1.
Popular music
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Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training and it stands in contrast to both art music and traditional or folk music. Art music was historically disseminated through the performances of music, although since the beginning of the recording industry. Traditional music forms such as blues songs or hymns were passed along orally, or to smaller. The original application of the term is to music of the 1880s Tin Pan Alley period in the United States, although popular music sometimes is known as pop music, the two terms are not interchangeable. Popular music songs and pieces typically have easily singable melodies, in the 2000s, with songs and pieces available as digital sound files, it has become easier for music to spread from one country or region to another. Some popular music forms have become global, while others have an appeal within the culture of their origin. Through the mixture of genres, new popular music forms are created to reflect the ideals of a global culture. The examples of Africa, Indonesia and the Middle East show how Western pop music styles can blend with local traditions to create new hybrid styles. Sales of recordings or sheet music are one measure, middleton and Manuel note that this definition has problems because multiple listens or plays of the same song or piece are not counted. Manuel states that one criticism of music is that it is produced by large media conglomerates and passively consumed by the public. He claims that the listeners in the scenario would not have been able to make the choice of their favorite music, moreover, understandings of popular music have changed with time. A societys popular music reflects the ideals that are prevalent at the time it is performed or published, david Riesman states that the youth audiences of popular music fit into either a majority group or a subculture. The majority group listens to the commercially produced styles while the subcultures find a minority style to transmit their own values and this allows youth to choose what music they identify with, which gives them power as consumers to control the market of popular music. Form in popular music is most often sectional, the most common sections being verse, chorus or refrain, other common forms include thirty-two-bar form, chorus form *, and twelve-bar blues. Popular music songs are rarely composed using different music for each stanza of the lyrics, the verse and chorus are considered the primary elements. Each verse usually has the melody, but the lyrics change for most verses. The chorus usually has a phrase and a key lyrical line which is repeated
2.
Irving Berlin
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Irving Berlin was an American composer and lyricist, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in American history. His music forms a part of the Great American Songbook. Born in Imperial Russia, Berlin arrived in the United States at the age of five. He published his first song, Marie from Sunny Italy, in 1907, receiving 33 cents for the publishing rights and he also was an owner of the Music Box Theatre on Broadway. Alexanders Ragtime Band sparked a dance craze in places as far away as Berlins native Russia. In doing so, said Walter Cronkite, at Berlins 100th birthday tribute, he helped write the story of country, capturing the best of who we are. He wrote hundreds of songs, many becoming major hits, which him a legend before he turned thirty. During his 60-year career he wrote an estimated 1,500 songs, including the scores for 19 Broadway shows and 18 Hollywood films, with his songs nominated eight times for Academy Awards. Many songs became popular themes and anthems, including Easter Parade, White Christmas, Happy Holiday, This Is the Army, Mr. Jones, and Theres No Business Like Show Business. His Broadway musical and 1942 film, This is the Army, Celine Dion recorded it as a tribute, making it no.1 on the charts after the September 11 attacks in 2001. In 2015, pianist and composer Hershey Felder began touring nationwide as a show, portraying Berlin. Composer George Gershwin called him the greatest songwriter that has ever lived, Berlin was born on May 11,1888, in Tolochin, Russian Empire. He was one of eight children of Moses and Lena Lipkin Beilin and his father, a cantor in a synagogue, uprooted the family to America, as did many other Jewish families in the late 19th century. In 1893 they settled in New York City, as of the 1900 census, the name Beilin had changed to Baline. By daylight the house was in ashes, as an adult, Berlin said he was unaware of being raised in abject poverty since he knew no other life. Tsar Alexander III of Russia and then Tsar Nicholas II, his son, had revived with utmost brutality the anti-Jewish pogroms, which created the spontaneous mass exodus to America. When they reached Ellis Island, Israel was put in a pen with his brother and his Yiddish-speaking family eventually settled on Cherry Street, a windowless cold-water basement flat in the Theater District of the Lower East Side. His father, unable to find work as a cantor in New York, took a job at a kosher meat market and gave Hebrew lessons on the side
3.
Alice Faye
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Alice Faye was an American actress and singer, described by the The New York Times as one of the few movie stars to walk away from stardom at the peak of her career. She is often associated with the Academy Award–winning standard Youll Never Know, born Alice Jeane Leppert in New York City, she was the daughter of a New York police officer of German descent, Charles Leppert, and his Irish-American wife, Alice Leppert. Fayes entertainment career began in vaudeville as a girl before she moved to Broadway. By this time, she had adopted her name and first reached a radio audience on Rudy Vallées The Fleischmanns Yeast Hour. Faye got her first major break in 1934, when Lilian Harvey abandoned the lead role in a film version of George Whites 1935 Scandals. Hired first to perform a number with Vallee, Faye ended up as the female lead. She became a hit with audiences of the 1930s, particularly when Fox production head Darryl F. Zanuck made her his protégée. He softened Faye from a show girl to a youthful, yet somewhat motherly, figure. Faye also received a makeover, going from a version of Jean Harlow to a wholesome appearance, in which her platinum hair. In 1938, Faye was cast as the lead in In Old Chicago. Zanuck initially resisted casting Faye, as the role had been written for Jean Harlow. The film was memorable for its twenty-minute ending, a recreation of the Great Chicago Fire. Her co-stars in that film were Tyrone Power and Don Ameche, Faye, Power, and Ameche were reunited for the 1938 release Alexanders Ragtime Band, which was designed to showcase more than twenty Irving Berlin songs, Faye again received strong reviews. One of the most expensive films of its time, it became one of the most successful musicals of the 1930s. By 1939, Faye was named one of the top ten box office draws in Hollywood and that year, she made Rose of Washington Square with Tyrone Power. Although a big hit, the film was based on the real life of comedian Fanny Brice and Brice sued Fox for stealing her story. Because of her status, Fox occasionally placed Faye in films that were put together more for the sake of making money than showcasing Fayes talents. Films like Tail Spin and Barricade were more dramatic in nature than regular Faye films, but, due to her immense popularity, none of the films that she made in the 1930s and 1940s lost money
4.
Kathryn Grayson
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Kathryn Grayson was an American actress and soprano. From the age of twelve, Grayson trained as an opera singer and she was under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by the early 1940s, soon establishing a career principally through her work in musicals. After several supporting roles, she was a performer in such films as Thousands Cheer, Anchors Aweigh with Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly. When film musical production declined, she worked in theatre, appearing in Camelot, later in the decade she performed in several operas, including La bohème, Madama Butterfly, Orpheus in the Underworld and La traviata. She was born Zelma Kathryn Elisabeth Hedrick in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Lillian was of Russian-Mongolian, Native American and English descent, and Charles was of German, Russian-Mongolian and Sicilian descent. Graysons sister, Frances Raeburn was also an actress and singer and she also had two brothers, Clarence Bud E. Hedrick, and Harold. In 1940, an MGM talent scout saw Grayson performing at a music festival, metro hoped to find a replacement for Deanna Durbin, who left the studio for Universal Pictures. For the next 18 months, Grayson went through voice lessons, drama coaching, diction, diets, within a year, Grayson had her first screen test. In the film, she takes part in three musical numbers, ann Sothern was also slated to appear, however, this fell through as well. The film eventually was made in 1944 as Broadway Rhythm and she appeared in three films in 1942, The Vanishing Virginian, Rio Rita and Seven Sweethearts. In the first, Grayson plays the daughter, Rebecca, of the eccentric Yancey family from Lynchburg. Set in 1913, the film was based on Rebecca Yancey Williamss own family, Grayson co-starred in Rio Rita with Abbott and Costello. Grayson portrayed the character, Rita Winslow. In 1943, Grayson appeared in the film Thousands Cheer, along with Gene Kelly, Mickey Rooney, Eleanor Powell, June Allyson, the film was intended as a morale booster for American troops and their families. Grayson starred as the daughter of an Army commander. It was announced in 1942 that Grayson would appear in An American Symphony with Judy Garland, Garland was replaced by June Allyson, and the film was retitled as Two Sisters from Boston and released in 1946. Grayson did not appear in any films for two years, but instead worked at entertaining troops during the war and performing on radio programs. Notably, it is reported that she would perform under the condition that the audience was integrated
5.
Ethel Merman
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Ethel Merman was an American actress and singer. Known primarily for her voice and roles in theatre, she has been called the undisputed First Lady of the musical comedy stage. The Irving Berlin song Theres No Business Like Show Business, written for the musical Annie Get Your Gun, became Mermans signature song. Merman was born in her grandmothers house located at 359 4th Avenue in Astoria, Queens, in New York City in 1908. Her father, Edward Zimmermann, was an accountant with James H. Dunham & Company, a Manhattan wholesale dry-goods company, Edward Zimmermann had been raised in the Dutch Reformed Church and his wife was Presbyterian. Shortly after they married, they joined the Episcopal congregation at Church of the Redeemer and her family was of German and Scottish ancestry. 4 and William Cullen Bryant High School, where she pursued a course that offered secretarial training. At home she tried to emulate their singing styles, but her own voice was difficult to disguise. After graduating from Bryant High School in 1924, – Merman was hired as a stenographer by the Boyce-Ite Company, during this period, Merman also began appearing in nightclubs, first hired by Jimmy Durantes partner Lou Clayton. At this time, she decided the name Ethel Zimmermann was too long for a theater marquee and she considered combining Ethel with Gardner or Hunter, which was her grandmothers maiden name. These considerations got her fathers German ire worked up, finally, she abbreviated Zimmermann to Merman to appease her father. He offered her an exclusive contract, starting at $125 per week. She finally urged Irwin to try to cancel her agreement with Mayo, instead, Merman was hired as a torch singer at Les Ambassadeurs, where the headliner was Jimmy Durante, and the two became lifelong friends. She caught the attention of such as Walter Winchell and Mark Hellinger. Soon after, Merman underwent a tonsillectomy she feared might damage her voice, while performing on the prestigious Keith Circuit, Merman was signed to replace Ruth Etting in the Paramount film Follow the Leader, starring Ed Wynn and Ginger Rogers. Following a successful run at the Brooklyn Paramount, she was signed to perform at the Palace for $500 per week. Upon hearing her sing I Got Rhythm, the Gershwins immediately cast her, Girl Crazy opened on October 14,1930, at the Alvin Theatre, where it ran for 272 performances. The New York Times noted Merman sang with dash, authority, good voice, Merman was fairly blasé about her notices, prompting George Gershwin to ask her mother, Have you ever seen a person so unconcerned as Ethel
6.
Bing Crosby
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Harry Lillis Bing Crosby, Jr. was an American singer and actor. The first multimedia star, from 1931 to 1954 Crosby was a leader in sales, radio ratings. His early career coincided with technical recording innovations such as the microphone and this allowed him to develop a laid-back, intimate singing style that influenced many of the popular male singers who followed him, including Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Dick Haymes, and Dean Martin. Also in 1948, the Music Digest estimated that Crosby recordings filled more than half of the 80,000 weekly hours allocated to recorded radio music, in 1963, Crosby received the first Grammy Global Achievement Award. He is one of only 33 people to have three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in the categories of motion pictures, radio, Crosby influenced the development of the postwar recording industry. He became the first performer to pre-record his radio shows and master his commercial recordings onto magnetic tape. In addition to his work with early tape recording, he helped to finance the development of videotape, bought television stations, bred racehorses, Crosby died at the age of 74 on October 14,1977, from a sudden heart attack in Alcobendas, Spain. Crosby was born on May 2,1903 in Tacoma, Washington, in 1906, Crosbys family moved to Spokane, and in 1913, Crosbys father built a house at 508 E. Sharp Avenue. The house now sits on the campus of Crosbys alma mater Gonzaga University and he was the fourth of seven children, brothers Larry, Everett, Ted, and Bob, and two sisters, Catherine and Mary Rose. His parents were Harry Lowe Crosby, Sr. a bookkeeper, Crosbys mother was a second generation Irish-American. In 1910, seven-year-old Harry Crosby Jr. was forever renamed, the Sunday edition of the Spokesman-Review published a feature called The Bingville Bugle. Written by humorist Newton Newkirk, The Bingville Bugle was a parody of a hillbilly newsletter filled with gossipy tidbits, minstrel quips, creative spelling, and mock ads. A neighbor, 15-year-old Valentine Hobart, shared Crosbys enthusiasm for The Bugle, and noting Crosbys laugh, took a liking to him, eventually, the last vowel was dropped and the nickname stuck. Crosby later described Jolsons delivery as electric, Crosby graduated from Gonzaga High School in 1920 and enrolled at Gonzaga University. He attended Gonzaga for three years, but did not earn a bachelors degree, as a freshman, he played on the universitys baseball team. The university granted him a doctorate in 1937. In 1923, Crosby was invited to join a new band composed of school students a few years younger than himself. Al Rinker, Miles Rinker, James Heaton, Claire Pritchard and Robert Pritchard, along with drummer Crosby, formed the Musicaladers, the group performed on Spokane radio station KHQ, but disbanded after two years
7.
Liza Minnelli
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Liza May Minnelli is an American actress and singer. She is considered both an American icon and a gay icon, Minnelli is the daughter of film actress and singer Judy Garland and film director Vincente Minnelli. She began her career as a teenager in New York City as a theatre actress. Minnelli also regularly performed with her famous mother, including a 1964 joint engagement at the London Palladium and in Garlands own CBS television series The Judy Garland Show. In 1965 she made her Broadway debut in the musical Flora the Red Menace and was awarded the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical and her other film roles have included Golden Globe Award nominated performances in Lucky Lady, New York, New York and Arthur. She has successfully returned to the Broadway stage on a number of occasions, from the late 1970s onwards, Minnellis work has predominantly focused on concert tours and nightclub performances. She gave highly regarded performances at Carnegie Hall in 1979 and 1987, in the late 1980s she toured alongside Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. in Frank, Liza & Sammy, The Ultimate Event. Minnelli was born on March 12,1946 in Hollywood, California, to Vincente Minnelli and she attended New York Citys High School of Performing Arts and Chadwick School. Her first performing experience on film was at age three where she appeared in the scene of the musical In the Good Old Summertime. The film stars Garland and Van Johnson, Minnelli has a half-sister, Lorna, and half-brother, Joey, from Garlands marriage to Sid Luft. She also has another half-sister, Christiane Nina Minnelli, from her fathers second marriage, Minnellis godparents were Kay Thompson and Ira Gershwin. Her parents named her after Ira Gershwins song Liza, during 1961, Minnelli was an apprentice at the Cape Cod Melody Tent, Hyannis, Massachusetts. She appeared in the chorus of Flower Drum Song and played the part of Muriel in Take Me Along, Minnelli began performing professionally at age 17, in 1963, in an Off-Broadway revival of the musical Best Foot Forward, for which she received the Theatre World Award. The next year, her mother invited Liza to perform with her in concert at the London Palladium, both concerts were recorded and released as an album. She attended Scarsdale High School for one year, starring in a production of The Diary of Anne Frank which then went to Israel on tour and she turned to Broadway at 19, and won her first Tony Award as a leading actress for Flora the Red Menace. It was the first time she worked with the musical duo John Kander, Minnelli began as a nightclub singer as an adolescent, making her professional nightclub debut at the age of 19 at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D. C. That same year she began appearing in clubs and on stage in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami. Her success as a performer led to her recording several albums for Capitol Records
8.
Ella Fitzgerald
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Ella Jane Fitzgerald was an American jazz singer often referred to as the First Lady of Song, Queen of Jazz and Lady Ella. She was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing and intonation, Fitzgeralds rendition of the nursery rhyme A-Tisket, A-Tasket helped boost both her and Webb to national fame. Taking over the band after Webb died, Fitzgerald left it behind in 1942 to start a career that would last effectively the rest of her life. With Verve she recorded some of her more noted works. These partnerships produced recognizable songs like Dream a Little Dream of Me, Cheek to Cheek, Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall, in 1993, Fitzgerald capped off her sixty-year career with her last public performance. Three years later, she died at the age of 79, Fitzgerald was born on April 25,1917, in Newport News, Virginia, the daughter of William Fitzgerald and Temperance Tempie Fitzgerald. Her parents were unmarried but lived together for at least two and a years after she was born. Initially living in a room, her mother and Da Silva soon found jobs. Her half-sister, Frances Da Silva, was born in 1923, by 1925, Fitzgerald and her family had moved to nearby School Street, then a predominantly poor Italian area. She began her education at the age of six and proved to be an outstanding student. Fitzgerald had been passionate about dancing from third grade, being a fan of Earl Snakehips Tucker in particular, Fitzgerald and her family were Methodists and were active in the Bethany African Methodist Episcopal Church, and she regularly attended worship services, Bible study, and Sunday school. The church provided Fitzgerald with her earliest experiences in music making. During this period Fitzgerald listened to recordings by Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby. Fitzgerald idolized the Boswell Sisters lead singer Connee Boswell, later saying, My mother brought home one of her records, in 1932, her mother died from serious injuries she received in a car accident when Fitzgerald was 15 years of age. This left her at first in the care of her stepfather but before the end of April 1933, following these traumas, Fitzgerald began skipping school and letting her grades suffer. During this period she worked at times as a lookout at a bordello, Ella Fitzgerald never talked publicly about this time in her life. When the authorities caught up with her, she was first placed in the Colored Orphan Asylum in Riverdale, in the Bronx. However, when the orphanage proved too crowded, she was moved to the New York Training School for Girls in Hudson, New York, eventually she escaped and for a time she was homeless
9.
Benny Goodman
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Benjamin David Benny Goodman was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader, known as the King of Swing. In the mid-1930s, Goodman led one of the most popular groups in America. Goodmans bands launched the careers of many jazz artists. During an era of segregation, he led one of the first well-known integrated jazz groups. Goodman performed nearly to the end of his life while exploring an interest in classical music, Goodman was born in Chicago, the ninth of twelve children of poor Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. His father, David Goodman, came to America in 1892 from Warsaw in partitioned Poland and his mother, Dora, came from Kaunas, Lithuania. His parents met in Baltimore, Maryland, and moved to Chicago before Benny was born, hundreds of houses are unconnected with the street sewer. Money was a constant problem in the family, Bennys father earned at most $20 per week. On Sundays, his father took the children to free concerts in Douglas Park. The following year Benny joined the club band at Jane Addamss Hull House. By joining the band, he was entitled to two weeks at a summer camp about fifty miles from Chicago. It was the time he was able to get away from the bleak environment of his urban neighborhood. He also received two years of instruction from the classically trained clarinetist Franz Schoepp and his early influences were New Orleans jazz clarinetists working in Chicago, notably Johnny Dodds, Leon Roppolo and Jimmie Noone. Goodman learned quickly, becoming a player at an early age. Goodman made his debut in 1921 at the Central Park Theater on Chicagos West Side. He entered Harrison High School in Chicago in 1922 and he joined the musicians’ union in 1923 and by the age of 14 was in a band featuring Bix Beiderbecke. Goodman attended Lewis Institute in 1924 as a sophomore, while also playing the clarinet in a dance hall band. When Goodman was 16, he joined one of Chicagos top bands, when he was 17, his father was killed by a passing car after stepping off a streetcar
10.
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
