1.
Country music
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Country music is a genre of United States popular music that originated in the southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from the genre of United States, such as folk music. Blues modes have been used throughout its recorded history. The term country music is used today to many styles and subgenres. In 2009 country music was the most listened to rush hour radio genre during the evening commute, immigrants to the Southern Appalachian Mountains of North America brought the music and instruments of Europe and Africa along with them for nearly 300 years. Country music was introduced to the world as a Southern phenomenon, Bristol, Tennessee, has been formally recognized by the U. S. Congress as the Birthplace of Country Music, based on the historic Bristol recording sessions of 1927. Since 2014, the city has been home to the Birthplace of Country Music Museum, historians have also noted the influence of the less-known Johnson City sessions of 1928 and 1929, and the Knoxville sessions of 1929 and 1930. Prior to these, pioneer settlers, in the Great Smoky Mountains region, had developed a musical heritage. The first generation emerged in the early 1920s, with Atlantas music scene playing a role in launching countrys earliest recording artists. Okeh Records began issuing hillbilly music records by Fiddlin John Carson as early as 1923, followed by Columbia Records in 1924, many hillbilly musicians, such as Cliff Carlisle, recorded blues songs throughout the 1920s. The most important was the Grand Ole Opry, aired starting in 1925 by WSM in Nashville, during the 1930s and 1940s, cowboy songs, or Western music, which had been recorded since the 1920s, were popularized by films made in Hollywood. Bob Wills was another musician from the Lower Great Plains who had become very popular as the leader of a hot string band. His mix of country and jazz, which started out as dance hall music, Wills was one of the first country musicians known to have added an electric guitar to his band, in 1938. Country musicians began recording boogie in 1939, shortly after it had played at Carnegie Hall. Gospel music remained a component of country music. It became known as honky tonk, and had its roots in Western swing and the music of Mexico. By the early 1950s a blend of Western swing, country boogie, rockabilly was most popular with country fans in the 1950s, and 1956 could be called the year of rockabilly in country music. Beginning in the mid-1950s, and reaching its peak during the early 1960s, the late 1960s in American music produced a unique blend as a result of traditionalist backlash within separate genres
2.
Actor
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An actor is a person who portrays a character in a performance. Simplistically speaking, the person denominated actor or actress is someone beautiful who plays important characters, the actor performs in the flesh in the traditional medium of the theatre, or in modern mediums such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is ὑποκριτής, literally one who answers, the actors interpretation of their role pertains to the role played, whether based on a real person or fictional character. Interpretation occurs even when the actor is playing themselves, as in forms of experimental performance art, or, more commonly, to act, is to create. Formerly, in societies, only men could become actors. When used for the stage, women played the roles of prepubescent boys. The etymology is a derivation from actor with ess added. However, when referring to more than one performer, of both sexes, actor is preferred as a term for male performers. Actor is also used before the name of a performer as a gender-specific term. Within the profession, the re-adoption of the term dates to the 1950–1960s. As Whoopi Goldberg put it in an interview with the paper, Im an actor – I can play anything. The U. K. performers union Equity has no policy on the use of actor or actress, an Equity spokesperson said that the union does not believe that there is a consensus on the matter and stated that the. subject divides the profession. In 2009, the Los Angeles Times stated that Actress remains the term used in major acting awards given to female recipients. However, player remains in use in the theatre, often incorporated into the name of a group or company, such as the American Players. Also, actors in improvisational theatre may be referred to as players, prior to Thespis act, Grecian stories were only expressed in song, dance, and in third person narrative. In honor of Thespis, actors are commonly called Thespians, the exclusively male actors in the theatre of ancient Greece performed in three types of drama, tragedy, comedy, and the satyr play. Western theatre developed and expanded considerably under the Romans, as the Western Roman Empire fell into decay through the 4th and 5th centuries, the seat of Roman power shifted to Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire. Records show that mime, pantomime, scenes or recitations from tragedies and comedies, dances, from the 5th century, Western Europe was plunged into a period of general disorder
3.
Disc jockey
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A disc jockey is a person who mixes different sources of pre-existing recorded music as it is playing, usually for a live audience in a nightclub or dance club or via broadcasting. DJs typically perform for an audience in a nightclub or dance club or a TV, radio broadcast audience, or in the 2010s. DJs also create mixes, remixes and tracks that are recorded for later sale, in hip hop music, DJs may create beats, using percussion breaks, basslines and other musical content sampled from pre-existing records. In hip hop, rappers and MCs use these beats to rap over, DJs use equipment that can play at least two sources of recorded music simultaneously and mix them together. This allows the DJ to create seamless transitions between recordings and develop unique mixes of songs, DJ equipment, notably the specialized DJ mixer, a small audio mixer with a crossfader and cue functions. The crossfader enables the DJ to blend or transition from one song to another, the cue knobs or switches allow the DJ to preview a source of recorded music in headphones before playing it for the live club or broadcast audience. Previewing the music in headphones helps the DJ pick the track they want to play. DJs may also use a microphone to speak to the audience, effects such as reverb to create sound effects, drum machines. The title DJ is also used by DJs in front of their real names or adopted pseudonyms or stage names as a title to denote their profession. Some DJs focus on creating a mix of songs for the club dancers or radio audience. Other DJs use turntablism techniques such as scratching, in which the DJ or turntablist manipulates the record player turntable to create new sounds. In many types of DJing, including club DJing and radio/TV DJing, there are several types of disc jockey. Radio DJs or radio personalities introduce and play music that is broadcast on AM, FM, club DJs select and play music in bars, nightclubs or discothèques, or at parties, raves, or even in stadiums. Mobile DJs travel with portable sound systems and play recorded music at a variety of events. Some mobile DJs also serve as the master of ceremonies at weddings or other events, directing the attention of attendees, there are also many competitions for DJs that specialize in different turntablism techniques, such as mixing, hip hop music-style scratching or other kinds of techniques. Other types of DJ use musical performance techniques that allow them to be categorized as performing musicians, hip hop DJs and are also often songwriters or music producers who use turntablism and sampling to create backing instrumentals for new tracks. In reggae, the DJ is a vocalist who raps, toasts, chants or chats over pre-recorded rhythm tracks, the individual who helps the DJ by selecting tracks or records to be played is called the selector. Many electronica artists and producers who work as DJs often perform music by combining turntablism with keyboards, digital musical instruments
4.
Columbia Records
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Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, Inc. the United States division of Sony Corporation. It was founded in 1887, evolving from an enterprise named the American Graphophone Company. Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in the sound business. Columbia Records went on to release records by an array of singers, instrumentalists. It is one of Sony Musics three flagship record labels alongside RCA Records and Epic Records, rather, as above, it was connected to CBS, a broadcasting media company which had purchased the company in 1938, and had been co-founded in 1927 by Columbia Records itself. Though Arista Records was sold to Bertelsmann Music Group, it would become a sister label of Columbia Records through its mutual connection to Sony Music. The Columbia Phonograph Company was founded in 1887 by stenographer, lawyer and New Jersey native Edward Easton and it derived its name from the District of Columbia, where it was headquartered. At first it had a monopoly on sales and service of Edison phonographs and phonograph cylinders in Washington. As was the custom of some of the regional companies, Columbia produced many commercial cylinder recordings of its own. Columbias ties to Edison and the North American Phonograph Company were severed in 1894 with the North American Phonograph Companys breakup, thereafter it sold only records and phonographs of its own manufacture. In 1902, Columbia introduced the XP record, a brown wax record. According to Gracyk, the molded brown waxes may have sold to Sears for distribution. Columbia began selling records and phonographs in addition to the cylinder system in 1901, preceded only by their Toy Graphophone of 1899. For a decade, Columbia competed with both the Edison Phonograph Company cylinders and the Victor Talking Machine Company disc records as one of the top three names in American recorded sound. In order to add prestige to its catalog of artists. The firm also introduced the internal-horn Grafonola to compete with the extremely popular Victrola sold by the rival Victor Talking Machine Company, during this era, Columbia used the famous Magic Notes logo—a pair of sixteenth notes in a circle—both in the United States and overseas. Columbia was split into two companies, one to make records and one to make players, Columbia Phonograph was moved to Connecticut, and Ed Easton went with it. Eventually it was renamed the Dictaphone Corporation, in late 1923, Columbia went into receivership
5.
Cleveland Indians
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The Cleveland Indians are an American professional baseball team based in Cleveland, Ohio. The Indians compete in Major League Baseball as a club of the American League Central division. Since 1994, they have played at Progressive Field, the teams spring training facility is at Goodyear Ballpark in Goodyear, Arizona. The Indians current World Series championship drought is the longest active drought, the name Indians originated from a request by club owner Charles Somers to baseball writers to choose a new name to replace Cleveland Naps following the departure of Nap Lajoie after the 1914 season. The name referenced the nickname Indians that was applied to the Cleveland Spiders baseball club during the time when Louis Sockalexis, common nicknames for the Indians include the Tribe and the Wahoos, the latter being a reference to their logo, Chief Wahoo, a controversial Native American caricature. The teams mascot is named Slider, the franchise originated in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1894 as the Grand Rapids Rustlers, a minor league team in the Western League. The team moved to Cleveland in 1900 and changed its name to the Cleveland Lake Shores, one of the American Leagues eight charter franchises, the major league incarnation of the club was founded in Cleveland in 1901. Originally called the Cleveland Bluebirds, the played in League Park until moving permanently to Cleveland Stadium in 1946. At the end of the 2016 season, they had a regular season record of 9. In 1857 baseball games were a spectacle in Clevelands Public Squares. City authorities tried to find an ordinance forbidding it, to the joy of the crowd, – Harold Seymour 1865–1868 Forest Citys of Cleveland 1869–1872 Forest Citys of Cleveland From 1865 to 1868 Forest Citys was an amateur ball club. During the 1869 season, Cleveland was among several cities which established professional baseball teams following the success of the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first fully professional team. In the newspapers before and after 1870, the team was called the Forest Citys. In 1871 the Forest Citys joined the new National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, ultimately, two of the leagues western clubs went out of business during the first season and the Chicago Fire left that citys White Stockings impoverished, unable to field a team again until 1874. Cleveland was thus the NAs westernmost outpost in 1872, the year the club folded, Cleveland played their full schedule to July 19 followed by two games versus Boston in mid-August and disbanded at the end of the season. 1879–1881 Cleveland Forest Citys 1882–1884 Cleveland Blues In 1876, the National League supplanted the NA as the professional league. Cleveland were not among its members, but by 1879 the league was looking for new entries. The Cleveland Forest Citys baseball team was then re-created, the National League required distinct colors for the 1882 season, so the Cleveland Forest Citys became the Cleveland Blues
6.
Decatur, Georgia
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Decatur is a city in, and county seat of, DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. With a population of 20,148 in the 2013 census and it is an intown suburb of Atlanta and part of the Atlanta Metropolitan Area, and its public transportation is served by three MARTA rail stations. Decaturs official motto is A city of homes, schools and places of worship, prior to 2000, its motto was A city of homes, schools, and churches. The citizens of Decatur did not want the noise, pollution and growth that would come with such a major terminal, in response, the railroad founded a new city to the west-southwest of Decatur for the terminal. This town later became the city of Atlanta, during the American Civil War, Decatur became a strategic site in Shermans campaign against Atlanta. In July 1864 Union general James B, mcPherson occupied Decatur to cut off the Confederates supply line from Augusta, Georgia. During the Battle of Atlanta on July 22, Confederate cavalry under Major General Joseph Wheeler attacked McPhersons supply wagons, a marker at the Decatur courthouse marks the site of this skirmish. In the last half of the century the metropolitan area of Atlanta expanded into unincorporated DeKalb County. Concurrently many well-to-do and middle class white Americans fled the area to more distant suburbs, the 1960s and 1970s witnessed dramatic drops in property values. Decatur is located at 33°46′17″N 84°17′52″W, according to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 4.2 square miles, all of it land. The Eastern Continental Divide bisects the city along the CSX trackage right of way, as of the 2010 census, there were 19,335 people,8,599 occupied housing units, and 4,215 families residing in the city. The population density was 4,603.6 people per square mile, there were 9,335 housing units at an average density of 2,222.6 per square mile. The racial makeup of the city was 73. 5% White,20. 2% African American,0. 2% Native American,2. 9% Asian,0. 0% Pacific Islander,0. 6% from other races, and 2. 4% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 3. 2% of the population,3,263 of all households were made up of individuals of those,1,814 had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.17 and the family size was 2.96. In the city, the population was out with 25. 1% under the age of 19,5. 2% from 20 to 24,32. 9% from 25 to 44,25. 7% from 45 to 64. The median age was 38 years, there are roughly 44 males for every 56 females. The ZIP code 30030 has one of the highest percentages of households with same sex couples in Georgia,9. 20% as of 2000, the median income for a household in the city was $73,602
7.
Emory University
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Emory University is a private research university in metropolitan Atlanta, located in the Druid Hills section of DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. The university was founded as Emory College in 1836 in Oxford, in 1915, the college relocated to metropolitan Atlanta and was rechartered as Emory University. The university is the second-oldest private institution of education in Georgia. Emory University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Peking University in Beijing, the university operates the Confucius Institute in Atlanta in partnership with Nanjing University. Emory has a faculty research partnership with the Korea Advanced Institute of Science. Emory University students come from all 50 states,6 territories of the United States, the university operates the Winship Cancer Institute, Yerkes National Primate Research Center, and many disease and vaccine research centers. Emory University is the coordinator of both the NIAIDs Malaria Host-Pathogen Interaction Center and the U. S. Health Departments National Ebola Training and Education Center, the university is one of four institutions involved in the NIAIDs Tuberculosis Research Units Program. The university is partnered with the Carter Center, the National Science Foundation ranked the university 36th among academic institutions in the United States for research and development expenditures. Emory University research is funded primarily by government agencies, namely the National Institutes of Health. In 1995 Emory University was elected to the Association of American Universities, Emory College was founded in 1836 in Oxford, Georgia by the Methodist Episcopal Church. The college was named in honor of the departed Methodist bishop John Emory, ignatius Alphonso Few was the colleges first president. In 1854, the Atlanta Medical College, a forerunner of Emory University School of Medicine, was founded, on April 12,1861, the American Civil War began. Emory College was closed in November 1861 and all of its students enlisted on the Confederate side, in late 1863 the war came to Georgia and the college was used as hospital and later a headquarters for the Union Army. The university produced many officers who served in the war, including General George Thomas Anderson who fought in every major battle in the eastern theater. Thirty five Emory students lost their lives and much of the campus was destroyed during the war, Emory College, as with the entire Southeastern United States, struggled to overcome financial devastation during the Reconstruction Era. In 1880, Atticus Greene Haygood, Emory College President, delivered a speech expressing gratitude for the end of slavery in the United States, which captured the attention of George I. Seney gave Emory College $5,000 to repay its debts, $50,000 for construction, in the 1880s, the technology department was launched by Isaac Stiles Hopkins, a polymath professor at Emory College
8.
Patsy Cline
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Patsy Cline was an American country music singer. Part of the late 1950s/early 1960s Nashville sound, Cline successfully crossed over to pop music and was one of the most influential, successful and she died at the age of 30 in a multiple-fatality crash of the private plane of her manager, Randy Hughes. Cline was known for her tone, emotionally expressive and bold contralto voice. Along with Kitty Wells, she helped pave the way for women as performers in the genre. Books, movies, documentaries, articles and stage plays document her life, millions of her records have sold since her death. She won awards and accolades, causing many to view her as an icon at the level of Jim Reeves, Johnny Cash, in 1973, ten years after her death, she became the first female solo artist inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In 1999, she was voted number 11 on VH1s special, The 100 Greatest Women in Rock and Roll, by members, according to her 1973 Country Music Hall of Fame plaque, Her heritage of timeless recordings is testimony to her artistic capacity. She was born Virginia Patterson Hensley on September 8,1932, in Winchester, Virginia and she was the eldest child of seamstress Hilda Virginia and blacksmith Samuel Lawrence Hensley. She soon had a brother and sister, Samuel Jr. They were known in the family as Ginny, John, the family moved often before finally settling in Winchester, Virginia, when Patsy was eight. Sam Hensley deserted his family in 1947, but the home was reportedly happy nonetheless. Cline was introduced to music at an age, singing in church with her mother. She liked stars such as Kay Starr, Jo Stafford, Hank Williams, Judy Garland, self-taught, she could not read music. When Patsy was thirteen, she was hospitalized with a throat infection, the fever affected my throat and when I recovered I had this booming voice like Kate Smith. After watching performers through the window at the radio station, she asked WINC disc jockey. Her performance in 1947 was well received, and she was asked back and this led to appearances at local nightclubs, wearing fringed Western outfits her mother made from Patsys designs. Cline performed in variety and talent shows in the Winchester and Tri-State areas, along with this and increasing local radio appearances on local radio, she gained a large following. In 1954 Jimmy Dean, already a young star, heard of her
9.
Merle Haggard
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Merle Ronald Haggard was an American singer, songwriter, guitarist, and fiddler. Haggards childhood was troubled after the death of his father, between the 1960s and the 1980s, he had 38 number-one hits on the US country charts, several of which also made the Billboard all-genre singles chart. Haggard continued to release albums into the 2000s. He died on April 6,2016 — his 79th birthday — at his ranch in Northern California, Haggards last recording, a song called Kern River Blues, described his departure from Bakersfield in the late 1970s and his displeasure with politicians. The song was recorded February 9,2016, and features his son Ben on guitar and this record was released on May 12,2016, marking the end of Haggards music career. Haggards parents, Flossie Mae and James Francis Haggard, moved to California from their home in Checotah, Oklahoma, during the Great Depression, after their barn burned in 1934. They settled with their two children, Lowell and Lillian, in an apartment in Bakersfield, while James started working for the Santa Fe Railroad. A woman, who owned a boxcar placed in Oildale, a nearby town and he remodeled the boxcar, and soon after moved in, also purchasing the lot, where Merle Ronald Haggard was born on April 6,1937. The property was expanded by building a bathroom, a second bedroom, a kitchen. His father died of a hemorrhage in 1945, an event that deeply affected Haggard during his childhood. To support the family, his mother worked as a bookkeeper, at 12, his brother, Lowell, gave him his used guitar. Haggard learned to play alone, with the records he had at home, influenced by Bob Wills, Lefty Frizzell, as his mother was absent due to work, Haggard became progressively rebellious. His mother sent him for a weekend to a detention center to change his attitude. Haggard committed a number of offenses, such as thefts. He was sent to a detention center for shoplifting in 1950. When he was 14, Haggard ran away to Texas with his friend Bob Teague and he rode freight trains and hitchhiked throughout the state. When he returned the year, he and his friend were arrested for robbery. Haggard and Teague were released when the robbers were found
10.
Kris Kristofferson
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Kristoffer Kris Kristofferson is an American singer, songwriter, musician and actor. He wrote and recorded the songs Me and Bobby McGee, For the Good Times, Sunday Mornin Comin Down, Kristofferson composed his own songs and collaborated with Nashville songwriters such as Shel Silverstein. In 1985, Kristofferson joined fellow country artists Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, in 2004, Kristofferson was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. He is also known for his roles in Alice Doesnt Live Here Anymore and A Star Is Born. Kristoffer Kristofferson was born in Brownsville, Texas, to Mary Ann and Lars Henry Kristofferson and his paternal grandparents emigrated from Sweden, while his mother had English, Scottish-Irish, German, Swiss-German and Dutch ancestry. Kristoffersons paternal grandfather was an officer in the Swedish Army, when Kristofferson was a child, his father pushed him towards a military career. At the age of 17, Kristofferson took a job with a dredging contractor on Wake Island. He called it the hardest job I ever had, like most military brats, Kristofferson moved around frequently as a youth, finally settling down in San Mateo, California, where he graduated from San Mateo High School. An aspiring writer, Kristofferson enrolled in Pomona College in 1954 and he experienced his first dose of fame when he appeared in Sports Illustrateds Faces in the Crowd for his achievements in collegiate rugby union, football, and track and field. He and his classmates revived the Claremont Colleges Rugby Club in 1958, Kristofferson became a member of Delta Kappa fraternity at Pomona College, graduating in 1958 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, summa cum laude, in literature. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa his junior year, in a 2004 interview with Pomona College Magazine, Kristofferson mentioned philosophy professor Frederick Sontag as an important influence in his life. Kristofferson earned a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, where he studied at Merton College, while at Oxford, he was awarded his Blue for boxing, played rugby for his college, and began writing songs. At Oxford, he was acquainted with fellow Rhodes scholar, art critic. With the help of his manager, Larry Parnes, Kristofferson recorded for Top Rank Records under the name Kris Carson and this early phase of his music career was unsuccessful. In 1960, Kristofferson graduated with a B. Phil in English literature, the following year he married his long-time girlfriend, Frances Mavia Beer. Kristofferson, under pressure from his family, ultimately joined the U. S. Army and he became a helicopter pilot after receiving flight training at Fort Rucker, Alabama. During the early 1960s, he was stationed in West Germany as a member of the 8th Infantry Division, during this time, he resumed his music career and formed a band. In 1965, when his tour of duty ended, Kristofferson was given an assignment to teach English literature at West Point, instead, he decided to leave the Army and pursue songwriting
11.
Neil Diamond
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Neil Leslie Diamond is an American singer-songwriter, musician and actor. One of the worlds best-selling artists of all time, he has sold over 120 million records worldwide since the start of his career in the 1960s. With 38 songs in the Top 10, he is the second most successful artist in the history of the Billboard Adult Contemporary Top 10 charts and his songs have been covered internationally by many performers from a variety of musical genres. Diamond was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1984 and into the Rock, additionally, he received the Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000 and in 2011 was an honoree at Kennedy Center. On the Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts, he has had eleven No, Sweet Caroline is played frequently at sporting events, and has become an anthem for the Boston Red Sox. Diamond was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Jewish family descended from Russian and his parents were Rose and Akeeba Kieve Diamond, a dry-goods merchant. He grew up in homes in Brooklyn, having also spent four years in Cheyenne, Wyoming. In Brooklyn he attended Erasmus Hall High School and was a member of the Freshman Chorus and they were not close friends at the time, Diamond recalls, We were two poor kids in Brooklyn. We hung out in the front of Erasmus High and smoked cigarettes, after his family moved he then attended Abraham Lincoln High School, and was a member of the fencing team. For his 16th birthday, he received his first guitar, and the next thing, I got a guitar when we got back to Brooklyn, started to take lessons and almost immediately began to write songs, he said. He adds that his attraction to songwriting was the first real interest he had growing up, Diamond also used his newly-developing skill at writing lyrics to write poetry. By writing poems for girls he was attracted to in school and his male classmates took note and began asking him to write poems for them which they would sing and use with equal success. He spent the following his graduation as a waiter in the Catskills resort area. There he first met Jaye Posner, who would, years later, Diamond next attended New York University as a pre-med major on a fencing scholarship. His skill at fencing made him a member of the 1960 NCAA mens championship team, however, he was often bored in classes, and found writing song lyrics more to his liking. He began cutting classes and taking the train up to Tin Pan Alley where he tried to get some of his songs heard by music publishers. By his senior year, and just 10 units short of graduation, Sunbeam Music Publishing offered him a 16-week job writing songs for $50 a week, and he dropped out of college to accept it. After his 16 weeks at Sunbeam Music were up, he was not rehired, I never really chose songwriting, he says
12.
Kitty Wells
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Ellen Muriel Deason, known professionally as Kitty Wells, was an American pioneering female country music singer. Her Top 10 hits continued until the mid-1960s, inspiring a long list of country singers who came to prominence in the 1960s. In 1976, she was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, in 1991, she became the third country music artist, after Roy Acuff and Hank Williams, and the eighth woman to receive the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Her accomplishments earned her the nickname Queen of Country Music, Wells was born Ellen Muriel Deason on August 30,1919, one of six siblings, to Charles Cary Deason and his wife, Myrtle, in Nashville, Tennessee. She began singing as a child, learning guitar from her father and her father, Charles, and his brother were musicians and her mother, Myrtle, was a gospel singer. As a teenager, she sang with her sisters, who performed under the name the Deason Sisters on a radio station beginning in 1936. At the age of 18 she married Johnnie Wright, a cabinet-maker who aspired to country-music stardom, Wells sang with Wright and his sister Louise Wright, the three toured as Johnnie Right and the Harmony Girls. Soon Wright met Jack Anglin, who married Louise and became part of the band, Wright and Wells performed as a duo, it was at this time she adopted Kitty Wells as her stage name. Johnnie Wright chose the name from a song called Sweet Kitty Wells. When Anglin returned from the Army, he and Wright formed the Johnnie & Jack duo, Wells would tour with the pair, occasionally performing backup vocals. Before Wells rise to stardom with Honky Tonk Angels, Roy Acuff, Acuff advised Wright not to make his wife his shows headliner, because he thought women could not sell country music records. On Louisiana Hayride, she performed with her husbands duo, while these early records gained some notice, promoters still werent keen on promoting female singers, and therefore Wells was dropped from the label in 1950. In 1952, Paul Cohen, an executive at Decca Records, Wells was disenchanted with her career prospects and was considering retirement, but agreed to the session because of the $125 union scale recording payment. I wasnt expecting to make a hit, said Wells later, I just thought it was another song. It Wasnt God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels was a song to Hank Thompsons The Wild Side of Life. Wells single retorted, Its a shame that all the blame is on us women, the records message was controversial at the time, and was banned by many radio stations. NBC, in particular, was troubled by the lyric, It brings back memories of when I was a trustful wife, Wells slight alteration of trustful to trusting lifted the network ban on the song. It was temporarily banned from the Grand Ole Opry, nevertheless, audiences couldn’t get enough of it
