Frank Beacham's Journal

Jerry Lee Lewis is 85 years old today

Jerry Lee Lewis is 85 years old today.

The rock and roll and country music singer-songwriter and pianist is known as "The Killer.” An early pioneer of rock and roll music, Lewis had hits in the late 1950s with songs such as "Great Balls of Fire,” "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On,” "Breathless" and "High School Confidential.”

However, Lewis' rock 'n' roll career faltered in the wake of his marriage to 13-year-old Myra Gale Brown. Brown was Lewis's first cousin once removed and he was 22 years old. The publicity over the marriage caused an uproar and his British tour was cancelled after only three concerts.

Lewis had little success in the charts following the scandal until his popularity recovered in the late 1960s after he extended his career to country and western music with songs such as "Another Place, Another Time.” More country hits soon followed over the late 1960s and through the 1970s.

Lewis's successes continued throughout the decade and he embraced his rock 'n' roll past with songs such as a cover of the Big Bopper's "Chantilly Lace" and "Rockin' My Life Away.”

In the 21st century, Lewis continues to tour to audiences around the world and still releases new albums. One recent album, titled Last Man Standing, is his best selling to date at over a million copies sold worldwide.

Lewis’s live album, Live at the Star Club, Hamburg, is often regarded by many as one of the wildest and greatest rock and roll concert albums ever.

Lewis is the last surviving member of Sun Records' Million Dollar Quartet and the Class of '55 album, which altogether included Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison and Elvis Presley, as well as Lewis himself.

Here, Lewis performs “Great Balls of Fire”

Jerry Lee Lewis' piano at his home in Mississippi

Photo by Jim Herrington

Anita Ekberg was born 89 years ago today

Anita Ekberg was born 89 years ago today.

A Swedish-Italian actress, model and sex symbol, Ekberg played the role of Sylvia in the Federico Fellini film, La Dolce Vita in 1960.

Ekberg worked primarily in Italy, of which she became a permanent resident in 1964. In her teens, she was a fashion model. Ekberg entered the Miss Malmö competition in 1950 at her mother's urging, leading to the Miss Sweden contest which she won.

She consequently went to the United States to compete for the Miss Universe 1951 title despite speaking little English. Although she did not win the Miss Universe pageant, as one of six finalists she did earn a starlet's contract with Universal Studios, as was the practice at the time.

As a starlet at Universal, she received lessons in drama, elocution, dancing, horseriding and fencing. She appeared briefly in the 1953 Universal films, Abbott and Costello Go to Mars, and The Golden Blade.

Ekberg skipped many of her drama lessons, restricting herself to riding horses in the Hollywood Hills. The combination of her voluptuous physique and colorful private life (such as her well-publicized romances with Hollywood's leading men, such as Frank Sinatra, Tyrone Power, Yul Brynner, Rod Taylor and Errol Flynn) appealed to the gossip magazines.

She soon became a major 1950s pin-up, appearing in men's magazines like Playboy. Additionally, she participated in publicity stunts and once admitted that an incident where her dress burst open in the lobby of London's Berkeley Hotel was prearranged with a photographer.

Federico Fellini gave Ekberg her best known role in La Dolce Vita (1960), performing as Sylvia Rank, the unattainable "dream woman" of the character played by Marcello Mastroianni. The film features a scene of her cavorting in Rome's Trevi Fountain alongside Mastroianni, which has been called "one of cinema's most iconic scenes.”

Ekberg died on January 11, 2015 at the age of 83 in Italy.

Here is the Trevi Fountain clip from La Dolce Vita

Gene Autry, the singing cowboy, was born 113 years ago today

Gene Autry, the singing cowboy, was born 113 years ago today.

From 1934 to 1953, Autry appeared in 93 films and 91 episodes of The Gene Autry Show television series. During the 1930s and 1940s, he personified the straight-shooting hero — honest, brave and true. He profoundly touched the lives of millions of Americans.

Autry was also one of the most important figures in the history of country music, considered the second major influential artist of the genre's development after Jimmie Rodgers. His singing cowboy movies were the first vehicle to carry country music to a national audience.

In addition to his signature song, "Back in the Saddle Again,” Autry is still remembered for his Christmas holiday songs, "Here Comes Santa Claus,” which he wrote, "Frosty the Snowman” and his biggest hit, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

Autry was owner of a television station and several radio stations in Southern California. He also owned the Los Angeles and California Angels Major League Baseball team from 1961 to 1997.

Autry is a member of both the Country Music Hall of Fame and Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and is the only person to be awarded stars in all five categories on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, for film, television, music, radio and live performance. The town of Gene Autry, Oklahoma was named in his honor.

Included for many years on Forbes magazine's list of the 400 richest Americans, Autry slipped to their "near miss" category in 1995 with an estimated net worth of $320 million.

Gene Autry died of lymphoma three days after his 91st birthday at his home in Studio City, California. His death on October 2, 1998 came fewer than three months after the death of another celebrated cowboy of the silver screen, radio and TV — Roy Rogers.

Here, Johnny Cash answers his son’s question, “Daddy, Who Is Gene Autry”

 

On this day in 1975 — 45 years ago — Jackie Wilson had a heart attack while performing live in Dick Clark's Good Ol' Rock and Roll Revue on stage at the Latin Casino in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

Wilson collapsed into a coma suffering severe brain damage. Ironically, he was in the middle of singing one of his biggest hits, “Lonely Teardrops” and was two words into the line, "....my heart is crying" when he collapsed to the stage, striking his head heavily.

At first, audience members initially thought it was part of the act. Clark, however, sensed something was wrong and then ordered the musicians to stop the music.

Cornell Gunter of the Coasters, who was backstage, noticed Wilson was not breathing. Gunter was able to resuscitate him and Wilson was then rushed to a nearby hospital.

Medical personnel worked nearly 30 minutes to stabilize his vitals, but the lack of oxygen to his brain caused him to slip into a coma. He briefly recovered in early 1976, and was even able to take a few wobbly steps but slipped back into a semi-comatose state.

Wilson was a resident of the Medford Leas Retirement Center in Medford, New Jersey when he was admitted into Memorial Hospital of Burlington County in Mount Holly, New Jersey due to having trouble taking nourishment.

Wilson died at age 49 on January 21, 1984 from complications of pneumonia.

He initially was buried in an unmarked grave at Westlawn Cemetery near Detroit. In 1987, a fundraiser collected enough money to purchase a headstone.

Mexico and the United States began the first telephone between the two countries on this day in 1927 — 93 years ago.

President Calvin Coolidge and his Mexican counterpart, Plutarco Elías Calles, exchanged pleasantries via telephone to celebrate the start of new telephone service between the two countries. Previously, a dispute over land rights in Mexico had soured relations.

Both leaders needed interpreters, but they each saw promise in the communications advancement. Calles hoped it would aid “an era of good will and mutual understanding, which cannot fail to put an end to all those needless misunderstandings.”

The American president praised the engineers who completed the critical piece of infrastructure that made the call possible — a telephone line system more than 780 miles long linking Mexico City with Laredo, Texas.

The music at the festivities celebrating the telephone connection was also notable. Mexico’s national anthem was played for Coolidge in Washington. In Mexico City, “The Star Spangled Banner” was performed at the National Palace for the first time since 1846.

The same year commercial transatlantic telephone service also began. And, the first AT&T videophone call was also made that year between Washington, D.C and New York City by then-Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover.

Thanks New York Times!

Suzzy Roche is 64 years old today

Suzzy Roche is 64 years old today.

Originally from Park Ridge, New Jersey, Roche is best known for her work with the female vocal group, The Roches, alongside sisters Maggie, who died in January, 2017, and Terre.

Suzzy is the youngest of the three, and joined the act in 1977. She has written a book, Wayward Saints, published in 2012.

Roche is also an active associate member of The Wooster Group and has appeared in a number of the group's productions as well as composing original music for the group's performances.

She was briefly a member of Four Bitchin' Babes, appearing on their album, Some Assembly Required.

In 2004, Roche appeared on Crash Test Dummies album, "Songs of the Unforgiven.” In addition to singing, she is an actress, having appeared in the 1988 romantic comedy, Crossing Delancey, as well as a 1982 film, Soup for One.

Roche also appeared with her siblings (playing themselves) in the 1996 comedy, A Weekend in the Country.

With musician, Loudon Wainwright III, Roche has a daughter, Lucy Wainwright Roche. Lucy's half-siblings, Rufus Wainwright and Martha Wainwright, are also singer-songwriters.

Here, the Roches in full concert at the Capital Theatre, 1978

Photo by Frank Beacham

Bass, Havana, Cuba

Photo by Alexandre Meneghini

Brigitte Bardot is 86 years old today

Brigitte Bardot is 86 years old today.

Bardot is a former French actress, singer and fashion model, who later became an animal rights activist. She was one of the best known sex symbols of the 1950s and 1960s, and was widely referred to simply by her initials.

Starting in 1969, Bardot became the official face of Marianne (who had previously been anonymous) to represent the liberty of France.

Bardot was an aspiring ballerina in early life. She started her acting career in 1952 and, after appearing in 16 routine comedy films with limited international release, became world-famous in 1957 with the controversial film, And God Created Woman.

She later starred in Jean-Luc Godard's 1963 film, Le Mépris.

Bardot was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress for her role in Louis Malle's 1965 film, Viva Maria!

Bardot caught the attention of French intellectuals. She was the subject of Simone de Beauvoir's 1959 essay, The Lolita Syndrome, which described Bardot as a "locomotive of women's history" and built upon existentialist themes to declare her the first and most liberated woman of post-war France.

Bardot retired from the entertainment industry in 1973. During her career in show business, she starred in 47 films, performed in several musical shows and recorded over 60 songs. She was awarded the Legion of Honor in 1985, but refused to receive it.

After her retirement, she established herself as an animal rights activist. During the 1990s, she generated controversy by criticizing immigration and Islam in France, and has been fined five times for inciting racial hatred.

Bardot adopted a Bohemian lifestyle that was to include four husbands, assorted lovers and a dress code far from the sophistication of Hollywood stars of the time.

"She goes barefoot, and turns her back on elegant grooming, jewels, perfumes, make-up, on all these tricks," the French feminist icon Simone de Beauvoir noted with approval. "She does what she wants and that is what is so troubling."

Bob Dylan is said to have written his very first song about Bardot as a teen, and John Lennon is said to have suffered so badly from nerves that he took LSD before meeting her.

Ed Sullivan was born 119 years ago today

Ed Sullivan was born 119 years ago today.

An entertainment writer and television host, Sullivan was best known as the presenter of the television variety program, The Toast of the Town, now usually remembered under its second name, The Ed Sullivan Show.

Broadcast for 23 years from 1948 to 1971, it set a record for long-running variety show in U.S. broadcast history. In 1996, Ed Sullivan was ranked #50 on TV Guide's "50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.”

Sullivan, of Irish decent, was born in Harlem. A former boxer, Sullivan began his media work as a newspaper sportswriter for The New York Evening Graphic.

When Walter Winchell, one of the original gossip columnists and the most powerful entertainment reporter of his day, left the newspaper for the Hearst syndicate, Sullivan took over as theater columnist. His theater column was later carried in The New York Daily News.

Sullivan’s column, “Little Old New York,” concentrated on Broadway shows and gossip, as Winchell's had. Like Winchell, he also did show business news broadcasts on radio.

Again echoing Winchell, Sullivan took on yet another medium in 1933 by writing and starring in the film, Mr. Broadway, which has him guiding the audience around New York nightspots to meet entertainers and celebrities.

Sullivan soon became a powerful starmaker in the entertainment world himself, becoming one of Winchell's main rivals, setting the El Morocco nightclub in New York as his unofficial headquarters against Winchell's seat of power at the nearby Stork Club. Sullivan continued writing for The News throughout his broadcasting career and his popularity long outlived that of Winchell.

In 1948, the CBS network hired Sullivan to do a weekly Sunday night TV variety show. Debuting in June, 1948, the show was broadcast from CBS Studio 50 at 1697 Broadway (at 53rd Street) in New York City.

In 1967, the theatre was renamed the Ed Sullivan Theater. It was home of the Late Show with David Letterman and now Stephen Colbert.

Television critics gave the new show and its host poor reviews. Harriet Van Horne alleged that "he got where he is not by having a personality, but by having no personality." The host wrote to the critic, "Dear Miss Van Horne: You bitch. Sincerely, Ed Sullivan."

Sullivan had little acting ability. In 1967, 20 years after his show's debut, Time magazine asked, "What exactly is Ed Sullivan's talent?" His mannerisms on camera were so awkward that some viewers believed the host suffered from Bell's palsy.

Time in 1955 stated that Sullivan resembled “a cigar-store Indian, the Cardiff Giant and a stone-faced monument just off the boat from Easter Island. He moves like a sleepwalker; his smile is that of a man sucking a lemon; his speech is frequently lost in a thicket of syntax; his eyes pop from their sockets or sink so deep in their bags that they seem to be peering up at the camera from the bottom of twin wells.”

The magazine concluded, however, that "Yet, instead of frightening children, Ed Sullivan charms the whole family." Sullivan appeared to the audience as an average guy who brought the great acts of show business to their home televisions.

"Ed Sullivan will last," comedian Fred Allen said, "as long as someone else has talent." Frequent guest, Alan King. said "Ed does nothing, but he does it better than anyone else in television."

He had a newspaperman's instinct for what the public wanted, and programmed his variety hours with remarkable balance. There was something for everyone. A typical show would feature a vaudeville act (acrobats, jugglers, magicians, etc.), one or two popular comedians, a singing star, a hot jukebox favorite, a figure from the legitimate theater and for the kids, a visit with puppet "Topo Gigio, the little Italian mouse," or a popular athlete.

Sullivan had a healthy sense of humor about himself and permitted — even encouraged — impersonators such as John Byner, Frank Gorshin, Rich Little and especially Will Jordan to imitate him on his show. Johnny Carson also did a fair impression, and even Joan Rivers imitated Sullivan's unique posture.

The impressionists exaggerated his stiffness, raised shoulders and nasal tenor phrasing, along with some of his commonly used introductions, such as "And now, right here on our stage…," "For all you youngsters out there…," and "a really big shew" (his pronunciation of the word "show"). He had a knack for identifying and promoting top talent and paid a great deal of money to secure that talent for his show.

When Elvis Presley became popular, Sullivan was wary of the singer's bad-boy style and said that he would never invite Presley on his program. However, Presley became too big a name to ignore, and Sullivan scheduled him to appear on September 9, 1956.

In August, however, Sullivan was injured in an automobile accident that occurred near his country home in Southbury, Connecticut. Sullivan had to take a medical leave from the series and missed Presley's appearance.

Charles Laughton wound up introducing Presley on the Sullivan hour. After Sullivan got to know Presley personally, he made amends by telling his audience, "This is a real decent, fine boy."

Sullivan's failure to scoop the TV industry with Presley made him determined to get the next big sensation first. In Feb. 9, 1964, he achieved that with the first live American appearance of The Beatles, the most-watched program in TV history to that point and still one of the most-watched programs of all time.

The Beatles appeared three more times on the Sullivan show in person, and submitted filmed performances later. Sullivan struck up such a rapport with the Beatles that he agreed to introduce them at their momentous Shea Stadium concert on August 15, 1965.

The Dave Clark Five, heavily promoted as having a "cleaner" image than the Beatles, made 13 appearances on the Sullivan show — more than any other UK group.

There was another side to Sullivan. He could be very quick to take offense if he felt he had been crossed, and could hold a grudge for a long time. This could sometimes be seen as a part of his TV personality. Jackie Mason, Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly and The Doors became intimately familiar with Sullivan's negative side.

On November 20, 1955, Bo Diddley was asked by Sullivan to sing Tennessee Ernie Ford's hit "Sixteen Tons." Diddley sensed the choice of song would end his career then and there, and instead sang his #1 hit, "Bo Diddley." He was banned from the show.

In 1963, Bob Dylan was set to appear on the show, but network censors rejected the song he wanted to perform, "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues," as potentially libelous to the John Birch Society.

Refusing to perform a different song, Dylan walked off the set at dress rehearsal. Sullivan, who had approved the song at a previous rehearsal, backed Dylan's decision. The incident resulted in accusations against the network of engaging in censorship.

In early September, 1974, X-rays revealed that Sullivan had advanced esophageal cancer. Only his family was told, however, and as the doctors gave Sullivan very little time, the family chose to keep the diagnosis from him.

Sullivan, still believing his ailment to be yet another complication from a long-standing battle with ulcers, died five weeks later, on October 13, 1974.

His funeral was attended by 3,000 at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York on a cold, rainy day.

Sullivan and his wife, Sylvia, in the water on Cote d'Azur during vacation, 1965

Photo by Hecht

On September 28, 1991 — 29 years ago today — jazz trumpet legend Miles Davis died in a California hospital at the age of 65.

Today, our vocabulary may no longer be adequate to describe the nature of an artist like Miles Davis. In a career that spanned parts of six decades, Davis didn't simply evolve as an individual musician. He drove the very evolution of the art form he worked in, pulling much of the jazz world along with him as he moved from one new sound to the next with utter disregard for the critical or popular reaction.

And though the reception to some of the directions Davis took was strongly negative, it never kept him from pursuing new ones. As he once said of himself, "I have to change....It's like a curse."

Miles Dewey Davis III was given his first trumpet on the day he turned 13, and by the time he was 15, he was a card-carrying member of the local musicians' union in Saint Louis, Missouri. He left St. Louis for New York City in 1944 to pursue a degree in music at Juilliard, though he immersed himself in the world of professional jazz while still receiving his classical training.

In the clubs on 52nd Street in postwar Manhattan, a new sound was being born, and Davis had a hand in its creation. As a member of Charlie Parker's quintet in 1945, Davis played on some of the earliest recordings made in the hugely popular style that became known as be-bop. By 1948, he was leading his own quintet on the first of his many departures from the jazz mainstream.

First came "cool jazz," a highly cerebral and highly unpopular style that nevertheless sparked a whole new movement. Then came "hard bop," a style he developed in the mid-1950s after several years lost in the early part of the decade to heroin addiction.

The decade that followed was the period of Davis's greatest popularity — a period during which he not only continued to break new musical ground on albums like Miles Ahead (1957), Kind of Blue (1959) and Sketches of Spain (1960).

He also managed to introduce the world to many other jazz greats he employed as sidemen: John Coltrane, Red Garland, Cannonball Adderley, Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock.

From the mid-1960s onward, the rate of Davis's evolution only increased as he went through periods of experimentation with rock and funk, among other new sounds.

In early September 1991, Davis checked into St. John's Hospital near his home in Santa Monica, California, for routine tests. Doctors suggested he have a tracheal tube implanted to relieve his breathing after repeated bouts of bronchial pneumonia. The suggestion provoked an outburst from Davis that led to an intracerebral hemorrhage followed by a coma.

After several days on life support, his machine was turned off and he died on September 28, 1991 at age 65. His death was attributed to the combined effects of a stroke, pneumonia and respiratory failure. Davis was taking azidothymidine (AZT), a type of antiretroviral drug used for the treatment of HIV and AIDS, during his treatments in hospital.

Davis is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City, with one of his trumpets, near the site of Duke Ellington's grave.

Thanks History.com

Miles Davis, 1955

Photo from Express Newspapers

Peter Finch, the British-born Australian actor, was born 104 years ago today

Peter Finch, the British-born Australian actor, was born 104 years ago today.

Finch is best remembered for his role as "crazed" television anchorman, Howard Beale, in the film 1976 film, Network.

The film earned him a posthumous Academy Award for Best Actor, his fifth Best Actor award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and a Best Actor award from the Golden Globes.

He was the first of two people to win a posthumous Academy Award in an acting category. The other was Heath Ledger, also Australian.

After suffering a heart attack in the lobby of The Beverly Hills Hotel, Finch died on January 14, 1977 at the age of 60.

Here, Finch does his infamous “Mad as Hell” speech from Network

William Windom, the actor, was born 97 years ago today

William Windom, the actor, was born 97 years ago today.

Windom was perhaps best known for his work on television, including two episodes of The Twilight Zone.

In the 1969–1970 NBC series, My World and Welcome to It, Windom played the James Thurberesque lead and received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Comedy Series.

After the cancellation of the series, Windom toured the country for a time in a one-man Thurber show. I saw the show. It was such a powerful portrayal, that I became a Thurber fan myself.

Windom’s most common recurring character, Dr. Seth Hazlitt, was on the CBS series Murder, She Wrote, starring Angela Lansbury.

Windom died on August 16, 2012, at the age of 88 at his home in Woodacre, California, from congestive heart failure.

Al Capp, the cartoonist and humorist best known for the satirical comic strip, Li'l Abner, was born 111 years ago today

Al Capp, the cartoonist and humorist best known for the satirical comic strip, Li'l Abner, was born 111 years ago today.

Capp created the strip in 1934 and continued writing and (with help from assistants) drawing until 1977. He also wrote the comic strips, Abbie an' Slats (in the years 1937-45) and Long Sam (1954).

He won the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award in 1947 for Cartoonist of the Year, and their 1979 Elzie Segar Award (posthumously) for his "unique and outstanding contribution to the profession of cartooning."

Comic strips dealt with northern urban experiences until the year Capp introduced "L'il Abner," the first strip based in the South.

Although Capp was from Connecticut, he spent 43 years teaching the world about Dogpatch, reaching an estimated 60 million readers in over 900 American newspapers and 100 foreign papers in 28 countries.

M. Thomas Inge says Capp made a large personal fortune on the strip and "had a profound influence on the way the world viewed the American South.”

Al Capp in 1946

Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt

New York City Subway

Photo by Matt Weber

On the day in 1912 — 108 years ago — W.C. Handy published “Memphis Blues,” which introduced his style of 12 bar blues. Many consider it the first blues song.

Handy sold the rights to the song for $100.

By 1914, when he was 40, he had established his musical style, his popularity had greatly increased and he was a prolific composer.

Arthur Penn was born 98 years ago today

Arthur Penn was born 98 years ago today.

Penn was an American director and producer of film, television and theater. He directed critically acclaimed films throughout the 1960s such as the drama The Chase (1966), the biographical crime film, Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and the Arlo Guthrie comedy, Alice's Restaurant (1969).

He also got attention for his revisionist Western, Little Big Man (1970). By the mid-1970s, his films were received with much less enthusiasm.

In the 1990s, he returned to stage and television direction and production, including an executive producer role for the crime series, Law & Order.

Penn was born to a Russian Jewish family in Philadelphia, the son of Sonia (Greenberg), a nurse and Harry Penn, a watchmaker. He was the younger brother of Irving Penn, the fashion photographer.

At 19, he was drafted into the army. Stationed in Britain, he became interested in theater. He started to direct and take part in shows being put on for the soldiers around England at the time. As Penn grew up, he became increasingly interested in film, especially after seeing the Orson Welles film, Citizen Kane.

He later attended Black Mountain College in North Carolina, and was a featured commentator in the documentary, Fully Awake, about the college.

After making a name for himself as a director of quality television dramas, Penn made his feature debut with a western, The Left Handed Gun (1958), for Warner Brothers. A retelling of the Billy the Kid legend, it was distinguished by Paul Newman's sharp portrayal of the outlaw as a psychologically troubled youth (the role was originally intended for the archetypal portrayer of troubled teens, James Dean).

The production was completed in only 23 days, but Warner Brothers reedited the film against his wishes with a new ending he disapproved of. The film subsequently failed upon release in North America, but was well received in Europe.

Penn died in Manhattan, on September 28, 2010, a day after his 88th birthday from congestive heart failure.

Here’s a Penn-directed scene from Alice’s Restaurant

Bud Powell, the jazz pianist who was a key to the development of bebop, was born 96 years ago today

Bud Powell, the jazz pianist who was a key to the development of bebop, was born 96 years ago today.

Born and raised in Harlem, Powell was a close friend of Thelonious Monk. His greatest influence on piano was Art Tatum.

Along with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, Powell was a key player in the development of bebop, and his virtuosity as a pianist led many to call him the Charlie Parker of the piano.

Powell's father was a stride pianist. He took to his father's instrument and started to learn classical piano at age five from a teacher his father hired. By age ten, he had also showed interest in the jazz that could be heard all over the neighborhood.

He first appeared in public at a rent party, where he mimicked Fats Waller's playing style. The first jazz composition that he mastered was James P. Johnson's, "Carolina Shout.” Bud's older brother, William, played the trumpet, and by age fifteen, Bud was playing in his band.

By this time, he had become familiar with Art Tatum, whose overwhelmingly virtuosic technique Powell then set out to equal.

Bud's younger brother, Richie, and his teenage friend, Elmo Hope, were also accomplished pianists who had significant careers. Bud, though underage, soon was exposed to the exciting, musically adventurous atmosphere at Uptown House, an after-hours venue that was near where he lived.

It was here that the first stirrings of modernism could be heard on a nightly basis, and where Charlie Parker first appeared when he was unattached to a band and stayed briefly in New York.

Thelonious Monk had some involvement there, but by the time that he and Powell met around 1942, the elder pianist/composer was able to introduce Powell to the circle of bebop musicians which was starting to form at Minton's Playhouse.

Monk was resident there and, consequently, presented Powell as his protégé. The mutual affection grew to where Monk was Powell's greatest mentor and dedicated his composition, "In Walked Bud," to him.

In the early 1940s, Powell played in a few dance orchestras, including that of Cootie Williams, whom Powell's mother decided her son should play for and tour with (rather than accept an offer from Oscar Pettiford and Dizzy Gillespie, whose modernist quintet was about to open at a midtown nightclub).

Powell was the pianist on a handful of Williams's recording dates in 1944, the last of which included the first-ever recording of Monk's "'Round Midnight." His tenure with Williams was terminated one night in January, 1945, when he got separated from the band after a Philadelphia dance engagement and was apprehended, drunk, by railroad police inside a station. He was beaten by them, and then briefly detained by the city police.

Shortly after his release and return to Harlem, he was hospitalized — first in Bellevue, an observation ward, and then in a psychiatric hospital, sixty miles away. He stayed there for two and a half months.

Powell resumed playing in Manhattan immediately, in demand by various small-group leaders for nightclub engagements in the increasingly integrated midtown scene. His 1945-46 recordings, many as the result of his sudden visibility on the club scene, were for Frank Socolow, Dexter Gordon, J. J. Johnson, Sonny Stitt, Fats Navarro and Kenny Clarke.

Powell soon became renowned for his ability to play at fast tempos. His percussive punctuation of certain phrases, as well as his predilection for speed, showed the influence of Parker and other modern horn soloists.

Powell's career advanced when Parker chose him to be his pianist on a quintet record date, with Miles Davis, Tommy Potter and Max Roach in May, 1947.

Powell demonstrated his mature style on the third complete take of "Donna Lee," where he got a brief solo spot, and with his jocular chord fills while the horn players paused to breathe during "Buzzy," the last tune recorded.

When the quintet came together for the final ensemble section, Powell's piano made its final, sarcastic comment on the proceedings.

In November, 1947, Powell had an altercation with another customer at a Harlem bar. In the ensuing fight, he was hit over his eye with a bottle. When Harlem Hospital found him incoherent and rambunctious, it sent him to Bellevue, which had the record of his previous confinement there and in a psychiatric hospital.

It chose to institutionalize him again, though this time at Creedmoor State Hospital, a facility much closer to Manhattan. He was kept there for eleven months.

From 1949 through 1953, Powell made his best recordings, most of which were for Alfred Lion of Blue Note Records and for Norman Granz of Mercury, Norgran and Clef.

The first Blue Note session, in August, 1949, features Fats Navarro, Sonny Rollins, Powell, Tommy Potter and Roy Haynes, and the compositions "Bouncing with Bud" and "Dance of the Infidels." The second Blue Note session in 1951 was a trio with Russell and Roach, and includes, "Parisian Thoroughfare" and "Un Poco Loco."

Powell was hospitalized in New York after months of increasingly erratic behavior and self-neglect. On July 31, 1966, he died of tuberculosis, malnutrition and alcoholism.

The pianist Bill Evans paid Powell a tribute in 1979: “If I had to choose one single musician for his artistic integrity, for the incomparable originality of his creation and the grandeur of his work, it would be Bud Powell. He was in a class by himself.”

Here, Powell plays piano in “Anthropology” in Copenhagen, 1962

Ensign Pulver, a film made in 1964, was a sequel to the 1955 film, Mister Roberts.

The film was directed and co-written by Joshua Logan, who had directed and co-written the 1948 Mister Roberts stage play on Broadway, and also shot scenes for the 1955 film after director John Ford fell ill. The cinematographer was Charles Lawton Jr.

Photo by Edward Croneweith

Don Cornelius, the host and creator of Soul Train, was born 84 years ago today

Don Cornelius, the host and creator of Soul Train, was born 84 years ago today.

Cornelius was the show host and producer of Soul Train, which he hosted from 1971 until 1993. Cornelius sold the show to MadVision Entertainment in 2008.

Born in Chicago's South Side and raised in the Bronzeville neighborhood, Cornelius graduated from DuSable High School in 1954 and then joined the Marines. He served 18 months in Korea.

In 1966, he took a three-month broadcasting course, despite being married with two sons and having only $400 in his bank account. That year he landed a job as an announcer, news reporter and disc jockey on Chicago radio station WVON.

In 1967, Cornelis joined Chicago television station, WCIU-TV, and hosted a news program, A Black's View of the News. In 1970, he launched Soul Train on WCIU-TV as a daily local show. The program entered national syndication and moved to Los Angeles the following year.

Eddie Kendricks, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Bobby Hutton and The Honey Cone were featured on the national debut episode.

Originally a journalist inspired by the civil rights movement, Cornelius recognized that in the late 1960s there was no television venue in the United States for soul music. He introduced many African-American musicians to a larger audience as a result of their appearances on Soul Train, a program that was both influential among African-Americans and popular with a wider audience.

As writer, producer and host of Soul Train, Cornelius was instrumental in offering wider exposure to black musicians such as James Brown, Aretha Franklin and Michael Jackson, as well as creating opportunities for talented dancers that would presage subsequent television dance programs.

In the early-morning hours of February 1, 2012, officers responded to a report of a shooting at 12685 Mulholland Drive and found Cornelius with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

He was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead by the Los Angeles County Assistant Chief Coroner.

According to former Soul Train host, Shemar Moore, Cornelius may have been suffering from early onset of dementia or Alzheimer's disease and his health had been in decline.

An autopsy found that Cornelius had been suffering from seizures during the last 15 years of his life, a complication of a 21-hour brain operation he underwent in 1982 to correct a congenital deformity in his cerebral arteries. He admitted that he was never quite the same after that surgery and it was a factor in his decision to retire from hosting Soul Train in 1993.

According to his son, he was in "extreme pain" by the end and said shortly before his death: "I don't know how much longer I can take this."

Here is a video tribute to Cornelius

Meat Loaf is 73 years old today

Meat Loaf performs in Central Park, New York City, 1978

Photo by Sheri Lynn Behr

Marvin Lee Aday — better known at “Meat Loaf” — is 73 years old today.

A hard rock musician and actor, Meat Loaf is known for the Bat Out of Hell album trilogy consisting of Bat Out of Hell, Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell and Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster is Loose.

Bat Out of Hell has sold more than 43 million copies worldwide. After 35 years, it still sells an estimated 200,000 copies annually and stayed on the charts for over nine years, making it one of the best selling albums of all time.

Although he enjoyed success with Bat Out of Hell and Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell, Meat Loaf experienced some initial difficulty establishing a steady career within his native United States.

However, he has retained iconic status and popularity in Europe, especially the UK, where he ranks 23rd for the number of weeks overall spent on the charts.

Meat Loaf has also appeared in over 50 movies and television shows, sometimes as himself or as characters resembling his stage persona. His most notable roles include Eddie in the American premiere of The Rocky Horror Show and The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Robert "Bob" Paulson in Fight Club.

Here, Meat Loaf performs in the video for Bat Out of Hell

William Harley and Arthur Davidson, the founders of Harley Davidson Motorcycles, 1914

Peter Sellars: A Memorable Encounter

It’s Peter Sellars 63nd birthday today. He is noted for his unique contemporary stagings of classical and contemporary operas and plays. But I remember him for another reason.

I met Sellars at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge in the 1990s and heard him give some insightful comments on the issue of serendipity on the internet. Not only have his early perceptions proven true, but they were memorable and have stuck with me over time.

Hundreds of years ago, Sellars said, people in search of knowledge went on personal pilgrimages for information. The process, he said, could take years. By not having the information at their fingertips, there was experience attached to the search that made the finding of the information far more meaningful.

"The actual act of finding something had value," Sellars said. "It was a beautiful thing because when you found something it meant something."

Now, said Sellars in the 1990s: "We are getting all this information with no experience attached to it. Where there is no pilgrimage the information itself is debased, devalued and dehumanized. In a sense the ratio of experience to information content is radically altered. What's irritating about the age of information is that it creates this yuppie denial of experience. We have everything at our fingertips, but we don't value anything."

The "untamed quality" of the basic internet structure appeals to Sellars because it allows the user to wander and discover information through personal experience. "To just meander is one of the pleasures of life," he noted.

To have the audience making wrong turns through the information "is exactly the point," Sellars continued. "That's where the juice is."

Today's electronic media reflects only a single point of view. "A very narrow group of people are creating this insane gridlock" on information about human experience, Sellars said. "We are aware there are many, many voices that we don't hear today at all. The CBS Evening News represents only one voice."

Artists, Sellars said, "must break out of the official information structure" to find new ways to express important subjects that mainstream media refuses to address.

"You get the feeling that huge parts of human experience are going undocumented and unrecognized," he continued. "Aristotle wrote about the attempts to touch the totality of an experience. As human beings, we are complex, divided and multilayered. Therefore, what satisfies us is complex, multilayered and has all these built-in conflicts just as we do. How — with set up (new media) structures — do we show our real feelings?"

The World Wide Web, as conceived by Tim Berners-Lee, offered the promise of a new media structure for a greater diversity of voices and ideas. But it has since been hijacked by not only by traditional media, but by commerce and narrow demagogic political voices. Even the most creative new works remain invisible — hidden under a cluttered sea of political and commercial noise?

Peter Sellars saw this early on and sadly it has not changed all these years earlier.

For his innovative collected work in the field of opera and music productions, Sellars was awarded the prestigious Swedish Polar Music Prize of 2014 alongside Chuck Berry.

On September 27, 1999 — 21 years ago today — operatic tenor Plácido Domingo made his 18th opening-night appearance at the Metropolitan Opera House, breaking an "unbreakable" record previously held by Enrico Caruso.

Caruso, of course, was the biggest star the world of opera had ever seen. Following his New York debut with the Metropolitan Opera in 1903, he made opening-night appearances at the Met in 16 of the next 17 years.

With his death in 1921, Caruso's streak stopped at 17 — a mark that no other singer even remotely approached for the next 60 years.

The Italian bass-baritone Ezio Pinza was the closest challenger to Caruso before Domingo came along, but even Pinza failed to reach double digits, topping out at nine opening nights with the Met over the course of his 22-year career.

Even Domingo never thought that Caruso's record would be broken, much less that he would be the one to break it.

"But when I was in my 11th or 12th opening night," he recalled during an interview before his record-setting performance, "somebody asked me, 'Do you realize how close you are to the number of times Caruso opened the Met season?' What can I tell you? I started to think maybe I can do it.''

As a contemporary of the great Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo never enjoyed undisputed status as the greatest tenor of his time. But his far superior stamina and his broader repertoire made him the go-to choice for opening nights at the Met, of which Pavarotti sang only seven.

Domingo sang his first opening with the Met in 1971, in Verdi's Don Carlo, and over the years he sang opening-night parts as diverse as the title role in Verdi's Otello and Sigmund in Wagner's Die Walkurie.

When he sang at his record-setting 18th opening night on this day in 1999, Domingo did so, appropriately enough, as Canio in Ruggero Leoncavallo's Pagliacci — a role most closely associated the man whose record he surpassed, Enrico Caruso.

In 2009, the Met honored Domingo for 40 years with the company.

In August 2019, Domingo was accused by multiple women of sexual harassment. Eight singers and a dancer said that Domingo sexually harassed them in incidents that spanned three decades from the late 1980s.

The alleged harassment took place at venues including opera companies where the musician held top positions. Additional women came forward expressing their discomfort due to his sexual advances.

It was reported that Domingo's sexual advances towards younger women were an "open secret" in the opera world. Domingo issued a statement, stating "The allegations from these unnamed individuals dating back as many as 30 years are deeply troubling, and as presented, inaccurate,” adding that "I recognize that the rules and standards by which we are—and should be—measured against today are very different than they were in the past.”

In September 2019, the Metropolitan Opera announced it would be ending its relationship with Domingo in light of the allegations of sexual harassment.

Following the announcement, Domingo issued a statement: "While I strongly dispute recent allegations made about me...upon reflection, I believe that my appearance in this production of Macbeth would distract from the hard work of my colleagues both on stage and behind the scenes."

He quit the show.

Thomas Nast, who was born 180 years ago today, is widely considered the father of American political cartooning.

As a regular contributor to Harper’s Weekly, he wielded enormous influence, skewering corrupt officials and politicians he opposed.

He introduced the Republican elephant in 1874, popularized the donkey as a symbol for Democrats, and was the first to depict Uncle Sam as we know him today, with a beard, top hat and pinstripe suit.

“He was a tremendous force in American politics for more than two decades,” The New York Times wrote in 1940, for the centennial of Nast’s birth. “He helped to win a war and to elect three presidents of the United States” — Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant (twice) and Rutherford B. Hayes, whom he later abandoned.

Nast also helped bring down the New York politician, William M. Tweed, the boss of the rapacious Democratic machine, Tammany Hall. His tactics might seem familiar. “He did it by heaping contempt and ridicule upon the opposing forces and the rival candidates,” The Times said.

Nast, who was born in Germany, was a defender of many immigrants and of black Americans, and he was a confirmed foe of the Ku Klux Klan. In addition to politics, he also gave America its modern vision of Santa Claus. His depiction of Santa Claus was on the cover of the January 3, 1863, issue of Harper's Weekly. The image stuck in American minds.

Thanks New York Times!

Bessie Smith was killed in a car wreck on Sept. 26, 1937 — 83 years ago today

Legendary blues singer Bessie Smith was killed in a car wreck on Sept. 26, 1937 — 83 years ago today.

Smith was killed when the old Packard she was driving hit a parked truck near Coahoma, Mississippi, between Clarksdale and Memphis.

There is no record of Smith's exact birth date, but she was about 43 years old.

Bessie Smith had been in show business since she was a teenager. In 1912, she joined a traveling vaudeville troupe, the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, and spent the next decade singing in minstrel shows and cabarets all around the South.

In 1923, Smith released her first record, "Down-Hearted Blues." It sold nearly 800,000 copies and made her a superstar. In fact, by the end of the 1920s, Smith had made more money than any black performer ever had.

She performed and recorded with luminaries like Clarence Williams, Louis Armstrong and Fletcher Henderson's band and she starred in the 1929 film, "St. Louis Blues."

Unfortunately, in the 1930s, Smith's career stalled. The Depression changed musical tastes that favored jazz and swing instead of vaudeville blues. Plus Smith’s severe alcoholism made it nearly impossible for her to find work. Toward the end of the decade, though, Smith had begun to record and perform again.

The circumstances surrounding the singer's death are mysterious. It is known that Smith was gravely injured — her arm was nearly severed — in the accident. After that, some people say, the doctor at the scene ignored her while he tended to the bumps and scrapes of a white couple that was in a nearby fender-bender.

Other sources say that Smith bled to death while her ambulance drove around in search of a hospital that would treat black patients. Edward Albee based his 1959 play, "The Death of Bessie Smith," on this version of events.

While neither one of these scenarios would have been much of a surprise in the Jim Crow South, most historians now agree that the stories are apocryphal. Smith did make it to the hospital, but her injuries were so severe that it made no difference.

In the summer of 1970, shortly before her own death from a heroin overdose, the young singer, Janis Joplin, had a headstone made for Smith's unmarked grave. It reads, "The Greatest Blues Singer in the World Will Never Stop Singing."

Bessie Smith, 1936

Photo by Carl Van Vechten

Abbey Road, the Beatles’s album, was released on this day in 1969 — 51 years ago

Abbey Road, the Beatles’s album, was released on this day in 1969 — 51 years ago.

The eleventh studio album by the Beatles, the recording sessions for the album were the last in which all four Beatles participated. Although, Let It Be, was the final album that the Beatles completed before the band's dissolution in April, 1970, most of the album had been recorded before the Abbey Road sessions began.

A double A-side single from the album, "Something"/"Come Together,” released in October, topped the Billboard chart in the US.

Abbey Road incorporates genres such as blues, pop and progressive rock, and it makes prominent use of the Moog synthesizer and the Leslie speaker. Side two contains a medley of song fragments edited together to form a single piece.

The album was recorded amid a more collegial atmosphere than the Get Back/Let It Be sessions earlier in the year, but there were still frequent confrontations within the band, particularly over Paul McCartney's song, "Maxwell's Silver Hammer,” one of four tracks on which John Lennon did not perform.

Lennon had privately left the group by the time the album was released and McCartney publicly quit the following year.

Many critics view the album as the Beatles' best work and rank it as one of the greatest albums of all time. In particular, George Harrison's contributions, "Something" and "Here Comes the Sun,” are considered to be among the best songs he wrote for the group.

The album's cover features the four band members walking across a zebra crossing outside Abbey Road Studios and has become one of the most famous and imitated images in the history of recorded music.

Today, Abbey Road remains one of the Beatles' best-selling albums.

John Lennon performs "Come Together” from the album

Betty Grable, 1943

Photo by Frank Powolny

Grable was celebrated for having the most beautiful legs in Hollywood and studio publicity widely dispersed photos featuring them. Her iconic bathing suit poster made her the #1 pin-up girl of the World War II era.

It was later included in the Life magazine project "100 Photos that Changed the World."

Hosiery specialists of the era often noted the ideal proportions of her legs as thigh (18.5 inch), calf (12 inches) and ankle (7.5 inches). Grable's legs were famously insured by her studio for $1,000,000 with Lloyds of London.

During her heyday in the 1940s, Grable had several nicknames during her career like: "the girl with the million dollar legs," "the quick-silver blonde," "the queen of the Hollywood musical" and "the darling of the forties."

Grable died in 1973 at age 56 of lung cancer.

Bryan Ferry is 75 years old today

Bryan Ferry is 75 years old today.

An English singer, musician and songwriter known for his unique vocal style, Ferry came to prominence in the early 1970s as lead vocalist and principal songwriter with the band, Roxy Music.

He had a successful career with three #1 albums and ten singles entering the Top 10 charts in the United Kingdom during the 1970s and '80s, including "Virginia Plain," "Street Life" and "Jealous Guy."

Ferry began his solo career in 1973, while still a member of Roxy Music, which he continues to the present day. His solo hits include, "Let's Stick Together" and "Slave To Love."

His album, The Jazz Age, was released in 2012. In November, 2014, Ferry released a new album, Avonmore, featuring original material. The same month in 2014, Ferry was diagnosed with acute laryngitis and on medical advice was declared unfit to perform the remaining dates of his current European tour. His concerts were rescheduled for 2015.

When his sales as a solo artist and as a member of Roxy Music are combined, Ferry has sold more than 30 million albums worldwide.

Here, Ferry performs “Don’t Stop the Dance” in Berlin, 2011

Carlene Carter is 65 years old today

Carlene Carter is 65 years old today.

Born Rebecca Carlene Smith, she is a country singer and songwriter and the daughter of June Carter and her first husband, Carl Smith.

Between 1978 and the present, Carter has recorded twelve albums, primarily on major labels. In the same timespan, she has released more than twenty singles, including three #3 peaking hits on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts.

In 1987, Carlene Carter joined with the singing trio, The Carter Sisters, consisting of her mother June Carter Cash and June's sisters Helen and Anita Carter in a revived version of The Carter Family. They were featured on a 1987 television episode of Austin City Limits along with Carter's stepfather, Johnny Cash.

Her solo recording career had begun in the late 1970s with a debut album. In 1979, during a concert at New York's Bottom Line, she introduced a song about mate-swapping called “Swap-Meat Rag,” from her album, Two Sides to Every Woman.

She said, "If this song don't put the cunt back in country, I don't know what will." Johnny and June Carter were in the audience, unknown to Carlene. The comment was quoted widely in the press, and Carter spent much of the next decade trying to live it down.

Carter's career really took off with the album, I Fell in Love, in 1990. The album and title song topped the U.S. country albums and singles charts, respectively. Following a stint in the UK and in the run-up to her divorce from the English singer-songwriter, Nick Lowe, Carter returned to America.

In 1988, she met musician, Howie Epstein. He helped Carter get her career back on track, producing, I Fell in Love, and co-authoring its title track with longtime collaborator, Milwaukee writer Perry M. Lamek.

The album, which featured straight-ahead, retro-sounding country (unlike her prior work, which had combined country, rock and roll and pop sounds) was among the first successes of the 1990s "neotraditionalist" movement in country.

Three years later, Epstein produced Carter's follow-up CD, Little Love Letters, featuring the hit, "Every Little Thing," which was one of the top-rated music videos of the year.

Epstein and Carter were engaged in the mid to late 1990s, but never married. Epstein died in 2003 of a suspected drug overdose.

Here, Carter performs “I Fell In Love”

Donna Douglas was born 88 years old today

Donna Douglas, best known for her role as Jed Clampett's (played by Buddy Ebsen) only daughter, Elly May Clampett, in the CBS television series, The Beverly Hillbillies (1962-1971), was born 88 years old today.

She starred on the program for all nine seasons, along with Buddy Ebsen, Irene Ryan, Nancy Kulp, Raymond Bailey and Max Baer, Jr.

The Beverly Hillbillies became the #1 show in the United States in its first two years. During the 1966 summer hiatus for the show, Douglas made her only starring motion picture appearance, cast as Frankie in Frederick de Cordova's Frankie and Johnny (1966), opposite Elvis Presley.

The film proved popular, and is among Presley’s most frequently televised movies, but it did little to advance Douglas's big-screen career.

In 1981, she returned for a made-for-TV reunion movie, The Return of the Beverly Hillbillies.

Douglas died at age 82 on January 1, 2015 from pancreatic cancer.

George Gershwin was born 122 years ago today

George Gershwin was born 122 years ago today.

A composer and pianist, Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres. His most popular songs are the orchestral compositions, Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris, as well as the opera, Porgy and Bess.

Born in Brooklyn to a Ukrainian father of Jewish descent and a Russian mother, Gershwin studied piano under Charles Hambitzer and composition with Rubin Goldmark and Henry Cowell.

He began his career as a song plugger, but soon after started composing Broadway theatre works with his brother, Ira Gershwin, and Buddy DeSylva. He moved to Paris intending to study with Nadia Boulanger, who refused him. There, he began to compose An American in Paris.

After returning to New York City, he wrote Porgy and Bess with Ira and author, DuBose Heyward. Initially a commercial failure, Porgy and Bess is now considered one of the most important American operas of the 20th century.

Gershwin moved to Hollywood and composed numerous film scores until his death at age 38 in 1937 from a brain tumor.

Gershwin's compositions have been used in numerous films and on television, and several became jazz standards recorded in many variations. Countless singers and musicians have recorded his songs. He was influenced by French composers of his time.

What set Gershwin apart was his ability to manipulate forms of music into his own unique voice. He took the jazz he discovered on Tin Pan Alley into the mainstream by splicing its rhythms and tonality with that of the popular songs of his era.

Although Gershwin would seldom make grand statements about his music, he believed that "true music must reflect the thought and aspirations of the people and time. My people are Americans. My time is today."

In 2007, the Library of Congress named their Prize for Popular Song after George and Ira Gershwin. Recognizing the profound and positive effect of popular music on culture, the prize is given annually to a composer or performer whose lifetime contributions exemplify the standard of excellence associated with the Gershwins.

On March 1, 2007, the first Gershwin Prize was awarded to Paul Simon.

Here is a short clip of Gershwin playing on Nightmusic. Clearly, the date 1943 in the credit is an error, since Gershwin died in 1937.

James Baldwin, Do You Love Me, 1963

Photo by Steve Schapiro

Marty Robbins was born 95 years ago today

Marty Robbins was born 95 years ago today.

A singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Robbins was one of the most popular and successful country and Western singers of his era. For most of his nearly four-decade career, Robbins was rarely far from the country music charts and several of his songs also became pop hits.

Robbins was born in Glendale, a suburb of Phoenix, in Maricopa County, Arizona. He was reared in a difficult family situation. His father took odd jobs to support the family of ten children.

His father's drinking led to divorce in 1937. Among his warmer memories of his childhood, Robbins recalled having listened to stories of the American West told by his maternal grandfather, Texas Bob Heckle.

Robbins left the troubled home at the age of 17 to serve in the United States Navy as an LCT coxswain during World War II. He was stationed in the Solomon Islands in the Pacific. To pass the time during the war, he learned to play the guitar, started writing songs and came to love Hawaiian music.

After his discharge from the military in 1945, he began to play at local venues in Phoenix, then moved on to host his own show on KTYL. He later had his own television show on KPHO-TV in Phoenix.

After Little Jimmy Dickens made a guest appearance on Robbins' TV show, Dickens got Robbins a record deal with Columbia Records. Robbins became known for his appearances at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.

In addition to his recordings and performances, Robbins was an avid race car driver, competing in 35 career NASCAR races with six Top 10 finishes, including the 1973 Firecracker 400. In 1983, NASCAR honored Robbins by naming the annual race at Nashville the Marty Robbins 420. He was also the driver of the 60th Indianapolis 500 Buick Century pace car in 1976.

Robbins later portrayed a musician in the 1982 Clint Eastwood film, Honkytonk Man. He died a few weeks before the film's release in December, 1982 of complications following cardiac surgery. He was 57.

Here, Robbins performs his 1957 recording of "A White Sport Coat and a Pink Carnation,” which sold over one million copies.

Olivia Newton-John is 72 years old today

Olivia Newton-John is 72 years old today.

An English born Australian singer and actress, Newton-John has amassed five #1 and ten other Top Ten Billboard Hot 100 singles and two #1 Billboard 200 solo albums. Eleven of her singles (including two platinum) and 14 of her albums (including two platinum and four double platinum) have been certified gold.

Newton-John’s music has been successful in pop, country and adult contemporary genres and has sold an estimated over 100 million albums worldwide.

She co-starred with John Travolta in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical, Grease, which featured one of the most successful film soundtracks in Hollywood history.

Newton-John has been a long-time activist for environmental and animal rights issues.

Since surviving breast cancer in 1992, she has been an advocate for health awareness becoming involved with various charities, health products and fundraising efforts.

Newton-John has been married twice. She currently lives with her second husband, John Easterling, in Jupiter Inlet, Florida.

Newton-John still tours. In 2014, she began residency at the Flamingo Las Vegas and released a new EP in April, 2014, Hotel Sessions, which consisted of seven tracks of unreleased demos that were recorded between 2002 and 2011 with her nephew, Brett.

In May, 2017, it was announced that Newton-John's breast cancer had returned and metastasized to her lower back. It was also reported that the cancer had progressed to Stage IV and spread to her bones.

Newton-John has openly talked about using cannabis oil to ease her cancer pain and has become an advocate for medical cannabis. Her daughter Chloe also owns a cannabis farm in Oregon.

Here, John performs “Have You Never Been Mellow” in 1975

The Rocky Horror Picture Show opened in the United States on this day in 1975 — 45 years ago

The Rocky Horror Picture Show opened in the United States on this day in 1975 — 45 years ago.

Opening at the UA Westwood in Los Angeles, it did well at that location, but not elsewhere. Before the midnight screenings' success, the film was withdrawn from its eight opening cities due to very small audiences and its planned New York City opening on Halloween night was cancelled.

Fox re-released the film around college campuses on a double-bill with another rock music film parody, Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise, but again it drew small audiences.

With Pink Flamingos (1972) and Reefer Madness (1936) making money in midnight showings nationwide, a Fox executive, Tim Deegan, was able to talk distributors into midnight screenings, starting in New York City on April Fools' Day of 1976.

The cult following started shortly after the film began its midnight run at the Waverly Theater in New York City. Many attendees would get in free if they arrived in costume. The popularity of the film gradually grew to where nearly every screening was accompanied by a live fan cast.

The film, produced by Lou Adler and Michael White and directed by Jim Sharman, is considered to be the longest-running release in film history. It has never been pulled by 20th Century Fox from its original 1975 release, and it continues to play today in cinemas.

The production is a parody tribute to the science fiction and horror B movies of the 1930s through to the early 1970s. Along with co-writer Richard O'Brien, the film stars Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick.

T.S. Eliot was born 132 years ago today

T.S. Eliot was born 132 years ago today.

Eliot was a publisher, playwright, literary and social critic — and one of the most important English-language poets of the 20th century.

Although he was born an American, he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at age 25) and was naturalized as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.

The poem that made his name — The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock — was published in Chicago in 1915. It is considered a masterpiece of the Modernist movement.

It was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including Gerontion (1920), The Waste Land (1922), The Hollow Men (1925), Ash Wednesday (1930) and Four Quartets (1945).

He is also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral in 1935.

Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.

He received an undergraduate degree at Harvard, studied at the Sorbonne, returned to Harvard to study Sanskrit and then studied at Oxford. After meeting poet and lifelong friend Ezra Pound, Eliot relocated to England.

In 1915, he married Vivian Haigh-Wood, but the marriage was unhappy, partly due to her mental instability. She died in an institution in 1947.

Eliot began working at Lloyd's Bank in 1917, writing reviews and essays on the side. In 1925, he accepted a job as an editor at Faber and Faber, which allowed him to quit his job at the bank. He held the position for the rest of his life.

Eliot lectured in the United States frequently in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1957, he married his assistant, Valerie Fletcher. The couple lived happily until his death in 1965 at the age of 76.

T.S. Eliot, 1956

Photo by Cecil Beaton

West Side Story premiered on Broadway on this day in 1957 — 63 years ago

West Side Story premiered on Broadway on this day in 1957 — 63 years ago.

East Side Story was the original title of the Shakespeare-inspired musical conceived by choreographer Jerome Robbins, written by playwright Arthur Laurents and scored by composer and lyricist, Leonard Bernstein, in 1949.

A tale of star-crossed lovers — one Jewish, the other Catholic — on Manhattan's Lower East Side, the show in its original form never went into production, and the idea was set aside for the next six years.

It was more than just a change of setting, however, that helped the re-titled show get off the ground in the mid-1950s. It was also the addition of a young, relatively unknown lyricist named Stephen Sondheim.

The book by Arthur Laurents and the choreography by Jerome Robbins helped make West Side Story a work of lasting genius, but it was the strength of the songs by Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein that allowed it to make its Broadway debut on this day in 1957.

The re-conception of West Side Story as a tale of love across the divide of two street gangs, one Latin and one white-ethnic, came quickly once the creative principals returned to the project in 1955.

With the support of producer Carol Crawford, plans for the show proceeded over the course of two years. But by the spring of 1957, no financial backers were ready to commit to a controversial show in which Act I would end with two principal characters dead as a result of gang violence.

Crawford announced she was pulling out of the project. At this point West Side Story seemed to be dead. What saved the show was the relationship between Stephen Sondheim and Broadway producer, Hal Prince, whom Sondheim called with the bad news.

Prince and his partner, Bobby Griffith, made arrangements for a quick visit to New York to consult with the West Side Story team, and it was there that they were won over by the power of the music Bernstein played them in his midtown apartment.

"About halfway through the audition," Prince later recalled, "I started to sing along with the material....at the end of the whole thing, Bobby and I looked at each other, and we said, without hesitation, 'We'll do it!'"

With Prince and Griffith's backing, West Side Story got back on track for a premiere on September 26, 1957, that would begin one of the longest initial runs in Broadway history.

The original Broadway production of West Side Story opened at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York City.

Ian Tyson is 87 years old today

Ian and Sylvia, 1974

Photo from the Toronto Telegram

Ian Tyson is 87 years old today.

The Canadian singer-songwriter, best known for his song "Four Strong Winds,” was half of the duo, Ian & Sylvia.

Tyson was born to British immigrants in Victoria in 1933, and grew up in Duncan B.C. A rodeo rider in his late teens and early twenties, he took up the guitar while recovering from an injury he sustained in a fall.

He made his singing debut at the Heidelberg Café in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1956 and played with a rock and roll band, "The Sensational Stripes." After graduation from the Vancouver School of Art in 1958, Tyson moved to Toronto, Ontario where he worked as a commercial artist.

There he performed in local clubs and in 1959 began to sing on occasion with Sylvia Fricker. By early 1959, Tyson and Fricker were performing part-time at the Village Corner as "Ian & Sylvia." The pair became a full-time musical act in 1961 and married four years later.

In 1969, they formed and fronted the group, The Great Speckled Bird. Residing in southern Alberta, Tyson toured all over the world. Tyson's first marriage, to Sylvia Fricker Tyson, ended in an amicable divorce in 1975.

Their son, Clay, (Clayton Dawson Tyson, born 1966) was also a musical performer. He later moved to a career modifying racing bikes.

In 1989, Tyson was inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame.

Here, Tyson performs his song, “Saddle Bronc Girl,” 2011