Robert “Bobby” Sharp (born November 26, 1924 in Topeka , Kansas ; † January 28, 2013 in Alameda , California ) was an American musician (piano, vocals) and songwriter who wrote the song Unchain My Heart wrote.Sharp grew up in Lawrence, Kansas , before moving to Los Angeles , where he lived with his grandparents during the Great Depression , while his parents Louis and Eva Sharp pursued a career as a concert tenor and athlete in New York . In 1936, at the age of twelve, he lived again with his parents in New York City . Her apartment on Edgecombe Avenue on Harlem’s Sugar Hill was a meeting place for prominent figures of the Harlem Renaissance ; these included Walter White, the founder of the civil rights organization NAACP , Roy Wilkins , longtime NAACP chairman andAaron Douglas , an African American artist also from Topeka. Duke Ellington ^[1] lived in the immediate vicinity .

In 1943 Sharp served in the US Army in the 372nd Infantry Regiment , which was stationed in New York and Fort Breckenridge (Kentucky). After his discharge from the army, he studied music at the Greenwich House Music School and then at the Manhattan School of Music harmony , music theory and piano . An important mentor during this phase was the band leader Sy Oliver , a friend of the Sharp family. In the following years Sharp tried to sell his own songs on Broadway and Tin Pan Alley ; a first success was in 1956 Baby Girl of Minewhich he recorded with orchestral accompaniment for the Wing label and which was later covered by Ruth Brown . The song Last Night in the Moonlight he recorded under his own name for the small label Destiny. ^In 1960 he signed a record deal with Epic Records .

In the 1950s and 1960s his songs were recorded by Sarah Vaughan , Sammy Davis, Jr. and especially Ray Charles . He played the first version of Sharp’s best-known song Unchain My Heart in 1961 , which was followed by cover versions by Trini Lopez and Joe Cocker (1987). Bobby Sharp had sold the song’s copyrights for only $ 50 to musician and composer Teddy Powell , who then insisted on his co-authorship. In 1963, Sharp sold its stake to Powell for only $ 1,000. 1987 Sharp renewed the exploitation righton the song just before Joe Cocker successfully covered it.

A very faint but very large squid-like nebula is visible in planet Earth’s sky — but inside a still larger bat. The Giant Squid Nebula cataloged as Ou4, and Sh2-129 also known as the Flying Bat Nebula, are both caught in this cosmic scene toward the royal royal constellation Cepheus. Composed with 55 hours of narrowband image data, the telescopic field of view is 3 degrees or 6 Full Moons across. Discovered in 2011 byFrench astro-imager Nicolas Outters, the Squid Nebula’s alluring bipolar shape is distinguished here by the telltale blue-green emission from doubly ionized oxygen atoms. Though apparently completely surrounded by the reddish hydrogen emission region Sh2-129, the true distance and nature of the Squid Nebula have been difficult to determine. Still, a more recent investigation suggests Ou4 really does lie within Sh2-129 some 2,300 light-years away. Consistent with that scenario, Ou4 would represent a spectacular outflow driven by HR8119, a triple system of hot, massive stars seen near the center of the nebula. The truly giant Squid Nebula would physically be nearly 50 light-years across.

Paul Desmond (born Paul Emil Breitenfeld, November 25, 1924 – May 30, 1977) was an American jazz alto saxophonist and composer, best known for his work with the Dave Brubeck Quartet and for composing that group’s biggest hit, “Take Five“. He was one of the most popular musicians to come out of the cool jazz scene.

In addition to his work with Brubeck, he led several groups and collaborated with Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Jim Hall, and Ed Bickert. After years of chain smoking and poor health, Desmond succumbed to lung cancer in 1977 after a tour with Brubeck.

Desmond was born Paul Emil Breitenfeld in San Francisco, California, in 1924, the son of Shirley (née King) and Emil Aron Breitenfeld. His grandfather Sigmund Breitenfeld was, according to an obituary, born in Austria in 1857. Sigmund Breitenfeld, a medical doctor, emigrated to New York City with his wife Hermine (born Hermine Lewy) at the end of the 19th century, and the Breitenfelds raised their four children (including Desmond’s father Emil) with no religion. Interviewed by Desmond biographer Doug Ramsey, Desmond’s first cousin Rick Breitenfeld said that no one in the Breitenfeld family could find evidence of Jewish ancestry or Jewish religious observance, but Paul Desmond and members of his father’s family “frequently speculated as to whether or not Sigmund or Hermine Breitenfeld had Jewish backgrounds”. Biographer Ramsey notes that “the name Breitenfeld could be Jewish or non-Jewish. There are plenty of Breitenfelds in Germany and Austria to support both sides of the argument. Lewy, the maiden surname of Paul’s paternal grandmother Hermine, is more likely to be of Jewish origin, but no evidence of her genealogy has surfaced.”However, Fred Barton, songwriter/arranger and Desmond’s cousin, found extensive genealogical proof that both the Breitenfeld and Löwy families were Bohemian Jews. The Breitenfeld family in Bohemia and Vienna featured musicians in every generation throughout the 1800s, 1900s, and to the present day. Desmond’s mother, born Shirley King, was Catholic, and of Irish descent. Desmond died on May 30, 1977, not of his heavy alcohol habit but of lung cancer, the result of his longtime heavy smoking. Never without his humor, after he was diagnosed with cancer he expressed pleasure at the health of his liver. His last concert was with Brubeck in February 1977, in New York City. His fans did not know that he was already dying. Desmond specified in his will that all proceeds from “Take Five” would go to the Red Cross following his death.

Scott Joplin (c. November 24, 1868 – April 1, 1917) was an African-American composer and pianist. Joplin is also known as the “King of Ragtime” because of the fame achieved for his ragtime compositions, music that was born out of the African-American community. During his brief career, he wrote over 100 original ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas. One of his first and most popular pieces, the “Maple Leaf Rag“, became ragtime’s first and most influential hit, and has been recognized as the archetypal rag.

Joplin grew up in a musical family of railway laborers in Texarkana, Arkansas, and developed his own musical knowledge with the help of local teachers. While in Texarkana, Texas, he formed a vocal quartet and taught mandolin and guitar. During the late 1880s, he left his job as a railroad laborer and traveled the American South as an itinerant musician. He went to Chicago for the World’s Fair of 1893, which played a major part in making ragtime a national craze by 1897.

Joplin moved to Sedalia, Missouri, in 1894 and earned a living as a piano teacher. There he taught future ragtime composers Arthur Marshall, Scott Hayden and Brun Campbell. He began publishing music in 1895, and publication of his “Maple Leaf Rag” in 1899 brought him fame. This piece had a profound influence on writers of ragtime. It also brought Joplin a steady income for life, though he did not reach this level of success again and frequently had financial problems. In 1901, Joplin moved to St. Louis, where he continued to compose and publish and regularly performed in the community. The score to his first opera, A Guest of Honor, was confiscated in 1903 with his belongings for non-payment of bills and is now considered lost.

In 1907, Joplin moved to New York City to find a producer for a new opera. He attempted to go beyond the limitations of the musical form that had made him famous but without much monetary success. His second opera, Treemonisha, was never fully staged during his life.

In 1916, Joplin descended into dementia as a result of syphilis. He was admitted to Manhattan State Hospital in January 1917 and died there three months later at the age of 48. Joplin’s death is widely considered to mark the end of ragtime as a mainstream music format; over the next several years, it evolved with other styles into stride, jazz and eventually big band swing.

Joplin’s music was rediscovered and returned to popularity in the early 1970s with the release of a million-selling album recorded by Joshua Rifkin. This was followed by the Academy Award-winning 1973 film The Sting, which featured several of Joplin’s compositions, most notably “The Entertainer“, a piece performed by pianist Marvin Hamlisch that received wide airplay. Treemonisha was finally produced in full, to wide acclaim, in 1972. In 1976, Joplin was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize.