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George Shearing
Sir George Albert Shearing, (13 August 1919 14 February 2011) was a British jazz pianist who for many years led a popular jazz group that recorded for Discovery Records, MGM Records and Capitol Records. Shearing was the composer of over 300 titles, including the jazz standards "Lullaby of Birdland" and " Conception", and had multiple albums on the '' Billboard'' charts during the 1950s, 1960s, 1980s and 1990s. He died of heart failure in New York City, at the age of 91. Biography Early life Born in Battersea, London, Shearing was the youngest of nine children. He was born blind to working-class parents: his father delivered coal and his mother cleaned trains in the evening. He started to learn piano at the age of three and began formal training at Linden Lodge School for the Blind, where he spent four years. Though he was offered several scholarships, Shearing opted to perform at a local pub, the Mason's Arms in Lambeth, for "25 bob a week" playing piano and accordion. He ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Battersea
Battersea is a large district in south London, part of the London Borough of Wandsworth, England. It is centred southwest of Charing Cross and extends along the south bank of the River Thames. It includes the Battersea Park. History Battersea is mentioned in the few surviving Anglo-Saxon geographical accounts as ''Badrices īeg'' meaning "Badric's Island" and later "Patrisey". As with many former parishes beside tidal flood plains the lowest land was reclaimed for agriculture by draining marshland and building culverts for streams. Alongside this was the Heathwall tide mill in the north-east with a very long mill pond regularly draining and filling to the south. The settlement appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as ''Patricesy'', a vast manor held by St Peter's Abbey, Westminster. Its ''Domesday'' Assets were: 18 hides and 17 ploughlands of cultivated land; 7 mills worth £42 9s 8d per year, of meadow, woodland worth 50 hogs. It rendered (in total): £75 9s 8d. The p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Accordion
Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed in a frame), colloquially referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist. The concertina , harmoneon and bandoneón are related. The harmonium and American reed organ are in the same family, but are typically larger than an accordion and sit on a surface or the floor. The accordion is played by compressing or expanding the bellows while pressing buttons or keys, causing ''pallets'' to open, which allow air to flow across strips of brass or steel, called '' reeds''. These vibrate to produce sound inside the body. Valves on opposing reeds of each note are used to make the instrument's reeds sound louder without air leaking from each reed block.For the accordion's place among the families of musical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Margie Hyams
Marjorie Hyams (August 9, 1920 – June 14, 2012) was an American jazz vibraphonist, pianist, and arranger. She began her career as a vibraphonist in the 1940s, playing with Woody Herman (from 1944 to 1945), the Hip Chicks (1945), Mary Lou Williams (1946), Charlie Ventura (1946), George Shearing (from 1949 to 1950), and led her own groups, including a trio, which stayed together from 1945 to 1948, performing on 52nd Street in Manhattan. The media, marquees, and promos often spelled her first name "Margie", but she insisted that it was spelled with a "j". Career Hyams had her own trio and quartet (1940–1944) and played with Woody Herman (1944–1945) and Flip Phillips in the mid-1940s. She formed another trio with guitarists such as Tal Farlow, Mundell Lowe, and Billy Bauer from 1945 to 1948. She also arranged and sang with Charlie Ventura, and recorded with Mary Lou Williams. Hyams joined George Shearing from 1949 to 1950 Woody Herman Jack Siefert (born 1918), a lifel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by amazon (company), Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded on April 17, 1924 and based in Beverly Hills, California. MGM was formed by Marcus Loew by combining Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures, and Louis B. Mayer Productions, Louis B. Mayer Pictures into one company. It hired a number of well known actors as contract players—its slogan was "more stars than there are in heaven"—and soon became Hollywood's most prestigious film studio, producing popular musical films and winning many Academy Awards. MGM also owned film studios, movie lots, movie theaters and technical production facilities. Its most prosperous era, from 1926 to 1959, was bracketed by two productions of ''Ben-Hur (1959 film), Ben Hur''. After that, it divested itself of the Loews movie theater chain, and, in the 1960s, diversified ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buddy DeFranco
Boniface Ferdinand Leonard "Buddy" DeFranco (February 17, 1923 – December 24, 2014) was an Italian-American jazz clarinetist. In addition to his work as a bandleader, DeFranco led the Glenn Miller Orchestra for almost a decade in the 1960s and 1970s. Biography Born in Camden, New Jersey, United States, DeFranco was raised in South Philadelphia. He was playing the clarinet by the time he was nine years old and within five years had won a national Tommy Dorsey swing contest. He began his professional career just as swing music and big bands—many of which were led by clarinetists like Artie Shaw, and Benny Goodman—were in decline. While most jazz clarinet players did not adapt to this change, DeFranco successfully continued to play clarinet exclusively, and was one of the few bebop clarinetists. In 1950, DeFranco spent a year with Count Basie's septet. He then led a small combo in the early 1950s which included pianist Sonny Clark and guitarist Tal Farlow. In this p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oscar Pettiford
Oscar Pettiford (September 30, 1922 – September 8, 1960) was an American jazz double bassist, cellist and composer. He was one of the earliest musicians to work in the bebop idiom. Biography Pettiford was born in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, United States. His mother was Choctaw, and his father Harry "Doc" Pettiford was half Cherokee and half African American. He grew up playing in the family band in which he sang and danced before switching to piano at the age of 12, then to double bass when he was 14. He is quoted as saying he did not like the way people were playing the bass, so he developed his own way of playing it. Despite being admired by the likes of Milt Hinton at the age of 14, he gave up in 1941 as he did not believe he could make a living. Five months later, he once again met Hinton, who persuaded him to return to music. In 1942, he joined the Charlie Barnet band and in 1943 gained wider public attention after recording with Coleman Hawkins on his " The Man I Love". Pett ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Evans (bandleader)
George Evans (1915 – 16 February 1993) was an English jazz bandleader, arranger, tenor saxophonist and vocalist. Early life and career He was born in north London in 1915. Having started playing ukulele-banjo in a group led by Norrie Paramor, he moved on to the saxophone at 14, and was doing local gigs at age 15. He got his first professional job in Sonny Winter's Band in Southend at 16, before going on to join Al Lever's band. Les Evans, "George Evans - a great innovator", ''National Jazz Archive'', 6 April 1993 Retrieved 26 July 2015 In the early 1930s he was playing and doing arrangements fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Melody Maker
''Melody Maker'' was a British weekly music magazine, one of the world's earliest music weeklies; according to its publisher, IPC Media, the earliest. It was founded in 1926, largely as a magazine for dance band musicians, by Leicester-born composer, publisher Lawrence Wright; the first editor was Edgar Jackson. In January 2001, it was merged into "long-standing rival" (and IPC Media sister publication) ''New Musical Express''. 1950s–1960s Originally the ''Melody Maker'' (''MM'') concentrated on jazz, and had Max Jones, one of the leading British proselytizers for that music, on its staff for many years. It was slow to cover rock and roll and lost ground to the ''New Musical Express'' (''NME''), which had begun in 1952. ''MM'' launched its own weekly singles chart (a top 20) on 7 April 1956, and an LPs charts in November 1958, two years after the ''Record Mirror'' had published the first UK Albums Chart. From 1964, the paper led its rival publications in terms of approac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Piccadilly
Piccadilly () is a road in the City of Westminster, London, to the south of Mayfair, between Hyde Park Corner in the west and Piccadilly Circus in the east. It is part of the A4 road that connects central London to Hammersmith, Earl's Court, Heathrow Airport and the M4 motorway westward. St James's is to the south of the eastern section, while the western section is built up only on the northern side. Piccadilly is just under in length, and it is one of the widest and straightest streets in central London. The street has been a main thoroughfare since at least medieval times, and in the Middle Ages was known as "the road to Reading" or "the way from Colnbrook". Around 1611 or 1612, a Robert Baker acquired land in the area, and prospered by making and selling piccadills. Shortly after purchasing the land, he enclosed it and erected several dwellings, including his home, Pikadilly Hall. What is now Piccadilly was named Portugal Street in 1663 after Catherine of Braganza, wif ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stéphane Grappelli
Stéphane Grappelli (; 26 January 1908 – 1 December 1997, born Stefano Grappelli) was a French jazz violinist. He is best known as a founder of the Quintette du Hot Club de France with guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1934. It was one of the first all-string jazz bands. He has been called "the grandfather of jazz violinists" and continued playing concerts around the world well into his eighties. For the first three decades of his career, he was billed using a gallicised spelling of his last name, ''Grappelly'', reverting to ''Grappelli'' in 1969. The latter, Italian spelling is now used almost universally when referring to the violinist, including reissues of his early work. Biography Early years Grappelli was born at Hôpital Lariboisière in Paris, France, and christened with the name Stefano. His father, Italian marchese Ernesto Grappelli, was born in Alatri, Lazio, while his French mother, Anna Emilie Hanoque, was from St-Omer. Ernesto was a scholar who taught Italian, so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harry Parry
Harry Owen Parry (22 January 1912 – 18 October 1956) was a Welsh jazz clarinetist and bandleader. Biography Parry was born in Bangor, Wales. He played cornet, tenor horn, flugelhorn, drums, and violin as a child, and began on clarinet and saxophone in 1927. After moving to London in 1932, he played with several dance bands, including Percival Mackey's, then led his own six-piece unit. He was engaged at the St. Regis Hotel in 1940 when he was selected by the BBC to lead the band for their ''Radio Rhythm Club'' show. He then proceeded to record over 100 titles for Parlophone Records with his sextet, which included George Shearing and Doreen Villiers as members. Following World War II Parry worked extensively for radio and television, including as a disc jockey. He toured worldwide as a bandleader in the late 1940s and 1950s, including in the Middle East and India. Parry was stylistically indebted to Benny Goodman, a comparison not lost on contemporary critics. He died ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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