1.
Red Bank, New Jersey
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Red Bank is a borough in Monmouth County, New Jersey, incorporated in 1908 and located on the Navesink River, the areas original transportation route to the ocean and other ports. Red Bank was originally formed as a town on March 17,1870, on February 14,1879, Red Bank became Shrewsbury City, a portion of Shrewsbury Township, but this only lasted until May 15,1879, when Red Bank regained its independence. On March 10,1908, Red Bank was formed as a borough by an act of the New Jersey Legislature and was set off from Shrewsbury Township, the borough was named for the red soil along the Navesink River. The Lenape lived in the area between the Navesink River and the Shrewsbury River in an area that they called Navarumsunk, the Native Americans traded freely with European settlers from England and the Dutch Republic in the mid-17th century, who purchased land in the area. Originally part of Shrewsbury Towne, Red Bank was named in 1736, Red Bank was settled by English colonists beginning in the 17th century and became a center for shipbuilding. Its population grew rapidly after 1809, when scheduled passenger ships were established to serve the route to Manhattan. By 1844, Red Bank had become a commercial and manufacturing center, focused on textiles, tanning, furs, with the dredging of the Navesink River about 1845, Red Bank became a port from which steamboats transported commuters to work in Manhattan. Red Bank grew in size as a result of this, as well as the effects of construction of a railway in the town by the Raritan and Delaware Bay Railroad in 1860. During the 20th century, Red Bank was a cultural, economic. During this time, Red Banks economy, based largely on commerce, was in decline. Local pundits and urban planners referred to the town as Dead Bank, the district as originally proposed was larger, to include the commercial areas west of Maple Avenue, including the antique buildings, The Galleria, and Shrewsbury Avenue. But, some property owners in this area were opposed to paying the special assessment, plans for the larger district advanced but opposition became more rigorous. The proposed district was amended to exclude opponents, and the district that was adopted stops at Maple Avenue. According to the United States Census Bureau, the borough had an area of 2.162 square miles. Red Bank is located on the bank of the Navesink River, in northern Monmouth County. It is about 24 miles due south of the tip of Manhattan and about 25 nautical miles to the tip of Manhattan if traveling by water along the Navesink River, unincorporated communities, localities and place names located partially or completely within the borough include Newmans Corner. Red Bank is bordered by the Monmouth County municipalities of Middletown Township and the boroughs of Tinton Falls, Fair Haven, Shrewsbury, and Little Silver. Red Banks climate borders humid subtropical and humid continental As of the census of 2010, there were 12,206 people,4,929 households, the population density was 7,019.1 per square mile
2.
Hollywood, Florida
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For the city in Florida with movie studios similar to Hollywood, Los Angeles, CA, see Orlando. Hollywood is a city in Broward County, Florida, located between Fort Lauderdale and Miami, the average temperature is between 68 and 83 degrees. As of 2013 Hollywood has a population of 146,526, founded in 1925, the city grew rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s, and is now the twelfth largest city in Florida. Hollywood is a city of the Miami metropolitan area, which was home to an estimated 6,012,331 people at the 2015 census. Joseph W. Young founded the city in 1925 and he dreamed of building a motion picture colony on the East Coast of the United States and named the town after Hollywood, California. After the 1926 Miami hurricane, Hollywood was severely damaged, local newspapers reported that Hollywood was second only to Miami in losses from the storm. Following upon Youngs death in 1934, the city encountered more terrific hurricanes and not only that and it felt as though the city was tumbling slowly piece by piece with all of those tragic events taking place. On Hollywood Boulevard is the Mediterranean-style Joseph Young Mansion, built around 1921, Hollywood is located at 26°1′17″N 80°10′30″W. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of 30.8 square miles. Hollywood is located in southeastern Broward County, and includes approximately 5 to 6 miles of Atlantic Ocean beach,34. 4% of all households were made up of individuals and 13. 1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.31 and the family size was 3.00. The citys age demographic shows a population with 21. 3% under the age of 18,7. 0% from 18 to 24,31. 3% from 25 to 44,23. 1% from 45 to 64. The median age was 39 years, for every 100 females there were 94.1 males. For every 100 women age 18 and over, there were 90.9 men, the median income for a household in the city was $40,714, and the median income for a family was $55,849. Males had an income of $33,102 versus $21,237 for females. The per capita income for the city was $22,097, about 9. 9% of families and 13. 2% of the population were below the poverty line, including 18. 1% of those under age 18 and 11. 8% of those age 65 or over. Hollywood is filled with about 60 parks, seven golf courses, the famous Hollywood Beach is known for its great broadwalk that extends about 2.5 miles along the Atlantic Ocean. Parking is available on streets or in parking garages for a large fee
3.
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
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.
Organ (music)
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In music, the organ is a keyboard instrument of one or more pipe divisions, each played with its own keyboard, played either with the hands on a keyboard or with the feet using pedals. The organ is an old musical instrument, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria. It was played throughout the Ancient Greek and Ancient Roman world, subsequently it re-emerged as a secular and recital instrument in the Classical music tradition. Pipe organs use air moving through pipes to produce sounds, since the 16th century, pipe organs have used various materials for pipes, which can vary widely in timbre and volume. The pipes are divided into ranks and controlled by the use of hand stops, although the keyboard is not expressive as on a piano and does not affect dynamics, some divisions may be enclosed in a swell box, allowing the dynamics to be controlled by shutters. Some organs are enclosed, meaning that all the divisions can be controlled by one set of shutters. Some special registers with free reed pipes are expressive and these instruments vary greatly in size, ranging from a cubic yard to a height reaching five floors, and are built in churches, synagogues, concert halls, and homes. Small organs are called positive or portative, increasingly hybrid organs are appearing in which pipes are augmented with electronic additions. Great economies of space and cost are possible especially when the lowest of the pipes can be replaced, non-piped organs include the reed organ or harmonium, which like the accordion and harmonica use air to excite free reeds. Electronic organs or digital organs, notably the Hammond organ, generate electronically produced sound through one or more loudspeakers, mechanical organs include the barrel organ, water organ, and Orchestrion. These are controlled by means such as pinned barrels or book music. Little barrel organs dispense with the hands of an organist and bigger organs are powered in most cases by a grinder or today by other means such as an electric motor. The pipe organ is the grandest musical instrument in size and scope, along with the clock, it was considered one of the most complex human-made mechanical creations before the Industrial Revolution. Pipe organs range in size from a short keyboard to huge instruments with over 10,000 pipes. A large modern organ typically has three or four keyboards with five each, and a two-and-a-half octave pedal board. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart called the organ the King of instruments, some of the biggest instruments have 64-foot pipes, and it sounds to an 8 Hz frequency fundamental tone. For instance, the Wanamaker organ, located in Philadelphia, USA, has sonic resources comparable with three simultaneous symphony orchestras, most organs in Europe, the Americas, and Australasia can be found in Christian churches. The introduction of organs is traditionally attributed to Pope Vitalian in the 7th century
7.
Harlem
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Harlem is a large neighborhood in the northern section of the New York City borough of Manhattan. Since the 1920s, Harlem has been known as a major African-American residential, cultural, originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands. Harlems history has been defined by a series of economic boom-and-bust cycles, African-American residents began to arrive by a lot in 1905, with numbers fed by the Great Migration. In the 1920s and 1930s, Central and West Harlem were the focus of the Harlem Renaissance, however, with job losses in the time of the Great Depression and the deindustrialization of New York City after World War II, rates of crime and poverty increased significantly. Harlems African-American population peaked in the 1950s, in the second half of the 20th century, Harlem became a major hub of African-American businesses. In 2008, the United States Census found that for the first time since the 1930s, less than half of residents were black, since New York Citys revival in the late 20th century, long-time residents of Harlem have been experiencing the effects of gentrification and new wealth. Harlem is located in Upper Manhattan, often referred to as Uptown by locals. Central Harlem is bounded by Fifth Avenue on the east, Central Park on the south, Morningside Park, St. Nicholas Avenue and Edgecombe Avenue on the west, and the Harlem River on the north. A chain of three large linear parks—Morningside Park, St. Nicholas Park and Jackie Robinson Park—are situated on steeply rising banks, on the east, Fifth Avenue and Marcus Garvey Park, also known as Mount Morris Park, separate this area from East Harlem. The bulk of the falls under Manhattan Community Board No.10. In the late 2000s, South Harlem, emerged from area redevelopment, the West Harlem neighborhoods of Manhattanville and Hamilton Heights comprise part of Manhattan Community Board No.9. The two neighborhoods area is bounded by Cathedral Parkway on the South, 155th Street on the North, nicholas/Bradhurst/Edgecome Avenues on the East, and Riverside Park/the Hudson River on the west. Morningside Heights is located in the southern most section of West Harlem, Manhattanville begins at roughly 123rd Street and extends northward to 135th Street. The northern most section of West Harlem is Hamilton Heights, the New York City Police Department patrols six precincts located within Harlem. The New York City Fire Department operates 9 firehouses in Harlem, as many as several hundred farmed the Harlem flatlands. Between 1637 and 1639, a few settlements were established, during the American Revolution, the British burned Harlem to the ground. It took a time to rebuild, as Harlem grew more slowly than the rest of Manhattan during the late 18th century. After the American Civil War, Harlem experienced an economic boom starting in 1868, the neighborhood continued to serve as a refuge for New Yorkers, but increasingly those coming north were poor and Jewish or Italian
8.
Kansas City, Missouri
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Kansas City is the largest city in Missouri and the sixth largest city in the Midwest. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the city had an population of 475,378 in 2015. It is the city of the Kansas City metropolitan area. Kansas City was founded in the 1830s as a Missouri River port at its confluence with the Kansas River coming in from the west, on June 1,1850 the town of Kansas was incorporated, shortly after came the establishment of the Kansas Territory. Confusion between the two ensued and the name Kansas City was assigned to them soon thereafter. Most of the city lies within Jackson County, but portions spill into Clay, Cass, along with Independence, it serves as one of the two county seats for Jackson County. Major suburbs include the Missouri cities of Independence and Lees Summit and the Kansas cities of Overland Park, Olathe, and Kansas City. The city is composed of neighborhoods, including the River Market District in the north, the 18th and Vine District in the east. Kansas City is also known for its cuisine, its craft breweries, Kansas City, Missouri was officially incorporated as a town on June 1,1850, and as a city on March 28,1853. The territory straddling the border between Missouri and Kansas at the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers was considered a place to build settlements. The Antioch Christian Church, Dr. James Compton House, the first documented European visitor to Kansas City was Étienne de Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont, who was also the first European to explore the lower Missouri River. Criticized for his response to the Native American attack on Fort Détroit, Bourgmont lived with a Native American wife in a village about 90 miles east near Brunswick, Missouri, where he illegally traded furs. In the documents, he describes the junction of the Grande Riv des Cansez and Missouri River, French cartographer Guillaume Delisle used the descriptions to make the areas first reasonably accurate map. The Spanish took over the region in the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the French continued their fur trade under Spanish license. After the 1804 Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark visited the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers, in 1831, a group of Mormons from New York settled in what would become the city. They built the first school within Kansas Citys current boundaries, but were forced out by mob violence in 1833, in 1833 John McCoy established West Port along the Santa Fe Trail,3 miles away from the river. In 1834 McCoy established Westport Landing on a bend in the Missouri to serve as a point for West Port. Soon after, the Kansas Town Company, a group of investors, began to settle the area, in 1850, the landing area was incorporated as the Town of Kansas
9.
Bennie Moten
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Bennie Moten was an American jazz pianist and band leader born in Kansas City, Missouri. His first recordings were made in 1923, and were rather typical interpretations of the New Orleans style of King Oliver and they also showed the influence of the ragtime that was still popular in the area, as well as the stomping beat that the band was famous for. These OKeh sides are some of the more valuable acoustic jazz 78s of the era, Moten remained one of Victors most popular orchestras through 1930. The song Kansas City Shuffle was recorded during this time, by 1928 Motens piano was showing some boogie woogie influences, but the real revolution came in 1929 when he recruited Count Basie, Walter Page and Oran Hot Lips Page. Walter Pages walking bass lines gave the music a new feel compared to the 2/4 tuba of his predecessor Vernon Page. Another boon to the band was adding Jimmy Rushing as their primary vocalist and their final session showed the early stages of what became known as the Basie sound, four years before Basie recorded under his own name. By this time Ben Webster and Rushing had joined Motens band, Basie, subsequently, took many of the leading musicians from the band to form his own orchestra. Motens popular 1928 recording of South on Victor V-38021 stayed in Victors catalog over the years and it remained in print until RCA stopping making vinyl records
10.
Count Basie Orchestra
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The Count Basie Orchestra is a 16 to 18 piece big band, one of the most prominent jazz performing groups of the swing era, founded by Count Basie in 1935 and recording regularly from 1936. Despite a brief disbandment at the beginning of the 1950s, the band survived long past the Big Band era itself and it continues as a ghost band. Its recordings of this era included collaborations with such as Frank Sinatra. Count Basie arrived in Kansas City, Missouri in 1927, playing on the Theater Owners Bookers Association circuit, after playing with the Blue Devils, in 1929 he joined rival band leader Bennie Motens band. Upon Motens death in 1935, Basie left the group to start his own band, the groups first venue was the Reno Club in Kansas City, later moving to the Grand Terrace in Chicago. He also offered to transfer the group to New York City in order to play at such as the Roseland Ballroom. Basie agreed, hoping that with new band, he could retain the freedom. Following the first recording session, the line up was reshuffled. Trumpeters Ed Lewis and Bobby Moore replaced Keyes and Smith, in March 1937 the guitarist Freddie Green arrived, replacing Claude Williams and completing what became one of the most respected rhythm sections in big band history. Billie Holiday also sang with the band during this period, although she never recorded with them for contractual reasons, Hits such as One OClock Jump and Jumpin at the Woodside helped to gain the band, now known as the Count Basie Orchestra, national and international fame. These tunes were known as head-arrangements, not scored in individual parts, in 1938, Helen Humes joined the group, replacing Billie Holiday as the female singer. She sang mostly pop ballads, including My Heart Belongs to Daddy and Blame it on My Last Affair, the band became increasingly dependent on arrangers to provide its music. Tab Smith contributed important arrangements at this time, such as Harvard Blues, but the many new arrangements led to a gradual change in the bands sound, distancing the group musically from its Kansas City roots. This can be attributed to the reliance on arrangers to influence the band with their music. It suggested that Basies ideal of a big band-sized group with the flexibility, the musicologist Gunther Schuller has said that when Jo Jones left, he took some of the smooth, relaxed style of the band with him. Replacements such as Sonny Payne, drummed much louder and raised the dynamic of the band to a harder, the ban on instrumental recordings of 1942-1944 adversely affected the finances of the Count Basie Orchestra, as it did for all big bands in the United States. Despite taking on soloists from the next generation such as Wardell Gray, Basie was forced to disband the group for a short period in 1948. For these two years, Basie led a band of between 6 and 9 people, featuring more new players such as Buddy Rich, Serge Chaloff
11.
Chicago
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Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the third-most populous city in the United States. With over 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the state of Illinois, and it is the county seat of Cook County. In 2012, Chicago was listed as a global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Chicago has the third-largest gross metropolitan product in the United States—about $640 billion according to 2015 estimates, the city has one of the worlds largest and most diversified economies with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce. In 2016, Chicago hosted over 54 million domestic and international visitors, landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis Tower, Museum of Science and Industry, and Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicagos culture includes the arts, novels, film, theater, especially improvisational comedy. Chicago also has sports teams in each of the major professional leagues. The city has many nicknames, the best-known being the Windy City, the name Chicago is derived from a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum, from the Miami-Illinois language. The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as Checagou was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir, henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the wild garlic, called chicagoua, grew abundantly in the area. In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African and French descent and arrived in the 1780s and he is commonly known as the Founder of Chicago. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes had ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, on August 12,1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 4,000 people, on June 15,1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as U. S. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4,1837, as the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicagos first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois, the canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River. A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad, manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade listed the first ever standardized exchange traded forward contracts and these issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage
12.
Lester Young
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Lester Willis Young, nicknamed Pres or Prez, was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and occasional clarinetist. Coming to prominence while a member of Count Basies orchestra, Young was one of the most influential players on his instrument, known for his hip, introverted style, he invented or popularized much of the hipster jargon which came to be associated with the music. Lester Young was born in Woodville, Mississippi, and grew up in a musical family and his father, Willis Handy Young, was a respected teacher, his brother Lee Young was a drummer, and several other relatives performed music professionally. His family moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, when Lester was an infant and later to Minneapolis, although at a very young age Young did not initially know his father, he learned that his father was a musician. Later Willis taught his son to play the trumpet, violin, Lester Young played in his familys band, known as the Young Family Band, in both the vaudeville and carnival circuits. He left the band in 1927 at the age of 18 because he refused to tour in the Southern United States. In 1933 Young settled in Kansas City, where after playing briefly in several bands and his playing in the Basie band was characterized by a relaxed style which contrasted sharply with the more forceful approach of Coleman Hawkins, the dominant tenor sax player of the day. Young left the Basie band to replace Hawkins in Fletcher Hendersons orchestra and he soon left Henderson to play in the Andy Kirk band before returning to Basie. While with Basie, Young made small-group recordings for Milt Gablers Commodore Records, The Kansas City Sessions. Although they were recorded in New York, they are named after the group, the Kansas City Seven, and comprised Buck Clayton, Dicky Wells, Basie, Young, Freddie Green, Rodney Richardson, Young played clarinet as well as tenor in these sessions. Young is described as playing the clarinet in a liquid, nervous style, as well as the Kansas City Sessions, his clarinet work from 1938–39 is documented on recordings with Basie, Billie Holiday, Basie small groups, and the organist Glenn Hardman. Billie and Lester met at a Harlem jam session in the early 30s and worked together in the Count Basie band, at one point Lester moved into the apartment Billie shared with her mother, Sadie Fagan. Holiday always insisted their relationship was strictly platonic and she gave Lester the nickname Prez after President Franklin Roosevelt, the greatest man around in Billies mind. Playing on her name, he would call her Lady Day and their famously empathetic classic recordings with Teddy Wilson date from this era. After Youngs clarinet was stolen in 1939, he abandoned the instrument until about 1957 and that year Norman Granz gave him one and urged him to play it. Young left the Basie band in late 1940 and he subsequently led a number of small groups that often included his brother, drummer Lee Young, for the next couple of years, live and broadcast recordings from this period exist. During this period Young accompanied the singer Billie Holiday in a couple of studio sessions and his studio recordings are relatively sparse during the 1942 to 1943 period, largely due to the recording ban by the American Federation of Musicians. Small record labels not bound by union contracts continued to record, in December 1943 Young returned to the Basie fold for a 10-month stint, cut short by his being drafted into the army during World War II
13.
Freddie Green
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Frederick William Freddie Green was an American swing jazz guitarist. Green was born in Charleston, South Carolina on March 31,1911 and he was exposed to music from an early age, and learned the banjo before picking up the guitar in his early teenage years. A friend of his father by the name of Sam Walker taught a young Freddie to read music, Walker gave Freddie what was perhaps his first gig, playing with a local community group with whom Walker was an organizer. Another member of the group was William Cat Anderson, who went on to become an established trumpeter and it was around this time that Greens parents died, and he moved to New York City to live with his aunt and continue his education. The move opened up a new world to Freddie. While still in his teens, he began to play around the clubs of the city, earning money, in one of these gigs, he was noticed by the legendary talent scout John H. Hammond, who realized the potential of Green and introduced him to Basie. In 1937, Basie and his ensemble went to one of Greens gigs on the advice of an associate, Basie was an immediate fan, and approached Green with a job offer, which he accepted. Except for an interruption, Freddie Green would remain a pivotal fixture of the Count Basie Band for the next fifty years. You should never hear the guitar by itself, helped to establish the role of the rhythm guitar as an important part of every rhythm section. Green did play a solo on the January 16,1938 Carnegie Hall concert that featured the Benny Goodman big band. In the jam session on Fats Wallers Honeysuckle Rose, Green was the rhythm guitarist for the ensemble, which featured Basie, Page, and musicians from Duke Ellingtons band. After Goodmans solo, he signalled to Green to take his own solo, Greens solo occurs between those of Goodman and trumpeter Harry James. He rapidly changed chords, often with every beat, rather than every measure and his chord fingering often involved him covering four strings with his fingers, while depressing only a subset of the notes. He dampened the unsounded notes from chords with his left hand and this technique gave a chunky rhythm sound without creating unnecessary harmonic presence that might interfere with notes sounded by other members of the orchestra. Greens playing on his signature Stromberg guitar was the model for Ralph Patts big-band playing, Green died of a heart attack in Las Vegas, Nevada at the age of 75. Mr. Rhythm Rhythm Willie with Herb Ellis With Count Basie The Original American Decca Recordings The Count, Dance Session Dance Session Album #2 Basie Count Basie Swings, Joe Williams Sings with Joe Williams April in Paris The Greatest. The Count Meets the Duke Count Basie and the Kansas City 7 Back with Basie Basie in Sweden On My Way & Shoutin Again
14.
Buck Clayton
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His principal influence was Louis Armstrong. The Penguin Guide to Jazz says that he “synthesi much of the history of jazz trumpet up to his own time, with a bright brassy tone, Clayton worked closely with Li Jinhui, father of Chinese popular music in Shanghai. His contributions helped change history in China, Hong Kong. Clayton learned to play the piano from the age of six and his father was an amateur musician associated with the familys local church, who was responsible for teaching his son the scales on a trumpet which he did not take up until his teens. From the age of seventeen, Clayton was taught the trumpet by Bob Russell, in his early twenties he was based in California, and was briefly a member of Duke Ellington’s Orchestra and worked with other leaders. Clayton was also taught at this time by trumpeter Mutt Carey, after high school, he moved to Los Angeles. He later formed a band named “14 Gentlemen from Harlem” in which he was the leader of the 14-member orchestra, from there, there are multiple sources claiming different ways in which Clayton ended up in Shanghai. Some claimed that Clayton was picked by Teddy Weatherford for a job at the Canidrome ballroom in the French Concession in Shanghai, others claimed he escaped the US temporarily to avoid racism. From 1934 or 1935, he was a leader of the Harlem Gentlemen in Shanghai, some of the bureaucratic social groups he was with included Chiang Kai-sheks wife Soong Mei-ling and her sister Ai-ling, who were regulars at the Canidrome. Clayton would play a number of songs that were composed by Li Jinhui, Li learned a great deal from the American jazz influence brought over by Clayton. A1935 guidebook in Shanghai listed Clayton and Teddy Weatherford as the main attraction at the Canidrome. He would eventually leave Shanghai before the 1937 Second Sino-Japanese War, Clayton is credited for helping to close the gap between traditional Chinese music and shidaiqu/mandopop. Li is mostly remembered in China as a casualty of the Cultural Revolution, Clayton remained with Basie until he was drafted for war service in November 1943. Based at Camp Kilmer near New York, Clayton was able to participate in various all-star sessions and he also recorded at this time for the H. R. S. In 1947 he was back in New York, and had a residency at the Café Society, Downtown, Clayton and Rushing worked together occasionally into the 1960s. From September 1949 Clayton was in Europe for nine months, leading his own band in France, Clayton recorded intermittently over the next few years for the French Vogue label, under his own name, that of clarinetist Mezz Mezzrow and for one session, with pianist Earl Hines. In 1953, he was again in Europe, touring with Mezzrow, in Italy, the English critic Stanley Dance coined the term mainstream in the 1950s to describe the style of those swing era players who fell between the revivalist and modernist camps. Clayton was precisely one of the players to whom this appellation most applied, in December 1953 Clayton embarked on a series of jam session albums for Columbia, which had been the idea of John Hammond, though George Avakian was the principal producer
15.
Harry Edison
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Harry Sweets Edison was an American jazz trumpeter and member of the Count Basie Orchestra. Born in Columbus, Ohio, Edison spent his childhood in Louisville, Kentucky. After moving back to Columbus at the age of twelve, the young Edison began playing the trumpet with local bands, in 1933, he became a member of the Jeter-Pillars Orchestra in Cleveland. Afterwards he played with the Mills Blue Rhythm Band and Lucky Millinder, in 1937 he moved to New York and joined the Count Basie Orchestra. His colleagues included Buck Clayton, Lester Young, Buddy Tate, Freddie Green, Jo Jones, and other original members of that famous band. In a 2003 interview for the National Museum of American History, drummer Elvin Jones explained the origin of Edisons nickname, Sweets had so many lady friends and he had all these girls all over him all the time, thats why they called him Sweets. Sweets Edison came to prominence as a soloist with the Basie Band and he also appeared in the 1944 film Jammin the Blues. Having joined the Basie Band in 1937, Edison spent thirteen years with Basie until the band was disbanded in 1950. Edison thereafter pursued a career as leader of his own groups, traveling with Jazz at the Philharmonic. In 1956 he recorded the first of three albums with tenor great Ben Webster, from 1973 Edison acted as Musical Director for Redd Foxx on theatre dates, at concerts, and in Las Vegas. He appeared frequently in Europe and Japan until shortly before his death, as the Los Angeles Jazz Institutes first Tribute Honoree, Sweets will always have a special place in the hearts of jazz fans. Edison died at his home in Columbus, Ohio at the age of 83, Buddy and Sweets with Buddy Rich Pres and Sweets with Lester Young Sweets Gee, Baby Aint I Good to You with Ben Webster Jazz Giants 58 with Stan Getz and Gerry Mulligan The Swinger Mr
16.
Jimmy Rushing
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He joined Walter Pages Blue Devils in 1927 and then joined Bennie Motens band in 1929. He stayed with the successor Count Basie band when Moten died in 1935, Rushing said that his first time singing in front of an audience was in 1924. He was playing piano at a club when the singer, Carlyn Williams. I got out there and broke it up, I was a singer from then on, he said. Rushing was a singer who had a range from baritone to tenor. He could project his voice so that it soared over the horn, Basie claimed that Rushing never had an equal as a blues vocalist, though Rushing really thought of himself as a ballad singer. George Frazier, the author of Harvard Blues, called Rushings distinctive voice a magnificent gargle, Dave Brubeck defined Rushings status among blues singers as the daddy of them all. Late in his life Rushing said of his style, I dont know what kind of blues singer youd call me. Among his best-known recordings are Going to Chicago, with Basie, Rushing was born into a family with musical talent and accomplishments. His father, Andrew Rushing, was a trumpeter, and his mother, Cora and he studied music theory with Zelia N. Breaux at Oklahoma Citys Douglass High School, and was unusual among his musical contemporaries for having attended college, at Wilberforce University. Rushing was inspired to music and eventually sing blues by his uncle Wesley Manning and George Fathead Thomas. Rushing toured the Midwest and California as an itinerant blues singer in 1923 and 1924 before moving to Los Angeles, Rushing also sang with Billy King before moving on to Pages Blue Devils in 1927. He, along other members of the Blue Devils, defected to the Bennie Moten band in 1929. Moten died in 1935, and Rushing joined Count Basie for what would be a 13-year tenure, after leaving Basie, his recording career soared, as a solo artist and a singer with other bands. When the Basie band broke up in 1950 he briefly retired and he also made a guest appearance with Duke Ellington for the 1959 album Jazz Party. In 1960, he recorded an album with the Dave Brubeck Quartet, known for their cerebral cool jazz sound, Rushing appeared in the 1957 television special Sound of Jazz, singing one of his signature songs I Left My Baby backed by many of his former Basie band compatriots. In 1958 he was among the musicians included in an Esquire magazine photo by Art Kane, in 1958 Rushing toured the UK with Humphrey Lyttelton and his band. A BBC broadcast with Rushing accompanied by Lytteltons specially organised big band was released on CD in 2009, in 1969 Rushing appeared in The Learning Tree, the first major studio feature film directed by an African-American, Gordon Parks
17.
Helen Humes
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Helen Humes was an American jazz and blues singer. Humes was a blues singer, a vocalist with Count Basies band, a saucy R&B diva. Along with other jazz singers of the swing era, Humes helped to shape. She was born on June 23,1913, in Louisville, Kentucky, to Emma Johnson and she grew up as an only child. Her mother was a schoolteacher, and her father was the first black attorney in town, in an interview, Humes recalled her parents singing to each other around the house and in a church choir. Humes was introduced to music in the church, singing in the choir and getting piano and organ lessons given at Sunday school by Bessie Allen, Humes began occasionally playing the piano in a small and locally traveling dance band, the Dandies. This constant involvement in music would lead to her career in the mid-1920s. Her career began with her first vocal performance, at an amateur contest in 1926, singing When Youre a Long, Long Way from Home and Im in Love with You, Thats Why. Her talents were noticed by a guitarist in the band, Sylvester Weaver, at the age of 14 Humes recorded an album in St. Louis, singing several blues songs. Two years later, a recording session was held in New York. She stayed home for a while, eventually leaving to visit friends in Buffalo, while there, she was invited to sing a few songs at the Spider Web, a cabaret in town. This brief performance turned into an audition, which turned in to a $35-a-week job and she stayed in Buffalo, singing with a small group led by Al Sears. While Humes was home in Louisville she got a call from Sears and he wanted her to sing at Cincinnatis Cotton Club. The Cotton Club was an important venue in the Cincinnati music scene and it was an integrated club that booked and promoted a lot of black entertainers. Humes moved to Cincinnati in 1936 and sang with Searss band again at the Cotton Club, Count Basie first heard and approached Humes while she was performing at the Cotton Club in 1937. He asked her to join his band to replace Billie Holiday. He told her that she would be paid $35 a week, not long after this encounter, Humes moved in 1937 to New York City, where John Hammond, an influential talent scout and producer, heard her singing with Searss band at the Renaissance Club. Through Hammond, she became a recording vocalist with Harry Jamess big band and her swing recordings with James included Jubilee, I Can Dream, Cant I
18.
Joe Williams (jazz singer)
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Joe Williams was an American jazz singer. Williams was born in Cordele, Georgia, the son of Willie Goreed, when he was about three, his mother and grandmother took him to Chicago. He grew up on the South Side of Chicago, where he attended Austin Otis Sexton Elementary School, in the 1930s, as a teenager, he was a member of a gospel group, the Jubilee Boys, and performed in Chicago churches. He worked as a singer and bouncer in Chicago in the late 1930s and he began singing professionally as a soloist in 1937. He sometimes sang with big bands, from 1937 he performed with Jimmie Noones Apex Club Orchestra, in 1941 he toured with Coleman Hawkins to Memphis, Tennessee. In 1943 he performed in Boston with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra and he toured with Hampton for several years but never achieved breakthrough success. He sang with Red Saunders at the Club DeLisa in Chicago in 1945, in the late 1940s Williams was ill and performed little. By October 1950 he was again at the Club DeLisa with Red Saunders, from 1954 to 1961 he was the singer for the Count Basie Orchestra. He rose to prominence with Basie, who nicknamed him The Number One Son. Every Day I Have the Blues, recorded in 1955, was one of his hit recordings. After leaving the Basie band, Williams had a career as a soloist at festivals, in clubs. He and Basie remained on good terms and he appeared with the Basie orchestra. He went on a tour from Egypt to India with Clark Terry in 1977, and toured Europe and the United States with Thad Jones. He also worked with his own combos, which between 1970 and 1990 usually included the pianist Norman Simmons, and often had Henry Johnson on guitar, Williams sang with the Basie orchestra in two films, Jamboree in 1957 and Cinderfella in 1960. He sometimes worked as an actor, and in 1985 took the rôle of Grandpa Al Hanks in Bill Cosbys popular Cosby Show, Williams appeared several times on Sesame Street in the 1980s and early 1990s. In later life Williams often worked in hotels and clubs in Las Vegas and he toured again with the Basie Orchestra, this time under the direction of Frank Foster, who had succeeded Thad Jones as leader of the band. Williams sang with the former Ellington Orchestra drummer Louie Bellson in Duke Ellingtons jazz suite Black, Brown and Beige, Williams worked regularly until his death in Las Vegas on March 29,1999, at the age of 80. In 1988, with his wife Jillean and friends, Williams set up the not-for-profit Joe Williams Every Day Foundation to offer scholarships to talented young musicians
19.
Mellophone
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The mellophone is a three-valved brass instrument pitched in the key of F or E♭. It has a bore, like that of the euphonium. Tuning is done solely by adjusting the piping, instead of adjusting both piping and hand position as on the French horn, fingerings for the mellophone are the same as fingerings for the trumpet, alto horn, and most valved brass instruments. Owing to its use primarily outside of music, there is little solo literature for the mellophone, other than that used within drum. The present-day mellophone has three valves, operated with the right hand, mellophone fingering is the same as the trumpet and is typically pitched lower, in the key of F or E♭. The overtone series of the F mellophone is an octave above that of the F horn, the tubing length of a mellophone is the same as that of the F-alto single horn or the F-alto branch of a triple horn or double-descant horn. The direction of the bell as well as the amount of tubing make the mellophone look like a large trumpet. The mellophone uses the same mouthpiece as the horn, which is in-between the size of a trombone. This mouthpiece usually has a cup, like that of the flugelhorn. These mouthpieces give the mellophone a dark, round sound, some trumpet players who double on mellophone use a trumpet-style parabolic mouthpiece on the instrument, resulting in a much brighter, more trumpet-like sound. Horn players doubling on mellophone use a smaller, lighter, conical mouthpiece, as used on French horns. Two instruments carry the name mellophone, Traditional mellophones with a rear or sideways facing bell, the marching mellophone, with a forward-facing bell. In general, the mellophone has its origin in the horn design boom of the 19th century. The earliest version was the Koenig horn, based on a design by its eponym Herman Koenig, but manufactured by Antoine Courtois, Courtois had just won the right to manufacture the saxhorn, in a lawsuit against the inventor of the saxophone, Adolphe Sax. This shape was influenced by the post horn. Kohler & Son originally began using the name mellophone for its line of horns based loosely on similar instruments by Distin. These were also post horn-like instruments with valves, but the mouthpieces and bell angle were slowly evolving to allow for more projection, the traditional instrument is visually modeled on the horn, with a round shape and a rear-facing bell. Unlike French horns, it is played with the hand
20.
Silent film
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A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. The silent film era lasted from 1895 to 1936, in silent films for entertainment, the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, mime and title cards which contain a written indication of the plot or key dialogue. During silent films, a pianist, theatre organist, or, in large cities, pianists and organists would either play from sheet music or improvise, an orchestra would play from sheet music. The term silent film is therefore a retronym—that is, a term created to distinguish something retroactively, the early films with sound, starting with The Jazz Singer in 1927, were referred to as talkies, sound films, or talking pictures. A September 2013 report by the United States Library of Congress announced that a total of 70% of American silent feature films are believed to be completely lost, the earliest precursors of film began with image projection through the use of a device known as the magic lantern. This utilized a glass lens, a shutter and a persistent light source, such as a powerful lantern and these slides were originally hand-painted, but still photographs were used later on after the technological advent of photography in the nineteenth century. The invention of a practical photography apparatus preceded cinema by only fifty years, the next significant step towards film creation was the development of an understanding of image movement. Simulations of movement date as far back as to 1828 and only four years after Paul Roget discovered the phenomenon he called Persistence of Vision. This experience was further demonstrated through Rogets introduction of the thaumatrope, the first projected primary proto-movie was made by Eadweard Muybridge between 1877 and 1880. Muybridge set up a row of cameras along a racetrack and timed image exposures to capture the many stages of a horses gallop, the oldest surviving film was created by Louis Le Prince in 1888. It was a film of people walking in Oakwood streets garden. Edison also made a business of selling Kinetograph and Kinetoscope equipment, due to Edisons lack of securing an international patent on his film inventions, similar devices were invented around the world. The Lumière brothers, for example, created the Cinématographe in France, the Cinématographe proved to be a more portable and practical device than both of Edisons as it combined a camera, film processor and projector in one unit. In contrast to Edisons peepshow-style kinetoscope, which one person could watch through a viewer. Their first film, Sortie de lusine Lumière de Lyon, shot in 1894, is considered the first true motion picture, the invention of celluloid film, which was strong and flexible, greatly facilitated the making of motion pictures. This film was 35 mm wide and pulled using four sprocket holes and this doomed the cinematograph, which could only use film with just one sprocket hole. From the very beginnings of film production, the art of motion pictures grew into maturity in the silent era. Silent filmmakers pioneered the art form to the extent that virtually every style, the silent era was also pioneering era from a technical point of view
21.
Sonny Greer
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Sonny Greer was an American jazz drummer and vocalist, best known for his work with Duke Ellington. Greer was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and played with Elmer Snowdens band and the Howard Theatres orchestra in Washington, D. C. before joining Duke Ellington, whom he met in 1919. He was Ellingtons first drummer, playing with his quintet, the Washingtonians and this enraged Greer, and the consequent argument led to their permanent estrangement. Greer continued to play, mainly as a drummer, working with musicians such as Johnny Hodges, Red Allen. Higginbotham, Tyree Glenn, and Brooks Kerr, as well as appearing in films, Greer featured in the iconic 1958 black-and-white photograph by Art Kane known as A Great Day in Harlem. He was part of a tribute to Ellington in 1974, which achieved success throughout the United States. Greer died in 1982 and is interred in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, with Johnny Hodges Castle Rock Creamy Ian Carr, Digby Fairweather & Brian Priestley. ISBN 1-85828-528-3 Sonny Greer — brief biography by Scott Yanow, for Allmusic Sonny Greer at Drummerworld. com Sonny Greer at the Internet Movie Database
22.
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
23.
Asbury Park, New Jersey
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Asbury Park is a city in Monmouth County, New Jersey, United States, located on the Jersey Shore and part of the New York City Metropolitan Area. It was ranked the sixth-best beach in New Jersey in the 2008 Top 10 Beaches Contest sponsored by the New Jersey Marine Sciences Consortium. Asbury Park was originally incorporated as a borough by an act of the New Jersey Legislature on March 26,1874, the borough was reincorporated on February 28,1893. Asbury Park was incorporated as a city, its current type of government, a seaside community, Asbury Park is located on New Jerseys central coast. Bradley was active in the development of much of the citys infrastructure, along the waterfront Bradley installed the Asbury Park Boardwalk, an orchestra pavilion, public changing rooms and a pier at the south end of that boardwalk. During these early decades in Asbury Park, a number of hotels were built. Uriah White, an Asbury Park pioneer, installed the first artesian well water system, by 1912, The New York Times estimated that the summer population could reach 200,000. The country by the sea destination experienced several key periods of popularity, the first notable era was the 1890s, marked by a housing growth, examples of which can still be found today in a full range of Victorian architecture. Coinciding with the trend in retail shopping, Asbury Parks downtown flourished during this period. The 1920s saw a change in the boardwalk with the construction of the Paramount Theatre and Convention Hall complex, the Casino Arena and Carousel House. Beaux Arts architect Warren Whitney of New York was the designer and he had also been hired to design the imposing Berkeley-Carteret Hotel positioned diagonally across from the theater and hall. At the same time, Asbury Park launched a first-class education, in 1935, the newly founded Securities and Exchange Commission called Asbury Parks Mayor Clarence F. Hetrick to testify about $6,000,000 in beach improvement bonds that had gone into default. The interests of Asbury Parks bond investors lead Senator Frank Durand to add a last-minute Beach Commission amendment to a municipal debt bill in the New Jersey legislature, when the bill became law, it ceded control of the Asbury Park beach to Governor Harold Hoffman and a governors commission. The city of Asbury Park sued to restore control of the beach to the municipal council, in 1943, the New York Yankees held their spring training in Asbury Park instead of Florida. This was because rail transport had to be conserved during the war, with the opening of the Garden State Parkway in 1947, Asbury Park saw the travel market change as fewer vacationers took trains to the seashore. Office parks built outside the city resulted in the relocation of accountants, dentists, doctors, lawyers, many of those city blocks have yet to be redeveloped into the 21st century. Although it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, the complex had featured the famous face of Tillie, a symbol of the Jersey Shore. In 1990, the carousel at the Casino Pier was sold to Family Kingdom Amusement Park in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
24.
Jersey Shore
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The Jersey Shore is the coastal region of the state of New Jersey. Geographically, the term encompasses about 141 miles of oceanfront from Perth Amboy in the north to Cape May Point in the south, the Jersey Shore area includes Middlesex, Monmouth, Atlantic County, Cape May, and Ocean counties. Many New Jersey residents refer to it as The Shore, a common phrase within New Jersey is to go down the shore, or to have done something down the shore. Certain communities are popular with visitors from the nearby Canadian provinces of Quebec. The Jersey Shore is lined with over 40 communities, each with a different character, some cater to summer tourists and visitors, others are completely full-year residential communities, others still are a mix of both. Below are some of the most notable shore points, the two towns that make up The Amboys are Perth Amboy and South Amboy. Perth Amboys history dates back to 1651 when August Herman bought a point of land from the Lenni Lenape Native Americans, the land, which was called Ompoge by the Indians, gradually changed its name to Emboyle, then Amboyle. When the city was incorporated in 1683, settlers began to call the land Ambo or Amboy Point, the name means place resembling a bowl. In 1686, when the settlement became the capital of East Jersey, Perth was added to the name in honor of one of the Proprietors under the Royal grant, the James Drummond, 1st Duke of Perth. Keansburg is one of the most tourism-oriented towns along the Raritan Bayshore region, Keansburg is home to the Keansburg Amusement Park, Keansburg is also home to a small boardwalk that runs along the Raritan Bay, sometimes offering views of the New York City skyline. Many boaters utilize Keyports marinas that give access to fishing, crabbing. The New York City skyline can be seen from the boroughs ridges, pleasure, fishing and commuter boats sail from its harbor. The municipal harbor was built from 1938 through 1940 with municipal, state and it is the largest on the East Coast, home to 715 craft, including high-speed ferry service to New York City, which was introduced in 1986. In 1966, the Central Railroad of New Jersey pier was destroyed by fire and its rail route is now used by the Henry Hudson Trail. Sandy Hook is a long, narrow peninsula managed by the National Park Service as the a unit of the Gateway National Recreation Area, the eastern shoreline consists of various public and fishing beaches, including North Beach and Gunnison Beach. The peninsulas ocean-facing beaches are considered among the finest in New Jersey and are a destination for recreation in summer when seasonal ferries bring beachgoers. Gunnison Beach is one of the largest clothing optional beaches on the East Coast, the northern end of the island is home to the Sandy Hook Lighthouse, the Marine Academy of Science and Technology, and restored buildings of the former Fort Hancock Coast Guard Station. Spread across the peninsula are former military installations, including four ammunitions bunkers, Red Bank, overlooking the Navesink River, is a noted social and commercial destination, filled with boutiques, designer clothing and home stores, parks, and restaurants
25.
The Harlem Alhambra
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The The Harlem Alhambra was a theater in Harlem, New York, built in 1905, that began as a vaudeville venue. The architect was John Bailey McElfatrick who, based in Manhattan, McElfatrick & Son – builder of 100 theaters. Construction on the structure commenced late 1902 by its original owner, the original design included specifications for a rathskeller, which was to be a reproduction of the Brunheil Rathskeller in Leipzig, a music hall, a roof garden, and an apartment house. The original owners started it in 1903, but it was not completed owing to litigation, at some point during the litigation, the Orpheum Amusement Company, of which Percy G. Williams was president, acquired the property. When Williams opened the theater on May 15,1905, the capacity was 1,650. By 1910, Williams managed the largest number of theaters in New York City — two in Manhattan, one in the Bronx, and one each in Brooklyn and Queens. It eventually became a venue and, in 1929, opened a famed upstairs ballroom that hosted performers including Bessie Smith. The ballroom fell into disrepair in the 1960s, but, reopened in 2003 as The Alhambra Ballroom, Inc. which hosts weddings, parties, in 2006, Harlem Lanes – a bowling facility – opened on the third and fourth floors. Harlem Bowling Center LLC is the owner, other tenants include the King Solomon Grand Lodge of New York, Inc. In June 2009, a new restaurant – Gospel Uptown – opened on the floor, replacing short-lived seafood restaurant. The building is located at 2116 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard at 126th Street in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, mitchell Enterprises, Inc. as of 2011, owns the building
26.
Willie "The Lion" Smith
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William Henry Joseph Bonaparte Bertholoff was born in Goshen, New York. In his memoir he reports that his father, Frank Bertholoff, was Jewish, Willie was at least somewhat conversant in Yiddish, as he demonstrated in a television interview late in his life. Willies mother, Ida Oliver, had Spanish, Negro, and her mother, Ann Oliver, was a banjo player and had been in Primrose and West minstrel shows. According to Ida, Frank Bertholoff was a playboy who loved his liquor, girls. His mother threw Frank out of the house when The Lion was two years old, when his father died in 1901, his mother married John Smith, a master mechanic from Paterson, New Jersey. The surname Smith was added to that of The Lion at age three and he grew up living at 76 Academy Street in Newark, New Jersey. Bailey, Pork Packers, and he would leave the house around midnight to pick up the freshly killed pigs and he was supposed to be home by 4 am, but would usually go to bars. Eventually, Willies mother wanted him to accompany his stepfather to work to ensure that John Smith would come straight home. Willie said he enjoyed his job, but most of the time he would have to drive the horses home. He also could only work on Fridays and Saturdays, as his mother did not want him to miss school and he wrote about the experience of being at the slaughterhouse with his stepfather, I couldnt stand to see what I saw at the slaughterhouse. I would watch wide-eyed as the squealing pigs slid down the rails to the cutter where they were slashed through the middle. The kill sometimes went to as many as four hundred pigs a night and it was a sickening sight to watch. But the cries from the pigs brought forth an emotional excitement and it was another weird but musical sound that I can still hear in my head. The squeaks, the squeals, the dipping them in hot water, they put them on a hook, take off the head, thats what you hear in a symphony, destruction, war, peace, beauty, all mixed. In 1907, the moved to 90 Bloome Street in Newark. His stepfather got a new job at Crucible Steel Company, across the Passaic River in Harrison, the job paid more, and Willie would have to get him before his bosses got him drunk on his own money. He attended the Baxter School, rumored to be a school for bad children, the school was notorious for brawls between Irish, Italian, and African-American children. Willie was in Mrs. Blacks fruit store and was caught with his hand in her register, according to Smiths memoirs, he had wanted to borrow a dime to see S. H
27.
James P. Johnson
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James Price Johnson was an American pianist and composer. As such, he was a model for Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, Johnson was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States. The proximity to New York City meant that the full spectrum of the citys musical experience, from bars, to cabarets. Johnsons father, William H. Johnson, was a helper and mechanic while his mother. Harrison was a part of the choir at the Methodist Church and was also a self-taught pianist, Johnson later attributed the popular African-American songs and dances at home and around the city as early influences on his musical taste. In 1908, Johnsons family moved to the San Juan Hill section of New York City, with perfect pitch and excellent recall he was soon able to pick out on the piano tunes that he had heard. Johnson, who got his first job as a pianist in 1912, from 1913 to 1916 Johnson spent time studying the European piano tradition with Bruto Giannini. Over the next four to five years Johnson continued to progress his ragtime piano skills by studying other pianists, in 1914, while performing in Newark, New Jersey with singer Lillie Mae Wright, who became his wife three years later, Johnson met Willie Smith. Smith and Johnson shared many of the ideas regarding entertainers. These beliefs and their complementary personalities led the two to become best friends, starting in 1918, Johnson and Wright began touring together in the Smart Set Revue before settling back in New York in 1919. During this period he met George Gershwin, who was also a young piano-roll artist at Aeolian, Johnson was a pioneer in the stride playing of the jazz piano. Johnson honed his craft, playing night after night, catering to the egos and idiosyncrasies of the singers he encountered. He developed into a sensitive and facile accompanist, the favorite accompanist of Ethel Waters, Ethel Waters wrote in her autobiography that working with musicians such as, and most especially, Johnson. made you want to sing until your tonsils fell out. Johnson seemed to be at his finest when he attacked the piano as if it were a drum set, the majority of his phonograph recordings of the 1920s and early 1930s were done for Black Swan and Columbia. In 1922, Johnson branched out and became the director for the revue Plantation Days. This revue took him to England for our months in 1923, during the summer of 1923 Johnson, along with the help of lyricist Cecil Mack, wrote the revue Runnin Wild. This revue stayed on tour for more than five years as well as showing on Broadway, in the depression era, Johnsons career slowed down somewhat. As the swing era began to gain popularity within the African-American communities, Johnson had a hard time adapting, Johnson began to write for musical revues and composed many forgotten orchestral music pieces
28.
Benjamin Franklin Keith
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Benjamin Franklin Keith was an American vaudeville theater owner, highly influential in the evolution of variety theater into vaudeville. Keith was born in Hillsboro Bridge, New Hampshire and he joined the circus after attending Van Amburgs Circus and then worked at Bunnells Museum in New York City in the early 1860s. He later joined P. T. Barnum and then joined the Forepaugh Circus, before he opened a museum in Boston, in 1883. In 1885 he joined Edward Franklin Albee II, who was selling circus tickets and their opening show was on July 6,1885. The theatre was one of the early adopters of the variety show which ran from 10,00 in the morning until 11,00 at night. Previously, shows ran at fixed intervals with several hours of downtime between shows, with the continuous show, you could enter the theatre at any time, and stay until you reached the point in the show where you arrived. Albee and Keith opened the Union Square Theatre in New York City and they had obtained the exclusive American rights to the Lumière apparatus and their film output, and the first showing was on June 29,1896. They then opened theatres in Philadelphia, and Boston, and then smaller theatres in the East and Midwest of the United States and they signed a contract with Biograph Studios in 1896 which lasted until July 1905 when they switched to Edison Studios as their supplier of motion pictures. Keith and Albee merged their theatre circuit with Frederick Freeman Proctor in June 1906, Keith withdrew from business in 1909 and married for a second time on October 29,1913, to Ethel Bird Chase. She was 26 years old and Keith was 67, Keith died at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida in 1914. After his son, Andrew Keith, died in 1918, control of the went to Albee. In 1928, the B. F. Keith Circuit merged with the Orpheum Circuit to form the Keith-Albee-Orpheum corporation in Marysville, in a few months, this organization became the major motion picture studio Radio-Keith-Orpheum. Also in 1928 the B. F. Keith Memorial Theatre opened in Boston, black Like You, Blackface, Whiteface, Insult and Imitation in American Popular Culture
29.
Vaudeville
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Vaudeville is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment. It was especially popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s, a typical vaudeville performance is made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. A vaudeville performer is often referred to as a vaudevillian, Vaudeville developed from many sources, including the concert saloon, minstrelsy, freak shows, dime museums, and literary American burlesque. Called the heart of American show business, vaudeville was one of the most popular types of entertainment in North America for several decades, the origin of this term is obscure, but is often explained as being derived from the French expression voix de ville. A second speculation is that it comes from the songs on satire by poet Olivier Basselin. Some, however, preferred the term variety to what manager Tony Pastor called its sissy. Thus, vaudeville was marketed as variety well into the 20th century, with its first subtle appearances within the early 1860s, vaudeville was not initially a common form of entertainment. The form gradually evolved from the saloon and variety hall into its mature form throughout the 1870s and 1880s. This more gentle form was known as Polite Vaudeville, in the years before the American Civil War, entertainment existed on a different scale. Certainly, variety theatre existed before 1860 in Europe and elsewhere, in the US, as early as the first decades of the 19th century, theatregoers could enjoy a performance consisting of Shakespeare plays, acrobatics, singing, dancing, and comedy. As the years progressed, people seeking diversified amusement found a number of ways to be entertained. Vaudeville was characterized by traveling companies touring through cities and towns, a significant influence also came from Dutch minstrels and comedians. Vaudeville incorporated these various itinerant amusements into a stable, institutionalized form centered in Americas growing urban hubs, pastors experiment proved successful, and other managers soon followed suit. B. F. Keith took the step, starting in Boston. Later, E. F. Albee, adoptive grandfather of the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee, circuits such as those managed by Keith-Albee provided vaudevilles greatest economic innovation and the principal source of its industrial strength. They enabled a chain of allied vaudeville houses that remedied the chaos of the booking system by contracting acts for regional and national tours. These could easily be lengthened from a few weeks to two years, Albee also gave national prominence to vaudevilles trumpeting polite entertainment, a commitment to entertainment equally inoffensive to men, women and children. Acts that violated this ethos were admonished and threatened with expulsion from the remaining performances or were canceled altogether
30.
Blues
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Blues is a genre and musical form originated by African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the end of the 19th century. The genre developed from roots in African musical traditions, African-American work songs, spirituals, Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. Blue notes, usually thirds or fifths flattened in pitch, are also a part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove, Blues as a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times, Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often relating the troubles experienced in African-American society. Many elements, such as the format and the use of blue notes. The origins of the blues are closely related to the religious music of the Afro-American community. The first appearance of the blues is often dated to after the ending of slavery and, later and it is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the former slaves. Chroniclers began to report about blues music at the dawn of the 20th century, the first publication of blues sheet music was in 1908. Blues has since evolved from unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of slaves into a variety of styles and subgenres. Blues subgenres include country blues, such as Delta blues and Piedmont blues, as well as urban blues styles such as Chicago blues, World War II marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues and the progressive opening of blues music to a wider audience, especially white listeners. In the 1960s and 1970s, a form called blues rock evolved. The term blues may have come from blue devils, meaning melancholy and sadness, the phrase blue devils may also have been derived from Britain in the 1600s, when the term referred to the intense visual hallucinations that can accompany severe alcohol withdrawal. As time went on, the phrase lost the reference to devils, by the 1800s in the United States, the term blues was associated with drinking alcohol, a meaning which survives in the phrase blue law, which prohibits the sale of alcohol on Sunday. Though the use of the phrase in African-American music may be older, it has been attested to in print since 1912, in lyrics the phrase is often used to describe a depressed mood. The lyrics of traditional blues verses probably often consisted of a single line repeated four times. Two of the first published songs, Dallas Blues and Saint Louis Blues, were 12-bar blues with the AAB lyric structure. Handy wrote that he adopted this convention to avoid the monotony of lines repeated three times, the lines are often sung following a pattern closer to rhythmic talk than to a melody
31.
St. Louis
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St. Louis is an independent city and major U. S. port in the state of Missouri, built along the western bank of the Mississippi River, on the border with Illinois. Prior to European settlement, the area was a regional center of Native American Mississippian culture. The city of St. Louis was founded in 1764 by French fur traders Pierre Laclède and Auguste Chouteau, in 1764, following Frances defeat in the Seven Years War, the area was ceded to Spain and retroceded back to France in 1800. In 1803, the United States acquired the territory as part of the Louisiana Purchase, during the 19th century, St. Louis developed as a major port on the Mississippi River. In the 1870 Census, St. Louis was ranked as the 4th-largest city in the United States and it separated from St. Louis County in 1877, becoming an independent city and limiting its own political boundaries. In 1904, it hosted the Louisiana Purchase Exposition and the Summer Olympics, the economy of metro St. Louis relies on service, manufacturing, trade, transportation of goods, and tourism. This city has become known for its growing medical, pharmaceutical. St. Louis has 2 professional sports teams, the St. Louis Cardinals of Major League Baseball, the city is commonly identified with the 630-foot tall Gateway Arch in Downtown St. Louis. The area that would become St. Louis was a center of the Native American Mississippian culture and their major regional center was at Cahokia Mounds, active from 900 AD to 1500 AD. Due to numerous major earthworks within St. Louis boundaries, the city was nicknamed as the Mound City and these mounds were mostly demolished during the citys development. Historic Native American tribes in the area included the Siouan-speaking Osage people, whose territory extended west, European exploration of the area was first recorded in 1673, when French explorers Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette traveled through the Mississippi River valley. Five years later, La Salle claimed the region for France as part of La Louisiane. The earliest European settlements in the area were built in Illinois Country on the east side of the Mississippi River during the 1690s and early 1700s at Cahokia, Kaskaskia, migrants from the French villages on the opposite side of the Mississippi River founded Ste. In early 1764, after France lost the 7 Years War, Pierre Laclède, the early French families built the citys economy on the fur trade with the Osage, as well as with more distant tribes along the Missouri River. The Chouteau brothers gained a monopoly from Spain on the fur trade with Santa Fe, French colonists used African slaves as domestic servants and workers in the city. In 1780 during the American Revolutionary War, St. Louis was attacked by British forces, mostly Native American allies, the founding of St. Louis began in 1763. Pierre Laclede led an expedition to set up a fur-trading post farther up the Mississippi River, before then, Laclede had been a very successful merchant. For this reason, he and his trading partner Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent were offered monopolies for six years of the fur trading in that area
32.
New Orleans
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New Orleans is a major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana. The population of the city was 343,829 as of the 2010 U. S. Census, the New Orleans metropolitan area had a population of 1,167,764 in 2010 and was the 46th largest in the United States. The New Orleans–Metairie–Bogalusa Combined Statistical Area, a trading area, had a 2010 population of 1,452,502. The city is named after the Duke of Orleans, who reigned as Regent for Louis XV from 1715 to 1723, as it was established by French colonists and it is well known for its distinct French and Spanish Creole architecture, as well as its cross-cultural and multilingual heritage. New Orleans is also famous for its cuisine, music, and its celebrations and festivals, most notably Mardi Gras. The city is referred to as the most unique in the United States. New Orleans is located in southeastern Louisiana, straddling the Mississippi River, the city and Orleans Parish are coterminous. The city and parish are bounded by the parishes of St. Tammany to the north, St. Bernard to the east, Plaquemines to the south, and Jefferson to the south and west. Lake Pontchartrain, part of which is included in the city limits, lies to the north, before Hurricane Katrina, Orleans Parish was the most populous parish in Louisiana. As of 2015, it ranks third in population, trailing neighboring Jefferson Parish, La Nouvelle-Orléans was founded May 7,1718, by the French Mississippi Company, under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, on land inhabited by the Chitimacha. It was named for Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, who was Regent of the Kingdom of France at the time and his title came from the French city of Orléans. The French colony was ceded to the Spanish Empire in the Treaty of Paris, during the American Revolutionary War, New Orleans was an important port for smuggling aid to the rebels, transporting military equipment and supplies up the Mississippi River. Bernardo de Gálvez y Madrid, Count of Gálvez successfully launched a campaign against the British from the city in 1779. New Orleans remained under Spanish control until 1803, when it reverted briefly to French oversight, nearly all of the surviving 18th-century architecture of the Vieux Carré dates from the Spanish period, the most notable exception being the Old Ursuline Convent. Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, thereafter, the city grew rapidly with influxes of Americans, French, Creoles, and Africans. Later immigrants were Irish, Germans, and Italians, Major commodity crops of sugar and cotton were cultivated with slave labor on large plantations outside the city. The Haitian Revolution ended in 1804 and established the republic in the Western Hemisphere. It had occurred several years in what was then the French colony of Saint-Domingue
33.
Louis Armstrong
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Louis Armstrong, nicknamed Satchmo or Satch, was an American trumpeter, composer, singer and occasional actor who was one of the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades, from the 1920s to the 1960s and he was also skilled at scat singing. Armstrong was one of the first truly popular African-American entertainers to cross over and he rarely publicly politicized his race, often to the dismay of fellow African Americans, but took a well-publicized stand for desegregation in the Little Rock crisis. His artistry and personality allowed him socially acceptable access to the upper echelons of American society which were restricted for black men of his era. Armstrong often stated that he was born on July 4,1900, although he died in 1971, it was not until the mid-1980s that his true birth date, August 4,1901, was discovered by the researcher Tad Jones through the examination of baptismal records. Armstrong was born into a family in New Orleans, Louisiana. He spent his youth in poverty, in a neighborhood known as the Battlefield. His father, William Armstrong, abandoned the family when Louis was an infant and his mother, Mary Mayann Albert, then left Louis and his younger sister, Beatrice Armstrong Collins, in the care of his grandmother, Josephine Armstrong, and at times his uncle Isaac. At five, he moved back to live with his mother, her relatives and he attended the Fisk School for Boys, where he most likely had early exposure to music. He hung out in dance halls close to home, where he observed everything from licentious dancing to the quadrille, after dropping out of the Fisk School at age eleven, Armstrong joined a quartet of boys who sang in the streets for money. He also started to get into trouble, Cornet player Bunk Johnson said he taught Armstrong to play by ear at Dago Tonys Tonk in New Orleans, although in his later years Armstrong gave the credit to Oliver. It has given me something to live for and he also worked for a Lithuanian-Jewish immigrant family, the Karnofskys, who had a junk-hauling business and gave him odd jobs. They took him in and treated him like family, knowing he lived without a father and he later wrote a memoir of his relationship with the Karnofskys, Louis Armstrong + the Jewish Family in New Orleans, La. the Year of 1907. Armstrong wore a Star of David pendant for the rest of his life and wrote about what he learned from them, how to live—real life, professor Peter Davis instilled discipline in and provided musical training to the otherwise self-taught Armstrong. Eventually, Davis made Armstrong the band leader, the home band played around New Orleans and the thirteen-year-old Louis began to draw attention by his cornet playing, starting him on a musical career. At fourteen he was released from the home, living again with his father and new stepmother, Gertrude, Armstrong got his first dance hall job at Henry Ponces, where Black Benny became his protector and guide. He hauled coal by day and played his cornet at night, later, he played in brass bands and riverboats of New Orleans, and began traveling with the well-regarded band of Fate Marable, which toured on a steamboat up and down the Mississippi River. He described his time with Marable as going to the University, in 1919, Joe Oliver decided to go north and resigned his position in Kid Orys band, Armstrong replaced him
34.
Fats Waller
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Thomas Wright Fats Waller was an American jazz pianist, organist, composer, singer, and comedic entertainer. His innovations in the Harlem stride style laid the groundwork for modern jazz piano and his best-known compositions, Aint Misbehavin and Honeysuckle Rose, were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1984 and 1999. Waller was the youngest of 11 children born to Adeline Locket Waller and he started playing the piano when he was six and graduated to playing the organ at his fathers church four years later. His mother instructed him when he was a youth, at the age of 14 he was playing the organ at the Lincoln Theater, in Harlem, and within 12 months he had composed his first rag. Wallers first piano solos were recorded in October 1922, when he was 18 years old and he was the prize pupil and later the friend and colleague of the stride pianist James P. Johnson. Against the opposition of his father, a clergyman, Waller became a professional pianist at the age of 15, working in cabarets, in 1918 he won a talent contest playing Johnsons Carolina Shout, a song he learned from watching a player piano play it. Waller became one of the most popular performers of his era, finding critical and commercial success in the United States and he was also a prolific songwriter, and many songs he wrote or co-wrote are still popular, such as Honeysuckle Rose, Aint Misbehavin and Squeeze Me. Fellow pianist and composer Oscar Levant dubbed Waller the black Horowitz, Waller is believed to have composed many novelty tunes in the 1920s and 1930s and sold them for small sums, attributed to another composer and lyricist. Standards attributed to Waller, sometimes controversially, include I Cant Give You Anything but Love and he further supports the conjecture, noting that early handwritten manuscripts in the Dana Library Institute of Jazz Studies of Spreadin Rhythm Around are in Wallers hand. Machlin comments that the Singer conjecture has considerable justification, maurice Wallers biography similarly notes his fathers objections to hearing On the Sunny Side of the Street playing on the radio. The anonymous sleeve notes on the 1960 RCA Victor album Handful of Keys state that Waller copyrighted over 400 songs, many of them co-written with his closest collaborator, Razaf described his partner as the soul of melody. A man who made the piano sing, both big in body and in mind. After a balance had been taken, wed just need one take to make a side, on one occasion his playing seemed to have put him at risk of injury. Waller was kidnapped in Chicago leaving a performance in 1926, four men bundled him into a car and took him to the Hawthorne Inn, owned by Al Capone. Waller was ordered inside the building, and found a party in full swing, gun to his back, he was pushed towards a piano, and told to play. A terrified Waller realized he was the surprise guest at Capones birthday party and it is rumored that Waller stayed at the Hawthorne Inn for three days and left very drunk, extremely tired, and had earned thousands of dollars in cash from Capone and other party-goers as tips. After sessions with Ted Lewis, Jack Teagarden and Billy Banks Rhythmakers, he began in May 1934 the voluminous series of recordings with a band known as Fats Waller. This six-piece group usually included Herman Autrey, Gene Sedric or Rudy Powell, Waller wrote Squeeze Me, Keepin Out of Mischief Now, Aint Misbehavin, Blue Turning Grey Over You, Ive Got a Feeling Im Falling, Honeysuckle Rose and Jitterbug Waltz
35.
Tulsa, Oklahoma
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Tulsa /ˈtʌlsə/ is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 47th-most populous city in the United States. As of July 2015, the population was 403,505 and it is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region with 981,005 residents in the MSA and 1,151,172 in the CSA. The city serves as the county seat of Tulsa County, the most densely populated county in Oklahoma, with urban development extending into Osage, Rogers, Tulsa was settled between 1828 and 1836 by the Lochapoka Band of Creek Native American tribe. For most of the 20th century, the city held the nickname Oil Capital of the World, once heavily dependent on the oil industry, Tulsa experienced economic downturn. Subsequent diversification efforts created a base in the energy, finance, aviation, telecommunications. The Tulsa Port of Catoosa, at the head of the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System, is the most inland port in the U. S. with access to international waterways. Two institutions of education within the city have sports teams at the NCAA Division I level, Oral Roberts University. It is situated on the Arkansas River at the foothills of the Ozark Mountains in northeast Oklahoma, the city has been called one of Americas most livable large cities by Partners for Livable Communities, Forbes, and Relocate America. FDi Magazine in 2009 ranked the city no.8 in the U. S. for cities of the future, in 2012, Tulsa was ranked among the top 50 best cities in the United States by BusinessWeek. People from Tulsa are called Tulsans, the area where Tulsa now exists was considered Indian Territory when it was first formally settled by the Lochapoka and Creek tribes in 1836. They established a settlement under the Creek Council Oak Tree at the present day intersection of Cheyenne Avenue. This area and this tree reminded Chief Tukabahchi and his group of trail of tear survivors of the bend in the river and their previous Creek Council Oak Tree back in the Talisi. They named their new settlement Tallasi, meaning old town in the Creek language, the area around Tulsa was also settled by members of the other so-called Five Civilized Tribes who had relocated to Oklahoma from the Southern United States. Most of modern Tulsa is located in the Creek Nation, with parts located in the Cherokee Nation, although Oklahoma was not yet a state during the Civil War, the Tulsa area did see its share of fighting. The Battle of Chusto-Talasah took place on the side of Tulsa. After the War, the tribes signed Reconstruction treaties with the government that in some cases required substantial land concessions. On January 18,1898, Tulsa was officially incorporated and elected its first mayor, Tulsa was a small town near the banks of the Arkansas River in 1901 when its first oil well, named Sue Bland No. Much of the oil was discovered on land whose mineral rights were owned by members of the Osage Nation under a system of headrights
36.
Oklahoma
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Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central United States. Oklahoma is the 20th-most extensive and the 28th-most populous of the 50 United States, the states name is derived from the Choctaw words okla and humma, meaning red people. The name was settled upon statehood, Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory were merged, on November 16,1907, Oklahoma became the 46th state to enter the union. Its residents are known as Oklahomans, or informally Okies, and its capital, a major producer of natural gas, oil, and agricultural products, Oklahoma relies on an economic base of aviation, energy, telecommunications, and biotechnology. In 2007, it had one of the economies in the United States, ranking among the top states in per capita income growth. Oklahoma City and Tulsa serve as Oklahomas primary economic anchors, with nearly two-thirds of Oklahomans living within their metropolitan statistical areas. With small mountain ranges, prairie, mesas, and eastern forests, most of Oklahoma lies in the Great Plains, Cross Timbers, interior Highlands—a region especially prone to severe weather. The name Oklahoma comes from the Choctaw phrase okla humma, literally meaning red people, equivalent to the English word Indian, okla humma was a phrase in the Choctaw language used to describe Native American people as a whole. Oklahoma later became the de facto name for Oklahoma Territory, and it was approved in 1890. Oklahoma is the 20th-largest state in the United States, covering an area of 69,898 square miles and it is one of six states on the Frontier Strip and lies partly in the Great Plains near the geographical center of the 48 contiguous states. It is bounded on the east by Arkansas and Missouri, on the north by Kansas, on the northwest by Colorado, on the far west by New Mexico, much of its border with Texas lies along the Southern Oklahoma Aulacogen, a failed continental rift. The geologic figure defines the placement of the Red River, the Oklahoma panhandles Western edge is out of alignment with its Texas border. The Oklahoma/New Mexico border is actually 2.1 to 2.2 miles east of the Texas line, the border between Texas and New Mexico was set first as a result of a survey by Spain in 1819. It was then set along the 103rd Meridian, in the 1890s, when Oklahoma was formally surveyed using more accurate surveying equipment and techniques, it was discovered the Texas line was not set along the 103rd Meridian. Surveying techniques were not as accurate in 1819, and the actual 103rd Meridian was approximately 2.2 miles to the east and it was much easier to leave the mistake than for Texas to cede land to New Mexico to correct the surveying error. The placement of the Oklahoma/New Mexico border represents the true 103rd Meridian, cimarron County in Oklahomas panhandle is the only county in the United States that touches four other states, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado and Kansas. Its highest and lowest points follow this trend, with its highest peak, Black Mesa, at 4,973 feet above sea level, situated near its far northwest corner in the Oklahoma Panhandle. The states lowest point is on the Little River near its far southeastern boundary near the town of Idabel, Oklahoma, which dips to 289 feet above sea level
37.
Fletcher Henderson
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James Fletcher Hamilton Henderson, Jr. was an American pianist, bandleader, arranger and composer, important in the development of big band jazz and swing music. He was one of the most prolific black musical arrangers and and he helped bridge the gap between the Dixieland and the swing eras. He was often known as Smack Henderson, James Fletcher Henderson was born in Cuthbert, Georgia, in 1897. He grew up in a middle-class African-American family and his father, Fletcher H. Henderson Sr. was the principal of the nearby Howard Normal Randolph School from 1880 until 1942. His home, now known as the Fletcher Henderson House, is a historic site and his mother, a teacher, taught him and his brother Horace to play the piano. He began lessons by the age of six and his father would occasionally lock Fletcher in his room to practice for hours. By age 13, Henderson possessed an ability to read music. He pursued the studies with his mother and further engaged himself in lessons on European art, although a talented musician, Henderson decided to dedicate himself to math and science. At age 18 he moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and changed his name to Fletcher Henderson, giving up James and he attended Atlanta University and graduated in 1920 with a bachelors degree in chemistry and mathematics. After graduation, he moved to New York City to attend Columbia University for a degree in chemistry. Finding his job prospects in chemistry to be poor because of his race, after arriving in New York City, Henderson shared an apartment with a pianist who worked as a musician. During the 1920s, he played piano accompaniment for blues singers and he also led the backing group for Ethel Waters during one of her national tours. Before 1923, Hendersons group was more of a band than a jazz band. In 1922 he formed his own band, which was resident first at Club Alabam, then at the Roseland Ballroom, in the 1920s, he did not do very many band arrangements. Although Armstong played in the band for only a year, he influenced its members, Hendersons band boasted the formidable arranging talents of Don Redman from 1922 to 1927. Henderson developed his skills from 1931 to the mid-1930s. His band c.1925 included Howard Scott, Coleman Hawkins, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Dixon, Kaiser Marshall, Buster Bailey, Elmer Chambers, Charlie Green, Ralph Escudero, and Don Redman. In 1925, with Henry Troy, he wrote Gin House Blues, recorded by Bessie Smith and his other compositions include Soft Winds
38.
Kansas City jazz
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According to a Kansas City website, While New Orleans was the birthplace of jazz, Americas music grew up in Kansas City. Kansas City is known as one of the most popular cradles of jazz, other cities include New Orleans, Chicago, St. Louis, Pittsburgh and New York City. The first band from Kansas City to acquire a national reputation was the Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawk Orchestra, however, the Kansas City jazz school is identified with the black bands of the 1920s and 1930s. Kansas City in the 1930s was very much the crossroads of the United States resulting in a mix of cultures, transcontinental trips at the time whether by plane or train often required a stop in the city. The era marked the zenith of power of political boss Tom Pendergast, Kansas City was a wide open town with liquor laws and hours totally ignored and was called the new Storyville. Often members of the big bands would perform at regular venues earlier in the evening, claude Williams described the scene, Kansas City was different from all other places because wed be jamming all night. Playing the wrong thing, wed straighten you out, clubs were scattered throughout city but the most fertile area was the inner city neighborhood of 18th Street and Vine. Kansas City jazz is distinguished by the musical elements, A preference for a 4 feel over the 2 beat feel found in other jazz styles of the time. As a result, Kansas city jazz had a more relaxed and it was not uncommon for one song to be performed for several hours, with the best musicians often soloing for dozens of choruses at a time. The KC big bands often played by memory, composing and arranging the music collectively and this further contributed to the loose, spontaneous Kansas City sound. A heavy blues influence, with KC songs often based around a 12-bar blues structure, rather than the 32 bar AABA standard, One of the most recognizable characteristics of Kansas City jazz is frequent, elaborate riffing by the different sections. The Count Basie signature tunes One OClock Jump and Jumpin at the Woodside, for example, are collections of complex riffs, memorized in a head arrangement. Kansas City influence overtly transferred to the scene in 1936 when record producer John H. Hammond cemented his career by discovering Kansas City talent. Pendergast was to be convicted of tax evasion in 1940. Beginning in the 1970s Kansas City has attempted to celebrate the heritage by taking off the edges for family friendly environments. In the 1970s, the city tried to create an enclave in the River Quay area on the Missouri River in the City Market neighborhood. Three of the clubs were bombed during a mob war that also led to the demise of mob influence of Las Vegas casinos that was depicted in the 1995 movie Casino. In 1979, Bruce Ricker filmed The Last of the Blue Devils, a documentary starring Basie and singer Big Joe Turner, in 1981114 people died in the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse in an attempted recreation of the jazz scene during a tea dance
39.
Moten Swing
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Moten Swing is a 1932 jazz standard by Bennie Moten and his Kansas City Orchestra. It was an important jazz standard in the move towards a form of orchestral jazz. Moten and his Orchestra, which included Count Basie on piano, achieved success with it, although the song is most associated with Basies Count Basie Orchestra. Count Basie has stated that he and guitarist Eddie Durham deserved the most credit for it and that it was essentially his, although he didnt join the band until 1929. The audience at the Pearl Theatre in Philadelphia raved about the song, the original recording is a four even beats to the bar, written in AABA form, thirty-two measures long. Basie and jazz historian Mark C, gridley claimed that Moten Swing is based on the chord progression to the song You’re Driving Me Crazy in the key of E-flat major. The song begins with Count Basie soloing over the form in his famous style of playing very little notes. The band has a gigantic interjectory hit in the chorus leading into the swinging Basie laid back feel with the melody. He adds that a key change introduces Hot Lips Page who solos in a coolish un-Armstrong manner. This leads into the shout which is standard for a swinging Count Basie chart filled with loud brass hits, shakes. Moten Swing became more popular in 1938 when it was recorded by the Benny Goodman orchestra during a Kansas City radio session and was recorded by Fletcher Henderson the same year as Moten Stomp. Basie introduces the first chorus with a confident, eight-bar stride piano solo, Moten Swing has since become most associated with Count Basie
