to much public ridicule.


Achievements

Commercial success with high book sales, successful play productions and a string of film adaptations, backed by astute stock market investments, allowed Maugham to live a very comfortable life. Small and weak as a boy, Maugham had been proud even then of his stamina, and as an adult he kept churning out the books, proud that he could.

Yet, despite his triumphs, he never attracted the highest respect from the critics or his peers. Maugham himself attributed this to his lack of "lyrical quality", his small vocabulary and failure to make expert use of metaphor in his work.

It seems equally likely that Maugham was underrated because he wrote in such a direct style. There was nothing in a book by Maugham that the reading public needed explained to them by critics. Maugham thought clearly, wrote lucidly, and expressed acerbic and sometimes cynical opinions in handsome, civilized prose. He wrote in a time when experimental modernist literature such as that of William Faulkner, Thomas Mann, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf was gaining increasing popularity and won critical acclaim. In this context, his writing was criticized as "such a tissue of clichés that one's wonder is finally aroused at the writer's ability to assemble so many and at his unfailing inability to put anything in an individual way"[16].

Maugham's homosexual leanings also shaped his fiction, in two ways. Since, in life, he tended to see attractive women as sexual rivals, he often gave the women of his fiction sexual needs and appetites, in a way quite unusual for distinguished authors of his time. "Liza of Lambeth," "Cakes and Ale" and "The Razor's Edge" all featured women determined to service their strong sexual appetites, heedless of the result.

Also, the fact that Maugham's own sexual appetites were highly disapproved of, or even criminal, in nearly all of the countries in which he traveled, made Maugham unusually tolerant of the vices of others. Readers and critics often complained that Maugham did not clearly enough condemn what was bad in the villains of his fiction and plays. Maugham replied in 1938: "It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they personally affect me."

Maugham's public account of his abilities remained modest; toward the end of his career he described himself as "in the very first row of the second-raters". In 1954, he was made a Companion of Honour.

Maugham had begun collecting theatrical paintings before the First World War and continued to the point where his collection was second only to that of the Garrick Club[17]. In 1948 he announced that he would bequeath this collection to the Trustees of the National Theatre, and from 1951, some 14 years before his death, it began its exhibition life and in 1994 they were placed on loan to the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden [2] [3].


Significant works

Maugham's masterpiece is generally agreed to be Of Human Bondage, an autobiographical novel which deals with the life of the main character Philip Carey, who like Maugham, was orphaned and brought up by his pious uncle. Philip's clubfoot causes him endless self-consciousness and embarrassment, echoing Maugham's struggles with his stutter. Later successful novels were also based on real-life characters: The Moon and Sixpence fictionalizes the life of Paul Gauguin; Cakes and Ale contains thinly veiled characterizations of authors Thomas Hardy and Hugh Walpole.

Maugham's last major novel, The Razor's Edge, published in 1944, was a departure for him in many ways. While much of the novel takes place in Europe, its main characters are American, not British. The protagonist is a disillusioned veteran of World War I who abandons his wealthy friends and lifestyle, traveling to India seeking enlightenment. The story's themes of Eastern mysticism and war-weariness struck a chord with readers as World War II waned, and a movie adaptation quickly followed.

Among his short stories, some of the most memorable are those dealing with the lives of Western, mostly British, colonists in the Far East, and are typically concerned with the emotional toll exacted on the colonists by their isolation. Some of his more outstanding works in this genre include Rain, Footprints in the Jungle, and The Outstation. Rain, in particular, which charts the moral disintegration of a missionary attempting to convert the Pacific island prostitute Sadie Thompson, has kept its fame and been made into a movie several times. Maugham said that many of his short stories presented themselves to him in the stories he heard during his travels in the outposts of the Empire. He left behind a long string of angry former hosts, and a contemporary anti-Maugham writer retraced his footsteps and wrote a record of his journeys called "Gin and Bitters". Maugham's restrained prose allows him to explore the resulting tensions and passions without descending into melodrama. His The Magician (1908) is based on British occultist Aleister Crowley.

Maugham was one of the most significant travel writers of the inter-war years, and can be compared with contemporaries such as Evelyn Waugh and Freya Stark. His best efforts in this line include The Gentleman in the Parlour, dealing with a journey through Burma, Siam, Cambodia and Vietnam, and On a Chinese Screen, a series of very brief vignettes which might almost be notes for short stories that were never written.

Influenced by the published journals of the French writer Jules Renard, which Maugham had often enjoyed for their conscientiousness, wisdom and wit, Maugham published in 1949 selections from his own journals under the title "A Writer's Notebook". Although these journal selections are, by nature, episodic and of varying quality, they range over more than 50 years of the writer's life and there is much that Maugham scholars and admirers find of interest in this book.


Influence

In 1947 Maugham instituted the Somerset Maugham Award, awarded to the best British writer or writers under the age of thirty-five of a work of fiction published in the past year. Notable past winners include V.S. Naipaul, Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis and Thom Gunn. On his death, he donated his copyrights to the Royal Literary Fund.

One of very few later writers to praise his influence was Anthony Burgess, who included a complex fictional portrait of Maugham in the novel Earthly Powers. George Orwell also stated that his writing style was influenced by Maugham. The American writer Paul Theroux, in his short story collection The Consul's File, updated Maugham's colonial world in an outstation of expatriates in modern Malaysia.

The 1995 film Se7en has a character played by Morgan Freeman, named Lt. William Somerset. The film makes explicit reference to Of Human Bondage.

Dean Jones (actor)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Born January 25, 1931 (age 75)
Decatur, Alabama United States


Dean Jones (born January 25, 1931 in Decatur, Alabama) is an American actor. He served in the US Navy during the Korean War, after which he worked at the Bird Cage Theater at Knott's Berry Farm, California.

He was notoriously replaced (by Larry Kert) in Stephen Sondheim's Broadway musical Company after just two weeks, having already recorded the cast album. He also appeared in many Disney films in the 1960s and 1970s, including, That Darn Cat! (1965), The Ugly Dachshund (1966), Blackbeard's Ghost (1968), and Snowball Express (1972). Jones' signature Disney role would be that of race car driver Jim Douglas in the highly successful The Love Bug (1969) series. Jones appeared in two of the five feature films, a short-lived television series produced in 1982, and a made for TV movie in 1997. He also appeared as the evil vet Herman Varnick in the popular family film Beethoven in 1992.

Jones became a devout born-again Christian in 1973/1974 and has since appeared in several Christian movies. He is semi-retired, and currently resides in California.

He also testified in favor of a constitutional amendment that would limit marriage to only heterosexuals.

Etta James
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Background information

Birth name Jamesetta Hawkins
Born January 25, 1938
Genre(s) Blues, R&B, Pop Music
Occupation(s) Singer
Instrument(s) Vocals
Years active 1954- Present
Label(s) Chess Records (1960-1975)
Bullseye Records
Private Records
RCA Records (2006-Present)
Associated
acts Dinah Washington, Billie Holiday

Etta James (born Jamesetta Hawkins January 25, 1938 in Los Angeles, California) is an American Blues, R&B and Gospel singer. In the 1950s and 60s, she had her biggest success as a Blues and R&B singer. She is best-known for her 1961 ballad "At Last", which has been classified as a "timeless classic" and has been featured in many movies and television commercials since its release.


Childhood & Rise to Success

Few R&B singers have endured tragic travails on the monumental level of Etta James and remain to tell the tale. [1]

Etta James was born to an unmarried 14-year-old African American mother. She claimed that her mother told her that her father was Rudolph "Minnesota Fats" Wanderone, and that they received financial support from him on the condition that they keep his paternity a secret. She received her first professional vocal training at the age of five, from James Earle Hines, musical director of the Echoes of Eden choir at St. Paul Baptist Church in Los Angeles.

James's family moved to San Francisco in 1950 and James soon teamed up with two other girls to form a singing group. When the girls were fourteen, bandleader Johnny Otis had them audition: they sang an answer to Hank Ballard's "Work With Me, Annie" called "Roll With Me Henry." Otis particularly liked the song, and against her mother's wishes, James and the trio went to Los Angeles to record the song in 1954. The song was recorded under the label Modern Records. By this time, the trio renamed the song "The Wallflower (Dance with Me, Henry)". James also named her vocal group The Peaches. "The Wallflower (Dance with Me, Henry)" was released in 1955.

Success

There are at least two versions of how Johnny Otis discovered Etta James: Otis's version is that she came to his hotel room after one of his performances in San Francisco and persuaded him to audition her. Another frequently told story is that Otis spotted her performing in an L.A. nightclub with The Peaches and, having conceived of the answer song to Hank Ballard's "Work With Me, Annie," arranged with the Bihari brothers for Modern Records to record "The Wallfower" with James. "The Wallflower" reached number two on the rhythm and blues charts in February 1955 but was undercut in the wider market by a rushed out cover version by Georgia Gibbs on Mercury Records. The song's royalties were divided between Hank Ballard, Etta James, and Johnny Otis, and its huge success attracted the attention of the R&B world, resulting in James going on tour with Little Richard. On the tour, according to James, she witnessed and experienced situations which minors are not usually privy to and acquired a drug habit.[2]


Career in the 50s

Before too long, "The Wallflower" was a #1 hit on the R&B charts of 1955. The song was later a hit in the white market for Georgia Gibbs, who re-wrote it as "Dance with Me, Henry". Soon after the song's success, The Peaches and Etta parted company, but this did not halt her career. She continued to record and release albums throughout much of the decade, and enjoyed more success. Her follow-up, "Good Rockin' Daddy" was released and became another hit in the fifties. Other songs however, such as "Tough Lover" and "W-O-M-A-N" failed to gain any significant success at all. James toured with Johnny "Guitar" Watson and Otis Redding in the fifties and has cited Watson as the most significant influence on her style.


The Chess Years in the 60s

In 1960, Etta signed a recording contract with Chess Records. Little did she know that she would have the biggest success of her career from this recording label, recording her biggest and most memorable hits. This recording company went into high gear with James, releasing many duets with her then boyfirend Harvey Fuqua, who was then the lead singer of the Moonglows. One of her duets with Fuqua, called "I Can't Have You", became a hit on the R&B charts in 1960. As a solo artist however, she had more enduring success. One of her first singles released by Chess in 1960 was called "All I Could Do Was Cry". This Blues number became a big hit for James on the R&B charts in 1960. James' sassy vibe added a significant touch of personality to the song. Leonard Chess, one of the founders of Chess Records helped James along the way. He saw the potential for James to go into a more Pop-oriented direction. Therefore, James started recording more Pop tunes for the label.

The year 1961 became a year of great change for James. In 1961 came the release of one of her first Pop-oriented tunes called "At Last". The song became a big hit in 1961, reaching #2 on the R&B charts. The song even went as far as #22 on the Pop charts that year, proving that the Pop crossover direction was becoming successful for her. Although it may have turned out to be less of a hit than expected on the Pop charts, it still made the Top 30. The song became her signature song and the song most people remember her by.[3] Her career had not ended yet though. More success came, following the success of "At Last". Other songs such as "Trust In Me" became hits for her, following the success of her signature tune. The 1962 tune "Something's Got a Hold On Me", showed more of James' Gospel side, a genre she had sung since childhood.

Her 1963 album Etta James Rocks the House, which was cut at Nashville's "New Era" club also gave her career a boost. She had other big hits in the 1960s, but mainly on the R&B charts. The song "Pushover" was a hit for her in 1963. Other hits followed, like "Stop the Wedding", "Fool That I Am" and "Don't Cry Baby", which were all hits for her between 1961 and 1963. From this, James became one of the most successful R&B artists of the 1960s, having many more Top Ten and Top Twenty hit singles on the charts. She has been classified as one of the pioneers of the Blues, being acclaimed to the ranks of artists like B.B. King. Performing in Memphis, Tennessee, the city where Blues started didn't hurt James into making her into a blues icon. Between 1965 and 1967, not much other success had followed, in terms of chart success. However, this wasn't to last for very long, in 1967, she would release another single that would become a big hit again, giving her comeback into music once more.


The Chess Years in the 70s, 80s and Onward

In 1967, Etta was ready to release her next hit single. The song was called "Tell Mama" and it became a Top Ten hit on the R&B charts that year. The song showed James' comeback, after a dry period of no hits for almost four years. The song made James a household name once more. The follow-up also proved to be just as successful as "Tell Mama" was for her. The song was called "Security" and proved that James had staying power on the charts agin. After that, less success came, but James was still on the charts regularly. Despite the death of Leonard Chess, Etta James stayed with the Chess label into 1975. Towards the end of the Chess years though, James went into more Rock-based songs. Her career however did not stop once the Chess years came to an end. Etta recorded for numerous other labels and continued to release albums, like 1978's Deep In the Night by Bullseye Records.

Despite a dry period during the early to mid 80s, Etta got back on track and began to record music again. Her 1988 album Seven Year Itch proved this comeback capability. The album showed more James' Soul side. Into the 1990s, she continued to record and perform. Her albums widely varied in styles and genres of music. Her 1992 album The Right Time was another Soul album that was produced by Elektra Records. The album was upbeat as well. She began to record more Jazz music as well, which became the subject for many of her 1990s albums. In 1998 she released a Christmas album called An Etta James Christmas. To a younger generation, Etta is known for the Muddy Waters song "I Just Wanna Make Love To You", used in television commercials for Coca-Cola and for John Smith's bitter. The Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry and Foghat have also recorded the song. Etta's version was a surprise Top 10 UK hit in 1995. Drug-related and romantic problems interfered with her career, but James managed to maintain a career throughout the latter half of the 20th century.[4] Later in life, James struggled with obesity. She reached more than 400 pounds, experienced mobility and knee problems, and often needed a wheelchair. In 2003, James underwent gastric bypass surgery and lost over 200 pounds.[5] James was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.[6] She was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2001. Her pioneering contribution to the genre has been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. In 2003 she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked her #62 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.[7] She is still touring in 2006. A new album was also released in 2006 called All the Way, which was released by RCA Records.

When Insults Had Class.

"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
-- Winston Churchill

"A modest little person, with much to be modest about."
-- Winston Churchill

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great
pleasure."
-- Clarence Darrow

"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the
dictionary."
-- William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?"
-- Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)

"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time
reading it."
-- Moses Hadas

"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I
know."
-- Abraham Lincoln

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."
-- Groucho Marx

"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved
of it."
-- Mark Twain

"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends."
-- Oscar Wilde

"I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a
friend.... if you have one."
-- George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

"Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... if there is
one."
-- Winston Churchill, in response

"I feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you here."
-- Stephen Bishop

"He is a self-made man and worships his creator."
-- John Bright

"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial."
-- Irvin S. Cobb

"He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others."
-- Samuel Johnson

"He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up."
-- Paul Keating

"He had delusions of adequacy."
-- Walter Kerr

"There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure."
-- Jack E. Leonard

"He has the attention span of a lightning bolt."
-- Robert Redford

"They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human
knowledge."
-- Thomas Brackett Reed

"He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by
diligent hard work, he overcame them."
-- James Reston (about Richard Nixon)

"In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily."
-- Charles, Count Talleyrand

"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him."
-- Forrest Tucker

"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on
it?"
-- Mark Twain

"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork."
-- Mae West

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go."
-- Oscar Wilde

"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts.. .for support
rather than illumination. "
-- Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

"He has Van Gogh's ear for music."
-- Billy Wilder

Thank goodness, hawkman. We were concerned about you. Great bio's today, Boston, and those scathing quotes are fantastic.

Love the George Bernard Shaw quote and Winston's retort.

No particular reason for this song, folks. I just heard it in the background of our little studio.

Gilbert O'Sullivan

Alone Again (Naturally)

In a little while from now
If I'm not feeling any less sour
I promise myself to treat myself
And visit a nearby tower
And climbing to the top will throw myself off
In an effort to make it clear to who
Ever what it's like when you're shattered
Left standing in the lurch at a church
Where people saying: "My God, that's tough
She's stood him up"
No point in us remaining
We may as well go home
As I did on my own
Alone again, naturally

To think that only yesterday
I was cheerful, bright and gay
Looking forward to well wouldn't do
The role I was about to play
But as if to knock me down
Reality came around
And without so much, as a mere touch
Cut me into little pieces
Leaving me to doubt
Talk about God and His mercy
Or if He really does exist
Why did He desert me in my hour of need
I truly am indeed Alone again, naturally

It seems to me that there are more hearts
broken in the world that can't be mended
Left unattended
What do we do? What do we do?

Alone again, naturally
Now looking back over the years
And whatever else that appears
I remember I cried when my father died
Never wishing to hide the tears
And at sixty-five years old
My mother, God rest her soul,
Couldn't understand why the only man
She had ever loved had been taken
Leaving her to start with a heart so badly broken
Despite encouragement from me
No words were ever spoken
And when she passed away
I cried and cried all day
Alone again, naturally
Alone again, naturally

We can't let the day wane without hearing one from Robert Burns, folks.

TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY
ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOUGH, APRIL, 1786
by: Robert Burns (1759-1796)

I

EE, modest, crimson-tippèd flow'r,
Thou's met me in an evil hour;
For I maun crush amang the stoure
Thy slender stem:
To spare thee now is past my pow'r,
Thou bonie gem.

II

Alas! it's no thy neebor sweet,
The bonie lark, companion meet,
Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet!
Wi' spreckl'd breast!
When upward-springing, blythe, to greet
The purpling east.

III

Cauld blew the bitter-biting north
Upon thy early, humble birth;
Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth
Amid the storm,
Scarce rear'd above the parent-earth
Thy tender form.

IV

The flaunting flow'rs our gardens yield,
High shelt'ring woods and wa's maun shield;
But thou, beneath the random bield
O' clod or stane,
Adorns the histie stibble-field,
Unseen, alane.

V

There, in thy scanty mantle clad,
Thy snawie bosom sun-ward spread,
Thou lifts thy unassuming head
In humble guise;
But now the share uptears thy bed,
And low thou lies!

VI

Such is the fate of artless maid,
Sweet flow'ret of the rural shade!
By love's simplicity betray'd,
And guileless trust;
Till she, like thee, all soil'd, is laid
Low i' the dust.

VII

Such is the fate of simple Bard,
On life's rough ocean luckless starr'd!
Unskilful he to note the card
Of prudent lore,
Till billows rage, and gales blow hard,
And whelm him o'er!

VIII

Such fate to suffering Worth is giv'n,
Who long with wants and woes has striv'n,
By human pride or cunning driv'n
To mis'ry's brink;
Till, wrench'd of ev'ry stay but Heav'n,
He, ruin'd, sink!

IX

Ev'n thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate,
That fate is thine -- no distant date;
Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives, elate,
Full on thy bloom,
Till crush'd beneath the furrow's weight,
Shall by thy doom!

One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong
I lit a thin green candle, to make you jealous of me.
But the room just filled up with mosquitos,
they heard that my body was free.
Then I took the dust of a long sleepless night
and I put it in your little shoe.
And then I confess that I tortured the dress
that you wore for the world to look through.
I showed my heart to the doctor: he said I just have to quit.
Then he wrote himself a prescription,
and your name was mentioned in it!
Then he locked himself in a library shelf
with the details of our honeymoon,
and I hear from the nurse that he's gotten much worse
and his practice is all in a ruin.

I heard of a saint who had loved you,
so I studied all night in his school.
He taught that the duty of lovers
is to tarnish the golden rule.
And just when I was sure that his teachings were pure
he drowned himself in the pool.
His body is gone but back here on the lawn
his spirit continues to drool.

An Eskimo showed me a movie
he'd recently taken of you:
the poor man could hardly stop shivering,
his lips and his fingers were blue.
I suppose that he froze when the wind took your clothes
and I guess he just never got warm.
But you stand there so nice, in your blizzard of ice,
oh please let me come into the storm.


Leonard Cohen

WOW! edgar Leonard Cohen never ceases to amaze me. Although the lyrics are very arcane, they are beautiful, Texas. There's nothing further that I can add to that song. I can just keep rereading them.

New from the world of science:

Earth's moon destined to desintegrate.

During the red giant phase the Sun will swell until its distended atmosphere reaches out to envelop the Earth and Moon, which will both begin to be affected by gas drag-the space through which they orbit will contain more molecules.
The Moon is now moving away from Earth and by then will be in an orbit that's about 40 percent larger than today. It will be the first to warp under the Sun's influence.
'The Moon's actual path is a wiggly line around the Sun, with it moving faster when it is slightly farther out (at full Moon) and more slowly when it is slightly closer (at new Moon),' said Lee Anne Willson of Iowa State University. 'So the gas drag is more effective at the farther part of the orbit and this will put the Moon into an orbit where the new Moon is closer to Earth than the full Moon.'

The rest of the story:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20070122/sc_space/earthsmoondestinedtodisintegrate

We can NOT allow that to happen.

In as little as 4 to 5 billion years our sun will burn out, it will turn dark then.

My goodness, dys. That's rather alarming news. Should we be concerned?

Dark Moon by Elvis Presley


(Words & music by Ned Miller)

Dark moon, way up high up in the sky
Oh, tell me why, oh tell me why
You've lost your splendor
Dark moon, what is the cause your life withdraws
Is it because, is it because I've lost my love

Mortals have dreams of love's perfect schemes
But they don't realize, their love can sometimes bring the

Dark moon, way up high up in the sky
Oh, tell me why, oh tell me why
You've lost your splendor
Dark moon, what is the cause your life withdraws
Is it because, is it because I've lost my love

Mortals have dreams of love's perfect schemes
But they don't realize, their love can sometimes bring the

Dark moon, way up high up in the sky
Oh, tell me why, oh tell me why
You've lost your splendor
Dark moon, what is the cause your life withdraws
Is it because, is it because I've lost my love

Mortals have dreams of love's perfect schemes
But they don't realize, their love can sometimes bring the

Dark moon, way up high up in the sky
Oh, tell me why, oh tell me why
You've lost your splendor
Dark moon, what is the cause your life withdraws
Is it because, is it because I've lost my love
What is the cause your light withdraws
Is it because, is it because I've lost my love

Dark moon, way up high up in the sky
Oh, tell me why, oh tell me why
You've lost your splendor
Dark moon, what is the cause your life withdraws
Is it because, is it because I've lost my love

Mortals have dreams of love's perfect schemes
But they don't realize, their love can sometimes bring the

Dark moon, way up high up in the sky
Oh, tell me why, oh tell me why
You've lost your splendor
Dark moon, what is the cause your life withdraws
Is it because, is it because I've lost my love

Mortals have dreams of love's perfect schemes
But they don't realize, their love can sometimes bring the

Dark moon, way up high up in the sky
Oh, tell me why, oh tell me why
You've lost your splendor
Dark moon, what is the cause your life withdraws
Is it because, is it because I've lost my love

Mortals have dreams of love's perfect schemes
But they don't realize, their love can sometimes bring the

Dark moon, way up high up in the sky
Oh, tell me why, oh tell me why
You've lost your splendor
Dark moon, what is the cause your life withdraws
Is it because, is it because I've lost my love
What is the cause your light withdraws
Is it because, is it because I've lost my love

I Want To Know What Love Is
Foreigner

I gotta take a little time
A little time to think things over
I better read between the lines
In case I need it when I'm older

Now this mountain I must climb
Feels like the world upon my shoulders
Through the clouds I see love shine
It keeps me warm as life grows colder

In my life there's been heartache and pain
I don't know if I can face it again
Can't stop now
I've travelled so far
To change this lonely life

I want to know what love is
I want you to show me
I want to feel what love is
I know you can show me

I'm gonna take a little time
A little time to look around me
I've got nowhere left to hide
It looks like love has finally found me

In my life there's been heartache and pain
I don't know if I can face it again
Can't stop now
I've travelled so far
To change this lonely life

I want to know what love is
I want you to show me
I want to feel what love is
I know you can show me
I want to know what love is
I want you to show me
And I wanna feel
I want to feel what love is
And I know
I know you can show me

Let's talk about love (I want to know what love is)
The love that you feel inside (I want you to show me)
And I'm feeling so much love (I want to feel what love is)
No, you just can't hide (I know you can show me)
I want to know what love is [let's talk about love]
(I know you can show me)
I wanna feel it too (I want to feel what love is)
I wanna feel it too
and I know and I know
I know you can show me
Show me love is real (yeah)
I want to know what love is...

if dys and letty's gloomy future comes true

hawksley workman has a solution

You and the Candles

Anne Jeffreys
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anne Jeffreys (born Anne Carmichael on January 26, 1923 in Goldsboro, North Carolina) is an American actress and singer.




Career

Jeffreys entered the entertainment field at a young age; her initial training was in voice (she was an accomplished soprano), but she decided as a teenager to sign with the John Robert Powers agency as a junior model.

Her plans for an operatic career were sidelined when she was cast in a staged musical review, Fun for the Money. Her appearance in that revue led to her being cast in her first movie role, in I Married an Angel (1942), starring Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. She was under contract to both RKO and Republic Studios during the 1940's, including several appearances as Tess in the Dick Tracy series, and the 1942 Frank Sinatra musical Step Lively

When her career faltered, she instead focused on her stage career, starring in productions such as the Broadway musical My Romance. With husband Robert Sterling, she appeared in the 1953 sitcom Topper.

After a semi-retirement in the 1960s, she appeared on television, appearing in episodes of such TV series as L.A. Law and Murder, She Wrote. She was nominated for a Golden Globe for her work in The Delphi Bureau (1972). From 1984 to 1985, she starred in the short-lived Aaron Spelling series Finder of Lost Loves. She also appeared in Baywatch as David Hasselhoff's mother.

Her most recent career has been in daytime television; since 1984 she has appeared on the soap opera General Hospital (as well as its short-lived spinoff, Port Charles) as wealthy socialite Amanda Barrington.


Personal life

Jeffreys has been married twice. Her first marriage, to Joseph Serena, ended in divorce in 1949.

She married actor Robert Sterling in 1951. Sterling appeared with Jeffreys in the series Topper. They had three sons: Jeffrey, Dana and Tyler. Sterling died on May 30, 2006.


Trivia

Jeffreys' star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is at 1501 Vine Street.

Scott Glenn
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Born January 26, 1941
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania


Theodore Scott Glenn (born January 26, 1941) is an American actor known for supporting roles. His roles include Wes Hightower in Urban Cowboy (1980), astronaut Alan Shepard in The Right Stuff (1983), Commander Bart Mancuso in The Hunt for Red October (1990), and as Jack Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs (1991).





Biography

Early life

Glenn was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Elizabeth Glenn. He grew up in Appalachia and has Irish and Native American ancestry.[1] During his childhood he was regularly ill, and for a year was bed-ridden. Through intense training programs he got over his illnesses, including a limp. After graduating from a Pittsburgh high school, Glenn entered College of William and Mary where he majored in English. He then joined the Marines for three years and worked roughly five months as a reporter for the Kenosha Evening News. He then tried to become an author, but found he could not write good dialogues. To learn the art of dialogue, he began taking acting classes.

In 1965, Glenn made his Broadway debut in The Impossible Years. He joined George Morrison's acting class, helping direct student plays to pay for his studies and appearing onstage in La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club productions. In 1967, he married Carol Schwartz, his current wife; Glenn converted to his wife's Jewish religion upon marrying her.[1] In 1968, he joined The Actors Studio and began working in professional theatre and TV. In 1970, director James Bridges offered him his first movie role in The Baby Maker, released the same year.


Career

Glenn that year left for LA and spent about 8 years there acting small roles in films and doing brief TV stints. He appeared in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), in a small role, while there and also worked with directors like Jonathan Demme and Robert Altman. Fed up with Hollywood, in 1978 Glenn left LA with his family for Ketchum, Idaho and worked for the two years he lived there as a barman, huntsman and mountain ranger, occasionally acting in Seattle stage productions.

In 1980, Glenn got back into acting in films, by appearing as ex-convict Wes Hightower in Bridges's Urban Cowboy. After, he appeared in action films like Silverado (1985), and The Challenge (1982) and drama films like The Right Stuff (1983), TV film Countdown to Looking Glass (1984), The River (1984) and Off Limits (1988) as he alternately played good guys and bad guys during the 1980s. He tried his hand at gangster movies in 1987 when he starred as the real-life sheriff turned gunman Verne Miller in the movie of the same name. "Verne Miller" was only given a theatrical release in Finland and went straight to video in the U.S. In the beginning of the 1990s his career was at its peak as he appeared in several well-known films such as The Silence of the Lambs (1991), the blockbuster smash hit Backdraft (1991), The Hunt for Red October (1990), and The Player (1992). Later he gravitated toward more different movie role, such as in the Freudian farce Reckless (1995/I), tragicomedy Edie and Pen (1997) and Ken Loach's socio-political declaration Carla's Song (1996). Today Glenn alternates between mainstream films (Courage Under Fire (1996), Absolute Power (1997)), with independent projects (Lesser Prophets (1997) and Larga distancia (1998), written by his daughter Dakota Glenn) and TV (Naked City: A Killer Christmas (1998)).

Glenn's most recent theatrical role was in the drama Freedom Writers (2007), in which he played the father of Hilary Swank's character.

Anita Baker
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia





Background information

Born January 26, 1958
Toledo, Ohio, United States

Origin Detroit, Michigan, United States
Genre(s) Pop, Adult contemporary, Quiet storm, Smooth jazz
Years active 1978-present
Label(s) Beverly Glen, Elektra, Atlantic, Blue Note
Website http://www.bluenote.com/artistpage.asp?ArtistID=3739
Anita Baker (born January 26, 1958, in Toledo, Ohio) is a multi-platinum selling rhythm and blues singer-songwriter and 8 time Grammy Award winner. Baker is renowned for her soaring alto vocal range.



Biography

Early career

Anita Baker was raised in Detroit, Michigan. She began singing in a Baptist church choir at the age of 12. At age 16 she was in a band called Humanity which included fellow high school friends and was playing with other local bands when she was approached by bass player David Washington of Chapter 8 to audition.

In 1975, Baker joined Chapter 8, the most popular group of Detroit at the time. They spent a couple of years playing in and around Detroit, and eventually got a record deal with Ariola. The self-titled album came out in fall 1979. Two singles hit the R&B charts: "Ready for Your Love" and "I Just Wanna Be Your Girl". Ariola Records suddenly ran into financial trouble and the company was bought by Arista. The executives at Arista did not care for Baker's vocals and refused to renew Chapter 8's record deal while Baker was a part of the group. After being rejected Baker went back home to Detroit and got a job as a receptionist for a local law firm.


Solo career

In 1981, Otis Smith, the man behind Chapter 8's contract, formed his own label Beverly Glen. Remembering Baker's vocals, he got her telephone number from a Chapter 8 member and called her in late 1982. Baker refused the job at first due to her duties as a receptionist. However, she agreed to sign with the label and try again with a music career. It would prove to be a smart move.

In 1983, Baker released her debut album The Songtress. This album was a moderate success, which paved the way for a host of bigger things to come; two of the album's singles, "Angel" and "No More Tears", became smash hits on the R&B charts. By the spring of 1984, Baker had 5 chart hits and was close to a gold record. However, there was no answer when she asked Beverly Glen about a new album.


1986 - 1989: The critical and commercial success

In 1985, Baker got a major label contract with Elektra Records, a division of Warner Music Group. She released her second album, Rapture in 1986. Choosing her friend from Chapter 8, Michael J. Powell, as her producer, they created a masterpiece. It was this album which established Anita Baker as a world-wide musical tour de force and a household name. It was also this album that afforded her the opportunity to stretch her skills; she wrote "Been So Long", "Watch Your Step" and "Sweet Love". "Sweet Love", "Caught Up In the Rapture", "No One In The World", and "Same Ole Love" became major R&B hits during 1986 and 1987. By the time "Rapture" had completed its chart run, it had sold 6 million copies worldwide and also earned Baker two Grammys.

In November 1986 when she was returning to Detroit to receive the key of the city, she got engaged to Walter Bridgforth Jr. whom she'd met on an earlier trip home in January. They were married on Christmas Eve 1987.

In 1987, Baker collaborated with The Winans on the single "Ain't No Need To Worry" and this single lead Baker to her third Grammy award. At the same time, she also worked on her follow-up album Giving You The Best That I Got in between a busy performance schedule. This album was released in October 1988. She worked with Michael J. Powell again, and the album became a critical and commercial success, which sold another 4.5 million copies wordwide. It features the such hits as "Just Because" and the title track. Critics noted that, single-handedly, through her first two albums, "Anita Baker has set a new standard and helped redefine the sound of contemporary music recorded by female vocalists in the '80s and the '90s."


Compositions

Baker returned back to the studio in 1990 for her third Elektra album Compositions. On her third project for Elektra, Anita wanted to be more involved in song writing and wished to experiment with jazz. Baker wrote seven of the songs on this album, including the hits "Talk to Me", "Fairy Tales", "No One To Blame", and "Whatever It Takes Soul Inspiration" (co-written with Gerald Levert). The album was mostly cut live, meaning that the rhythm section was playing as Baker sung. On the album produced by Michael J. Powell, there were musicians like Greg Philinganes, Nathan East, Paulinho da Costa, Vernon Fails, Ricky Lawson and Stephen Ferrone. Baker's involvement in the whole recording process gave the album a personal touch and for the effort she received her 7th Grammy award.

Though the three singles from Compositions all failed to peak Top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart, they still became Top 20 hits on the R&B Singles Chart, however. Compositions peaked at #5 on the Billboard 200 Albums Chart, #3 on the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, #4 on the Billboard Top Contemporary Jazz Albums, and still was certified Platinum by RIAA.

After almost five years of touring, performing, and recording non-stop, Anita took a break, only taking time off to record the jazz standard "Witchcraft" with Frank Sinatra for his 1993 Duets album.


Rhythm of Love
In January 1993, Baker gave birth to her first child, a boy named Walter Baker Bridgforth. Five months later Baker started working on her 5th album, and during the recording sessions she became pregnant again. In May 1994, with most of the album completed, Baker gave birth to a second son, Edward Carlton.

Her 5th album, Rhythm of Love, was issued on September 1994. After she ended the partnership with Michael J. Powell, Anita produced most of the album. However, this time many famous producers like George Duke, Arif Mardin, Barry Eastmond and Tommy Lipuma also contributed to the album. Rhythm Of Love was mainly recorded in Baker's home due to her pregnancy, and she wrote 5 out of 12 songs and beautifully selected "My Funny Valentine" to be the last song, a song that proves that Anita should do an all jazz album in many fans' opinion.

This album still sold well, peaked at #3 on the Billboard 200 Albums Chart and #1 on the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. It was certified double platinum by RIAA and received her 8th Grammy for the second single "I Apologize" in 1995.


Turn back home with family

After Rhythm Of Love album, Baker spent most of her time with her family. She only appeared in a jazz-influenced soundtrack to the Billy Crystal directed 1995 film Forget Paris. For this movie, Baker paired with popular Pop/R&B crooner James Ingram to record "When You Love Someone", which is produced by David Foster, and was also written with Foster, Carole Bayer Sager and Ingram.

The tragedy occurred that she lost her birth mother in 1996 and her father in 1998. At the same time she had a disagreement with Elektra Records about the delay of her new album. After all, she won the case against Elektra and signed with Atlantic Records, another division of Warner Music Group.


The allegedly ruined new album

In August 2000, Baker began to record her long-awaited new album. However, In May 2001, she had filed a lawsuit in federal court against an audio equipment rental company she said ruined some tracks recorded for her new album. She alleged that a 24-track tape machine she rented produced random popping noises. The company sent a technician to Baker's studio to repair the equipment, but Baker said the technician determined that the recorded material could not be salvaged because no system could remove the popping noises. According to the lawsuit, she said it cost her more than $500,000 to rent the equipment, hire producers, songwriters, musicians and vocalists, and pay their travel and housing expenses. She was seeking more than $200,000.

Due to the delay of new album, Atlantic Records parted ways with her in December 2001. Rhino Records released her compilation The Best Of Anita Baker on June 18, 2002, and the international version had different tracks and title, Sweet Love: The Very Best Of Anita Baker. On May 3, 2004 this compilation was certified gold by RIAA.


Back to music industry

After two years, in March 2004, Blue Note Records announced they signed Baker to an exclusive recording contract that would result in at least two albums. Bruce Lundvall, president/CEO of EMI Jazz & Classics, signed her after she approached him to record for Blue Note. In the same time Rhino Records released A Night Of Rapture: Live, a compilation that contains nine live tracks and three extra multimedia video in the late 80's.

In September, after a decade, Anita Baker finally released her long-awaited original album My Everything. Produced by Barry J. Eastmond and Baker herself, she still wrote or cowrote nine of this album's 10 tracks, including a duet with Babyface, "Like You Used To Do." Though she had left the limelight so long, this album still got the critical and commercial success. It debut at #4 on the Billboard 200 Albums Chart and #1 on the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. The album was certified gold by RIAA for shipments of 500,000 copies.

October 2005, she released her first Christmas album, Christmas Fantasy. Still produced by Baker and Barry J. Eastmond, the album mixes traditional Christmas carols ("God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen"), standards ("I'll Be Home For Christmas"), re-imagined classics ("Frosty's Rag"), Broadway show tunes ("My Favorite Things"), and three new songs by Baker and Eastmond ("Moonlight Sleighride", "Family of Man", and "Christmas Fantasy"), all tied together with Baker's warm, rapturous voice.


The Babyface lawsuit

On April 15, 2006, the Grammy-winning singer-producer Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds had filed a breach of contract lawsuit against Baker, claiming she owed him more than $250,000.

According to the lawsuit, filed in Superior Court, Baker broke two oral agreements with Edmonds, who co-wrote, produced and performed on the song "Like You Used To Do" on her 2004 reunited album My Everything. The lawsuit claimed Baker refused to pay Edmonds producer's royalties equaling at least $100,000 from an estimated more than 500,000 albums sold. He also alleged that he and Baker had an agreement to play four concerts together, but that Baker canceled two shows and refused to pay $150,000 for those dates.

Spokesman Cem Kurosman from Baker's label, Blue Note Records, declined to comment Friday, saying the label had no knowledge of the lawsuit.