Frank Beacham's Journal

Now available, order here

Little Richard was born 89 years ago today

Little Richard, Aug. 30, 2004, B.B. Kings Club, NYC

Photo by Frank Beacham

Little Richard was born 89 years ago today.

Born Richard Wayne Penniman, Little Richard was a recording artist, songwriter and musician who has been an influential figure in popular music and culture for over six decades.

Penniman's most celebrated work dates from the mid 1950s where his dynamic music and charismatic showmanship laid the foundation for rock and roll. His music also had a pivotal impact on the formation of other popular music genres, including soul and funk.

Penniman influenced numerous singers and musicians across musical genres from rock to rap. He was honored by many institutions, including inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He was the recipient of Lifetime Achievement Awards from The Recording Academy and the Rhythm and Blues Foundation.

Penniman's "Tutti Frutti" (1955) was included in the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry in 2010, claiming the "unique vocalizing over the irresistible beat announced a new era in music."

Born in Macon, Georgia, he was the third-eldest of twelve. His parents were Leva Mae and Charles "Bud" Penniman. His father was a church deacon who sold bootlegged moonshine on the side and owned his own nightclub, the Tip In Inn. His mother was a member of Macon's New Hope Baptist Church.

Initially, Penniman's first name was supposed to have been "Ricardo," but an error resulted in "Richard" instead. The Penniman children were raised in the poor neighborhood of Macon called Pleasant Hill. He was nicknamed "Lil' Richard" by family due to his small and skinny frame as a child.

A mischievous child who played pranks on neighbors, Penniman began singing in church at a young age. Possibly due to complications at birth, Penniman had a deformity that left one of his legs shorter than the other. This produced an unusual gait, for which he was mocked over its allegedly effeminate appearance.

Penniman's family was highly religious, joining various A.M.E. Baptist and Pentecostal churches, with some family members becoming ministers. Penniman enjoyed the Pentecostal churches the most due to its charismatic worship and live music.

He later recalled that people in his neighborhood during segregation sang gospel songs throughout the day to keep a positive outlook because "there was so much poverty, so much prejudice in those days.”

Penniman's initial musical influences were gospel performers, such as Brother Joe May, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Mahalia Jackson and Marion Williams.

May, who as a singing evangelist was known as the "Thunderbolt of the Middle West" due to his phenomenal range and vocal power, inspired the boy to become a preacher. Penniman performed with Tharpe at the Macon City Auditorium at fourteen after Tharpe heard him singing prior to her concert.

He attended Macon's Hudson High School where he was a below average student. His musical talent, however, was recognized there when he learned to play the alto saxophone.

In 1948, Penniman left school after his father kicked him out of the family house. That year, he joined Dr. Hudson's Medicine Show, performing "Caldonia." Penniman recalled the song was the first secular R&B song he learned due to his family's strict rules against playing R&B music, which they considered "devil music.”

In 1949, he began performing at a local Macon nightclub called the Tick Tock Club, owned by Ann Johnson. She soon took Penniman to live with her and her husband John after Penniman told her of his family troubles.

Penniman soon joined his first musical band, Buster Brown's Orchestra, under Johnson's suggestion, after the band's lead singer, I.A. Harris, missed a performance at the Tick Tock Club. While performing with the band, he began using the name Little Richard.

After his tenure with the band ended in 1950, Penniman began performing for various vaudeville groups including Sugarfoot Sam from Alabam, the Tidy Jolly Steppers, the King Brothers Circus and Broadway Follies, earning a reputation as a drag performer.

Around this time, Penniman began listening more to R&B and frequented Atlanta clubs where he witnessed Roy Brown and Billy Wright. Heavily influenced by Wright's flamboyant persona and showmanship, Penniman began performing as a solo artist as part of the chitlin' circuit. During this period, he lived for several months in the motel at Charlie’s Place, a chitlin’s circuit motel in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

He gained notoriety for high-energy onstage antics during live performances. He eventually befriended Wright during an Atlanta performance in 1950. In October, 1951, Wright put Penniman in contact with his manager, Zenas Sears, a local deejay. Sears recorded Penniman at his station backed by Wright's band.

The recordings soon led to a deal with RCA's Camden subsidiary. Penniman recorded a total of eight sides for Camden, including the blues ballad, "Every Hour," which became his first single and a hit in the Georgia area.

The release of "Every Hour" improved his relationship with his father, who began regularly performing the song at his nightclub. In 1955, Penniman began recording at Cosimo Matassa's J&M Studios in New Orleans with several of Fats Domino's session musicians including drummer Earl Palmer and saxophonist Lee Allen.

Initial cuts failed to produce anything to inspire huge sales and Penniman and his producer took a break at a club called the Dew Drop Inn. While there, Penniman performed a risqué song he had improvised from his days on the club circuit called "Tutti Frutti." The song's a cappella introduction was based off a drum rhythm Penniman had devised.

Blackwell felt the song had hit potential and hired songwriter Dorothy LaBostrie to replace some of Penniman's sexual lyrics with less controversial words. Recorded in three takes in September 1955, "Tutti Frutti" was released as a single in November.

"Tutti Frutti" became an instant hit, reaching #2 on Billboard's Rhythm and Blues Best-Sellers chart and crossing over to the pop charts in both the United States and overseas in the United Kingdom. It reached #17 on the Billboard Top 100 in America and #29 on the British singles chart, eventually selling a million copies.

Penniman's next hit single, "Long Tall Sally" (1956), became his first to reach #1 on the R&B chart and the first to reach the Top Ten of the pop charts in both America and Britain. Like "Tutti Frutti," it sold over a million copies.

Following his success, Penniman began performing on package tours across the United States, often appearing last, where he would steal the show. He claims to be "the architect of rock and roll," and history would seem to bear out his boast.

More than any other performer – save, perhaps, Elvis Presley — Little Richard blew the lid off the Fifties, laying the foundation for rock and roll with his explosive music and charismatic persona. On record, he made spine-tingling rock and roll.

His frantically charged piano playing and raspy, shouted vocals on such classics as "Tutti Frutti," "Long Tall Sally" and "Good Golly, Miss Molly" defined the dynamic sound of rock and roll.

Penniman's music and performance style had a pivotal impact on the shape of the sound and style of popular music genres of the 20th century. As a rock and roll pioneer, Penniman embodied its spirit more flamboyantly than any other performer.

His raspy shouting style gave the genre one of its most identifiable and influential vocal sounds and his fusion of boogie-woogie, New Orleans R&B and gospel music blazed its rhythmic trail.

R&B pioneer Johnny Otis said "Little Richard is twice as valid artistically and important historically as Elvis Presley, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones put together."

Little Richard died on May 9, 2020 at the age of 87 at his home in Tullahoma, Tennessee, from a cause related to bone cancer, after a two-month illness. His brother, sister and son were with him at the time of his death.

Here, Little Richard performs “Lucille” in an early video

Photo by Frank Beacham

Humphrey Bogart, who was taught the game of chess by his father, a prominent New York City doctor, had quite a reputation on the chessboard

Humphrey Bogart, who was taught the game of chess by his father, a prominent New York City doctor, had quite a reputation on the chessboard.

When Bogart was working as an office boy for a theatrical office in New York City, he was into the Jazz Age lifestyle, always up for late night revels. When his meager wages were exhausted, he’d play chess against all comers in arcades for a dollar a match to fund his outings.

“Before he made any money from acting, he would hustle players for dimes and quarters, playing in New York parks and at Coney Island,” wrote Mike Doyle of Bogart on Chess.com.

The actor even achieved a draw against the grandmaster Samuel Reshevsky in 1955 — though Reshevsky was also simultaneously playing 29 other opponents.

Above, Bogart plays chess with his wife, Lauren Bacall.

Thanks New York Times!

J.J. Cale was born 83 years ago today

Photo by Louis Ramirez

J.J. Cale was born 83 years ago today.

Cale was a singer-songwriter and musician who was one of the originators of the Tulsa Sound, a loose genre drawing on blues, rockabilly, country and jazz influences. His personal style has often been described as "laid back."

Songs written by Cale that have been covered by other musicians include "After Midnight" by Eric Clapton, Phish and Jerry Garcia, "Cocaine" by Eric Clapton, "Clyde" by Waylon Jennings and Dr. Hook and "Call Me the Breeze" by Lynyrd Skynyrd, John Mayer and Bobby Bare.

Born in Oklahoma City, Cale was raised in Tulsa and graduated from Tulsa Central High School in 1956. Along with a number of other young Tulsa musicians, he moved to Los Angeles in the early 1960s, where he first worked as a studio engineer.

Finding little success as a recording artist, Cale later returned to Tulsa and was considering giving up the music business until Clapton recorded Cale's "After Midnight" in 1970. His first album, Naturally, established his style, described by Los Angeles Times writer Richard Cromelin as a "unique hybrid of blues, folk and jazz, marked by relaxed grooves and Cale's fluid guitar and laconic vocals.

Cale’s early use of drum machines and his unconventional mixes lend a distinctive and timeless quality to his work and set him apart from the pack of Americana roots music purists."

In 2013, Neil Young remarked that of all the musicians he had ever heard, J.J. Cale and Jimi Hendrix were the two best electric guitar players. Cale often acted as his own producer, engineer and session player. His vocals, sometimes whispery, would be buried in the mix. Cale attributed his unique sound to being a recording mixer and engineer.

"Because of all the technology now you can make music yourself and a lot of people are doing that now,” Cale said. “I started out doing that a long time ago and I found when I did that I came up with a unique sound."

Cale died of heart failure in July, 2013, at the age of 74, in La Jolla, California.

Here, Cale performs a concert with Leon Russell in Los Angles, 1979

Jim Messina is 74 years old today

Loggins and Messina, 2009

Photo by BryCox

Jim Messina is 74 years old today.

Messina is a musician, songwriter, singer, recording engineer and record producer. He was a member of folk rock group, Buffalo Springfield, a founding member of country rock pioneer, Poco, and half of the soft rock duo, Loggins and Messina.

While with Buffalo Springfield, Messina served as a recording engineer, producer, and musician, replacing bass player, Bruce Palmer, on two songs from their final album, Last Time Around. After Buffalo Springfield disbanded, Messina and Richie Furay, a founding member of Buffalo Springfield, formed Poco.

Messina played lead guitar and supplied vocals and some songwriting to the band. After recording two studio albums and one live album, he left Poco.

After Poco, Messina signed a contract with Columbia Records, as an independent producer. Messina was first introduced to the idea of producing Kenny Loggins in the summer of 1970 while still performing on the road with Poco.

Loggins first met with Messina in December, 1970 at Messina's home, where the two recorded a number of Loggins' compositions in Messina's living room. Loggins, at the time, was a songwriter for ABC Dunhill and not a performing artist.

The songs he presented for his album leaned more toward being a folk artist, a style Messina felt might anchor Loggins in a past trend as opposed to being a part of a future trend. In the course of deciding how to produce Loggins' first solo album, Messina met with Clive Davis, then president of Columbia Records.

The inexperienced Loggins had no agent, no manager, no business manager and no prior experience as a performing artist. Messina felt Loggins needed some kind of an edge. Messina proposed to Davis that he be allowed to sit in with Loggins' on his first solo album in the same way that jazz artists had done in the past.

Loggins also needed more upbeat and diverse material to help him gain appeal as a pop music artist. After reluctantly agreeing, Clive pursued the "sitting in" concept through to the end.

With music trends moving away from folk, Messina presented Loggins with a number of songs that spilled over from his days with Poco and Buffalo Springfield. He felt Loggins could do both country rock and R&B styles extremely well, especially after hearing Kenny perform, "Danny's Song."

Among the material Messina contributed was "Listen to a Country Song" (a hit single by Lynn Anderson), "Nobody But You", "Same Old Wine" and "The Trilogy," which included, "Peace of Mind." He provided the rehearsal space, amps and instruments and lent his talents as an arranger, vocalist and guitarist.

Messina worked long hours with Loggins and encouraged him to purchase an electric guitar and play it on his solo debut album.

Messina assembled "The Kenny Loggins Band" by summoning old friends. They included drummer, Merel Bregante, and bassist/singer, Larry Sims, (both formally of the Sunshine Company), horn and viola player Al Garth, Jon Clarke (performing with the Don Ellis Jazz Band), and a friend of Loggins, keyboardist Michael Omartian, who played on the album but dropped out once the touring began.

Originally intended to be Kenny Loggins' first solo album, the two decided that Messina's contribution was so substantial that the album was finally released as "Kenny Loggins with Jim Messina” “Sittin' In." It made its debut in November, 1971.

Messina had been reluctant to perform and tour, having begun the collaboration with the sole interest of producing. Nonetheless, by the end of 1976, the group, now renamed "Loggins and Messina," had toured extensively and sold over 20 million albums.

After the release of "Kenny Loggins with Jim Messina Sittin' In," Messina went on to write, perform and produce seven more albums with Loggins. Those albums were: "Loggins and Messina," "Full Sail," "On Stage," "Mother Lode," "So Fine," "Native Sons" and "Finale."

Loggins ultimately decided to strike out on his own, and in 1976 the duo split. Both went on to solo careers.

In 2009, Messina released the album — Under a Mojito Moon-Part 1 — containing works recorded only with his Flamenco guitar. The Latin based arrangements feature trumpet, percussion, drums, piano and nylon acoustic guitar in melodies reminiscent of the music of Cuba and Spain.

Messina continues to tour and make records as a solo artist. In addition, he dabbles in the fine arts as a painter working both in watercolor and acrylics. He is also a carpenter who enjoys building "cowboy" furniture and old distressed Scottish and Irish style of pine furniture.

Messina also works in metal and enjoys the art of welding metals. He continues to work in the field of electronics, both as a studio owner and recording/mixing engineer.

Messina is the creator and owner of "The Songwriters' Performance Workshop," where he leads six-day intensive workshops for songwriters and singers at retreats, resorts and hotels around the country.

Here, Loggins and Messina perform “Angry Eyes”

An Encounter with Lou Reed

Metropolitan Diary: Rock & Roll

Dear Diary:

In 1976, I was 15 and working in the back room of my parents’ Upper West Side typewriter shop, Osner Business Machines.

The air was pungent with the smell of lubricants and cleaning solvents. The floor-to-ceiling shelves were stuffed two and three deep with typewriters of every size and shape. A makeshift cowbell jangled when the front door opened.

My father greeted each new customer from behind a yellowing linoleum counter, equally attentive to person and ailing machine. When someone paid with a credit card, he would pass it to me. My job was to call the card company for authorization.

One day, after taking an American Express card, I did a double-take at the name embossed on it: Lou Reed.

I poked my head out, gesturing wildly toward my father. On the other side of the counter, I glimpsed a figure in black leather.

“Daddy,” I said, “that’s Lou Reed!”

My father, who tuned in to the local Yiddish-language radio station when he wasn’t listening to WQXR, offered a dubious response.

“Who’s Lou Reed?”

I rolled my eyes.

“He’s a rock star,” I whispered.

My father, unimpressed, returned to the counter. I tiptoed behind, my mouth agape as I stared at the familiar, craggy, handsome face.

“Mr. Reed,” my father said in his thick Polish accent, “my daughter thinks she knows you?”

Lou Reed blinked. One corner of his mouth quivered into the slightest of smiles.

“Well,” he said, returning my gaze, “she might.”

— Anne Adelman

Thanks New York Times!

Above, Lou Reed, 2011

Photo by Frank Beacham

The hit soundtrack for the film, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, was released on this day in 2000

The cast of the film, O' Brother, Where Art Thou?, in 2000

Released on this day in 2000, several weeks ahead of the film itself, the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack would catch on slowly.

But, eventually, it would sell more than seven million copies while winning a broad new audience for contemporary artists performing bluegrass that had been absent from the pop charts for five decades or more.

"To me the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack is not bluegrass, but as long as people love the music, who cares what it's called?" said Rhonda Vincent, a bluegrass artist, to the Los Angeles Times in 2002.

Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, O Brother, Where Art Thou? was a loose adaptation of Homer's Odyssey starring George Clooney as the fast-talking escaped convict Ulysses Everett McGill, who must survive encounters with sirens, a Cyclops and a posse of hooded Klansmen on an epic journey home to Ithaca (Mississippi) to prevent his wife, Penny, from marrying another man.

Deciding early on to employ a soundtrack appropriate to the film's setting in the Depression-era South, the Coen brothers enlisted songwriter-producer, T-Bone Burnett, to find the right music. He found it in Nashville, though not within the country-music establishment.

As the soundtrack's liner notes put it, the sound that Burnett and the Coens were looking for was the sound of country music "before the infidels of [Nashville's] Music Row expropriated that term to describe watered-down pop/rock with greeting-card lyrics."

They found that sound alive and well and in the capable hands of musicians whose roots date back across decades — Ralph Stanley and The Fairfield Four, for instance — and others who had made their careers working in a country vernacular far older than themselves — Gillian Welch, Allison Kraus and Emmylou Harris, most prominent among them.

Using these and other contemporary musicians, Burnett completed work on the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou? before the first frame of the film was shot.

The Coens consciously built many memorable scenes around songs like Krauss's rendition of "Down To The River To Pray" and "Man Of Constant Sorrow," by the fictitious Soggy Bottom Boys, featuring the real-life Dan Tyminski and Ron Block.

Within several months of its release, the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack had topped the country album charts, but its crossover to the pop charts came much more slowly. By August, 2001, the film had left theaters in the United States, but the album was still building momentum.

It finally reached the #1 spot on the Billboard 200 chart of pop albums in March, 2002 — the longest climb to #1 for a pop album in the modern era.

Here’s a clip from the movie with the Soggy Bottom Boys performing “Constant Sorrow.”

Thanks History.com

Eighty-eight years ago today, prohibition ended in the United States

Eighty-eight years ago today, prohibition ended in the United States.

On Dec. 5, 1933, Utah became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment, enough to end national Prohibition.

Bars across the U.S. are celebrating Repeal Day. They might also consider honoring its unlikely hero: Pierre du Pont.

One of the wealthiest men in the world, du Pont was also among the most prominent “wets” — as opponents of Prohibition were called. He helped lead a powerful lobbying group with a not-so-hidden agenda: Bring back booze, and make income taxes unnecessary by renewing levies on legal alcohol.

He succeeded, to a point. The end of Prohibition injected millions of dollars into the federal treasury. But income and corporate taxes went up, too.

Du Pont’s folly was America’s gain — and a reminder that in politics, things rarely turn out the way you want, no matter how much money you have.

Thanks New York Times!

Above, Pierre du Pont, a leader to end prohibition

Photo by Herber Gehr

Sonny Boy Williamson II, blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter from Mississippi, was born 109 years ago today

Houston Stackhouse, Sonny Boy Williamson II and Peck Curtis, 1965

Sonny Boy Williamson II, blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter from Mississippi, was born 109 years ago today.

Acknowledged as one of the most charismatic and influential blues musicians, Williamson had considerable prowess on the harmonica and highly creative songwriting skills. He recorded successfully in the 1950s and 1960s, and had a direct influence on later blues and rock performers.

Born Alex Miller (pronounced "Aleck") on the Sara Jones Plantation in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, his date and year of birth are uncertain. He claimed to have been born on December 5, 1899, but Dr. David Evans, professor of music and an ethnomusicologist at the University of Memphis, claims to have found census record evidence that he was born around 1912, being seven on February 2, 1920, the day of the census.

His gravestone, set up by record company owner, Lillian McMurry, twelve years after his death, gives his date of birth as March 11, 1908, but the birth date on that stone is most likely incorrect. He lived and worked with his sharecropper stepfather, Jim Miller, whose last name he soon adopted, and mother, Millie Ford, until the early 1930s.

Beginning in the 1930s, he traveled around Mississippi and Arkansas and encountered Big Joe Williams, Elmore James and Robert Lockwood, Jr., also known as Robert Junior Lockwood, who would play guitar on his later Checker Records sides. He was also associated with Robert Johnson during this period. Miller developed his style and raffish stage persona during these years.

Willie Dixon recalled seeing Lockwood and Miller playing for tips in Greenville, Mississippi in the 1930s. He entertained audiences with novelties such as inserting one end of the harmonica into his mouth and playing with no hands. At this time he was often known as "Rice" Miller — a childhood nickname stemming from his love of rice and milk — or as Little Boy Blue.

In 1941, Miller was hired to play the King Biscuit Time show, advertising the King Biscuit brand of baking flour on radio station KFFA in Helena, Arkansas with Lockwood. It was at this point that the radio program's sponsor, Max Moore, began billing Miller as Sonny Boy Williamson, apparently in an attempt to capitalize on the fame of the well known Chicago-based harmonica player and singer Sonny Boy Williamson (birth name John Lee Williamson, died 1948).

Although John Lee Williamson was a major blues star who had already released dozens of successful and widely influential records under the name "Sonny Boy Williamson" from 1937 onward, Aleck Miller would later claim to have been the first to use the name.

Some blues scholars believe that Miller's assertion he was born in 1899 was a ruse to convince audiences he was old enough to have used the name before John Lee Williamson, who was born in 1914.

Miller became commonly known as "Sonny Boy Williamson," (universally distinguished by blues fans and musicians as "Sonny Boy Williamson #2" or "Sonny Boy Williamson the second") and Lockwood and the rest of his band were billed as the King Biscuit Boys.

In 1949, he relocated to West Memphis, Arkansas and lived with his sister and her husband, Howlin' Wolf. (Later, for Checker Records, he did a parody of Howlin' Wolf entitled "Like Wolf.")

Sonny Boy started his own KWEM radio show from 1948 to 1950 selling the elixir, Hadacol.

Sonny Boy also brought his King Biscuit musician friends to West Memphis, Elmore James, Houston Stackhouse, Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, Robert Nighthawk and others to perform on KWEM Radio.

Williamson's first recording session took place in 1951 for Lillian McMurry of Jackson, Mississippi's Trumpet Records, three years after the death of John Lee Williamson, which for the first time allowed some legitimacy to Miller's carefully worded claim to being "the one and only Sonny Boy Williamson."

McMurry later erected Williamson's headstone, near Tutwiler, Mississippi, in 1977.

When Trumpet went bankrupt in 1955, Sonny Boy's recording contract was yielded to its creditors, who sold it to Chess Records in Chicago, Illinois. Sonny Boy had begun developing a following in Chicago beginning in 1953, when he appeared there as a member of Elmore James's band.

It was during his Chess years that he enjoyed his greatest success and acclaim, recording about 70 songs for Chess subsidiary Checker Records from 1955 to 1964. Sonny Boy's first LP record — Down and Out Blues — was released by Checker Records in 1959.

In the early 1960s, he toured Europe several times during the height of the British blues craze, recording with The Yardbirds and The Animals. He also appeared on several TV broadcasts throughout Europe. During this time Sonny was quoted as saying, "those British boys want to play the blues real bad, and they do."

According to the Led Zeppelin biography, Hammer of the Gods, while in England Sonny Boy set his hotel room on fire while trying to cook a rabbit in a coffee percolator. The book also maintains that future Led Zeppelin vocalist, Robert Plant, purloined one of the bluesman's harmonicas at one of these shows as well.

Robert Palmer's "Deep Blues" mentions that during this tour he allegedly stabbed a man during a street fight and left the country abruptly.

Sonny Boy took a liking to the European fans, and while there had a custom-made, two-tone suit tailored personally for him, along with a bowler hat, matching umbrella and an attaché case for his harmonicas. William resumed playing the King Biscuit Time show on KFFA, and performed in the Helena, Arkansas area.

As fellow musicians Houston Stackhouse and Peck Curtis waited at the KFFA studios for Williamson on May 25, 1965, the 12:15 broadcast time was closing in and Sonny Boy was nowhere in sight.

Peck left the radio station to locate Williamson, and discovered his body in bed at the rooming house where he had been staying, dead of an apparent heart attack suffered in his sleep the night before.

Here, Williamson performs “Bye Bye Bird” in Europe

Rodeo Jam, circa 1950s

Photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson

Freddy Cannon is 85 years old today

Freddy Cannon poses with Dick Clark during one of Freddy's 110 appearances on "American Bandstand" in the 1960s

Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Frederick Anthony Picariello Jr. — better known as Freddy Cannon — is 85 years old today.

Cannon is a rock and roll singer, whose biggest international hits included "Tallahassee Lassie," "Way Down Yonder In New Orleans" and "Palisades Park."

Freddy Picariello was born in Swampscott, Massachusetts, moving to the neighboring town of Lynn as a child. His father worked as a truck driver and also played trumpet and sang in local bands.

Freddy grew up listening to the rhythm and blues music of Big Joe Turner, Buddy Johnson and others on the radio. He learned to play guitar.

After attending Lynn Vocation High School, he made his recording debut in 1955, singing and playing rhythm guitar on a single, "Cha-Cha-Do" by the Spindrifts, which became a local hit.

He also played lead guitar on a session for an R&B vocal group, The G-Clefs, whose record "Ka-Ding Dong" made #24 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1956.

At a young age, he joined the National Guard, took a job driving a truck, married and became a father. Inspired musically by Chuck Berry and Little Richard, he formed his own group, Freddy Karmon & the Hurricanes, which became increasingly popular in the Boston area, and began to develop a trademark strained singing style.

He also became a regular on a local TV dance show, Boston Ballroom, and, in 1958, signed up to a management contract with Boston disc jockey, Jack McDermott.

With lyrics written by his mother, he prepared a new song which he called "Rock and Roll Baby," and produced a demo which McDermott took to the writing and production team of Bob Crewe and Frank Slay. They rearranged the song and rewrote the lyrics, and offered to produce a recording in return for two-thirds of the composing credits.

The first recording of the song, now titled "Tallahassee Lassie," with a guitar solo by session musician Kenny Paulson, was rejected by several record companies. But was then heard by TV presenter Dick Clark, who part-owned Swan Records in Philadelphia.

Clark suggested that the song be re-edited and overdubbed to add excitement, by highlighting the pounding bass drum sound and adding hand claps and Freddy's cries of "whoo!," which later became one of his trademarks. The single was finally released by Swan Records, with the company president, Bernie Binnick, suggesting Freddy's new stage name, Freddy Cannon.

After being promoted and becoming successful in Boston and Philadelphia, the single gradually received national airplay. In 1959, it peaked at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the first of his 22 songs to appear on the Billboard chart. It also reached #13 on the R&B singles chart.

Cannon stayed on the Swan label with producer Frank Slay for the next five years, and became known as Freddy "Boom Boom" Cannon, for the thumping power of his recordings. Dick Clark brought him national exposure through his numerous appearances on his television program, American Bandstand — a record of 110 appearances in total.

"Freddy Cannon was a true believer, a rocker to the bone. Freddy made rock and roll records; great noisy rock and roll records, and all of them were infused with a gigantic drum beat that was an automatic invitation to shake it on down anyplace there was a spot to dance," said Cub Koda, a music writer.

His second single, "Okefenokee" (credited to Freddie Cannon, as were several of his other records), only reached #43 on the charts, but the next record, "Way Down Yonder In New Orleans," a rocked-up version of a 1922 song, became a gold record and reached #3 in the pop charts in both the U.S. and the UK, where it was the biggest of his hits.

In March, 1960, his album, The Explosive Freddy Cannon, became the first album by a rock and roll singer to top the UK Albums Chart.

For the next two years, until early 1962, he continued to have lesser chart hits in the U.S., in some cases with versions of old standards including "Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy" and Edward "Kid" Ory's "Muskrat Ramble."

His hits also included "Twistin' All Night Long," recorded with Danny and the Juniors and also featuring Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons on backing vocals.

However, one of his biggest hits came in May, 1962 with "Palisades Park," written by future TV Gong Show host, Chuck Barris.

Produced by Slay with overdubbed rollercoaster sound effects, it reached #3 on the Hot 100, #15 on the R&B chart, and #20 in the UK.

Cannon also appeared with Bobby Vee, Johnny Tillotson and others, in the movie Just for Fun, made in the UK in 1962. Although his popularity in the U.S. faded, he remained a popular touring act in Britain and elsewhere in the world for some years.

A resident of Tarzana, California, Cannon continues to put on performances at assorted concert venues. He has complete control and ownership of his Swan and Warner Bros. masters.

Here, Cannon performs “Palisades Park”

Freddy Cannon

Dennis Wilson, a founding member of The Beach Boys, was born 77 years ago today

Dennis Wilson, a founding member of The Beach Boys, was born 77 years ago today.

A drummer, singer and songwriter, Wilson founded the group with his brothers, Brian and Carl, and cousin, Mike Love. He was a member of the band from its formation until his death in 1983, recording twenty-four studio albums.

In 1977, he released a solo album, Pacific Ocean Blue, to widespread critical acclaim.

Born in Inglewood, California, Dennis was the middle brother of fellow Beach Boys members Brian Wilson and Carl Wilson. His prominence in the group as a writer and lead vocalist increased as their careers went on into the late 1960s and 1970s.

Wilson was the son of Audree Neva and Murry Gage Wilson. He spent his family years with his brothers and parents in Hawthorne, California. Dennis' role in the family dynamic, which he himself acknowledged, was that of the black sheep. Though anxiety-filled and aggressive at times, he was also sensitive and generous.

Possessed with an abundance of physical energy and a combative nature, Dennis often refused to participate in family singalongs, and likewise avoided vocalizing on the early recordings made by Brian on a portable tape recorder.

However, Dennis would sing with his brothers late at night in their shared bedroom on a song Brian later recalled as "our special one we'd sing," titled "Come Down, Come Down from the Ivory Tower."

Brian noted of the late night brotherly three-part harmonies: "We developed a little blend which aided us when we started to get into the Beach Boys stuff."

Dennis' mother, Audree, forced Brian to include Dennis in the original lineup of the Beach Boys. Urged by older cousin, Mike Love, Dennis had approached Brian to form a group and compose a song about surfing.

The Beach Boys formed in August, 1961 and were successful immediately (Murry having taken over guidance of the group as manager). Though the Beach Boys were named for, and developed, an image based on the California surfing culture, Dennis was the only actual surfer in the band.

In 1968, Dennis Wilson was driving through Malibu when he noticed two female hitchhikers, Patricia Krenwinkel and Ella Jo Bailey. He picked them up and dropped them off at their destination. Later on Wilson noticed the same two girls hitchhiking again. This time he took them to his home at 14400 Sunset Boulevard near Will Rogers Park. Wilson then went to a recording session.

When he returned at around 3 a.m., he was met in his driveway by a stranger, Charles Manson. When Wilson walked into his home, about a dozen people were occupying the premises, most of them female.

Wilson became fascinated by Manson and his followers. The "Manson Family" lived with Wilson for a period of time afterwards at his expense. Initially impressed by Manson's songwriting talent, Wilson introduced him to a few friends in the music business, including Terry Melcher (the son of Doris Day), whose home at 10050 Cielo Drive would later be rented by director Roman Polanski and his wife, actress Sharon Tate.

Manson family members would later murder Tate and several others at the home. Manson held recording sessions at the home studio of Dennis' brother, Brian Wilson. Those recordings, if they exist, have never been released.

The Beach Boys released a Manson song, originally titled "Cease To Exist," but reworked as "Never Learn Not To Love," as a single B-side and on the album 20/20.

As Dennis Wilson became increasingly aware of Manson's volatile nature and growing tendency to violence, he finally made a break from the friendship by simply moving out of the house and leaving Manson there.

When Manson subsequently sought further contact (and money), he left a bullet with Wilson's housekeeper to be delivered with a cryptic message, which Wilson perceived as a threat.

In August, 1969, Manson Family members perpetrated the Tate/LaBianca murders. Wilson rarely discussed his involvement with the Manson Family, and usually became upset when the subject was broached.

Succeeding years saw Wilson battling alcohol abuse. Smoking had taken a toll on his voice, although the resultant gravelly effect helped define him as a singer.

On December 28, 1983, shortly after his 39th birthday, Wilson drowned at Marina Del Rey, after drinking all day and diving in the afternoon to recover items he had thrown overboard at the marina from his yacht three years prior.

Dennis Wilson's body was buried at sea off the California coast (coordinates 33° 53.9 N, 118° 38.8 W) by the U.S. Coast Guard on January 4, 1984. His song "Farewell My Friend" was played at the funeral.

As non-veterans of the Coast Guard and Navy are not allowed to be buried at sea unless cremated, Dennis' burial was possible due to the intervention of then-President Reagan.

Here, Dennis Wilson with the Beach Boys performs “Forever” in 1971

Chris Hillman is 77 years old today

Chris Hillman is 77 years old today.

Hillman was one of the original members of The Byrds, which in 1965 included Roger McGuinn, Gene Clark, David Crosby and Michael Clarke.

With frequent collaborator Gram Parsons, Hillman was a key figure in the development of country rock, defining the genre through his work with The Byrds, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Manassas and the country-rock group, Desert Rose Band.

Hillman has continued to write, perform and tour, with dates in 2017 with Herb Pedersen and John Jorgenson. He has released his latest album, Bidin' my time (2017), co-produced with Tom Petty, featuring guests including Roger McGuinn, David Crosby and members of The Heartbreakers.

This has been describe as "a kind of summing up of Hillman's long and varied career, incorporating the folk, bluegrass, country and rock styles he's touched on over the years."

Hillman and Herb Pedersen perform “Turn, Turn, Turn” at WAMU

Cassandra Wilson is 66 years old today

Cassandra Wilson is 66 years old today.

Wilson is a jazz musician, vocalist, songwriter and producer from Jackson, Mississippi. She is "a singer blessed with an unmistakable timbre and attack who has expanded the playing field" by incorporating blues, country and folk music into her work, wrote Gary Giddins, the music critic.

Wilson is the third and youngest child of Herman Fowlkes, Jr., a guitarist, bassist and music teacher, and Mary McDaniel, an elementary school teacher who earned her PhD in education. Her ancestry includes Fon, Yoruba, Irish and Welsh. Between her mother’s love for Motown and her father’s dedication to jazz, Wilson’s parents sparked her early interest in music.

For college, Wilson attended Millsaps College and Jackson State University. She graduated with a degree in mass communications. Outside of the classroom, she spent her nights working with R&B, funk and pop cover bands, also singing in local coffeehouses.

In New York, Wilson's focus turned towards improvisation. Heavily influenced by singers Abbey Lincoln and Betty Carter, she fine-tuned her vocal phrasing and scat while studying ear training with trombonist Grachan Moncur, III.

Frequenting jam sessions under the tutelage of pianist, Sadik Hakim, a Charlie Parker alumnus, she met alto saxophonist, Steve Coleman, who encouraged her to look beyond the standard jazz repertoire in favor of developing original material.

She would become the vocalist and one of the founding members of the M-Base collective in which Coleman was the leading figure, a stylistic outgrowth of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and Black Artists Group (BAG) that re-imagined the grooves of funk and soul within the context of traditional and avant-garde jazz.

Miles Davis was one of Wilson's greatest influences. In 1989, Wilson performed as the opening act for Davis at the JVC Jazz Festival in Chicago.

Here, Wilson performs “No More Blues” at WSJ Cafe

Rainer Maria Rilke, poet, was born 146 years ago today

Rainer Maria Rilke, poet, was born 146 years ago today.

A Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist, Rilke is one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets, writing in both verse and highly lyrical prose. Several critics have described his work as inherently "mystical."

Rilke’s writings include one novel, several collections of poetry and several volumes of correspondence in which he invokes haunting images that focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude and profound anxiety. These deeply existential themes tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist writers.

Rilke was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, travelled extensively throughout Europe, including Russia, Spain, Germany, France and Italy. In his later years, settled in Switzerland. These settings were key to the genesis and inspiration for many of his poems.

While Rilke is most known for his contributions to German literature, over 400 poems were originally written in French and dedicated to the canton of Valais in Switzerland.

In the later 20th century, his work has found new audiences through its use by New Age theologians and self-help authors, and through frequent quoting in television programs, books and motion pictures. In the United States, Rilke remains among the more popular, best-selling poets.

In the summer of 1902, Rilke left home and travelled to Paris to write a monograph on the sculptor, Auguste Rodin. Before long his wife left their daughter with her parents and joined Rilke there. The relationship between Rilke and Clara Westhoff continued for the rest of his life.

A mutually agreed-upon effort at divorce was bureaucratically hindered by Rilke's "official" status as a Catholic, though a non-practicing one.

Rilke became deeply involved in the sculpture of Rodin, and then with the work of Paul Cézanne. For a time, he acted as Rodin's secretary, also lecturing and writing a long essay on Rodin and his work.

Rodin taught him the value of objective observation, and under this influence, Rilke dramatically transformed his poetic style from the subjective and sometimes incantatory language of his earlier work into something quite new in European literature.

In the United States, Rilke is one of the more popular, best-selling poets — along with 13th-century Sufi mystic, Rumi (1207–1273), and 20th-century Lebanese-American poet, Khalil Gibran (1883–1931).

In 1929, a minor writer, Franz Xaver Kappus (1883–1966), published a collection of ten letters that Rilke had written to him when he was a 19-year-old officer cadet studying at the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt.

The young Kappus wrote to Rilke, who had also attended the academy, between 1902 and 1908 when he was uncertain about his future career as a military officer or as a poet. Initially, he sought Rilke's advice as to the quality of his poetry, and whether he ought to pursue writing as a career.

While he declined to comment on Kappus's writings, Rilke advised Kappus on how a poet should feel, love and seek truth in trying to understand and experience the world around him and engage the world of art.

These letters offer insight into the ideas and themes that appear in Rilke's poetry and his working process. Further, these letters were written during a key period of Rilke's early artistic development after his reputation as a poet began to be established with the publication of parts of Das Stunden-Buch (The Book of Hours) and Das Buch der Bilder (The Book of Images).

In 1926, Rilke was diagnosed as having leukemia. He died at the age of 51 in the arms of his doctor on December 29, 1926 in the Valmont Sanatorium in Switzerland.

Southside Johnny is 73 years old today

Photo by Daniel Gonzalez

Southside Johnny is 73 years old today.

Born John Lyon in Neptune Township, New Jersey, Southside Johnny is a singer-songwriter, who usually fronts his band, Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes.

Southside Johnny has long been considered the grandfather of "the New Jersey Sound." Jon Bon Jovi has acknowledged him as his "reason for singing."

Lyon grew up in Ocean Grove, New Jersey and graduated from Neptune High School with Garry Tallent and Vini Lopez, two future musical cohorts of his, in 1967.

Southside Johnny first achieved prominence in the mid-1970s as the second act to emerge from the Jersey Shore music scene and be considered part of the Jersey Shore sound, following Bruce Springsteen.

Southside's first three albums, I Don't Want To Go Home (1976), This Time It's for Real (1977) and Hearts of Stone (1978), were Stax-influenced R&B, arranged and produced by the co-founder of the band and Springsteen confederate Steven Van Zandt, and largely featured songs written by Van Zandt and/or Springsteen.

The Van Zandt-written, "I Don't Want To Go Home," became Southside's signature song, an evocative mixture of horn-based melodic riffs and sentimental lyrics. Other notable songs included "The Fever," "Talk to Me," "This Time It's For Real," "Love on the Wrong Side of Town" and a cover of Springsteen's, "Hearts of Stone."

In 1977, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes were featured as a bar band in the movie, Between the Lines. In 1979, the band appeared on the Canadian sketch comedy television show SCTV, featured as a "wedding band." Johnny and the band played three full songs, including "The Fever," and performed many truncated versions of their other tunes.

Also in 1979, the band performed a homecoming concert in Asbury Park which was the subject of a documentary film directed and produced by Neal Marshad. It’s called Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes at the Asbury Park Convention Center.

Cast under Springsteen's long shadow, the group never gained national commercial success and in 1979 they were dropped by their record company. Now working without Van Zandt, they released The Jukes in 1979 and Love is a Sacrifice in 1980. Neither of these achieved much success either.

The band's first official live release also came out in 1980, the double live album Reach Up and Touch the Sky.

In 1983, Southside Johnny served as a technical advisor on the film, Eddie and the Cruisers. His recording career was re-launched with the album, Better Days (1991), which featured production by Van Zandt, songs by Springsteen and vocal performances from Van Zandt, Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi.

With Bobby Bandiera driving the band, the Jukes were gaining new energy for a world wide tour supporting the album. But once again, Southside Johnny's bad luck with the industry was shown when the record label went bankrupt while the tour was still rolling. Lyon eventually relocated to Nashville, taking a break from the music business.

A few members of the Asbury Jukes would end up being part of The Max Weinberg 7 on the Late Night with Conan O'Brien television show, while some others went on tour and into the recording studio with artists such as Jon Bon Jovi, Mink DeVille, Graham Parker and Robert Cray.

Since 2001, Southside Johnny and the Jukes have toured the UK and Europe as an annual event, their first since the 1992 Better Days tour, although Southside and Bobby Bandiera did some acoustic shows in 1995.

As of 2009, Lyon lives again in his original hometown Ocean Grove. The Jukes' album, Pills and Ammo, was released in June, 2010, receiving the most critical acclaim since Better Days. The songs were primarily written by the band’s keyboard player, Jeff Kazee.

The band’s most recent album, Soultime!, was released in September, 2015. In 2017, the band appeared as themselves in the "Sic Transit Imperium" episode of the Showtime TV series "Billions," performing "I Don't Want to Go Home" and "Looking for a Good Time."

Here, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes perform Live at Alabama Hall

An impromptu jam session by four young rock-and-roll giants — Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis — took place on this day in 1956 — 65 years ago. It became the Million Dollar Quartet

The modest storefront recording studio at 760 Union Avenue in Memphis played an outsize role in rock-and-roll history. And of the many historic moments that occurred there, none is more famous than the impromptu jam session by four young rock-and-roll giants that took place on this day in 1956 — 65 years ago.

The session enshrined in rock-and-roll legend as the one-and-only gathering of the "Million Dollar Quartet."

The studio at 760 Union was run by Sam Phillips, the legendary producer whose Sun Records had launched Elvis Presley on his path toward stardom two years earlier with the release of his first single, "It's Alright Mama" (1954).

Phillips' decision to sell Presley's contract to RCA Victor in 1955 for only $35,000 is easy to question in retrospect, but it provided Sun Records with the operating capital it needed in order to record and promote the parade of future stars who had descended on Memphis hoping to follow in Elvis' footsteps.

Among those stars was Carl Perkins, the rockabilly legend who was in the studio on December 4, 1956, to record a follow-up to his smash hit from earlier that year, "Blue Suede Shoes."

Hanging out in the booth was Perkins' good friend Johnny Cash, already a star in his own right after his breakthrough hits, "Folsom Prison Blues" (1955) and "I Walk The Line" (1956).

And playing piano for a $15 session fee was the brash, wild, but not-yet-famous Jerry Lee Lewis, whose career-making Sun single, "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On," was set for release just a few weeks later.

Four songs into Perkins' session, all work came to an end with the arrival of an unexpected drop-in guest: Elvis Presley himself.

While recording engineer Jack Clement ran a tape that would not be discovered for more than 20 years, Sam Phillips — ever the promoter — had the presence of mind to summon a photographer from the local paper to capture images of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins gathered around a piano singing the kind of music they'd all grown up on, gospel.

The caption under the photo that ran in the next day's Memphis Press-Scimitar was "Million Dollar Quartet."

The label quickly caught on among rock-and-roll fans who would not actually get the chance to hear the recording made on this day in 1956 until 1981, when the first portions of the lost tapes were discovered and released.

Here, audio from the Million Dollar quartet

Thanks History.com

Sam Phillips with Elvis Presley at Sun Records, Memphis

Amy Helm is 51 years old today

Amy Helm, Beacon Theatre, 2007

Photo by Frank Beacham

Amy Helm is 51 years old today.

A singer-songwriter and daughter of drummer, Levon Helm, and singer, Libby Titus, Helm is a past and current member of the Levon Helm Band, the Dirt Farmer Band, the Midnight Ramble Band, Ollabelle, as well as her own touring band, Amy Helm & The Handsome Strangers.

Here Helm performs “Rescue Me” with her band, The Handsome Strangers, at Telluride in 2014

David "Honeyboy" Edwards, B.B. Kings, New York City, 2005

Photo by Frank Beacham

Jean-Luc Godard, French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic, is 91 years old today

Jean-Luc Godard, French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic, is 91 years old today.

Godard is often identified with the 1960s French film movement La Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave.” Like his New Wave contemporaries, Godard criticized mainstream French cinema's "Tradition of Quality," which "emphasized craft over innovation, privileged established directors over new directors and preferred the great works of the past to experimentation."

To challenge this tradition, he and like-minded critics started to make their own films. Many of Godard's films challenge the conventions of traditional Hollywood in addition to French cinema. He is often considered the most radical French filmmaker of the 1960s and 1970s.

Several of his films expressed his political views. His films also expressed his knowledge of film history through their references to earlier films. In addition, Godard's films often cite existentialism, as he was an avid reader of existential and Marxist philosophy.

His radical approach in film conventions, politics and philosophies made him an influential filmmaker of the French New Wave. Since the New Wave, his politics have been much less radical and his recent films are about representation and human conflict from a humanist.

In a 2002 Sight & Sound poll, Godard was ranked third in the critics' Top 10 directors of all time (which was put together by assembling the directors of the individual films for which the critics voted). He is said to have "created one of the largest bodies of critical analysis of any filmmaker since the mid-twentieth century."

Godard and his work have been central to narrative theory and have "challenged both commercial narrative cinema norms and film criticism's vocabulary.”

In 2010, Godard was awarded an Academy Honorary Award, but did not attend the award ceremony.

Godard's films have inspired many directors including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, D. A. Pennebaker, Robert Altman, Jim Jarmusch, Wong Kar-wai, Wim Wenders, Bernardo Bertolucci and Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Eleven people, including three high-school students, were killed on this day in 1979 — 42 years ago — when a crowd of general-admission ticket-holders to a Who concert in Cincinnati surged forward to secure better seats

The general-admission ticketing policy for rock concerts at Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum in the 1970s was known as "festival seating." That term and ticketing policy would become infamous in the wake of one of the deadliest rock-concert incidents in history.

Eleven people, including three high-school students, were killed on this day in 1979 — 42 years ago — when a crowd of general-admission ticket-holders to a Who concert in Cincinnati surged forward in an attempt to enter Riverfront Coliseum and secure prime unreserved seats inside.

Festival seating had already been eliminated at many similar venues in the United States by 1979, yet the system remained in place at Riverfront Coliseum despite a dangerous incident at a Led Zeppelin show two years earlier. That day, 60 would-be concertgoers were arrested, and dozens more injured, when the crowd outside the venue surged up against the Coliseum's locked glass doors.

In the early evening hours of December 3, 1979, those same doors stood locked before a restless and growing crowd of fans of The Who. That evening's concert was scheduled to begin at 8:00 pm, but ticket-holders had begun to gather outside the Coliseum shortly after noon, and by 3:00 pm, police had been called in to maintain order as the crowd swelled into the thousands.

By 7:00 pm, an estimated 8,000 ticket-holders were jostling for position in a plaza at the Coliseum's west gate, and the crowd began to press forward. When a police lieutenant on the scene tried to convince the show's promoters to open the locked glass doors at the west gate entrance, he was told that there were not enough ticket-takers on duty inside, and that union rules prevented them from recruiting ushers to perform that duty.

At approximately 7:20 p.m., the crowd surged forward powerfully as one set of glass doors shattered and the others were thrown open. With Coliseum security nowhere in sight, the police on hand were aware almost immediately that the situation had the potential for disaster, yet they were physically unable to slow the stream of people flowing through the plaza for at least the next 15 minutes.

At approximately 7:45 p.m., they began to work their way into the crowd, where they found the first of what would eventually turn out to be eleven concert-goers lying on the ground, dead from asphyxiation.

Afraid of how the crowd might react to a cancellation, Cincinnati fire officials instructed the promoters to go on with the show, and the members of The Who were not told what had happened until after completing their final encore hours later.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, the City of Cincinnati banned festival seating at its concert venues. That ban was overturned, however, 24 years later, and improved crowd-control procedures have thus far prevented a re-occurrence of any such incident.

Thanks History.com

Ferlin Husky was born 96 years ago today

Ferlin Husky and Patsy Cline, Nashville, circa 1960

Ferlin Husky was born 96 years ago today.

Husky was an early country music singer who was equally adept at the genres of traditional honky-tonk, ballads, spoken recitations and rockabilly pop tunes.

He had two dozen Top 20 hits in the Billboard country charts between 1953 and 1975. His versatility and matinee-idol looks propelled a seven-decade entertainment career.

In the 1950s and 60s, Husky's hits included "Gone" and "Wings of a Dove," each reaching #1 on the country charts. He also created a comic outspoken hayseed character, Simon Crum. He recorded under the stage name, Terry Preston, from 1948 to 1953.

Born in Cantwell, a community of east Desloge, Missouri, Husky’s mother named him Furland, but his name was misspelled on his birth certificate. Husky grew up on a farm near Flat River and attended school in Irondale. He learned guitar from an uncle.

After dropping out of high school, Husky moved to St. Louis, where he worked as a truck driver and steel mill worker while performing in honky-tonks at night. During World War II, Husky served in the United States Merchant Marine for five years, entertaining troops on transport ships.

His Crum character evolved from stories he told at the time about a Missouri neighbor named, Simon Crump. His website states that his ship participated in the D-Day invasion of Cherbourg. After the war, Husky continued to develop the Crum character, while working as a disc jockey in Missouri and then Bakersfield, California in the late 1940s.

He began using the moniker, Terry Preston, at the suggestion of Smiley Burnette, who claimed Ferlin Husky would never work on a marquee. As a honky-tonk singer, Husky signed with Capitol Records in 1953 under the guidance of Cliffie Stone, also the manager for Tennessee Ernie Ford.

With Capitol Records, he returned to using his given name. A few singles failed before "A Dear John Letter" with Jean Shepard became a #1 hit. The followup was called, "Forgive Me John." In 1955, Husky had a solo hit with "I Feel Better All Over (More Than Anywheres Else)"/"Little Tom."

As Simon Crum, he signed a separate contract with Capitol Records and began releasing records, the biggest of which was 1959's, "Country Music is Here to Stay" (#2 for three weeks).

In the late 1950s, Husky had a long string of hits, including the #1 "Gone" in 1957 (he first recorded "Gone" as Terry Preston in 1952, but the earlier version lacked the strings and backup singers of the newly emerging Nashville sound).

"Gone" was a crossover success, also reaching #4 on the pop music chart. It sold over a million copies. The song's popularity led to a stint as a summer replacement host in 1957 on CBS-TV's Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts. He then began an acting career, appearing on Kraft Television Theatre, and portraying himself in the 1957 film, Mr. Rock & Roll.

His website said he had bit parts in 18 films, including with Zsa Zsa Gabor and Mamie Van Doren.

Bob Ferguson's "Wings of a Dove" became his biggest hit in 1960, topping the country charts for ten weeks and attaining #12 on the pop chart. Husky was also known for his ability to mimic other popular country singers, including Tennessee Ernie Ford and Kitty Wells.

Husky suffered from cardiopathy for many years and was hospitalized several times since the late 1970s, including for heart surgery in 2005 and blood clots in his legs in 2007. He was admitted to St. John's Hospital in Springfield, Missouri on April 19, 2009 with congestive heart failure and pneumonia.

On February 23, 2010, the Country Music Association announced his induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. He was heralded for his vocal and comic prowess — and "all around showmanship" — that left a legacy as "one of the best entertainers country music has ever produced."

On March 17, 2011, Husky died at his daughter's home in Westmoreland, Tennessee of congestive heart failure.

Husky was one of the first country singers to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (for recording) at 6675 Hollywood Blvd.

Here, Husky performs “Wings of a Dove” on the Grand Ole Opry

Joseph Conrad, Polish-British writer, was born 164 years ago today

Joseph Conrad, Polish-British writer, was born 164 years ago today.

Conrad was regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. His stories and novels, many with a nautical setting, depict trials of the human spirit in the midst of an impassive, inscrutable universe.

Conrad is considered an early modernist, though his works still contain elements of 19th century realism. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced many authors, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, André Malraux, George Orwell, Graham Greene, Gabriel García Márquez, John le Carré, V. S. Naipaul, Philip Roth, J. M. Coetzee and Salman Rushdie.

Many films have been adapted from, or inspired by, Conrad's works.

Writing in the heyday of the British Empire, Conrad drew on, among other things, his native Poland's national experiences, and his personal experiences in the French and British merchant navies, to create short stories and novels that reflect aspects of a European-dominated world – including imperialism and colonialism – while profoundly exploring the human psyche.

In 1878, when Conrad was 21, he traveled to England as a deck hand on a British freighter. He learned English during six voyages on a small British trade boat and spent 16 years with the British merchant navy. He had numerous adventures around the world, became a British subject in 1886, and got his first command in 1888.

The following year, he commanded a Congo River steamboat for four months, which set the stage for his well-known story, Heart of Darkness (1902).

Conrad began writing in the late 1890s. His first novel, Almayer’s Folly, was published in 1895. The following year, he married an English girl and gave up the sea to write full time.

His work evolved from hearty sea-adventure tales to sophisticated and pessimistic explorations of morals, personal choices and character. His best-known works, including Lord Jim, Nostromo and The Secret Agent, were published between 1900 and 1911, and brought him financial security.

Conrad died of a heart attack at the age of 66 in 1924.

Above photo of Conrad in 1904 by George Charles Beresford

Mickey Thomas, rock and blues singer and one of the lead vocalists of Jefferson Starship and Starship, is 71 years old today

Mickey Thomas, rock and blues singer and one of the lead vocalists of Jefferson Starship and Starship, is 71 years old today.

Thomas was inspired to pursue a career in music after traveling to Atlanta with long time childhood friends Charles Connell and Tommy Verran to see a Beatles performance in 1965. Thomas, Connell and Verran wound up in their first band together.

Verran was the lead vocalist at the time. They split up to go to different colleges, but later reformed in the early 1970s along with friend, Bud Thomas, as the Jets.

Thomas was the vocalist for the Lords of London, a garage band from Douglas, Georgia for a brief time, along with guitarist Billy Folsom, bassist Bob Hutchinson, keyboardist Billy Corbi and drummer Troy Blasingame.

While singing lead for the Jets in 1974, Thomas joined the Elvin Bishop Group as a backing vocalist and eventually made it to lead vocals. His best known achievement was singing on Elvin Bishop's chart hit, "Fooled Around and Fell in Love," a #3 single in 1976.

In April, 1979, Thomas was asked to join Jefferson Starship after the departure of Marty Balin and Grace Slick. In 1981, he recorded his second solo album, Alive Alone. Former Elvin Bishop Group drummer Donny Baldwin became drummer for Jefferson Starship two years later when Aynsley Dunbar left.

Thomas spent most of the early eighties as the main vocalist of Jefferson Starship, performing several duets with Slick (who rejoined in 1981) and gaining greater influence in the band.

After Paul Kantner left in 1984, Thomas was leader of the band. From 1985-1989 the newly dubbed “Starship” scored some of their biggest hits. When Grace Slick left again in 1988, Thomas sang all lead vocals.

But their fortunes as pop music artists soon ran out. A tour was cancelled after Donny Baldwin allegedly attacked Thomas in a bar. The damage was such that it required facial reconstruction surgery. Baldwin chose to resign after the incident.

The original incarnation of Starship disbanded in 1991. In 1992, Paul Kantner reformed Jefferson Starship without Thomas, and Thomas formed a new touring band called Starship featuring Mickey Thomas. Touring has continued with this title.

Here, Thomas and the Starship performs “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” in 2011

Ozzy Osbourne is 73 years old today

Ozzy Osbourne is 73 years old today.

An English rock vocalist, songwriter and television personality, Osbourne rose to prominence in the early 1970s as the lead vocalist of the pioneering English band Black Sabbath, whose dark and heavy sound has often been cited as key to the development of the heavy metal genre.

Osbourne left Black Sabbath in 1979 and has since had a successful solo career, releasing 11 studio albums, the first seven of which were all awarded multi-platinum certifications in the U.S. He has reunited with Black Sabbath on several occasions, most recently in 2011 to record the album 13, which was released in 2013.

Osbourne's longevity and success have earned him the informal title of "Godfather of Heavy Metal." His total album sales from his years in Black Sabbath combined with his solo work is over 100 million.

In the early 2000s, Osbourne became a television personality, appearing as himself in the MTV reality program, The Osbournes, alongside wife/manager, Sharon, and two of their three children, Kelly and Jack.

Here, Osbourne performs “Dreamer"

On this day in 1947 — 74 years ago today — Marlon Brando's famous cry of "STELLA!" first boomed across a Broadway stage, during the first-ever performance of Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire

Marlon Brando confers with Elia Kazan, the director, on his work in the Tennessee Williams' play, Streetcar Named Desire

On this day in 1947 — 74 years ago today — Marlon Brando's famous cry of "STELLA!" first boomed across a Broadway stage, electrifying the audience at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre during the first-ever performance of Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire.

The 23-year-old Brando played the rough, working-class Polish-American Stanley Kowalski, whose violent clash with Blanche DuBois (played on Broadway by Jessica Tandy), a Southern belle with a dark past, is at the center of Williams' famous drama.

Blanche comes to stay with her sister, Stella (Kim Hunter), Stanley's wife, at their home in the French Quarter of New Orleans. She and Stanley immediately despise each other.

In the climactic scene, Stanley rapes Blanche, causing her to lose her fragile grip on sanity. The play ends with her being led away in a straitjacket. 

Streetcar, produced by Irene Mayer Selznick and directed by Elia Kazan, shocked mid-century audiences with its frank depiction of sexuality and brutality onstage. When the curtain went down on opening night, there was a moment of stunned silence before the crowd erupted into a round of applause that lasted 30 minutes.

On December 17, the cast left New York to go on the road. The show would run for more than 800 performances, turning the charismatic Brando into an overnight star.

Tandy won a Tony Award for her performance and Williams was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. 

In 1951, Kazan made “Streetcar” into a movie. Brando, Hunter and Karl Malden (as Stanley's friend and Blanche's love interest) reprised their roles. The role of Blanche went to Vivien Leigh, the scenery-chewing star of Gone with the Wind.

Controversy flared when the Catholic Legion of Decency threatened to condemn the film unless the explicitly sexual scenes — including the climactic rape — were removed.

When Williams, who wrote the screenplay, refused to take out the rape, the Legion insisted that Stanley be punished onscreen. As a result, the movie (but not the play) ends with Stella leaving Stanley.

A Streetcar Named Desire earned 12 Oscar nominations, including acting nods for each of its four leads. The movie won for Best Art Direction. Leigh, Hunter and Malden all took home awards. Brando lost to Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen. 

Thanks History.com

Here is clip from the film

Violinist Joe Deninzon is 47 years old today

Violinist Joe Deninzon is 47 years old today.

Deninzon has been hailed by critics as “The Jimi Hendrix of the Violin,” because of his innovative style on electric seven-string violin. He has worked with Sheryl Crow, Bruce Springsteen, Phoebe Snow, Everclear, Ritchie Blackmore,, Smokey Robinson, Aretha Franklin, Robert Bonfiglio, Les Paul, and as a soloist with the NY City Ballet and Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Deninzon is the lead singer and violinist for the progressive rock band, Stratospheerius, which has released five CD’s. He can be heard on over a hundred CD’s and jingles as a violinist and string arranger.

He’s a BMI Jazz Composer’s grant recipient and winner of the John Lennon Songwriting Contes. In 2015, Deninzon premiered his “Concerto for Seven String Electric Violin and Orchestra” with the Muncie Symphony Orchestra.

He is also a member of the Sweet Plantain String Quartet, which combines Latin Jazz with hip-hop and Classical music, and has toured throughout Europe and the U.S. Joe has also released a CD with his Acoustic Jazz Trio, titled “Exuberance.”

Denizon holds Bachelor’s degrees in Violin Performance and Jazz Violin from Indiana University and a Master’s in Jazz/Commercial violin from Manhattan School of Music.

Here is Denizon with Stratopheerius

Painter of the Pont des Arts , circa 1940s

Photo by Robert Doisneau

Georges-Pierre Seurat, French Post-Impressionist painter and draftsman, was born 162 years ago today

Georges-Pierre Seurat, French Post-Impressionist painter and draftsman, was born 162 years ago today.

Seurat is noted for his innovative use of drawing media and for devising the painting techniques known as chromoluminarism and pointillism. His large-scale work, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884–1886), altered the direction of modern art by initiating neo-impressionism.

Seurat is one of the icons of late 19th century painting.

Born in Paris, Seurat’s father, Antoine Chrysostome Seurat, originally from Champagne, was a former legal official who had become wealthy from speculating in property, and his mother, Ernestine Faivre, was from Paris.

Seurat first studied art at the Ecole Municipale de Sculpture et Dessin, near his family's home in the boulevard Magenta, which was run by the sculptor Justin Lequien. In 1878, he moved on to the École des Beaux-Arts where he was taught by Henri Lehmann, and followed a conventional academic training, drawing from casts of antique sculpture and copying drawings by old masters.

Seurat's studies resulted in a well-considered and fertile theory of contrasts — a theory to which all his work was thereafter subjected. His formal artistic education came to an end in November, 1879, when he left the École des Beaux-Arts for a year of military service.

After a year at the Brest Military Academy, he returned to Paris where he shared a studio with his friend Aman-Jean, while also renting a small apartment at 16 rue de Chabrol. For the next two years, he worked at mastering the art of monochrome drawing.

His first exhibited work, shown at the Salon, of 1883, was a Conté crayon drawing of Aman-Jean. He also studied the works of Delacroix carefully, making notes on his use of color.

He spent 1883 working on his first major painting — a large canvas titled Bathers at Asnières, a monumental work showing young men relaxing by the Seine in a working-class suburb of Paris.

Although influenced in its use of color and light tone by Impressionism, the painting with its smooth, simplified textures and carefully outlined, rather sculptural figures, shows the continuing impact of his neoclassical training.

In the summer of 1884, Seurat began work on A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, which took him two years to complete. The painting shows members of each of the social classes participating in various park activities. The tiny juxtaposed dots of multi-colored paint allow the viewer's eye to blend colors optically, rather than having the colors physically blended on the canvas.

It is now in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Seurat made several studies for the large painting including a smaller version, Study for A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884–1885), now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City.

The painting was the inspiration for James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim's musical, Sunday in the Park with George.

Seurat died in Paris in his parents home on March 29, 1891 at the age of 31. The cause of his death is uncertain, and has been variously attributed to a form of meningitis, pneumonia, infectious angina and diphtheria. His son died two weeks later from the same disease.

Seurat’s last ambitious work, The Circus, was left unfinished at the time of his death.

Above, Seurat in 1888

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1884–1886, at The Art Institute of Chicago

Painting by Georges Seurat

Adolph Green was born 107 years ago

Comden and Greene

Adolph Green was born 107 years ago.

Green was a lyricist and playwright who, with long-time collaborator Betty Comden, penned the screenplays and songs for some of the most beloved American movie musicals.

Green was part of Arthur Freed's production unit at MGM, during the musical genre's heyday. Many people thought the pair were married, but they were not. They shared a unique comic genius and sophisticated wit that enabled them to forge a six-decade-long partnership that produced some of Hollywood and Broadway's greatest hits.

Green was born in the Bronx to Hungarian Jewish immigrants, Helen and Daniel Green. After high school, he worked as a runner on Wall Street, while he tried to make it as an actor.

He met Comden through mutual friends in 1938 while she was studying drama at New York University. They formed a troupe called the Revuers, which performed at the Village Vanguard, a club in Greenwich Village. Among the members of the company was a young comedian named, Judy Tuvim, who later changed her name to Judy Holliday.

Green's good friend, a young musician named Leonard Bernstein, frequently accompanied them on the piano. The act's success earned them a movie offer and the Revuers traveled west in hopes of finding fame in Greenwich Village, a 1944 movie starring Carmen Miranda and Don Ameche. But their roles were so small they barely were noticed and they quickly returned to New York.

Their first Broadway effort joined them with Bernstein for On the Town, a musical romp about three sailors on leave in New York City that was an expansion of a ballet entitled Fancy Free on which Bernstein had been working with the choreographer, Jerome Robbins. Comden and Green wrote the lyrics and book, which included sizable parts for themselves.

Their next two musicals, Billion Dollar Baby (1945) and Bonanza Bound (1947), were not successful. Once again, they headed to California, where they immediately found work at MGM. They wrote the screenplay for Good News, starring June Allyson and Peter Lawford, and The Barkleys of Broadway for Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.

Then they adapted On the Town for Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly, scrapping much of Bernstein's music at the request of Arthur Freed, who did not care for the Bernstein score. They reunited with Kelly for their most successful project, the classic, Singin' in the Rain, about Hollywood in the final days of the silent film era.

Considered by many film historians to be the best movie musical of all time, it ranked #10 on the list of the 100 Best American Movies of the 20th Century, compiled by the American Film Institute in 1998. They followed this with another hit, The Band Wagon, in which the characters of Lester and Lily, a husband-and-wife team that writes the play for the show-within-a-show, were patterned after themselves.

They were Oscar-nominated twice, for their screenplays for The Band Wagon and It's Always Fair Weather, both of which earned them a Screen Writers Guild Award, as did On the Town.

Their stage work during the next few years included the revue, Two on the Aisle, starring Bert Lahr and Dolores Gray; Wonderful Town, an adaptation of the comedy hit, My Sister Eileen, with Rosalind Russell and Edie Adams as two sisters from Ohio trying to make it in the Big Apple; and Bells Are Ringing, which reunited them with Judy Holliday as an operator at a telephone answering service.

The score, including the standards, "Just in Time," "Long Before I Knew You" and "The Party’s Over," proved to be one of their richest.

In 1980, Green was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. And, in 1981, he was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.

Green died on Oct. 23, 2002 at age 87.

Here’s a classic scene with Gene Kelly from “Singin’ in the Rain”

In Charles Town, Virginia, militant abolitionist John Brown was executed on charges of treason, murder and insurrection 162 years ago today

The Last Moments of John Brown

Painting by Thomas Hovenden

The painting depicts Brown going to his execution in Charlestown, Virginia in 1859

In Charles Town, Virginia, militant abolitionist John Brown was executed on charges of treason, murder and insurrection 162 years ago today.

Brown, born in Connecticut in 1800, first became militant during the mid-1850s, when as a leader of the Free State forces in Kansas he fought pro-slavery settlers in the sharply divided U.S. territory.

Achieving only moderate success in his fight against slavery on the Kansas frontier, and committing atrocities in the process, Brown settled on a more ambitious plan in 1859.

With a group of racially mixed followers, Brown set out to Harpers Ferry in present-day West Virginia, intending to seize the Federal arsenal of weapons and retreat to the Appalachian Mountains of Maryland and Virginia, where they would establish an abolitionist republic of liberated slaves and abolitionist whites.

Their republic hoped to form a guerrilla army to fight slaveholders and ignite slave insurrections, and its population would grow exponentially with the influx of liberated and fugitive slaves.

At Harpers Ferry on October 16, Brown's well-trained unit was initially successful, capturing key points in the town. But Brown's plans began to deteriorate after his raiders stopped a Baltimore-bound train and then allowed it to pass through. News of the raid spread quickly, and militia companies from Maryland and Virginia arrived the next day, killing or capturing several raiders.

On October 18, U.S. Marines commanded by Colonel Robert E. Lee and Lieutenant J.E.B. Stuart, both of whom were destined to become famous Civil War generals, recaptured the arsenal, taking John Brown and several other raiders alive.

On November 2, Brown was sentenced to death by hanging.

On the day of his execution, 16 months before the outbreak of the Civil War, John Brown prophetically wrote, "The crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood."

"John Brown's Body" (originally known as "John Brown's Song") is an American marching song about Brown. The song arose out of the folk hymn tradition of the American camp meeting movement of the 19th century.

According to an 1890 account, the original John Brown lyrics were a collective effort by a group of Union soldiers who were referring both to the famous John Brown and also, humorously, to a Sergeant John Brown of their own battalion.

Various other authors have published additional verses and/or claimed credit for originating the John Brown lyrics.

The "flavor of coarseness, possibly of irreverence" led many of the era to feel uncomfortable with the earliest "John Brown" lyrics. This in turn led to the creation of many variant versions of the text that aspired to a higher literary quality.

The most famous of these is Julia Ward Howe's, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," which was written when a friend suggested, "Why do you not write some good words for that stirring tune?"

Here is John Brown’s Rap (It’s Going Down) by MC LaLa

On this day in 1979 — 42 years ago — Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand's “You Don't Bring Me Flowers” was at #1 on the U.S. singles chart

On this day in 1979 — 42 years ago — Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand's “You Don't Bring Me Flowers” was at #1 on the U.S. singles chart.

A radio station engineer had spliced together Neil's version with Barbra's version and got such good response, the station added it to their play list.

When Neil Diamond was told about it, he decided to re-record the song with Streisand herself, and within weeks of its release, the single went to #1 in the U.S. and #5 in the UK.

Peter Goldmark, inventor of the LP record, was born 115 years ago today

Peter Goldmark, inventor of the LP record, was born 115 years ago today.

Goldmark was a German-Hungarian engineer who, during his time with Columbia Records, was instrumental in developing the long-playing microgroove 33-1/3 rpm phonograph disc. For two generations, it became the standard for incorporating multiple or lengthy recorded works on a single disc.

The LP was introduced by Columbia's Goddard Lieberson in 1948. Lieberson was later president of Columbia Records from 1956–71 and 1973–75.

On November 22, 1977, President Jimmy Carter presented Goldmark with the National Medal of Science "for contributions to the development of the communication sciences for education, entertainment, culture and human service."

Goldmark died in an automobile accident on December 7, 1977 in Westchester County, New York.

In 1976, the first day of the photo shoot for the forthcoming Pink Floyd Animals album cover took place at Battersea Power Station in London, England with a giant inflatable pig lashed between two of the structure's tall towers

In 1976, the first day of the photo shoot for the forthcoming Pink Floyd Animals album cover took place at Battersea Power Station in London, England with a giant inflatable pig lashed between two of the structure's tall towers.

A trained marksman was hired ready to fire if the inflatable escaped, but was not needed on this, the first day.

Unfortunately, the following day the marksman hadn't been rebooked, so when the inflatable broke free from its moorings, it was able to float away, eventually landing in Kent where it was recovered by a local farmer, reportedly furious that it had “scared his cows.”

Steve Rubell, co-owner of New York’s Studio 54 night club, was born 78 years ago today

Steve Rubell with Bianca Jagger at Studio 54, 1978

Steve Rubell, co-owner of New York’s Studio 54 night club, was born 78 years ago today.

Rubell and his brother, Don, spent their childhoods with their parents in Brooklyn. His father worked for the U.S. Postal Service and later became a tennis pro. Rubell attended Wingate High School, and was also an avid tennis player, but decided against playing professionally.

Entering Syracuse University, Rubell had the intention of becoming a dentist, but failed his courses and switched majors, studying finance and history. He was reportedly not a good student but managed to complete his studies, going on to complete a Master's degree in Finance.

While attending college, Rubell met Ian Schrager, who became a lifelong friend and business partner. Rubell joined the National Guard, returning to New York after a tour of duty in a military intelligence unit. He worked at a brokerage firm after his return.

Rubell then decided to start his own business and opened two Steak Lofts restaurants: one in Queens, New York, and the other in New Haven, Connecticut. Rubell and Schrager opened two clubs, one in Boston with John Addison from La Jardin, the other, called The Enchanted Garden, in Queens in 1975, which later became Douglaston Manor.

In April, 1977, they opened Studio 54 in the old CBS television studio on West 54th Street that the network was selling. Rubell became a familiar face in front of the building, turning people down at the door and only letting in those who met his specific standards.

He also dealt with the club's celebrity patrons, ensuring that they were thrown lavish parties. His tactics worked, and the club made $7 million during its first year.

In December, 1978, Studio 54 was raided after Rubell was quoted as saying that only the Mafia made more money than the club brought in.

In June, 1979, Rubell and Schrager were charged with tax evasion, obstruction of justice and conspiracy for reportedly skimming nearly $2.5 million in unreported income from the club's receipts, in a system Rubell called "cash-in, cash-out and skim."

Police reports state that cash and receipts were in the building and were hidden in the ceiling sections of Rubell's office, where both he and Schrager worked. A second raid occurred in December, 1979.

The pair hired Roy Cohn to defend them, but on January 18, 1980, they were sentenced to three and a half years in prison and a $20,000 fine each for the tax evasion charge. On February 4, 1980, Rubell and Schrager went to prison and Studio 54 was sold in November of that year for $4.75 million.

In January, 1981, Rubell and Schrager were released from prison after handing over the names of other club owners involved in tax evasion. Once released, Rubell and Schrager purchased the Executive Hotel on Madison Ave and renamed it Morgan's.

Rubell later opened the Palladium, a large dance club famous for displaying art by Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, and considered central to the New York club scene in the 1980s. In 1998, the Palladium was demolished so that New York University dorms could be built in its place.

Mike Myers played the part of Steve Rubell in the movie, 54, much to Rubell's relatives' protest after the movie portrayed him as an overly sleazy gay man and an alcoholic junkie with mob connections. Rubell has also been the topic of an episode of Biography titled, Steve Rubell: Lord of the Disco.

In 1985, after discovering he had contracted AIDS, Rubell (who was closeted for most of his life) began taking AZT, but his illness was furthered by his continued drug usage and drinking, which affected his already compromised immune system.

Rubell died on July 25, 1989, with the official cause of death listed as hepatitis.

On December 2, 1972 — 49 years ago — the Temptations earned the last of their four chart-topping hits when "Papa Was A Rollin' Stone" reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100

On December 2, 1972 — 49 years ago — the Temptations earned the last of their four chart-topping hits when "Papa Was A Rollin' Stone" reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Over the course of their storied career, the Temptations placed 38 hit records in the Top 40 — not just more than any other Motown Records artist, but more than any American pop group ever.

Beyond their quantitative achievements, the Temptations also embodied the original Motown ideal that the records mattered more than the people who made them — for good and for ill.

Various intrigues, upsets and tragedies saw the Temptations' lineup change almost annually during their heyday, but the turmoil went largely unnoticed by the record-buying public.

Indeed, in an era when pop groups were coming to be known as much for the personalities of their individual members as for their music, the Temptations — a group in which all five members sometimes sang lead — remained essentially unknowable other than through their incredible records. 
 
Formed in Detroit, Michigan, in the early 1960s when members of two vocal groups called The Distants and The Primes came together as "The Elgins," The Temptations took on the name under which they became famous shortly after signing with Berry Gordy's fledgling Motown Records in 1961.

Even as personnel shifted due to internal politics and the untimely death of one original member, Paul Williams, by suicide in 1973, the Temptations kept churning out hits well past the era when Motown first became famous for creating "The Sound of Young America."

Indeed, The Temptations were alone among the stars that emerged from "Hitsville U.S.A." in successfully navigating the transition from the mid 1960s to the early 1970s.

They evolved from the glorious love poetry of producer-songwriter Smokey Robinson on early hits like "The Way You Do The Things You Do" (1964) and "My Girl" (1965) to the funk-fueled social commentary of producer Norman Whitfield and songwriting partner, Barrett Strong, on later hits like "Ball Of Confusion (That's What The World Is Today)" (1970) and "Papa Was A Rolling Stone," which became their final chart-topper on this day in 1972.

The Temptations were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, but the deaths in quick succession of members David Ruffin, Eddie Kendricks and Melvin Franklin in 1991, 1992 and 1995, respectively, leaves Otis Williams as the sole surviving member of the original Temptations lineup.

Williams continues to perform the group's hits to this day with a new group of Temptations.

Thanks History.com

Here, the Temptations perform “Papa Was a Rolling Stone”

Automat, New York City, 1946

Photo by Stanley Kubrick, then 17-years-old

Jaco Pastorius was born 70 years ago today

Jaco Pastorius was born 70 years ago today.

Pastorius was an influential American jazz musician, composer, big band leader and electric bass player. He is best known for his work with Weather Report from 1976 to 1981, as well as work with artists including Joni Mitchell, Pat Metheny and his own solo projects.

As a musician, he developed a highly influential approach to bass playing that combined a deep understanding of advanced harmony with ferocious technical prowess. His signature approach infused Latin-influenced 16th-note funk, lyrical soloing on fretless bass, bass chords and innovative use of harmonics.

Pastorius was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame in 1988, one of only seven bassists so honored (and the only electric bass guitarist).

In his early career, Pastorius had avoided alcohol and drugs, but with Weather Report he increasingly used alcohol and other drugs, the abuse of which exacerbated his mental issues, leading to increasingly erratic and sometimes anti-social behavior. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in late 1982 following the Word of Mouth tour of Japan, during which his erratic behavior had become an increasing source of concern for fellow band members.

By 1986, Pastorius' health had further deteriorated and he began living on the streets after being evicted from his New York apartment. In July, 1986, following intervention by his then ex-wife, Ingrid, with the help of his brother, Gregory, he was admitted to Bellevue Hospital in New York, where he was prescribed carbamazepine in preference to lithium.

He moved back to Fort Lauderdale in December of that year, and again lived on the streets for weeks at a time. After sneaking onstage at a Carlos Santana concert on September 11, 1987 and being ejected from the premises, Pastorius made his way to the Midnight Bottle Club in Wilton Manors, Florida.

After reportedly kicking in a glass door, having been refused entrance to the club, he was engaged in a violent confrontation with the club bouncer, Luc Havan. Pastorius was hospitalized for multiple facial fractures and injuries to his right eye and left arm and fell into a coma.

Initially, there were encouraging signs that he would come out of the coma and recover, but they soon faded. A massive brain hemorrhage a few days later led to brain death.

Pastorius died on September 21, 1987 at 35 at Broward General Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale. In the wake of Pastorius' death, Havan was charged with second degree murder but later pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

Because he had no prior convictions, and recognizing time served while waiting for the verdict, the court sentenced him to 22 months in prison and five years' probation. After four months in prison, he was paroled for good behavior.

Here, Pastorius performs at the Montreal Jazz Festival in 1982

John Densmore, drummer for the Doors, is 77 years old today

John Densmore, drummer for the Doors, is 77 years old today.

Born in Los Angeles, Densmore grew up playing piano and later took up drums/percussion for the marching band at his school. He attended Santa Monica City College and California State University, Northridge. At the latter, he studied ethnic music under jazz cellist, Fred Katz.

Densmore joined The Doors in 1965 and remained a member until the band's dissolution in 1973.

Densmore met keyboardist Ray Manzarek and guitarist Robby Krieger at a Transcendental Meditation lecture. Densmore said, "There wouldn't be any Doors without Maharishi."

According to Densmore's own book, he quit the band on one occasion in reaction to Jim Morrison's increasingly self-destructive behavior, although he returned the next day. He repeatedly suggested that the band stop touring, but Krieger and Manzarek were resistant to this notion.

After the Doors' final, disastrous performance with Morrison in New Orleans on December 12, 1970, the band agreed to discontinue performing live. The New Orleans debacle would be the band's last public performance as a quartet.

Densmore allowed "Riders on the Storm" to be used to sell Pirelli Tires in England only. He later stated that he "heard Jim's voice" in his ears and ended up donating the money earned to charity.

In 2002, Densmore vetoed an offer by Cadillac for $15 million for "Break on Through (To the Other Side)" because of his strong views to conserve the environment.

Densmore formed a band with fellow ex-Doors Robby Krieger in 1973 called Butts Band. The band released two albums with two different lineups but disbanded in 1975.

Densmore left rock and roll in the 1980s, moving to the world of dance as he performed with Bess Snyder and Co., touring the United States for two years.

In 1984, at La Mama Theatre in New York, he made his stage acting debut in Skins, a one-act play he had written. In 1985, he won the LA Weekly Theater Award for music with Methusalem, directed by Tim Robbins.

The play, Rounds, which he co-produced, won the NAACP award for theatre in 1987. In 1988, he played a feature role in Band Dreams and Bebop at the Gene Dynarski Theatre. He developed and performed a one-man piece from the short story, The King of Jazz, at the Wallenboyd Theatre in 1989.

With Adam Ant, he co-produced Be Bop A Lula at Theatre Theatre in 1992. He has acted in numerous TV shows, most memorably as himself in the show Square Pegs, working as a drummer for Johnny Slash's band, Open 24 Hours.

His film credits include: Get Crazy with Malcolm McDowell, Dudes directed by Penelope Spheeris and The Doors directed by Oliver Stone.

Densmore wrote his best-selling autobiography, Riders On The Storm (1990), about his life and the time he spent with Morrison and The Doors. In the first chapter, Densmore describes the solemn day on which he and the band finally visited Morrison's grave around three years after he had died.

As the drummer and an influential member of The Doors, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He worked as a technical adviser on the 1991 film, The Doors, and was impressed with Val Kilmer's performance as Morrison and overall was quite happy with the film.

In 2013, Densmore released "The Doors Unhinged," a book covering his legal battle with Krieger and Manzarek over the use of the name The Doors for a tour they were doing, and Densmore's veto over a 2003 offer by Cadillac to buy the rights to The Doors music.

Here’s Densmore on learning of Jim Morrison’s death

The Doors perform “People Are Strange”

Bette Midler — "The Divine Miss M" — is 76 years old today

By the time she appeared as the final guest of Johnny Carson's 30-year career on The Tonight Show and brought tears to the unflappable host's eyes with an emotional performance of "One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)," she was an established star of stage and screen.

It would be difficult, however, to imagine a more unorthodox path to mainstream stardom than the one followed by Bette Midler — "The Divine Miss M" — who was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on this day in 1945 — 76 years ago.

Equal parts Judy Garland and Ethel Merman, Bette Midler early on set her sights on making it in New York City. Arriving in the city in 1965, Midler soon tried out for the national touring company of Fiddler On The Roof only to land the role of Tzeitel (and the job of singing "Matchmaker" eight times a week) in the Broadway production instead.

After several years of singing in various Manhattan nightclubs on the side, she got what would prove to be the most important gig of her career, singing poolside nightly at the fabled Continental Baths, a gay bathhouse/cabaret in the basement of the Ansonia building on West 72nd Street in Manhattan.

It was there, in collaboration with a young pianist named Barry Manilow, that she fully developed her "Divine Miss M" stage persona — a brash, campy interpreter of numbers ranging from "Chattanooga Choo Choo" and "Leader Of The Pack" to "Superstar" and "Delta Dawn."

It was at the Continental Baths that Atlantic Records chief Ahmet Ertegun discovered Midler and signed her to record the album that made her a star: The Divine Miss M (1972). That album made an unlikely pop hit out of "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" (Billboard #8, June, 1973).

Though she would remain a beloved favorite of a significant fan base over the next decade or so, her only pop hit during that period was the theme song from the 1979 movie, The Rose.

In 1986, however, her flagging Hollywood career was revived by a comic turn in Paul Mazursky's Down And Out In Beverly Hills.

Two years later, she would have her first and only #1 pop hit with "Wing Beneath My Wings," from the 1988 movie, Beaches, in which Midler co-starred alongside Barbara Hershey.

In 2013, Midler performed on Broadway for the first time in more than 30 years in a play about the Hollywood superagent, Sue Mengers. The play, titled I'll Eat You Last: A Chat With Sue Mengers, written by John Logan, opened on April 24, 2013 at the Booth Theatre.

In March 2017, she began playing the role of Dolly Gallagher Levi in the Broadway revival of Hello, Dolly! in which she won her second Tony Award. Also in 2017, she appeared in the role of Muv in the film, Freak Show.

Here, Middler performs in The Rose (1979). Her role was modeled after Janis Joplin.

Thanks History.com

Bette Midler poses with the TV Matrix crew in Miami in the late 1970s.

Frank Beacham, Midler, Robin Hirsch and Roy Chase at the bottom.

After the video shoot, Midler said she was free for the night and asked me to take her to visit Little Havana, the Cuban neighborhood in Miami.

I had another obligation that night and couldn't go. I regret it to this day!

Bette Midler: The People's Diva

Stuart Kimball, longtime guitarist with Bob Dylan, is 64 years old today

Stuart Kimball, longtime guitarist with Bob Dylan, is 64 years old today.

In addition to being a session player, Kimball is also an accomplished producer and arranger. At age eight, Kimball started picking out tunes he heard in his family’s record collection by the Kingston Trio and Pete Seeger on his father’s baritone ukulele.

His parents bought Stu his first acoustic guitar and he switched to the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and Bob Dylan.

“What really got me was Hendrix,” Kimball said. “I first heard ‘Are You Experienced’ when I was 11 and I couldn’t believe what he did with the electric guitar. Then the first Led Zeppelin album came out. Hendrix and Led Zeppelin opened up the whole world of electric guitar for me.”

As a teenager, Kimball was in demand for his skills. His first paid gig was at a Manchester, New Hampshire Knights of Columbus Hall, where he was brought in as a ringer on guitar — the only minor in the band and in the bar.

For a time Kimball attended the St. Thomas Choir School in New York City, where he developed his ear for harmony and vocal performance. But the core of his education began after high school, when a band he formed with some friends from New Hampshire — Face To Face — got signed to Epic Records.

In 1984, the group’s eponymous debut spawned a Top 40 single, the sweet and catchy “10, 9, 8.” Face to Face would travel across the U.S. and to Japan and make two more albums, literally introducing Kimball to both the world and the music industry. “A very important part, looking back, was Jimmy Iovine and, later, Arthur Baker, who worked on Empire Burlesque, taking me under wing.”

Iovine, one of the decade’s hottest producers, admired Kimball’s playing and was the first to hire him as a session guitarist. He also recruited the band for the soundtrack for Streets of Fire, and Face to Face sans lead singer Laurie Sargent, who provided the voice for actress Diane Lane in the film.

Although most of Kimball’s session work was in New York City, he began producing bands in Boston, where he lived at the time, and then on Martha’s Vineyard, where he relocated and became co-owner of a studio with Carly Simon.

Kimball produced several local bands and began to expand his credits, working with roots outfit Black Number Nine, ska legends Bop Harvey and New England blues group Fatwall Jack, as well as co-producing Carly Simon’s The Bedroom Tapes and Peter Wolf’s Long Line.

He also played on an album for folksinger Kate Taylor with Dylan bassist, Tony Garnier, a collaboration that would ultimately play a role in Kimball joining Dylan’s band. Kimball is known for his own earthy, flexible brand of six-string.

He’s played on sessions for Al Green, Bruce Springsteen, Peter Wolf, Debbie Harry, Carly Simon, Clarence Clemons, Diana Ross, Kate Taylor, Nona Hendrix, Stevie Nicks, Laurie Sargent, Robbie Williams, indie rockers Twinemen and Bob Dylan.

Although Kimball joined Dylan’s band in 2004, their history together dates back to 1985, when Stu played on Empire Burlesque. He also played on Dylan’s Modern Times, and is featured on six tracks on Tell Tale Signs, the latest release in the Bootleg Series. Kimball has also released One Last Wish, his own self-produced CD. Kimball left the Dylan tour in the fall of 2018.

Above, Stuart Kimball on stage in 2009

Photo by Frank Beacham