Mavis Staples, musician from a storied legacy, is 84 years old today
Mavis Staples, musician from a storied legacy, is 84 years old today
Mavis Staples, New York City, 2007
Photo by Frank Beacham
Mavis Staples is 84 years old today.
Staples is a rhythm and blues and gospel singer, actress and civil rights activist who recorded with The Staple Singers, her family's band.
Staples began her career with her family group in 1950. Initially singing locally at churches and appearing on a weekly radio show, the Staples scored a hit in 1956 with "Uncloudy Day" for the Vee-Jay label. When Mavis graduated from what is now Paul Robeson High School in 1957, The Staple Singers took their music on the road.
Led by family patriarch Roebuck "Pops" Staples on guitar and including the voices of Mavis and her siblings Cleotha, Yvonne and Purvis, the Staples were called "God's Greatest Hitmakers."
With Mavis' voice and Pops' songs, singing and guitar playing, the Staples evolved from enormously popular gospel singers (with recordings on United and Riverside as well as Vee-Jay) to become the most spectacular and influential spirituality-based group in America.
By the mid-1960s The Staple Singers, inspired by Pops' close friendship with Martin Luther King, Jr., became the spiritual and musical voices of the civil rights movement. They covered contemporary pop hits with positive messages, including Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" and a version of Stephen Stills' "For What It's Worth."
During a December 20, 2008 appearance on National Public Radio's news show "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me," when Staples was asked about her past personal relationship with Dylan, she admitted they "were good friends, yes indeed" and that he had asked her father for her hand in marriage. Staples toured with Dylan, many years later.
The Staples sang "message" songs like "Long Walk to D.C." and "When Will We Be Paid?," bringing their moving and articulate music to a huge number of young people. The group signed to Stax Records in 1968, joining their gospel harmonies and deep faith with musical accompaniment from members of Booker T. and the MGs.
The Staple Singers hit the Top 40 eight times between 1971 and 1975, including two #1 singles, "I'll Take You There" and "Let's Do It Again," and a #2 single "Who Took the Merry Out of Christmas?"
Staples made her first solo foray while at Epic Records with The Staple Singers releasing a lone single "Crying in the Chapel" to little fanfare in the late 1960s. The single was finally re-released on the 1994 Sony Music collection, Lost Soul.
Her first solo album would not come until a 1969 self-titled release for the Stax label. After another Stax release, Only for the Lonely, in 1970, she released a soundtrack album, A Piece of the Action, on Curtis Mayfield's Curtom label.
A 1984 album (also self-titled) preceded two albums under the direction of rock star Prince; 1989's Time Waits for No One, followed by 1993's The Voice.
Her 1996 release, Spirituals & Gospels: A Tribute to Mahalia Jackson was recorded with keyboardist Lucky Peterson. The recording honors Mahalia Jackson, a close family friend and a significant influence on Mavis Staples' life.
In 2004, Staples contributed to a Verve release by legendary jazz/rock guitarist, John Scofield. The album entitled, That's What I Say, was a tribute to the great Ray Charles, and led to a live tour featuring Mavis, John Scofield, pianist Gary Versace, drummer Steve Hass and bassist Rueben Rodriguez. An album for Anti-Records entitled We'll Never Turn Back was released on April 24, 2007.
The Ry Cooder-produced concept album focuses on Gospel songs of the civil rights movement and also included two new original songs by Cooder.
Staples has recorded with a wide variety of musicians, from her friend Bob Dylan (with whom she was nominated for a 2003 Grammy Award in the "Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals" category for their duet on "Gotta Change My Way of Thinking" from the album Gotta Serve Somebody: The Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan) to The Band, Ray Charles, Nona Hendryx, George Jones, Natalie Merchant, Ann Peebles and Delbert McClinton.
She has provided vocals on current albums by Los Lobos and Dr. John, and she appears on tribute albums to such artists as Johnny Paycheck, Stephen Foster and Bob Dylan.
In 2003, Staples performed in Memphis at the Orpheum Theater alongside a cadre of her fellow former Stax Records stars during "Soul Comes Home," a concert held in conjunction with the grand opening of the Stax Museum of American Soul Music at the original site of Stax Records and appears on the CD and DVD that were recorded and filmed during the event.
On May 7, 2011, Staples was awarded an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.
On May 6, 2012, she was awarded an honorary doctorate, and performed "I'll Take You There" with current and graduating students at Columbia College Chicago's 2012 Commencement Exercise in Chicago at the historic Chicago Theatre.
Staples' sixteenth album — If All I Was Was Black — was released on November 17, 2017. Following the release, Staples toured with Bob Dylan.
Here, Staples performs “I’ll Take You There” in 1988.
Arlo Guthrie, Carnegie Hall, New York City, 2010
Photo by Frank Beacham
Arlo Guthrie is 76 years old today.
Like his late father, Woody Guthrie, Arlo is known for singing songs of protest against social injustice. Guthrie's best-known work is "Alice's Restaurant Massacree," a satirical talking blues song about 18 minutes in length.
His song “Massachusetts” was named the official folk song of the state where he has lived most of his adult life.
Born in Brooklyn and the son of folk singer and composer, Woody Guthrie, and his wife, Marjorie Mazia Guthrie, Guthrie’s sister is record producer, Nora Guthrie. His mother was a one-time professional dancer with the Martha Graham Company and founder of the Committee to Combat Huntington's disease, the disease that took Woody's life in 1967. His father was from a Protestant family and his mother was Jewish. His maternal grandmother was renowned Yiddish poet, Aliza Greenblatt.
Guthrie received religious training for his bar mitzvah from Rabbi Meir Kahane, who would go on to form the Jewish Defense League. "Rabbi Kahane was a really nice, patient teacher," Guthrie later recalled, "but shortly after he started giving me my lessons, he started going haywire. Maybe I was responsible."
Guthrie attended Woodward School in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn first through eighth grades. In 1965, he graduated from the Stockbridge School in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. He briefly attended Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Montana, and received an Honorary Doctorate from Westfield State College in 2008.
“Alice's Restaurant Massacree" lasts 18 minutes and 34 seconds in its original recorded version. Guthrie has pointed out that this was also the exact length of one of the famous gaps in Richard Nixon's Watergate tapes. He has been known to spin the story out to forty-five minutes in concert.
The Alice in the song is Alice Brock, who had been librarian at Arlo's boarding school in town before opening her restaurant. Later, she ran an art studio in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
The song lampoons the Vietnam War draft. However, Guthrie stated in a 2009 interview with Ron Bennington that the song is more an "anti-stupidity" song than an anti-war song. It is based on a true incident.
In the song, Guthrie is called up for a draft examination, and rejected as unfit for military service as a result of a criminal record consisting in its entirety of a single arrest, court appearance, fine and clean-up order for littering and creating a public nuisance on Thanksgiving Day in 1965, when Arlo was 18 years old.
Alice and her restaurant make up the recurrent refrain, but barely figure in the story. On the DVD commentary for the 1969 movie, Guthrie states that the events presented in the song all actually happened.
For a short period after its release in 1967, "Alice's Restaurant" was heavily played on U.S. college and counter-culture radio stations. It became a symbol of the late 1960s and for many it defined an attitude and lifestyle that were lived out across the country in the ensuing years.
Its leisurely, sassy finger-picking acoustic guitar and rambling lyrics were widely memorized and played by irreverent youth. Many radio stations have made playing "Alice's Restaurant" a Thanksgiving Day tradition.
A 1969 film, directed and co-written by Arthur Penn, was based on the true story told in the song, but with the addition of a large number of fictional scenes. This film, also called Alice's Restaurant, featured Arlo portraying himself. The part of his father, Woody Guthrie, who had died in 1967, was played by an actor, Joseph Boley.
In 1972, Guthrie had a highly successful single, Steve Goodman's song "City of New Orleans," a wistful paean to long-distance passenger rail travel.
Guthrie's first trip on that train was in December, 2005 (when his family joined other musicians on a train trip across the country to raise money for musicians financially devastated by Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita, in the South of the United States).
Though Guthrie is best known for being a musician, singer and composer, throughout the years he has also appeared as an actor in films and on television.
The film, Alice's Restaurant (1969), is his best known role, but he has had small parts in several films and even co-starred in a television drama, Byrds of Paradise.
Guthrie has had minor roles in several movies and television series.
Guthrie resides in the town of Washington, Massachusetts where he and his late wife, Jackie Hyde, married for 43 years, were long time residents. Jackie died on October 14, 2012 after a brief battle with liver cancer.
Guthrie's son, Abe Guthrie, and his daughters, Annie, Sarah Lee and Cathy, are also musicians. Annie Guthrie writes songs and performs, and also takes care of family touring details.
Sarah Lee performs and records with her husband, Johnny Irion. Cathy plays ukulele in Folk Uke, a group she formed with Amy Nelson, the daughter of Willie Nelson.
Abe Guthrie was formerly in a folk-rock band called Xavier, and now tours with his father. Abe Guthrie's son, Krishna, is a drummer and toured with Arlo on his European tour in 2006 and played guitar for the 2009–2010 Tour.
Here, Guthrie performs “Coming Into Los Angeles” in 1969.
Béla Fleck is 65 years old today.
Fleck is widely acknowledged as one of the world's most innovative and technically proficient banjo players. He is best known for his work with the bands, New Grass Revival, and Béla Fleck and the Flecktones.
Born in New York City, Fleck is named after Hungarian composer Béla Bartók, Austrian composer Anton Webern and Czech composer Leoš Janáček. He was drawn to the banjo when he first heard Earl Scruggs play the theme song for the television show, Beverly Hillbillies. Fleck received his first banjo at age fifteen from his grandfather in 1973.
Later, Fleck enrolled in New York City's High School of Music and Art where he studied the French horn. He was a banjo student of Tony Trischka. Shortly after high school, Fleck traveled to Boston to play with Jack Tottle, Pat Enright and Mark Schatz in the group, Tasty Licks.
During this period, Fleck released his first solo album in 1979, Crossing the Tracks, and made his first foray into progressive bluegrass composition.
Fleck played on the streets of Boston with bassist, Mark Schatz. Along with guitarist/vocalist Glen Lawson and mandolin great Jimmy Gaudreau, they formed Spectrum in 1981. Fleck toured with Spectrum during 1981.
That same year, Sam Bush asked Fleck to join New Grass Revival. Fleck performed with New Grass Revival for nine years. During this time, Fleck recorded another solo album, Drive.
During the 1980s, Fleck and Bush also performed live occasionally with Doc Watson and Merle Watson in various bluegrass festivals, most notably the annual Telluride Bluegrass Festival.
Fleck and Victor Wooten formed Béla Fleck and the Flecktones in 1988, along with keyboardist and harmonica player, Howard Levy, and Wooten's percussionist brother, Roy "Future Man" Wooten, who played synthesizer-based percussion.
They recorded numerous albums, most notably Flight of the Cosmic Hippo, their second album, which reached #1 on the Billboard Top Contemporary Jazz Albums chart. The group found increased popularity among jazz/rock/fusion fans. Levy left the group in 1992, making the band a trio until the saxophonist, Jeff Coffin, joined the group onstage in 1997.
Coffin’s first studio recording with the band was their 1998 album, Left of Cool. Coffin left the group in 2008 to replace Dave Matthews Band's saxophonist, LeRoi Moore. Howard Levy rejoined the Flecktones in 2009. Béla Fleck and the original Flecktones went on to record, Rocket Science, and tour in 2011.
In 2009, an independent film documentary of Fleck's visit to Uganda, Tanzania, The Gambia and Mali, was released to limited run engagements in U.S. cities.
"Throw Down Your Heart" was directed by Sascha Paladino, Fleck's half brother. It was filmed during Fleck's year off from touring with the Flecktones.
Fleck premiered his Concerto for Banjo in Nashville on September 22, 2011, performing with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, which commissioned the work.
Here, Fleck and the Flecktones perform “Next.”
Nikola Tesla, Serbian American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system, was born 167 years ago today.
Tesla gained experience in telephony and electrical engineering before emigrating to the United States in 1884 to work for Thomas Edison in New York City. He soon struck out on his own with financial backers, setting up laboratories and companies to develop a range of electrical devices.
His patented AC induction motor and transformer were licensed by George Westinghouse, who also hired Tesla for a short time as a consultant. His work in the formative years of electric power development was also involved in the corporate struggle between making alternating current or direct current the power transmission standard, referred to as “the war of currents.”
Tesla went on to pursue his ideas of wireless lighting and electricity distribution in his high-voltage, high-frequency power experiments in New York and Colorado Springs and made early (1893) pronouncements on the possibility of wireless communication with his devices.
He tried to put these ideas to practical use in his ill-fated attempt at intercontinental wireless transmission — his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project.
In his lab, he also conducted a range of experiments with mechanical oscillator/generators, electrical discharge tubes and early X-ray imaging. He even built a wireless controlled boat which may have been the first such device ever exhibited.
Tesla was renowned for his achievements and showmanship, eventually earning him a reputation in popular culture as an archetypal "mad scientist." His patents earned him a considerable amount of money, much of which was used to finance his own projects with varying degrees of success. He lived most of his life in a series of New York hotels, through his retirement.
Tesla died alone in his New York hotel room in 1943 at age 86 of a heart attack.
Two days after Tesla’s death, the FBI ordered the Alien Property Custodian to seize Tesla's belongings, even though Tesla was an American citizen.
Tesla's entire estate from the Hotel New Yorker and other New York City hotels was transported to the Manhattan Storage and Warehouse Company under Office of Alien Property (OAP) seal.
John G. Trump, a professor at M.I.T. and well-known electrical engineer serving as a technical aide to the National Defense Research Committee, was called in to analyze the Tesla items in OAP custody. After a three-day investigation, Trump's report concluded there was nothing that would constitute a hazard in unfriendly hands.
In 1952, following pressure from Tesla's nephew, Sava Kosanović, Tesla's entire estate was shipped to Belgrade in 80 trunks marked N.T. Despite having sold his AC electricity patents, Tesla died impoverished and in debt.
Here’s a rap video portraying the rival between Tesla and Thomas Edison
Nikola Tesla with his Tesla Coil
As a kid, I saw one of Tesla’s original coils in action at summer camp in a show called Bob Brown’s Science Circus.
I was fascinated by the fire, light and spectacle of it all. As a high school student, I built my own Tesla Coil with the help of a old neon sign transformer and a glass plate capacitor made with tin foil inserts.
My Tesla Coil scared the wits out of my mother and lit up our house with fiery sparks. I did gain some credibility, however, when my Tesla Coil won the high school’s science fair.
Don Herbert as “Mr. Wizard,” circa 1950s
Photo by Fran Byrne
Don Herbert, television’s “Mr. Wizard,” was born 106 years ago today.
Herbert was the creator and host of Watch Mr. Wizard (1951–65, 1971–72) and of Mr. Wizard's World (1983–90), which were educational television programs for children devoted to science and technology.
He also produced many short video programs about science and authored several popular books about science for children.
In his obituary, Bill Nye wrote, "Herbert's techniques and performances helped create the United States' first generation of homegrown rocket scientists just in time to respond to Sputnik. He sent us to the moon. He changed the world."
Herbert died in 2007.
Marcel Proust by Jennie Cohen
Marcel Proust, French novelist, critic and essayist, was born 152 years ago today.
Proust is best known for his novel, Remembrance of Things Past. The work was published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927.
Proust is considered by many to be one of the greatest authors of all time.
Canadian short story writer Alice Munro was born in Wingham, Ontario, on this day in 1931. She is 92 years old today.
Munro was raised on a fox and turkey farm. Her parents encouraged her to read, and she decided to become a writer during her childhood. She attended the University of Western Ontario, but dropped out after two years to marry James Munro.
The couple moved to British Columbia, had three daughters and opened a successful bookstore in Victoria. She later divorced her first husband, married a geographer and settled in a town outside Ontario.
Munro began publishing short stories in the late 1960s. Her first collection, Dance of the Happy Shades, appeared in 1968. Since then, she has published more than 15 books, nearly all of them short story collections, including The Progress of Love (1986), Friend of My Youth (1990) and Too Much Happiness (2009).
Many of Munro's stories feature female characters living in rural settings. She has won several prestigious awards for her writing, including the PEN/Malamud Award for short fiction.
The Love of a Good Woman (1998) and Runaway (2004) both won Canada's esteemed Giller Prize.
Thanks History.com
On this day in 1950 — 73 years ago — Your Hit Parade premiered on the NBC television network.
The program, which featured vocalists covering the top hits of the week, had been on radio since 1935. It moved to CBS in 1958, but was canceled the following year, unable to cope with the rising popularity of Rock n' Roll.
It was sponsored by American Tobacco's Lucky Strike cigarettes. During its 24-year run, the show had 19 orchestra leaders and 52 singers or groups.