Hank Williams first appeared on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry 74 years ago today
In the tragically short life of country legend Hank Williams, there were many broken relationships — both personal and professional — that resulted from his self-destructive behavior.
One such relationship was with the most important institution in his chosen field: The Grand Ole Opry. Shortly before it cost him his life, Hank's drinking cost him his membership in the Opry, just three years after his triumphant debut.
That debut, however, remains one of the most famous in the history of the live country-music performance program broadcast weekly on WSM Nashville since 1925.
Hank Williams took to the microphone for his Grand Ole Opry debut on June 11, 1949 — 74 years ago today — electrifying a live audience at Ryman Auditorium that called Williams out for six encores and had to be implored not to call him out for more in order to allow the rest of the show to go on.
Williams was only 25-years-old when he was invited to appear for the first time on the Grand Ole Opry. As a young man growing up dirt poor in southern Alabama, he began supporting his family at the age of seven by shining shoes and selling peanuts, but by 14 he was already performing as a professional musician.
The life of a "professional musician" playing the blood-bucket honky-tonks of the Deep South bore little resemblance to the lifestyle that would later become available to him. But it was there, in country music's backwater proving grounds, that Hank Williams developed his heavily blues-influenced style and began writing his own music.
Williams left music behind during WWII, but then he went to Nashville in 1946 hoping to sell some of his songs. Quickly signed to a publishing contract by one of Nashville's most prominent music publishers, Fred Rose, Williams soon had a recording contract with MGM and his first hit record, "Move It On Over" (1947).
Williams' heavy drinking had already earned him a reputation in the industry — one that ruled out an invitation to appear on The Grand Ole Opry. It was the Opry's biggest competition, The Louisiana Hayride, that first exposed Williams to a wide radio audience.
But when his 1949 record, "Lovesick Blues," became a monumental popular hit, the powers that be in Nashville relented and Williams made his Opry debut. His performance on this day in 1949, during which he performed six encores of "Lovesick Blues" for a wildly enthusiastic live audience, led to regular appearances over the next three years, until the Opry fired Williams in July, 1952 over his heavy drinking.
Two months later, Hank Williams died of alcohol-induced heart failure at the age of 29.
Thanks History.com
Jacques Cousteau and his diving saucer
Jacques Cousteau was born 113 years ago today.
Cousteau was a French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and researcher who studied the sea and all forms of life in water. He co-developed the Aqua-Lung, pioneered marine conservation and was a member of the Académie française.
After an automobile accident cut short his career in naval aviation, Cousteau indulged his interest in the sea. In Toulon, where he was serving on the Condorcet, Cousteau carried out his first underwater experiments, thanks to his friend Philippe Tailliez who in 1936 lent him some Fernez underwater goggles — predecessors of modern swimming goggles.
His two sons, Jean-Michel (born 1938) and Philippe (1940–1979), took part in the adventures of the Calypso. In 1975, John Denver released the tribute song, "Calypso," on his album "Windsong," and on the B-side of his hit song, "I'm Sorry."
"Calypso" became a hit on its own and was later considered the new A-side, reaching #2 on the charts. Cousteau's legacy includes more than 120 television documentaries, more than 50 books and an environmental protection foundation with 300,000 members. He liked to call himself an "oceanographic technician."
Cousteau was, in reality, a sophisticated showman, teacher and lover of nature. His work permitted many people to explore the resources of the oceans. His work also created a new kind of scientific communication, criticized at the time by some academics.
The so-called "divulgationism," a simple way of sharing scientific concepts, was soon employed in other disciplines and became one of the most important characteristics of modern television broadcasting.
Cousteau died on June 25, 1997 at age 87.
Here is a short film on Cousteau’s work
Philippe Cousteau with his Eclair 16mm camera
Jacques Cousteau created "divulgationism," a simple way of sharing scientific concepts that became important in modern television broadcasting.
On Cousteau’s birthday, here’s a personal remembrance of shooting video for his television show onboard the Calypso.
Cousteau had long recorded his documentaries and television programs on film, but in the mid-1970s he began using video.
While based in Miami, I formed Television Matrix, one of the first small format video production companies. I got a call to shoot video for Jacques Cousteau and his son, Philippe, on the Calypso for The Cousteau Society.
Over a few months, we shot several segments with Jacques Cousteau on the Calypso. The main producer on the shoots was Philippe, who worked closely with his father on his film and video production.
On June 28, 1979, while the Calypso was on an expedition to Portugal, Philippe — Cousteau’s preferred and designated successor and with whom he had co-produced all his films since 1969 — died in a PBY Catalina flying boat crash in the Tagus river near Lisbon.
Jacques Cousteau was deeply affected by Philippe’s death and it was the last I worked with him. He then called his eldest son, the architect Jean-Michel Cousteau, to be at his side. Their collaboration lasted 14 years.
Athol Fugard, South African playwright, novelist, actor and director who writes in English, is 91 years old today.
Fugard is best known for his political plays opposing the South African system of apartheid and for the 2005 Academy Award-winning film of his novel, Tsotsi, directed by Gavin Hood.
Among his plays are Master Harold...and the Boys (1982), Valley Song (1996), Victory (2007) and The Train Driver (2010).
For several years, Fugard was an adjunct professor of playwriting, acting and directing in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of California, San Diego. For the academic year 2000–2001, he was the IU Class of 1963 Wells Scholar Professor at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.
The recipient of many awards, honors and honorary degrees, including the 2005 Order of Ikhamanga in Silver "for his excellent contribution and achievements in the theatre" from the government of South Africa, he is also an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Fugard's plays are produced internationally, have won multiple awards and several have been made into films, including among their actors Fugard himself.
In 2012, Fugard moved to South Africa, where he now lives permanently
William Styron, author of Sophie's Choice and other critically acclaimed novels, was born on this day in 1925 — 98 years ago — in Newport News, Virginia.
Styron was troubled by growing up in the segregated south. His father's family had once owned slaves. An only child, he became a voracious reader and skipped ahead in school. He went to Davidson College in North Carolina, but nearly flunked out before he joined the Marines.
Styron was sent to the Pacific for the invasion of Japan. When he returned, he finished his education at Duke University in North Carolina, where he studied writing. He moved to New York City, hoping to become a writer.
He finished his first novel, Lie Down in Darkness, about a woman struggling against insanity and suicidal urges. However, he was called back to the Marines to serve in the Korean War before the book's publication in 1951.
His next book, The Long March (1956), about a brutal march forced on Marine recruits in training, became a critical and financial success. He won a major award, the Prix de Rome, that allowed him to travel abroad and write.
In Rome, he met his future wife, Rose Burgunder. While in Paris, he helped found the Paris Review. He made friends with Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin and other writers.
His novel, Set This House on Fire (1960), was attacked by U.S. critics but praised abroad. In 1967, he explored his interest in race issues with The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967), written in the voice of Nat Turner, leader of a failed slave uprising.
Some black writers attacked Styron, claiming a white writer could not accurately portray the psychology of a black slave. The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1968. His bestselling novel, Sophie's Choice, dealing with the devastating aftermath of the Holocaust, was made into an award-winning film in 1982.
Styron struggled with severe clinical depression and suicidal urges, which he described in his memoir Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness (1990).
He died on November 21, 2006 at age 81.
Thanks History.com
Pine Top Smith, boogie-woogie style blues pianist, was born 119 years ago today.
His hit tune, "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie," featured rhythmic "breaks" that were an essential ingredient of ragtime music.
Born in Troy, Alabama and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, Smith received his nickname as a child from his liking for climbing trees. In 1920. he moved to Pittsburgh, where he worked as an entertainer before touring on the T. O. B. A. vaudeville circuit, performing as a singer and comedian as well as a pianist.
For a time he worked as accompanist for blues singer, Ma Rainey, and Butterbeans & Susie. In the mid-1920s, he was recommended by Cow Cow Davenport to J. Mayo Williams at Vocalion Records. In 1928, he moved, with his wife and young son, to Chicago to record. For a time he, Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis lived in the same rooming house.
On Dec. 29, 1928, he recorded his influential "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie," one of the first "boogie woogie" style recordings to make a hit, and which cemented the name for the style. Pine Top talks over the recording, telling how to dance to the number.
He said he originated the song at a house-rent party in St. Louis. Smith was the first ever to direct "the girl with the red dress on" to "not move a peg" until told to "shake that thing" and "mess around." Similar lyrics are heard in many later songs, including "Mess Around" and "What'd I Say" by Ray Charles.
Smith was scheduled to make another recording session for Vocalion in 1929, but died from a gunshot wound in a dance-hall fight in Chicago the day before the session. He was 24 years old.
Sources differ as to whether he was the intended recipient of the bullet. "I saw Pine Top spit blood" was the famous headline in Down Beat magazine.
Here, Smith performs “Pine Top’s Boogie Woogie,” 1928
Gene Wilder was born 90 years ago today.
A stage and screen comic actor, director, screenwriter, author and activist, Wilder began his career on stage, and made his screen debut in the TV-series Armstrong Circle Theatre in 1962.
Although his first film role was portraying a hostage in the 1967 motion picture Bonnie and Clyde, Wilder's first major role was as Leopold Bloom in the 1968 film, The Producers, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
This was the first in a series of collaborations with writer/director Mel Brooks, including 1974's Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, the latter of which garnered the pair an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Wilder also wrote Young Frankenstein, making it the first movie Mel Brooks directed but did not personally write.
Wilder is known for his portrayal of Willy Wonka in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) and for his four films with Richard Pryor: Silver Streak (1976), Stir Crazy (1980), See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989) and Another You (1991). He has directed and written several of his films, including The Woman in Red (1984).
His third wife was actress Gilda Radner, with whom he starred in three films. Her death from ovarian cancer led to his active involvement in promoting cancer awareness and treatment, helping found the Gilda Radner Ovarian Cancer Detection Center in Los Angeles and co-founding Gilda's Club.
After his last acting role in 2003, Wilder turned his attention to writing. He produced a memoir in 2005, Kiss Me Like a Stranger: My Search for Love and Art; a collection of stories, What Is This Thing Called Love? (2010); and the novels My French Whore (2007), The Woman Who Wouldn't (2008) and Something to Remember You By (2013).
Wilder died Aug. 29, 2016 at home in Stamford, Connecticut, from complications of Alzheimer's disease. He had kept knowledge of his condition private, but had been diagnosed three years prior to his death. Wilder's nephew, Jordan Walker-Pearlman, said that this was so as not to sadden his younger fans.
According to his family, Wilder died while listening to one of his favorite songs, a rendition of "Over the Rainbow" sung by Ella Fitzgerald.
Wilder was regarded as one of the most appealing comedic actors of the second half of the 20th century.
Bernard Lee "Pretty" Purdie is 84 years old today.
Purdie is a session drummer and is considered an influential and innovative exponent of funk. He is known for his strict musical time keeping and "The Purdie Shuffle."
Purdie recorded Soul Drums (1968) as a band leader and although he went on to record Alexander's Ragtime Band, the album remained unreleased until Soul Drums was reissued on CD in 2009 with the Alexander's Ragtime Band sessions. Other solo albums include Purdie Good (1971), Soul Is...Pretty Purdie (1972) and the soundtrack for the blaxploitation film, Lialeh (1973).
Purdie was credited on the soundtrack album for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978) and more recently he was the drummer for the 2009 Broadway revival of Hair and appeared on the associated Broadway cast recording.
At an early age, Purdie began hitting cans with sticks and learned the elements of drumming techniques from overhearing lessons being given by Leonard Heywood. He later took lessons from Heywood and played in Heywood's big band.
Purdie's other influences at that time were Papa Jo Jones, Buddy Rich, Gene Krupa, Joe Marshall, Art Blakey, Cozy Cole, Sticks Evans, Panama Francis, Louis Bellson and Herbie Lovelle. In 1961, he moved from his home town of Elkton, Maryland to New York City.
In order to be able to obtain a license to perform in public (minimum age 21), Purdie claimed he was born in 1939, while in fact he was born in 1941. There he played sessions with Mickey and Sylvia and regularly visited the Turf Club on 50th and Broadway, where musicians, agents and promoters met and touted for business.
It was during this period that he played for the saxophonist Buddy Lucas, who nicknamed him “Mississippi Bigfoot.” Eventually Barney Richmond contracted him to play session work.
Later Bernard Purdie added drum overdubs to "several [tracks] of the Beatles' Hamburg recording" with Tony Sheridan, including "Ain't She Sweet," "Take Out Some Insurance on Me Baby" and "Sweet Georgia Brown."
Purdie started working with Aretha Franklin as musical director in 1970 and held that position for five years, as well as drumming for Franklin's opening act, King Curtis and The King Pins. In 1970, he performed with both bands at the Fillmore West. The resulting live recordings were released as Aretha Live at the Fillmore West (1971) and King Curtis's Live at Fillmore West (1971).
His best known track with Franklin was "Rock Steady," on which he played what he described as "a funky and low down beat." Of his time with Franklin he once commented that "backing her was like floating in seventh heaven.”
Here, Purdie performs a drum solo
Painting by Bob Dylan