Today is the birthday of Robert E. Lee and Edgar Allan Poe, mentioned in earlier posts. It is also the birthday
… of Jean Stapleton. Edith Bunker is 89. She won three Emmys and two Golden Globes in that role.
… of Tippi Hedren. The actress in Hitchcock’s The Birds is 82. She is Melanie Griffith’s mom.
… of Robert MacNeil. The newscaster, born in Montreal, is 81.
… of Phil Everly. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee (with older brother Don) is 73.
The gentle, silken harmonies of the Everly Brothers were one of the musical treasures of the 1950s and a major influence on the music of the 1960s. The duo of Don and Phil Everly drew upon Appalachian folk, bluegrass and country to craft a dreamy, innocent style of rock and roll. Their father, Ike Everly, was an accomplished guitarist. He and his wife Margaret had their sons performing regularly on their live radio show before they had reached their teens. With Don taking the melody and Phil harmonizing above him, the Everlys sang with flawless precision. Over the decades, the Everlys’ close-harmony style served to influence the likes of the Beatles, the Hollies, Simon and Garfunkel and the Byrds. The Everly Brothers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.
… of Shelley Fabares. Donna Reed’s television daughter is 68.
… of Dolly Parton. She’s 66.
With their strong feminine stances in the 1960s and 1970s, Dolly Rebecca Parton, along with fellow female pioneers Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette, revolutionized the world of country music for women performers. Then Parton took her crusade a step farther by crossing over to the pop world—landing on the cover of Rolling Stone, achieving pop hits, and starring in a series of Hollywood movies. Along the way, however, she ultimately lost much of her core country audience, to the point that in 1997 she dissolved her fan club, which had been one of the staunchest in country music. But Parton’s career—and her appeal to fans of hard country—was far from over. Beginning in 1999 she returned to the music of her youth and began rebuilding a tradition-minded fan base with a series of critically acclaimed bluegrass albums.
… of recently in the news Paula Deen. She’s 65.
… of Desi Arnaz Jr. Little Ricky, Lucille Ball’s TV son, also first appeared 59 years ago today, on I Love Lucy about 12 hours after Desi Jr. was born.
… of Katey Sagal. The Married…With Children mom is 58.
… of Paul Rodriguez, 57.
… of Luc Longley. The 7-foot-2 Australian who played at the University of New Mexico and for the Timberwolves, Bulls, Suns and Knicks is 43.
… of Drea de Matteo. The actress who was whacked on The Sopranos is 40.
Robert Palmer was born on January 19, 1949. Alas, Palmer was even more addicted to nicotine than he was “Addicted to Love.” He died of a heart attack in 2003.
Janis Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas, 69 years ago today.
Janis Joplin brought her powerful, bluesy voice from Texas to San Francisco’s psychedelic scene, where she went from drifter to superstar. She has been called “the greatest white urban blues and soul singer of her generation.” Joplin’s vocal intensity proved a perfect match for the high-energy music of Big Brother and the Holding Company, resulting in a mix of blues, folk and psychedelic rock. Joplin’s tenure with Big Brother may have been brief, lasting only from 1966 to 1968, but it yielded a pair of albums that included the milestone Cheap Thrills. Moreover, her performance with Big Brother at 1967’s Monterey International Pop Festival, a highlight of the film documentary Monterey Pop, is among the great performances in rock history.
In the words of biographer Myra Friedman, “It wasn’t only her voice that thrilled, with its amazing range and strength and awesome wails. To see her was to be sucked into a maelstrom of feeling that words can barely suggest.” She was a dynamic singer who shred her vocal cords on driving psychedelic rockers like “Combination of the Two” and then deliver a delicate, empathetic reading of George Gershwin’s “Summertime.” . . .
http://youtu.be/JjD4eWEUgMM
Paul Cezanne was born on this date in 1839. Not his most colorful, but my particular favorite Cezanne painting is below. Perhaps that is because I portrayed the middle card player in the Laguna Beach Pageant of the Masters in 1977.
