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Dinah Washington
Dinah Washington (born Ruth Lee Jones; August 29, 1924 – December 14, 1963) was an American singer and pianist, who has been cited as "the most popular black female recording artist of the 1950s songs". Primarily a jazz vocalist, she performed and recorded in a wide variety of styles including blues, R&B, and traditional pop music, and gave herself the title of "Queen of the Blues". She was a 1986 inductee of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. Early life Ruth Lee Jones was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to Alice and Ollie Jones, and moved to Chicago as a child. She became deeply involved in gospel music and played piano for the choir in St. Luke's Baptist Church while still in elementary school. She sang gospel music in church and played piano, directing her church choir in her teens and was a member of the Sallie Martin Gospel Singers. When she joined the Sallie Martin group, she dropped out of Wendell Phillips High Sch ...
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Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Tuscaloosa ( ) is a city in and the seat of Tuscaloosa County in west-central Alabama, United States, on the Black Warrior River where the Gulf Coastal and Piedmont plains meet. Alabama's fifth-largest city, it had an estimated population of 101,129 in 2019. It was known as Tuskaloosa until the early 20th century. It is also known as ''"the Druid City"'' because of the numerous water oaks planted in its downtown streets since the 1840s. Incorporated on December 13, 1819, it was named after Tuskaloosa, the chief of a band of Muskogean-speaking people defeated by the forces of Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto in 1540 in the Battle of Mabila, in what is now central Alabama. It served as Alabama's capital city from 1826 to 1846. Tuscaloosa is the regional center of industry, commerce, healthcare and education for the area of west-central Alabama known as ''West Alabama;'' and the principal city of the Tuscaloosa Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes Tuscaloosa, Hale and ...
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Nat King Cole
Nathaniel Adams Coles (March 17, 1919 – February 15, 1965), known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American singer, jazz pianist, and actor. Cole's music career began after he dropped out of school at the age of 15, and continued for the remainder of his life. He found great popular success and recorded over 100 songs that became hits on the pop charts. His trio was the model for small jazz ensembles that followed. Cole also acted in films and on television and performed on Broadway. He was the first African-American man to host an American television series. He was the father of singer Natalie Cole (1950–2015). Biography Early life Nathaniel Adams Coles was born in Montgomery, Alabama, on March 17, 1919. He had three brothers: Eddie (1910–1970), Ike (1927–2001), and Freddy (1931–2020), and a half-sister, Joyce Coles. Each of the Coles brothers pursued careers in music. When Nat King Cole was four years old, the family moved to Chicago, Illinois, where his ...
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Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, Holiday had an innovative influence on jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. She was known for her vocal delivery and improvisational skills. After a turbulent childhood, Holiday began singing in nightclubs in Harlem, where she was heard by producer John Hammond, who liked her voice. She signed a recording contract with Brunswick in 1935. Collaborations with Teddy Wilson produced the hit "What a Little Moonlight Can Do", which became a jazz standard. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Holiday had mainstream success on labels such as Columbia and Decca. By the late 1940s, however, she was beset with legal troubles and drug abuse. After a short prison sentence, she performed at a sold-out conce ...
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Fats Waller
Thomas Wright "Fats" Waller (May 21, 1904 – December 15, 1943) was an American jazz pianist, organist, composer, violinist, singer, and comedic entertainer. His innovations in the Harlem stride style laid much of the basis for modern jazz piano. His best-known compositions, " Ain't Misbehavin'" and " Honeysuckle Rose", were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1984 and 1999. Waller copyrighted over 400 songs, many of them co-written with his closest collaborator, Andy Razaf. Razaf described his partner as "the soul of melody... a man who made the piano sing... both big in body and in mind... known for his generosity... a bubbling bundle of joy". It is likely that he composed many more popular songs than he has been credited with: when in financial difficulties he had a habit of selling songs to other writers and performers who claimed them as their own. Waller started playing the piano at the age of six, and became a professional organist at 15. By the age of 18, he was ...
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Regal Theater, Chicago
Regal Theater was a night club, theater, and music venue, popular among African-Americans. Located in the Bronzeville, Chicago, Bronzeville neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois. The theater was designed by Edward Eichenbaum. and opened in February 1928. Part of the Balaban and Katz chain, the lavishly decorated venue, with plush carpeting and velvet drapes, featured some of the most celebrated African-American entertainers in America. On what for a time was known as the Chitlin' Circuit, the Regal also featured motion pictures and live stage shows. Nat "King" Cole, Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Lena Horne, Dinah Washington, Miles Davis, Sammy Davis Jr., Lionel Hampton, Dizzy Gillespie, and Duke Ellington performed frequently at the theater through the 1920s and 1940s. Other acts to appear at the Regal over the years have included such performers as The Supremes, Wayne Cochran, The Esquires The Temptations, The Four Tops, B.B. King, Herbie Hancock, De ...
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Sallie Martin
Sallie Martin (November 20, 1895 – June 18, 1988) was an American gospel singer referred to as the "Mother of Gospel" for her efforts to popularize the songs of Thomas A. Dorsey and her influence on other artists. Biography Martin was born in Pittfield, Georgia, on November 20, 1895, where she was raised as a Baptist. She joined the Pentecostal movement as a young woman. She began her career singing in Holiness churches after coming to Chicago in 1927. Martin's rough-hewn singing style, combined with the enthusiastic physicality of the Holiness church, nearly kept her from working with Dorsey, who looked down on the shouting style of many Holiness singers and was reluctant to hire a singer who could not read music. Martin nonetheless persuaded Dorsey, after three auditions, to hire her as part of a trio he had formed to introduce his songs to churches. She proved to be an able organizer with a shrewd financial sense who marketed Dorsey's songs, organized his finances, develope ...
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Wendell Phillips Academy High School
Wendell Phillips Academy High School is a public 4–year high school located in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the south side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. Phillips is part of the Chicago Public Schools district and is managed by the Academy for Urban School Leadership. Phillips is named for the American abolitionist Wendell Phillips. Phillips is known as the first predominantly African-American high school in the City of Chicago. Opened in September 1904, the school building was designated a Chicago Landmark on May 7, 2003. History The high school traces its history to 1875, when South Division High School was opened as the south side's first public high school. Phillips was established by Chicago Board of Education in 1900 to replace South Division, (which was located near 26th street and Wabash Avenue, about two miles from Phillips location) after community members petitioned for a new school due to the location being deemed "altogether unfit" and the need to provide a ...
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Chicago Reader
The ''Chicago Reader'', or ''Reader'' (stylized as ЯEADER), is an American alternative weekly newspaper in Chicago, Illinois, noted for its literary style of journalism and coverage of the arts, particularly film and theater. It was founded by a group of friends from Carleton College. The ''Reader'' is recognized as a pioneer among alternative weeklies for both its creative nonfiction and its commercial scheme. Richard Karpel, then-executive director of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, wrote: e most significant historical event in the creation of the modern alt-weekly occurred in Chicago in 1971, when the ''Chicago Reader'' pioneered the practice of free circulation, a cornerstone of today's alternative papers. The ''Reader'' also developed a new kind of journalism, ignoring the news and focusing on everyday life and ordinary people. After being owned by same four founders since 1971, by the early 2000s profits and readership of the ''Reader'' were dropping, and o ...
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Church Choir
A choir ( ; also known as a chorale or chorus) is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which spans from the medieval era to the present, or popular music repertoire. Most choirs are led by a conductor, who leads the performances with arm, hand, and facial gestures. The term ''choir'' is very often applied to groups affiliated with a church (whether or not they actually occupy the quire), whereas a ''chorus'' performs in theatres or concert halls, but this distinction is not rigid. Choirs may sing without instruments, or accompanied by a piano, pipe organ, a small ensemble, or an orchestra. A choir can be a subset of an ensemble; thus one speaks of the "woodwind choir" of an orchestra, or different "choirs" of voices or instruments in a polychoral composition. In typical 18th century to 21st century oratorios and masses, 'chorus' ...
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Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television are named), it remains the most-read daily newspaper in the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region. It had the sixth-highest circulation for American newspapers in 2017. In the 1850s, under Joseph Medill, the ''Chicago Tribune'' became closely associated with the Illinois politician Abraham Lincoln, and the Republican Party's progressive wing. In the 20th century under Medill's grandson, Robert R. McCormick, it achieved a reputation as a crusading paper with a decidedly more American-conservative anti-New Deal outlook, and its writing reached other markets through family and corporate relationships at the ''New York Daily News'' and the ''Washington Times-Herald.'' The 1960s saw its corporate parent owner, Tribune Company, rea ...
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Alabama
(We dare defend our rights) , anthem = "Alabama (state song), Alabama" , image_map = Alabama in United States.svg , seat = Montgomery, Alabama, Montgomery , LargestCity = Huntsville, Alabama, Huntsville , LargestCounty = Baldwin County, Alabama, Baldwin County , LargestMetro = Birmingham metropolitan area, Alabama, Greater Birmingham , area_total_km2 = 135,765 , area_total_sq_mi = 52,419 , area_land_km2 = 131,426 , area_land_sq_mi = 50,744 , area_water_km2 = 4,338 , area_water_sq_mi = 1,675 , area_water_percent = 3.2 , area_rank = 30th , length_km = 531 , length_mi = 330 , width_km = 305 , width_mi = 190 , Latitude = 30°11' N to 35° N , Longitude = 84°53' W to 88°28' W , elevation_m = 150 , elevation_ft = 500 , elevation_max_m = 735.5 , elevation_max_ft = 2,413 , elevation_max_point = Mount Cheaha , elevation_min_m = 0 , elevation_min_ft = 0 , elevation_min_point = Gulf of Mexico , OfficialLang = English language, English , Languages = * English ...
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Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (RRHOF), sometimes simply referred to as the Rock Hall, is a museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ... and hall of fame located in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States, on the shore of Lake Erie. The museum documents the history of rock music and the artists, producers, engineers, and other notable figures who have influenced its development. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation was established on April 20, 1983, by Ahmet Ertegun, founder and chairman of Atlantic Records. After a long search for the right city, Cleveland was chosen in 1986 as the Hall of Fame's permanent home. Architect I. M. Pei designed the new museum, and it was dedicated on September 1, 1995. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation The RRHOF Foundation was ...
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