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Slappy White
Melvin Edward "Slappy" White (September 27, 1921 – November 7, 1995) was an American comedian and actor. He worked with Redd Foxx on the Chitlin' Circuit of stand-up comedy during the 1950s and 1960s. He appeared on the television shows ''Sanford and Son'', '' That's My Mama'', ''Blossom'', and '' Cybill'' and in the films '' Mr. Saturday Night'' and ''Amazon Women on the Moon''. Biography White was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on September 27, 1921. His official biography reported that he "ran away to join the circus" as a child. White was born near the old Royal Theatre in Baltimore, where by the age of 10, he used to dance outside for coins and sold candy at the theater. He left Baltimore at the age of 13 because he was in danger of being sent to reform school because of his school absences. White joined a traveling carnival and made a living as a tap dancer with the troupe. He was eventually picked up by police and returned to his family, but could not trade show busine ...
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Baltimore
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a population of 585,708 in 2020. Baltimore was designated an independent city by the Constitution of Maryland in 1851, and today is the most populous independent city in the United States. As of 2021, the population of the Baltimore metropolitan area was estimated to be 2,838,327, making it the 20th largest metropolitan area in the country. Baltimore is located about north northeast of Washington, D.C., making it a principal city in the Washington–Baltimore combined statistical area (CSA), the third-largest CSA in the nation, with a 2021 estimated population of 9,946,526. Prior to European colonization, the Baltimore region was used as hunting grounds by the Susquehannock Native Americans, who were primarily settled further northwest than where the city was later built. Colonist ...
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Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world's most populous megacities. Los Angeles is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Southern California. With a population of roughly 3.9 million residents within the city limits , Los Angeles is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic and cultural diversity, being the home of the Hollywood film industry, and its sprawling metropolitan area. The city of Los Angeles lies in a basin in Southern California adjacent to the Pacific Ocean in the west and extending through the Santa Monica Mountains and north into the San Fernando Valley, with the city bordering the San Gabriel Valley to it's east. It covers about , and is the county seat of Los Angeles County, which is the most populous county in the United States with an estim ...
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Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (RRHOF), sometimes simply referred to as the Rock Hall, is a museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ... and hall of fame located in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States, on the shore of Lake Erie. The museum documents the history of rock music and the artists, producers, engineers, and other notable figures who have influenced its development. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation was established on April 20, 1983, by Ahmet Ertegun, founder and chairman of Atlantic Records. After a long search for the right city, Cleveland was chosen in 1986 as the Hall of Fame's permanent home. Architect I. M. Pei designed the new museum, and it was dedicated on September 1, 1995. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation The RRHOF Foundation was ...
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San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of California cities by population, fourth most populous in California and List of United States cities by population, 17th most populous in the United States, with 815,201 residents as of 2021. It covers a land area of , at the end of the San Francisco Peninsula, making it the second most densely populated large U.S. city after New York City, and the County statistics of the United States, fifth most densely populated U.S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. Among the 91 U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco was ranked first by per capita income (at $160,749) and sixth by aggregate income as of 2021. Colloquial nicknames for San Francisco include ''SF'', ''San Fran'', ''The '', ''Frisco'', and '' ...
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Black Hawk (nightclub)
The Black Hawk was a San Francisco nightclub that featured live jazz performances during its period of operation from 1949 to 1963. It was located on the corner of Turk Street and Hyde Street in San Francisco's Tenderloin District. Guido Caccienti owned the club along with Johnny and Helen Noga. History The Black Hawk's intimate atmosphere was ideal for small jazz groups and the club was a very popular hangout. In 1959, the fees that the club was able to pay jazz acts rose from less than $300 to more than $3,000 a week. A "cage" area separated by woven wire fencing was provided for patrons under 21 years old who could not legally consume alcohol. This exception to the liquor laws was set up by an agreement between Black Hawk owner Guidio Caccienti and Mayor George Christopher, and made it possible for children to experience jazz. A number of musicians recorded albums at the club, including Miles Davis, Cal Tjader, Thelonious Monk, Shelly Manne and Mongo Santamaría. Notable mu ...
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Dinah Washington
Dinah Washington (born Ruth Lee Jones; August 29, 1924 – December 14, 1963) was an American singer and pianist, who has been cited as "the most popular black female recording artist of the 1950s songs". Primarily a jazz vocalist, she performed and recorded in a wide variety of styles including blues, R&B, and traditional pop music, and gave herself the title of "Queen of the Blues". She was a 1986 inductee of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. Early life Ruth Lee Jones was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to Alice and Ollie Jones, and moved to Chicago as a child. She became deeply involved in gospel music and played piano for the choir in St. Luke's Baptist Church while still in elementary school. She sang gospel music in church and played piano, directing her church choir in her teens and was a member of the Sallie Martin Gospel Singers. When she joined the Sallie Martin group, she dropped out of Wendell Phillips High Sch ...
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Bill Bailey (dancer)
Willie Eugene Bailey (December 8, 1912 – December 12, 1978), known professionally as Bill Bailey was an African-American tap dancer. The older brother of actress and singer Pearl Bailey, Bill was considered to be one of the best rhythm dancers of his time and was the first person to be recorded doing the Moonwalk, although he referred to it as the "Backslide," in the film '' Cabin in the Sky'' (1943), starring Ethel Waters, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson and Lena Horne. Early life Bill Bailey was born Willie Eugene Bailey in the small town of Sedley, Virginia in Southampton County, Virginia to Joseph James Bailey and Ella Mae Ricks Bailey. He was named after Eugenia V. Turner who was the midwife that helped deliver him. He spent his adolescence in Newport News, Virginia and Philadelphia. His father, Reverend Bailey, raised all his children Christian and hoped that Bill would also choose to become a minister. Career At eighteen years old, Bailey was discovered in New York by ...
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Cab Calloway
Cabell Calloway III (December 25, 1907 – November 18, 1994) was an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, conductor and dancer. He was associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, where he was a regular performer and became a popular vocalist of the swing era. His niche of mixing jazz and vaudeville won him acclaim during a career that spanned over 65 years. Calloway was a master of energetic scat singing and led one of the most popular dance bands in the United States from the early 1930s to the late 1940s. His band included trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie, Jonah Jones, and Adolphus "Doc" Cheatham, saxophonists Ben Webster and Leon "Chu" Berry, guitarist Danny Barker, bassist Milt Hinton, and drummer Cozy Cole. Calloway had several hit records in the 1930s and 1940s, becoming known as the "Hi-de-ho" man of jazz for his most famous song, "Minnie the Moocher", originally recorded in 1931. He reached the '' Billboard'' charts in five consecutive decades (1930s–1970s). Calloway ...
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Pearl Bailey
Pearl Mae Bailey (March 29, 1918 – August 17, 1990) was an American actress, singer and author. After appearing in vaudeville, she made her Broadway debut in '' St. Louis Woman'' in 1946. She received a Special Tony Award for the title role in the all-black production of '' Hello, Dolly!'' in 1968. In 1986, she won a Daytime Emmy award for her performance as a fairy godmother in the ABC Afterschool Special ''Cindy Eller: A Modern Fairy Tale''. Her rendition of " Takes Two to Tango" hit the top ten in 1952. In 1976, she became the first African-American to receive the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom on October 17, 1988. Early life Bailey was born in Newport News, Virginia to the Reverend Joseph James and Ella Mae Ricks Bailey. She was raised in the Bloodfields neighborhood of Newport News and graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in nearby Norfolk, the first city in the region to offer higher education ...
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Billy Eckstine
William Clarence Eckstine (July 8, 1914 – March 8, 1993) was an American jazz and pop singer and a bandleader during the swing and bebop eras. He was noted for his rich, almost operatic bass-baritone voice. In 2019, Eckstine was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award "for performers who, during their lifetimes, have made creative contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the field of recording." His recording of " I Apologize" (MGM, 1948) was given the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1999. ''The New York Times'' described him as an "influential band leader" whose "suave bass-baritone" and "full-throated, sugary approach to popular songs inspired singers like Earl Coleman, Johnny Hartman, Joe Williams, Arthur Prysock, and Lou Rawls." Early life and education Eckstine was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States, the son of William Eckstein, a chauffeur, and Charlotte Eckstein, a seamstress. Eckstine's paternal grandparents were William F. ...
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Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street (Manhattan), 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and 110th Street (Manhattan), Central Park North on the south. The greater Harlem area encompasses several other neighborhoods and extends west and north to 155th Street, east to the East River, and south to Martin Luther King, Jr., Boulevard (Manhattan), Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Central Park, and 96th Street (Manhattan), East 96th Street. Originally a Netherlands, Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands. Harlem's history has been defined by a series of economic boom-and-bust cycles, with significant population shifts accompanying each cycle. Harlem was predominantly occupied by Jewish American, Jewish and Italian American, Italian Americans in the 19th century, but African-American residents began to ...
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The Morey Amsterdam Show
''The Morey Amsterdam Show'' is an American sitcom which ran from 1948 to 1949 on CBS Television (13 episodes) and 1949–50 on the DuMont Television Network (58 episodes), for a total of 71 episodes. Synopsis The show began on CBS Radio with Morey Amsterdam playing himself as the emcee at a fictional New York City nightclub, the "Golden Goose Cafe". He introduced musical and comedy acts, and performed songs and monologues himself. Art Carney played Charlie the Doorman and Jacqueline Susann was Lola the Cigarette Girl. After six months on the radio, the show moved to CBS Television with the same characters, actors, and plot. The CBS version premiered December 17, 1948, and ended March 7, 1949, after 13 episodes. The show was picked up by the DuMont Television Network and began broadcasting on April 21, 1949, with a few minor changes. The name of the nightclub was changed to the "Silver Swan Cafe". Art Carney's character changed to Newton the Waiter, Susann continued as Lola, an ...
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