1.
Villa Rica, Georgia
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Villa Rica /ˌvɪləˈrɪkə/ is a city in Carroll and Douglas counties in the U. S. state of Georgia. The population was 4,134 at the 2000 census, by the 2010 census, the population had grown to 13,956, an increase of approximately 238%. Villa Rica is located in northeastern Carroll County and northwestern Douglas County at 33°43′55″N 84°55′12″W, U. S. Route 78 passes through the center of the city, leading west 6 miles to Temple and east 10 miles to Douglasville. Interstate 20 passes through the part of the city with access from exits 24 and 26. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of 14.4 square miles, of which 14.2 square miles is land and 0.15 square miles. Villa Rica sits on the ridgeline that separates the Chattahoochee and the Tallapoosa river basins, slightly more than half of Villa Rica lies within Carroll County, and the remainder lies within Douglas County. Villa Rica has a subtropical climate according to the Köppen classification system, with hot, humid summers. On average, the warmest month is July, the highest recorded temperature was 103 °F in 1980. On average, the coolest month is January, the lowest recorded temperature was −9 °F in 1985. The most precipitation on average occurs in March, despite its significant physical distance from the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, on rare occasion Villa Rica is impacted by hurricanes, sometimes severely. Tornadoes are a common occurrence in the area, although not usually as severe as those that occur in the midwest United States. The location which was to become Villa Rica was originally settled in 1826 along what is now Dallas Highway and this land was ceded by the Creek people in 1825 with the second Treaty of Indian Springs signed by Chief William McIntosh. In 1826, farmers and gold miners arrived in the area from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, one mile south was Chevestown, owned by Allison Cheeves. Hixtown and Cheevestown moved to Villa Ricas present location in 1882 when the railroad was built, many of the original structures were physically moved to the new site by rolling them on logs pulled by horses. The city was incorporated as Villa Rica in 1881, the name Villa Rica is derived from the Spanish for rich village, and the citys name change was done to help promote the gold that had been found in the area. Shortly after the arrival of the wagons in 1826, gold was discovered there,1826 was also the year that Carroll County was created and named for Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Maryland, because he was the last living signer of the Declaration of Independence. Although it did not develop into the gold rush that would strike Georgia a few years later. When the Georgia Gold Rush took hold in 1829, most of the Villa Rica miners moved northeast to the Dahlonega area, Villa Rica was established in 1830
2.
Chicago
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Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the third-most populous city in the United States. With over 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the state of Illinois, and it is the county seat of Cook County. In 2012, Chicago was listed as a global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Chicago has the third-largest gross metropolitan product in the United States—about $640 billion according to 2015 estimates, the city has one of the worlds largest and most diversified economies with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce. In 2016, Chicago hosted over 54 million domestic and international visitors, landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis Tower, Museum of Science and Industry, and Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicagos culture includes the arts, novels, film, theater, especially improvisational comedy. Chicago also has sports teams in each of the major professional leagues. The city has many nicknames, the best-known being the Windy City, the name Chicago is derived from a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum, from the Miami-Illinois language. The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as Checagou was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir, henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the wild garlic, called chicagoua, grew abundantly in the area. In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African and French descent and arrived in the 1780s and he is commonly known as the Founder of Chicago. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes had ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, on August 12,1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 4,000 people, on June 15,1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as U. S. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4,1837, as the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicagos first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois, the canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River. A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad, manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade listed the first ever standardized exchange traded forward contracts and these issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage
3.
Blues
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Blues is a genre and musical form originated by African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the end of the 19th century. The genre developed from roots in African musical traditions, African-American work songs, spirituals, Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. Blue notes, usually thirds or fifths flattened in pitch, are also a part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove, Blues as a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times, Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often relating the troubles experienced in African-American society. Many elements, such as the format and the use of blue notes. The origins of the blues are closely related to the religious music of the Afro-American community. The first appearance of the blues is often dated to after the ending of slavery and, later and it is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the former slaves. Chroniclers began to report about blues music at the dawn of the 20th century, the first publication of blues sheet music was in 1908. Blues has since evolved from unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of slaves into a variety of styles and subgenres. Blues subgenres include country blues, such as Delta blues and Piedmont blues, as well as urban blues styles such as Chicago blues, World War II marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues and the progressive opening of blues music to a wider audience, especially white listeners. In the 1960s and 1970s, a form called blues rock evolved. The term blues may have come from blue devils, meaning melancholy and sadness, the phrase blue devils may also have been derived from Britain in the 1600s, when the term referred to the intense visual hallucinations that can accompany severe alcohol withdrawal. As time went on, the phrase lost the reference to devils, by the 1800s in the United States, the term blues was associated with drinking alcohol, a meaning which survives in the phrase blue law, which prohibits the sale of alcohol on Sunday. Though the use of the phrase in African-American music may be older, it has been attested to in print since 1912, in lyrics the phrase is often used to describe a depressed mood. The lyrics of traditional blues verses probably often consisted of a single line repeated four times. Two of the first published songs, Dallas Blues and Saint Louis Blues, were 12-bar blues with the AAB lyric structure. Handy wrote that he adopted this convention to avoid the monotony of lines repeated three times, the lines are often sung following a pattern closer to rhythmic talk than to a melody
4.
Piano
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The piano is an acoustic, stringed musical instrument invented around the year 1700, in which the strings are struck by hammers. It is played using a keyboard, which is a row of keys that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings. The word piano is a form of pianoforte, the Italian term for the early 1700s versions of the instrument. The first fortepianos in the 1700s had a sound and smaller dynamic range. An acoustic piano usually has a wooden case surrounding the soundboard and metal strings. Pressing one or more keys on the keyboard causes a padded hammer to strike the strings. The hammer rebounds from the strings, and the continue to vibrate at their resonant frequency. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that amplifies by more efficiently coupling the acoustic energy to the air, when the key is released, a damper stops the strings vibration, ending the sound. Notes can be sustained, even when the keys are released by the fingers and thumbs and this means that the piano can play 88 different pitches, going from the deepest bass range to the highest treble. The black keys are for the accidentals, which are needed to play in all twelve keys, more rarely, some pianos have additional keys. Most notes have three strings, except for the bass that graduates from one to two, the strings are sounded when keys are pressed or struck, and silenced by dampers when the hands are lifted from the keyboard. There are two types of piano, the grand piano and the upright piano. The grand piano is used for Classical solos, chamber music and art song and it is used in jazz. The upright piano, which is compact, is the most popular type, as they are a better size for use in private homes for domestic music-making. During the nineteenth century, music publishers produced many works in arrangements for piano, so that music lovers could play. The piano is widely employed in classical, jazz, traditional and popular music for solo and ensemble performances, accompaniment, with technological advances, amplified electric pianos, electronic pianos, and digital pianos have also been developed. The electric piano became an instrument in the 1960s and 1970s genres of jazz fusion, funk music. The piano was founded on earlier technological innovations in keyboard instruments, pipe organs have been used since Antiquity, and as such, the development of pipe organs enabled instrument builders to learn about creating keyboard mechanisms for sounding pitches
5.
Christianity
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Christianity is a Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, who serves as the focal point for the religion. It is the worlds largest religion, with over 2.4 billion followers, or 33% of the global population, Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the savior of humanity whose coming as the Messiah was prophesied in the Old Testament. Christian theology is summarized in creeds such as the Apostles Creed and his incarnation, earthly ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection are often referred to as the gospel, meaning good news. The term gospel also refers to accounts of Jesuss life and teaching, four of which—Matthew, Mark, Luke. Christianity is an Abrahamic religion that began as a Second Temple Judaic sect in the mid-1st century, following the Age of Discovery, Christianity spread to the Americas, Australasia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the rest of the world through missionary work and colonization. Christianity has played a prominent role in the shaping of Western civilization, throughout its history, Christianity has weathered schisms and theological disputes that have resulted in many distinct churches and denominations. Worldwide, the three largest branches of Christianity are the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the denominations of Protestantism. There are many important differences of interpretation and opinion of the Bible, concise doctrinal statements or confessions of religious beliefs are known as creeds. They began as baptismal formulae and were expanded during the Christological controversies of the 4th and 5th centuries to become statements of faith. Many evangelical Protestants reject creeds as definitive statements of faith, even agreeing with some or all of the substance of the creeds. The Baptists have been non-creedal in that they have not sought to establish binding authoritative confessions of faith on one another. Also rejecting creeds are groups with roots in the Restoration Movement, such as the Christian Church, the Evangelical Christian Church in Canada, the Apostles Creed is the most widely accepted statement of the articles of Christian faith. It is also used by Presbyterians, Methodists, and Congregationalists and this particular creed was developed between the 2nd and 9th centuries. Its central doctrines are those of the Trinity and God the Creator, each of the doctrines found in this creed can be traced to statements current in the apostolic period. The creed was used as a summary of Christian doctrine for baptismal candidates in the churches of Rome. Most Christians accept the use of creeds, and subscribe to at least one of the mentioned above. The central tenet of Christianity is the belief in Jesus as the Son of God, Christians believe that Jesus, as the Messiah, was anointed by God as savior of humanity, and hold that Jesus coming was the fulfillment of messianic prophecies of the Old Testament. The Christian concept of the Messiah differs significantly from the contemporary Jewish concept, Jesus, having become fully human, suffered the pains and temptations of a mortal man, but did not sin
6.
Jazz
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Jazz is a music genre that originated amongst African Americans in New Orleans, United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and developed from roots in Blues and Ragtime. Since the 1920s jazz age, jazz has become recognized as a form of musical expression. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, call and response vocals, polyrhythms, Jazz has roots in West African cultural and musical expression, and in African-American music traditions including blues and ragtime, as well as European military band music. Although the foundation of jazz is deeply rooted within the Black experience of the United States, different cultures have contributed their own experience, intellectuals around the world have hailed jazz as one of Americas original art forms. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on different national, regional, and local musical cultures, New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass-band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. In the 1930s, heavily arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz, bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging musicians music which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed in the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, modal jazz developed in the late 1950s, using the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock rhythms, electric instruments. In the early 1980s, a form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful. Other styles and genres abound in the 2000s, such as Latin, the question of the origin of the word jazz has resulted in considerable research, and its history is well documented. It is believed to be related to jasm, a term dating back to 1860 meaning pep. The use of the word in a context was documented as early as 1915 in the Chicago Daily Tribune. Its first documented use in a context in New Orleans was in a November 14,1916 Times-Picayune article about jas bands. In an interview with NPR, musician Eubie Blake offered his recollections of the slang connotations of the term, saying, When Broadway picked it up. That was dirty, and if you knew what it was, the American Dialect Society named it the Word of the Twentieth Century. Jazz has proved to be difficult to define, since it encompasses such a wide range of music spanning a period of over 100 years. Attempts have been made to define jazz from the perspective of other musical traditions, in the opinion of Robert Christgau, most of us would say that inventing meaning while letting loose is the essence and promise of jazz. As Duke Ellington, one of jazzs most famous figures, said, although jazz is considered highly difficult to define, at least in part because it contains so many varied subgenres, improvisation is consistently regarded as being one of its key elements
7.
Martin Luther King Jr.
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Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Baptist minister and activist who was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs, King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, with the SCLC, King led an unsuccessful 1962 struggle against segregation in Albany, Georgia, and helped organize the 1963 nonviolent protests in Birmingham, Alabama. King also helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his famous I Have a Dream speech, on October 14,1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance. In 1965, he helped to organize the Selma to Montgomery marches, in the final years of his life, King expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty and the Vietnam War, alienating many of his liberal allies with a 1967 speech titled Beyond Vietnam. In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D. C. to be called the Poor Peoples Campaign, Kings death was followed by riots in many U. S. cities. Ray, who fled the country, was arrested two months later at London Heathrow Airport, King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established as a holiday in numerous cities and states beginning in 1971, hundreds of streets in the U. S. have been renamed in his honor, and a county in Washington State was also renamed for him. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, King was born on January 15,1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, to the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King. It was during this time he chose to be called Martin Luther King in honor of the German reformer Martin Luther, King had Irish ancestry through his paternal great-grandfather, as well as African ancestry. King was a child, between an older sister, Willie Christine King, and a younger brother, Alfred Daniel Williams King. King sang with his choir at the 1939 Atlanta premiere of the movie Gone with the Wind. His mother was an accomplished organist and choir leader, and she took him to various churches to sing and he received attention for singing I Want to Be More and More Like Jesus. King later became a member of the choir in his church. King said that his father regularly whipped him until he was fifteen, King saw his fathers proud and fearless protests against segregation, such as King Sr. When King was a child, he befriended a boy whose father owned a business near his familys home. When the boys were six, they started school, King had to attend a school for African Americans, King lost his friend because the childs father no longer wanted the boys to play together. King suffered from depression throughout much of his life, in his adolescent years, he initially felt resentment against whites due to the racial humiliation that he, his family, and his neighbors often had to endure in the segregated South
8.
Elvis Presley
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Elvis Aaron Presley was an American singer and actor. Regarded as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century, he is referred to as the King of Rock and Roll. Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, and relocated to Memphis and his music career began there in 1954, when he recorded a song with producer Sam Phillips at Sun Records. Accompanied by guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, Presley was a popularizer of rockabilly. RCA Victor acquired his contract in a deal arranged by Colonel Tom Parker, Presleys first RCA single, Heartbreak Hotel, was released in January 1956 and became a number-one hit in the United States. He was regarded as the figure of rock and roll after a series of successful network television appearances. In November 1956, Presley made his debut in Love Me Tender. In 1958, he was drafted into military service, in 1973, Presley featured in the first globally broadcast concert via satellite, Aloha from Hawaii. Several years of drug abuse severely damaged his health. Presley is one of the most celebrated and influential musicians of the 20th century and he won three Grammys, also receiving the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award at age 36, and has been inducted into multiple music halls of fame. Presley was born on January 8,1935, in Tupelo, Mississippi, to Gladys Love and Vernon Elvis Presley, Jesse Garon Presley, his identical twin brother, was delivered stillborn 35 minutes before his own birth. Thus, as a child, Presley became close to both parents and formed an especially close bond with his mother. The family attended an Assembly of God, where he found his musical inspiration. Although he was in conflict with the Pentecostal church in his later years, rev. Rex Humbard officiated at his funeral, as Presley had been an admirer of Humbards ministry. Presleys ancestry was primarily a Western European mix, including Scots-Irish, Scottish, German, gladyss great-great-grandmother, Morning Dove White, was possibly a Cherokee Native American. Gladys was regarded by relatives and friends as the dominant member of the small family, Vernon moved from one odd job to the next, evincing little ambition. The family often relied on help from neighbors and government food assistance, the Presleys survived the F5 tornado in the 1936 Tupelo–Gainesville tornado outbreak. In 1938, they lost their home after Vernon was found guilty of kiting a check written by the landowner, Orville S. Bean and he was jailed for eight months, and Gladys and Elvis moved in with relatives
9.
Johnny Cash
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Johnny Cash was an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, actor, and author. He is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century and one of the music artists of all time. Although primarily remembered as an music icon, his genre-spanning songs and sound embraced rock and roll, rockabilly, blues, folk. This crossover appeal won Cash the rare honor of multiple inductions in the Country Music, Rock and Roll and he traditionally began his concerts with the simple Hello, Im Johnny Cash, followed by his signature Folsom Prison Blues. Much of Cashs music contained themes of sorrow, moral tribulation and redemption and his signature songs include I Walk the Line, Folsom Prison Blues, Ring of Fire, Get Rhythm, and Man in Black. During the last stage of his career, Cash covered songs by several late 20th-century rock artists, notably Hurt by Nine Inch Nails, Cash was born on February 26,1932, in Kingsland, Arkansas, one of seven children born to Ray Cash and Carrie Cloveree. He was mostly of Scottish and English ancestry, and as an adult traced his surname to 11th-century Fife, Scotland, after meeting with the then-laird of Falkland, Fife, Cash Loch and other locations in Fife bear the name of his family. At birth, Cash was named J. R. Cash, when Cash enlisted in the United States Air Force, he was not permitted to use initials as a first name, so he changed his name to John R. Cash. In 1955, when signing with Sun Records, he took Johnny Cash as his stage name, the Cash children were, Roy, Margaret Louise, Jack, J. R. Reba, Joanne, and Tommy. Tommy Cash also became a country artist. In March 1935, when Cash was three years old, the family settled in Dyess, Arkansas and he started working in cotton fields at age five, singing along with his family while working. The family farm was flooded on at least two occasions, which inspired him to write the song Five Feet High and Rising. His familys economic and personal struggles during the Great Depression inspired many of his songs, Cash was very close to his older brother, Jack. In May 1944, Jack was pulled into a head saw in the mill where he worked and was almost cut in two. He suffered for over a week before he died on May 20,1944, Cash often spoke of the horrible guilt he felt over this incident. Jack insisted on working, as the family needed the money, on his deathbed, Jack said he had visions of Heaven and angels. Decades later, Cash spoke of looking forward to meeting his brother in Heaven, Cashs early memories were dominated by gospel music and radio. Taught guitar by his mother and a friend, Cash began playing and writing songs at the age of twelve
10.
Library of Congress
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The Library of Congress is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the de facto national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States, the Library is housed in three buildings on Capitol Hill in Washington, D. C. it also maintains the Packard Campus in Culpeper, Virginia, which houses the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center. The Library of Congress claims to be the largest library in the world and its collections are universal, not limited by subject, format, or national boundary, and include research materials from all parts of the world and in more than 450 languages. Two-thirds of the books it acquires each year are in other than English. The Library of Congress moved to Washington in 1800, after sitting for years in the temporary national capitals of New York. John J. Beckley, who became the first Librarian of Congress, was two dollars per day and was required to also serve as the Clerk of the House of Representatives. The small Congressional Library was housed in the United States Capitol for most of the 19th century until the early 1890s, most of the original collection had been destroyed by the British in 1814, during the War of 1812. To restore its collection in 1815, the bought from former president Thomas Jefferson his entire personal collection of 6,487 books. After a period of growth, another fire struck the Library in its Capitol chambers in 1851, again destroying a large amount of the collection. The Library received the right of transference of all copyrighted works to have two copies deposited of books, maps, illustrations and diagrams printed in the United States. It also began to build its collections of British and other European works and it included several stories built underground of steel and cast iron stacks. Although the Library is open to the public, only high-ranking government officials may check out books, the Library promotes literacy and American literature through projects such as the American Folklife Center, American Memory, Center for the Book, and Poet Laureate. James Madison is credited with the idea for creating a congressional library, part of the legislation appropriated $5,000 for the purchase of such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress. And for fitting up an apartment for containing them. Books were ordered from London and the collection, consisting of 740 books and 3 maps, was housed in the new Capitol, as president, Thomas Jefferson played an important role in establishing the structure of the Library of Congress. The new law also extended to the president and vice president the ability to borrow books and these volumes had been left in the Senate wing of the Capitol. One of the only congressional volumes to have survived was a government account book of receipts and it was taken as a souvenir by a British Commander whose family later returned it to the United States government in 1940. Within a month, former president Jefferson offered to sell his library as a replacement
11.
Aretha Franklin
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Aretha Louise Franklin is an American singer, songwriter and musician. Franklin began her career singing gospel at her father, minister C. L. Franklins church as a child, in 1960, at the age of 18, Franklin embarked on a secular career, recording for Columbia Records but only achieving modest success. Following her signing to Atlantic Records in 1967, Franklin achieved commercial acclaim and success with such as Respect, A Natural Woman. These hits and more helped her to gain the title The Queen of Soul by the end of the 1960s decade, in 1998, Franklin won international acclaim for singing the opera aria Nessun dorma, at the Grammys of that year replacing Luciano Pavarotti. Later that same year, she scored her final Top 40 recording with A Rose Is Still a Rose, Franklin has won a total of 18 Grammy Awards and is one of the best-selling artists of all time, having sold over 75 million records worldwide. Franklin has been honored throughout her career including a 1987 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and she was inducted to the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. In August 2012, Franklin was inducted into the GMA Gospel Music Hall of Fame, Aretha Louise Franklin was born in Memphis, Tennessee, the daughter of Barbara and Clarence LaVaughn Franklin. Her father, who went by the nickname, C. L. was an itinerant preacher originally from Shelby, Mississippi, while her mother was a piano player. Alongside Franklin, her parents had three children while both C. L. and Barbara had children from outside their marriage. The family relocated to Buffalo, New York when Franklin was two, before her fifth birthday, C. L. Franklin permanently relocated the family to Detroit, Michigan where he took over the pastorship of New Bethel Baptist Church. Franklins mother died on March 7,1952, before Franklins tenth birthday, several women, including Franklins grandmother Rachel, and Mahalia Jackson took turns helping with the children at the Franklin home. During this time, Franklin learned how to play piano by ear, Franklins fathers emotionally driven sermons resulted in him being known as the man with the million-dollar voice and earning thousands of dollars for sermons in various churches across the country. Just after her mothers death, Franklin began singing solos at New Bethel, debuting with the hymn, Jesus, Be a Fence Around Me. Four years later, when Franklin was 14, her father began managing her and he helped his daughter get signed to her first recording deal with J. V. B. Records, where her first album, Songs of Faith, was issued in 1956, two singles were released to gospel radio stations including Never Grow Old and Precious Lord, Take My Hand. Franklin sometimes traveled with The Caravans and The Soul Stirrers during this time and developed a crush on Sam Cooke, after turning 18, Franklin confided to her father that she aspired to follow Sam Cooke to record pop music. Serving as her manager, C. L. agreed to the move and helped to produce a demo that soon was brought to the attention of Columbia Records. Franklin was signed as a five-percent artist, during this period, Franklin would be coached by choreographer Cholly Atkins to prepare for her pop performances
12.
Roy Rogers
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Roy Rogers was an American singer and actor who was one of the most popular Western stars of his era. Known as the King of the Cowboys, he appeared in over 100 films and numerous radio, in many of his films and television episodes, he appeared with his wife, Dale Evans, his golden palomino, Trigger, and his German shepherd dog, Bullet. His show was broadcast on radio for nine years and then on television from 1951 through 1957 and his productions usually featured a sidekick, often Pat Brady, Andy Devine, or George Gabby Hayes. In his later years, Rogers lent his name to the chain of Roy Rogers Restaurants. Rogers was born Leonard Slye, the son of Mattie and Andrew Andy Slye in Cincinnati, the family lived in a tenement on 2nd Street, where Riverfront Stadium would later be constructed. In 1919 the Slye family purchased a farm in Duck Run, located near Lucasville, Ohio, about 12 miles north of Portsmouth, a notable gift was a horse on which young Len Slye learned the basics of horsemanship. Living on the farm with no radio, the made their own entertainment. On Saturday nights, they often invited neighbors over for square dances, during which Len would sing, play mandolin and he also learned to yodel during this time, and he and his mother would use different yodels to communicate with each other across distances on the farm. Len attended high school in McDermott, Ohio, but after he completed his year there his family returned to Cincinnati. Realizing that his family needed his help, Len quit school. He tried to attend school, but after being ridiculed for falling asleep in class, he quit school. They stayed for four months before returning to Ohio, soon after returning, Len had the opportunity to travel again to California with Marys father-in-law, and the rest of the family followed in the spring of 1930. The Slye family rented a house near Mary, and Len. In the spring of 1931, after the company went bankrupt, Len traveled to Tulare, California. During this time he lived in a camp similar to the ones depicted in John Steinbecks novel The Grapes of Wrath. The economic hardship of the Great Depression was just as severe in California as it was in Ohio, after 19-year-old Len Slyes second arrival in Lawndale, his sister Mary suggested that he audition for the Midnight Frolic radio program, which was broadcast over KMCS in Inglewood. A few nights later, wearing a Western shirt that Mary had made for him, he overcame his shyness and appeared on the program playing guitar, singing, a few days later, he was asked to join a local country music group, the Rocky Mountaineers. He accepted the offer and became a member in August 1931
