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Robert Burns
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.


Robert Burns (January 25, 1759 - July 21, 1796) was a pioneer of the Romantic movement and after his death became an important source of inspiration to the founders of both liberalism and socialism. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is the best known of the poets who have written in the Scots language, although much of his writing is also in English and in a "light" Scots dialect which would have been accessible to a wider audience than simply Scottish people. At various times in his career, he wrote in English, and in these pieces, his political or civil commentary is often at its most blunt. A cultural icon in Scotland and among Scots who have relocated to other parts of the world (the Scottish diaspora), his celebration became almost a national charismatic cult during periods of the 19th and 20th centuries, and his influence has long been an influence on Scottish literature.

Burns also collected folk songs from across Scotland, often revising or adapting them. His poem (and song) Auld Lang Syne is often sung at Hogmanay (New Year), and Scots Wha Hae served for a long time as an unofficial national anthem of the country. Other poems and songs of Burns that remain well known today across the world include A Red, Red Rose, A Man's A Man for A' That, To a Louse, and To a Mouse.

Burns' Night, effectively a second national day, is celebrated on 25 January with Burns' Suppers around the world, and is still more widely observed than the official national day, Saint Andrew's Day, or the new North American celebration Tartan Day.

Biography


Robert Burns, often abbreviated to simply Burns, and also known as Rabbie Burns, Robbie Burns, Scotland's favourite son, the Ploughman Poet, the Bard of Ayrshire, and in Scotland simply as The Bard (see Bard (disambiguation)), was born in Alloway, South Ayrshire, Scotland, the son of William Burnes or Burns, a small farmer, and a man of considerable force of character and self-culture. His youth was passed in poverty, hardship, and a degree of severe manual labour which left its traces in a premature stoop and weakened constitution. He had little regular schooling, and got much of what education he had from his father, who taught his children reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, and history, and also wrote for them A Manual of Christian Belief. He also received education from a tutor, John Murdock, who opened an "adventure school" in the Alloway parish in 1763 and taught both Robert and his brother Gilbert Latin, French, and maths. With all his ability and character, however, the elder Burns was consistently unfortunate, and migrated with his large family from farm to farm without ever being able to improve his circumstances.

In 1781 Robert went to Irvine to become a flax-dresser, but, as the result of a New Year carousal of the workmen, including himself, the shop took fire and was burned to the ground. This venture accordingly came to an end. In 1783 he started composing poetry in a traditional style using the Ayrshire dialect of Lowland Scots. In 1784 his father died, and Burns with his brother Gilbert made an ineffectual struggle to keep on the farm; failing in which they removed to Mossgiel, where they maintained an uphill fight for 4 years.


Burns the Mason

Robert Burns joined as Entered Apprentice in Lodge St. David, Tarbolton on 4 July 1781. His initiation fee was 12s 6d. A visit to the Museum of Lodge Tarbolton (Kilwinning) sheds light on his Masonic associations.[1]

Burns went with Lodge St. James, and on 27 July 1784, he was elected "Depute Master".

Burns' popularity aided his rise in Freemasonry. At a meeting of Lodge St. Andrew in Edinburgh in 1787, in the presence of the Grand Master and Grand Lodge of Scotland, Burns was toasted by the Worshipful Grand Master, Most Worshipful Brother Francis Chateris.


Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish dialect

Meanwhile, his love affair with Jean Armour had passed through its first stage, and the troubles in connection therewith, combined with the want of success in farming, led him to think of going to Jamaica as bookkeeper on a plantation. From this he was dissuaded by a letter from Thomas Blacklock, and at the suggestion of his brother published his poems in the volume, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish dialect in June 1786. This edition was brought out by a local printer in Kilmarnock and contained much of his best work, including "The Twa Dogs", "The Address to the Deil", "Hallowe'en", "The Cottar's Saturday Night", "The Mouse", and "The Daisy", many of which had been written at Mossgiel. Copies of this edition are now extremely rare, and as much as US$36,000 has been paid for one.

The success of the work was immediate, the poet's name rang over all Scotland, and he was induced to go to Edinburgh to superintend the issue of a new edition. There he was received as an equal by the brilliant circle of men of letters which the city then boasted - Dugald Stewart, Robertson, Blair, etc., and was a guest at aristocratic tables, where he bore himself with unaffected dignity. Here also Scott, then a boy of 15, saw him and describes him as of "manners rustic, not clownish. His countenance ... more massive than it looks in any of the portraits ... a strong expression of shrewdness in his lineaments; the eye alone indicated the poetical character and temperament. It was large, and of a dark cast, and literally glowed when he spoke with feeling or interest." The results of this visit outside of its immediate and practical object, included some life-long friendships, among which were those with Lord Glencairn and Mrs Dunlop. The new ed. brought him £400. About this time the episode of Highland Mary occurred.

The Scots Musical Museum

In the winter of 1786 in Edinburgh he met James Johnson, a struggling music engraver / music seller, with a love of old Scots songs and a determination to preserve them. Burns shared this interest and became an enthusiastic contributor to The Scots Musical Museum. The first volume of this was published in 1787 and included three songs by Burns. He contributed 40 songs to volume 2, and would end up responsible for about a third of the 600 songs in the whole collection as well as making a considerable editorial contribution. The final volume was published in 1803.

On his return to Ayrshire he renewed his relations with Jean Armour, whom he ultimately married, took the farm of Ellisland near Dumfries, having meanwhile taken lessons in the duties of an exciseman, as a line to fall back upon should farming again prove unsuccessful. At Ellisland his society was cultivated by the local gentry. And this, together with literature and his duties in the Customs and Excise, to which he had been appointed in 1789, proved too much of a distraction to admit of success on the farm, which in 1791 he gave up.

Meanwhile he was writing at his best, and in 1790 had produced Tam O' Shanter. About this time he was offered and declined an appointment in London on the staff of the Star newspaper, and refused to become a candidate for a newly-created Chair of Agriculture in the University of Edinburgh, although influential friends offered to support his claims. After giving up his farm he removed to Dumfries.

It was at this time that, being requested to furnish words for The Melodies of Scotland, he responded by contributing over 100 songs. He made major contributions to George Thomson's A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs for the Voice as well as to James Johnson's The Scots Musical Museum. Arguably his claim to immortality chiefly rests on these volumes which placed him in the front rank of lyric poets. Burns described how he had to master singing the tune, then would compose the words: "My way is: I consider the poetic Sentiment, correspondent to my idea of the musical expression; then chuse my theme; begin one Stanza; when that is composed, which isgenerally the most difficult part of the business, I walk out, sit down now and then, look out for objects in Nature around me that are in unison or harmony with the cogitations of my fancy and workings of my bosom; humming every now and then the air with the verses I have framed. when I feel my Muse beginning to jade, 1 retire to the solitary fireside of my study, and there commit my effusions to paper; swinging, at intervals, on the hind-legs of my elbow chair, by way of calling forth my own critical strictures, as my, pen goes."

His worldly prospects were now perhaps better than they had ever been; but he was entering upon the last and darkest period of his career. He had become soured, and moreover had alienated many of his best friends by too freely expressing sympathy with the French Revolution, and the then unpopular advocates of reform at home. His health began to give way; he became prematurely old, and fell into fits of despondency; and the habits of intemperance, to which he had always been more or less addicted, grew upon him. He died on July 21, 1796. Within a short time of his death, money started pouring in from all over Scotland to support his widow and children.

His memory is celebrated by Burns clubs across the world; his birthday is an unofficial national day for Scots and those with Scottish ancestry, celebrated with Burns suppers.

Burns' 1787 epistle to Mrs Scott, Gudewife of Wanchope House, Roxburgh, is a rare example of the rhyming of the word purple - it is a common myth that there is no rhyme.

I'd be mair vauntie o' my hap,
Douce hingin' owre my curple,
Than ony ermine ever lap,
Or proud imperial purple.



Burns' Works and Influence


Burns' direct influences in the use of Scots in poetry were Allan Ramsay (1686-1758) and Robert Fergusson. Burns' poetry also drew upon a substantial familiarity and knowledge of Classical, Biblical, and English literature, as well as the Scottish Makar tradition. Burns was skilled in writing not only in the Scots language but also in the Scottish English dialect of the English language. Some of his works, such as Love and Liberty (also known as The Jolly Beggars), are written in both Scots and English for various effects.

Burns' themes included republicanism (he lived during the French Revolutionary period) and Radicalism which he expressed covertly in Scots Wha Hae, Scottish patriotism, anticlericalism, class inequalities, gender roles, commentary on the Scottish Kirk of his time, Scottish cultural identity, poverty, sexuality, and the beneficial aspects of popular socialising (carousing, Scotch whisky, folk songs, and so forth). Burns and his works were a source of inspiration to the pioneers of liberalism, socialism and the campaign for Scottish self-government, and he is still widely respected by political activists today, ironically even by conservatives and establishment figures because after his death Burns became drawn into the very fabric of Scotland's national identity. It is this, perhaps unique, ability to appeal to all strands of political opinion in the country that have led him to be widely acclaimed as the national poet.

Burns' views on these themes in many ways parallel those of William Blake, but it is believed that, although contemporaries, they were unaware of each other. Burns' works are less overtly mystical.

Burns is generally classified as a proto-Romantic poet, and he influenced William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Percy Bysshe Shelley greatly. The Edinburgh literati worked to sentimentalise Burns during his life and after his death, dismissing his education by calling him a "heaven-taught ploughman." Burns would influence later Scottish writers, especially Hugh MacDiarmid who fought to dismantle the sentimental Burns cult that had dominated Scottish literature in MacDiarmid's opinion.

Burns also worked to collect and preserve Scottish folk songs, sometimes revising, expanding, and adapting them. One of the better known of these collections is The Merry Muses of Caledonia (the title is not Burns'), a collection of bawdy lyrics that were popular in the music halls of Scotland as late as the 20th century. Many of Burns' most famous poems are songs with the music based upon older traditional songs. For example, Auld Lang Syne is set to the traditional tune Can Ye Labour Lea while A Red, Red Rose is set to the tune of Major Graham.

The genius of Burns is marked by spontaneity, directness, and sincerity, and his variety is marvellous, ranging from the tender intensity of some of his lyrics through the rollicking humour and blazing wit of Tam o' Shanter to the blistering satire of Holy Willie's Prayer and The Holy Fair. His life is a tragedy, and his character full of flaws. But he fought at tremendous odds, and as Thomas Carlyle in his great Essay says, "Granted the ship comes into harbour with shrouds and tackle damaged, the pilot is blameworthy ... but to know how blameworthy, tell us first whether his voyage has been round the Globe or only to Ramsgate and the Isle of Dogs."

See Cutty-sark for the popularity of the phrase "Weel done, Cutty-sark", a line from "Tam O' Shanter".

Honours

There are many organisations around the world named for Burns, and a number of statues and memorials. For example:

* Robert Burns Fellowship, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
* Burns Club Atlanta
* Burns national memorial on Calton Hill, Edinburgh
* statue in George Square, Glasgow, 1877 by George Edwin Ewing, reliefs by J A Ewing, cast by Cox and Son
* bronze statue near Union Terrace Gardens, Aberdeen
* statue in London
* statue of Burns, complete with plough, outside the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia
* statue in Dominion Square in Montreal
* statue on Irvine Moor, Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland
* statue in Canberra, Australia (1935)
* statue in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California, USA
* statue in Burns Square,Dumfries,Scotland
* Burns, New York is named for him.
* A BR standard class 7 steam locomotive was named after him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Burns

W. Somerset Maugham
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

William Somerset Maugham (January 25, 1874 Paris, France - December 16, 1965 Nice, France) was an English playwright, novelist, and short story writer, reputedly the highest paid author of the 1930s.

Childhood and education

Maugham was born to English parents living in France, who arranged in advance for their child's birth to occur at the British embassy in Paris, so that it would be technically true - as a legal nicety, despite geography - that he was born in Britain. His father, the embassy's solicitor, was short and rather ugly, his mother a famous beauty; unfortunately for Maugham he inherited his father's looks and height, a fact which was to prove only the first of a series of misfortunes. The loss of his adored mother in childbirth when he was eight years old was the next, and undoubtedly the most crushing, of these. Throughout his life he kept her photograph by his bedside, and as an old man he said of her death, "I shall never get over it, never!"

In 1886 his father also died, and Maugham was sent to England, a country whose language, despite his parentage, he could not even speak, to live with an uncle who was the Vicar of Whitstable, England, a man he found cold and emotionally cruel. The boy who had previously spoken without trace of any speech defect in French suddenly developed a life-long stammer. Maugham was miserable, both at the vicarage and at The King's School, Canterbury, where he was bullied because of his size and his stammer, but where he quickly developed a talent for the wounding remark, provided he could get his tongue round it.

At sixteen Maugham was allowed to travel to Germany, where he studied literature and philosophy at Heidelberg University and had his first homosexual experience. On his return to England he studied medicine in London, qualifying from St. Thomas' Hospital in 1897, while writing his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, drawing on his experiences as a medical student in the slums of the East End.


Career

Liza was daringly avant garde for the time, and displayed many of the characteristics that were to mark Maugham's later fiction and stage plays: realism, taboo-breaking, and a certain callousness, which might also be called detachment, although the usual critical phrase used to describe his work in his own lifetime was "cynical". The book enjoyed modest sales and drew the attention of critics, which was enough to convince Maugham to drop medicine and embark on the career of a writer. It was not until 1907, however, that he achieved success, with his play Lady Frederick; by the next year he had four plays running simultaneously in London, and Punch magazine published a cartoon of Shakespeare biting his fingernails nervously as he looked at the billboards.

During World War I, Maugham although famous with by then 10 plays published and produced, and 10 novels published, served in France as a member of the British Red Cross ambulance driving group. Maugham was part of the group of at least 23 well known writers including Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, and E.E. Cummings who served in this capacity during the war and were later referred to as the Literary Ambulance Drivers. During this time he met Frederick Gerald Haxton, a young San Franciscan who would become his constant companion and lover until Haxton's death in 1944.

Throughout this period Maugham continued to write. His lengthy (650 pages) novel titled Of Human Bondage, described at the time by critics as one of the most important novels of the twentieth century appeared in 1915. The book appeared to be closely autobiographical, (Maugham's stammer is transformed into Philip Carey's club foot, the vicar of Whitestable becomes the vicar of Blackstable, and Phillip Carey becomes a doctor) although Maugham himself indicated it was more invention than otherwise. However the close relationship of fictional and non-fictional characteristation in his written work became Maugham's trademark despite the requirement placed upon him to indicate that the characters in [this or that publication] are entirely imaginary.

Later in the war he served as a spy for MI6 in Russia with the mission of preventing the Russian Revolution by keeping the Mensheviks in power; Maugham subsequently claimed that if he had been able to arrive a little earlier, he could have prevented the triumph of Lenin. From this experience came a collection of short stories about a gentlemanly, sophisticated, and aloof spy, Ashenden, (1928) - the name of the hero, but also of one of Maugham's fellow-pupils at the King's School - a volume which Ian Fleming cited as an influence on his character of James Bond.

Maugham was clearly not exclusively homosexual in his relationships, having an affair with the then married Gwendoline Maud Syrie Barnardo, a daughter of orphanage founder Thomas John Barnardo and wife of American-born English pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome. In 1915 Syrie had a daughter to Maugham who was later officially named Elizabeth 'Liza' Mary Maugham (1915-1998) and Syrie was then sued for divorce by her husband Henry Wellcome. In May of 1916, following her divorce Maugham and Syrie were married. Syrie Maugham became a noted interior decorator who popularized the all-white room in the 1920s. In 1922 he dedicated his short story collection On a Chinese Screen to her. They divorced during 1927 and 1928 after a tempestuous marriage that may have been complicated by Maugham's frequent travels abroad and his relationship with Haxton, (who appears as Tony Paxton in Maugham's 1917 play, Our Betters).

Maugham had begun travelling widely from 1917. Partly this was as a result of his Russian adventure. He travelled to the more exotic corners of the colonial world. One of the first of these travels was a trip to the Pacific to research his novel The Moon and Sixpence (1919), based on the life of Paul Gauguin. On this and all subsequent journeys he was accompanied by Haxton, whom he regarded as indispensible to his success as a writer. Maugham himself was painfully shy, and Haxton's extroverted personality allowed him to gather the human material that was steadily turned into fiction. In 1928 he bought Villa Mauresque on twelve acres at Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera - it would be his home for most of the rest of his life, and one of the great literary and social salons of the 1920s and 30s. His output continued to be prodigious, producing plays, short stories, novels, essays and travel books. By 1940, when the collapse of France decreed that Maugham should leave the Mauresque and take up the life of a refugee, he was already one of the most famous writers in the English-speaking world, and one of the wealthiest.

Maugham spent most of World War II in the United States, first in Hollywood (he worked on many scripts, and was one of the first authors to make significant money from film adaptations of his books) and later in the South. While in the US, he was encouraged by the British government to make patriotic speeches to impel the US to help Britain, if not get involved in the war effort. Gerald Haxton died in 1944, and Maugham moved back to England, and then in 1946 to his villa in France, where he lived - except for his frequent and long travels - until his death. The gap left by Haxton's death was filled by Alan Searle, a young man from London's East End who, as a boy, had been well known in the homosexual circles of London high society frequented by Maugham (he had once been [[Noel Coward's boyfriend). Searle proved a devoted but perhaps not a stimulating companion - one of Maugham's friends, describing the difference between Searle and Haxton, said simply: "Gerald was champagne." His last years were marred by several quasi-scandals which can probably be set down to a progressive loss of judgement as he grew older: the worst of these was the publication of Looking Back (1962), which contained a bitter attack on the deceased Syrie which cost him many friends. In his last years Maugham adopted Searle as his son in order to ensure that he would inherit his estate, a move hotly contested by his daughter Liza and her husband, and which exposed Maugham to much public ridicule.

Achievement

Commercial success with high book sales, successful play productions and a string of film adaptations, backed by astute stock market investments, allowed Maugham to live a very comfortable life. Yet despite his triumphs, he never attracted the respect of the critics or of his peers, and his own opinion of his abilities remained low, to the extent of describing himself towards the end of his career as "in the very first row of the second-raters". He was made a Companion of Honour in 1954.


Significant works

Maugham's masterpiece is generally agreed to be Of Human Bondage, an autobiographical novel which deals with the life of Philip Carey, who, like Maugham, was orphaned and brought up by his pious uncle. Maugham's severe stutter has been replaced by Philip's clubfoot.

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

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

Influence

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

His commercial success and his careful highly polished prose style virtually assured that he would be an object of scorn to many of his fellow authors. One of very few later writers to cite his influence was Anthony Burgess, who included a complex fictional portrait of Maugham in the novel Earthly Powers. George Orwell also stated that his writing style was influenced by Maugham. The American writer Paul Theroux, in his short story collection The Consul's File, updated Maugham's colonial world in an outstation of expatriates in modern Malaysia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Somerset_Maugham

Tobe Hooper
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.


Tobe Hooper (b. January 25, 1943) is an American television and film director best known for his work in the horror film genre. His movies include Lifeforce, Poltergeist and the watershed exploitation classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Before becoming a filmmaker, Hooper, a native of Austin, Texas, spent the 1960s as a documentary cameraman. He organized a small cast who were also college teachers and students, and then he and Kim Henkel made The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. This film changed the horror film industry. Hooper based it upon the real life killings of Ed Gein, a cannibalistic killer responsible for the grisly murders of several people in the 1950s. Hooper's success with Texas Chain Saw Massacre landed him in Hollywood and it remains a horror film classic. Hooper rejoined the cast of Texas Chainsaw Massace and Kim Henkel for Eaten Alive (1976), a gory horror film with Mel Ferrer, William Finley and Marilyn Burns (who played the lead in Texas Chain Saw). The film centered around a caretaker of a motel who feeds his guests to his pet alligator. Also in the film was Robert Englund. Hooper helped raise his career and worked with him again in the future. Eaten Alive also won many awards at Horror Film Festivals. The movie was largely inspired by serial killer Joe Ball, alias "The Aligator Man".

Hooper had success with Stephen King's 1979 miniseries Salem's Lot. In 1981, Hooper directed the teen slasher film for Universal Pictures, The Funhouse; despite its success, the film was a minor disappointment. In 1982, Hooper found greater success when Steven Spielberg enlisted him to direct his production of Poltergeist. It quickly became a top ranking major motion picture.

Poltergeist was perhaps a greater success than Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Three years later Hooper signed a three year contract with Menahem Golan and Cannon Films, and directed the apocalyptic Lifeforce (1985), the remake of Invaders from Mars and the sequel to his earlier film, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 (1986). Since then, Hooper has also directed two Robert Englund films: Night Terrors (1993) and The Mangler (1995), and has directed numerous horror television sitcoms. He also directed the pilot of Freddy's Nightmares, the television spin-off of A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Since then Hooper has gone on to direct the premiere episodes of the Sci-Fi series Dark Skies and is once again working with Spielberg on the miniseries Taken.

Hooper's most recent effort is a remake of the exploitation classic The Toolbox Murders, which despite being a direct to video release has garnered very positive reviews.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobe_Hooper

Etta James
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.


Etta James (b. Jamesetta Hawkins January 25, 1938 in Los Angeles, California) is an American Blues, R&B and gospel singer.

She received her first professional vocal training at the age of 5, from James Earle Hines, musical director of the Echoes of Eden choir at St. Paul Baptist Church in Los Angeles. Her family moved to San Francisco, California in 1950, and in 1952 the trio (the Creolettes) she had formed with two of her friends came to the attention of Johnny Otis. Otis reversed the syllables of her first name to give her her stage name and began recording her. Her first record, and her first R & B hit, was her own composition, "The Wallflower (Dance with Me, Henry)," an answer song to Hank Ballard's "Work with Me, Annie." She recorded it in 1954 with the Otis band and Richard Berry, who sang the second vocal. The song was later a hit in the white market for Georgia Gibbs, re-written as "Dance with Me, Henry". She briefly recorded as Etta James & the Peaches, releasing several hits before signing to Chess Records in 1960.

James released several duets with Harvey Fuqua (of The Moonglows) that became major R&B hits, as well as her classic "At Last". However, her mainstream success was limited. In 1967, James recorded "Tell Mama" and "I'd Rather Go Blind", with "At Last" perhaps her most enduring songs, in Muscle Shoals. Her singing is characterized by accomplished vocal technique and strong jazz influences. She won the Grammy for best jazz vocal in 1994 for her CD Mystery Lady, a collection of songs associated with Billie Holliday, and in 2004 won the Grammy for best contemporary blues album with Let's Roll. In 2003 she received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

To a younger generation, Etta is known for the Muddy Waters song "I Just Wanna Make Love To You", used in television commercials for Coca-Cola and for John Smith's bitter. The Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry and Foghat have also recorded the song.

Drug-related and romantic problems interfered with her career, but James managed to maintain a career throughout the latter half of the 20th century and was inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Blues Hall of Fame. Her pioneering contribution to the genre has been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.

In 2003 she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etta_James

Feed the Birds

Performed by: Mary Poppins (Julie Andrews)
Written by: Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman

Early each day to the steps of Saint Paul's
The little old bird woman comes.
In her own special way to the people she calls,
"Come, buy my bags full of crumbs.

Come feed the little birds, show them you care
And you'll be glad if you do.
Their young ones are hungry,
Their nests are so bare;
All it takes is tuppence from you."

Feed the birds, tuppence a bag,
Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag.
"Feed the birds," that's what she cries,
While overhead, her birds fill the skies.

All around the cathedral the saints and apostles
Look down as she sells her wares.
Although you can't see it, you know they are smiling
Each time someone shows that he cares.

Though her words are simple and few,
Listen, listen, she's calling to you:
"Feed the birds, tuppence a bag,
Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag."

Hey, Bob. It's a little early for cutty sark, but I am simply waiting to see if all the bio's are through before I comment.

Incidentally, thanks for the bird lady song; it does tend to make our little radio format relevant.

I suspect that McTag knows Carl Peterson, so we will also wait to see if he favors us with a song or two.

Of course, folks, we all know Burns and Maugham, right?

Incidentally, cutty sark is not only a scotch, it has several connotations.

Well, folks, here's a little humor sent to me by my Irish friend:

Special Bulletin from the Pentagon
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Pentagon announced today the formation of a new 500-man elite
fighting unit called the United States Redneck Special Forces.

These Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri,
Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas boys will be dropped off into Iraq and
have been given only the following facts about terrorists:

1. The season opened today.
2. There is no limit.
3. They taste just like chicken.
4. They don't like beer, pickups, country music or Jesus.
5. They are DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE for the death of Dale Earnhardt.

The Pentagon expects the problem in Iraq to be over by Friday.

Waiting for the Carl Perterson song, I might add here a tune from a different Carl P ... erkins:





Oh, let that jukebox keep on playin'
Let that record roll around
Let my baby keep on sayin'
She's a lonesome gal in town
Let 'er know that I'll be waitin'
When my lonely days are through
Let the jukebox keep on playin'
Till I'm holdin' you

Oh, let those honky-tonkin' angels
Be the girls I never loved
Let 'em know its you I'm cravin'
It's you I'm dreamin' of
Let 'em know that I'll be waitin'
When my lonely days are through
let the jukebox keep on playin'
Till I'm holdin' you

Oh, let that jukebox keep on playin'
Let that record roll around
Let my baby keep on sayin'
She's a lonesome gal in town
Let 'er know that I'll be waitin'
When my lonely days are through
Let the jukebox keep on playin'
Till I'm holdin' you

I just don't feel too enthused about posting a picture of any of today's birthday celebrities, but I do wish to take a moment out in observance of:

Magnus Manske Day

Happy Magnus Manske Day everyone.

Well, listeners, there's our Walter with Carl Perkins. Thanks, Germany for the lyrics. Once again, I will have to check him out.

UhOh, Raggedy. You'll have to explain about Magnus Manske Day. Please don't send Miss Letty to the archives. <smile>

Well, we're awaiting the voice of the turtle, folks. Anyone know to what that alludes?

My pleasure, Letty. A day to remember:

Wikipedia:Magnus Manske Day
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Jump to: navigation, search
Magnus Manske Day is January 25, which commemorates the day in 2002 when Wikipedia switched to the mediawiki software. This is an important day to Wikipedia. Jimbo Wales proclaimed:

I hereby decree, in my usual authoritarian and bossy manner, that today shall forever be known as Magnus Manske Day. Wikipedians of the distant future will marvel at the day when the new software era dawned upon us. Tonight at dinner, every Wikipedian should say a toast to Magnus and his many inventions.


And I know about the "voice of the turtle" and the little foxes and sexy Solomon, too.

Raggedy, you are such a delight. Thanks, PA. and you are right about sexy Solomon. He and the queen of Sheba really got it on. Ever wonder why that book hasn't been banned by the Bush machine?

Okay, so here's a picture of Carl Perkins:



Not only is Carl a very civic minded person, he has an exchange site for abused children, folks

If there hadn't been Elvis (and still is, of course :wink: ) Perkins would have been the Nº1, I'm sure.

You may be right, Walter, but I don't think that I have ever heard Perkins sing, more's the pity.

My neice always like this one by Elvis:





Lord Almighty I feel my temp'rature rising, Mmm
Higher and higher it's burning through to my soul
Girl, girl, girl, girl, you've gone and set me on fire, Mmm
My brain is flamin' I don't know which way to go, yeh
Your kisses lift me higher like the sweet song of a choir
You light my morning sky with burning love, Mmm

Ooh-hoo-hoo, I feel my temp'rature rising
Help me I'm flamin', I must be a hundred and nine
Burnin', burnin', burnin' and nothing can cool me, yeh
I just might turn to smoke but I feel fine
'Cos your kisses lift me higher like the sweet song of a choir
And you light my morning sky with burning love

(with burning love)

It's comin' closer, the flames are now lickin' my body
Won't you help me I feel like I'm slippin' away
It's hard to breathe, my chest is a heavin', mmm
Lord have mercy I'm burnin' a hole where I lay, yeh
Your kisses lift me higher like the sweet song of a choir
You light my morning sky with burning love
With burning love (hunka hunka burning love Ha)

I'm just a hunka hunka burning love (Ha)
Just a hunka hunka burnin' love (Ha) Ha
Just a hunka hunka burnin' love (Ha)
A hunka hunka burnin' love (Ha) Ha
A hunka hunka burnin' love (Ha)
I'm just a hunka hunka burnin' love (Ha) Ha
A hunka hunka burnin' love (Ha)
I'm just a hunka hunka burnin' love

Once more with passion:


The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills...My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle (literally, turtledove) is heard in our land; The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs.

From Elvis to Solomon. God how I love it.

Burns Night, thank you for remembering it, folks, the anniversary of the Scottish Bard.

"The rank is but the guinea stamp
The man's the gowd, for a' that

There will be a lot of whisky shifted this evening, at Burns Suppers throughout the english-speaking world.
And a lot of haggis too, it goes without saying.

"My love is like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June
Oh, my love is like a melodie
That's sweetly played in tune"

"...and cried oot "Weel done, Cutty Sark!"
-and in an instant all was dark.
As bees bizz oot wi' angry fyke...."

Well, our McTag is back again. Hey, Brit. I do know that a cutty sark is some type short garment as well as a tall ship with masts. Am I right?

Something perhaps that an auld Scottish sailor would wear on this:

and here is a little patois from someone in McTag's parish:

Reggae Beat

By Suzalee Blair
Posted Tuesday, March 30, 2004

In the mind of a Rasta man,
There is always the sound of a Reggae Beat,
Beating out the pain and bondage they meet.
In the mind of a Rasta man is a Reggae Beat.

In the mind of a bald head,
There is the sound of a Reggae Beat,
Beating out the pain and suffering they meet.
In the mind of a bald head is a Reggae Beat.