1.
Manhattan
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Manhattan is the most densely populated borough of New York City, its economic and administrative center, and the citys historical birthplace. The borough is coextensive with New York County, founded on November 1,1683, Manhattan is often described as the cultural and financial capital of the world and hosts the United Nations Headquarters. Many multinational media conglomerates are based in the borough and it is historically documented to have been purchased by Dutch colonists from Native Americans in 1626 for 60 guilders which equals US$1062 today. New York County is the United States second-smallest county by land area, on business days, the influx of commuters increases that number to over 3.9 million, or more than 170,000 people per square mile. Manhattan has the third-largest population of New York Citys five boroughs, after Brooklyn and Queens, the City of New York was founded at the southern tip of Manhattan, and the borough houses New York City Hall, the seat of the citys government. The name Manhattan derives from the word Manna-hata, as written in the 1609 logbook of Robert Juet, a 1610 map depicts the name as Manna-hata, twice, on both the west and east sides of the Mauritius River. The word Manhattan has been translated as island of hills from the Lenape language. The United States Postal Service prefers that mail addressed to Manhattan use New York, NY rather than Manhattan, the area that is now Manhattan was long inhabited by the Lenape Native Americans. In 1524, Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano – sailing in service of King Francis I of France – was the first European to visit the area that would become New York City. It was not until the voyage of Henry Hudson, an Englishman who worked for the Dutch East India Company, a permanent European presence in New Netherland began in 1624 with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island. In 1625, construction was started on the citadel of Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, later called New Amsterdam, the 1625 establishment of Fort Amsterdam at the southern tip of Manhattan Island is recognized as the birth of New York City. In 1846, New York historian John Romeyn Brodhead converted the figure of Fl 60 to US$23, variable-rate myth being a contradiction in terms, the purchase price remains forever frozen at twenty-four dollars, as Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace remarked in their history of New York. Sixty guilders in 1626 was valued at approximately $1,000 in 2006, based on the price of silver, Straight Dope author Cecil Adams calculated an equivalent of $72 in 1992. In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant was appointed as the last Dutch Director General of the colony, New Amsterdam was formally incorporated as a city on February 2,1653. In 1664, the English conquered New Netherland and renamed it New York after the English Duke of York and Albany, the Dutch Republic regained it in August 1673 with a fleet of 21 ships, renaming the city New Orange. Manhattan was at the heart of the New York Campaign, a series of battles in the early American Revolutionary War. The Continental Army was forced to abandon Manhattan after the Battle of Fort Washington on November 16,1776. The city, greatly damaged by the Great Fire of New York during the campaign, became the British political, British occupation lasted until November 25,1783, when George Washington returned to Manhattan, as the last British forces left the city
2.
Jazz
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Jazz is a music genre that originated amongst African Americans in New Orleans, United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and developed from roots in Blues and Ragtime. Since the 1920s jazz age, jazz has become recognized as a form of musical expression. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, call and response vocals, polyrhythms, Jazz has roots in West African cultural and musical expression, and in African-American music traditions including blues and ragtime, as well as European military band music. Although the foundation of jazz is deeply rooted within the Black experience of the United States, different cultures have contributed their own experience, intellectuals around the world have hailed jazz as one of Americas original art forms. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on different national, regional, and local musical cultures, New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass-band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. In the 1930s, heavily arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz, bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging musicians music which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed in the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, modal jazz developed in the late 1950s, using the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock rhythms, electric instruments. In the early 1980s, a form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful. Other styles and genres abound in the 2000s, such as Latin, the question of the origin of the word jazz has resulted in considerable research, and its history is well documented. It is believed to be related to jasm, a term dating back to 1860 meaning pep. The use of the word in a context was documented as early as 1915 in the Chicago Daily Tribune. Its first documented use in a context in New Orleans was in a November 14,1916 Times-Picayune article about jas bands. In an interview with NPR, musician Eubie Blake offered his recollections of the slang connotations of the term, saying, When Broadway picked it up. That was dirty, and if you knew what it was, the American Dialect Society named it the Word of the Twentieth Century. Jazz has proved to be difficult to define, since it encompasses such a wide range of music spanning a period of over 100 years. Attempts have been made to define jazz from the perspective of other musical traditions, in the opinion of Robert Christgau, most of us would say that inventing meaning while letting loose is the essence and promise of jazz. As Duke Ellington, one of jazzs most famous figures, said, although jazz is considered highly difficult to define, at least in part because it contains so many varied subgenres, improvisation is consistently regarded as being one of its key elements
3.
Charlie Parker
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Charles Charlie Parker, Jr. also known as Yardbird and Bird, was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Parker was an influential jazz soloist and a leading figure in the development of bebop. Parker was a blazingly fast virtuoso, and he introduced revolutionary harmonic ideas including rapid passing chords, new variants of altered chords and his tone ranged from clean and penetrating to sweet and somber. Parker acquired the nickname Yardbird early in his career, Parker was an icon for the hipster subculture and later the Beat Generation, personifying the jazz musician as an uncompromising artist and intellectual rather than just an entertainer. Charles Parker, Jr. was born in Kansas City, Kansas, and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, the child of Charles Parker and Adelaide Addie. He attended Lincoln High School in September 1934, but withdrew in December 1935, Parker began playing the saxophone at age 11, and at age 14 he joined his schools band using a rented school instrument. His father, Charles, was absent but provided some musical influence, he was a pianist. He later became a Pullman waiter or chef on the railways, Parkers mother Addie worked nights at the local Western Union office. His biggest influence at that time was a trombone player who taught him the basics of improvisation. In the late 1930s Parker began to practice diligently, during this period he mastered improvisation and developed some of the ideas that led to bebop. In an interview with Paul Desmond, he said that he spent three to four years practicing up to 15 hours a day, bands led by Count Basie and Bennie Moten certainly influenced Parker. In 1937, Parker played at a jam session at the Reno Club in Kansas City and his attempt to improvise failed when he lost track of the chord changes. This prompted Jo Jones, the drummer for Count Basies Orchestra, in 1938 Parker joined pianist Jay McShanns territory band. The band toured nightclubs and other venues of the southwest, as well as Chicago, Parker made his professional recording debut with McShanns band. As a teenager, Parker developed a morphine addiction while hospitalized after an automobile accident and he continued using heroin throughout his life, and it ultimately contributed to his death. In 1939 Parker moved to New York City, to pursue a career in music and he held several other jobs as well. He worked for nine dollars a week as a dishwasher at Jimmies Chicken Shack, in 1942 Parker left McShanns band and played for one year with Earl Hines, whose band included Dizzy Gillespie, who later played with Parker as a duo. This period is virtually undocumented, due to the strike of 1942–1943 by the American Federation of Musicians, Parker joined a group of young musicians, and played in after-hours clubs in Harlem, such as [[Clark Monroes Uptown House
4.
Dizzy Gillespie
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John Birks Dizzy Gillespie was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, and singer. AllMusics Scott Yanow wrote, Dizzy Gillespies contributions to jazz were huge, Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic complexity previously unheard in jazz. His beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, his singing, his bent horn, pouched cheeks. In the 1940s Gillespie, with Charlie Parker, became a figure in the development of bebop. He taught and influenced other musicians, including trumpeters Miles Davis, Jon Faddis, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Arturo Sandoval, Lee Morgan, Chuck Mangione. Gillespie was born in Cheraw, South Carolina, the youngest of nine children of James, James was a local bandleader, so instruments were made available to the children. Gillespie started to play the piano at the age of four, Gillespies father died when he was only ten years old. Gillespie taught himself how to play the trombone as well as the trumpet by the age of twelve, from the night he heard his idol, Roy Eldridge, play on the radio, he dreamed of becoming a jazz musician. He received a scholarship to the Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina which he attended for two years before accompanying his family when they moved to Philadelphia. Teddy Hills band was where Gillespie made his first recording, King Porter Stomp, Willis was not immediately friendly but Gillespie was attracted anyway. The two finally married on May 9,1940 and they remained married until his death in 1993. Gillespie stayed with Teddy Hills band for a year, then left, in 1939, Gillespie joined Cab Calloways orchestra, with which he recorded one of his earliest compositions, the instrumental Pickin the Cabbage, in 1940. After a notorious altercation between the two men, Calloway fired Gillespie in late 1941, the incident is recounted by Gillespie, along with fellow Calloway band members Milt Hinton and Jonah Jones, in Jean Bachs 1997 film, The Spitball Story. Calloway did not approve of Gillespies mischievous humor, nor of his approach to soloing, according to Jones. Finally, their grudge for each other erupted over a thrown spitball, Calloway never thought highly of Gillespie, because he didnt view Gillespie as a good musician. Once during a rehearsal, a member of the band threw a spitball, already in a foul mood, Calloway decided to blame this on Gillespie. In order to clear his name, Gillespie didn’t take the blame, Calloway had minor cuts on the thigh and wrist. After the two men were separated, Calloway fired Gillespie, a few days later, Gillespie tried to apologize to Calloway, but he was dismissed
5.
East Carolina University
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East Carolina University is a public, doctoral/research university in Greenville, North Carolina, United States. Named East Carolina University by statute and commonly known as ECU or East Carolina, the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities designates East Carolina as a Sea Grant university and an Innovation and Economic Prosperity campus. Founded on March 8,1907 as a training school. The nine undergraduate colleges, graduate school, and four schools are located on these four properties. All of the non-health sciences majors are located on the main campus, the College of Nursing, College of Allied Health Sciences, The Brody School of Medicine, and School of Dental Medicine are located on the health science campus. There are ten social sororities,16 social fraternities, four historically black sororities, five historically black fraternities, one Native American fraternity, there are over 300 registered clubs on campus including fraternities and sororities. Although its purpose was to young white men and women. In 1920, ECTTS became an institution and renamed East Carolina Teachers College. A masters degree program was authorized in 1929, the first such degree granted by ECTC was in 1933. Progress toward full college status was made in 1948 with the designation of the bachelor of arts as an arts degree. A change of name to East Carolina College in 1951 reflected this expanded mission, over the objections of Governor Dan K. The university did not remain independent for long, on July 1,1972, it was incorporated into the University of North Carolina System, the successor to the Consolidated University. Today, ECU is the third–largest university in North Carolina with 21,589 undergraduate and 5,797 graduate students, East Carolina is separated into three distinct campuses, Main Campus, Health Sciences Campus, and West Research Campus. It owns two sports complexes, Blount Recreational Sports Complex and North Recreational Complex and it owns a field station in New Holland, North Carolina. The main campus, also known as the east campus, is about 530 acres in a residential area of downtown Greenville. The 158 buildings on main campus comprise more than 4.6 million square feet of academic, research, many of the Main Campus buildings feature the Spanish–Mission style architecture, inspiration drawn from Thomas Jarvis time as an ambassador to Brazil. He wanted to bring the unique architecture to eastern North Carolina, on the main campus, there are five districts, Campus Core, Downtown District, Warehouse District, Athletic fields and the South Academic District. On the Campus Core, there are 15 residence halls which are divided into three separate neighborhoods, the distinct feature of the main campus is the mall, which is a large tree–laden grassy area where many students go to relax
6.
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
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The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is a performing arts center located on the Potomac River, adjacent to the Watergate complex in Washington, D. C. The Center, which opened September 8,1971, is a multi-dimensional facility, both an enduring memorial to John F. Now in its 45th season, the Center presents the greatest examples of music, dance and theater, supports artists in the creation of new work and it is both the nations public memorial to President John F. Kennedy and the national center for the performing arts. Its activities include educational and outreach initiatives, almost entirely funded through sales and gifts from individuals, corporations. The building, designed by architect Edward Durell Stone, was constructed by Philadelphia contractor John McShain and it receives annual federal funding to pay for its maintenance and operation. The Library of Congress added an auditorium, but it had restrictions on its use. A congressional resolution in 1938 called for construction of a building which shall be known as the National Cultural Center near Judiciary Square. In 1950, the idea for a national theater resurfaced when U. S, representative Arthur George Klein of New York introduced a bill to authorize funds to plan and build a cultural center. The bill included provisions that the center would prohibit any discrimination of cast or audience, in 1955, the Stanford Research Institute was commissioned to select a site and provide design suggestions for the center. From 1955 to 1958, Congress debated the idea amid much controversy and this was the first time in history that the federal government helped finance a structure dedicated to the performing arts. The legislation required a portion of the costs, estimated at $10–25 million, Edward Durell Stone was selected as architect for the project in June 1959. He presented preliminary designs to the Presidents Music Committee in October 1959, along with estimated costs of $50 million, by November 1959, estimated costs had escalated to $61 million. The National Cultural Center was renamed the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 1964, the National Cultural Center Board of Trustees, a group Eisenhower established January 29,1959, led fundraising. Fundraising efforts were not successful, with only $13,425 raised in the first three years, President John F. Kennedy was interested in bringing culture to the nations capital, and provided leadership and support for the project. In 1961, President Kennedy asked Roger L. Stevens to help develop the National Cultural Center, Stevens recruited First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy as Honorary Chairman of the Center, and former First Lady Mamie Eisenhower as co-chairman. The total cost of construction was $70 million, Congress allocated $43 million for construction costs, including $23 million as an outright grant and the other $20 million in bonds. Donations also comprised a significant portion of funding, including $5 million from the Ford Foundation, other major donors included J. Willard Marriott, Marjorie Merriweather Post, John D. Rockefeller III, and Robert W. Woodruff, as well as many corporate donors. Foreign countries provided gifts to the Kennedy Center, including a gift of 3,700 tons of Carrara marble from Italy from the Italian government, President Lyndon B. Johnson dug the ceremonial first-shovel of earth at the groundbreaking for the Kennedy Center December 2,1964
7.
Hurricane Katrina
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Hurricane Katrina was the costliest natural disaster and one of the five deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States. The storm is ranked as the third most intense United States landfalling tropical cyclone. Overall, at least 1,245 people died in the hurricane and subsequent floods, total property damage was estimated at $108 billion, roughly four times the damage wrought by Hurricane Andrew in 1992 in the United States. Early the following day, the new depression intensified into Tropical Storm Katrina, the cyclone headed generally westward toward Florida and strengthened into a hurricane only two hours before making landfall at Hallandale Beach and Aventura on August 25. After very briefly weakening to a storm, Katrina emerged into the Gulf of Mexico on August 26. The storm caused severe destruction along the Gulf coast from central Florida to Texas, much of it due to the storm surge, severe property damage occurred in coastal areas, such as Mississippi beachfront towns, over 90 percent of these were flooded. Boats and casino barges rammed buildings, pushing cars and houses inland, over fifty breaches in New Orleanss hurricane surge protection were the cause of the majority of the death and destruction during Katrina on August 29,2005. Eventually 80% of the city and large tracts of neighboring parishes became flooded, according to a modeling exercise conducted by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, two-thirds of the deaths in Greater New Orleans were due to levee and floodwall failure. All of the studies concluded that the USACE, the designers and builders of the levee system as mandated by the Flood Control Act of 1965, is responsible. This is mainly due to a decision to use shorter steel sheet pilings in an effort to save money, exactly ten years after Katrina, J. Many other government officials were criticized for their responses, especially New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, several agencies including the United States Coast Guard, National Hurricane Center, and National Weather Service were commended for their actions. They provided accurate hurricane weather tracking forecasts with sufficient lead time, Hurricane Katrina formed as Tropical Depression Twelve over the southeastern Bahamas on August 23,2005, as the result of an interaction of a tropical wave and the remains of Tropical Depression Ten. It strengthened into Tropical Storm Katrina on the morning of August 24, the tropical storm moved towards Florida, and became a hurricane only two hours before making landfall between Hallandale Beach and Aventura on the morning of August 25. The storm weakened over land, but it regained hurricane status about one hour after entering the Gulf of Mexico, on August 27, the storm reached Category 3 intensity on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale, becoming the third major hurricane of the season. An eyewall replacement cycle disrupted the intensification, but caused the storm to nearly double in size, the storm rapidly intensified after entering the Gulf, growing from a Category 3 hurricane to a Category 5 hurricane in just nine hours. This rapid growth was due to the movement over the unusually warm waters of the Loop Current. Katrina attained Category 5 status on the morning of August 28 and reached its peak strength at 1800 UTC that day, with sustained winds of 175 mph. However, this record was broken by Hurricane Rita
8.
Duke Ellington
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Edward Kennedy Duke Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and bandleader of a jazz orchestra, which he led from 1923 until his death in a career spanning over fifty years. Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s onward, in the 1930s, his orchestra toured in Europe. Some of the musicians who were members of Ellingtons orchestra, such as saxophonist Johnny Hodges, are considered to be among the best players in jazz, Ellington melded them into the best-known orchestral unit in the history of jazz. Some members stayed with the orchestra for several decades, a master at writing miniatures for the three-minute 78 rpm recording format, Ellington often composed specifically to feature the style and skills of his individual musicians. Ellington also recorded songs written by his bandsmen, for example Juan Tizols Caravan, and Perdido, after 1941, Ellington collaborated with composer-arranger-pianist Billy Strayhorn, whom he called his writing and arranging companion. With Strayhorn, he composed many extended compositions, or suites, following an appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival, in July 1956, Ellington and his orchestra enjoyed a major career revival and embarked on world tours. Ellington recorded for most American record companies of his era, performed in films, scoring several. His reputation continued to rise after he died, and he was awarded a special posthumous Pulitzer Prize for music in 1999, Ellington was born on April 29,1899, to James Edward Ellington and Daisy Ellington in Washington, D. C. Daisy primarily played parlor songs and James preferred operatic arias and they lived with his maternal grandparents at 2129 Ida Place, NW, in the West End neighborhood of Washington, D. C. Dukes father was born in Lincolnton, North Carolina, on April 15,1879, Daisy Kennedy was born in Washington, D. C. on January 4,1879, the daughter of a former American slave. James Ellington made blueprints for the United States Navy, when Ellington was a child, his family showed racial pride and support in their home, as did many other families. African Americans in D. C. worked to protect their children from the eras Jim Crow laws, at the age of seven, Ellington began taking piano lessons from Marietta Clinkscales. Daisy surrounded her son with dignified women to reinforce his manners, Ellingtons childhood friends noticed that his casual, offhand manner, his easy grace, and his dapper dress gave him the bearing of a young nobleman, and began calling him Duke. Ellington credited his chum Edgar McEntree for the nickname, I think he felt that in order for me to be eligible for his constant companionship, I should have a title. Though Ellington took piano lessons, he was interested in baseball. President Roosevelt would come by on his horse sometimes, and stop and watch us play, Ellington went to Armstrong Technical High School in Washington, D. C. He gained his first job selling peanuts at Washington Senators baseball games, in the summer of 1914, while working as a soda jerk at the Poodle Dog Café, Ellington wrote his first composition, Soda Fountain Rag. He created the piece by ear, as he had not yet learned to read, I would play the Soda Fountain Rag as a one-step, two-step, waltz, tango, and fox trot, Ellington recalled
9.
Virginia State University
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Virginia State University, also known as Virginia State, is a historically black public land-grant university located north of the Appomattox River in Petersburg. Founded on March 6,1882, Virginia State developed as the United Statess first fully state-supported four-year institution of learning for black Americans. The university is a school of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. The new line extended from Norfolk to Bristol, after the AM&O struggled to operate for several years under receiverships, the railroad was sold at auction in 1881 and became part of the Norfolk and Western Railway. Mahone, a former Confederate general, led Virginias Readjuster Party and he was a major proponent of public schools for the education of freedmen and free blacks. Elected by the legislature as a United States Senator from Virginia. Alfred W. Harris, an attorney who was a state delegate. In 1882, the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute at Ettrick was established, the next morning I asked my father about the school for coloured people, which was being projected under the influence of General Mahone at Petersburg, now a State Normal School. He told me much about it and it was to open the following fall. The Hon. John M. Langston, he said, a man who was as well educated as any white person that he knew of, was to be the president. He said I might go if I wished and that he would do what he could to help me, Virginia States first president was John Mercer Langston, former dean of Howard Universitys law school, and later elected to Congress as the first African-American Representative from Virginia. The board of trustees was composed of prominent African-American men, with one seat for a white man, until the mid-1960s, following federal civil rights legislation that ended racial segregation, the faculty of the collegiate program and the normal school was exclusively African American. In response to the 1890 Amendments to the federal Morrill Act, the United States Congress required that states either open their land-grant colleges to all races or else establish additional land-grant educational facilities for blacks. In 1902, the legislature revised the charter and renamed it the Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute. With expansion of programs and a curriculum, in 1930 the college was renamed Virginia State College for Negroes. In 1979, the addition of more departments and graduate programs was recognized in a change of name to Virginia State University. In 2003, the university accepted its first students in its first Ph. D. program, on July 1,2010, President Keith T. Miller was named as the 13th president of Virginia State University. He previously served as President of Lock Haven University, Miller earned his bachelor, master, and doctoral degrees from the University of Arizona
10.
52nd Street (Manhattan)
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52nd Street is a 1. 9-mile long one-way street traveling west to east across Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It was known as the center of jazz performance from the 1930s to the 1950s. Following the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, 52nd Street replaced 133rd street as Swing Street of the city, the blocks of 52nd Street between Fifth Avenue and Seventh Avenue became renowned for the abundance of jazz clubs and lively street life. The street was convenient to musicians playing on Broadway and the nightclubs and was also the site of a CBS studio. Musicians who played for others in the evening played for themselves on 52nd Street. Although musicians from all schools performed there, after Mintons Playhouse in uptown Harlem, in fact, a tune called 52nd Street Theme by Thelonious Monk became a bebop anthem and jazz standard. By the late 1940s the jazz scene began moving elsewhere around the city, by the 1960s, most of the legendary clubs were razed or fell into disrepair. The last club there closed its doors in 1968, today, the street is full of banks, shops, and department stores and shows little trace of its jazz history. The block from 5th to 6th Avenues is formally co-named Swing Street, the 21 Club is the sole surviving club on 52nd Street that also existed during the 1940s. The venue for the original Birdland at 1674 Broadway, which came into existence in 1949, is now a gentlemens club, the current Birdland is on 44th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues. This is a list of places within one block of 52nd Street. The route begins at the West Side Highway, Duncan Center on the block after moving from its original location. The Duncan Center is named for a patrolman who was shot while chasing a car in the neighborhood on May 17,1930. Closed Midtown Branch of Saint Vincents Catholic Medical Center The Manhattan School – Public School 35, radio City Station Post Office The Link, 43–story, 215–unit, glass tower condominium, opened in 2007 on site of the S. I. R. Building at 310 W 52nd, known as the Palm Gardens Building, occupied the building from 1974 until 2004. Cheetah, the club that had once been at 53rd and Broadway. Cheetah became a popular Latin-American dance club that helped popularize Salsa to mainstream America. C, sixth Avenue to Fifth Avenue is signed Swing Street AXA Financial Center 43-story 174 m 571 ft completed in 1963. It has a large Thomas Hart Benton mural in lobby, CBS Building, headquarters of the network and popularly referred to as Black Rock 31 West 52nd Street 30-floor 125 m 411 ft completed in 1986 originally for the E. F. Hutton headquarters
11.
Art Tatum
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Arthur Art Tatum, Jr. was an American jazz pianist. Tatum is widely acknowledged as the greatest jazz pianist of all time and he was hailed for the technical proficiency of his performances, which set a new standard for jazz piano virtuosity. Critic Scott Yanow wrote, Tatums quick reflexes and boundless imagination kept his improvisations filled with ideas that put him way ahead of his contemporaries. For a musician of such stature, there is little published information available about Tatums life, only one full-length biography has been published, Too Marvelous for Words, by James Lester. Lester interviewed many of Tatums contemporaries for the book and drew from many articles published about him, Tatum was born in Toledo, Ohio. His father, Arthur Tatum, Sr. was a guitarist and an elder at Grace Presbyterian Church and he had two siblings, Karl and Arlene. From infancy he suffered from cataracts which left him blind in one eye, a number of surgical procedures improved his eye condition to a degree but some of the benefits were reversed when he was assaulted in 1930. A child with perfect pitch, Tatum learned to play by ear, in a Voice of America interview, he denied the widespread rumor that he learned to play by copying piano roll recordings made by two pianists. He developed a very fast playing style, without losing accuracy, as a child he was also very sensitive to the pianos intonation and insisted it be tuned often. While playing piano was the most obvious application of his mental and physical skills, in 1925, Tatum moved to the Columbus School for the Blind, where he studied music and learned braille. He subsequently studied piano with Overton G. Rainey at either the Jefferson School or the Toledo School of Music, Rainey, who was also visually impaired, probably taught Tatum in the classical tradition, as Rainey did not improvise and discouraged his students from playing jazz. In 1927, Tatum began playing on Toledo radio station WSPD as Arthur Tatum, Toledos Blind Pianist, during interludes in Ellen Kays shopping chat program, by the age of 19, Tatum was playing at the local Waiters and Bellmens Club. In 1931, vocalist Adelaide Hall commenced a tour that lasted almost two years, during which she discovered Tatum in Toledo and employed him as one of her stage pianists. In 1932, Hall returned to New York with Tatum and introduced him to Harlem on stage at the Lafayette Theatre, in August 1932, she made four recordings using Tatum as one of her pianists including the songs Strange As It Seems and You Gave Me Everything But Love. Tatum drew inspiration from the pianists James P. Johnson and Fats Waller, who exemplified the stride piano style, Tatum identified Waller as his main influence, but according to pianist Teddy Wilson and saxophonist Eddie Barefield, Art Tatums favorite jazz piano player was Earl Hines. He used to buy all of Earls records and would improvise on them, hed play the record but hed improvise over what Earl was doing. Course, when you heard Art play you didnt hear nothing of anybody, but he got his ideas from Earls style of playing – but Earl never knew that. A major event in his rise to success was his appearance at a cutting contest in 1933 at Morgans bar in New York City that included Waller, Johnson
12.
Billie Holiday
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Eleanora Fagan, professionally known as Billie Holiday, was an American jazz musician and singer-songwriter with a career spanning nearly thirty years. Nicknamed Lady Day by her friend and music partner Lester Young, Holiday had a influence on jazz music. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and she was known for her vocal delivery and improvisational skills, which made up for her limited range and lack of formal music education. There were other singers with equal talent, but Holiday had a voice that captured the attention of her audience. After a turbulent childhood, Holiday began singing in nightclubs in Harlem, where she was heard by the producer John Hammond and she signed a recording contract with Brunswick Records in 1935. Collaborations with Teddy Wilson yielded the hit What a Little Moonlight Can Do, Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Holiday had mainstream success on labels such as Columbia Records and Decca Records. By the late 1940s, however, she was beset with legal troubles, after a short prison sentence, she performed a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall, but her reputation deteriorated because of her drug and alcohol problems. Her final recordings were met with mixed reaction to her voice but were mild commercial successes. Her final album, Lady in Satin, was released in 1958, Holiday died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1959. A posthumous album, Last Recording, was released following her death, much of Holidays material has been rereleased since her death. She is considered a performer with an ongoing influence on American music. She is the recipient of four Grammy awards, all of them posthumous awards for Best Historical Album, Holiday herself was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1973. Lady Sings the Blues, a film about her life, starring Diana Ross, was released in 1972, Eleanora Fagan was born on April 7,1915, in Philadelphia, the daughter of Sarah Julia Sadie Fagan and Clarence Holiday, an unmarried teenaged couple. Her father did not live with her mother, not long after Eleanora was born, Clarence abandoned his family to pursue a career as a jazz banjo player and guitarist. Sarah moved to Philadelphia at age 19, after she was evicted from her parents home in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland, for becoming pregnant. With no support from her parents, she made arrangements with her older, married half-sister, Eva Miller, the child was of African-American ancestry and was also said to have had Irish ancestors through her mothers mixed heritage. Her mother often took what were known as transportation jobs. Holidays autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, first published in 1956, is sketchy on details of her early life, some historians have disputed Holidays paternity, as a copy of her birth certificate in the Baltimore archives lists the father as a man named Frank DeViese
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