Dexter Gordon
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Dexter Gordon
Dexter Gordon (February 27, 1923 – April 25, 1990) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, bandleader, and actor. He was among the most influential early bebop musicians, which included other greats such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Bud Powell. Gordon's height was , so he was also known as "Long Tall Dexter" and "Sophisticated Giant". His studio and performance career spanned more than 40 years. Gordon's sound was commonly characterized as being "large" and spacious and he had a tendency to play behind the beat. He was known for inserting musical quotes into his solos, with sources as diverse as "Happy Birthday" and well known melodies from the operas of Wagner. Quoting from various musical sources is not unusual in jazz improvisation, but Gordon did it frequently enough to make it a hallmark of his style. One of his major influences was Lester Young. Gordon, in turn, was an early influence on John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins. Rollins and Coltrane then i ...
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Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world's most populous megacities. Los Angeles is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Southern California. With a population of roughly 3.9 million residents within the city limits , Los Angeles is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic and cultural diversity, being the home of the Hollywood film industry, and its sprawling metropolitan area. The city of Los Angeles lies in a basin in Southern California adjacent to the Pacific Ocean in the west and extending through the Santa Monica Mountains and north into the San Fernando Valley, with the city bordering the San Gabriel Valley to it's east. It covers about , and is the county seat of Los Angeles County, which is the most populous county in the United States with an estim ...
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Happy Birthday To You
"Happy Birthday to You", also known as "Happy Birthday", is a song traditionally sung to celebrate a person's birthday. According to the 1998 ''Guinness World Records'', it is the most recognised song in the English language, followed by "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow". The song's base lyrics have been translated into at least 18 languages. The melody of "Happy Birthday to You" comes from the song "Good Morning to All", which has traditionally been attributed to American sisters Patty and Mildred J. Hill in 1893, although the claim that the sisters composed the tune is disputed. The song is in the public domain in the United States and the European Union. Warner Chappell Music had previously claimed copyright on the song in the US and collected licensing fees for its use; in 2015 the copyright claim was declared invalid and Warner Chappell agreed to pay back $14 million in licensing fees. History Patty Hill was a kindergarten principal in Louisville, Kentucky developing vario ...
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Awakenings
''Awakenings'' is a 1990 American drama film directed by Penny Marshall. It is written by Steven Zaillian, who based his screenplay on Oliver Sacks's 1973 memoir ''Awakenings''. It tells the story of neurologist Dr. Malcolm Sayer (Robin Williams), who is based on Sacks, who discovers the beneficial effects of the drug L-Dopa in 1969. He administers it to catatonic patients who survived the 1917–1928 epidemic of encephalitis lethargica. Leonard Lowe ( Robert de Niro) and the rest of the patients are awakened after decades and have to deal with a new life in a new time. Julie Kavner, Ruth Nelson, John Heard, Penelope Ann Miller, Peter Stormare, and Max von Sydow also star. ''Awakenings'' was produced by Walter Parkes and Lawrence Lasker, who first encountered Sacks's book as undergraduates at Yale and optioned it a few years later. The film was a critical and commercial success, earning $108.7 million on a $29 million budget, and was nominated for three Academy Awards. Plot ...
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The Other Side Of Round Midnight
''The Other Side of Round Midnight'' is an album by American jazz saxophonist Dexter Gordon recorded in 1985 and released on the Blue Note Records, Blue Note label.Dexter Gordon discography
accessed November 1, 2010
The album was recorded during the making of Bertrand Tavernier's 1986 film ''Round Midnight (film), Round Midnight,'' and it consists of tracks that were not included in the Academy Award-winning Round Midnight (soundtrack), soundtrack album for the film. The album features the last recordings released under Gordon's name (although he does not appear on all tracks), produced and arranged by Herbie Hancock.


Reception

The Allmusic review by Scott Yanow awarded the album 3 stars and calling it "Not essential but interesting".Yanow, S. ...
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Warner Bros
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery. Founded in 1923 by four brothers, Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack Warner, the company established itself as a leader in the American film industry before diversifying into animation, television, and video games and is one of the "Big Five" major American film studios, as well as a member of the Motion Picture Association (MPA). The company is known for its film studio division the Warner Bros. Pictures Group, which includes Warner Bros. Pictures, New Line Cinema, the Warner Animation Group, Castle Rock Entertainment, and DC Studios. Among its other assets, stands the television production company Warner Bros. Television Studios. Bugs Bunny, a cartoon character created by Tex Avery, Ben Hardaway, Chuck Jones, Bob Givens and ...
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Round Midnight (film)
''Round Midnight'' is a 1986 musical drama film directed by Bertrand Tavernier and written by Tavernier and David Rayfiel. It stars Dexter Gordon, François Cluzet and Herbie Hancock, the latter of whom also composed the film's soundtrack. Martin Scorsese, Philippe Noiret and Wayne Shorter appear in cameos. The protagonist jazzman, Dale Turner, was based on a composite of real-life jazz legends Lester Young (tenor sax) and Bud Powell (piano). While the film is fictionalized, it is drawn directly from the memoir/biography ''Dance of the Infidels'' written by French author Francis Paudras, who had befriended Powell during his Paris expatriate days and on whom the character Francis was based. The film is a wistful and tragic portrait that captures the Paris jazz scene of the 1950s. Gordon was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor and won a Grammy for the film's soundtrack entitled ''The Other Side of Round Midnight'' in the category for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance, ...
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Bertrand Tavernier
Bertrand Tavernier (25 April 1941 – 25 March 2021) was a French director, screenwriter, actor and producer. Life and career Tavernier was born in Lyon, France, the son of Geneviève (née Dumond) and René Tavernier, a publicist and writer, several years president of the French PEN club. He said his father's publishing of a wartime resistance journal and aid to anti-Nazi intellectuals shaped his moral outlook as an artist. According to Tavernier, his father believed that words were "as important and as lethal as bullets". Tavernier wanted to become a filmmaker from the age of 13 or 14 years. He said that his cinematic influences included filmmakers John Ford, William Wellman, Jean Renoir, Jean Vigo and Jacques Becker. Tavernier was influenced by the 1968 general strike in France. He associated with the OCI between 1973 and 1975, and was particularly struck by the writing of Leon Trotsky. The first film director with whom he worked was Jean-Pierre Melville. Later, his first fi ...
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Academy Award For Best Actor
The Academy Award for Best Actor is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given to an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance in a leading role in a film released that year. The award is traditionally presented by the previous year's Best Actress winner. The 1st Academy Awards were held in 1929 with Emil Jannings receiving the award for his roles in '' The Last Command'' (1928) and ''The Way of All Flesh'' (1927). Currently, nominees are determined by single transferable vote within the actors branch of AMPAS; winners are selected by a plurality vote from the entire eligible voting members of the Academy. In the first three years of the awards, actors were nominated as the best in their categories. At that time, all of their work during the qualifying period (as many as three films, in some cases) was listed after the award. During the third ceremony in 1930, only one of those films was cited in each winner' ...
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Academy Awards
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment industry worldwide. Given annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), the awards are an international recognition of excellence in cinematic achievements, as assessed by the Academy's voting membership. The various category winners are awarded a copy of a golden statuette as a trophy, officially called the "Academy Award of Merit", although more commonly referred to by its nickname, the "Oscar". The statuette, depicting a knight rendered in the Art Deco style, was originally sculpted by Los Angeles artist George Stanley from a design sketch by art director Cedric Gibbons. The 1st Academy Awards were held in 1929 at a private dinner hosted by Douglas Fairbanks in The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. The Academy Awards cerem ...
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Royal Roost
The Royal Roost was a jazz club located at 1580 Broadway in the Theater District of Manhattan in New York City. History Ralph Watkins originally opened the Royal Roost as a chicken restaurant. After a difficult start, Watkins was persuaded by Sid Torin (D.J. Symphony Sid) to try presenting modern jazz at the club. Beginning in 1948 the club began to showcase the likes of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro, Dexter Gordon, Tadd Dameron, and Max Roach. The presence of so many prominent bebop musicians performing at the Royal Roost led to the club being nicknamed "the Metropolitan Bopera House," a pun referencing the club's close proximity to the nearby Metropolitan Opera House. In 1949, a record label, Roost Records, was founded by Arthur Faden, Bill Faden, Monty Kay and Ralph Watkins, which recorded many of the musicians who performed at the club. In September 1948, Miles Davis debuted his nonet at the club, a project that would eventually give rise to the seminal cool ja ...
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Herman Leonard
Herman Leonard (March 6, 1923, in Allentown, Pennsylvania – August 14, 2010, in Los Angeles, California) was an American photographer known for his unique images of jazz icons. Early life and education Leonard was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania to Joseph Leonard and Rose Morrison, who were Romanian Jewish immigrants who emigrated from Iaşi to the U.S. Leonard gained a BFA degree in photography in 1947 from Ohio University, although his college career was interrupted by a tour of duty in the United States Army during World War II. In the military, he served as a medical technician in Burma while attached to Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese troops fighting the Japanese. Career After graduation, he apprenticed with portraitist Yousuf Karsh for one year. Karsh gave him valuable experience photographing public personalities such as Albert Einstein, Harry Truman, and Martha Graham. In 1948, Leonard opened his first studio in New York's Greenwich Village at 200 Sullivan St. ...
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Sonny Rollins
Walter Theodore "Sonny" Rollins (born September 7, 1930) is an American jazz tenor saxophonist who is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians. In a seven-decade career, he has recorded over sixty albums as a leader. A number of his compositions, including " St. Thomas", " Oleo", " Doxy", "Pent-Up House", and "Airegin", have become jazz standards. Rollins has been called "the greatest living improviser" and the "Saxophone Colossus". Early life Rollins was born in New York City to parents from the United States Virgin Islands. The youngest of three siblings, he grew up in central Harlem and on Sugar Hill, receiving his first alto saxophone at the age of seven or eight. He attended Edward W. Stitt Junior High School and graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School in East Harlem. Rollins started as a pianist, changed to alto saxophone, and finally switched to tenor in 1946. During his high school years, he played in a band with other future ...
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