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August 12, 2022
A Great Day in Harlem, the iconic photograph by Art Kane, was taken on this day in 1958 — 64 years ago
A Great Day in Harlem, the iconic photograph by Art Kane, was taken on this day in 1958 — 64 years ago.
The black and white group portrait of 57 notable jazz musicians was photographed in front of a Brownstone in Harlem, New York City. The photo has remained an important object in the study of the history of jazz.
Kane, a freelance photographer working for Esquire magazine, took the picture around 10 a.m. on August 12 in the summer of 1958. The musicians had gathered at 17 East 126th Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues in Harlem.
Esquire published the photo in its January, 1959 issue. Kane calls it "the greatest picture of that era of musicians ever taken."
Jean Bach, a radio producer of New York, recounted the story behind it in her 1994 documentary film, A Great Day in Harlem. The film was nominated in 1995 for an Academy Award for Documentary Feature.
As of now, only two of the 57 musicians who participated are still living. They are Benny Golson and Sonny Rollins.
Red Allen, Buster Bailey, Count Basie, Emmett Berry, Art Blakey, Lawrence Brown, Scoville Browne, Buck Clayton, Bill Crump, Vic Dickenson, Roy Eldridge, Art Farmer, Bud Freeman, Dizzy Gillespie, Tyree Glenn, Benny Golson*, Sonny Greer, Johnny Griffin, Gigi Gryce, Coleman Hawkins, J.C. Heard, Jay C. Higginbotham, Milt Hinton, Chubby Jackson, Hilton Jefferson, Osie Johnson, Hank Jones, Jo Jones, Jimmy Jones, Taft Jordan, Max Kaminsky, Gene Krupa, Eddie Locke, Marian McPartland, Charles Mingus, Miff Mole, Thelonious Monk, Gerry Mulligan, Oscar Pettiford, Rudy Powell, Luckey Roberts, Sonny Rollins*, Jimmy Rushing, Pee Wee Russell, Sahib Shihab, Horace Silver, Zutty Singleton, Stuff Smith, Rex Stewart, Maxine Sullivan, Joe Thomas, Wilbur Ware, Dickie Wells, George Wettling, Ernie Wilkins, Mary Lou Williams and Lester Young
(*) denotes still living people
Buck Owens, creator of the Bakersfield sound, was born 93 years ago today
Buck Owens, creator of the Bakersfield sound, was born 93 years ago today.
A singer and guitarist, Owens had 21 #1 hits on the country music charts with his band, the Buckaroos. They pioneered what came to be called the Bakersfield sound — a reference to Bakersfield, California, the city Owens called home and from which he drew inspiration for what he preferred to call American music.
While Owens originally used fiddle and retained pedal steel guitar into the 1970s, his sound on records and onstage was always more stripped-down and elemental, incorporating elements of rock and roll.
His signature style was based on simple story lines, infectious choruses, a twangy electric guitar, an insistent rhythm supplied by a drum track placed forward in the mix and high two-part harmonies featuring Owens and his guitarist, Don Rich.
In the early 1960s, the countrypolitan sound was popular, with smooth, string-laden, pop-influenced styles used by Eddy Arnold, Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline. Owens went against the trend, using a honky-tonk hillbilly feel, mixed idiosyncratically with the Mexican polkas he had heard on border radio stations while growing up.
Beginning in 1969, Owens co-hosted the TV series, Hee Haw, with Roy Clark. He left the cast in 1986. In 1974, the accidental death of Rich, his best friend, devastated him for years and abruptly halted his career until he performed with Dwight Yoakam in 1988.
Owens died at age 76 of a heart attack on March 25, 2006 shortly after performing at his Crystal Palace restaurant, club and museum in Bakersfield.
Owens is a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Jimmy Norman was born 85 years ago today
Jimmy Norman after an appearance at Penang with Jonny Rosch and Friends on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, October, 2003
Photo by Frank Beacham
Jimmy Norman was born 85 years ago today.
Norman was a rhythm and blues and jazz musician and a songwriter. In his early career, Norman had a charting single of his own, "I Don't Love You No More (I Don't Care About You)," as well as performing session work with Jimi Hendrix, but he is better known as a lyricist and songwriter.
He wrote the expanded lyrics of the song "Time Is on My Side," which became a hit for The Rolling Stones, and later in 1985 re-recorded and produced by Stephen Vanderbilt featuring "St. Tropez" as the A side of a 45 released on the album "Home" throughout Europe.
Norman composed a number of songs performed by well-known musicians including Johnny Nash and Bob Marley.
In 1969, he became involved with The Coasters, first as a producer and then as a touring member. He toured with the group for 30 years. He was also recording independently, releasing a solo album in 1998, the same year poor health forced him to retire from performance.
Like many other musicians of his time, he was not financially prepared for retirement or heavy medical bills, and with few royalties for his writing soon found himself in economic crisis.
With the assistance of the charitable organization, Jazz Foundation of America, Norman regained his feet and resumed performing, releasing his first wide distribution album in 2004, Little Pieces. He performed in the Manhattan area until shortly before his death.
In July, 2002, Norman's rare tape of his jam session with Marley was located in his apartment and, with the help of Frank Beacham, placed on auction, retrieving considerably above its estimated value when auctioned at $26,290.
During a housekeeping session, Norman had thrown away a garbage bag full of old notebooks containing his song lyrics.
Producer Kerryn Tolhurst, with the aid of Frank Beacham, recorded Norman performing the songs on a tape recorder in his apartment, taking the tapes into the studio later to add parts by other musicians.
Judy Collins, whose drummer, Tony Beard, contributed to the project, released the resultant album under her own Wildflower label in 2004. The album, Little Pieces, is the first recording Norman ever released with wide distribution.
In 2006, Little Pieces won in The 5th Annual Independent Music Awards for Best Blues Album.
Norman died on November 8, 2011, in New York City after a long illness.
Here, Frank Beacham interviewed Jimmy during a recording session about his favorite songs
Mark Knopfler is 73 years old today
Mark Knopfler is 73 years old today.
Knopfler is a British guitarist, singer, songwriter, record producer and film score composer. He is best known as the lead guitarist, vocalist and songwriter for the British rock band, Dire Straits, which he co-founded in 1977.
After Dire Straits disbanded in 1995, Knopfler went on to record and produce several solo albums, including Golden Heart (1996), Sailing to Philadelphia (2000) and Get Lucky (2009), Privateering (2012) and Tracker (2015).
He has composed and produced film scores, including Local Hero (1983), Cal (1984) and The Princess Bride (1987).
In addition to his work with Dire Straits and as a solo artist and composer, Knopfler has recorded and performed with many prominent musical artists. These include Bob Dylan, Phil Lynott, Chet Atkins, The Chieftains, Eric Clapton, Emmylou Harris, Jools Holland, Steely Dan, Sonny Landreth and Van Morrison.
Knopfler has also produced albums for Dylan, Tina Turner and Randy Newman. He is one of the most respected fingerstyle guitarists of the modern rock era. Knopfler and Dire Straits have sold in excess of 120 million albums to date.
Knopfler holds three honorary doctorate degrees in music from universities in the United Kingdom.
Pat Metheny, jazz guitarist and composer, is 68 years old today
Pat Metheny, jazz guitarist and composer, is 68 years old today.
As the leader of the Pat Metheny Group, he is also involved in duets, solo works and other side projects. His style incorporates elements of progressive and contemporary jazz, post-bop, latin jazz and jazz fusion.
Metheny is the brother of jazz flugelhornist and journalist, Mike Metheny. He has been touring for more than 30 years — playing between 120 and 240 concerts a year.
His tone, which has evolved over the years, involves using the natural full-frequency response of his hollow-body guitar, combined with high-midrange settings on his amplifier to create a smooth, sustaining lead sound that is virtually devoid of piercing treble yet is able to cut through a dense mix.
By using digital signal processing that involves digital delay/chorus and reverb, Metheny has created a big rich, and resonant instrumental voice.
In 2009, 2001 and 2011, Metheny was voted "Guitarist of the Year" in the DownBeat Magazine's Readers Poll.
Here, Metheny performs Carly Simon’s “That’s The Way I Always Heard It Should Be”
Today, Porter Wagoner would be 95 years old
It was in the 1960s, as a teenager attending the Anderson County Fair in South Carolina, that I saw Porter Wagoner introduce his new “girl singer,” Dolly Parton.
Let’s just say for a Southern kid, it was a day I will never forget.
I grew up around Wagoner, who actually rode in the Christmas parade in my tiny hometown of Honea Path. He was always a flashy character, wearing Nudie and Manuel suits with his big blond pompadour.
Today, Porter Wagoner would be 95 years old. Known as Mr. Grand Ole Opry, Wagoner charted 81 singles from 1954–1983 and was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Born in West Plains, Missouri, Wagoner’s first band, The Blue Ridge Boys, performed on radio station KWPM-AM from a butcher shop in his native West Plains where Wagoner cut meat. In 1951, he was hired by Si Siman as a performer on KWTO-AM in Springfield, Missouri. This led to a contract with RCA Victor.
With lagging sales, Wagoner and his trio played schoolhouses for the gate proceeds. In 1953, his song "Trademark" became a hit for Carl Smith, followed by a few hits of his own on RCA. Starting in 1955, he was a featured performer on ABC-TV's Ozark Jubilee in Springfield, Missouri.
He often appeared on the show as part of the Porter Wagoner Trio with Don Warden and Speedy Haworth. Warden, on steel guitar, became Wagoner's long-time business manager. In 1957, Wagoner and Warden moved to Nashville, Tennessee, joining the Grand Ole Opry.
Like many of his contemporaries in country music, Wagoner toured and performed outdoors for fans at American Legion houses in rural towns. Fans sat on wooden benches facing what was often a makeshift stage, just as I did when I first saw Dolly Parton.
Wagoner would mingle with the audience during performance breaks and usually remembered the names of the towns he visited. He could easily have been a politician.
Wagoner's 81 charted records include "A Satisfied Mind" (#1, 1955), “Misery Loves Company” (#1, 1962), “I've Enjoyed as Much of This as I Can Stand” (#7, 1962–1963), “Sorrow on the Rocks” (#5, 1964), “Green, Green Grass of Home” (#4, 1965), “Skid Row Joe” (#3, 1965–1966), “The Cold Hard Facts of Life” (#2, 1967) and “The Carroll County Accident” (#2, 1968–1969).
Among his hit duets with Dolly Parton were a cover of Tom Paxton's "The Last Thing on My Mind" (1967), "We'll Get Ahead Someday" (1968), "Just Someone I Used to Know" (1969), "Better Move it on Home" (1971), "The Right Combination" (1972), "Please Don't Stop Loving Me" (#1, 1974) and "Making Plans" (#2, 1980).
His syndicated television program, The Porter Wagoner Show, aired from 1960 to 1981. There were 686 30-minute episodes taped; the first 104 (1960–66) in black-and-white and the remainder (1966–81) in color.
At its peak, his show was featured in over 100 markets, with an average viewership of over three million. Reruns of the program air on the rural cable network RFD-TV and its sister channel in the UK Rural TV.
Though Parton's departure from Wagoner caused some animosity on both sides, the two reconciled in the late 1980s and appeared together a number of times in the following years. Parton inducted Wagoner into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2002.
Until his death, Wagoner appeared regularly on the Grand Ole Opry and toured actively. He died from lung cancer in Nashville on October 28, 2007 at age 80.
Dolly Parton performed a concert at her Tennessee theme park, Dollywood, in his memory after his death.
Here is Porter Wagoner with Dolly Parton on his TV show, 1973
Sid Bernstein was born 104 years ago today
Sid Berstein and Frank Beacham
Sid Bernstein was born 104 years ago today.
Bernstein was a music producer and promoter who changed the American music scene in the 1960s by bringing The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Herman's Hermits, The Moody Blues and The Kinks to America. He was the first impresario to organize rock concerts at sports stadiums.
Born in New York City, Bernstein was adopted by a Russian Jewish family. He studied journalism at Columbia University before working in a ballroom and joining the U.S. Army in 1943. During World War II, he was stationed in Britain and also served in France with the 602nd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Gun Battalion of the United States Army.
After the end of the war, he returned to New York and became the manager of mambo musician, Esy Morales, as well as acting as a booking agent. He started work for the General Artists Corporation (GAC), and by the early 1960s was working as a booking agent for pop stars such as Dion and Chubby Checker.
Bernstein helped to start the British Invasion by first bringing The Beatles over to the United States from Britain. An Anglophile, he contacted Brian Epstein in early 1963 after having read about the group in British newspapers, and, after persuading Epstein that they could be successful in the U.S., he booked Carnegie Hall for their first appearance without informing the venue of their style of music.
In late December, 1963, the unknown Beatles were introduced to the Tidewater area of Virginia. Almost every other song played by the area’s DJs were Beatle records, accompanied by giveaways of shirts, etc. The following month in very early January, 1964, the same phenomenon occurred, as the Beatles were introduced to the New York City area complemented by all sorts of contests and gifts.
They played at Carnegie Hall on February 12, 1964, after their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Bernstein also booked them at Shea Stadium, a concert that Bernstein described as "inaudible" due to the crowd’s loud cheering and the inadequate sound system.
After the group retired from touring and later split up, Bernstein made many attempts to persuade them to re-form, at one point taking out full-page newspaper articles asking them to perform together for charity.
During the Beatles Shea concert, Bernstein had the phrase "The Rascals are coming!" displayed on the Shea Stadium scoreboard. "I had met the Rascals in the summer of '65 though Billy Smith (Amato) in Westhampton Long Island; I put their name up on the scoreboard (at Shea) - 'The Rascals are coming! The Rascals are coming!' A lot of people who hadn't seen pictures of them thought they were a black group. I sensed something big about them."
He worked with the Rascals for five years, helping along their rise from obscurity, changing their name from "The Rascals" to "The Young Rascals" in an attempt to avoid controversy because of a similar named group.
Bernstein also brought British bands including The Rolling Stones, Herman's Hermits, The Moody Blues and The Kinks to America. He also organized concerts for Tony Bennett, Ray Charles, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Jimi Hendrix, Laura Nyro, Laura Branigan, Melanie and Sly & the Family Stone.
James Brown said that Bernstein "was in the forefront of race relations" by booking African-American musicians during the 1960s.
In 1964, he brought many Israeli singers to the United States for their first major concerts, among them Shoshana Damari, Shaike Ophir and Yaffa Yarkoni, who appeared at Carnegie Hall a year after the Beatles. He was the first to stage a rock show at Madison Square Garden.
In his later years, a Bernstein favorite was David Ippolito, that guitar man in Central Park. Bernstein is shown with Ippolito.
Bernstein died on August 21, 2013 in Manhattan at age 95.
William Goldman, novelist, playwright and screenwriter, was born 91 years old today
William Goldman, novelist, playwright and screenwriter, was born 91 years old today.
In his book, Adventures in the Screen Trade, Goldman summed up the entertainment industry in the memorable opening sentence of the book, "Nobody knows anything."
Growing up in a Jewish family in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Goldman obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from Oberlin College in 1952 and a Master of Arts degree from Columbia University in 1956.
He and his brother James, the playwright, shared an apartment with their friend, John Kander (also Oberlin and Columbia MA), and helped out Kander, a composer, by writing the libretto for his dissertation.
Kander became the composer of Cabaret, Chicago and a dozen other famous musicals. All three later won separate Academy Awards. Goldman lives in a penthouse apartment in New York City. His brother, James Goldman, who died in 1998, was a playwright and screenwriter.
Goldman began writing screenplays in his 30s. He researched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for eight years, and used Harry Longbaugh (a variant spelling of the Sundance Kid's real name) as his pseudonym for No Way to Treat a Lady.
After deciding he did not want to write a cowboy novel, he turned the story into his first original screenplay and sold it for a record $400,000 in the late 1960s. Goldman felt that the script's potential, and the eight years of research involved in writing it, justified the fee.
He went on to use several of his novels as the foundation for his screenplays, such as The Princess Bride. His book, No Way to Treat a Lady, was made into a film in 1968, but Goldman did not write the adaptation, which varied from the book.
Goldman wrote the famous line "Follow the money" for the screenplay of All the President's Men. While the line is often attributed to Deep Throat, it is not found in Bob Woodward’s notes nor in Woodward and Carl Bernstein's book or articles.
He was the original screenwriter for the film version of Tom Wolfe's novel, The Right Stuff. He wrote the screenplay for Rob Reiner's 1990 adaptation of Stephen King's novel, Misery, considered "one of [King's] least adaptable novels.” The movie performed well with critics and at the box office, and earned Kathy Bates an Academy Award.
Among the other scripts Goldman wrote are The Stepford Wives (1975), Marathon Man (1976), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Chaplin (1992), Maverick (1994) and Absolute Power (1997).
In the 1980s, Goldman wrote a series of memoirs looking at his professional life on Broadway and in Hollywood. These have become classic reading for students of filmmaking.
Goldman died on Nov. 16, 2018 due to complications from colon cancer and pneumonia.
August 11, 2022
Charlie Sexton is 54 years old today
Charlie Sexton plays with Bob Dylan at the United Palace Theatre, New York City, 2009
Photo by Frank Beacham
Charlie Sexton is 54 years old today.
Sexton is a guitarist, singer and songwriter best known for the 1985 hit, "Beat's So Lonely," and as the guitarist for Bob Dylan's backing band from 1999 to 2002, 2009 to 2012 and from 2013 to present.
His style of playing has varied and he has been associated with artists in the blues, folk, rock and punk genres.
Sexton's mother was 16 years old when she gave birth to him in San Antonio. When he was four, he and his mother moved to Austin, where clubs such as the Armadillo World Headquarters, Soap Creek Saloon and more notably the Split Rail and Antone's Blues Club later exposed him to popular music.
By the early 1980s, while Charlie and his brother, Will, were still young boys, they were both taught how to play guitar by the local Austin legend, W. C. Clark, known as the "Godfather of Austin Blues." With the help of Joe Ely and other local musicians such as Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan, Sexton developed his talents as a musician.
In 1983, Sexton (under the name "Guitar Charles Sexton") appeared on a five-song EP by the group, Maxwell (a.k.a. the Eager Beaver Boys). Entitled Juvenile Junk, the EP's credits list the following musicians: Maxwell (lead vocals), Charles Sexton (guitars, backup vocals), Alex Buttersworth Napier (bass, backup vocals, maracas) and Gary Muddkatt Smith (drums, backup vocals).
Song titles are "Straight As An Arrow," "Don't Cha Know," "Anna Lou," "Back To School Blues" and "Oh Baby Show." All five songs appear on side one (with side two being empty dead space).
Old album jackets by groups such as the Flock were turned inside-out and used in the making of the EP's homemade covers. The front side is simply a pasted-on sheet of lined tablet paper with "Maxwell" and "Juvenile Junk" written in crayon. The back side is a pasted-on blue sheet with credits and photos. Juvenile Junk is one of the rarest and most sought after items in Sexton's vinyl discography.
In 1985, Sexton released his debut full-length album, Pictures for Pleasure. Recorded in Los Angeles when he was 16 years old, it yielded the Top 20 hit single, "Beat's So Lonely."
In 1987, Sexton was an occasional opening act for David Bowie on his Glass Spider Tour. He appears on the Glass Spider home video playing guitar on Iggy Pop's "I Wanna Be Your Dog" and the Velvet Underground's White Light/White Heat.
While he was still in his late teens, Sexton's skills as a guitar player were in great demand, and he became a popular session player, recording with artists such as Ronnie Wood, Keith Richards, Don Henley, Jimmy Barnes and Bob Dylan. He eventually followed up his debut with the self-titled album, Charlie Sexton, recorded at the age of twenty.
In 1988, Sexton worked for a time with Will Sexton, his brother. The band, Will and the Kill, released a 38-minute self-titled album featuring both Sexton and Jimmie Vaughan on tracks. The album was recorded at the Fire Station Studio and produced by Ely and released via MCA Records.
Sexton later contributed songs to various motion picture soundtracks, including True Romance and Air America, and made a cameo fronting a bar band in Thelma & Louise.
In 1992, Sexton, along with Doyle Bramhall II (son of Stevie Ray Vaughan's writing partner, Doyle Bramhall), Tommy Shannon and Chris "Whipper" Layton (both from Double Trouble, Stevie Ray Vaughan's famed rhythm section) formed the Arc Angels. The blues/rock band recorded and released a self-titled album on Geffen Records that same year.
The Steven Van Zandt-produced disc was well received by fans and critics alike. However, due to internal strife, including lack of communication (all members involved) and drug abuse (Bramhall), the band broke up in less than three years.
In 1999, Sexton was hired by Bob Dylan to replace Bucky Baxter. Sexton had previously played with Dylan during a pair of Austin concerts in 1996 and on some demos recorded in the fall of 1983. Sexton's residency with Dylan from 1999–2002 brought him great exposure, with many critics singling out the interplay between him and Larry Campbell, who was also a guitarist in Dylan's backing band.
Hailed as one of Dylan's best bands, the group recorded a number of studio recordings, including Things Have Changed (from the 2000 film, Wonder Boys) and 2001's critically acclaimed album, Love and Theft. Sexton also performed and appeared in 2003's Masked & Anonymous.
In October, 2009, Sexton rejoined Dylan's touring band, replacing Denny Freeman. He continues as a member of Dylan’s band today.
Here, Sexton performs “Beat’s So Lonely”
Charlie Sexton at home with his James Trussart SteelMaster and SteelTop guitars
James Trussart, the maker of Sexton’s guitars, is a musician-turned-luthier. The Parisian native began his career as a fiddler, accompanying Cajun singer-songwriter Zachary Richard in the late '70s, before turning his attention to crafting violins and later guitars in 1980.
From his current Southern California home workshop, Trussart crafts custom steel-bodied guitars, basses and violins reminiscent of shiny chrome resonator instruments and rusty, weathered or fossilized discarded machinery.
Influential artists own his guitars, including Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, Mike Japper, Paul Simon, Eric Clapton, Billy Gibbons, Joe Walsh, Jack White, Daniel Lanois, Marc Ribot, Peter Stroud (Sheryl Crow), Rich Robinson (Black Crowes), Sonny Landreth, Joe Perry, Tom Morello, Billy Corgan and The Roots.
American Graffiti, George Lucas’s coming of age film, opened on this day in 1973 — 49 years ago
American Graffiti, George Lucas’s coming of age film, opened on this day in 1973 — 49 years ago.
The film starred Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Harrison Ford, Charles Martin Smith, Cindy Williams, Candy Clark and Mackenzie Phillips.
Set in 1962 Modesto, California, American Graffiti is a study of the cruising and rock and roll cultures popular among the post–World War II baby boom generation.
Roger Ebert called it “not only a great movie but a brilliant work of historical fiction; no sociological treatise could duplicate the movie’s success in remembering exactly how it was to be alive at that cultural instant.”
The genesis of American Graffiti was in Lucas's own teenage years in early 1960s Modesto. He was unsuccessful in pitching the concept to financiers and distributors but finally found favor at Universal Pictures after United Artists, 20th Century Fox, Columbia Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Paramount Pictures turned him down.
Filming was initially set to take place in San Rafael, California, but the production crew was denied permission to shoot beyond a second day. As a result, most filming for American Graffiti was done in Petaluma.
American Graffiti was released to universal critical acclaim and financial success, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Produced on a $775,000 budget, the film has turned out to be one of the most profitable movies of all time.
In 1995, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Alex Haley was born 101 years ago today
Alex Haley was born 101 years ago today.
Haley was the author of the 1976 book, Roots: The Saga of an American Family, and the co-author of, The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Born in Ithaca, New York, Haley's father was Simon Haley, a professor of agriculture at Alabama A&M University, and his mother was Bertha George Haley. The younger Haley always spoke proudly of his father and the obstacles of racism he had overcome.
Like his father, Alex Haley was enrolled at Alcorn State University at age 15, and a year later, enrolled at Elizabeth City State College in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. The following year he returned to his father and stepmother to inform them of his withdrawal from college.
His father felt that Alex needed discipline and growth and convinced his son to enlist in the military when he turned 18. On May 24, 1939, Alex Haley began a 20-year career with the Coast Guard. He enlisted as a mess attendant and later became advanced to the rate of petty officer third-class in the rating of steward, one of the few ratings open to African Americans at that time.
It was during his service in the Pacific theater of operations that Haley taught himself the craft of writing stories. It is said that during his enlistment he was often paid by other sailors to write love letters to their girlfriends. He said that the greatest enemy he and his crew faced during their long voyages was not the Japanese forces, but boredom.
After World War II, Haley was able to petition the U.S. Coast Guard to allow him to transfer into the field of journalism, and by 1949 he had become a petty officer first class in the rating of journalist. He later advanced to chief petty officer and held this grade until his retirement from the Coast Guard in 1959.
He was the first Chief Journalist in the Coast Guard, the rating having been expressly created for him in recognition of his literary ability.
After retiring from the U.S. Coast Guard, Haley began his writing career, and eventually became a senior editor for Reader's Digest. He conducted the first interview for Playboy magazine with Miles Davis, appearing in the September, 1962 issue.
In the interview, Davis candidly spoke about his thoughts and feelings on racism, and it was that interview which set the tone for what became a significant feature of the magazine. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Playboy Interview with Haley was the longest he ever granted to any publication.
Throughout the 1960s, Haley was responsible for some of the magazine's most notable interviews, including an interview with American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell, who agreed to meet with Haley only after Haley, in a phone conversation, assured him that he was not Jewish.
Haley remained calm and professional during the interview, even though Rockwell kept a handgun on the table throughout it. The interview was recreated in Roots: The Next Generations, with James Earl Jones as Haley and Marlon Brando as Rockwell.
Haley also interviewed Muhammad Ali, who spoke about changing his name from Cassius Clay. Other interviews include Jack Ruby's defense attorney, Melvin Belli, Sammy Davis, Jr., Jim Brown, Johnny Carson and Quincy Jones.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X, published in 1965, was Haley's first book. It describes the trajectory of Malcolm X's life from street criminal to national spokesman for the Nation of Islam to his conversion to Sunni Islam.
It also outlines Malcolm X's philosophy of black pride, black nationalism and pan-Africanism. Haley wrote an epilogue to the book summarizing the end of Malcolm X's life, including his assassination in New York's Audubon Ballroom.
Haley ghostwrote, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, based on more than 50 in-depth interviews he conducted with Malcolm X between 1963 and Malcolm X's February, 1965 assassination. The two men first met in 1960 when Haley wrote an article about the Nation of Islam for Reader's Digest. They met again when Haley interviewed Malcolm X for Playboy.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X has been a consistent best-seller since its 1965 publication. The New York Times reported that six million copies of the book had been sold by 1977. In 1998, TIME named The Autobiography of Malcolm X one of the ten most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century.
In 1973, Haley wrote his only screenplay, Super Fly T.N.T. The film starred and was directed by Ron O'Neal.
In 1976, Haley published Roots: The Saga of an American Family, a novel based on his family's history, starting with the story of Kunta Kinte, who was kidnapped in the Gambia in 1767 and transported to the Province of Maryland to be sold as a slave.
Haley claimed to be a seventh-generation descendant of Kunta Kinte, and his work on the novel involved ten years of research, intercontinental travel and writing. He went to the village of Juffure, where Kunta Kinte grew up and which is still in existence, and listened to a tribal historian tell the story of Kinte's capture. Haley also traced the records of the ship, The Lord Ligonier, which he said carried his ancestor to the Americas.
Haley has stated that the most emotional moment of his life occurred on September 29, 1967, when he stood at the site in Annapolis, Maryland, where his ancestor had arrived from Africa in chains exactly 200 years before. A memorial depicting Haley reading a story to young children gathered at his feet has since been erected in the center of Annapolis.
Roots was eventually published in 37 languages, and Haley won a special Pulitzer Prize for the work in 1977. The same year, Roots was adapted into a popular television miniseries by ABC.
The serial reached a record-breaking 130 million viewers. Roots emphasized that African Americans have a long history and that not all of that history is necessarily lost, as many believed. Its popularity also sparked an increased public interest in genealogy.
In 1979, ABC aired the sequel miniseries Roots: The Next Generations, which continued the story of Kunta Kinte's descendants, concluding with Haley's arrival in Juffure. Haley was portrayed at different ages by actors Kristoff St. John, Damon Evans and James Earl Jones.
Haley died in Seattle, Washington in 1992 of a heart attack and was buried beside his childhood home in Henning, Tennessee. He was 70 years old.
Steve Wozniak, visionary engineer behind Apple’s first computers, is 72 years old today
Steve Wozniak, visionary engineer behind Apple’s first computers, is 72 years old today.
Gregarious and entertaining, Wozniak left Apple more than 30 years ago. He has spent much of the time since working on philanthropic and business projects. He has taught in grade schools, organized rock festivals, devised products like wireless GPS and universal remote controls, written an autobiography and appeared on “Dancing With the Stars.”
In the early 1970s, Wozniak was also known as "Berkeley Blue" in the phone phreak community, after he made a blue box. He has said that Star Trek was a source of inspiration for him starting Apple Inc.
In March, 2016, High Point University, a private liberal arts school in High Point, North Carolina, announced that Wozniak would serve as their Innovator in Residence. Through this ongoing partnership, Wozniak connects with High Point University students and visits the campus.
In March 2017, Wozniak was listed by UK-based company, Richtopia, at #18 in the list of 200 Most Influential Philanthropists and Social Entrepreneurs.
Wozniak gave away or sold most of his Apple stock early on but still gets a company stipend. He met Steve Jobs in 1971, but it wasn’t until 1976 that he developed the Apple I. Jobs was the marketing maestro who made it and the Apple II desirable to the public.
Wozniak lives in Los Gatos, California. He applied for Australian citizenship in 2012, and has said that he would like to live in Melbourne, Australia in the future.
On this day in 1939 — 83 years ago today — the film, The Wizard of Oz, was previewed for the first time
On this day in 1939 — 83 years ago today — the film, The Wizard of Oz, was previewed for the first time in Kenosha, Wisconsin and Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The next day it was shown in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin.
The Hollywood premiere would come August 15, 1939 at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, and two days later it premiered in New York City at Loew's Capitol Theatre. The New York screening was followed by a live performance with the films star, Judy Garland, and her frequent film co-star, Mickey Rooney. They continued to perform there after each screening for a week.
The Wizard of Oz featured the words and music by E.Y. “Yip” Harburg and Harold Arlen. It had beloved characters and familiar plot points from the original children’s book, from the Kansas farm girl in shiny slippers transported to Munchkin land by a terrible tornado, to the wicked witch, the brainless scarecrow, the heartless tin woodsman and the cowardly lion she encounters once she gets there.
But what’s missing, of course, from Frank Baum’s bestselling novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, is the music that helped make those characters so beloved and those plot points so familiar.
First published in 1900, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was adapted numerous times for the stage and screen and even set to music since it was first published in 1900. It was the 1939 film adaptation, however, that earned Baum’s work a permanent place in both cinema and music history.
Lyricist Yip Harburg and composer, Harold Arlen, were both seasoned songwriting professionals before teaming up in 1938 to write the original songs for The Wizard of Oz, though they had worked together very little. Harburg’s best-known credits to date were “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?” (1931) and “It’s Only A Paper Moon” (1933), and Arlen’s were “Get Happy” (1929) and “Stormy Weather” (1933).
Their first collaboration was on the Broadway musical, Hooray For What! (1937), which yielded the now-standard, “Down With Love.”
The success of The Wizard of Oz, however, would quickly overshadow those earlier accomplishments. Not only did Judy Garland’s signature song, “Over The Rainbow,” earn Arlen and Harburg the Oscar for Best Song at the 1940 Academy Awards, but it quickly became a standard in the American songbook.
It was later acknowledged as the #1 song on the “Songs of the Century” list compiled in 2001. First and foremost, however, Arlen and Harburg’s songs accomplished their primary goal with flying colors, carrying and deepening the emotional impact of the story in the film for which they were written.
As innovative and impressive as the production values of The Wizard of Oz were in 1939, it is impossible to imagine the film earning the place it has in the popular imagination without songs like “The Lollipop Guild,” “If I Only Had A Brain” and “We’re Off To See The Wizard.”
August 10, 2022
Bobby Hatfield, half of the Righteous Brothers, was born 82 years ago today
Bobby Hatfield (right) in the Righteous Brothers
Bobby Hatfield, half of the Righteous Brothers, was born 82 years ago today.
Born in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, Hatfield would eventually encounter his singing partner, Bill Medley, while attending California State University in Long Beach. Hatfield and Medley began singing as a duo in 1962 in the Los Angeles area as part of a five-member group, the Paramours.
They were often told they sounded like African-American gospel singers and named their singing act, The Righteous Brothers, after a fan remarked of their singing, "that's righteous, brothers."
Their first charted single as the Righteous Brothers was "Little Latin Lupe Lu" and their first #1 was "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'," produced by Phil Spector in 1964. Follow-up hits included the #1 "(You're My) Soul and Inspiration" and "Unchained Melody,” the latter of which was actually a Hatfield solo performance that he recorded again after the success of the film, Ghost.
Hatfield told friends that he had not lost any of the high notes in his tenor/falsetto range since the original recording, but had actually gained one note. The duo broke up in 1968, but returned with another hit in 1974, the #3 "Rock and Roll Heaven."
On November 5, 2003, Hatfield died at the Radisson Hotel in downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan, apparently in his sleep. In January, 2004, a toxicology report concluded that an overdose of cocaine had precipitated a fatal heart attack.
The initial autopsy found that Hatfield had advanced coronary disease. The medical examiner stated "there was already a significant amount of blockage in the coronary arteries." Hatfield was 63.
Here, the Righteous Brothers sing “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’” on Shindig
Leo Fender, pioneer in electric guitar technology, was born 113 years ago today
Leo Fender, pioneer in electric guitar technology, was born 113 years ago today.
He is the inventor who founded Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company. Fender left the company in the late 1960s, and later founded two other musical instrument companies, MusicMan and G&L Musical Instruments.
The guitars, bass guitars and amplifiers Fender designed from the 1940s forward are still relevant today. The Fender Telecaster (1950) was the first mass-produced electric guitar. The Fender Stratocaster (1954) is among the world's most iconic electric guitars. The Fender Precision Bass (1951) set the standard for electric bass guitars.
The Fender Bassman amplifier, popular enough in its own right, became the basis for later amplifiers (notably by Marshall and Mesa Boogie) that dominated rock and roll music.
Fender was born on August 10, 1909, to Clarence Monte Fender and Harriet Elvira Wood, owners of a successful orange grove located between Anaheim and Fullerton, California. From an early age, he showed an interest in tinkering with electronics. When he was 13 years old, his uncle, who ran an automotive-electric shop, sent him a box filled with discarded car radio parts and a battery.
The following year, young Leo visited his uncle's shop in Santa Maria, California, and was fascinated by a radio his uncle had built from spare parts and placed on display in the front of the shop. Fender later claimed that the loud music coming from the speaker of that radio made a lasting impression on him. Soon thereafter, he began repairing radios in a small shop in his parents' home.
In the spring of 1928, Fender graduated from Fullerton Union High School, and entered Fullerton Junior College that fall, as an accounting major. While he was studying to be an accountant, he continued to teach himself electronics, and tinker with radios and other electrical items but never took any kind of electronics course.
After college, Fender took a job as a deliveryman for Consolidated Ice and Cold Storage Company in Anaheim, where he later was made the bookkeeper. It was around this time that a local band leader approached Leo, asking him if he could build a public address system for use by the band at dances in Hollywood. Fender was contracted to build six of these PA systems.
In 1933, Fender met Esther Klosky and they were married in 1934. About that time, he took a job as an accountant for the California Highway Department in San Luis Obispo. In a depression government change-up, his job was eliminated and he then took a job in the accounting department of a tire company. After working there six months, Leo lost his job along with the other accountants in the company.
In 1938, with a borrowed $600, Leo and Esther returned to Fullerton, and Leo started his own radio repair shop, "Fender Radio Service." Soon, musicians and band leaders began coming to him for PA systems, which he built, rented and sold.
They also visited his store for amplification for the acoustic guitars that were beginning to show up in the southern California music scene — in big band and jazz music, and for the electric "Hawaiian" or "lap steel" guitars becoming popular in country music.
During World War II, Leo met Clayton Orr "Doc" Kauffman, an inventor and lap steel player who had worked for Rickenbacker, which had been building and selling lap steel guitars for a decade. While with Rickenbacker, Kauffman had invented the "Vibrola" tailpiece, a precursor to the later vibrato or "tremolo" tailpiece.
Fender convinced him that they should team up, and they started the "K & F Manufacturing Corporation" to design and build amplified Hawaiian guitars and amplifiers. In 1944, Leo and Doc patented a lap steel guitar with an electric pickup already patented by Fender. In 1945, they began selling the guitar, in a kit with an amplifier designed by Fender.
As the Big Bands fell out of vogue toward the end of World War II, small combos playing boogie-woogie, rhythm and blues, western swing and honky-tonk formed throughout the United States. Many of these groups embraced the electric guitar because it could give a few players the power of an entire horn section.
Pickup-equipped archtops were the guitars of choice in the dance bands of the late-'40s, but the increasing popularity of roadhouses and dance halls created a growing need for louder, cheaper and more durable instruments. Players also needed faster necks and better intonation to play what the country players called "take-off lead guitar."
In the late 1940s, solid body electric guitars began to emerge in popularity, yet they were still considered novelty items with the Rickenbacker Spanish Electro guitar being the most commercially available solid body. Les Paul's one-off home-made "Log" and the Bigsby Travis guitar made by Paul Bigsby for Merle Travis were the most visible early examples.
Fender recognized the potential for an electric guitar that was easy to hold, tune and play, and would not feed back at dance hall volumes as the typical arch top would. In 1949, he finished the prototype of a thin solid-body electric. It was first released in 1950 as the Fender Esquire (with a solid body and one pickup), and renamed first, Broadcaster, and then, Telecaster (with two pickups), the year after.
Although he never admitted it, Fender seems to have based his design on the Rickenbacker Bakelite. The Telecaster, originally equipped with two single-coil pick-ups and widely used among country and western players, became one of the most popular electric guitars in history.
Instead of updating the Telecaster, Fender decided, based on customer feedback, to leave the Telecaster as it was and design a new, upscale solid body guitar to sell alongside the basic Telecaster.
Western swing guitarist Bill Carson was one of the chief critics of the Telecaster, stating that the new design should have individually adjustable bridge saddles, four or five pickups, a vibrato unit that could be used in either direction and return to proper tuning, and a contoured body for enhanced comfort over the slab-body Telecaster's harsh edges.
Fender, assisted by draftsman, Freddie Tavares, began designing the Stratocaster in late 1953. It included a rounder, less "club-like" neck (at least for the first year of issue) and a double cutaway for easier reach to the upper registers.
During this time, Fender also tackled the problems experienced by players of the acoustic double bass, who could no longer compete for volume with the other musicians. Besides, double basses were also large, bulky and difficult to transport.
With the Precision Bass (or "P-Bass"), released in 1951, Leo Fender addressed both issues. The Telecaster-based Precision Bass was small and portable, and its solid body construction and four magnet, single coil pickup let it play at higher volumes without feedback.
Along with the Precision Bass (so named because its fretted neck allowed bassists to play with “precision”), Fender introduced the Fender Bassman, a 45-watt amplifier with four 10-inch speakers (although initially with one 15-inch speaker).
Despite suffering several minor strokes, Fender continued to produce guitars and basses throughout his life.
On March 21, 1991, he died at age 81, having long suffered from Parkinson's disease.
Above photo by Jon Sievert
The first-ever electric guitar patent was awarded on this day in 1937 to the Electro String Corporation — 85 years ago
The first-ever electric guitar patent was awarded on this day in 1937 to the Electro String Corporation — 85 years ago.
Versatile, inexpensive and relatively easy to play, the acoustic guitar was a staple of American rural music in the early 20th century — particularly black rural music such as the blues. But a significant physical limitation made it a poor fit in ensembles made up of brass, woodwind and orchestral string instruments. The acoustic guitar was simply too quiet and could not project to audiences.
What transformed the guitar and its place in popular music, and eventually transformed popular music itself, was the development of a method for transforming the sound of a vibrating guitar string into an electrical signal that could be amplified and re-converted into audible sound at a much greater volume.
The electric guitar — the instrument that revolutionized jazz, blues and country music and made the later rise of rock and roll possible — was recognized by the United States Patent Office on this day in 1937 with the award of Patent #2,089.171 to G.D. Beauchamp for an instrument known as the Rickenbacker Frying Pan.
Inventor G.D. Beauchamp, partner with Adolph Rickenbacher in the Electro String Instrument Corp. of Los Angeles, spent more than five years pursuing his patent on the Frying Pan. It was a process delayed by several areas of concern, including the electric guitar's reliance on an engineering innovation that dated to the 19th century.
When a vibrating string is placed within a magnetic field, it is possible to "pick up" the sound waves created by that string's vibrations and convert those waves into electric current. Replace the word "string" with the word "membrane" in that sentence, however, and you also have a description of how a telephone works.
For this reason, Beauchamp's patent application had to be revised multiple times to clarify which of his individual claims were truly novel and which were merely new applications of existing patents.
On August 10, 1937, the Patent Office approved the majority of Beachamp's claims — primarily those relating to the unique design of the Frying Pan's "pickup," a heavy electromagnet that surrounded the base of the steel strings like a bracelet rather than sitting below them as on a modern electric guitar.
Unfortunately for the Electro String Corp., Beauchamp's specific invention had long since been obsolesced by the innovations of various competitors, rendering the patent awarded on this day in 1937 an item of greater historical importance than economic value.
Thanks to History.com
Eddie Fisher was born 94 years ago today
Eddie Fisher and Elizabeth Taylor
Eddie Fisher was born 94 years ago today.
Fisher was the most successful pop singles artist of the first half of the 1950s, selling millions of records and hosting his own TV show. He left his first wife, actress Debbie Reynolds, to marry Reynolds's best friend, actress Elizabeth Taylor, when Taylor's husband, film producer Mike Todd, died.
This event garnered scandalous and unwelcome publicity for Fisher. He later married Connie Stevens. He was the father of actresses Carrie Fisher (with Reynolds), Joely Fisher (with Stevens) and Tricia Leigh Fisher (with Stevens).
A pre–rock and roll vocalist, Fisher's strong and melodious tenor made him a teen idol and one of the most popular singers of the early 1950s. He had 17 songs in the Top 10 on the music charts between 1950 and 1956 and 35 in the Top 40.
Fisher has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — one for recording at 6241 Hollywood Boulevard and the other for television at 1724 Vine Street.
Fisher suffered from knee, back, hearing and eyesight problems in his later years, the last of which were worsened by a botched cataract removal operation. As a result, he rarely appeared in public.
At age 82, Fisher broke his hip on September 9, 2010, and died 13 days later on September 22, 2010, at his home in Berkeley, California, due to complications from hip surgery.
His second wife, Elizabeth Taylor, died six months and one day after Fisher, on March 23, 2011.
Here, Fisher joins Bobby Darin and Andy Williams singing “Do-Re-Mi” in 1966
Jimmy Dean was born 94 years ago today
Jimmy Dean was born 94 years ago today.
A country music singer, television host, actor and businessman, Dean may be best known today as the creator of the Jimmy Dean sausage brand.
He became a national television personality starting in 1957, rising to fame for his 1961 country crossover hit, "Big Bad John," and his television series, The Jimmy Dean Show, which also gave puppeteer Jim Henson his first national media exposure.
Dean’s acting career included a supporting role as Willard Whyte in the 1971 James Bond movie, Diamonds Are Forever.
On February 23, 2010, Dean was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Dean died at the age of 81, on June 13, 2010, of natural causes at his home near Richmond, Virginia. He is entombed in a nine-foot-tall piano-shaped mausoleum overlooking the James River on the grounds of his estate.
His epitaph reads, "Here Lies One Hell of a Man," which is a quote from a lyric from his uncensored version of the song, "Big Bad John.”
Patti Austin is 72 years old today
Patti Austin is 72 years old today.
An R&B, pop and jazz singer, Austin was born in Harlem and grew up on Long Island. Her father was a jazz musician. She made her debut at the Apollo Theater at age four and had a contract with RCA Records when she was five. Quincy Jones and Dinah Washington are her godparents.
By the late 1960s, Austin was a session musician and commercial jingle singer. During the 1980s, signed to Jones's Qwest Records, she began her most prolific hit-making period. By this time she was both one of the leading background session vocalists, appearing on numerous famous albums by other artists.
Austin was also known as Queen of The Jingles, appearing on jingles for Burger King, Almay make-up, Avon, KFC, McDonalds, Meow Mix, Impulse, Stouffers, Maxwell House and the United States Army. She charted twenty R&B songs between 1969 and 1991 and had success on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart, where she hit #1 in 1981 with "Do You Love Me?" / "The Genie."
The album containing that hit, Every Home Should Have One, also produced her biggest mainstream hit, "Baby, Come to Me," a duet with James Ingram. The song initially peaked at #73 on the Hot 100 in early 1982.
During a 2007 interview, Austin reflected how as a teenager she reluctantly attended one of Judy Garland's last concerts and the experience helped focus her career. "Judy Garland ripped my heart out. I wanted to interpret a lyric like that, to present who I was at the moment through the lyric," she said.
Ronnie Spector was born 79 years ago today
Ronnie and Phil Spector
Ronnie Spector was born 79 years ago today.
A rock and roll and popular music vocalist, Veronica Yvette Bennet, later known as Ronnie Spector, was lead singer of the 1960s hit-making girl group, The Ronettes. She was regarded as an original "bad girl of rock and roll.”
Born in New York City, she took to singing at an early age, encouraged by her large, close family. The other members of the Ronettes, her sister, Estelle Bennett (1941-2009), and cousin, Nedra Talley, were also encouraged to sing by their family.
The Ronettes were a multiracial group. The Bennetts' mother was African-American and Cherokee, and their father was Irish. Their cousin, Nedra Talley, is African-American and Puerto Rican.
Bennett was married to Phil Spector from 1968 to 1974, and took his name professionally. They adopted three children, including a set of twins, whom Phil adopted as a single parent after Ronnie and the youngest child left. By her account, Phil kept Ronnie a near-prisoner and limited her opportunities to pursue her musical ambitions.
In her autobiography, she said that he would force her to watch the film, Citizen Kane, to remind her she would be nothing without him. Spector's domineering attitude led to the dissolution of their marriage.
The Ronettes were produced by Phil Spector and managed by Val Irving of (GAC) General Artists Corp. in Manhattan. In the early 1960s, they had huge hits with "Be My Baby,” "Baby, I Love You,” "The Best Part of Breakin' Up, "Do I Love You?" and "Walking in the Rain.”
The group had two Top 100 hits in 1965, "Born to Be Together" and "Is This What I Get for Loving You." The Ronettes broke up in early 1967.
In 2016, she released English Heart, her first album of new material in a decade. The album features her versions of songs of the British Invasion by the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Yardbirds, Bee Gees, and others produced by Scott Jacoby. English Heart peaked at #6 on the Billboard Top Heatseekers chart.
Spector died on January 12, 2022 after a short bout with cancer.
Here, she performs “Be My Baby,” with her “new” Ronettes, Belinda Carlisle and Grace Slick.
Sunset Boulevard, the classic black comedy/drama film noir, premiered on this day in 1950 — 72 years ago
Gloria Swanson and William Holden
Sunset Boulevard, the classic black comedy/drama film noir, premiered on this day in 1950 — 72 years ago.
Directed and co-written by Billy Wilder and produced and co-written by Charles Brackett, the film was named after the boulevard that runs through Los Angeles and Beverly Hills.
It stars William Holden as Joe Gillis, an unsuccessful screenwriter, and Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond, a faded silent film star who draws him into her fantasy world where she dreams of making a triumphant return to the screen.
Erich von Stroheim as Max Von Mayerling, plays her devoted servant. Nancy Olson, Fred Clark, Lloyd Gough and Jack Webb play supporting roles. Director Cecil B. DeMille and gossip columnist, Hedda Hopper, play themselves, and the film includes cameo appearances by leading silent film actors, Buster Keaton, H. B. Warner and Anna Q. Nilsson.
Praised by many critics when first released, Sunset Boulevard was nominated for eleven Academy Awards (including nominations in all four acting categories) and won three. It is widely accepted as a classic, often cited as one of the greatest films of American cinema.
Deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the U.S. Library of Congress in 1989, Sunset Boulevard was included in the first group of films selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
In 1998, it was ranked #12 on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 best American films of the 20th century.
August 09, 2022
On this day in 1995 — 27 years ago — Jerry Garcia died of a heart attack in a residential drug-treatment facility in Forest Knolls, California
Photo by Jay Blakesberg
Like his band the Grateful Dead, which was still going strong three decades after its formation, Jerry Garcia defied his life-expectancy not merely by surviving, but by thriving creatively and commercially into the 1990s — far longer than most of his peers.
His long, strange trip came to an end, however, on this day in 1995 — 27 years ago — when he died of a heart attack in a residential drug-treatment facility in Forest Knolls, California.
A legendary guitarist and true cultural icon, Jerry Garcia was 53 years old.
Garcia was born on August 1, 1942 and raised primarily in San Francisco's Excelsior District, about five miles south of his and his band's famous future residence at 710 Ashbury Street. Trained formally on the piano as a child, Garcia picked up the instrument he'd make his living with at the age of 15, when he convinced his mother to replace the accordion she'd bought him as a birthday gift with a Danelectro electric guitar.
Five years later, after brief stints in art school and the Army, and after surviving a deadly automobile accident in 1961, he began to pursue a musical career in earnest, playing with various groups that were part of San Francisco's bluegrass and folk scene.
By 1965, he had joined up with bassist Phil Lesh, rhythm guitarist Bob Weir, organist Ron "Pigpen" McKernan and drummer Bill Kreutzman in a group originally called the Warlocks. They were later renamed "The Grateful Dead."
From their early gig as the house band at Ken Kesey's famous Acid Tests, the Dead was a defining part of San Francisco's burgeoning hippie counterculture scene. They would go on to play at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and at Woodstock in 1969.
However, as big as they were in the 60s and 70s, the Grateful Dead grew even more popular and successful as the decade they helped to define slipped further into the past.
Indeed, during the final decade of Jerry Garcia's life, following his recovery from a five-day diabetic coma in 1986, the Dead played an average of 100 to 150 live shows per year, frequently to sold-out audiences that included a significant proportion of tie-dye-wearing college students who were not yet alive when the Grateful Dead first made their name.
Thanks History.com
On this day in 2005 — 17 years ago — Marc Cohn survived being shot in the head during an attempted car jacking as he left a concert in Denver, Colorado
Marc Cohn, New York City, 2015
Photo by Frank Beacham
On this day in 2005 — 17 years ago — Marc Cohn survived being shot in the head during an attempted car jacking as he left a concert in Denver, Colorado.
Cohn was struck in the temple by the bullet but it did not penetrate his skull.
Police said a man tried to commandeer Cohn's tour van as it left after a show, the attacker was fleeing police after trying to pay a hotel bill with a stolen credit card.
Barbara Mason is 75 years old today
Barbara Mason is 75 years old today.
Born in Philadelphia, Mason is an R&B/soul singer with several R&B and pop hits in the 1960s and 1970s, best known for her self-written 1965 hit song, "Yes, I'm Ready."
Mason initially focused on songwriting in her teens. As a performer, she had a major hit single with her third release in 1965, "Yes, I'm Ready." Her sound was rhythmic, but lush, and came to be called “Philly Soul.”
Mason had modest success throughout the rest of the decade on the small Arctic label, run by her manager, Jimmy Bishop, a Philadelphia disc-jockey. She reached the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 Top 40 again in 1965 with "Sad, Sad Girl," and "Oh How It Hurts" in 1967, releasing two albums.
A two-year stay with National General Records, run by a film production company, produced one album and four singles which failed to find success.
In the 1970s, Mason signed to Buddah Records and toughened her persona, singing about sexual love and infidelity. Her songs like "Bed and Board," "From His Woman to You" and "Shackin' Up" and would interrupt her singing to deliver straight-talking raps about romance.
Curtis Mayfield produced her on a cover version of Mayfield's own, "Give Me Your Love," which restored her to the pop Top 40 and R&B Top Ten in 1973. "From His Woman to You" (the response to Shirley Brown's single, "Woman to Woman") and "Shackin' Up," produced by former Stax producer Don Davis in Detroit, were also solid soul sellers in the mid-1970s.
After leaving Buddah Records in 1975, surprisingly after two Top 10 R&B hits, she only dented the charts periodically on small labels. They included "I Am Your Woman, She Is Your Wife," which was produced in 1978 by Weldon McDougal, who had produced her first major success, "Yes I'm Ready,” and later in 1984, "Another Man" on West End Records.
Mason started to concentrate on running her own publishing company in the late 1980s, but continues to perform occasionally.
Standing waist deep in the swamp, under attack by aggressive mosquitoes and keenly aware of the nearby alligators and snakes, I fumbled under a large piece of dark cloth to see the dim upside down image through the back of a wooden view camera
Clyde Butcher and Frank Beacham go "swamp walking" in the Everglades, mid 1990s
Pictures in the Everglades
by Frank Beacham
(I originally wrote this article in the 1990s. Clyde Butcher’s work continues to climb in artistic stature today.)
Standing waist deep in the swamp, under attack by aggressive mosquitoes and keenly aware of the nearby alligators and snakes, I fumbled under a large piece of dark cloth to see the dim upside down image through the back of a wooden view camera.
“You know in the video world we have viewfinder hoods,” I shouted from under the thick black cover to Clyde Butcher, sweltering from the oppressive heat.
“Hoods are for wimps,” responded Butcher, one of the world's best landscape photographers. “This is Mathew Brady stuff!”
Yes, it is, I quickly realized. Photography as it was done in the 19th century, when the great Mathew Brady and his assistants lugged similar equipment around battlefields to create the most memorable images of the American Civil War.
As a member of the video generation, I found myself in a bit of a technology time warp. A world where a new fangled gadget like a viewfinder hood is looked upon with suspicion. In this branch of image making, old fashioned craft and vision reign supreme over new technology and the latest widgets.
Yet, I found going back to the basics a strangely satisfying experience. Working with 4x5 inch black and white negatives and huge, radiant high definition prints resulted in a creative high I have yet to match with the high tech tools of these digital times.
I had first gotten a glimpse of Clyde Butcher's photography in the early 1990s when I stumbled into a PBS television special about his task of preserving on film Florida's rapidly disappearing Everglades. I was instantly attracted to his work.
After calling his gallery, I found he offers occasional workshops in large format photography at his 13-acre wilderness compound in South Florida's Big Cypress National Preserve.
Butcher, whose talents at photographing nature rank up there with the late Ansel Adams, normally works with 8x10 and 12x20 format Wisner view cameras. His monochrome prints range in size from 11x14 (which he considers barely a wallet photo) to huge wall murals that are stunning in their scope, richness and detail.
Thinking Butcher's Everglades outpost would be a brief, but splendid, break from electronic media, I was surprised to find that a CBS Sunday Morning crew would be completing a video profile of the photographer on the second day of our workshop.
Ironically, I would get a side-by-side comparison of the film and video images made in the picturesque swamp and the chance to ponder the methods by which each was created.
The CBS crew set up a video viewing station in Butcher's darkroom where we were crafting the prints from negatives we had taken the day before. Their video — made efficiently and quickly — had the crisp, snappy color and technically savvy look of work done by a top professional network crew.
Yet, clearly missing from the video was the emotional bang that had drawn me to Butcher's photographs in the first place. How was it that Butcher could tell a whole story so well on a single frame of black and white film while the thousands of moving video images only skimmed the emotional surface of the subject?
Was it simply a matter of resolution? Do we not have “fine art” video because of the limitations of the television medium to resolve detail? If so, then why — after well over a decade — haven't we seen high resolution video used as a artistic medium?
If it is not the video medium itself, does the answer lie in how we've been conditioned to use it? Or does it go much deeper?
After the CBS crew had finished and was on the way to their next assignment, we in the darkroom were still tinkering with our prints, trying to decide where to dodge and burn or how to vary the contrast with filters.
Our still images were obviously produced through a much slower and more deliberate process than the video. They had a handmade quality. There was even a subtle aesthetic with the equipment itself — something I never felt before with electronics.
Take the Wisner camera. It's more like a piece of fine furniture than a technical tool. Made of beautifully finished mahogany wood with adjustable brass fittings, the camera is a timeless design. Not only does it offer a wide range of options to the creative photographer, but one could never imagine it ever becoming obsolete.
While other types of photography have succumbed to computer-assisted automation, somehow the methods of making large format landscape photographs have remained traditional. Here the human mind never relinquishes control to a computer.
The photographer must think about every step taken. Each adjustment is made by hand. Careful consideration must be made to planes of focus, depth of field and the perspective of the subject. Even then, the image on the camera's viewing surface is upside down and very dim.
From the very first day, the large format photographer assumes the role of artisan. For us video “wimps” — used to the “point and shoot” conveniences of modern cameras — it's at first hard to be confident about decisions of composition and image sharpness under that dark cloth.
Yet for an old pro like Butcher — with more than 40 years experience under his belt — these seemingly large obstacles have been turned to pluses. He uses his eyes, not the viewfinder, to frame the image. He can do this because he instinctively knows what each lens will see and how it will see it.
The slow and tedious nature of large format photography, says Butcher, forces the creator of the image to take time to think about the picture being made. Sometimes it takes Butcher hours to make a single photograph.
This contemplative method, he is quick to point out, is far more important than technique in helping convey a powerful emotional experience on a sheet of film.
One workshop participant asked Butcher what makes a visual artist. He estimated that it first takes about 20 years of learning the nuts and bolts — the techniques of image making — followed by another period when that technique is suppressed, becoming second nature.
For most of us, only then does real artistic vision begin to kick in. And even then, nothing is guaranteed. It all depends on the fragile talent and circumstances of the individual at a given moment as to whether new artistic boundaries will be broken.
In Butcher's life, the transition from successful commercial photographer to artist came in a tragic way. He says he found his creative voice in the grief that followed his son's death in an auto accident. The shock of that death led him to re-evaluate his approach to his work and resulted in his commitment to fine art nature photography.
It's a long way from a Florida swamp to an urban jungle like New York City. But in Clyde Butcher's wilderness preserve, there are valuable lessons for those who would attempt to use video as an artistic medium.
Butcher's work reminds us that the art of the picture is not found in technology or technique. It's in the mind of the maker. The only artistic limitations we face in any medium are within ourselves.
Walden, the story by Henry David Thoreau of his life in a cabin at Walden Pond, was published on this day in 1854 — 168 years ago
The 1991 watercolor “On Walden Pond” is by N. Santoleri
Walden, the story by Henry David Thoreau of his life in a cabin at Walden Pond, was published on this day in 1854 — 168 years ago.
First published as “Walden; or, Life in the Woods,” the book is a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire and (to some degree) a manual for self-reliance.
Thoreau also used this time to write his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.
First published in 1854, Walden details Thoreau's experiences over the course of two years, two months and two days in a cabin he built near Walden Pond. It was amidst woodland owned by his friend and mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts.
The book compresses the time into a single calendar year and uses passages of four seasons to symbolize human development. By immersing himself in nature, Thoreau hoped to gain a more objective understanding of society through personal introspection.
Simple living and self-sufficiency were Thoreau's other goals, and the whole project was inspired by transcendentalist philosophy, a central theme of the American Romantic Period.
Whitney Houston was born 59 years ago today
Whitney Houston was born 59 years ago today.
A recording artist, actress, producer and model, Houston was one of the world's best-selling music artists, having sold over 170 million albums, singles and videos worldwide. She released seven studio albums and three movie soundtrack albums, all of which have diamond, multi-platinum, platinum or gold certification.
Houston's crossover appeal on the popular music charts, as well as her prominence on MTV, starting with her video for "How Will I Know,” influenced several African American female artists to follow in her footsteps.
Houston is the only artist to chart seven consecutive #1 Top 100 hits. She is the second artist behind Elton John and the only female artist to have two #1 Billboard 200 Album awards on the magazine’s year-end charts.
Houston's 1985 debut album, Whitney Houston, became the best-selling debut album by a female act at the time of its release. Her second studio album, Whitney, (1987) became the first album by a female artist to debut at #1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart.
Houston's first acting role was as the star of the feature film, The Bodyguard (1992). Its lead single "I Will Always Love You,” became the best-selling single by a female artist in music history.
With the album, Houston became the first act (solo or group, male or female) to sell more than a million copies of an album within a single week period under Nielsen SoundScan system. The album makes her the top female act in the top 10 list of the best-selling albums of all time, at #4.
Houston continued to star in movies and contribute to their soundtracks, including the films, Waiting to Exhale (1995) and The Preacher's Wife (1996). The Preacher's Wife soundtrack became the best-selling gospel album in history.
On February 11, 2012, Houston was found unresponsive in Suite 434 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, submerged in the bathtub. The cause of death was ruled by the coroner to have been an "accidental drowning” due to drugs. She was 48.
August 08, 2022
One of the most famous photographs in the history of rock and roll was taken on this day in 1969 — 53 years ago
One of the most famous photographs in the history of rock and roll was taken on this day in 1969 — 53 years ago.
The photograph on the sleeve of Abbey Road by The Beatles signifies for a whole generation of fans the end of an era. The front cover design for the album, a photograph of the group traversing a zebra crossing, was based on sketched ideas by Paul McCartney. It was taken outside EMI Studios on Abbey Road.
At around 11:30 that morning, photographer Iain Macmillan was given only ten minutes to take the photo while he stood on a step-ladder and a policeman held up the traffic. In the scene, the group walk across the street in single file from left to right, with Lennon leading, followed by Starr, McCartney and Harrison.
McCartney is barefoot. With the exception of Harrison, the group are wearing suits designed by Tommy Nutter. To the left of the picture, parked next to the zebra crossing, is a white Volkswagen Beetle which belonged to one of the people living in the block of flats across from the recording studio.
After the album was released, the number plate (LMW 281F) was stolen repeatedly from the car. In 1986, the car was sold at auction for and in 2001 was on display in a museum in Germany.
The man standing on the pavement to the right of the picture is Paul Cole, who died in 2008. He was an American tourist unaware he had been photographed until he saw the album cover months later.
The image of the Beatles on the crossing has become one of the most famous and imitated in recording history. The crossing is a popular destination for Beatles fans and there is a live webcam featuring it.
In December, 2010, the crossing was given grade II listed status for its "cultural and historical importance." The Abbey Road studios themselves had been given similar status earlier in the year.
Webb Pierce was born 101 years ago today
Webb Pierce was born 101 years ago today.
One of the most popular American honky-tonk vocalists of the 1950s, Piece charted more #1 hits than any other country artist during the decade. His biggest hit was "In The Jailhouse Now," which was on the record charts for 37 weeks in 1955 — 21 of them at #1.
Pierce went to #1 for several weeks' each with his recordings of "Slowly" (1954), "Love, Love, Love" (1955), "I Don't Care" (1955), "There Stands The Glass" (1953), "More And More" (1954), "I Ain't Never" (1959) and his first #1, "Wondering," which stayed at the top spot for four of its 27 weeks' charting in 1952.
For many, Pierce, with his flamboyant Nudie suits and twin silver dollar-lined convertibles, became the most recognizable face of country music of the era and its excesses.
Pierce was an early influence on Bob Dylan. Footage of Pierce singing "There Stands the Glass" was featured in the 2005 Dylan documentary, No Direction Home, by Martin Scorsese. He was a member of the Grand Ole Opry and was posthumously inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Pierce became known for his excessive lifestyle. He had North Hollywood tailor Nudie Cohen, who had made flamboyant suits for Pierce, line two convertibles with silver dollars.
He built a $30,000 guitar-shaped swimming pool at his Nashville home which became a popular paid tourist attraction — nearly 3,000 people visited it each week — causing his neighbors, led by singer Ray Stevens, to file lawsuit. Stevens lost, but eventually, as the crowds grew, Piece was forced to stop the tours.
Pierce waged a long battle with pancreatic cancer, which he lost on February 24, 1991, dying at age 69.
Kenny White is 69 years old today
Photo by Frank Beacham
Kenny White is 69 years old today.
A New York City-based singer-songwriter, studio musician and writer, White was originally known mostly as a writer of music for radio and TV commercials and a producer and session keyboard player. In this capacity, he worked with artists like Gladys Knight, Linda Ronstadt, Dwight Yoakam, Ricky Skaggs, Kim Carnes Felix Cavaliere, Dobie Gray and Aaron Neville.
White’s relationships with Marc Cohn and Shawn Colvin led to his producing Colvin’s Grammy-nominated, “I Don’t Know Why” and to his involvement in Cohn’s platinum debut record. White went on to produce three records for legendary J. Geils Band leader, Peter Wolf.
The second of which, “Sleepless,” was widely acclaimed. It gave White a chance to work with Keith Richards, Mick Jagger and Steve Earle. As a contributing writer/musician, White worked on many a film soundtrack including, Message in a Bottle, Ed TV, Forces of Nature, A Walk on the Moon, Where the Heart Is, Edie & Pen and four films by indie master, John Sayles.
After being hailed by reviewers for his piano playing, White chose to devote himself to making his first album. His work in the studio enabled him to assemble an A-list team of players for that release, 2002′s “Uninvited Guest.” White traveled and opened shows for many artists, including Cheryl Wheeler, Shawn Colvin, Peter Wolf, Richard Shindell and Jonathan Edwards.
An early copy of his follow-up record, “Symphony in 16 Bars,” landed in the hands of folk legend Judy Collins who then signed White to her own Wildflower Records and released the CD in the winter of 2005.
Showcasing another remarkable ensemble of talent, Symphony in 16 Bars picked up where Uninvited Guest left off, following a main character whose story, set in New York City, navigates the heart’s complexities through an ever changing urban landscape.
Dustin Hoffman is 85 years old today
Hoffman with Ann Bancroft, who played Mrs. Robinson, in The Graduate, 1967
Dustin Hoffman is 85 years old today.
An actor with a career in film, television and theatre since 1960, Hoffman has built a career with versatile portrayals of antiheroes and vulnerable characters.
He first drew critical praise for the play Eh?, for which he won a Theatre World Award and a Drama Desk Award. This was soon followed by his breakthrough movie role as the good-looking, but troubled Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate in 1967.
Since then Hoffman's career has largely been focused on cinema, with only sporadic returns to television and the stage. Some of his most notable films are Papillon, Marathon Man, Midnight Cowboy, Little Big Man, Lenny, All the President's Men, Kramer vs. Kramer, Tootsie, Rain Man and Wag the Dog.
Hoffman has won two Academy Awards (for his performances in Kramer vs. Kramer and Rain Man), five Golden Globes, four BAFTAs, three Drama Desk Awards, a Genie Award and an Emmy Award. Hoffman received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1999.
Benny Carter was born 115 years ago today
Benny Carter greets Dizzy Gillespie
Photo by Allan Grant
Benny Carter was born 115 years ago today.
A jazz alto saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger and bandleader, Carter was a major figure in jazz from the 1930s to the 1990s, and was recognized as such by other jazz musicians who called him “King.”
In 1958, Carter performed with Billie Holiday at the legendary Monterey Jazz Festival.
The National Endowment for the Arts honored Carter with its highest honor in jazz, the NEA Jazz Masters Award for 1986. In 2000, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. It was presented by President Bill Clinton.
One of the most remarkable things about Benny Carter's career was its length. It has been said that he is the only musician to have recorded in eight different decades. Having started a career in music before music was even recorded electrically, Carter remained a masterful musician, arranger and composer until he retired from performing in 1997.
In 1998, Benny Carter was honored at Third Annual Awards Gala and Concert at Lincoln Center. He received the Jazz at Lincoln Center Award for Artistic Excellence and his music was performed by the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, Diana Krall and Bobby Short.
Back trouble prevented Benny from attending, so Wynton Marsalis accepted on his behalf.
Carter died in Los Angeles at Cedars-Sinai Hospital on July 12, 2003 from complications of bronchitis at the age of 95.
Here, Carter performs “Rosetta” at the Bern Jazz Festival in 1983
Anton Fig is 70 years old today
Anton Fig, New York City, 2012
Photo by Frank Beacham
Anton Fig is 70 years old today.
Born in Cape Town, South Africa, Fig is session drummer known as "The Thunder from Down Under.” He was a member of David Letterman's house band, the CBS Orchestra. Letterman often referred to Fig as "Anton Zip" or "Buddy Rich Jr."
Fig began playing drums at age four. After performing in numerous successful local rock bands, he moved to Boston to further pursue his musical interests. His formal education included studies at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, studying both jazz and classical disciplines graduating with Honors in 1975.
In 1976, he moved to New York City where he began to establish a career as a freelance musician. Fig was a member of the band, Spider, and played on both their releases in 1980 and 1981 and played with Shanghai on their 1982 release.
Fig was also a member of ex-Kiss lead guitarist Ace Frehley's solo project, Frehley's Comet, from 1984 to 1987, as well as the drummer on Frehley's 1978 solo album. Other artists with whom he has worked include Bob Dylan, Warren Zevon, B. B. King, Peter Frampton, Joan Armatrading, Cyndi Lauper, Link Wray, Robert Gordon, Joe Bonamassa, Beth Hart and Kix. Fig also played drums on all but one song on Kiss's 1979 album, Dynasty, and every song on their 1980 album, Unmasked.
Fig was the drummer for the Paul Shaffer-led house band of David Letterman's late night television shows since 1986, when he debuted with "The World's Most Dangerous Band" on NBC's Late Night with David Letterman.
When Letterman's show moved to CBS in 1993 and became Late Show with David Letterman, the band (and Fig) moved as well, adding a horn section and becoming known as the "CBS Orchestra."
Joe Tex was born 88 years ago today
Joe Tex was born 88 years ago today.
Tex was a musician who gained success in the 1960s and 1970s with his brand of Southern soul, which mixed the styles of country, gospel and rhythm and blues.
Born in Rogers, Texas, and raised in Baytown, Tex's career started after he was signed to King Records in 1955, following four wins at the Apollo Theater.
Between that year and 1964, however, Tex struggled to find hits and by the time he finally recorded his first hit, "Hold What You've Got,” in 1965, he had recorded thirty prior singles that were deemed failures on the charts.
Tex went on to have three million-selling hits, "Hold What You've Got" (1965), "Skinny Legs and All" (1967) and "I Gotcha" (1972). Tex's style of speaking over the background of his music helped to make him one of the predecessors of the modern style of rap music.
In 1963, a longstanding feud between Tex and James Brown escalated when Brown and Tex performed at what was Brown's homecoming concert at Macon, Georgia. Tex, who opened the show, arrived in a tattered cape and began rolling around on the floor as if in agony, and screamed, "please — somebody help get me out of this cape!"
This allegedly resulted in Brown finding Tex at an after show party at a nightclub and shooting at the place with his gun. Tex would later claim that Brown stole his dance moves and his microphone stand tricks. In a few interviews he gave in the sixties, Tex dismissed the notion of Brown being called "Soul Brother No. 1," insisting that Little Willie John was the original "Soul Brother No. 1.”
A convert to the Muslim faith since 1966, Tex changed his name to Yusuf Hazziez, and toured as a spiritual lecturer.
On August 13, 1982, he died at his home in Navasota, Texas, following a heart attack, five days after his 49th birthday.
Here, Tex sings “Ain’t Gonna Bump No More” on Soul Train, 1977
Jimmy Witherspoon was born 102 years ago today
Jimmy Witherspoon and The Gordon Robinson Septet, The Bamboo Club, Hazel Grove, Stockport, England, 1964
Photo by Alan Hare
Jimmy Witherspoon was born 102 years ago today.
Witherspoon was a jump blues singer born in Gurdon, Arkansas. He first attracted attention singing with Teddy Weatherford's band in Calcutta, India, which made regular radio broadcasts over the U. S. Armed Forces Radio Service during World War II. Witherspoon made his first records with Jay McShann's band in 1945.
In 1949, recording under his own name with the McShann band, he had his first hit, "Ain't Nobody's Business," a song which came to be regarded as his signature tune.
In 1950, he had hits with two more songs closely identified with him: "No Rollin' Blues," "Big Fine Girl," as well as "Failing By Degrees" and "New Orleans Woman" recorded with the Gene Gilbeaux Orchestra, which included Herman Washington and Don Hill on the Modern Records label.
These were recorded from a live performance on May 10, 1949 at a "Just Jazz" concert Pasadena, CA sponsored by Gene Norman. Another classic Witherspoon composition is "Times Gettin' Tougher Than Tough."
Witherspoon's style of blues — that of the "blues shouter" — became unfashionable in the mid-1950s, but he returned to popularity with his 1959 album, Jimmy Witherspoon at the Monterey Jazz Festival, which featured Roy Eldridge, Woody Herman, Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Earl Hines and Mel Lewis.
He later recorded with Gerry Mulligan, Leroy Vinnegar, Richard "Groove" Holmes and T-Bone Walker. In 1961, Witherspoon toured Europe with Buck Clayton and returned to the UK on many occasions, featuring on a mid-sixties live UK recording Spoon Sings and Swings (1966) with tenor sax player Dick Morrissey's quartet.
In 1970, he appeared on Brother Jack McDuff's London Blue Note recording To Seek a New Home together with British jazz musicians, including Dick Morrissey, again and Terry Smith.
In the 1970s, he also recorded the album, Guilty! with Eric Burdon and featuring Ike White & the San Quentin Prison Band. He then toured with a band of his own featuring Robben Ford and Russ Ferrante.
A recording from this period, Spoonful, featured 'Spoon accompanied by Robben Ford, Joe Sample, Cornell Dupree, Thad Jones and Bernard Purdie. He continued performing and recording into the 1990s.
Other performers with whom Witherspoon recorded include Jimmy Rowles, Earl "Fatha" Hines, Vernon Alley, Mel Lewis, Teddy Edwards, Gerald Wiggins, John Clayton, Paul Humphrey, Pepper Adams, Kenny Burrell, Harry "Sweets" Edison, Jimmy Smith, Long John Baldry, Junior Mance, Ellington bassist Jimmy Woode, Kenny Clarke, Gerry Mulligan, Jim Mullen, Count Basie, Van Morrison, Dutch Swing College Band and Gene Gilbeaux.
In the 1995 film, Georgia, Witherspoon portrayed a traveling, gun-collecting blues singer, Trucker, who has a relationship with the troubled character, Sadie, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh.
Witherspoon died of throat cancer in Los Angeles on September 18, 1997.
Here, Witherspoon sings his signature song, “Ain’t Nobody’s Business”
Mel Tillis was born 90 years old today
Mel Tillis was born 90 years old today.
The country music singer began recording in the late 1950s with his biggest success occurring in the 1970s. He had a long list of Top 10 hits, including "I Ain't Never,” "Good Woman Blues” and "Coca-Cola Cowboy.”
On February 13, 2012, President Barack Obama awarded Tillis the National Medal of Arts for his contributions to country music. He also won the CMA Awards' most coveted award, Entertainer of the Year.
Tillis was known for his speech impediment, which did not affect his singing voice. The Grand Ole Opry inducted Tillis on June 9, 2007. He was inducted into the Opry by his daughter, Pam Tillis.
Tillis had been unwell since January, 2016 with various illnesses. On November 19, 2017, he died of respiratory failure in Ocala, Florida, at the age of 85.
Charlie's Place: Photo Essay
- The true story of the Ku Klux Klan’s violent attempt in South Carolina in the post World War II years to stop dirty dancing and kill the emerging black music behind it—rhythm & blues. E-book in all platforms.
Mill Town Murder: Photo Essay
- On the morning of Sept. 6, 1934, in the tiny town of Honea Path, S.C., friends and neighbors came to blows in a labor dispute. When it was over, seven people were dead and 30 others wounded. The bloody riot at the town’s cotton mill shaped the lives of two generations to follow—not because of the shock of what was known, but by what was unknown. E-book available on all platforms.
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