Beale Street Blues
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Beale Street Blues
"Beale Street Blues" is a song by American composer and lyricist W.C. Handy. It was named after Beale Street, a center of African-American music in Memphis, Tennessee, and was published in 1917. Background The title refers to Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee, an entertainment district for the city's African-American population in the early part of the 20th century. Accounts of Handy's inspiration vary: one is that he observed a pianist playing in a cafe on that street; another credits a barber commenting on closing early because no one had been murdered on the street that day. Composition and lyrics "Beale Street Blues" "juxtaposes the 12-bar blues form with an 8-bar counter-theme". The song was published in 1917. Difficulty in securing a good publishing deal meant that Handy published it himself. Early versions The publication of the song coincided with the beginning of jazz recordings. An early version by Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band earned Handy's firm $2,857 in royalties ...
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Gilda Gray
Gilda Gray (born Marianna Michalska; October 24, 1901 – December 22, 1959) was a Polish-American dancer and actress who popularized a dance called the "shimmy" which became fashionable in 1920s films and theater productions. Early life and 'the shimmy' According to her own statement, Gilda Gray was born on 24 October 1901 in Kraków (then part of Galicia-Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary, and now part of Poland) and she was an adopted child of Maksymilian (Max) and Wanda Michalski (née Kuras).Giordano, Ralph G. (2008)''Satan in the Dance Hall: Rev. John Roach Straton, Social Dancing, and Morality in 1920s New York City'' Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press. p. 119. . However, according to her birth certificate she was born on 25 October 1895 in a village Rydlewo near Żnin (Żnin County, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship) and Maksymilian (Max) and Wanda Michalski (née Kuras) were her biological parents. In 1903 she emigrated with her parents to the United States. She had one sister, Josephin ...
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Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous jazz orchestra from 1923 through the rest of his life. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s and gained a national profile through his orchestra's appearances at the Cotton Club in Harlem. A master at writing miniatures for the three-minute 78 rpm recording format, Ellington wrote or collaborated on more than one thousand compositions; his extensive body of work is the largest recorded personal jazz legacy, and many of his pieces have become standards. He also recorded songs written by his bandsmen, such as Juan Tizol's " Caravan", which brought a Spanish tinge to big band jazz. At the end of the 1930s, Ellington began a nearly thirty-year collaboration with composer-arranger-pianist Billy Strayhorn, whom he called his writing and arranging companion. With Strayhorn, he composed multipl ...
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1910s Jazz Standards
Year 191 ( CXCI) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Apronianus and Bradua (or, less frequently, year 944 '' Ab urbe condita''). The denomination 191 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years. Events By place Parthia * King Vologases IV of Parthia dies after a 44-year reign, and is succeeded by his son Vologases V. China * A coalition of Chinese warlords from the east of Hangu Pass launches a punitive campaign against the warlord Dong Zhuo, who seized control of the central government in 189, and held the figurehead Emperor Xian hostage. After suffering some defeats against the coalition forces, Dong Zhuo forcefully relocates the imperial capital from Luoyang to Chang'an. Before leaving, Dong Zhuo orders his troops to loot the tombs of the H ...
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Lena Horne Songs
Lena or LENA may refer to: Places * Léna Department, a department of Houet Province in Burkina Faso * Lena, Manitoba, an unincorporated community located in Killarney-Turtle Mountain municipality in Manitoba, Canada * Lena, Norway, a village in Østre Toten municipality in Innlandet county, Norway * Lena, Asturias, a municipality in the Principality of Asturias, Spain Russia * Lena, Russia, a list of names of several rural localities in Russia * Lena (river), the easternmost of the three great rivers in Siberia * Lena Cheeks, a stretch of the river Lena with peculiar rock formations in Kirensky District, Irkutsk Oblast, Russia * Lena Pillars, a natural rock formation along the banks of the Lena River in far eastern Siberia * Lena Plateau, a large plateau in Siberia * Lena-Angara Plateau, a large plateau in Siberia United States * Lena, Illinois, a village in Stephenson County * Lena, Indiana, an unincorporated community in Parke County * Lena, Louisiana, an unincorporated communi ...
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Blues Songs
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern (the blues scale and specific chord progressions) of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or "worried notes"), usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove. Blues as a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current st ...
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1917 Songs
Events Below, the events of World War I have the "WWI" prefix. January * January 9 – WWI – Battle of Rafa: The last substantial Ottoman Army garrison on the Sinai Peninsula is captured by the Egyptian Expeditionary Force's Desert Column. * January 10 – Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition: Seven survivors of the Ross Sea party were rescued after being stranded for several months. * January 11 – Unknown saboteurs set off the Kingsland Explosion at Kingsland (modern-day Lyndhurst, New Jersey), one of the events leading to United States involvement in WWI. * January 16 – The Danish West Indies is sold to the United States for $25 million. * January 22 – WWI: United States President Woodrow Wilson calls for "peace without victory" in Germany. * January 25 ** WWI: British armed merchantman is sunk by mines off Lough Swilly (Ireland), with the loss of 354 of the 475 aboard. ** An anti-prostitution drive in San Francisco occurs, and police ...
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Beale Street Blues
"Beale Street Blues" is a song by American composer and lyricist W.C. Handy. It was named after Beale Street, a center of African-American music in Memphis, Tennessee, and was published in 1917. Background The title refers to Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee, an entertainment district for the city's African-American population in the early part of the 20th century. Accounts of Handy's inspiration vary: one is that he observed a pianist playing in a cafe on that street; another credits a barber commenting on closing early because no one had been murdered on the street that day. Composition and lyrics "Beale Street Blues" "juxtaposes the 12-bar blues form with an 8-bar counter-theme". The song was published in 1917. Difficulty in securing a good publishing deal meant that Handy published it himself. Early versions The publication of the song coincided with the beginning of jazz recordings. An early version by Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band earned Handy's firm $2,857 in royalties ...
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List Of Pre-1920 Jazz Standards
Jazz standards are musical compositions that are widely known, performed and recorded by jazz artists as part of the genre's musical repertoire. This list includes compositions written before 1920 that are considered standards by at least one major fake book publication or reference work. Some of the tunes listed were instant hits and quickly became well-known standards, while others were popularized later. The time of the most influential recordings of a song, where appropriate, is indicated on the list. From its conception at the change of the twentieth century, jazz was music intended for dancing. This influenced the choice of material played by early jazz groups: King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, New Orleans Rhythm Kings and others included many Tin Pan Alley popular songs in their repertoire, and record companies often used their power to dictate which songs were to be recorded by their artists. Certain songs were pushed by recording executives and therefore quickly achieved s ...
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Trad Jazz
Trad jazz, short for "traditional jazz", is a form of jazz in the United States and Britain in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, played by musicians such as Chris Barber, Acker Bilk, Kenny Ball, Ken Colyer and Monty Sunshine, based on a revival of New Orleans Dixieland jazz, on trumpets, trombones, clarinets, tambourines, banjos, double basses, saxophones, Hammond organs, pipe organs, pianos, electric basses, guitars (typically electric guitars) and drums and cymbals, with a populist repertoire which also included jazz versions of pop songs and nursery rhymes. Beginnings of revival A Dixieland revival began in the United States on the West Coast in the late 1930s as a backlash to the Chicago style, which was close to swing. Lu Watters and the Yerba Buena Jazz Band, and trombonist Turk Murphy, adopted the repertoire of Joe "King" Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong and W. C. Handy: bands included banjo and tuba in the rhythm sections. A New Orleans-based traditional revi ...
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Tommy Dorsey
Thomas Francis Dorsey Jr. (November 19, 1905 – November 26, 1956) was an American jazz trombonist, composer, conductor and bandleader of the big band era. He was known as the "Sentimental Gentleman of Swing" because of his smooth-toned trombone playing. His theme song was "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You". His technical skill on the trombone gave him renown among other musicians. He was the younger brother of bandleader Jimmy Dorsey. After Dorsey broke with his brother in the mid-1930s, he led an extremely successful band from the late 1930s into the 1950s. He is best remembered for standards such as "Opus No. 1, Opus One", "Song of India (song), Song of India", "Marie", "On Treasure Island", and his biggest hit single, "I'll Never Smile Again". Early life Born in Mahanoy Plane, Pennsylvania, Thomas Francis Dorsey Jr. was the second of four children born to Thomas Francis Dorsey Sr., a bandleader, and Theresa (née Langton) Dorsey. He and Jimmy, his older brother by slightly ...
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Blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern (the blues scale and specific chord progressions) of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or "worried notes"), usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove. Blues as a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current str ...
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Big Band
A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s and dominated jazz in the early 1940s when swing was most popular. The term "big band" is also used to describe a genre of music, although this was not the only style of music played by big bands. Big bands started as accompaniment for dancing. In contrast to the typical jazz emphasis on improvisation, big bands relied on written compositions and arrangements. They gave a greater role to bandleaders, arrangers, and sections of instruments rather than soloists. Instruments Big bands generally have four sections: trumpets, trombones, saxophones, and a rhythm section of guitar, piano, double bass, and drums. The division in early big bands, from the 1920s to 1930s, was typically two or three trumpets, one or two trombones, three or four saxo ...
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