1.
Chester, Pennsylvania
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Chester is a city in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, United States, with a population of 33,972 at the 2010 census. Chester is situated on the Delaware River, between the cities of Philadelphia and Wilmington, Delaware, the current mayor of Chester, Thaddeus Kirkland, was elected on November 3,2015 and served his first day in office on January 4,2016. The first European settlers in the area were Swedes and they called the settlement that became Chester first Finlandia, then Upland. They built Fort Mecoponacka in 1641 to defend the settlement, by 1682, Upland was the most populous town of the new Province of Pennsylvania. On October 27, the ship Welcome arrived at the town, Penn renamed the settlement for the English city of Chester. Chester served as the county seat for Chester County, which stretched from the Delaware River to the Susquehanna River. In 1789, the city became the county seat for the newly created Delaware County, the courthouse is near the new City Hall building. Chesters naval shipyard supplied the Union during the Civil War, the Sun Shipbuilding & Drydock Co. later Pennsylvania Shipyard & Dry Dock Company, was located in Chester until it closed in 1990. Two ships of the United States Navy have been named USS Chester in honor of the city, on April 10,1917, an explosion at the Eddystone Ammunition Corporation near Chester resulted in the deaths of 133 workers, mostly women. Chester is one of places that claim to be the birthplace of the hoagie sandwich. It is also known as the Cradle of Rock n Roll, poverty and crime rose as the city declined. In 1995, the state designated Chester as a distressed municipality. When Chester became eligible for Pennsylvanias Keystone Opportunity Zone program, firms began to accept state, one of its tenants is AdminServer, which makes software for the insurance industry. It moved from Malvern, Pennsylvania in 2003 and was acquired by Oracle in 2007, another one of the Wharfs tenants is Power Home Remodeling Group, the nations 2nd largest exterior home remodeling company. Harrahs Casino and Racetrack built its facilities beginning in 2005, launching harness racing along the Delaware River in September 2006, the employment status for workers sixteen and older, and not in the labor force is at 41 percent. Chester has a government system, consisting of a popularly elected city mayor. The terms of the mayor and members are four years, the Chester City Council is made up of four members, Councilwoman Elizabeth Williams, Portia West, William A. Jacobs, and Edith Blackwell and the presiding officer, the mayor, Thaddeus Kirkland. The City Controller is currently Ms. Edith Blackwell, the current mayor of the City of Chester is State Rep. Thaddeus Kirkland who won the Democratic nomination in May 2015 over incumbent Mayor John Linder
2.
Chatsworth, Los Angeles
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Chatsworth is a neighborhood in the northwestern San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, California. The area was home to Native Americans, some of whom left caves containing rock art, Chatsworth was explored and colonized by the Spanish beginning in the 18th Century. The land was part of a Mexican land grant in the 19th Century, Chatsworth has seven public and eight private schools. There are large open-space and smaller recreational parks as well as a public library, distinctive features are the former Chatsworth Reservoir, the Santa Susana Field Laboratory and a number of private businesses. Overall, Chatsworth has one of the lowest densities of any neighborhood in the city, and it has a relatively high income level. The 2000 U. S. census counted 35,073 residents in the 15. 24-square-mile Chatsworth neighborhood—or 2,301 people per square mile, in 2008, the city estimated that the population had increased to 37,102. In 2000 the median age for residents was 40, considered old for city and county neighborhoods, the neighborhood was considered moderately diverse ethnically within Los Angeles, with a relatively high percentage of whites and of Asian people. The breakdown was Whites,65. 7%, Latinos,13. 5%, Asians,14. 4%, Blacks,2. 2%, and others,4. 2%. Korea and the Philippines were the most common places of birth for the 25. 2% of the residents who were born abroad—a low figure for Los Angeles, the median yearly household income in 2008 dollars was $84,456, considered high for the city. The percentages of families earned more than $40,000 was considered high for the county. Renters occupied 28. 9% of the stock, and house- or apartment-owners held 71. 1%. The average household size of 2.6 people was considered average for Los Angeles, in 2000 there were 2,933 military veterans, or 10. 8% of the population, a high percentage compared to the rest of the city. The percentages of married people were among the countys highest, the rate of 10% of families headed by single parents was low for the city. Chatsworth is flanked by, the Santa Susana Mountains on the north, porter Ranch and Northridge on the east. Winnetka, Canoga Park, and West Hills on the south, the Simi Hills, and unincorporated Los Angeles County and Ventura County on the west. Twin Lakes, a community founded by San Franciscos George Haight in the early 20th Century and this region experiences hot and dry summers, with average daily high temperatures of 90–100 °F. According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Chatsworth has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate, Chatsworth was inhabited by the Tongva-Fernandeño, Chumash-Venturaño, and Tataviam-Fernandeño Native American tribes. Native American civilizations had inhabited the Valley for an estimated 8,000 years, Stoney Point is the site of the Tongva Native American settlement of Ashaawanga or Momonga, that was also a trading place with the neighboring Tataviam and Chumash people
3.
Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Glendale)
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Forest Lawn Memorial Park is a privately owned cemetery in Glendale, California. It is the location of Forest Lawn, a chain of six cemeteries in Southern California. Forest Lawn Glendale was founded in 1906 as a cemetery by a group of businessmen from San Francisco. Dr. Hubert Eaton and C. B. Sims entered into a contract with the cemetery in 1912. Eaton took over the management of the cemetery in 1917, Eaton was a firm believer in a joyous life after death. A number of plaques which state Eatons intentions are signed The Builder, frederick Llewellyn, Eatons nephew, became CEO of Forest Lawn in 1966. In 1987 he was succeeded by his son, John Llewellyn, for many decades the cemetery refused black, Jewish, and Chinese burials. The Forest Lawn Museum in Glendale was founded in 1957 and displays art, artifacts, the museum has hosted solo exhibitions for Henri Matisse, Winslow Homer, Ian Hornak, Francisco Goya, Rembrandt, Marc Davis and Reuben Nakian among many others. The objects in Forest Lawns permanent collection represent specific locations and peoples from around the world, there are sections for India, Africa, the Middle East, East and Southeast Asia, the United States, South America, Australia and Europe. D. The stained glass collection includes portions of William Randolph Hearsts former collection and owns the work of Albrecht Dürer, all of these precious art pieces are put in storage or hidden behind temporary walls when a special display is on site. The six Forest Lawn cemeteries contain about 1,500 statues, about 10% of which are reproductions of works of art. On display in the Hall of the Crucifixion is the painting by the Polish artist Jan Styka entitled The Crucifixion. It is the largest permanently mounted religious painting in the world, the main gates of Forest Lawn – Glendale are claimed to be the worlds largest wrought iron gates. Over 60,000 people have actually been married here, including Ronald Reagan, more than 250,000 people are buried at Forest Lawn, and over a million people visit it each year, including thousands of schoolchildren on field trips. Many commentators have considered Forest Lawn to be a unique American creation, the Great Mausoleum was fashioned after Campo Santo in Genoa, Italy and contains many of the most highly sought after interment places within Forest Lawn, Glendale. Within the portion of the Great Mausoleum accessible to the public is the Court of Honor where individuals are inducted as Immortals by Forest Lawns Council of Regents, the rest of the structure is protected by guards and is closed to the public. Time magazine described it as the New Worlds Westminster Abbey, in 2009 the cemetery became the focus of intense media interest surrounding the private interment of Michael Jackson in the privacy of Holly Terrace in the Great Mausoleum. List of United States cemeteries Providencia Ranch The Loved One – a satirical novel inspired by Forest Lawn, official website Evelyn Waughs witty essay, Half in love with easeful death, imagines archaeologists in 1000 years coming upon Forest Lawn
4.
Crystal Waters
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Crystal Waters is an American house music singer and songwriter, best known for her 1990s dance hits Gypsy Woman and 100% Pure Love. In December 2016, Billboard magazine ranked her as the 39th most successful dance artist of all-time and her family moved to New Jersey for a while but they again moved to Washington, D. C. At age eleven she began writing poetry and took her writing seriously enough to be inducted into the American Poetry Society when she was 14 and she studied business and computer science at Howard University, but her creative work dropped off as she found less time for it. After earning her degree in 1985, Waters secured a job as a computer technician with the Washington, D. C. parole board. In one of her assignments Waters penned a song called Gypsy Woman for dance artist Ultra Naté, the producers were so taken by her rendition that they drew up a recording contract with her for the song, never passing it on to Ultra Naté. The song became a hit, memorable for its la da dee, la dee da refrain. The track reached number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, and found success in Europe, reaching number 2 on the UK Singles Chart. A year after its release, a new version was featured on the Red Hot Organizations Red Hot + Dance AIDS fundraiser disc, along with the single, the singer released her second album Storyteller, which sold over 284,000 copies in the United States. In 1996, Waters participated in the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Rio and her 1997 self-titled album included another Top 40 US hit, Say. If You Feel All Right, but mainstream success in the U. S. has since eluded her, Gypsy Womans keyboard-chord was sampled on rapper T. I. s 2006 hit Why You Wanna. In 2007 Waters embarked on a world tour and that year her track Destination Calabria hit the Top 10 on the UK Singles Chart. In May 2008, Waters released the single Dancefloor, which was a Top 10 Dance hit, never Enough hit number 20 on the US Dance Charts in February 2009. On March 23,2013, Oh, Mama, Hey, by Chris Cox & DJ Frankie featuring Crystal Waters, List of number-one dance hits List of artists who reached number one on the US Dance chart Official website
5.
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
6.
Gospel music
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Gospel music is a music genre in Christian music. The creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of music varies according to culture. Gospel music is composed and performed for many purposes, including aesthetic pleasure, religious or ceremonial purposes, Gospel music usually has dominant vocals with Christian lyrics. Gospel music can be traced to the early 17th century, with roots in the oral tradition. Hymns and sacred songs were repeated in a call and response fashion, most of the churches relied on hand clapping and foot stomping as rhythmic accompaniment. Most of the singing was done a cappella, the first published use of the term Gospel Song probably appeared in 1874. The original gospel songs were written and composed by such as George F. Root, Philip Bliss, Charles H. Gabriel, William Howard Doane. The advent of radio in the 1920s greatly increased the audience for gospel music, following World War II, gospel music moved into major auditoriums, and gospel music concerts became quite elaborate. Gospel blues is a form of gospel music. Southern gospel used all male, tenor-lead-baritone-bass quartet make-up, progressive Southern gospel is an American music genre that has grown out of Southern gospel over the past couple of decades. Christian country music, sometimes referred to as gospel music, is a subgenre of gospel music with a country flair. It peaked in popularity in the mid-1990s, bluegrass gospel music is rooted in American mountain music. Celtic gospel music infuses gospel music with a Celtic flair, and is popular in countries such as Ireland. British black gospel refers to Gospel music of the African diaspora, some proponents of standard hymns generally dislike gospel music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today, with distance, there is a greater acceptance of such gospel songs into official denominational hymnals. Gospel music in general is characterized by dominant vocals referencing lyrics of a Christian nature, subgenres include contemporary gospel, urban contemporary gospel, Southern gospel, and modern gospel music. Several forms of gospel music utilize choirs, use piano or Hammond organ, tambourines, drums, bass guitar and, increasingly, electric guitar. In comparison with hymns, which are generally of a statelier measure, several attempts have been made to describe the style of late 19th and early 20th century gospel songs in general
7.
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
8.
Black Swan Records
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Black Swan Records was an American jazz and blues record label founded in 1921 in Harlem, New York. It was the first widely distributed label to be owned, operated, Black Swan was revived in the 1990s for CD reissues of historic jazz and blues recordings. Black Swans parent company, Pace Phonograph Corporation, was founded in March 1921 by Harry Pace and was based in Harlem, the new production company was formed after Paces music publishing partnership with W. C. Handy, Pace & Handy, had dissolved, bert Williams was an early investor in Pace Phonograph. Williams also promised to record for the company once his contract with Columbia Records ended. Pace Phonograph Corporation was renamed Black Swan Phonograph Company in the fall of 1922, both the record label and production company were named after 19th century opera star Elizabeth Greenfield, who was known as the Black Swan. Former employees of Pace & Handy staffed the new company, Fletcher Henderson, william Grant Still was named arranger and later musical director. Noted author, activist, and academic W. E. B, Du Bois was a stockholder and member of the Board of Directors of Black Swan. Ads for Black Swan often ran in The Crisis, the magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the production company declared bankruptcy in December 1923, and in March 1924 Paramount Records bought the Black Swan label. In addition, the Defender credited Pace with showing the majors how to target black audiences, Paramount discontinued the Black Swan label a short time later. The Black Swan label was revived in the 1990s for a series of CD reissues of jazz and blues recordings originally issued on Black Swan. These CDs were issued by George H. Bucks Jazzology and GHB labels under the control of the George H. Buck Jr, jazz Foundation, which gained rights to the Paramount back-catalogue but not the Paramount name. These artists were passing for colored since the label was advertised as featuring only black artists, trixie Smith, blues singer, second only to Ethel Waters in Black Swan sales. Florence Cole Talbert, soprano Eva Taylor, singer Ethel Waters, blues and she had the labels first commercially successful records, and remained their best seller. Wilson List of record labels The Rise and Fall of Black Swan Records
9.
Columbia Records
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Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, Inc. the United States division of Sony Corporation. It was founded in 1887, evolving from an enterprise named the American Graphophone Company. Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in the sound business. Columbia Records went on to release records by an array of singers, instrumentalists. It is one of Sony Musics three flagship record labels alongside RCA Records and Epic Records, rather, as above, it was connected to CBS, a broadcasting media company which had purchased the company in 1938, and had been co-founded in 1927 by Columbia Records itself. Though Arista Records was sold to Bertelsmann Music Group, it would become a sister label of Columbia Records through its mutual connection to Sony Music. The Columbia Phonograph Company was founded in 1887 by stenographer, lawyer and New Jersey native Edward Easton and it derived its name from the District of Columbia, where it was headquartered. At first it had a monopoly on sales and service of Edison phonographs and phonograph cylinders in Washington. As was the custom of some of the regional companies, Columbia produced many commercial cylinder recordings of its own. Columbias ties to Edison and the North American Phonograph Company were severed in 1894 with the North American Phonograph Companys breakup, thereafter it sold only records and phonographs of its own manufacture. In 1902, Columbia introduced the XP record, a brown wax record. According to Gracyk, the molded brown waxes may have sold to Sears for distribution. Columbia began selling records and phonographs in addition to the cylinder system in 1901, preceded only by their Toy Graphophone of 1899. For a decade, Columbia competed with both the Edison Phonograph Company cylinders and the Victor Talking Machine Company disc records as one of the top three names in American recorded sound. In order to add prestige to its catalog of artists. The firm also introduced the internal-horn Grafonola to compete with the extremely popular Victrola sold by the rival Victor Talking Machine Company, during this era, Columbia used the famous Magic Notes logo—a pair of sixteenth notes in a circle—both in the United States and overseas. Columbia was split into two companies, one to make records and one to make players, Columbia Phonograph was moved to Connecticut, and Ed Easton went with it. Eventually it was renamed the Dictaphone Corporation, in late 1923, Columbia went into receivership
10.
Brunswick Records
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Brunswick Records is an American record label founded in 1916. The company first began producing phonographs in 1916, then began marketing their own line of records as an after-thought and these first Brunswick records used the vertical cut system like Edison Disc Records, and were not sold in large numbers. They were recorded in the US but sold only in Canada, in January 1920, a new line of Brunswick Records was introduced in the US and Canada that employed the lateral cut system which was becoming the default cut for 78 discs. Brunswick started its standard popular series at 2000 and ended up in 1940 at 8517, however, when the series reached 4999, they skipped over the previous allocated 5000s and continued at 6000. Also, when they reached 6999, they continued at 7301, the parent company marketed them extensively, and within a few years Brunswick became one of the USAs Big Three record companies, along with Victor and Columbia Records. The Brunswick line of home phonographs were commercially successful, Brunswick had a hit with their Ultona phonograph capable of playing Edison Disc Records, Pathé disc records, and standard lateral 78s. In late 1924, Brunswick acquired the Vocalion Records label, audio fidelity of early-1920s, acoustically-recorded Brunswick discs is above average for the era. They were pressed into good quality shellac, although not as durable as that used by Victor, in the spring of 1925 Brunswick introduced its own version of electrical recording using photoelectric cells, which Brunswick called the light-ray process. Then based in Chicago, many of the citys best orchestras, the labels jazz roster included Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, King Oliver, Johnny Dodds, Andy Kirk, and Red Nichols. Brunswick initiated a 7000 race series as well as the Vocalion 1000 race series and these race records series recorded hot jazz, urban and rural blues, and gospel. Brunswick also had a successful business supplying radio with sponsored transcriptions of popular music, comedy. Few orchestra records were approved for issue and those that did appear on the often combined excellent performances with execrable sound. Brunswick found it expedient and ultimately cheaper to contract with European companies to fill their electrical classical catalogue, some of these recordings have been reissued on CD. Brunswick itself switched to a conventional microphone recording process in 1927. Prior to this, however, they had introduced the Brunswick Panatrope and this phonograph met with critical acclaim, and composer Ottorino Respighi selected the Brunswick Panatrope to play a recording of bird songs in his composition The Pines of Rome. Jack Kapp became the company executive of Brunswick in 1930. In April 1930, Brunswick-Balke-Collender sold Brunswick Records to Warner Bros. Warner Bros. hoped to make their own soundtrack recordings for their sound-on-disc Vitaphone system. A number of interesting recordings were made by actors during this period, actors who made recordings included Noah Beery, Charles King, and J. Harold Murray
11.
Decca Records
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Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U. S. label was established in late 1934 by Lewis along with American Deccas first president Jack Kapp and later American Decca president Milton Rackmil. In 1937, as a result of anticipating Nazi aggression leading to World War II, Lewis sold American Decca, the British label was renowned for its development of recording methods, while the American company developed the concept of cast albums in the musical genre. Both wings are now part of the Universal Music Group, which is owned by Vivendi, the US Decca label was the foundation company that evolved into UMG. The name Decca was coined by Wilfred S. Samuel by merging the word Mecca with the initial D of their logo Dulcet or their trademark Dulcephone, Samuel, a linguist, chose Decca as a brand name as it was easy to pronounce in most languages. The name dates back to a gramophone called the Decca Dulcephone patented in 1914 by musical instrument makers Barnett Samuel. That company was renamed the Decca Gramophone Co. Ltd. Within years, Decca Records Ltd. was the second largest record label in the world, Decca bought the UK branch of Brunswick Records and continued to run it under that name. In the 1950s the American Decca studios were located in the Pythian Temple in New York City, in classical music, Decca had a long way to go from its modest beginnings to catch up with the established HMV and Columbia labels. The pre-war classical repertoire on Decca was not extensive, but was select, heinrich Schlusnus made important pre-war lieder recordings for Decca. John Culshaw, who joined Decca in 1946 in a junior post and he revolutionised recording – of opera, in particular. Hitherto, the practice had been to put microphones in front of the performers, Culshaw was determined to make recordings that would be a theatre of the mind, making the listeners experience at home not second best to being in the opera house, but a wholly different experience. To that end he got the singers to move about in the studio as they would onstage, used sound effects and different acoustics. His skill, coupled with Decca engineering, took Decca into the first flight of recording companies and his pioneering recording of Wagners Der Ring des Nibelungen conducted by Georg Solti was a huge artistic and commercial success. In the wake of Deccas lead, artists such as Herbert von Karajan, Joan Sutherland, however, Culshaw was, strictly speaking, not the first to do this. Far from being a mere rendering of the score, the 3-LP album set used sound effects to recreate the production as if the listener were watching a stage performance of the work. Until 1947, American Decca issued British Decca classical music recordings, afterwards, British Decca took over distribution through its new American subsidiary London Records. American Decca actively re-entered the classical music field in 1950 with distribution deals from Deutsche Grammophon, American Decca began issuing its own classical music recordings in 1956 when Israel Horowitz joined Decca to head its classical music operations
12.
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
13.
Lena Horne
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Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was an American jazz and pop music singer, dancer, actress, and civil rights activist. Hornes career spanned over 70 years appearing in film, television, because of the Red Scare and her political activism, Horne found herself blacklisted and unable to get work in Hollywood. She announced her retirement in March 1980, but the year starred in a one-woman show, Lena Horne, The Lady and Her Music. She then toured the country in the show, earning numerous awards, Horne continued recording and performing sporadically into the 1990s, disappearing from the public eye in 2000. Horne died of heart failure on May 9,2010. Lena Horne was born in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn and her mother, Edna Louise Scottron, was a granddaughter of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, she was an actress with a black theatre troupe and traveled extensively. Ednas maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave, Horne was mainly raised by her grandparents, Cora Calhoun and Edwin Horne. When Horne was five, she was sent to live in Georgia, for several years, she traveled with her mother. From Fort Valley, southwest of Macon, Horne briefly moved to Atlanta with her mother and she then attended Girls High School, an all-girls public high school in Brooklyn that has since become Boys and Girls High School, she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved in with her father in Pittsburgh, staying in the citys Little Harlem for almost five years and learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn and Billy Eckstine, among others. In the fall of 1933, Horne joined the line of the Cotton Club in New York City. In the spring of 1934, she had a role in the Cotton Club Parade starring Adelaide Hall. A few years later, Horne joined Noble Sissles Orchestra, with which she toured and with whom she made her first records, issued by Decca. After she separated from her first husband, Horne toured with bandleader Charlie Barnet in 1940–41 and she replaced Dinah Shore as the featured vocalist on NBCs popular jazz series The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street. The shows resident maestros, Henry Levine and Paul Laval, recorded with Horne in June 1941 for RCA Victor, Hornes songs from Boogie Woogie Dream were later released individually as soundies. Horne made her Hollywood nightclub debut at Felix Youngs Little Troc on the Sunset Strip in January 1942, a few weeks later, she was signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In November 1944, she was featured in an episode of the radio series Suspense, as a fictional nightclub singer. In 1945 and 1946, she sang with Billy Eckstines Orchestra, as a result, most of Hornes film appearances were stand-alone sequences that had no bearing on the rest of the film, so editing caused no disruption to the storyline
14.
Bessie Smith
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Bessie Smith was an American blues singer. Nicknamed the Empress of the Blues, she was the most popular female singer of the 1920s and 1930s. She is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era and was an influence on other jazz singers. The 1900 census indicates that Smith was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in July 1892, the 1910 census gave her age as 16. A birth date of April 15,1894, appears on subsequent documents and was observed as her birthday by the Smith family, the 1870 and 1880 censuses report three older half-siblings, but later interviews with Smiths family and contemporaries did not mention them among her siblings. She was the daughter of Laura and William Smith, a laborer and he died while his daughter was too young to remember him. By the time Bessie was nine, her mother and a brother had also died and her older sister Viola took charge of caring for her siblings. To earn money for their household, Smith and her brother Andrew began busking on the streets of Chattanooga, she sang and danced. Their favorite location was in front of the White Elephant Saloon at Thirteenth and Elm streets, in 1904, her oldest brother, Clarence, left home, joining a small traveling troupe owned by Moses Stokes. If Bessie had been old enough, she would have gone with him, said Clarences widow, thats why he left without telling her, but Clarence told me she was ready, even then. Of course, she was only a child, in 1912, Clarence returned to Chattanooga with the Stokes troupe and arranged an audition for his sister with the managers of the troupe, Lonnie and Cora Fisher. She was hired as a rather than a singer, because the company already included the well-known singer Ma Rainey. Smith eventually moved on to performing in various lines, making the 81 Theater in Atlanta her home base. She also performed in shows on the circuit and became its biggest star after she signed a recording contract with Columbia Records. Smiths recording career began in 1923 and she was then living in Philadelphia, where she met Jack Gee, a security guard, whom she married on June 7,1923, just as her first record was being released. Their marriage was stormy with infidelity on both sides, including numerous female lovers for Bessie, Gee was impressed by the money but never adjusted to show business life or to Smiths bisexuality. In 1929, when she learned of his affair with singer, Gertrude Saunders, Smith ended the relationship. Smith later entered a marriage with an old friend, Richard Morgan
15.
Billie Holiday
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Eleanora Fagan, professionally known as Billie Holiday, was an American jazz musician and singer-songwriter with a career spanning nearly thirty years. Nicknamed Lady Day by her friend and music partner Lester Young, Holiday had a influence on jazz music. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and she was known for her vocal delivery and improvisational skills, which made up for her limited range and lack of formal music education. There were other singers with equal talent, but Holiday had a voice that captured the attention of her audience. After a turbulent childhood, Holiday began singing in nightclubs in Harlem, where she was heard by the producer John Hammond and she signed a recording contract with Brunswick Records in 1935. Collaborations with Teddy Wilson yielded the hit What a Little Moonlight Can Do, Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Holiday had mainstream success on labels such as Columbia Records and Decca Records. By the late 1940s, however, she was beset with legal troubles, after a short prison sentence, she performed a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall, but her reputation deteriorated because of her drug and alcohol problems. Her final recordings were met with mixed reaction to her voice but were mild commercial successes. Her final album, Lady in Satin, was released in 1958, Holiday died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1959. A posthumous album, Last Recording, was released following her death, much of Holidays material has been rereleased since her death. She is considered a performer with an ongoing influence on American music. She is the recipient of four Grammy awards, all of them posthumous awards for Best Historical Album, Holiday herself was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1973. Lady Sings the Blues, a film about her life, starring Diana Ross, was released in 1972, Eleanora Fagan was born on April 7,1915, in Philadelphia, the daughter of Sarah Julia Sadie Fagan and Clarence Holiday, an unmarried teenaged couple. Her father did not live with her mother, not long after Eleanora was born, Clarence abandoned his family to pursue a career as a jazz banjo player and guitarist. Sarah moved to Philadelphia at age 19, after she was evicted from her parents home in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland, for becoming pregnant. With no support from her parents, she made arrangements with her older, married half-sister, Eva Miller, the child was of African-American ancestry and was also said to have had Irish ancestors through her mothers mixed heritage. Her mother often took what were known as transportation jobs. Holidays autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, first published in 1956, is sketchy on details of her early life, some historians have disputed Holidays paternity, as a copy of her birth certificate in the Baltimore archives lists the father as a man named Frank DeViese
16.
Broadway theatre
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Along with Londons West End theatres, Broadway theatres are widely considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world. The Theater District is a popular tourist attraction in New York City, the great majority of Broadway shows are musicals. They presented Shakespeare plays and ballad operas such as The Beggars Opera, in 1752, William Hallam sent a company of twelve actors from Britain to the colonies with his brother Lewis as their manager. They established a theatre in Williamsburg, Virginia and opened with The Merchant of Venice, the company moved to New York in the summer of 1753, performing ballad operas and ballad-farces like Damon and Phillida. The Revolutionary War suspended theatre in New York, but thereafter theatre resumed in 1798, the Bowery Theatre opened in 1826, followed by others. Blackface minstrel shows, a distinctly American form of entertainment, became popular in the 1830s, by the 1840s, P. T. Barnum was operating an entertainment complex in lower Manhattan. In 1829, at Broadway and Prince Street, Niblos Garden opened, the 3, 000-seat theatre presented all sorts of musical and non-musical entertainments. In 1844, Palmos Opera House opened and presented opera for four seasons before bankruptcy led to its rebranding as a venue for plays under the name Burtons Theatre. The Astor Opera House opened in 1847, booth played the role for a famous 100 consecutive performances at the Winter Garden Theatre in 1865, and would later revive the role at his own Booths Theatre. Other renowned Shakespeareans who appeared in New York in this era were Henry Irving, Tommaso Salvini, Fanny Davenport, lydia Thompson came to America in 1868 heading a small theatrical troupe, adapting popular English burlesques for middle-class New York audiences. Thompsons troupe called the British Blondes, was the most popular entertainment in New York during the 1868–1869 theatrical season, the six-month tour ran for almost six extremely profitable years. Theatre in New York moved from downtown gradually to midtown beginning around 1850, in 1870, the heart of Broadway was in Union Square, and by the end of the century, many theatres were near Madison Square. Broadways first long-run musical was a 50-performance hit called The Elves in 1857, New York runs continued to lag far behind those in London, but Laura Keenes musical burletta The Seven Sisters shattered previous New York records with a run of 253 performances. It was at a performance by Keenes troupe of Our American Cousin in Washington, the production was a staggering five-and-a-half hours long, but despite its length, it ran for a record-breaking 474 performances. The same year, The Black Domino/Between You, Me and the Post was the first show to call itself a musical comedy, Tony Pastor opened the first vaudeville theatre one block east of Union Square in 1881, where Lillian Russell performed. Comedians Edward Harrigan and Tony Hart produced and starred in musicals on Broadway between 1878 and 1890, with book and lyrics by Harrigan and music by his father-in-law David Braham. They starred high quality singers, instead of the women of repute who had starred in earlier musical forms. Plays could run longer and still draw in the audiences, leading to better profits, as in England, during the latter half of the century, the theatre began to be cleaned up, with less prostitution hindering the attendance of the theatre by women
17.
Dinah (song)
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Dinah is a popular song from the show The New Plantation. The music was written by Harry Akst, and the lyrics by Sam M. Lewis, the song was published in 1925. It was immensely popular with bands and vocalists of the period and beyond, with versions by various artists, including. Recorded at Phil Turetskys House, Los Angeles, on July 9,1952, recorded in Paris in October 1926. It was released on a 78 rpm record by Odeon Records A49172 as catalog number 7412 and it was released on a 78 rpm record by Brunswick Records as catalog number 7412. He recorded the song twice, First time on June 7,1932 and it was released on a 78 rpm record by ARC and was issued on Banner Records 32483, Melotone M-12489, Oriole 2495, Perfect 15623, Romeo 1868, and Vocalion 15872. The second time he recorded the live at The New Café Zanzibar on July 17,1945. It was released on the album Cab Calloway 45, Live at the New Cafe Zanzibar by Magnetic Records as catalog number 132 in 1993, bing Crosby & The Mills Brothers. Recorded in New York City on December 16,1932 and it was released on a 78 rpm record by Brunswick Records as catalog number 6240. A later version was included in Crosbys album Some Fine Old Chestnuts and it was released on a 78 rpm record by Victor Records as catalog number 22938A. It was released on a 78 rpm record by Victor Records as catalog number 25398, the Hot Sardines recorded a version on their album Shanghaid released by Decca/Universal on July 25,2011 Thelonious Monk. It was released on the album Solo Monk by Columbia Records as catalog number CS9149 in 1965, ed Townsend released a version of the song on his 1959 album, Glad to Be Here. Recorded in Paris in December 1934, released on a 78 rpm record by Ultraphone as catalog number AP1422. Recorded in Camden on September 4,1925 and it was released on a 78 rpm by Victor Records as catalog number 19796. Released on the album Those BBC Years by Upbeat Jazz as catalog number URCD185 in 2009, recorded in Camden on June 24,1935. Released on a 78 rpm record by Victor Records as catalog number 25471A and it was released on a 78 rpm record by Columbia Records as catalog number 487D In Japan, it was released by Teichiku Records, it was the debut song of Dick Mine in December,1934. Tokuichi Mine had previously been a band singer. He referred to himself as Dick Mine, translated the lyrics of Dinah into Japanese by himself and he called himself Kōich Mine, a pen name, as the translator
18.
Stormy Weather (song)
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Stormy Weather is a 1933 song written by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler. Ethel Waters first sang it at The Cotton Club night club in Harlem in 1933 and recorded it that year, also 1933, for the first time in history the entire floor revue from Harlems Cotton Club went on tour, playing theatres in principal cities. The song has since been performed by artists as diverse as Frank Sinatra, Etta James, Dinah Washington, Clodagh Rodgers, leo Reismans orchestra version had the biggest hit on records, although Ethel Waterss recorded version also sold well. Stormy Weather was featured in the 1943 movie of the same name, the song tells of disappointment, as the lyrics, Dont know why theres no sun up in the sky, show someone pining for her man to return. The weather is a metaphor for the feelings of the singer, stormy weather since my man and I aint together, keeps raining all the time. The original handwritten lyrics, along with a painting by Ted Koehler, were featured on the Antiques Roadshow on 24 January 2011, the lyrics show a number of crossings out and corrections. Ethel Waterss recording of the song in 1933 was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2003, also in 2004, Hornes version finished at #30 on AFIs 100 Years.100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema. Stormy Weather was released as a single by the industrial hip-hop group Fats Comet, duke Ellington recorded an instrumental version of the song in 1933 and another version with singer Ivie Anderson in 1940. He also featured a version with Ivy Anderson in his 1933 Paramount short film Bundle of Blues. Ethel Waters 1933 The Golden Gate Quartet recorded the song for Bluebird Records in 1939, Lena Horne first recorded the song in 1941 for RCA Victor. In 1943, she recorded another version of Stormy Weather for the movie of the same name, Horne recorded the song at least five times throughout her career. Hornes version of the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2000, Judy Garland recorded a studio version of the song for her London Sessions with Capitol. Most notable is her performance of the song recorded for the Grammy Award-winning album Judy at Carnegie Hall. Roy Hamilton, studio album Have Blues Must Travel and it was arranged by Marion Evans Billy Eckstine, studio album Once More with Feeling. It was arranged by Billy May Charles Mingus recorded the song on the Mingus, album for Candid Records Etta James, on her 1960 album for Chess Records, At Last. Bing Crosby on the 1965 album Bing Crosbys Treasury - The Songs I Love Ringo Starr recorded the song in 1969 for his debut album. Sylvia Brooks, on her 2012 album, Restless Viola Wills covered the song in 1982, jeff Lynne recorded a version of the song for his 1990 solo album, Armchair Theatre. Carmel recorded a version for her 1984 album, The Drum is Everything, bob Dylan - Triplicate The chapter Stormy Weather in the book Stardust Melodies, The Biography of Twelve of Americas Most Popular Songs by Will Friedwald
19.
Am I Blue?
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Am I Blue. is a song written by Harry Akst and Grant Clarke in 1929, and was a big hit that year for Ethel Waters in the movie On with the Show. It has become a standard and has covered by numerous artists. Eddie Cochran recorded his version of Am I Blue sometime between May and August 1957 and it was released on the B-side of Liberty Records single 55087. The A-side was Drive In Show which rose to number 82 on the Billboard charts and it was released on single and the album Bittersweet White Light. In 1944, the song was performed by Hoagy Carmichael and Lauren Bacall in the Howard Hawks directed film To Have and Have Not. The tune is played in a scene in the Warner Bros. cartoon Booby Hatched, in 1954, Dinah Washington recorded the song for the album After Hours with Miss D In 1957, early teen idol Ricky Nelson included the song on his debut album Ricky. Eddie Cochran, a performer of rock and roll music. In 1961, Fats Domino recorded the song for the album Let the Four Winds Blow, brenda Lee recorded her version for the album Reflections In Blue. In 1972, Bette Midler recorded the song for her album The Divine Miss M, in 1973, Cher released the song as the first and only single from her album of standards, Bittersweet White Light. It missed the Billboard Hot 100 chart, peaking at 111 in Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles, the song was performed by the character of Batman in the 2004 episode of the animated series Justice League Unlimited, This Little Piggy. Wonder Woman hums the tune at the end of that episode, in 1969, Judy Garland and Johnnie Ray performed an duet cover of the song. Barbra Streisand recorded a version of Am I Blue for her 1975 film Funny Lady, in 1978, Robert Gordon recorded the song for his Rock Billy Boogie album. Diane Lane sang it in the 1984 film The Cotton Club, linda Ronstadt recorded the song for her album For Sentimental Reasons. The deposed Qing emperor Henry Puyi sings the song during his 1925-31 playboy days in the Japanese concession of Tianjin in The Last Emperor by Bernardo Bertolucci, billie Holidays version of the song appeared in the 1989 movie Slaves of New York and 2009 movie Public Enemies. Charlie Rich recorded the song in 1991 for his 1992 release Pictures, jeri Southern covered the song on her 2009 album Romance in the Dark. List of Am I Blue versions on Second Hand Songs
20.
Spiritual (music)
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Spirituals are generally Christian songs that were created by African slaves in the United States. Spirituals were originally a tradition that imparted Christian values while also describing the hardships of slavery. Although spirituals were originally unaccompanied monophonic songs, they are best known today in harmonized choral arrangements and this historic group of uniquely American songs is now recognized as a distinct genre of music. Slave Songs of the United States, the first major collection of Negro spirituals, was published in 1867 and they are a result of the interaction of music and religion from Africa with music and religion of European origin. Further, this occurred only in the United States. Africans who converted to Christianity in other parts of the world, even in the Caribbean and Latin America, Negro spirituals were primarily expressions of religious faith. Some may also have served as socio-political protests veiled as assimilation to white American culture and they originated among enslaved Africans in the United States. Slavery was introduced to the British colonies in the early 17th century, in the United States, these people would remain in bondage for the entire 18th century and much of the 19th century. Most were not fully emancipated until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1865, Slaves were forbidden from speaking their native languages, and were generally converted to Christianity. With narrow vocabularies, slaves would use the words they did know to translate biblical information, while some slave owners believed that Christian slaves would be more docile, others came to feel that stories of Moses leading the Israelites out of bondage were counterproductive. Forced conversion only worked to a point since church attendance might be required, some slaves became Christians voluntarily, either because it helped them endure hardships or because membership may have offered other benefits. Many of the Slaves turned towards the Baptist or Methodist churches, in some places enslaved Africans were permitted, or even encouraged, to hold their own prayer meetings. During these meetings, worshipers would sing, chant, dance, along with spirituals, shouts also emerged in the Praise Houses. Shouts begin slowly with the shuffling of feet and clapping of hands, drums were used as they had been in Africa, for communication. When the connection between drumming, communication, and resistance was eventually made drums were forbidden. Slaves introduced a number of new instruments to America, the bones, body percussion, and an instrument variously called the bania, banju, or banjar and they drew on native rhythms and their African heritage. They brought with them from Africa long-standing religious traditions that highlighted the importance of storytelling, Music was an essential element in communicating identity, shared social mores, traditional customs, and ethnic history. The primary function of the spirituals was as communal songs sung in a religious gathering, Negro spirituals may also have served as socio-political protests veiled as assimilation to the white American culture
21.
His Eye Is on the Sparrow
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His Eye Is on the Sparrow is a Gospel hymn. The song was written in 1905 by lyricist Civilla D. Martin and it is most associated with actress-singer Ethel Waters who used the title for her autobiography. Mahalia Jacksons recording of the song was honored with the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 2010, look at the birds of the air, they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of value than they. and Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing. and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered, fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows. We contracted a friendship for a couple by the name of Mr. Mrs. Doolittle had been bedridden for twenty years. Her husband was a cripple who had to propel himself to. Despite their afflictions, they lived happy Christian lives, bringing inspiration, one day while we were visiting with the Doolittles, my husband commented on their bright hopefulness and asked them for the secret of it. Mrs. Doolittles reply was simple, His eye is on the sparrow, the beauty of this simple expression of boundless faith gripped the hearts and fired the imagination of Dr. Martin and me. The hymn His Eye Is on the Sparrow was the outcome of that experience, the song has been performed extensively by both Christian and secular artists. RCA Records released the song as the single from the album on June 8,2012. This version is Houstons last original single, and second posthumous one, the song made its debut only one day after the premiere of Celebrate. AllMusic called it a piano, organ, and choir showcase for Houston, entertainment Weekly editor Melissa Maerz called it a gorgeously rippling solo with Houston testif that Jesus is watching over her. Jody Rosen of Rolling Stone panned the cover, saying Houston sings –, at times the song has a ravaged magnificence, but mostly its painful. There are many arrangements of the hymn that have produced since its original publication. Gabriel texts and MIDI sequences of 44 songs, including His Eye Is on the Sparrow Piano version and background of His Eye Is On The Sparrow Free MP3 piano version of His Eye Is on the Sparrow
22.
African Americans
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African Americans are an ethnic group of Americans with total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. The term may also be used to only those individuals who are descended from enslaved Africans. As a compound adjective the term is usually hyphenated as African-American, Black and African Americans constitute the third largest racial and ethnic group in the United States. Most African Americans are of West and Central African descent and are descendants of enslaved peoples within the boundaries of the present United States. On average, African Americans are of 73. 2–80. 9% West African, 18–24% European, according to US Census Bureau data, African immigrants generally do not self-identify as African American. The overwhelming majority of African immigrants identify instead with their own respective ethnicities, immigrants from some Caribbean, Central American and South American nations and their descendants may or may not also self-identify with the term. After the founding of the United States, black people continued to be enslaved, believed to be inferior to white people, they were treated as second-class citizens. The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U. S. citizenship to whites only, in 2008, Barack Obama became the first African American to be elected President of the United States. The first African slaves arrived via Santo Domingo to the San Miguel de Gualdape colony, the ill-fated colony was almost immediately disrupted by a fight over leadership, during which the slaves revolted and fled the colony to seek refuge among local Native Americans. De Ayllón and many of the colonists died shortly afterwards of an epidemic, the settlers and the slaves who had not escaped returned to Haiti, whence they had come. The first recorded Africans in British North America were 20 and odd negroes who came to Jamestown, as English settlers died from harsh conditions, more and more Africans were brought to work as laborers. Typically, young men or women would sign a contract of indenture in exchange for transportation to the New World, the landowner received 50 acres of land from the state for each servant purchased from a ships captain. An indentured servant would work for years without wages. The status of indentured servants in early Virginia and Maryland was similar to slavery, servants could be bought, sold, or leased and they could be physically beaten for disobedience or running away. Africans could legally raise crops and cattle to purchase their freedom and they raised families, married other Africans and sometimes intermarried with Native Americans or English settlers. By the 1640s and 1650s, several African families owned farms around Jamestown and some became wealthy by colonial standards and purchased indentured servants of their own. In 1640, the Virginia General Court recorded the earliest documentation of slavery when they sentenced John Punch. One of Dutch African arrivals, Anthony Johnson, would own one of the first black slaves, John Casor
23.
Hattie McDaniel
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Hattie McDaniel was an African American stage actress, professional singer-songwriter, and comedian. She is best known for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, the first Academy Award won by an African American entertainer. In addition to acting in films, McDaniel was a radio performer and television star. She appeared in over 300 films, although she received screen credits for only 80 or so. McDaniel has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Hollywood, one at 6933 Hollywood Boulevard for her contributions to radio and one at 1719 Vine Street for acting in motion pictures. In 1975, she was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, McDaniel was born June 10,1895, in Wichita, Kansas, to former slaves. She was the youngest of 13 children and her father, Henry McDaniel, fought in the Civil War with the 122nd United States Colored Troops and her mother, Susan Holbert, was a singer of religious music. In 1900, the moved to Colorado, living first in Fort Collins and then in Denver. Her brother, Sam McDaniel, played the butler in the 1948 Three Stooges’ short film Heavenly Daze and her sister Etta McDaniel was also an actress. McDaniel was not only a performer but was also a songwriter and she honed her songwriting skills while working with her brothers minstrel show. After the death of her brother Otis in 1916, the troupe began to lose money, from 1920 to 1925, she appeared with Professor George Morrisons Melody Hounds, a black touring ensemble. In the mid-1920s, she embarked on a career, singing with the Melody Hounds on station KOA in Denver. From 1926 to 1929, she recorded many of her songs for Okeh Records, after the stock market crashed in 1929, the only work McDaniel could find was as a washroom attendant and waitress at Club Madrid in Milwaukee. Despite the owners reluctance to let her perform, she was allowed to take the stage. In 1931, McDaniel moved to Los Angeles to join her brother Sam and her sisters Etta, when she could not get film work, she took jobs as a maid or cook. Sam was working on a KNX radio program, The Optimistic Do-Nut Hour and she performed on radio as Hi-Hat Hattie, a bossy maid who often forgets her place. Her show became popular, but her salary was so low that she had to continue working as a maid and her first film appearance was in The Golden West, in which she played a maid. Her second was in the highly successful Mae West film Im No Angel and she received several other uncredited film roles in the early 1930s, often singing in choruses
24.
Academy Awards
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The various category winners are awarded a copy of a golden statuette, officially called the Academy Award of Merit, which has become commonly known by its nickname Oscar. The awards, first presented in 1929 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, are overseen by AMPAS, the awards ceremony was first broadcast on radio in 1930 and televised for the first time in 1953. It is now live in more than 200 countries and can be streamed live online. The Academy Awards ceremony is the oldest worldwide entertainment awards ceremony and its equivalents – the Emmy Awards for television, the Tony Awards for theater, and the Grammy Awards for music and recording – are modeled after the Academy Awards. The 89th Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the best films of 2016, were held on February 26,2017, at the Dolby Theatre, in Los Angeles, the ceremony was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and was broadcast on ABC. A total of 3,048 Oscars have been awarded from the inception of the award through the 88th, the first Academy Awards presentation was held on May 16,1929, at a private dinner function at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel with an audience of about 270 people. The post-awards party was held at the Mayfair Hotel, the cost of guest tickets for that nights ceremony was $5. Fifteen statuettes were awarded, honoring artists, directors and other participants in the industry of the time. The ceremony ran for 15 minutes, winners were announced to media three months earlier, however, that was changed for the second ceremony in 1930. Since then, for the rest of the first decade, the results were given to newspapers for publication at 11,00 pm on the night of the awards. The first Best Actor awarded was Emil Jannings, for his performances in The Last Command and he had to return to Europe before the ceremony, so the Academy agreed to give him the prize earlier, this made him the first Academy Award winner in history. With the fourth ceremony, however, the system changed, for the first six ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned two calendar years. At the 29th ceremony, held on March 27,1957, until then, foreign-language films had been honored with the Special Achievement Award. The 74th Academy Awards, held in 2002, presented the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, since 1973, all Academy Awards ceremonies always end with the Academy Award for Best Picture. The Academy also awards Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, see also § Awards of Merit categories The best known award is the Academy Award of Merit, more popularly known as the Oscar statuette. The five spokes represent the branches of the Academy, Actors, Writers, Directors, Producers. The model for the statuette is said to be Mexican actor Emilio El Indio Fernández, sculptor George Stanley sculpted Cedric Gibbons design. The statuettes presented at the ceremonies were gold-plated solid bronze
25.
Emmy Award
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An Emmy Award, or simply Emmy, recognizes excellence in the television industry, and corresponds to the Academy Award, the Tony Award, and the Grammy Award. Because Emmy Awards are given in various sectors of the American television industry, Regional Emmy Awards are also presented throughout the country at various times through the year, recognizing excellence in local and statewide television. In addition, International Emmys are awarded for excellence in TV programming produced, each is responsible for administering a particular set of Emmy ceremonies. The Los Angeles-based Academy of Television Arts & Sciences established the Emmy Award as part of an image-building and public relations opportunity. The first Emmy Awards ceremony took place on January 25,1949, at the Hollywood Athletic Club, shirley Dinsdale has the distinction of receiving the very first Emmy Award for Most Outstanding Television Personality, during that first awards ceremony. In the 1950s, the ATAS expanded the Emmys into a national event, in 1955, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences was formed in New York City as a sister organization to serve members on the East Coast, and help to also supervise the Emmys. The NATAS also established regional chapters throughout the United States, with each one developing their own local Emmy awards show for local programming, the ATAS still however maintained its separate regional ceremony honoring local programming in the Los Angeles Area. Originally there was only one Emmy Awards ceremony held per year to honor shows nationally broadcast in the United States, in 1974, the first Daytime Emmy Awards ceremony was held to specifically honor achievement in national daytime programming. Other area-specific Emmy Awards ceremonies soon followed, also, the International Emmy Awards, honoring television programs produced and initially aired outside the U. S. was established in the early 1970s. Meanwhile, all Emmys awarded prior to the emergence of these separate, in 1977, due to various conflicts, the ATAS and the NATAS agreed to split ties. However, they agreed to share ownership of the Emmy statue and trademark. With the rise of television in the 1980s, cable programs first became eligible for the Primetime Emmys in 1988. The ATAS also began accepting original online-only web television programs in 2013, the Emmy statuette, depicting a winged woman holding an atom, was designed by television engineer Louis McManus, who used his wife as the model. The TV Academy rejected a total of forty-seven proposals before settling on McManus design in 1948. The statuette has become the symbol of the TV Academys goal of supporting and uplifting the art and science of television, The wings represent the muse of art. When deciding a name for the award, Academy founder Syd Cassyd originally suggested Ike, however, Ike was also the popular nickname of World War II hero and future U. S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the Academy members wanted something unique. Finally, television engineer and the third president, Harry Lubcke, suggested the name Immy. After Immy was chosen, it was feminized to Emmy to match their female statuette
26.
Rosetta Reitz
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Rosetta Reitz was an American feminist and jazz historian who searched for and established a record label producing 18 albums of the music of the early women of jazz and the blues. Reitz was born in Utica, New York on September 28,1924 and she attended the University of Buffalo for one year and the University of Wisconsin–Madison for two years. After leaving college, she moved to Manhattan and worked at the Gotham Book Mart, later opening the Four Seasons, a bookstore in Greenwich Village she operated from 1947-1956. She then wrote 1977 book Menopause, A Positive Approach, which was one of the first such books to have focused on menopause from the perspective of women, rather than with a medical approach. While writing the book, she listened to her music recordings which told of the strength of women, Reitz noted that all the books she had read treated menopause as a dysfunction. She spent three years and spoke to 1,000 women in writing the book, using $10,000 she borrowed from friends, Rosetta Records was established in 1979. She would search for lost music, most often from record collectors, the music that Reitz discovered was usually in the public domain, but she would try to determine if there were any current rights and ensure that royalties were paid to the artists. She also found long lost songs from artists such as Ida Cox, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith. Her collecting covered the period from the 1920s to the 1960s and she would remaster the recordings, research the background of the artists and write liner notes. She designed the graphics for album covers and included historic photographs, while early records were shipped by mail, ultimately there were more than ten stores that carried the Rosetta label. With changes in recording media, the label switched to tapes, though official sales figures were never disclosed, Reitz estimated that the four independent womens blues compilation albums each sold 20,000 copies. The last album released came in the mid-1990s, but older releases were available online, in 1980 and 1981, Reitz organized a tribute to the Women of Jazz at Avery Fisher Hall as part of the Newport Jazz Festival. Called The Blues is a Woman, the program, narrated by Carmen McRae, featured music by Adelaide Hall, Big Mama Thornton, Nell Carter and Koko Taylor. Ms Reitz was the recipient of three awards—the Wonder Woman Award of 1982, a Grandmother Winifred grant in 1994, and the Veteran Feminists of America 2002 Roll of Honor for feminists writers. She died at age 84 on November 1,2008 in Manhattan and she is survived by 3 daughters and a granddaughter
27.
Philadelphia
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In 1682, William Penn, an English Quaker, founded the city to serve as capital of the Pennsylvania Colony. Philadelphia was one of the capitals in the Revolutionary War. In the 19th century, Philadelphia became an industrial center. It became a destination for African-Americans in the Great Migration. The areas many universities and colleges make Philadelphia a top international study destination, as the city has evolved into an educational, with a gross domestic product of $388 billion, Philadelphia ranks ninth among world cities and fourth in the nation. Philadelphia is the center of activity in Pennsylvania and is home to seven Fortune 1000 companies. The Philadelphia skyline is growing, with a market of almost 81,900 commercial properties in 2016 including several prominent skyscrapers. The city is known for its arts, culture, and rich history, Philadelphia has more outdoor sculptures and murals than any other American city. Fairmount Park, when combined with the adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park in the watershed, is one of the largest contiguous urban park areas in the United States. The 67 National Historic Landmarks in the city helped account for the $10 billion generated by tourism, Philadelphia is the only World Heritage City in the United States. Before Europeans arrived, the Philadelphia area was home to the Lenape Indians in the village of Shackamaxon, the Lenape are a Native American tribe and First Nations band government. They are also called Delaware Indians and their territory was along the Delaware River watershed, western Long Island. Most Lenape were pushed out of their Delaware homeland during the 18th century by expanding European colonies, Lenape communities were weakened by newly introduced diseases, mainly smallpox, and violent conflict with Europeans. Iroquois people occasionally fought the Lenape, surviving Lenape moved west into the upper Ohio River basin. The American Revolutionary War and United States independence pushed them further west, in the 1860s, the United States government sent most Lenape remaining in the eastern United States to the Indian Territory under the Indian removal policy. In the 21st century, most Lenape now reside in the US state of Oklahoma, with communities living also in Wisconsin, Ontario. The Dutch considered the entire Delaware River valley to be part of their New Netherland colony, in 1638, Swedish settlers led by renegade Dutch established the colony of New Sweden at Fort Christina and quickly spread out in the valley. In 1644, New Sweden supported the Susquehannocks in their defeat of the English colony of Maryland
28.
Baltimore
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Baltimore is the largest city in the U. S. state of Maryland, and the 29th-most populous city in the country. It was established by the Constitution of Maryland and is not part of any county, thus, it is the largest independent city in the United States, with a population of 621,849 as of 2015. As of 2010, the population of the Baltimore Metropolitan Area was 2.7 million, founded in 1729, Baltimore is the second largest seaport in the Mid-Atlantic. Baltimores Inner Harbor was once the leading port of entry for immigrants to the United States. With hundreds of identified districts, Baltimore has been dubbed a city of neighborhoods, in the War of 1812, Francis Scott Key wrote The Star-Spangled Banner, later the American national anthem, in Baltimore. More than 65,000 properties, or roughly one in three buildings in the city, are listed on the National Register, more than any city in the nation. The city has 289 properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the historical records of the government of Baltimore are located at the Baltimore City Archives. The city is named after Cecil Calvert, second Lord Baltimore, of the Irish House of Lords, Baltimore Manor was the name of the estate in County Longford on which the Calvert family lived in Ireland. Baltimore is an anglicization of the Irish name Baile an Tí Mhóir, in 1608, Captain John Smith traveled 210 miles from Jamestown to the uppermost Chesapeake Bay, leading the first European expedition to the Patapsco River. The name Patapsco is derived from pota-psk-ut, which translates to backwater or tide covered with froth in Algonquian dialect, a quarter century after John Smiths voyage, English colonists began to settle in Maryland. The area constituting the modern City of Baltimore and its area was first settled by David Jones in 1661. He claimed the area today as Harbor East on the east bank of the Jones Falls stream. In the early 1600s, the immediate Baltimore vicinity was populated, if at all. The Baltimore area had been inhabited by Native Americans since at least the 10th millennium BC, one Paleo-Indian site and several Archaic period and Woodland period archaeological sites have been identified in Baltimore, including four from the Late Woodland period. During the Late Woodland period, the culture that is called the Potomac Creek complex resided in the area from Baltimore to the Rappahannock River in Virginia. It was located on the Bush River on land that in 1773 became part of Harford County, in 1674, the General Assembly passed An Act for erecting a Court-house and Prison in each County within this Province. The site of the house and jail for Baltimore County was evidently Old Baltimore near the Bush River. In 1683, the General Assembly passed An Act for Advancement of Trade to establish towns, ports, one of the towns established by the act in Baltimore County was on Bush River, on Town Land, near the Court-House
29.
Zeta Phi Eta
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Zeta Phi Eta is a national professional fraternity in Communication Arts and Sciences. Zeta Phi Eta is the oldest national group of its kind - it was founded on October 10,1893 under the inspiration, the founding members were Edith DeVore, Maud Newell, Mollie Connor, Leila Little, and Laurine Wright. The fraternity was incorporated under the laws of the State of Illinois on June 25,1902, in 1908, Zeta Phi Eta affiliated with Phi Eta Sigma, a local organization founded in 1901 at Emerson College, in Boston, Massachusetts. In the affiliation, the chapter at Boston became Alpha, the cameo and pearl pin of Alpha became the official badge, and the shield and torch of Beta, the coat of arms. Zeta Phi Eta has expanded its areas of interest as the field expanded to include all communication arts. As of 1975, Zeta Phi Etas Bylaws were amended to include men in its membership, there are currently five active campus chapters of Zeta Phi Eta
30.
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
31.
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
32.
Atlanta, Georgia
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Atlanta is the capital of and the most populous city in the U. S. state of Georgia, with an estimated 2015 population of 463,878. Atlanta is the cultural and economic center of the Atlanta metropolitan area, home to 5,710,795 people, Atlanta is the county seat of Fulton County, and a small portion of the city extends eastward into DeKalb County. In 1837, Atlanta was founded at the intersection of two lines, and the city rose from the ashes of the American Civil War to become a national center of commerce. Atlantas economy is considered diverse, with dominant sectors that include logistics, professional and business services, media operations, Atlanta has topographic features that include rolling hills and dense tree coverage. Revitalization of Atlantas neighborhoods, initially spurred by the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, has intensified in the 21st century, altering the demographics, politics. Prior to the arrival of European settlers in north Georgia, Creek Indians inhabited the area, standing Peachtree, a Creek village located where Peachtree Creek flows into the Chattahoochee River, was the closest Indian settlement to what is now Atlanta. As part of the removal of Native Americans from northern Georgia from 1802 to 1825, the Creek ceded the area in 1821. In 1836, the Georgia General Assembly voted to build the Western, the initial route was to run southward from Chattanooga to a terminus east of the Chattahoochee River, which would then be linked to Savannah. After engineers surveyed various possible locations for the terminus, the zero milepost was driven into the ground in what is now Five Points. A year later, the area around the milepost had developed into a settlement, first known as Terminus, and later as Thrasherville after a merchant who built homes. By 1842, the town had six buildings and 30 residents and was renamed Marthasville to honor the Governors daughter, later, J. Edgar Thomson, Chief Engineer of the Georgia Railroad, suggested the town be renamed Atlantica-Pacifica, which was shortened to Atlanta. The residents approved, and the town was incorporated as Atlanta on December 29,1847, by 1860, Atlantas population had grown to 9,554. During the American Civil War, the nexus of multiple railroads in Atlanta made the city a hub for the distribution of military supplies, in 1864, the Union Army moved southward following the capture of Chattanooga and began its invasion of north Georgia. On the next day, Mayor James Calhoun surrendered Atlanta to the Union Army, on November 11,1864, Sherman prepared for the Union Armys March to the Sea by ordering Atlanta to be burned to the ground, sparing only the citys churches and hospitals. After the Civil War ended in 1865, Atlanta was gradually rebuilt, due to the citys superior rail transportation network, the state capital was moved from Milledgeville to Atlanta in 1868. In the 1880 Census, Atlanta surpassed Savannah as Georgias largest city, by 1885, the founding of the Georgia School of Technology and the citys black colleges had established Atlanta as a center for higher education. In 1895, Atlanta hosted the Cotton States and International Exposition, during the first decades of the 20th century, Atlanta experienced a period of unprecedented growth. In three decades time, Atlantas population tripled as the city expanded to include nearby streetcar suburbs
33.
Ballad
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A ballad /ˈbæləd/ is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French chanson balladée or ballade, which were originally danced songs, Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of the British Isles from the later medieval period until the 19th century. They were widely used across Europe, and later in the Americas, Australia, Ballads are 13 lines with an ABABBCBC form, consisting of couplets of rhymed verse, each of 14 syllables. Many ballads were written and sold as single sheet broadsides, the form was often used by poets and composers from the 18th century onwards to produce lyrical ballads. In the later 19th century, the took on the meaning of a slow form of popular love song and is now often used for any love song. The ballad derives its name from medieval French dance songs or ballares, from which ballet is also derived, as a narrative song, their theme and function may originate from Scandinavian and Germanic traditions of storytelling that can be seen in poems such as Beowulf. Musically they were influenced by the Minnesinger, the earliest example of a recognizable ballad in form in England is Judas in a 13th-century manuscript. This means that the two words, ballad and ballet, are derived from the French language. Ballads were originally written to accompany dances, and so were composed in couplets with refrains in alternate lines and these refrains would have been sung by the dancers in time with the dance. Most northern and west European ballads are written in ballad stanzas or quatrains of alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, known as ballad meter. Usually, only the second and fourth line of a quatrain are rhymed, there is considerable variation on this pattern in almost every respect, including length, number of lines and rhyming scheme, making the strict definition of a ballad extremely difficult. Ballads usually use the dialect of the people and are heavily influenced by the region in which they originate. Scottish ballads in particular are distinctively un-English, even showing some pre-Christian influences in the inclusion of elements such as the fairies in the Scottish ballad Tam Lin. The ballads do not have any known author or correct version, instead, having passed down mainly by oral tradition since the Middle Ages. The ballads remained a tradition until the increased interest in folk songs in the 18th century led collectors such as Bishop Thomas Percy to publish volumes of popular ballads. In all traditions most ballads are narrative in nature, with a story, often concise, and rely on imagery, rather than description. Themes concerning rural laborers and their sexuality are common, and there are many ballads based on the Robin Hood legend. Another common feature of ballads is repetition, sometimes of fourth lines in succeeding stanzas, as a refrain, sometimes of third and fourth lines of a stanza and sometimes of entire stanzas
34.
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
35.
Harlem Renaissance
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The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural, social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem, New York, spanning the 1920s. During the time, it was known as the New Negro Movement, the Harlem Renaissance was considered to be a rebirth of African-American arts. The Harlem Renaissance is generally considered to have spanned from about 1918 until the mid-1930s, many of its ideas lived on much longer. The zenith of this flowering of Negro literature, as James Weldon Johnson preferred to call the Harlem Renaissance, until the end of the Civil War, the majority of African Americans had been enslaved and lived in the South. During the Reconstruction Era, the emancipated African Americans, freedmen, began to strive for civic participation, political equality and economic, soon after the end of the Civil War the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 gave rise to speeches by African-American Congressmen addressing this Bill. By 1875 sixteen blacks had been elected and served in Congress, the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 was denounced by black Congressmen and resulted in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, part of Reconstruction legislation by Republicans. By the late 1870s, Democratic whites managed to power in the South. From 1890 to 1908 they proceeded to pass legislation that disenfranchised most Negros and many poor whites and they established white supremacist regimes of Jim Crow segregation in the South and one-party block voting behind southern Democrats. Convict laborers were typically subject to forms of corporal punishment, overwork. While a small number of blacks were able to land shortly after the Civil War. As life in the South became increasingly difficult, African Americans began to migrate north in great numbers, most of the African-American literary movement arose from a generation that had memories of the gains and losses of Reconstruction after the Civil War. Sometimes their parents or grandparents had been slaves and their ancestors had sometimes benefited by paternal investment in cultural capital, including better-than-average education. Many in the Harlem Renaissance were part of the early 20th century Great Migration out of the South into the Negro neighborhoods of the North, African Americans sought a better standard of living and relief from the institutionalized racism in the South. Others were people of African descent from racially stratified communities in the Caribbean who came to the United States hoping for a better life, uniting most of them was their convergence in Harlem. During the enormous influx of European immigrants in the late 19th century, the once exclusive district was abandoned by the middle class. Harlem became an African-American neighborhood in the early 1900s, in 1910, a large block along 135th Street and Fifth Avenue was bought by various African-American realtors and a church group. Many more African Americans arrived during the First World War, due to the war, the migration of laborers from Europe virtually ceased, while the war effort resulted in a massive demand for unskilled industrial labor. The Great Migration brought hundreds of thousands of African Americans to cities such as Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, despite the increasing popularity of Negro culture, virulent white racism, often by more recent ethnic immigrants, continued to affect African-American communities, even in the North
36.
Blackface
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Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used predominantly by non-black performers to represent a black person. The practice gained popularity during the 19th century and contributed to the spread of racial stereotypes such as the happy-go-lucky darky on the plantation or the dandified coon. In 1848, blackface minstrel shows were an American national art of the time, translating formal art such as opera into popular terms for a general audience. Early in the 20th century, blackface branched off from the show and became a form in its own right. Blackface was an important performance tradition in the American theater for roughly 100 years beginning around 1830, in both the United States and Britain, blackface was most commonly used in the minstrel performance tradition, which it both predated and outlasted. Later, black artists also performed in blackface, in some quarters, the caricatures that were the legacy of blackface persist to the present day and are a cause of ongoing controversy. Another view is that blackface is a form of cross-dressing in which one puts on the insignias of a sex, class, or race that stands in opposition to ones own. By the mid-20th century, changing attitudes about race and racism effectively ended the prominence of blackface makeup used in performance in the U. S. and it remains in relatively limited use as a theatrical device and is more commonly used today as social commentary or satire. Perhaps the most enduring effect of blackface is the precedent it established in the introduction of African-American culture to an international audience, there is no consensus about a single moment that constitutes the origin of blackface. Whites routinely portrayed the characters in the Elizabethan and Jacobean theater. The play attracted notice, and other performers adopted the style, from at least the 1810s, blackface clowns were popular in the United States. Rice introduced the song Jump Jim Crow accompanied by a dance in his act in 1828. Rice traveled the U. S. performing under the stage name Daddy Jim Crow, the name Jim Crow later became attached to statutes that codified the reinstitution of segregation and discrimination after Reconstruction. In the 1830s and early 1840s, blackface performances mixed skits with comic songs, stereotyped blackface characters developed, buffoonish, lazy, superstitious, cowardly, and lascivious characters, who stole, lied pathologically, and mangled the English language. By 1852, the skits that had part of blackface performance for decades expanded to one-act farces. The songs of northern composer Stephen Foster figured prominently in blackface minstrel shows of the period, though written in dialect and certainly politically incorrect by todays standards, his later songs were free of the ridicule and blatantly racist caricatures that typified other songs of the genre. Fosters works treated slaves and the South in general with a cloying sentimentality that appealed to audiences of the day. White minstrel shows featured white performers pretending to be blacks, playing their versions of black music, Minstrel shows dominated popular show business in the U. S. from that time through into the 1890s, also enjoying massive popularity in the UK and in other parts of Europe
37.
Paramount Records
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Paramount Records was an American record label known for its recordings of jazz and blues in the 1920s and early 1930s, including such artists as Ma Rainey and Blind Lemon Jefferson. Paramount Records was founded in 1917 by the Wisconsin Chair Company, the labels offices were located in Port Washington, Wisconsin and the pressing plant was in Grafton. The label was managed by Fred Dennett Key, the Wisconsin Chair Company made wooden phonograph cabinets for Edison Records. In 1915 it started making its own phonographs in the name of its subsidiary and it made phonographs under the Vista brand name through the end of the decade, the line failed commercially. In 1918, a line of gramophone records debuted on the Paramount label, advertisements, however, stated, Paramounts are recorded in our own New York laboratory. In its early years, the Paramount label fared only slightly better than the Vista phonograph line, the product had little to distinguish itself. Paramount released pop recordings with average audio quality pressed on average quality shellac, in the early 1920s, Paramount was accumulating debt while producing no profit. Paramount began offering to press records for other companies on a basis at low prices. Paramount was contracted to press discs for Black Swan Records, when the Black Swan company later floundered, Paramount bought out Black Swan and made records by and for African-Americans. These so-called race music records became Paramounts most famous and lucrative business, Paramounts race record series was launched in 1922 with vaudeville blues songs by Lucille Hegamin and Alberta Hunter. The company had a large mail-order operation which was a key to its early success, most of Paramounts race music recordings were arranged by black entrepreneur J. Mayo Williams. Williams did not know at the time that the market had become Paramounts prime business. Problems with low fidelity and poor pressings continued, Blind Lemon Jeffersons 1926 hits, Got the Blues and Long Lonesome Blues, were quickly rerecorded in the superior facilities of Marsh Laboratories, and subsequent releases used the rerecorded version. Both versions were released on compilation albums, in 1927, Ink Williams moved to competitor Okeh Records, taking Blind Lemon Jefferson with him for just one recording, Matchbox Blues. Paramounts recording of the song can be compared with Okehs on compilation albums. In 1929, Paramount was building a new studio in Grafton, so it sent Charley Patton —sent up by Jackson, Mississippi, storeowner H. C. Speir —to the studio of Gennett Records in Richmond, Indiana, where on June 14 he cut 14 famous sides, as the 12000 race series sold well, Paramounts 20000 popular series floundered. Paramount turned to its label, Broadway Records, which was taken over by Paramount following the collapse of Bridgeport Die & Machine Company in 1924
38.
Broadway (Manhattan)
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Broadway /ˈbrɔːdweɪ/ is a road in the U. S. state of New York. It is the oldest north–south main thoroughfare in New York City, dating to the first New Amsterdam settlement, the name Broadway is the English language literal translation of the Dutch name, Brede weg. Broadway is known widely as the heart of the American theatre industry, Broadway was originally the Wickquasgeck Trail, carved into the brush of Manhattan by its Native American inhabitants. Wickquasgeck means birch-bark country in the Algonquian language and this trail originally snaked through swamps and rocks along the length of Manhattan Island. Upon the arrival of the Dutch, the trail became the main road through the island from Nieuw Amsterdam at the southern tip. The Dutch explorer and entrepreneur David Pietersz. de Vries gives the first mention of it in his journal for the year 1642, the Dutch named the road Heerestraat. Although current street signs are simply labeled as Broadway, in a 1776 map of New York City, in the mid-eighteenth century, part of Broadway in what is now lower Manhattan was known as Great George Street. An 1897 City Map shows a segment of Broadway as Kingsbridge Road in the vicinity of what is now the George Washington Bridge. In the 18th century, Broadway ended at the town north of Wall Street, where traffic continued up the East Side of the island via Eastern Post Road. The western Bloomingdale Road would be widened and paved during the 19th century, on February 14,1899, the name Broadway was extended to the entire Broadway/Bloomingdale/Boulevard road. Broadway once was a street for its entire length. The present status, in which it runs one-way southbound south of Columbus Circle, on 6 June 1954, Seventh Avenue became southbound and Eighth Avenue became northbound south of Broadway. On 3 June 1962, Broadway became one-way south of Canal Street, with Trinity Place, northbound traffic on Broadway now needs to take Amsterdam Avenue to 73rd Street, make a sharp turn on the very narrow 73rd and then right turn on Broadway. Otherwise, and effectively, the traffic on Broadway has been diverted into Amsterdam Avenue. In August 2008, two lanes from 42nd to 35th Streets were taken out of service and converted to public plazas. Additionally, bike lanes were added on Broadway from 42nd Street down to Union Square, the city decided that the experiment was successful and decided to make the change permanent in February 2010. Additionally, portions of Broadway in the Madison Square and Union Square have been dramatically narrowed, Broadway runs the length of Manhattan Island, roughly parallel to the North River, from Bowling Green at the south to Inwood at the northern tip of the island. South of Columbus Circle, it is a southbound street
39.
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
40.
Will Marion Cook
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William Mercer Cook, better known as Will Marion Cook, was an African-American composer and violinist from the United States. Cook was a student of Antonín Dvořák and performed for King George V among others and he is probably best known for his popular songs and Broadway musicals, such as Clorindy, or The Origin of the Cake Walk and In Dahomey. Will Marion Cook was born in Washington, D. C. to John Hartwell Cook, dean of the Howard University School of Law, Cooks musical talent was apparent at an early age. At fifteen, he was sent to the Oberlin Conservatory to study violin, with help from members of the African American community, his benefit recitals were sponsored to help him afford to study abroad. Although it is stated that Cook studied abroad for nine years. Cook married the young singer Abbie Mitchell in 1898, she was 14 and they had a daughter, Marion Abigail Cook, in 1900, and a son, Will Mercer Cook, in 1903. Their daughter, raised by members as had been Mitchell herself. Their son became a professor at Howard University and United States Ambassador to Niger, during 1894 and 1895, Cook studied with Dvořák and John White at the National Conservatory of Music. Cook had performed professionally as a student and made his debut in 1889 in Washington and his performance career as a soloist was short lived, however. Because of stricter segregation in the music community, Cook found a home in the musical theatre. In 1890, he director of a chamber orchestra touring the East Coast. He prepared Scenes from the Opera of Uncle Toms Cabin for performance, the performance, which was to take place at the Chicago Worlds Fair in 1893, was canceled. Clorindy, or, The Origin of the Cakewalk—a musical sketch comedy in collaboration with Paul Laurence Dunbar — was his next composition and it was the first all-black show to play in a prestigious Broadway house, Casino Theatres Roof Garden. After this period, he was composer-in-chief and musical director for the George Walker-Bert Williams Company, as he continued to write, he produced many successful musicals. Best known for his songs, Cook used folk elements in an original, many of these songs first appeared in his musicals. The songs were written for choral groups or for solo singers, some were published in A Collection of Negro Songs. Later in his career, Cook was a choral and orchestral conductor. He produced several concerts and organized many choral societies in both New York and in Washington, D. C
