1.
Bobby Crosby
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Robert Edward Crosby is a former infielder in Major League Baseball. The son of major league infielder Ed Crosby, he batted. He was Rookie of the Year in 2004, Crosby first attended Pacifica High School, then later graduated from La Quinta High School in Westminster, California. In 1998, Bobby Crosby was selected by the Anaheim Angels in the round of the Major League Baseball Draft. Crosby chose not to sign with the Angels, however, opting instead to play baseball for California State University. In the 2001, Crosby was selected by the Oakland Athletics in the first round of the Major League Baseball Draft. In 2004, his first full MLB season, he took over the Athletics shortstop duties from 2002 American League Most Valuable Player Miguel Tejada and that year, Crosby hit.239 with 22 home runs and 64 RBIs. He also led American League rookies in hits, doubles and walks and these numbers earned Crosby Rookie of the Year honors, the sixth Athletics player to do so after Harry Byrd, José Canseco, Mark McGwire, Walt Weiss, and Ben Grieve. In addition to becoming the sixth Athletics player to be named Rookie of the Year, he was the second shortstop in a row to win the award. He was also the eighth shortstop in 22 seasons to earn top honors, the others being Cal Ripken, Jr. Ozzie Guillén, Walt Weiss, Pat Listach, Derek Jeter, Nomar Garciaparra. Crosby was just a vote shy of being a unanimous pick and he also struck out 141 times, fourth-most in the AL, and the teams most since Canseco had 152 in 1991. Crosby and the Oakland Athletics agreed to a five-year, $12.75 million contract on April 22,2005, due to the signing of free agent shortstop Orlando Cabrera prior to the 2009 season, Crosby was moved into a utility infielder role. Mark McGwire served as his coach in the 2009 offseason. The Pittsburgh Pirates signed Crosby as an agent on December 9,2009. He appeared in 61 games, with a average of.224. The Pirates traded Crosby, D. J. Carrasco and Ryan Church to the Arizona Diamondbacks for Chris Snyder, Crosby appeared in only nine games for the Diamondbacks, batting just.167, and was released on August 24,2010. His younger brother, Blake Crosby, played baseball at Sacramento State. Blake was drafted by the Athletics in the 42nd round of the 2009 Major League Baseball Draft and is serving as a Regional Crosschecker for the Toronto Blue Jays in Chandler
2.
Spokane, Washington
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Spokane is a city in the state of Washington, in the northwestern United States. It is the seat of Spokane County, and the economic and cultural center of the Spokane Metropolitan Area, the Greater Spokane Area, the city, along with the whole Inland Northwest, is served by Spokane International Airport,5 miles west of downtown Spokane. According to the 2010 Census, Spokane had a population of 208,916, making it the second largest city in Washington and the 102nd largest city in the United States. The first humans to live in the area, the Spokane people, known as the birthplace of Fathers Day, Spokane is officially nicknamed the Lilac City. David Thompson explored the area with the expansion and establishment of the North West Companys Spokane House in 1810. This trading post was the first long-term European settlement in Washington, completion of the Northern Pacific Railway in 1881 brought settlers to the Spokane area, and that same year it was officially incorporated as a city with the name of Spokan Falls. In the late 19th century, gold and silver were discovered in the Inland Northwest, the local economy depended on mining, timber, and agriculture until the 1980s. Spokane hosted the first environmentally themed Worlds Fair at Expo 74, many of the older Romanesque Revival-style buildings in the downtown area were designed by architect Kirtland Kelsey Cutter after the Great Fire of 1889. The city also features Riverfront and Manito parks, the Smithsonian-affiliated Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, the Davenport Hotel, and the Fox and Bing Crosby theaters. The Cathedral of Our Lady of Lourdes serves as the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Spokane, the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist represents the Anglican community. Gonzaga University was established in 1887 by the Jesuits, and the private Presbyterian Whitworth University opened three years later in north Spokane, in sports, the Gonzaga Bulldogs collegiate basketball team competes at the Division I level. Professional and semi-professional sports teams include the Spokane Indians in Minor League Baseball, Spokane Empire in arena football, as of 2010, Spokanes only major daily newspaper, The Spokesman-Review, has a daily circulation of over 76,000. The first humans to live in the Spokane area arrived between 13,000 and 8,000 years ago and were hunter-gatherer societies that lived off plentiful game. The Spokane tribe, after which the city is named, are believed to be either their direct descendants, when asked by early white explorers, the Spokanes said their ancestors came from up North. Early in the 19th century, the Northwest Fur Company sent two white fur trappers west of the Rocky Mountains to search for fur. These were the first white men met by the Spokanes, who believed they were sacred, the explorer-geographer David Thompson, working as head of the North West Companys Columbia Department, became the first European to explore the Inland Empire. Crossing what is now the Canada–US border from British Columbia, Thompson wanted to expand the North West Company further south in search of furs, after establishing the Kullyspell House and Saleesh House trading posts in what are now Idaho and Montana, Thompson then attempted to expand further west. He sent out two trappers, Jacques Raphael Finlay and Finan McDonald, to construct a fur trading post on the Spokane River in Washington and trade with the local Indians
3.
La Jolla
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La Jolla is a hilly seaside community within the city of San Diego, California, United States occupying 7 miles of curving coastline along the Pacific Ocean within the northern city limits. The population reported in the 2010 Census was 46,781, Local Native Americans, the Kumeyaay, called this location mat kulaaxuuy, lit. land of holes. The topographic feature that gave rise to the holes is uncertain, it probably refers to sea-level caves located on the north-facing bluffs. It is suggested that the Kumeyaay name for the area was transcribed by the Spanish settlers as La Jolla, an alternative, pseudo-etymological suggestion for the origin of the name is that it is an alternate spelling of the Spanish word la joya, which means the jewel. Despite being disputed by scholars, this derivation of the name has been cited in popular culture. That supposed origin gave rise to the nickname Jewel City, during the Mexican period of San Diegos history, La Jolla was mapped as pueblo land and contained about 60 lots. When California became a state in 1850, the La Jolla area was incorporated as part of the chartered City of San Diego, in 1870 Charles Dean acquired several of the pueblo lots and subdivided them into an area that became known as La Jolla Park. Dean was unable to develop the land and left San Diego in 1881, a real estate boom in the 1880s led speculators Frank T. Botsford and George W. Heald to further develop the sparsely settled area. In the 1890s the San Diego, Pacific Beach, and La Jolla Railway was built, La Jolla became known as a resort area. To attract visitors to the beach, the railway built facilities such as a bath house, visitors were housed in small cottages and bungalows above La Jolla Cove, as well as a temporary tent city, erected every summer. The La Jolla Park Hotel opened in 1893, the Hotel Cabrillo was built in 1908 by Squire James A. Wilson and was later incorporated into the La Valencia Hotel. By 1900, La Jolla comprised 100 buildings and 350 residents, the first reading room was built in 1898. A volunteer fire brigade was organized in 1907, the city of San Diego established a fire house in 1914. Livery stable owner Nathan Rannells served successively as La Jollas volunteer fire captain, first police officer, the Bishops School opened in 1909. La Jolla High School was established in 1922, the La Jolla Beach and Yacht Club was built in 1927. In 1896 journalist and publisher Ellen Browning Scripps settled in La Jolla and she was wealthy in her own right from her investments and writing, and she inherited a large sum from her brother George H. Scripps in 1900. Unmarried and childless, she devoted herself to philanthropic endeavors, particularly those benefiting her adopted home of La Jolla and she commissioned many of La Jollas most notable buildings, usually designed by Irving Gill or his nephew and partner Louis John Gill. Her donations also launched the Scripps Memorial Hospital in 1924, the Scripps Metabolic Clinic, Ellen Browning Scripps also founded Scripps College, a womens college, in 1926
4.
Swing music
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Swing music, or simply swing, is a form of American music that dominated in the 1930s and 1940s. The name swing came from the swing feel where the emphasis is on the off–beat or weaker pulse in the music, Swing bands usually featured soloists who would improvise on the melody over the arrangement. The danceable swing style of big bands and bandleaders such as Benny Goodman was the dominant form of American popular music from 1935 to 1946, the verb to swing is also used as a term of praise for playing that has a strong groove or drive. Notable musicians of the era include Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, Count Basie, Woody Herman. Swing has roots in the late 1920s as larger ensembles began using written arrangements, a typical song played in swing style would feature a strong, anchoring rhythm section in support of more loosely tied wind and brass. The most common style consisted of having a soloist take center stage, Swing music began to decline in popularity during World War II because of several factors. By the late 1940s, swing had morphed into traditional pop music, or evolved into new styles such as jump blues, Swing music saw a revival in the late 1950s and 1960s with pop vocalists such as Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and Ella Fitzgerald. Swing blended with other genres to create new styles, in country music, artists such as Jimmie Rodgers, Moon Mullican and Bob Wills introduced many elements of swing along with blues to create a genre called western swing. Gypsy swing is an outgrowth of Venuti and Langs jazz violin swing, in the 1970s, and 1980s, fans of big band music attended swing music performances at supper clubs. In the late-1980s a trendier, more urban-styled swing-beat emerged called new jack swing, in the late 1990s and into the 2000s there was a swing revival, led by Squirrel Nut Zippers, Brian Setzer, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, and Lavay Smith. In Canada, some of the early 2000s records by The JW-Jones Blues Band included swing revival elements, the 1920s saw parallel trends in jazz and popular music that would later converge into the swing style. New Orleans style jazz was based on a meter and contrapuntal improvisation led by a trumpet or cornet, typically followed by a clarinet. The rhythm section consisted of a tuba and drums, and sometimes a banjo, by the early 1920s guitars and pianos sometimes substituted for the banjo and a string bass sometimes substituted for the tuba. Further innovations in small ensemble playing led to development of the Chicago style identified with Louis Armstrong, a stint with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra familiarized him with arranged ensemble playing that differed from the New Orleans style, in which saxophones became the dominant sound among the reeds. Armstrong brought those back to his smaller ensembles, the soloist played over an ensemble relegated to a supporting role in the background. The string bass also lent itself to playing in a 4/4 rhythm rather than the 2/4 rhythm dictated by the tuba. The new format gave the soloist the opportunity to play with more rhythmic freedom, but playing with swing remained the province of the soloist, not the ensemble. The late 1920s saw increasingly sophisticated arrangements used by bigger ensembles, some arrangements used call-response between horn sections to build the melody
5.
Big band
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A big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with playing jazz music and which became popular during the Swing Era from the early 1930s until the late 1940s. Big Bands evolved with the times and continue to this day, a big band typically consists of approximately 12 to 25 musicians and contains saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. The terms jazz band, jazz ensemble, stage band, jazz orchestra and this does not, however, mean that each one of these names is technically correct for naming a big band specifically. The music is traditionally called charts, improvised solos may be played only when called for by the arranger. There are two periods in the history of popular bands. Beginning in the mid-1920s, big bands, then consisting of 10–25 pieces. At that time they played a form of jazz that involved very little improvisation, which included a string section with violins. A few bands also had violas and cellos, usually one or two along with them, the dance form of jazz was characterized by a sweet and romantic melody. Orchestras tended to stick to the melody as it was written and vocals would be sung, many of these artists changed styles or retired after the introduction of swing music. Although unashamedly commercial, these bands often featured front-rank jazz musicians - for example Paul Whiteman employed Bix Beiderbecke, there were also all-girl bands such as Helen Lewis and Her All-Girl Jazz Syncopators. Towards the end of the 1920s, a new form of Big Band emerged which was more authentically jazz and this form of music never gained the popularity of the sweet dance form of jazz. The few recordings made in form of jazz were labelled race records and were intended for a limited urban audience. Few white musicians were familiar with music, Johnny Mercer. The three major centres in this development were New York City, Chicago and Kansas City, some big ensembles, like the Joe King Oliver outfit played a kind of half arranged, half improvised jazz, often relying on head arrangements. Other great bands, like the one of Luis Russell became a vehicle for star instrumentalists, there the whole arrangement had to promote all the possibilities of the star, although they often contained very good musicians, like Henry Red Allen, J. C. Earl Hines became the star of Chicago with his Grand Terrace Cafe band, meanwhile, in Kansas City and across the Southwest, an earthier, bluesier style was developed by such bandleaders as Benny Moten and, later, by Jay McShann and Jesse Stone. Radio was a factor in gaining notice and fame for Benny Goodman. Soon, others challenged him, and the battles of the bands became a staple at theater performances featuring many groups on one bill
6.
Dixieland
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Dixieland, sometimes referred to as hot jazz or traditional jazz, is a style of jazz based on the music that developed in New Orleans at the start of the 20th century. The first use of the term Dixieland with reference to music was in the name of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, at that time, there was no issue of subgenres of jazz, so Dixieland referred to the band and not the music. That reflected the fact that all of the recorded repertoire of New Orleans musicians was from the period when the format was already evolving beyond the traditional New Orleans format. Dixieland may in that sense be regarded as denoting the jazz movement of the 1940s and 1950s as much as any particular subgenre of jazz. The essential elements that were accepted as within the style were the front lines consisting of trumpets, trombones, and clarinets. The Jim Crow associations of the name Dixieland also did little to attract younger coloured musicians to the revival, well-known jazz standard tunes such as Basin Street Blues and When the Saints Go Marching In are known even to non-jazz fans thanks to the enduring popularity of traditional jazz. The Vietnam-era protest song Feel Like Im Fixin to Die Rag is based on tonal centers, Traditional jazz is a major tourist attraction for New Orleans to the present day. It has been an influence on the styles of modern players such as Charles Mingus. New Orleans music combined earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime, the Dixieland sound is created when one instrument plays the melody or a variation on it, and the other instruments improvise around that melody. This creates a more sound than the heavily arranged big band sound of the 1930s or the straight melodies of bebop in the 1940s. The West Coast revival began in the late 1930s in San Francisco which used banjo, the Dutch old-style jazz was played with trumpets, trombones and saxophones accompanied by a single clarinet, sousaphone and a section of Marching percussion usually including a washboard. Dixieland is the given to early jazz by traditional jazz revivalists. The name is a reference to the Old South, specifically anything south of the Mason-Dixon line, the term encompasses earlier brass band marches, French Quadrilles, biguine, ragtime, and blues with collective, polyphonic improvisation. Louis Armstrongs All-Stars was the band most popularly identified with Dixieland during the 1940s and this creates a more polyphonic sound than the arranged ensemble playing of the big band sound or the straight head melodies of bebop. During the 1930s and 1940s, the earlier group-improvisation style fell out of favor with the majority of black players. Though younger musicians developed new forms, many beboppers revered Armstrong, many Dixieland groups of the revival era consciously imitated the recordings and bands of decades earlier. Other musicians continued to create innovative performances and new tunes, for example, in the 1950s a style called Progressive Dixieland sought to blend polyphonic improvisation with bebop-style rhythm. Spike Jones & His New Band and Steve Lacy played with such bands and this style is sometimes called Dixie-bop
7.
Bing Crosby
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Harry Lillis Bing Crosby, Jr. was an American singer and actor. The first multimedia star, from 1931 to 1954 Crosby was a leader in sales, radio ratings. His early career coincided with technical recording innovations such as the microphone and this allowed him to develop a laid-back, intimate singing style that influenced many of the popular male singers who followed him, including Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Dick Haymes, and Dean Martin. Also in 1948, the Music Digest estimated that Crosby recordings filled more than half of the 80,000 weekly hours allocated to recorded radio music, in 1963, Crosby received the first Grammy Global Achievement Award. He is one of only 33 people to have three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in the categories of motion pictures, radio, Crosby influenced the development of the postwar recording industry. He became the first performer to pre-record his radio shows and master his commercial recordings onto magnetic tape. In addition to his work with early tape recording, he helped to finance the development of videotape, bought television stations, bred racehorses, Crosby died at the age of 74 on October 14,1977, from a sudden heart attack in Alcobendas, Spain. Crosby was born on May 2,1903 in Tacoma, Washington, in 1906, Crosbys family moved to Spokane, and in 1913, Crosbys father built a house at 508 E. Sharp Avenue. The house now sits on the campus of Crosbys alma mater Gonzaga University and he was the fourth of seven children, brothers Larry, Everett, Ted, and Bob, and two sisters, Catherine and Mary Rose. His parents were Harry Lowe Crosby, Sr. a bookkeeper, Crosbys mother was a second generation Irish-American. In 1910, seven-year-old Harry Crosby Jr. was forever renamed, the Sunday edition of the Spokesman-Review published a feature called The Bingville Bugle. Written by humorist Newton Newkirk, The Bingville Bugle was a parody of a hillbilly newsletter filled with gossipy tidbits, minstrel quips, creative spelling, and mock ads. A neighbor, 15-year-old Valentine Hobart, shared Crosbys enthusiasm for The Bugle, and noting Crosbys laugh, took a liking to him, eventually, the last vowel was dropped and the nickname stuck. Crosby later described Jolsons delivery as electric, Crosby graduated from Gonzaga High School in 1920 and enrolled at Gonzaga University. He attended Gonzaga for three years, but did not earn a bachelors degree, as a freshman, he played on the universitys baseball team. The university granted him a doctorate in 1937. In 1923, Crosby was invited to join a new band composed of school students a few years younger than himself. Al Rinker, Miles Rinker, James Heaton, Claire Pritchard and Robert Pritchard, along with drummer Crosby, formed the Musicaladers, the group performed on Spokane radio station KHQ, but disbanded after two years
8.
The Andrews Sisters
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The Andrews Sisters were an American close harmony singing group of the swing and boogie-woogie eras. The group consisted of three sisters, contralto LaVerne Sophia, soprano Maxene Angelyn, and mezzo-soprano Patricia Marie Patty, throughout their long career, the sisters sold well over 75 million records. Their 1941 hit Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy can be considered an example of rhythm. The Andrews Sisters harmonies and songs are still today, and have been covered by entertainers such as Bette Midler, Christina Aguilera, Pentatonix. The group was inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1998, writing for Bloomberg, Mark Schoifet said the sisters became the most popular female vocal group of the first half of the 20th century. They are still widely acclaimed today for their famous close harmonies, the sisters were born to Peter Andreos and Olga, their father was Greek and their mother Norwegian-American of the Lutheran faith. Following the collapse of their fathers Minneapolis restaurant, the sisters went on the road to support the family and they started their career as imitators of an earlier successful singing group, the Boswell Sisters who were popular in the 1930s. They followed this success with a string of best-selling records over the two years and they became a household name by the 1940s. Instrumental to the success over the years were their parents, their orchestra leader and musical arranger, Vic Schoen, and Jack and David Kapp. During World War II they entertained the Allied forces extensively in America, Africa and Italy, visiting Army, Navy, Marine and Coast Guard bases, war zones, hospitals, and munitions factories. They encouraged U. S. citizens to war bonds with their rendition of Irving Berlins song Any Bonds Today. While touring, they often treated three random servicemen to dinner when they were dining out. I. An ad in the 1951 Radio Annual showed photos of the Andrews as children, as singers, and as old women in the then-future year of 1975, sadly. In the 1950s, Patty Andrews decided to break away from the act to be a soloist and she had married the trios pianist, Walter Weschler, who then became the groups manager and demanded more money for Patty. Patty attributed the breakup to the deaths of their parents, We had been nearly all our lives. Then in one year our dream world ended and our mother died and then our father. All three of us were upset, and we were at each others throats all the time, in 1951, they recorded The Windmill Song which is an adaptation of the French song Maître Pierre written in 1948 by Henri Betti and Jacques Plante. The English lyrics were written by Mitchell Parish, the Andrews Sisters formally broke up in 1953
9.
Doris Day
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Doris Day is a retired American actress and singer, and continuing animal welfare activist. After she began her career as a big band singer in 1939, her popularity increased with her first hit recording Sentimental Journey, in 1948, Day was given a key part in the film Romance on the High Seas, despite not having any acting experience. Its director, Michael Curtiz, gave her the part since she looked like the All-American Girl and it led to a 20-year career in film, including a string of musicals and romantic comedies beginning in the 1950s. She starred with leading men such as Clark Gable in Teachers Pet, Rock Hudson in Pillow Talk and Send Me No Flowers, Cary Grant in That Touch of Mink and she was usually one of the top 10 singers between 1951 and 1966. As an actress, she became the biggest female star in the early 1960s. In 2011 – well into her late 80s – she released her 29th studio album, My Heart, among her awards, Day has received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and a Legend Award from the Society of Singers. She has been Oscar nominated six times, and in 1989 was given the Cecil B, deMille Award for lifetime achievement in motion pictures. In 2004, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom followed in 2011 by the Los Angeles Film Critics Associations Career Achievement Award. Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff was born on April 3,1922, in Cincinnati, Ohio, the daughter of Alma Sophia, a housewife, and William Joseph Kappelhoff, All of her grandparents were German immigrants. The youngest of three siblings, she had two brothers, Richard and Paul, several years older. Due to her fathers alleged infidelity, her parents separated and she developed an early interest in dance, and in the mid-1930s formed a dance duo with Jerry Doherty that performed locally in Cincinnati. A car accident on October 13,1937, injured her legs, while recovering, Day started to sing along with the radio and discovered a talent she did not know she had. But the one radio voice I listened to above others belonged to Ella Fitzgerald. There was a quality to her voice that fascinated me, and Id sing along with her, trying to catch the subtle ways she shaded her voice, observing her daughter rekindled Almas interest in show business, and she decided to give Doris singing lessons. She engaged a teacher, Grace Raine, after three lessons, Raine told Alma that young Doris had tremendous potential, which led Alma to give her daughter three lessons a week for the price of one. Years later, Day said that Raine had the biggest effect on her singing style, during her radio performances, Day first caught the attention of Barney Rapp, who was looking for a girl vocalist and asked if Day would like to audition for the job. According to Rapp, he had auditioned about 200 singers when Day got the job, while working for Rapp in 1939, she adopted the stage surname Day, at Rapps suggestion. Rapp felt that Kappelhoff was too long for marquees, and he admired her rendition of the song Day After Day, after working with Rapp, Day worked with bandleaders Jimmy James, Bob Crosby, and Les Brown
