John Benson Brooks
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John Benson Brooks
John Benson Brooks (February 23, 1917, Houlton, Maine – November 13, 1999, New York City) was an American jazz pianist, songwriter, arranger, and composer. Brooks worked early in his career as an arranger for Randy Brooks, Les Brown, Boyd Raeburn, and Tommy Dorsey. He worked often with lyricists Eddie DeLange and Bob Russell in the 1940s; he and DeLange wrote the song " Just as Though You Were Here," a hit for Tommy Dorsey with Frank Sinatra as vocalist. He wrote " You Came a Long Way from St. Louis" with Bob Russell for Ray McKinley, released as a single in 1948. In 1956, Brooks worked with Zoot Sims and Al Cohn on the recording, "Folk Jazz U.S.A.", and was recognized as a composer during this time. His works blend elements of folk music and dodecaphony with the idioms of modern jazz. In 1958, he composed a work entitled ''Alabama Concerto'' and assembled a cast of sidemen for a recording which included Cannonball Adderley, Art Farmer, Barry Galbraith, and Milt Hinton. The ...
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Houlton, Maine
Houlton is a town in Aroostook County, Maine, on the Canada–United States border. As of the 2020 census, the town's population was 6,055. It is perhaps best known for being at the northern terminus of Interstate 95 and as the birthplace of Samantha Smith, a goodwill ambassador as a child during the Cold War. The town hosts the annual Houlton Agricultural Fair. Houlton is the county seat of Aroostook County, and as such its nickname is the "Shire Town". The Houlton High School sports teams are named "The Shiretowners". The Meduxnekeag River flows through the heart of the town, and the border with the Canadian province of New Brunswick is east of the town's center. Houlton was the home of Ricker College, which closed in 1978. The primary settlement and center of the town is designated as a CDP with the same name. The headquarters of the federally recognized Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians is based here. History The area was occupied for thousands of years by varying cultur ...
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Cannonball Adderley
Julian Edwin "Cannonball" Adderley (September 15, 1928August 8, 1975) was an American jazz alto saxophonist of the hard bop era of the 1950s and 1960s. Adderley is perhaps best remembered for the 1966 soul jazz single "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy", which was written for him by his keyboardist Joe Zawinul and became a major crossover hit on the pop and R&B charts. A cover version by the Buckinghams, who added lyrics, also reached No. 5 on the charts. Adderley worked with Miles Davis, first as a member of the Davis sextet, appearing on the seminal records ''Milestones'' (1958) and '' Kind of Blue'' (1959), and then on his own 1958 album '' Somethin' Else''. He was the elder brother of jazz trumpeter Nat Adderley, who was a longtime member of his band. Early life and career Julian Edwin Adderley was born on September 15, 1928, in Tampa, Florida to high school guidance counselor and cornet player Julian Carlyle Adderley and elementary school teacher Jessie Johnson. Elementary school cla ...
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LeRoi Jones
Amiri Baraka (born Everett Leroy Jones; October 7, 1934 – January 9, 2014), previously known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka, was an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays and music criticism. He was the author of numerous books of poetry and taught at several universities, including the University at Buffalo and Stony Brook University. He received the PEN/Beyond Margins Award in 2008 for ''Tales of the Out and the Gone''. Baraka's plays, poetry, and essays have been described by scholars as constituting defining texts for African-American culture. Baraka's career spanned nearly 52 years, and his themes range from black liberation to white racism. His notable poems include "The Music: Reflection on Jazz and Blues", "The Book of Monk", and "New Music, New Poetry", works that draw on topics from the worlds of society, music, and literature. Baraka's poetry and writing have attracted both high praise and condemnation. In the African-American community, some comp ...
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Robert Graves
Captain Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985) was a British poet, historical novelist and critic. His father was Alfred Perceval Graves, a celebrated Irish poet and figure in the Gaelic revival; they were both Celticists and students of Irish mythology. Graves produced more than 140 works in his lifetime. His poems, his translations and innovative analysis of the Greek myths, his memoir of his early life—including his role in World War I—''Good-Bye to All That'', and his speculative study of poetic inspiration ''The White Goddess'' have never been out of print. He is also a renowned short story writer, with stories such as "The Tenement" still being popular today. He earned his living from writing, particularly popular historical novels such as ''I, Claudius''; '' King Jesus''; ''The Golden Fleece''; and ''Count Belisarius''. He also was a prominent translator of Classical Latin and Ancient Greek texts; his versions of ''The Twelve Caesars'' and ...
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Milt Gabler
Milton Gabler (May 20, 1911 – July 20, 2001) was an American record producer, responsible for many innovations in the recording industry of the 20th century. These included being the first person to deal in record reissues, the first to sell records by mail order, and the first to credit all the musicians on the recordings. He was also a successful songwriter, writing the lyrics for a number of standards, including "In a Mellow Tone," "Danke Schoen," and "L-O-V-E." Early life Gabler was born to a Jewish family in Harlem, New York, the son of Susie (née Kasindorf) and Julius Gabler. His father was an Austrian Jewish immigrant from Vienna, and his mother's family were Jewish immigrants from Russia, including Rostov. At 15, he began working in his father's business, the Commodore Radio Corporation, a radio shop located on East 42nd Street in New York City. Career 1930s By the mid-1930s, Gabler renamed the business the Commodore Music Shop, and it became a focal point for ja ...
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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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Spiritual (music)
Spirituals (also known as Negro spirituals, African American spirituals, Black spirituals, or spiritual music) is a genre of Christian music that is associated with Black Americans, which merged sub-Saharan African cultural heritage with the experiences of being held in bondage in slavery, at first during the transatlantic slave trade and for centuries afterwards, through the domestic slave trade. Spirituals encompass the "sing songs," work songs, and plantation songs that evolved into the blues and gospel songs in church. In the nineteenth century, the word "spirituals" referred to all these subcategories of folk songs. While they were often rooted in biblical stories, they also described the extreme hardships endured by African Americans who were enslaved from the 17th century until the 1860s, the emancipation altering mainly the nature (but not continuation) of slavery for many. Many new derivative music genres emerged from the spirituals songcraft. Prior to the end of the US ...
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Blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern (the blues scale and specific chord progressions) of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or "worried notes"), usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove. Blues as a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current str ...
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Transcription (music)
In music, transcription is the practice of Musical notation, notating a piece or a sound which was previously unnotated and/or unpopular as a written music, for example, a jazz improvisation or a video game soundtrack. When a musician is tasked with creating sheet music from a recording and they write down the notes that make up the piece in music notation, it is said that they created a ''musical transcription'' of that recording. Transcription may also mean rewriting a piece of music, either solo or Musical ensemble, ensemble, for another instrument or other instruments than which it was originally intended. The Beethoven Symphonies (Liszt), Beethoven Symphonies transcribed for solo piano by Franz Liszt are an example. Transcription in this sense is sometimes called ''arrangement'', although strictly speaking transcriptions are faithful adaptations, whereas arrangements change significant aspects of the original piece. Further examples of music transcription include Ethnomusico ...
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Harold Courlander
Harold Courlander (September 18, 1908 – March 15, 1996) was an American novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist and an expert in the study of Haitian life. The author of 35 books and plays and numerous scholarly articles, Courlander specialized in the study of African, Caribbean, Afro-American, and Native American cultures. He took a special interest in oral literature, cults, and Afro-American cultural connections with Africa. Life and work Courlander was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, the son of the painter David Courlander of Detroit, Michigan. Courlander received a B.A. in English from the University of Michigan in 1931. At the University of Michigan, he received three Avery Hopwood Awards (one in drama and two in literary criticism). He attended graduate school at the University of Michigan and Columbia University. He spent time in the 1930s on a farm in Romeo, Michigan. There, he built a one-room log cabin in the woods where he spent much of his time writing. With th ...
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Gil Evans
Ian Ernest Gilmore Evans (né Green; May 13, 1912 – March 20, 1988) was a Canadian–American jazz pianist, arranger, composer and bandleader. He is widely recognized as one of the greatest orchestrators in jazz, playing an important role in the development of cool jazz, modal jazz, free jazz, and jazz fusion. He is best known for his acclaimed collaborations with Miles Davis. Early life Gil Evans was born in Toronto, Canada on May 13, 1912 to Margaret Julia McConnachy. Little is known about Evans' biological father, although a family friend said that he was a doctor who had died before Evans was born. Originally named Gilmore Ian Ernest Green, Evans took the last name of his step-father, John Evans, a miner. The family moved frequently, living in Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Oregon, migrating to wherever Evans' father could find work. Eventually, the family ended up in California, first in Berkeley, where Evans attended the ninth and t ...
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