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Ervin Drake
Ervin Drake (born Ervin Maurice Druckman; April 3, 1919 – January 15, 2015) was an American songwriter whose works include such American Songbook standards as "I Believe (1953 song), I Believe" and "It Was a Very Good Year". He wrote in a variety of styles and his work has been recorded by musicians around the world. In 1983, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Biography Born in New York City, Drake had his first song published at age 12, in 1931. The son of Jewish immigrants Max Druckman and Pearl Cohen, he attended Townsend Harris High School in the borough of Manhattan, graduating in 1935, and went on to receive a Bachelor of Arts degree in social science from the City College of New York in 1940. His elder brother, Milton Drake, also became a songwriter, with work including "Java Jive" and "Nina Never Knew"; and his younger brother Arnold Drake, became a writer for DC Comics, Marvel Comics, and others, as well as an author and playwright. Drake wrote the lyric ...
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New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the List of United States cities by population density, most densely populated major city in the United States, and is more than twice as populous as second-place Los Angeles. New York City lies at the southern tip of New York (state), New York State, and constitutes the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban area, urban landmass. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York is one of the world's most populous Megacity, megacities, and over 58 million people live within of the city. New York City is a global city, global Culture of New ...
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Arnold Drake
Arnold Drake (March 1, 1924 – March 12, 2007) was an American comic book writer and screenwriter best known for co-creating the DC Comics characters Deadman and the Doom Patrol, and the Marvel Comics characters the Guardians of the Galaxy, among others. Drake was posthumously inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2008. Biography Early life and career Arnold Drake was the third child of Max Druckman, a Manhattan furniture dealer who died in June 1966 at his home in Forest Hills, Queens, New York City, and Pearl Cohen. His eldest brother, Ervin Drake, born Ervin Maurice Druckman, and the middle brother, Milton, both became notable songwriters. His family was Jewish. At age 12, Drake contracted scarlet fever, confining him to bed for a year, a time he spent drawing his own comic strip creations. Years later, turning to writing, he studied journalism at the University of Missouri and later at New York University. Collaborating with co-writer Leslie Waller (t ...
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Folk Music
Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted orally, music with unknown composers, music that is played on traditional instruments, music about cultural or national identity, music that changes between generations (folk process), music associated with a people's folklore, or music performed by custom over a long period of time. It has been contrasted with commercial and classical styles. The term originated in the 19th century, but folk music extends beyond that. Starting in the mid-20th century, a new form of popular folk music evolved from traditional folk music. This process and period is called the (second) folk revival and reached a zenith in the 1960s. This form of music is sometimes called contemporary folk music or folk rev ...
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Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), or simply Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century. His energized interpretations of songs and sexually provocative performance style, combined with a singularly potent mix of influences across color lines during a civil rights movement, transformative era in race relations, led him to both great success and Cultural impact of Elvis Presley#Danger to American culture, initial controversy. Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, and relocated to Memphis, Tennessee, with his family when he was 13 years old. His music career began there in 1954, recording at Sun Records with producer Sam Phillips, who wanted to bring the sound of African-American music to a wider audience. Presley, on rhythm acoustic guitar, and accompanied by lead ...
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Barbra Streisand
Barbara Joan "Barbra" Streisand (; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress and director. With a career spanning over six decades, she has achieved success in multiple fields of entertainment, and is among the few performers List of people who have won Academy, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Awards, awarded an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony (EGOT). Streisand began her career by performing in nightclubs and Broadway theaters in the early 1960s. Following her guest appearances on various television shows, she signed to Columbia Records, insisting that she retain full artistic control, and accepting lower pay in exchange, an arrangement that continued throughout her career, and released her debut ''The Barbra Streisand Album'' (1963), which won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Throughout her recording career, Streisand has topped the US Billboard 200, ''Billboard'' 200 chart with 11 albums—a record for a woman—including ''People (Barbra Streisand album), People'' (1 ...
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Frankie Laine
Frankie Laine (born Francesco Paolo LoVecchio; March 30, 1913 – February 6, 2007) was an American Singing, singer, songwriter, and actor whose career spanned nearly 75 years, from his first concerts in 1930 with a marathon dance company to his final performance of "That's My Desire (1931 song), That's My Desire" in 2005. Often billed as "America's Number One Song Stylist", his other nicknames include "Mr. Rhythm", "Old Leather Lungs", and "Mr. Steel Tonsils". His hits included "That's My Desire", "That Lucky Old Sun", "Mule Train", "Jezebel (Frankie Laine song), Jezebel", "High Noon (song), High Noon", "I Believe (1953 song), I Believe", "Hey Joe (1953 song), Hey Joe!", "The Kid's Last Fight", "Cool Water (song), Cool Water", "Rawhide (song), Rawhide", and "You Gave Me a Mountain". He sang well-known theme songs for many western (genre), Western film soundtracks, including ''3:10 to Yuma (1957 film), 3:10 To Yuma'', ''Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (film), Gunfight at the O.K. Co ...
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Jane Froman
Ellen Jane Froman (November 10, 1907 – April 22, 1980) was an American actress and singer. During her thirty-year career, she performed on stage, radio and television despite chronic health problems due to injuries sustained in a 1943 plane crash. Her life story was told in the 1952 film '' With a Song in My Heart''. She was portrayed by Susan Hayward, who was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance. Early life and education Ellen Jane Froman was born in University City, Missouri, the daughter of Anna Tillman ( Barcafer) and Elmer Ellsworth Froman. Her childhood and adolescence were spent in the small Missouri town of Clinton. When Froman was about five years old, her father mysteriously disappeared and was never heard from again, although it is known he died in Los Angeles in 1936. Her mother later remarried, to William Hetzler. Froman developed a stutter around this time, which stayed with her all of her life, except when she sang. In 1919, Fr ...
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Milton Berle
Milton Berle (born Mendel Berlinger; ; July 12, 1908 – March 27, 2002) was an American actor and comedian. His career as an entertainer spanned over 80 years, first in silent films and on stage as a child actor, then in radio, movies and television. As the host of NBC's ''Texaco Star Theatre'' (1948–1953), he was the first major American television star and was known to millions of viewers as "Uncle Miltie" and "Mr. Television" during the first Golden Age of Television. He was honored with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in both radio and TV. Early life Milton Berle was born into a Jewish family in a five-story walkup at 68 W. 118th Street in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan. His given name was Mendel Berlinger, but he chose Milton Berle as his professional name when he was 16. His father, Moses Berlinger (1872–1938), was a paint and varnish salesman. His mother, Sarah (Sadie) Glantz Berlinger (1877–1954), changed her name to Sandra Berle when ...
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Jackie Gleason
John Herbert Gleason (February 26, 1916June 24, 1987) was an American actor, comedian, writer, composer, and conductor known affectionately as "The Great One." Developing a style and characters from growing up in Brooklyn, New York, he was known for his brash visual and verbal comedy, exemplified by his city-bus-driver character Ralph Kramden in the television series ''The Honeymooners''. He also developed ''The Jackie Gleason Show,'' which maintained high ratings from the mid 1950s through 1970. After originating in New York City, filming moved to Miami Beach, Florida, in 1964 after Gleason took up permanent residence there. Among his notable film roles were Minnesota Fats in 1961's ''The Hustler'' (co-starring with Paul Newman) and Buford T. Justice in the ''Smokey and the Bandit'' series from 1977 to 1983 (co-starring Burt Reynolds). Gleason enjoyed a prominent secondary music career during the 1950s and 1960s, producing a series of best-selling "mood music" albums. H ...
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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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Juan Tizol
Juan Tizol Martínez (22 January 1900 – 23 April 1984) was a Puerto Rican jazz trombonist and composer. He is best known as a member of Duke Ellington's big band, and as the writer of the jazz standards " Caravan", "Pyramid", and " Perdido". Biography Tizol was born in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico. Music was a large part of his life from an early age. His first instrument was the violin, but he soon switched to valve trombone, the instrument he played throughout his career. His musical training came mostly from his uncle Manuel Tizol, who was the director of the municipal band and the symphony in San Juan. Throughout his youth, Tizol played in his uncle's band and also gained experience by playing in local operas, ballets and dance bands. In 1920, Tizol joined a band that was traveling to the United States to work in Washington, D.C. The group eventually made it to Washington (traveling as stowaways) and established residence at the Howard Theater, where they played for tour ...
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Perdido (song)
"Perdido" is a jazz standard composed by Juan Tizol that was recorded on December 3, 1941 by Duke Ellington. However, it is the January 21, 1942, recording of the song on the Victor label by the Ellington orchestra, of which Tizol was a member, that is regarded as the original recording. In 1944, Ervin Drake and Hans Lengsfelder were hired to write lyrics for the song. Background "Perdido" is Spanish and means ''lost'', but also sloppy or indecent. The song refers to Perdido Street in New Orleans. Ella Fitzgerald recording "Perdido" was not usually sung with the Ellington band, the exception being Ella Fitzgerald on her 1957 album ''Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook''. Other recordings Many others recorded the song, including: *Sarah Vaughan *Dinah Washington *Art Tatum *Quincy Jones *The Charlie Parker Quintet *Dave Brubeck *Charles Mingus *Randy Weston *Erroll Garner *Bill Doggett *Harry James Harry Haag James (March 15, 1916 – July 5, 1983) was an Ame ...
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