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Bernard Herrmann (born Maximillian Herman; June 29, 1911 – December 24, 1975 NY, NY) was an American composer and conductor best known for his work in composing for films. As a conductor, he championed the music of lesser-known composers. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest film composers. Alex Rosswrites that “Over four decades, he revolutionized movie scoring by abandoning the illustrative musical techniques that dominated Hollywood in the 1930s and imposing his own peculiar harmonic and rhythmic vocabulary.”
An Academy Award-winner for The Devil and Daniel Webster(1941), Herrmann is known for his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, notably The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) (where he makes a cameo as the conductor at Royal Albert Hall), Vertigo(1958), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), The Birds(1963) (as “sound consultant”) and Marnie (1964). He worked in radio drama, composing for Orson Welles‘s The Mercury Theater on the Air, and his first film score was for Welles’s film debut, Citizen Kane (1941). His other credits include Jane Eyre (1943), Anna and the King of Siam (1946), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir(1947), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Cape Fear (1962), Fahrenheit 451 (1966) and Twisted Nerve (1968). Herrmann scored films that were inspired by Hitchcock, like François Truffaut‘s The Bride Wore Black (1968) and Brian De Palma‘s Sisters (1972) and Obsession (1976). He composed the scores for several fantasy films by Ray Harryhausen, and composed for television, including Have Gun – Will Travel and Rod Serling‘s The Twilight Zone. His last score, recorded shortly before his death, was for Martin Scorsese‘s Taxi Driver (1976).
more...Comet 13P/Olbers is returning to the inner Solar System after 68 years. The periodic, Halley-type comet will reach its next perihelion or closest approach to the Sun on June 30 and has become a target for binocular viewing low in planet Earth’s northern hemisphere night skies. But this sharp telescopic image of 13P is composed of stacked exposures made on the night of June 25. It easily reveals shifting details in the bright comet’s torn and tattered ion tail buffeted by the wind from an active Sun, along with a broad, fanned-out dust tail and slightly greenish coma. The frame spans over two degrees across a background of faint stars toward the constellation Lynx.
more...Peter Hall, folk singer and song collector, born London, June 28 1936; died Aberdeen, December 5, 1996
PETER Hall’s contribution to the folk song revival in Scotland was enormous. Although born in London and raised in Newcastle, when he moved to Aberdeen to study Medicine in the 1950s he became engrossed in the ballads and songs of the North-east.
National Service (one of his favourite observations was that he was only in the Army for three years but still managed to become a Field Marshall . . . of the long jump) interrupted his medical studies, and when he returned from the Army he became a science teacher and taught latterly at Harlaw Academy in Aberdeen.
At his first teaching post in Peterhead, pupils became used to their science teacher asking if any of their family knew any songs. Acting on these leads and others supplied by Hamish Henderson at the School of Scottish Studies and other word-of-mouth contacts, Hall spent much of his spare time and the school holidays travelling round Aberdeenshire, Banffshire, and Western Ireland with a small Phillips reel-to-reel recorder, logging some 600 songs.
Pete Candoli (born Walter Joseph Candoli; June 28, 1923 – January 11, 2008) was an American jazz trumpeter. He played with the big bands of Woody Herman and Stan Kenton and worked in the studios of the recording and television industries.
Career
A native of Mishawaka, Indiana, Pete Candoli was the older brother of Conte Candoli.
During the 1940s he was a member of big bands led by Sonny Dunham, Will Bradley, Ray McKinley, Tommy Dorsey, Teddy Powell, Woody Herman, Boyd Raeburn, Tex Beneke, and Jerry Gray. For his ability to hit high notes on the trumpet he was given the nickname “Superman”.[3] While he was a member of Woody Herman’s First Herd, he sometimes wore a Superman costume during his solo. In the 1950s he belonged to the bands of Stan Kenton and Les Brown and in Los Angeles began to work as a studio musician. His studio work included recording soundtracks for the movies Bell, Book and Candle (in which the Brothers Candoli performed in scenes set in the movie’s Zodiac nightclub), Private Hell 36, Day the World Ended (1955) (‘The S.F. Blues’), Peter Gunn (on 38 episodes, acting once), Save the Tiger, The Man with the Golden Arm, and The Prisoner of Second Avenue; appearing with The Tonight Show Band ; and acting in The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, (1957); Kings Go Forth, (1958); Touch of Evil, (1958); ‘Pete’, in three episodes of Johnny Staccato, (1958–59); Porgy and Bess, (1959); as trumpet player ‘Johnny’, in ‘The Hand’, an episode of Alcoa Presents: One Step Beyond, (series 2, episode 15), 1959, (broadcast US, 15th Dec); as the ‘Spokesman’, in one episode of The Untouchables (1959 TV series), (1959-1963); Monsanto Night Presents Michel Legrand, a 1972 TV special, in which he played ‘Mos Santos’; a bartender and trumpet player in the short film, ‘Tarzana’, (1978), (starring his then wife, Edie Adams); and as ‘Sam Johnson’, in one episode of Hotel (American TV series), (1983), among others.
more...David “Honeyboy” Edwards (June 28, 1915 – August 29, 2011) was an American delta blues guitarist and singer from Mississippi.
Edwards was born in Shaw, Mississippi. He learned to play music from his father, a guitarist and violinist. At the age of 14, he left home to travel with the bluesman Big Joe Williams, beginning life as an itinerant musician, which he maintained through the 1930s and 1940s. He performed with the famed blues musician Robert Johnson, with whom he developed a close friendship. Edwards was present on the night Johnson drank the poisoned whiskey that killed him, and his story has become the definitive version of Johnson’s demise. Edwards also knew and played with other leading bluesmen in the Mississippi Delta, including Charley Patton, Tommy Johnson, and Johnny Shines.
more...“To see a world in a grain of sand And heaven in a wild flower, To hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, and Eternity in an hour.” William Blake
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Jets of material blasting from newborn stars, are captured in this James Webb Space Telescope close-up of the Serpens Nebula. The powerful protostellar outflows are bipolar, twin jets spewing in opposite directions. Their directions are perpendicular to accretion disks formed around the spinning, collapsing stellar infants. In the NIRcam image, the reddish color represents emission from molecular hydrogen and carbon monoxide produced as the jets collide with the surrounding gas and dust. The sharp image shows for the first time that individual outflows detected in the Serpens Nebula are generally aligned along the same direction. That result was expected, but has only now come into clear view with Webb’s detailed exploration of the active young star-forming region. Brighter foreground stars exhibit Webb’s characteristic diffraction spikes. At the Serpens Nebula’s estimated distance of 1,300 light-years, this cosmic close-up frame is about 1 light-year across.
more...Joseph Edward Covington (born Joseph Edward Michno; June 27, 1945 – June 4, 2013) was an American drummer, best known for his involvements with Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna and Jefferson Starship.
Though best known for his work with Jefferson Airplane, Electric Hot Tuna, and Jefferson Starship, Joey Covington (born Joseph Michno) had a long career starting at age 10 as a self-taught drummer/percussionist, along with becoming an award-winning songwriter and ultimately recording on over 22 albums, of which 16 went gold and platinum.
Covington became a professional drummer as a young teenager, taking gigs with, among other things, polka bands and in strip clubs in his hometown of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. A colorful character, on his website he listed among his fondest early memories “Getting to New York City on a Greyhound bus with a suitcase, a set of drums, and a hundred dollars in my pocket.”
more...St. Elmo Sylvester Hope (June 27, 1923 – May 19, 1967) was an American jazzpianist, composer, and arranger, chiefly in the bebop and hard bop genres. He grew up playing and listening to jazz and classical music with Bud Powell, and both were close friends of another influential pianist, Thelonious Monk.
Hope survived being shot by police as a youth to become a New York-based musician who recorded with several emerging stars in the early to mid-1950s, including trumpeter Clifford Brown, and saxophonists John Coltrane, Lou Donaldson, Jackie McLean, and Sonny Rollins. A long-term heroin user, Hope had his license to perform in New York’s clubs withdrawn after a drug conviction, so he moved to Los Angeles in 1957. He was not happy during his four years on the West Coast, but had some successful collaborations there, including with saxophonist Harold Land.
More recordings as leader ensued following Hope’s return to New York, but they did little to gain him more public or critical attention. Further drug and health problems reduced the frequency of his public performances, which ended a year before his death, at the age of 43. He remains little known, despite, or because of, the individuality of his playing and composing, which were complex and stressed subtlety and variation rather than the virtuosity predominant in bebop.
Elmo Hope was born on June 27, 1923, in New York City. His parents, Simon and Gertrude Hope, were immigrants from the Caribbean, and had several children.
more...Johnny “Big Moose” Walker (June 27, 1927 – November 27, 1999) was an American Chicago blues and electric blues pianist and organist. He worked with many blues musicians, including Ike Turner, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Lowell Fulson, Choker Campbell, Elmore James, Earl Hooker, Muddy Waters, Otis Spann, Sunnyland Slim, Jimmy Dawkins and Son Seals.
Walker was primarily a piano player but was also proficient on the electronic organ and the bass guitar (he played the bass guitar when backing Muddy Waters). He recorded solo albums and accompanied other musicians in concert and on recordings.
John Mayon Walker was born in the unincorporated community of Stoneville, Mississippi, partly of Native American ancestry. He acquired his best-known stage name in his childhood in Greenville, Mississippi, derived from his long, flowing hair.He learned to play several instruments, including the church organ, guitar, vibraphoneand tuba.
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Rahul Dev Burman (27 June 1939 – 4 January 1994) was an Indian music director and actor, who is considered to be one of the greatest and most successful music directors of the Hindi film music industry. From the 1960s to the 1990s, Burman composed musical scores for 331 films, bringing a new level of music ensemble with his compositions. Burman did his major work with legendary singers Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, and Kishore Kumar. He also worked extensively with lyricist Gulzar, with whom he has some of the most memorable numbers in his career. Nicknamed Pancham, he was the only son of the composer Sachin Dev Burman.
He was mainly active in the Hindi film industry as a composer, and also provided vocals for a few compositions. He served as an influence to the next generation of Indian music directors, and his songs continue to be popular in India and overseas. Many years after his death, his songs continue to be inspiration for new singers and composers.
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