WA2K Radio is now on the air

edgar, my oldest sister loves that song. I like it as well. Thanks, Texas. If I recall correctly, Imur's dad loved it, too, and Imur wanted to dedicate it to him.

Dutchy, I had no idea that John had a downunder connection. All this time I thought Mel Gibson was an Aussie, and come to find out he was NOT, but Russell Crowe is.

Another from John.

Almost heaven, west virginia
Blue ridge mountains
Shenandoah river -
Life is old there
Older than the trees
Younger than the mountains
Growin like a breeze

Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West virginia, mountain momma
Take me home, country roads

All my memories gathered round her
Miners lady, stranger to blue water
Dark and dusty, painted on the sky
Misty taste of moonshine
Teardrops in my eye

Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West virginia, mountain momma
Take me home, country roads

I hear her voice
In the mornin hour she calls me
The radio reminds me of my home far away
And drivin down the road I get a feelin
That I should have been home yesterday, yesterday

Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West virginia, mountain momma
Take me home, country roads

Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West virginia, mountain momma
Take me home, country roads
Take me home, now country roads
Take me home, now country roads

Words and music by bill danoff, taffy nivert and john denver

Letty Russell Ira Crowe is NOT an Australian! he was born: 7 April 1964 in Wellington, New Zealand

Oops, Dutchy. Thanks for the correction.

Gomenasai, I am so sorry, gomenasai. That's Japan's way of eating crow.

Here's Madonna's way.

Je suis désolé = i am sorry (french)
Lo siento = i am sorry (spanish)
Ik ben droevig = i am sad (Dutch)
Sono spiacente = i am sorry (italian)
Perdóname = forgive me (spanish)


I've heard it all before
I've heard it all before
I've heard it all before
I've heard it all before
[repeat]

I don't wanna hear, I don't wanna know
Please don't say you're sorry
I've heard it all before
And I can take care of myself
I don't wanna hear, I don't wanna know
Please don't say 'forgive me'
I've seen it all before
And I can't take it anymore

You're not half the man you think you are
Save your words because you've gone too far
I've listened to your lies and all your stories (Listen to your stories)
You're not half the man you'd like to be

I don't wanna hear, I don't wanna know
Please don't say you're sorry
I've heard it all before
And I can take care of myself
I don't wanna hear, I don't wanna know
Please don't say 'forgive me'
I've seen it all before
And I can't take it anymore

Don't explain yourself 'cause talk is cheap
There's more important things than hearing you speak
You stayed because I made it so convenient(so convenient)
Don't explain yourself, you'll never see

Gomenasai = "Forgive me"/"sorry" in japanese
Mujhe maaf kardo = "Please forgive me" in Hindi
Przepraszam = "Sorry" in Polish
Sleechah = "I am sorry"in Hebrew
Forgive me...

(Sorry, sorry, sorry)
I've heard it all before
I've heard it all before
I've heard it all before
[repeat]

I don't wanna hear, I don't wanna know
Please don't say you're sorry
I've heard it all before
And I can take care of myself
I don't wanna hear, I don't wanna know
Please don't say 'forgive me'
I've seen it all before
And I can't take it anymore

I don't wanna hear, I don't wanna know
Please don't say you're sorry
(Don't explain yourself cause talk is cheap)
I've heard it all before, And I can take care of myself
(There's more important things than hearing you speak)
I don't wanna hear, I don't wanna know
Please don't say 'forgive me'

I've heard it all before
I've heard it all before
I've heard it all before
I've heard it all before

Hank Locklin - Fraulein

Far across deep blue water lives an old German's daughter
By the banks of the old River Rhine
Where I loved her and left her but I can't forget her
Cause I miss my pretty Fraulein
Fraulein Fraulein look up toward the heavens each night when the stars start to shine
By the same stars above you I swear that I love you you are my pretty Fraulein
[ ac.guitar - piano ]
When my memories wander away over yonder to the sweetheart that I left behind
In a moment of glory a face comes before me the face of my pretty Fraulein
Fraulein Fraulein...

Good morning, WA2K radio friends and neighbors.

Well, edgar, I did a lot of research last evening and found out that Hank is the oldest living singer of the Grand Old Opry era. Salute to you, buddy.

Woke up this morning with this song in my head, listeners:


In this world of ordinary people
Extraordinary people
I'm glad there is you

In this world of over-rated pleasures
Of under-rated treasures
I'm so glad there is you

I live to love, I love to live with you beside me
This role so new, I'll muddle through with you to guide me

In this world where many, many play at love
And hardly any stay in love
I'm glad there is you


More than ever, I'm glad there is you.

Isadora Duncan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Isadora Duncan (May 27, 1877 - September 14, 1927) was an American dancer.

Born Dora Angela Duncan in San Francisco, California, she is considered by many to be the mother of Modern Dance. Although never very popular in the United States, she entertained throughout Europe.





Early life

Duncan was born in San Francisco, where she lived with her mother Dora, and her father, Joseph Duncan. Mr. Duncan had walked out on his family, giving the family a reason to convert from Roman Catholicism to strict atheism. Duncan attended school for the early years of her life, but dropped out because she found it to be constricting to her individuality. Her family was very poor, so to earn extra money, both she and her sister gave dance classes to local children. Their mother also taught piano lessons.


Career

Montparnasse's developing Bohemian environment did not suit her. In 1909, she moved to two large apartments at 5 Rue Danton where she lived on the ground floor and used the first floor for her dance school. Barefoot, dressed in clinging scarfs and faux-Grecian tunics, she created a primitivist style of improvisational dance to counter the rigid styles of the time. Isadora believed that classical ballet, with its strict rules of posture and formation, was "ugly and against nature" and gained a wide following that allowed her to set up a school to teach. She became so famous that she inspired artists and authors to create sculpture, jewelry, poetry, novels, photographs, watercolors, prints and paintings. When the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées was built in 1913, her face was carved in the bas-relief by sculptor Antoine Bourdelle and painted in the murals by Maurice Denis.

In 1922 she acted on her sympathy for the social and political experiment being carried out in the new Soviet Union and moved to Moscow. She cut a striking figure in the increasingly austere post-revolution capital, but her international prominence brought welcome attention to the new regime's artistic and cultural ferment. The Russian government's failure to follow through on extravagant promises of support for Duncan's work, combined with the country's spartan living conditions, sent her back to the West in 1924.

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

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


Personal life

Both in her professional and her private life, she flouted traditional mores and morality. She married the Russian poet Sergei Yesenin, who was 18 years her junior. Yesenin accompanied her on a tour of Europe, but his frequent drunken rages, resulting in the repeated destruction of furniture and the smashing of the doors and windows of their hotel rooms, brought a great deal of negative publicity. The following year he left Duncan and returned to Moscow where he soon suffered a mental breakdown and was placed in a mental institution. Released from hospital, he allegedly committed suicide on December 28, 1925. It is still unclear whether the poet was murdered or commited suicide indeed.

Duncan bore two children -- one by theatre designer Gordon Craig, and another by Paris Singer, one of the many sons of sewing machine magnate Isaac Singer. Her private life was subject to considerable scandal, especially following the tragic and horrific drowning of her children Deirdre and Patrick in an accident on the Seine River in 1913. The children were in the car with their nanny for a day out, while Isadora stayed at home. The car was driving up a hill, when suddenly the engine stalled. The chauffeur got out of the car to fix the engine, but he had forgotten to use the emergency brake, and so once he got the car to start, it proceeded to roll down the hill, and into the river below. The children and the nanny drowned. Following the accident, she spent several weeks at the Viareggio seaside resort with actress Eleonora Duse. The fact that Duse was just coming out of a lesbian relationship with rebellious young lesbian feminist Lina Poletti fuelled speculation as to the nature of Duncan and Duse's relationship. However, there has never been definite proof that the two were involved romantically.[1]

She was a classical dancer. She rejected traditional ballet steps to stress improvisation, emotion, and the human form.

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

Duncan and de Acosta wrote regularly in often revealing letters of correspondence. In one, written in 1927, Duncan wrote; (quoted by Hugo Vickers in "Loving Garbo") ".....A slender body, hands soft and white, for the service of my delight, two sprouting breasts round and sweet, invite my hungry mouth to eat, from whence two nipples firm and pink, persuade my thirsty soul to drink, and lower still a secret place where I'd fain hide my loving face....."[2]

In another letter, written to de Acosta by Duncan, she writes; "Mercedes, lead me with your little strong hands and I will follow you - to the top of a mountain. To the end of the world. Wherever you wish." Isadora, June 28, 1926.[3]

De Acosta had once proclaimed that from the moment she first saw Isadora Duncan, she looked upon her as a great genius, taken by her completely.[4]


Later life

By the end of her life, Duncan's performing career had dwindled, and she became as notorious for her financial woes, scandalous love life, and all-too-frequent public drunkenness as for her contributions to the arts. She spent her final years moving between Paris and the Mediterranean, running up debts at hotels or spending short periods in apartments rented on her behalf by an ever-decreasing number of friends and supporters, many of whom attempted to assist her in writing an autobiography, in the hope that it would be sufficiently successful to support her. In a reminiscent sketch, Zelda Fitzgerald recalled how she and Scott sat in a Paris cafe watching a somewhat drunk Duncan. Scott Fitzgerald would speak of how memorable it was, but what Zelda recalled was that while all eyes were watching Duncan, Zelda was able to steal the salt and pepper shakers (shaped like miniature taxicabs) from the table.

In the book Isadora, an Intimate Portrait the author, Sewell Stokes, who met her in the last years of her life when she was penniless and alone, describes her extravagant waywardness. Duncan's autobiography My Life was published in 1927.


Death

A habitual wearer of flowing scarves which trailed behind her, Duncan's fashion preferences were the cause of her death in a freak automobile accident in Nice, France, on the night of September 14, 1927 at the age of 50. The accident gave rise to Gertrude Stein's mordant remark that "affectations can be dangerous."

Duncan was a passenger in the Amilcar automobile of a handsome young Italian mechanic, Benoît Falchetto, whom she had ironically nicknamed 'Buggatti' [sic]. (The marque of the automobile is open to dispute but the informed opinion is that it was an Amilcar, a 1924 GS model. It was regularly described and filmed as a more glamorous Bugatti). Before getting into the car, she said to a friend, Mary Desti, and some companions, "Adieu, mes amis. Je vais à la gloire!" ("Goodbye, my friends, I am off to glory!") However, according to the diaries of the American novelist Glenway Wescott, who was in Nice at the time and visited Duncan's body in the morgue (his diaries are in the collection of the Beineke Library at Yale University), Desti admitted that she had lied about Duncan's last words. Instead, she told Wescott, the dancer actually said, "Je vais à l'amour" ("I am off to love"), which Desti considered too embarrassing to go down in history as the legend's final utterance, especially since it suggested that Duncan hoped that she and Falchetto were going to her hotel for a sexual assignation. Whatever her actual last words, when Falchetto drove off, Duncan's immense handpainted silk scarf, which was a gift from Desti and was large enough to be wrapped around her body and neck and flutter out of the car, became entangled around one of the vehicle's open-spoked wheels and rear axle. Duncan died on the scene.

As the New York Times noted in its obituary of the dancer on 15 September 1927, "The automobile was going at full speed when the scarf of strong silk began winding around the wheel and with terrific force dragged Miss Duncan, around whom it was securely wrapped, bodily over the side of the car, precipitating her with violence against the cobblestone street. She was dragged for several yards before the chauffeur halted, attracted by her cries in the street. Medical aid was summoned, but it was stated that she had been strangled and killed instantly."

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


Isadora Duncan in culture

John Dos Passos devotes a section of his panoramic 1936 novel The Big Money to Duncan, called "Art and Isadora".
Vivian Pickles played Isadora Duncan in Ken Russell's astonishingly inventive 1966 biopic for the BBC. Subtitled 'The Biggest Dancer in the World' it is was introduced by Isadora's biographer, Sewell Stokes, and it probably unmatched as a portrait of the pain and the glory that come with being an artist.
The 1968 film of her life, Isadora, starred Vanessa Redgrave in the title role.
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events books contained the Quagmire triplets named Isadora, Duncan, and Quigley. Isadora and Duncan are quite unlucky, which is a reference to Isadora Duncan's ill-fated life.
In a deleted scene of James Cameron's 1997 film Titanic, the character Rose DeWitt Bukater mentions that she wishes that she could escape her horrid life as a wealthy, restricted young woman and become an artist, or a sculptor, or a dancer like Isadora Duncan.
She is featured in the opening theme song to the popular 1970s show Maude. "Isadora was the first bra burner, ain't you glad she showed up."
In the romantic comedy film How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, a diamond necklace supposedly once having belonged to Isadora Duncan is featured.
Salsa diva Celia Cruz sang a song in Isadora Duncan's honor, titled "Isadora".
In the Pixar animated movie The Incredibles Edna Mode refuses to make a cape for Mr. Incredible's new uniform, citing Isadora's tragic tangling and death from her scarf. The villain, Syndrome, is later killed in a similar way when his cape is caught in a jet engine.
In the Mage: The Ascension supplement Cult of Ecstasy, Duncan is considered an important figure in the Cult's history.
Isadora Duncan is referenced in the poem Fever 103 by Sylvia Plath.
In Mikhail Bulgakov's story Heart of a Dog professor Preobrazhensky compares his life with Duncan's life in Moscow.
In the 1997 animated film Anastasia, Isadora Duncan makes a cameo during the "Paris Hold the Key to her Heart" number, singing the line "Come dance through the night!" with a long scarf dangling behind her.
Duncan is the "poor dancing girl" alluded to in The Libertines' song 'Radio America.'
Isadora Duncan is mentioned in an episode of The Mighty Boosh' talking of her death and then subsequently Vince's scarf gets caught up in the wheel of the van.
Frank Serpico (Al Pacino) mentioned reading "My Life", by Isodora Duncun in the movie Serpico.
In the animated Disney cartoon The Weekenders, Tish went into a discount costume shop looking for an Isadora Duncan costume. However, all the costume shop had was legionnaire breastplates and feather boas.

Robert Morley
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Birth name Robert Adolph Wilton Morley
Born May 26, 1908
Semley, Wiltshire, England, UK
Died June 3, 1992 (aged 84)
Wargrave, Berkshire, England, UK
Spouse(s) Joan Buckmaster (1940-3 June 1992) (his death) 3 children
Notable roles King Louis XVI in Marie Antoinette
Max in Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?
Atkins in Istanbul
Academy Awards

Nominated: Best Actor in a Supporting Role (1938) for Marie Antoinette
Golden Globe Awards

Nominated: Best Motion Picture Actor in a Supporting Role (1979) for Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?

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




Life and work

He was born Robert Adolph Wilton Morley in Semley, Wiltshire, England. Morley attended Wellington College, RADA and made his West End stage debut in 1929 and his Broadway debut in 1938 in the title role of Oscar Wilde and although soon won over to the big screen, Morley remained both a busy West End star and successful author, as well as tirelessly touring.

A versatile actor, especially in his younger years, he played roles as divergent as those of Louis XVI, for which he received an Academy Award Nomination as Best Supporting Actor (Marie Antoinette 1938). He also received Oscar nominations for Oscar Wilde (1960) and a missionary in The African Queen (1951).

As a playwright he co-wrote and adapted several plays for the stage, having outstanding success in London and New York with Edward, My Son, a gripping family drama written in 1947 (with Noel Langley) in which he played the central role of Arnold Holt. But the disappointing film version, directed by George Cukor at MGM Elstree in 1949, instead starred the miscast Spencer Tracy, who turned Holt, an unscrupulous English businessman, into a blustering Canadian expatriate.

Morley also personified the conservative Englishman in many comedy and caper films. Later in his career, he received numerous critical accolades for Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?. Renowned for repartee and generally being an eloquent conversationalist, Morley gained the epitheton of being a "wit".

He married Joan Buckmaster (1910-2005), a daughter of Dame Gladys Cooper. Their elder son, Sheridan Morley was a well-known writer and critic. They also had a daughter Annabel and another son Wilton. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1957 New Year's Honours List. He died in Reading, Berkshire from a stroke, aged 84.

Ben Alexander
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ben Alexander (Nicholas Benton Alexander IV) alias Bennie Alexander, (May 26, 1911 - July 5, 1969) was an American motion picture actor, who started out as a child actor in 1915.




Life and career

Born in Goldfield, Nevada and raised in California, Alexander made his screen debut at age of five in Every Pearl a Tear. He went on to portray Lillian Gish's young brother in D.W. Griffith's Hearts of the World. It was in another WW I classic, All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), that Alexander made his first positive impression as an adult actor in the role of Kemmerick, the tragic amputation victim. When Alexander's acting career slowed down in the mid 1930s, he found a new career as a successful radio announcer, and in 1952, Jack Webb chose him to replace Herbert Ellis in the role of Officer Frank Smith in the TV series Dragnet. In 1966, Alexander returned to police work as Sergeant Dan Briggs on the weekly ABC cop series Felony Squad.

Jay Silverheels
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Born May 26, 1919
Six Nations Indian Reserve, Brantford, Ontario
Died March 5, 1980
Woodland Hills, California
Notable roles Tonto in The Lone Ranger

Jay Silverheels (May 26, 1919 - March 5, 1980) was a Canadian Mohawk Indian actor.




Early history

Born Harold J. Smith on the Six Nations Indian Reserve, in Brantford, Ontario, Canada, Silverheels excelled in athletics and lacrosse as a boy before leaving home to travel around North America, appearing in boxing and wrestling tournaments. In 1938 Silverheels placed second in the middleweight section of the Golden Gloves tournament.


Film career

Following World War II, Silverheels moved to Hollywood and made his film debut in 1947's Captain from Castille, starring Tyrone Power. He followed this with roles in Key Largo (1948), Broken Arrow (1950) with Jimmy Stewart, War Arrow (1953) with Maureen O'Hara, Jeff Chandler and Noah Beery, Jr., Walk the Proud Land (1956) with Audie Murphy and Anne Bancroft, Alias Jesse James (1959) with Bob Hope and Indian Paint (1964) with Johnny Crawford.


TV career

Silverheels was best known for his appearances as the Lone Ranger's friend Tonto. In addition to starring in the Lone Ranger television series from 1949 to 1957, Silverheels appeared in the films The Lone Ranger (1956) and The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold (1958).

Following the end of the Lone Ranger television series, Silverheels found himself typecast as Tonto and had trouble finding further acting work. Silverheels was also hindered by a changing attitude, as some felt that the Tonto character was equivalent to a Native American Uncle Tom. Subsequently, Silverheels was forced to work as a salesman to supplement his acting income. He also began to concentrate on writing poetry influenced by his youth on the Six Nations Indian Reserve and appeared on television reciting his poetry.

In the early 1960s he helped to establish the Indian Actors Workshop in Echo Park, California as a place where Native American actors could develop their acting skills. It is still active.


Personal life

Silverheels was also quite fond of raising, breeding and racing horses in his spare time. Once, when asked about possibly running Tonto's famous Pinto horse Scout in a race, Jay laughed off the idea: "Heck, I can outrun Scout!"

Married in 1945, Silverheels was the father of two boys and a girl. He died of stroke in Woodland Hills, California and was cremated. His ashes were returned home and scattered in Canada. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6538 Hollywood Boulevard.


Legacy

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

Peggy Lee
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Background information

Birth name Norma Deloris Egstrom
Born May 26, 1920
Origin Jamestown, North Dakota
Died January 21, 2002 (age 81)
Genre(s) Traditional Pop, Jazz
Occupation(s) Singer, Actress
Years active 1941- 1996
Label(s) Decca Records
Capitol Records
Associated
acts Jo Stafford, Patti Page, Rosemary Clooney

Peggy Lee (May 26, 1920 - January 21, 2002) was an American Jazz and Traditional Pop singer and songwriter and Oscar-nominated performer. She was born Norma Deloris Egstrom and was famous for her "soft and cool" singing style, which she is thought to have developed in response to noisy nightclub audiences. Though she recorded dozens of hit songs (many written or cowritten by herself), Miss Lee might be best known for her interpretation of the Davenport/Cooley composition "Fever" and the song written by her and Dave Barbour, "It's a Good Day".





Early life

Lee was born Norma Deloris Egstrom in Jamestown, North Dakota, the youngest child of seven. After her mother died, her father remarried and her stepmother was very cruel to her. She took solace in the music she heard on the radio. She first sang professionally with KOVC radio in Valley City, North Dakota. She soon landed her own series on a radio show sponsored by a local restaurant that paid her "salary" in food. Both during and after her high school years, she took whatever jobs she could find, waitressing and singing for paltry sums on other local stations. The program director of WDAY in Fargo (the most widely listened to station in North Dakota) changed her name from Norma to Peggy Lee. Tiring of the abuse from her stepmother, she left home and traveled to Los Angeles at the age of seventeen.

She returned to North Dakota for a tonsillectomy and, while there, lined up a gig at The Buttery Room, a nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel West in Chicago, home of Benny Goodman, the jazz clarinetist and band leader. According to Lee, "Benny's then-fiance, Lady Alice Duckworth, came into the Buttery, and she was very impressed. So the next evening she brought Benny in, because they were looking for replacement for Helen Forrest. And although I didn't know, I was it. He was looking at me strangely, I thought, but it was just his preoccupied way of looking. I thought that he didn't like me at first, but it just was that he was preoccupied with what he was hearing." She joined his band in 1941 and stayed for two years, with the band then at the height of its popularity.


Recording career

In early 1942, Lee had her first # 1 hit, "Somebody Else Is Taking My Place," followed by 1943's "Why Don't You Do Right?," which sold over a million copies and made her famous. She sang with Goodman in two 1943 films, Stage Door Canteen and The Powers Girl.

In March 1943, Lee married Dave Barbour, the guitarist in Goodman's band. Peggy said, "David joined Benny's band and there was a ruling that no one should fraternize with the girl singer. But I fell in love with David the first time I heard him play, and so I married him. Benny then fired David, so I quit, too. Benny and I made up, although David didn't play with him anymore. Benny stuck to his rule. I think that's not too bad a rule, but you can't help falling in love with somebody."

When Lee and Barbour left the band, the idea was that he would work in the studios and she would keep house and raise their daughter, Nicki. But she drifted back towards songwriting and occasional recording sessions for the fledgling Capitol Records in 1944, for whom she produced a long string of hits, many of them with lyrics and music by Lee and Barbour, including "I Don't Know Enough About You" and "It's a Good Day" (1946). With the release of the smash-hit #1-selling record of 1948, "Mañana," her "retirement" was over.

In 1948, she joined Perry Como and Jo Stafford as one of the rotating hosts of the NBC musical radio program Chesterfield Supper Club.

She left Capitol for a few years in the early 1950s, but returned in 1957. She is most famous for her cover version of the Little Willie John hit "Fever" and her rendition of Leiber and Stoller's gloomy "Is That All There Is?" Her relationship with the Capitol label spanned almost three decades, aside from her brief but artistically rich detour (1952-1956) at Decca Records, where she recorded one of her most acclaimed albums Black Coffee (1956). While recording for Decca, Miss Lee had hit singles with the songs "Lover" and "Mr. Wonderful."


Songwriting

She was also known as a songwriter with such hits as the songs from the Disney movie Lady and the Tramp, which she also sang. Her many songwriting collaborators, in addition to Dave Barbour, included Laurindo Almeida, Harold Arlen, Sonny Burke, Cy Coleman, Gene DiNovi, Duke Ellington, Dave Grusin, Dick Hazard, Quincy Jones, Francis Lai, Jack Marshall, Johnny Mandel, Marian McPartland, Willard Robison, Lalo Schifrin, Hubie Wheeler, and Victor Young.

During a time when youths began turning to rock and roll music, she was one of the mainstays of Capitol recordings. From 1957 until her final disc for the company in 1972, she routinely produced a steady stream of two or three albums per year. Her mastery of the blues form, which is far in advance of virtually any other jazz singer (many other great ladies of jazz, like Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, visited the blues only sporadically), let alone pop star, produced her signature readings of "Fever" and "I'm a Woman".


Acting career

Lee also acted in several films. In 1952, she played opposite Danny Thomas in a remake of the early Al Jolson film, The Jazz Singer. In 1955, she played a despondent and alcoholic blues singer in Pete Kelly's Blues (1955), for which she was nominated for an Oscar.

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

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


Retirement and death

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

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


Legacy

She was not featured in Memoriam Tribute during the Academy Awards ceremony. When her family requested she be featured in the following year's ceremony, the Academy stated they did not honor requests and Lee was omitted because her contribution to film and her legacy were not deemed significant enough. The Lee family pointed out that, although she had been omitted, R&B singer/actress Aaliyah, who died a few months earlier, was included though having been in only one moderately successful film, Romeo Must Die (Queen of the Damned had yet to be released). The Academy provided no comment on the oversight.

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

In 2003, "There'll Be Another Spring: A Tribute to Miss Peggy Lee" was held at Carnegie Hall. Produced by recording artist Richard Barone, the sold-out event included performances by Cy Coleman, Debbie Harry, Nancy Sinatra, Rita Moreno, Marian McPartland, Chris Connor, Petula Clark and many others. In 2004, Barone brought the event to the Hollywood Bowl and Chicago's Ravinia Festival, with expanded casts including Maureen McGovern and Bea Arthur. The Carnegie Hall concert was broadcast as on NPR's "Jazz Set."


Trivia

"Peggy Lee" is also a character in Victory Gundam, one of the five (of the six) original members of the Shrike Team named in homage to famous 20th century female singers.

James Arness
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia




Birth name James Aurness
Born May 26, 1923 (1923-05-26) (age 83)
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Spouse(s) Virginia Chapman (1948-1960)
Janet Surtrees (1978-)

James Arness (born May 26, 1923 in Minneapolis, Minnesota as James Aurness) is an actor best known for portraying Marshal Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke for 20 years, a record length for a character on a single prime time show (though the length of time in a role is shared with Kelsey Grammer's portrayal of Dr. Frasier Crane, Grammer played the same role on three different programs, Cheers, Frasier, and Wings), however, James Arness has played the part of Marshal Matt Dillon in 5 separate decades. 1955 to 1975 in the weekly series. Then in the decade of the 80's (1987)Return to Dodge, and 4 more made for tv Gunsmoke movies in the 90's giving him the distinct honor of playing the same character over 5 decades. Arness's parents were Rolf Cirkler Aurness and Ruth Duesler, descendants of German and Norwegian immigrants. Arness is the older brother of actor Peter Graves. He was the tallest actor ever to play a lead role, standing 6' 7" (2.01 m)[citation needed].





Military service in World War II

James Arness served in the United States Army during World War II, and was severely wounded at the Battle of Anzio, leading to a lifelong slight limp. He was reported to have been first off his landing craft at the landing beaches at Anzio because of his height.[citation needed]After the war Arness entered Beloit College where he was initiated into Beta Theta Pi, under his original last name.


Acting career

Though primarily identified with Westerns, he also is remembered for appearing in two science fiction films, The Thing from Another World and Them!. He was a close personal friend of John Wayne's and co-starred with him in Big Jim McLain, and Island in the Sky. Wayne said that when he imagined Marshal Dillon, he saw Arness. Wayne even did a television spot introducing Arness in the role.

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

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

SPECIAL POEM FOR SENIOR CITIZENS!!

A row of bottles on my shelf
Caused me to analyze myself.
One yellow pill I have to pop
Goes to my heart so it won't stop.
A little white one that I take
Goes to my hands so they won't shake.
The blue ones that I use a lot
Tell me I'm happy when I'm not.
The purple pill goes to my brain
And tells me that I have no pain.
The capsules tell me not to wheeze
Or cough or choke or even sneeze.
The red ones, smallest of them all
Go to my blood so I won't fall.
The orange ones, very big and bright
Prevent my leg cramps in the night.
Such an array of brilliant pills
Helping to cure all kinds of ills.
But what I'd really like to know..........
Is what tells each one where to go!

There's always a lot to be thankful for if
you take time to look for it. For example
I am sitting here thinking how nice it is
that wrinkles don't hurt...

Do Nothin' 'Til You Hear From Me
Woody Herman

[Music and Lyrics by Duke Ellington and Bob Russell]

Do nothin' till you hear from me
Pay no attention to what's said
Why people tear the seams of anyone's dream
Is over my head
Do nothin' till you hear from me
At least consider our romance
If you should take the word of others you've heard
I haven't a chance
True I've been seen with someon new
But does that mean that I'm untrue
when we're apart the words in my heart
Reveal how I feel about you
some kiss may cloud my memory
And other arms may hold a thrill
But please do nothin' till you hear it from me
And you never will

Time Waits For No One
Helen Forrest

[Words and Music by Cliff Friend and Charlie Tobias]

Time waits for no one
It passes you by
It rolls on forever
Like the clouds in the sky
Time waits for no one
Goes on endlessly
It's just like a river
Flowing out to the sea
You'll find that love is like this
Each precious moment we miss
Will never ever return again
So don't let us throw one
Sweet moment away
Time waits for no one
Let's make love while we may

Good morning WA2K.

Wow, lots of work cut out for me today.
Here goes! Jolson, Wayne, Morley, Alexander, Silverheels, Cushing, Lee and Arness.





Do your thang, Letty.

Ok, Raggedy, here's my "thang"

First, folks, we would like to thank our Bob for the marvelous bio's. I had no idea that James was still with us, Boston.

edgar, know both those tunes, thanks to my sis and her imitation of Woody Herman. (long story, folks) Great,Texas.

And last but by no means Least, even though she's just a tiny little puppy, we honor our Raggedy for those faces that match her acumen so very well.

Here's an answer from Peggy to Bob's "special poem."


Yes, it's a good day for singing a song,
and it's a good day for moving along,
Yes, it's a good day, how could anything go wrong,
A good day from morning' till night

Yes, it's a good day for shining your shoes,
and it's a good day for losing the blues;
Everything go gain and nothing' to lose,
`Cause it's a good day from morning' till night

I said to the Sun, " Good morning sun
Rise and shine today"
You know you've gotta get going
If you're gonna make a showin'
And you know you've got the right of way.

`Cause it's a good day for paying your bills;
And it's a good day for curing your ills,
So take a deep breath and throw away your PILLS,
`Cause it's a good day from morning' till night.

A line from an old war movie caught my ear and I think it's a true definition.

Courage is when you are afraid and still face the danger. That's a paraphrase, and it does say quite a bit about true heroes, right?

Stand By Me

When the night has come
And the land is dark
And the moon is the only light we'll see
No I won't be afraid, no I won't be afraid
Just as long as you stand, stand by me

And darlin', darlin', stand by me, oh now now stand by me
Stand by me, stand by me

If the sky that we look upon
Should tumble and fall
And the mountains should crumble to the sea
I won't cry, I won't cry, no I won't shed a tear
Just as long as you stand, stand by me

And darlin', darlin', stand by me, oh stand by me
Stand by me, stand by me, stand by me-e, yeah

Whenever you're in trouble won't you stand by me, oh now now stand by me
Oh stand by me, stand by me, stand by me

Darlin', darlin', stand by me-e, stand by me
Oh stand by me, stand by me, stand by me


Ben E. King