Frank Beacham's Journal

Now available, order here

Mississippi, 1960s

Photo by Mary Elizabeth King

Ringo Starr is 82 years old today

Ringo Starr is 82 years old today.

An English musician, singer and actor, Starr was the drummer for the Beatles. He sang lead vocals on several Beatles’ songs, including "With a Little Help from My Friends," "Yellow Submarine" and their version of "Act Naturally."

He is also credited as a co-writer of "What Goes On," "Flying" and "Dig It," and as the sole author of "Don't Pass Me By" and "Octopus's Garden."

Starr was twice afflicted by life-threatening illnesses during his childhood, and as a result of prolonged hospitalizations, fell behind scholastically. His classmates nicknamed him "Lazarus" after a twelve-month recovery from peritonitis following a routine appendectomy.

At age eight, he had remained illiterate. After several years of twice weekly tutoring, he had nearly caught up to his peers academically. But in 1953, he contracted tuberculosis and was admitted to a sanatorium, where he remained for two years.

He then entered the workforce and briefly held a position with British Rail before securing an apprenticeship at a Liverpool equipment manufacturer. Soon after, he became interested in the UK skiffle craze — developing a fervent admiration for the genre.

In 1957, he co-founded his first band, the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group. They got several prestigious local bookings before the fad succumbed to American rock and roll by early 1958. When the Beatles formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another leading Liverpool group, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes.

After achieving moderate success with them in the UK and Hamburg, Germany, he quit the Hurricanes and joined the Beatles in August, 1962, replacing Pete Best.

Starr played key roles in the Beatles' films and appeared in numerous others. After their break-up in 1970, he released several successful singles and albums and recorded with each of the former Beatles.

He has been featured in a number of documentaries, hosted television shows, narrated the first two seasons of the children's television series, Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends, and portrayed "Mr. Conductor" during the first season of the PBS children's television series, Shining Time Station.

Since 1989, Starr has toured with more than a dozen variations of Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band. He is a vegetarian whose diet is limited due to ongoing stomach problems related to his childhood illnesses.

Starr is left-handed, but became ambidextrous as a child when his grandmother forced him to write with his right hand because she thought it was a curse for people to be left-handed.

Here, Starr and The Roundheads perform “Octopus’s Garden” in 2005

Marc Chagall, modernist artist, was born 135 years ago today

Marc Chagall, modernist artist, was born 135 years ago today.

Chagall was a Russian-French artist, described as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century." An early modernist, he was associated with several major artistic styles and created works in virtually every artistic medium, including painting, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramic, tapestries and fine art prints.

Chagall was considered to be "the last survivor of the first generation of European modernists," wrote Michael J. Lewis, the art historian. Using the medium of stained glass, he produced windows for the cathedrals of Reims and Metz, windows for the UN and the Jerusalem Windows in Israel.

Chagall also did large-scale paintings, including part of the ceiling of the Paris Opéra.

Before World War I, he traveled between St. Petersburg, Paris and Berlin. During this period he created his own mixture and style of modern art based on his idea of Eastern European Jewish folk culture.

He spent the wartime years in Soviet Belarus, becoming one of the country's most distinguished artists and a member of the modernist avant-garde, founding the Vitebsk Arts College before leaving again for Paris in 1922.

Chagall had two basic reputations, wrote Lewis: He was a pioneer of modernism and as a major Jewish artist. He experienced modernism's "golden age" in Paris, where "he synthesized the art forms of Cubism, Symbolism and Fauvism, and the influence of Fauvism gave rise to Surrealism." Yet throughout these phases of his style, he remained a Jewish artist.

"When Matisse dies," Pablo Picasso remarked in the 1950s, "Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what color really is."

Chagall died in March, 1985 at age 97.

The Blue Violinist, 1947

Painting by Marc Chagall

Pinetop Perkins was born 109 years ago today

Pinetop Perkins was born 109 years ago today.

A blues pianist, Perkins played with some of the most influential blues and rock and roll performers in American history.

Born in Belzoni, Mississippi, Perkins began his career as a guitarist, but then injured the tendons in his left arm in a fight with a choir girl in Helena, Arkansas. Unable to play guitar, Perkins switched to the piano. He also switched from Robert Nighthawk's KFFA radio program to Sonny Boy Williamson's King Biscuit Time.

He continued working with Nighthawk, however, accompanying him on 1950's "Jackson Town Gal."

In the 1950s, Perkins joined Earl Hooker and began touring, stopping to record "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie" (written by Pinetop Smith) at Sam Phillips' studio in Memphis. "They used to call me Pinetop," he recalled, "because I played that song."

Perkins then relocated to Illinois and left the music business until Hooker convinced him to record again in 1968. When Otis Spann left the Muddy Waters band in 1969, Perkins was chosen to replace him. He stayed for more than a decade, then left with several other musicians to form The Legendary Blues Band with Willie "Big Eyes" Smith, recording through the late 70s, 80s and early 90s.

Perkins played a brief musical cameo on the street outside Aretha's Soul Food Cafe in the 1980 movie, The Blues Brothers, having an argument with John Lee Hooker over who wrote "Boom Boom." He also appeared in the 1987 movie, Angel Heart, as a member of guitarist Toots Sweet's band.

Although he appeared as a sideman on countless recordings, Perkins never had an album devoted solely to his artistry, until the album, After Hours, on Blind Pig Records in 1988. The tour in support of the album also featured Jimmy Rogers and Hubert Sumlin.

His robust piano is fairly presented in On Top (1992), an easy-going recital of blues standards with his old Muddy Waters' associate, Jerry Portnoy, on harmonica. In 1998, Perkins released the album, Legends, featuring guitarist Hubert Sumlin.

Perkins was driving his automobile in 2004 in La Porte, Indiana when he was hit by a train. The car was wrecked, but the 91-year-old driver was not seriously hurt. Until his death, Perkins lived in Austin, Texas. He usually performed a couple of nights a week at Nuno's on Sixth Street.

At the age of 97, he won a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album for Joined at the Hip, an album he recorded with Willie "Big Eyes" Smith. Perkins thus became the oldest-ever Grammy winner, edging out comedian George Burns who had won in the spoken word category 21 years earlier. Perkins had tied with Burns, at the age of 90, in 2004.

A little more than a month later, Perkins died on March 21, 2011 at his home in Austin. At the time of his death, the musician had more than 20 performances booked for 2011.

Shortly before that, while discussing his late career resurgence with an interviewer, he conceded, "I can't play piano like I used to either. I used to have bass rolling like thunder. I can't do that no more. But I ask the Lord, please forgive me for the stuff I done trying to make a nickel."

Along with David "Honeyboy" Edwards, he was one of the last two original Mississippi Delta blues musicians, and also to have a personal knowledge of, and friendship with, Robert Johnson.

Here, Pinetop Perkins joins Muddy Waters to perform “Reefer and Champagne” at the Montreal Jazz Festival in 1980

Joe Zawinul, Austrian jazz keyboardist and composer who was a creator jazz fusion, was born 90 years ago today

Joe Zawinul, Austrian jazz keyboardist and composer who was a creator jazz fusion, was born 90 years ago today.

First coming to prominence with saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, Zawinul went on to play with trumpeter Miles Davis, and to become one of the creators of jazz fusion, an innovative musical genre that combined jazz with elements of rock and world music.

Later, Zawinul co-founded the groups, Weather Report, and world fusion music-oriented, The Zawinul Syndicate.

Zawinul made pioneering use of electric piano and synthesizers, and was named "Best Electric Keyboardist" 28 times by the readers of Down Beat magazine.

In the late 1960s, Zawinul recorded with Miles Davis's studio band and helped create the sound of jazz fusion. He played on the album, In a Silent Way, the title track of which he composed, and the landmark album, Bitches Brew, for which he contributed the twenty-minute track, "Pharaoh's Dance,” which occupied the whole of side one.

Zawinul is known to have played live with Davis only once in public, on July 10, 1991, in Paris, along with Wayne Shorter. It was shortly before Davis' death.

Zawinul became ill and was hospitalized in his native Vienna on August 7, 2007, after concluding a five-week European tour. He died a little over a month later from a rare form of skin cancer (Merkel cell carcinoma) on September 11, 2007.

Here, Zawinul performs “Weather Update”

Otto Frederick Rohwedder's marvelous bread slicing machine was introduced 94 years ago today

Otto Frederick Rohwedder and his bread slicing machine

We’ve all used the expression, “It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.”

In celebration of all good things, we note today is the birthday of Otto Frederick Rohwedder, the inventor of the bread slicing machine.

Born in 1880, Rohwedder’s bread slicer produced the first package of machine-cut and wrapped bread. It was revealed on his 48th birthday in 1928 — 94 years ago today.

Bakers didn’t love the first version of Rohwedder’s invention, which he started working on in 1912. They feared the individual slices would quickly go stale.

Rohwedder tried to ward that off by holding the loaves together with sterilized hairpins, but the pins kept falling out.

Finally, he added a step that automatically wrapped the bread, too. Eventually Wonder Bread bought a version of Rohwedder’s machine.

Sliced bread was banned very briefly in 1943, to wide chagrin. The move was intended to control bread prices and save on wax paper during World War II.

Headlines heralded the lifting of the two-month ban: “Housewives’ Thumbs Safe Again,” read one. It wasn’t just housewives, though. In 1963, reporters noticed a Band-Aid on President John F. Kennedy’s finger and asked him what had happened. The President laughed and replied: “I cut my finger when I was cutting bread, unbelievable as it may sound.”

Charlie Louvin was born 95 years ago today

Charlie Louvin was born 95 years ago today.

A country music singer and songwriter, Louvin was one of the Louvin Brothers, and a member of the Grand Ole Opry beginning in 1955.

Born in Henagar, Alabama, Louvin was one of seven children. He started singing when he was eight years old. He began singing professionally with his brother, Ira, as a teenager on local radio programs in Chattanooga.

The boys sang traditional and gospel music in the harmony style they had learned while performing in their church's choir. After Charlie left the act briefly in 1945 to serve in World War II, the brothers moved first to Knoxville and later to Memphis, working as postal clerks by day while making appearances in the evening.

Another brief disbandment due to Charlie's service in the Korean War led to the brothers' relocation to Birmingham. Primarily known as gospel artists, the Louvins were convinced by a sponsor that "you can't sell tobacco with gospel music" and began adding secular music to their repertoire.

They began making appearances on the famed Grand Ole Opry during the 1950s, becoming official members in 1955. The Louvin Brothers released numerous singles, such as "When I Stop Dreaming," with over 20 recordings reaching the country music charts. Their rich harmonies served as an influence to later artists such as Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons and The Byrds.

By the 1960s, Charlie and Ira's popularity had waned and the brothers split up in 1963.

In 1965, Ira was killed in a car accident. Charlie continued to perform solo, making numerous appearances on the Grand Ole Opry and in later years acting as an elder statesman for country music.

In the 2000s, Louvin began rebuilding his career. Although he readily admitted he was never much of a writer, he released a disc of classics containing one new song, a tribute to Ira, and a gospel album on Tompkins Square Records.

The songs mainly pair Louvin with other singers, such as George Jones, Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, Alex McManus of Bright Eyes, Elvis Costello and Derwin Hinson. He also wrote two songs with Colonial Robert Morris, the Rockabilly Hall of Famer. One is on Morris' trucking CD, "Highway Hero."

As of 2003, Louvin lived in Manchester, Tennessee. He closed his Louvin Brothers museum in Nashville and was looking to open another one in Monteagle, Tennessee, near Chattanooga.

Louvin underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer on July 22, 2010. Doctors expected a full recovery, but "the surgery did not go as planned," according to Louvin's son, Sonny. From that point, he began using alternative methods of treatment.

Louvin died in the early morning on January 26, 2011, in Manchester, Tennessee at age 83.

Here, the Louvin Brothers perform “I Don’t Believe You’ve Met My Baby”

William Kunstler, radical lawyer and civil rights activist, known for his politically unpopular clients, was born 103 years ago today

William Kunstler and his daughter, Sarah, is shown in 1977. Sarah and her sister, Emily, wrote and directed the film about their father.

Photo by Maddy Miller

William Kunstler: A Personal Remembrance

William Kunstler, radical lawyer and civil rights activist, known for his politically unpopular clients, was born 103 years ago today.

Kunstler was a board member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the co-founder of the Law Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the "leading gathering place for radical lawyers in the country."

Kunstler's defense of the "Chicago Seven" from 1969–1970 led The New York Times to label him "the country's most controversial and, perhaps, its best-known lawyer ..."

Kunstler is also well known for defending members of the Catonsville Nine, Black Panther Party, Weather Underground Organization, the Attica Prison rioters and the American Indian Movement.

I remember William Kunstler for another reason. He was a wonderful poet. Once I attended a poetry reading in his New York City apartment.

As a reviewer wrote of his poems, “like most things William Kunstler does, his poems rattle the foundations of venerable American institutions.”

Kunstler won a lot of major cases, but I was impressed by his creative abilities as a poet. He saw the world in a unique way and expressed it vividly in his poems.

In fact, one his clients and closest friends was the poet, Dylan Thomas, who he had met while majoring in French literature at Yale. Kunstler became an expert on Thomas’s work and was called the night the poet drank himself to death at the White Horse Tavern in New York City.

In late 1995, Kunstler died in New York City of heart failure at the age of 76.

Marlene Dietrich, New York, 1942

Photo by Horst P. Horst

Bill Haley was born 97 years ago today

Bill Haley was born 97 years ago today.

One of America’s first rock and roll musicians, Haley is credited by many with first popularizing rock in the early 1950s with his group, Bill Haley & His Comets.

The group, inspired by Halley's Comet, had million-selling hits such as “Rock Around the Clock,” “See You Later, Alligator,” “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” “Skinny Minnie” and “Razzle Dazzle.” He has sold over 25 million records worldwide.

Born in Highland Park, Michigan as William John Clifton Haley, Haley’s father moved the family to Boothwyn, Pennsylvania, near Chester, when Bill was seven years old. This was due to the effects of the Great Depression on the Detroit area.

Haley's father, William Albert Haley, was from Kentucky and played the banjo and mandolin. His mother, Maude Green, originally from Ulverston in England, was a technically accomplished keyboardist with classical training. Haley said when he made a simulated guitar out of cardboard, his parents bought him a real one.

The anonymous sleeve notes accompanying the 1956 Decca album, "Rock Around The Clock," describe Haley's early life and career: "Bill got his first professional job at the age of 13, playing and entertaining at an auction for the fee of one dollar a night. Very soon after this he formed a group of equally enthusiastic youngsters and managed to get quite a few local bookings for his band."

Haley left home at 15 in 1940 with his guitar and little else. The next few years were hard and poverty stricken, but full of useful experiences. Apart from learning how to exist on one meal a day and other artistic exercises, he worked at an open-air park show, sang and yodeled with any band that would have him and worked with a traveling medicine show.

For six years, Haley was a musical director of WPWA, a radio station in Chester, Pennsylvania. He led his own band all through this period. It was then known as Bill Haley's Saddlemen, indicating their definite leaning toward the tough Western style. They continued playing in clubs as well as over the radio around Philadelphia, and in 1951 made their first recordings.

During the Labor Day weekend in 1952, The Saddlemen were renamed Bill Haley with Haley's Comets (inspired by a popular mispronunciation of Halley's Comet).

In 1953, Haley's recording of "Crazy Man, Crazy" (co-written by Haley and his bass player, Marshall Lytle, although Lytle would not receive credit until 2001) became the first rock and roll song to hit the American charts, peaking at #15 on Billboard and #11 on Cash Box. Soon after, the band's name was revised to Bill Haley & His Comets.

In 1953, a song called "Rock Around the Clock" was written for Haley. He was unable to record it until April 12, 1954. Initially, it was relatively unsuccessful, staying at the charts for only one week, but Haley soon scored a major worldwide hit with a cover version of Big Joe Turner's "Shake, Rattle and Roll," which went on to sell a million copies and became the first ever rock 'n' roll song to enter British singles charts in December, 1954.

Haley retained elements of the original, but threw some country music aspects into the song (specifically, Western Swing) and cleaned up the lyrics. Haley and his band were important in launching the music known as "rock and roll" to a wider, mostly white audience after a period of it being considered an underground genre.

When "Rock Around the Clock" appeared behind the opening credits of the 1955 film, Blackboard Jungle, starring Glenn Ford, it soared to the top of the American Billboard chart for eight weeks. The single is commonly used as a convenient line of demarcation between the "rock era" and the music industry that preceded it.

The song for the film was chosen from the collection of young Peter Ford, the son of Glenn Ford and dancer Eleanor Powell. The producers were looking for a song to represent the type of music the youth of 1955 was listening to, and the elder Ford borrowed several records from his son's collection, one of which was Haley's "Rock Around the Clock." This was the song chosen.

Billboard separated its statistical tabulations into 1890-1954 and 1955–present. After the record rose to #1, Haley was quickly given the title "Father of Rock and Roll," by the media and by teenagers that had come to embrace the new style of music.

With the song's success, the age of rock music began overnight and instantly ended the dominance of the jazz and pop standards performed by Frank Sinatra, Jo Stafford, Perry Como and Bing Crosby.

Success came at somewhat of a price as the new music confused and horrified most people over the age of 30, leading to Cold War-fueled suspicion that rock-and-roll was part of a communist plot to corrupt the minds of American teenagers.

FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover attempted to dig up incriminating material on Haley, who took to carrying a gun with him on tours for his own safety. A self-admitted alcoholic, Haley fought a battle with alcohol into the 1970s. Nonetheless, he and his band continued to be a popular touring act, benefiting from a 50s nostalgia movement that began in the late 60s and the signing of a lucrative record deal with the European Sonet Records label.

After performing for Queen Elizabeth II at a command performance in 1979, Haley made his final performances in South Africa in May and June, 1980. Prior to the South African tour, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. A planned tour of Germany in the fall of 1980 was canceled. He died at age 55 early in the morning of February 9, 1981.

There is a dispute over whether he had a brain tumor or not. Haley's death certificate listed "Natural causes: Most likely heart attack" as the immediate cause of death. The next lines, “Due to, or as a consequence of" were blank.

Here, Haley and the Comets perform “Rock Around the Clock” in 1956

Frida Kahlo, Mexican painter, was born 115 years ago today

Frida Kahlo, Mexican painter, was born 115 years ago today.

Best known for her self-portraits, Kahlo's life began and ended in Mexico City, in her home known as the Blue House. Her work has been celebrated in Mexico as emblematic of national and indigenous tradition, and by feminists for its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form.

Mexican culture and Amerindian cultural tradition are important in her work, which has been sometimes characterized as Naïve art or folk art. Her work has also been described as "surrealist," and in 1938 André Breton, principal initiator of the surrealist movement, described Kahlo's art as a "ribbon around a bomb.”

Kahlo had a volatile marriage with the famous Mexican artist, Diego Rivera. She suffered lifelong health problems, many the result of a traffic accident she survived as a teenager. Recovering from her injuries isolated her from other people. This isolation influenced her works, many of which are self-portraits of one sort or another.

Kahlo suggested, "I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best." She also stated, "I was born a bitch. I was born a painter."

The 100th anniversary of the birth of Frida Kahlo in 2007 was commemorated with the largest exhibit ever held of her paintings at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, Kahlo's first comprehensive exhibit in Mexico. Works were on loan from Detroit, Minneapolis, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Nagoya, Japan. The exhibit included one-third of her artistic production and surpassed all previous attendance records at the museum.

Nanci Griffith was born 69 years ago today

Nanci Griffith was born 69 years ago today.

A singer, guitarist and songwriter, Griffith’s career spanned a variety of musical genres, predominantly country, folk and what she called "folkabilly."

One of her better-known songs — "From a Distance" — was written and composed by Julie Gold, although Bette Midler's version achieved greater commercial success. Similarly, other artists occasionally achieved greater success with Griffith's songs than Griffith herself.

For example, Kathy Mattea had a country music top five hit with a 1986 cover of Griffith's "Love at the Five and Dime" and Suzy Bogguss had one of her largest hits with Griffith's and Tom Russell's, "Outbound Plane."

In 1994, Griffith teamed up with Jimmy Webb to contribute the song "If These Old Walls Could Speak" to the AIDS benefit album, Red Hot + Country, produced by the Red Hot Organization. Griffith was a survivor of breast cancer, which was diagnosed in 1996, and thyroid cancer in 1998.

In recent years, Griffith toured with various other artists, including Buddy Holly's band, The Crickets; John Prine, Iris DeMent, Suzy Bogguss and Judy Collins.

Griffith recorded duets with many artists, among them Emmylou Harris, Mary Black, John Prine, Don McLean, Jimmy Buffett, Dolores Keane, Willie Nelson, Adam Duritz (singer of Counting Crows), The Chieftains and Darius Rucker.

Griffith suffered from severe “writers block” for a number of years after 2004, lasting until the 2009 release of her The Loving Kind album, which contained nine selections that she had written and composed either entirely by herself or as collaborations.

After several months of limited touring in 2011, Griffith's bandmates, The Kennedys (Pete & Maura Kennedy), packed up their professional Manhattan recording studio and relocated it to Nashville, where they installed it in
Griffith’s home.

There, Griffith and her backing team, including Pete and Maura Kennedy and Pat McInerney, co-produced her album, Intersections, over the course of the summer. The album includes several new original songs and was released in April, 2012.

Griffith died in Nashville on August 13, 2021, at the age of 68. The cause of death was not reported

Here, Griffith performs “Love at the Five and Dime”

Gene Chandler is 85 years old today

Gene Chandler is 85 years old today.

Known as "The Duke of Earl" or simply "The Duke," Chandler is a R&B and soul singer-songwriter, producer and record executive, and one of the leading exponents of the 1960s Chicago soul scene.

Best known for his million-selling hits "Duke Of Earl" and "Groovy Situation," and his associations with the Dukays, the Impressions and Curtis Mayfield, Chandler is one of the few artists to chart hit records during the doo-wop, rhythm and blues, soul and disco eras. He had forty pop and R&B chart hits between 1961 and 1986.

Chandler attended Englewood High School on Chicago's south side. He began performing in the early 1950s with the Gaytones. In 1957, he joined a doo-wop group, The Dukays, with James Lowe, Shirley Jones, Earl Edwards and Ben Broyles, soon becoming their lead singer.

After his draft into the U.S. Army, he returned to Chicago in 1960 and rejoined the Dukays. The Dukays were offered a recording contract by Nat Records and recorded “The Girl Is a Devil in 1961 with producers Carl Davis and Bill "Bunky" Sheppard. This recording was followed with a session in August, 1961 with four sides — most notably "Nite Owl" and "Duke of Earl."

Nat Records chose to release "Nite Owl" and it became a sizable R&B hit at the end of 1961. Meanwhile, Davis and Sheppard shopped the "Duke of Earl" recording to Vee-Jay Records, which picked it. However, it was released by a solo artist, Eugene Dixon, who was renamed "Gene Chandler." "Duke of Earl" sold a million copies in just over one month.

After spending three weeks at #1 on the Billboard charts, Chandler purchased a cape, a monocle, a top hat and a cane and became "The Duke of Earl." He can be seen in the full “Duke” outfit singing "The Duke of Earl" in the movie, Don't Knock the Twist 1962, starring Chubby Checker.

His concerts became popular and he performed encores, usually "Rainbow '65," one of his collaborations with Curtis Mayfield.

Chandler still performs in Chicago, Las Vegas and elsewhere in the United States.

Here, Gene Chandler performs “Duke of Earl"

Ned Beatty was born 85 years ago today

Ned Beatty as “Big Daddy” in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Photo by Joan Marcus

Ned Beatty was born 85 years ago today.

Beatty appeared in more than 100 films, including Network (1976), Friendly Fire (1979), Last Train Home (1990), Hear My Song (1991), the adaptation film Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (2004) and Toy Story 3 (2010).

Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Beatty was the son of Margaret and Charles William Beatty. He had a sister, Mary Margaret.

In 1947, young Ned began singing in gospel and barbershop quartets in St. Matthews, Kentucky, and at his local church. He received a scholarship to sing in the a cappella choir at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky; he attended but did not graduate.

In 1956, he made his stage debut at age 19, appearing in Wilderness Road, an outdoor-historical pageant located in Berea, Kentucky. During his first ten years of theater, he worked at the Barter Theater in Abingdon, Virginia, the State Theatre of Virginia.

Returning to Kentucky, he worked in the Louisville area through the mid-1960s, at the Clarksville Little Theater (Indiana) and the newly founded Actors Theater of Louisville. His time at the latter included a run as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman in 1966.

He has had great commercial success in memorable roles such as the executive Bobby Trippe in Deliverance (1972), Tennessee lawyer Delbert Reese in Nashville (1975), general attorney Dardis in All the President's Men (1976), Bob Sweet in Silver Streak (1976), the priest Edwards in Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), Lex Luthor's henchman, Otis, in Superman (1978) and Superman II (1980) and Bates' right-hand man, Sydney Morehouse, in The Toy (1982).

He also played Borisov and Pavel Petrovic in The Fourth Protocol (1987), TV presenter Ernest Weller in Repossessed (1990), Rudy Ruettiger's father in Rudy (1993), attorney McNair in Just Cause (1995), Dexter Wilkins in Life (1999), the simple sheriff in Where the Red Fern Grows (2003), the corrupt Senator Charles F. Meachum in Shooter (2007), United States Congressman Doc Long in Charlie Wilson's War (2007), the voice of antagonist Lots-O'-Huggin' Bear in Toy Story 3 (2010) and Tortoise John in Rango (2011).

Beatty died at his home in Los Angeles of natural causes on June 13, 2021, at the age of 83.

Here is Beatty’s classic “The World is a Business” scene in Network in 1976

William Schallert — actor who played more than 600 “father” characters on television including The Patty Duke Show, Nancy Drew Mysteries and Little Women — was born 99 years ago today

William Schallert — actor who played more than 600 “father” characters on television including The Patty Duke Show, Nancy Drew Mysteries and Little Women — was born 99 years ago today.

A former president of the Screen Actors Guild, Schallert was a character actor who appeared in many films and in such television series as Perry Mason, The Smurfs, Jefferson Drum, The Rat Patrol, Gunsmoke, Star Trek, 87th Precinct, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The Waltons, Bonanza, Leave It to Beaver, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Love, American Style, Get Smart, Lawman, Combat, The Wild Wild West and in later years, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

As with many character actors with long careers, Schallert's face was more recognizable than his name. I practically grew up watching him on television.

I had a chance to work with Schallert in 1989 on an impromptu radio dramatization of Salman Rushdie’s “Satanic Verses” on KPFK Radio in Los Angeles. I produced the radio drama on the fly in reaction to the fatwā issued against Rushdie by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then the leader of Iran.

I approached Schallert and he volunteered to act in the drama, which was largely live and unrehearsed. Just as in old time radio, we used a single RCA 44BX bi-directional ribbon microphone and stage directed the actors to move in and out of the mic’s vocal range to do their various parts. This avoided making mixing mistakes in an unrehearsed live broadcast.

Like the pro has always was, Schallert performed flawlessly. He was fun to work with as well. It was a day we all celebrated when the broadcast ended.

Schallert died on May 8, 2016 at age 93.

Coit Tower, atop Telegraph Hill, Downtown Skyline, San Francisco, CA, circa 1950s

Photo by Fred Lyon

Robbie Robertson is 79 years old today

Robbie Robertson is 79 years old today.

Born as Jaime Robert Klegerman, Robertson is a Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist. He was lead guitarist and primary lyricist within The Band.

As a songwriter, Robertson is credited for such classics as "The Weight," "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," "Up On Cripple Creek," "Broken Arrow" and "Somewhere Down the Crazy River."

Robertson’s mother, Rosemarie Myke Chrysler, was of "predominantly Mohawk descent." His father, Alexander David Klegerman, was Jewish. His father died when he was a child, and his mother re-married to James Patrick Robertson, who adopted Robbie and whose surname Robbie had taken.

He had his earliest exposure to music at Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation, where he spent summers with his mother's family. By 1958, Robertson was performing in various groups around Toronto, including Little Caesar and the Consuls, Robbie and the Robots and Thumper and the Trambones.

In 1959, he had met singer Ronnie Hawkins, who led a band called The Hawks. In 1960, Hawkins recorded two early Robertson songs, "Hey Boba Lu" and "Someone Like You" on his Mr. Dynamo LP. Robertson then took over lead guitar with The Hawks and toured often, before splitting from Hawkins in 1963.

Robertson's skill on his instrument continued to increase, causing Howard Sounes to write, "By twenty-two, he was a guitar virtuoso." After Robertson left Ronnie Hawkins, along with Levon Helm, Richard Manuel, Rick Danko and Garth Hudson, the quintet called themselves, Levon and the Hawks.

However, after rejecting such tongue-in-cheek names as The Honkies and The Crackers, as well as the Canadian Squires — a name the record label called them and they immediately hated — they ultimately called themselves, The Band.

Bob Dylan hired The Hawks for his famed, controversial tour of 1966, his first wide exposure as an electrified rock and roll performer rather than his earlier acoustic folk sound.

Robertson's distinctive guitar sound was an important part of the music. Dylan famously praised him as "the only mathematical guitar genius I’ve ever run into who doesn’t offend my intestinal nervousness with his rearguard sound."

Robertson appears as one of the guitarists on Dylan's 1966 album, Blonde on Blonde. From their first albums, Music from Big Pink (1968) and The Band (1969), The Band was praised as one of rock music's preeminent groups.

Robertson sang only a few songs with The Band, but was the group's primary songwriter. In the later years of the Band, he was often seen as the de facto bandleader. In 1976, at the urging of Robertson, The Band decided to cease touring. They gave their final concert in November of that year.

Robertson's friend, filmmaker Martin Scorsese, captured the event on film, released in 1978 as The Last Waltz. The concert featured The Band's friends and influences: Ronnie Hawkins, Muddy Waters, Paul Butterfield, Dr. John, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, Neil Diamond, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Emmylou Harris, Ron Wood and Ringo Starr.

Since Robertson was the only one in the group who had seriously wanted to stop touring, The Band resumed touring in 1983 with a revolving door of musicians filling his place.

Between 1979 and 1980, Robertson co-starred with Gary Busey and Jodie Foster in the film, Carny. He also co-wrote, produced and composed source music for the film. For Scorsese's Raging Bull, Robertson created background music and produced source music.

For another Scorsese film, The King of Comedy (released in 1983), Robertson served as music producer and also contributed with his first post-Band solo recording, "Between Trains." Additionally, he produced and played guitar on Van Morrison's song, "Wonderful Remark."

Robertson signed via A&R executive Gary Gersh for his debut solo album on Geffen Records. He recorded with producer (and fellow Canadian), Daniel Lanois. Robertson also scored Scorsese's The Color of Money (1986), working with Gil Evans and Willie Dixon and co-wrote "It's In the Way That You Use It" with Eric Clapton.

Robertson was enlisted as creative consultant for Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll (1987), Taylor Hackford's film saluting Chuck Berry. He interviewed Berry and played guitar while Chuck recited some poetry.

From 1987 onwards, Robertson has released five solo albums. The first was self titled followed by Storyville, Music for the Native Americans and Contact from the Underworld of Redboy. In 1990, he contributed to Japanese musician Ryuichi Sakamoto's album, Beauty.

Robertson's song "Broken Arrow," off the Robbie Robertson album, was covered by Rod Stewart on his album Vagabond Heart and became a hit single.

"Broken Arrow" was also a part of the Grateful Dead's rotation of live songs 1993–95 (sung by bassist Phil Lesh), and later with Phil Lesh and Friends. The song, "Somewhere Down the Crazy River," became Robertson's biggest solo hit.

In 1994, Robertson returned to his roots, forming a Native American group the Red Road Ensemble for Music for The Native Americans, a collection of songs that accompanied a television documentary series.

Robertson and the late Levon Helm had one of music's longest-running feuds, dating back more than 35 years. They last played together at the Band's final concert, The Last Waltz, in 1976.

Helm was furious at Robertson's decision to "destroy" the Band, he wrote in his autobiography. He participated in the concert on the basis of his attorney's advice: "Do it, puke and get out of the way."

They also clashed over royalties. "[Robbie] and [manager] Albert [Grossman] get all the money, and the rest of us get all the leftovers, and he was supposed to be one of us," Helm said in 1998.

Here, Robertson performs “Somewhere Down the Crazy River”

The Band, Woodstock, NY, 1969

(In the basement of Rick Danko’s house on Chestnut Hill Road)

Robertson is second from the left

Photo by Elliot Landy

56 Years Ago: Chas Chandler Sees Jimi Hendrix at Café Wha?

56 Years Ago: Chas Chandler Sees Jimi Hendrix at Café Wha?

By 1966, Jimi Hendrix‘s career was stalled. The guitarist was frustrated with gigs as a sideman for artists that included Little Richard and the Isley Brothers.

However, his fortunes changed when fashion model Linda Keith convinced Animals’ bassist, Chas Chandler, to see Hendrix at the Café Wha? in New York’s Greenwich Village.

Hendrix’s performance on July 5, 1966 — 55 years ago today — left Chandler awestruck. He immediately put into motion plans to bring Hendrix to London and help him become a superstar.

Linda Keith, a blues fan and girlfriend of the Rolling Stones‘ Keith Richards, first saw Hendrix at New York’s Cheetah discotheque, where his band performed as Jimmy James and the Blue Flames.

“It was so clear to me,” Keith said in an interview. “I couldn’t believe nobody had picked up on him before because he’d obviously been around. He was astonishing – the moods he could bring to music, his charisma, his skill and stage presence. Yet nobody was leaping about with excitement. I couldn’t believe it.”

On July 5, 1946 — 76 years ago — French designer Louis Reard unveiled a daring two-piece swimsuit at the Piscine Molitor, a popular swimming pool in Paris

Micheline Bernardini wears the first bikini in 1946

On July 5, 1946 — 76 years ago — French designer Louis Reard unveiled a daring two-piece swimsuit at the Piscine Molitor, a popular swimming pool in Paris.

Parisian showgirl, Micheline Bernardini, modeled the new fashion, which Reard dubbed the "bikini," inspired by a news-making U.S. atomic test that took place off the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean earlier that week.

European women first began wearing two-piece bathing suits that consisted of a halter top and shorts in the 1930s, but only a sliver of the midriff was revealed and the navel was vigilantly covered.

In the United States, the modest two-piece made its appearance during World War II, when wartime rationing of fabric saw the removal of the skirt panel and other superfluous material.

Meanwhile, in Europe, fortified coastlines and Allied invasions curtailed beach life during the war. Swimsuit development, like everything else non-military, came to a standstill.

In 1946, Western Europeans joyously greeted the first war-free summer in years, and French designers came up with fashions to match the liberated mood of the people. Two French designers, Jacques Heim and Louis Reard, developed competing prototypes of the bikini.

Heim called his the "atom" and advertised it as "the world's smallest bathing suit." Reard's swimsuit, which was basically a bra top and two inverted triangles of cloth connected by string, was significantly smaller.

Made out of a scant 30-inches of fabric, Reard promoted his creation as "smaller than the world's smallest bathing suit."

In planning the debut of his new swimsuit, Reard had trouble finding a professional model who would deign to wear the scandalously skimpy two-piece. So he turned to Micheline Bernardini, an exotic dancer at the Casino de Paris, who had no qualms about appearing nearly nude in public.

As an allusion to the headlines that he knew his swimsuit would generate, he printed newspaper type across the suit that Bernardini modeled on July 5 at the Piscine Molitor. The bikini was a hit, especially among men, and Bernardini received some 50,000 fan letters.

Before long, bold young women in bikinis were causing a sensation along the Mediterranean coast. Spain and Italy passed measures prohibiting bikinis on public beaches, but later capitulated to the changing times when the swimsuit grew into a mainstay of European beaches in the 1950s.

Reard's business soared, and in advertisements he kept the bikini mystique alive by declaring that a two-piece suit wasn't a genuine bikini "unless it could be pulled through a wedding ring." In prudish America, the bikini was successfully resisted until the early 1960s, when a new emphasis on youthful liberation brought the swimsuit en masse to U.S. beaches.

It was immortalized by the pop singer, Brian Hyland, who sang "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini" in 1960. Adding to that were the teenage "beach blanket" movies of Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon and the California surfing culture celebrated by the Beach Boys. Since then, the popularity of the bikini has only continued to grow.

Thanks History.com

Bridget Bardot is credited for popularizing the bikini, especially in America. She wore one in Roger Vidim’s 1957 film, And God Created Woman

Brian Hyland performs "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" on American Bandstand, 1960

Elvis Presley's recording of "That's All Right" by Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup began a revolution in rock music

Scotty Moore, Elvis Presley and Bill Black, Memphis, September 9, 1954

This photo was taken barely two months after the release of their first record

History credits Sam Phillips, the owner and operator of Sun Records in Memphis, with the discovery of Elvis Presley.

Though that assumption fails to account for the roles of four others in making that discovery possible: The business partner who first spotted something special in Elvis, the two session men who vouched for his musical talent and the blues figure who wrote the song he was playing when Sam Phillips realized what he had on his hands.

The song in question was "That's All Right" by Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup. Elvis' unrehearsed performance of it is a moment some regard as the true beginning of the rock-and-roll revolution. It happened on this day in 1954 — 67 years ago.

The sequence of events that led to this moment began when a young truck driver walked into the offices of Sun Records and the Memphis Recording Service on a Saturday night in the summer of 1953 and paid $3.98 plus tax to make an acetate record as a birthday present to his mother.

Sam Phillips recorded Elvis singing "My Happiness" and "That's When Your Heartaches Begin." Marion Keisker, Phillip’s business partner, wrote — "Good ballad singer. Hold" — in her notes on the session.

It was Keisker who was impressed enough by the incredibly shy young singer that she repeatedly brought his name up to Phillips over the next year and mentioned that he seemed worth following up with.

In early July, 1954, Phillips finally sent two of his favorite session musicians, guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, to meet with Elvis and report back to him with their assessment. After talking and jamming a bit with Presley, Moore and Black gave Phillips a report that was hardly enthusiastic.

"He didn't knock me out," Moore told Phillips, "[but] the boy's got a good voice." Phillips decided to schedule a recording session with Presley for July 5.

Phillips knew that something was brewing in the music world of 1954, and he had a pretty good idea what it would take to make the pot boil: A white singer who could sing "black" rhythm and blues. However, the first several hours of the July 5 session did nothing to convince Sam Phillips that Elvis was the one he'd been looking for.

Elvis's renditions of "Harbor Lights" and "I Love You Because" were stiff and uninspired, and after numerous takes and re-takes, Phillips called for a break.

Rather than shoot the breeze with his fellow musicians or step outside for a breath of fresh air, Elvis began to mess around on the guitar, playing and singing "That's All Right," but at least twice as fast as the original.

Through an open door in the control room, Sam Phillips heard this unfamiliar rendition of a familiar blues number and knew he'd found the sound he'd been looking for.

"[Phillips] stuck his head out and asked, 'What are you doing?'" Scotty Moore later recalled. "And we said, 'We don't know.' 'Well, back up,' Sam said, 'try to find a place to start, and do it again.'"

Phillips continued recording with Elvis over the next two evenings, but he never captured anything as thrilling as he did that first night.

Released to Memphis radio station, WHBQ, just two days after it was recorded, and then as a single two weeks later, Elvis Presley's "That's All Right (Mama)" became an instant regional hit and set him on his path toward stardom.

Here, Elvis performs “That’s All Right (Mama)” in his 1968 “comeback” TV special.

Thanks History.com

Jean Cocteau, French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker, was born 133 years ago today

Jean Cocteau in 1923

Jean Cocteau, French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker, was born 133 years ago today.

Cocteau wrote the novel, Les Enfants terribles (1929), and made the films, Blood of a Poet (1930), Les Parents terribles (1948), Beauty and the Beast (1946) and Orpheus (1949).

His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Yul Brynner, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, Igor Stravinsky, María Félix, Édith Piaf and Raymond Radiguet.

In his early twenties, Cocteau became associated with the writers Marcel Proust, André Gide and Maurice Barrès. In 1912, he collaborated with Léon Bakst on Le Dieu bleu for the Ballets Russes. The principal dancers were Tamara Karsavina and Vaslav Nijinsky.

During World War I, Cocteau served in the Red Cross as an ambulance driver. This was the period in which he met the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, artists Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani, and numerous other writers and artists with whom he later collaborated.

Russian choreographer, Sergei Diaghilev, persuaded Cocteau to write a scenario for a ballet, which resulted in Parade, in 1917. It was produced by Diaghilev, with sets by Picasso, the libretto by Apollinaire and the music by Erik Satie. The piece was later expanded into a full opera — with music by Satie, Poulenc and Ravel.

An important exponent of avant-garde art, Cocteau had great influence on the work of others, including the group of composers known as Les six. In the early 1920s, he and other members of Les six frequented a wildly popular bar named Le Boeuf sur le Toit, a name that Cocteau himself had a hand in picking.

The popularity of the bar was due in no small measure to the presence of Cocteau and his friends.

Cocteau's experiments with the human voice peaked with his play La Voix humaine. The story involves one woman on stage speaking on the telephone with her (invisible and inaudible) departing lover, who is leaving her to marry another woman. The telephone proved to be the perfect prop for Cocteau to explore his ideas, feelings and "algebra" concerning human needs and realities in communication.

In 1940, Le Bel Indifférent, Cocteau's play written for and starring Édith Piaf, was enormously successful. He also worked with Pablo Picasso on several projects and was friends with most of the European art community.

Cocteau's films, most of which he both wrote and directed, were particularly important in introducing the avant-garde into French cinema and influenced to a certain degree the upcoming French New Wave genre.

In 1945, Cocteau was one of several designers who created sets for the Théâtre de la Mode. He drew inspiration from filmmaker René Clair while making Tribute to René Clair: I Married a Witch.

Cocteau died of a heart attack at his chateau in Milly-la-Forêt, Essonne, France, on October 11, 1963 at the age of 74.

Huey Lewis is 72 years old today

Huey Lewis is 72 years old today.

A musician, songwriter and actor, Lewis sings lead and plays harmonica for his band, Huey Lewis and the News, in addition to writing or co-writing many of the band's songs.

The band is perhaps best known for their third album, Sports, and their contribution to the soundtrack of the 1985 feature film, Back to the Future. In previous years, Lewis previously played with the band, Clover, from 1972 to 1979.

Born in New York City, Lewis was raised in Marin County, California. When he was 13, his parents divorced. He attended and later graduated from the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey in 1967, where he achieved a perfect score of 800 on the math portion of the SAT. Lewis applied to and was accepted by Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

In an interview with David Letterman, Lewis talked about hitchhiking across the country to New York and how he learned to play the harmonica while waiting for rides. He hung out at an airport for three days until he stowed away on a plane to Europe.

While visiting the Scottish city of Aberdeen with no money and nowhere to sleep, Lewis claimed that the locals were very hospitable and would often offer him somewhere to stay.

In Madrid, Spain, Lewis became an accomplished blues player and he hitchhiked around and supported himself by busking with his harmonica. He gave his first concerts in Madrid, earning enough money to buy a plane ticket back to the U.S.

During his junior year, he dropped out of Cornell and moved back to the San Francisco area. His aim was to continue playing music as he tried other fields of work including landscaping, carpentry, weddings, event planning and natural foods.

In 1971, Lewis joined the Bay Area band, Clover. Around this time he took the stage name "Hughie Louis," the spelling of which he would tinker with for some years after. Other members of the band (at various points) were John McFee, Alex Call, John Ciambotti, Mitch Howie, Sean Hopper, Mickey Shine and Marcus David. Lewis played harmonica and sang lead vocals on a few tunes.

In 1976, after playing in the Bay Area with limited success, Clover went to Los Angeles. They had their "big break" in a club there when their act was caught by Nick Lowe, who convinced Clover to travel to Great Britain with him.

However, Clover arrived in Britain just as their folk-rock sound, known as pub rock in Britain, was being replaced by punk rock.

In 1978, the band returned to California, McFee joined the Doobie Brothers and Clover disbanded. Under the name "Huey Harp," Lewis played harmonica on Thin Lizzy's 1978 landmark album, Live and Dangerous. That same year, Lewis was playing at Uncle Charlie's, a club in Corte Madera, California, doing the “Monday Night Live” spot along with future members of the News.

After recording the song "Exo-Disco" (a disco version of the theme from the film, Exodus) as Huey Lewis and the American Express, Huey landed a singles contract from Phonogram Records and Bob Brown became his manager.

The band played a few gigs (including an opening for Van Morrison), before adding new guitarist, Chris Hayes, to the line-up. On Brown's advice they changed their name again to Huey Lewis and The News.

In April, 2018, Lewis revealed that he was suffering from hearing loss as a result of Ménière's disease, and canceled all upcoming tour dates.

Here, Huey Lewis and the News perform “The Heart of Rock & Roll”

Spam, the canned meat, was introduced on this day in 1937 — 85 years ago

Jay Hormel and some of his company’s canned meat products, including Spam, in 1946

Photo by Wallace Kirkland

Spam, the canned meat, was introduced on this day in 1937 — 85 years ago.

Hormel Foods introduced the mix of pork shoulder and ham, whose name is derived from “spiced ham.” (No, it doesn’t stand for “Something Posing As Meat.”) Since then, Spam has been a muse for poets, comedians and chefs, and it helped win World War II.

Jay Hormel, Spam’s creator, said he was the first to successfully can ham. Cooking the meat inside the can produced a natural gelatin, increased shelf life and made it useful in battle.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote a letter praising Spam, and the former Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev said his country couldn’t have fed its troops without it. Hawaii embraced Spam during the war, too, and the affection never ceased. The state consumes the most in America, with seven million cans a year, or five cans per person.

“In all of its high-sodium, gravy-drenched glory, Spam has, in every sense, found its way into my heart,” Anthony Bourdain, the late chef, said during a visit to Hawaii for his show “No Reservations.” “I get it now. I feel inducted into the Church of True Knowledge.”

Thanks New York Times!

Marc Cohn is 62 years old today

Marc Cohn, New York City, 2015

Photo by Frank Beacham

Marc Cohn is 62 years old today.

Cohn is a folk rock singer-songwriter and musician best known for his 1991 song, "Walking In Memphis."

Cohn was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He graduated from Beachwood High School in Beachwood, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb.

His mother died when he was two years old, and his father died ten years later. Cohn learned to play guitar and started writing songs when he was in junior high school, playing and singing with a local band called, Doanbrook Hotel.

While attending Oberlin College, he taught himself to play the piano. He transferred to UCLA and began to perform in Los Angeles-area coffeehouses.

Cohn then moved to New York City and embarked on demoing songs for various writers, including Jimmy Webb, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.

Working initially as a backup artist in recording sessions, he established secure professional footing after assembling the Supreme Court, a 14-piece cover band, who played at Caroline Kennedy’s wedding in 1986.

In 1987, Cohn performed two songs ("One Rock and Roll Too Many" and "Pumping Iron") on the Phil Ramone-produced concept album of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Starlight Express, Music and Songs from Starlight Express.

In 1989, Cohn was a backing pianist for singer Tracy Chapman on her second album. The job led to a contract with Atlantic Records in the early 1990s after label executives heard a demo disc featuring Cohn on piano and vocals.

Working initially with Chapman producer, David Kershenbaum, and collaborating later with engineer, Ben Wisch, and producer John Leventhal, Cohn released his debut solo album, Marc Cohn, in February, 1991.

The album was hugely successful, thanks to Cohn's hit song, "Walking in Memphis." The album went gold in 1992 and was certified platinum in 1996.

In August, 2005, Cohn was shot in the head during an attempted carjacking in Denver, Colorado, following a concert with Suzanne Vega. The bullet struck him in the temple but did not penetrate his skull. Cohn was hospitalized and released the next day.

Subsequently, he released the compilation The Very Best of Marc Cohn in June, 2006, and his fourth studio album, Join the Parade, in October, 2007.

In 2013, Cohn went on tour, opening for Bonnie Raitt.

Cohn was married to ABC News journalist Elizabeth Vargas, whom he met at the 1999 U.S. Open after being introduced by Andre Agassi. They have since divorced.

Here, Cohen performs “Walking in Memphis” in 2011

Warren Oates was born 94 years ago today

Warren Oates was born 94 years ago today.

An actor best known for his performances in several films directed by Sam Peckinpah, including The Wild Bunch (1969) and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974, Oates starred in numerous films during the early 1970s.

Much of his work has since achieved cult status including The Hired Hand (1971), Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) and Race with the Devil (1975). Oates also portrayed Sergeant Hulka in Stripes (1981).

Oates attended high school in Louisville, Kentucky and became interested in theater at the University of Louisville and starred in several plays there in 1953 for the Little Theater Company. He got an opportunity in New York City to star in a live production of the television series, Studio One, in 1957.

Oates died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, California on April 3, 1982 at age 53.

Today, the actor has a dedicated cult following due to his memorable performances in not only Peckinpah's films, but Monte Hellman's independent works, his films with Peter Fonda and a number of B-movies from the 1970s. His occasionally crude facade, likable persona and uncommon presence are admired by such filmmakers as Quentin Tarantino and Richard Linklater.

Picnickers at a Sarasota, Florida trailer park, 1941

Photo by Marion Post Walcott

Harvey Brooks, a bassist who has played for a wide range of major musicians from Bob Dylan to Miles Davis, is 78 years old today

Jimi Hendrix with Harvey Brooks, Los Angeles, Feb. 10, 1968

Harvey Brooks, a bassist who has played for a wide range of major musicians from Bob Dylan to Miles Davis, is 78 years old today.

Brooks has played in many styles of music (notably jazz and popular music), coming out of a New York music scene that was crackling with activity in the early 1960s.

One of the younger players on his instrument, he was a contemporary of Felix Pappalardi and Andy Kulberg and other eclectic bass players in their late teens and early 20s, who saw a way to bridge the styles of folk, blues, rock and jazz.

Al Kooper gave Brooks his first boost to fame when he asked him to play as part of Bob Dylan's backing band on the sessions that yielded the album, Highway 61 Revisited — in contrast to the kind of folkie-electric sound generated by the band on Dylan’s previous album, Bringing It All Back Home.

Dylan and his producer, Bob Johnston, were looking for a harder, in-your-face electric sound, and Brooks, along with guitarist Michael Bloomfield and organist Al Kooper, provided exactly what was needed on one of the most famous recordings of the 1960s.

Brooks was also part of Dylan's early backing band which performed to notoriety at Forest Hills, Queens and other venues in 1965. This band also included Robbie Robertson (guitar), Al Kooper (keyboards) and Levon Helm (drums).

From the Dylan single and album, which became two of the most widely heard (and, at the time, most controversial) records of the 1960s, Brooks branched out in a multitude of directions.

He went on to play on records by folk artists like Eric Andersen at Vanguard Records, Richie Havens and Jim & Jean at Verve Records, transitional electric folk-rockers such as David Blue (whose producer was looking for a sound similar to that on Highway 61 Revisited) and various blues-rock fusion projects involving Bloomfield and Kooper.

Brooks played on Cass Elliot's debut solo album, Dream a Little Dream (1968), and also on some Doors sessions, including the Soft Parade album.

Producer Paul Rothchild wanted to give the Doors a fresh sound. He hired Brooks to play and help organize the rhythm tracks and Paul Harris to write some string and horn arrangements.

Brooks also played live with the Doors at the Forum in LA and Madison Square Garden in New York and played on the Michael Bloomfield/Al Kooper/Steve Stills Super Session release, one of the iconic records of late 1960s rock music. His song "Harvey's Tune" appeared on this album.

It was through his participation in The Electric Flag, an extension of Michael Bloomfield and Barry Goldberg's interests in blues, that Brooks' career took an unexpected turn.

The Flag only lasted in its original line-up for about a year, and much of that time was spent recording a sound track album to the film, The Trip. The film starred Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Susan Strasberg and was written by Jack Nicholson. The Trip, made in 1967, was the predecessor to Easy Rider a couple of years later.

In the course of his work with the Flag, Brooks became a producer at Columbia Records and connected with fellow producer Teo Macero who led him to Miles Davis.

Working with Davis involved Brooks in a freer manner of making music than he'd been used to even on the most ambitious sessions with Bloomfield. Brooks contributed to the Bitches Brew and Big Fun albums as well as several unreleased tracks.

On these sessions two bassists were used; Brooks played electric bass while Dave Holland simultaneously played the acoustic bass. From this work, the jazz fusion movement was born.

Even casual listeners became familiar with his name, and from the 1970s into the mid-1990s, Brooks was one of the busiest bassists in music, working with such varied artists as Karen Dalton, John Martyn, the Fabulous Rhinestones, Seals & Crofts, Fontella Bass, John Sebastian, Loudon Wainwright III, John Cale and Paul Burlison.

Brooks and his wife, Bonnie, moved to Israel on August 4, 2009. Bonnie Brooks has written a children's book, "Gramps Has A Ponytail," using Harvey as a model for her musical gramps and his granddaughter.

Here, Brooks tells the Highway 61 Revisited story in “View From the Bottom”

Michael Bloomfield and Harvey Brooks during the recording of Al Kooper’s Super Session in 1968

Bob Dylan and his band off stage at Forest Hills, New York just before the famous concert on August 28, 1965.

Harvey Brooks, who is 78 years old today, is at the left, Robbie Robertson in the foreground and Levon Helm the the right foreground. Al Kooper was on keyboards.

After the well received acoustic half came to an end with "Mr. Tambourine Man," the band set up for the second half, an electric set. The sound was essentially a marriage of the Highway 61 sound with the future Hawks sound of the 1966 tour, but it actually sounds exactly like neither.

The electric half featured no less than the debut of four songs and a fifth ("Like a Rolling Stone") that had been released as a single a month before and played live at the Newport Festival soon after.

Harvey Brooks’ book, View from the Bottom, is available from Tangible Press! I am privileged to have helped Harvey shape the stories in the book. It was a lot of fun!

Harvey first came to the public’s attention when he played on the classic Bob Dylan album Highway 61 Revisited, released in 1965 to great acclaim.

Since then he has played with everyone from Miles Davis to Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, The Electric Flag, Al Kooper, John Cale and many others. This is his story, told from his own perspective, which includes first-hand accounts of such historical events as the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, as well as his esteemed career as a sought-after studio musician and staff producer for Columbia Records.

This book is a rich rock story about a musician who went all the way to the top. It was a wild ride!

Bill Withers was born 84 years ago today

Bill Withers was born 84 years ago today.

Withers was a singer-songwriter and musician who performed and recorded from 1970 until 1985. He recorded a number of hits such as "Lean on Me,” "Ain't No Sunshine,” "Use Me,” "Just the Two of Us,” "Lovely Day" and "Grandma's Hands.”

His life was recently the subject of the documentary film, Still Bill.

Withers died from heart complications in Los Angeles on March 30, 2020, at age 81.

Here, Withers performs “Ain’t No Sunshine”

Alan "Blind Owl" Wilson was born 79 years ago today

Alan "Blind Owl" Wilson was born 79 years ago today.

Wilson was a co-founder, leader and primary composer for Canned Heat. He played guitar, harmonica, sang and wrote several songs for the band.

Born and raised in the Boston suburb of Arlington, Massachusetts, some of Wilson's first efforts at performing music publicly came during his teen years with a jazz ensemble he formed with other musically oriented friends from school. It was around this same time that Wilson developed a fascination with blues music after a friend played a Muddy Waters record for him.

After graduating from Arlington High School, he majored in music at Boston University and played the Cambridge, Massachusetts coffeehouse folk-blues circuit. Wilson developed into a dedicated student of early blues, writing a number of articles for the Broadside of Boston newspaper and the folk-revival magazine, Little Sandy Review, including a piece on bluesman Robert Pete Williams.

Wilson was considered by many of his musical peers to be an expert on the blues musicians who came before him. Many considered him as possessing an exceptional ability for connecting musically with the elder bluesmen. His biggest influences included Skip James, Robert Johnson, Son House, Charley Patton, Tommy Johnson, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters and Booker White.

Skip James, in particular, was a highly exalted figure in Wilson's personal music journey. In high school, Wilson studied James' 1931 recordings with great enthusiasm. Subsequently, Wilson began singing similar to James' high pitch. Wilson eventually perfected the high tenor, for which he would become known.

After Son House's “rediscovery” in 1964, it was evident that House had forgotten his songs due to his long absence from music. Wilson showed him how to play again the songs House had recorded in 1930 and 1942. Wilson demonstrated them on guitar to revive House's memory.

House recorded "Father of the Delta Blues" for Columbia Records in 1965. Two of three selections on the set featured Wilson on harmonica and guitar.

In a letter to Jazz Journal, published in the September, 1965 issue, Son House's manager, Dick Waterman, remarked the following about the project and Wilson:

"It is a solo album, except for backing on two cuts by a 21-year-old White boy from Cambridge by the name of Al Wilson. Al plays second guitar on Empire State Express and harp on Levee Camp Moan. Al never recorded before, but he has backed John Hurt, Skip James, Sleepy John Estes, Bukka White and many others. He is good, and the record will prove it."

During his time performing in Cambridge, Wilson met the American guitarist, John Fahey. From Fahey, he acquired the nickname, "Blind Owl," owing to his extreme nearsightedness, roundish facial features and scholarly nature. In one instance when he was playing at a wedding, he laid his guitar on the wedding cake because he did not see it.

As Canned Heat's drummer, Fito de la Parra, wrote in his book: "Without the glasses, Alan literally could not recognize the people he played with at two feet. That's how blind the 'Blind Owl' was."

With Fahey's encouragement, Wilson moved with Fahey to Los Angeles with the aim of having Wilson assist Fahey with his UCLA master's thesis on Charley Patton. It was in Los Angeles that Wilson met Bob Hite, a fellow blues enthusiast and record collector, who would go on to establish Canned Heat with Wilson.

With Canned Heat, Wilson performed at two prominent concerts of the 1960s era, the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and Woodstock in 1969. Although Canned Heat's live performance was cut from the original theatrical release of the Woodstock film, they were featured in the 25th anniversary "Director's Cut."

The studio version of "Going Up The Country" was featured in the Woodstock film and has been referred to as the festival's unofficial theme song. Wilson also wrote and sang the notable "On the Road Again."

On September 3, 1970, Wilson was found dead on a hillside behind band mate Bob Hite's Topanga Canyon house. He was 27 years old.

An autopsy identified his manner and cause of death as accidental acute barbiturate intoxication. Wilson reportedly had attempted suicide a few months earlier, attempting to drive his car off a freeway in Los Angeles. He was briefly hospitalized for significant depression, and was released after a few weeks.

Although his death is sometimes reported as a suicide, this is not clearly established and he left no note. Wilson's death came just two weeks before the death of Jimi Hendrix and four weeks before the death of Janis Joplin. Along with his talent and intellect, Wilson had a reputation for social awkwardness and introversion which may have contributed to his depression.

Stephen Stills' song, "Blues Man," from the album, Manassas, is dedicated to Wilson, along with Jimi Hendrix and Duane Allman.

Neil Simon was born 95 years ago today

Neil Simon was born 95 years ago today.

A playwright and screenwriter, Simon wrote over thirty plays and nearly the same number of movie screenplays, most adapted from his plays. He has received more Oscar and Tony nominations than any other writer.

Simon grew up in New York during the Great Depression, with his parents' financial hardships affecting their marriage and giving him a mostly unhappy and unstable childhood. He often took refuge in movie theaters, where he enjoyed watching the early comedians like Charlie Chaplin, which inspired him to become a comedy writer.

After a few years in the Army Air Force Reserve after graduating high school, Simon began writing comedy scripts for radio and some popular early television shows. Among them were The Phil Silvers Show and Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows in 1950, where he worked alongside other young writers including Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks and Selma Diamond.

He began writing his own plays, beginning with Come Blow Your Horn (1961), which took him three years to complete and ran for 678 performances on Broadway.

It was followed by two more successful plays, Barefoot in the Park (1963) and The Odd Couple (1965), for which he won a Tony Award. This made him a national celebrity and "the hottest new playwright on Broadway."

His style ranged from romantic comedy to farce to more serious dramatic comedy. Overall, he has garnered seventeen Tony nominations and won three. During one season, he had four successful plays showing on Broadway at the same time, and, in 1983, became the only living playwright to have a New York theatre, the Neil Simon Theatre, named in his honor.

During the time between the 1960s, 70s and 80s, he wrote both original screenplays and stage plays, with some films actually based on his plays.

After winning the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1991 for Lost in Yonkers, critics began to take notice of the depths, complexity and issues of universal interest in his stories, which expressed serious concerns of most average people. His comedies were based around subjects such as marital conflict, infidelity, sibling rivalry, adolescence and fear of aging.

Most of his plays were also partly autobiographical, portraying his troubled childhood and different stages of his life, creating characters who were typically New Yorkers and often Jewish, like himself.

Simon's facility with dialogue gave his stories a rare blend of realism, humor and seriousness which audiences find easy to identify with.

Simon died died on August 26, 2018, after being on life support while hospitalized for renal failure. He also had Alzheimer's disease.

Peter Rowan is 80 years old today

Peter Rowan is 80 years old today.

A bluegrass musician and composer, Rowan plays guitar and mandolin, yodels and sings. From an early age, he had an interest in music and eventually learned to play the guitar. At 12, he heard Elvis Presley for the first time and later, in junior high school, formed a rockabilly band, the Cupids.

Influenced by the blues musician, Eric Von Schmidt, Rowan traded his electric guitar for an acoustic and began to play the blues. He was also influenced by the folk sound of Joan Baez. In college, he discovered bluegrass after hearing, The Country Gentlemen, and The Stanley Brothers.

He soon discovered the music of Bill Monroe, and with some help from banjo player Bill Keith, he was to audition for Monroe, who invited him to Nashville. Accompanied by Keith, Rowan was hired in March, 1965 as guitarist and lead vocalist of Monroe's Bluegrass Boys.

His recording debut as a "Bluegrass Boy" took place on October 14, 1966 and he recorded a total of fourteen songs with Monroe before his tenure ended in the spring of 1967.

Rowan teamed up with David Grisman in 1967, forming the band, Earth Opera, which frequently opened for The Doors. In 1969, Rowan joined Seatrain, along with Richard Greene. In 1973, Rowan, together with Greene, Grisman, Bill Keith and Clarence White formed the bluegrass band, Muleskinner.

The band released one album. The same year, (1973), Rowan and Grisman formed Old and in the Way, with Greene, Jerry Garcia and John Kahn.

Greene was later replaced by Vassar Clements. Old and In the Way disbanded in 1974 and Rowan joined a rock band led by his brothers. The arrangement lasted three years, with him leaving the group in 1977.

For a time, he toured with Richard Greene in Japan and played clubs with fiddler, Tex Logan. He also formed the Green Grass Gringos. Rowan has been involved in many group and solo projects, including Peter Rowan and the Free Mexican Airforce. He composed songs performed by New Riders of the Purple Sage, including "Panama Red," "Midnight Moonlight" and "Lonesome L.A. Cowboy."

Rowan also plays on In No Sense? Nonsense!, an album by the UK band, Art of Noise. His is the voice (yodel) on "One Earth," the last song of the album. It was recorded in 1987, and was released by China Records and Chrysalis Records Ltd. that same year.

Rowan's "Quartet" in 2007 was the second collaboration with guitarist and bluegrass musician, Tony Rice.

Here, Rowan performs “Doc Watson Morning” in 2013

Rube Goldberg was born 139 years ago

Rube Goldberg was born 139 years ago.

A cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer and inventor, Goldberg is best known for a series of popular cartoons depicting complicated gadgets that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways.

Goldberg received many honors in his lifetime, including a Pulitzer Prize for his political cartooning in 1948 and the Banshees' Silver Lady Award in 1959. He was a founding member and the first president of the National Cartoonists Society, and he is the namesake of the Reuben Award, which the organization awards to the Cartoonist of the Year.

He is the inspiration for various international competitions, known as Rube Goldberg Machine Contests, which challenge participants to make a complicated machine to perform a simple task.

Here’s a video of a Rube Goldberg contraption

Stephen Foster was born 196 years ago today

Illustration by William Sharp

Stephen Foster was born 196 years ago today.

Known as the "father of American music,” Foster was the pre-eminent songwriter in the United States of the 19th century. His songs — such as "Oh! Susanna,” "Camptown Races,” "Old Folks at Home" ("Swanee River"), "Hard Times Come Again No More,” "My Old Kentucky Home,” "Old Black Joe,” "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair” and "Beautiful Dreamer" — remain popular today.

Foster attended private academies in Allegheny, Athens and Towanda, Pennsylvania. He received an education in English grammar, diction, the classics, penmanship, Latin and Greek and mathematics.

In 1846, Foster moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and became a bookkeeper with his brother's steamship company. While in Cincinnati, he penned his first successful songs, among them "Oh! Susanna" which would prove to be the anthem of the California Gold Rush in 1848–1849.

In 1849, he published Foster's Ethiopian Melodies, which included the successful song "Nelly Was a Lady,” made famous by the Christy Minstrels.

A plaque marks the site of Foster's residence in Cincinnati, where the Guilford School building is now located. Although many of his songs had Southern themes, Foster never lived in the South and visited it only once, by river-boat voyage (on his brother Dunning's steam boat, the Millinger) down the Mississippi to New Orleans, during his honeymoon in 1852.

Foster attempted to make a living as a professional songwriter and may be considered innovative in this respect, since this field did not yet exist in the modern sense. Due in part to the limited scope of music copyright and composer royalties at the time, Foster realized very little of the profits which his works generated for sheet music printers.

Multiple publishers often printed their own competing editions of Foster's tunes, not paying Foster anything. For "Oh, Susanna," he received $100.

Foster moved to New York City in 1860. About a year later, his wife and daughter left him and returned to Pittsburgh. Beginning in 1862, his fortunes decreased, and as they did, so did the quality of his new songs.

Early in 1863, he began working with George Cooper, whose lyrics were often humorous and designed to appeal to musical theater audiences.

The Civil War created a flurry of newly written music with patriotic war themes, but this did not benefit Foster.

Stephen Foster had become impoverished while living at the North American Hotel at 30 Bowery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York. He was reportedly confined to his bed for days by a persistent fever.

Foster tried to call a chambermaid, but collapsed, falling against the washbasin next to his bed and shattering it, which gouged his head. It took three hours to get him to Bellevue Hospital. In an era before transfusions and antibiotics, he succumbed three days after his admittance at age 37.

Here, Neil Young’s Americana album features a unique version Foster’s “Oh Susannah”

Mavis Staples performs Stephen Foster's "Hard Times Come Again No More" in Nashville, 2004

Ted Joans, jazz poet, surrealist, trumpeter and painter, was born 94 years ago today

Photo by Frank Beacham

Ted Joans, jazz poet, surrealist, trumpeter and painter, was born 94 years ago today.

Joans work stands at the intersection of several avant-garde streams and some have seen in it a precursor to the orality of the spoken-word movement. However, he criticized the competitive aspect of "slam" poetry. Joans is known for his motto: "Jazz is my religion and Surrealism is my point of view."

Born in Cairo, Illinois, as Theodore Jones, his parents worked on the riverboats that plied the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. He played the trumpet and was an avid jazz aficionado, following Bop as it developed, and continued to espouse jazz of all styles and eras throughout his life.

Growing up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Louisville, Kentucky, he earned a degree in fine arts from Indiana University, before moving in 1951 to New York City. In New York, he painted in a style he called, Jazz Action, and read his poetry, developing a personal style of oral delivery he called, Jazz Poetry.

A participant in the Beat Generation in Greenwich Village, Joans was a contemporary and friend of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, Leroi Jones (later known as Amiri Baraka), Gregory Corso, Diane Di Prima, Bob Kaufman and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Joans shared a room for a time with the great jazz musician, Charlie Parker. His bohemian costume balls and rent parties were photographed by Fred McDarrah and Weegee.

Joans was also deeply involved in Surrealism, meeting Joseph Cornell. At first becoming close to his childhood hero, Salvador Dalí, Joans soon broke with him. In Paris, he was welcomed into the circle of André Breton.

Joans was an erudite Africanist and traveled extensively throughout the continent, frequently on foot, over many decades between periods in Europe and North America. From the 1960s onward, he had a house in Tanger, Morocco, and then in Timbuktu, Mali. While he ceased playing the trumpet, he maintained a jazz sensibility in the reading of his poems and frequently collaborated with musicians.

He continued to travel and maintained an active correspondence with a host of creative individuals, among them Langston Hughes, Michel Leiris, Aimé Césaire, Robert Creeley, Jayne Cortez, Stokely Carmichael, Ishmael Reed, Paul Bowles and Franklin and Penelope Rosemont.

Many of these letters are collected at the Bancroft Library of the University of California Berkeley. The University of Delaware houses his correspondence with Charles Henri Ford. Joans was also a close correspondent/participant of the Chicago Surrealist Group.

Joans' painting, Bird Lives, hangs in the De Young Museum in San Francisco. He was also the originator of the "Bird Lives" legend and graffiti in New York City after the death of Charlie Parker in March, 1955.

Joans invented the technique of outagraphy, in which the subject of a photograph is cut out of the image. His visual art work spans collages, assemblage objects, paintings and drawings including many resulting from the collaborative surrealist game, Cadavre Exquis. The rhinoceros is a frequent subject in his work in all media. He also created short Super 8 film works.

During the early 1980s, Joans was a writer in residence in Berlin, Germany, under the auspices of the DAAD (Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst) program. He was a contributor of jazz essays and reviews to magazines such as Coda and Jazz Magazine.

His autobiographical text, "Je Me Vois," appeared in the Contemporary Authors Autobiographical Series, Volume 25, published by Gale Research. His work has been included in numerous anthologies. In the late 1990s, Joans relocated to Seattle and resided there and in Vancouver, between travels, until 2003. He was the recipient of the American Book Awards Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001, from the Before Columbus Foundation.

Joans died in Vancouver, British Columbia, on April 25, 2003 due to complications from diabetes. He was 75 years old and had 10 children. One of his daughters, Daline, was named after Salvador Dalí.

Here is the first part of “Jazz and Poetry” by Louis va Gasteren. It features poetry by Ted Joans.

“Don't let the minute spoil the hour.”

— Ted Joans

Ted Joans with David Amram, New York, 1994

Photo by Frank Beacham

On this day — 167 years ago — Walt Whitman's first edition of the self-published, Leaves of Grass, was printed. It contained a dozen poems

Walt Whitman, 1887

Photo by George C. Cox

(This image is said to have been Whitman's favorite from the photo-session. Cox published about seven images for Whitman, who so admired this image that he even sent a copy to the poet Tennyson in England. Whitman sold the other copies.)

On this day — 167 years ago — Walt Whitman's first edition of the self-published, Leaves of Grass, was printed. It contained a dozen poems.

Whitman was born in West Hills, Long Island, and raised in Brooklyn. He left school at the age of 14 to become a journeyman printer and later worked as a teacher, journalist, editor and carpenter to support his writing.

In 1855, he self-published, Leaves of Grass, which carried his picture but not his name. He revised the book many times, constantly adding and rewriting poems.

The second edition, in 1856, included his "Sundown Poem," later called "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," one of his most beloved pieces.

Whitman sometimes took long ferry and coach rides as an excuse to talk with people, and was also fond of long walks and cultural events in Manhattan.

In 1862, Whitman's brother was wounded at the Battle of Fredericksburg, and Whitman went to care for him. He spent the rest of the war comforting both Union and Confederate soldiers.

After the war, Whitman worked for several government departments until 1873, when he suffered a stroke. He spent the rest of his life in Camden, New Jersey, and continued to issue revised editions of Leaves of Grass until shortly before his death in 1892.

A Sunday afternoon on the family lawn, Westchester, New York, 1968

Photo by Diane Arbus

Ken Russell, the English film director known for his flamboyant style, was born 95 years ago today

Ken Russell, the English film director known for his flamboyant style, was born 95 years ago today.

Russell was known for his pioneering work in television and film. His films often dealt with the lives of famous composers or were based on other works of art which he adapted loosely.

He began directing for the BBC, where he made creative adaptations of composers' lives which were unusual for the time. He also directed feature films independently and for studios.

Russell is best known for his Oscar-winning film, Women in Love (1969), The Devils (1971), The Who's Tommy (1975) and the science fiction film, Altered States (1980).

Classical musicians and conductors hold him in high regard for his story-driven biopics of various composers, most famously Elgar, Delius, Liszt, Mahler and Tchaikovsky.

British film critic Mark Kermode called Russell "somebody who proved that British cinema didn't have to be about kitchen-sink realism — it could be every bit as flamboyant as Fellini.”

Born in Southampton, England, Russell spent much of his time at the cinema with his mother, who was mentally ill. He cited Die Nibelungen and The Secret of the Loch as two early influences. He was educated at private schools in Walthamstow and at Pangbourne College, and studied photography at Walthamstow Technical College (now part of the University of East London).

He moved into television work after short careers in dance and photography.

His series of documentary “Teddy Girl” photographs were published in Picture Post magazine in 1955, and he continued to work as a freelance documentary photographer until 1959.

After 1959, Russell's amateur films (his documentaries for the Free Cinema movement, and his 1958 short, Amelia and the Angel, secured him a job at the BBC. Between 1959 to 1970, Russell directed art documentaries for Monitor and Omnibus.

His best known works during this period include: Elgar (1962), The Debussy Film (1965), Isadora Duncan, the Biggest Dancer in the World (1967), Song of Summer (about Frederick Delius and Eric Fenby, 1968) and Dance of the Seven Veils (1970), a film about Richard Strauss.

He once said that the best film he ever made was Song of Summer, and, looking back, he wouldn't edit a single shot. With Elgar it was the first time that an arts' program (Monitor) had shown one long film about an artistic figure instead of short items, and also it was the first time that re-enactments were used.

Russell fought with the BBC over using actors to portray different ages of the same character, instead of the traditional photograph stills and documentary footage. His television films became increasingly flamboyant and outrageous.

Dance of the Seven Veils sought to portray Richard Strauss as a Nazi. One scene in particular showed a Jew being tortured, while a group of SS men look on in delight, to the tune of Strauss's music. The Strauss family was so outraged they withdrew all music rights so that the film is effectively banned from being screened until Strauss's copyright expires in 2019.

Russell's first feature film was French Dressing (1963), a comedy loosely based on Roger Vadim's And God Created Woman. Its critical and commercial failure sent Russell back to the BBC. His second big-screen effort was part of author Len Deighton's Harry Palmer spy cycle, Billion Dollar Brain (1967), starring Michael Caine.

In 1969, Russell directed what is considered his "signature film" — Women In Love, an adaptation of D. H. Lawrence's novel of the same name about two artist sisters living in post-World War I Britain.

The film starred Glenda Jackson, Oliver Reed, Jennie Linden and Alan Bates. It is notable for its nude wrestling scene, which broke the convention at the time that a mainstream movie could not show male genitalia.

Women in Love connected with the sexual revolution and bohemian politics of the late 1960s. It was nominated for several Oscars and won one for Glenda Jackson for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Russell himself was nominated for an Oscar — that for Best Director (his only nomination)— as were his cinematographer and screenwriter. He followed, Women in Love, with a string of innovative adult-themed films which were often as controversial as they were successful.

The Music Lovers (1970), a biopic of Tchaikovsky, starred Richard Chamberlain as a flamboyant Tchaikovsky and Glenda Jackson as his wife. The score was conducted by André Previn. The following year, Russell released The Devils, a film so controversial that its backers, the American company Warner Bros., refused to release it uncut.

Inspired by Aldous Huxley's book, The Devils of Loudun, and using material from John Whiting's play, The Devils, it starred Oliver Reed as a priest who stands in the way of a corrupt church and state. Helped by publicity over the more sensational scenes, featuring sexuality among nuns, the film topped British box office receipts for eight weeks.

In the United States, the film, which had already been cut for distribution in Britain, was further edited. It has never played in anything like its original state in America.

Russell followed The Devils with a reworking of the period musical, The Boy Friend, for which he cast the model, Twiggy. She won two Golden Globe Awards for her performance: one for Best Actress in a musical comedy and one for the best newcomer. The film was heavily cut, shorn of two musical numbers for its American release, where it was not a big success.

Russell himself provided most of the financing for Savage Messiah, a biopic of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. He worked with David Puttnam on Mahler.

In 1975, Russell's star-studded film version of The Who's rock opera, Tommy, starring Roger Daltrey, Ann-Margret, Oliver Reed, Elton John, Tina Turner, Eric Clapton and Jack Nicholson, spent a record fourteen weeks at the #1 spot and played to full houses for over a year.

Two months before Tommy was released in March, 1975, Russell started work on Lisztomania, another vehicle for Roger Daltrey and for the film scoring of progressive rocker, Rick Wakeman. In the film, the good music of Franz Liszt is stolen by Richard Wagner who, in his operas, puts forward the theme of the Superman.

Tommy and Lisztomania were important in the rise of improved motion picture sound in the 1970s, as they were among the first films to be released with Dolby-encoded soundtracks. Lisztomania, tagged as "the film that out-Tommys 'Tommy'," topped the British box-office for two weeks in November, 1975, when Tommy was still in the list of the week's top five box-office hits.

Russell's next film, the 1977 biopic, Valentino, also topped the British box-office for two weeks, but was not a hit in America. Russell's 1980 effort, Altered States, was a departure in both genre and tone, in that it is Russell's only foray into science fiction.

Working from Paddy Chayefsky's screenplay (based upon his novel), Russell used his penchant for elaborate visual effects to translate Chayefsky's hallucinatory story to the cinema, and took the opportunity to add his trademark religious and sexual imagery. The film had an innovative Oscar-nominated score by John Corigliano.

After taking a break from film to direct opera, Russell found financing with various independent companies. During this period, he directed Gothic (1986) with Gabriel Byrne, about the night Mary Shelley told the tale of Frankenstein, and The Lair of the White Worm (1988) with Amanda Donohoe and Hugh Grant, based on a novella by Bram Stoker.

In 1988, came the release of Salome's Last Dance, a loosely adapted esoteric tribute to Oscar Wilde's controversial play Salome, which was banned on the 19th century London stage. The cult movie defines Russell's adult themed romance with the Theater of The Poor and was also notable for the screen presence of Imogen Millais-Scott as Salome.

Russell finished the 1980s with The Rainbow, another D. H. Lawrence adaptation, which also happens to be the prequel to Women in Love. Glenda Jackson played the mother of her character in the previous film.

In the 1990 film, The Russia House, starring Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer, Russell made one of his first significant acting appearances, portraying Walter, an ambiguously gay British intelligence officer who discomfits his more strait-laced CIA counterparts. Russell henceforth occasionally acted.

In May, 1995, he was honored with a retrospective of his work presented in Hollywood by the American Cinematheque. Titled Shock Value, it included some of Russell's most successful and controversial films and also several of his early BBC productions.

Russell attended the festival and engaged in lengthy post-screening discussions of each film with audiences and moderator, Martin Lewis, who had instigated and curated the retrospective.

Ken Russell and his wife, Lisi Tribble, were invited by New York film writer Shade Rupe on a six-week journey across North America, beginning with a Lifetime Achievement Award given by Mitch Davis at the Fantasia film festival on July 20, 2010.

Ken Russell died on November 27, 2011 at the age of 84.

Here is an assessment of Russell’s career by the Guardian.

Brian Jones died on this day 53 years ago. Jim Morrison died exactly two years later

Brian Jones on the left; Jim Morrison on the right

Brian Jones, the Rolling Stones guitarist, was found dead of an apparent accidental drowning on this day in 1969 — 53 years ago.

Two years later to the day, in 1971, Jim Morrison died of heart failure in a Paris bathtub.

For all the highly publicized brushes with the law that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards would have in the late 1960s, it was the original leader of the Rolling Stones, Brian Jones, who was the group's original bad boy.

He lived, in the words of Pete Townshend, "on a higher planet of decadence than anyone I would ever meet."

A gifted musician, Jones helped create the sound of countless classic Stones tracks with his work on guitar, sitar, marimba and other instruments that were then considered exotic for rock and roll. But he also helped create the stereotype of the wasted rock star with his prodigious drug habit and his declining ability to contribute to the Stones' recordings.

“At first, Brian was the most interesting Stone," John Lennon recalled in a 1970 interview, "[but] he was one of them guys that disintegrated in front of you."

Unable to show up for recording sessions due to his drug habit, and unable to play properly on the occasions that he did, Jones was also refused an entry visa to the United States in the spring of 1969 due to his recent drug conviction. This upset plans for a fall tour of the U.S.

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards fired him on June 8, and a little more than three weeks later, the 27-year-old Jones was found dead at the bottom of the swimming pool at his home in Sussex.

Rumors of foul play would persist for years among fans and conspiracy buffs, but the coroner's official ruling was "death by misadventure" on July 3, 1969.

Two years later to the day, Jim Morrison, another 27-year-old rock star would die under uncertain circumstances.

As the charismatic frontman of the iconic 1960s group, The Doors, Morrison created a template that charismatic frontmen are still emulating nearly half a century later.

Young, good-looking and clad in skintight black leather pants, the Lizard King mesmerized a generation with his stage presence and his lyrics about funeral pyres and mystic heated wine. But the trippy mix of Nietzsche, Blake and Huxley that the young Dionysius peddled was usually filtered through heavy doses of bourbon and mescaline, or some other combination of alcohol and drugs.

While the precise circumstances of Morrison's death on July 3, 1971 are fuzzy enough to have fueled persistent rumors that he is still alive, what is known for certain is that he was found dead in the bathtub of the Paris apartment he was sharing with longtime girlfriend, Pamela Courson.

Because no evidence of foul play was found at the scene, and because Courson told French authorities that Morrison had not been using drugs, no autopsy was conducted. “Heart failure" was cited as the cause of death.

In the years since his untimely death, Morrison's most prominent biographers, Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman, have asserted that Morrison suffered an accidental heroin overdose that night, basing their claim on Courson's allegation that he was in fact using drugs sometime before her own death by overdose in 1974.

Remembering the Atlanta International Pop Festival of 1970

Remembering the Atlanta International Pop Festival of 1970

Perhaps it was because I missed Woodstock the summer before, I’m no longer sure. But I certainly was not going to miss the second Atlanta International Pop Festival which began on this day in 1970 — 52 years ago.

It was a hell of a lineup, even then.

The festival was held at the Middle Georgia Raceway in Byron, Georgia and it went from July 3 until near dawn on the July 6. I clearly remember Jimi Hendrix destroying his guitar with the “Star Spangled Banner” about midnight on July 4. Who could forget?

Tickets for the festival were only $14, but like Woodstock before it, it became an "open event" when the promoter threw open the gates after crowds outside began to tear down the plywood fence that had been erected around the site. Estimates were that up 600,000 people attended.

On the bill, in addition to Hendrix, were the Allman Brothers Band, B.B. King, Procol Harum, the Chambers Brothers, Poco, Grand Funk Railroad, Ravi Shankar, Richie Havens, Ten Years After, Johnny Winter, John Sebastian, Mountain, Spirit and Terry Reid.

It would become one of the last big open, free concerts. There was no real “security” at the time, the word hadn’t even been coined yet. No “merch,” either. T-shirts were homemade, mostly. And, there were no cell phones, pagers, Internet or personal computers. Back then I seemed to have plenty of money, though I wasn’t rich by any means. It was one of the last of the great times of the decade!

Corporations hadn’t yet taken over rock music. Half the crowd was naked and there were so many drugs that the festival now is a blur.

But, man, it was fun. A time of discovery and adventure. A magic moment in my life, for sure.

Audra McDonald is 52 years old today

Photo by Van Wezel

Audra McDonald is 52 years old today.

An actress and singer, McDonald has appeared on stage in both musicals and dramas. Her credits include Ragtime, A Raisin in the Sun, Porgy and Bess and as Billie Holiday on Broadway in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill.

McDonald maintains an active concert and recording career, performing song cycles and operas as well as performing in concert throughout the U.S. She has won six Tony Awards, more performance wins than any other actor, and is the only person to win all four acting categories.

Born in West Berlin, Germany, McDonald is the daughter of American parents, Anna Kathryn, a university administrator, and Stanley McDonald, Jr., a high school principal. At the time of her birth, her father was stationed with the U.S. Army. McDonald was raised in Fresno, California, the elder of two daughters.

She began to study acting at a young age to counteract her diagnosis as "hyperactive.” McDonald graduated from the Roosevelt School of the Arts program within Theodore Roosevelt High School in Fresno. She got her start in acting with Dan Pessano and Good Company Players, beginning in their junior company.

McDonald was a three-time Tony Award winner by age 28 for her performances in Carousel, Master Class and Ragtime, placing her alongside Shirley Booth, Gwen Verdon and Zero Mostel by accomplishing this feat within five years.

McDonald has also made many television appearances, both musical and dramatic. In films, McDonald has appeared in Best Thief in the World (2004), It Runs in the Family (2003), Cradle Will Rock (1999), The Object of My Affection (1998) and Seven Servants by Daryush Shokof which was her film acting debut in (1996).

Here, McDonald discusses her role as Billie Holiday in “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill”