WA2K Radio is now on the air

Well, I'll be danged. You'd have thought one of those Pauls would have changed his name, woudn't you?

Thanks for catching the error, Eva. Thanks for the kind words ,Letty. And I did read the bios, Bob, --- with the exception of Paul.

Two Georges and Pete and Tom:

Well, folks. There she is with her fabulous photo's. Thanks, PA. My mom loved George M. and knew all of his songs and could play them on piano. (There's a Paul Williams that was a black architect, too.)

(Just heard from my older sister who ran through the list)

Well, folks, we're looking at George, George, Pete, and Tom. Great quartet, gal.

psssst, not Eva but ehBeth, pup. :

For you, Mamma



She's a grand old flag,
She's a high flying flag,
And forever in peace may she wave.

She's the emblem of,
The land I love,
The home of the free and the brave.

Every heart beats true,
For the red, white, and blue,
With never a boast or a brag.

Should old aquaintence be forgot
Keep your eye on the grand old flag.

I think I should not have come into the station to work yesterday, Letty.
Thank you ehBeth.
(hmmm, wonder why I was thinking about Eva.)

Did you ever see two Yankees part upon a foreign shore?
When the good ship's just about to start for Old New York once more?
With tear dimmed eye, they say goodbye
They're friends, without a doubt;
When the man on the pier shouts, "Let them clear!"
As the ship strikes out.

Give my regards to Broadway!
Remember me to Herald Square!
Tell all the gang at Forty Second Street
That I will soon be there!
Whisper of how I'm yearning
To mingle with the old time throng!
Give my regards to Old Broadway
And say that I'll be there, 'ere long!

Give my regards to Broadway!
Remember me to Herald Square!
Tell all the gang at Forty Second Street
That I will soon be there!
Whisper of how I'm yearning
To mingle with the old time throng!
Give my regards to Old Broadway
And say that I'll be there, 'ere long!

Lyrics and Music by George M. Cohan (1904)

Hey, Raggedy. If people don't make mistakes and admit to them, there is something awry. To me, we learn from our errors, right? Thanks for another George song. (not the third or the one in Washington)

Well, America, tomorrow is the 4th of July, and we may have fireworks here since we just got the thunderstorm of the week.

A reminder from Carl Sandburg, folks, that the real America is the people and NOT necessarily the politicians.

The people yes
The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on.
They will be tricked and sold and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,
The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,
You can't laugh off their capacity to take it.
The mammoth rests between his cyclonic dramas.

The people so often sleepy, weary, enigmatic,
is a vast huddle with many units saying:
"I earn my living.
I make enough to get by
and it takes all my time.
If I had more time
I could do more for myself
and maybe for others.
I could read and study
and talk things over
and find out about things.
It takes time.
I wish I had the time."

The people is a tragic and comic two-face: hero and hoodlum:
phantom and gorilla twisting to moan with a gargoyle mouth:
"They buy me and sell me...it's a game...sometime I'll
break loose..."

Once having marched
Over the margins of animal necessity,
Over the grim line of sheer subsistence
Then man came
To the deeper rituals of his bones,
To the lights lighter than any bones,
To the time for thinking things over,
To the dance, the song, the story,
Or the hours given over to dreaming,
Once having so marched.

Between the finite limitations of the five senses
and the endless yearnings of man for the beyond
the people hold to the humdrum bidding of work and food
while reaching out when it comes their way
for lights beyond the prison of the five senses,
for keepsakes lasting beyond any hunger or death.
This reaching is alive.
The panderers and liars have violated and smutted it.
Yet this reaching is alive yet
for lights and keepsakes.

The people know the salt of the sea
and the strength of the winds
lashing the corners of the earth.
The people take the earth
as a tomb of rest and a cradle of hope.
Who else speaks for the Family of Man?
They are in tune and step
with constellations of universal law.
The people is a polychrome,
a spectrum and a prism
held in a moving monolith,
a console organ of changing themes,
a clavilux of color poems
wherein the sea offers fog
and the fog moves off in rain
and the labrador sunset shortens
to a nocturne of clear stars
serene over the shot spray
of northern lights.

The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:

This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can't be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can't hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?

In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
"Where to? what next?"

WESTPORT, Conn. - Lyricist Hy Zaret, who wrote the haunting words to "Unchained Melody," one of the most frequently recorded songs of the 20th century, has died at age 99.

Zaret died at his home Monday, about a month shy of his 100th birthday, his son, Robert Zaret, said Tuesday.

He penned words to many songs and advertising jingles but his biggest hit was "Unchained Melody," written in 1955 for a film called "Unchained." It brought Zaret and Alex North, the composer, an Academy Award nomination for best song.

Don't we love these bits of musicology provided by our folks here on WA2K radio?

edgar, thanks for the info. I had no idea about Hy Zaret, but I do know the song and the lyrics. I saw the movie Ghost, but can't recall the song having been played. Read another interesting commentary about the background, but won't produce it here as it is too long.

Here is one version, listeners.

Artist: Righteous Brothers
Song: Unchained Melody
Album: Ghosts Soundtrack

Oh, my love, my darling
I've hungered for your touch
A long, lonely time
And time goes by so slowly
And time can do so much
Are you still mine?
I need your love, I need your love
God speed your love to me

Lonely rivers flow
To the sea, to the sea
To the open arms of the sea
Lonely rivers sigh
"Wait for me, wait for me"
I'll be coming home; wait for me

Oh, my love, my darling
I've hungered, hungered for your touch
A long, lonely time
And time goes by so slowly
And time can do so much
Are you still mine?
I need your love, I need your love
God speed your love to me

NPR had a story on Zaret this afternoon, and mentioned that he was asked to write a song for a film. He was busy painting his house at the time, but he agreed. And the result was "Unchained Melody."
NPR had a montage of various artists interpreting the song. The best recording ever, in my mind, was done by the Righteous Brothers.

Unchained Melody: I had been listening to a version on a record, by Harry Belafonte, since 1958, so, I was predjudiced in favor of that version. I also recall the Al Hibbler version, ahich I heard on the radio quite a bit.

Has anyone noticed ( I may have missed it ) the death of Beverly Sills yesterday? Speaking of Diva's just what does the tern "Diva" mean?

Hey, John of Virginia. Welcome back. That's the version that I just played, but I'm not certain which one is best.

edgar, are you sure that Bob Dylan didn't do a version? <smile>

Well, folks, our little cyber radio is more than just music. It's also has other facets.

Here's a song dedicated to the weather where I have my little studio, folks.

Phil Collins

I never thought I'd ever get tired of playing games
But I've been holding back for too long
Now the time has come to get it right
Now's the time to show them all that they're wrong

'Cos they said thunder and they said lightning
It would never strike twice
Oh but if that's true, why can't you tell me
How come this feels so nice, Oh it feels alright

Never ever did believe in guiding lights
'Cos what you didn't hold, slipped away
Oh but there's a feeling deep down in my shoe
'Cos things look like they're going my way

'Cos they say thunder and they say lightning
It would never strike twice
Oh but if that's true, why can't you tell me
How come this feels so nice, Oh it feels alright

I never ever did believe in a second chance
You get, just one crack of the whip, that's all
If you played the game, you got treated right
Oh but I'm not playing the game, no more

'Cos they say thunder and they say lightning
It would never strike twice
Oh but if that's true, why can't you tell me
How come this feels so nice, Oh it feels alright

dys, Missed you again. Are you being a poopity head? Yes, cowboy. We got both yours and edgar's message about Beverly, and I am guessing that "diva" means the main star in grand opera. You know, the one that gets to sing all them arias?

Here's a song for our dys from Thomas Sterns Eliot.

Artist: Musical "Cats"
Song: Memory

Daylight
See the dew on the sunflower
And a rose that is fading
Roses whither away
Like the sunflower
I yearn to turn my face to the dawn
I am waiting for the day . . .

Midnight
Not a sound from the pavement
Has the moon lost her memory?
She is smiling alone
In the lamplight
The withered leaves collect at my feet
And the wind begins to moan

Memory
All alone in the moonlight
I can smile at the old days
I was beautiful then
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again

Every streetlamp
Seems to beat a fatalistic warning
Someone mutters
And the streetlamp gutters
And soon it will be morning

Daylight
I must wait for the sunrise
I must think of a new life
And I musn't give in
When the dawn comes
Tonight will be a memory too
And a new day will begin

Burnt out ends of smoky days
The stale cold smell of morning
The streetlamp dies, another night is over
Another day is dawning

Touch me
It's so easy to leave me
All alone with the memory
Of my days in the sun
If you touch me
You'll understand what happiness is

Look
A new day has begun

I actually met Beverly Sills once, many years ago. I was just a kid, in NY with my folks, and ended up riding around with the family of some friends of theirs. The husband, Bill, was the brother of a minor diva (diva=a distiguished female singer) named Eleanor Steber (I may have the spelling wrong). Anyway, Ms Sills showed up at some little gathering. I had no idea who she was and, quite frankly don't have too much appreciation for opera.

Here's one you will appreciate, John of Virginia, and it will be my goodnight song, folks.

Virginia Moon lyrics
Artist: Foo Fighters
Album: In Your Honor

Dearest constellation, heaven surroundin' you
Stay there, soft and blue. virginia moon, I'll wait for you
Tonight
Sweetest invitation, breaking the day in two
Feelin' like I do, virginia moon, I'll wait for you tonight

And now our shades become shadows in your light
In the morning when we're through and tomorrow rescues you
I will say goodnight

Secret fascination, whisper a quiet tune
Hear me callin' you, virginia moon, I'll wait for you tonight

And now our shades become shadows in your light
In the morning when we're through and tomorrow rescues you
I will say goodnight

Virginia moon, I'll wait for you tonight

And now our shades become shadows in your light
In the morning when we're through and tomorrow rescues you
I will say goodnight

I will say goodnight
I will say goodnight

From Letty with love

Rainy Day Women #12 & 35
Bob Dylan

Well, they'll stone you when you're trying to be so good
They'll stone you just like they said they would
They'll stone you when you're trying to go home
And they'll stone you when you're there all alone
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned

Well, they'll stone you when you're at the breakfast table
They'll stone you when you are young and able
They'll stone you when you're riding in your car
And they'll stone you when you're playing your guitar
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned

Well, they'll stone you when you're walking on the street
They'll stone you when you're tryin' to keep your seat
They'll stone you when you're tryin' to make a buck
Then they'll stone you and then they'll say "good luck"
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned

---- Instrumental Verse ----

Well, they'll stone you when you're at the breakfast table
They'll stone you when you are young and able
They'll stone you and they'll say that you are brave
They'll stone you when you're sent down in your grave
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned

Good Morning WA2.

Remembering Nathaniel Hawthorne, Stephen Foster, Gertrude Lawrence, George Murphy, Stephen Boyd and Gloria Stuart, born on the 4th of July.

(Here's Stephen (Ben Hur and Jumbo) and Gloria (Titanic) and earlier days)



And wishing a Happy 83rd to Eva Marie Saint; 80th to Gina Lollobrigida; 80th to Neil Simon and 69th to Bill Withers:

Good morning, y'all. There is something amiss with our studio computer as I got a flashing message saying, "run time error."

Thanks, edgar, for the Dylan song, and Raggedy, that is a magnificent collage, gal. Thanks.

Happy fourth to all, and I shall be back later, as I have guests.

Until our hawkman arrives, let's hear one from Carl, listeners. It all begins with two, right?

Artist: Grover Washington, Jr. & Bill Withers
Song: Just the Two of Us

I see the crystal raindrops fall
And see the beauty of it all
Is when the sun comes shining through
To make those rainbows in my mind
When I think of you some time
And I want to spend some time with you
Just the two of us
We can make it if we try
Just the two of us
Just the two of us
Building castles in the sky
Just the two of us
You and I

We look for love, no time for tears
Wasted water's all that is
And it don't make no flowers grow
Good things might come to those who wait
Not to those who wait too late
We got to go for all we know

Just the two of us
We can make it if we try
Just the two of us
Just the two of us
Building castles in the sky
Just the two of us
You and I

I hear the crystal raindrops fall
On the window down the hall
And it becomes the morning dew
Darling, when the morning comes
And I see the morning sun
I want to be the one with you

Just the two of us
We can make it if we try
Just the two of us
Just the two of us
Building big castles way on high
Just the two of us
You and I

Nathaniel Hawthorne
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Born: July 4, 1804(1804-07-04)
Salem, Massachusetts, United States
Died: May 19, 1864 (aged 59)
Plymouth, New Hampshire, United States
Occupation: Writer
Literary movement: Romanticism

Nathaniel Hawthorne (born Nathaniel Hathorne; July 4, 1804 - May 19, 1864) was a 19th century American novelist and short story writer. He is seen as a key figure in the development of American literature for his tales of the nation's colonial history.



Biography

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts, where his birthplace is now a museum. William Hathorne, who emigrated from England in 1630, was the first of Hawthorne's ancestors to arrive in the colonies. William's son John Hathorne was one of the judges who oversaw the Salem Witch Trials. (One theory is that having learned about this, the author added the "w" to his surname in his early twenties, shortly after graduating from college.[1]) Hawthorne's father, Nathaniel Hathorne, Sr., was a sea captain who died in 1808 of yellow fever, when Hawthorne was only four years old, in Raymond, Maine.

Hawthorne attended Bowdoin College at the expense of an uncle from 1821 to 1824, befriending classmates Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and future president Franklin Pierce. While there he joined the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. Until the publication of his Twice-Told Tales in 1837, Hawthorne wrote in the comparative obscurity of what he called his "owl's nest" in the family home. As he looked back on this period of his life, he wrote: "I have not lived, but only dreamed about living."[2] And yet it was this period of brooding and writing that had formed, as Malcolm Cowley was to describe it, "the central fact in Hawthorne's career," his "term of apprenticeship" that would eventually result in the "richly meditated fiction."

Hawthorne was hired in 1839 as a weigher and gauger at the Boston Custom House. He had become engaged in the previous year to the illustrator and transcendentalist Sophia Peabody. Seeking a possible home for himself and Sophia, he joined the transcendentalist utopian community at Brook Farm in 1841; later that year, however, he left when he became dissatisfied with farming and the experiment. (His Brook Farm adventure would prove an inspiration for his novel The Blithedale Romance.) He married Sophia in 1842; they moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, where they lived for three years. There he wrote most of the tales collected in Mosses from an Old Manse. Hawthorne and his wife then moved to Salem and later to the Berkshires, returning in 1852 to Concord and a new home The Wayside, previously owned by the Alcotts. Their neighbors in Concord included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.


Nathaniel Hawthorne in the 1860s.Like Hawthorne, Sophia was a reclusive person. She was bedridden with headaches until her sister introduced her to Hawthorne, after which her headaches seem to have abated. The Hawthornes enjoyed a long marriage, often taking walks in the park. Sophia greatly admired her husband's work. In one of her journals, she writes: "I am always so dazzled and bewildered with the richness, the depth, the... jewels of beauty in his productions that I am always looking forward to a second reading where I can ponder and muse and fully take in the miraculous wealth of thoughts."[3]

In 1846, Hawthorne was appointed surveyor (determining the quantity and value of imported goods) at the Salem Custom House. Like his earlier appointment to the custom house in Boston, this employment was vulnerable to the politics of the spoils system. A Democrat, Hawthorne lost this job due to the change of administration in Washington after the presidential election of 1848.

Hawthorne's career as a novelist was boosted by The Scarlet Letter in 1850, in which the preface refers to his three-year tenure in the Custom House at Salem. The House of the Seven Gables (1851) and The Blithedale Romance (1852) followed in quick succession.

In 1852, he wrote the campaign biography of his old friend Franklin Pierce. With Pierce's election as president, Hawthorne was rewarded in 1853 with the position of United States consul in Liverpool. In 1857, his appointment ended and the Hawthorne family toured France and Italy. They returned to The Wayside in 1860, and that year saw the publication of The Marble Faun. Failing health (which biographer Edward Miller speculates was stomach cancer) prevented him from completing several more romances. Hawthorne died in his sleep on May 19, 1864, in Plymouth, New Hampshire while on a tour of the White Mountains with Pierce. He was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts. Wife Sophia and daughter Una were originally buried in England. However, in June 2006, they were re-interred in plots adjacent to Nathaniel.

Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne had three children: Una, Julian, and Rose. Una was a victim of mental illness and died young. Julian moved out west, served a jail term for embezzlement and wrote a book about his father. Rose married George Parsons Lathrop and they became Roman Catholics. After George's death, Rose became a Dominican nun. She founded the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne to care for victims of incurable cancer.


Writings

Hawthorne is best-known today for his many short stories (he called them "tales") and his four major romances written between 1850 and 1860: The Scarlet Letter (1850), The House of the Seven Gables (1851), The Blithedale Romance (1852) and The Marble Faun (1860). Another novel-length romance, Fanshawe was published anonymously in 1828.

Before publishing his first collection of tales in 1837, Hawthorne wrote scores of short stories and sketches, publishing them anonymously or pseudonymously in periodicals such as The New England Magazine and The United States Magazine and Democratic Review. (The editor of the Democratic Review, John L. O'Sullivan, was a close friend of Hawthorne's.) Only after collecting a number of his short stories into the two-volume Twice-Told Tales in 1837 did Hawthorne begin to attach his name to his works.

Hawthorne's work belongs to Romanticism, an artistic and intellectual movement characterized by an emphasis on individual freedom from social conventions or political restraints, on human imagination, and on nature in a typically idealized form. Romantic literature rebelled against the formalism of 18th century reason.

His writings were in the Romantic Period. Much of Hawthorne's work is set in colonial New England, and many of his short stories have been read as moral allegories influenced by his Puritan background. Ethan Brand (1850) tells the story of a lime-burner who sets off to find the Unpardonable Sin, and in doing so, commits it. One of Hawthorne's most famous tales, The Birth-Mark (1843), concerns a young doctor who removes a birthmark from his wife's face, an operation which kills her. Hawthorne based parts of this story on the penny press novels he loved to read. Other well-known tales include Rappaccini's Daughter (1844), My Kinsman, Major Molineux (1832), The Minister's Black Veil (1836), and Young Goodman Brown (1835). The Maypole of Merrymount (1836) recounts an encounter between the Puritans and the forces of anarchy and hedonism. A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys (1852) and Tanglewood Tales (1853) were re-tellings for children of some Greek myths, from which was named the Tanglewood estate and music venue.

Hawthorne is also considered among the first to experiment with alternate history as literary form. His 1845 short story "P.'s Correspondence" (a part of "Mosses from an Old Manse") is the first known complete English language alternate history and among the most early in any language. The story's protagonist is considered "a madman" due to his perceiving an alternative 1845 in which long-dead historical and literary figures are still alive; these delusions feature the poets Burns, Byron, Shelley, and Keats, the actor Edmund Kean, the British politician George Canning and even Napoleon Bonaparte.

Recent criticism has focused on Hawthorne's narrative voice, treating it as a self-conscious rhetorical construction, not to be conflated with Hawthorne's own voice. Such an approach complicates the long-dominant tradition of regarding Hawthorne as a gloomy, guilt-ridden moralist.

Hawthorne enjoyed a brief but intense friendship with American novelist Herman Melville beginning on August 5, 1850, when the two authors met at a picnic hosted by a mutual friend. Melville had just read Hawthorne's short story collection Mosses from an Old Manse, which Melville later praised in a famous review, "Hawthorne and His Mosses." Melville's letters to Hawthorne provide insight into the composition of Moby-Dick, which Melville dedicated to Hawthorne "in appreciation for his genius". Hawthorne's letters to Melville do not survive.

Edgar Allan Poe wrote important, though largely unflattering reviews of both Twice-Told Tales and Mosses from an Old Manse, mostly due to Poe's own contempt of allegory, moral tales, and his chronic accusations of plagiarism. However, even Poe admitted, "The style of Hawthorne is purity itself. His tone is singularly effective--wild, plaintive, thoughtful, and in full accordance with his themes." He concluded that, "we look upon him as one of the few men of indisputable genius to whom our country has as yet given birth."[4]

Stephen Foster
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Stephen Collins Foster (July 4, 1826 - January 13, 1864), known as the "father of American music," was the pre-eminent songwriter in the United States of the 19th century. His songs, such as "Oh! Susanna", "Camptown Races", "My Old Kentucky Home", "Old Black Joe", "Beautiful Dreamer" and "Old Folks at Home" ("Swanee River") remain popular over 150 years after their composition.





Early life

Foster was born in Lawrenceville, now part of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and grew up as the youngest of ten children in a middle-class family that would eventually become near destitute after his father's fall into alcoholism. Foster's education included one month at college (Washington & Jefferson College) but little formal music training. Despite this, he published several songs before the age of twenty. His first, "Open Thy Lattice Love," appeared when he was 18.

Stephen was greatly influenced by two men during his teenage years: Henry Kleber (1816-1897) and Dan Rice. The former was a classically trained musician who immigrated from the German city of Darmstadt and opened a music store in Pittsburgh, and who was among Stephen Foster's few formal music instructors. The latter was an entertainer -- a clown and blackface singer, making his living in traveling circuses. These two very different musical worlds created a tension for the teenage Foster. Although respectful of the more civilized parlor songs of the day, he and his friends would often sit at a piano, writing and singing minstrel songs through the night. Eventually, Foster would learn to blend the two genres to write some of his best work.


Adulthood

In 1846 Foster moved to Cincinnati, Ohio and became a bookkeeper with his brother's steamship company. While in Cincinnati Foster penned his first hit songs, among them "Oh! Susanna". It would prove to be the anthem of the California Gold Rush in 1848/1849. In 1849 he published Foster's Ethiopian Melodies, which included the hit song "Nelly Was a Lady", made famous by the Christy Minstrels.

Then he returned to Pennsylvania and signed a contract with the Christy Minstrels. It was during this period that Foster would write most of his best-known songs: "Camptown Races" (1850), "Nelly Bly" (1850), "Old Folks at Home" (also known as "Suwannee River," 1851), "My Old Kentucky Home" (1853), "Old Dog Tray" (1853), "Hard Times Come Again No More" (1854) and "Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair" (1854), written for his wife Jane McDowall.

Many of Foster's songs were of the blackface minstrel show tradition popular at the time. Foster sought, in his own words, to "build up taste...among refined people by making words suitable to their taste, instead of the trashy and really offensive words which belong to some songs of that order." He instructed white performers of his songs not to mock slaves but to get their audiences to feel compassion for them.

Although many of his songs held Southern themes, Foster only visited the South once, on a river-boat trip down the Mississippi to New Orleans in 1852 on his honeymoon.

Foster attempted to make a living as a professional songwriter and may be considered a pioneer in this respect, since this field did not yet exist in the modern sense. Consequently, due in part to the poor provisions for music copyright and composer royalties at the time, Foster saw very little of the profits which his works generated for sheet music printers. Multiple publishers often printed their own competing editions of Foster's tunes, paying Foster nothing. For "Oh, Susanna", he received $100.

Foster moved to New York City in 1860. About a year later, his wife and daughter left him and returned to Pittsburgh. Beginning in 1862 his fortunes would decline, and as they did, so did the quality of his new songs. He began working with George Cooper early in 1863 whose lyrics were often humorous and designed to appeal to musical theater audiences. The Civil War helped ruin the commercial market for newly written music.


Death and Memorials

Sculpture of Stephen Foster near the entrance of Carnegie Museum of Natural History.Stephen Foster died on January 13, 1864, at the age of 37. He had been impoverished while living at the North American Hotel at 30 Bowery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan (possessing exactly 38 cents) when he died. His brother Henry described the accident in the New York theater-district hotel that led to his death: confined to bed for days by a persistent fever, Stephen tried to call a chambermaid, but collapsed, falling against the washbasin next to his bed and shattering it, which gouged his head. It took three hours to get him to the hospital, and in that era before transfusions and antibiotics, he succumbed after three days. In his hand when he died there was a scrap of paper that simply said "dear friends and gentle hearts".

Georgia named Stephen Foster State Park in his honor.

The Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park in White Springs, Florida is a Florida State Park named in his honor.

Stephen Foster Lake at Mount Pisgah State Park in Pennsylvania is named in his honor as well.

In Alms Park in Cincinnati, overlooking the Ohio River, there is a seated statue of Stephen Foster.

He is buried in the Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of his best loved works, "Beautiful Dreamer" would be published shortly after his death.

His brother, Morrison Foster, is largely responsible for compiling his works and writing a short but pertinent biography of Stephen. His sister, Ann Eliza Foster Buchanan, married a brother of President James Buchanan.

Foster is honored on the University of Pittsburgh campus with the Stephen Foster Memorial, a landmark building that houses the Stephen Foster Memorial Museum, the Center for American Music, as well as two theatres: the Charity Randall Theatre and Henry Heymann Theatre, both performance spaces for Pitt's Department of Theater Arts.

Stephen Foster was inducted into the Songwriters' Hall of Fame in 1970

Eighteen of Foster's compositions were recorded and released on the "Beautiful Dreamer: The Songs of Stephen Foster" collection. Among the artists that are featured on the album are John Prine, Alison Krauss, Yo Yo Ma, Roger McGuinn, Mavis Staples and Suzy Bogguss. The album won the Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album in 2005.




Trivia / References in Popular Culture

Three Hollywood movie biographies have been made of Foster - Harmony Lane (1935) with Douglass Montgomery, Swanee River (1939 film) (1939) with Don Ameche, and I Dream of Jeanie (1952), with Bill Shirley (who years later was Jeremy Brett's singing voice in My Fair Lady). The first and third of those screen biographies were low budget affairs made by B film studios, although the '52 version was in color, but the 1939 film was one of Twentieth Century Fox's more ambitious efforts, also in Technicolor.
Journalist Nellie Bly took her pseudonym from the title character of Foster's song "Nelly Bly".
The alt-country song "Tennessee", written by Virginia poet David Berman and performed with his band the Silver Jews, includes the line: "Her doorbell plays a bar of Stephen Foster; her sister never left and look what it cost her."
Foster is referenced in a memorable exchange between Doc Holiday and a cowboy in the film Tombstone.
The Squirrel Nut Zippers track "Ghost of Stephen Foster" name-checks many of his songs.
De La Salle University-Manila, a university in the Philippines uses his song "Beautiful Dreamer" as the tune of the school bell during regular days.
"My Old Kentucky Home" is the official state song of Kentucky, adopted by the General Assembly on March 19, 1928.
"Old Folks at Home" is the official state song of Florida, designated in 1935
"Stephen Foster Super Saturday" is a day of thoroughbred racing during the Spring/Summer meet at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky. During the call to the post, selections of Stephen Foster songs are played by the track bugler, Steve Buttleman. The day is headlined by the Stephen Foster Handicap a Grade I turf race for older horses.

Gertrude Lawrence
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Birth name Gertrude Alexandria Dagmar Lawrence-Klasen
Born July 4, 1898
London, England
Died September 6, 1952
New York City, New York, United States
Spouse(s) Francis Gordon-Howley
Richard Aldrich
Notable roles The Glass Menagerie (film)
Anna in The King and I (Broadway)

Gertrude Lawrence (July 4, 1898 - September 6, 1952) was an actress and musical performer popular in the 1930s and 1940s, appearing on stage in London and on Broadway, and in several films. She is particularly associated with the light comedy of Noel Coward.

She was born Gertrude Alexandria Dagmar Lawrence-Klasen, of English and Danish extraction, in London, England, and was a professional performer by the age of ten. She was sent to Catholic convent schools and attended the Italia Conti Academy, presumably to keep her out of trouble. She understudied Beatrice Lillie in the Andre Charlot London revues in the 1920s. In the 1921 revue "A to Z", she co-introduced with Jack Buchanan Furber and Braham's "Limehouse Blues". She achieved stardom when the revues were brought to Broadway in 1924 and 1926. She was one of the foremost comediennes of her day, capable of playing both slapstick clowns and elegant ladies. Her great charisma is attested to by those who saw her on stage, but her films struggle to convey her charm.

She married Francis Gordon-Howley, a director, during World War I, and they divorced in 1928, having had one daughter, Pamela (1918-2005). In 1928, she announced her engagement to Bertrand L. Taylor Jr., a New York stockbroker but the marriage was eventually called off. Lawrence then married Richard Aldrich, an American theatre owner from a blueblood family, on July 4, 1940, and they remained married until her death. In addition to an affair with film star Douglas Fairbanks Jr., she also had lesbian affairs, including a much-rumoured relationship with the British novelist Dame Daphne du Maurier, and apparently with Beatrice Lillie who, when referring to Lawrence, said: "I knew her better than her husband". Passionate letters written between Lawrence and Du Maurier were published in a 1993 biography of Du Maurier, who long outlasted her one-time love interest. Lawrence also appears to have had a much earlier affair with du Maurier's own father, Sir Gerald du Maurier; in fact, Daphne du Maurier referred to Lawrence as "the last of Daddy's actress loves".

Lawrence's onstage persona inspired composers and writers. George and Ira Gershwin wrote the musical Oh, Kay! for her, which included the well-loved song "Someone to Watch Over Me". She was the first British actress to have a lead role on Broadway. Cole Porter wrote Nymph Errant for her to star in, and it opened in London in 1933. Noel Coward wrote Private Lives and Tonight at 8:30 (a cycle of nine one-act musicals and plays) for her. She starred as Liza Elliot in Moss Hart, Kurt Weill, and Ira Gershwin's psychoanalytical musical Lady in the Dark (played in the film version by Ginger Rogers), and was a popular entertainer of the troops in World War II.

In 1946 Lawrence saw the film version of the book Anna and the King of Siam, which she decided would make a perfect musical. She persuaded the American team of Rodgers and Hammerstein to write it for her. The result was The King and I, which introduced such memorable songs as: "Hello Young Lovers", "Getting to Know You", and "Shall We Dance".

The King and I opened on Broadway in 1951, with Lawrence in the role of Anna, and was her greatest success. Also that year she received the first of many prestigious "Woman of the Year" awards from Harvard University's famed performance troup, the Hasty Pudding Theatricals. In 1952, she won the Tony Award for Best Actress for her role as Anna Leonowens.

Lawrence died of liver cancer, which caused her to suffer jaundice, in New York City at the age of 54. She was buried in her pink "Shall We Dance?" gown from the second act of The King and I, in Lakeview Cemetery, in Upton, Massachusetts.

In the biographical 1968 film, Star!, loosely based on her life, Lawrence was portrayed by Julie Andrews.

Lawrence's grandson is Benn Clatworthy, a jazz saxophonist.