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Bette Midler (/bɛt/; born December 1, 1945) is an American singer, songwriter, actress, comedian, and film producer.
Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Midler began her professional career in several Off-Off-Broadway plays, prior to her engagements in Fiddler on the Roof and Salvation on Broadway in the late 1960s. She came to prominence in 1970 when she began singing in the Continental Baths, a local gay bathhousewhere she managed to build up a core following.
Since 1970, Midler has released 14 studio albums as a solo artist. Throughout her career, many of her songs became hits on the record charts, including her renditions of “The Rose“, “Wind Beneath My Wings“, “Do You Want to Dance“, “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy“, and “From a Distance“. In 2008, she signed a contract with Caesars Palace in Las Vegas to perform a show titled Bette Midler: The Showgirl Must Go On, which ended in 2010.
Midler made her motion picture debut in 1979 with The Rose, which earned her a Golden Globe for Best Actress, as well as a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She has since starred in a number of hit films, which include: Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), Ruthless People(1986), Outrageous Fortune (1987), Big Business (1988), Beaches (1988), Hocus Pocus (1993), The First Wives Club (1996), The Stepford Wives(2004), and Parental Guidance (2012). She also starred in For the Boys (1991) and Gypsy (1993), winning two additional Golden Globes for these films and receiving a second Academy Award nomination for the former.
more...Sander L. Nelson (born December 1, 1938) is an American drummer. Nelson, one of the best-known rock drummers of the early 1960s, had several solo instrumental Top 40 hits and was a session drummer on many other well-known hits, and released over 30 albums. He lives in Boulder City, Nevada, and continues to experiment with music on keyboards and piano.
His first recording, with a band called the Renegades (Richard Podolor, Bruce Johnston, and Nick Venet), was “Geronimo”, written by Venet, produced by Kim Fowley, and released on the Original Sound Records label. Although it flopped on the national charts, it charted in some of the Mid West markets. The song, along with “Charge”, is part of the soundtrack of 1959 film Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow released by American International Pictures.
Nelson attended high school with Jan Berry, Dean Torrence (who became Jan and Dean), and Kim Fowley. After gaining respect as a session drummer, he played on such songs as “To Know Him Is To Love Him” (Phil Spector‘s Teddy Bears, 1958), “Alley-Oop” (The Hollywood Argyles, 1960), and “A Thousand Stars” (Kathy Young and the Innocents, 1960).
His song “Teen Beat“, on Original Sound Records, rose to number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1959. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc. Subsequently, he signed with the Imperial record label, and pounded out two more Top 40 hits, “Let There Be Drums“, which went to number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100, and “Drums Are My Beat”. In December 1961, the British music magazine, NME, reported that “Let There Be Drums” had gone Top 10 in both the United Kingdom and United States. All three were instrumentals (a feat rarely repeated). Guitar playing on these hits was by co-writer Richard Podolor, later a songwriter and record producer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bKVZMF7-Q4
more...Ike Isaacs (December 1, 1919, Rangoon, Burma – January 11, 1996, Sydney, Australia) was a jazz guitarist from Rangoon, Burma, best known for his work with violinist Stéphane Grappelli.
Isaacs was self taught on guitar. He started playing professionally in college while pursuing a degree in chemistry. In 1946 he moved to England, where he became a member of the BBC Show Band. During the 1960s and ’70s, he was a member of the Hot Club of London, led by guitarist Diz Disley, which often collaborated with Stéphane Grappelli. He was a member of the band Velvet with Digby Fairweather, Len Skeat, and Denny Wright. In the 1980s, he moved to Australia and taught at the Sydney School of Guitar.
more...Friday November 30th 2018 730-9pm
more...Rhythm Roots Workshop solo performance
PRI Minneapolis 11-30-18 noon-2pm
This is the conclusion of a Art Access Residency
more...NGC 7552 (also known as IC 5294) is a barred spiral galaxy in constellation Grus. It is at a distance of circa 60 million light years from Earth, which, given its apparent dimensions, means that NGC 7552 is about 75,000 light years across. It forms with three other spiral galaxies the Grus Quartet.
NGC 7552 was originally discovered and reported in 1826 by James Dunlop and John Herschel added it in the General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters as number 3977. However, Lewis Swift reported the galaxy independently in on October 22, 1897, at right ascention 9 arcseconds off the location of the galaxy and was included in Index Catalogue as IC 5294
more...Jack Sheldon (born November 30, 1931) is an American bebop and West Coast jazz trumpeter, singer, and actor. He is a trumpet player and was the music director on The Merv Griffin Show, as well as the voice heard on several episodes of the educational music television series Schoolhouse Rock!
Sheldon was born in Jacksonville, Florida. He originally became known through his participation in the West Coast jazz movement of the 1950s, performing and recording with such figures as Art Pepper, Gerry Mulligan, and Curtis Counce. Sheldon played the trumpet, sang, and performed on The Merv Griffin Show. He was Griffin’s sidekick for many years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmVNhgrKnxY
more...Walter Brown “Brownie” McGhee (November 30, 1915 – February 16, 1996) was an African-American folk music and Piedmont blues singer and guitarist, best known for his collaboration with the harmonica player Sonny Terry.
McGhee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee. At about the age of four he contracted polio, which incapacitated his right leg. His brother Granville “Sticks”(or “Stick”) McGhee, who also later became a musician and composed the famous song “Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-o-Dee,” was nicknamed for pushing young Brownie around in a cart. Their father, George McGhee, was a factory worker, known around University Avenue for playing guitar and singing. Brownie’s uncle made him a guitar from a tin marshmallow box and a piece of board.
McGhee spent much of his youth immersed in music, singing with a local harmony group, the Golden Voices Gospel Quartet, and teaching himself to play guitar. He also played the five-string banjo and ukulele and studied piano. Surgery funded by the March of Dimes enabled McGhee to walk.
more...Robert Lee McCollum (November 30, 1909 – November 5, 1967) was an American blues musician who played and recorded under the pseudonyms Robert Lee McCoy and Robert Nighthawk. He was the father of the blues musician Sam Carr.
McCollum was born in Helena, Arkansas. He left home at an early age and became a busking musician. After a period traveling through southern Mississippi, he settled for a time in Memphis, Tennessee, where he played with local orchestras and musicians, such as the Memphis Jug Band. A particular influence during this period was Houston Stackhouse, from whom he learned to play slide guitar and with whom he performed on the radio in Jackson, Mississippi.
more...World Music on Flamenco Fridays with Paco de Lucia
more...Cosmic dust clouds are draped across a rich field of stars in this broad telescopic panorama near the northern boundary of Corona Australis, the Southern Crown. Less than 500 light-years away the denser clouds effectively block light from more distant background stars in the Milky Way. The entire vista spans about 5 degrees or nearly 45 light-years at the clouds’ estimated distance. Toward the right lies a group of bluish reflection nebulae cataloged as NGC 6726, 6727, 6729 and IC 4812. The characteristic blue color is produced as light from hot stars is reflected by the cosmic dust. The dust also obscures from view stars in the region still in the process of formation. Smaller yellowish nebula NGC 6729 surrounds young variable star R Coronae Australis. Below it are arcs and loops identified as Herbig Haro (HH) objects associated with energetic newborn stars. Magnificent globular star cluster NGC 6723 is above and right of the nebulae. Though NGC 6723 appears to be part of the group, its ancient stars actually lie nearly 30,000 light-years away, far beyond the young stars of the Corona Australis dust clouds.
more...Billy Hart (born November 29, 1940) is an American jazz drummer and educator.
Hart was born in Washington, D.C., where early on in his career he performed with soul artists such as Otis Redding and Sam and Dave, and then later with Buck Hill and Shirley Horn, and was a sideman with the Montgomery Brothers (1961), Jimmy Smith (1964–1966), and Wes Montgomery(1966–68). Following Montgomery’s death in 1968, Hart moved to New York, where he recorded with McCoy Tyner, Wayne Shorter, and Joe Zawinul, and played with Eddie Harris, Pharoah Sanders, and Marian McPartland.
Hart was a member of Herbie Hancock‘s sextet (1969–73), and played with McCoy Tyner (1973–74), Stan Getz (1974–77), and Quest (1980s), in addition to extensive freelance playing (including recording with Miles Davis on 1972’s On the Corner).
Since the early 1990s, Hart has been associated with Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and is also adjunct faculty at the New England Conservatory of Music and Western Michigan University. He also conducts private lessons through the New School and New York University. The drummer often contributes to the Stokes Forest Music Camp and the Dworp Summer Jazz Clinic in Belgium.
He has led a group with Mark Turner, Ethan Iverson, and Ben Street, is featured in a trio led by pianist Jean-Michel Pilc, another led by guitarist Assaf Kehati, and has performed in a band known as the Cookers, with Eddie Henderson, David Weiss, Craig Handy, George Cables and Cecil McBee, all who have toured extensively and recorded two CD.
more...John Mayall, OBE (born 29 November 1933) is an English blues singer, guitarist, organist and songwriter, whose musical career spans over sixty years. In the 1960s, he was the founder of John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, a band which has counted among its members some of the most famous blues and blues rock musicians. They include Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Jack Bruce, John McVie, Mick Fleetwood, Mick Taylor, Don “Sugarcane” Harris, Harvey Mandel, Larry Taylor, Aynsley Dunbar, Hughie Flint, Jon Hiseman, Dick Heckstall-Smith, Andy Fraser, Johnny Almond, Walter Trout, Coco Montoya, Kal David, and Buddy Whittington.
more...William Thomas “Billy” Strayhorn (November 29, 1915 – May 31, 1967) was an American jazz composer, pianist, lyricist, and arranger, best remembered for his long-time collaboration with bandleader and composer Duke Ellington that lasted nearly three decades. His compositions include “Take the ‘A’ Train“, “Chelsea Bridge“, “A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing“, and “Lush Life“.
Strayhorn was born in Dayton, Ohio.
more...Brigada Victor Jara was formed in Coimbra, Portugal in 1974, following the April 25 revolution, in which traditional music had played an inspiring part. The band took its name from the Chilean folk singer murdered by the military after the Pinochet coup of 1973.
more...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml13OAEtNQw
more...This cosmic close-up looks deep inside the Soul Nebula. The dark and brooding dust clouds on the left, outlined by bright ridges of glowing gas, are cataloged as IC 1871. About 25 light-years across, the telescopic field of view spans only a small part of the much larger Heart and Soul nebulae. At an estimated distance of 6,500 light-years the star-forming complex lies within the Perseus spiral arm of our Milky Way Galaxy, seen in planet Earth’s skies toward the constellation Cassiopeia. An example of triggered star formation, the dense star-forming clouds of IC 1871 are themselves sculpted by the intense winds and radiation of the region’s massive young stars. The featured image appears mostly red due to the emission of a specific color of light emitted by excited hydrogen gas.
more...More Posts
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- Aldo Romano
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- Daily Roots with the Survivors
- Surviving the Pandemic and Realizing Racial Justice
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- Captain Beefheart
- Earl Hooker
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