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Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
"Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" is a show tune written by American composer Jerome Kern and lyricist Otto Harbach for the 1933 musical '' Roberta''. The song was sung in the Broadway show by Tamara Drasin. Its first recorded performance was by Gertrude Niesen, who recorded the song with orchestral direction from Ray Sinatra, Frank Sinatra's second cousin, on October 13, 1933. Niesen's recording of the song was released by Victor, with the B-side, "Jealousy", featuring Isham Jones and his Orchestra. Paul Whiteman had the first hit recording of the song on the record charts in 1934. The song was reprised by Irene Dunne, who performed it in the 1935 film adaptation of the musical co-starring Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, and Randolph Scott. The song was also included in the 1952 remake of ''Roberta'', '' Lovely to Look At'', in which it was performed by Kathryn Grayson, and was a number 1 chart hit in 1959 for The Platters. Later recordings 1930s–1950s Paul Whiteman and h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gertrude Niesen
Gertrude Niesen (July 8, 1911 – March 27, 1975) was an American torch singer, actress, comedian, and songwriter who achieved popular success in musicals and films in the 1930s and 1940s. Early years Niesen was born aboard ship as her Swedish father and Russian mother returned from a vacation in Europe. As a child, she hoped for a career on stage and began performing in vaudeville. She attended Brooklyn Heights Seminary, where she found and developed an interest in music. Career Niesen began singing as a career in the early 1930s, performing on radio and in night clubs. She first appeared on film (credited as Gertrude Nissen) with Roger Wolfe Kahn and His Orchestra and Artie Shaw in a Vitaphone short film, ''Yacht Party'' (1932). On old-time radio, Niesen was the featured singer on ''The Ex-Lax Big Show'' on CBS and host of ''The Show Shop'' (1942), on NBC-Blue. She left ''The Ex-Lax Big Show'' in the summer of 1935 to sing leads in musical productions of the St. Loui ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kathryn Grayson
Kathryn Grayson (born Zelma Kathryn Elisabeth Hedrick; February 9, 1922 – February 17, 2010) was an American actress and coloratura soprano.Ronald Berganbr>Obituary '' London Guardian'', February 19, 2010. From the age of twelve, Grayson trained as an opera singer. She was under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by the early 1940s, soon establishing a career principally through her work in musicals. After several supporting roles, she was a lead performer in such films as ''Thousands Cheer'' (1943), ''Anchors Aweigh'' (1945) with Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly, and ''Show Boat'' (1951) and ''Kiss Me Kate'' (1953), both with Howard Keel. When film musical production declined, she worked in theatre, appearing in ''Camelot'' (1962–1964). Later in the decade she performed in several operas, including ''La bohème'', ''Madama Butterfly'', ''Orpheus in the Underworld'' and ''La traviata''. Early life Zelma Kathryn Elisabeth Hedrick was born on February 9, 1922, in Winston-Salem, Nort ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benny Goodman
Benjamin David Goodman (May 30, 1909 – June 13, 1986) was an American clarinetist and bandleader known as the "King of Swing". From 1936 until the mid-1940s, Goodman led one of the most popular swing big bands in the United States. His concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City on January 16, 1938, is described by critic Bruce Eder as "the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history: jazz's 'coming out' party to the world of 'respectable' music." Goodman's bands started the careers of many jazz musicians. During an era of racial segregation, he led one of the first integrated jazz groups, his quartet and quintet. He performed nearly to the end of his life while exploring an interest in classical music. Early years Goodman was the ninth of twelve children born to poor Jewish emigrants from the Russian Empire. His father, David Goodman (1873–1926), came to the United States in 1892 from Warsaw in partitioned Poland and became a tailor. His mother, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Easy Listening
Easy listening (including mood music) is a popular music genre and radio format that was most popular during the 1950s to 1970s. It is related to middle-of-the-road (MOR) music and encompasses instrumental recordings of standards, hit songs, non-rock vocals and instrumental covers of selected popular rock songs. It mostly concentrates on music that pre-dates the rock and roll era, characteristically on music from the 1940s and 1950s. It was differentiated from the mostly instrumental beautiful music format by its variety of styles, including a percentage of vocals, arrangements and tempos to fit various parts of the broadcast day. Easy listening music is often confused with lounge music, but while it was popular in some of the same venues it was meant to be listened to for enjoyment rather than as background sound. History The style has been synonymous with the tag "with strings". String instruments had been used in sweet bands in the 1930s and was the dominant sound track ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andre Kostelanetz
Andre Kostelanetz (russian: Абрам Наумович Костелянец; December 22, 1901 – January 13, 1980) was a Russian-born American popular orchestral music conductor and arranger who was one of the major exponents of popular orchestra music. Biography Abram Naumovich Kostelyanetz was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia to a prominent Jewish family. He was a cousin of physicist Lew Kowarski. His father, Nachman Yokhelevich (Naum Ignatyevich) Kostelyanetz, was active on the St. Petersburg stock exchange; his maternal grandfather, Aizik Yevelevich Dymshitz, was a wealthy merchant and industrialist, engaged in timber production. He began playing the piano at four and a half years old. He studied composition and orchestration at the Petrograd Conservatory of Music. When he was 19, the Grand Petrograd Opera Company held a competition to select a chorusmaster and assistant conductor, in which he was selected despite being the youngest applicant. Kostelanetz continued there ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Art Tatum
Arthur Tatum Jr. (, October 13, 1909 – November 5, 1956) was an American jazz pianist who is widely regarded as one of the greatest in his field. From early in his career, Tatum's technical ability was regarded by fellow musicians as extraordinary. Many pianists attempted to copy him; others questioned their own skills after encountering him, and some even switched instruments in response. In addition to being acclaimed for his virtuoso technique, Tatum extended the vocabulary and boundaries of jazz piano far beyond his initial stride influences, and established new ground in jazz through innovative use of reharmonization, voicing, and bitonality. Tatum grew up in Toledo, Ohio, where he began playing piano professionally and had his own radio program, rebroadcast nationwide, while still in his teens. He left Toledo in 1932 and had residencies as a solo pianist at clubs in major urban centers including New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. In that decade, he settled into a patt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, movies/videos, moving images, and millions of books. In addition to its archiving function, the Archive is an activist organization, advocating a free and open Internet. , the Internet Archive holds over 35 million books and texts, 8.5 million movies, videos and TV shows, 894 thousand software programs, 14 million audio files, 4.4 million images, 2.4 million TV clips, 241 thousand concerts, and over 734 billion web pages in the Wayback Machine. The Internet Archive allows the public to upload and download digital material to its data cluster, but the bulk of its data is collected automatically by its web crawlers, which work to preserve as much of the public web as possible. Its web archiving, web archive, the Wayback Machine, contains hu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harmonica
The harmonica, also known as a French harp or mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used worldwide in many musical genres, notably in blues, American folk music, classical music, jazz, country, and rock. The many types of harmonica include diatonic, chromatic, tremolo, octave, orchestral, and bass versions. A harmonica is played by using the mouth (lips and tongue) to direct air into or out of one (or more) holes along a mouthpiece. Behind each hole is a chamber containing at least one reed. The most common is the diatonic Richter-tuned with ten air passages and twenty reeds, often called the blues harp. A harmonica reed is a flat, elongated spring typically made of brass, stainless steel, or bronze, which is secured at one end over a slot that serves as an airway. When the free end is made to vibrate by the player's air, it alternately blocks and unblocks the airway to produce sound. Reeds are tuned to individual pitches. Tuning may involve changing a reed’s length ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BBC Radio
BBC Radio is an operational business division and service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a royal charter since 1927). The service provides national radio stations covering the majority of musical genres, as well as local radio stations covering local news, affairs and interests. It also oversees online audio content. Of the national radio stations, BBC Radio 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 Live are all available through analogue radio ( AM or FM (with BBC Radio 4 LW on longwave) as well as on DAB Digital Radio and BBC Sounds. The Asian Network broadcasts on DAB and selected AM frequencies in the English Midlands. BBC Radio 1Xtra, 4 Extra, 5 Sports Extra, 6 Music and the World Service broadcast only on DAB and BBC Sounds, while Radio 1 Dance and Relax streams are available only online. All of the BBC's national radio stations broadcast from bases in London and Manchester, usually in or near to Broadcasting House ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Hall (bandleader)
Henry Robert Hall, CBE (2 May 1898 – 28 October 1989) was an English bandleader who performed regularly on BBC Radio during the British dance band era of the 1920s and 1930s, through to the 1960s. Early life and career Henry Hall was born in Peckham, South London, England. He won a scholarship to Trinity College of Music where he studied trumpet, piano, harmony and counterpoint. His first job was as copyist at the head office of the Salvation Army for which he wrote several marches. During World War I, Hall served with the Royal Field Artillery, and played trumpet and piano in the regimental band. Hall's musical career was slow to start but eventually he was engaged by the London Midland and Scottish Railway to take charge of music throughout their then large chain of hotels, including Gleneagles Hotel, where he had previously led the band. Hall describes in his autobiography, ''Here's to the Next Time'', that on a Thursday in October 1923 he met a young woman, Margery Hark ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Larry Adler
Lawrence Cecil Adler (February 10, 1914 – August 6, 2001) was an American harmonica player. Known for playing major works, he played compositions by George Gershwin, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Malcolm Arnold, Darius Milhaud and Arthur Benjamin. During his later career, he collaborated with Sting, Elton John, Kate Bush and Cerys Matthews. Early life Adler was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to Sadie Hack and Louis Adler. They were a Jewish family. He graduated from Baltimore City College high school. He taught himself harmonica, which he called a mouth organ. He played professionally at 14. In 1927, he won a contest sponsored by the ''Baltimore Sun'', playing a Beethoven minuet, and a year later he ran away from home to New York. After being referred by Rudy Vallée, Adler got his first theatre work, and caught the attention of orchestra leader Paul Ash, who placed Adler in a vaudeville act as "a ragged urchin, playing for pennies".''Current Biography 1944'', pp. 3–5 Career From ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Night And Day (song)
"Night and Day" is a popular song by Cole Porter that was written for the 1932 musical ''Gay Divorce''. It is perhaps Porter's most popular contribution to the Great American Songbook and has been recorded by dozens of musicians. Fred Astaire introduced "Night and Day" on stage. His studio recording of the song with the Leo Reisman orchestra was released on Victor Records on January 13, 1933, and it became a No. 1 hit, topping the charts of the day for ten weeks. In December, it beat " The Last Round-Up" by George Olsen (nine weeks) and " Stormy Weather" by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler (eight weeks) to become the Number 1 record for the year 1933. Astaire performed it again in the 1934 film version of the show, renamed ''The Gay Divorcee'', and it became one of his signature songs. There are several accounts about the song's origin. One mentions that Porter was inspired by an Islamic prayer when he visited Morocco. Another account says he was inspired by the Moorish architect ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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