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It's Been A Long, Long Time
"It's Been a Long, Long Time" is a big band-era song that was a hit at the end of World War II, with music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Sammy Cahn. Background The lyrics are written from the perspective of a person welcoming home their spouse at the end of the war. Popular recordings The most popular recording, by trumpeter Harry James and His Orchestra with vocalist Kitty Kallen, debuted in October 1945 on ''Billboard'''s Best-Selling Popular Retail Records chart and reached number one in the chart dated November 24, 1945 – the last of Harry James's nine US number ones. The record features a solo by alto saxophonist Willie Smith. A hit version by iconic crooner Bing Crosby with Les Paul and His Trio (recorded on July 12, 1945) debuted the same week as James's record, which it replaced at number one in the chart dated December 8, 1945. Sammy Kaye's "Chickery Chick" then returned to number one, only to be replaced by the Harry James recording, which reclaimed the top spot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harry James
Harry Haag James (March 15, 1916 – July 5, 1983) was an American musician who is best known as a trumpet-playing band leader who led a big band from 1939 to 1946. He broke up his band for a short period in 1947 but shortly after he reorganized and was active again with his band from then until his death in 1983. He was especially known among musicians for his technical proficiency as well as his tone, and was influential on new trumpet players from the late 1930s into the 1940s. He was also an actor in a number of films that usually featured his band. Early life Harry James was born in Albany, Georgia, United States, the son of Everett Robert James, a bandleader in a traveling circus, the Mighty Haag Circus, and Myrtle Maybelle (Stewart), an acrobat and horseback rider. He started performing with the circus at an early age, first as a contortionist at age of four, then playing the snare drum in the band from about the age of six. It was at this age that James was almost ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
June Christy
June Christy (born Shirley Luster; November 20, 1925June 21, 1990) was an American singer, known for her work in the cool jazz genre and for her silky smooth vocals. Her success as a singer began with The Stan Kenton Orchestra. She pursued a solo career from 1954 and is best known for her debut album '' Something Cool''. After her death, she was hailed as "one of the finest and most neglected singers of her time." Biography Early life Shirley Luster was born in Springfield, Illinois, United States. She moved with her parents Steve and Marie (née Crain) Luster to Decatur, Illinois, when she was three years old. She began to sing with the Decatur-based Bill Oetzel Orchestra at thirteen. While attending Decatur High School she appeared with Oetzel and his society band, the Ben Bradley Band, and Bill Madden's Band. After high school she moved to Chicago, changed her name to Sharon Leslie, and sang with a group led by Boyd Raeburn. Later she joined Benny Strong's band. In 1944, S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Doris Day's Sentimental Journey
''Doris Day's Sentimental Journey'' is a studio album by American singer Doris Day, released by Columbia Records on July 12, 1965 as a monophonic LP (catalog number CL-2360) and a stereophonic album (catalog number CS-9160). This was Day's final album for Columbia, and her last album of previously unissued material until 1994. The album gets its title from Doris Day's first big hit, " Sentimental Journey," which she performed as a part of the band Les Brown and His Band of Renown in 1945, and was re-recorded for this album. Other tracks on the album consist mostly of pop standards, principally composed in the 1940s, approximately contemporaneously with the title track. Liner notes on the album were written by George T. Simon who was the author of "The Feeling of Jazz". The album's tracks are backed with the lush arrangements from the Mort Garson Orchestra. Mort Garson arranged and conducted. All of the album tracks are medium to slow tempo. The album was produced by Alle ... [...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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Helen Forrest
Helen Forrest (born Helen Fogel, April 12, 1917 – July 11, 1999) was an American singer of traditional pop and swing music. She served as the "girl singer" for three of the most popular big bands of the Swing Era (Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, and Harry James), thereby earning a reputation as "the voice of the name bands." Childhood Forrest was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey on April 12, 1917. Her parents, Louis and Rebecca Fogel, were Jewish. Her father died from influenza when Helen was an infant so she was raised by her mother, who often blamed her husband's death on Helen's birth. She believed God had taken her husband because she had wished so much for a baby girl. Helen had three older brothers: Harry, Ed, and Sam. In Helen's early teen years, the family relocated to Brooklyn. Her mother married a house painter, whom Helen disliked. Soon, Helen's mother and stepfather turned the family's home into a brothel. At 14, Helen was nearly raped by her stepfather; she defen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert Sinatra (; December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. Nicknamed the " Chairman of the Board" and later called "Ol' Blue Eyes", Sinatra was one of the most popular entertainers of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. He is among the world's best-selling music artists with an estimated 150 million record sales. Born to Italian immigrants in Hoboken, New Jersey, Sinatra was greatly influenced by the intimate, easy-listening vocal style of Bing Crosby and began his musical career in the swing era with bandleaders Harry James and Tommy Dorsey. He found success as a solo artist after signing with Columbia Records in 1943, becoming the idol of the " bobby soxers". Sinatra released his debut album, '' The Voice of Frank Sinatra'', in 1946. When his film career stalled in the early 1950s, Sinatra turned to Las Vegas, where he became one of its best-known residency performers and part of the famous Rat Pack. His acting career was revived by the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tom Jones (singer)
Sir Thomas Jones Woodward (born 7 June 1940), known professionally as Tom Jones, is a Welsh singer. His career began with a string of top-ten hits in the mid-1960s. He has toured regularly, with appearances in Las Vegas (1967–2011). Jones's voice has been described by AllMusic as a "full-throated, robust baritone". His performing range has included pop, R&B, show tunes, country, dance, soul and gospel. In 2008, the ''New York Times'' called Jones a musical "shape shifter", who could "slide from soulful rasp to pop croon, with a voice as husky as it was pretty". Jones has sold over 100 million records, with 36 Top 40 hits in the UK and 19 in the US, including " It's Not Unusual", " What's New Pussycat?", the theme song for the 1965 James Bond film '' Thunderball'', " Green, Green Grass of Home", " Delilah", " She's a Lady", "Kiss" and " Sex Bomb". Jones has also occasionally dabbled in acting, first making his acting debut playing the lead role in the 1979 televi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louis Armstrong
Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed "Satchmo", "Satch", and "Pops", was an American trumpeter and Singing, vocalist. He was among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades and several eras in the history of jazz. Armstrong was born and raised in New Orleans. Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an inventive trumpet and cornet player, Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the focus of the music from collective improvisation to solo performance. Around 1922, he followed his mentor, King Oliver, Joe "King" Oliver, to Chicago to play in the . In Chicago, he spent time with other popular jazz musicians, reconnecting with his friend Bix Beiderbecke and spending time with Hoagy Carmichael and Lil Hardin Armstrong, Lil Hardin. He earned a reputation at "cutting contests", and his fame reached band leader Fletcher Henderson. Henderson persuaded Armstrong to come to New York City, where he became a featur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Keely Smith
Dorothy Jacqueline Keely (March 9, 1928The reference work ''The Encyclopedia of Native Music: More Than a Century of Recordings from Wax Cylinder to the Internet'' gives Smith's date of birth as March 9, 1932. – December 16, 2017), professionally known as Keely Smith, was an American jazz and popular music singer, who performed and recorded extensively in the 1950s with then-husband Louis Prima, and throughout the 1960s as a solo artist. Smith married Prima in 1953. The couple were stars throughout the entertainment business, including stage, television, motion pictures, hit records, and cabaret acts. They won a Grammy in 1959, its inaugural year, for their smash hit, "That Old Black Magic", which remained on the charts for 18 weeks. Early years Smith was born in Norfolk, Virginia; her ancestry was Irish and Cherokee. Jesse Smith, her stepfather, was a carpenter, and her mother took in laundry to earn money to buy gowns for Smith to wear when she performed. Career When Sm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peggy Lee
Norma Deloris Egstrom (May 26, 1920 – January 21, 2002), known professionally as Peggy Lee, was an American jazz and popular music singer, songwriter, composer, and actress, over a career spanning seven decades. From her beginning as a vocalist on local radio to singing with Benny Goodman's big band, Lee created a sophisticated persona, writing music for films, acting, and recording conceptual record albums combining poetry and music. Called the "Queen of American pop music," Lee recorded over 1,100 masters and composed over 270 songs. Early life Lee was born Norma Deloris Egstrom in Jamestown, North Dakota, United States, on May 26, 1920, the seventh of the eight children of Selma Emele (née Anderson) Egstrom and Marvin Olaf Egstrom, a station agent for the Midland Continental Railroad. Her family were Lutherans. Her father was Swedish-American and her mother was Norwegian-American. After her mother died when Lee was four, her father married Minnie Schaumberg Wiese. Lee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Al Hibbler
Albert George Hibbler (August 16, 1915 – April 24, 2001) was an American baritone vocalist, who sang with Duke Ellington's orchestra before having several pop hits as a solo artist. Some of Hibbler's singing is classified as rhythm and blues, but he is best seen as a bridge between R&B and traditional pop music. According to one authority, "Hibbler cannot be regarded as a jazz singer but as an exceptionally good interpreter of twentieth-century popular songs who happened to work with some of the best jazz musicians of the time." Early life Hibbler was born in Tyro, Mississippi, United States, and was blind from birth. Some sources give his birth name as Andrew George Hibbler. At the age of 12 he moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, where he attended Arkansas School for the Blind, joining the school choir. Later he began working as a blues singer in local bands, failing his first audition for Duke Ellington in 1935. However, after winning an amateur talent contest in Memphis, Ten ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Perry Como
Pierino Ronald "Perry" Como (; May 18, 1912 – May 12, 2001) was an Italian-American singer, actor and television personality. During a career spanning more than half a century, he recorded exclusively for RCA Victor for 44 years, after signing with the label in 1943. He recorded primarily vocal pop and was renowned for recordings in the intimate, easy-listening genre pioneered by multi-media star Bing Crosby. "Mr. C.", as he was nicknamed, sold millions of records and pioneered a weekly musical variety television show. His weekly television shows and seasonal specials were broadcast throughout the world. In the official RCA Records ''Billboard'' magazine memorial, his life was summed up in these few words: "50 years of music and a life well lived. An example to all." Como received five Emmys from 1955 to 1959, and a Christopher Award in 1956. He also shared a Peabody Award with good friend Jackie Gleason in 1956. He received a Kennedy Center Honor in 1987 and was induct ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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