Simon Townshend
Simon Townshend is a British guitarist and songwriter. He is the younger brother of The Who's guitarist Pete Townshend, is most associated with The Who and the various side projects of its original members. Simon Townshend has performed with numerous other acts including Pearl Jam, Dave Grohl and Jeff Beck. Townshend was born in Chiswick, the same area and town where older brother Pete Townshend was born, he grew up into a musical family. He was the youngest of three sons born to Cliff Townshend, a professional saxophonist in The Squadronaires, his wife Betty Townshend, who had an early career as a singer. By the time he was born, his father's career as a jazz musician was winding down, while Pete became successful as the primary songwriter of the rock band The Who in the mid-1960s. At the age of nine, Simon Townshend recorded backing vocals to the track "Smash the Mirror" with Paul Townshend on The Who's rock opera Tommy and in 1975 appeared as the Newsboy in the 1975 film Tommy. In 1974, Townshend released his debut single When I'm a Man at the early age of 13 and 9 years in 1983 he released his first solo album Sweet Sound and Moving Target in 1985.
In 1989 Simon Townshend appeared on Pete Townshend's fifth solo album The Iron Man: The Musical by Pete Townshend, singing on the short song "Man Machines" and an alternative version of "Dig". In 1994 he toured with The. In 1996, after starting his own record label and production company, Stir Music, Simon Townshend released several other albums including studio and live performances, he joined The Who as a second guitarist for their Quadrophenia Tour in 1996 and 1997. He rejoined the band as a full touring member in 2002 and has played with them on each of their tours since. Simon Townshend joined Casbah Club in 2004, which included Bruce Foxton and Mark Brzezicki and Bruce Watson, where he functioned as lead guitarist, lead vocalist and songwriter. In 2006 Simon Townshend joined the European leg of The Who's tour, playing a support set with Casbah Club as well as performing with The Who. Simon Townshend played rhythm guitar and performed backing vocals, he played a modified Fender Stratocaster with P-90 pick-ups.
Simon Townshend uses a signature guitar designed and developed by JJ Guitars in addition to their Retro Lux model. His first credited collaboration with The Who involved participation as one of the supporting choralists for Ken Russell's film adaptation of Tommy, released in 1975, he had contributed backing vocals to The Who's Endless Wire album in 2006. On 11 August 2009 Simon joined Pearl Jam onstage at the Shepherd's Bush Empire in London for a performance of "The Real Me" from The Who's Quadrophenia album. In the fall of 2009, he embarked on a tour of the US with the No Plan B band; the band continued touring in the spring of 2010, playing a number of dates in support of Eric Clapton. Further tours in 2011 and 2012 followed, with the band performing a complete version of Tommy. In February 2012, he began his own tour of the UK, in support of his new album, credited as his most impactful solo recording to date "Looking Out Looking In", which London's Daily Express rated 5/5, calling it "utterly compelling" and naming Simon Townshend "a genuinely original talent."His live band for this contained Tony Lowe, Phil Spalding, Greg Pringle, His live shows have been variously described as "supercharged", "irresistible" and a "catharsis".
Billboard labelled him "impressive" and Goldmine affirmed, "truly enjoyable listening." In short, as London's Gig Guide said, "you would be a fool to miss him."In the late summer and fall of 2012, he played with The Who on the Quadrophenia and More tour, which included a performance at the 2012 Summer Olympics closing ceremony. In July 2014 at Milton Keynes Bowl he again joined Pearl Jam on stage to perform his song I'm the answer. From 2014 to 2016, Townsend joined The Who on their 50th anniversary tour, The Who Hits 50!. In 2018, he toured with Roger Daltrey. Sweet Sound Moving Target Among Us Animal Soup Venustraphobia as Casbah Club Looking Out Looking In Denial Simontownshendis Scraps Ages Something New Bare Bodies Bare Assets Animal Soup Live at the Astoria "When I'm a Man" "Janie" "Turn It On" "Ready for Action" "Another Planet" "I'm the Answer" "So Real" "Sweet Sound" "Barriers" "Meet You" "Broken Heart" "Walking in Wonderland" "The Way It Is" "Bare Essence" Simon Townshend is married to Janie Townshend, with whom he has three children.
His song "Girl in New York" was written for her. Official homepage Simon Townshend's weblog JJ Guitars page devoted to Simon Townshend
American Library Association
The American Library Association is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association with more than 57,000 members. Founded by Justin Winsor, Charles Ammi Cutter, Samuel S. Green, James L. Whitney, Melvil Dewey, Fred B. Perkins, Charles Evans, Thomas W. Bicknell on October 6, 1876 during the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia and chartered in 1879 in Massachusetts, its head office is now in Chicago. During the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, 103 librarians, 90 men and 13 women, responded to a call for a "Convention of Librarians" to be held October 4–6 at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. At the end of the meeting, according to Ed Holley in his essay "ALA at 100," "the register was passed around for all to sign who wished to become charter members," making October 6, 1876, to be ALA's birthday. In attendance were 90 men and 13 women, among them Justin Winsor, William Frederick Poole, Charles Ammi Cutter, Melvil Dewey, Richard Rogers Bowker.
Attendees came from as far west from England. The aim of the association, in that resolution, was "to enable librarians to do their present work more and at less expense." The association has worked throughout its history to define, extend and advocate for equity of access to information. Library activists in the 1930s pressured the American Library Association to be more responsive to issues put forth by young members involved with issues such as peace, library unions and intellectual freedom. In 1931, the Junior Members Round Table was formed to provide a voice for the younger members of the ALA, but much of what they had to say resurfaced in the social responsibility movement to come years later. During this period, the first Library Bill of Rights was drafted by Forrest Spaulding to set a standard against censorship and was adopted by the ALA in 1939; this has been recognized as the moment defining modern librarianship as a profession committed to intellectual freedom and the right to read over government dictates.
The ALA formed the Staff Organization's Round Table in 1936 and the Library Unions Round Table in 1940. The ALA appointed a committee to study censorship and recommend policy after the banning of The Grapes of Wrath and the implementation of the LBR; the committee reported in 1940 that intellectual freedom and professionalism were linked and recommended a permanent committee – Committee on Intellectual Freedom. The ALA made revisions to strengthen the LBR in June 1948, approved the Statement on Labeling in 1951 to discourage labeling material as subversive, adopted the Freedom to Read Statement and the Overseas Library Statement in 1953. In 1961, the ALA took a stand regarding service to African Americans and others, advocating for equal library service for all. An amendment was passed to the LBR in 1961 that made clear that an individual's library use should not be denied or abridged because of race, national origin, or political views; some communities decided to close their doors rather than desegregate.
In 1963, the ALA commissioned a study, Access to Public Libraries, which found direct and indirect discrimination in American libraries. In 1967, some librarians protested against a pro-Vietnam War speech given by General Maxwell D. Taylor at the annual ALA conference in San Francisco; this group called themselves the Organizing Committee for the ALA Round Table on Social Responsibilities of Libraries. This group drew in many other under-represented groups in the ALA who lacked power, including the Congress for Change in 1969; this formation of the committee was approved in 1969 and would change its name to the Social Responsibilities Round Table in 1971). After its inception, the Round Table of Social Responsibilities began to press ALA leadership to address issues such as library unions, working conditions and intellectual freedom; the Freedom to Read Foundation was created by ALA's Executive Board in 1969. The Black Caucus of the ALA and the Office for Literacy and Outreach were set up in 1970.
In June 1990, the ALA approved "Policy on Library Services to the Poor" and in 1996 the Task Force on Hunger Homelessness, Poverty was formed to resurrect and promote the ALA guidelines on library services to the poor. In 2014, Courtney Young, the president of the association, commented on the background and implications of a racist joke author Daniel Handler made as African-American writer Jacqueline Woodson received a National Book Award for Brown Girl Dreaming. "His comments were inappropriate and fell far short of the association's commitment to diversity," said Young. "Handler's remarks come at a time. Works from authors and illustrators of color make up less than 8 percent of children's titles produced in 2013; the ALA hopes this regrettable incident will be used to open a dialogue on the need for diversity in the publishing industry in regards to books for young people."The ALA Archives, including historical documents, non-current records, digital records, are held at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign archives.
ALA membership is open to any person or organization, though most of its members are libraries or librarians. Most members live and
David Carradine
David Carradine was an American actor, musician and martial artist. He played the leading role of peace-loving Shaolin monk Kwai Chang Caine in the television series Kung Fu and portrayed Frankenstein in Death Race 2000 and Bill in both Kill Bill films, he was a member of the Carradine family of actors that began with John Carradine. His father's acting career, which included major and minor roles on stage and television, in cinema, spanned over four decades. A prolific "B" movie actor, David Carradine appeared in more than 100 feature films in a career spanning more than six decades, he received nominations for a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy Award for his work on Kung Fu, received three further Golden Globe nominations for his performances in Woody Guthrie biopic Bound for Glory, the miniseries North and South, Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill: Volume 2, for which he won the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor. Films that featured Carradine continued to be released after his death; these posthumous credits were from a variety of genres including action, drama, martial arts, science fiction, westerns.
In addition to his acting career, Carradine was a musician. Moreover, influenced by his Kung Fu role, he studied martial arts. On April 1, 1997, Carradine received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, he was arrested and prosecuted for a variety of offenses, which involved substance abuse. On June 3, 2009, he was found dead in a closet in his hotel room in Bangkok, Thailand due to a fatal autoerotic asphyxiation accident. Carradine was born on December 8, 1936, as John Arthur Carradine, in Hollywood, the oldest child of actor John Carradine and his wife Ardanelle Abigail, he was a half-brother of Bruce, Keith and Robert Carradine, an uncle of Ever Carradine and Martha Plimpton, most of whom are actors. Of Irish descent, he was a great-grandson of Methodist evangelical author Beverly Carradine and a grandnephew of artist Will Foster. Called "Jack" by his family, Carradine's childhood was turbulent, his parents divorced and remarried. At the time of Carradine's parents' marriage, his mother had a son by her first husband, whom John adopted.
John Carradine planned a large family, but after his wife had a series of miscarriages, he discovered she had gotten numerous abortions without his knowledge, which had rendered her unable to carry a baby to full term. Against this backdrop of marital discord, David succeeded in committing suicide by hanging at the age of five, he said the incident followed his discovery that he and his older half-brother, adopted by John, had different biological fathers. Carradine added, "My father saved me, confiscated my comic book collection and burned it –, scarcely the point."After three years of marriage, Ardenelle filed for divorce from John, but the couple remained married for another five years. Divorce came in 1944, when Carradine was seven years old, his father left California to avoid court action in the alimony settlement. After the couple engaged in a series of court battles over child custody and alimony, which at one point landed John in jail, Jack joined his father in New York City. By this time, his father had remarried.
For the next few years David was shuffled between boarding schools, foster homes, reform school. He would accompany his father while the elder Carradine performed summer theater throughout the Northeast. Carradine spent time in Massachusetts and one miserable winter milking cows on a farm in Vermont. David Carradine returned to California, where he graduated from Oakland High School, he attended Oakland Junior College for a year before transferring to San Francisco State College, where he studied drama and music theory, wrote music for the drama department's annual revues while juggling work at menial jobs, a fledgling stage acting career, his studies. After he dropped out of college, Carradine spent some time with the "beatniks" of San Francisco's North Beach and southern California's Venice. During this time he sold baby pictures, he was prosecuted for disturbing the peace. Despite an attempt to dodge the draft, in 1960 Carradine was inducted into the United States Army, where he drew pictures for training aids.
That Christmas he married Donna Lee Becht. While stationed at Fort Eustis, Virginia he helped to establish a theater company that became known as the "entertainment unit."He met fellow inductee Larry Cohen, who cast him in Q, The Winged Serpent. He faced court-martial for shoplifting. In 1962, Donna gave birth to their daughter, Calista. Carradine was honorably discharged after a two-year tour. Upon leaving the Army, Carradine became serious about his acting pursuits, it was at that time that he was advised to change his name to avoid confusion with his famous father. In 1963, he made his television debut on an episode of Armstrong Circle Theatre, "Secret Document X256". Several other television roles were to follow including appearances on Wagon Train, East Side/West Side and Trial, The Virginian, Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Carradine got a contract with Universal; that studio gave him his feature film debut in Taggart, a western based on a novel by Louis L'Amour.
They put him in Bus Riley's Back in Town. In May 1964 Carradine joined the cast of the Broadway play The Deputy by Rolf Hochhuth, replacing Jeremy Brett
Steve Forbert
Samuel Stephen "Steve" Forbert is an American pop music singer-songwriter. Bob Harris of BBC Radio 2 said Forbert has "One of the most distinctive voices anywhere.”His song "Romeo's Tune" reached No. 11 on the U. S. Billboard Hot No. 13 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary Chart. It spent two weeks at No. 8 in Canada. His other singles have all charted on Billboard. Forbert's first four albums all charted on the Billboard 200 chart, with Jack Rabbit Slim certified gold. In 2003, his Any Old Time, album was nominated Grammy Award in the Best Traditional Folk category. Forbert has released three live albums. Forbert's songs have been recorded by several artists, including Rosanne Cash, Keith Urban, Marty Stuart and Webb Wilder. In 2017, a tribute album, An American Troubadour: The Songs of Steve Forbert, was released, with covers of his songs by twenty-one artists. In September 2018, he released his self-penned memoir, Big City Cat: My Life In Folk Rock, with editor Therese Boyd, it accompanied the release of his 19th studio album The Magic Tree on Blue Rose Music.
Forbert was born in Mississippi. As a child, he fell in love with music playing air guitar in a pretend band he called The Mosquitos. Due to a fascination with Top 40 radio, he proclaimed himself a "music junkie." At 17, he started writing songs, soon moved to New York City to experience the punk rock scene of the'70s. There he performed on the street to passersby in Greenwich Village, had early shows as a singer with a guitar and harmonica at punk club CBGB before moving on to folk venues Kenny's Castaways and Folk City. Forbert signed a recording contract with Nemperor in 1978, they released his debut album, Alive on Arrival that year. While some, like Village Voice, called him "the new Dylan," of any comparison to Bob Dylan, he said, "You can't pay any attention to that, it was just a cliché back and it's nothing I take seriously. I'm off the hook — I don't have to be smarter than everybody else and know all the answers like Bob Dylan."Even though the sleeve of his second album Jackrabbit Slim stated that "Romeo's Tune" is "dedicated to the memory of Florence Ballard", the song is not about the Supremes singer who died in 1976.
The song, which went to No. 11, was written about a girl from Forbert's hometown of Meridian, but was dedicated to Ballard because, as Forbert explained, "that seemed like such bad news to me and such sad news. She wasn't taken care of by the music business, not a new story." The piano part on "Romeo's Tune" was played by former Elvis Presley pianist Bobby Ogdin. Jackrabbit Slim was recorded live at Quadrophonic Studio in Nashville and produced by John Simon, who had worked with The Band. Jackrabbit Slim peaked at No. 54 in the UK Albums Chart. The album reached No. 20 on the Billboard Top 200 album chart. Forbert had a cameo appearance in Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" video, playing her boyfriend. In 1984, Forbert had a disagreement with his record company Nemperor and contractual issues prevented him from recording for a number of years afterwards, his 1988 album, Streets of This Town, the 1992 followup The American in Me were released by Geffen Records. They received significant airplay.
In the years following, Forbert recorded more albums of songs he wrote and sang, accompanied by his guitar. He maintained a constant touring presence as well. By 1985, Forbert relocated to Nashville, his tribute album to Jimmie Rodgers, Any Old Time, was nominated for a 2004 Grammy Award in the Best Traditional Folk category. In 2006, he was inducted into the Mississippi Music Hall of Fame, in 2007, Keith Urban covered his hit "Romeo's Tune." The same year, Forbert's music was featured in the film, Margot at the Wedding starring Nicole Kidman. Forbert wrote new music in support of the Occupy Wall St. movement He began doing photography, using an old LG phone. An exhibit of his cell phone photographs opened at the Tinney Contemporary Art Gallery in Nashville in September 2011. In 2012, he joined Blue Corn Music, they released Over With You, produced by Chris Goldsmith, that same year. Musical backing on the record included Ben Sollee on cello and bass, with Ben Harper guesting on guitar on several tracks.
American Songwriter stated "it’s all lovely, lyrically moving and beautifully performed" and "Like Warren Zevon, Gram Parsons, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, Steve Forbert has left his unmistakable imprint on the landscape of American music. After destruction of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, Forbert released a music video, "Sandy," to raise awareness about the storm and its aftermath. In 2013, Blue Corn Music re-released Forbert's first two albums - Alive on Arrival, its gold-certified follow-up Jackrabbit Slim; that year marked the 35th anniversary of the release of Alive on Arrival, Forbert played that album in its entirety at a number of shows. Alive on Arrival was profiled as one of the greatest debut albums in the book Please Allow Me To Introduce Myself. Forbert's memoir, Big City Cat: My Life in Folk-Rock, was edited by Therese Boyd and released in September 2018; the book covers his four-decade-long career. To accompany the book, at the same time, Forbert released The Magic Tree album on Blue Rose Music.
The twelve tracks were culled from demos and new material, builds on his pop and folk rock style. Joining Forbert on The Magic Tree is longtime accompanying guitarist Clay Barnes, the album was produced by Karl Derfler. in 2017, Forbert received a cancer diagnosis. As a result, he had one kidney removed, received chemotherapy and today is cancer free. Alive on Arrival, Nemperor/CBS Records, 1978 Jackrabbit
Bruce Dern
Bruce MacLeish Dern is an American actor playing supporting villainous characters of unstable nature. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Coming Home and the Academy Award for Best Actor for Nebraska, his other film appearances include The Cowboys, Family Plot, Black Sunday and The Hateful Eight. Dern was born in the son of Jean and John Dern, a utility chief and attorney, he grew up in Illinois. His paternal grandfather, was a Utah governor and Secretary of War. Dern's maternal grandfather was a chairman of the Carson and Scott stores, his maternal granduncle was poet Archibald MacLeish, his maternal great-grandfather was Scottish-born businessman Andrew MacLeish. Dern's godfather was Illinois governor and two-time presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson II, his ancestry includes Dutch, English and Scottish. He attended the University of Pennsylvania. Dern starred in the Philadelphia premiere of Waiting for Godot. Dern appeared in an uncredited role in Wild River as Jack Roper, so upset with his friend for hitting a woman that he punches himself.
He played the sailor in a few flashbacks with Marnie's mother in Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie. Dern played a murderous rustler in Clint Eastwood's Hang'Em High and a gunfighter in Support Your Local Sheriff!. He played cattle-thief Asa Watts, who murders John Wayne's character in The Cowboys. Wayne warned Dern, "America will hate you for this." Dern replied, "Yeah, but they'll love me in Berkeley." Having played a series of villains, that same year he played against type as a sensitive ecologist in the science-fiction film Silent Running. He played a psychotic Goodyear Blimp pilot who launches a terrorist attack at the Super Bowl in Black Sunday. Dern was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Coming Home. In 1983, he won the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the 33rd Berlin International Film Festival for That Championship Season. In 2013, Dern won the Best Actor Award at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival for Alexander Payne's Nebraska, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Dern was married to Marie Dawn Pierce from 1957 to 1959. He married Diane Ladd in 1960, their first daughter, Diane Elizabeth Dern, died at eighteen months from head injuries after falling into a swimming pool on May 18, 1962. The couple's second daughter, Laura, is an actor. After his divorce from Ladd in 1969, Dern married Andrea Beckett. Dern and their daughter Laura received adjoining stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on November 1, 2010. Bruce Dern on IMDb Bruce Dern at the Internet Broadway Database Bruce Dern at the University of Wisconsin's Actors Studio audio collection Bruce Dern at AllMovie Cinema Retro's Evening with Bruce Dern at The Players, New York City
Don McLean
Donald McLean III is an American singer-songwriter, best known for his 1971 hit song "American Pie", an 8.5-minute folk rock "cultural touchstone" about the loss of innocence of the early rock and roll generation. His other hit singles include "Vincent", "Dreidel", a rendition of Roy Orbison's "Crying", a rendition of the Skyliners' "Since I Don't Have You", "Wonderful Baby", his composition "And I Love You So" has been sung by Elvis Presley, Perry Como, Helen Reddy, Glen Campbell, others, in 2000, Madonna had a hit with a rendition of "American Pie". In 2004, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In January 2018, BMI certified that "American Pie" and "Vincent" had reached five million and three million airplays respectively. McLean's grandfather and father, both named Donald McLean, had roots originating in Scotland; the Buccis, the family of McLean's mother, came from Abruzzo in central Italy. They settled in Port Chester, New York at the end of the 19th century, he has other extended family in Los Boston.
Though some of his early musical influences included Frank Sinatra and Buddy Holly, as a teenager, McLean became interested in folk music the Weavers' 1955 recording At Carnegie Hall. He missed long periods of school because of childhood asthma music lessons, although McLean slipped back in his studies, his love of music was allowed to flourish. By age 16, he had bought his first guitar and began making contacts in the music business, becoming friends with the folk singers Erik Darling and Fred Hellerman of the Weavers. Hellerman said, "He called me one day and said,'I'd like to come and visit you', that's what he did! We became good friends — he has the most remarkable music memory of anyone I've known."When McLean was 15, his father died. Fulfilling his father's request, the singer graduated from Iona Preparatory School in 1963, attended Villanova University, dropping out after four months. After leaving Villanova, McLean became associated with the famed folk music agent Harold Leventhal for several months before teaming up with his personal manager, Herb Gart, for 18 years.
For the next six years, he performed at venues and events including The Bitter End and the Gaslight Cafe in New York, the Newport Folk Festival, the Cellar Door in Washington, D. C. and the Troubadour in Los Angeles. Gart's 18 year tenure as McLean's manager ended acrimoniously in the 1980s. Following Herb Gart's death in September 2018, Don McLean wrote: I feel it is important to note that Herb did many good things for me in the beginning but could not deal with my success, as odd as that may sound. In about 1982 Herb told me his associate Walter Hofer who ran Copyright Service Bureau had stolen $90,000 from my account but had "put it back"; this was a lie. Furthermore the amount turned out to be more like $200,000 and because Gart was now complicit in this crime I fired him, he sued me but was never heard from again. There is so much of this in my business and artists sweep it under the rug but I don’t. I want people to know the truth about my journey. Don McLean. McLean attended night school at Iona College and received a bachelor's degree in business administration in 1968.
He turned down a scholarship to Columbia University Graduate School in favor of pursuing a career as a singer-songwriter, performing at such venues as Caffè Lena in Saratoga Springs, New York and the Main Point in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. That year, with the help of a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts, McLean began reaching a wider audience, with visits to towns up and down the Hudson River, he learned the art of performing from mentor Pete Seeger. McLean accompanied Seeger on his Clearwater boat trip up the Hudson River in 1969 to raise awareness about environmental pollution in the river. During this time, McLean wrote songs. McLean co-edited the book Songs and Sketches of the First Clearwater Crew, with sketches by Thomas B. Allen, for which Pete Seeger wrote the foreword. Seeger and McLean sang "Shenandoah" on the 1974 Clearwater album. McLean still thinks about his experiences of working with Seeger: "Hardly a day goes by when I don’t think of Pete and how generous and supportive he was.
If you could understand his politics and you got to know him, he was some kind of modern day saint” McLean recorded Tapestry in 1969 in Berkeley, California during the student riots. After being rejected 72 times by labels, the album was released by Mediarts, a label that had not existed when he first started to look for a label, he worked on the album for a couple of years before putting it out. It attracted good reviews but little notice outside the folk community, though on the Easy Listening chart "Castles in the Air" was a success, in 1973 "And I Love You So" became a number 1 Adult Contemporary hit for Perry Como. McLean's major break came when Mediarts was taken over by United Artists Records, thus securing the promotion of a major label for his second album, American Pie; the album launched two number one hits in the title song and "Vincent". American Pie's success made McLean an international star and piqued interest in his first album, which charted more than two years after its initial release.
McLean's magnum opus "American Pie" is a sprawling, impressionistic ballad inspired by the deaths of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, J. P. Richardson in a plane crash in 1959, developments in American youth culture in the subsequent decade
Emmylou Harris
Emmylou Harris is an American singer and musician. She has released dozens of albums and singles over the course of her career and won 14 Grammys, the Polar Music Prize, numerous other honors, including induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In 2018 she was presented the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, her work and recordings include work as a solo artist, a bandleader, an interpreter of other composers' works, a singer-songwriter, a backing vocalist and duet partner. She has worked with numerous artists. Harris is from a career military family, her father, Walter Harris, was a Marine Corps officer, her mother, was a wartime military wife. Her father was reported missing in action in Korea in 1952 and spent ten months as a prisoner of war. Born in Birmingham, Harris spent her childhood in North Carolina and Woodbridge, where she graduated from Gar-Field Senior High School as class valedictorian, she won a drama scholarship to the UNCG School of Music and Dance at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she began to study music, learn the songs of Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez on guitar.
She dropped out of college to pursue her musical aspirations, moved to New York City, working as a waitress to support herself while performing folk songs in Greenwich Village coffeehouses during the 1960s folk music boom. She recorded her first album, Gliding Bird. Harris and Slocum soon divorced, Harris and her newborn daughter Hallie moved in with her parents in Clarksville, Maryland, a suburb near Washington, D. C. Harris soon returned to performing as part of a trio with Tom Guidera. In 1971, members of the country rock group the Flying Burrito Brothers saw. Instead, Hillman recommended her to Gram Parsons, looking for a female vocalist to collaborate with on his first solo album, GP. Harris toured as a member of Parsons's band, the Fallen Angels, in 1973, the pair shone during vocal harmonies and duets; that year and Harris worked on a studio album, Grievous Angel. Parsons died in his motel room near what is now Joshua Tree National Park on September 19, 1973, from an accidental overdose of drugs and alcohol.
Parsons's Grievous Angel was released posthumously in 1974, three more tracks from his sessions with Harris were included on another posthumous Parsons album, Sleepless Nights, in 1976. One more album of recorded material from that period was packaged as Live 1973, but was not released until 1982. Warner Brothers A&R representative Mary Martin introduced Harris to Canadian producer Brian Ahern, who produced her major label debut album, Pieces of the Sky, released in 1975 on Reprise Records; the album was eclectic by Nashville standards, including cover versions of the Beatles' "For No One", Merle Haggard's "Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down" and the Louvin Brothers' "If I Could Only Win Your Love". It featured "Bluebird Wine", a composition by a young Texas songwriter, Rodney Crowell, the first in a long line of songwriters whose talents Harris has championed; the record was one of the most expensive country records produced at the time, featuring the talents of James Burton, Glen Hardin, Ron Tutt, Ray Pohlman, Bill Payne, as well as two tracks that were cut with the Angel Band.
Two singles were released: "Too Far Gone", which charted at No. 73, Harris's first big hit, "If I Could Only Win Your Love", a duet with Herb Pedersen, which peaked at No. 4. Executives of Warner Bros. Records told Harris they would agree to record her if she would "get a hot band". Harris did so, enlisting guitarist James Burton and pianist Glen Hardin, both of whom had played with Elvis Presley as well as Parsons. Burton was a renowned guitarist, starting in Ricky Nelson's band in the 1950s, Hardin had been a member of the Crickets. Other Hot Band members were drummer John Ware, pedal steel guitarist Hank DeVito, bassist Emory Gordy, Jr. with whom Harris had worked while performing with Parsons. Singer-songwriter Crowell was enlisted as a rhythm duet partner. Harris's first tour schedule dovetailed around Presley's, owing to Burton and Hardin's continuing commitments to Presley's band; the Hot Band lived up to its name, with most of the members moving on with fresh talent replacing them as they went on to solo careers of their own.
Elite Hotel, released in December 1975, established that the buzz created by Pieces of the Sky was well-founded. Unusual for country albums at the time, which revolved around a hit single, Harris's albums borrowed their approach from the album-oriented rock market. In terms of quality and artistic merit, tracks like "Sin City", "Wheels", "Till I Gain Control Again", which weren't singles stood against tracks like "Together Again", "Sweet Dreams", "One of These Days", which were. Elite Hotel was a No. 1 country album and did sufficiently well as a crossover success with the rock audience. Harris appealed to those who disapproved of the country market's pull toward crossover pop singles. Elite Hotel won a Grammy in 1976 for Female. Harris's reputation for guest work continued, she contributed to albums by Linda Ronstadt, Guy Clark and Neil Young, she was tapped by Bob Dylan to perform on his Desi
