Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, located on the shore of Lake Erie in downtown Cleveland, Ohio and archives the history of the best-known and most influential artists, producers and other notable figures who have had some major influence on the development of rock and roll. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation was established on April 20, 1983, by Atlantic Records founder and chairman Ahmet Ertegun. In 1986, Cleveland was chosen as the Hall of Fame's permanent home. Founder Ahmet Ertegun assembled a team that included attorney Suzan Evans, Rolling Stone magazine editor and publisher Jann S. Wenner, attorney Allen Grubman, record executives Seymour Stein, Bob Krasnow, Noreen Woods; the Foundation began inducting artists in 1986. The search committee considered several cities, including Philadelphia, Detroit, New York City, Cleveland. Cleveland lobbied for the museum, with civic leaders in Cleveland pledging $65 million in public money to fund the construction, citing that WJW disc jockey Alan Freed both coined the term "rock and roll" and promoted the new genre—and that Cleveland was the location of Freed's Moondog Coronation Ball credited as the first major rock and roll concert.
Freed was a member of the hall of fame's inaugural class of inductees in 1986. In addition, Cleveland cited radio station WMMS, which played a key role in breaking several major acts in the U. S. during the 1970s and 1980s, including David Bowie, who began his first U. S. tour in the city, Bruce Springsteen, Roxy Music, Rush among many others. A petition drive was signed by 600,000 fans favoring Cleveland over Memphis, Cleveland ranked first in a 1986 USA Today poll asking where the Hall of Fame should be located. On May 5, 1986, the Hall of Fame Foundation chose Cleveland as the permanent home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Author Peter Guralnick said. Cleveland may have been chosen as the organization's site because the city offered the best financial package; as The Plain Dealer music critic Michael Norman noted, "It was $65 million... Cleveland wanted it here and put up the money." Co-founder Jann Wenner said, "One of the small sad things is we didn't do it in New York in the first place," but added, "I am delighted that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is in Cleveland."
During early discussions on where to build the Hall of Fame and Museum, the Foundation's board considered the Cuyahoga River. The chosen location was along East Ninth Street in downtown Cleveland by Lake Erie, east of Cleveland Stadium. At one point in the planning phase, when a financing gap existed, planners proposed locating the Rock Hall in the then-vacant May Company Building, but decided to commission architect I. M. Pei to design a new building. Initial CEO Dr. Larry R. Thompson facilitated I. M. Pei in designs for the site. Pei came up with the idea of a tower with a glass pyramid protruding from it; the museum tower was planned to stand 200 ft high, but had to be cut down to 162 ft due to its proximity to Burke Lakefront Airport. The building's base is 150,000 square feet; the groundbreaking ceremony took place on June 7, 1993. Pete Townshend, Chuck Berry, Billy Joel, Sam Phillips, Ruth Brown, Sam Moore of Sam and Dave, Carl Gardner of the Coasters and Dave Pirner of Soul Asylum all appeared at the groundbreaking.
The museum was dedicated on September 1, 1995, with the ribbon being cut by an ensemble that included Yoko Ono and Little Richard, among others, before a crowd of more than 10,000 people. The following night an all-star concert was held at the stadium, it featured Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Al Green, Jerry Lee Lewis, Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen, Iggy Pop, John Fogerty, John Mellencamp, many others. In addition to the Hall of Fame inductees, the museum documents the entire history of rock and roll, regardless of induction status. Hall of Fame inductees are honored in a special exhibit located in a wing that juts out over Lake Erie. Since 1986, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has selected new inductees; the formal induction ceremony has been held in New York City 26 times. As of 2018, the induction ceremonies alternate each year between New Cleveland; the 2009 and 2012 induction weeks were made possible by a public–private partnership between the City of Cleveland, the State of Ohio, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, local foundations, civic organizations and individuals.
Collectively these entities invested $5.8 million in 2009 and $7.9 million in 2012 to produce a week of events, including free concerts, a gospel celebration, exhibition openings, free admission to the museum, induction ceremonies filled with both fans and VIPs at Public Hall. Millions viewed the television broadcast of the Cleveland inductions; the economic impact of the 2009 induction week activities was more than $13 million, it provided an additional $20 million in media exposure for the region. The 2012 induction week yielded similar results. There are seven levels in the building. On the lower level is the Ahmet M. Ertegun Exhibition Hall, the museum's main gallery, it includes exhibits on the roots of roll. It featu
Doo-wop
Doo-wop is a genre of rhythm and blues music developed in the 1940s by African American youth in the large cities of the upper east coast including New York. It features vocal group harmony that carries an engaging melodic line to a simple beat with little or no instrumentation. Lyrics are simple about love, ornamented with nonsense syllables, featuring, in the bridge, a melodramatically heartfelt recitative addressed to the beloved. Gaining popularity in the 1950s, doo-wop enjoyed its peak successes in the early 1960s, but continued to influence performers in other genres. Doo-wop has complex musical and commercial origins. Doo-wop's style is a mixture of precedents in composition and vocals that figured in popular music by composers or groups both black and white from the 1930s to the 1940s; such composers as Rodgers and Hart, Hoagy Carmichael and Frank Loesser used a I-VI-II-V-loop chord progression in those hit songs. This characteristic harmonic layout was combined with the AABA chorus form typical for Tin Pan Alley pop.
Hit songs by black groups such as the Ink Spots and the Mills Brothers were slow songs in swing time with simple instrumentation. Doo-wop street singers performed without instrumentation, but made their musical style distinctive, whether using fast or slow tempos, by keeping time using a swing-like off-beat. Doo-wop's characteristic vocal style was influenced by groups such as the Mills Brothers, whose close four-part harmony derived from the earlier barbershop quartet. Bill Kenny, lead singer of the Ink Spots, is credited with introducing the "top and bottom" vocal arrangement featuring a high tenor singing the lead and a bass singer reciting the lyrics in the middle of the song; the Mills Brothers, who were famous in part because in their vocals they sometimes mimicked instruments, exercised an additional influence on street doo-woppers who, singing a cappella arrangements, used wordless onomatopoeia to mimic instruments, the bass singing "bom-bom-bom," a guitar rendered as "shang-a-lang," and brass riffs as "dooooo -wop-wop."
For instance, "Count Every Star" by The Ravens includes vocalizations imitating the "doomph, doomph" plucking of a double bass. The Orioles helped develop the doo-wop sound with their hits "It's Too Soon to Know" and "Crying in the Chapel". Although the musical style originated in the late 1940s and was wildly popular in the 1950s, the term "doo-wop" itself did not appear in print until 1961, in The Chicago Defender, just as the style's vogue was nearing its end. Though the name was attributed to radio disc jockey Gus Gossert, he did not accept credit, stating that "doo-wop" was in use in California to categorize the music."Doo-wop" is itself a nonsense expression. In The Delta Rhythm Boys' 1945 recording, "Just A-Sittin' And A-Rockin", it is heard in the backing vocal, it is heard in The Clovers' 1953 release "Good Lovin'", in the chorus of Carlyle Dundee & The Dundees' 1954 song "Never". The first record to use "doo-wop" in the refrain was The Turbans' 1955 hit, "When You Dance"; the Rainbows embellished the phrase as "do wop de wadda" in their 1955 "Mary Lee".
The term's application was extended to include rhythm and blues groups as far back as the 1940s. Radio and cinema propagated the new style and inspired imitation in many U. S. cities and abroad. The Chords' 1954 hit, "Sh-Boom," is considered to have been the first rhythm-and-blues record to break into the top ten on the Billboard charts, reaching #9. Many other all-white doo-wop groups would appear and produce hits: The Mello-Kings in 1956 with "Tonight, Tonight," The Diamonds in 1957 with the chart-topping "Little Darlin'," The Skyliners in 1959 with "Since I Don't Have You" and in 1960 with "This I Swear," The Tokens in 1961 with "Tonight I Fell In Love" and "I Love My Baby." Productive were doo-wop groups of young Italian-American men who, like their black counterparts, lived in rough neighborhoods, learned their basic musical craft singing in church, would gain experience in the new style by singing on street corners. By the late 1950s and early 60s, many Italian-American groups had national hits: Dion and the Belmonts scored with "I Wonder Why," "Teenager in Love," and "Where or When".
Other Italian-American doo-wop groups were The Earls, The Chimes, The Demensions, The Elegants, The Mystics, The Duprees, Vito & the Salutations, The Gaylords, Johnny Maestro & the Brooklyn Bridge, The Regents and the Ebb Tides, The Del-Satins, The Videls, The Chaperones. Some doo-wop groups were racially mixed. Puert
Chubby Checker
Chubby Checker is an American rock'n roll singer and dancer. He is known for popularising many dance styles including the twist dance style, with his 1960 hit cover of Hank Ballard & The Midnighters' R&B hit "The Twist" and the Pony with hit "Pony Time". In September 2008, "The Twist" topped Billboard's list of the most popular singles to have appeared in the Hot 100 since its debut in 1958, an honor it maintained for an August 2013 update of the list, he popularized the "Limbo Rock" and its trademark limbo dance, as well as various dance styles such as The Fly. Ernest Evans known as Chubby Checker, was born in Spring Gully, South Carolina, he was raised in the projects of South Philadelphia, where he lived with his parents and Eartle Evans, two brothers. By age eight Evans formed a street-corner harmony group, by the time he entered high school, took piano lessons at Settlement Music School, he entertained his classmates by performing vocal impressions of popular entertainers of the day, such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley and Fats Domino.
One of his classmates and friends at South Philadelphia High School was Fabiano Forte, who would become a popular performer of the late 1950s and early 1960s as Fabian. After school Evans would entertain customers at his various jobs, including Fresh Farm Poultry in the Italian Market on Ninth Street and at the Produce Market, with songs and jokes, it was his boss at the Produce Market, "Tony A.", who gave Evans the nickname "Chubby". The owner of Fresh Farm Poultry, Henry Colt, was so impressed by the boy's performances for the customers that he, along with his colleague and friend Kal Mann, who worked as a songwriter for Cameo-Parkway Records, arranged for young Chubby to do a private recording for American Bandstand host Dick Clark. At this recording session Evans got his stage name from Clark's wife, who asked Evans what his name was. "Well", he replied, "my friends call me'Chubby'". As he had just completed a Fats Domino impression, she smiled and said, "As in Checker?" That little play on words got an instant laugh, stuck: from on, Evans would use the name "Chubby Checker".
Checker recorded a novelty single for Clark in which the singer portrayed a school teacher with an unruly classroom of musical performers. The premise allowed Checker to imitate such acts as Fats Domino, The Coasters, Elvis Presley, Cozy Cole, Ricky Nelson, Frankie Avalon, Fabian Forte as The Chipmunks, each singing "Mary Had a Little Lamb". Clark sent the song out as his Christmas greeting, it received such good response that Cameo-Parkway signed Checker to a recording contract. Titled "The Class", the single became Checker's first release, charting at #38 in the spring of 1959. Checker introduced his version of "The Twist" at the age of 18 in July 1960 in Wildwood, New Jersey at the Rainbow Club, "The Twist" went on to become the only single to top the Billboard Hot 100 twice, in two separate chart runs. "The Twist" had peaked at #16 on the Billboard rhythm and blues chart, in the 1959 version recorded by its author, Hank Ballard, whose band The Midnighters first performed the dance on stage.
Checker's "Twist", was a nationwide smash, aided by his many appearances on Dick Clark's American Bandstand, the Top 10 American Bandstand ranking of the song, the teenagers on the show who enjoyed dancing the Twist. The song was so ubiquitous that Checker felt that his critics thought that he could only succeed with dance records typecasting him as a dance artist. Checker lamented:"...in a way, "The Twist" ruined my life. I was on my way to becoming a big nightclub performer, "The Twist" just wiped it out... It got so out of proportion. No one believes I have talent." By 1965 alone, "The Twist" had sold over 15 million copies, was awarded multiple gold discs by the RIAA. Despite Checker's initial disapproval, he found follow-up success with a succession of up-tempo dance tracks, including "The Hucklebuck", "The Fly", "Dance the Mess Around", "Pony Time", which became his second #1 single. Checker's follow-up "twist" single, "Let's Twist Again", won the 1961 Grammy Award for Best Rock and Roll Solo Vocal Performance.
A 1962 duet with Dee Dee Sharp, "Slow Twistin'", reached #3 on the national charts. Other substantial hits included "Dancin' Party", "Popeye the Hitchhiker", "Twenty Miles", "Birdland", "Loddy Lo", the Christmas duet with Bobby Rydell, "Jingle Bell Rock". "Limbo Rock" reached # 2 on 22 -- 29 December 1962. Checker continued to have Top 40 singles until 1965, but changes in public taste ended his hit-making career, he spent much of the rest of the 1960s recording in Europe. "The Twist" was recorded for Cameo Parkway Records and along with the label's other material, became unavailable after the early 1970s because of the company's internal legal disputes. For decades all compilations of Checker's hits consisted of re-recordings; the 1970s saw him become a staple on the oldies circuit, including a temporary stint as a disco artist. Chubby Checker continued to be a superstar in Europe with television and records. A dance-floor cover version of the Beatles' "Back in the U. S. S. R." was released in 1969 on Buddah Records, his first chart entry in three years, reached No. 82.
It was Checker's last chart appearance until 1982 when he hit No. 92 with "Running". In 1971, Checker at his own insistence recorded a psychedelic album filled with music he felt was "current", only released in Europe. Named Chequered!, it was renamed over the years in su
King Records (United States)
King Records was an American leading independent record company and label founded in 1943 by Syd Nathan in Cincinnati, Ohio. The label owned several divisions, including Federal Records, which launched the career of James Brown, it operated until 1975, now operates as a reissue label. In the beginning, King specialized at the time known as hillbilly music. King advertised, "If it's a King, It's a Hillbilly – If it's a Hillbilly, it's a King." One of the label's hits was "I'm Using My Bible for a Road Map" by Smiley. Important recordings in this field were done by the Delmore Brothers and Wayne Raney; the Delmores and Moon Mullican played a country-boogie style, similar to rockabilly. Several King artists, such as Bill Beach, are in the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. Queen Records was the "Race Records" division of King Records and was owned by Syd Nathan, it was founded in 1943 and was folded into King. King owned Federal Records, which launched the career of James Brown; the label hired Ralph Bass and recorded R&B musicians such as Hank Ballard, Roy Brown, Valerie Carr, Champion Jack Dupree, Ivory Joe Hunter, Joe Tex, Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Otis Williams and the Charms.
King had a long legal battle with James Brown after he violated his contract with the company. King bought Bethlehem Records. In 1951, Federal Records made the crossover of an R&B record into the white pop music charts with Billy Ward and the Dominoes' "Sixty Minute Man", it reached number 17 on number 1 in the R&B chart. King mixed the R&B sides of the label. Many of its country singers, such as Moon Mullican, the Delmore Brothers, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Zeb Turner, covered the label's R&B songs, such as "Grandpa Stole My Baby", "Rocket to the Moon", "Bloodshot Eyes", "I Got Loaded". R&B artists recorded country songs, such as Bubber Johnson's "Keep a Light in the Window for Me". During the 1950s, King distributed portable phonographs. King Records was unique among the independent labels because the entire production process was done in-house: recording, printing and shipping; this gave Nathan complete control, a record could be recorded one day and shipped to radio stations the next day in quantities as small as 50.
For that reason, King records that did not sell well are now rare. Seymour Stein, a co-founder of Sire Records, interned at King Records as a high school student in 1957 and 1958 and worked for King from 1961 to 1963; when Nathan died in 1968, King was acquired by Hal Neely's Starday Records and restarted as Starday and King Records. The songwriting duo of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller bought the label in 1970 but sold it soon afterwards to LIN Broadcasting, which in turn sold it to Tennessee Recording & Publishing, which sold it to Gusto Records in 1974. In 1971, James Brown's recording contract and back catalogue were sold to Polydor Records. Since 2001, Collectables Records has been reissuing the King Records catalogue; the former King Records headquarters, at 1540 Brewster Avenue in Cincinnati, is still standing. A historical marker was placed by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008. Audio Lab Records Bethlehem Records De Luxe Records Federal Records Festival Records Queen Records Starday Records List of record labels King Records discography at Discogs The King Records story King Records on the Internet Archive's Great 78 Project King Records orginial location in Cincinnati, OH
The Independent
The Independent is a British online newspaper. Established in 1986 as a politically independent national morning newspaper published in London, it was controlled by Tony O'Reilly's Independent News & Media from 1997 until it was sold to Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev in 2010; the last printed edition of The Independent was published on Saturday 26 March 2016, leaving only its digital editions. Nicknamed the Indy, it began as a broadsheet, but changed to tabloid format in 2003; until September 2011, the paper described itself on the banner at the top of every newspaper as "free from party political bias, free from proprietorial influence". It tends to take a pro-market stance on economic issues; the daily edition was named National Newspaper of the Year at the 2004 British Press Awards. In June 2015, it had an average daily circulation of just below 58,000, 85 per cent down from its 1990 peak, while the Sunday edition had a circulation of just over 97,000. Launched in 1986, the first issue of The Independent was published on 7 October in broadsheet format.
It was produced by Newspaper Publishing plc and created by Andreas Whittam Smith, Stephen Glover and Matthew Symonds. All three partners were former journalists at The Daily Telegraph who had left the paper towards the end of Lord Hartwell's ownership. Marcus Sieff was the first chairman of Newspaper Publishing, Whittam Smith took control of the paper; the paper was created at a time of a fundamental change in British newspaper publishing. Rupert Murdoch was challenging long-accepted practices of the print unions and defeated them in the Wapping dispute. Production costs could be reduced which, it was said at the time, created openings for more competition; as a result of controversy around Murdoch's move to Wapping, the plant was having to function under siege from sacked print workers picketing outside. The Independent attracted some of the staff from the two Murdoch broadsheets who had chosen not to move to his company's new headquarters. Launched with the advertising slogan "It is. Are you?", challenging both The Guardian for centre-left readers and The Times as the newspaper of record, The Independent reached a circulation of over 400,000 by 1989.
Competing in a moribund market, The Independent sparked a general freshening of newspaper design as well as, within a few years, a price war in the market sector. When The Independent launched The Independent on Sunday in 1990, sales were less than anticipated due to the launch of the Sunday Correspondent four months prior, although this direct rival closed at the end of November 1990; some aspects of production merged with the main paper, although the Sunday paper retained a distinct editorial staff. In the 1990s, The Independent was faced with price cutting by the Murdoch titles, started an advertising campaign accusing The Times and The Daily Telegraph of reflecting the views of their proprietors, Rupert Murdoch and Conrad Black, it featured spoofs of the other papers' mastheads with the words The Rupert Murdoch or The Conrad Black, with The Independent below the main title. Newspaper Publishing had financial problems. A number of other media companies were interested in the paper. Tony O'Reilly's media group and Mirror Group Newspapers had bought a stake of about a third each by mid-1994.
In March 1995, Newspaper Publishing was restructured with a rights issue, splitting the shareholding into O'Reilly's Independent News & Media, MGN, Prisa. In April 1996, there was another refinancing, in March 1998, O'Reilly bought the other shares of the company for £30 million, assumed the company's debt. Brendan Hopkins headed Independent News, Andrew Marr was appointed editor of The Independent, Rosie Boycott became editor of The Independent on Sunday. Marr introduced a dramatic if short-lived redesign which won critical favour but was a commercial failure as a result of a limited promotional budget. Marr admitted his changes had been a mistake in My Trade. Boycott left in April 1998 to join the Daily Express, Marr left in May 1998 becoming the BBC's political editor. Simon Kelner was appointed as the editor. By this time the circulation had fallen below 200,000. Independent News spent to increase circulation, the paper went through several redesigns. While circulation increased, it did not approach the level, achieved in 1989, or restore profitability.
Job cuts and financial controls reduced the quality of the product. Ivan Fallon, on the board since 1995 and a key figure at The Sunday Times, replaced Hopkins as head of Independent News & Media in July 2002. By mid-2004, the newspaper was losing £5 million per year. A gradual improvement meant. In November 2008, following further staff cuts, production was moved to Northcliffe House, in Kensington High Street, the headquarters of Associated Newspapers; the two newspaper groups' editorial and commercial operations remained separate, but they shared services including security, information technology and payroll. On 25 March 2010, Independent News & Media sold the newspaper to Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev for a nominal £1 fee and £9.25m over the next 10 months, choosing this option over closing The Independent and The Independent on Sunday, which would have cost £28m and £40m due to long-term contracts. In 2009, Lebedev had bought a controlling stake in the London Evening Standard. Two weeks editor Roger Alton resigned.
In July 2011, The Independent's columnist Johann Hari was stripped of the Orwell Prize he had won in 2008 after claims, to which Hari admitted, of plagiarism and inaccuracy. In January 2012, Chris Blackhurst
The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine is a Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It is host to feature articles longer than those in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors; the magazine is noted for its photography relating to fashion and style. The magazine includes various puzzles, which have been popular features since their introduction, its first issue was published on September 6, 1896, contained the first photographs printed in the newspaper. In the early decades it was a section of not an insert as it is today; the creation of a "serious" Sunday magazine was part of a massive overhaul of the newspaper instigated that year by its new owner, Adolph Ochs, who banned fiction, comic strips and gossip columns from the paper, is credited with saving The New York Times from financial ruin. In 1897, the magazine published a 16-page spread of photographs documenting Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, a "costly feat" that resulted in a wildly popular issue and helped boost the magazine to success.
In its early years, The New York Times Magazine began a tradition of publishing the writing of well-known contributors, from W. E. B. Du Bois and Albert Einstein to numerous sitting and future U. S. Presidents. Editor Lester Markel, an "intense and autocratic" journalist who oversaw the Sunday Times from the 1920s through the 1950s, encouraged the idea of the magazine as a forum for ideas. During his tenure, writers such as Leo Tolstoy, Thomas Mann, Gertrude Stein, Tennessee Williams contributed pieces to the magazine. When, in 1970, The New York Times introduced its first Op-Ed page, the magazine shifted away from publishing as many editorial pieces. In 1979, the magazine began publishing Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist William Safire's "On Language", a column discussing issues of English grammar and etymology. Safire's column gained popularity and by 1990 was generating "more mail than anything else" in the magazine; the year 1999 saw the debut of "The Ethicist", an advice column written by humorist Randy Cohen that became a contentious part of the magazine.
In 2011, Ariel Kaminer replaced Cohen as the author of the column, in 2012 Chuck Klosterman replaced Kaminer. Klosterman left in early 2015 to be replaced by a trio of authors—Kenji Yoshino, Amy Bloom, Jack Shafer—who used a conversational format. "Consumed", Rob Walker's regular column on consumer culture, debuted in 2004. The Sunday Magazine features a puzzle page, edited by Will Shortz, that features a crossword puzzle with a larger grid than those featured in the Times during the week, along with other types of puzzles on a rotating basis. In September 2010, as part of a greater effort to reinvigorate the magazine, Times editor Bill Keller hired former staff member and then-editor of Bloomberg Businessweek, Hugo Lindgren, as the editor of The New York Times Magazine; as part of a series of new staff hires upon assuming his new role, Lindgren first hired then–executive editor of O: The Oprah Magazine Lauren Kern to be his deputy editor and hired then-editor of TNR.com, The New Republic magazine's website, Greg Veis, to edit the "front of the book" section of the magazine.
In December 2010, Lindgren hired Joel Lovell story editor at GQ magazine, as deputy editor. In January 2012, humorist John Hodgman, who hosts his comedy court show podcast Judge John Hodgman, began writing a regular column "Judge John Hodgman Rules" for "The One-Page Magazine". In 2004, The New York Times Magazine began publishing an entire supplement devoted to style. Titled T, the supplement appears 14 times a year. In 2009, it launched a Qatari Edition as a standalone magazine. In 2006, the magazine introduced two other supplements: PLAY, a sports magazine published every other month, KEY, a real estate magazine published twice a year. US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey selects and introduces every week poems from world-class poets like recipient of Nobel Prize Tomas Transtromer, recipient of Paz Prize Carlos Pintado, recipient of Pulitzer Prize Gregory Pardlo among others; the magazine features the Sunday version of the crossword puzzle along with other puzzles. The puzzles have been popular features since their introduction.
The Sunday crossword puzzle has more clues and squares and is more challenging than its counterparts featured on the other days of the week. A second puzzle is included with the crossword puzzle; the variety of the second puzzle varies each week. These have included acrostic puzzles, diagramless crossword puzzles, other puzzles varying from the traditional crossword puzzle; the puzzles are edited by Will Shortz, the host of the on-air puzzle segment of NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday. In the September 18, 2005, issue of the magazine, an editors' note announced the addition of The Funny Pages, a literary section of the magazine intended to "engage our readers in some ways we haven't yet tried—and to acknowledge that it takes many different types of writing to tell the story of our time". Although The Funny Pages is no longer published in the magazine, it was made up of three parts: the Strip, the Sunday Serial, True-Life Tales. On July 8, 2007, the magazine stopped printing True-Life Tales; the section has been criticized for being unfunny, sometimes nonsensical, e
Bessemer, Alabama
Bessemer is a city southwest of Birmingham in Jefferson County, United States. The population was 27,456 at the 2010 Census, it is within the Birmingham-Hoover, AL Metropolitan Statistical Area, of which Jefferson County is the center. It developed as an industrial city in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; the town was founded in the postbellum era by the Bessemer Land and Improvement Company, named after Henry Bessemer and owned by coal magnate Henry F. DeBardeleben, he had inherited Daniel Pratt's investments. The mayor and councilmen voted to incorporate the city of Bessemer on September 9, 1887. Located 16 miles southwest of Birmingham, Bessemer grew and its promoters believed that it might overtake the other city in economic power. Given the iron ore and limestone deposits in the area, the city became a center of steelmaking from about 1890 through the 20th century, it attracted rural migrants from across the South, as well as European immigrants. By the 1950s, the city was majority African American in population.
The industry went through considerable restructuring in the late 20th century, jobs moved out of the area. Steel is no longer made here. Bessemer is located 18 miles southwest of Birmingham. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 40.8 square miles, of which 40.7 square miles is land and 0.1 square miles is water. Bessemer is situated in the midst of the iron ore and limestone district of Alabama, in the southern part of Jones Valley. Iron ore was mined on the hills on the city's southeast side, coal was mined to the north and west, limestone deposits were nearby. All three ingredients were necessary for steelmaking, which led to the area becoming a major steel center from about 1890 through the twentieth century. Steel is no longer made within the city limits, but is still manufactured in the neighboring city of Fairfield; the climate in this area is characterized by hot, humid summers and mild to cool winters. According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Bessemer has a humid subtropical climate, abbreviated "Cfa" on climate maps.
As of the 2013 American Community Survey, there were 27,336 people residing in the city. 72.0% were African American, 24.0% White, 0.1% Native American, 0.2% Asian, 0.1% from some other race and 0.4% from two or more races. 3.2 % were Latino of any race. As of the census of 2000, there were 29,672 people, 11,537 households, 7,868 families residing in the city; the population density was 729.0 people per square mile. There were 12,790 housing units at an average density of 314.2 per square mile. The racial makeup of the city was 69.55% Black or African American, 28.93% White, 0.28% Native American, 0.18% Asian, 0.02% Pacific Islander, 0.30% from other races, 0.74% from two or more races. 1.14% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. There were 11,537 households out of which 30.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 34.6% were married couples living together, 29.2% had a female householder with no husband present, 31.8% were non-families. 29.0% of all households were made up of individuals and 13.0% had someone living alone, 65 years of age or older.
The average household size was 2.52 and the average family size was 3.12. In the city, the population was spread out with 26.8% under the age of 18, 9.6% from 18 to 24, 26.1% from 25 to 44, 21.1% from 45 to 64, 16.4% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36 years. For every 100 females, there were 82.9 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 75.8 males. The median income for a household in the city was $23,066, the median income for a family was $28,230. Males had a median income of $29,413 versus $21,552 for females; the per capita income for the city was $12,232. About 24.2% of families and 27.2% of the population were below the poverty line, including 37.8% of those under age 18 and 24.7% of those age 65 or over. In 1900, Bessemer ranked eighth in population in the state, second in amount of capital invested in manufacturing, fourth in the value of its manufactured product for the year. By 1911, ore mining, iron smelting, the manufacture of iron and coke were the chief industries of Bessemer.
Truck farming was an important industry, dating from the area's agricultural past. Both blacks and whites from rural areas were attracted to the city for its new work opportunities. African Americans moved into industrial jobs and became part of integrated unions. Today, ore mining has ended. Manufacturing remains a factor, with the U. S. Pipe and Foundry ductile pipe plant on the city's north side. On May 9, 2007, U. S. Pipe announced; the site was selected, among other reasons, for having available space for potential future expansions. U. S. Pipe is the largest domestic producer of Ductile Iron pipe in sizes 4 inch through 64 inch; the city was once home to a large railroad car manufacturing factory, operated by Pullman Standard for many decades and by Trinity Industries. With railroad restructuring in the late 20th century and other manufacturing moving offshore, this plant ceased most production in the 1990s. Other industries have relocated to this facility; the decline of mining and exodus of the steelmaking and railcar manufacturing industries resulted in extensive loss of jobs.
The city has lost population since a peak in 1970. It faced an economic crisis in the early to mid-1980s, as unemployed workers constituted more than one-third of the workforce. Since that time the c
