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Anita O'Day
Anita Belle Colton (October 18, 1919 – November 23, 2006), known professionally as Anita O'Day, was an American jazz singer and self-proclaimed “song stylist” widely admired for her sense of rhythm and dynamics, and her early big band appearances that shattered the traditional image of the "girl singer". Refusing to pander to any female stereotype, O'Day presented herself as a "hip" jazz musician, wearing a band jacket and skirt as opposed to an evening gown. She changed her surname from Colton to O'Day, pig Latin for "dough", slang for money. Early career Anita Belle Colton (who later took the surname "O'Day") was born to Irish parents, James and Gladys M. (née Gill) Colton in Kansas City, Missouri, and raised in Chicago, Illinois, during the Great Depression. Colton took the first chance to leave her unhappy home when, at age 14, she became a contestant in the popular Dance marathon, Walk-a-thons as a dancer. She toured with the Walk-a-thons circuits for two years, occas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kansas City, Missouri
Kansas City, Missouri, abbreviated KC or KCMO, is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri by List of cities in Missouri, population and area. The city lies within Jackson County, Missouri, Jackson, Clay County, Missouri, Clay, and Platte County, Missouri, Platte counties, with a small portion lying within Cass County, Missouri, Cass County. It is the central city of the Kansas City metropolitan area, which straddles the Missouri–Kansas state line and has a population of 2,392,035. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the city had a population of 508,090, making it the sixth-most populous city in the Midwestern United States, Midwest and List of United States cities by population, 38th-most populous city in the United States. Kansas City was founded in the 1830s as a port on the Missouri River at its confluence with the Kansas River from the west. On June 1, 1850, the town of Kansas was incorporated; shortly after came the establishment of the Kansas Terr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was published on Saturday 26 March 2016, leaving only the online edition. The daily edition was named National Newspaper of the Year at the 2004 British Press Awards. ''The Independent'' won the Brand of the Year Award in The Drum Awards for Online Media 2023. History 1980s Launched in 1986, the first issue of ''The Independent'' was published on 7 October in broadsheet format.Dennis Griffiths (ed.) ''The Encyclopedia of the British Press, 1422–1992'', London & Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992, p. 330. It was produced by Newspaper Publishing plc and created by Andreas Whittam Smith, Stephen Glover and Matthew Symonds. All three partners were former journalists at ''The Daily Telegraph'' who had left the paper towards the end of Lord Hartwell' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dinah Shore
Dinah Shore (born Frances Rose Shore; February 29, 1916 – February 24, 1994) was an American singer, actress, television personality, and the chart-topping female vocalist of the 1940s. She rose to prominence as a recording artist during the Big Band era. She achieved even greater success a decade later in television, mainly as the host of a series of variety programs for the Chevrolet automobile company. After failing singing auditions for the bands of Benny Goodman, and both Jimmy Dorsey, Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Shore struck out on her own. She became the first singer of her era to achieve huge solo success. She had a string of eighty charted popular hits, spanning from 1940 to 1957, and after appearing in a handful of feature films, she went on to a four-decade career in American television. She starred in her own music and variety shows from 1951 through 1963 and hosted two talk shows in the 1970s. TV Guide ranked her at number 16 on their list of the top 50 television st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, Holiday made significant contributions to jazz music and pop music, pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly influenced by jazz instrumentalists, inspired a new way of manipulating Phrase (music), phrasing and tempo. Holiday was known for her vocal delivery and Jazz improvisation, improvisational skills. After a turbulent childhood, Holiday began singing in nightclubs in Harlem where she was heard by producer John Hammond (record producer), John Hammond, who liked her voice. Holiday signed a recording contract with Brunswick Records, Brunswick in 1935. Her collaboration with Teddy Wilson produced the hit "What a Little Moonlight Can Do", which became a jazz standard. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Holiday had mainstream success on labels such as Columbia Records, Columbia and Decca Records, Decca. H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Helen Forrest
Helen Forrest (born Helen Fogel, April 12, 1917 – July 11, 1999) was an American singer of traditional pop and swing music. She served as the "girl singer" for three of the most popular big bands of the Swing Era (Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, and Harry James), thereby earning a reputation as "the voice of the name bands." Childhood Forrest was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey on April 12, 1917. Her parents, Louis and Rebecca Fogel, were Jewish. Her father died from influenza when Helen was an infant so she was raised by her mother, who often blamed her husband's death on Helen's birth. She believed God had taken her husband because she had wished so much for a baby girl. Helen had three older brothers: Harry, Ed, and Sam. In Helen's early teen years, the family relocated to Brooklyn. Her mother married a house painter, whom Helen disliked. Soon, Helen's mother and stepfather turned the family's home into a brothel. At 14, Helen was nearly raped by her stepfather; she defe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Helen O'Connell
Helen O'Connell (May 23, 1920 – September 9, 1993) was an American singer, actress, and hostess, described as "the quintessential big band singer of the 1940s". Early life Born in Lima, Ohio, O'Connell grew up in Toledo, Ohio. By the time she was 15, she and her older sister, Alice, were singing duets in clubs and hotels and on radio stations in Toledo. Career O'Connell launched her career as a big-band singer with Larry Funk and his Band of a Thousand Melodies. She was singing with Funk's band in Greenwich Village when Jimmy Dorsey's manager discovered her. O'Connell joined the Dorsey band in 1939 and achieved her best selling records in the early 1940s with " Green Eyes", " Amapola", " Tangerine" and " Yours". In each of these Latin-influenced numbers, Bob Eberly crooned the song which Helen then reprised in an up-tempo arrangement. O'Connell was selected by ''DownBeat'' readers as best female singer in 1940 and 1941 and won the 1940 '' Metronome'' magazine poll fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soundies
A soundie is a three-minute American film displaying both the audio and video of a musical performance. Over 1,850 soundies were produced between 1940 and 1946, regarded today as "precursors to music videos". Soundies exhibited a variety of musical genres in an effort to draw a broad audience. The shorts were originally viewed in public places on some 5,000 " Panorams", coin-operated, 16mm rear projection machines built by the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago. Panorams offered multiple selections of a constantly changing rotation of soundies, and were typically located in public venues like nightclubs, bars, and restaurants. As World War II progressed, soundies also featured patriotic messages and advertisements for war bonds. Hollywood films were censored but Soundies weren't, so the films occasionally had daring content like burlesque acts; these were produced to appeal to soldiers on leave. Technology Soundies were filmed professionally on black-and-white 35mm theatrica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roy Eldridge
David Roy Eldridge (January 30, 1911 – February 26, 1989), nicknamed "Little Jazz", was an American jazz trumpeter. His sophisticated use of harmony, including the use of tritone substitutions, his virtuosic solos exhibiting a departure from the dominant style of jazz trumpet innovator Louis Armstrong, and his strong impact on Dizzy Gillespie mark him as one of the most influential musicians of the swing era and a precursor of bebop. Biography Early life Eldridge was born on the North Side of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on January 30, 1911, to parents Alexander, a wagon teamster, and Blanche, a gifted pianist with a talent for reproducing music by ear, a trait that Eldridge claimed to have inherited from her. Eldridge began playing the piano at the age of five; he claimed to have been able to play coherent blues licks at even this young age. The young Eldridge looked up to his older brother, Joe Eldridge (born Joseph Eldridge, 1908, North Side of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Irene Daye
Irene Daye (January 17, 1918, Lawrence, Massachusetts – November 1, 1971, Greenville, South Carolina) was an American jazz singer. Early life Daye began her career at age 17 by singing in Dan Murphy's Musical Skippers big band while still in high school in 1935, continuing with Murphy through 1937. She then worked briefly with Mal Hallett before beginning work with Gene Krupa, with whose orchestra she sang from 1938 to 1941. Krupa and Daye recorded 63 titles together, with her biggest hit being "Drum Boogie", which was recorded in the last session she did with Krupa. After leaving Krupa, Daye retired from music at the age of 23, marrying Corky Cornelius. Anita O'Day took her spot in Krupa's orchestra. Daye had a daughter in 1943, but Cornelius (then in the Casa Loma Orchestra) died suddenly later that year, after which she returned to her singing career. Marriage and death From 1944 to 1950, she sang with Charlie Spivak, then married him in 1950 and retired from perfor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gene Krupa
Eugene Bertram Krupa (January 15, 1909 – October 16, 1973) was an American jazz drummer, bandleader, and composer. Krupa is widely regarded as one of the most influential drummers in the history of popular music. His drum solo on Benny Goodman's 1937 recording of "Sing, Sing, Sing" elevated the role of the drummer from that of an accompanist to that of an important solo voice in the band. In collaboration with the Slingerland drum- and Zildjian cymbal-manufacturers, he became a major force in defining the standard band-drummer's kit. ''Modern Drummer'' magazine regards Krupa as "the founding father of modern drumset playing". Upon his death, ''The New York Times'' labeled Krupa a "revolutionary" known for "frenzied, flashy" drumming, with his work having generated a significant musical legacy that started "in jazz and has continued on through the rock era". Early life The youngest of Anna (née Oslowski) and Bartłomiej Krupa's nine children, Gene Krupa was born in Chicago, I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Max Miller (jazz Musician)
Edward Maxwell Miller (November 17, 1911 – November 13, 1985) was an American jazz pianist and vibraphone player. He had a forty year career that peaked in the 1940s and '50s. Many of his compositions use extended chord harmonies, polyphony, and polytonality and were influenced by Stravinsky, Bartók, and Hindemith. Early career Miller was born in East Chicago, Indiana. At an early age he learned banjo and played it in the high school band. At sixteen he joined the Musicians Union and began to play professionally. In 1927 he switched to guitar, performing mostly dixieland with bands in Indiana and Michigan. He moved to Chicago in the early 1930s and worked as a drummer and string bassist. At this time he started experimenting with the vibraphone. He worked with bands around Chicago, playing guitar, piano, and vibes, including with pianist Frank Melrose and drummer Dave Tough. He went on tour as a guitarist and vibraphonist for the Vincent Lopez Orchestra with Betty Hutto ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
State Street (Chicago)
State Street is a large south-north street, also one of the main streets, in Chicago, Illinois, USA and its south suburbs. Its intersection with Madison Street () has marked the origin for Chicago's address system since 1909. State begins in the north at North Avenue, the south end of Lincoln Park, runs south through the heart of the Chicago Loop, and ends at the southern city limits, intersecting 127th Street along the bank of the Little Calumet River. It resumes north of 137th Street in Riverdale and runs south intermittently through Chicago's south suburbs until terminating at New Monee Road in Crete, Illinois. From north to south, State Street traverses the following community areas of Chicago: Near North Side to the Chicago River, Chicago Loop to Roosevelt Road, Near South Side to 26th Street, Douglas to 39th Street, Grand Boulevard to 51st Street, Washington Park to 63rd Street, Grand Crossing to 79th Street, Chatham to 91st Street, Roseland to 115th Street ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
