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Smiley Burnette
Lester Alvin Burnett (March 18, 1911 – February 16, 1967), better known as Smiley Burnette, was an American country music performer and a comedic actor in Western films and on radio and TV, playing sidekick to Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and other B-movie cowboys. He was also a prolific singer-songwriter who is reported to have played proficiently over 100 musical instruments, sometimes more than one simultaneously. His career, beginning in 1934, spanned four decades, including a regular role on CBS-TV's ''Petticoat Junction'' in the 1960s. Biography Lester A. Burnett (he added the final "e" later in life) was born in Summum, Illinois, on March 18, 1911, and grew up in Ravenwood, Missouri. He began singing as a child and learned to play a wide variety of instruments by ear, yet never learned to read or write music. In his teens, he worked in vaudeville, and starting in 1929, at the state's first commercial radio station, WDZ-AM in Tuscola, Illinois. Burnette came by his ni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Summum, Illinois
Summum is an unincorporated community in Fulton County, Illinois, United States. Summum is located adjacent to U.S. Highway 24 northeast of Astoria, in Woodland Township. Summum gives its name to the Summum cyclothem and the associated "Summum coal" formation, which extends over much of western Illinois but is typically only a few inches thick. One place the Summum coal reached a minable thickness was just north of Summum itself, where a strip mine was operated in the mid-20th century, from 1948 to 1955 by Key Coal Company and for some time thereafter by Peabody Coal Company. The strip mine was later converted into a small lake. Notable people from Summum include country musician and comedian Smiley Burnette, who was born there in 1911. History Summum takes its name from the Summum post office, which predated the town and took its name from early postmaster Peter Summy. The town was officially platted in 1851 by local mill owner James Madison Onion. The platted town was gi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vaudeville
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition or light poetry, interspersed with songs or ballets. It became popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s, but the idea of vaudeville's theatre changed radically from its French antecedent. In some ways analogous to music hall from Victorian Britain, a typical North American vaudeville performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. Types of acts have included popular and classical musicians, singers, dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, ventriloquists, strongmen, female and male impersonators, acrobats, clowns, illustrated songs, jugglers, one-act plays or scenes from plays, athletes, lecturing celebrities, minstrels, and movies. A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ken Maynard
Kenneth Olin Maynard (July 21, 1895 – March 23, 1973) was an American actor and producer. He was mostly active from the 1920s to the 1940s and considered one of the biggest Western stars in Hollywood. Maynard was also an occasional screenwriter and director. In 1960, he was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the film industry. Biography Maynard was born in Vevay, Indiana, United States, one of five children, another of whom, his lookalike younger brother, Kermit, would also become an actor; most audience members assumed that Kermit was his brother's identical twin. Ken Maynard began working at carnivals and circuses, where he became an accomplished horseman. As a young man, he performed in rodeos and was a trick rider with ''Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show''. Maynard served in the United States Army during World War I. After the war, Maynard returned to show business as a circus rider with Ringling Brothers. When the circus was playing i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
In Old Santa Fe
''In Old Santa Fe'' is a 1934 American Western film directed by David Howard, starring Ken Maynard, George "Gabby" Hayes and Evalyn Knapp and featuring the first screen appearance of Gene Autry, singing a bluegrass rendition of "Wyoming Waltz" accompanied by his own acoustic guitar with Smiley Burnette on accordion. Autry and Burnette were uncredited, but the scene served as a screen test for the duo for subsequent singing cowboy films, beginning with ''The Phantom Empire'' (1935), in which Autry had his first leading role.George-Warren 2007, pp. 124–129. Based on a story by Wallace MacDonald and John Rathmell, the film is about a cowboy who loses his horse in a rigged horse race and gets framed for the murder of a stagecoach driver. The film was shot on location in Kentucky and Keystone Studios in California. Plot A cowboy named Kentucky Ken (Ken Maynard) and his sidekick, Cactus (George "Gabby" Hayes), meet a beautiful woman named Lila Miller (Evalyn Knapp) when her car ac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mascot Pictures
Mascot Pictures Corporation was an American film company of the 1920s and 1930s best known for producing and distributing film serials and B-westerns. Mascot was formed in 1927 by film producer Nat Levine. In 1936 it merged with several other companies to form Republic Pictures. Mascot's serial ''The King of the Kongo'' (1929) was the first serial to include sound, beating Universal Studios by several months. The company's logo featured a roaring tiger resting on top of a model of the planet Earth. Early years Mascot was created by Nat Levine, a former personal secretary to Marcus Loew, in 1927 after the success of his independent serial ''The Silent Flyer'' ( 1926). In the beginning the company operated out of the upstairs offices of a contractor's business on Santa Monica Boulevard. It rented all of its equipment and facilities. In 1929 the studio made serial history with the production of ''The King of the Kongo''. This was the first serial, from any production company ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bluegrass Band
Bluegrass music is a genre of American roots music that developed in the 1940s in the Appalachian region of the United States. The genre derives its name from the band Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys. Like mainstream country music, it largely developed out of old-time string music, though in contrast, bluegrass is traditionally played exclusively on acoustic instruments and also has roots in traditional English, Scottish, and Irish ballads and dance tunes as well as in blues and jazz. Bluegrass was further developed by musicians who played with Monroe, including 5-string banjo player Earl Scruggs and guitarist Lester Flatt. Monroe characterized the genre as: " Scottish bagpipes and ole-time fiddlin'. It's a part of Methodist, Holiness and Baptist traditions. It's blues and jazz, and it has a high lonesome sound." Bluegrass features acoustic stringed instruments and emphasizes the off-beat. Notes are anticipated, in contrast to laid back blues where notes are behind ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nat Levine
Nat Levine (July 26, 1899 – August 6, 1989), was an American film producer. He produced 105 films between 1921 and 1946. He was personal secretary to Marcus Loew, formed Mascot Pictures in 1927, and merged Mascot with Herbert Yates's Republic Pictures in 1935. He was born in New York City and died in Los Angeles. Selected filmography * ''Rose of the Desert'' (1925) * '' The Silent Flyer'' (1926) * '' The Golden Stallion'' (1927) * '' Isle of Sunken Gold'' (1927) * ''Heroes of the Wild'' (1927) * '' Vultures of the Sea'' (1928) * '' The Vanishing West'' (1928) * ''The Fatal Warning'' (1929) * '' The King of the Kongo'' (1929) * '' The Devil Horse'' (1932) * ''The Pride of the Legion'' (1932) * ''The Law of the Wild'' (1934) * ''Little Men'' (1934) * '' 1,000 Dollars a Minute'' (1935) * ''Ladies Crave Excitement'' (1935) * ''Behind the Green Lights'' (1935) * '' Ticket to Paradise'' (1936) *''The House of a Thousand Candles ''The House of a Thousand Candles'' is a 1936 Am ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sound Film
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before sound motion pictures became commercially practical. Reliable synchronization was difficult to achieve with the early sound-on-disc systems, and amplification and recording quality were also inadequate. Innovations in sound-on-film led to the first commercial screening of short motion pictures using the technology, which took place in 1923. The primary steps in the commercialization of sound cinema were taken in the mid-to-late 1920s. At first, the sound films which included synchronized dialogue, known as "talking pictures", or "talkies", were exclusively shorts. The earliest feature-length movies with recorded sound included only music and effects. The first feature film originally presented as a talkie (although it had only limited so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Barn Dance
''National Barn Dance'', broadcast by WLS-AM in Chicago, Illinois starting in 1924, was one of the first American country music radio programs and a direct precursor of the ''Grand Ole Opry''. ''National Barn Dance'' also set the stage for other similar programs, in part because the clear-channel signal of WLS could be received throughout most of the Midwest and even beyond in the late evening and nighttime hours, making much of the United States (and Canada) a potential audience. The program was well received and thus widely imitated. ''National Barn Dance'' ended its broadcast in 1968. History ''National Barn Dance'' was founded by Edgar L. Bill. To him goes the credit for arranging to have a program of "down-home" tunes broadcast from radio station WLS, of which Bill was then director. Having lived on a farm, he knew how people loved the familiar sound and informal spirit of old-fashioned barn dance music. The first broadcast was an impromptu sustaining program. An avalanche o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gene Autry And Smiley Burnette Singing In In Old Santa Fe Film, 1934
In biology, the word gene (from , ; "...Wilhelm Johannsen coined the word gene to describe the Mendelian units of heredity..." meaning ''generation'' or ''birth'' or ''gender'') can have several different meanings. The Mendelian gene is a basic unit of heredity and the molecular gene is a sequence of nucleotides in DNA that is transcribed to produce a functional RNA. There are two types of molecular genes: protein-coding genes and noncoding genes. During gene expression, the DNA is first copied into RNA. The RNA can be directly functional or be the intermediate template for a protein that performs a function. The transmission of genes to an organism's offspring is the basis of the inheritance of phenotypic traits. These genes make up different DNA sequences called genotypes. Genotypes along with environmental and developmental factors determine what the phenotypes will be. Most biological traits are under the influence of polygenes (many different genes) as well as gene– ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Celebrated Jumping Frog Of Calaveras County
"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is an 1865 short story by Mark Twain. It was his first great success as a writer and brought him national attention. The story has also been published as "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog" (its original title) and "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County". In it, the narrator retells a story he heard from a bartender, Simon Wheeler, at the Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California, about the gambler Jim Smiley. The narrator describes him: "If he even seen a straddle bug start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take him to get to wherever he going to, and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle bug to Mexico but what he would find out where he was bound for and how long he was on the road." ''The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches'' is also the title story of an 1867 collection of short stories by Mark Twain. It was Twain's first book and collected 27 stories that were previ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
