Charles Leighton
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Charles Leighton
Charles Leighton (24 June 1921 – 26 June 2009) was an American classical and jazz harmonica player who performed from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s. After a hiatus while he managed a recording studio, he performed again in the 1980s until his death. He performed as a soloist and as a member of international ensembles. He worked as a studio musician for radio, film, and television. In the 1950s, Leighton founded JAC Recording, a small recording studio in his apartment in Manhattan. Several years later, the studio hired record producer Phil Ramone, who was mentored by Leighton and other audio engineers. Ramone attributes his love of engineering to Leighton. Career Charles Leighton, a native New Yorker, taught himself to play the harmonica at the age of twelve. At age sixteen (1937), he toured the U.S., playing lead harmonica in vaudeville theaters with harmonica groups such as the Philharmonicas and the Cappy Barra Harmonica Gentlemen. During the early 1940s, he worked in ...
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Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. But jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisationa ...
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Hugh Downs
Hugh Malcolm Downs (February 14, 1921July 1, 2020) was an American radio and television broadcaster, announcer and programmer; television host; news anchor; TV producer; author; game show host; talk show sidekick; and music composer. A regular television presence from the mid 1940s until the late 1990s, he had several successful roles on morning, prime-time, and late-night television. For several years he held the certified Guinness World Record for the most hours on commercial network television before being surpassed by Regis Philbin. Downs served as announcer and sidekick for ''Tonight Starring Jack Paar'' from 1957 to 1962, co-host of the NBC News program ''Today'' from 1962 to 1971, host of the ''Concentration'' game show from 1958 to 1969, and anchor of the ABC News magazine ''20/20'' from 1978 to 1999. Downs started his career in radio in 1939 and began in live television in 1945 in Chicago, where he became a regular on several nationally broadcast programs over the next ...
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Herb Shriner
Herbert Arthur "Herb" Shriner (May 29, 1918 – April 23, 1970) was an American humorist, radio personality, actor, and television host. Shriner was known for his homespun monologues, usually about his home state of Indiana. He was frequently compared to humorist Will Rogers. Early life Shriner was born Herbert Arthur Schriner in Toledo, Ohio, the son of Edith (née Rockwell) and Peter Schriner. He moved to Fort Wayne as a small child, when his mother left his father. Shriner learned to play the harmonica as a grade school student. He formed a quintet when he was in high school; it expanded to an octet and made frequent local appearances. Shriner then performed on his own. When his lip gave out one night, he filled time by telling homespun stories. His deadpan comedy routines became more popular than his music, and soon he was entertaining audiences with stories about a fictional Hoosier hometown. Career Radio In 1940, Shriner was hired by NBC for occasional radio appearan ...
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Rob Paparozzi
Robert Steven "Rob" Paparozzi (born October 14, 1952) is an American Grammy-nominated harmonica player and vocalist from New Jersey. In the early 1970s, Paparozzi fronted the Psychotic Blues Band, a blues rock group which played extensively in the New Jersey area, opening several times for Bruce Springsteen. He has toured with Dolly Parton, George Jones, and has contributed to works by Whitney Houston, Judy Collins, Cyndi Lauper and Bobby McFerrin, among others. He is a former member of The Original Blues Brothers Band and is the singer for the reformed Blood Sweat and Tears. When not touring with Blood Sweat and Tears, Paparozzi leads his own band, the Hudson River Rats, which sometimes features famed funk drummer, Bernard Purdie. The Hudson River Rats have released two CDs, ''First Take'' (1994) and ''Get It While You Can'' (1999). In 2009 Paparozzi released a solo CD entitled, ''Etruscan Soul''. In 2019, Paparozzi continued to tour Steve Cropper and the Blues Brothers Band a ...
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Stan Harper
Stanley Harper ''(né'' Stanley Theodore Wisser; 2 September 1921 – 29 June 2016) was an American virtuoso classical harmonica artist, arranger, and composer. He died June 29, 2016, in a home for the elderly in New Jersey. He raised the popularity of classical harmonica by influencing composers to write for the instrument and by transcribing serious classical works, himself. Through his virtuosity, he widened the recognition of classical harmonica in solo, chamber, and major orchestral settings. Career history Harper began his professional harmonica career in 1935, at age 14. In 1941, he went professionally for a short while by the name Ted Stanley. He went on to perform and record nationally on radio, television, record, theaters, and film until 2015. In the mid to late 1930s, Harper performed with The Harmonica Scamps and Three Harpers, both based in New York City. He apparently only began using the name Stan Harper after World War II. Over the years, he performed with o ...
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William Galison
William Alexander Galison (born February 19, 1958) is an American harmonica player. Early life Galison was born and raised in New York City. As a child, he started to study piano, but at the age of eight he decided to switch to guitar, having been inspired by the Beatles. He developed a love of jazz in high school and attended Berklee College of Music in Boston. He decided to change to the harmonica because "I was one of a million guitarists at Berklee" and it was easy to carry around. He was Berklee's only harmonica player. He toured extensively in Europe with Billy Leadbelly (Bill Gough from Hatfield UK). Among his role models at the time were Toots Thielemans and Stevie Wonder. After Berklee, he studied at Wesleyan University, then returned to New York City in 1982. He performed at various New York venues, including The Village Gate, The Blue Note and the Lone Star Cafe with jazz musicians Jaco Pastorius and Jaki Byard. He also played with his own group at Preacher's Cafe in ...
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Charles Griffes
Charles Tomlinson Griffes ( ; September 17, 1884 – April 8, 1920) was an American composer for piano, chamber ensembles and voice. His initial works are influenced by German Romanticism, but after he relinquished the German style, his later works make him the most famous American representative of musical Impressionism, along with Charles Martin Loeffler. He was fascinated by the exotic, mysterious sound of the French Impressionists, and was compositionally much influenced by them while he was in Europe. He also studied the work of contemporary Russian composers such as Scriabin, whose influence is also apparent in his use of synthetic scales. Musical career Griffes was born in Elmira, New York. He had early piano lessons with his sister Katherine and later studied piano with Mary Selena Broughton, who taught at Elmira College. Broughton had a profound impact on his personal and musical development. After early studies on piano and organ in his home town, on recommendation ...
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JAC Recording, Inc
JAC or Jac may refer to: Businesses * JAC Liner, a Philippine bus company *JAC Motors, a Chinese automobile manufacturer * Japan Air Commuter airline (ICAO: JAC) Organizations *JAC (football club), a football club from Libreville, Gabon * Japanese Alpine Club * Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, a Soviet political organization *Jharkhand Academic Council *Joint Analysis Center, US intelligence agency *Joint Astronomy Centre, an observatory telescope operator * Judicial Appointments Commission, of England and Wales *''Junta de Aviación Civil'', the civil aviation authority of the Dominican Republic *Men's Hockey Junior Africa Cup, international under-21 field hockey tournament organised by the African Hockey Federation. Other uses *''J.A.C.'', an album from Austrian band Tosca *Jac Naylor, a fictional character in ''Holby City'' * Castra of Jac, a fort in the Roman province of Dacia *Jakaltek language (ISO 639-3: jac) * John Abbott College, Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec, Canada *'' ...
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Dionne Warwick
Marie Dionne Warwick (; born December 12, 1940) is an American singer, actress, and television host. Warwick ranks among the 40 biggest U.S. hit makers between 1955 and 1999, based on her chart history on ''Billboard'''s Hot 100 pop singles chart. She is the second-most charted female vocalist during the rock era (1955–1999). She is also one of the most-charted vocalists of all time, with 56 of her singles making the Hot 100 between 1962 and 1998 (12 of them Top Ten), and 80 singles in total – either solo or collaboratively – making the Hot 100, R&B and/or adult contemporary charts. Dionne ranks #74 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100's "Greatest Artists of all time". During her career, she has sold more than 100 million records worldwide and she has won many awards, including six Grammy Awards. Warwick has been inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Grammy Hall of Fame, the R&B Music Hall of Fame and the Apollo Theater Walk of Fame. In 2019 she won the Grammy Lifetim ...
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Dinah Shore
Dinah Shore (born Frances Rose Shore; February 29, 1916 – February 24, 1994) was an American singer, actress, and television personality, and the top-charting female vocalist of the 1940s. She rose to prominence as a recording artist during the Big Band era. She achieved even greater success a decade later, in television, mainly as the host of a series of variety programs for the Chevrolet automobile company. After failing singing auditions for the bands of Benny Goodman, and both Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Shore struck out on her own. She became the first singer of her era to achieve huge solo success. She had a string of 80 charted popular hits, spanning 1940–1957, and after appearing in a handful of feature films, she went on to a four-decade career in American television. She starred in her own music and variety shows from 1951 through 1963 and hosted two talk shows in the 1970s. ''TV Guide'' ranked her at number 16 on their list of the top 50 television stars of all time. ...
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Mitch Miller
Mitchell William Miller (July 4, 1911 – July 31, 2010) was an American choral conductor, record producer, record-industry executive, and professional oboist. He was involved in almost all aspects of the industry, particularly as a conductor and artists and repertoire (A&R) man. Miller was one of the most influential people in American popular music during the 1950s and early 1960s, both as the head of A&R at Columbia Records and as a best-selling recording artist with an NBC television series, ''Sing Along with Mitch''. A graduate of the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester in the early 1930s, Miller began his musical career as a player of the oboe and English horn, making numerous highly regarded classical and popular recordings. Early life Mitchell William Miller was born to a Jewish family in Rochester, New York, on July 4, 1911. His mother was Hinda (Rosenblum) Miller, a former seamstress, and his father, Abram Calmen Miller, a Russian-Jewish immigrant w ...
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