Jazz tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins is 93 years old today
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Jazz tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins is 93 years old today
Sonny Rollins with the photographer's dog, Dizzy
Photo by John Abbott
Sonny Rollins is 93 years old today.
A jazz tenor saxophonist, Rollins is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians of our era. A number of his compositions, including "St. Thomas,” "Oleo,” “Doxy” and "Airegin" have become jazz standards.
Rollins received his first saxophone at age 13. He attended Benjamin Franklin High School in East Harlem in New York City. He said a concert by Frank Sinatra at the school, accompanied by a plea for racial harmony, changed his life.
Rollins started as a pianist, changed to alto saxophone, and finally switched to tenor in 1946. During his high-school years, he played in a band with other future jazz legends Jackie McLean, Kenny Drew and Art Taylor.
He was first recorded in 1949 with Babs Gonzales (J. J. Johnson was the arranger of the group). In his recordings through 1954, he played with performers such as Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk.
In 1950, Rollins was arrested for armed robbery and given a sentence of three years. He spent 10 months in Rikers Island jail before he was released on parole. In 1952, he was arrested for violating the terms of his parole by using heroin.
Rollins was assigned to the Federal Medical Center, Lexington, at the time the only assistance in the U.S. for drug addicts. While there he was a volunteer for then-experimental methadone therapy and was able to break his heroin habit. Rollins initially feared sobriety would impair his musicianship, but then went on to greater success.
As a saxophonist, he had initially been attracted to the jump and R&B sounds of performers like Louis Jordan, but soon became drawn into the mainstream tenor saxophone tradition.
Joachim Berendt has described this tradition as sitting between the two poles of the strong sonority of Coleman Hawkins and the light flexible phrasing of Lester Young, which did so much to inspire the fleet improvisation of bebop in the 1950s.
Rollins began to make a name for himself in 1949 as he recorded with J. J. Johnson and Bud Powell what would later be called "hard bop,” with Miles Davis in 1951, with the Modern Jazz Quartet and with Thelonious Monk in 1953.
His breakthrough arrived in 1954 when he recorded his famous compositions "Oleo" "Airegin" and "Doxy" with a quintet led by Davis. Rollins then joined the Miles Davis Quintet in the summer of 1955, but left after a short stay to deal with his drug problems.
Rollins was invited later in 1955 to join the Clifford Brown–Max Roach quintet. Studio recordings documenting his time in the band are the albums Clifford Brown and Max Roach at Basin Street and Sonny Rollins Plus 4. After Brown's death in 1956, Rollins began his subsequent career as a leader, his first long-playing albums released on Prestige Records.
On September 7, 2011, his 81st birthday, Sonny Rollins was named as an honoree for the 2011 Kennedy Center Honors. He was awarded the 2010 National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama.
Here Rollins performs “Falling in Love With Love” in 1997.
Buddy Holly and Ed Sullivan, January 26, 1958
Buddy Holly was born 87 years ago today.
A singer-songwriter and pioneer of rock and roll, Holly was described by critics as the single most influential creative force in early rock. His success, however, lasted only a year and a half before his death in an airplane crash.
His works and innovations inspired and influenced contemporary and later musicians, notably The Beatles, Elvis Costello, The Rolling Stones, Don McLean, Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton. He exerted a profound influence on popular music.
Holly was offered a spot in the Winter Dance Party, a three-week tour across the Midwest opening on January 23, 1959 with other notable performers such as Dion and the Belmonts, Ritchie Valens and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson.
He assembled a backing band consisting of Tommy Allsup on guitar, Waylon Jennings on bass and Carl Bunch on drums. They were billed as The Crickets.
Following a performance at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, on February 2, 1959, Holly chartered a small airplane to take him to the next stop on the tour.
Holly, Valens, Richardson and the pilot were killed en route to Moorhead, Minnesota, when their plane crashed soon after taking off from nearby Mason City in the early morning hours of February 3. Holly was 22 years old.
Bandmate Waylon Jennings had given up his seat on the plane, causing Holly to jokingly tell Jennings, "I hope your ol' bus freezes up!" Jennings shot back facetiously, "Well, I hope your ol' plane crashes!"
It was a statement that would haunt Jennings for decades to come.
Holly managed to bridge the racial divide that marked music in America. Along with Elvis and others, Holly made rock and roll, with its roots in rockabilly country music and blues-inspired rhythm and blues music, more popular among a broad white audience.
From listening to their recordings, one had difficulty determining if the Crickets, the name of Buddy's band, were white or black singers. Holly indeed sometimes played with black musicians Little Richard and Chuck Berry, and incorporated the Bo Diddley beat in several songs.
The Crickets were only the second white rock group to tour Great Britain. Holly's essential eyeglasses encouraged other musicians, such as John Lennon, also to wear their glasses during performances.
Here, Holly and Crickets appear on the Arthur Murray Dance Party in 1957.
Chrissie Hynde is 72 years old today.
Best known as the leader of the rock/new wave band the Pretenders, Hynde is a singer, songwriter and guitarist. She has been the only constant member of the band throughout its history.
The daughter of a part-time secretary and a Yellow Pages manager, Hynde graduated from Firestone High School in Akron, Ohio. While attending Kent State University's Art School for three years, she joined a band called Sat. Sun. Mat., which included Mark Mothersbaugh, later of Devo.
Hynde was on the campus during the infamous Kent State shootings. She knew Jeffrey Miller, one of those killed during the shooting.
In the spring of 1978, Hynde met Pete Farndon (bass guitar/vocals), and they selected a band consisting of James Honeyman-Scott (guitar/vocals/keyboards) and Martin Chambers (drums/vocals/percussion). The called the group, The Pretenders, inspired by the song "The Great Pretender" by The Platters. The band's early success was followed by their first gigs in Britain where they earned wide critical acclaim.
Later that spring (1979), The Pretenders recorded their first album and hit the charts in UK and U.S. with the song "Brass in Pocket.”
Hynde published an autobiography, ''Reckless: My Life as a Pretender,'' on September 8, 2015.
Here, Hynde performs “I’ll Stand By You.”
“Songs are dangerous, songs are subversive and can change your life.”
— Ronnie Gilbert, on the effects of hearing Paul Robeson sing when she was 10 years old
Photo of Gilbert in 1953
Ronnie Gilbert, original member of The Weavers, was born 96 years ago today.
Gilbert was a founding member of The Weavers with Pete Seeger, Lee Hays and Fred Hellerman.
Born in New York City, Gilbert was the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Her mother, Sarah, was a dressmaker and trade unionist, and her father, Charles Gilbert, was a factory worker.
Gilbert was married to Martin Weg from 1950 until 1959, and the couple have one daughter, Lisa, born in 1952.
In 2004, Gilbert married her partner of almost two decades, Donna Korones, when then-Mayor Gavin Newsom temporarily legalized gay marriage in San Francisco. Gilbert moved to Caspar, California in 2006.
The Weavers were an influential folk-singing group that was blacklisted in the early 1950s, during a period of widespread anti-communist feeling, because of the group's left-wing sympathies.
Following the Weavers' dissolution in 1953 due to the blacklist, Gilbert continued her activism on a personal level, traveling to Cuba in 1961 on a trip that brought her back to the United States on the same day that the country banned travel to Cuba.
She also participated in the Parisian protests of 1968 after traveling to that country to work with the British theatrical director, Peter Brook.
In the 1970s, Gilbert earned an M.A. in clinical psychology and worked as a therapist for a few years.
Various well-known younger singers honor Gilbert for the example she set for them, and the influence she had on their careers, particularly Holly Near, with whom Gilbert has released three duet albums: 1983's Lifelines, 1989's Singing With You and 1997's This Train Still Runs. Near and Gilbert also joined Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger for the 1984 quartet album, HARP (an acronym for "Holly, Arlo, Ronnie and Pete").
During that period, Gilbert wrote and appeared in a one-woman show about Mary Harris "Mother" Jones, the American labor organizer, and in a second work based on author Studs Terkel's book, Coming Of Age.
In 1991, Gilbert recorded "Lincoln and Liberty" and "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" for the compilation album, Songs of the Civil War, joining artists such as Kathy Mattea, Judy Collins, John Hartford, Hoyt Axton and the United States Military Academy Band of West Point.
In 1992, she accompanied the Vancouver Men's Chorus on the song “Music in My Mother's House” from their album, Signature.
Until her death, Gilbert continued to tour and appear in plays, folk festivals and Jewish music festivals. She also continued her protest work, participating in groups such as Women in Black to protest Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.
In 2006, the Weavers received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys. Gilbert and Hellerman accepted the award alone. Seeger was unable to attend the ceremony and Hays had died in 1981.
Gilbert died on June 6, 2015 in Mill Valley, California, from natural causes at age 88.
Here, Gilbert joins Judy Collins to perform “Irene Goodnight” in 1988.
Little Milton, North Atlantic Blues Festival, Rockland, Maine, 2005
Little Milton was born 89 years ago today.
An electric blues, rhythm and blues, soul singer and guitarist, Milton is best known for his hit records "Grits Ain't Groceries" and "We're Gonna Make It."
Born as James Milton Campbell, Jr., in the Mississippi Delta town of Inverness, Milton was raised in Greenville by a farmer and local blues musician. By 12, he had learned the guitar and was a street musician, chiefly influenced by T-Bone Walker and his blues and rock and roll contemporaries.
In 1952, while still a teenager playing in local bars, he caught the attention of Ike Turner, who was at that time a talent scout for Sam Phillips' Sun Records. He signed a contract with Sun and recorded a number of singles. None of them broke through onto radio or sold well at record stores, however, and Milton left the Sun label by 1955.
After trying several labels without notable success, including Trumpet Records, Milton set up the St. Louis based, Bobbin Records, which ultimately scored a distribution deal with Leonard Chess' Chess Records. As a record producer, Milton helped bring artists such as Albert King and Fontella Bass to fame, while experiencing his own success for the first time.
After a number of small format and regional hits, his 1962 single, "So Mean to Me," broke onto the Billboard R&B chart — eventually peaking at #14. Following a short break to tour, managing other acts and spending time recording new material, he returned to music in 1965 with a more polished sound, similar to that of B.B. King.
After the ill-received, "Blind Man," he released back-to-back hit singles. The first, "We're Gonna Make It," a blues-infused soul song, topped the R&B chart and broke through onto Top 40 radio, a format then dominated largely by white artists.
He followed the song with #4 R&B hit "Who's Cheating Who?" All three songs were featured on his album, We're Gonna Make It, released that summer.
In 1988, Little Milton was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame and won a W.C. Handy Award. His final album, Think of Me, was released in May, 2005 on Telarc, and included writing and guitar on three songs by Peter Shoulder of the UK-based blues-rock trio, Winterville.
Milton died on August 4, 2005 from complications following a stroke.
Here, Little Milton performs “The Blues Is Alright.”
Elia Kazan was born 114 years ago today.
A director, producer, writer and actor, Kazan was described by The New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history.”
Born in Istanbul, Ottoman Empire to Greek parents, Kazan studied acting at Yale. He acted professionally for eight years and joined he Group Theater in 1932. In 1947, he co-founded the Actors Studio.
With Lee Strasberg, he introduced Method acting to the American stage and cinema as a new form of self-expression and psychological "realism.”
Kazan, himself, only acted in only a few films, including City for Conquest in 1940. He introduced a new generation of unknown young actors to the movie audiences, including Marlon Brando and James Dean. Noted for drawing out the best dramatic performances from his actors, he directed 21 actors to Oscar nominations, resulting in nine wins.
He became one of the consummate filmmakers of the 20th century after directing a string of successful films, including, A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), On the Waterfront (1954) and East of Eden (1955). During his career, he won two Oscars as Best Director and received an Honorary Oscar, won three Tony Awards and four Golden Globes.
Among the other actors he introduced to movie audiences were Warren Beatty, Carroll Baker, Julie Harris, Andy Griffith, Lee Remick, Rip Torn, Eli Wallach, Eva Marie Saint, Martin Balsam, Fred Gwynne and Pat Hingle.
Kazan’s films were concerned with personal or social issues of special concern to him. He influenced the films of the 1950s and '60s with his provocative, issue-driven subjects. "I don't move unless I have some empathy with the basic theme," he wrote.
A turning point in Kazan's career came with his testimony as a "friendly witness" before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1952 at the time of the Hollywood blacklist, which cost him the respect of many liberal friends and colleagues. Kazan later explained that he took "only the more tolerable of two alternatives that were either way painful and wrong.”
Director Stanley Kubrick called him, "without question, the best director we have in America, [and] capable of performing miracles with the actors he uses.”
Film author Ian Freer concludes that "If his achievements are tainted by political controversy, the debt Hollywood — and actors everywhere — owes him is enormous."
Elia Kazan died from natural causes in his home in New York in 2003 at age 94.
Grandma Moses, 1946
Photo by Associated Press
“Grandma Moses,” American painter, was born on this day in 1860.
Anna Mary Robertson Moses, an upstate New York farm wife, began painting seriously in her 70s. She was discovered by a collector who saw her colorful, precise paintings of rural scenes in a drugstore window.
After her first show, she was seized on by the press, who loved her countrified ways. An early reviewer nicknamed her “Grandma Moses.”
The New York Times highlighted her folksiness when she visited Manhattan in 1940: “Modest ‘Grandma Moses’ declared, ‘If they want to make a fuss over me, I guess I don’t mind.’”
But Moses was no naïf. A believer in women’s autonomy, she said in her autobiography: “Always wanted to be independent. I couldn’t bear the thought of sitting down and Thomas,” her husband, “handing out the money.”
Her “primitive” painting style was carefully conceived: “I like to paint something that leads me on and on in to the unknown something that I want to see away on beyond,” she wrote.
She died at 101, having created some 2,000 paintings and received two honorary doctorates.
“All Americans mourn her loss,” President John F. Kennedy said.
Children at a Puppet Show, Paris, 1963
“It is more important to click with people than to click the shutter.”
— Photo and quote by Alfred Eisenstaedt