June Carter Cash, member of music's Carter Family, was born 94 years ago today
June and her husband, Johnny Cash, 1969
Photo by Jim Marshall
June Carter Cash was born 94 years ago today.
A singer, dancer, songwriter, actress, comedian and author who was a member of the Carter Family and the second wife of Johnny Cash, Cash played the guitar, banjo, harmonica and autoharp, and acted in several films and television shows.
Born Valerie June Carter in Maces Spring, Virginia, to Maybelle and Ezra Carter, Cash was also born into country music and performed with the Carter Family from the age of ten, beginning in 1939.
In March, 1943, when the Carter Family trio stopped recording together at the end of the WBT contract, Maybelle Carter, with encouragement from her husband Ezra, formed "Mother Maybelle & the Carter Sisters" with her daughters Helen, Anita and June.
The new group first aired on radio station WRNL in Richmond, Virginia in the summer of 1943. Doc (Addington) and Carl (McConnell) — Maybelle's brother and cousin, respectively — known as "The Virginia Boys" joined them in late 1945.
June, then 16, was a co-announcer with Ken Allyn and did the commercials on the radio shows for "Red Star Flour," "Martha White" and "Thalhimers Department Store," just to name a few.
For the next year, the Carters and Doc and Carl did show dates within driving range of Richmond, which covered Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania. June later said she had to work harder at her music than her sisters, but she had her own special talent — comedy. A highlight of the road shows was her "Aunt Polly" comedy routine.
Carl McConnell wrote in his memoirs that June was "a natural born clown, if there ever was one." She attended John Marshall High School during this period.
After Doc and Carl dropped out of the music business in late 1946, Maybelle and her daughters moved to Sunshine Sue Workman's "Old Dominion Barn Dance" on the WRVA radio station in Richmond. After a while there, they moved to WNOX in Knoxville, where they met Chet Atkins with Homer and Jethro.
In 1949, Maybelle & The Carter Sisters, along with their lead guitarist, a young Chet Atkins, were living in Springfield, Missouri, and performing regularly at KWTO.
Ezra "Eck" Carter, Maybelle's husband and manager of the group, declined numerous offers from the Grand Ole Opry to move the act to Nashville, because the Opry would not permit Atkins to accompany the group onstage. Atkins' reputation as a guitar player had begun to spread, and studio musicians were fearful that he would displace them as a “first-call” player if he came to Nashville.
Finally, in 1950, Opry management relented and the group, along with Atkins, became part of the Opry company. Here the family befriended Hank Williams and Elvis Presley (to whom they were distantly related). June first met Johnny Cash at the Opry.
June and her sisters, with mother Maybelle and aunt Sara joining in from time to time, reclaimed the name The Carter Family for their act during the 1960s and 1970s. With her thin and lanky frame, June Carter often played a comedic foil during the group's performances alongside other Opry stars Faron Young and Webb Pierce.
While June Carter Cash may be best known for singing and songwriting, she was also an author, dancer, actress, comedian, philanthropist and humanitarian. Director Elia Kazan saw her perform at the Grand Ole Opry in 1955 and encouraged her to study acting. She studied with Lee Strasberg and Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York.
Her acting roles included Mrs. "Momma" Dewey in Robert Duvall's 1998 movie, The Apostle; Sister Ruth, wife to Johnny Cash's character, Kid Cole; and Clarise on Gunsmoke in 1957. She was also "Momma James" in The Last Days of Frank and Jesse James.
As a singer, she had both a solo career and a career singing with first her family and later her husband. As a solo artist, she became somewhat successful with upbeat country tunes of the 1950s like "Jukebox Blues" and, with her exaggerated breaths, the comedic hit "No Swallerin' Place" by Frank Loesser. She also recorded "The Heel" in the 1960s along with many other songs.
Her last album, Wildwood Flower, was released posthumously in 2003. It contains bonus video enhancements showing extracts from the film of the recording sessions, which took place at the Carter Family estate in Hiltons, Virginia, on September 18–20, 2002. The songs on the album include "Big Yellow Peaches," "Sinking in the Lonesome Sea," "Temptation" and the trademark staple, "Wildwood Flower."
Carter and the entire Carter Family had performed with Johnny Cash for a number of years. In 1968, Cash proposed to Carter during a live performance at the London Ice House in London, Ontario, Canada. They married on March 1 in Franklin, Kentucky, and remained married until her death in May 15, 2003, just four months before Cash died. The couple's son, John Carter Cash, is a musician, songwriter and producer.
June Carter Cash died of complications following heart-valve replacement surgery, in the company of her family and her husband of 35 years, Johnny Cash. At Carter's funeral, her stepdaughter, Rosanne Cash, stated that "if being a wife were a corporation, June would have been a CEO. It was her most treasured role."
Here, June Carter Cash and Mother Maybelle Carter performs “No Hiding Place Down Here” in 1971
Milt Hinson with his players in dressing room
Milt Hinton, dean of jazz bass players, was born 113 years ago today.
A jazz double bassist and photographer, Hinton was nicknamed "The Judge."
Born in Vicksburg, Mississippi and living in Chicago, Hinton first learned to play the violin, and later bass horn, tuba, cello and the double bass at school. As a young violinist, he found gainful employment as a bassist. He later switched to double bass.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Hinton worked as a freelance musician in Chicago. During this time, he played with accomplished jazz musicians such as Jabbo Smith, Eddie South and Art Tatum.
In 1936, he joined a band led by Cab Calloway. Members of this band included Chu Berry, Cozy Cole, Dizzy Gillespie, Illinois Jacquet, Jonah Jones, Ike Quebec, Ben Webster and Danny Barker.
Hinton possessed a formidable technique and was equally adept at bowing, pizzicato and "slapping," a technique for which he became famous while playing with the big band of Cab Calloway from 1936 to 1951.
Unusually for a double bass player, Hinton was frequently given the spotlight by Calloway, taking bass solos in tunes like "Pluckin' the Bass." At the same time, Hinton worked as a studio musician. He was part of a large group of studio musicians who played on dozens of hit records written by songwriters who worked at the Brill Building.
He was responsible for the opening bass line on the Drifters "Under the Boardwalk" as well as playing on dozens of hits recorded by Neil Sedaka and many others.
Hinton played a rare Gofriller Double Bass during the latter part of his career. The bass was found in pieces in a cellar in Italy and a musical agent arranged the purchase from the family for Hinton. In his autobiography, Bass Line, Inton described the tone as magnificent and said it was one of the reasons for his long success in the New York recording studios in the 1950s and 60s.
According to The Jazz Discography, Hinton is the most-recorded jazz musician of all time, having appeared on 1,174 recording sessions.
Also a photographer, Hinton documented many of the great jazz musicians via photographs he took over the course of his career. He captured many of the obstacles black musicians endured during the Jim Crow era. Hinton was one of the best friends of jazz trumpeter, Louis Armstrong.
Hinton died in Queens, New York City at age 90 in 2000.
Here, Hinton gives a jazz bass lesson
Mona Hinton, Ike Quebec, Doc Cheatham, Mario Bauza and Shad Collins on tour in Georgia, 1950
Photo by Milt Hinton
The layout of the computer keyboard we use today has a lot to do with a machine that most of us haven’t used — or maybe even seen.
That invention, the “Type-Writer, 1868,” was granted a patent on this day — 155 years ago. With its ivory keys, it looked like a mini-piano and took up an entire table.
It wasn’t very successful, partly because typists couldn’t go very fast. The keyboard was laid out alphabetically, and the keys would lock up if letters that were close together were struck too fast in succession.
The solution that the inventor, Christopher Latham Sholes, came up with in the 1870s was to spread out the most commonly used letters across the keyboard to prevent the jams. It was called the Qwerty keyboard, after the first six letters of its top row, which also has all the letters needed to spell “typewriter.” This may have been done so salesmen could more easily type the new word.
The Qwerty keyboard has long been criticized as inefficient, but it has been the most popular form of English-language typing since Mark Twain typed out “Life on the Mississippi” (1883), by some accounts the first time an author handed in a typewritten manuscript to his publisher.
Early on, typewritten messages were seen as impersonal. Anyone who has received a handwritten letter is likely to say that still holds true today.
Thanks New York Times!
Alan Turing was born 111 years ago today.
A pioneering English computer scientist, mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and theoretical biologist, Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a formalization of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general purpose computer.
Turing is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. He was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts, when "gross indecency" was still criminal in the UK. He accepted chemical castration treatment, with DES, as an alternative to prison. Turing died in 1954, 16 days before his 42nd birthday, from cyanide poisoning.
An inquest determined his death as suicide, but it has been noted that the known evidence is also consistent with accidental poisoning. In 2009, following an internet campaign, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for "the appalling way he was treated." Queen Elizabeth II granted him a posthumous pardon in 2013.
The Alan Turing law is now an informal term for a 2017 law in the United Kingdom that retroactively pardoned men cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts.
Bob Fosse was born 96 years ago today.
An actor, dancer, musical theatre choreographer, director, screenwriter, film editor and film director, Fosse won an unprecedented eight Tony Awards for choreography, as well as one for direction. He was nominated for an Academy Award four times, winning for his direction of Cabaret (beating Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather).
Born in Chicago to a Norwegian American father, Cyril K. Fosse, and Irish-born mother, Sara Alice Fosse, Fosse was the second youngest of six children. He teamed up with Charles Grass, another young dancer, and began a collaboration under the name The Riff Brothers. They toured theaters throughout the Chicago area.
After being recruited into the military, Fosse was placed in the variety show, Tough Situation, which toured military and naval bases in the Pacific. He then moved to New York with the ambition of being the new Fred Astaire.
Fosse’s appearance with his first wife and dance partner, Mary Ann Niles (1923–1987), in Call Me Mister brought him to the attention of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Fosse and Niles were regular performers on Your Hit Parade during its 1950-51 season, and during this season Martin and Lewis caught their act in New York's Pierre Hotel. Martin and Lewis scheduled them to appear on the Colgate Comedy Hour.
Fosse was signed to a MGM contract in 1953. His early screen appearances included Give A Girl A Break, The Affairs of Dobie Gillis and Kiss Me Kate, all released in 1953. A short sequence that he choreographed in the latter (and danced with Carol Haney) brought him to the attention of Broadway producers.
Fosse was reluctant to move from Hollywood to theatre. However, he made the move, and in 1954, he choreographed his first musical, The Pajama Game, followed by George Abbott's Damn Yankees in 1955. It was while working on the latter show that he first met Gwen Verdon, the redheaded rising star and his future wife. He married her in 1960.
Verdon won her first Tony Award for Best Actress in Damn Yankees (she had won previously for best supporting actress in Can-Can).
Fosse appears in the film version of Damn Yankees, which he also choreographed, in which Verdon reprises her stage triumph as "Lola." They partner with each other in the mambo number, "Who's Got the Pain."
In 1957, Fosse choreographed New Girl in Town, also directed by Abbott, and Verdon won her second Leading Actress Tony. That year he also choreographed the film version of "Pajama Game," starring Doris Day.
In 1960, Fosse was, for the first time, both director and choreographer of a musical called simply, Redhead. With Redhead, Verdon won her third Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. The show won the Tony for best musical and Fosse carried off the award for best choreography. Fosse partnered with Verdon as her director/choreographer again with Sweet Charity and again with Chicago.
Fosse won the Tony for Best Direction of a Musical in 1973 with Pippin. He performed a memorable song and dance number in Stanley Donen's 1974 film version of The Little Prince, and in 1977, Fosse had a small role in the romantic comedy, Thieves.
Notable distinctions of Fosse's style included the use of turned-in knees, sideways shuffling, rolled shoulders and jazz hands. With Astaire as an influence, he used props such as bowler hats, canes and chairs. His trademark use of hats was influenced by his own self-consciousness.
According to Martin Gottfried in his biography of Fosse, "His baldness was the reason that he wore hats and was doubtless why he put hats on his dancers." He used gloves in his performances because he did not like his hands. Some of his most popular numbers include "Steam Heat" (The Pajama Game) and "Big Spender" (Sweet Charity).
Fosse directed five feature films. His first, Sweet Charity in 1969, starring Shirley MacLaine, is an adaptation of the Broadway musical he had directed and choreographed. Fosse shot the film largely on location in Manhattan.
His second film, Cabaret, won eight Academy Awards, including Best Director, which he won over Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather starring Marlon Brando. The film was shot on location in Berlin. Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey both won Oscars for their roles.
Fosse went on to direct Lenny in 1974, a biopic of comic Lenny Bruce starring Dustin Hoffman. The film was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director Oscars, among other awards.
However, just as Fosse picked up his Oscar for Cabaret, his Tony for Pippin and an Emmy for directing Liza Minnelli's television concert, Liza with a Z, his health suffered. He underwent open-heart surgery.
In 1979, Fosse co-wrote and directed a semi-autobiographical film, All That Jazz, which portrayed the life of a womanizing, drug-addicted choreographer-director in the midst of triumph and failure. All That Jazz won four Academy Awards, earning Fosse his third Oscar nomination for Best Director. It also won the Palme d'Or at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival.
On September 23, 1987, Fosse died from a heart attack at George Washington University Hospital, while the revival of Sweet Charity was opening at the nearby National Theatre.
Here, Fosse’s former wife, Gwen Verdon, narrates a film features various clips of Fosse dancing.
U.F.O. sightings have been reported around the world, but arguably none are more famous than one 76 years ago.
In June, 1947, W. W. Brazel, a rancher in New Mexico, came across some odd debris. A few days later, he whispered “kinda confidential-like” to the local sheriff that it might have been remnants of a “flying disk.”
A local military base, the Roswell Army Air Field, issued a news release about the debris, prompting a newspaper article with the headline “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer.”
Officials changed their story the next day, saying the debris came from a weather balloon, but Roswell has since been nearly synonymous with tales of alien visitations.
Almost 20 years ago, the Air Force tried to end the speculation. In “The Roswell Report: Case Closed,” officials wrote that any “aliens” spotted in the desert “were actually anthropomorphic test dummies” carried aloft by high-altitude Air Force balloons.
As for Mr. Brazel, he didn’t believe the debris was a weather balloon, but he regretted setting off the furor. In the future, he said, “If I find anything else besides a bomb, they are going to have a hard time getting me to say anything about it.”
Thanks, New York Times!
Ralph Stanley, Town Hall, New York City, 2005
Photo by Frank Beacham
Ralph Stanley: A Personal Remembrance on the seventh anniversary of his death
Ralph Stanley was always the real thing. When he sang “Oh Death,” it hit you in the gut like a big rock. When he said he believed in his music, you knew he deeply meant it.
Stanley was one of America’s defining bluegrass artists — a man known far and wide for his distinctive singing and banjo playing. He began performing professionally in 1946, before I was born, originally with his brother, Carter, as part of the Stanley Brothers, and later as the leader of his band, the Clinch Mountain Boys.
He was the last of a breed of first generation bluegrass stars, up there with the likes of Bill Monroe and Earl Scruggs.
Stanley was born, grew up and lived in rural Southwest Virginia. He learned to play the banjo — clawhammer style — from his mother. She had 11 brothers and sisters, and all of them could play the five-string banjo.
From the time I was a little kid, I loved the music of the Stanley Brothers. I saw Ralph in concert dozens of times. I interviewed him once, wanting to know if he had ever played with any black musicians. He said “no,” at least not publicly. He was tight with information, not going to reveal any secrets about an obvious black influence on bluegrass music.
He was more open, however, when he wanted to sell you something. I have a signed, homemade CD he made of his early music with the Stanley Brothers. He said it could only be bought from him personally and every copy was personally signed.
He even tried to sell me one of the banjos he played, something he did after every show. Back then, he wanted $5,000 for it. Now, looking back, it was probably a good deal!
RIP, Ralph. You were definitely one of a kind.
Jack Nicholson with director Roman Polanski on the set of Chinatown, 1974