1.
American folk music
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The term American folk music encompasses numerous music genres, variously known as traditional music, traditional folk music, contemporary folk music, or roots music. Many traditional songs have been sung within the family or folk group for generations. Mike Seeger once famously commented that the definition of American folk music is. all the music that fits between the cracks. Roots music is a category of music including bluegrass, gospel, old time music, jug bands, Appalachian folk, blues, Cajun. It is considered roots music because it served as the basis of music developed in the United States, including rock and roll, rhythm and blues. Most songs of the Colonial Fletch and Revolutionary period originated in England, Scotland and Ireland and were brought over by early settlers, barbara Allen remains a popular traditional ballad originating in England and Scotland, which immigrants introduced to the United States. The murder ballad Pretty Polly is an American version of an earlier British song, African American folk music in the area has roots in slavery and emancipation. Sacred music, both a Capella and instrumentally accompanied, is at the heart of the tradition, early spirituals framed Christian beliefs within native practices and were heavily influenced by the music and rhythms of Africa. Spirituals are prominent, and often use a call and response pattern, Gospel developed after the Civil War. It relied on text for much of its direction. Gospel is a noise, sometimes accompanied by instrumentation and almost always punctuated by hand clapping, toe tapping. Sea shanties functioned to lighten the burden of routine tasks and provide a rhythm that helped workers perform as a team, cowboys songs are typically ballads that cowboys sang in the West and Southwest. The familiar Streets of Laredo derives from an Irish folk song of the late 18th century called The Unfortunate Rake, while Streets of Laredo uses the same melody as The Unfortunate Rake, St. James Infirmary Blues adapts the story to a different tune. This illustrates how folk songs can change in the retelling and appear in a variety of versions, the Ballad of John Henry is about an African-American folk hero said to have worked as a steel-driving man. Many roots musicians do not consider themselves folk musicians, the main difference between the American folk music revival and American roots music is that roots music seems to cover a broader range, including blues and country. Roots music developed its most expressive and varied forms in the first three decades of the 20th century, by the 1950s, forms of roots music had led to pop-oriented forms. In recent years roots music has been the focus of popular programs such as Garrison Keillors public radio program, A Prairie Home Companion. American traditional music is also called roots music, Roots music is a broad category of music including bluegrass, country music, gospel, old time music, jug bands, Appalachian folk, blues, Cajun and Native American music
2.
North Carolina
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North Carolina is a state in the southeastern region of the United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west, Virginia to the north, North Carolina is the 28th most extensive and the 9th most populous of the U. S. states. The state is divided into 100 counties, the most populous municipality is Charlotte, which is the second largest banking center in the United States after New York City. The state has a range of elevations, from sea level on the coast to 6,684 feet at Mount Mitchell. The climate of the plains is strongly influenced by the Atlantic Ocean. Most of the falls in the humid subtropical climate zone. More than 300 miles from the coast, the western, mountainous part of the state has a highland climate. North Carolina is bordered by South Carolina on the south, Georgia on the southwest, Tennessee on the west, Virginia on the north, the United States Census Bureau places North Carolina in the South Atlantic division of the southern region. So many ships have been lost off Cape Hatteras that the area is known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic, the most famous of these is the Queen Annes Revenge, which went aground in Beaufort Inlet in 1718. The coastal plain transitions to the Piedmont region along the Atlantic Seaboard fall line, the Piedmont region of central North Carolina is the states most populous region, containing the six largest cities in the state by population. It consists of rolling countryside frequently broken by hills or low mountain ridges. The Piedmont ranges from about 300 feet in elevation in the east to about 1,500 feet in the west, the western section of the state is part of the Appalachian Mountain range. Among the subranges of the Appalachians located in the state are the Great Smoky Mountains, Blue Ridge Mountains, the Black Mountains are the highest in the eastern United States, and culminate in Mount Mitchell at 6,684 feet, the highest point east of the Mississippi River. North Carolina has 17 major river basins, the five basins west of the Blue Ridge Mountains flow to the Gulf of Mexico, while the remainder flow to the Atlantic Ocean. Of the 17 basins,11 originate within the state of North Carolina, but only four are contained entirely within the states border – the Cape Fear, the Neuse, the White Oak, and the Tar-Pamlico basin. Elevation above sea level is most responsible for temperature change across the state, the climate is also influenced by the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf Stream, especially in the coastal plain. These influences tend to cause warmer winter temperatures along the coast, the coastal plain averages around 1 inch of snow or ice annually, and in many years, there may be no snow or ice at all. North Carolina experiences severe weather in summer and winter, with summer bringing threat of hurricanes, tropical storms, heavy rain
3.
Folk music
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Folk music includes both traditional music and the genre that evolved from it during the 20th century folk revival. The term originated in the 19th century, but is applied to music older than that. Some types of music are also called world music. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways, as music transmitted orally, music with unknown composers and it has been contrasted with commercial and classical styles. Starting in the century, a new form of popular folk music evolved from traditional folk music. This process and period is called the revival and reached a zenith in the 1960s. This form of music is called contemporary folk music or folk revival music to distinguish it from earlier folk forms. Smaller, similar revivals have occurred elsewhere in the world at other times and this type of folk music also includes fusion genres such as folk rock, folk metal, electric folk, and others. Even individual songs may be a blend of the two, a consistent definition of traditional folk music is elusive. The terms folk music, folk song, and folk dance are comparatively recent expressions and they are extensions of the term folklore, which was coined in 1846 by the English antiquarian William Thoms to describe the traditions, customs, and superstitions of the uncultured classes. Traditional folk music also includes most indigenous music, however, despite the assembly of an enormous body of work over some two centuries, there is still no certain definition of what folk music is. Some do not even agree that the term Folk Music should be used, Folk music may tend to have certain characteristics but it cannot clearly be differentiated in purely musical terms. One meaning often given is that of old songs, with no known composers, the fashioning and re-fashioning of the music by the community that give it its folk character. Such definitions depend upon processes rather than abstract musical types, one widely used definition is simply Folk music is what the people sing. For Scholes, as well as for Cecil Sharp and Béla Bartók, Folk music was already. seen as the authentic expression of a way of life now past or about to disappear, particularly in a community uninfluenced by art music and by commercial and printed song. In these terms folk music may be seen as part of a schema comprising four types, primitive or tribal, elite or art, folk. Music in this genre is often called traditional music. Although the term is only descriptive, in some cases people use it as the name of a genre
4.
The Kingston Trio
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The Kingston Trio is an American folk and pop music group that helped launch the folk revival of the late 1950s to late 1960s. The group started as a San Francisco Bay Area nightclub act with a lineup of Dave Guard, Bob Shane. It rose to popularity, fueled by unprecedented sales of 33⅓ rpm long-playing record albums. The Trio released nineteen albums that made Billboards Top 100, fourteen of which ranked in the top 10, Dave Guard and Bob Shane had been friends since junior high school at the Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii where both had learned to play ukulele in required music classes. They had developed an interest in and admiration for native Hawaiian slack key guitarists like Gabby Pahinui, after graduating from high school in 1952, Guard enrolled at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, while Shane matriculated at nearby Menlo College. At Menlo, Shane became friends with Nick Reynolds, a native San Diegan with a knowledge of folk and calypso songs—in part from his guitar-playing father. Reynolds was also able to create and sing tenor harmonies, a skill derived in part from family singalongs, Shane and Reynolds performed at fraternity parties and luaus for a time, and eventually Shane introduced Reynolds to Guard. The three began performing at campus and neighborhood hangouts, sometimes as a trio but with an aggregation of friends that could swell their ranks to as many as six or seven and they usually billed themselves under the name of Dave Guard and the Calypsonians. At one engagement at Redwood Citys Cracked Pot beer garden, they met a young San Francisco publicist named Frank Werber, who had heard of them from a local entertainment reporter. Werber liked the groups raw energy but did not consider them refined enough to want to represent them as an agent or manager at that point, bogue left with Gannon, and Guard, Reynolds, and Werber invited Shane to rejoin the now more formally organized band. Shane, who had been performing part-time as an act at night in Honolulu. The first major break for The Kingston Trio came in late June 1957 when comedian Phyllis Diller canceled a week-long engagement at The Purple Onion club in San Francisco. When the crowds came, the Trio had been prepared by months of work. At the same time, Werber was attempting to leverage the Trios popularity as an act into a recording contract. On Gilmores strong recommendation, Capitol signed the Kingston Trio to an exclusive seven-year deal. Colburn began playing Tom Dooley extensively on his show, prompting a rush of album sales in the Salt Lake area by fans who wanted to listen to the song, as yet unavailable as a single record. The success of the album and the single earned the Kingston Trio a Grammy award for Best Country & Western Performance for Tom Dooley at the inaugural ceremony in 1959. At the time, no folk music existed in the Grammys scheme
5.
Appalachia
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Appalachia is a cultural region in the Eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York to northern Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia. As of the 2010 United States Census, the region was home to approximately 25 million people, sociological studies in the 1960s and 1970s helped to re-examine and dispel these stereotypes. While endowed with abundant natural resources, Appalachia has long struggled, by 1990, Appalachia had largely joined the economic mainstream, but still lagged behind the rest of the nation in most economic indicators. Since Appalachia lacks definite physiographical or topographical boundaries, there has been disagreement over what exactly the region encompasses. The most commonly used definition of Appalachia is the one initially defined by the Appalachian Regional Commission in 1965. When the Commission was established, counties were added based on economic need, in 1921, John C. Campbell published The Southern Highlander and His Homeland in which he modified Frosts map to include 254 counties in 9 states. A landmark survey of the region in the decade by the United States Department of Agriculture defined the region as consisting of 206 counties in 6 states. In 1984, Karl Raitz and Richard Ulack expanded the ARCs definition to include 445 counties in 13 states, although they removed all counties in Mississippi and added two in New Jersey. The name was altered by the Spanish to Apalachee and used as a name for the tribe. Pánfilo de Narváezs expedition first entered Apalachee territory on June 15,1528, now spelled Appalachian, it is the fourth oldest surviving European place-name in the U. S. After the de Soto expedition in 1540, Spanish cartographers began to apply the name of the tribe to the mountains themselves. The first cartographic appearance of Apalchen is on Diego Gutiérrez map of 1562, le Moyne was also the first European to apply Apalachen specifically to a mountain range as opposed to a village, native tribe, or a southeastern region of North America. The name was not commonly used for the mountain range until the late 19th century. A competing and often more popular name was the Allegheny Mountains, Alleghenies, in the early 19th century, Washington Irving proposed renaming the United States either Appalachia or Alleghania. In northern U. S. dialects, the mountains are pronounced /æpəˈleɪtʃənz/ or /æpəˈleɪʃənz/, the cultural region of Appalachia is pronounced /æpəˈleɪʃə/, also /æpəˈleɪtʃə/, all with a third syllable like lay. In southern U. S. dialects, the mountains are called the /æpəˈlætʃənz/, and this pronunciation is favored in the core region in central and southern parts of the Appalachian range. The occasional use of the sh sound for the ch in the last syllable in northern dialects was popularized by Appalachian Trail organizations in New England in the early 20th century, Native American hunter-gatherers first arrived in what is now Appalachia over 16,000 years ago. The earliest discovered site is the Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Washington County, several other Archaic period archaeological sites have been identified in the region, such as the St. Albans site in West Virginia and the Icehouse Bottom site in Tennessee
6.
Confederate States of America
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The Confederate States, officially the Confederate States of America, commonly referred to as the Confederacy, was a breakaway country of 11 secessionist slave states existing from 1861 to 1865. It was never recognized as an Independent country, although it achieved belligerent status by Britain. A new Confederate government was established in February 1861 before Lincoln took office in March, after the Civil War began in April, four slave states of the Upper South – Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina – also declared their secession and joined the Confederacy. The government of the United States rejected the claims of secession, the Civil War began with the April 12,1861, Confederate attack upon Fort Sumter, a Union fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. In spring 1865, after four years of fighting which led to an estimated 620,000 military deaths, all the Confederate forces surrendered. Jefferson Davis later lamented that the Confederacy had disappeared in 1865, Missouri and Kentucky were represented by partisan factions from those states, while the legitimate governments of those two states retained formal adherence to the Union. Also fighting for the Confederacy were two of the Five Civilized Tribes located in Indian Territory and a new, but uncontrolled, Confederate Territory of Arizona. Efforts by certain factions in Maryland to secede were halted by federal imposition of law, while Delaware, though of divided loyalty. A Unionist government in parts of Virginia organized the new state of West Virginia. With the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1,1863, the Union made abolition of slavery a war goal, as Union forces moved southward, large numbers of plantation slaves were freed. Many joined the Union lines, enrolling in service as soldiers, teamsters and laborers, the most notable advance was Shermans March to the Sea in late 1864. Much of the Confederacys infrastructure was destroyed, including telegraphs, railroads, plantations in the path of Shermans forces were severely damaged. Internal movement became increasingly difficult for Southerners, weakening the economy and these losses created an insurmountable disadvantage in men, materiel, and finance. Public support for Confederate President Jefferson Daviss administration eroded over time due to repeated military reverses, economic hardships, after four years of campaigning, Richmond was captured by Union forces in April 1865. Shortly afterward, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, President Davis was captured on May 10,1865, and jailed in preparation for a treason trial that was ultimately never held. The U. S. government began a process known as Reconstruction which attempted to resolve the political and constitutional issues of the Civil War. By 1877, the Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction in the former Confederate states, Confederate veterans had been temporarily disenfranchised by Reconstruction policy. The prewar South had many areas, the war left the entire region economically devastated by military action, ruined infrastructure
7.
American Civil War
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The American Civil War was an internal conflict fought in the United States from 1861 to 1865. The Union faced secessionists in eleven Southern states grouped together as the Confederate States of America, the Union won the war, which remains the bloodiest in U. S. history. Among the 34 U. S. states in February 1861, War broke out in April 1861 when Confederates attacked the U. S. fortress of Fort Sumter. The Confederacy grew to eleven states, it claimed two more states, the Indian Territory, and the southern portions of the western territories of Arizona. The Confederacy was never recognized by the United States government nor by any foreign country. The states that remained loyal, including border states where slavery was legal, were known as the Union or the North, the war ended with the surrender of all the Confederate armies and the dissolution of the Confederate government in the spring of 1865. The war had its origin in the issue of slavery. The Confederacy collapsed and 4 million slaves were freed, but before his inauguration, seven slave states with cotton-based economies formed the Confederacy. The first six to declare secession had the highest proportions of slaves in their populations, the first seven with state legislatures to resolve for secession included split majorities for unionists Douglas and Bell in Georgia with 51% and Louisiana with 55%. Alabama had voted 46% for those unionists, Mississippi with 40%, Florida with 38%, Texas with 25%, of these, only Texas held a referendum on secession. Eight remaining slave states continued to reject calls for secession, outgoing Democratic President James Buchanan and the incoming Republicans rejected secession as illegal. Lincolns March 4,1861 inaugural address declared that his administration would not initiate a civil war, speaking directly to the Southern States, he reaffirmed, I have no purpose, directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the United States where it exists. I believe I have no right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. After Confederate forces seized numerous federal forts within territory claimed by the Confederacy, efforts at compromise failed, the Confederates assumed that European countries were so dependent on King Cotton that they would intervene, but none did, and none recognized the new Confederate States of America. Hostilities began on April 12,1861, when Confederate forces fired upon Fort Sumter, while in the Western Theater the Union made significant permanent gains, in the Eastern Theater, the battle was inconclusive in 1861–62. The autumn 1862 Confederate campaigns into Maryland and Kentucky failed, dissuading British intervention, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which made ending slavery a war goal. To the west, by summer 1862 the Union destroyed the Confederate river navy, then much of their western armies, the 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River. In 1863, Robert E. Lees Confederate incursion north ended at the Battle of Gettysburg, Western successes led to Ulysses S. Grants command of all Union armies in 1864
8.
The New York Times
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The New York Times is an American daily newspaper, founded and continuously published in New York City since September 18,1851, by The New York Times Company. The New York Times has won 119 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper, the papers print version in 2013 had the second-largest circulation, behind The Wall Street Journal, and the largest circulation among the metropolitan newspapers in the US. The New York Times is ranked 18th in the world by circulation, following industry trends, its weekday circulation had fallen in 2009 to fewer than one million. Nicknamed The Gray Lady, The New York Times has long been regarded within the industry as a newspaper of record. The New York Times international version, formerly the International Herald Tribune, is now called the New York Times International Edition, the papers motto, All the News Thats Fit to Print, appears in the upper left-hand corner of the front page. On Sunday, The New York Times is supplemented by the Sunday Review, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times Magazine and T, some other early investors of the company were Edwin B. Morgan and Edward B. We do not believe that everything in Society is either right or exactly wrong, —what is good we desire to preserve and improve, —what is evil, to exterminate. In 1852, the started a western division, The Times of California that arrived whenever a mail boat got to California. However, when local California newspapers came into prominence, the effort failed, the newspaper shortened its name to The New-York Times in 1857. It dropped the hyphen in the city name in the 1890s, One of the earliest public controversies it was involved with was the Mortara Affair, the subject of twenty editorials it published alone. At Newspaper Row, across from City Hall, Henry Raymond, owner and editor of The New York Times, averted the rioters with Gatling guns, in 1869, Raymond died, and George Jones took over as publisher. Tweed offered The New York Times five million dollars to not publish the story, in the 1880s, The New York Times transitioned gradually from editorially supporting Republican Party candidates to becoming more politically independent and analytical. In 1884, the paper supported Democrat Grover Cleveland in his first presidential campaign, while this move cost The New York Times readership among its more progressive and Republican readers, the paper eventually regained most of its lost ground within a few years. However, the newspaper was financially crippled by the Panic of 1893, the paper slowly acquired a reputation for even-handedness and accurate modern reporting, especially by the 1890s under the guidance of Ochs. Under Ochs guidance, continuing and expanding upon the Henry Raymond tradition, The New York Times achieved international scope, circulation, in 1910, the first air delivery of The New York Times to Philadelphia began. The New York Times first trans-Atlantic delivery by air to London occurred in 1919 by dirigible, airplane Edition was sent by plane to Chicago so it could be in the hands of Republican convention delegates by evening. In the 1940s, the extended its breadth and reach. The crossword began appearing regularly in 1942, and the section in 1946
9.
Zebulon Baird Vance
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Zebulon Baird Vance was a Confederate military officer in the American Civil War, the 37th and 43rd Governor of North Carolina, and U. S. Senator. A prodigious writer, Vance became one of the most influential Southern leaders of the Civil War, Zebulon Vance was born in Buncombe County, North Carolina, near present-day Weaverville, the third of eight children. His uncle was Congressman Robert Brank Vance, for whom his elder brother, at age twelve he was sent to study at Washington College in Tennessee, now known as Washington College Academy. The death of his father forced Vance to withdraw and return home at the age of fourteen and it was during this time that he began to court Harriette Espy by letter. To improve his standing, Vance determined to go to law school, Governor Swain arranged for a $300 loan from the university, and Vance performed admirably. By 1852 Vance had begun practicing law in Asheville, and was elected county solicitor. By 1853, he married Harriette Espy at Quaker Meadows, and they would subsequently have five sons and that August, Vance was elected Colonel of the Twenty-sixth North Carolina. The Twenty-sixth engaged in battle in New Bern in March 1862, Vance also led the Twenty-sixth at Richmond. The Twenty-sixth was ultimately destroyed at the Battle of Gettysburg, losing more than 700 of its original 800 members, in September 1862, Vance won the gubernatorial election. In the Confederacy Vance was a proponent of individual rights and local self-government. For example, North Carolina was the state to observe the right of habeas corpus. This testimony questioned the legality of Picketts decision to hang as deserters the North Carolinians found fighting for the Union troops, Vance also refused to allow supplies smuggled into North Carolina by blockade runners to be given to other states until North Carolinians had their share. Vances work for the aid and morale of the people inspired the nickname War Governor of the South, on May 29,1865, William Woods Holden was appointed Governor by President Andrew Johnson. Holden believed that once Vance left Raleigh, he relinquished the office of Governor, Governor Vance was arrested by Federal forces on his birthday in May 1865 and spent time in prison in Washington, D. C. Per US President Andrew Johnsons amnesty program, he filed an application for pardon on June 3, after his parole, he began practicing law in Charlotte, North Carolina. Among his clients was accused murderer Tom Dula, the subject of the folk song Tom Dooley. Governor Vance was formally pardoned on March 11,1867, though no charges had ever been filed against him before his arrest, during his imprisonment. In 1870, the legislature elected him to the United States Senate
10.
Grand Ole Opry
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The Grand Ole Opry is a weekly country-music stage concert in Nashville, Tennessee, which was founded on November 28,1925, by George D. Hay as a one-hour radio barn dance on WSM, currently owned and operated by Opry Entertainment, it is the longest-running radio broadcast in US history, albeit not the longest-running one on a radio network. It attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world and millions of radio, the Oprys current primary slogan is The Show that Made Country Music Famous. Other slogans include Home of American Music and Country’s Most Famous Stage, in the 1930s the show began hiring professionals and expanded to four hours, and WSM, broadcasting by then with 50,000 watts, made the program a Saturday night musical tradition in nearly 30 states. In 1939, it debuted nationally on NBC Radio, the Opry moved to a permanent home, the Ryman Auditorium, in 1943. As it developed in importance, so did the city of Nashville, the Grand Ole Opry holds such significance in Nashville that its name is included on the city/county line signs on all major roadways. The signs read Music City|Metropolitan Nashville Davidson County|Home of the Grand Ole Opry, membership in the Opry remains one of country musics crowning achievements. Such country music legends as Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Marty Robbins, Roy Acuff, since 1974, the show has been broadcast from the Grand Ole Opry House east of downtown Nashville, with an annual three-month winter foray back to the Ryman since 1999. Performances have been televised in addition to the radio programs. The Grand Ole Opry started as the WSM Barn Dance in the new radio studio of the National Life & Accident Insurance Company in downtown Nashville on November 28,1925. On October 18,1925, management began a program featuring Dr. Humphrey Bate, on November 2, WSM hired long-time announcer and program director George D. Hay launched the WSM Barn Dance with 77-year-old fiddler Uncle Jimmy Thompson on November 28,1925, judge Hay, however, liked the Fruit Jar Drinkers and asked them to appear last on each show because he wanted to always close each segment with red hot fiddle playing. They were the band accepted on Barn Dance, with the Crook Brothers being the first. When the Opry began having square dancers on the show, the Fruit Jar Drinkers always played for them, in 1926, Uncle Dave Macon, a Tennessee banjo player who had recorded several songs and toured the vaudeville circuit, became its first real star. The phrase Grand Ole Opry was first uttered on the air on December 10,1927, at the time, Barn Dance followed the NBC Red Networks Music Appreciation Hour, a program of classical music and selections from grand opera presented by classical conductor Walter Damrosch. On that particular night, Damrosch had remarked that there is no place in the classics for realism, in response, Opry presenter George Hay said, Friends, the program which just came to a close was devoted to the classics. Doctor Damrosch told us there is no place in the classics for realism. However, from here on out for the three hours, we will present nothing but realism
11.
Victor Talking Machine Company
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The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American flagship record company headquartered in Camden, New Jersey. The company was founded by Eldridge R. Johnson, who had previously made gramophones to play Emile Berliners disc records, Victor Talking Machine Co. was incorporated officially in 1901 shortly before agreeing to allow Columbia Records use of its disc record patent. Victor had acquired the Pan-American rights to use the trademark of the fox terrier Nipper listening to a gramophone when Berliner. Barraud noticed that whenever he played a recorded by his brother. Barrauds original depicts Nipper staring intently into the horn of an Edison-Bell while both sit on a wooden surface. The London branch was managed by an American, William Barry Owen, Barraud paid a visit with a photograph of the painting and asked to borrow a horn. Owen gave Barraud an entire gramophone and asked him to paint it into the picture, the original painting still shows the contours of the Edison-Bell phonograph beneath the paint of the gramophone when viewed in the correct light. Only 13 originally commissioned His Masters Voice paintings were commissioned by the company, in 1915, the His Masters Voice logo was rendered in immense circular leaded-glass windows in the tower of the Victrola factory building. The tower remains today with replica windows installed during Radio Corporation of Americas ownership of the plant in its later years, today, one of the original windows is located at the Smithsonian museum in Washington, D. C. There are different accounts as to how the Victor name came about, a second account is that Johnson emerged as the Victor from the lengthy and costly patent litigations involving Berliner and Frank Seamans Zonophone. A third story is that Johnsons partner, Leon Douglass, derived the word from his wifes name Victoria, finally, a fourth story is that Johnson took the name from the popular Victor bicycle, which he had admired for its superior engineering. Of these four accounts the first two are the most generally accepted, perhaps coincidentally, the first use of the Victor title on a letterhead, on March 28,1901, was only nine weeks after the death of British Queen Victoria. Before 1925, recording was done by the purely mechanical. No microphone was involved and there was no means of amplification, the recording machine was essentially an exposed-horn acoustical record player functioning in reverse. The sound-vibrated center of the diaphragm was linked to a stylus that was guided across the surface of a very thick wax disc. The wax was too soft to be played back even once without seriously damaging it, although test recordings were sometimes made, although sound quality was gradually improved by a series of small refinements, the process was inherently insensitive. From the start, Victor innovated manufacturing processes and soon rose to preeminence by recording famous performers, in 1903, it instituted a three-step mother-stamper process to produce more stampers and records than previously possible. These new celebrity recordings bore red labels, and were marketed as Red Seal records, for many years these records were single-sided, only in 1923 did Victor begin offering Red Seals in double-sided form
12.
Alan Arkin
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Alan Wolf Arkin is an American actor, director, musician, and singer. He has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor twice for his performances in The Russians Are Coming and he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Little Miss Sunshine and received a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his performance in Argo. Arkin was born Alan Wolf Arkin in Brooklyn, New York City] on March 26,1934, Arkin, a painter and writer, and his wife, Beatrice, a teacher. He was raised in a Jewish family with no emphasis on religion and his grandparents were immigrants from Ukraine, Russia, and Germany. His parents moved to Los Angeles when Alan was 11, during the 1950s Red Scare, Arkins parents were accused of being Communists, and his father was fired when he refused to answer questions about his political ideology. David Arkin challenged the dismissal, but he was vindicated only after his death, Arkin attended Los Angeles City College from 1951 to 1953. With two friends, he formed the music group The Tarriers, in which Arkin sang. It reached #4 on the Billboard magazine chart the year as Harry Belafontes better-known hit version. The group appeared in the 1957 Calypso-exploitation film Calypso Heat Wave, singing Banana Boat Song, from 1958 to 1968, Arkin performed and recorded with the childrens folk group, The Baby Sitters. He also performed the role of Dr. Pangloss in a staging of Leonard Bernsteins operetta Candide, alongside Madeline Kahns Cunegonde. Arkin was an member of the Second City comedy troupe in the 1960s. Arkin is one of six actors to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his first screen appearance. Two years later, he was nominated, for The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. In 1968, he appeared in the role of Inspector Clouseau after Peter Sellers disassociated himself from the role. His portrayal of Dr. Oatman, a scared and emotionally conflicted psychiatrist treating John Cusacks hit man character Martin Q, Blank in Grosse Point Blank was also well received. At 72 years old, Arkin was the sixth oldest winner of the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, on Broadway, Arkin starred in Enter Laughing and Luv. He also directed The Sunshine Boys, among others, in 1969, Arkins directorial debut was a 12-minute childrens film titled People Soup, starring his sons Adam and Matthew Arkin. His most acclaimed directorial effort is Little Murders, released in 1971, the film opened to a lukewarm review by Roger Greenspan, and a more positive one by Vincent Canby in the New York Times
