RvrCtyLbry

Harpo 'n his axe

2009-11-23T09:28:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZOlrZNIod0

Johnny Mercer So nice...blogged him 2ce

2009-11-18T09:53:00.000-08:00

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JOHNNY MERCER
(1909 - 1976)

(born November 18, 1909, Savannah, Georgia;
died June 25, 1976, Bel-Air, California)

Any list of America's ten greatest songwriters would include the name of Johnny Mercer of Savannah, Georgia.
Most authorities rank him as the greatest lyricist the nation has produced. A recitation of the song titles of his hits beginning with "Lazybones" with Hoagy Carmichael in 1933 and running through "Good Companions" with Andre Previn in 1974, constitutes by itself a graphic history spanning the four momentous decades from the Great Depression to the Space Age.
Born to wealth on November 18, 1909, John Herndon Mercer attended a fashionable Virginia prep school and was forced to drop out of college by the bankruptcy of his father's real estate business precipitated by the economic crash of the late 20s.

He vowed to himself at the time that he one day would pay off his father's debts, a promise on which he was able to make good in the early 50s when he sold his interest in Capitol Records, which he founded in the early 40s, and sent a Savannah bank his personal check for $300,000 to reimburse all the creditors or their heirs with interest.
He got his first big break in 1932 when he won the Pontiac Youth of America Contest to appear on Paul Whiteman's Kraft radio program. Whiteman liked him so much he that he kept him on for a year to write, emcee, and sing with his orchestra.
Mercer's major triumphs were scored in the field of movies. radio, and recording. He wrote the hit, "I'm an Old Cowhand" for the movie in which he starred with Buddy Rogers in 1935, which led to a contract with Warner Brothers, and a stint in Hollywood with such greats as Ritchard Whiting, Harry Warren, Ziggy Elman, Jerome Kern and Gordon Jenkins.
With Harold Arlen and Hoagy Carmichael he produced an unequaled succession of Oscar winning songs and other hits including "Hooray for Hollywood" and "Moon River."

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Johnny Mercer - The Bard from Savannah
Exhibit at Georgia State University

A permanent Johnny Mercer exhibit is located on the second floor of The University Library South on the Georgia State University campus.
The exhibit is open to the public during regular library hours; it is closed on university holidays and operates on reduced hours during university semester breaks. Admission is free.

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THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING

Singing a song of Johnny Mercer

Debbie Reynolds was the presenter in 1962 when Johnny Mercer (right) and Henry Mancini won Oscars for “Moon River’’ from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.’’ (Associated Press/File)

By Mark Feeney Globe Staff / June 28, 2009

Text size – +

“Baby shall we go/Out skippin’?/Careful, amigo,/You’re flippin’. Speaks Latin,/That satin doll.’’

	Discuss
	COMMENTS (6)

The concision of phrasing, the easy languor of the language, the winking wit: How could Johnny Mercer, the man who wrote these lyrics to Duke Ellington’s “Satin Doll,’’ not be the great American songwriter?

Well, because the competition’s so stiff. Giving the title to Mercer - or Cole Porter, or Irving Berlin, or Jerome Kern (the list goes on) - is like saying huckleberry is the great American pie or Georgia the great American state.

Mercer is, however, the great overlooked American songwriter. Although he had a hand in some 1,500 songs, wrote seven Broadway shows, and contributed to dozens of movies, his name is nowhere as familiar as his lyrics to such songs as “Come Rain or Come Shine,’’ “Blues in the Night,’’ “Moon River,’’ “Skylark,’’ the list also goes on.

The biggest contributor to Mercer’s fame since his death, in 1976, hasn’t been musical but literary. He receives several mentions in John Berendt’s “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil’’ as the most famous son of Savannah, Ga.

Mercer’s relative unfamiliarity is likely to change. This year marks the centenary of his birth, Nov. 18, 1909, and the celebration has already begun. Tribute concerts have been held in New York, Glasgow, Miami, and Savannah, with others scheduled for Chicago, Paris, and elsewhere.

PBS will devote an “American Masters’’ broadcast to him this fall. “The Complete Lyrics of Johnny Mercer’’ arrives in bookstores in October. Turner Classic Movies plans to program an entire broadcast day in November of films featuring Mercer songs. (A four-time Academy Award winner, he received 19 Oscar nominations.)

There are several reasons for Mercer’s comparatively low profile. Almost all of his best-known songs were collaborations. His collaborators included some of the biggest names in Tin Pan Alley history: Kern, Harold Arlen, Hoagy Carmichael, Harry Warren, Jimmy Van Heusen. But Mercer never had a longstanding partner, as did George Gershwin with his brother Ira or Richard Rodgers with Lorenz Hart, then Oscar Hammerstein II.

Mercer is hard to categorize generally. Although mainly a lyricist, he also composed music. “Something’s Gotta Give’’ and “Dream’’ are probably his two best-known compositions. He was a successful singer. Four of his records reached No. 1 on the charts. He helped start one of the most important labels of the postwar era, Capitol Records. And even though his career spanned almost half a century, much of it came as the pages of the Great American Songbook were closing. Mercer was enough of an expert on closing time - he wrote the lyrics to “One for My Baby’’ and “Days of Wine and Roses,’’ after all - to know that’s rarely when the party’s going strongest.

The word “mercer’’ means one who deals in textile fabrics. That Johnny Mercer should have a tradesman’s name is fitting. He took an unashamedly craftsmanlike approach to his art. Mercer claimed to have written “Days of Wine and Roses’’ in five minutes and “Autumn Leaves,’’ for which he rendered a French lyric into English, while taking a taxi to the airport. (Conversely, “Skylark’’ required an entire year. “Sometimes you get lucky,’’ Mercer liked to say, “but not often.’’)

“Autumn Leaves’’ is an example of his willingness to retrofit lyrics to preexisting music. Sometimes the music was foreign, like Paul Lincke’s “Glow-Worm.’’ Or it could be a movie theme, like David Raksin’s “Laura.’’ Mercer especially excelled at coming up with words for jazz numbers: “And the Angels Sing,’’ “Midnight Sun,’’ “Early Autumn,’’ and, of course, “Satin Doll.’’ He had a singular affinity for jazz.

Mercer wasn’t immune to the occasional purple patch in his writing. Consider “Early Autumn’’: “There’s a dance pavilion in the rain/All shuttered down,/A winding country lane all russet brown,/A frosty windowpane shows me a town grown lonely.’’ But such fustian was less a matter of artistry, perhaps, than personality. It sprang from a deep streak of melancholy in Mercer’s character. Certainly, there’s none of the stentorian solemnity of a Hammerstein.

What’s most striking about Mercer’s work, in fact, is how gorgeously idiomatic it is, full of slang, catch phrases, even nonsense syllables like “yippe-ay-o-kay-ay,’’ from “I’m a Lone Cowhand,’’ or “whooee-duh-whooee,’’ from “Blues in the Night.’’ Some of Mercer’s most celebrated lyrics are so vernacular the songs are practically novelty numbers: “Jeepers Creepers,’’ “Hooray for Hollywood,’’ “Lazybones.’’

Porter and Hart can suffer for the excellence of their lyrics in at least one respect. You can sense sometimes self-congratulation wafting off a particularly bravura rhyme. There’s none of that with Mercer. He never flourishes his virtuosity. The brilliant triple rhyme of “right time,’’ “nighttime,’’ and “despite time,’’ in “Out of This World,’’ works so effortlessly it’s more felt than noticed. Mercer’s being so naturally, resolutely idiomatic inoculates him from attacks of self-regard.

In their indispensable anthology “Reading Lyrics,’’ Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball write that Mercer’s songs “seem easy, relaxed, inevitable.’’ Ease and relaxation are not to be confused with ignorance and slackness. Mercer liked to affect a certain bumpkinishness - the Southern drawl, the cute verbal coinages - but it was an affectation. He’s very much like Carmichael that way, another singing songwriter of laidback manner who hailed from the hinterlands. People who leave the country for the big city usually do so either seeking sophistication or already in possession of it. Mercer is a case in point. According to Irving Berlin, “Johnny gives everybody credit for knowing what he’s talking about.’’ The talk could be startlingly cultivated.

“When an irresistible force such as you/Meets an old immovable object like me,’’ from “Something’s Gotta Give,’’ does nothing less than put Newtonian physics to music. “Accentuate,’’ “eliminate,’’ and “affirmative’’ are not words one expects to find in a product of Tin Pan Alley, let alone from a writer as idiomatic as Mercer, but there they are, in “Accentuate the Positive.’’ Mercer immediately follows them, as if wanting to cover his intellectual tracks, with the splendidly colloquial “Don’t mess with Mr. In-between.’’

He does something similar, only in reverse, in “Too Marvelous for Words.’’ The lines “You’re much too much,/And just too very very!’’ find Mercer so inarticulate he can’t even supply words for the adjectives to modify. Then he turns the situation on its verbal head, completing the rhyme with “To ever be in Webster’s Dictionary!’’ The wonder of it isn’t Mercer’s getting away with using “Webster’s Dictionary’’ in a love song; it’s how matter-of-fact those six syllables scan. No other songwriter would ever think to use “Webster’s Dictionary’’ because no other songwriter might have pulled it off.

“We all come from Gilbert,’’ Mercer liked to say, meaning W.S. Gilbert, of Gilbert and Sullivan fame. That’s true, of course. But just as Gilbert came to Ira Gershwin via the Lower East Side and Cole Porter via Peru, Ind., and Yale, he came to Mercer via the South.

The importance of his Southern roots can hardly be overstated. No other master of the Great American Songbook demonstrated such a capacity to tap into the music of the South: the softened consonants and casual speech, the irresistible rhythms and blues inflections, of blacks and poor whites. Out of the same culturally mulatto stew came Elvis Presley, born 25 years and a month after Mercer. (The cross-fertilization worked both ways. Rodgers and Hart’s “Blue Moon’’ is on “The Sun Sessions,’’ and Dean Martin was one of Presley’s favorite singers.)

Mercer’s Southerness is even more audible in his singing than his songwriting. Although he tended to disparage his vocal abilities, Mercer had a very winning way with a song. When he sang, he sounded smooth, unhurried, joshing. It was a style that took the crooning of Bing Crosby (whom he succeeded in Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra) a crucial step further in the artistic relaxation of racial boundaries. Where Crosby nodded in the direction of black vocal style, Mercer ambled right on over. In fact, his friend the critic Gene Lees has said the award Mercer most cherished came in 1944 when an African-American boys’ club in Chicago voted him “outstanding young Negro singer of the year.’’ It was an honest mistake. All they’d had to go on, in an age without television, was Mercer’s vocal style.

Maybe the best way to understand Mercer and honor the singularity of his achievement is as the great transitional American songwriter. More than any of his peers, Mercer brought the South into the Great American Songbook and, however unconsciously, began to transcend race. Yet those very things that helped enrich Tin Pan Alley in its waning years, also helped end it. It was the South and racial transcendence that did so much to propel rhythm ’n’ blues and rock ’n’ roll, soon to become the primary popular music not just of America but the entire world - “From Natchez to Mobile,/From Memphis to St. Jo,/Wherever the four winds blow,’’ to quote “Blues in the Night.’’

As it happens, Mercer loathed rock ’n’ roll. It must have pained him that the two biggest acts on Capitol Records in the ’60s were the Beatles and the Beach Boys. Mercer and his partners had sold the company by then. It was the worst of both worlds. He didn’t profit by the association while still, presumably, feeling its taint. In his own fashion, he had helped pave the way. What the irresistible force of rock met in Johnny Mercer wasn’t so much an old immovable object as an unwitting ally.

Mark Feeney can be reached at mfeeney@globe.com.

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"...Accentuate Tha Positive..."

2009-11-18T09:49:00.000-08:00

The Way It Was

2009-11-05T10:07:00.000-08:00

Look Out For That BIG, FIERY, Rock

Billy and Charlie

2009-10-28T09:41:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnepPZChA5U

yeah, it's their B'day!

Lest we forget

2009-10-27T11:55:00.000-07:00

Home > Literature > Eugene Field > Poems > Poems of Childhood >
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod (Dutch Lullaby)
by Eugene Field (1850-1895)

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
Sailed off in a wooden shoe---
Sailed on a river of crystal light,
Into a sea of dew.
"Where are you going, and what do you wish?"
The old moon asked the three.
"We have come to fish for the herring fish
That live in this beautiful sea;
Nets of silver and gold have we!"
Said Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.

The old moon laughed and sang a song,
As they rocked in the wooden shoe,
And the wind that sped them all night long
Ruffled the waves of dew.
The little stars were the herring fish
That lived in that beautiful sea---
"Now cast your nets wherever you wish---
Never afeard are we";
So cried the stars to the fishermen three:
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.

All night long their nets they threw
To the stars in the twinkling foam---
Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe,
Bringing the fishermen home;
'T was all so pretty a sail it seemed
As if it could not be,
And some folks thought 't was a dream they 'd dreamed
Of sailing that beautiful sea---
But I shall name you the fishermen three:
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.

Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes,
And Nod is a little head,
And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies
Is a wee one's trundle-bed.
So shut your eyes while mother sings
Of wonderful sights that be,
And you shall see the beautiful things
As you rock in the misty sea,
Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three:
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.

Back to Eugene Field poems: Poems of Childhood...

Page last updated: 4 February 1999
©1998-1999, Richard J. Yanco

"Hey Moe! Hey Moe"

2009-10-22T09:51:00.000-07:00

BACK

October 22, 1903 - January 18, 1952

Curly Howard, the one with the shaven head which Moe referred to as "looking like a dirty tennis ball," was the most popular member of the Three Stooges and the most inventive of the three. His hilarious improvisations and classic catch-phrases of "N'yuk- n'yuk-n'yuk!" and "Wooo-wooo-wooo!" have established him as a great American cult hero.

His real name was Jerome Lester Horwitz, born to Jennie and Solomon Horwitz on October 22, 1903, in Bath Beach, a summer resort in a section of Brooklyn, He was the fifth and youngest of the Horwitz sons and weighed eight and a half pounds at birth. He was delivered by Dr. Duffy, the brother of Moe Howard's six-grade school teacher. Curly- Jerome, to complicate matters, was nicknamed "Babe" by his brother Moe.

Curly was a quiet child and gave his parents very little trouble. Moe and Shemp made up for him in spades. Moe recalls one mischievous incident when Curly was an infant: "We took his brand-new baby carriage, removed the wheels, made a pair of axles from two-by- fours and built our own version of a `soap box racer. We put Curly in it and dragged him all over town. It was a lucky thing we didn't kill him. When our parents found out we had the devil to pay.

When Curly was about four, Moe and Shemp started to instill in their brother the idea of becoming a comedian. Quite frequently they would stage small theater productions in the basement of their friends' homes; the cast would usually consist of Shemp, Moe and Curly. There was a charge of two cents for admission, but the ventures could not have been very lucrative, as the boys had to split the take three ways. It is believed that during these performances Curly got his first taste of comedy.

Moe also recalled that Curly was only a fair student in school. A boyhood friend, Lester Friedman, remembers that he was a fine athlete, making a name for himself on the elementary school basketball team. Though Curly never graduated from school, he kept himself busy doing odd jobs, following Moe and Shemp wherever they went.

As a young man, Curly loved to dance and listen to music, and he became an accomplished ballroom dancer. He would go regularly to the Triangle Ballroom in Brooklyn, where on several occasions he met George Raft, who in the early days of his career was a fine ballroom dancer. Curly also tried his hand at the ukulele, singing along as he strummed. As Moe once said, "He was not a good student but he was in demand socially, what with his beautiful singing voice." Moe continued to influence his kid brother's theatrical education, taking him along with him to vaudeville shows and the melodrama theaters, but Curly's first love was musicals and comedy.

During this period, sometime in his late teens, Curly found another love and married a young girl whose name remains a mystery to this day. His mother, Jennie Horwitz, the matriarch of the family, was against the idea of Curly's marrying at such a young age and, before six months had gone by, had the marriage annulled.

In 1928, Curly landed a job as a comedy musical conductor for the Orville Knapp Band, which, to that date, was his only stage experience. Moe recalls that his brother's performances usually overshadowed those of the band. "He was billed as the guest conductor and would come out and lead the band in a breakaway tuxedo. The sections of the suit would fall away, piece by piece, while he stood there swinging his baton."

Young Curly's interest in show business continued to grow as he watched his brothers, Shemp and Moe, perform as stooges in Ted Healy's act. Joe Besser, who worked with them in The Passing Show of 1932, recalls that Curly liked to hang around backstage. "He was there all the time and would get sandwiches for all of us in the show, including Ted Healy and his Stooges. He never participated in any of the routines but liked to watch us perform." During this period Curly remained in the shadow of his brothers, and watched as their careers began to skyrocket them to stardom along with Healy.

It was in 1932, during J.J. Shubert's Passing Show, that Healy had an argument with Shubert and walked off the show; taking Larry and Moe along with him. Shemp, disenchanted with Healy's drunken bouts and practical jokes, decided to remain in the Shubert show.

Later that afternoon, Moe suggested to Healy that his kid brother; Babe (Curly), was available and would make an excellent replacement for Shemp, since he was familiar with the act. Ted agreed, asking Curly to join the act, but under the condition that he shave his head. At the time, Curly sported long, wavy brown hair and a mustache. In an interview; Curly recalled the incident: "I had beautiful wavy hair and a waxed mustache. When I went to see Ted Healy about a job as one of the Stooges, he said, `What can you do?' I said, `I don't know.' He said, `I know what you can do. You can shave off your hair to start with.' Then later on I had to shave off my poor mustache. I had to shave it off right down to the skin."

Curly's wacky style of comedy started to emerge, first on stage and then on screen when Healy and his Stooges starred in numerous features and comedy shorts for MCM. Later; in 1934, Curly played an integral part in the team's rise to fame as the Three Stooges at Columbia Pictures, where he starred as a Stooge in 97 two-reel comedies.

But success virtually destroyed Curly. He started to drink heavily, feeling that his shaven head robbed him of his sex appeal. Larry Fine once remarked that Curly wore a hat in public to confirm an image of masculinity, since he felt like a little kid with his hair shaved off Curly was also unable to save a cent. When he received his check he'd rush out to spend it on life's pleasures: wine, women, a new house, an automobile or a new dog-Curly was mad about dogs. Since Curly was certainly no businessman, Moe usually handled all of his affairs, helped him manage his money and even made out his income tax returns.

Curly's homes were San Fernando Valley show-places and most of them were either purchased from or sold to a select group of Hollywood personalities. One house Curly purchased was on Cahuenga Boulevard and Sarah Street in North Hollywood and was purchased from child star Sabu. Later Curly sold the property to a promising young actress of the forties, Joan Leslie. Curly also bought a lot next door to Moe Howard's palatial home in Toluca Lake, expecting to build on it, but he never did. It was eventually sold to film director Raoul Walsh.

As to Curly's personality, he was basically an introvert, barely speaking on the set between takes, the complete antithesis of his insanely hilarious screen character. Charles Lamont, who directed Curly in two Stooges comedies, related in an interview that "Curly was pretty dull. This may not be a very nice thing to say but I don't think he had all of his marbles. He was always on Cloud Nine whenever you talked to him."

Clarice Seiden, the sister of Moe Howard's wife, Helen, saw Curly off screen whenever there was a party at his home. She remembers him as being far from "a quiet person." Seiden said: "Although he wasn't on (stage) all the time, I wouldn't call him a quiet person. ... he was a lot of fun. He was quiet at times but when he had a few drinks-and he drank quite a bit-he was more gregarious."

Curly's niece, Dolly Sallin, agreed with Mrs. Seiden that Curly liked people but shared Lamont's viewpoint that he could be quiet at times. "I can remember his wanting to be with people. He wasn't a recluse and I wouldn't call him dull. He wasn't an intellect nor did he go in for discussions. But when I think of someone as dull, I'd think of them as being under par intelligence-wise, and Curly wasn't that."

Friends remember that Curly refrained from any crazy antics in private life but reserved them for his performances in the comedies. However, when he got together with his brothers, Moe and Shemp, it was a totally different story. As Irma Grenner Leveton, a friend of Moe and Helen Howard, recalls: "Yes, Curly did clown around, but only if Moe, Shemp and Larry were with him. Or if his immediate group of friends or family were there. But the minute there were strangers, he retreated."

But Curly's main weakness was women; to paraphrase an old adage, "Curly couldn't live with women, or live without them." Mrs. Leveton remembers that women were his favorite pastime for a number of reasons. As she said: "He just liked a good time and that was it. And women. he loved women. I don't have to tell you... not always the nicest women. You know why, because he was so shy. Curly didn't know how to speak to a woman, so he would wind, up conversing with anyone that approached him.

Dolly Sallin viewed his love for women in a similar manner: "I can remember his wanting to be around people, and that included the current woman in his life. That was the most important thing-if she was good, bad, or whatever. If he decided she was interesting, that was that! As long as there was a woman around the house, he would stay home instead of running around. He seemed restless to me."

Director-producer Norman Maurer first met Curly in 1945 and remembers that he "was a pushover for women. If a pretty girl went up to him and gave him a spiel, Curly would marry her. Then she would take his money and run off. It was the same when a real estate agent would come up and say, `I have a house for you,' Curly would sell his current home and buy another one. It seemed as though every two weeks he would have a new girl, a new car, a new house and a new dog."

But as much as Curly loved women, they were his downfall. He married three times after his first marriage was annulled. On June 7, 1937, he married Elaine Ackerman. In 1938 Elaine gave birth to Curly's first child, a daughter, Marilyn. Due to the addition to their family, Curly and Elaine moved to a home on the 400 block of Highland Avenue in Hollywood, near where Moe lived at the time. But slowly the marriage began to crumble and Elaine filed suit for divorce on July 11, 1940, after only three years of marriage.

During the next five years, Curly ate, drank and made merry. He gained a tremendous amount of weight and his blood pressure soared. On January 23, 1945, he entered the Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara where he was diagnosed as having extreme hypertension, a retinal hemorrhage and obesity. He remained at the hospital for tests and treatment and was discharged on February 9, 1945.

Eight months later, while making a personal appearance in New York, Curly met Marion Buxbaum, a petite blonde woman with a ten-year-old son from a previous marriage. Curly instantly fell in love with her and they were married in New York on October 17, 1945. It was felt that Marion used Curly to her advantage. He spent a fortune on her-everything from fur coats to expensive jewelry. Curly even bought her a new home on Ledge Street in Toluca Lake. As Marie Howard, Jack Howard's wife, recalled: "She was just after his money.

It didn't take long for Curly to find out that Marion wasn't for him. After a miserable three months of arguments and accusations, Marion and Curly separated on January 14, 1946, and Curly sued for divorce. The divorce was quite scandalous and notices were carried in all the local papers. Dolly Sallin recalled: "It was horrible. She tried to get everything she could from him and even accused Curly of never bathing, which was totally untrue. Curly was fat but he was always immaculate. That marriage nearly ruined him." Marion was awarded the decree on July 22, 1946, less than nine months after they were married.

Irma Leveton remembers that Moe talked Curly into the marriage with Marion since he, Moe, did not like the kind of wild life his brother was leading. Moe wanted Curly to settle down and take care of his health. As Leveton remarked: "Moe fixed them u* Marion and Curly. He wanted Curly to get married and pushed him into it. He wanted Curly to quit the life be was leading, as he was getting sick. Curly had very high blood pressure and that marriage to Marion didn't help. It was very aggravating for Curly and a very unhappy time for all concerned."

With his third marriage a disaster, the question surfaced as to why Curly's marriages had failed? Irma Leveton believed that it was a combination of Curly's immaturity and a succession of mismatched marriages. As she remarked: "He couldn't contribute anything to a marriage. Most likely his wives married him because he was a (film) personality. But he had nothing to back it up. There was no substance of any kind. He always seemed to be in a trance... kinda dopey. Once in awhile he would come out with something very funny. And I can't even imagine him saying, `I Love you, to any woman.

But Dolly Sallin brought to light another point of view. She said: "I don't think Curly ever grew up. He couldn't make it in a one-to-one relationship. He was sweet and loving but not really mature. He was very restless. He seemed to need women to soothe his restless quality, not just for sex. I would guess that he was restless and that nothing seemed to help."

It was soon after his separation from Marion that Curly's health started its rapid decline. On May 6 (not May 19), 1946, he suffered a stroke during the filming of his 97th Three Stooges comedy, HalftWits' Holiday (1947). Curly had to leave the team to recuperate from his illness. His condition began to improve and a year later, still not fully recovered from his stroke, Curly met a thrice-married widow of thirty-two who really seemed to care for him-Valerie Newman, whom he married on July 31, 1947.

Valerie was Curly's fourth wife, a very caring woman who nursed him through those last, awful years. Although his health worsened after the marriage, Valerie gave birth to a daughter, Curly's second child, Janie. As Irma Leveton recalls: "Valerie was the only decent thing that happened to Curly and the only one that really cared about him. I remember she nursed him 24 hours a day."

Finally, in 1949, Curly's health took a severe turn for the worse when he suffered his second in a series of strokes and was rushed to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Hollywood. Doctors contemplated doing spinal surgery on him since the stroke had left him partially paralyzed. But the final decision was not to operate.

Curly was confined to a wheelchair and doctors put him on a diet of boiled rice and apples. It was hoped that this would bring down his weight and his high blood pressure. As a result of his illness Curly's weight dropped dramatically. As Norman Maurer recalls: "I'll never forget him at this point in his life. His hand would constantly fall off the arm of the wheelchair; either from weakness or the paralysis, and he couldn't get it back on without help." When Curly's condition failed to improve, Valerie admitted him into the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills on August 29, 1950. He was released after several months of treatment and medical tests on November 15, 1950. Curly would return periodically to the hospital, up until 1952.

Curly returned home confined to his bed, where Valerie nursed him. When his health worsened, in February 1951, she made a request for a male nurse to help her. In that same month, Curly was placed in a nursing home, the Colonial House, located in Los Angeles. In March, he suffered another stroke and Moe had to move him, out, due to the fact that the nursing home did not meet state fire codes.

In April of 1951 Curly was moved to North Hollywood Hospital and Sanitarium. In December; the hospital supervisor advised the family that Curly was becoming a problem to the nursing staff due to mental deterioration and that they could no longer care for him. It was suggested that he be placed in a mental hospital, but Moe would not hear of it. On January 7, 1952, Moe was called from the filming of a Stooges comedy, He Cooked His Goose (1952), to help move Curly again, this time to the Baldy View Sanitarium in San Gabriel. He died 11 days later on January 18, 1952. He was forty-eight years old.

Curly Howard is gone and one can only wonder what it would have been like if he had lived and worked with the Stooges through the 1960's. Imagine Curly starring in full- length features in color and black-and-white. Stooges cartoons could have been voiced with the original Curly "N'yuk-n'yuking" and "Wooo-woooing." Television audiences could have realized the true genius of Curly Howard on talk and variety shows. When the Stooges' popularity suddenly burgeoned in 1959, Curly could have been around to take the bows with Moe and Larry.

Hopefully, if there is a Stooges' heaven Curly will be there watching, seeing his talent, his art of comedy and his contributions as a Stooge continue to be enjoyed by millions throughout the world.

READ THE OTHER BIOS

Ted Healy | Moe Howard | Larry Fine | Shemp Howard | Joe Besser | Curly-Joe DeRita

'Tis DIZ' B'day

2009-10-21T09:00:00.000-07:00

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie (pronounced /gɪˈlɛspi/; October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, singer, and composer.

Together with Charlie Parker, he was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz. He taught and influenced many other musicians, including trumpeters Miles Davis, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Arturo Sandoval, Lee Morgan, and John Faddis.^[1]

In addition to featuring in the epochal moments in bebop, he was instrumental in founding Afro-Cuban jazz, the modern jazz version of what early-jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton referred to as the "Spanish Tinge". Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge^{[citation needed]} but adding layers of harmonic complexity previously unknown in jazz. Dizzy's beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, his scat singing, his bent horn, pouched cheeks and his light-hearted personality were essential in popularizing bebop.

[hide]

Biography

Early life and career

He was born in Cheraw, South Carolina, the youngest of nine children. Dizzy's father, James, was a local bandleader, so instruments were made available to Dizzy. John Birks Gillespie's mother went by the name Lottie Gillespie. He started to play the piano at the age of four. His father had already died when Gillespie was only ten years old. Gillespie taught himself how to play the trombone as well as the trumpet all at the age of twelve. He would play his friend's trumpet, and from the night that he heard his idol, Roy Eldridge, play on the radio, he dreamed of becoming a jazz musician.^[2] Dizzy Gillespie received a music scholarship to the Laurinburg Institute in Laurinburg, North Carolina. However, he turned it down in order to start his music career.^[3]

Dizzy's first professional job was with the Frank Fairfax orchestra in 1935, after which he joined the respective orchestras of Edgar Hayes and subsequently Teddy Hill, essentially replacing his main influence Roy Eldridge as first trumpet in 1937. Teddy Hill’s Band was where Dizzy Gillespie made his first recording “King Porter Stomp”. At this time, Dizzy met a young woman named Lorraine from the Apollo Theatre, whom he married in 1940. They remained married until his death in 1993. Dizzy stayed with Teddy Hill’s Band for a year, and then he left and free-lanced around with numerous other bands.^[1] In 1939, Gillespie joined Cab Calloway's orchestra, with which he recorded one of his earliest compositions, the instrumental "Pickin' the Cabbage", in 1940 (originally released on the Vocalion label, #5467 - a 78rpm backed with a co-composition with Calloway's drummer at the time, Cozy Cole, entitled "Paradiddle"). Gillespie left Calloway in late 1941 over a notorious incident with a knife. Calloway did not like how Gillespie played his music, nor did he like the humor that Gillespie gave to the audience. Calloway even went so far as to call Gillespie’s music “Chinese Music”. During a performance one night, Calloway was playing a solo and one of his band members hit him in the back with a spitball. Calloway was very angry, and because he did not like Gillespie, accused him first. Gillespie said that he did not throw the spitball, and both musicians started arguing. The argument got so bad that Gillespie actually pulled out his weapon. Also during his time in Calloway's band, Dizzy Gillespie started writing big band music for bandleaders like Woody Herman and Jimmy Dorsey.^[1] He then freelanced with a few bands - most notably being Ella Fitzgerald's orchestra, composed of members of the late Chick Webb's band, in 1942.

In 1943, Gillespie joined the Earl Hines orchestra. The legendary big band of Billy Eckstine gave his unusual harmonies a better setting, and it was as a member of Eckstine's band that he was reunited with Parker, after earlier being members of Hines's more conventional band. In 1945, Gillespie left Eckstine's band because he wanted to play with a smaller combo of musicians. A small combo comprised of no more than five musicians. The instruments were typically the trumpet, saxophone, piano, bass, and the drums.^[4]

The rise of bebop

Bebop was known as the first modern jazz style. However, it was unpopular in the beginning and was not viewed as positively as swing music was. Bebop was seen as an outgrowth of swing, not a revolution. Swing introducted a diversity of new musicians in the bebop era like Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk, Bud Powell, Kenny Clarke, Oscar Pettiford, and Gillespie. Through these musicians, a new vocabulary of musical phrases was created.^[5] With Charlie Parker, Gillespie jammed at famous jazz clubs like Minton's Playhouse and Monroe's Uptown House, where the first seeds of bebop were planted. Charlie Parker's system also held methods of adding chords to existing chord progressions and implying additional chords within the improvised lines.^[5]

Gillespie compositions like "Groovin' High", "Woody n' You", "Salt Peanuts", and "A Night in Tunisia" (A Night in Tunisia was composed by Monk and given to Dizzy as a gift.) sounded radically different, harmonically and rhythmically, from the Swing music popular at the time. Written in 1942, while Gillespie was playing with Earl Hines' band, the song is noted for have a feature that is common in today's music, a non-walking bass line.^{[citation needed]} The song also displays Afro-Cuban rhythms.^[6] One of their first (and greatest) small-group performances together was only issued in 2005: a concert in New York's Town Hall on June 22, 1945. Gillespie taught many of the young musicians on 52nd Street, like Miles Davis and Max Roach, about the new style of jazz. After a lengthy gig at Billy Berg's club in Los Angeles, which left most of the audience ambivalent or hostile towards the new music, the band broke up. Unlike Parker, who was content to play in small groups and be an occasional featured soloist in big bands, Gillespie aimed to lead a big band himself; his first, unsuccessful, attempt to do this was in 1945.^{[citation needed]}

After his work with Parker, Gillespie led other small combos (including ones with Milt Jackson, John Coltrane, Lalo Schifrin, Ray Brown, Kenny Clarke, James Moody, J.J. Johnson, and Yusef Lateef) and finally put together his first successful big band. Dizzy Gillespie and his band tried to popularize bop and make Dizzy Gillespie a symbol of the new music.^[7] He also appeared frequently as a soloist with Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic. He also headlined the 1946 independently-produced musical revue film Jivin' in Be-Bop.^[8]

In 1948 Dizzy was involved in a traffic accident when the bicycle he was riding was bumped by an automobile. He was slightly injured, and found that he could no longer hit the B-flat above high C. He won the case, but the jury awarded him only $1000, in view of his high earnings up to that point.^[9]

In 1956 he organized a band to go on a State Department tour of the Middle East and earned the nickname "the Ambassador of Jazz".^[10]^[11] During this time, he also continued to lead a big band that performed throughout the United States and featured musicians including Pee Wee Moore and others. This band recorded a live album at the 1957 Newport jazz festival that featured Mary Lou Williams as a guest artist on piano.

Afro-Cuban music

In the late 1940s, Gillespie was also involved in the movement called Afro-Cuban music, bringing Latin and African elements to greater prominence in jazz and even pop music, particularly salsa. Afro-Cuban jazz is based on traditional Cuban rhythms. Dizzy Gillespie was introduced to Chano Pozo in 1947 by Mario Bauza, a Latin jazz trumpet player. Chano Pozo became Gillespie's conga drummer for his band. Dizzy Gilespie also worked with Mario Bauza in New York jazz clubs on 52nd street and several famous dance clubs such as Palladium and the Apollo Theater in Harlem. They played together in the Chick Webb band and Cab Calloway's band, where Gillespie and Bauza became life-long friends. Dizzy helped develop and mature the Afro-Cuban jazz style.^[12]

Afro-Cuban jazz was considered bebop-oriented, and some musicians classified it as a modern style or swing. Afro-Cuban jazz was successful because it never decreased in popularity and it always attracted people to dance to its unique rhythms.^[12] Gillespie's most famous contributions to Afro-Cuban music are the compositions "Manteca" and "Tin Tin Deo" (both co-written with Chano Pozo); he was responsible for commissioning George Russell's "Cubano Be, Cubano Bop", which featured the great but ill-fated Cuban conga player, Chano Pozo. In 1977, Gillespie discovered Arturo Sandoval while researching music during a tour of Cuba.

Later years and death

Dizzy Gillespie at Nambassa festival 1981.
Credit: Nambassa Trust and Peter Terry http://www.nambassa.com

Unlike his contemporary Miles Davis, Gillespie essentially remained true to the bebop style for the rest of his career.^{[citation needed]}

In 1960, he was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame.

In 1964 the artist put himself forward as a presidential candidate. He promised that if he were elected, the White House would be renamed "The Blues House," and a cabinet composed of Duke Ellington, (Secretary of State); Miles Davis, (Director of the CIA); Max Roach, (Secretary of Defense); Charles Mingus, (Secretary of Peace); Ray Charles, (Librarian of Congress); Louis Armstrong, (Secretary of Agriculture); Mary Lou Williams, (Ambassador to the Vatican); Thelonious Monk, (Travelling Ambassador) and Malcolm X, (Attorney General).^[13]^[14] He said his running mate would be Phyllis Diller.

Gillespie published his autobiography, To Be or Not to Bop, in 1979.

Gillespie was a vocal fixture in many of John Hubley and Faith Hubley's animated films, such as The Hole, The Hat, and Voyage to Next.

In the 1980s, Dizzy Gillespie led the United Nation Orchestra. For three years Flora Purim toured with the Orchestra and she credits Gillespie with evolving her understanding of jazz after being in the field for over two decades.^[15] David Sánchez also toured with the group and was also greatly influenced by Gillespie. Both artists later were nominated for Grammy awards. Gillespie also had a guest appearance on The Cosby Show as well as Sesame Street and The Muppet Show.

In 1982, Dizzy Gillespie had a cameo on Stevie Wonder's hit "Do I Do". Gillespie's tone gradually faded in the last years in life, and his performances often focused more on his proteges such as Arturo Sandoval and Jon Faddis; his good-humoured comedic routines became more and more a part of his live act.

Dizzy Gillespie with drummer Bill Stewart at 1984 Stanford Jazz Workshop

In 1988, Gillespie had worked with Canadian flautist and saxophonist Moe Koffman on their prestigious album Oo Pop a Da. He did fast scat vocals on the title track and a couple of the other tracks were played only on trumpet.

In 1989 Gillespie gave 300 performances in 27 countries, appeared in 100 U.S. cities in 31 states and the District of Columbia, headlined three television specials, performed with two symphonies, and recorded four albums.^{[citation needed]} He was also crowned a traditional chief in Nigeria, received the Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres -- France's most prestigious cultural award—was named regent professor by the University of California, and received his fourteenth honorary doctoral degree, this one from the Berklee College of Music. In addition, he was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award the same year. The next year, at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts ceremonies celebrating the centennial of American jazz, Gillespie received the Kennedy Center Honors Award and the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers Duke Ellington Award for 50 years of achievement as a composer, performer, and bandleader.^[16]^[17] In 1993 he received the Polar Music Prize in Sweden.^{[citation needed]}

Dizzy Gillespie with the Italian singer Sergio Caputo.

November 26, 1992 at Carnegie Hall in New York, following the Second Bahá'í World Congress was Dizzy's 75th birthday concert and his offering to the celebration of the centenary of the passing of Bahá'u'lláh. Gillespie was to appear at Carnegie Hall for the 33rd time. The line-up included: Jon Faddis, Marvin "Doc" Holladay, James Moody, Paquito D'Rivera, and the Mike Longo Trio with Ben Brown on bass and Mickey Roker on drums. But Gillespie didn't make it because he was in bed suffering from cancer of the pancreas. "But the musicians played their real hearts out for him, no doubt suspecting that he would not play again. Each musician gave tribute to their friend, this great soul and innovator in the world of jazz."^[18]

Gillespie also starred in a film called The Winter in Lisbon released in 2004.^[19] He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7057 Hollywood Boulevard in the Hollywood section of the City of Los Angeles. He is honored by the December 31, 2006 - A Jazz New Year's Eve: Freddy Cole & the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.^[20]

A longtime resident of Corona, Queens^[21], he died of pancreatic cancer January 6, 1993, aged 75, and was buried in the Flushing Cemetery, Queens, New York. Mike Longo delivered a eulogy at his funeral. He was also with Gillespie on the night he died, along with Jon Faddis and a select few others.

At the time of his death, Dizzy Gillespie was survived by his widow, Lorraine Willis Gillespie; a daughter, jazz singer Jeanie Bryson; and a grandson, Radji Birks Bryson-Barrett. Gillespie had two funerals. One was a Bahá'í funeral at his request, at which his closest friends and colleagues attended. The second was at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York open to the public.^[22]

Dizzy Gillespie, a Bahá'í since 1970, was one of the most famous adherents of the Bahá'í Faith which helped him make sense of his position in a succession of trumpeters as well as turning his life from knife-carrying roughneck to global citizen, and from alcohol to soul force, in the words of author Nat Hentoff, who knew Gillespie for forty years.^[23]^[24]^[25] He is often called the Bahá'í Jazz Ambassador.^[26] He is honored with weekly jazz sessions at the New York Bahá'í Center.^[27]

Origins of iconic "bent" trumpet

Gillespie's image is almost inseparable from his trademark trumpet whose bell was bent at a 45 degree angle rather than a traditional straight trumpet. In honor of this trademark, the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History has collected Gillespie's B-flat trumpet.^[28] According to Gillespie's autobiography, this was originally the result of accidental damage caused during a job on January 6, 1953, but the constriction caused by the bending altered the tone of the instrument, and Gillespie liked the effect. Gillespie's biographer Alyn Shipton writes that Gillespie likely got the idea when he saw a similar instrument in 1937 in Manchester, England while on tour with the Teddy Hill Orchestra. Gillespie came across an English trumpeter who was using such an instrument because his vision was poor and the horn made reading music easier. According to this account (from British journalist Pat Brand) Gillespie was able to try out the horn and the experience led him, much later, to commission a similar horn for himself.

Whatever the origins of Gillespie's upswept trumpet, by June, 1954, Gillespie was using a professionally manufactured horn of this design, and it was to become a visual trademark for him for the rest of his life.^[29]

Discography

"...lead, follow, or get out of the way" ?

2009-10-15T09:58:00.000-07:00

It's his B'day

Arma virumque cano..., "I sing arms and the man..."

2009-10-15T09:35:00.000-07:00

Rumor, than which no evil flies more swiftly. She flourishes as she flies, gains strength by mere motion. Small at first and in fear, she soon rises to heaven, Walks upon land and hides her head in the clouds.

PUBLIUS VERGILIUS MARO October 15, 70 BCE

Edward Estin Cummings

2009-10-14T09:58:00.000-07:00

It's HIS B'DAY

you shall above all things... (22) by E. E. Cummings

you shall above all things be glad and young
For if you're young,whatever life you wear

it will become you;and if you are glad
whatever's living will yourself become.
Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
i can entirely her only love

whose any mystery makes every man's
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time

that you should ever think,may god forbid
and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:
for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave
called progress,and negation's dead undoom.

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

Email This Poem to a Friend

the way to hump a cow is not... (14) by E. E. Cummings

the way to hump a cow is not
to get yourself a stool
but draw a line around the spot
and call it beautifool

to multiply because and why
dividing thens by nows
and adding and(i understand)
is hows to hump a cows

the way to hump a cow is not
to elevate your tool
but drop a penny in the slot
and bellow like a bool

to lay a wreath from ancient greath
on insulated brows
(while tossing boms at uncle toms
is hows to hump a cows

the way to hump a cow is not
to push and then to pull
but practicing the art of swot
to preach the golden rull

to vote for me(all decent mem
and wonens will allows
which if they don't to hell with them)
is hows to hump a cows

Email This Poem to a Friend

Order In The Universe? {:>)

2009-10-13T11:39:00.000-07:00

If you ever go out with a schoolteacher,

You're in for a sensational night;

She'll make you do it over and over again

Until you do it right.

The opposite of 'pro' is 'con'

This fact is clearly seen

But if 'progress' means move forward

What does 'Congress' mean? Nipsey Russell

IT"S THEIR B'Day

Larry's B'day

2009-10-05T10:41:00.000-07:00

Julie London B'day!

2009-10-01T12:31:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPnh2sa4Fek
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsWvJw

He's not heavy, he's my Brother

2009-10-01T11:57:00.000-07:00

DONNY HATHAWAY

It's his B'day!
http://www.jango.com/music/Donny+Hathaway/_more_songs#

Hap'y B'day JM

2009-09-30T09:22:00.000-07:00

Copy url to address bar.....MISTY

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd3pDM2f6Y8

Poinciana by Johnny Mathis

Poinciana by Johnny...

cybernautev

4:02

Jerry Clower It's his B'Day

2009-09-28T12:39:00.000-07:00

Today? 551 B.C.E

2009-09-28T09:35:00.000-07:00

"Portrait of The First Teacher, Confucius, Giving a Lecture".

Still Ain't Easy

2009-09-24T13:37:00.000-07:00

Jim Henson

Hap'y B'day

Ray's Day

2009-09-23T11:55:00.000-07:00

It's His B'day

2009-09-23T09:36:00.000-07:00

John Coltrane

"EQUINOX"

It's His B'day

2009-09-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH 29 YEARS?

Brothers, BirthDays,.......

2009-09-15T12:58:00.000-07:00

Shook his hand once.......
Passin' thru airport, NYC,
Exchanged greetings,
Shook hands,
Departed

Midafternoon, April 4, 1968

MERCY, MERCY, MERCY

Order In The Universe?

2009-09-08T12:41:00.000-07:00

SAME DAY B'DAYS!!!!!

This disease still lives in us.

2009-08-29T07:31:00.000-07:00

Threats, Jeers Saturate Angry Health Care Debate

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: August 19, 2009

Filed at 9:24 p.m. ET

NEW YORK (AP) -- The images are striking: One congressman's office defaced by a swastika, other congressmen heckled at public meetings, videos and placards likening Barack Obama to Hitler, private citizens with guns joining anti-Obama protests.

Outside one meeting hosted by Sen. Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat, authorities detained a man with a sign reading, ''Death To Obama, Death To Michelle And Her Two Stupid Kids.''

In this season of searing political heat generated by the health care debate, these incidents have raised divisive questions of their own. Are they simply the latest twists in a long tradition of vigorous, public engagement or evidence of some new, alarming brand of political virulence?

''Hate, if it ever truly threatened to leave the political stage, is most definitely back, larger and nastier than ever,'' University of Missouri journalism professor Charles Davis wrote this week in his local paper, the Columbia Daily Tribune. He urged the media to put a spotlight on the hate, rather than ignore it.

To some political veterans, the phenomenon is unprecedented.

''There is more anger in America today than at any time I can remember,'' said Sen. Arlen Specter, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, after one of a series of town hall meetings at which he was jeered.

Many conservatives agree that the depth of anger is unusual, but insist that it is understandable as well -- with the health care issue overlapping with worries about the economy.

''People are frustrated -- they don't want to be lied to,'' said Mat Staver, president of Liberty Counsel, a Florida-based Christian legal group. ''Rather than just listening, they want be heard, and they feel Washington isn't listening to them.''

Another conservative activist, the Rev. Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition, said he was dismayed by the recent surfacing of threats against political leaders. But he noted that venomous rhetoric was nothing new in U.S. politics and recalled that former President George W. Bush had been called a terrorist and war criminal by some of his critics.

''You'll find on both ends of the divide -- the political left and political right -- the more extreme elements have completely different ideological viewpoints, but they are identical on imagery,'' Mahoney said. ''They use Nazi, Hitler, terrorist.''

Beyond the extremists, Mahoney said he was impressed by the backgrounds of the angry citizens appearing at recent town hall meetings. Unlike many left-of-center protesters, he said, ''these are people who normally stay home and don't get involved.''

One such political newcomer is Rick Smith, a 38-year-old North Carolina store owner who in the past thought protests were pointless. But recently he joined rallies and pickets targeting Kay Hagan, a first-term Democratic senator.

''I hope the freshmen have their eyes open to what's going on out here -- to see that they need to represent the people that put them in office,'' Smith said.

At some of the meetings, politicians and their critics have engaged in substantive dialogue over health care policy and other issues. At other times, the exchanges have been curt.

''On what planet do you spend most of your time?'' Democratic Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts asked a woman at a meeting Tuesday when she held up a poster depicting Obama with a Hitler-style mustache.

Andrew Kohut, who oversees public opinion surveys as president of the Pew Research Center, says the health care debate has fueled intense anti-government sentiment in some quarters.

''I also think the conservatives are frustrated politically -- they don't feel they have a leader,'' Kohut said. ''They're worried about a government takeover of health care and feeling not so empowered with a strong Democratic Congress. All these things lead to a summer of intense points of view.''

Kohut expressed doubt that racism was a major factor behind the hostility toward Obama, but others disagree.

African-American congressman David Scott, whose Smyrna, Ga., office outside Atlanta was defaced with a spray-painted swastika, said he also has received mail in recent days using racial slurs.

''We have got to make sure that the symbol of the swastika does not win, that the racial hatred that's bubbling up does not win this debate,'' Scott said. ''That's what is bubbling up with all of this. There's so much hatred out there for President Obama.''

For many of Obama's supporters, a new source of apprehension has surfaced in the form of private citizens showing up with guns outside venues where the president was speaking.

In Arizona, about a dozen people carried guns Monday outside the convention center where Obama addressed the Veterans of Foreign Wars. And last week during Obama's health care town hall in Portsmouth, N.H., a man stood outside with a pistol strapped to his leg, carrying a sign reading, ''It is time to water the tree of liberty.''

That's part of a longer quote from Thomas Jefferson, who wrote that the tree should be watered periodically ''with the blood of patriots and tyrants.''

The Secret Service said the armed men were in compliance with state laws, and were neither trying to enter the meeting hall nor get near Obama's motorcade route. Nonetheless, their appearance raised concern in the liberal blogosphere that the trend could lead to violence.

''It just takes one wacko with a gun to cause a huge problem at one of these events -- if not trying to kill Obama then to kill others,'' wrote Kansas City Star columnist Yael T. Abouhalkah.

Matthew Spalding, director of the conservative Heritage Foundation's Center for American Studies, said Democratic leaders should not dismiss the surge of anger as an extremist-fringe phenomenon.

''There are components of liberalism that try to paint the whole thing as right-wing paranoia,'' he said. ''That would be a large political mistake. There's a sense that our country is at a great turning point, and there's widespread confusion and concern about where we're going.''

"The more things change"

2009-08-29T07:23:00.000-07:00

Updated 12:15 p.m. 8/20/09
By Garance Franke-Ruta and Sarah Lovenheim
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) was greeted with shouts and boos at a town hall meeting on health care at a senior center in Dartmouth, Mass., Tuesday night, an event that was targeted by supporters of perennial independent political candidate Lyndon LaRouche. But the combative House Financial Services Committee chairman met fire with fire.

"On what planet do you spend most of your time?" Frank retorted when Rachel Brown of the LaRouche Youth Movement compared President Obama's push for health-care reform to the policies of Nazi Germany while holding up a pamphlet depicting the president with a Hitler mustache, a LaRouche anti-Obama health reform campaign image.

"This policy is actually already on its way out. It already has been defeated by LaRouche. My question to you is, why do you continue to support a Nazi policy?" Brown had asked.

"You stand there with a picture of the president defaced to look like Hitler and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis," Frank, who is Jewish, blasted back.

"Trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table," he continued. "... I have no interest in doing it."

Video of Frank's remarks quickly went viral online and was shown repeatedly on cable television.

Protesters had greeted attendees of the meeting, organized by the Democratic Town Committee of Dartmouth, by distributing pamphlets criticizing Frank's push for reform and Obama's plan. Images of Obama as Hitler were visible on several of the pamphlets seen in videos of the event. Some protesters held posters that read, "It's the economy stupid, stop the spending," the Associated Press reported.

Ray Medeiros, chairman of the Dartmouth Democratic Party, said the pamphlets came from LaRouche supporters, and that the woman who ticked off Frank was one of about 20 who came to the meeting. Brock Cordiero, the regional chair of the Massachusetts GOP, said Brown was passing out pamphlets from a table with a LaRouche PAC banner on it before the town hall meeting and that he and Medeiros spent a fair bit of time during the meeting trying to contain the disruptions the LaRouche supporters were causing. "They were there to cause problems," he said.

Cordiero, concerned attendees might mistake LaRouche supporters for Republicans, said he went out of his way at the meeting to repudiate the Hitler-Obama imagery in remarks to Frank. "I saw media reports there was Republican booing and jeering," said Cordiero Thursday. "That's not the case."

To those who interrupted Frank's remarks during the event, the congressman from Massachusetts jabbed, "Disruption never helps your cause. ... It just looks like you're afraid to have rational discussion."

Medeiros said that he had encouraged protesters, mostly young people, to leave but that they wouldn't budge. "This is a Democratic Town Committee meeting. We called the meeting to order!" he said he eventually yelled after one refused to clear floor space.

LaRouche PAC has been waging an intensifying campaign against the Obama and congressional health reform proposals since the president's nationally televised news conference of July 22, when he called for an "an independent group of doctors and medical experts who are empowered to eliminate waste and inefficiency in Medicare." The group has interpreted that statement as ordering euthanasia.

"LaRouche PAC members are giving leadership to these town hall meetings all around the country so we are being at any one that we possibly can," LaRouche PAC spokeswoman Nancy Spannaus told The Post of the group's presence in Massachusetts.

"Our Obama mustache poster....It symbolizes the fact that the president is attempting to implement a Hitler health care policy," she said. "At any town hall, you'll know LaRouche people are there if you just look for the mustache."

If you know of other town hall meetings happening nationwide, e-mail us at politicscalendar@wpost.com.

By Garance Franke-Ruta and Sarah Lovenheim | August 19, 2009; 8:21 AM ET
Categories: Health Reform | Tags: Barney Frank, Health Care

My Mentor, Colleague, Friend

2009-08-19T10:04:00.000-07:00

Read Message

Fwd: FW: The Passing of a Pioneer: Margaret Bush Wilson

From: leslievanc@aol.com

To:misaji@aol.com, l.w.day@comcast.net, meisrich@bellsouth.net, tigerpaws1114@aol.com, ssenat74@yahoo.com, treydfg@aol.com

Sent: Mon, 17 Aug 2009 22:58:46 -0400

Margaret-Bush-Wil... (470KB)

-----Original Message-----
From: Fields, Carmen <Carmen.Fields@us.ngrid.com>
Sent: Mon, Aug 17, 2009 11:54 am
Subject: FW: The Passing of a Pioneer: Margaret Bush Wilson

fyi
cf
The
Passing of a Pioneer: Margaret Bush Wilson
Posted on 14 August 2009

Photo by Maurice Meredith
Internationally known and respected, locally born
and raised, civil rights pioneer, attorney, and business executive
Margaret Bush
Wilson passed on Tuesday, August 11th, at BJC Hospital, at the age of
90.Â  Margaret Bush Wilson changed America, while never losing her roots
here in St. Louis.

Margaret Bush Wilson was born January 30, 1919, the second of three
children.Â  America must have known the kind of woman she was to be, as
one
year later (almost in recognition of her arrival and preparation for
her life)
women won the right to vote. She received an early education on civil
rights and
public service as her mother, Margaret Casey Bush, was on the executive
committee of the local N.A.A.C.P.Â  Her father, James T. Bush , was a
real
estate agent and financially backed civil rights causes. When Mrs.
Wilson was a
child, Walter White (then head of the N.A.A.C.P.) stayed at their house
while on
a visit to St. Louis.

Mrs. Wilson attended Sumner High School and graduated in 1935.Â  After
high school, she attended Talladega College and earned a degree in
economics
with a minor in mathematics.Â  Whil
e attending Talladega, Mrs. Wilson
was
awarded the Julia Prescott Fellowship to study abroad in India, where
she met
Mahatma Ghandi and Nobel Prize winning poet, Rabindranath Tragore.Â 
After
graduation, she attended Lincoln University Law School (newly created
as a
result of the Gains vs. Canada lawsuit-and set up as a
â€œseparate-but-equalâ€ law
school for African Americans) which, at that time, was one of the
premiere
African American universities, along with Fisk, Morehouse, Spelman, and
Howard.Â  She earned her law degree in 1943 and became, at that time,
only
the second African American female to practice law in Missouri.

After working a few years for the U.S. Department of Agricultureâ€™s
Rural
Electrification Administration, Mrs. Wilson married a law school
classmate,
Robert Wilson Jr. (who had just come back from World War II), and they
set up a
law practice in St. Louis.Â  She joined the legal team on the historic
Shelley v. Kramer case, which challenged housing covenants that
excluded African
Americans and Jewish people from certain neighborhoods in St. Louis and
other
cities.Â  The case, which came out of her fatherâ€™s real estate dealings,
went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in 1948 that
the
covenants were unenforceable.

Mrs. Wilson presided over the St. Louis Chapter of the N.A.A.C.P.
during the
historic Jefferson Bank demonstrations.Â  In early 19
60, she organized
the
first statewide N.A.A.C.P. conference in Missouri which became the
Missouri
State Conference of N.A.A.C.P. Branches, of which she also served as
President.Â  After presiding over the City and State branches of the
N.A.A.C.P., Mrs. Wilson became the first African American woman to head
the
national N.A.A.C.P.Â  She held the position of national chair for nine
consecutive terms.Â  When asked by male board members â€œWhat shall we
call
you? Chairperson? Chairlady?â€ she responded â€œAs long as you recognize
that Iâ€™m
the Chairman of the Board, I donâ€™t care what you call me.â€

Margaret Bush Wilsonâ€™s young life was touched by social and civil
rights
advancements and in her adult life she spearheaded social and civil
rights
advancements.Â  Her story is one that is unique to America, unique to
its
time, and unique to a woman of character, competence and accomplishment.

One of St. Louisâ€™ greatest citizens, always willing and able to assume
roles
of leadership and fight for the right reasons, Margaret Bush Wilson
will be
sorely missed. At the time of her death, Mrs. Wilson still lived on
Page in the
home owned by her late father (she considered the house â€œpart of the
familyâ€).Â  Both of her parents preceded her in death, as well as her
husband, and her older brother, James T. Bush Jr. (who died this year).
Her
sister, Ermine=2
0Byas, lives in Rochester, NY and her son, Robert Wilson,
lives in
Rio De Janeiro.Â  Her life and legacy is an inspiration to them and to
us
all.

Services for Mrs. Wilson will be held Tuesday, August 18, at All Saints
Episcopal Church (2831 N. Kingshighway).Â  Visitation will be from 9
a.m. â€“
11 a.m.Â  Funeral Services and a celebration of her life will begin
directly
afterwards at 11 a.m.

From: Jojhnsn@aol.com [mailto:Jojhnsn@aol.com]

Sent: Sunday, August 16, 2009 7:31 AM
To:
Jojhnsn@aol.com
Subject: The Passing of a Pioneer: Margaret Bush
Wilson

A recent inductee into the Lincoln UniversityÂ AlumniÂ Hall of Fame
at the St. Louis Convention, Margaret Bush Wilson was also a
distinguishedÂ giant in our nation's struggle with Civil
Rights!
She'll be missed by ALL!
Â
Joe
Â

Â
 Â

       The Passing of a Pioneer: Margaret
       Bush Wilson

*************************************************************************
*******
This e-mail and any files transmitted with it, are confidential to
National Grid and are intended solely for the use of the individual or
entity to whom they are addressed.Â  If you have received this e-mail in
error, please reply to this message and let the sender know.

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Hap' py Br BrBirthday!!!!!! Bert Lahr

2009-08-13T09:51:00.000-07:00

The Wacky Peop[le Who Work There.

2009-07-16T10:29:00.000-07:00

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106561675

Funny story! There is audio (4 minutes) and a video clip of the winners of the Book Cart competition!

Thnx Charles Stone

2009-07-14T12:05:00.000-07:00

Heard on NPR

"Steroids" are the standout subject at this years' American Library Association gathering!

Observed: Librarian with electric blue hair; Librarian with Pink Thunderbird!

Golden Bookcart competition won by Oak Park Illinois; something about "...Valkyries"?

"Support Your Local Library...and the Wacky People Who Work There".

It's His B'day

2009-07-06T11:00:00.000-07:00

Dalai Lama turns 74, says should live to 100

By MUNEEZA NAQVI – 2 hours ago

NEW DELHI (AP) — The Dalai Lama celebrated his 74th birthday Monday in a typically jocular mood, remarking lightheartedly that the prayers being said for him might help him live to at least 100.

The Tibetan spiritual leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate has now spent 50 birthdays in exile in India.

Hundreds of Tibetan exiles chanted prayers and sang songs in New Delhi and Dharmsala, the northern town where he lives, to mark the birthday, setting aside nagging worries about their aging leader's successor.

The Dalai Lama has had a number of medical problems in the last two years, which have interrupted his busy schedule of international travel to teach Buddhism and highlight the Tibetan struggle for more freedom under Chinese rule.

As he gets older, there are concerns about who will lead the Tibetan exiles and push for their cause after his death.

Fears that China will appoint a new Dalai Lama after his death have led Tibetan leaders to contemplate ideas that break with the centuries-old system of choosing a child believed to be the reincarnation of the deceased spiritual leader. Among the suggestions have been doing away with Dalai Lamas altogether or naming a successor before the current leader dies.

On Monday, however, the Dalai Lama, who traveled to the Indian capital from Dharmsala, did not focus on worries about the future.

He thanked his followers for their prayers for his health and long life and joked that they would prolong his life.

"I don't know about a thousand years but maybe at least a 100 years," the Dalai Lama, known for his humor and exuberance, said in a speech to his followers.

He also accepted scores of silk scarves from them and watched a musical performance. The gift of a white or cream silk scarf is considered a sign of respect among Tibetan Buddhists.

In Dharmsala, the hill town that is home to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile, hundreds gathered at Tsuglakhang temple to listen to speeches by religious leaders.

Banners that said "Long Live the Dalai Lama" were put up, and Tibetans dressed in their finery to mark the occasion.

The festivities included cultural shows and dance performances by schoolchildren and Tibetan artists. Sweets were distributed, and businesses were closed through the morning to allow people to mark the event.

"We are happy to celebrate His Holiness' birthday. At the same time, I feel sad because it reminds me that we have been in exile for a long time," said Lhakpa, a 60-year-old Tibetan exile, who uses just one name.

The government-in-exile's Cabinet said Monday that China's unwillingness to make concessions in talks with the Dalai Lama over the autonomy for Tibetans raises doubts whether Beijing wants to resolve the Tibet issue.

"Therefore, we have now shifted our focus on engaging with the Chinese people," the Cabinet said in a statement.

However, the Tibetan ministers said talks with Beijing would continue "once we receive a clear signal from the Chinese government," the statement said. The two sides have held eight rounds of discussions since 2002.

The Dalai Lama has lived in Dharmsala since fleeing Tibet following a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule over the Himalayan region.

"Tibetans do not want to think that His Holiness will not be there with us one day. We all pray for a long, long life for him," said Tenzin Dhoyoen, a young exile.

Associated Press writer Ashwini Bhatia in Dharmsala, India, contributed to this report.

Photo 1 of 8

Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama blesses his followers as he arrives at a gathering held to celebrate his birthday in New Delhi, India, Monday, July 6, 2009. The Dalai Lama celebrates his 74th birthday in a jocular mood, remarking lightheartedly that the prayers being said for him by his followers might help him live at least 100 years. (AP Photo/Saurabh Das)

Map

Birthday of..?

2009-07-06T10:40:00.000-07:00

Bill Haley

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Bill Haley
Bill Haley and His Comets in concert at Liège, Belgium May 1974.
Background information
Birth name	William John Clifton Haley
Also known as	Jack Haley, Johnny Clifton, Scott Gregory
Born	July 6, 1925(1925-07-06)
Origin	Highland Park, Michigan
Died	February 9, 1981 (aged 55)
Genre(s)	Rock and roll, country, rockabilly
Occupation(s)	Singer-songwriter, musician, bandleader
Instrument(s)	Vocals, guitar, slap bass
Years active	1946 – 1980
Label(s)	Cowboy, Atlantic, Keystone, Center, Holiday, Essex, Decca, Warner Bros. Records, Orfeon, Dimsa, Newtown, Guest Star, Logo, APT, Gone, United Artists, Roulette, Sonet, Buddah, Antic
Associated acts	Bill Haley & His Comets, The Down Homers, The Jodimars

This article is specifically about the singer. For detailed information about his rock and roll group, see Bill Haley & His Comets.

Bill Haley (pronounced /ˈheɪliː/) (July 6, 1925 – February 9, 1981) was one of the first American rock and roll musicians. He is credited by many with first popularizing this form of music in the early 1950s with his group Bill Haley & His Comets and their hit song "Rock Around the Clock". Bill Haley is known as the Father of Rock n Roll.^[1]

[hide]

Biography

Early life and career

Bill Haley & His Comets

Main article: Bill Haley & His Comets

During the Labour Day weekend in 1952, The Saddlemen were renamed Bill Haley with Haley's Comets (inspired by a popular mispronunciation of Halley's Comet), and in 1953, Haley's recording of "Crazy Man, Crazy" (co-written by Haley and his bass player, Marshall Lytle although Lytle wouldn't receive credit until 2001) became the first rock and roll song to hit the American charts, peaking at no.15 on Billboard and no.11 on Cash Box. Soon after, the band's name was revised to Bill Haley & His Comets.

In 1953, a song called "Rock Around the Clock" was written for Haley (Dawson 2005). He was unable to record it until April 12, 1954. Initially, it was relatively unsuccessful, staying at the charts for only one week, but Haley soon scored a major worldwide hit with a cover version of Big Joe Turner's "Shake, Rattle and Roll", which went on to sell a million copies and became the first ever rock 'n' roll song to enter British singles charts in December 1954 and became a Gold Record. Haley and his band were important in launching the music known as "Rock and Roll" to a wider, mostly white audience after years of it being considered an underground genre. When "Rock Around the Clock" appeared behind the opening credits of the 1955 film Blackboard Jungle starring Glenn Ford, it soared to the top of the American Billboard charts for eight weeks. The single is commonly used as a convenient line of demarcation between the "rock era" and the music industry that preceded it; Billboard Magazine separates its statistical tabulations into 1890-1954 and 1955-present. After the record rose to number one, Haley was quickly given the title "Father of Rock and Roll," by the media, and by teenagers that had come to embrace the new style of music.

"Rock Around the Clock" was the first record ever to sell over one million copies in both Britain and Germany and, in 1957, Haley became the first major American rock singer to tour Europe. Haley continued to score hits throughout the 1950s such as "See You Later, Alligator" and he starred in the first rock and roll musical movies Rock Around the Clock and Don't Knock the Rock, both in 1956. His star was soon surpassed in the USA by the younger, sexier Elvis, but Haley continued to be a major star in Latin America, Mexico, and in Europe throughout the 1960s.

Death and legacy

A self-admitted alcoholic (as indicated in a 1974 radio interview for the BBC), Haley fought a battle with liquor well into the 1970s. Nonetheless, he and his band continued to be a popular touring act, enjoying a career resurgence in the late 1960s with the Rock and roll revival movement and the signing of a lucrative record deal with the European Sonet Records label. After performing for Queen Elizabeth II at a command performance in 1979, Haley made his final performances in South Africa in May and June 1980. Prior to the South African tour, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and a planned tour of Germany in the fall of 1980 was canceled. Despite his ill health, Haley began compiling notes for possible use as a basis for either a biographical film based on his life, or a published autobiography (accounts differ), and there were plans for him to record an album in Memphis, Tennessee, when the brain tumor began affecting his behavior and he retired to his home in Harlingen, Texas, where he died early on the morning February 9, 1981.

Media reports immediately following his death indicated Haley displayed deranged and erratic behavior in his final weeks, although beyond a biography of Haley by John Swenson released a year later which describes Haley painting the windows of his home black and making rambling late-night phone calls to friends and relatives, there is little information extant about Haley's final days. The exact cause of his death is controversial. Media reports, supported by Haley's death certificate (reproduced in the book Bill Haley: The Daddy of Rock and Roll by John Swenson), suggest he died of "natural causes most likely heart attack". Members of Haley's family, however, contest that he died from the brain tumor.

Haley was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.^[2]

Songwriters Tom Russell and Dave Alvin addressed Haley's sad demise in musical terms with "Haley's Comet" on Alvin's 1991 album "Blue Blvd." Dwight Yoakam sang backup on the tribute.

Haley's original Comets from 1954 and 1955 still tour the world to packed houses. Despite ranging in age from 72 to 84, the band members show no sign of slowing down, releasing a concert DVD in 2004 on Hydra Records, playing the trendy Viper Room in West Hollywood in 2005, and performing at Dick Clark's American Bandstand Theater in Branson, Missouri in 2006-07.

In March 2007 The Original Comets pre opened the Bill-Haley-Museum in Munich, Germany(Schleissheimerstr.321,München www.rockithydra.de). On October 27, 2007 ex Comets guitar player Bill Turner opened the Bill-Haley-Museum for the public. The Museum keeps the legacy and importance of Bill Haley & His Comets alive. There are hundreds of photos, posters, books, instruments, Gold Records, business papers and merchandise on display.

Asteroid

Main article - 79896 Billhaley

In February 2006, the International Astronomical Union announced the naming of asteroid 79896 Billhaley to mark the 25th anniversary of Bill Haley's death.

Children

Married three times, Bill Haley had at least eight children. John W. Haley, his eldest son, wrote Sound and Glory, a biography of Haley, while his youngest daughter, Gina Haley, is an up-and-coming musician based out of Los Angeles. Scott Haley is a noted athlete, while Bill's youngest son, Pedro Haley, is also a musician-in-the-making. He also had a daughter from his last marriage with Mrs. Martha Velasco. Her name is Martha Maria.

Bill Haley Jr. (b. 7/28/55), Bill's second son and first with Joan Barbara "Cuppy" Haley-Hahn, publishes a regional business magazine in Southeastern Pennsylvania (Route 422 Business Advisor). He sings and plays guitar with a band called "Lager Rhythms," and appeared with the "Original Comets" at the Bubba Mac Shack in Somers Point, New Jersey, in 2004 and 2005, and at the Twin Bar re-dedication ceremony in Gloucester City, New Jersey, in 2007. He is currently writing a biography about his father, concentrating on the years 1949-61.

Biographies

In 1980, Haley began working on an autobiography entitled The Life and Times of Bill Haley but died after completing only 100 pages. The work is registered with the U.S. Copyright Office but has yet to be released to the public.
In 1982, John Swenson wrote Bill Haley: The Daddy of Rock and Roll (published in the UK under the title, Bill Haley), which is controversial among Haley fans for alleged inaccuracies.
In 1990, Haley's eldest son, John W. Haley, along with John von Hoëlle wrote Sound and Glory, a biography focusing mostly on Haley's early life and peak career years. This book is long out of print.
A German-language biography was published soon after Haley's death, written by Peter Cornelsen and Harald D. Kain.
A book on the history of Haley's most famous recording, Rock Around the Clock: The Record That Started the Rock Revolution by Jim Dawson was published in June 2005 ([1]).

Film portrayals

Unlike his contemporaries, Bill Haley has rarely been portrayed on screen. Following the success of The Buddy Holly Story in 1978, Haley expressed interest in having his life story committed to film, but this never came to fruition. In the 1980s and early 1990s, numerous media reports emerged that plans were underway to do a biopic based upon Haley's life, with Beau Bridges, Jeff Bridges and John Ritter all at one point being mentioned as actors in line to play Haley (according to Goldmine Magazine, Ritter attempted to buy the film rights to Sound and Glory).

Bill Haley has also been portrayed - not always in a positive light - in several "period" films:

John Paramor in Shout! The Story of Johnny O'Keefe (1985)
Michael Daingerfield in Mr. Rock 'n' Roll: The Alan Freed Story (1999)
Dicky Barrett (of The Mighty Mighty Bosstones) in Shake, Rattle and Roll: An American Love Story (also 1999)

In March 2005, the British network Sky TV reported that Tom Hanks was planning to produce a biopic on the life of Bill Haley, with production tentatively scheduled to begin in 2006. However this rumor was quickly debunked by Hanks.

Discography

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (July 2007)

Prior to the formation of Bill Haley and the Saddlemen, which later became The Comets, Haley released several singles with other groups. Dates are approximate due to lack of documentation. (Source: the Bill Haley Database)

As Bill Haley and the Four Aces of Western Swing

1948

Too Many Parties and Too Many Pals (vocal by Tex King)/Four Leaf Clover Blues (Cowboy CR1201)

1949

Tennessee Border/Candy Kisses (Cowboy CR1202)

As Johnny Clifton and His String Band

1949 or 1950

Stand Up and Be Counted/Loveless Blues (Center C102)

Many Haley discographies list two 1946 recordings by the Down Homers released on the Vogue Records label as featuring Haley. Haley historian Chris Gardner, as well as surviving members of the group, have confirmed that the two singles: "Out Where the West Winds Blow"/"Who's Gonna Kiss You When I'm Gone" (Vogue R736) and "Boogie Woogie Yodel"/"Baby I Found Out All About You" (Vogue R786) do not feature Haley.[2] However, the tracks were nonetheless included in the compilation box set Rock 'n' Roll Arrives released by Bear Family Records in 2006.

See the discography section of Bill Haley & His Comets for a list of the singles and album releases made by Haley with the Saddlemen and the Comets from 1950 onwards.

Unreleased recordings

Bill Haley recorded prolifically during the 1940s, often at the radio stations where he worked, or in formal studio settings. Virtually none of these recordings were ever released. Liner notes for a 2003 CD release by Hydra Records entitled Bill Haley and Friends Vol. 2: The Legendary Cowboy Recordings reveal that several additional Cowboy label single releases were planned for the Four Aces, but this never occurred.

A number of previously unreleased Haley country-western recordings from the 1946-1950 period began to emerge near the end of Haley's life, some of which were released by the Arzee label, with titles such as "Yodel Your Blues Away" and "Rose of My Heart." Still more demos, alternate takes, and wholly unheard-before recordings have been released since Haley's death. Notable examples of such releases include the albums Golden Country Origins by Grassroots Records of Australia and Hillbilly Haley by the British label, Rollercoaster, as well as the aforementioned German release by Hydra Records. In 2006, Bear Family Records of Germany released what is considered to be the most comprehensive (yet still incomplete) collection of Haley's 1946-1950 recordings as part of its Haley box set Rock n' Roll Arrives.

References

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (February 2008)

^ http://www.audiobooksonline.com/188595915X.html
^ Dawson, Jim and Whitcomb, Ian (2005). Rock Around the Clock: The Record that Started the Rock Revolution!, p. 180. Hal Leonard Corporation. ISBN 087930829X

Sources

Books

Jim Dawson, Rock Around the Clock: The Record That Started the Rock Revolution! (San Francisco: Backbeat Books, 2005)
John W. Haley and John von Hoëlle, Sound and Glory (Wilmington, DE: Dyne-American, 1990)
John Swenson, Bill Haley (London: W.H. Allen, 1982)

External links

Persondata
NAME	Haley, William John Clifton
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Haley, Bill; Clifton, Johnny; Gregory, Scott; Haley, Jack
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Rock and roll music pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH	6 July 1925(1925-07-06)
PLACE OF BIRTH	Highland Park, Michigan
DATE OF DEATH	9 February 1981
PLACE OF DEATH	Harlingen, Texas

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Haley"

Happy 100th B'day

2009-07-01T09:53:00.000-07:00

Charles Laughton

Happy Birthday

2009-06-29T10:02:00.000-07:00

Dr.Kwame Chaka Toure' ne Stokely Standiford Churchill Carmichael

1941

She Makes Cakes Too!

2009-06-24T11:51:00.000-07:00

Julie Wieberg is the Missouri River Regional Library's serials coordinator. (Stephen Brooks/News Tribune photo)

"Fauntleroy's" Birthday

2009-06-09T12:08:00.000-07:00

Icons

2009-05-28T10:59:00.000-07:00

Jerry West's B'Day

A "Respected Spirit"

2009-05-28T10:13:00.000-07:00

Wa-Tho-Huk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Thorpe

Jacobus Franciscus "JIM" Thorpe

2009-05-26T11:46:00.000-07:00

Some say June, Some say May

i say Hap'y B'day to the Great Grandson of an African Prince/
Russian General/Blackamour

2009-05-07T11:29:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW_rYLoIR08

Happy B'Day Janis Ian

Sir Duke

2009-04-29T13:22:00.000-07:00

Edward Kennedy Ellington

WE DO LOVE YOU MADLY

B'day

2009-04-23T11:42:00.000-07:00

"Willie" Shakespeare

Roy Orbison

B'Day

2009-04-15T10:35:00.000-07:00

L. DaVinci

TJ's BDay

2009-04-13T11:00:00.000-07:00

This day 1743

Thomas Jefferson' Birthday

"Dinner For One James"

Perhaps his birthday?

2009-04-08T10:17:00.000-07:00

Gautama Siddhartha Shakyamuni "THE BUDDHA"

JERU

2009-04-06T13:13:00.000-07:00

Hap'y B'day

Jerry Mulligan

Hill Williams 94102?

2008-10-17T07:12:00.000-07:00

Happy BirthDay

IRENE RYAN

'Granny' Clampet, Beverly Hills, CA

The Iceman Cometh, Emperor Jones

2008-10-16T10:22:00.000-07:00

HAP'Y

B'DAY

EUGENE O'NEIL

B'day

2008-10-14T12:37:00.000-07:00

Hap'Y B'day E.E. Cummings

the boys i mean are not refined

the boys i mean are not refined
they go with girls who buck and bite
they do not give a fuck for luck
they hump them thirteen times a night

one hangs a hat upon her tit
one carves a cross on her behind
they do not give a shit for wit
the boys i mean are not refined

they come with girls who bite and buck
who cannot read and cannot write
who laugh like they would fall apart
and masturbate with dynamite

the boys i mean are not refined
they cannot chat of that and this
they do not give a fart for art
they kill like you would take a piss

they speak whatever's on their mind
they do whatever's in their pants
the boys i mean are not refined
they shake the mountains when they dance

Quite A Body Of Work

2008-10-02T09:58:00.000-07:00

"Groucho" Marx

"Bud" Abbott

Moses Gunn

Avery Brooks

HAP'Y B'DAY

2day

2008-10-01T10:04:00.000-07:00

Hap'y B'day

Bobby Womack

"He Ain't heavy, He's My Brother"

KOKO

2008-08-28T09:50:00.000-07:00

KOKO's Whelping Week+ days before and after start today! {:>)

2day

2008-08-19T11:40:00.000-07:00

Happy B'day

Willie Shoemaker

B'Day

2008-08-13T10:59:00.000-07:00

Bert Lahr

George Shearing

B'days

2008-03-26T14:02:00.000-07:00

This day in 2228, (CE?) Captain James T. Kirk is born.

Today is really Leonard Nemoy's B'day.

B'days

2008-03-25T12:01:00.001-07:00

Aretha Franklin

Elton john

Frank Oz

B'days

2008-03-25T12:01:00.000-07:00

Aretha Franklin

Elton john

Frank Oz

MoreMonkeyBusiness

2008-01-10T12:57:00.000-08:00

LL2.1

2008-01-07T10:11:00.000-08:00

https://207.160.148.179/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://librarylearning21.blogspot.com/

Looks like can put in both?

td4

KOKO 2007

2007-12-29T07:49:00.000-08:00

Cap'n Jack Simian

2007-09-06T13:16:00.000-07:00

TheLibraryDarkSide

2007-07-05T10:10:00.001-07:00

Havin' a BAD day?

2007-05-30T11:55:00.000-07:00

Happy B'day!

2007-05-30T09:55:00.000-07:00

Peter I, Russia{the Great}

Benny Goodman

Mel Blanc

#20,web2.0,library2.0,

2007-05-24T12:11:00.000-07:00

Perhaps this should have been the FIRST lesson?
Read all 6 articles. Puts this 'Library' Stuff 'n the tech stuff together like a Roman Mosaic.

The SELECTORS' Nemesis?

2007-05-10T11:27:00.000-07:00

2007-05-03T11:34:00.000-07:00

This is not a Mickey Mouse Outfit

2007-05-02T14:53:00.000-07:00

Prophetic History?

2007-04-18T10:17:00.000-07:00

" Listen my children
And....

Hardly a {person} is now alive
Who remembers that day and year."

Been There

2007-04-17T11:02:00.000-07:00

i've been there

2007-04-17T10:37:00.000-07:00

SAM 2.0

2007-04-16T14:18:00.000-07:00

Fractured History

2007-03-15T09:31:00.000-07:00

Hey Jules,....Gaius! Sly Stone is havin' a b'day gig at the Collesium. Be there or be square.
Oh yeah, take the long way, AROUND THE FORUM!
TDIV

4parents

2007-03-07T10:58:00.000-08:00

A good site to explain "myspace" to parents.

http://familyinternet.about.com/od/chattingsafety/a/myspace.htm

PreemptiveProfileClarification

2007-03-06T12:06:00.000-08:00

The book, A Different Drummer, is authored by William Melvin Kelley.

It grows!

2007-03-06T11:59:00.000-08:00

FYI

Try a Google search of your library blog.

NicePic

2007-03-01T13:17:00.000-08:00

RSS

2007-03-01T12:41:00.000-08:00

OK,

i think it's finished.... for this lesson.
Would have to organize, perhaps prioritize, what and why re the subscribed to feeds.
Seems GREAT for news junkies.?
'The Shifted Librarian' site seemed 'newsy', that's why i chose it.

RSS/KISS

2007-02-27T13:08:00.000-08:00

Already
[i'm not through this lesson] i can tell that this 'tech developement' will go through the stages necessary to arrive at KISS wisdom.
Two years of IT study does allow me to understand the language and development story.
Methinks, for our purposes, the 'how to' info would be enough. Sympathies to those who wade through 'protocols', standards, RFC's{There are some very clever RFC's for those who can't get enough research see Jabberwocky - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaIt is generally accepted as the first "joke" RFC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabberwocky - 83k - Cached} and the like.

MNetwork Working Group R. Merryman (UCSD-CC)
Request for Comments: 527 6/22/73

ARPAWOCKY
Twas brillig, and the Protocols
Did USER-SERVER in the wabe.
All mimsey was the FTP,
And the RJE outgrabe,
Beware the ARPANET, my son;
The bits that byte, the heads that scratch;
Beware the NCP, and shun
the frumious system patch,
He took his coding pad in hand;
Long time the Echo-plex he sought.
When his HOST-to-IMP began to limp
he stood a while in thought,
And while he stood, in uffish thought,
The ARPANET, with IMPish bent,
Sent packets through conditioned lines,
And checked them as they went,
One-two, one-two, and through and through
The IMP-to-IMP went ACK and NACK,
When the RFNM came, he said "I'm game",
And sent the answer back,
Then hast thou joined the ARPANET?
Oh come to me, my bankrupt boy!
Quick, call the NIC! Send RFCs!
He chortled in his joy.
Twas brillig, and the Protocols
Did USER-SERVER in the wabe.
All mimsey was the FTP,
And the RJE outgrabe.
D.L. COVILL
May 1973

Maybe more to come when i finish subscriptions etc

A Japanese Garden

2007-02-20T11:21:00.000-08:00

MyFriendFLIKR?

2007-02-17T08:15:00.000-08:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/80758754@N00/276091949/in/set-72157594339473860/
The Laughing Buddah
is an elememt in some strictly designed Japanese Gardens.
This link/url should show one photographed at Hangzhou.
tdp4

tagging

2007-02-17T07:35:00.000-08:00

Made
this comment earlier.
Not very user friendly in my reaction. Have to do too much to get set up; probably have to think too much to keep it going. Some of us still like to: point&click; read &delete; compose &send. AND the idea that ANYONE can access my thots is a freightening discipline!

i DID enjoy the Jazz portiion of the video/tutorial!
tdp4

2007-02-05T12:34:00.000-08:00

i'm
Confused. Maybe i shouldhave named the "myspace thingy' the same as this one?
Or, is this to be 'intra mrrl' and the other "universal'?
Even so,..... still having probs' with pics: perhaps the 'protect intellectual property rights movement' has figured out how to interfere?

2007-02-05T11:45:00.000-08:00

Tagging?
Seems like i must have omitted a step or 2?
Yes, Would help in some research; one would still have to reorganize to present a "scholarly" work.

2007-01-22T11:04:00.000-08:00

Welcome Waterman

Haven't gotten much past this re 2.0
Loadin' pics is a drag!
td4

2007-01-18T12:13:00.000-08:00

i hear
we are going to have an hour a week to work on ...2.?

Also, wha' happened to my pic of Aquarius?

OK, it came back...........what kind of Library Elves live in the PCC RefDesk machines?

2007-01-18T12:05:00.000-08:00

i hear
we are going to have an hour a week to work on ...2.?

Also, wha' happened to my pic of Aquarius?

01/22/---02/18

2007-01-16T13:34:00.000-08:00

2007-01-16T11:37:00.000-08:00

The Ice Storm of '07!
Closed the Library for two days.

KOKO

2007-01-11T11:19:00.000-08:00

KOKOPELEMANA
Is the name of the Yorkie that lives with and herds us at our home.
She is as whimsical/magical/and 'Hobbitish' as the mystical flute player familiar to many of America's First Nations Peoples.

We call her KoKo.

"caught"

2007-01-10T11:16:00.000-08:00

mea culpa
i have not been here every day........

Robin 'caught me' so i thot that should be enterred.

tdp4

2006-12-26T11:43:00.000-08:00

Librarians, and those who serve at libraries, should probably have a 'reasonable ' understanding of whateveritis that is energizing patrons/the public.?
Library{Professional?} values will probably guide that understanding as/when conversation/communication requires/allows.
tdp4

MaidenBlog

2006-12-11T13:01:00.000-08:00

'Tis a far far stranger thing, this, than i have ever learned in school!

RvrCtyLbry

Harpo 'n his axe

Johnny Mercer So nice...blogged him 2ce

Singing a song of Johnny Mercer

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