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London Guarantee Building
The London Guarantee Building or London Guaranty & Accident Building is a historic 1923 commercial skyscraper whose primary occupant since 2016 is the LondonHouse Chicago Hotel. Formerly, for a time named the Stone Container Building, it is located near the Loop in Chicago, and is one of four 1920s skyscrapers that surround the Michigan Avenue Bridge (the others are the Wrigley Building, Tribune Tower and 333 North Michigan Avenue) and is a contributing property to the Michigan–Wacker Historic District. It stands on part of the former site of Fort Dearborn. The building was designated a Chicago Landmark on April 16, 1996. History The London Guarantee & Accident Building was designed by Chicago architect Alfred S. Alschuler and completed in 1923 for the London Guarantee & Accident Company, an insurance firm that was then its principal occupant. The top of the building is noted to resemble the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates in Athens, but it was modeled after the Stockholm ...
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Wacker Drive (Chicago)
Wacker Drive is a major multilevel street in Chicago, Illinois, running along the south side of the main branch and the east side of the south branch of the Chicago River in the Loop.Hayner, Don and Tom McNamee, ''Streetwise Chicago'', "Wacker Drive", p. 129., Loyola University Press, 1988, The vast majority of the street is double-decked; the upper level intended for local traffic, and the lower level for through-traffic and trucks serving buildings on the road (and originally a dock). It is sometimes cited as a precursor to the modern freeway, though when it was built the idea was that pleasure vehicles would use the upper level. It is the only street in the city that is prefixed with all four cardinal directions, albeit on different parts of its route. The drive is named for early 20th century Chicago businessman and city planner Charles H. Wacker. The upper level is normally known as Upper Wacker Drive and the lower level is Lower Wacker Drive. A short part has a third ...
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Athens
Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates and is the capital of the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, with its recorded history spanning over 3,400 years and its earliest human presence beginning somewhere between the 11th and 7th millennia BC. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state. It was a centre for the arts, learning and philosophy, and the home of Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum. It is widely referred to as the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of democracy, largely because of its cultural and political influence on the European continent—particularly Ancient Rome. In modern times, Athens is a large cosmopolitan metropolis and central to economic, financial, industrial, maritime, political and cultural life in Gre ...
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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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Marian McPartland
Margaret Marian McPartland OBE ( Turner;Hasson, Claire"Marian McPartland: Jazz Pianist: An Overview of a Career" PhD Thesis. Retrieved 12 August 2008. 20 March 1918 – 20 August 2013), was an English–American jazz pianist, composer, and writer. She was the host of '' Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz'' on National Public Radio from 1978 to 2011. After her marriage to trumpeter Jimmy McPartland in February 1945,Obituary: Marian McPartland
telegraph.co.uk, 21 August 2013.
she resided in the United States when not travelling throughout the world to perform. In 1969, she founded Halcyon Records, a recording company that issued albums for 10 years. In 2000, she was named a

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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 ...
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Bill Evans
William John Evans (August 16, 1929 – September 15, 1980) was an American jazz pianist and composer who worked primarily as the leader of his trio. His use of impressionist harmony, interpretation of traditional jazz repertoire, block chords, and trademark rhythmically independent, "singing" melodic lines continues to influence jazz pianists today. Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, United States, he was classically trained at Southeastern Louisiana University and the Mannes School of Music, in New York City, where he majored in composition and received the Artist Diploma. In 1955, he moved to New York City, where he worked with bandleader and theorist George Russell. In 1958, Evans joined Miles Davis's sextet, which in 1959, then immersed in modal jazz, recorded '' Kind of Blue'', the best-selling jazz album ever. In late 1959, Evans left the Miles Davis band and began his career as a leader, with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian, a group now regarded as a se ...
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Ramsey Lewis
Ramsey Emmanuel Lewis Jr. (May 27, 1935 – September 12, 2022) was an American jazz piano, jazz pianist, composer, and radio personality. Lewis recorded over 80 albums and received five RIAA certification, gold records and three Grammy Awards in his career. His album ''The In Crowd (Ramsey Lewis album), The In Crowd'' earned Lewis critical praise and the 1965 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Grammy Award for Best Jazz Performance. His best known singles include "The 'In' Crowd (song), The In Crowd", "Wade in the Water", and "Sun Goddess (song), Sun Goddess". Until 2009, he was the host of the ''Ramsey Lewis Morning Show'' on the Chicago radio station WNUA. Lewis was also active in musical education in Chicago. He founded the Ramsey Lewis Foundation, established the Ravinia's Jazz Mentor Program, and served on the board of trustees for the Merit School of Music and The Chicago High School for the Arts. Life and career Ramsey Lewis was born on May 27, 1935, in ...
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Oscar Peterson
Oscar Emmanuel Peterson (August 15, 1925 – December 23, 2007) was a Canadian virtuoso jazz pianist and composer. Considered one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time, Peterson released more than 200 recordings, won seven Grammy Awards, as well as a lifetime achievement award from the Recording Academy, and received numerous other awards and honours. He played thousands of concerts worldwide in a career lasting more than 60 years. He was called the "Maharaja of the keyboard" by Duke Ellington, simply "O.P." by his friends, and informally in the jazz community as "the King of inside swing". Biography Early years Peterson was born in Montreal, Quebec, to immigrants from the West Indies (Saint Kitts and Nevis and the British Virgin Islands); His mother, Kathleen, was a domestic worker and his father, Daniel, worked as a porter for Canadian Pacific Railway and was an amateur musician who taught himself to play the organ, trumpet and piano. Peterson grew up in the neighbourh ...
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Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. But jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisationa ...
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London House (Chicago)
The London House was a jazz club and restaurant in Chicago located at the corner of Wacker Drive and Michigan Avenue, in the London Guaranty and Accident Company Building, 360 N. Michigan Ave. It was one of the foremost jazz clubs in the country, once home to successful jazz artists including Oscar Peterson, Ramsey Lewis, Bill Evans, Dave Brubeck, Marian McPartland, Dinah Washington, Cannonball Adderley, Erroll Garner, Ahmad Jamal, Nancy Wilson, Barbara Carroll and Bobby Short. On the occasion of its 20th anniversary in November 1966, Frank Sinatra Jr. headlined the club in his Chicago debut. Renovated in 1946 by George and Oscar Marienthal, the club was crafted from the original Fort Dearborn Grill. Known as a "famed dining spot" the club was revamped in 1955 to include jazz music and stay open until 4 A.M. rather than be a strictly dining establishment that closed at 10 P.M. After jazz had finally waned as popular music, losing out to rock and roll, The London House close ...
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Paul Harvey
Paul Harvey Aurandt (September 4, 1918 – February 28, 2009) was an American radio broadcaster for ABC News Radio. He broadcast ''News and Comment'' on mornings and mid-days on weekdays and at noon on Saturdays and also his famous ''The Rest of the Story'' segments. From 1951 to 2008, his programs reached as many as 24 million people per week. ''Paul Harvey News'' was carried on 1,200 radio stations, on 400 American Forces Network stations, and in 300 newspapers. Early life Harvey was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and was the son of a policeman who was killed by robbers in 1921. He made radio receivers as a young boy, and attended Central High School (Tulsa, Oklahoma), Tulsa Central High School, where he was two years ahead of future actor Tony Randall. Teacher Isabelle Ronan was "impressed by his voice." On her recommendation, he started working at KTSB (AM), KVOO in Tulsa in 1933 helping to clean up when he was 14. He eventually was allowed to fill in on the air by reading commerc ...
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WLS (AM)
WLS (890 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station in Chicago, Illinois. Owned by Cumulus Media, through licensee Radio License Holdings LLC, the station airs a talk radio format. WLS has its radio studios in the NBC Tower on North Columbus Drive in the city's Streeterville neighborhood. Its non-directional broadcast tower is located on the southwestern edge of Tinley Park, Illinois in Will County. WLS is a Class A station broadcasting on the clear-channel frequency of 890 kHz with 50,000 watts using a Nautel NX-50 transmitter. A Harris DX-50 serves as a backup transmitter. Both transmitters run in MDCL (Modulation Dependent Carrier Level) mode to improve efficiency. The station's daytime groundwave service contour covers portions of five states. At night, its signal routinely reaches 38 states via skywave. WLS participates in the Emergency Alert System's primary entry point network, serving that function for northern Illinois and western Indiana. The station's programm ...
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