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The MTA by The Kingston Trio

Let me tell you the story
Of a man named Charlie
On a tragic and fateful day
He put ten cents in his pocket,
Kissed his wife and family
Went to ride on the MTA

Charlie handed in his dime
At the Kendall Square Station
And he changed for Jamaica Plain
When he got there the conductor told him,
"One more nickel."
Charlie could not get off that train.

Chorus:
Did he ever return,
No he never returned
And his fate is still unlearn'd
He may ride forever
'neath the streets of Boston
He's the man who never returned.

Now all night long
Charlie rides through the tunnels
the station
Saying, "What will become of me?
Crying
How can I afford to see
My sister in Chelsea
Or my cousin in Roxbury?"

Charlie's wife goes down
To the Scollay Square station
Every day at quarter past two
And through the open window
She hands Charlie a sandwich
As the train comes rumblin' through.

As his train rolled on
underneath Greater Boston
Charlie looked around and sighed:
"Well, I'm sore and disgusted
And I'm absolutely busted;
I guess this is my last long ride."
{this entire verse was replaced by a banjo solo}

Now you citizens of Boston,
Don't you think it's a scandal
That the people have to pay and pay
Vote for Walter A. O'Brien
Fight the fare increase!
And fight the fare increase
Vote for George O'Brien!
Get poor Charlie off the MTA.

Chorus:
Or else he'll never return,
No he'll never return
And his fate will be unlearned
He may ride forever
'neath the streets of Boston
He's the man (Who's the man)
He's the man who never returned.
He's the man (Oh, the man)
He's the man who never returned.
He's the man who never returned.

I figured that, edgar. The legend and tall tales of Dylan are everywhere.

Wow!, Victor. That's one eerie song and political as well.

Here's a great river song, folks, and we dedicate this to djjd.

The River of No Return
Words & Music by Ken Darby & Lionel Newman

Tennessee Ernie Ford



D Dsus4 D7 G Em7 D
There is a river called the river of no return;

D F#m7 Bm Bm7 G Em7 G/B A7
Sometimes it's peaceful, and sometimes wild and free!

D Dsus4 D7 G Em7 D
Love is a trav'ler on the river of no return,

D F#m7 Bm Bm7 A7 Em7 A7 D
Swept on forever to be lost in a stor - my sea.



Bridge:


A7 D F#m Em7 A7 D
Wail-a-ree I can hear the river call (no return, no return)

A7 G Em7 D
Where the roarin' waters fall,

A7 D F#m Bm7 Bm7/E E7 A7
Wail-a-ree I can hear my lover call, "Come to me"



A7 G A7 D Dsus4 D7 G Em7 D
I lost my love on the river, and forever my heart will yearn;

D F#m7 Bm Bm7 Em7 G/B A7 D
Gone, gone forever down the river of no re - turn.

A7 D DM7 Bm Bm7 Bm7/E
Wail-a-ree wail-a-ree

G G/F# Em7 A7 D D D6 D D D6 D D D6 D
You'll never re - turn to me! (no return, no return, no return)






The lyric and guitar chord transcriptions on this site are the work of The Guitarguy and are intended for private study, research, or educational purposes only. Individual transcriptions are inspired by and and based upon the recorded versions cited, but are not necessarily exact replications of those recorded versions.

Paul Simon
El Condor Pasa Lyrics


I'd rather be a sparrow than a snail
Yes I would, if I could, I surely would
I'd rather be a hammer than a nail
Yes I would, if I only could, I surely would

Away, I'd rather sail away
Like a swan that's here and gone
A man gets tied up to the cross

He gives the world its saddest sun
Its saddest sun

I'd rather be a forest than a street
Yes I would, if I could, I surely would
I'd rather feel the earth beneath my feet
Yes I would, if I only could, I surely would

Billy Eckstine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Background information

Birth name William Clerance Eckstein
Born 8 July 1914
Origin Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Died 8 March 1993 (Aged 78)
Genre(s) Jazz
Occupation(s) Singer
Instrument(s) Vocals
Associated
acts Dizzy Gillespie
Charlie Parker
Sarah Vaughan

Billy Eckstine (8 July 1914-8 March 1993), born William Clerance Eckstein in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was a ballad singer of the Swing Era. Billy Eckstine's smooth baritone and distinctive vibrato broke down barriers throughout the 1940s, first as leader of the original bop big-band, then as the first romantic black male in popular music.

An influence looming large in the cultural development of soul and R&B singers from Sam Cooke to Prince, Eckstine was able to play it straight on his pop hits "Prisoner of Love," "My Foolish Heart" and "I Apologize." Born in Pittsburgh but raised in Washington, D.C., Eckstine began singing at the age of seven and entered many amateur talent shows. He had also planned on a football career, though after breaking his collar bone he made music his focus. After working his way west to Chicago during the late '30s, Eckstine was hired by Earl Hines to join his Grand Terrace Orchestra in 1939. Though white bands of the era featured males singing straightahead romantic ballads, black bands were forced to stick to novelty or blues vocal numbers until the advent of Eckstine and Herb Jeffries (from Duke Ellington's Orchestra).

One of the most distinctive of all ballad singers, Eckstine, affectionately known as Mr. B., was both a pivotal figure in the history of jazz (because of his commitment to bebop) and the first black singer to achieve lasting success in the pop mainstream. After winning a talent contest in 1930 by imitating Cab Calloway, Eckstine sang briefly with Tommy Myles' band, before returning to college. On the recommendation of composer and tenor saxophonist Buddy Johnson he joined Earl Hines' band in 1939 as singer and occasionally playing trumpet and in turn encouraged Hines to sign up Charlie Parker and Sarah Vaughan. Eckstine's recordings with the band include ?'Stormy Monday Blues' and his own ?'Jelly Jelly'. Though several of Eckstine's first hits with Hines were novelties like "Jelly, Jelly" and "The Jitney Man," he also recorded several straight-ahead songs, including the hit "Stormy Monday."

By 1943, he gained a trio of stellar bandmates ?- Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Sarah Vaughan. After forming his own big band that year, he hired all three and gradually recruited still more modernist figures and future stars: Wardell Gray, Dexter Gordon, Miles Davis, Kenny Dorham, Fats Navarro, and Art Blakey as well as arrangers Tadd Dameron and Gil Fuller. The Billy Eckstine Orchestra was the first bop big-band, and its leader reflected bop innovations by stretching his vocal harmonics into his normal ballads. Despite the group's modernist slant, Eckstine hit the charts often during the mid-'40s, with Top Ten entries including "A Cottage for Sale" and "Prisoner of Love." On the group's frequent European and American tours, Eckstine also played trumpet, valve trombone and guitar.

After a few years of touring with road hardend be-boppers, in 1947 Eckstine became a solo performer. Eckstine made the transition to string-filled balladry with ease. He recorded more than a dozen hits during the late '40s, including "My Foolish Heart" and "I Apologize." He was one of the first signings to the newly established MGM Records and had immediate hits with revivals of ?'Everything I Have Is Yours' (1947), Richard Rodgers' and Lorenz Hart's ?'Blue Moon' (1948), and Duke Ellington's, Irving Mills and Juan Tizol's ?'Caravan' (1949). He had further success in 1950 with Victor Young's theme song to ?'My Foolish Heart' and a revival of the 1931 Bing Crosby hit, ?'I Apologize'. However, unlike Nat ?'King' Cole who followed him into the pop charts, Eckstine's singing, especially his exaggerated vibrato, sounded increasingly mannered and he was unable to sustain his recording success throughout the decade.

His best record of the fifties was the thrilling duet with Sarah Vaughan, ?'Passing Strangers', a minor hit in 1957, but a perennial hit in the U.K. Even before folding his band, Eckstine had recorded solo to support it, scoring two million-sellers in 1945 with ?'Cottage for Sale' and a revival of ?'Prisoner of Love'. Far more successful than his band recordings, though more mannered and pompously sung, these prefigured Eckstine's future career. Where before black bands had played ballads, jazz and dance music, in the immediate post-war years they had to choose.

Lacking an interest in the blues and frustrated by the failure of his big band, Eckstine, at first reluctantly, turned to ballads. Henceforth his successes would be in the pop charts. He even created a fashion craze with the Mr. B "roll" collar, popular with hipsters and gangsters alike. He was also quite popular in Britain, hitting the Top Ten there twice during the '50s ?- "No One But You" and "Gigi" ?- as well as several duet entries with Sarah Vaughan. Eckstine returned to his jazz roots occasionally as well, recording with Vaughan, Count Basie, and Quincy Jones for separate LPs, and he regularly topped the Metronome and Downbeat Polls, as the Top Male Vocalist of the era.

The classic 1960 live in Las Vegas LP No Cover, No Minimum featured him taking a few trumpet solos as well. He recorded several albums for Mercury and Roulette during the early '60s, and he appeared on Motown for a few standards albums during the mid-'60s. After recording very sparingly during the '70s, for Al Bell's, Stax/Enterprise imprint, Eckstine although still performing to adoring audiences throughout the world, made his last recording, the Grammy nominated (Billy Eckstine Sings with Benny Carter) in 1986.

He also made numerous appearances on television variety shows including, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Nat King Cole Show, The Tonite Show, with Steve Allen, Jack Paar, and Johnny Carson, The Merv Griffin Show, The Art Linkletter Show, The Joey Bishop Show, The Dean Martin Show, The Flip Wilson Show, Playboy After Dark, and he also performed as an actor on occasion including, Sanford and Son, and movies Skirts Ahoy, Let's Do It Again, and Jo Jo Dancer.

Eckstine was an American jazz singer and bandleader who also played trumpet, valve trombone, and guitar. He also performed briefly as Billy X. Stine. His nickname was Mr. B. Although best known as a singer, his openness to new music made him a strong influence on modern jazz, particularly bebop, as he gave employment to many of the musicians who founded the style.

After singing with the Earl Hines band from 1939 to 1943 he led his own band from 1944 to 1947. The band featured at various times a large number of rising jazz stars, including:


Eckstine later formed an octet, then went solo, becoming a popular ballad singer while remaining an important figure in jazz. His huge, distinctive baritone made him one of the first African American singers to have mainstream success. He was the composer of the blues classic "Jelly, Jelly" and also recorded the R&B top hit "Stormy Monday Blues" in 1942 (not to be confused with T-Bone Walker's 1947 "Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday Is Just As Bad)"). Most of his success as a singer came with ballads, including "Everything I have is Yours", "Blue Moon", "Caravan," "Prisoner of Love," "You Go to My Head," and "That Old Black Magic". His last hit was "Passing Strangers", a duet with Sarah Vaughan released in 1957.

Eckstine was a style leader and noted sharp dresser. He designed and patented a high roll collar that formed a B over a Windsor-knotted tie, which became known as a Mr. B. Collar. In addition to looking cool, the collar expanded and contracted without popping open, which allowed his neck to swell while playing his horns. The collars were worn by many a hipster in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Legend has it his refined appearance also had an effect on trumpeter Miles Davis. Once when Eckstein came across a dishevelled Davis in the depths of heroin excess, his remark "Looking sharp, Miles" served as a wake-up call for Davis who promptly returned to his father's farm in the winter of 1953 and finally kicked the habit.[1]

In 1984, Eckstine recorded his final album, I Am A Singer, featuring beautiful ballads arranged and conducted by Angelo DiPippo.

He died on March 8th 1993, aged 78.

Faye Emerson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Birth name Faye Margaret Emerson
Born July 8, 1917
Elizabeth, Louisiana, USA
Died March 9, 1983 (age 65)
Deya, Majorca, Spain
Spouse(s) Skitch Henderson (1950-1957)
Elliott Roosevelt (1944-1950)
William Crawford (1938-1942)

Faye Margaret Emerson (July 8, 1917 - March 9, 1983) was an American film actress and television host. She is remembered as an actress in many Warner Bros. films beginning in 1941. She was born in tiny Elizabeth in Allen Parish in south central Louisiana. In 1944, she played one of her more memorable roles as Zachary Scott's ex in The Mask of Dimitrios.

In 1948, she made her move to television, acting in various anthology series, such as The Chevrolet Tele-Theatre, The Philco Television Playhouse and Goodyear Television Playhouse. She served as host for several short-lived talk shows and musical/variety shows including Paris Cavalcade of Fashions (1948), The Faye Emerson Show (1950), Wonderful Town, U.S.A. (1951), Author Meets the Critics (1952) and Faye and Skitch (1953). She also made numerous guest appearances on various variety shows and game shows.

Although the Faye Emerson Show on CBS only lasted one season, it gave her wide exposure because her time slot immediately followed the CBS Evening News and alternated weeknights with the popular The Perry Como Show.

Emerson hosted or appeared on so many talk shows?-usually wearing long, low-cut gowns?-and game shows such as I've Got a Secret that she was known as "The First Lady of Television". The glamorous Emerson was so popular in the early 1950s, it was rumored that the newly created Emmy Award was named after her.

She was once married to Elliott Roosevelt, son of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Emerson was later married to band leader Skitch Henderson in the 1950s. Once a Hollywood starlet enjoying the show business spotlight, the wealthy Emerson moved to Spain and spent the rest of her life in seclusion.

She died of stomach cancer in Deya, Majorca in 1983 at the age of sixty-five.

Craig Stevens
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Birth name Gail Shikles, Jr.
Born July 8, 1918
Liberty, Missouri
Died May 10, 2000
Los Angeles, California
Spouse(s) Alexis Smith (1944-1993)

Craig Stevens (July 8, 1918 - May 10, 2000) was an American motion picture and television actor.


Biography

Born Gail Shikles, Jr. in Liberty, Missouri, he studied dentistry at the University of Kansas but acting with the university's drama club saw him give up on his studies to try to make it in the Hollywood film industry. Adopting the stage name Craig Stevens, he debuted in a small role in 1939 and thereafter played mainly secondary parts. In 1944, he married Canadian actress Alexis Smith to whom he was married for almost fifty years until her passing in 1993.

After nearly twenty years in film, in 1958 Craig Stevens gained national prominence for his starring role as the "super-cool" private detective in the trend-setting television series Peter Gunn. The series was produced by Blake Edwards, who also wrote and directed many of the episodes. The theme music for the series was composed by Henry Mancini and helped establish his early fame.

Stevens was called on by Sir Lew Grade of ITV to move to London to play the lead role in a made for TV series called Man of the World in the early 60's.

Stevens died in 2000 in Los Angeles, California from cancer at the age of 81.

The Let's All Call Up AT&T And Protest To The President March
Allan Sherman

It's the "The Let's All Call Up AT&T And Protest To The President March."
Can you see him smirking and smiling?
'Cause he's got us all digit dialing.
So let's all call up AT&T and protest to the president march.

So protest! Do your best!
Let us show him that we march in unity.
If he won't change the rules,
Let's take our business to another phone company.
Let's all call up AT&T and protest to the president march.

Let us wake him up in his slumber.
Get a pencil, I'll give you his number.
It's 3 1 8 5 2 7 3
0 8 7 4 2 9 dash!
5 1 1 4 9 0 6 7
4 0 8 5 2 hyphen!
1 1 4 6 2 0 5
7 9 hyphen dash 0 3.

And now that you're on the right road,
Don't forget his Area Code.
Which is 5 1 8 2 4 7 9
0 5 hyphen dash 9 4.

Where are the days of Auld Lang Syne?
Butterfield 8! Madison 9!
Let's keep those beautiful names alive.
Crestview 6! Gramercy 5!
Get ready to fight before it's too late!
Temple 2! Murray Hill 8!
Let's let them know that this means war!
Gettysburg 3! Concord 4! Hurray!

To all telephone subscribers,
We'll erect a triumphal arch,
For the let's all call up AT&T and protest to the president march.

Jerry Vale
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jerry Vale (born Gennaro Luigi Vitaliano, 8 July 1932, The Bronx, New York) is an American singer.


Career

In high school, in order to make some money, he took a job shining shoes in a barbershop in New York City. He sang while he shined shoes, and his boss liked the sound so well that he paid for music lessons for the boy. Enjoying the lessons, Vale started singing in high school musicals and at a local club. This led to additional club dates, including one that lasted for three years at a club in the suburb of Yonkers, New York, just north of the city. When Paul Insetta, (who was a road manager for Guy Mitchell and a hit songwriter) heard him there, he signed him to a management contract, changed his name, and further coached his singing voice. He then arranged for Vale to record some demonstration records of songs that he had written, and brought these demos to Columbia Records. Vale then signed a recording contract with Columbia Records, and Insetta managed his career for many years.

Vale and Rita, his wife of over forty years, reside in Los Angeles, California. His autobiography, A Singer's Life, was published in 2000 by Celebrity Profiles, Long Island, New York.

Marty Feldman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Birth name Martin Alan Feldman
Born 8 July 1934(1934-07-08)
London, England
Died 2 December 1982 (aged 48)
Mexico City, Mexico
Spouse(s) Lauretta Sullivan
(1959-1982)
BAFTA Awards

Best Light Entertainment Performance
1968 Marty
Best writer
1968 Marty

Martin Alan "Marty" Feldman (8 July 1934[1] - 2 December 1982) was an English writer, comedian and BAFTA award winning actor, famous for his bulging eyes, which were the result of a thyroid condition known as Graves Disease.




Youth

Feldman was born in London's East End, the son of Jewish/Russian immigrants. Leaving school at 15, he started his show-business career as a trumpet player but soon turned to comedy.


Career

The television sketch comedy series At Last the 1948 Show featured Feldman's first on-screen performances. In one memorable sketch first broadcast on 1 March 1967, Feldman harassed a patient shop assistant (John Cleese) for a series of fictitious books, finally achieving success with Ethel the Aardvark goes Quantity Surveying. The sketch was revived as part of the Monty Python stage show repertoire, and on Monty Python's Contractual Obligation Album (both without Feldman).

In 1954, he formed a flourishing writing partnership with Barry Took. For British television, they wrote situation comedies such as The Army Game, Bootsie and Snudge, and most notably the ground-breaking BBC radio show Round the Horne, which starred Kenneth Horne and Kenneth Williams.

Marty Feldman was co-author, with John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Tim Brooke-Taylor, of the "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch, which was written for their television comedy series At Last the 1948 Show. The "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch was performed during Amnesty International concerts (by members of Monty Python ?- once including Rowan Atkinson in place of Python member Eric Idle), as well as during Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl and other Monty Python shows and record albums. This has led to the "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch now being considered a Monty Python sketch, with the origin and co-authorship of the sketch by non-Monty Python writers Marty Feldman and Tim Brooke-Taylor being overlooked or forgotten by many people. Feldman was also a writer on The Frost Report with several future members of Monty Python.

Following his success on At Last the 1948 Show, Feldman had a series of his own on the BBC called Marty (1968), which also featured Tim Brooke-Taylor, John Junkin and Roland MacLeod and for which he won two BAFTA awards. The second series (made in 1969) was renamed It's Marty (with the second title being retained for the DVD release of the show). In 1974, Dennis Main Wilson (producer for the UK television show Till Death Us Do Part) produced a short sketch series for Feldman entitled Marty Back Together Again ?- a reference to reports about the star's health. But this series never recaptured the impact of the earlier series. The Marty series proved popular enough with an international audience (the first series won the Golden Rose Award at Montreaux) to launch a film career. His first feature role was in 1970's Every Home Should Have One.

Marty Feldman's performances on American television included The Dean Martin Show and Marty Feldman's Comedy Machine. He is best remembered for his role as the hunchback Igor (pronounced 'eye-gor') in Young Frankenstein in which, as usual, many of his lines were improvised. At one point, Dr. Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) scolds Igor with the phrase "Damn your eyes!" Feldman then turns to the camera, points to his already-misaligned eyes, grins and says, "Too late!"

Feldman met American comedy writer Alan Spencer on the set of Young Frankenstein when Spencer was just a teenager. Spencer was a devout fan of Feldman as both a writer and performer. Feldman took Spencer under his wing and offered him key guidance that eventually led the young scribe to create the offbeat, critically-acclaimed television show Sledge Hammer!.

He also released one long-playing record called I Feel a Song Going Off (1969), re-released as The Crazy World of Marty Feldman. The songs were written by Dennis King, John Junkin and Bill Solly (a writer for Max Bygraves and The Two Ronnies).[2]


In 1976, Marty Feldman ventured into Italian Cinema, starring with Barbara Bouchet in 40 gradi all'ombra del lenzuolo, (Sex with a Smile), a farcical sex comedy.

Feldman appeared in The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother and Mel Brooks' Silent Movie, as well as directing and starring in The Last Remake of Beau Geste. He guest-starred in the "Arabian Nights" episode of The Muppet Show.


Personal life

Feldman married Lauretta Sullivan in January of 1959. She had proposed to him when he made no move to do so, after nine months of daily dating. They would remain married until his death in 1982.[3]

He had one younger sister, Pamela.[4] It was long thought that he was brother to actress Fenella Fielding, but the actress has denied this claim.[citation needed]


Death

Feldman died from a heart attack (as a result of shellfish food poisoning) in a hotel room in Mexico City, Mexico during the making of the film Yellowbeard. The famous cartoonist Sergio Aragones was filming a movie nearby and when he introduced himself to Feldman earlier that night, he frightened Feldman and possibly induced his heart attack. He has told the story with the punchline "I killed Marty Feldman". The story was converted into a story in Aragones' issue of DC Comics' Solo.[5]

Mel Brooks on the DVD commentary of Young Frankenstein, cites a number of factors that may have contributed to Feldman's early death from a heart attack. He was a very heavy smoker (smoking 4-5 packs of cigarettes a day), drank copious amounts of coffee and, although a vegetarian, ate a diet high in eggs and dairy products. The increased stress placed upon his body by the high altitude environment of Mexico City (it is located at an altitude of 2,300m where the air contains 30% less oxygen than at sea level) may also have been a factor in his sudden death.

He is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Los Angeles, California near his idol, Buster Keaton, in the Garden of Heritage.

Steve Lawrence
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Background information

Birth name Steve Lawrence
Born July 8, 1935
Origin New York, USA
Genre(s) Big band, Swing, pop standards
Occupation(s) Singer, Actor
Years active 1952 - Present

Steve Lawrence (born July 8, 1935) is an American singer, perhaps best known as a member of a duo with his wife Eydie Gormé. The two have appeared together since appearing regularly on Steve Allen's The Tonight Show in the mid-1950s.[1][2]




Biography

Personal life

Lawrence was born Sidney Liebowitz[2] to a Jewish family[3] in Brooklyn, New York. His parents were Anna Gelb and Max Leibowitz, a cantor and house painter.[4] He and Gormé married on December 29, 1957 at the El Rancho Hotel[2] in Las Vegas, Nevada.[1] They had two sons, the younger of whom, Michael, died unexpectedly in 1986 of ventricular fibrillation resulting from an undiagnosed heart condition at the age of 23.[1][2] His other son is David Nessim Lawrence, who composed the score for High School Musical. In the late 1950s, Lawrence was drafted into the Army and served as the official vocal soloist with The United States Army Band (Pershing's Own) in Washington, D.C.


Career

Lawrence is an actor as well, appearing in guest roles on television shows in every decade since the 1950s[5], in shows such as The Carol Burnett Show, Night Gallery, Police Story, Murder, She Wrote, Gilmore Girls, and CSI. In the 1960s Lawrence was the star of a variety show called The Steve Lawrence Show, "the last television show in black and white on CBS"[2]. Lawrence also appeared in the last season of The Nanny as Fran's never-before-seen father, Morty Fine.

In 1980, Lawrence was introduced to a new generation of fans with his memorable portrayal of blackmailed manager Maury Sline in the hit movie The Blues Brothers with John Belushi.


Awards

Lawrence has been awarded a Drama Critics Circle Award and a Tony Award nomination for his performance of What Makes Sammy Run on Broadway,[1] and two Emmy Awards ?-one for production?-for Steve & Eydie Celebrate Irving Berlin, which altogether won seven Emmys.

With Gormé, he has been the recipient of two Emmys for Our Love is Here to Stay, a tribute to George and Ira Gershwin; a "Best Performance By a Vocal Duo or Group" Grammy Award for We Got Us; a Film Advisory Board's Award of Excellence and a Television Critics Circle Award for From This Moment On, a tribute to Cole Porter. He and Gormé appeared together in the flop Broadway musical Golden Rainbow, the painful gestation of which is chronicled in unflattering detail in William Goldman's 1968 book The Season.

The duo have also won a Las Vegas Entertainment Award for "Musical Variety Act of the Year" four times, three of them consecutively. They have been honoured with a lifetime achievement award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame[6], and in 1995 were the recipients of an Ella Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Singers,[1][6] a non-profit organization that helps professional singers with counseling and financial assistance.

Kim Darby
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Born July 8, 1947 (1947-07-08) (age 60)
Los Angeles, California, USA

Kim Darby (born Deborah Zerby on July 8, 1947 in Los Angeles, California although her father insisted on calling her Derby Zerby because he believed it was a great stagename) is an American actress, daughter of professional dancers John and Inga Zerby. She began acting at age 15 and has appeared in many films and television shows. Her first appearance was as a dancer in the 1963 film Bye Bye Birdie. Among her best known roles are True Grit (1969), Better Off Dead (1985), and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995). After appearing in True Grit, film critics predicted that she was at the beginning of a long career as a great and famous actress. In fact, since the film came out, she has made almost no films of note. This has caused some critics to consider her in the same category as Bo Derek (in 10), Maria Schneider (in Last Tango in Paris) because all three actresses made spectacular splashes in one film with critic after critic saying they were going to have a great career, but, in fact, they never acted in any film nearly as successful again.

Her well known TV roles include an appearance in the 1960s hit TV series Ironside, and her well known guest appearance in the first season of Star Trek as Miri in "Miri". She also appeared as Angel in the classic two-part Gunsmoke episode "Vengeance." Darby also appeared in the 1972 movie The People which also starred William Shatner, reuniting them from their Star Trek appearance.

Kim Darby also had the central role of Sally Farnham in the 1973 made-for-TV horror film Don't Be Afraid of the Dark. Kim Darby has made numerous guest appearances, including in such TV shows as Crazy Like a Fox, The Love Boat, Riptide, and Becker.

In the late 1980s she began to teach acting in the Los Angeles area and has been an instructor in the Extension Program at the University of California since 1992. She continues to make guest appearances on television and to make occasional films.

She has been married five times, three times to well-known people in Hollywood. Her first marriage was to actor James Stacy (1968-1969). They had one child. Her second marriage was to B-movie actor James Westmoreland (aka Rad Fulton) (February to March 1970). Her fourth marriage was the longest, and was to producer William (Bill) Tennant.

Anjelica Huston
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia





Birth name Anjelica Huston
Born July 8, 1951 (1951-07-08) (age 56)
Santa Monica, California
Spouse(s) Robert Graham, Jr. (May 23, 1992-present)
Notable roles Maerose Prizzi in Prizzi's Honor
Eve Ernst in The Witches
Lily Dillon in The Grifters
Morticia Addams in The Addams Family
Etheline Tenenbaum in The Royal Tenenbaums
Academy Awards

Best Supporting Actress
1985 Prizzi's Honor
Golden Globe Awards

Best Supporting Actress - Miniseries
2005 Iron Jawed Angels

Anjelica Huston (born July 8, 1951) is an Academy Award- and Golden Globe Award-winning American actress and former fashion model. Huston won an Oscar for her performance in 1985's Prizzi's Honor. She later was nominated in 1990 and 1991 for her acting in Enemies, a Love Story and The Grifters respectively. Among her roles, she starred as Morticia Addams in The Addams Family (1991) and Addams Family Values (1993), receiving Golden Globe nominations for both.




Biography

Youth

Huston was born in Santa Monica, California, the daughter of film director John Huston (1906-1987) and his fourth wife, Italian American[1] prima ballerina Enrica Soma (1930-1969). Her grandfather, Walter Huston ?- a stage and screen star ?- won an Oscar for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. One of four siblings, she was raised mainly in the Republic of Ireland and England. She attended Kylemore Abbey, a prestigious all-girl boarding school in Connemara, Ireland as well as Holland Park School.


Career

Two of Huston's first movies, Sinful Davey (1969) and A Walk with Love and Death (1969) were directed by her father. Although he disapproved of her ambitions to act, Anjelica received crucial but hurtful reviews for her performances. She would lose her mother in a car accident the same year; her father remarried Celeste Shane three years later. She appeared in only a few films over the next decade, moving to United States and pursuing a successful career in modeling.

Huston would again retreat to familiar roots, taking on very small roles in films in the early Eighties; one in which she would star alongside Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange in Bob Rafelson's The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) and in Frances (1982) which would also star Jessica Lange. Huston would also appear in critically acclaimed television series, Laverne & Shirley and Faerie Tale Theatre.

After taking on several small but prominent roles in both film and in television, Huston would land her big break, winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Maerose Prizzi in Prizzi's Honor (1985), a film directed by her father, John Huston and starring opposite Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner. Anjelica collaborated with her father again in The Dead, a film for which Anjelica was awarded an Independent Spirit Award, . It would also be John Huston's final film before passing away from emphysema in 1987.

Huston would also be nominated another Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Tamara Broder in Enemies, a Love Story (1989) and another for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her role as Lily Dillon in The Grifters (1990). She received three Saturn Award nominations for arguably one of her most memorable roles, The Grand High Witch in The Witches (1990); later for Morticia Addams in Addams Family Values (1991) and for her role as Baroness Rodmilla de Ghent in Ever After (1998).

Over the years, Huston has received five Emmy Award nominations for her television work. Winning a Golden Globe Award for Supporting Actress in a TV Program for Iron Jawed Angels (2004). It was her first win, after eight nominations. Currently, she is a recurring cast member in Wes Anderson films, starting with The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004). Huston will narrate "Freedom from Fear", a documentary set for a Summer 2007 release, exploring the life of Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner, and her leadership in the democracy movement in Burma.


Directing

After a handful prominent roles in both television and in film, Huston soon stepped away from acting, following in her father's footsteps in the Director's chair, her first film she would direct would be Bastard Out of Carolina (1996), another would be Agnes Browne (1999) in which she both Directed and starred, and Riding the Bus with My Sister (2005).


Personal life

Huston lived with Jack Nicholson from 1973 to 1989. She married sculptor Robert Graham Jr. in 1992, and resides in an unusual dwelling in Venice, Los Angeles, California. She refused to move to the bohemian area unless Graham built them a fortress in which to live. The result was a giant, windowless structure behind an opaque 40-foot fence.

Kevin Bacon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Birth name Kevin Bacon
Born July 8, 1958 (1958-07-08) (age 49)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Spouse(s) Kyra Sedgwick (September 4, 1988-present) 2 children
Notable roles Ren McCormick in Footloose
Willie O'Keefe in JFK
Capt. Jack Ross in A Few Good Men
Wade in The River Wild
Henri Young in Murder in the First
Jack Swigert in Apollo 13
Sean Devine in Mystic River
John Hume in Death Sentence
Golden Globe Awards

Nominated: Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture
1994 The River Wild
Screen Actors Guild Awards

Best Cast - Motion Picture
1995 Apollo 13

Kevin Bacon (born July 8, 1958) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is an American film and theater actor who has starred in Footloose, Animal House, Stir of Echoes, Wild Things, JFK, and Apollo 13, among many others. He has been married to actress Kyra Sedgwick since September 4, 1988. They have two children, Travis Bacon and Sosie Ruth Bacon.





Life and career

Early years

Born on July 8, 1958, Bacon, the youngest of six children, was raised in a close-knit family in Philadelphia. A former Park Avenue debutante, his mother, Ruth, taught elementary school and was an activist for liberal politics, while his father, Edmund Bacon, was a well-respected city planner. In characterizing their parents' approach to raising children, Bacon's older sister Karin explained in Premiere: "We were all given the sense that we should be independent, that we were never to feel needy." Knowing that he wanted to be an actor by age 13, Bacon left home four years later to pursue a theater career in New York, where he was one of the youngest students ever admitted to the Circle in the Square Theater School. "I wanted life, man, the real thing", he later recalled to Nancy Mills of Cosmopolitan. "The message I got was 'The arts are it. Business is the devil's work. Art and creative expression are next to godliness.' Combine that with an immense ego and you wind up with an actor."[1]

Yet Bacon's decision to become an actor did not come without pressures. Describing his father to Mills as a "city-planning superstar", he set very high goals for himself because he "felt nothing less than stardom would be enough."[2] However, his movie debut in the fraternity comedy Animal House in 1978 did not lead to the instant fame he had hoped for, and Bacon returned to waiting tables and auditioning for small roles in theatre. He later refused the offer of a television series based on Animal House in order to stay on the New York stage. Some of that early work included Getting Out performed at New York's Phoenix Theater, and Flux which he did at Second Stage Theatre during their 1981-1982 season.

What motivated his decision to stay in New York still has resonance for Bacon. "I think my decision had a lot to do with just being afraid", he explained to Chase in Cosmopolitan. "L.A. scared me. I call it the city of fear. I get scared when I land, and I live in fear there, and I think a lot of people do. I mean, I've had a hard time in New York City too, but aesthetically and spiritually, I'm an East Coast person."[3] With the support of his wife, actress Kyra Sedgwick, Bacon believes that he has come to terms with his apprehensions about Los Angeles and has thus strengthened his commitment to acting. "Our lives are still crazy, we still spend a ton of time out there, and I've finally admitted that the movie business means a lot to me", he told Chase. "I used to say, it's okay, I can do it, but it isn't that important, and then I realized I was out of my mind; this is what I do for a living."[4]


Acclaim and success

Known for having what Entertainment Weekly called "bone-dry humor and [an] average-Joe ability to tell it like it is",[5] Bacon has always been forthcoming about his lack of professional self-confidence, but he has never let it stop him from delivering powerful performances. In 1982 he won an Obie Award for his role in Forty-Deuce, a play about street hustlers, and soon after made his Broadway debut in Slab Boys, with then-unknowns Sean Penn and Val Kilmer. However, it was not until he portrayed Timothy Fenwick that same year in Barry Levinson's Diner?--also starring Steve Guttenberg, Daniel Stern, Mickey Rourke, and Ellen Barkin?--that he made an indelible impression on film critics and moviegoers alike. Set in Baltimore during Christmas week of 1959, Diner depicts the lives of six young men in their early twenties who have been close friends since childhood but are gradually moving in different directions. By far the most aimless of the group, the surly, sarcastic Fenwick gets increasingly drunk as the story progresses, deriving great pleasure from playing practical jokes on his friends and out-answering contestants on the television quiz show College Bowl from the security of his sofa. The New Yorker's Pauline Kael, who included Bacon's name on her list of the film's "amazing" performances, also noted that "with his pointed chin, and the look of a mad Mick, [he] keeps Fenwick morose and yet demonic." David Denby of New York found Fenwick "both attractive and creepily self-destructive", attributing much of Diner's success to the fact that it "offers a completed vision of life, ecstatic in its recovery of forgotten pleasures, melancholy in its knowledge of how small a chance these men ever had of reclaiming their freedom."

Bolstered by the attention that his performance in Diner received, Bacon went on to star in the 1984 box-office smash Footloose. Directed by Herbert Ross and packed with energetic music and dance sequences, the film tells the story of Ren McCormick, a streetwise Chicago teenager who, after moving with his mother to a repressive small town in the Midwest, is determined to reverse the town minister's ban on rock and roll made years earlier. Richard Corliss of Time likened Footloose to the James Dean classic Rebel Without a Cause and the old Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland musicals, commenting that the film includes "motifs on book burning, mid-life crisis, AWOL parents, fatal car crashes, drug enforcement, and Bible Belt vigilantism." Part of the conflict centers around the relationship between the minister, played by John Lithgow, and his wild teenage daughter, played by Lori Singer, who falls in love with Bacon's character and joins forces with him to put on a dance in a neighboring town. To prepare for the role, Bacon enrolled at a high school as a transfer student named "Ren McCormick" and studied teenagers before leaving in the middle of the day. Sporting a punk haircut for the role and a rebellious James Dean-type attitude somewhat different than Fenwick's in Diner, he earned strong reviews for Footloose, appearing on the cover of People magazine soon after its release. David Ansen of Newsweek noted that Footloose "works because Bacon [is] always a fine actor", while Corliss found his performance to be "smart and appealing." The film itself, wrote Ansen, "has a lively, sweet infectious spirit", providing a "jolt of disposable but pleasant energy that makes you want to roll back the rug and boogie."


Career slump

Bacon's long-awaited exposure from these two films proved a mixed blessing for the actor, however, who found himself saddled with a new concern?--that he had become typecast as the characters he portrayed in the films Diner and Footloose. Bacon would not be able to shake their images. His portrayal of Fenwick, Bacon explained to Mills in Cosmopolitan, "made enough of an impact that it was very difficult for me to get a lead in a movie. The perception was that I was incapable of being heroic, that I was offbeat, dark, nutty, and messed up." Nor did he welcome the teen-idol image that Footloose offered him, shunning other chances to play what he told Mills were "angst-ridden teenagers." For the next several years Bacon chose films that cast him against either type and experienced, by his own standards, a career slump. In 1988 he portrayed a newlywed who, ambivalent about marriage to begin with, faces the added burden of impending fatherhood in John Hughes's comedy She's Having a Baby, costarring Elizabeth McGovern. The next year he starred in a Christopher Guest comedy called The Big Picture, playing a film student whose excessive pride leads to trouble after he achieves instant Hollywood fame as a filmmaker. While The Nation found little else redeeming about the movie, it did comment on Bacon's "perfect face and unfailing charm as Nick", noting as well the actor's ability to "play just about anything." In 1990 no breakthroughs occurred for Bacon either. He saved his town from under-the-earth "graboids" in the comedy/horror film Tremors?--a role that People found him "far too accomplished" to play?--and portrayed an earnest medical student experimenting with death in Joel Schumacher's Flatliners.

Bacon's next project was to star, opposite Elizabeth Perkins, in the 1991 romantic comedy He Said, She Said, codirected by Ken Kwapis and Marisa Silver. As clashing newspaper reporters who are forced to write a column together, the two fall in love; making the film more interesting, however, is the fact that the story is told twice, first from the viewpoint of Bacon's character, which Kwapis directed, and then from the point of view of Perkins's character, directed by Silver. Despite its lukewarm reviews and low audience turnout, He Said, She Said was illuminating for Bacon. Required to play a character with sexist attitudes, he admitted that the role was not that large a stretch for him. "Until he meets Elizabeth, he sees women as sex objects...not people to respect or share your life with", he told Mills. "But he changes when he falls in love with the strongest woman he could possibly find. In some ways, this character is like me. What he's going through is maybe something I was going through ten or twelve years ago." After completion of He Said, She Said, Perkins had nothing but praise for her costar both on screen and off. "When Kevin first came on the set, I thought he was one of those actors who just breezes in and doesn't need to prepare for a scene. After a couple weeks, I realized that he does his homework, is extremely concentrated, and never misses a beat", she remarked in Cosmopolitan. "What you assume is not always the truth about Kevin. He can come off as suave, and people may mistake it for arrogance. But underneath, he's very compassionate and kindhearted."


Comeback

By 1991 Bacon began to give up the idea of playing leading men in big-budget films and to remake himself as a character actor. "The only way I was going to be able to work on 'A' projects with really 'A' directors was if I wasn't the guy who was starring", he confided to The New York Times writer Trip Gabriel. "You can't afford to set up a $40 million movie if you don't have your star." His performance that year as gay prostitute Willie O'Keefe in Oliver Stone's JFK received tremendous critical acclaim; Premiere called his work "flawless", while National Review referred to it as "stunning." Shining among an ensemble cast in a small but memorable role had its appeal for Bacon, whose career began to swing in a more positive direction. Encouraged by his JFK reviews, he went on to play another character role?--prosecuting attorney Jack Ross in the 1992 military courtroom drama A Few Good Men, starring Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson. Michael Sragow of The New Yorker found Bacon's performance to be the strongest in the film: "Kevin Bacon, as the prosecutor, gives the most full-bodied performance. You find yourself believing he is a career serviceman?--not because of his flattop haircut but because he's marinated in Marine tradition. His boyish competitive streak emerges from a saltier place than Cruise's." Bacon's newfound career momentum did not stop with these two films; that same year he returned to the theater to play, opposite Saundra Santiago, in Spike Heels, directed by Michael Greif. Time, which praised the play's "tart wit, feminist insight, and quirky detours of plot", also pronounced Bacon, who portrays a wealthy cad, its "standout" for his ability to blend "ribaldry, rudeness, rapscallion reprehensibility, and believable redemption."

It was not until his work on The River Wild in 1994, however, that Bacon began to feel more confident about the success of his professional comeback. He earned a Golden Globe Award nomination for his portrayal of a compulsive liar whose boyish charm turns diabolic when he overtakes the raft of a former river guide?--played by Meryl Streep?--and her family on a white-water rafting trip. As Wade, Bacon first flirts with Streep's character and then befriends her young son until it becomes apparent that what he really wants is her knowledge of the river to secure freedom for himself and his friend who are hiding out after a violent robbery. Describing it to Chase in Cosmopolitan as a "grueling shoot", in which "every one of us fell out of the boat at one point or another and had to be saved", Bacon had the added stress of worrying about Sedgwick and their children, who had joined him on location. Like the actors and crew, they had to come up the river each day in a helicopter, which would land on a raft and allow them to trudge to shore. "I'd hear somebody say, 'The Bacons are in the chopper,' and I'd see them waving, and then they'd come down", Bacon recalled in the same source. "It was terrifying because everything I loved was in that whirlybird." Dispelling any lingering suggestions that Bacon might not be leading-man material, director Curtis Hanson told The New York Times: "Kevin in our movie is playing a movie-star part. In another era?--if we were making this movie in 1950?--I would have wanted Robert Mitchum to play that part." Hanson, after reflecting on Bacon's earlier career, also ventured to make some predictions about his future. "Kevin was going through a period of his life, agewise, that is as fragile as being a child star....You can be hot for a year or two and then you can fade rapidly", he explained to Hanson. "Whereas what Kevin's doing now?--whether by design or by accident?--is he's building a very fruitful and long career...and he just keeps getting better."


But no matter how grueling the filming of The River Wild was, it could not compare to the hardships Bacon faced in preparing for his next film, Murder in the First. Based on a true story that occurred during the Depression, the film recounts the drama of Henri Young, a petty thief imprisoned in Alcatraz, who, after spending three years in solitary confinement, kills the inmate whose betrayal of him led to this punishment. Though Christian Slater, as his public defender, received top billing for the film, Bacon's character was at its dramatic center. To transform himself into Henri Young, Bacon lost 20 pounds, shaved his head, and wore contact lenses that completely covered his eyeballs and had to be removed every hour. He even spent some time locked up in a jail cell to get the feeling of being imprisoned. "In every scene, the character suffers a different level of pain", he explained to Chase. "Because he spent three years in that dungeon trying to keep warm, I picked this extreme physicality for him when he comes out. I'm all hunched over, and I walk with a limp, and I had to pull myself into that twisted condition everyday." Helping Bacon through the physical and psychological wringer of the role was friend and fellow actor Gary Oldman, ironically playing a sadistic warden who routinely brutalizes Young. "You know, when somebody's thrown a bucket of cold water on you, and he's beating you with a blackjack, and the blood is flying, it helps if the person wielding the blackjack is someone you trust", Bacon told Cosmopolitan's Chase. "It lets you fly." For Bacon, the experience of being filmed naked for several weeks in a Los Angeles warehouse and encrusted with mud and live bugs was not one he will forget soon. Nor will director Marc Rocco, who told Premiere that working with Bacon was "the most rewarding experience I've ever had with an actor." The film did well at the box office, and Bacon was given good reviews for his role as Young.


Continuing success

This wave of success left Bacon with little time to rest in between projects. His subsequent film, Apollo 13, released in the summer of 1995, was a blockbuster. Preparation for the film, which tells the true story of an aborted space mission, involved some difficult stunt work. To simulate space travel, Bacon and costars Tom Hanks and Bill Paxton took several trips on huge NASA KC-135 airplanes, which fly in such precise parabolic curves that for several seconds the actors are weightless. Bacon, who liked this sensation no more than the daily exposure to icy wind and water on the set of The River Wild, joked in Entertainment Weekly, "I mean, I'm not a thrill seeker, but I keep getting into these situations."

Bacon reverted to his trademark typecast role once again, as a brutal and sadistic reform school warden in Sleepers in 1996. Like Murder in the First, Sleepers presented a gripping yet horrifying reality?-a stark contrast to Bacon's ensuing appearance in a lighthearted romantic comedy, called Picture Perfect, in the following year. Bacon resurrected his oddball mystique also that year as a retarded houseguest in Digging to China and again as a disc jockey corrupted by the lure of payola in Telling Lies in America. As the executive producer of 1998's Wild Things, Bacon reserved a supporting role for himself, then went on to star in Stir of Echoes with director David Koepp in 1999 and in Paul Verhoeven's Hollow Man in 2000. He is also playing a role in movie "Taking Chance" a movie based on a story written by LtCol. Strobl.

In 2006, Bacon appeared in television commercials for the Hanes clothing company, in the ad campaign, titled "Look who we've got our Hanes on now". Some of these commercials also feature basketball star Michael Jordan.

On 7 July 2007 Bacon presented at Live Earth.


Personal life


Bacon has been married to actress Kyra Sedgwick since September 4, 1988; they met on the set of the PBS version of Lanford Wilson's play Lemon Sky. "The time I was hitting what I considered to be bottom was also the time I met my wife, our kids were born, good things were happening", he explained to Cosmopolitan's Chase. "And I was able to keep supporting myself; that always gave me strength."

Bacon and Sedgwick, have starred together in Born on the Fourth of July, and Mr. and Mrs. Bridge. They have two children, Travis (b. 1989) and Sosie Ruth (b. 1992). Bacon and Sedgwick insist that neither work on separate projects at the same time. In 1994, while shooting The River Wild, Bacon was accompanied at the set by his family. Bacon prioritizes having a relationship with his children, something he and his father never shared, and does not want to risk having his career come between him and his wife. "No place, no business could break up my wife and me. I would never give the movie business so much credit", he stated in Cosmopolitan. "To me, marriage is about committing yourself to one person. In my opinion, I got the hottest babe there is; I would never do anything to jeopardize that."


Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon


Bacon is the subject of the trivia game entitled Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. It is based on the idea that, due to his prolific screen career, any Hollywood actor can be "linked" to another in a handful of "steps" based on their associations with Bacon. Although it has since been proven that there are other "better" centers of the Hollywood universe than Bacon, such as Sean Connery, Christopher Lee, Rod Steiger, Gene Hackman, or the prolific Michael Caine, Bacon's name remained the focus because he was the first one picked by the creators of the game, and because his name "Kevin Bacon" sounds like the original word in the phrase "Six degrees of separation." A person's number of degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon can be known as his or her "Bacon Number".

Though he was initially dismayed by the game, the meme stuck, and Bacon eventually embraced it, forming the "charitable initiative" Six Degrees, a social networking site intended to link people to charities and each other. [1]


Music

In the late 1990s and into the 2000s Bacon joined his musician brother, Michael, in a duo ensemble, called The Bacon Brothers. With three albums to their credit by 2001 and increasingly preoccupied with his new career diversion as a rock star, Bacon's tour schedule included eight concerts for the summer of that year, at venues from New York City, down the East Coast, and into the Midwest to Peru, Illinois and Missouri.

Trivia

Was one of the key motives in the American Dad! episode entitled Four Little Words, in which one of the main characters, Roger the Alien, impersonates Kevin Bacon throughout the episode.
Bacon had a no full frontal nude clause in his contract for the movie Wild Things. Fellow star Matt Dillon does not block Bacon all of the way in a particular scene when he is exiting the shower, exposing all of Bacon. After reviewing the shot multiple times Bacon decided to keep it saying; "Well hell, it's a good-looking cock, what can I say?".[citation needed]
Kevin Bacon makes an appearance demonstrating techniques such as "the can opener" and "the scissors kick" in the 1979 book, Roller Disco Dancing by Kerry Kollmar & Melody Mason. Sterling Publishing Co.
An anatomically-correct computer model of Kevin Bacon's entire body was made for the movie Hollow Man. This model was later donated to scientists.[citation needed]
Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth and Rachel Blanchard depict a ménage à trois in their film, Where the Truth Lies. Bacon and director Atom Egoyan have condemned the MPAA ratings board decision to give the film their "NC-17" rating over the preferable "R". Bacon decried the decision, commenting: "I don't get it, when I see films (that) are extremely violent, extremely objectionable sometimes in terms of the roles that women play, slide by with an R, no problem, because the people happen to have more of their clothes on." [2]
Kevin Bacon will be directing his wife, Kyra Sedgwick, in episode 15 of the second season of her hit television series "The Closer."[citation needed]
Has played characters referred to as 'Smiling Jack' in two unrelated films. In Quicksilver (1986) his character's friend refers to him as Smiling Jack Casey while on the phone, and in A Few Good Men (1992) Tom Cruise greets him as Smiling Jack Ross.
He used the same egotistical line, "I am a God damn genius," in two unrelated films, Hollow Man and Trapped.
Empire Magazine voted him as the most underrated actor of all time.
Bacon looked up to his older brother Michael while growing up in Philly
Plays in a band with his older brother Michael in a band called "The Bacon Brothers"

Toby Keith
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia




Background information

Birth name Toby Keith Covel
Born July 08, 1961 (1961-07-08) (age 46)
Origin Clinton, Oklahoma, USA
Genre(s) Country
Occupation(s) singer-songwriter
Instrument(s) Vocals, rhythm guitar
Years active 1993-present
Label(s) Mercury Records (1993-1994, 1997-1999)
Polygram (1994-1995)
A&M Records (1996)
DreamWorks Records (2000-2006)
Show Dog Nashville (2006-present)
Website TobyKeith.com

Toby Keith Covel (born July 8, 1961) is an American country music singer-songwriter who has enjoyed commercial success throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Five of his albums have reached number one on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart, and he has had fifteen Number One singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts. In addition, he starred in the 2006 film Broken Bridges.





Biography

Early life

Toby Keith Covel was born in Clinton, Oklahoma. His family moved to Moore, Oklahoma (a suburb of Oklahoma City) when Keith was young. His grandmother owned a supper club and Keith became interested in the musicians who came there to play. He got his first guitar at the age of eight. Keith attended Moore High School where he played on the football team.

Keith graduated from Moore High School and, in 1979, went to work as a derrick hand in the booming oil fields of Oklahoma. He worked his way up to become an operation manager. At the age of 20, he formed the Easy Money band and they played local bars as he continued to work in the oil industry. At times, he would have to leave in the middle of a gig if he was paged to work in the oil field.

In 1982, the oil industry in Oklahoma began a rapid decline and Keith soon found himself unemployed. He fell back on his football training and played defensive end with the semi-pro Oklahoma City Drillers while continuing to perform with his band. (The Drillers were an unofficial farm club of the USFL's Oklahoma Outlaws; Keith tried out for the Outlaws but did not make the team.) After two years with the Drillers, Keith decided to try music full time. His family and friends were doubtful he would succeed, but in 1984, Easy Money began playing the honky tonk circuit in Oklahoma and Texas. The band cut a single titled Blue Moon and the song received some airplay on local radio stations in Oklahoma.

Also in 1984, Keith married his wife, Tricia. He is the father of three children; Shelley (born 1981; adopted stepdaughter), Krystal (born 1984), and Stelen (born 1997). An avid University of Oklahoma football fan, Keith is often seen at Oklahoma Sooners games and practices.


Career

In 1993, Keith went to Nashville, Tennessee. Keith hung out and busked on Music Row and at a place called Houndogs. He distributed copies of a demo tape the band had made to the many record companies in the city. There was no interest by any of the record labels and Keith returned home feeling depressed. Keith had promised himself to have a recording contract by the time he was 30 years old or give up on music as a career. He had already passed that age without any prospects for a recording contract.

Fortunately for Keith, a flight attendant and fan of his gave a copy of Keith's demo tape to Harold Shedd, a Mercury Records executive, while he was traveling on a flight she was working. Shedd enjoyed what he heard, went to see Keith perform live and then signed him to a recording contract with Mercury. His debut single, "Should've Been a Cowboy" (1993), went to number 1 on the Billboard country singles chart, and his self-titled debut album was certified platinum. Other hit singles included "A Little Less Talk And A Lot More Action" and "Wish I Didn't Know Now".

Keith moved briefly to Polydor Records and released his next two albums, Boomtown (1994) and Blue Moon (1996). The albums went gold and platinum respectively. In 1996, Keith was also featured on the Beach Boys' now out-of-print 1996 album Stars and Stripes Vol. 1 performing a cover of their 1963 hit Be True to Your School with the Beach Boys themselves providing the harmonies and backing vocals.

Polydor folded and Keith moved back to Mercury Records (now called Mercury Nashville), and released his fourth album, Dream Walkin' (1997). The album featured a duet with Sting, "I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying", which had previously been a hit for Sting himself.


Keith began work on his next album How Do You Like Me Now (1999) at Mercury but purchased the rights to the album and moved to DreamWorks Nashville because of creative differences with Mercury.[citation needed] The first single off How Do You Like Me Now failed to make the Top 40 on the country charts. However, the follow-up single, which was the album's title track, went on to spend five weeks at number one, helping boost the album's sales to double platinum.

Keith also began doing a series of television advertisements for Telecom USA for their discount long distance telephone service 10-10-220. Because of the ads and his latest hit album, Keith became a superstar and household name. He also starred in Ford commercials, singing original songs such as "Ford Truck Man" and "Field Trip (Look Again)" while driving Ford trucks.

Keith made an appearance at the very first Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (then NWA-TNA) weekly pay-per-view on June 19, 2002, where his playing of Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue was interrupted by Jeff Jarrett. He would later enter the Gauntlet for the Gold main event specifically to eliminate Jarrett from the match. He would appear the next week, on June 26, and help Scott Hall defeat Jarrett in singles action.

Keith was the subject of the January, 2005 issue of Playboy Magazine's Playboy Interview. That year, Keith toured with rock guitarist Ted Nugent, whom Keith met in Iraq while they were both performing in USO-sponsored shows for the coalition troops.

On August 31, 2005, Keith parted ways with Universal Music Group- which had since bought DreamWorks- and launched his own record label called Show Dog Nashville. Its first release was Keith's album White Trash With Money, followed by the soundtrack to Broken Bridges. Big Dog Daddy, the album that birthed his single High Maintenance Woman, was released on June 12th, 2007. The album debuted at the top of the Billboard 200 charts, his third album to reach this feat, after "Unleashed" and "Shock'n Y'all"

In the Autumn of 2005, he filmed Broken Bridges, written by Cherie Bennett and Jeff Gottesfeld, and directed by Steven Goldmann. This feature film from Paramount/CMT Films was released on September 8, 2006. A contemporary story set in small-town Tennessee, Keith plays Bo Price, a country musician whose career has seen better times. The movie also stars Kelly Preston, Burt Reynolds, and Tess Harper.

In 2005, Keith opened Toby Keith's I Love This Bar & Grill in Bricktown, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Keith is continuing his Hookin' Up & Hangin' Out Tour, sponsored by Ford trucks, in Albany, New York, with guests Flynnville Train, Lindsey Haun, and Miranda Lambert, which wraps up in Hartford, Connecticut

Keith is currently writing a script for a movie based on his and Willie Nelson's 2003 hit Beer for My Horses.[1]


Personal convictions and controversy

On March 24, 2001, Keith's father, H.K. Covel, was killed in a car accident. That event and the September 11, 2001 attacks prompted Keith to write the song "Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue (The Angry American)", a song about his father's patriotism and faith in the USA. At first, Keith refused to record the song and only sang it live at his concerts for military personnel. The reaction was so strong that the Commandant of the Marine Corps James L. Jones told Keith it was his duty as an American citizen to record the song.[1] As the lead single from the album Unleashed (2002), "Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue" peaked at number 1 over the weekend of July 4.


ABC invited Keith to sing "Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue" on a patriotic special it was producing. However, the host of the show, newsman Peter Jennings, requested Keith soften the lyrics of the song or choose another song to sing.[citation needed] Keith refused both requests and did not appear on the special. The rift gave the song a considerable amount of publicity, which led to many national interviews and public performances of the song.

Keith also had a public feud with the Dixie Chicks over the song, as well as comments they made from the stage about President George W. Bush. The lead singer of the Dixie Chicks, Natalie Maines, publicly stated that the song was "ignorant, and it makes country music sound ignorant."[2] Keith responded by belittling Maines' songwriting skills, and by displaying a backdrop at his concerts showing a doctored photo of Maines with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. On May 21, 2003, Maines wore a T-shirt with the letters FUTK on the front at the Academy of Country Music Awards. [3] While a spokesperson for the Dixie Chicks said that the acronym stood for "Friends United in Truth and Kindness," many including host Vince Gill took it to be a shot at Keith. In August 2003, Keith publicly declared he was done feuding with Maines 'because he's realized there are far more important things to concentrate on'.[4] However, he continues to refuse to say Maines' name, and claims that the doctored photo was intended to express his feeling that Maines' criticism was tyrannical and a dictator-like attempt to squelch Keith's free speech.[5]

In the 2006 film Shut Up and Sing, Maines confirmed that the FUTK shirt was in fact a shot at Toby Keith, after once claiming that it meant Freedom Understanding Truth and Kindness. In an October 2004 appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher, Natalie finally acknowledged that it was indeed an obscene shot at Toby Keith, and that she didn't think her fans would get it.[citation needed]

Keith considers himself "a Conservative Democrat who is sometimes embarrassed for his party." He endorsed the re-election of President George W. Bush in 2004 and performed at a Dallas rally on the night before the election. Keith also endorsed Democrat Dan Boren in his successful run in Oklahoma's 2nd Congressional district and is good friends with Democratic New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson.

In a January 2007 interview with Newsday, Keith was asked whether or not he supported the war in Iraq and responded with "Never did." He favors setting a time limit on the occupation. He also said, "I don't apologize for being patriotic...If there is something socially incorrect about being patriotic and supporting your troops, then they can kiss my [ass] on that, because I'm not going to budge on that at all. And that has nothing to do with politics. Politics is what's killing America." [6]

Once upon a time the government had a
vast scrap yard in the middle of a desert.

Congress said someone may steal from
it at night, so they created a night watchman
position (GS-4) and hired a person for the job.

Then Congress said, "How does the watchman
do his job without instruction? "

So they created a planning position and hired
two people: one person to write the instructions
(GS-12) and one person to do time studies
(GS-11).

Then Congress said, "How will we know the
night watchman is doing the tasks correctly?"

So they created a Q.C. position and hired two
people, one GS-9 to do the studies and one
GS-11 to write the reports.

Then Congress said, "How are these people
going to get paid?" So they created the following
positions, a timekeeper (GS-09) and a payroll
officer (GS-11) and hired two people.

Then Congress said, "Who will be accountable
for all of these people?"

So they created an administrative position and
hired three people: an Admin. Officer (GM-13),
an Assistant Admin. Officer (GS-13) and a Legal
Secretary (GS-08).

Then Congress said, "We have had this command
in operation for one year and we are $18,000 over
budget, we must cutback overall cost," so they
laid off the night watchman.

Well, folks, the eagle may not have landed here, but the hawk just did.

Thanks for the great bio's, Boston. I was particularly interested in a couple of them, especially Marty Feldman, because I did not know the circumstances of his death.

I looked at the lyrics to Courtesy of the Red White and Blue, and they were a little syrupy, but I think we all admire Toby Keith's open admission and stance.

Thanks for the reminder of how the government works in creating and cutting jobs. That gave us all a wry smile.

edgar, we all know and love Paul Simon. Great song, Texas. Wonder if the California condor is still on the endangered list?

I swear dj, where do you get those parodies? I have called AT&T enough to appreciate that one, buddy.

Several folks have done this song, but I think it follows the format of our cyber radio, so...

Billy Eckstine

Without a song the day would never end
Without a song the road would never bend
When things go wrong a man ain't got a friend
Without a song

That field of corn would never see a plow
That field of corn would be deserted now
A man is born but he's no good no how
Without a song

I got my trouble and woe but, sure as I know, the Jordan will roll
And I'll get along as long as a song is strong in my soul

I'll never know what makes the rain to fall
I'll never know what makes that grass so tall
I only know there ain't no love at all
Without a song

<instrumental>

I've-a got my trouble and woe and, sure as I know, the Jordan will roll
And I'll get along as long as a song is strong in my soul


I'll-a never know what makes that rain to fall
I'll never know what makes the grass so tall
I only know there ain't no love at all
Without a song.

Hope our puppy can make it today.

Hey, all. Today is Shewolfn's birthday.

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=99635&highlight=

Go wish her a happy one, ok?

Good afternoon WA2K and a Happy Birthday to Shewolf.

And today's celebrities:






Billy; Faye; Craig, Jerry, Marty, Steve, Kim, Anjelica, Kevin and Toby.

I'd sure like to know how our PD is getting all those amazing pictures - walking alligator, howling wolf, etc. Looks complicated to me.

Howlin Wolf
I'm The Wolf (1954 recording)
From More Real Folk Blues (MCA CHD 9279)

You know I'm the Wolf baby, you know I stays in the woods
You know I'm the Wolf babe, you know I stays in the woods.
Well when you get in trouble, you call the wolf out of the woods.

Well you want my money, well you want me to spend it on you
Well you want my money, babe you want the Wolf to spend it on you
Just as soon as you get my fortune, she said what in the world I want with you?

Well I spend my money, trying to make you satsified
Well, I have spent my money darlin', tryin' to make you satisfied
Well, the woman who took my money and took my home and, oh the Wolf gonna wreck her life.

Michael Jackson Singing about his rat friend, Ben!

Ben, the two of us need look no more
We both found what we were looking for
With a friend to call my own
I'll never be alone
And you, my friend, will see
You've got a friend in me
(you've got a friend in me)

Ben, you're always running here and there
You feel you're not wanted anywhere
If you ever look behind
And don't like what you find
There's one thing you should know
You've got a place to go
(you've got a place to go)

I used to say "I" and "me"
Now it's "us", now it's "we"
I used to say "I" and "me"
Now it's "us", now it's "we"
Ben, most people would turn you away
I don't listen to a word they say
They don't see you as I do
I wish they would try to
I'm sure they'd think again
If they had a friend like Ben
(a friend) Like Ben
(like Ben) Like Ben