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Barney Bigard
Albany Leon "Barney" Bigard (March 3, 1906 – June 27, 1980) was an American jazz clarinetist known for his 15-year tenure with Duke Ellington. He also played tenor saxophone. Biography Bigard was born in New Orleans to Creoles of color, Creole parents, Alexander and Emanuella Bigard. He had two brothers, Alex Bigard, Alexander Jr. and Sidney. His uncle, Emile Bigard, was a jazz violinist. He attended local schools and studied music and clarinet with Lorenzo Tio. In the early 1920s, he moved to Chicago, where he worked with King Oliver and others. During this period, much of his recording, including with clarinetist Johnny Dodds, was on tenor saxophone, which he played often with great lyricism, as on Oliver's "Someday Sweetheart". In December 1927, Bigard joined Duke Ellington's orchestra in New York. He played with Ellington until 1942. They played primarily at the Cotton Club until 1931, then toured almost nonstop for over a decade. With Ellington, he was the featured cl ...
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New Orleans
New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of municipalities in Louisiana, most populous city in Louisiana and the French Louisiana region, the second-most populous in the Deep South, and the twelfth-most populous in the Southeastern United States. The city is coextensive with Orleans Parish, Louisiana, Orleans Parish. New Orleans serves as a major port and a commercial hub for the broader Gulf Coast of the United States, Gulf Coast region. The New Orleans metropolitan area has a population of approximately 1 million, making it the most populous metropolitan area in Louisiana and the List of metropolitan statistical areas, 59th-most populous in the United States. New Orleans is world-renowned for Music of New Orleans, its distincti ...
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Cotton Club
The Cotton Club was a 20th-century nightclub in New York City. It was located on 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue from 1923 to 1936, then briefly in the midtown Theater District until 1940. The club operated during the United States' era of Prohibition and Jim Crow era racial segregation. Black people initially could not patronize the Cotton Club, but the venue featured many of the most popular black entertainers of the era, including musicians Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford, Chick Webb, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Fats Waller, Willie Bryant; vocalists Adelaide Hall,Iain Cameron Williams, Chapter 15, ''Underneath A Harlem Moon: The Harlem to Paris Years of Adelaide Hall'', Continuum, 2002. Ethel Waters, Cab Calloway, Bessie Smith, Lillie Delk Christian, Aida Ward, Avon Long, the Dandridge Sisters, the Will Vodery choir, The Mills Brothers, Nina Mae McKinney, Billie Holiday, Midge Williams, Lena Horne, and dancers such as Katherine Dunham, Bill ...
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Velma & Friends
Velma may refer to: Places *Velma, Illinois *Velma, Nebraska *Velma, Oklahoma *Velma, Virginia Other uses * Velma (given name), including persons and fictional characters * ''Velma'' (TV series), a 2023 streaming series See also * Thelma (other) * Wilma (given name) Wilma is a female given name, a feminine form of William William is a masculine given name of Germanic languages, Germanic origin. It became popular in England after the Norman Conquest, Norman conquest in 1066,All Things William"Meaning & Origi ... {{disambiguation, geo, given name English given names Feminine given names English feminine given names ...
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Mood Indigo
"Mood Indigo" is a jazz song with music by Duke Ellington and Barney Bigard and lyrics by Irving Mills. Composition Although Irving Mills—Jack Mills's brother and publishing partner—took credit for the lyrics, Mitchell Parish claimed in a 1987 interview that he had written the lyrics. The tune was composed for a radio broadcast in October 1930 and was originally titled "Dreamy Blues". It was "the first tune I ever wrote specially for microphone transmission", Ellington recalled. "The next day wads of mail came in raving about the new tune, so Irving Mills put a lyric to it." Renamed "Mood Indigo", it became a jazz standard. The main theme was provided by Bigard, who learned it in New Orleans, Louisiana from his clarinet teacher Lorenzo Tio, who called it a "Mexican Blues". Ellington's arrangement was first recorded by his band for Brunswick Records, Brunswick on October 17, 1930. It was recorded twice more in 1930. These recordings included Arthur Whetsel (trumpet), Trick ...
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Eartha Kitt
Eartha Mae Kitt (née Keith; January 17, 1927 – December 25, 2008) was an American singer and actress. She was known for her highly distinctive singing style and her 1953 recordings of "C'est si bon" and the Christmas novelty song "Santa Baby". Kitt began her career in 1942 and appeared in the 1945 original Broadway theatre production of the musical ''Carib Song''. In the early 1950s, Kitt had six US Top 30 entries, including "Uska Dara" (1953) and "I Want to Be Evil" (1953). Her other recordings include the UK Top 10 song "Under the Bridges of Paris" (1954), "Just an Old Fashioned Girl" (1956) and "Where Is My Man" (1983). Orson Welles once called her the "most exciting woman in the world". Kitt starred as Catwoman in the third and final season of the television series ''Batman (TV series), Batman'' in 1967. In 1968, Kitt's career in the U.S. deteriorated after she made Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, anti-Vietnam War statements at a White House lu ...
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Pearl Bailey
Pearl Mae Bailey (March 29, 1918 – August 17, 1990) was an American actress, singer, comedian and author. After appearing in vaudeville, she made her Broadway debut in '' St. Louis Woman'' in 1946. She received a Special Tony Award for the title role in the all-black production of '' Hello, Dolly!'' in 1968. In 1986, she won a Daytime Emmy award for her performance as a fairy godmother in the ABC Afterschool Special ''Cindy Eller: A Modern Fairy Tale''. Her rendition of " Takes Two to Tango" hit the top ten in 1952. In 1976, she became the first African-American to receive the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom on October 17, 1988. Early life Bailey was born in Newport News, Virginia to the Reverend Joseph James and Ella Mae Ricks Bailey. When she was very young, the family moved to Washington, DC. After her parents' divorce, Bailey moved to Philadelphia to live with her mother. Bailey made her stage-singing debu ...
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Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April25, 1917June15, 1996) was an American singer, songwriter and composer, sometimes referred to as the "First Lady of Song", "Queen of Jazz", and "Lady Ella". She was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing, timing, Intonation (music), intonation, absolute pitch, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing. After a tumultuous adolescence, Fitzgerald found stability in musical success with the Chick Webb Orchestra, performing across the country but most often associated with the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. Her rendition of the nursery rhyme "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" helped boost both her and Webb to national fame. After taking over the band when Webb died, Fitzgerald left it behind in 1942 to start her solo career. Her manager was Moe Gale, co-founder of the Savoy, until she turned the rest of her career over to Norman Granz, who founded Verve Records to produce new records by Fitzgerald. With Verve, she recorded ...
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Nat King Cole
Nathaniel Adams Coles (March 17, 1919 – February 15, 1965), known professionally as Nat King Cole, alternatively billed as Nat "King" Cole, was an American singer, jazz pianist, and actor. Cole's career as a jazz and Traditional pop, pop vocalist started in the late 1930s and spanned almost three decades where he found success and recorded over 100 songs that became hits on the pop charts. Cole started his career as a jazz pianist in the late 1930s, when he formed the King Cole Trio, which became the top-selling group (and the only black act) on Capitol Records in the 1940s. Cole's trio was the model for small jazz band, jazz ensembles that followed. Starting in 1950, he transitioned to become a solo singer billed as Nat King Cole. Despite achieving mainstream success, Cole faced intense racial discrimination during his career. While not a major vocal public figure in the civil rights movement, Cole was a member of his local NAACP branch and participated in the 1963 March ...
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Earl Hines
Earl Kenneth Hines, also known as Earl "Fatha" Hines (December 28, 1903 – April 22, 1983), was an American jazz pianist and bandleader. He was one of the most influential figures in the development of jazz piano and, according to one source, "one of a small number of pianists whose playing shaped the history of jazz". The trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie (a member of Hines's big band, along with Charlie Parker) wrote, The piano is the basis of modern harmony. This little guy came out of Chicago, Earl Hines. He changed the style of the piano. You can find the roots of Bud Powell, Herbie Hancock, all the guys who came after that. If it hadn't been for Earl Hines blazing the path for the next generation to come, it's no telling where or how they would be playing now. There were individual variations but the style of … the modern piano came from Earl Hines. The pianist Lennie Tristano said, "Earl Hines is the ''only'' one of us capable of creating real jazz and real swing when playi ...
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Jack Teagarden
Weldon Leo "Jack" Teagarden (August 20, 1905 – January 15, 1964) was an United States, American jazz Trombone, trombonist and singer. He led both of his bands himself and was a sideman for Paul Whiteman's orchestra. From 1946 to 1951, he played in Louis Armstrong's All-Stars. Early life Jack Teagarden was born in Vernon, Texas, the oldest of four children. His siblings also pursued musical careers: Charlie Teagarden, Charlie played trumpet, Norma Teagarden, Norma played piano, and Clois ("Cub") played Drum kit, drums. Teagarden's father, Charles, worked in the oil fields and played cornet part-time, while his mother, Helen, was a semi-professional pianist who accompanied silent films in local theaters. Charles encouraged Teagarden to play the baritone horn. At age eight, Jack received his first trombone as a Christmas gift, transitioning from the Tenor horn, tenor-valve horn to the trombone. His first public performances were in his local theaters, helping his mother provide mu ...
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The Strip
The Las Vegas Strip is a stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard in Clark County, Nevada, that is known for its concentration of resort hotels and casinos. The Strip, as it is known, is about long, and is immediately south of the Las Vegas city limits in the unincorporated towns of Paradise and Winchester, but is often referred to simply as "Las Vegas". Many of the largest hotel casino and resort properties in the world are on the Strip. Its hotels, casinos, restaurants, residential high-rises, entertainment offerings, and skyline have established the Strip as one of the most popular and iconic tourist destinations in the world and is one of the driving forces for Las Vegas's economy. Most of the Strip has been designated as an All-American Road, and the North and South Las Vegas Strip routes are classified as Nevada Scenic Byways and National Scenic Byways. Boundaries Historically, casinos that were not in Downtown Las Vegas along Fremont Street sat outside the city limits on Las ...
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Kid Ory
Edward "Kid" Ory (December 25, 1886 – January 23, 1973) was an American jazz composer, Trombone, trombonist and bandleader. One of the early users of the glissando technique, he helped establish it as a central element of Music of New Orleans#Jazz, New Orleans jazz. He was born near LaPlace, Louisiana and moved to New Orleans on his 21st birthday, to Los Angeles in 1910 and to Chicago in 1925. The Ory band later was an important force in reviving interest in New Orleans jazz, making radio broadcasts on ''The Orson Welles Almanac'' program in 1944, among other shows. In 1944–45, the group made a series of recordings for the Crescent Records, Crescent label, which was founded by Nesuhi Ertegun for the express purpose of recording Ory's band. Ory retired from music in 1966 and spent his last years in Hawaii where he died from a heart attack. Biography Ory was born in 1886 to a Louisiana French-speaking family of Creoles of color, Black Creole descent, on Woodland Plantatio ...
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