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Irving Townsend
Irving Townsend (November 27, 1920 – December 17, 1981) was an American record producer and author. He is most famous for having produced the Miles Davis album ''Kind of Blue'', which is the best-selling jazz album of all time according to the RIAA. He later served as president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States. Townsend, a former jazz bandleader, became an advertising copywriter for Columbia Records. He then convinced George Avakian to have him assist on recording sessions, and by the mid-1950s he was a full-time producer. He became Davis's producer after the departures of Avakian and Cal Lampley. Townsend wrote many liner notes for Columbia, including notes for the album ''Black, Brown and Beige'' by Duke Ellington and Mahalia Jackson. In 1975, Townsend wrote an article in ''The Atlantic Monthly'' called "Ellington in Private" detailing his meeting with Duke at Newport Jazz Festival in 1956 which led to Ellington's subsequent si ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Springfield, Massachusetts
Springfield is a city in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, United States, and the seat of Hampden County. Springfield sits on the eastern bank of the Connecticut River near its confluence with three rivers: the western Westfield River, the eastern Chicopee River, and the eastern Mill River. At the 2020 census, the city's population was 155,929, making it the third-largest city in Massachusetts, the fourth-most populous city in New England after Boston, Worcester, and Providence, and the 12th-most populous in the Northeastern United States. Metropolitan Springfield, as one of two metropolitan areas in Massachusetts (the other being Greater Boston), had a population of 699,162 in 2020. Springfield was founded in 1636, the first Springfield in the New World. In the late 1700s, during the American Revolution, Springfield was designated by George Washington as the site of the Springfield Armory because of its central location. Subsequently it was the site of Shays' Rebellio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Atlantic
''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, as ''The Atlantic Monthly'', a literary and cultural magazine that published leading writers' commentary on education, the abolition of slavery, and other major political issues of that time. Its founders included Francis H. Underwood and prominent writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and John Greenleaf Whittier. James Russell Lowell was its first editor. In addition, ''The Atlantic Monthly Almanac'' was an annual almanac published for ''Atlantic Monthly'' readers during the 19th and 20th centuries. A change of name was not officially announced when the format first changed from a strict monthly (appearing 12 times a year) to a slightly lower frequency. It was a mo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Doris Day
Doris Day (born Doris Mary Kappelhoff; April 3, 1922 – May 13, 2019) was an American actress, singer, and activist. She began her career as a big band singer in 1939, achieving commercial success in 1945 with two No. 1 recordings, " Sentimental Journey" and "My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time" with Les Brown & His Band of Renown. She left Brown to embark on a solo career and recorded more than 650 songs from 1947 to 1967. Day was one of the biggest film stars of the 1950s–1960s. Day's film career began during the Golden Age of Hollywood with the film ''Romance on the High Seas'' (1948). She starred in films of many genres, including musicals, comedies, dramas, and thrillers. She played the title role in ''Calamity Jane'' (1953) and starred in Alfred Hitchcock's '' The Man Who Knew Too Much'' (1956) with James Stewart. Her best-known films are those in which she co-starred with Rock Hudson, chief among them 1959's ''Pillow Talk'', for which she was nominated fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dave Brubeck
David Warren Brubeck (; December 6, 1920 – December 5, 2012) was an American jazz pianist and composer. Often regarded as a foremost exponent of cool jazz, Brubeck's work is characterized by unusual time signatures and superimposing contrasting rhythms, Metre (music), meters, and tonality, tonalities. Born in Concord, California, Brubeck was drafted into the US Army, but was spared from combat service when a International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, Red Cross show he had played at became a hit. Within the US Army, Brubeck formed one of the first racial integration, racially diverse bands. In 1951, Brubeck formed the Dave Brubeck Quartet, which kept its name despite shifting personnel. The most successful—and prolific—lineup of the quartet was the one between 1958 and 1968. This lineup, in addition to Brubeck, featured saxophonist Paul Desmond, bassist Eugene Wright and drummer Joe Morello. A U.S. Department of State-sponsored tour in 1958 featuring the band inspir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jimmy Rushing
James Andrew Rushing (August 26, 1901 – June 8, 1972) was an American singer and pianist from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S., best known as the featured vocalist of Count Basie's Orchestra from 1935 to 1948. Rushing was known as " Mr. Five by Five" and was the subject of an eponymous 1942 popular song that was a hit for Harry James and others; the lyrics describe Rushing's rotund build: "he's five feet tall and he's five feet wide". He joined Walter Page's Blue Devils in 1927 and then joined Bennie Moten's band in 1929. He stayed with the successor Count Basie band when Moten died in 1935. Rushing said that his first time singing in front of an audience was in 1924. He was playing piano at a club when the featured singer, Carlyn Williams, invited him to do a vocal. "I got out there and broke it up. I was a singer from then on," he said. Rushing was a powerful singer who had a range from baritone to tenor. He has sometimes been classified as a blues shouter. He could project ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chico Hamilton
Foreststorn "Chico" Hamilton (September 20, 1921 – November 25, 2013) was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. He came to prominence as sideman for Lester Young, Gerry Mulligan, Count Basie, and Lena Horne. Hamilton became a bandleader, first with a quintet featuring the cello as a lead instrument, an unusual choice for a jazz band in the 1950s, and subsequently leading bands that performed cool jazz, post bop, and jazz fusion. Biography Early life and career Foreststorn Hamilton was born in Los Angeles, California, one of three brothers, one of whom was actor Bernie Hamilton. Hamilton started his career in a band with Charles Mingus, Illinois Jacquet, Ernie Royal, Dexter Gordon, Buddy Collette and Jack Kelso before he had finished high school. Engagements with Lionel Hampton, Slim & Slam, T-Bone Walker, Lester Young, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Charlie Barnet, Billy Eckstine, Nat King Cole, Sammy Davis Jr., Billie Holiday, Gerry Mulligan and Lena Horne esta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wayne Shorter
Wayne Shorter (born August 25, 1933) is an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Shorter came to prominence in the late 1950s as a member of, and eventually primary composer for, Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. In the 1960s, he joined Miles Davis's Second Great Quintet, and then co-founded the jazz fusion band Weather Report. He has recorded over 20 albums as a bandleader. Many Shorter compositions have become jazz standards, and his music has earned worldwide recognition, critical praise and commendation. Shorter has won 11 Grammy Awards. He is acclaimed for his mastery of the soprano saxophone since switching his focus from the tenor in the late 1960s and beginning an extended reign in 1970 as ''Down Beat''s annual poll-winner on that instrument, winning the critics' poll for 10 consecutive years and the readers' for 18. ''The New York Times Ben Ratliff described Shorter in 2008 as "probably jazz's greatest living small-group composer and a contender for greatest living improv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Percy Faith
Percy Faith (April 7, 1908 – February 9, 1976) was a Canadian-American bandleader, orchestrator, composer and conductor, known for his lush arrangements of pop and Christmas standards. He is often credited with popularizing the "easy listening" or "mood music" format. He became a staple of American popular music in the 1950s and continued well into the 1960s. Though his professional orchestra-leading career began at the height of the Swing Era, he refined and rethought orchestration techniques, including use of large string sections, to soften and fill out the brass-dominated popular music of the 1940s. Biography Faith was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He was the oldest of eight children. His parents, Abraham Faith and Minnie, née Rottenberg, were Jewish. He played violin and piano as a child, and played in theatres and at Massey Hall. After his hands were badly burned in a fire, he turned to conducting, and his live orchestras used the new medium of radio broa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johnny Mathis
John Royce Mathis (born September 30, 1935) is an American singer of popular music. Starting his career with singles of standard music, he became highly popular as an album artist, with several dozen of his albums achieving gold or platinum status and 73 making the ''Billboard'' charts. Mathis has received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and has been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for three recordings. Although frequently described as a romantic singer, his discography includes traditional pop, Brazilian and Spanish music, soul, rhythm and blues, show tunes, Tin Pan Alley, soft rock, blues, country music, and even a few disco songs for his album ''Mathis Magic'' in 1979. Mathis has also recorded six albums of Christmas music. In a 1968 interview, Mathis cited Lena Horne, Nat King Cole, and Bing Crosby among his musical influences. Early life and education Mathis was born in Gilmer, Texas, on September 30, 1935, the fourth of seven children of Clem Mathis and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
André Previn
André George Previn (; born Andreas Ludwig Priwin; April 6, 1929 – February 28, 2019) was a German-American pianist, composer, and conductor. His career had three major genres: Hollywood films, jazz, and classical music. In each he achieved success, and the latter two were part of his life until the end. In movies, he arranged and composed music. In jazz, he was a celebrated trio pianist, a piano-accompanist to singers of standards, and pianist-interpreter of songs from the "Great American Songbook". In classical music, he also performed as a pianist but gained television fame as a conductor, and during his last thirty years created his legacy as a composer of art music. Before the age of twenty, Previn began arranging and composing for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He would go on to be involved in the music of more than fifty films and would win four Academy Awards. He won ten Grammy Awards, for recordings in all three areas of his career, and then one more, for lifetime achieve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein ( ; August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian. Considered to be one of the most important conductors of his time, he was the first American conductor to receive international acclaim. According to music critic Donal Henahan, he was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history". Bernstein was the recipient of many honors, including seven Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, sixteen Grammy Awards including the Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors, Kennedy Center Honor. As a composer he wrote in many genres, including symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film and theatre music, choral works, opera, chamber music and works for the piano. His best-known work is the Broadway theatre, Broadway musical ''West Side Story'', which continues to be regularly performed worldwide, and has been adapted into two (West Side Story (1961 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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