Category: Birthdays

Edd “Kookie Kookie lend me your comb” Byrnes is 81 today.

Buddy Guy is 78.

Buddy Guy is one of the titans of the blues, straddling traditional and modern forms, as well as musical generations. He’s worked with Muddy Waters, Little Walter and Howlin’ Wolf, on one hand, and Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan and the Rolling Stones, on the other. There are few notable blues figures that Guy hasn’t brushed up against. He was even an influence on Jimi Hendrix.

Buddy Guy Biography | The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum

Oscar nominee (direction and co-writer, The Last Picture Show) Peter Bogdanovich is 75.

Paul Anka is 73. Anka is not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, is 67.

Oscar best actor nominee Laurence Fishburne is 53.

Coach of the American men’s national soccer team, Jürgen Klinsmann is 50.

Lisa Kudrow is 51.

Two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank is 40.

Joe Nuxhall, the youngest player ever to appear in the major leagues, was born on this date in 1928. Nuxhall pitched 2/3rds of an inning for the Cincinnati Reds on June 10, 1944. He was 15 years, 316 days old. He gave up 5 runs, with 5 walks, 2 hits and a wild pitch. It was 1952 before he again appeared, but he pitched for 15 more seasons. Nuxhall was a longtime Reds broadcaster. He died in 2007.

The Hall of Fame manager Casey Stengel was born on this date in 1890.

Casey Stengel’s distinguished 54-year professional career spanned the era from Christy Mathewson to Mickey Mantle. He batted .284 over 14 seasons in the majors and accounted for both Giant victories in the 1923 World Series by hitting home runs. It was as a colorful and successful manager, though, that he earned Hall of Fame recognition. His feat of guiding the Yankees to 10 pennants and seven world titles in a 12-year span ranks as one of the most remarkable managerial accomplishments of all time.

Baseball Hall of Fame

A few Casey-isms:

“Can’t anybody here play this game?”

“Good pitching will always stop good hitting and vice-versa.”

“He’d (Yogi Berra) fall in a sewer and come up with a gold watch.”

One of the most remarkable Americans, Henry Ford, was born on this date in 1863. The following is an excerpt from Mr. Ford’s New York Times obituary in 1947:

Renting a one-story brick shed in Detroit, Mr. Ford spent the year 1902 experimenting with two- cylinder and four-cylinder motors. By that time the public had become interested in the speed possibilities of the automobile, which was no longer regarded as a freak. To capitalize on this interest, he built two racing cars, the “999” and the “Arrow,” each with a four-cylinder engine developing eighty horsepower. The “999,” with the celebrated Barney Oldfield at its wheel, won every race in which it was entered.

The resulting publicity helped Mr. Ford to organize the Ford Motor Company, which was capitalized at $100,000, although actually only $28,000 in stock was subscribed. From the beginning Mr. Ford held majority control of this company. In 1919 he and his son, Edsel, became its sole owners, when they bought out the minority stockholders for $70,000,000.

In 1903 the Ford Motor Company sold 1,708 two-cylinder, eight horsepower automobiles. …

With this material he began the new era of mass production. He concentrated on a single type of chassis, the celebrated Model T, and specified that “any customer can have a car painted any color he wants, so long as it is black.” On Oct. 1, 1908, he began the production of Model T, which sold for $850. The next year he sold 10,600 cars of this model. Cheap and reliable, the car had a tremendous success. In seven years he built and sold 1,000,000 Fords; by 1925 he was producing them at the rate of almost 2,000,000 a year.

He established two cardinal economic policies during this tremendous expansion: the continued cutting of the cost of the product as improved methods of production made it possible, and the payment of higher wages to his employes. By 1926 the cost of the Model T had been cut to $310, although it was vastly superior to the 1908 model. In January, 1914, he established a minimum pay rate of $5 a day for an eight-hour day, thereby creating a national sensation. Up to that time the average wage throughout his works had been $2.40 a nine-hour day.

The entire obituary is really rather fascinating reading.

Douglas Brinkley’s Wheels for the World (2003) is considered a good biography of Ford and the Ford Motor Company.

Vladimir Zworykin was born in Murom, Russia, on this date in 1889. He came to the U.S. in 1919. Zworykin’s television transmitting and receiving method using cathode ray tubes, developed in the 1920s and early 1930s, ranks him as the prime inventor of television.

“Professor” Irwin Corey, The World’s Foremost Authority, is 100 today.

Ken Burns is 61.

William Powell was born on this date in 1892. He was nominated for three best actor Academy Awards — The Thin Man (1934), My Man Godfrey (1936) and Life with Father (1947). Powell was Nick Charles and Myrna Loy was Nora Charles in the six Thin Man films.

The “It Girl” Clara Bow was born on this date in 1905. A huge star when movies didn’t talk, her career wound down quickly and unhappily after sound. As with many other silent film stars, it was a new medium that necessitated less physical acting, the reason they had become big stars to begin with. The clip is from It (1927).

Charlie Christian was born on this date in 1916. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990 (the fifth group).

Charlie Christian elevated the guitar as a lead instrument on par with the saxophone and trumpet in jazz and popular music. His single-string technique established a solo style that was carried on by such contemporaries as T-Bone Walker and emulated by later disciples like B. B. King and Chuck Berry. Born in Bonham, Texas, on July 29th, 1919, and raised in Oklahoma City, Christian was influenced by country music and jazz, an odd hybrid of influences that can be heard in his recorded works, such as “Seven Come Eleven,” with the Benny Goodman Sextet. Unfortunately, his recording career lasted less than two years, as he was brought down in his prime by tuberculosis, dying on March 2, 1942, in New York. Though his life was short, his hornlike, single-note style, which capitalized on innovations in amplification technology, revolutionized and redefined the role of the electric guitar in popular music. The reverberations from Christian’s pioneering efforts have echoed down the decades, through Western swing, rockabilly and rock and roll to the present day.”

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum

Charles, Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer were married 33 years ago today.

Today is the birthday

… of Bill Cosby. He’s 77.

… of Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac. She’s 71.

… of Gaius Julius Caesar, born on July 12th around 100 BCE (some say July 13th). Caesar was named for his father, Gaius Julius Caesar III, and he had two sisters, both named Julia. If Caesar was named for a caesarean section, it was an ancestor’s birth, not his. The explanation for the name that Julius Caesar himself seemed to favor was that it came from the Moorish word caesai for elephant.

Caesar, of course, died on March 15, 44 BCE. Caesar never said “Et tu, Brute?” That’s Shakespeare (though not original with him). Some contemporaries said Caesar did say “καὶ σύ, τέκνον,” Greek for “You too, child.” If he said it, it may have been intended as a curse (this will happen to you) as much as a feeling of abandonment by Brutus.

It was Julius Caesar who fixed the calendar at 365 days with a leap day every fourth year. His formula had to be tweaked in 1582 with three less leap years every 400 years, but it stands pretty much as Caesar established it, the Julian Calendar, in 46 BCE.

Henry David Thoreau was born on this date in 1817; George Eastman, the inventor of roll film, in 1854; George Washington Carver in 1864; Jean Hersholt in 1886 and Buckminster Fuller in 1895. Hersholt was in 140 films, most famously as Heidi’s grandfather with Shirley Temple. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences named its service award for Hersholt, who was president of the Academy and longtime president of the Motion Picture Relief Fund.

Oscar Hammerstein II was born on July 12th, 1895. Hammerstein won eight Tonys and two Oscars — for “The Last Time I Saw Paris,” and “It Might as Well Be Spring.”

. . . is 80 today.

Boone had grandchildren at the same school NewMexiKen’s children attended nearly 40 years ago. He showed up at “Back to School Night” once or twice, and I have to admit he was about the handsomest, youngest looking grandpa you’d ever see. Of course, he was only 41 or 42.

It’s hard to believe I was ever so young I thought 41 was old enough that someone could “look good” for 41?

Only Elvis sold more records than Pat Boone in the late 1950s.

Hubert Humphrey was born in Wallace, South Dakota, on this date in 1911. Humphrey was first elected mayor of Minneapolis in 1945 and U.S. Senator in 1948. Senator Humphrey introduced his first bill in 1949; it became law in 1965 and we know it as Medicare. Humphrey became Vice President with the election of President Lyndon Johnson in 1964. After Johnson withdrew from the 1968 campaign, and after Robert Kennedy was killed, Humphrey was nominated as the Democratic candidate for President. He lost to Richard Nixon in one of the closest elections in history. Some commented that with the vote trending as it did, had the election been one or two days later Humphrey would have won.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Herman Wouk is 99 today. Wouk served in the United States Navy during World War II, background for his great novel The Caine Mutiny. Other works include Majorie Morningstar, Youngblood Hawke, and The Winds of War and War and Remembrance.

Henry Kissinger is 91. They say the good die young.

Lou Gossett Jr. is 78 today. Gossett won the Oscar for best supporting actor for his portrayal of Gunnery Sgt. Emil Foley in An Officer and a Gentleman and an Emmy as the slave Fiddler in Roots.

Roz is 53 today. That’s actress Peri Gilpin of Frasier.

Todd Bridges is 49 today. “Watchoo talkin’ ’bout, Willis?”

Best-selling mystery author Tony Hillerman was born in Sacred Heart, Oklahoma, on this date in 1925; he died in Albuquerque in 2008. The Shape Shifter was the 18th and last in Hillerman’s series centered on Navajo Tribal policemen Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. Hillerman told us that:

Leaphorn emerged from a young Hutchinson County, Texas, sheriff who I met and came to admire in 1948 when I was a very green ‘crime and violence” reporter for a paper in the high plains of the Panhandle. He was smart, he was honest, he was wise and humane in his use of police powers–my idealistic young idea of what every cop should be but sometimes isn’t. 
. . . 

Jim Chee emerged several books later. I like to claim he was born from an artistic need for a younger, less sophisticated fellow to make the plot of PEOPLE OF DARKNESS make sense–and that is mostly true. Chee is a mixture of a couple of hundred of those idealistic, romantic, reckless youngsters I had been lecturing to at the University of New Mexico, with their yearnings for Miniver Cheever’s “Days of Old” modified into his wish to keep the Navajo Value System healthy in universe of consumerism.

John Cheever was born on this date in 1912.

He wrote for more than 50 years and published more than 200 short stories. He’s known for writing about the world of American suburbia. Even though he was one of the most popular short-story writers of the 20th century, he once said that he only earned “enough money to feed the family and buy a new suit every other year.”

In 1935 he was published in The New Yorker for the first time, and he would continue to write for the magazine for the rest of his life. His stories were collected in books including The Way Some People Live (1943) and The Enormous Radio and Other Stories (1953). The Stories of John Cheever, published in 1978, won the Pulitzer Prize and became one of the few collections of short stories ever to make the New York Times best-seller list.

The Writer’s Almanac (2008)

Cheever died in 1982.

Sam Snead was born on May 27th in 1912. Snead won 82 PGA events; seven majors — three Masters, three PGA Championships and a British Open. Great as he was, he never won the big one.

Vincent Price, an actor noted primarily for his horror and suspense roles, was born 103 years ago today.

Rachel Carson was born on this date in 1907. Carson’s writing, most notably Silent Spring (1962), was instrumental in establishing environmental awareness. Silent Spring lead to a ban on DDT and the creation of the EPA.

Mystery writer Samuel Dashiell Hammett was born on this date in 1894.  Hammett departed from the intellectualized mysteries of earlier detective novels (Sherlock Holmes for example) and transformed the genre with his less-than-glamorous realism. He is considered one of the most influential writers of the 20th century.  

Hammett actually was a detective with Pinkerton for a few years just before World War I. Contracting TB during military service, he realized his health would keep him from resuming as a detective. He turned to writing. He published his first story in 1922, and then about 80 more, many in the popular pulp crime magazine Black Mask. Hammett’s first novel was Red Harvest, published in 1929. His most famous character, Sam Spade, made his appearance in Hammett’s third novel, The Maltese Falcon (1930). (It was the third—and only successful—attempt to turn that novel into a film when Humphrey Bogart played the role in 1941.) The Thin Man (1934) was the last of Hammett’s novels. 

By the early-thirties, Hammett was established and famous. He began a relationship with playwright Lillian Hellman that lasted for 30 years despite his drinking and womanizing. Though both eventually divorced their spouses, they never married. Hammett served in the Army in World War II, enlisting as a private at age 48. His involvement in left-wing politics and unwillingness to testify about it before Congress however, and the continued drinking, diminished his stature. Hammett died in 1961.

James Butler Hickok was born May 27, 1837. As Wild Bill Hickok, he was killed while playing poker at Nuttal & Mann’s Saloon No. 10 in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, at age 39. It’s said he was holding a pair of aces and a pair of eights, all black (but most doubt the tale).

Hubert Humphrey was born 103 years ago today. He was, I think, a genuinely great American politician.

Among the many then secret documents I came across at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library when I was an archivist there long ago, was a lengthy single-spaced typewritten memo from Vice President Humphrey to President Johnson. Humphrey had been to Vietnam and wanted to report his observations directly. Because the document was secret I couldn’t keep a copy, but I remember Humphrey being perceptive about what was really happening.

But mostly I remember the P.S. — the Vice President of the United States apologized to the President of the United States for the typing. Humphrey said he’d come into the office on Sunday and no one was available, so he had typed the memo himself.

Brent Musburger is 75.

Stevie Nicks is 66 today.

Finally, the platinum edition of Fleetwood Mac came together in 1975 with the recruitment of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. The San Francisco duo had previously cut an album together as Buckingham-Nicks. Drummer Fleetwood heard a tape of theirs at a studio he was auditioning, and the pair were drafted into the group without so much as a formal audition. This lineup proved far and away to be Fleetwood Mac’s most durable and successful. In addition to the most solid rhythm section in rock, this classic lineup contained strong vocalists and songwriters in Buckingham, Nicks and Christine McVie. Male and female points of view were offered with unusual candor on the watershed albums Fleetwood Mac (1975) and Rumours (1977).

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Lenny Kravitz is 50. Helena Bonham Carter is 48.

John Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison 107 years ago today. (His middle name was later changed to Mitchell so his parents could name their next son Robert.)

In more than 200 films made over 50 years, John Wayne saddled up to become the greatest figure of one of America’s greatest native art forms, the western.

The movies he starred in rode the range from out-of-the-money sagebrush quickies to such classics as “Stagecoach” and “Red River.” He won an Oscar as best actor for another western, “True Grit,” in 1969. Yet some of the best films he made told stories far from the wilds of the West, such as “The Quiet Man” and “The Long Voyage Home.”

In the last decades of his career, Mr. Wayne became something of an American folk figure, hero to some, villain to others, for his outspoken views. He was politically a conservative and, although he scorned politics as a way of life for himself, he enthusiastically supported Richard M. Nixon, Barry Goldwater, Spiro T. Agnew, Ronald Reagan and others who, he felt, fought for his concept of Americanism and anti- Communism.

The New York Times [Obituary, 1979]

Photographer Dorothea Lange was born on May 26th in 1895. That’s her most famous photo, “Migrant Mother,” taken in 1936.

Dancer Isadora Duncan was born on this date in 1877.

Engineer, designer of the Brooklyn Bridge, Washington Roebling was born on May 26th 1837. And, according to the Smithsonian Civil War Studies :

From a hot air balloon on a sunny late-June morning in 1863, Roebling was the first to spy Robert E. Lee’s army heading toward Gettysburg. During the ensuing battle, when General Warren ordered that Little Round Top be reinforced, Roebling helped place the first cannon, which effectively defended the site and directly contributed to the subsequent Union victory. He was awarded three brevets for gallant conduct and ended his military career as a Colonel.

Roebling’s wife Emily was the younger sister of General Gouverneur K. Warren, hero of Gettysburg. Roebling served on Warren’s staff.

James Arness — Marshall Dillon — was born May 26, 1923. He died in 2011.

The first woman in space, Sally K. Ride, was born on May 26, 1951. She died in 2012.

Levon Helm was born May 26, 1940. It’s his voice you know from “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” “Up on Cripple Creek,” “Rag Mama Rag,” and “The Weight.” He died in 2012.

The Band, more than any other group, put rock and roll back in touch with its roots. With their ageless songs and solid grasp of musical idioms, the Band reached across the decades, making connections for a generation that was, as an era of violent cultural schisms wound down, in desperate search of them. They projected a sense of community in the turbulent late Sixties and early Seventies – a time when the fabric of community in the United States was fraying. Guitarist Robbie Robertson drew from history in his evocative, cinematic story-songs, and the vocal triumvirate of bassist Rick Danko, drummer Levon Helm and keyboardist Richard Manuel joined in rustic harmony and traded lines in rich, conversational exchanges. Multi-instrumentalist Garth Hudson provided musical coloration in period styles that evoked everything from rural carnivals of the early 20th century to rock and roll revues of the Fifties.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Norma Deloris Egstrom was born on May 26th in 1920. We know her as Peggy Lee. Miss Lee began with the Benny Goodman band in 1941, then recorded on her own beginning later in the 1940s. Her signature song is Little Willie John’s “Fever,” recorded by Lee in 1958. She also wrote a number of songs, including “He’s a Tramp” and “The Siamese Cat Song” for Lady and the Tramp. Lee received a supporting actress Oscar nomination for her performance in Pete Kelly’s Blues. She died in 2002.

Harold J. Smith was born in Branford, Ontario, on this date in 1912. He was a member of the Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation (Canadian Mohawk). Harry Smith boxed Golden Gloves and played lacrosse. Eventually he found his way to movies and then television where, as Jay Silverheels, he played Tonto in The Lone Ranger TV series, 1949-1957. He died in 1980.

Ben Alexander was born on this date in 1911. A veteran actor who began at age 5, Alexander is best known for playing Detective Frank Smith on the first TV run of Dragnet in the 1950s. (Harry Morgan had the Jack Webb’s sidekick role in the second run.) Alexander has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Al Jolson was born Asa Yoelson in Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire, on May 26, 1886. The biggest star on Broadway and vaudeville even before the movie The Jazz Singer in 1927, by the 1930s he was America’s most famous and highest paid entertainer. It can be said, that as Elvis Presley married country and blues, Al Jolson wedded Jewish performing style with jazz, blues and ragtime, and so made “race music” acceptable to the wider audience.

Mamie Robinson Smith was born on May 26th in 1883. She was a vaudeville performer and the first African American singer to make vocal blues recordings. Smith’s “Crazy Blues” — a Grammy Hall of Fame record and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Song That Shaped Rock and Roll — was recorded in 1920. It sold over a million copies in its first year. She was billed “Queen of the Blues” — but of course, Bessie Smith came right behind and Bessie was “Empress of the Blues.”

Robert Allen Zimmerman was born in Duluth, Minnesota, on May 24th 73 years ago. That’s Bob Dylan, of course.

From the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:

Bob Dylan is the uncontested poet laureate of the rock and roll era and the pre-eminent singer/songwriter of modern times. Whether singing a topical folk song, exploring rootsy rock and blues, or delivering one of his more abstract, allegorical compositions, Dylan has consistently demonstrated the rare ability to reach and affect listeners with thoughtful, sophisticated lyrics.

Dylan re-energized the folk-music genre in the early Sixties, brought about the lyrical maturation of rock and roll when he went electric at mid-decade, and bridged the worlds of rock and country by recording in Nashville throughout the latter half of the Sixties. As much as he’s played the role of renegade throughout his career, Dylan has also kept the rock and roll community mindful of its roots by returning to them. With his songs, Dylan has provided a running commentary on our restless age. His biting, imagistic and often cryptic lyrics served to capture and define the mood of a generation.

For this, he’s been elevated to the role of spokesmen – and yet the elusive Dylan won’t even admit to being a poet. “I don’t call myself a poet because I don’t like the word,” he has said. “I’m a trapeze artist.”

…

Tommy Chong, he’s Chong of Cheech and Chong, is 76.

Walter “Radar” O’Reilly, that is Gary Burghoff, is 71.

Patti LaBelle is 70 today.

Alfred Molina is 61.

Rosanne Cash is 59. She was born a month before her father released his first record, “Cry, Cry, Cry.”

Kristin Scott Thomas is 54.

Michael Chabon is 51 today.

Criticized by one reviewer for not being ambitious enough, Chabon decided he needed to go in a new direction. About that time, he said: “I found one remaining box of comics which I had saved and I’d been dragging with me for 15 years. When I opened it up and that smell came pouring out […] I was struck by […] a sense of my childhood self that seemed to be contained in there.” Soon he wrote The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000), an epic story about 1940s comic book creators. The novel moves from the ghetto of Nazi-occupied Prague to the bohemian nightlife of New York City.

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor [2008]

John C. Reilly is 49. “Shake ‘n Bake.”

Victoria was born on May 24, 1819. She was the daughter of Edward, Duke of Kent, the fourth son of George III. None of her uncles had legitimate children who survived, so when her uncle William IV died in 1837, she became queen at age 18. Her reign lasted until 1901; the longest of any British monarch (Elizabeth II can catch her next year). She had nine children and is Elizabeth II’s great great grandmother.

Victoria Day has been celebrated in Canada since 1845. The holiday is now the Monday before May 24th, unless Monday is May 24th. (It was May 19th this year.)

The first passenger railroad in the U.S. began service between Baltimore and Ellicott’s Mills, Maryland, on May 24th in 1830. That’s 13 miles.

The first telegraph message was transmitted by Samuel F. B. Morse on May 24th in 1844. Sent from Washington to Baltimore it said, “What hath God wrought!”

The Brooklyn Bridge opened on May 24th in 1883.

The first Major League Baseball night game was played in Cincinnati on May 24, 1935. The Reds beat the Phillies 2-1. The Reds played seven night games that year (one against each National League opponent).

“Mary Had a Little Lamb,” a poem by Sarah Josepha Hale, was published in Boston May 24, 1830, by Marsh, Capen & Lyon. It was inspired by an actual event. The Mary was Mary Sawyer who did take a lamb to school. (A witness may have written the first stanza.) Hale was an influential author and editor, known foremost for being a principal in establishing Thanksgiving as a holiday.

Today is the birthday of Carol Burnett, 81, and Bobby Rydell, 72.

Duane Eddy was born on this date in 1938, which would make him 76 today. Eddy was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

One of the earliest guitar heroes, Duane Eddy put the twang in rock and roll. “Twang” is a reverberating, bass-heavy guitar sound boasted by primitive studio wizardry. Concocted by Eddy and producer Lee Hazlewood in 1957, twang came to represent the sound of revved-up hot rods and an echo of the Wild West on the frontier of rock and roll. Eddy obtained his trademark sound by picking on the low strings of a Chet Atkins-model Gretsch 6120 hollowbody guitar, turning up the tremolo and running the signal through an echo chamber. Behind the mighty sound of twang, Eddy became the most successful instrumentalist in rock history, charting fifteen Top Forty singles in the late Fifties and early Sixties. He has sold more than 100 million records worldwide. No less an authority than John Fogerty has declared, “Duane Eddy was the front guy, the first rock and roll guitar god.” Eddy’s influence is widespread in rock and roll. A twangy guitar drove Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run,” and twang echoes in the work of the Beatles, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Dave Edmunds, Chris Isaak and many more.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum

“Cannonball,” “Rebel Rouser,” “Forty Miles of Bad Road” and I’m cruising Speedway Boulevard in Tucson all over again. Someone else is driving — I’m not THAT old — but nevertheless, little rock and roll is as evocative as Duane Eddy, dated as it seems now.

Bernard Malamud was born on this date in 1914. Malamud twice won the National Book Award (The Magic Barrel, The Fixer) and the 1967 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (The Fixer). He’s also the author of The Natural.

Gertrude Pridgett was born on this date in 1886. She began performing in 1900, singing and dancing in minstrel shows. In 1902, she married performer William “Pa” Rainey and became known as Ma Rainey.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum has this to say about inductee Ma Rainey:

If Bessie Smith is the acknowledged “Queen of the Blues,” then Gertrude “Ma” Rainey is the undisputed “Mother of the Blues.” As music historian Chris Albertson has written, “If there was another woman who sang the blues before Rainey, nobody remembered hearing her.” Rainey fostered the blues idiom, and she did so by linking the earthy spirit of country blues with the classic style and delivery of Bessie Smith. She often played with such outstanding jazz accompanists as Louis Armstrong and Fletcher Henderson, but she was more at home fronting a jugband or washboard band.

Jealous Hearted Blues

Frederick Law Olmsted was born on this date in 1822. He was America’s foremost landscape architect of the 19th century and the designer of New York’s Central Park.

John James Audubon was born on this date in 1785.

Ella Fitzgerald, Edward R. Murrow, Albert King, Jerry Leiber, Al Pacino, Talia Shire, Hank Azaria, Renee Zellweger, Tim Duncan — is this not enough for a national holiday on April 25th?

Ella Jane Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia, on this date in 1917 (she died in 1996). Scott Yanow’s essay for the All Music Guide is first rate. It begins:

“The First Lady of Song,” Ella Fitzgerald was arguably the finest female jazz singer of all time (although some may vote for Sarah Vaughan or Billie Holiday). Blessed with a beautiful voice and a wide range, Fitzgerald could outswing anyone, was a brilliant scat singer, and had near-perfect elocution; one could always understand the words she sang. The one fault was that, since she always sounded so happy to be singing, Fitzgerald did not always dig below the surface of the lyrics she interpreted and she even made a downbeat song such as “Love for Sale” sound joyous. However, when one evaluates her career on a whole, there is simply no one else in her class.

There are many great Fitzgerald albums but an excellent, inexpensive place to start is The Best of the Song Books.

Egbert Roscoe Murrow was born on this date in 1908. He died in 1965.

A Murrow radio report from a bombing raid over Berlin (he made 25 bombing runs):

The clouds were gone and the sticks of incendiaries from the preceding waves made the place look like a badly laid out city with the streetlights on. The small incendiaries were going down like a fistful of white rice thrown on a piece of black velvet. As Jock hauled the Dog up again, I was thrown to the other side of the cockpit, and there below were more incendiaries, glowing white and then turning red. The cookies—the four-thousand-pound high explosives—were bursting below like great sunflowers gone mad. And then, as we started down again, still held in the lights, I remembered the Dog still had one of those cookies and a whole basket of incendiaries in its belly, and the lights still held us. And I was very frightened.

The above from a fine 2006 article by Nicholas Lehmann in The New Yorker.

Albert Nelson was born on this date in 1923 (he died in 1992). We know him as Albert King.

As an electric guitar player who focused more on tone and intensity than flash, Albert King had a tremendous impact on countless rock and roll guitarists, including Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Michael Bloomfield and Stevie Ray Vaughan. King was also one of the first bluesmen who crossed over into the world of soul music, signing with Stax Records and recording such classic songs as “Born Under a Bad Sign” and “Crosscut Saw.”

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Jerry Leiber was born 80 years ago today (he died in 2011). Leiber and partner Mike Stoller are in the Rock and Roll and Songwriters halls of fame.

By the time they were 20, in just three years of working together, their early songs had been recorded by a collection of true all-stars in the rhythm and blues genre including Jimmy Witherspoon, Little Esther, Amos Milburn, Charles Brown, Little Willie Littlefield, Bull Moose Jackson, Linda Hopkins, Ray Charles and Willie Mae (Big Mama) Thornton who actually first recorded “Hound Dog” in 1952. Atlantic Records executives, Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler among them, were impressed, and in 1955 signed Leiber and Stoller to the first independent production deal, forever changing the course of production in the record industry.

For the next decade, well into the late ’60s the hits of Leiber and Stoller were constantly at the top of the charts, including the memorable “Stand By Me,” “Spanish Harlem” and “I (Who Have Nothing),” by Ben E. King; “On Broadway,” “Dance With Me” and “Drip Drop” by The Drifters; LaVern Baker’s “Saved” and Ruth Brown’s “Lucky Lips.”

During this same productive period, there were other Leiber and Stoller smashes, including “Love Potion #9,” by The Clovers, “Only In America” by Jay and The Americans, “I Keep Forgettin,” by Chuck Jackson, Wilbert Harrison’s “Kansas City,” The Drifters’ “There Goes My Baby” and “Fools Fall In Love,” “Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots” by The Cheers and “Ruby Baby” by Dion DiMucci. [And virtually everything by The Coasters.]

Following the triumph of “Hound Dog,” Elvis Presley actually went on to record more than 20 Leiber and Stoller songs, including such highlights as “Loving You,” “Bossa Nova Baby,” “She’s Not You” and “Santa Claus Is Back In Town.” [And “Jailhouse Rock.”]

Songwriters Hall of Fame

Ted Kooser, former poet laureate of the United States (2004–2006), author of many poetry collections, and winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry is 75 today.

Eight-time Oscar nominee Al Pacino is 74. He won for Scent of a Woman, but not for The Godfather or Godfather II. Pacino was nominated for a supporting actor Oscar for the first Godfather, which seems odd until one remembers that Caan and Duvall were also nominated for supporting and Brando won for lead.

Another Godfather cast member, Talia Shire is 68 today. Connie Corleone-Rizzi in the Godfather movies, Miss Shire was Adrian in the Rocky films. She was nominated for the best supporting actress Oscar for Godfather II (1974) and for the best actress Oscar for Rocky (1976). Talia Shire’s actual name is Talia Rose Coppola. She is the sister of director Francis Ford Coppola, which makes her the aunt of Sofia Coppola (daughter of Francis Coppola) and the aunt of Nicolas Cage (son of another Coppola brother).

Agador Spartacus is 50 today. So are Moe Szyslak, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, Chief Wiggum, Professor Frink, Comic Book Guy and Dr. Nick Riviera. All are played by the multi-talented Hank Azaria, who was born on this date in 1964. Agador Spartacus is the Guatemalan houseboy in The Birdcage. Azaria appeared on Friends six times and 13 times on Mad About You.

Renée Zellweger is 45. Twice nominated for best actress, Miss Zellweger won the Oscar for a supporting role in Cold Mountain (without her that film would have died of its own weight). She was born in Katy, Texas, but her parents were born in Switzerland and Norway.

Joe Buck is 45 today.

Jason Lee is 44 today. Tim Duncan is 38.

Shirley Temple was born on April 23, 1928.

It was on the date in 1791 that James Buchanan, one-time worst president ever of the U.S., was born.

Stephen A. Douglas, the short guy who debated Lincoln during the 1858 election—and won the election — was born on this date in 1813. Douglas died shortly after Lincoln’s inaugural as president in 1861.

April 23, 1564, is generally accepted as the birth date of William Shakespeare.

And 52 years later, on April 23, 1616, both Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes died. One likes to think that had they been in heaven sooner, The Bible would have been better written.

Ron Howard is no doubt celebrating his brother’s 55th birthday today.

Ron Howard’s brother has more than 200 film and television credits including roles in many of his brother’s films — Cocoon, Apollo 13, Cinderella Man and Frost/Nixon come to mind. Many will remember Ron Howard’s brother also as the 8-year-old kid in the TV series Gentle Ben. Howard’s younger sibling was also the voice of Roo in the Disney Winnie the Pooh films, and more recently the voice of the balloon man in Curious George.

… in Massachusetts. (Well, I guess it’s the third Monday now, but whatever.) Happy Patriot’s Day.

Today we celebrate the birthday

… of TV’s Wyatt Earp. Hugh O’Brian is 89.

… of Elinor Donahue. Donahue has nearly 100 credits listed at IMDB, but foremost she was the oldest daughter on famed 1950s sitcom “Father Knows Best.” Betty “Princess” Anderson is 77.

… of Ashley Judd, 46.

… of Oscar-nominee (2001) Kate Hudson. She’s more than almost famous at 35.

… of Troy Polamalu. He of the amazing locks is 33.

… of Oscar-nominee (2005) Catalina Sardino Moreno. She’s full of grace at 33.

… of Maria Sharapova, 27.

(I know Kate, Catalina and Maria and I post a photo of Troy. Weird.)

Ole Evinrude was born on this date in 1877. Guess what he invented.

Eliot Ness was born on this date in 1903.

Ever since Eliot Ness first published The Untouchables in 1957, the public has fallen in love with the adventures of this authentic American hero. His book was a runaway best seller because it was the exciting true story of a brave and honest lawman pitted against the country’s most successful gangster, Al Capone. The television series that followed in the 1950’s and the Kevin Costner movie in 1987 built fancifully on the same theme.

The Crime Library

Vera Jayne Palmer was born on this date in 1933. We know her as Jayne Mansfield.

Grace Kelly became Her Serene Highness Princess Grace on this date in 1956.

By 1956, Grace Kelly was calling it quits after a movie-acting career of only five years—but what a career it was. Her 11 films included the 1952 classic High Noon, the 1956 musical High Society, and the Alfred Hitchcock-directed masterpieces Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, and To Catch a Thief. She had won an Oscar for her role in 1954’s The Country Girl—and all this before her twenty-seventh birthday.

American Heritage

Bessie Smith was born on this date in 1894.

Bessie Smith earned the title of “Empress of the Blues” by virtue of her forceful vocal delivery and command of the genre. Her singing displayed a soulfully phrased, boldly delivered and nearly definitive grasp of the blues. In addition, she was an all-around entertainer who danced, acted and performed comedy routines with her touring company. She was the highest-paid black performer of her day and arguably reached a level of success greater than that of any African-American entertainer before her. – See more at: http://www.rockhall.com/inductees/bessie-smith/bio/#sthash.jw6UNMwz.dpuf

. . .

Some of her better-known sides from the Twenties include “Backwater Blues,” “Taint Nobody’s Bizness If I Do,” “St. Louis Blues” (recorded with Louis Armstrong), and “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.” The Depression dealt her career a blow, but Smith changed with the times by adapting a more up-to-date look and revised repertoire that incorporated Tin Pan Alley tunes like “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” On the verge of the Swing Era, Smith died from injuries sustained in an automobile accident outside Clarksdale, Mississippi, in September 1937. She left behind a rich, influential legacy of 160 recordings cut between 1923 and 1933. Some of the great vocal divas who owe a debt to Smith include Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin. In Joplin’s own words of tribute, “She showed me the air and taught me how to fill it.”

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

And this from a review of The Essential Bessie Smith.

Bessie could sing it all, from the lowdown moan of “St. Louis Blues” and “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” to her torch treatment of the jazz standard “After You’ve Gone” to the downright salaciousness of “Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl.” Covering a time span from her first recordings in 1923 to her final session in 1933, this is the perfect entry-level set to go with. Utilizing the latest in remastering technology, these recordings have never sounded quite this clear and full, and the selection — collecting her best-known sides and collaborations with jazz giants like Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, and Benny Goodman — is first-rate. If you’ve never experienced the genius of Bessie Smith, pick this one up and prepare yourself to be devastated.

allmusic

There are no lyrics today that surpass “Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl” for sexual imagery.

And, there is no more important recording in American musical history than Smith and Armstrong’s “St. Louis Blues.”

In listening to the earliest recordings, keep in mind there were no microphones until 1925. The artists sang or played and the sound was recorded acoustically, i.e., without electrical amplification.

And Thomas Hart Benton was born on this date in 1889.

Named after his great-uncle, Missouri’s first senator, Thomas Hart Benton was born on 15 April 1889 in Neosho, Missouri, an Ozark town of 2,000 people. … In 1935 they moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where Benton directed the Art Institute until 1941, and where he contiued to live for the rest of his life. Albert Barnes, the Philadelphia collector, purchased some of his paintings, which raised the level of public success for the artist. Benton published his autobiography, An Artist in America, in 1937. He completed several murals in the midwest and on the east coast. Shortly before Harry Truman’s death in December 1972, Benton finished a portrait of the former President. Thomas Hart Benton died on 19 January 1975 in Kansas City, the day he completed a large mural for the Country Music Foundation of Nashville.

National Gallery of Art

April 15th is the birthday of Emma Thompson and of Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson. The actresses are 55 and 24.

Emma Thompson has been nominated four times for an acting Oscar, winning best actress in a leading role for Howards End. She also won the screen adaptation Oscar for Sense and Sensibility. She’s delightful as Nanny McPhee. And I thought she was superb in Saving Mr. Banks.

Emma Watson is known primarily for just one character so far in her acting career, that of Hermione Granger.

Today is Ruination Day, but still we celebrate the birthday

… of Loretta Lynn. The coal miner’s daughter was born in Butcher Holler, Kentucky, 82 years ago today (1932).

Loretta Webb was born in a one-room log cabin and was the second of eight children. At thirteen she attended a pie social, bringing a pie she had baked using salt instead of sugar. The highest bidder not only won the pie but also got to meet the girl who had baked the pie. Mooney Lynn had just returned home after having served in the army. A month after they had first met, still three months short of her fourteenth birthday, Loretta and Mooney married.

Country Music Hall of Fame

… of four-time Oscar nominee for best actress Julie Christie. She’s 73. Miss Christie won the Oscar for Darling but be sure to see the film Away from Her from 2007.

… of Pete Rose. You can bet that Pete is 73 today.

… of Brad Garrett, 54. Garrett is 6-8½.

… of Greg Maddux, 48. Maddux will be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame this summer.

… of Adrien Brody. The Oscar winner (best actor for The Pianist) is 41.

… of Sarah Michelle Gellar. Buffy is 37.

… of Abigail Breslin. The Oscar-nominated actress was born 18 years ago today (1996).

Three time Oscar-nominated actor Rod Steiger was born on this date in 1925. Steiger won for Best Actor for his portrayal of the sheriff in the movie In the Heat of the Night. He was nominated for best actor for The Pawnbroker and for best supporting actor for On the Waterfront. The Pawnbroker (1964) was one of the first films to deal with the emotional aftermath of the Nazi concentration camps. Steiger died in 2002.

Helen Keller’s teacher Anne Sullivan Macy was born on April 14 in 1866.

James Cash Penney opened his first retail store, called the Golden Rule Store, in the mining town of Kemmerer, Wyoming, on this date in 1902. In 1913, the chain incorporated as J.C. Penney Company, Inc.

Noah Webster published his American Dictionary of the English Language on April 14, 1828.

 

It’s the birthday of Wally Cleaver. Tony Dow is 69. That’s him in the photos, then and more recently.

Paul Sorvino is 75 today. Sorvino has more than 100 credits at IMDB, including a season as Detective Sergeant Philip “Phil” Cerreta on Law & Order and Henry Kissinger in Nixon.

The Reverend Al Green is staying together at 68.

With his incomparable voice, full of falsetto swoops and nuanced turns of phrase, Al Green rose to prominence in the Seventies. One of the most gifted purveyors of soul music, Green has sold more than 20 million records. During 1972 and 1973, he placed six consecutive singles in the Top 10: “Let’s Stay Together,” “Look What You Done for Me,” “I’m Still in Love With You,” “You Ought to Be With Me,” “Call Me” and “Here I Am (Come and Take Me).” “Let’s Stay Together” topped the pop chart for one week and the R&B charts for nine; it was also revived with great success by Tina Turner in 1984. In terms of popularity and artistry, Green was the top male soul singer in the world, voluntarily ending his reign with a move from secular to gospel music in 1979.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Chess champion Gary Kasparov is 51.

Rick Schroeder, just nine when he won a Golden Globe, is 44.

It’s also the birthday of playwright and novelist Samuel Beckett, born on this date in 1906. Waiting for Godot was published in 1952.

Today we celebrate the birthday

… of Harry Morgan. IMDb lists 162 credits for Morgan, who died in 2011 at the age of 96. If you’d like to see him as a relatively young actor, view the 1943 classic The Ox-Bow Incident. Morgan was Henry Fonda’s sidekick. Great, great film.

You may not know the name Verna Felton, but you know the voice. She was the character actress heard in many Disney animations — a matriarchical elephant in Dumbo, the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella, the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, Aunt Sarah in Lady and the Tramp. She also appeared with Harry Morgan in an early fifties sitcom December Bride — and its 1960 spinoff Pete and Gladys. She died in 1966, but Morgan kept Felton’s photo on Sherman Potter’s desk on the M*A*S*H set to portray Mrs. Potter.

That’s Morgan in the photo, with Felton (right) and Spring Byington, who played the title role on the TV series, December Bride.

… of Max von Sydow, 85.

… of Omar Sharif. Dr. Zhivago is 72. Sharif was nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar for Lawrence of Arabia.

… of John Madden. He’s 78. Madden was the Raiders head coach for 158 games, including post season. His team won 112 of them including Super Bowl XI. Why is John Madden’s Birthday not a significant national holiday?

… of Paul Theroux (rhymes with through). He’s 73.

It’s the birthday of novelist and travel writer Paul Theroux, born in Medford, Massachusetts (1941). After college he decided to join the Peace Corps in 1963. He later said, “I had thought of responsibilities I did not want—marriage seemed too permanent, grad school too hard, and the army too brutal.” He said the Peace Corps was a kind of “Howard Johnson’s on the main drag to maturity.”

The Peace Corps sent him to live in East Africa. He was expelled from Malawi after he became friends with a group that planned to assassinate the president of the country. He continued traveling around Africa, teaching English, and started submitting pieces to magazines back in the United States. While living in Africa, he became friends with the writer V.S. Naipaul, who became his mentor and who encouraged him to keep traveling.

He had published several novels when he decided to go on a four-month trip through Asia by train. He wrote every day on the journey, and he filled four thick notebooks with material that eventually became his first best-seller, The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia (1975).

The Writer’s Almanac (2006)

… of Anne Lamott. She’s 60 today.

“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” Anne Lamott

Don Meredith was born in Mount Vernon, Texas, on April 10th, 1938. He died in 2010. “Turn out the lights, the party’s over.”

The Pulitizer Prize winning author David Halberstam should have been 80 today.

One of America’s most successful authors, David Halberstam began his career as a journalist in the 1950s, first as a reporter for The Daily Times Leader in West Point, Mississippi and later for the Nashville Tennessean. In 1960 he joined The New York Times and shortly thereafter was assigned to the paper’s bureau in Saigon. Halberstam was among a small group of reporters there who began to question the official optimism about the growing war in Vietnam. Halberstam’s work from Vietnam so rankled official Washington that President Kennedy once asked the publisher of The New York Times to transfer Halberstam to another bureau. In 1964, at age 30, Halberstam earned a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting from Vietnam. His best-selling book, The Best and The Brightest, chronicles America’s deepening involvement in Vietnam through the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

Reporting America at War | PBS

Joseph Pulitzer himself was born in Budapest, Hungary, on this date in 1847.

Frances Perkins, the first woman presidential cabinet member — FDR’s Secretary of Labor — was born on this date in 1880. Perkins and Interior Secretary Harold Ickes were the only cabinet members to serve Roosevelt’s entire 12+ years. The Department of Labor Building in Washington is named for Secretary Perkins.

When Frances Perkins married in 1913 she had to go to court to win the right to keep her own name.