Al Bernard
Alfred Aloysous Bernard (November 23, 1888 – March 6, 1949) was an American vaudeville singer, known as "The Boy From Dixie", who was most popular during the 1910s through early 1930s. Life Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, he became a blackface singer in minstrel shows before starting his recording career around 1916. He was one of the first white singers to record blues songs. W. C. Handy credited Bernard with helping his own career by recording a number of his songs, notably "St. Louis Blues". Bernard recorded the song for nine different record labels, the most successful being what Handy called ''"the sensational Victor recording in which he sang with the Dixieland Jazz Band"''. From 1919, he recorded solo for Okeh Records. His songs included one called "Shake, Rattle and Roll", about a dice game, which was wholly unrelated, except in title, to the later rock and roll song. Bernard was sometimes billed as "The Singing Comedian", and was the first American singer to record th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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New Orleans, Louisiana
New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans Merriam-Webster. ; french: La Nouvelle-Orléans , es, Nueva Orleans) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 according to the 2020 U.S. census, it is the List of municipalities in Louisiana, most populous city in Louisiana and the twelfth-most populous city in the southeastern United States. Serving as a List of ports in the United States, major port, New Orleans is considered an economic and commercial hub for the broader Gulf Coast of the United States, Gulf Coast region of the United States. New Orleans is world-renowned for its Music of New Orleans, distinctive music, Louisiana Creole cuisine, Creole cuisine, New Orleans English, uniq ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Minstrel Show
The minstrel show, also called minstrelsy, was an American form of racist theatrical entertainment developed in the early 19th century. Each show consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances that depicted people specifically of African descent. The shows were performed by mostly white people wearing blackface make-up for the purpose of playing the role of black people. There were also some African-American performers and black-only minstrel groups that formed and toured. Minstrel shows caricatured black people as dim-witted, lazy, buffoonish, superstitious, and happy-go-lucky.The Coon Character , Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, Ferris State University. Retrieved 29 January 2016.John Kenrick ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid digital subscribers. It also is a producer of popular podcasts such as '' The Daily''. Founded in 1851 by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, it was initially published by Raymond, Jones & Company. The ''Times'' has won 132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper, and has long been regarded as a national " newspaper of record". For print it is ranked 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the U.S. The paper is owned by the New York Times Company, which is publicly traded. It has been governed by the Sulzberger family since 1896, through a dual-class share structure after its shares became publicly traded. A. G. Sulzberger, the paper's publisher and the company's chairman, is the fifth generation of the family to head the pa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Western Swing
Western swing music is a subgenre of American country music that originated in the late 1920s in the Western United States, West and Southern United States, South among the region's Western music (North America), Western string bands. It is dance music, often with an up-tempo beat, which attracted huge crowds to dance halls and clubs in Texas, Oklahoma and California during the 1930s and 1940s until a federal war-time nightclub tax in 1944 contributed to the genre's decline.''Stomping the Blues''. Albert Murray. Da Capo Press. 2000. page 109, 110. , The movement was an outgrowth of jazz. The music is an amalgamation of American roots music, rural, Western music (North America), cowboy, polka, Old-time music, old-time, Dixieland jazz, and blues blended with swing music, swing; and played by a Musical improvisation, hot string band often augmented with drums, saxophones, pianos and, notably, the steel guitar. The electrically amplified stringed instruments, especially the steel g ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hesitation Blues
"Hesitation Blues" is a popular song adapted from a traditional tune. One version was published by Billy Smythe, Scott Middleton, and Art Gillham. Another was published by W.C. Handy as "Hesitating Blues". Because the tune is traditional, many artists have taken credit as writer, frequently adapting the lyrics of one of the two published versions. Adaptations of the lyrics vary widely, though typically the refrain is recognizably consistent. The song is a jug band standard and is also played as blues and sometimes as Western swing. It is cataloged as Roud Folk Song Index No. 11765. Composer William Grant Still arranged a version of the song in 1916 while working with Handy. Smythe, Middleton and Gillham version The three men were involved in the music publishing business in St. Louis, Missouri. About 1914 they joined a band and went to Los Angeles. They passed their traveling time making up verses to a traditional tune. When they returned to St. Louis the trio went their sepa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Vernon Dalhart
Marion Try Slaughter (April 6, 1883 – September 14, 1948), better known by his stage name Vernon Dalhart, was an American country music singer and songwriter. His recording of the classic ballad "Wreck of the Old 97" was the first country song to sell one million copies. Biography Dalhart was born in Jefferson, Texas, on April 6, 1883. He took his stage name from two towns, Vernon and Dalhart in Texas, between which he punched cattle as a teenager in the 1890s. Dalhart's father, Robert Marion Slaughter, was killed by his brother-in-law, Bob Castleberry, when Vernon was age 10. When Dalhart was 12 or 13, the family moved from Jefferson to Dallas, Texas. He sang and played harmonica and Jew's harp at local community events and attended the Dallas Conservatory of Music. He married Sadie Lee Moore-Livingston in 1901 and had two children, a son and a daughter. In 1910, he moved the family to New York City, where he worked in a piano warehouse and took occasional singing jobs. M ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jimmy Durante
James Francis Durante ( , ; February 10, 1893 – January 29, 1980) was an American comedian, actor, singer, vaudevillian, and pianist. His distinctive gravelly speech, Lower East Side accent, comic language-butchery, jazz-influenced songs, and prominent nose helped make him one of America's most familiar and popular personalities of the 1920s through the 1970s. He often referred to his nose as ''the schnozzola'' ( Italianization of the American Yiddish slang word ''schnoz'', meaning "big nose"), and the word became his nickname. Early life Childhood Durante was born on the Lower East Side of New York City. He was the youngest of four children born to Rosa (Lentino) and Bartolomeo Durante, both immigrants from Salerno, Campania, Italy. Bartolomeo was a barber. Young Jimmy served as an altar boy at St. Malachy Roman Catholic Church, known as the Actor's Chapel. Early career Durante dropped out of school in seventh grade to become a full-time ragtime pianist. He first pl ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith (April 15, 1894 – September 26, 1937) was an American blues singer widely renowned during the Jazz Age. Nicknamed the " Empress of the Blues", she was the most popular female blues singer of the 1930s. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, she is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era and was a major influence on fellow blues singers, as well as jazz vocalists. Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Smith was young when her parents died, and she and her six siblings survived by performing on street corners. She began touring and performed in a group that included Ma Rainey, and then went out on her own. Her successful recording career with Columbia Records began in 1923, but her performing career was cut short by a car crash that killed her at the age of 43. Biography Early life The 1900 census indicates that her family reported that Bessie Smith was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in July 1892. The 1910 census gives her age as ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ernie Hare
Thomas Ernest Hare (March 16, 1883 – March 9, 1939) was an American singer who recorded prolifically during the 1920s and 1930s, finding fame as a radio star on ''the Happiness Boys'' radio program. Career Hare's recording career began in 1918. He was Al Jolson's understudy in the Broadway musical '' Sinbad'' during 1919–20. He recorded with the Cleartone Four, the Crescent Trio, the Harmonizers Quartet, and the Premier Quartet. He made a series recordings with Al Bernard in the late 1910s and the start of the 1920s. As a soloist, he worked under a variety of names (Wallace Daniels, Arthur Grant, Henry Jones, Robert Judson, Walter Lang, Walter Leslie, Roy Roberts, Bob Thomas, Bob Thompson, "Hobo" Jack Turner, and Frank Mann).Gracyk, Tim. ''Popular ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Charley Straight
Charles Theodore "Charley" Straight (January 16, 1891 – September 22, 1940) was an American pianist, bandleader and composer. Biography Straight started his career in 1909 accompanying singer Gene Greene in Vaudeville. In 1916, he began working at the Imperial Piano Roll Company in Chicago, where he recorded dozens of piano rolls. He became a popular bandleader in Chicago during the 1920s. His band, the Charley Straight Orchestra, had a long term engagement at the Rendezvous Café from 1922 to 1925 and recorded for Paramount Records and Brunswick Records in the 1920s. During the 1920s, Straight worked with Roy Bargy on the latter's eight ''Piano Syncopations''. In describing "Rufenreddy", the fifth in the series, the ragtime historian "Perfessor" Bill Edwards stated: :The actual parentage of this piece will likely remain obscured to some degree, since Bargy's collaborator, Charley Straight, more or less may have let Bargy take credit when the piano rolls of the Eight Piano ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gene Greene
Eugene Delbert Greene (June 9, 1877 – April 5, 1930) was an American vaudeville and ragtime singer. He was one of the first to use scat singing techniques. Career Greene was born in Indiana. He worked with his wife, Blanche Werner, as Greene & Werner. Between 1911 and 1917, he made five recordings of "King of the Bungaloos", which was his most popular song. Nicknamed "The Ragtime King", he employed scat singing techniques on this song. His other songs included "The Chinese Blues" and "Alexander's Got a Jazz Band Now". While on a tour of Europe in 1912, Blanche Werner died. Greene continued to perform, making about 64 recordings during 1912–13 before returning to the U.S. He retired to Grand Rapids, Michigan, and ran a restaurant. He tried to sing again in New York City but died of a heart attack backstage. "King of the Bungaloos" appeared on ''Pop Music: The Early Years 1890–1950'' as part of Sony's ''Soundtrack for a Century'' box set. See also *List of ragtime compose ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Frankie And Johnny (song)
"Frankie and Johnny" (sometimes spelled "Frankie and Johnnie"; also known as "Frankie and Albert", "Frankie's Man", "Johnny", or just "Frankie") is a traditional American popular song. It tells the story of a woman, Frankie, who finds her man Johnny making love to another woman and shoots him dead. Frankie is then arrested; in some versions of the song she is also executed. History The song was inspired by one or more actual murders. One of these took place in an apartment building located at 212 Targee Street in St. Louis, Missouri, at 2:00 on the morning of October 15, 1899. Frankie Baker (18761952), a 22-year-old woman, shot her 17-year-old lover Allen (also known as "Albert") Britt in the abdomen. Britt had just returned from a cakewalk at a local dance hall, where he and another woman, Nelly Bly (also known as "Alice Pryor" and no relation to the pioneering reporter who adopted the pseudonym Nellie Bly or Stephen Foster's Nelly Bly), had won a prize in a slow-dancing contest ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |