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Donald Charles Frederick (Don) Messer (May 9, 1909 - March 26, 1973) was a Canadian musician and defining icon of folk music during the 1960s.

Born in Tweedside, New Brunswick, Messer began playing the violin at age five, learning fiddle tunes with Irish and Scottish influences. As a young boy, Messer would play concerts in the local area and later throughout southwestern New Brunswick.
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In 1956, Messer's music group began to make regular television appearances on CBHT-TV in Halifax, Nova Scotia. CBC television began a summer series called The Don Messer Show on August 7, 1959, which continued into the fall as Don Messer's Jubilee, produced out of Halifax. Continuing as Don Messer's Jubilee throughout the 1960s, the show won a wide audience and reportedly became the second-most watched television show in Canada during the decade (next to Hockey Night in Canada).

Anne Sofie von Otter (born 9 May 1955) is a Swedish mezzo-soprano.

Von Otter was born in Stockholm, Sweden. Her father was the diplomat Göran von Otter and she grew up in Bonn, London and Stockholm. After studying in Stockholm and Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, she was engaged by the Basel Opera, where she made her operatic début in 1983 as Alcina in Haydn's Orlando paladino. She made her Royal Opera House, Covent Garden début in 1985 and her La Scala debut in 1987. Her Metropolitan Opera début was in 1988 as Cherubino.[1]

Fred Astaire (born Frederick Austerlitz;[1] May 10, 1899 – June 22, 1987) was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer, musician and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute. He is particularly associated with Ginger Rogers, with whom he made ten films.

Thomas Andrew Dorsey (July 1, 1899 – January 23, 1993) was known as "the father of black gospel music" and was at one time so closely associated with the field that songs written in the new style were sometimes known as "dorseys."[2] Earlier in his life he was a leading blues pianist known as Georgia Tom.

As formulated by Dorsey, gospel music combines Christian praise with the rhythms of jazz and the blues. His conception also deviates from what had been, to that time, standard hymnal practice by referring explicitly to the self, and the self's relation to faith and God, rather than the individual subsumed into the group via belief.

Dorsey, who was born in Villa Rica, Georgia, was the music director at Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago from 1932 until the late 1970s. His best known composition, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord", was performed by Mahalia Jackson and was a favorite of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.. Another composition, "Peace in the Valley", was a hit for Red Foley in 1951 and has been performed by dozens of other artists, including Queen of Gospel Albertina Walker, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash. Dorsey died in Chicago, aged 93.

"Mother" Maybelle Carter (May 10, 1909 – October 23, 1978) was an American country musician. She is best known as a member of the historic Carter Family act in the 1920s and 1930s and also as a member of Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters.[

Irving Berlin (May 11, 1888 – September 22, 1989) was an American composer and lyricist of Belarusian Jewish origin (born near Mogilev[1][2] in Russian Empire, nowadays Belarus), widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in American history. He published his first song, "Marie from Sunny Italy", in 1907 and had his first major international hit, "Alexander's Ragtime Band" in 1911