(1630)]] Moses (, Modern Moshe Tiberian Mōšéh; Greek: Mōüsēs; Arabic: ) was, according to the Hebrew Bible, a religious leader, lawgiver, and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed. Also called Moshe Rabbenu in Hebrew (, Lit. "Moses our Teacher/Rabbi"), he is the most important prophet in Judaism, and is also considered an important prophet in Christianity and Islam, as well as a number of other faiths.

According to the Book of Exodus, Moses was born in a time when his people, the Children of Israel, were increasing in number and the Egyptian Pharaoh was worried that they might help Egypt's enemies. Moses' Hebrew mother, Jochebed, hides him when the Pharaoh ordered all newborn Hebrew boys to be killed, and the child is adopted as a foundling by the Egyptian royal family. After killing an Egyptian slave-master, Moses flees across the Red Sea to Midian where he has his encounter with the God of Israel in the "burning bush" episode. God sends Moses to request the release of the Israelites. After the Ten Plagues, Moses leads the Exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt and across the Red Sea, after which they base themselves at Mount Sinai, where Moses receives the Ten Commandments. After 40 years of wandering in the desert, Moses dies aged 120, within sight of the Promised Land.

Rabbinical Judaism calculated a lifespan of Moses corresponding to 1391–1271 BCE; Christian tradition has tended to assume an earlier date. Historically, the Exodus narrative can be traced to the 7th century BCE kingdom of Judah, where it acts as a founding myth presented by the Yahwist faction. The Deuteronomist source of the Hebrew Bible purports that the Book of Deuteronomy is the record of Moses' parting address to his people. The "law of Moses" was discovered in the Temple during the reign of king Josiah (r. 641–609 BCE) probably corresponds to an early version of the Book of Deuteronomy.

Name

The biblical text explicitly etymologizes the name Mošeh משה as a derivation of the root mšh משה "to draw", in : :"[...] she called his name Moses (משה): and she said, Because I drew him (משיתהו) out of the water." (KJV).

The name is thus suggested to relate to drawing out in a passive sense, "the one who was drawn out". Those who depart from this tradition derive the name from the same root but in an active sense, "he who draws out", in the sense of "saviour, deliverer". The form of the name as recorded in the Masoretic text is indeed the expected form of the Biblical Hebrew active participle. Josephus has argued for an Egyptian etymology, and some scholarly suggestions have followed this in deriving the name from Coptic terms mo "water" and `uses "save, deliver", suggesting a meaning "saved from the water". Another suggestion has connected the name with an Egyptian root ms found in Tuth-mose and Ra-messes, with the meaning "born" or "child".

Biblical narrative

In the Hebrew Bible, the narratives of Moses are in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. According to the Book of Exodus, Moses was a son of Amram, a member of the Levite tribe of Israel descended from Jacob, and his wife, Jochebed. Jochebed (also Yocheved) was kin to Amram's father Kehath (Exodus 6:20). Moses had one older (by seven years) sister, Miriam, and one older (by three years) brother, Aaron.

In the Exodus account, the birth of Moses occurred at a time when an unnamed Egyptian Pharaoh had commanded that all male Hebrew children born be killed by drowning in the river Nile. Jochebed, the wife of the Levite Amram, bore a son and kept him concealed for three months. When she could keep him hidden no longer, rather than deliver him to be killed, she set him adrift on the Nile River in a small craft of bulrushes coated in pitch.) was bathing with her handmaidens. It is said that she spotted the baby in the basket and had her handmaiden fetch it for her. Miriam came forward and asked Pharaoh's daughter if she would like a Hebrew woman to nurse the baby.

Shepherd in Midian

After Moses had reached adulthood, he went to see how his brethren were faring. Moses soon discovered from a higher source that the affair was known, and that Pharaoh was likely to put him to death for it; he therefore made his escape over the Sinai Peninsula. There he sojourned forty years, following the occupation of a shepherd, during which time his son Gershom was born. One day, Moses led his flock to Mount Horeb (), usually identified with Mount Sinai — a mountain that was thought in the Middle Ages to be located on the Sinai Peninsula. While tending the flocks of Jethro at Mount Horeb, he saw a burning bush that would not be consumed.

Moses then set off for Egypt, and was nearly killed by God because his son was not circumcised (the meaning of this latter obscure passage is debatable, because of the ambiguous nature of the Hebrew and its abrupt presence in the narrative). He was met on the way by his elder brother, Aaron, and gained a hearing with his oppressed kindred after they returned to Egypt, who believed Moses and Aaron after they saw the signs that were performed in the midst of the Israelite assembly. It is also revealed that during Moses' absence, the Pharaoh of the Oppression had died, and been replaced by a new Pharaoh, known as the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Because the story the book of Exodus describes is catastrophic for the Egyptians — involving horrible plagues, the loss of thousands of slaves, and many deaths (possibly including the death of Pharaoh himself, although that matter is unclear in Exodus) — it is conspicuous that no Egyptian records speaking of Israelites in Egypt have ever been found. However, Merneptah is indeed historically known to have been a mediocre ruler, and certainly one weaker than Rameses II. Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and told him that the Lord God of Israel wanted Pharaoh to permit the Israelites to celebrate a feast in the wilderness. Pharaoh replied that he did not know their God and would not permit them to go celebrate the feast. Pharaoh upbraided Moses and Aaron, however they gained a second hearing with Pharaoh and changed Moses' rod into a serpent, but Pharaoh's magicians did the same with their rods. Moses and Aaron had a third opportunity when they went to meet the Pharaoh at the Nile riverbank, and Moses had Aaron turn the river to blood, but Pharaoh's magicians could do the same. Moses obtained a fourth meeting, and had Aaron bring frogs from the Nile to overrun Egypt, but Pharaoh's magicians were able to do the same thing. Apparently Pharaoh eventually got annoyed by the frogs and asked Moses to remove the frogs and promised to let the Israelites go observe their feast in the wilderness in return. The next day all the frogs died leaving a horrible stench and an enormous mess. This angered Pharaoh and he decided against letting the Israelites leave to observe the feast. Eventually Pharaoh let the Hebrews depart after Moses' God sent ten plagues upon the Egyptians. The third and fourth were the plague of gnats and flies. The fifth was the invasion of diseases on the Egyptians' cattle, oxen, goats, sheep, camels, and horses. The sixth was boils on the skins of Egyptians. Seventh, fiery hail and thunder struck Egypt. The eighth plague was locusts encompassing Egypt. The ninth plague was total darkness. The tenth plague culminated in the slaying of the Egyptian male first-borns, whereupon such terror seized the Egyptians that they ordered the Hebrews to leave in the Exodus. The events are commemorated as Passover, referring to how the plague "passed over" the houses of the Israelites while smiting the Egyptians.

The crossing of the Red Sea

Moses then led his people eastward, beginning the long journey to Canaan. The procession moved slowly, and found it necessary to encamp three times before passing the Egyptian frontier — some believe at the Great Bitter Lake, while others propose sites as far south as the northern tip of the Red Sea. Meanwhile, Pharaoh had a change of heart, and was in pursuit of them with a large army. Shut in between this army and the sea, the Israelites despaired, but Exodus records that God divided the waters so that they passed safely across on dry ground. There is some contention about this passage, since an earlier incorrect translation of Yam Suph to Red Sea was later found to have meant Reed Sea. When the Egyptian army attempted to follow, God permitted the waters to return upon them and drown them.

The people then continued to Marsa marching for three days along the wilderness of the Shur without finding water. Then they came to Elim where twelve water springs and 70 Palm trees greeted them. From Elim they set out again and after 45 days they reached the wilderness of Sin between Elim and Sinai.

From there they reached the plain of Rephidim, completing the crossing of the Red Sea.

Mount Sinai and the Ten Commandments

(1659)]]

According to the Bible, after crossing the Red Sea and leading the Israelites towards the desert, Moses was summoned by God to Mount Sinai, also referred to as Mount Horeb, the same place where Moses had first talked to the Burning Bush, tended the flocks of Jethro his father-in-law, and later produced water by striking the rock with his staff and directed the battle with the Amalekites.

Moses stayed on the mountain for 40 days and nights, a period in which he received the Ten Commandments directly from God. Moses then descended from the mountain with intent to deliver the commandments to the people, but upon his arrival he saw that the people were involved in the sin of the Golden Calf. In terrible anger, Moses broke the commandment tablets and ordered his own tribe (the Levites) to go through the camp and kill everyone, including family and friends, upon which the Levites killed about 3,000 people. God later commanded Moses to inscribe two other tablets, to replace the ones Moses smashed, so Moses went to the mountain again, for another period of 40 days and nights, and when he returned, the commandments were finally given.

In Jewish tradition, Moses is referred to as "The Lawgiver" for this singular achievement of delivering the Ten Commandments.

The years in the wilderness

, Albany, New York.]] When the people arrived at Marah, the water was bitter, causing the people to murmur against Moses. Moses cast a tree into the water, and the water became sweet. Later in the journey the people began running low on supplies and again murmured against Moses and Aaron and said they would have preferred to die in Egypt, but God's provision of manna from the sky in the morning and quail in the evening took care of the situation. When the people camped in Rephidim, there was no water, so the people complained again and said, "Wherefore is this that thou hast brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst?" Moses struck a rock with his staff, and water came forth.

Amalekites arrived and attacked the Israelites. In response, Moses bade Joshua lead the men to fight while he stood on a hill with the rod of God in his hand. As long as Moses held the rod up, Israel dominated the fighting, but if Moses let down his hands, the tide of the battle turned in favor of the Amalekites. Because Moses was getting tired, Aaron and Hur had Moses sit on a rock. Aaron held up one arm, Hur held up the other arm, and the Israelites routed the Amalekites. Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, came to see Moses and brought Moses' wife and two sons with him. After Moses had told Jethro how the Israelites had escaped Egypt, Jethro went to offer sacrifices to the Lord, and then ate bread with the elders. The next day Jethro observed how Moses sat from morning to night giving judgement for the people. Jethro suggested that Moses appoint judges for lesser matters, a suggestion Moses heeded.

When the Israelites came to Sinai, they pitched camp near the mountain. Moses commanded the people not to touch the mountain. Moses received the Ten Commandments orally (but not yet in tablet form) and other moral laws. He then went up with Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy of the elders to see the God of Israel. Before Moses went up the mountain to receive the tablets, he told the elders to direct any questions that arose to Aaron or Hur. While Moses was on Mount Sinai receiving instruction on the laws for the Israelite community, the Israelites went to Aaron and asked him to make gods for them. After Aaron had received golden earrings from the people, he made a golden calf and said, "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt." A "solemnity of the Lord" was proclaimed for the following day, which began in the morning with sacrifices and was followed by revelry.

After Moses had persuaded the Lord not to destroy the people of Israel, he went down from the mountain and was met by Joshua. Moses destroyed the calf and rebuked Aaron for the sin he had brought upon the people. Seeing that the people were uncontrollable, Moses went to the entry of the camp and said, "Who is on the Lord's side? Let him come unto me." All the sons of Levi rallied around Moses, who ordered them to go from gate to gate slaying the idolators.

Following this, according to the last chapters of Exodus, the Tabernacle was constructed, the priestly law ordained, the plan of encampment arranged both for the Levites and the non-priestly tribes, and the Tabernacle consecrated. Moses was given eight prayer laws that were to be carried out in regards to the Tabernacle. These laws included light, incense and sacrifice.

Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses on account of his marriage to an Ethiopian, Josephus explains the marriage of Moses to this Ethiopian in the Antiquities of the Jews and about him being the only one through whom the Lord spoke. Miriam was punished with leprosy for seven days.

The people left Hazeroth and pitched camp in the wilderness of Paran. (Paran is a vaguely defined region in the northern part of the Sinai peninsula, just south of Canaan) Moses sent twelve spies into Canaan as scouts, including most famously Caleb and Joshua. After forty days, they returned to the Israelite camp, bringing back grapes and other produce as samples of the regions fertility. Although all the spies agreed that the land's resources were spectacular, only two of the twelve spies (Joshua and Caleb) were willing to try to conquer it, and are nearly stoned for their unpopular opinion. The people began weeping and wanted to return to Egypt. Moses turned down the opportunity to have the Israelites completely destroyed and a great nation made from his own offspring, and instead he told the people that they would wander the wilderness for forty years until all those twenty years or older who had refused to enter Canaan had died, and that their children would then enter and possess Canaan. Early the next morning, the Israelites said they had sinned and now wanted to take possession of Canaan. Moses told them not to attempt it, but the Israelites chose to disobey Moses and invade Canaan, but were repulsed by the Amalekites and Canaanites.

The Tribe of Reuben, led by Korah, Dathan, Abiram, and two hundred fifty Israelite princes accused Moses and Aaron of raising themselves over the rest of the people. Moses told them to come the next morning with a censer for every man. Dathan and Abiram refused to come when summoned by Moses. Moses went to the place of Dathan and Abiram's tents. After Moses spoke the ground opened up and engulfed Dathan and Abiram's tents, after which it closed again. Fire consumed the two hundred fifty men with the censers. Moses had the censers taken and made into plates to cover the altar. The following day, the Israelites came and accused Moses and Aaron of having killed his fellow Israelites. The people were struck with a plague that killed fourteen thousand seven hundred persons, and was only ended when Aaron went with his censer into the midst of the people. To prevent further murmurings and settle the matter permanently, Moses had each of the chief princes of the non-Levitic tribes write his name on his staff and had them lay them in the sanctuary. He also had Aaron write his name on his staff and had it placed in the tabernacle. The next day, when Moses went into the tabernacle, Aaron's staff had budded, blossomed, and yielded almonds.

After leaving Sinai, the Israelites camped in Kadesh. After more complaints from the Israelites, Moses struck the stone twice, and water gushed forth. However, because Moses and Aaron had not shown the Lord's holiness, they were not permitted to enter the land to be given to the Israelites. This was the second occasion Moses struck a rock to bring forth water; however, it appears that both sites were named Meribah after these two incidents.

, curing the Israelites from poisonous snake bites.]] Now ready to enter Canaan, the Israelites abandon the idea of attacking the Canaanites head-on in Hebron, a city in the southern part of Canaan. Having been informed by spies that they were too strong, it is decided that they will flank Hebron by going further East, around the Dead Sea. This required that they pass through Edom, Moab, and Ammon. These three tribes are considered Hebrews by the Israelites as descendants of Lot, and therefore cannot be attacked. However they are also rivals, and are therefore not permissive in allowing the Israelites to openly pass through their territory. So Moses leads his people carefully along the eastern border of Edom, the southernmost of these territories. While the Israelites were making their journey around Edom, they complained about the manna. After many of the people had been bitten by serpents and died, Moses made the brass serpent and mounted it on a pole, and if those who were bitten looked at it, they did not die. According to the Biblical Book of Kings this brass serpent remained in existence until the days of King Hezekiah, who destroyed it after persons began treating it as an idol. When they reach Moab, it is revealed that Moab has been attacked and defeated by the Amorites led by a king named Sihon. The Amorites were a non-Hebrew Canaanic people who once held power in the Fertile Crescent. When Moses asks the Amorites for passage and it is refused, Moses attacks the Amorites (as non-Hebrews, the Israelites have no reservations in attacking them), presumably weakened by conflict with the Moabites, and defeats them. The Israelites, now holding the territory of the Amorites just north of Moab, desire to expand their holdings by acquiring Bashan, a fertile territory north of Ammon famous for its oak trees and cattle. It is led by a king named Og. Later rabbinical legends made Og a survivor of the flood, suggesting the he had sat on the ark and was fed by Noah. The Israelites fight with Og's forces at Edrei, on the southern border of Bashan, where the Israelites are victorious and slay every man, woman, and child of his cities and take the spoil for their bounty.

icon of the prophet Moses, gesturing towards the burning bush. 18th century (Iconostasis of Transfiguration Church, Kizhi Monastery, Karelia, Russia).]]

Balak meets with Balaam at Kirjath-huzoth, and they go to the high places of Baal, and offer sacrifices at seven altars, leading to Balaam being given a prophecy by God, which Balaam relates to Balak. However, the prophecy blesses Israel; Balak remonstrates, but Balaam reminds him that he can only speak the words put in his mouth, so Balak takes him to another high place at Pisgah, to try again. Building another seven altars here, and making sacrifices on each, Balaam provides another prophecy blessing Israel. Balaam finally gets taken by a now very frustrated Balak to Peor, and, after the seven sacrifices there, decides not to seek enchantments but instead looks on the Israelites from the peak. The spirit of God comes upon Balaam and he delivers a third positive prophecy concerning Israel. Balak's anger rises to the point where he threatens Balaam, but Balaam merely offers a prediction of fate. Balaam then looks on the Kenites, and Amalekites and offers two more predictions of fate. Balak and Balaam then simply go to their respective homes. Later, Balaam informed Balak and the Midianites that, if they wished to overcome the Israelites for a short interval, they needed to seduce the Israelites to engage in idolatry. The Midianites sent beautiful women to the Israelite camp to seduce the young men to partake in idolatry, and the attempt proved successful.

God then commanded Moses to kill and hang the heads of everyone that had engaged in idolatry, and Moses ordered the judges to carry out the mass execution. At the same time, one of the Israelites brought home a Midianitish woman in the sight of the congregation. Upon seeing this, Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron, took a javelin in his hand and thrust through both the Israelite and the Midianitish woman, which turned away the wrath of God. By that time, however, the plague inflicted on the Israelites had already killed about twenty-four thousand persons. Moses was then told that because Phinehas had averted the wrath of God from the Israelites, Phinehas and his descendents were given the pledge of an everlasting priesthood. After Moses had taken a census of the people, he sent an army to avenge the perceived evil brought on the Israelites by the Midianites. Numbers 31 says Moses instructed the Israelite soldiers to kill every Midianite woman, boy, and non-virgin girl, although virgin girls were shared amongst the soldiers. The Israelites killed Balaam, and the five kings of Midian: Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba.

Moses appointed Joshua, son of Nun, to succeed him as the leader of the Israelites. Moses then died at the age of 120.

Death

in New York City]]

Moses was warned that he would not be permitted to lead the Israelites across the Jordan river, because of his trespass at the waters of Meribah (Deut. 32:51) but would die on its eastern shores (Num. 20:12). God himself buried him in an unknown grave in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Bethpeor (Deut. 34:6). See also and .

Mosaic law

The Book of Kings relates how a "law of Moses" was discovered in the Temple during the reign of king Josiah (r. 641–609 BC). This book is mostly identified as an early version of the Book of Deuteronomy, perhaps chapters 5-26 and chapter 28 of the extant text. This text contains a number of laws, dated to the 8th century BC kingdom of Judah, a time when a minority Yahwist faction was actively attacking mainstream polytheism, succeeding in establishing official monolatry of the God of Israel under Josiah by the late 7th century BC.

The law attributed to Moses, specifically the laws set out in Deuteronomy, as a consequence came to be considered supreme over all other sources of authority (the king and his officials), and the Levite priests were the guardians and interpreters of the law.

The Book of Deuteronomy ( and ) describes how Moses writes "torah" (instruction) on a scroll and lays it beside the ark of the Covenant. Similar passages include, for example, Exodus 17:14, "And YHWH said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven;" Exodus 24:4, "And Moses wrote all the words of YHWH, and rose up early in the morning, and built an altar under the mount, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel;" Exodus 34:27, "And Yahweh said unto Moses, Write thou these words, for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel;" and "These are the decrees, the laws and the regulations that the LORD established on Mount Sinai between himself and the Israelites through Moses."

Based on this tradition, "Mosaic law" came to refer to the entire legal content of the Pentateuch, not just the Ten Commandments explicitly connected to Moses in the biblical narrative. The content of this law was excerpted and codified in Rabbinical Judaism as the 613 Mitzvot. By Late Antiquity, the tradition of Moses being the source of the law in the Pentateuch also gave rise to the tradition of Mosaic authorship, the interpretation of the entire Torah as the work of Moses.

Moses in Hellenistic literature

depicts the three stages in Moses' life.]]

Non-biblical writings about Jews, with references to the role of Moses, first appear at the beginning of the Hellenistic period, the zenith of Greek influence in the ancient world, from 323 BCE to about 146 BCE. Shmuel notes that "a characteristic of this literature is the high honour in which it holds the peoples of the East in general and some specific groups among these peoples." and the Qur'an (c. 610—653).

The figure of Osarseph in Hellenistic historiography is a renegade Egyptian priest who leads an army of lepers against the pharaoh and is finally expelled from Egypt, changing his name to Moses.

;In Hecataeus The earliest existing reference to Moses in Greek literature occurs in the Egyptian history of Hecataeus of Abdera (4th century BC). All that remains of his description of Moses are two references made by Diodorus Siculus, wherein, writes historian Arthur Droge, "he describes Moses as a wise and courageous leader who left Egypt and colonized Judaea." Among the many accomplishments described by Hecataeus, Moses had founded cities, established a temple and religious cult, and issued laws: :After the establishment of settled life in Egypt in early times, which took place, according to the mythical account, in the period of the gods and heroes, the first . . . to persuade the multitudes to use written laws was Mneves [Moses], a man not only great of soul but also in his life the most public-spirited of all lawgivers whose names are recorded.

:''Jealousy of Moses' excellent qualities induced Chenephres to send him with unskilled troops on a military expedition to Ethiopia, where he won great victories. After having built the city of Hermopolis, he taught the people the value of the ibis as a protection against the serpents, making the bird the sacred guardian spirit of the city; then he introduced circumcision. After his return to Memphis, Moses taught the people the value of oxen for agriculture, and the consecration of the same by Moses gave rise to the cult of Apis. Finally, after having escaped another plot by killing the assailant sent by the king, Moses fled to Arabia, where he married the daughter of Raguel [Jethro], the ruler of the district."

Artapanus goes on to relate how Moses returns to Egypt with Aaron, and is imprisoned, but miraculously escapes through the name of YHWH in order to lead the Exodus. This account further testifies that all Egyptian temples of Isis thereafter contained a rod, in remembrance of that used for Moses' miracles. He describes Moses as 80 years old, "tall and ruddy, with long white hair, and dignified."

Some historians, however, point out the "apologetic nature of much of Artapanus' work,"

;In Strabo Strabo, a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher, in his Geography (circa AD 24), wrote in detail about Moses, whom he considered to be an Egyptian who deplored the situation in his homeland, and thereby attracted many followers who respected the deity. He writes, for example, that Moses opposed the picturing of the deity in the form of man or animal, and was convinced that the deity was an entity which encompassed everything – land and sea:

In Strabo’s writings of the history of Judaism as he understood it, he describes various stages in its development: from the first stage, including Moses and his direct heirs; to the final stage where "the Temple of Jerusalem continued to be surrounded by an aura of sanctity." Strabo’s "positive and unequivocal appreciation of Moses’ personality is among the most sympathetic in all ancient literature."

Egyptologist Jan Assmann concludes that Strabo was the historian "who came closest to a construction of Moses' religion as monotheism and as a pronounced counter-religion." It recognized "only one divine being whom no image can represent. . . [and] the only way to approach this god is to live in virtue and in justice." Tacitus claims that, despite various opinions current in his day regarding the Jews' ethnicity, most of his sources are in agreement that there was an Exodus from Egypt. By his account, the Pharaoh Bocchoris, suffering from a plague, banished the Jews in response to an oracle of the god Hammon.

:A motley crowd was thus collected and abandoned in the desert. While all the other outcasts lay idly lamenting, one of them, named Moses, advised them not to look for help to gods or men, since both had deserted them, but to trust rather in themselves, and accept as divine the guidance of the first being, by whose aid they should get out of their present plight.

;In Longinus The Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, influenced Longinus, who may have been the author of the great book of literary criticism, On the Sublime, although the true author is still unknown for certain. However, most scholars agree that the author lived in the time of Augustus or Tiberius, the first and second Roman Emperors.

The writer quotes Genesis in a "style which presents the nature of the deity in a manner suitable to his pure and great being," however he does not mention Moses by name, but instead calls him "the Lawgiver of the Jews." Besides its mention of Cicero, Moses is the only non-Greek writer quoted in the work, and he is described "with far more admiration than even Greek writers who treated Moses with respect, such as Hecataeus and Strabo.

According to Feldman, Josephus also attaches particular significance to Moses' possession of the "cardinal virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice." He also includes piety as an added fifth virtue. In addition, he "stresses Moses' willingness to undergo toil and his careful avoidance of bribery. Like Plato's philosopher-king, Moses excels as an educator." He describes his background:

:"Numenius was a man of the world; he was not limited to Greek and Egyptian mysteries, but talked familiarly of the myths of Brahmins and Magi. It is however his knowledge and use of the Hebrew scriptures which distinguished him from other Greek philosophers. He refers to Moses simply as "the prophet," exactly as for him Homer is the poet. Plato is described as a Greek Moses."

Historicity

The tradition of Moses as a lawgiver and culture hero of the Israelites can be traced to 8th or 7th century BCE in the kingdom of Judah. Moses is a central figure in the Deuteronomist account of the origins of the Israelites, cast in a literary style of elegant flashbacks told by Moses. The Deuteronomist relies on earlier material that may date to the United Monarchy, so that the biblical narrative would be based on traditions that can be traced to about four centuries after the supposed lifetime of Moses.

The question of the historicity of the Exodus (specifically, the Pharaoh of the Exodus, identification of which would connect the biblical narrative to Egyptological chronology) has long been debated, without conclusive result. Many biblical scholars are prepared to admit that there may be a historical core beneath the Exodus and Sinai traditions, even if the biblical narrative dramatizes by portraying as a single event what was more likely a gradual process of migration and conquest. Thus, the motif of "slavery in Egypt" reflects the historical situation of imperialist control of the Egyptian Empire over Canaan after the conquests of Ramesses II, which declined gradually during the 12th century under the pressure from the Sea Peoples and the general Bronze Age collapse. Israel Finkelstein points to the appearance of settlements in the central hill country around 1200 as the earliest of the known settlements of the Israelites. A cyclical pattern to these highland settlements, corresponding to the state of the surrounding cultures, suggests that the local Canaanites combined an agricultural and nomadic lifestyles. When Egyptian rule collapsed after the invasion of the Sea Peoples, the central hill country could no longer sustain a large nomadic population, so they went from nomadism to sedentism.

While the general narrative of the Exodus and the conquest of the Promised Land may be remotely rooted in historical events, the figure of Moses as a leader of the Israelites in these events cannot be substantiated. William Dever agrees with the Canaanite origin of the Israelites but allows for the possibility of some immigrants from Egypt among the early hilltop settlers, leaving open the possibility of a Moses-like figure in Transjordan ca 1250-1200.

Martin Noth holds that two different groups experienced the Exodus and Sinai events, and each group transmitted its own stories independently of the other one, writing that "The biblical story tracing the Hebrews from Egypt to Canaan resulted from an editor's weaving separate themes and traditions around a main character Moses, actually an obscure person from Moab."

William Albright held a more favorable view towards the traditional views regarding Moses, and accept the essence of the biblical story, as narrated between Exodus 1:8 and Deuteronomy 34:12, but recognize the impact that centuries of oral and written transmission have had on the account, causing it to acquire layers of accretions.

Moses in religious traditions

Judaism

There is a wealth of stories and additional information about Moses in the Jewish apocrypha and in the genre of rabbinical exegesis known as Midrash, as well as in the primary works of the Jewish oral law, the Mishnah and the Talmud. Moses is also given a number of bynames in Jewish tradition. The Midrash identifies Moses as one of seven biblical personalities who were called by various names. Moses' other names were: Jekuthiel (by his mother), Heber (by his father), Jered (by Miriam), Avi Zanoah (by Aaron), Avi Gedor (by Kohath), Avi Soco (by his wet-nurse), Shemaiah ben Nethanel (by people of Israel). Moses is also attributed the names Toviah (as a first name), and Levi (as a family name) (Vayikra Rabbah 1:3), Heman, Mechoqeiq (lawgiver) and Ehl Gav Ish (Numbers 12:3)

Jewish historians who lived at Alexandria, such as Eupolemus, attributed to Moses the feat of having taught the Phoenicians their alphabet, similar to legends of Thoth. Artapanus of Alexandria explicitly identified Moses not only with Thoth / Hermes, but also with the Greek figure Musaeus (whom he calls "the teacher of Orpheus"), and ascribed to him the division of Egypt into 36 districts, each with its own liturgy. He names the princess who adopted Moses as Merris, wife of Pharaoh Chenephres.

Ancient sources mention an Assumption of Moses and a Testimony of Moses. A Latin text was found in Milan in the 19th century by Antonio Ceriani who called it the Assumption of Moses, even though it does not refer to an assumption of Moses or contain portions of the Assumption which are cited by ancient authors, and it is apparently actually the Testimony. The incident which the ancient authors cite is also mentioned in the Epistle of Jude.

To Orthodox Jews, Moses is really Moshe Rabbenu, `Eved HaShem, Avi haNeviim zya"a. He is called "Our Leader Moshe", "Servant of God", and "Father of all the Prophets". In their view, Moses not only received the Torah, but also the revealed (written and oral) and the hidden (the `hokhmat nistar teachings, which gave Judaism the Zohar of the Rashbi, the Torah of the Ari haQadosh and all that is discussed in the Heavenly Yeshiva between the Ramhal and his masters). He is also considered the greatest prophet.

Arising in part from his age, but also because 120 is elsewhere stated as the maximum age for Noah's descendants (one interpretation of ), "may you live to 120" has become a common blessing among Jews.

Christianity

Name	Moses
Feast day	September 4
Venerated in	Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, Lutheranism
Caption	Mosaic of Moses at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis
Birth place	Goshen, Lower Egypt
Death place	Mount Nebo, Moab
Titles	Prophet, Seer, Lawgiver
Attributes	Tablets of the Law}}

For Christians, Moses — mentioned more often in the New Testament than any other Old Testament figure — is often a symbol of God's law, as reinforced and expounded on in the teachings of Jesus. New Testament writers often compared Jesus' words and deeds with Moses' to explain Jesus' mission. In Acts 7:39–43, 51–53, for example, the rejection of Moses by the Jews that worshiped the golden calf is likened to the rejection of Jesus by the Jews that continued in traditional Judaism.

Moses also figures in several of Jesus' messages. When he met the Pharisees Nicodemus at night in the third chapter of the Gospel of John, he compares Moses' lifting up of the bronze serpent in the wilderness, which any Israelite could look at and be healed, to his own lifting up (by his death and resurrection) for the people to look at and be healed. In the sixth chapter, Jesus responds to the people's claim that Moses provided them manna in the wilderness by saying that it was not Moses, but God, who provided. Calling himself the "bread of life", Jesus states that he is now provided to feed God's people.

He along with Elijah, is presented as meeting with Jesus in all three Gospel accounts of the Transfiguration of Jesus in Matthew 17, Mark 9, and Luke 9, respectively. Later Christians found numerous other parallels between the life of Moses and Jesus to the extent that Jesus was likened to a "second Moses." For instance, Jesus' escape from the slaughter by Herod in Bethlehem is compared to Moses' escape from Pharaoh's designs to kill Hebrew infants. Such parallels, unlike those mentioned above, are not pointed out in Scripture. See the article on typology.

His relevance to modern Christianity has not diminished. He is considered to be a saint by several churches; and is commemorated as a prophet in the respective Calendars of Saints of the Lutheran and Eastern Orthodox Churches on September 4. He is commemorated as one of the Holy Forefathers in the Calendar of Saints of the Armenian Apostolic Church on July 30.

;Mormonism Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (colloquially called Mormons) generally view Moses in the same way that other Christians do. However, in addition to accepting the Biblical account of Moses, Mormons include Selections from the Book of Moses as part of their scriptural canon. This book is believed to be the translated writings of Moses, and is included in the Pearl of Great Price. Latter-day Saints are also unique in believing that Moses was taken to heaven without having tasted death (translated). In addition, Joseph Smith, Jr. and Oliver Cowdery stated that on April 3, 1836, Moses appeared to them in the Kirtland Temple in a glorified, immortal, physical form and bestowed upon them the "keys of the gathering of Israel from the four parts of the earth, and the leading of the ten tribes from the land of the north."

Islam

The life of Moses is narrated and recounted in the Qur'an more than that of any other prophet. In general, Moses is described in ways which parallel the prophet Muhammad, and "his character exhibits some of the main themes of Islamic theology," including the "moral injunction that we are to submit ourselves to God."

Moses is defined in the Qur’an as both prophet (nabi) and messenger (rasul), the latter term indicating that he was one of those prophets who brought a scripture and law to his people.

Huston Smith (1991) describes an account in the Qur'an of meetings in heaven between Moses and Muhammad, which Huston states were "one of the crucial events in Muhammad's life," and resulted in Muslims observing 5 daily prayers.

Moses is mentioned 502 times in the Qur'an, "far more than the references to Jesus, Noah and even Abraham; passages mentioning Moses include 2.49-61, 7.103-160, 10.75-93, 17.101-104, 20.9-97, 26.10-66, 27.7-14, 28.3-46, 40.23-30, 43.46-55, 44.17-31, and 79.15-25. and many others. Most of the key events in Moses' life which are narrated in the Bible are to be found dispersed through the different Surahs of Qur'an, with a story about meeting Khidr which is not found in the Bible. Pharaoh's wife Asiya, not his daughter, found Moses floating in the waters of the Nile. She convinced Pharaoh to keep him as their son because they were not blessed with any children.

The Qur'an's account has emphasized Moses' mission to invite the Pharaoh to accept God's divine message as well as give salvation to the Israelites. According to the Qur'an the Pharaoh was leading the Egyptian army himself, and drowned along with his army, and in his last words before drowning he asks God for forgiveness, however God made him die with his body in perfect shape, so he would be an example for every tyrant who defies the prophets — surat Yunis:92 (يونس:92) -.

According to the Qur'an, Moses encourages the Israelites to enter Canaan, but they are unwilling to fight the Canaanites, fearing certain defeat. Moses responds by pleading to Allah that he and his brother Aaron be separated from the rebellious Israelites.

According to Islamic tradition, Moses is buried at Maqam El-Nabi Musa, Jerico-Jerusalam.

Modern reception

Literature

;In Sigmund Freud There is also a psychoanalytical interpretation of Moses' life, put forward by Sigmund Freud in his last book, Moses and Monotheism, in 1939. Freud postulated that Moses was an Egyptian nobleman who adhered to the monotheism of Akhenaten. Following a theory proposed by a contemporary biblical critic, Freud, a committed atheist, believed that Moses was murdered in the wilderness, producing a collective sense of patricidal guilt that has been at the heart of Judaism ever since. "Judaism had been a religion of the father, Christianity became a religion of the son", he wrote. The possible Egyptian origin of Moses and of his message has received significant scholarly attention. Opponents of this view observe that the religion of the Torah seems different to Atenism in everything except the central feature of devotion to a single god, although this has been countered by a variety of arguments, e.g. pointing out the similarities between the Hymn to Aten and Psalm 104. Freud's interpretation of the historical Moses is not a prominent theory among historians, and is considered pseudohistory by most.

;Criticism

According to the Torah, Moses prescribed the death penalty for a huge range of offences, and for defeated enemies. As he is considered a holy figure, however, by Jews, Christians and Muslims, most criticism of those passages of the Hebrew Bible has been made by others.

In the late 18th century, for example, the deist Thomas Paine commented at length on Moses' Laws in The Age of Reason, and gave his view that "the character of Moses, as stated in the Bible, is the most horrid that can be imagined", giving the story at as an example. In the 19th century the agnostic Robert G. Ingersoll wrote "...that all the ignorant, infamous, heartless, hideous things recorded in the 'inspired' Pentateuch are not the words of God, but simply 'Some Mistakes of Moses'". In the 2000s, the atheist Richard Dawkins referring, like Paine, to the incident at , concluded, "No, Moses was not a great role model for modern moralists."

Figurative art

Moses is depicted in several U.S. government buildings because of his legacy as a lawgiver. In the Library of Congress stands a large statue of Moses alongside a statue of the Apostle Paul. Moses is one of the 23 lawgivers depicted in marble bas-reliefs in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives in the United States Capitol. The other twenty-two figures have their profiles turned to Moses, which is the only forward facing bas-relief. —giving off "hornlike rays"]]

Moses appears eight times in carvings that ring the Supreme Court Great Hall ceiling. His face is presented along with other ancient figures such as Solomon, the Greek god Zeus and the Roman goddess of wisdom, Minerva. The Supreme Court building's east pediment depicts Moses holding two tablets. Tablets representing the Ten Commandments can be found carved in the oak courtroom doors, on the support frame of the courtroom's bronze gates and in the library woodwork. A controversial image is one that sits directly above the chief justice's head. In the center of the 40-foot-long Spanish marble carving is a tablet displaying Roman numerals I through X, with some numbers partially hidden.

Michelangelo's statue

Michelangelo's statue of Moses in the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome, is one of the most familiar masterpieces in the world. Horns the sculptor included on Moses' head are the result of a mistranslation of the Hebrew Bible into the Latin Vulgate Bible with which he was familiar. The Hebrew word taken from Exodus means either a "horn" or an "irradiation." Experts at the Archaeological Institute of America show that the term was used when Moses "returned to his people after seeing as much of the Glory of the Lord as human eye could stand," and his face "reflected radiance." In early Jewish art, moreover, Moses is often "shown with rays coming out of his head."

Another author explains, "When Saint Jerome translated the Old Testament into Latin, he thought no one but Christ should glow with rays of light — so he advanced the secondary translation. However, writer J. Stephen Lang points out that Jerome's version actually described Moses as "giving off hornlike rays," and he "rather clumsily translated it to mean 'having horns.'" It has also been noted that he had Moses seated on a throne, yet Moses was neither a King nor ever sat on such thrones.

Film and television

Moses was portrayed by Theodore Roberts in DeMille's 1923 silent film The Ten Commandments. Moses appears as the central character in the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille movie, also called The Ten Commandments. He is portrayed by Charlton Heston. A television remake was produced in 2006.

Burt Lancaster played Moses in the 1975 television miniseries Moses the Lawgiver In the 1981 film History of the World, Part I, Moses is portrayed by Mel Brooks.

Moses appears as the central character in the 1998 DreamWorks Pictures animated movie, The Prince of Egypt. He is voiced by Val Kilmer.

See also

Mosaic authorship

Passage of the Red Sea

Table of prophets of Abrahamic religions

Osarseph

Notes

Further reading

Asch, Sholem. Moses. New York: Putnam, 1958. ISBN 0742691373.

Assmann, Jan. Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism. Harvard University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-674-58738-3.

Barenboim, Peter. Biblical Roots of Separation of Power, Moscow : Letny Sad, 2005, ISBN 5943811230, http://lccn.loc.gov/2006400578

Barzel, Hillel. "Moses: Tragedy and Sublimity." In Literary Interpretations of Biblical Narratives. Edited by Kenneth R.R. Gros Louis, with James S. Ackerman & Thayer S. Warshaw, 120–40. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1974. ISBN 0-687-22131-5.

Buber, Martin. Moses: The Revelation and the Covenant. New York: Harper, 1958.

Card, Orson Scott. Stone Tables. Deseret Book Co., 1998. ISBN 1-57345-115-0.

Chasidah, Yishai. "Moses." In Encyclopedia of Biblical Personalities: Anthologized from the Talmud, Midrash and Rabbinic Writings, 340–99. Brooklyn: Shaar Press, 1994.

Cohen, Joel. Moses: A Memoir. Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8091-0558-6.

Daiches, David. Moses: The Man and his Vision. New York: Praeger, 1975. ISBN 0-275-33740-5.

Fast, Howard. Moses, Prince of Egypt. New York: Crown Pubs., 1958.

Freud, Sigmund. Moses and Monotheism. New York: Vintage, 1967. ISBN 0-394-70014-7.

Gjerman, Corey. Moses: The Father I Never Knew. Portland: Biblical Fantasticals, 2007. ISBN 978-1424171132.

Halter, Marek. Zipporah, Wife of Moses. New York: Crown, 2005. ISBN 1400052793.

Hoffmeier, James K. 'Moses and the Exodus.' In: Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition, pp. 135–63. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Ingraham, J. H.. The Pillar of Fire: Or Israel in Bondage. New York: A.L. Burt, 1859. Reprinted Ann Arbor, Mich.: Scholarly Publishing Office, University of Michigan Library, 2006. ISBN 1425564917.

Kirsch, Jonathan. Moses: A Life. New York: Ballantine, 1998. ISBN 0-345-41269-9.

Kohn, Rebecca. Seven Days to the Sea: An Epic Novel of the Exodus. New York: Rugged Land, 2006. ISBN 1-59071-049-5.

Lehman, S.M. (translator), Freedman, H. (ed.), Midrash Rabbah, 10 volumes, The Soncino Press, London, 1983.

Mann, Thomas. "Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me." In The Ten Commandments, 3–70. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1943.

Salibi, Kamal. The Bible Came from Arabia. London: Jonathan Cape, 1985.

Sandmel, Samuel. Alone Atop the Mountain. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1973. ISBN 0-385-03877-1.

Southon, Arthur E. On Eagles' Wings. London: Cassell and Co., 1937. Reprinted New York: McGraw-Hill, 1954.

Wiesel, Elie. “Moses: Portrait of a Leader.” In Messengers of God: Biblical Portraits & Legends, 174–210. New York: Random House, 1976. ISBN 0-394-49740-6.

Wildavsky, Aaron. Moses as Political Leader. Jerusalem: Shalem Press, 2005. ISBN 965-7052-31-9.

Wilson, Dorothy Clarke. Prince of Egypt. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1949.

External links

The Geography, Book XVI, Chapter II The entire context of the cited chapter of Strabo's work

# Numbered list item

Category:Torah people Category:Book of Exodus Category:Old Testament saints Category:People celebrated in the Lutheran liturgical calendar Category:Prophets of Islam

Name	Teedra Moses
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Teedra Moses
Born	December 17, 1976New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
Genre	R&B;, soul
Occupation	Singer-songwriter
Years active	2003–present
Label	Arista Records
Associated acts	Ras Kass, Jadakiss, Mary J. Blige, Nivea, Christina Milan, Trina, Macy Gray
Url	www.teedra-moses.com

Teedra Moses (born December 17, 1976) is an American R&B; and soul singer-songwriter.

Biography

Teedra Moses was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, to a gospel singing mother, Shirley Moses. She later moved to California with her mother and three siblings after her parents' separation. Moses brought a little bit of that fervor to her own vocal style when she began singing professionally. The final song on her debut album, "I Think of You (Shirley's Song)", is dedicated to her late mother.

Career

Prior to becoming a recording artist, Moses worked with her best friend Nonja McKenzie as an assistant wardrobe stylist for artists such as Will Smith, Kelis, R. Kelly, and No Doubt. It was after breaking her leg on a video set that Moses decided to follow her heart and begin making music.

Following this epiphany, Moses teamed up with producer, Paul Poli and signed with the Indie Record Label, TVT Records to release her debut album Complex Simplicity in August of 2004. Complex Simplicity included fourteen tracks all self-penned by Moses with dominant production by Poli; which lead to the well deserved executive production credit by both Moses & Poli. The album underperformed on the U.S. chart, debuting and peaking at number one hundred and sixty-eight on the Billboard 200. However, the album was Critically Acclaimed and otherwise found success on the Top R&B;/Hip-Hop Albums, the Top Independent Albums, and the Top Heatseekers, reaching number twenty, number eleven, and number ten, respectively.

In addition to executive producing and penning all the lyrics on her own project, Moses has written songs for other artists including Nivea, Christina Milian, Mary J. Blige and others. She was featured on and co-wrote two songs from Raphael Saadiq's 2004 album Ray Ray, "Chic" and "I Want You Back". Her songs have been showcased in the Logo series Noah's Arc as well as in the HBO hit show Entourage, movies such as Never Die Alone, Beauty Shop, and Be Cool.

Though Moses hasn't released a studio album in 6 years she can be found touring and doing live shows on a regular basis. From March to November 2010 Moses has been a spokes model on the Lady Hennessy Tour. In addition, Moses continues to release underground all original mixtapes for her fans to enjoy while she awaits a new label deal caused by the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filed in 2008 by the now defunct TVT records.

Teedra Moses is currently seeking a new label to release her second studio album entitled "The Lioness" to be released early 2011. For more information visit: www.teedramoses.net

Songwriting credits

2003: "Still in Love" — from Nivea's album Nivea

2004: "Dip It Low" — from Christina Milian's album It's About Time

2004: Complex Simplicity - debut album entirely written by Teedra Moses

2004: "Chic" and "I Want You Back" - from Raphael Saadiq's album "Raphael Saadiq As Ray Ray"

2005: "Get Up on Ya Gangsta" — from Teairra Marí's album

2006: "Here We Go" — from Trina's album Glamorest Life

2006: "So Lady" — from the Japanese and international edition of Mary J. Blige's album The Breakthrough

2007: "Finally Made Me Happy", "Ghetto Love", and "AEIOU" — from Macy Gray's album Big

Discography

Albums

2004: Complex Simplicity

2011: The Lioness

Singles

Mixtapes

2004: The Young Hustla Compilation

2007: Young Hustla Compilation Vol II: Live from the Jungle

2008: Lionhearted - Young Hustla Vol III

2010: "Royal Patience... A Love Journey"

Collaborations

2003: "Hot 1" and "I'm That Gangsta" — Ras Kass

2003: "Realize" — Bravehearts

2004: "Chic" and "I Want You Back" — Raphael Saadiq

2005: "Put That Thang Down" — Ying Yang Twins

2005: "Here We Go" — from Trina's album Glamorest Life (the album features the song's version with Kelly Rowland)

2008: "Get Yours" - Raheem DeVaughn

Tours

2004: Seagram’s Gin Live

2004: Live In London

2005: Raphael Saadiq As Ray Ray

2007: Heineken Red Star Soul

2008: Turn It Up

2010: Lady Hennessy

External links

Official website

Category:1976 births Category:2000s singers Category:2010s singers Category:African American female singer-songwriters Category:American rhythm and blues singer-songwriters Category:American soul singers Category:English-language singers Category:Living people Category:Musicians from New Orleans, Louisiana Category:Neo soul singers

Name	Slick Rick
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Richard Walters
Born	January 14, 1965London, United Kingdom
Origin	New York City, New York, United States
Genre	Hip hop
Occupation	Rapper, record producer
Years active	1982–present
Label	Def Jam, Columbia, CBS Records, PolyGram, Universal
Associated acts	Doug E. Fresh, Nas, Prince Paul

Richard Walters (born January 14, 1965), better known by his stage name Slick Rick (also known as MC Ricky D and Rick the Ruler) is a Grammy-nominated British American rapper. He began his career in late 1983, in the hip hop genre, where he recorded a series of acclaimed recordings such as, "Children's Story", "La Di Da Di" and "Hey Young World." Walters is best known for his British accent and his story telling innovations in this genre. His music has been frequently sampled and interpolated by other artists such as, TLC, Black Star, and Snoop Dogg; with many of these songs later becoming hit singles. Slick Rick rose to stardom in an era known to fans as Golden age hip hop.

Career

Originally from Mitcham in London, England, Walters moved with his British Jamaican family to The Bronx in 1975 where he met Dana Dane with whom he later formed a hip hop duo known as the Kangol Crew. Walters received his characteristic eye patch after being blinded in the right eye by broken glass as an infant. Once he gained a degree of wealth, Walters earned a reputation for wearing the eye patch over his right eye, and a significant amount of gold and diamond jewelry.

He first gained success in the rap industry by joining Doug E. Fresh's Get Fresh Crew, with the stage name MC Ricky D. He was featured on two singles, "The Show" and "La Di Da Di". "La Di Da Di" featured Walters' rapping over Doug E. Fresh's beatbox. These singles gained some mainstream attention. In 1988 Walters' solo debut The Great Adventures of Slick Rick came out on Def Jam Records. The album was very successful, reaching the #1 spot on Billboard's R&B;/Hip-Hop chart. It also featured three charting singles: "Children's Story", "Hey Young World", and "Teenage Love". These are now some of Walters' best known songs.

In 1990, Walters shot a bystander and his cousin whom he had hired as a bodyguard and who later admitted to having Walters shot outside a club. Walters was indicted on two counts of attempted murder and plead guilty to all charges, which included assault, use of a firearm, and criminal possession of a weapon. He spent five years in prison, two for the second degree attempted murder charges he received for the shooting, and three for his struggle with the Immigration and Naturalization Services over his residency in the US. He was bailed out by Russell Simmons, head of Def Jam records. After being bailed out Walters recorded his second album, The Ruler's Back. The album got mixed reviews and wasn't as commercially successful as his debut. In the documentary film, The Show, Russell Simmons interviews Walters while he was a prisoner on Rikers Island.

Walters third studio album Behind Bars was released while he was still incarcerated. It was met with lukewarm sales and reviews. After being released from prison in 1996, Walters remained with the Def Jam label and on May 25, 1999 released a fourth album entitled The Art of Storytelling. Generally considered the authentic follow up to his 1988 debut, The Art of Storytelling was an artistically successful comeback album that paired him with prolific MCs like Nas, OutKast, Raekwon, and Snoop Dogg among others. On October 6, 2008, Rick was honoured on the VH1 Hip Hop Honors show.

"La Di Da Di", "Mona Lisa" and "Children's Story" are among Walters most well known songs, with "La Di Da Di" being covered nearly word-for-word by Snoop Dogg on his 1993 album Doggystyle. Lines from "La Di Da Di" were borrowed by other multiple high profile artists. "Children's Story" was sampled by Montell Jordan for his 1995 hit, "This Is How We Do It", and rapper Everlast covered the song for his album Eat at Whitey's. Rapper Eminem also borrowed from the song extensively in his diss track "Can-I-Bitch". "Children's Story" was covered with similar lyrics by the MC duo Black Star on their 1998 album "Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star", as well as by Tricky on the album Nearly God. With a similar and very similar lyrics, rapper The Game also made a similar song which was named "Compton Story". "Compton Story" was on the Mixtape BWS Radio 5 made in 2008. The chorus of Notorious B.I.G.'s song "Hypnotize" is also derived from "La Di Da Di".

Rapping style

Slick Rick’s style is commended by music critics - music journalist Peter Shapiro says, “‘La Di Da Di' was important because of its narrative structure and Rick’s understanding of how crucial little sonic details—such as his use of a female voice and his yawning rap—were to hip hop style.”

He is largely known for his story raps, such as ‘Children’s Story’ and ‘La Di Da Di' – “he largely introduced the art of narrative into hip hop… none of the spinners of picaresque rhymes who followed did it with the same grace or humor.” - Allmusic states that he has the “reputation as hip hop's greatest storyteller.” In the book Check the Technique, Slick Rick says, “I was never the type to say freestyle raps, I usually tell a story, and to do that well I’ve always had to work things out beforehand.” Kool Moe Dee comments, “Slick Rick raised the lost art of hip hop storytelling to a level never seen again.” Devin the Dude notes that Slick Rick’s ‘Indian Girl’ is a good example of the type of humor that existed in hip hop’s golden era, and Peter Shapiro says that “he was funnier than Rudy Ray Moore or Red Foxx”

Slick Rick uses very clear enunciation and raps with the “Queen’s English”. O.C. states: “The Great Adventures of Slick Rick is one of the greatest albums ever… the stuff he was just saying on there, it was so clear… the [clear] syllable dude was Slick Rick for me”. He is also renowned for his unique “smooth, British-tinged flow” which contains distinct structures - in the book How to Rap, it is noted that on the song ‘I Own America’, he “puts a rest on almost every other 1 beat so that each set of two lines begins with a rest,”. Kool Moe Dee states that, “Rick accomplished being totally original at a time when most MCs were using very similar cadences.” He has what is described as “singsong cadences” - Andy Cat of Ugly Duckling mentions that Slick Rick uses a melodic delivery on the track ‘Hey Young World’. Slick Rick is also known to extensively use punch ins, especially in his story rhymes as different characters - Kool Moe Dee says Rick used “multi-voices to portray multiple characters.”

Personal life

After performing on a Caribbean cruise ship in June 2001, Walters was arrested by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) as he re-entered the United States through Florida. He was promptly told that he was being deported because he was a British citizen since he had been born in London and moved to the States as a youth. In 1996, a law was passed which called for foreigners convicted of violent felonies to be deported, a ruling which was more vigorously enforced amid heightened security concerns after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Rick was continuously refused bail, but after 17 months in prison he was released on November 7, 2003.

Rumours suggested that Walters planned to release a new album, "The Adventure Continues," in 2007. However, in a recent XXL Magazine interview, he denied the claim. Rick is supposedly "waiting for a market to open up for a mature audience."

In October 2006, the Department of Homeland Security began a new attempt to deport Walters, moving the case from the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit based in New York to the more conservative Eleventh Circuit. The court is based in Atlanta, Georgia but the trial was expected to proceed in Florida, where immigration agents originally arrested Walters.

On May 23, 2008, New York Gov. David Paterson granted Slick Rick a full and unconditional pardon on the attempted murder charges. The governor was pleased with his behavior since the mishap. He has volunteered his time to mentor youths about violence.

Discography

Albums

The Great Adventures of Slick Rick

*Released: November 3, 1988

*Billboard 200 chart position: #31

*R&B;/Hip-Hop chart position: #1

Last RIAA Certification: Platinum

*Singles: "Teenage Love", "Children's Story" & "Hey Young World"

The Ruler's Back

*Released: July 2, 1991

*Billboard 200 chart position: #29

*R&B;/Hip-Hop chart position: #18

*Last RIAA Certification: None

*Singles: " A Woman in Love With Other Men", "It's A Boy" & "I Shouldn't Have Done It"

Behind Bars

*Released: November 22, 1994

*Billboard 200 chart position: #51

*R&B;/Hip-Hop chart position: #11

*Last RIAA Certification: None

*Singles: "Behind Bars" & "Sittin' In My Car"

The Art of Storytelling

*Released: May 25, 1999

*Billboard 200 chart position: #8

*R&B;/Hip-Hop chart position: #1

Last RIAA Certification: Gold

*Singles: "Street Talkin'"

Singles

Featured Singles

Appearances

1986: "The Show (Oh My God! Remix)" (from the Doug E Fresh album Oh My God!)

1989: "If I'm Not Your Lover (12" remix from the Al B. Sure! album In Effect Mode)

1991: "Get Bizzy" (from the Greyson & Jaysun album Livin Like a Troopa)

1994: "Let's All Get Down" (from the Nice & Smooth album Jewel of the Nile)

1994: "Move On..." (from the compilation The Show (Original Soundtrack))

1996: I Like (From the Montell Jordan album More)

1996: "Got To Give It Up" (from the Aaliyah album One in a Million)

1997: "Just Another Case" (from the CRU album Da Dirty 30)

1998: "Fresh" (from the Jermaine Dupri album Life In 1472)

1998: "Faces Of Def" (bonus track on Jayo Felony's Watcha Gonna Do?)

1998: "Unify" (from the Kid Capri album Soundtrack to the Streets)

1998: "Pimpin' Ain't Easy" (from WWF Aggression with Ice-T & Charles Wright)

1999: "If We Give You A Chance" (from the Warren G album I Want It All)

1999: "Your Moms House"

1999: "Night Riders" (from the Rahzel album Make The Music 2000)

1999: "So Fresh" (from the Will Smith album Willennium)

1999: "Don't Come My Way" (from the Whiteboys soundtrack with Common)

1999: "Da Art of Storytellin' (Pt. 1)" (from the OutKast album Aquemini)

2000: "Why Not" (from the Erick Sermon album Def Squad Presents Erick Onasis)

2001: "What We Do (For Love)" (from the De La Soul album )

2001: "Pie" (from WWF The Music, Vol. 5 with The Rock)

2001: "Girls, Girls, Girls" (from the Jay-Z album The Blueprint)

2001: "Guidance Counselor"(from the Little-T And One Track Mike album Fome Is Dape)

2001: "Hey Young World, Part 2" (from the Macy Gray album The Id)

2002: "Women Lose Weight" (from the Morcheeba album Charango)

2004: "The Return (Remix)" (from the Jay-Z/R. Kelly album Unfinished Business)

2005: Performs live for Vox Entertainment @ Club Strata NYC

2005: "The Sun" (from the Ghostface Killah album Put It on the Line)

2005: "Irresistible Delicious" (from the Missy Elliott album The Cookbook)

2006: "Vows" (from the Juggaknots album Use Your Confusion)

2007: "Hip Hop Police" (from the Chamillionaire album Ultimate Victory)

2008: "VH1 Hip Hop Honors" (Honoree)

2009: "Y.O.U." (from the Asher Roth album Asleep in the Bread Aisle - UK bonus track)

2009: "Auditorium" (from the Mos Def album The Ecstatic)

2009: "We Will Rob You" (from the Raekwon album Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt. II)

2009: "Family Jewels" (from the Dynas album The Apartment)

2010: "Rock The Bells 2010" (from album The Great Adventures of Slick Rick)

Filmography

Backstage appearance on Jay-Z's Fade to Black DVD.

Cameo in Ludacris's music video for the single, "Number One Spot".

Cameo, wearing his excessive jewelry in the New York Shit music video (2:56) by Busta Rhymes featuring Swizz Beatz.

Himself in the game .

Drug kingpin in the 1999 movie Whiteboyz, co-starring fellow rappers Doug E. Fresh, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Fat Joe, Dead Prez and Mic Geronimo.

Cameo in the film Brown Sugar, which starred Taye Diggs and Sanaa Lathan.

Himself in the seminal Run DMC film, Tougher Than Leather, performing the song Treat Her Like a Prostitute.

Interviewee in 1995 documentary The Show

Opened Chris Rock's Apollo Theatre comedy Show Bigger & Blacker

References

External links

Category:1965 births Category:Living people Category:1990s rappers Category:2000s rappers Category:2010s rappers Category:African American rappers Category:American musicians of English descent Category:American people convicted of assault Category:American people convicted of attempted murder Category:American rappers of Jamaican descent Category:Black British musicians Category:British expatriates in the United States Category:British people convicted of assault Category:Columbia Records artists Category:Def Jam Recordings artists Category:English people of Jamaican descent Category:English rappers Category:People from South Wimbledon Category:People from the Bronx Category:People from Wimbledon Category:Rappers from New York City Category:Recipients of American gubernatorial pardons

Name	Rick Moses
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Richard Cantrell Moses, Jr.
Born	September 05, 1952Washington, District of Columbia, U.S.
Genre	Rock, traditional pop, adult contemporary
Occupation	Singer-songwriter, actor, producer, director, screenwriter
Years active	1970–present
Label	20th Century Fox, Teldec Records, Solaris Records
Url

Rick Moses (born September 5, 1952) is an American actor and singer/songwriter.

Early life

Moses was born in Washington, District of Columbia. He is the oldest son of advertising executive Richard Cantrell Moses and Marian McCargo (1932–2004). Moses has three siblings; brothers Graham, Harry and Billy. He grew up in Pasadena, California where he showed an interest in wrestling, swimming, movies, and music. His mother enrolled him in various AAU swim clubs and bought him a guitar. She drove him to Hollywood and enrolled him in acting classes.

Moses attended boarding school at the Chadwick School in Palos Verdes, California where he was an all C.I.F. swimmer. In high school, Moses joined with friends to form several bands. They played parties and weddings with some success. Moses had been studying martial arts since age thirteen, becoming a student of notable instructors including Bruce Lee, Ed Parker and Bob Ozman. He continued the training throughout his life, earning a black-belt in Isshin-Ryu Karate. He worked as an instructor for Bob Ozman at his Van Nuys studio. At Andover in Andover, Massachusetts, he was named to the N.I.S.C.A. Prep School All-America Swimming Team for three years in a row from 1969 to 1971 in events including Butterfly, Freestyle, 200 yard medley relay and 400 yard freestyle relay.

Career

Moses began his acting career in 1967, at age fifteen, in an Equity production of “The Fifth Season” at the Santa Monica Playhouse. In 1970, he appeared in an episode of Room 222, followed in 1971 with roles on and The FBI. He appeared in a production of Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Dirty Hands (Les Mains Sales)” at the Gallery Theatre in Hollywood. He headlined at Ye Little Club, a popular venue in Beverly Hills. Roger Ailes spotted him on an episode of . Ailes invited Moses to become a client. Moses moved to New York. Ailes arranged an audition for Moses to perform for Budd Friedman, the owner of the well known New York night club The Improv. Moses’ style clicked with Friedman and New York audiences. Moses became the only male singer to work the club regularly during that period along with the then unknown comedians Jay Leno, Richard Lewis, and Andy Kaufman. Moses worked a number of east coast night clubs, including Host’s Farm in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and Michael’s Pub in Manhattan, for several years, returning weekly to the Improv. He was hired to do a backer’s audition for a prospective New York show that was mounted in Los Angeles. Budd Friedman had just opened his L.A. Improv. Moses was rehearsing the play by day and performing at the Improv at night. Moses was a veteran night club performer at this point. Standing ovations were not unusual for his twenty minute sets. (Westways magazine did an article on this phenomenon.) A talent coordinator for the nationally syndicated Merv Griffin Show (Don Kane) was present one night. Two weeks later, Moses appeared on Merv’s show. Merv, a successful singer himself for several decades, had Moses back 18 times in a nine month period.

In 1977, Moses played the title role in the prime-time action adventure drama Young Dan'l Boone on CBS. In 1978, Moses played the role of Bruce Scott in the feature film "Avalanche" which starred Rock Hudson and Mia Farrow. Also in 1978, 20th Century Fox record division released his LP album "Face The Music".

Moses is probably best known for playing Jefferson Smith Hutchins "(Hitman) Hutch" in the day-time soap opera General Hospital, from 1979 to 1980 on ABC. The story-line, carried by “Luke, Laura, and Hutch” made General Hospital one of the most popular shows on television. Time Magazine did an article on the subject.

Moses had a hit in Germany in 1985 with the song "If I Could Just Fall in Love" released by Teldec Records of Hamburg, Germany as a 12" vinyl record. It was also made into a music video directed by the German filmmaker Utz Weber.

In 1986, Moses played Niles Perry, the rock star love interest of Eve Harper, played by Linda Purl in the TV movie "Pleasures".

His CD "Evil and Dangerous Men" was released in 2005 and received favorable reviews. The title song of the album was derived from the short film "Jack Takes a Vacation" that was co-produced, co-written and directed by Moses. He also played the title role. Scenes from the film were intercut and used in the music video for "Evil and Dangerous Men".

Personal life

Moses married Joni Morris in 1974. They had two sons, Richard, III and Tarrant, before they separated in 1982. In 1988, Moses married Colette Benhaim; they have four children together, all sons, Ronson, Adam, Dan and Naftali.

Moses was raised an Episcopalian but in his forties he converted to Orthodox Judaism. In an interview with Internet journalist Luke Ford, Moses related that, after his sons, "Judaism became the singular most important thing to me." He also stated: "I put my energies into (the study of Judaism) the same way a young man who wished to become a doctor would apply himself to his studies in medical school."

References

External links

RickMoses.com

YouTube video "If I Could Just Fall in Love"

YouTube video "Jack Takes a Vacation"

YouTube video "Evil and Dangerous Men"

Category:Actors from Los Angeles, California Category:American film actors Category:American film directors Category:Guitarists Category:American Jews Category:American Orthodox Jews Category:American music video directors Category:American people of Welsh descent Category:American people of Scottish descent Category:People from Pasadena, California Category:Singer-songwriters Category:1952 births Category:Living people

|width	220
Position	Center/Power forward
Height ft	6 | height_in = 10
Weight lbs	260
Number	24, 2
Birthdate	March 23, 1955
Birthplace	Petersburg, Virginia
Debutyear	1974
Finalyear	1995
Highschool	Petersburg
Teams
League	ABA/NBA
Stat1label	Points
Stat1value	29,580
Stat2label	Rebounds
Stat2value	17,834
Stat3label	Assists
Stat3value	1,936
Stat4label	Blocks
Stat4value	1,889
Stat5label	Steals
Stat5value	1,199
Letter	m
Bbr	malonmo01
Highlights
Hof player	moses-e-malone

Moses Eugene Malone (born March 23, 1955 in Petersburg, Virginia) is a retired American Hall of Fame basketball player who starred in both the American Basketball Association and the National Basketball Association. A three-time NBA MVP and one of the NBA's 50 greatest players, Malone was the most successful prep-to-pro player of his era, going straight from Petersburg High to a twenty-one year career in professional basketball. By the time Malone retired after 19 seasons in the NBA he was the last former ABA player active and held numerous distinctions in both leagues, including a championship ring and NBA finals trophy won with the 1983 Philadelphia 76ers.

High school

Right after graduating from Petersburg High School, Malone signed a letter of intent to play for the University of Maryland. However, Malone was drafted by the ABA's Utah Stars in 1974 and became the fifth basketball player to jump straight from high school into the professional leagues.

ABA career

Malone began his professional career with the Utah Stars. He later played for the ABA's Spirits of St. Louis. In two seasons in the ABA, Malone averaged 17.2 points and 12.9 rebounds per game. Malone's ABA career ended with the ABA–NBA merger in June 1976, when Malone moved to the NBA.

Early years in the NBA

The ABA-NBA merger occurred after the 1975–76 season, but the Spirits of St. Louis were one of the ABA teams that did not join the NBA. In the ABA Dispersal Draft held on August 5, the NBA's Portland Trail Blazers selected Malone from the Spirits of St. Louis with the fifth overall pick.

The 21-year-old center never played a regular-season game for the Blazers, however. Prior to the first game of the 1976–77 season Portland traded him to the Buffalo Braves for a 1978 first-round draft choice. Even then, Malone's travels were not over. After only two games with Buffalo he was traded by the Braves to the Houston Rockets for two future first-round draft choices.

Malone found a home in Houston, where he was reunited with Coach Tom Nissalke, who had coached him in his rookie season with the ABA's Utah Stars. With the Rockets, Malone established himself immediately as one of the NBA's most ferocious rebounders, particularly on the offensive end. He appeared in 82 games overall for both Buffalo and Houston and finished with averages of 13.2 points and 13.1 rebounds per game. He ranked third in the NBA in rebounding behind Bill Walton and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and established a new NBA record for offensive rebounds in a season, with 437, shattering Paul Silas's old mark of 365. (Malone would break his own record two years later.) Malone also ranked seventh in the league in blocked shots, with 2.21 per game.

He delivered in the playoffs, helping the Rockets to the Eastern Conference Finals, which they lost to the Philadelphia 76ers in six games. Malone averaged 18.8 points and 16.9 rebounds in 12 playoff games. He set an NBA Playoff record with 15 offensive rebounds in an overtime victory against the Washington Bullets in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals.

Malone's second NBA season ended prematurely when he suffered a stress fracture in his right foot and missed the Rockets' final 23 games. Remarkably, he still led the NBA in total offensive rebounds (380) and finished second in rebounding average (15.0 rpg) behind Leonard "Truck" Robinson (15.7).

Malone made the first of what would be 12 consecutive All-Star Game appearances in 1978, the year that would have been his senior season had he chosen to play college basketball. His scoring output surged to 19.4 points per game, third best on the Rockets behind Calvin Murphy's 25.6 and Rudy Tomjanovich's 21.5.

MVP seasons with the Houston Rockets

Had Malone chosen to accept a scholarship at the University of Maryland, the 1978–79 season would have been his rookie campaign in the NBA. Instead, it was his fifth professional season (third with the Rockets) and one of the best of his career. Beginning the year at only age 23, Malone went on to win the NBA Most Valuable Player Award after averaging 24.8 points and a career-high 17.6 rebounds. Having gained 15 pounds in the offseason to weigh in at a robust 235, he led the league in rebounding and established the NBA's all-time record for offensive rebounds in a season, with 587.

Malone also finished fifth in the NBA in scoring and shot a career-best .540 from the field. He was named to the All-NBA First Team and the NBA All-Defensive Second Team and started at center for the East squad in the 1979 NBA All-Star Game.

The 6-foot-10 giant notched the best single-game rebounding performance of his career when he hauled in 37 boards against the New Orleans Jazz on February 9. Houston advanced to the NBA Playoffs but was swept in two opening-round games by the Atlanta Hawks. Malone totaled an impressive 49 points and 41 rebounds in the two games.

Malone continued to dominate the paint in his fourth NBA season. He averaged 25.8 points and 14.5 rebounds, ranking fifth in the league in scoring and second to Swen Nater (15.0 rpg) in rebounding. He made his third straight All-Star appearance—his second straight as a starter—and was named to the All-NBA Second Team at season's end.

Malone's indomitable spirit helped the Rockets defeat the San Antonio Spurs in a best-of-three first-round playoff series. He scored 37 points and grabbed 20 rebounds in the third and deciding game, leading Houston to a 141-120 victory. The Rockets were then swept by the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference Semifinals.

Malone returned to the top of the NBA's rebounding charts, beginning a record string of five consecutive seasons leading the league. He grabbed 14.8 rebounds per game in 80 appearances, earning his second straight berth on the All-NBA Second Team. An All-Star for the fourth consecutive season, Malone (27.8 ppg) also finished runner-up to Adrian Dantley (30.7) for the league's scoring title. He exploded for 51 points in a March 11 game against the Golden State Warriors, hitting 20 of 28 field goals and 11 of 12 free throws. It was the third-highest single-game effort in Rockets history up to that time, behind Calvin Murphy's 57 points and Elvin Hayes's 54.

Now in the Midwest Division, Houston finished tied with the Kansas City Kings for second place with a 40–42 record. The Rockets, energized by Malone's 26.8 points and 14.5 rebounds per game during the playoffs, advanced all the way to the NBA Finals. They lost in six games to the Boston Celtics, who were led by second-year forward Larry Bird.

Malone had another spectacular season, averaging 31.1 points and 14.7 rebounds and capturing his second of three NBA Most Valuable Player Awards. The perennial All-Star led the league in rebounding for a second straight season and finished runner-up to George Gervin (32.3 ppg) for the league's scoring title.

The ultimate workhorse, Malone led the NBA in minutes played (3,398, 42.0 per game) and offensive rebounds (558). At season's end, he was named to the All-NBA First Team for the second time in his six-year career. Malone's stratospheric scoring average would stand as a career high, as would the 53 points he scored against the San Diego Clippers on February 2. He also broke his own NBA record with 21 offensive rebounds in a game against the Seattle SuperSonics on February 11.

In Malone's last season in Houston, the Rockets followed an NBA Finals appearance in 1981 with a first-round playoff exit in 1982. Despite 24.0 points and 17.0 rebounds per game from Malone, Houston lost to Seattle in three games.

Championship in Philadelphia

With Houston rebuilding their roster, the Rockets allowed restricted free agent Malone to explore options in the free agency market. He signed an offer sheet with the Philadelphia 76ers on September 2. Houston then exercised its right of first refusal and matched the offer, only to trade Malone to the 76ers on September 15 for Caldwell Jones and their 1983 first-round draft choice.

Philadelphia added the Most Valuable Player of 1982 to a mix that already included Julius Erving, Andrew Toney, Maurice Cheeks and Bobby Jones. The result was an NBA championship—and the second straight MVP Award for Malone (becoming the only NBA player ever to win the MVP award in consecutive seasons with two different teams, a feat only matched by Barry Bonds (1992–93) in the four major sports).

Now in his seventh season of professional basketball (fifth in the NBA), Malone led the league in rebounding (15.3 rpg) for a third consecutive year. With Erving (21.4 ppg) and Toney (19.7) making strong scoring contributions, Malone's average dipped to 24.5 points per game, still good enough for fifth in the NBA.

An All-Star for a sixth straight time, Malone made the All-NBA First Team and the NBA All-Defensive First Team at season's end. The 76ers lost only one postseason contest en route to the league championship, concluding their title run with a four-game sweep of the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1983 NBA Finals. Malone averaged 26.0 points and 15.8 rebounds in 13 postseason games and was named Most Valuable Player of the Finals.

His head coach Billy Cunningham said, "The difference from last year was Moses" (the Lakers had beaten the 76ers in the 1982 NBA Finals). Before the playoffs began, reporters asked how the playoffs would run. Malone answered "four, four, four"—in other words, predicting that the 76s would sweep all three rounds to win the title, with the minimum 12 games. Malone's deep voice made his boast sound like "fo', fo', fo'." However, the 76ers backed up Malone's boast, losing only one playoff game (game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals to the Milwaukee Bucks) en route to making Malone a world champion for the first time. This led some to rephrase Malone's prediction as "fo', fi', fo'" (four, five, four). The 76ers' 12 – 1 record in the playoffs became the second-most-dominant playoff run in NBA history (the 2001 Lakers went 15 – 1 in the extended four-round playoff set-up). However, this would turn out be the last championship for the city of Philadelphia until the Phillies won the 2008 World Series.

Post-championship

In the 1983–84 season Malone led the league in rebounding for a fourth straight season and fifth overall, finishing with 13.4 per game. Ankle injuries limited him to 71 games that season, his lowest number of appearances since 1977–78. Still, he posted a 22.7 scoring average in his second season with the Sixers and was named to the All-NBA Second Team at year's end.

Malone was selected to play in the NBA All-Star Game for a seventh consecutive year but missed the game because of his aching ankle. He averaged 21.4 points and 13.8 rebounds in five postseason games, but Philadelphia suffered a first-round playoff upset at the hands of the New Jersey Nets.

When Malone finished the season with an average of 13.1 rebounds per game he became the first player in NBA history to lead the league in rebounding for five consecutive seasons. Wilt Chamberlain had held the previous record with two separate stretches of four straight titles in the 1960s.

An All-Star for the eighth time, Malone chalked up 24.6 points per game (ninth in the NBA) and earned his fourth selection to the All-NBA First Team. He finished third in the balloting for the league's Most Valuable Player Award, won this season by Boston's Larry Bird.

The nine-year NBA veteran scored his 15,000th NBA point on November 28 and grabbed his 10,000th NBA rebound on March 29. He exploded for 51 points against the Detroit Pistons on November 14.

Philadelphia advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals in 1985 but lost to Boston in five games. Malone contributed 20.2 points and 10.6 rebounds per game in the postseason.

Malone's 10th NBA season and last with Philadelphia came to an abrupt end when on March 28 he suffered a fractured orbit of the right eye against the Milwaukee Bucks. He missed the Sixers' last eight games and the entire postseason. Without him, Philadelphia lost to the Bucks in a seven-game Eastern Conference Semifinal series.

In 74 appearances Malone averaged 23.8 points and 11.8 rebounds. He ranked seventh in the NBA in scoring but surrendered the league's rebounding crown for the first time in six seasons, finishing fourth behind the Detroit Pistons' Bill Laimbeer (13.1 rpg), Philadelphia teammate Charles Barkley (12.8), and the New Jersey Nets' Buck Williams (12.0).

Malone was an All-Star for the ninth straight season but failed to make an All-NBA Team for the first time since 1978.

Later years

Shortly after the 1985–86 season Philadelphia had traded Malone, along with Terry Catledge and two first-round draft choices, to the Washington Bullets for Jeff Ruland and Cliff Robinson.

The 11-year veteran bounced back from an injury-shortened 1985–86 campaign to average 24.1 points and 11.3 rebounds and reclaim a spot on the All-NBA Second Team. An All-Star for the 10th consecutive season, he was the only NBA player to rank among the league's top 10 in both scoring and rebounding, placing ninth in each category.

Malone scored his 20,000th NBA point on April 12 against the Detroit Pistons. He exploded for 50 points versus the New Jersey Nets on April 8, joining Earl Monroe (56) and Phil Chenier (52) as the only Bullets players ever to score 50 points in a game.

Washington made a brief appearance in the postseason, losing to the Pistons in a first-round sweep. Malone averaged 20.7 points and 12.7 rebounds in three playoff games.

Malone kept plugging away in his 12th NBA season and second with Washington. He averaged 20.3 points and 11.2 rebounds, ranking fourth in the league in rebounding and 19th in scoring. He earned his 11th consecutive All-Star selection and was one of only four players to rank in the top 20 in scoring and the top 10 in rebounding.

Malone scored in double figures in 76 of 79 games and recorded 55 double-doubles for the year. He helped the Bullets to the 1988 NBA Playoffs, where they lost to the Detroit Pistons in a five-game first-round series. Malone contributed 18.6 points and 11.2 rebounds per game in five postseason appearances.

Atlanta Hawks

The Atlanta Hawks signed Malone as a free agent prior to the 1988–89 season, and he went on to have another All-Star campaign. Teaming with Dominique Wilkins in the Hawks' frontcourt, Malone averaged 20.2 points and 11.8 rebounds. He was selected to start for the East squad in his 12th straight NBA All-Star Game.

The 13-year veteran scored in double figures in 75 of his 81 appearances and rebounded in double figures 55 times. He poured in a season-high 37 points against the Phoenix Suns on February 4.

After nearly toppling the Boston Celtics the year before in a thrilling Eastern Conference Semifinal series, Atlanta did not make it out of the first round in 1989. The Hawks lost to the Milwaukee Bucks in five games, despite 21.0 points and 12.0 rebounds per game from their veteran center.

In his second season with Atlanta, Malone failed to average at least 20 points and 10 rebounds for the first time since his second NBA season. He finished at 18.9 points per game and 10.0 rebounds per game, snapping a string of 11 straight 20–10 campaigns. The 14-year veteran led the NBA in offensive rebounds, with 364, and tied for eighth in rebounding average. He led the Hawks in scoring 20 times and in rebounding 41 times.

In Mike Fratello's final year as head coach, Atlanta struggled to a 41–41 record and missed the playoffs for the first time in five seasons.

Malone started at center for the first 15 games of the 1990–91 season, but then Atlanta's new coach, Bob Weiss, moved him to the bench and made him Jon Koncak's backup for the final 67 contests. Although he was the only Hawk to appear in all 82 games, Malone failed to play 2,000 minutes in a season (1,912) for the first time in his 15-year NBA career.

Malone averaged 10.6 points and 8.1 rebounds in 23.3 minutes per game—all career lows up to that point. He nevertheless continued to etch his name in the NBA record books. With career free throw No. 7,695 against the Indiana Pacers on November 3, he became the NBA's all-time leader in free throws made, surpassing Oscar Robertson. He also scored his 25,000th career point on November 21 versus the Milwaukee Bucks and grabbed his 15,000th rebound against the Dallas Mavericks on March 15. Malone broke Wilt Chamberlain's record of 1,045 consecutive games without fouling out when he reached No. 1,046 in a game against the Detroit Pistons on March 19.

Atlanta returned to the playoffs but fell to the Pistons in a five-game first-round series. Malone contributed only 4.2 points and 6.2 rebounds per game in the postseason.

Milwaukee Bucks

The Milwaukee Bucks had signed Malone as a free agent shortly after the 1990–91 season and had immediately made him their starting center. The 16-year veteran responded with a resurgent campaign, playing in all 82 games and averaging 15.6 points and 9.1 rebounds.

He ranked second on the Bucks in scoring and first in rebounding, leading the team in boards in 54 of 82 games. He scored a season-high 30 points twice and grabbed 19 rebounds against the Seattle SuperSonics on March 27.

Milwaukee, about to begin a rebuilding process, finished 31–51 and tied with the Charlotte Hornets for last place in the Central Division.

Malone missed most of the 1992–93 season while recovering from back surgery. He finally returned to active duty on March 27 and made 11 appearances for Milwaukee. He played only 104 total minutes and averaged 4.5 points and 4.4 rebounds. On April 12 he registered season highs of 12 points, 9 rebounds, and 18 minutes in a game against the Miami Heat.

Milwaukee continued to struggle while developing young talent. The Bucks finished 28–54 and last in the Central Division.

Many thought Malone would retire after an injury-plagued 1992–93 campaign, but the Philadelphia 76ers convinced him to play another season—his 18th in the NBA and his 20th in professional basketball. Indeed, Malone was the only remaining active player who had played in the ABA.

The Sixers signed him as a free agent in August, primarily to have him tutor 7-foot-6 rookie Shawn Bradley. Malone and Assistant Coach Jeff Ruland worked with Bradley throughout the year and helped him to improve noticeably, before a dislocated left kneecap and a chipped bone in his knee shelved Bradley for the rest of the season.

For his part, Malone appeared in 55 games off the bench and averaged 5.3 points and 4.1 rebounds. At season's end, he ranked third on the NBA's all-time scoring list (27,360 points), third in games played (1,312), fifth in rebounds (16,166), first in offensive rebounds (6,711), first in free throws made (8,509), second in free throws attempted (11,058), and first in consecutive games played without a disqualification (1,195).

San Antonio Spurs

In 1994, he was sent to the Spurs, where he played the back-up center role behind superstar David Robinson. 1994–95 was his last season in the NBA. During the final game of his NBA career in a game against the Charlotte Hornets, he hit a buzzer-beating three-point shot from the opposing free throw line, eighty feet away from the goal. It was only the eighth three-pointer of his career. He played just 17 games for the Spurs, all in November and December 1994.

Career accomplishments

Malone:

was named one of the NBA's 50 greatest players in 1997.

was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2001.

played more seasons (21) in the NBA/ABA than any other player.

was both the NBA Most Valuable Player and Sporting News MVP in 1979, 1982 and 1983.

is the only player in NBA history to average 20 points and 10 rebounds on four different teams. Three others have done it three times, Wilt Chamberlain, Shaquille O'Neal, and George McGinnis, McGinnis accomplishing the feat a fourth season while playing in the American Basketball Association before joining the NBA

became the first player in NBA history to earn five consecutive rebounding titles (1980–1984).

did not foul out during his final 1,212 games, the longest streak without a disqualification.

has the highest number of offensive rebounds (6,731) since the NBA started tracking offensive and defensive rebounds separately in 1973–74

is second only to Karl Malone in overall (NBA and ABA) free throws made, with 9,018

is second behind Karl Malone in overall (NBA and ABA) free throws attempted, with 11,864

is eighth all time in games played (1,329)

is tenth in minutes played (45,071)

is 13th in NBA field goal attempts (19,225)

Lifetime statistics

Games: 1,329

Points: 27,409

PPG: 20.6

RPG: 12.2

APG: 1.4

BLK: 1,733

FG%: .491

FT%: .769

Career highs

Regular season

Playoffs

Other accomplishments

Malone:

Helped his high school team to win 50 games in a row and achieve a number of state championships.

Has had his number retired by two teams: #24 with the Houston Rockets, and #2 (unofficially) with the Philadelphia 76ers. Though the 76ers have not yet had a ceremony retiring Malone's #2 it is no longer issued.

Had such a long career he played with Rick Barry (Houston in 1979 and 1980) and Rick's son Jon (Milwaukee in 1992 and 1993).

Tutored Hakeem Olajuwon during off-season pickup games while Olajuwon was still a collegian, helping the young center make huge strides in his abilities

Was known for wearing thick goggles during games in the latter years of his basketball career following an eye injury

Wore several different jersey numbers in his career, including #2 with the Sixers, Hawks, and Spurs, #4 with the Bullets, #8 with the Bucks, #13 with the Spirits, #22 with the Stars, #20 in his two games with Buffalo Braves and #21 and #24 with the Rockets.

Is the father of Michael Malone, signed by the NFL Miami Dolphins in 2007

See also

List of National Basketball Association players with 1000 games played

List of National Basketball Association career scoring leaders

List of National Basketball Association career rebounding leaders

List of National Basketball Association career blocks leaders

List of National Basketball Association career turnovers leaders

List of National Basketball Association career free throw scoring leaders

List of National Basketball Association players with most rebounds in a game

Notes

Further reading

External links

nba.com historical playerfile

Career Stats

More Career Stats

Malone's Biography on the official NBA site

Moses Malone's NBA basketball cards

Category:1955 births Category:Living people Category:African American basketball players Category:Basketball Hall of Fame inductees Category:Basketball players from Virginia Category:Atlanta Hawks players Category:Buffalo Braves players Category:Houston Rockets players Category:Milwaukee Bucks players Category:Parade High School All-Americans (boys' basketball) Category:Philadelphia 76ers players Category:National Basketball Association players with retired numbers Category:San Antonio Spurs players Category:Spirits of St. Louis players Category:Utah Stars draft picks Category:Utah Stars players Category:Washington Bullets players Category:National Basketball Association high school draftees Category:Power forwards (basketball) Category:Centers (basketball) Category:National Basketball Association broadcasters Category:NBA Finals MVP Award winners Category:People from Petersburg, Virginia Category:Undrafted National Basketball Association players

Name	Mel Brooks
Caption	Brooks in April 2010
Birth name	Melvin Kaminsky
Birth date	June 28, 1926
Birth place	Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Medium	FilmTelevisionMusical theatre
Nationality	American
Influences	George M. CohanJack Benny Bob HopeHarry RitzFred AstaireGene Kelly
Influenced	Robin Williams, Jim Carrey
Active	1949–present
Genre	FarceParody
Subject	Comedy
Spouse	Florence Baum (1953-1962) (divorced) 3 children Anne Bancroft (1964-2005) (her death) 1 child.
Notable work	The ProducersBlazing SaddlesYoung Frankenstein,Spaceballs
Emmyawards	Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Program1967 The Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner and Howard Morris SpecialOutstanding Guest Actor - Comedy Series 1997, 1998, 1999 Mad About You

}} Melvin "Mel" Kaminsky (born June 28, 1926), better known by his stage name Mel Brooks, is an American film director, screenwriter, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor and producer. He is best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies. Brooks is a member of the short list of entertainers with the distinction of having won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony award. Three of his films ranked in the Top 20 on the American Film Institute's list of the Top 100 comedy films of all-time: Blazing Saddles, The Producers and Young Frankenstein.

Early life

Brooks was born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn, New York, a son of Maximilian Kaminsky and his wife Kate Brookman. His father's family were German Jews from the Baltic seaport of Danzig (modern Gdansk); his mother's family were Russian Jews from Kiev. His father died of kidney disease when he was only 34.

Brooks was a small, sickly boy who was often bullied and picked on by his classmates. Taking on the comically aggressive job of Tummler (master entertainer) in various Catskills resorts, he gradually gained in confidence. Following high school, he attended the Virginia Military Institute and served in the United States Army as a corporal during World War II, taking part in the Battle of the Bulge.

Early career

Brooks started as a stand-up comic performing in summers at the Catskill Mountains, telling jokes and doing movie-star impressions. He found more rewarding work behind the scenes, becoming a comedy writer for television. He joined the hit comedy series Your Show of Shows with Sid Caesar and Carl Reiner. Reiner, as creator of The Dick Van Dyke Show, based Morey Amsterdam's character Buddy Sorell on Brooks.

Starting in 1960, Brooks teamed with Reiner as a comedy duo on the Steve Allen Show. Their performances led to release a series of comedy albums that included a routine that eventually expanded into the 2000 Year Old Man series that became five albums and a 1975 animated TV special.

Brooks later moved into film, working as an actor, director, writer, and producer. Brooks's first film was The Critic (1963), an animated satire of arty, esoteric cinema, conceived by Brooks and directed by Ernest Pintoff. Brooks supplied running commentary as the baffled moviegoer trying to make sense of the obscure visuals. The short film won an Academy Award. With Buck Henry, Brooks created the successful TV series Get Smart, starring Don Adams as a bumbling secret agent. This series added to Brooks's reputation as a clever satirist.

Brooks's first feature film, The Producers, was a dark comedy about two theatrical partners who deliberately contrive the worst possible Broadway show. The film was so brazen in its satire (its big production number was "Springtime for Hitler") that the major studios would not touch it, nor would many exhibitors. Brooks finally found an independent distributor, which released it like an art film, as a specialized attraction. The film received an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. The film became a smash underground hit, first on the nationwide college circuit, then in revivals and on home video. Brooks later turned it into a musical, which became hugely successful on Broadway, receiving an unprecedented twelve Tony awards.

His two most financially successful films were released in 1974: Blazing Saddles (co-written with Richard Pryor, Andrew Bergman, Norman Steinberg and Alan Uger), and Young Frankenstein (co-written with Gene Wilder). He followed these up with an audacious idea: the first feature-length silent comedy in four decades. Silent Movie (co-written with Ron Clark, 1976) featured Brooks in his first leading role, with Dom DeLuise and Marty Feldman as his sidekicks; it also featured, ironically, Marcel Marceau, in a cameo appearance as himself, who uttered the film's single word of audible dialogue. The following year he released his Hitchcock parody High Anxiety (also written with Clark), which was the first movie produced by Brooks himself.

Brooks developed a repertory company of sorts for his film work: performers with three or more of Brooks's films (The Producers, The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, High Anxiety, History of the World: Part I, Spaceballs, Life Stinks, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and Dracula: Dead and Loving It) to their credit include Gene Wilder, Dom DeLuise, Madeline Kahn, Harvey Korman, Cloris Leachman, Ron Carey, Dick Van Patten and Andréas Voutsinas. Dom DeLuise appeared in six of Brooks's 12 films, the only person with more appearances being Brooks himself.

In 1975, at the height of his movie career, Brooks tried TV again with When Things Were Rotten, a Robin Hood parody that lasted only 13 episodes. Nearly twenty years later, in response to the 1991 hit film , Brooks mounted another Robin Hood parody with . Brooks's film resurrected several pieces of dialog from his TV series, as well as from earlier Brooks films.

Later career

In 1980, Brooks became interested in producing the dramatic film The Elephant Man (directed by David Lynch). Knowing that anyone seeing a poster reading "Mel Brooks presents The Elephant Man" would expect a comedy, he set up the company Brooksfilms. Brooksfilms has since produced a number of non-comedy films, including David Cronenberg's The Fly, Frances, and 84 Charing Cross Road, starring Anthony Hopkins and Anne Bancroft, as well as comedies, including Richard Benjamin's My Favorite Year, which was partially based on his real life. Brooks sought to purchase the rights to 84 Charing Cross Road for his wife, Anne Bancroft, for many years. He successfully obtained the rights to the movie and presented them to her as an anniversary gift.

The 1980s saw Brooks produce and direct only two films, the first being History of the World Part I in 1981, a tongue-in-cheek look at human culture from the Dawn of Man to the French Revolution. As part of the film's soundtrack, Brooks, then aged 55, recorded a rap entitled "It's Good to Be the King", a parody of Louis XVI and the French Revolution; it was released as a single, and became a surprise US dance hit. His second movie release of the decade came in 1987 in the form of Spaceballs, a parody of science fiction, mainly Star Wars. Both films featured him in multiple roles. He also starred in the 1983 remake of To Be or Not to Be, which spawned a highly controversial single that featured as part of the film's soundtrack album (although not in the film itself) - "To Be Or Not To Be (The Hitler Rap)". The song - satirising German society in the 1940s with Brooks playing Hitler - was banned from both radio airplay and television in Germany due to its deliberately ironic portrayal of the Nazi involvement in World War Two, but was an unlikely hit elsewhere, peaking at #12 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1984 and #3 on the Australian Singles Chart (Kent Music Report) that same year.

One of his most recent successes has been a transfer of his film The Producers to the Broadway stage. Brooks also had a vocal role in the 2005 animated film Robots. He then worked on an animated series sequel to Spaceballs called , which premiered on September 21, 2008 on G4 TV.

Brooks is one of the few artists who have received an Oscar, Emmy, Tony, and Grammy. He was awarded his first Grammy award for Best Spoken Comedy Album in 1999 for his recording of The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000 with Carl Reiner. His two other Grammys came in 2002 for Best Musical Show Album, for the soundtrack to The Producers, and for Best Long Form Music Video for the DVD "Recording the Producers - A Musical Romp with Mel Brooks". He won his first of four Emmy awards in 1967 for Outstanding Writing Achievement in Variety for a Sid Caesar special. He went on to win three consecutive Emmys in 1997, 1998, and 1999 for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for his role of Uncle Phil on Mad About You. He won his three Tony awards in 2001 for his work on the musical, The Producers. He won Tonys for Best Musical, Best Original Musical Score, and Best Book of a Musical. Additionally, he won a Hugo Award and a Nebula Award for Young Frankenstein. In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, he was voted #50 of the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders. Three of Brooks's films are on the American Film Institute's list of funniest American films: Blazing Saddles (#6), The Producers (#11), and Young Frankenstein (#13).

Brooks and his wife Anne Bancroft acted together in Silent Movie and To Be or Not to Be, and Bancroft also had a bit part in the 1995 film . Years later, the Brookses appeared as themselves in the fourth season finale of Curb Your Enthusiasm, spoofing the finale of The Producers. It is reported that Bancroft encouraged Brooks (after an idea suggested by David Geffen) to take The Producers to Broadway where it became an enormous success, as the show broke the Tony record with 12 wins, a record that had previously been held for 37 years by Hello, Dolly! at 10 wins. Such success has translated to a big-screen version of the Broadway adaptation/remake with actors Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane reprising their stage roles, in addition to new cast members Uma Thurman and Will Ferrell. As of early April 2006, Brooks had begun composing the score to a Broadway musical adaptation of Young Frankenstein, which he says is "perhaps the best movie [he] ever made." The world premiere was performed at Seattle's most historic theatre (originally built as a movie palace), The Paramount Theatre, between August 7, 2007, and September 1, 2007 after which it opened on Broadway at the former Foxwoods Theatre (then the Hilton Theatre), New York, on October 11, 2007. It has since earned mixed reviews from the critics.

In interviews broadcast on WABC radio, Brooks has discussed with NYC radio personality Mark Simone the possibilities of turning other works from his creative oeuvre (such as the movie Blazing Saddles) into future musical productions. Specifically, in a conversation airing March 1, 2008, he and Simone speculated on what show tunes might be incorporated into a theatrical adaptation of the Get Smart property.

On December 5, 2009 Brooks was one of five recipients of 2009 Kennedy Center Honors at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

On April 23, 2010 Brooks was awarded the 2,406th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Personal life

in April 2010]] Brooks was married to Florence Baum from 1953 to 1962. Their marriage ended in divorce. Mel and Florence had three children, Stephanie, Nicky, and Eddie.

Brooks was married to the actress Anne Bancroft from 1964 until her death from uterine cancer on June 6, 2005. They met on rehearsal for the Perry Como Variety Show in 1961 and married three years later, August 5, at the Manhattan Marriage Bureau. Their son, Max Brooks, was born in 1972. In 2010, Brooks credited Bancroft as being the guiding force behind his involvement in developing The Producers and Young Frankenstein for the musical theater, citing an early meeting as "From that day, until her death on June 5, 2005, we were glued together."

Work

Writer/director

The Producers (1968) (Academy Award, best original screenplay)

The Twelve Chairs (1970) (also actor)

Blazing Saddles (1974) (also actor)

Young Frankenstein (1974)

Silent Movie (1976) (also actor)

High Anxiety (1977) (also actor/producer)

History of the World, Part I (1981) (also actor/producer)

Spaceballs (1987) (also actor/producer)

Life Stinks (1991) (also actor/producer)

(1993) (also actor/producer)

(1995) (also actor/producer)

Theatre

Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1952 (1952) (sketches for a revue)

Shinbone Alley (1957) (co-book-writer)

All-American (1962) (book-writer)

The Producers (2001) (composer, lyricist, co-book-writer, producer; Tony Award for Best Musical, Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical, Tony Award for Best Original Score, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical)

Young Frankenstein (2007) (composer, lyricist, co-book-writer, producer)

Other works

Your Show of Shows (TV) (1950–1954) (writer)

New Faces of 1952 (Broadway) (1952) (writer) and "New Faces", the 1954 film version (writer)

The Critic (created and narrated, won Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film) (1963)

Get Smart (TV) (1965–1970) (co-creator, writer)

The Electric Company (TV) (1971–1977) (voice of recurring little cartoon man who asks: "Who's the dummy writing this show?!")

"Hollywood Squares" (1972) (Guest star)

When Things Were Rotten (1975) (co-created, writer)

The Muppet Movie (1979) (Special Guest Star-Mad Scientist Professor Max Krassman)

The Elephant Man (1980) (uncredited executive producer)

To Be or Not to Be (1983) (actor, producer)

The Fly (1986) (uncredited producer)

The Fly II (1989) (uncredited producer)

''The Tracy Ullman Show (1990) (actor-Buzz Schlanger)

Look Who's Talking Too (1990) (voice of Mr. Toilet Man)

Frasier (1993) (voice of Tom)

The Little Rascals (1994) (actor-Mr. Welling)

Silence of the Hams (1994) (actor-Checkout Guest)

The Simpsons (1995, "Homer vs. Patty and Selma") (voice-himself)

Mad About You (TV) (1996–1999) (actor-Uncle Phil)

The Prince of Egypt (1998) (uncredited, additional voices)

Svitati (AKA Screw Loose) (1999) (actor-Jake Gordon)

It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie (2002) (voice of Joe Snow)

(2003) (voice of Santa Claus)

Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks (2003–present) (voice of Wiley the Sheep)

Curb Your Enthusiasm: Season 4 (2004) (actor)

Robots (2005) (voice of Bigweld)

The Producers (2005) (writer, producer)

(2008) (writer, producer, voice)

"Get Smart" (2008) (Consultant)

"The 2000 Year Old Man: The Complete History" (2009) DVD

Rotten Tomatoes Ratings

See also

List of persons who have won Academy, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Awards

References

Further reading

Jeff Rovin. Cat Angels, Harper Paperbacks, ISBN 0-06-100972-5

Parish, James Robert. It's Good to Be the King: The Seriously Funny Life of Mel Brooks (2007) Wiley ISBN 0-471-75267-3

External links

Mel Brooks - Box Office Data Movie Director at The Numbers

Mel Brooks - Box Office Data Movie Star at The Numbers

Interview with Brooks on NPR's Fresh Air (March 16, 2005)

TonyAwards.com Interview with Mel Brooks at Tony Awards site

Interview with Mel Brooks biographer James Robert Parish

Photographs and literature

Category:1926 births Category:Abraham Lincoln High School (Brooklyn, New York) alumni Category:American comedians Category:American military personnel of World War II Category:American musical theatre composers Category:American satirists Category:American theatre managers and producers Category:American voice actors Category:Best Original Screenplay Academy Award winners Category:Emmy Award winners Category:English-language film directors Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Jewish actors Category:American people of Russian-Jewish descent Category:American people of German-Jewish descent Category:Jewish American writers Category:Jewish comedians Category:Jewish American composers and songwriters Category:Kennedy Center honorees Category:Living people Category:People from Brooklyn Category:People from Fire Island, New York Category:Saturn Award winners Category:Tony Award winners Category:United States Army soldiers Category:American Jews

Name	Louis Armstrong
Img alt	A picture of Louis Armstrong. Short-haired black man in his fifties blowing into a trumpet. He is wearing a light-colored sport coat, a white shirt and a bow tie. He is faced left with his eyes looking upwards. His right hand is fingering the trumpet, with the index finger down and three fingers pointing upwards. The man's left hand is mostly covered with a handkerchief and it has a shining ring on the little finger. He is wearing a wristwatch on the left wrist.
Landscape	Yes
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Louis Daniel Armstrong
Born	August 4, 1901New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.
Died	July 06, 1971Corona, Queens, New York City, U.S.
Instruments	Trumpet, cornet, vocals
Genre	Dixieland, jazz, swing, traditional pop
Occupation	Musician
Spouse	Daisy Parker
Years active	c. 1914–1971
Associated acts	Joe "King" Oliver, Ella Fitzgerald, Kid Ory

Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana.

Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an "inventive" cornet and trumpet player, Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the music's focus from collective improvisation to solo performance.

With his instantly recognizable deep and distinctive gravelly voice, Armstrong was also an influential singer, demonstrating great dexterity as an improviser, bending the lyrics and melody of a song for expressive purposes. He was also greatly skilled at scat singing, vocalizing using sounds and syllables instead of actual lyrics.

Renowned for his charismatic stage presence and voice almost as much as for his trumpet-playing, Armstrong's influence extends well beyond jazz music, and by the end of his career in the 1960s, he was widely regarded as a profound influence on popular music in general.

Armstrong was one of the first truly popular African-American entertainers to "cross-over," whose skin-color was secondary to his amazing talent in an America that was severely racially divided. It allowed him socially-acceptable access to the upper echelons of American society that were highly restricted for a person of color. While he rarely publicly politicized his race, often to the dismay of fellow African-Americans, he was privately a huge supporter of the Civil Rights movement in America.

Biography

Early life

Armstrong often stated that he was born on July 4, 1900, a date that has been noted in many biographies. Although he died in 1971, it was not until the mid-1980s that his true birth date of August 4, 1901 was discovered through the examination of baptismal records.

Armstrong was born into a very poor family in New Orleans, Louisiana, the grandson of slaves. He spent his youth in poverty, in a rough neighborhood of Uptown New Orleans, known as “Back of Town”, as his father, William Armstrong (1881–1922), abandoned the family when Louis was an infant and took up with another woman. His mother, Mary "Mayann" Albert (1886–1942), then left Louis and his younger sister Beatrice Armstrong Collins (1903–1987) in the care of his grandmother, Josephine Armstrong, and at times, his Uncle Isaac. At five, he moved back to live with his mother and her relatives, and saw his father only in parades.

He attended the Fisk School for Boys. It was there that he likely had his first exposure to Creole music. He brought in some money as a paperboy and also by finding discarded food and selling it to restaurants, but it was not enough to keep his mother from prostitution. He hung out in dance halls close to home, where he observed everything from licentious dancing to the quadrille. For extra money he also hauled coal to Storyville, the famed red-light district, and listened to the bands playing in the brothels and dance halls, especially Pete Lala's where Joe "King" Oliver performed and other famous musicians would drop in to jam.

After dropping out of the Fisk School at age eleven, Armstrong joined a quartet of boys that sang in the streets for money. But he also started to get into trouble. Cornet player Bunk Johnson said he taught Armstrong (then 11) to play by ear at Dago Tony's Tonk in New Orleans, although in his later years Armstrong gave the credit to Oliver. Armstrong hardly looked back at his youth as the worst of times but instead drew inspiration from it, “Every time I close my eyes blowing that trumpet of mine—I look right in the heart of good old New Orleans...It has given me something to live for.”

He also worked for a Lithuanian-Jewish immigrant family, the Karnofskys, who had a junk hauling business and gave him odd jobs. They took him in and treated him as almost a family member, knowing he lived without a father, and would feed and nurture him. He later wrote a memoir of his relationship with the Karnofskys titled, Louis Armstrong + the Jewish Family in New Orleans, La., the Year of 1907. In it he describes his discovery that this family was also subject to discrimination by "other white folks' nationalities who felt that they were better than the Jewish race. I was only seven years old but I could easily see the ungodly treatment that the White Folks were handing the poor Jewish family whom I worked for." Armstrong wore a Star of David pendant for the rest of his life and wrote about what he learned from them: "how to live—real life and determination." The influence of Karnofsky is remembered in New Orleans by the Karnofsky Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to accepting donated musical instruments to "put them into the hands of an eager child who could not otherwise take part in a wonderful learning experience."

Armstrong developed his cornet playing seriously in the band of the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs, where he had been sent multiple times for general delinquency, most notably for a long term after firing his stepfather's pistol into the air at a New Year's Eve celebration, as police records confirm. Professor Peter Davis (who frequently appeared at the Home at the request of its administrator, Captain Joseph Jones) instilled discipline in and provided musical training to the otherwise self-taught Armstrong. Eventually, Davis made Armstrong the band leader. The Home band played around New Orleans and the thirteen year old Louis began to draw attention by his cornet playing, starting him on a musical career. At fourteen he was released from the Home, living again with his father and new stepmother and then back with his mother and also back to the streets and their temptations. Armstrong got his first dance hall job at Henry Ponce’s where Black Benny became his protector and guide. He hauled coal by day and played his cornet at night.

He played in the city's frequent brass band parades and listened to older musicians every chance he got, learning from Bunk Johnson, Buddy Petit, Kid Ory, and above all, Joe "King" Oliver, who acted as a mentor and father figure to the young musician. Later, he played in the brass bands and riverboats of New Orleans, and began traveling with the well-regarded band of Fate Marable, which toured on a steamboat up and down the Mississippi River. He described his time with Marable as, "going to the University," since it gave him a much wider experience working with written arrangements.

In 1919, Joe Oliver decided to go north and resigned his position in Kid Ory's band; Armstrong replaced him. He also became second trumpet for the Tuxedo Brass Band, a society band.

Career

"]] "]] "]] On March 19, 1918, Louis married Daisy Parker from Gretna, Louisiana. They adopted a 3-year-old boy, Clarence Armstrong, whose mother, Louis's cousin Flora, died soon after giving birth. Clarence Armstrong was mentally disabled (the result of a head injury at an early age) and Louis would spend the rest of his life taking care of him. Louis's marriage to Parker failed quickly and they separated. She died shortly after the divorce.

Through all his riverboat experience Armstrong’s musicianship began to mature and expand. At twenty, he could read music and he started to be featured in extended trumpet solos, one of the first jazzmen to do this, injecting his own personality and style into his solo turns. He had learned how to create a unique sound and also started using singing and patter in his performances. In 1922, Armstrong joined the exodus to Chicago, where he had been invited by his mentor, Joe "King" Oliver, to join his Creole Jazz Band and where he could make a sufficient income so that he no longer needed to supplement his music with day labor jobs. It was a boom time in Chicago and though race relations were poor, the “Windy City” was teeming with jobs for black people, who were making good wages in factories and had plenty to spend on entertainment.

Oliver's band was the best and most influential hot jazz band in Chicago in the early 1920s, at a time when Chicago was the center of the jazz universe. Armstrong lived like a king in Chicago, in his own apartment with his own private bath (his first). Excited as he was to be in Chicago, he began his career-long pastime of writing nostalgic letters to friends in New Orleans. As Armstrong’s reputation grew, he was challenged to “cutting contests” by hornmen trying to displace the new phenom, who could blow two hundred high C’s in a row. Armstrong made his first recordings on the Gennett and Okeh labels (jazz records were starting to boom across the country), including taking some solos and breaks, while playing second cornet in Oliver's band in 1923. At this time, he met Hoagy Carmichael (with whom he would collaborate later) who was introduced by friend Bix Beiderbecke, who now had his own Chicago band.

Armstrong enjoyed working with Oliver, but Louis's second wife, pianist Lil Hardin Armstrong, urged him to seek more prominent billing and develop his newer style away from the influence of Oliver. Armstrong took the advice of his wife and left Oliver's band. For a year Armstrong played in Fletcher Henderson's band in New York on many recordings. After playing in New York, Armstrong returned to Chicago, playing in large orchestras; there he created his most important early recordings. Lil had her husband play classical music in church concerts to broaden his skill and improve his solo play and she prodded him into wearing more stylish attire to make him look sharp and to better offset his growing girth. Lil’s influence eventually undermined Armstrong’s relationship with his mentor, especially concerning his salary and additional moneys that Oliver held back from Armstrong and other band members. Armstrong and Oliver parted amicably in 1924. Shortly afterward, Armstrong received an invitation to go to New York City to play with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, the top African-American band of the day. Armstrong switched to the trumpet to blend in better with the other musicians in his section. His influence upon Henderson's tenor sax soloist, Coleman Hawkins, can be judged by listening to the records made by the band during this period. Armstrong quickly adapted to the more tightly controlled style of Henderson, playing trumpet and even experimenting with the trombone and the other members quickly took up Armstrong’s emotional, expressive pulse. Soon his act included singing and telling tales of New Orleans characters, especially preachers. The Henderson Orchestra was playing in the best venues for white-only patrons, including the famed Roseland Ballroom, featuring the classy arrangements of Don Redman. Duke Ellington’s orchestra would go to Roseland to catch Armstrong’s performances and young hornmen around town tried in vain to outplay him, splitting their lips in their attempts.

During this time, Armstrong also made many recordings on the side, arranged by an old friend from New Orleans, pianist Clarence Williams; these included small jazz band sides with the Williams Blue Five (some of the best pairing Armstrong with one of Armstrong's few rivals in fiery technique and ideas, Sidney Bechet) and a series of accompaniments with blues singers, including Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Alberta Hunter.

Armstrong returned to Chicago in 1925 due mostly to the urging of his wife, who wanted to pump up Armstrong’s career and income. He was content in New York but later would concede that she was right and that the Henderson Orchestra was limiting his artistic growth. In publicity, much to his chagrin, she billed him as “the World’s Greatest Trumpet Player”. At first he was actually a member of the Lil Hardin Armstrong Band and working for his wife. He began recording under his own name for Okeh with his famous Hot Five and Hot Seven groups, producing hits such as "Potato Head Blues", "Muggles", (a reference to marijuana, for which Armstrong had a lifelong fondness), and "West End Blues", the music of which set the standard and the agenda for jazz for many years to come.

The group included Kid Ory (trombone), Johnny Dodds (clarinet), Johnny St. Cyr (banjo), wife Lil on piano, and usually no drummer. Armstrong’s bandleading style was easygoing, as St. Cyr noted, "One felt so relaxed working with him and he was very broad-minded ... always did his best to feature each individual." His recordings soon after with pianist Earl "Fatha" Hines (most famously their 1928 Weatherbird duet) and Armstrong's trumpet introduction to "West End Blues" remain some of the most famous and influential improvisations in jazz history. Armstrong was now free to develop his personal style as he wished, which included a heavy dose of effervescent jive, such as "whip that thing, Miss Lil" and "Mr. Johnny Dodds, Aw, do that clarinet, boy!"

Armstrong also played with Erskine Tate’s Little Symphony, actually a quintet, which played mostly at the Vendome Theatre. They furnished music for silent movies and live shows, including jazz versions of classical music, such as “Madame Butterfly,” which gave Armstrong experience with longer forms of music and with hosting before a large audience. He began to scat sing (improvised vocal jazz using non-sensical words) and was among the first to record it, on "Heebie Jeebies" in 1926. So popular was the recording the group became the most famous jazz band in the USA even though they as yet had not performed live to any great degree. Young musicians across the country, black and white, were turned on by Armstrong’s new type of jazz.

After separating from Lil, Armstrong started to play at the Sunset Café for Al Capone's associate Joe Glaser in the Carroll Dickerson Orchestra, with Earl Hines on piano, which was soon renamed Louis Armstrong and his Stompers, though Hines was the music director and Glaser managed the orchestra. Hines and Armstrong became fast friends as well as successful collaborators.

Armstrong returned to New York, in 1929, where he played in the pit orchestra of the successful musical Hot Chocolate, an all-black revue written by Andy Razaf and pianist/composer Fats Waller. He also made a cameo appearance as a vocalist, regularly stealing the show with his rendition of "Ain't Misbehavin'", his version of the song becoming his biggest selling record to date.

Armstrong started to work at Connie's Inn in Harlem, chief rival to the Cotton Club, a venue for elaborately staged floor shows, and a front for gangster Dutch Schultz. Armstrong also had considerable success with vocal recordings, including versions of famous songs composed by his old friend Hoagy Carmichael. His 1930s recordings took full advantage of the new RCA ribbon microphone, introduced in 1931, which imparted a characteristic warmth to vocals and immediately became an intrinsic part of the 'crooning' sound of artists like Bing Crosby. Armstrong's famous interpretation of Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust" became one of the most successful versions of this song ever recorded, showcasing Armstrong's unique vocal sound and style and his innovative approach to singing songs that had already become standards.

Armstrong's radical re-working of Sidney Arodin and Carmichael's "Lazy River" (recorded in 1931) encapsulated many features of his groundbreaking approach to melody and phrasing. The song begins with a brief trumpet solo, then the main melody is stated by sobbing horns, memorably punctuated by Armstrong's growling interjections at the end of each bar: "Yeah! ..."Uh-huh" ..."Sure" ... "Way down, way down." In the first verse, he ignores the notated melody entirely and sings as if playing a trumpet solo, pitching most of the first line on a single note and using strongly syncopated phrasing. In the second stanza he breaks into an almost fully improvised melody, which then evolves into a classic passage of Armstrong "scat singing".

As with his trumpet playing, Armstrong's vocal innovations served as a foundation stone for the art of jazz vocal interpretation. The uniquely gritty coloration of his voice became a musical archetype that was much imitated and endlessly impersonated. His scat singing style was enriched by his matchless experience as a trumpet soloist. His resonant, velvety lower-register tone and bubbling cadences on sides such as "Lazy River" exerted a huge influence on younger white singers such as Bing Crosby.

The Depression of the early Thirties was especially hard on the jazz scene. The Cotton Club closed in 1936 after a long downward spiral and many musicians stopped playing altogether as club dates evaporated. Bix Beiderbecke died and Fletcher Henderson’s band broke up. King Oliver made a few records but otherwise struggled. Sidney Bechet became a tailor and Kid Ory returned to New Orleans and raised chickens. Armstrong moved to Los Angeles in 1930 to seek new opportunities. He played at the New Cotton Club in LA with Lionel Hampton on drums. The band drew the Hollywood crowd, which could still afford a lavish night life, while radio broadcasts from the club connected with younger audiences at home. Bing Crosby and many other celebrities were regulars at the club. In 1931, Armstrong appeared in his first movie, Ex-Flame. Armstrong was convicted of marijuana possession but received a suspended sentence. He returned to Chicago in late 1931 and played in bands more in the Guy Lombardo vein and he recorded more standards. When the mob insisted that he get out of town, Armstrong visited New Orleans, got a hero’s welcome and saw old friends. He sponsored a local baseball team known as “Armstrong’s Secret Nine” and got a cigar named after himself. But soon he was on the road again and after a tour across the country shadowed by the mob, Armstrong decided to go to Europe to escape.

After returning to the States, he undertook several exhausting tours. His agent Johnny Collins’ erratic behavior and his own spending ways left Armstrong short of cash. Breach of contract violations plagued him. Finally, he hired Joe Glaser as his new manager, a tough mob-connected wheeler-dealer, who began to straighten out his legal mess, his mob troubles, and his debts. Armstrong also began to experience problems with his fingers and lips, which were aggravated by his unorthodox playing style. As a result he branched out, developing his vocal style and making his first theatrical appearances. He appeared in movies again, including Crosby's 1936 hit Pennies from Heaven. In 1937, Armstrong substituted for Rudy Vallee on the CBS radio network and became the first African American to host a sponsored, national broadcast. He finally divorced Lil in 1938 and married longtime girlfriend Alpha.

After spending many years on the road, Armstrong settled permanently in Queens, New York in 1943 in contentment with his fourth wife, Lucille. Although subject to the vicissitudes of Tin Pan Alley and the gangster-ridden music business, as well as anti-black prejudice, he continued to develop his playing. He recorded Hoagy Carmichael's Rockin' Chair for Okeh Records.

During the subsequent thirty years, Armstrong played more than three hundred gigs a year. Bookings for big bands tapered off during the 1940s due to changes in public tastes: ballrooms closed, and there was competition from television and from other types of music becoming more popular than big band music. It became impossible under such circumstances to support and finance a 16-piece touring band.

The All Stars

Following a highly successful small-group jazz concert at New York Town Hall on May 17, 1947, featuring Armstrong with trombonist/singer Jack Teagarden, Armstrong's manager Joe Glaser dissolved the Armstrong big band on August 13, 1947 and established a six-piece small group featuring Armstrong with (initially) Teagarden, Earl Hines and other top swing and dixieland musicians, most of them ex-big band leaders. The new group was announced at the opening of Billy Berg's Supper Club.

This group was called Louis Armstrong and his All Stars and included at various times Earl "Fatha" Hines, Barney Bigard, Edmond Hall, Jack Teagarden, Trummy Young, Arvell Shaw, Billy Kyle, Marty Napoleon, Big Sid Catlett, Cozy Cole, Tyree Glenn, Barrett Deems and the Filipino-American percussionist, Danny Barcelona. During this period, Armstrong made many recordings and appeared in over thirty films. He was the first jazz musician to appear on the cover of Time Magazine on February 21, 1949.

In 1964, he recorded his biggest-selling record, "Hello, Dolly!". The song went to #1 on the pop chart, making Armstrong (age 63) the oldest person to ever accomplish that feat. In the process, Armstrong dislodged The Beatles from the #1 position they had occupied for 14 consecutive weeks with three different songs.

Armstrong kept up his busy tour schedule until a few years before his death in 1971. In his later years he would sometimes play some of his numerous gigs by rote, but other times would enliven the most mundane gig with his vigorous playing, often to the astonishment of his band. He also toured Africa, Europe, and Asia under sponsorship of the US State Department with great success, earning the nickname "Ambassador Satch." While failing health restricted his schedule in his last years, within those limitations he continued playing until the day he died.

Death

Armstrong died just after a heart attack on July 6, 1971, a month before his 70th birthday, and 11 months after playing a famous show at the Waldorf-Astoria's Empire Room. He was residing in Corona, Queens, New York City, at the time of his death. He was interred in Flushing Cemetery, Flushing, in Queens, New York City.

His honorary pallbearers included Governor Rockefeller, Mayor Lindsay, Bing Crosby, Scatman John, Ella Fitzgerald, Guy Lombardo, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Pearl Bailey, Count Basie, Harry James, Frank Sinatra, Ed Sullivan, Earl Wilson, Alan King, Johnny Carson, David Frost, Merv Griffin, Dick Cavett and Bobby Hackett.

Peggy Lee sang The Lord's Prayer at the services while Al Hibbler sang "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" and Fred Robbins, a long-time friend, gave the eulogy.

Personality

Armstrong was a colorful character. His own biography vexes biographers and historians, because he had a habit of telling tales, particularly of his early childhood, when he was less scrutinized, and his embellishments of his history often lack consistency.

He was not only an entertainer. Armstrong was a leading personality of the day who was so beloved by a white-controlled America, that gave even the greatest African-American performers little access beyond their public celebrity, that he was able to privately live a life of access and privilege accorded to few other African-Americans.

He tried to remain politically neutral, which gave him a large part of that access, but often alienated him from members of the African-American community who looked to him to use his prominence with white America to become more of an outspoken figure during the Civil Rights Era of U.S. history.

Nicknames

The nicknames Satchmo and Satch are short for Satchelmouth. Like many things in Armstrong's life, which was filled with colorful stories both real and imagined, many of his own telling, the nickname has many possible origins.

The most common tale that biographers tell is the story of Armstrong as a young boy dancing for pennies in the streets of New Orleans, who would scoop up the coins off of the streets and stick them into his mouth to avoid having the bigger children steal them from him. Someone dubbed him "satchel mouth" for his mouth acting as a satchel.

In 1932, Melody Maker magazine editor Percy Brooks greeted Armstrong in London with, "Hello, Satchmo!", and thence the nickname took root.

Early on he was also known as Dipper, short for Dippermouth, a reference to the piece Dippermouth Blues. and something of a riff on his unusual embouchure.

As he became older and more of an institution than another musician, Armstrong was usually addressed by friends and fellow musicians as Pops, save in the company of Pops Foster, whom Armstrong always called "George".

Armstrong and race

Armstrong was able to pass into white society, both on stage and off, a privilege reserved for very few African-American public figures, and usually those of either exceptional talent and fair skin-tone. As his fame grew, so did his access to the finer things in life usually denied to a black man, even a famous one. His renown was such that he dined in the best restaurants and stayed in hotels usually exclusively for whites.

It was a power and privilege that he enjoyed, although he was very careful not to flaunt it with fellow performers of color, and privately, he shared what access that he could with friends and fellow musicians.

That still did not prevent members of the African-American community, particularly in the late 1950s to the early 1970s, from calling him an Uncle Tom, a black-on-black racial epithet for someone who kowtowed to white society at the expense of their own racial identity.

He was criticized for accepting the title of "King of The Zulus" for Mardi Gras in 1949. In the New Orleans African-American community it is an honored role as the head of leading black Carnival Krewe, but bewildering or offensive to outsiders with their traditional costume of grass-skirts and blackface makeup satirizing southern white attitudes.

Some musicians criticized Armstrong for playing in front of segregated audiences, and for not taking a strong enough stand in the civil rights movement.

Billie Holiday countered, however, "Of course Pops toms, but he toms from the heart." Her meaning was that Armstrong was a performer who had no animosity for audiences of any color in his public life, and he would not bring the political elements of race into his performing.

In spite of his perception by many in the African-American community as being weak on racial equality and social justice, Armstrong was anything but that. He was a major financial supporter of Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights activists, even if he preferred to work quietly behind the scenes, not mixing his politics with his work as an entertainer.

The few exceptions made it more effective when he did speak out. Armstrong's criticism of President Eisenhower, calling him "two-faced" and "gutless" because of his inaction during the conflict over school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957 made national news.

As a protest, Armstrong canceled a planned tour of the Soviet Union on behalf of the State Department saying "The way they're treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell" and that he could not represent his government abroad when it was in conflict with its own people.

The FBI kept a file on Armstrong, for his outspokenness about integration.

Religion

When asked about his religion, Armstrong would answer that he was raised a Baptist, always wore a Star of David, and was friends with the Pope. Armstrong wore the Star of David in honor of the Karnofsky family, who took him in as a child and lent him the money to buy his first cornet. Louis Armstrong was, in fact, baptized as a Catholic at the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in New Orleans, The cards have sometimes been incorrectly described as ads for Swiss Kriss.

In a live recording of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" with Velma Middleton, he changes the lyric from "Put another record on while I pour" to "Take some Swiss Kriss while I pour." The line, slightly garbled in the live recording, could just as likely be "Take some Swiss Miss while I pour"—Swiss Miss is a hot chocolate mix that would have been fairly new on the market in 1951. (The line comes at 1:04 in the song.)

Love of food

The concern with his health and weight was balanced by his love of food, reflected in such songs as "Cheesecake," "Cornet Chop Suey," though "Struttin’ with Some Barbecue" was written about a fine-looking companion, not about food. He kept a strong connection throughout his life to the cooking of New Orleans, always signing his letters, "Red beans and ricely yours..."

Writings

Armstrong’s gregariousness extended to writing. On the road, he wrote constantly, sharing favorite themes of his life with correspondents around the world. He avidly typed or wrote on whatever stationery was at hand, recording instant takes on music, sex, food, childhood memories, his heavy “medicinal” marijuana use—and even his bowel movements, which he gleefully described. He had a fondness for lewd jokes and dirty limericks as well.

Social organizations

Louis Armstrong was not, as is often claimed, a Freemason. Although he is usually listed as being a member of Montgomery Lodge No. 18 (Prince Hall) in New York, no such lodge has ever existed. Armstrong states in his autobiography, however, that he was a member of the Knights of Pythias, which is not a Masonic group.

Music

Horn playing and early jazz

In his early years, Armstrong was best known for his virtuosity with the cornet and trumpet. The greatest trumpet playing of his early years can be heard on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records, as well as the Red Onion Jazz Babies. The improvisations he made on these records of New Orleans jazz standards and popular songs of the day are unsurpassed by later jazz performers. The older generation of New Orleans jazz musicians often referred to their improvisations as "variating the melody." Armstrong's improvisations were daring and sophisticated for the time, while often subtle and melodic.

He often essentially re-composed pop-tunes he played, making them more interesting. Armstrong's playing is filled with joyous, inspired original melodies, creative leaps, and subtle relaxed or driving rhythms. The genius of these creative passages is matched by Armstrong's playing technique, honed by constant practice, which extended the range, tone and capabilities of the trumpet. In these records, Armstrong almost single-handedly created the role of the jazz soloist, taking what was essentially a collective folk music and turning it into an art form with tremendous possibilities for individual expression.

Armstrong's work in the 1920s shows him playing at the outer limits of his abilities. The Hot Five records, especially, often have minor flubs and missed notes, which do little to detract from listening enjoyment since the energy of the spontaneous performance comes through. By the mid 1930s, Armstrong achieved a smooth assurance, knowing exactly what he could do and carrying out his ideas to perfection.

He was one of the first artists to use recordings of his performances to improve himself. Armstrong was an avid audiophile. He had a large collection of recordings, including reel-to-reel tapes, which he took on the road with him in a trunk during his later career. He enjoyed listening to his own recordings, and comparing his performances musically. In the den of his home, he had the latest audio equipment and would sometimes rehearse and record along with his older recordings or the radio.

Vocal popularity

As his music progressed and popularity grew, his singing also became very important. Armstrong was not the first to record scat singing, but he was masterful at it and helped popularize it. He had a hit with his playing and scat singing on "Heebie Jeebies" when, according to some legends, the sheet music fell on the floor and he simply started singing nonsense syllables. Armstrong stated in his memoirs that this actually occurred. He also sang out "I done forgot the words" in the middle of recording "I'm A Ding Dong Daddy From Dumas."

Such records were hits and scat singing became a major part of his performances. Long before this, however, Armstrong was playing around with his vocals, shortening and lengthening phrases, interjecting improvisations, using his voice as creatively as his trumpet.

Colleagues and followers

During his long career he played and sang with some of the most important instrumentalists and vocalists of the time; among them were Bing Crosby, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Earl Hines, the singing brakeman Jimmie Rodgers, Bessie Smith and perhaps most famously Ella Fitzgerald.

His influence upon Bing Crosby is particularly important with regard to the subsequent development of popular music: Crosby admired and copied Armstrong, as is evident on many of his early recordings, notably "Just One More Chance" (1931). The New Grove Dictionary Of Jazz describes Crosby's debt to Armstrong in precise detail, although it does not acknowledge Armstrong by name:

Armstrong recorded three albums with Ella Fitzgerald: Ella and Louis, Ella and Louis Again, and Porgy and Bess for Verve Records, with the sessions featuring the backing musicianship of the Oscar Peterson Trio and drummer Buddy Rich. His recordings Satch Plays Fats, all Fats Waller tunes, and Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy in the 1950s were perhaps among the last of his great creative recordings, but even oddities like Disney Songs the Satchmo Way are seen to have their musical moments. And, his participation in Dave Brubeck's high-concept jazz musical The Real Ambassadors was critically acclaimed. For the most part, however, his later output was criticized as being overly simplistic or repetitive.

Hits and later career

Armstrong had many hit records including "Stardust", "What a Wonderful World", "When The Saints Go Marching In", "Dream a Little Dream of Me", "Ain't Misbehavin'", "You Rascal You,"and "Stompin' at the Savoy." "We Have All the Time in the World" was featured on the soundtrack of the James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and enjoyed renewed popularity in the UK in 1994 when it featured on a Guinness advert. It reached number 3 in the charts on being re-released.

In 1964, Armstrong knocked the Beatles off the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart with "Hello, Dolly!", which gave the 63-year-old performer a U.S. record as the oldest artist to have a number one song. His 1964 song, "Bout Time" was later featured in the film "Bewitched" (2005).

Armstrong performed in Italy at the 1968 Sanremo Music Festival where he sang "Mi Va di Cantare" alongside his friend, the Eritrean-born Italian singer Lara Saint Paul. In February 1968, he also appeared with Lara Saint Paul on the Italian RAI television channel where he performed "Grassa e Bella," a track he sang in Italian for the Italian market and C.D.I. label.

In 1968, Armstrong scored one last popular hit in the United Kingdom with the highly sentimental pop song "What a Wonderful World", which topped the British charts for a month; however, the single did not chart at all in America. The song gained greater currency in the popular consciousness when it was used in the 1987 movie Good Morning, Vietnam, its subsequent rerelease topping many charts around the world. Armstrong even appeared on the October 28, 1970 Johnny Cash Show, where he sang Nat "King" Cole's hit "Rambling Rose" and joined Cash to re-create his performance backing Jimmie Rodgers on "Blue Yodel #9".

Stylistic range

Armstrong enjoyed many types of music, from blues to the arrangements of Guy Lombardo, to Latin American folksongs, to classical symphonies and opera. Armstrong incorporated influences from all these sources into his performances, sometimes to the bewilderment of fans who wanted Armstrong to stay in convenient narrow categories. Armstrong was inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an early influence. Some of his solos from the 1950s, such as the hard rocking version of "St. Louis Blues" from the WC Handy album, show that the influence went in both directions.

Literature, radio, films and TV

Armstrong appeared in more than a dozen Hollywood films, usually playing a band leader or musician. His most familiar role was as the bandleader cum narrator in the 1956 musical, High Society, in which he sang the title song and performed a duet with Bing Crosby on "Now You Has Jazz". In 1947, he played himself in the movie New Orleans opposite Billie Holiday, which chronicled the demise of the Storyville district and the ensuing exodus of musicians from New Orleans to Chicago. In the 1959 film, The Five Pennies (the story of the cornetist Red Nichols, he played himself as well as singing and playing several classic numbers, including a remarkable duet with Danny Kaye of When the Saints Go Marching In during which Kaye does a brilliant impersonation of Armstrong. He also had a part in the film alongside James Stewart in "The Glenn Miller Story" in which Glenn (played by Stewart) went along to Connies Inn and had a jam session with him and a few other noted musicians of the time, Louis sang "Basin St. Blues"..

He was the first African American to host a nationally broadcast radio show in the 1930s. In 1969, Armstrong had a cameo role in the film version of Hello, Dolly! as the bandleader, Louis, to which he sang the title song with actress Barbra Streisand. His solo recording of "Hello, Dolly!" is one of his most recognizable performances.

He was heard on such radio programs as The Story of Swing (1937) and This Is Jazz (1947), and he also made countless television appearances, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, including appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

Armstrong has a record star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on 7601 Hollywood Boulevard.

Many of Armstrong's recordings remain popular. Almost four decades since his passing, a larger number of his recordings from all periods of his career are more widely available than at any time during his lifetime. His songs are broadcast and listened to every day throughout the world, and are honored in various movies, TV series, commercials, and even anime and computer games. "A Kiss to Build a Dream On" was included in the computer game Fallout 2, accompanying the intro cinematic. It was also used in the 1993 film Sleepless in Seattle and the 2005 film Lord of War. His 1923 recordings, with Joe Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band, continue to be listened to as documents of ensemble style New Orleans jazz, but more particularly as ripper jazz records in their own right. All too often, however, Armstrong recorded with stiff, standard orchestras leaving only his sublime trumpet playing as of interest. "Melancholy Blues," performed by Armstrong and his Hot Seven was included on the Voyager Golden Record sent into outer space to represent one of the greatest achievements of humanity. Most familiar to modern listeners is his ubiquitous rendition of "What a Wonderful World". In 2008, Armstrong's recording of Edith Piaf's famous "La Vie En Rose" was used in a scene of the popular Disney/Pixar film WALL-E. The song was also used in parts, especially the opening trumpets, in the French Film Jeux d'enfants (English: Love Me If You Dare)

Argentine writer Julio Cortázar, a self-described Armstrong admirer, asserted that a 1952 Louis Armstrong concert at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris played a significant role in inspiring him to create the fictional creatures called Cronopios that are the subject of a number of Cortázar's short stories. Cortázar once called Armstrong himself "Grandísimo Cronopio" (Most Enormous Cronopio).

Armstrong appears as a minor character in Harry Turtledove's Timeline-191 series. When he and his band escape from a Nazi-like Confederacy, they enhance the insipid mainstream music of the North.

There is a pivotal scene in 1980's Stardust Memories in which Woody Allen is overwhelmed by a recording of Armstrong's Stardust and experiences a nostalgic epiphany. The combination of the music and the perfect moment is the catalyst for much of the film's action, prompting the protagonist to fall in love with an ill-advised woman.

Armstrong is referred to in The Trumpet of the Swan along with Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. Three siblings in the film are named Louis, Billie, and Ella. The main character, Louis, plays a trumpet, an obvious nod to Armstrong. In the original E. B. White book, he is referred to by name, by a child who hears Louis playing and comments, "He sounds just like Louis Armstrong, the famous trumpet player."

In the 2009 Disney Film The Princess and the Frog, one of the supporting characters is a trumpet-playing alligator named Louis. During the song "When I'm Human", Louis sings a line and it says "Y'all heard of Louis Armstrong".

Awards and honors

Grammy Awards

Armstrong was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1972 by the Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. This Special Merit Award is presented by vote of the Recording Academy's National Trustees to performers who, during their lifetimes, have made creative contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the field of recording.

{| class=wikitable |- | colspan="6" style="text-align:center;" | Grammy Award |- ! Year ! Category ! Title ! Genre ! Label ! Result |- align=center | 1964 | Male Vocal Performance | "Hello, Dolly!" | Pop | Kapp | Winner |}

Grammy Hall of Fame

Recordings of Armstrong were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, which is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least twenty-five years old, and that have "qualitative or historical significance."

{| class=wikitable |- | colspan="6" style="text-align:center;" | Grammy Hall of Fame |- ! Year Recorded ! Title ! Genre ! Label ! Year Inducted ! Notes |- align=center | 1929 | "St. Louis Blues" | Jazz (Single) | OKeh | 2008 |with Bessie Smith |- align=center | 1928 | "Weather Bird" | Jazz (Single) | OKeh | 2008 | with Earl Hines |- align=center | 1930 | "Blue Yodel #9(Standing on the Corner)" | Country (Single) | Victor | 2007 | Jimmie Rodgers (Featuring Louis Armstrong) |- align=center | 1932 | "All of Me" | Jazz (Single) | Columbia | 2005 | |- align=center | 1958 | Porgy and Bess | Jazz (Album) | Verve | 2001 | with Ella Fitzgerald |- align=center | 1964 | "Hello Dolly!" | Pop (Single) | Kapp | 2001 | |- align=center | 1926 | "Heebie Jeebies" | Jazz (Single) | OKeh | 1999 | |- align=center | 1968 | "What a Wonderful World" | Jazz (Single) | ABC | 1999 | |- align=center | 1955 | "Mack the Knife" | Jazz (Single) | Columbia | 1997 | |- align=center | 1925 | "St. Louis Blues" | Jazz (Single) | Columbia | 1993 | Bessie Smith with Louis Armstrong, cornet |- align=center | 1928 | "West End Blues" | Jazz (Single) | OKeh | 1974 | |}

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame listed a song by Armstrong on the list of 500 songs that shaped Rock and Roll.

{| class=wikitable |- ! Year Recorded ! Title ! Label ! Group |- align=center | 1928 | West End Blues | Okeh | Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five |}

Inductions and honors

In 1995, the U.S. Post Office issued a Louis Armstrong 32 cents commemorative postage stamp.

{| class=wikitable |- ! Year Inducted ! Title ! Results ! Notes |- align=center | 2007 | Louisiana Music Hall of Fame | | |- align=center | 2007 | Gennett Records Walk of Fame, Richmond, Indiana | | |- align=center | 2007 | Long Island Music Hall of Fame | | |- align=center | 2004 | Nesuhi Ertegün Jazz Hall of Fameat Jazz at Lincoln Center | | |- align=center | 1990 | Rock and Roll Hall of Fame | | Early influence |- align=center | 1978 | Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame | | |- align=center | 1952 | Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame | | |- align=center | 1960 | Hollywood Walk of Fame | Star | at 7601 Hollywood Blvd. |}

Legacy

The house where Louis Armstrong lived for close to 28 years was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1977 and is now a museum. The Louis Armstrong House Museum, at 34-56 107th Street (between 34th and 37th Avenues) in Corona, Queens, presents concerts and educational programs, operates as a historic house museum and makes materials in its archives of writings, books, recordings and memorabilia available to the public for research. The museum is operated by the City University of New York's Queens College, following the dictates of Lucille Armstrong's will.

The museum opened to the public on October 15, 2003. A visitors center is currently being planned, and estimated to open in 2011.

The influence of Armstrong on the development of jazz is virtually immeasurable. Yet, his irrepressible personality both as a performer, and as a public figure later in his career, was so strong that to some it sometimes overshadowed his contributions as a musician and singer.

As a virtuoso trumpet player, Armstrong had a unique tone and an extraordinary talent for melodic improvisation. Through his playing, the trumpet emerged as a solo instrument in jazz and is used widely today. He was a masterful accompanist and ensemble player in addition to his extraordinary skills as a soloist. With his innovations, he raised the bar musically for all who came after him.

Though Armstrong is widely recognized as a pioneer of scat singing, Ethel Waters precedes his scatting on record in the 1930s according to Gary Giddins and others. Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra are just two singers who were greatly indebted to him. Holiday said that she always wanted Bessie Smith's 'big' sound and Armstrong's feeling in her singing.

On August 4, 2001, the centennial of Armstrong's birth, New Orleans's airport was renamed Louis Armstrong International Airport in his honor.

In 2002, the Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings (1925–1928) are preserved in the United States National Recording Registry, a registry of recordings selected yearly by the National Recording Preservation Board for preservation in the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress.

The US Open tennis tournament's former main stadium was named Louis Armstrong Stadium in honor of Armstrong who had lived a few blocks from the site.

Today, there are many bands worldwide dedicated to preserving and honoring the music and style of Satchmo, including the Louis Armstrong Society located in New Orleans, LA.

Discography

Louis Armstrong albums

Louis Armstrong songs

Notes

References

Armstrong, Louis. Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans. ISBN 0-306-80276-7

Armstrong, Louis and Thomas Brothers. Armstrong, in His Own Words: Selected Writings. ISBN 0-19-514046-X

Bergreen, Laurence "Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life" ISBN 0-553-06768-0

Brothers, Thomas "Louis Armstrong's New Orleans" ISBN 0-393-06109-4

Cogswell, Michael. Armstrong: The Offstage Story. ISBN 1-888054-81-6

Elie, Lolis Eric. A Letter from New Orleans. Originally printed in Gourmet. Reprinted in Best Food Writing 2006, Edited by Holly Hughes, ISBN 1-56924-287-9

Jones Max and John Chilton. Louis Armstrong Story. ISBN 0-306-80324-0

Meckna, Michael. Satchmo: The Louis Armstrong Encyclopedia. ISBN 0-313-30137-9

Video clips

"Louis Armstrong - Documentary (Part 1)"

"Louis Armstrong - Documentary (Part 2)"

"Louis Armstrong - Documentary (Part 3)"

"Louis Armstrong - Documentary (Part 4)"

"Louis Armstrong - Documentary (Part 5)"

"Louis Armstrong - Documentary (Part 6)"

"Louis Armstrong - Documentary (Part 7)"

"Louis Armstrong - Documentary (Part 8)"

"What a Wonderful World" BBC recording, 1968

"When The Saints Go Marching In"

"Hello Dolly"

"Hello Dolly" with Barbra Streisand

"Now You Has Jazz"

"Blueberry Hill"

"Mack the Knife Germany, 1959

"Stompin' At The Savoy" Germany, 1959

"Tiger Rag"

"C'est si bon 1962

"Dream a Little Dream" photo slide show

"Louis Armstrong and Frank Sinatra - The Birth of The Blues" - The Edsel Show

"Louis Armstrong on the Mark Twain at Disneyland"

"Louis Armstrong - Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen (1962)"

"Louis Armstrong - Basin Street Blues - 1959"

"Louis Armstrong - A kiss To Build A Dream"

External links

louis-armstrong.net - Sony BMG Music Entertainment

Louis Armstrong by Nat Hentoff

Obituary, NY Times

Quotes and tributes

Discography

Filmography @ imdb.com

The Louis Armstrong Society Jazz Band

Louis Armstrong: A Life in Music - slideshow by Life magazine

Seeing Black jazz critic on the Uncle Tom question

the official website of the Louis Armstrong House & Archives

"Louis Armstrong Transcription Project - john p birchall"

Louis Armstrong at pbskids.org

David Margolick, The Day Louis Armstrong Made Noise

Smithsonian Louis Armstrong: A Cultural Legacy

Louis Armstrong at NPR Music

Louis Armstrong: discography and early recordings (Real Player format) on the Red Hot Jazz website.

Milestone Louis Armstrong recordings at Three Perfect Minutes

Louis Armstrong's autobiography online book

* "Satchmo - My Life in New Orleans(1954)" free download

*"Satchmo - My Life in New Orleans" another website

Category:1901 births Category:1971 deaths Category:ABC Records artists Category:African American brass musicians Category:African American singers Category:American buskers Category:American jazz cornetists Category:American jazz singers Category:American jazz trumpeters Category:American male singers Category:Burials at Flushing Cemetery Category:Cardiovascular disease deaths in New York Category:Columbia Records artists Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:Decca Records artists Category:Dixieland bandleaders Category:Dixieland singers Category:Dixieland trumpeters Category:Gennett recording artists Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Jazz bandleaders Category:Jazz musicians from New Orleans, Louisiana Category:MGM Records artists Category:Musicians from Louisiana Category:Okeh Records artists Category:People from Corona, Queens Category:RCA Victor artists Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Category:Swing bandleaders Category:Swing singers Category:Swing trumpeters Category:Vocal jazz musicians Category:Vocalion Records artists

Name	Joe Strummer
Landscape	no
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	John Graham Mellor
Born	August 21, 1952Ankara, Turkey
Died	December 22, 2002Broomfield, Somerset, England
Instrument	Vocals, guitar, piano, bass
Genre	Punk rock, rock and roll, reggae, world music
Occupation	Musician, songwriter, radio host, actor
Years active	1973–2002
Label	CBS, Sony, Hellcat, Mercury
Associated acts	The 101ers, The Clash, The Latino Rockabilly War, The Pogues, The Mescaleros
Url	www.strummernews.com
Notable instruments	1966 Fender Telecaster

John Graham Mellor (21 August 1952 – 22 December 2002), best remembered by his stage name Joe Strummer, was the co-founder, lyricist, rhythm guitarist and lead vocalist of the critically acclaimed British rock band The Clash. His musical experience included his membership in The 101ers, Latino Rockabilly War, The Mescaleros and The Pogues, in addition to his own solo music career. Strummer's work as a musician allowed him to explore other interests, which included acting, creating film scores for television and movies, songwriting, radio broadcasting, and a position as a radio host.

Joe Strummer and The Clash were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in January 2003. In his remembrance, Strummer's friends and family have established the Strummerville Foundation for the promotion of new music, and each year there are many festivals and both organized and spontaneous ceremonies worldwide to celebrate his memory.

Biography and career

(1952–1976) The early years

Strummer was born John Graham Mellor in Ankara, Turkey on 21 August 1952. His mother Anna Mackenzie, a crofter's daughter born and raised in Bonar Bridge in the Scottish Highlands, was a nurse. His father, Ronald Mellor, was a British foreign service diplomat born in Lucknow, India. Ronald Mellor had an Armenian maternal grandfather and a German Jewish paternal grandmother.

The family spent much time moving from place to place, and Strummer spent parts of his early childhood in Cairo, Mexico City, and Bonn. At the age of 9, Strummer and his older brother David, 10, began boarding at the City of London Freemen's School in Surrey. Strummer rarely saw his parents during the next seven years. He developed a love of rock music listening to records by Little Richard and The Beach Boys as well as American folk-singer Woody Guthrie (Strummer would even go by the nickname "Woody" for a few years).

By 1970 his brother David had become estranged from his family and had joined the National Front. His suicide in July profoundly affected Strummer, as did having to identify his body after it had lain undiscovered for three days. During this time, Mellor shared a flat in the north London suburb of Palmers Green with friends Clive Timperley and Tymon Dogg.

In 1973 Strummer moved to Newport, Wales. He did not study at Newport College of Art but met up with college musicians in the Students' Union in Stow Hill and became vocalist for Flaming Youth, renaming the band The Vultures. The Vultures The band played many gigs in London pubs, playing covers of popular American R&B; and blues songs. In 1975 he stopped calling himself "Woody" Mellor and adopted the stage name of Joe Strummer, and insisted that his friends call him by that name. The name "Strummer" apparently referred to his role as rhythm guitarist, in a rather self-deprecating way. Though left-handed, he was taught to play right-handed by his friend Tymon Dogg. Strummer was the lead singer of the 101'ers and began to write original songs for the group. One song he wrote was inspired by his girlfriend at the time, Slits drummer Palmolive. The group liked the song "Keys to Your Heart", and picked it as their first single.

(1976–1986) The Clash

On 3 April 1976, a then-unknown band called the Sex Pistols opened for The 101'ers at a venue called "The Nashville Rooms" in London, and Strummer was impressed by them. Their songs tackled social decay, unemployment, racism, police brutality, political and social repression, and militarism in detail. Strummer was involved with the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism campaigns. He later also gave his support to the Rock Against the Rich series of concerts organised by the anarchist organisation Class War. The Clash's London Calling album was voted best album of the 1980s by Rolling Stone magazine (although it was released in late 1979 in the UK; it was released in 1980 in the USA).

During his time with The Clash, Strummer, along with his bandmates, became notorious for getting in trouble with the law. On 10 June 1977, he and Topper were arrested for spray-painting "The Clash" on a wall in a hotel. On 20 May 1980, he was arrested for hitting a violent member of the audience with his guitar during a show in Hamburg, Germany. This incident shocked Strummer, and had a lasting personal impact on him.

Category:1952 births Category:2002 deaths Category:Alumni of the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design Category:The Clash members Category:Cardiovascular disease deaths in England Category:English buskers Category:English male singers Category:English people of Scottish descent Category:English punk rock guitarists Category:English punk rock singers Category:English singer-songwriters Category:English socialists Category:Epitaph Records artists Category:Mercury Records artists Category:Old Citizens (City of London School) Category:People from Ankara Category:The Pogues members Category:Rhythm guitarists Category:World music musicians Category:Squatters

Name	Jerry Reed
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Jerry Reed Hubbard
Born	March 20, 1937Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.
Died	September 01, 2008Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.
Instrument	Guitar
Genre	Country
Occupation	Musician, Songwriter, Actor
Years active	1956–2008
Spouse	Priscilla Mitchell (1959-2008) (his death) 2 children
Associated acts	Chet Atkins, Elvis Presley, Buster B. Jones

Jerry Reed Hubbard (March 20, 1937 – September 1, 2008), known professionally as Jerry Reed, and lovingly as the Snowman, was an American country music singer, country guitarist, session musician, songwriter, and actor who appeared in more than a dozen films. As a singer, he was known for "(Who Was the Man Who Put) The Line in Gasoline"; "Lord, Mr. Ford (What Have You Done)"; "Amos Moses"; "When You're Hot, You're Hot," for which he received the Grammy Award for Best Male Country Vocal Performance in 1972; and "East Bound and Down," the theme song for the film Smokey and the Bandit, in which he also co-starred.

Early life

Reed was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the second child of Robert and Cynthia Hubbard. Reed's grandparents lived in Rockmart, GA and he would visit them from time to time. He was quoted as saying as a small child, while running around strumming his guitar, "I am gonna be a star. I'm gonna go to Nashville and be a star." Reed's parents separated four months after his birth, and he and his sister spent seven years in foster homes or orphanages. Reed was reunited with his mother and stepfather in 1944. Music and impromptu performances helped ease the stressful times the new family was under.

By high school, Reed was already writing and singing music, having picked up the guitar as a child. At age 18, he was signed by publisher and record producer Bill Lowery to cut his first record, "If the Good Lord's Willing and the Creek Don't Rise." At Capitol Records, he recorded both country and rockabilly singles to little notice, until label mate Gene Vincent covered his "Crazy Legs" in 1958. By 1958, Lowery signed Reed to his National Recording Corporation, and he recorded for NRC as both artist and as a member of the staff band, which included other NRC artists Joe South and Ray Stevens.

Reed married Priscilla "Prissy" Mitchell in 1959. They had two daughters, Charlotte Elaine "Lottie" Reed Stewart, and Seidina Ann Reed Hinesley, born April 2, 1960. Priscilla Mitchell was a member of folk group the Appalachians ("Bony Moronie," 1963), and was co-credited with Roy Drusky on the 1965 Country #1 "Yes Mr. Peters."

Career

In 1959, Reed hit the Billboard "Bubbling Under The Top 100" and Cashbox Country chart with the single "Soldier's Joy." After serving two years in the military, Reed moved to Nashville in 1961 to continue his songwriting career, which had continued to gather steam while he was in the armed forces, thanks to Brenda Lee's 1960 cover of his "That's All You Got to Do." He also became a popular session and tour guitarist. In 1962, he scored some success with the singles "Goodnight Irene" (as by Jerry Reed & the Hully Girlies, featuring a female vocal group) and "Hully Gully Guitar," which found their way to Chet Atkins, who produced Reed's 1965 "If I Don't Live Up to It."

"Guitar Man"

In 1967, Reed notched his first official country chart hit with "Guitar Man," which Elvis Presley soon covered. Presley had come to Nashville to record in 1967, and one of the songs he was working on was "Guitar Man" (which Reed had written and recorded earlier). "I was out on the Cumberland River fishing, and I got a call from Felton Jarvis (then Presley's producer). He said, 'Elvis is down here. We've been trying to cut 'Guitar Man' all day long. He wants it to sound like it sounded on your album.' I finally told him, 'Well, if you want it to sound like that, you're going have to get me in there to play guitar, because these guys (you're using in the studio) are straight pickers. I pick with my fingers and tune that guitar up all weird kind of ways.'"

Jarvis hired Reed to play on the session. "I hit that intro, and [Elvis'] face lit up and here we went. Then after he got through that, he cut [my] "U.S. Male" at the same session. I was toppin' cotton, son." Reed also played the guitar for Elvis Presley's "Big Boss Man" (1967), recorded in the same session. In January 1968 Reed worked on a second Presley session, during which he played guitar on a cover of Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business", as well as another Reed composition, "U.S. Male" (Reed's quoted recollection of "U.S. Male" being recorded at the same session as "Guitar Man" being incorrect). After Presley recorded "U.S. Male," the songwriter recorded an Elvis tribute, "Tupelo Mississippi Flash," which proved to be his first Top 20 hit.

Elvis also recorded two other Reed compositions: "A Thing Called Love" in 1970 and "Talk About The Good Times" in 1973 for a total of four.

Johnny Cash would also release "A Thing Called Love" as a single in 1971, which would reach #2 on the Billboard Country Singles Chart for North America. It would become the title track for a studio album that he released the following spring.

1970s

After releasing the 1970 crossover hit "Amos Moses", a hybrid of rock, country, funk, and Cajun styles, which reached No. 8 on the U.S. pop charts, Reed teamed with Atkins for the duet LP Me & Jerry. During the 1970 television season, he was a regular on The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, and in 1971 he issued his biggest hit, the chart-topper "When You're Hot, You're Hot", which was also the title track of his first solo album, reaching #9 Pop and #6 on Billboard's Easy Listening charts. Both "Amos Moses" and "When You're Hot, You're Hot" sold over one million copies, and were awarded gold discs by the R.I.A.A.

A second collaboration with Atkins, Me & Chet, followed in 1972, as did a series of Top 40 singles, which alternated between frenetic, straightforward country offerings and more pop-flavored, countrypolitan material. A year later, he scored his second number one single with "Lord, Mr. Ford" (written by Dick Feller), from the album of the same name.

Atkins, who frequently produced Reed's music, remarked that he had to encourage Reed to put instrumental numbers on his own albums, as Reed always considered himself more of a songwriter than a player. Atkins, however, thought Reed was a better fingerstyle player than he himself was; Reed, according to Atkins, helped him work out the fingerpicking for one of Atkins' biggest hits, "Yakety Axe." Reed, one of only four people to have the title of "Certified Guitar Player" (an award only bestowed to those who have completely mastered guitar), was given this title by Chet Atkins.

Reed was featured in animated form in a December 9, 1972 episode of Hanna-Barbera's The New Scooby-Doo Movies, "The Phantom of the Country Music Hall" (prod. #61-10). He sang and played the song "Pretty Mary Sunlight." The song is played throughout the episode as Scooby and the gang search for Reed's missing guitar.

In the mid-1970s, Reed's recording career began to take a back seat to his acting aspirations. In 1974, he co-starred with his close friend Burt Reynolds in the film W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings. While he continued to record throughout the decade, his greatest visibility was as a motion picture star, almost always in tandem with headliner Reynolds; after 1976's Gator, Reed appeared in 1978's High Ballin and 1979's Hot Stuff. He also co-starred in all three of the Smokey and the Bandit films; the first, which premiered in 1977, landed Reed a Number 2 hit with the soundtrack's "East Bound and Down."

Reed also took a stab at hosting a TV variety show, filming two episodes of The Jerry Reed Show in 1976. The show featured music performances and interview segments, but did not contain the comedy skits that usually were a part of variety shows of the '70s. Guests included Tammy Wynette, Ray Stevens, and Burt Reynolds.

Scottish rockers the Sensational Alex Harvey Band band released a version of "Amos Moses" in 1976.

In 1978, he appeared as himself in the television show Alice.

In 1979, he released a record comprising both vocal and instrumental selections titled, appropriately enough, Half & Half. It was followed one year later by Jerry Reed Sings Jim Croce, a tribute to the late singer/songwriter. He starred in a TV movie in that year entitled The Concrete Cowboys.

1980s and 1990s

In 1982, Reed's career as a singles artist was revitalized by the chart-topping hit "She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft)," followed by "The Bird," which peaked at Number 2. His last chart hit, "I'm a Slave," appeared in 1983. That same year, he co-starred with Robin Williams and Walter Matthau in the Michael Ritchie comedy The Survivors. Reed guest-starred in the October 13, 1983 episode of Mama's Family, "The Return of Leonard Oates" (Episode 13, Season 2), as Naomi Harper's ex-husband Leonard Oates.

After an unsuccessful 1986 LP, Lookin' at You, Reed focused on touring until 1992, when he and Atkins reunited for the album Sneakin' Around before he again returned to the road.

Reed had a role as a Commander/Huey Pilot for Danny Glover's character in the 1988 movie Bat*21 starring Gene Hackman. He also acted as executive producer and screenwriter on this film.

Reed starred in the 1998 Adam Sandler film, The Waterboy, as Red Beaulieu, the movie's chief antagonist and the head coach for the University of Louisiana Cougars football team.

He teamed up with country superstars Waylon Jennings, Mel Tillis, and Bobby Bare in the group Old Dogs. They recorded one album, in 1998, entitled Old Dogs, with songs written by Shel Silverstein. (Reed sang lead on "Young Man's Job" and "Elvis Has Left The Building," the latter possibly in deference to Elvis' helping launch his career.)

In 1998, the American rock band Primus covered the Reed song "Amos Moses" on the EP entitled Rhinoplasty.

2000s

In October 2004, "Amos Moses" was featured on the , playing on fictional radio station K-ROSE. His latest recording was released in 2006, named Let's Git It On. In 2007, UK band Alabama 3 (Known as A3 in the USA) covered his hit "Amos Moses" on their album M.O.R.

In June 2005, American guitarist Eric Johnson released his album Bloom, which contained a track entitled "Tribute To Jerry Reed" in commemoration of his works.

Reed has appeared as a guest on the fishing television series Bill Dance Outdoors. In one memorable appearance, Reed caught a particularly big largemouth bass and planned to have it preserved and mounted by a taxidermist. Host Bill Dance objected to this plan, and freed the fish when Jerry wasn't looking. Reed became enraged when he discovered what had happened, and chased Dance off the boat and to shore. This incident was also mentioned in one of Jeff Foxworthy's standup comedy routines. He did guest appearances on the Bill Dance Fishing show. The song "Eastbound and Down" made a rather impressive setting in the movie Delta Farce, starring Larry the Cable Guy, Bill Engvall, and DJ Qualls.

Death

Reed died in Nashville, Tennessee, on September 1, 2008, of complications from emphysema. In a tribute in Vintage Guitar Magazine, Rich Kienzle wrote that "Reed set a standard that inspires fingerstyle players the way Merle and Chet inspired him."

Discography

Albums

^AWhen You're Hot, You're Hot also peaked at #33 on the RPM Top Albums chart in Canada.

Singles

#"When You're Hot, You're Hot" also peaked at #6 on Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks.

Guest singles

B-Sides

Filmography

{|class="wikitable" style="font-size: 90%;" border="2" cellpadding="4" background: #f9f9f9; |- align="center" ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Year ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Film ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Role ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Film gross ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Notes |- | 1975 | W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings | Wayne | |- | 1976 | Gator | Bama McCall | |- | 1977 | Smokey and the Bandit | Cledus Snow | USD$126,737,428 | |- | 1978 | High-Ballin' | Duke | |- | 1979 | Concrete Cowboys | J.D. Reed | | Made for TV movie |- | 1979 | Hot Stuff | Doug von Horne | |- | 1980 | Smokey and the Bandit II | Cledus Snow | $66,132,626 | |- | 1983 | Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 | Cledus Snow / 'Bandit' | $5,678,950 | Source of an urban legend |- | 1983 | The Survivors | Jack Locke | $14,000,000 | |- | 1985 | Stand Alone | Paramedic | |- | 1985 | What Comes Around | Joe Hawkins | |- | 1988 | Bat*21 | Col. George Walker |$3,184,348 |- | 1998 | The Waterboy | Coach Red Beaulieu | $185,991,646 |- | 2001 | Joe Dirt | Neighbor | | Cameo |}

References

Further reading

Goldsmith, Thomas. (1998). "Jerry Reed." In The Encyclopedia of Country Music. Paul Kingsbury, Ed. New York: Oxford Press. pp. 433–4.

External links

[ AMG Entry for Jerry Reed]. Retrieved Jan. 7, 2006. "Discography". AlabamaWildman.com. Retrieved October 13, 2004. "R2K Records". Jerry Reed's own label

http://www.rockabillyhall.com/JerryReed.html

"Jerry Reed, Country Singer and Actor, Dies at 71" from The New York Times

Category:1937 births Category:2008 deaths Category:Deaths from emphysema Category:American film actors Category:American male singers Category:American country singer-songwriters Category:American country guitarists Category:American country musicians Category:American country singers Category:Fingerstyle guitarists Category:People from Atlanta, Georgia Category:Grammy Award winners Category:National Recording Corporation artists Category:RCA Victor artists Category:Capitol Records artists Category:Columbia Records artists

Name	Elizabeth Fraser
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Elizabeth Davidson Fraser
Born	August 29, 1963Grangemouth, Scotland, UK
Genre	Gothic rock, Ambient, Dreampop, Ethereal wave
Occupation	Singer
Years active	1982–present
Associated acts	Cocteau TwinsThis Mortal CoilMassive Attack
Url	Official website}}

Elizabeth Davidson Fraser (born 29 August 1963, Grangemouth) is a Scottish singer best known as the vocalist for the pioneer dreampop group Cocteau Twins. Described by critic Jason Ankeny as "an utterly unique performer whose swooping, operatic vocals relied less on any recognizable language than on the subjective sounds and textures of verbalized emotions," Fraser's distinctive singing earned much critical praise. To her chagrin, she was once described as "the voice of God." Fraser's singing veers between semi-comprehensible lyrics and abstract mouth music; fans have oft-debated the inspiration and meaning of her lyrics, but over the years Fraser has been reluctant to discuss such topics. Fraser has a soprano vocal range.

Fraser and Cocteau Twins

Fraser was the vocalist and lyricist in Cocteau Twins, a group founded in 1981 by Robin Guthrie and Will Heggie. At the time, she was 17 years old, and had never thought of herself as a singer. Guthrie and Heggie noticed her dancing at a club one night, and asked her to join their band. Fraser and Guthrie formed a relationship, and had a daughter, Lucy Belle, in 1989. Guthrie liberally used drugs and alcohol through the years, and Fraser suffered a nervous breakdown during the recording of Four-Calendar Café. The couple broke up in 1992, still opting to continue a musical relationship until 1998, when Cocteau Twins were disbanded.

Fraser had an intense personal relationship with singer Jeff Buckley and recorded a duet with him, "All Flowers In Time Bend Towards The Sun", written by Buckley but never released commercially. She speaks candidly about their relationship in the BBC documentary, Jeff Buckley: Everybody Here Wants You.

Cocteau Twins were due to perform for the North American Coachella Festival on 30 April 2005, but cancelled on 16 March 2005.

During the years of working as part of Cocteau Twins, Fraser also collaborated with numerous artists, appearing on 4AD house band This Mortal Coil's first release along with her bandmates where her notable contributions included a cover version of Tim Buckley's Song to the Siren, and providing one-off vocals for acts such as Felt (Primitive Painters), Dif Juz (Extractions LP), the Future Sound of London (Lifeforms EP), the Wolfgang Press, Ian McCulloch and others.

Post-Cocteau Twins

After the breakup of Cocteau Twins in 1998, Fraser continued to collaborate with a range of performers, including The Future Sound of London, Elliot Goldenthal, Craig Armstrong, Massive Attack (including extensive tours performing with the band in 2006), and Peter Gabriel's millennium project OVO.

She has subsequently contributed to the soundtracks of several films, such as, In Dreams, Cruel Intentions, The Winter Guest and (also uncredited in the soundtrack of the Fellowship Of The Ring Extended Edition DVD), and has occasionally appeared as a guest artist on other musicians' projects. In 2005, she also participated in Yann Tiersen's album Les Retrouvailles. She sings in two pieces: "Kala" and "Mary".

Solo career

Aside from the work with other artists, Fraser's solo career has been quiet. In 2000, a white label recording, Underwater, was released in a limited edition of only 200 copies. She contributed a cover version of "At Last I am Free" (originally by '70s band Chic, covered by Robert Wyatt) on the 2003 album Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before, a celebration of 25 year of Rough Trade Records. In 2004, Fraser was invited to participate in a unique audio exhibit, "Shhh...", at London's Victoria and Albert Museum for which she produced a piece called "Expectant Mood", which has not been made commercially available. Fraser has reportedly signed to Blanco y Negro Records, but little is known about the progress of an officially released solo album. In December 2006 New Music Express magazine reported that her solo album was due for release in early 2007. The album would have contained eight tracks, one of which is to be a cover version. No titles were announced and the album was never released. Its current status is unknown.

In November 2009 it was announced that Fraser was releasing a solo single, '"Moses", available on 12" and download through Rough Trade. The single was recorded some time ago with her partner of more than a decade – Massive Attack's drummer Damon Reece, and close friend Jake Drake-Brockman.

Website

The official website Elizabethfraser.com was initially created by a fan, but was taken over by Fraser's management company on 22 March 2007. , the new site content is updated with news on the release for the new single "Moses".

Family

Elizabeth Fraser lives with her partner, musician Damon Reece (from the band Lupine Howl), in Bristol. She has two daughters, Lucy Belle Guthrie, her daughter with Robin Guthrie and Lily, her daughter with Damon Reece.

Collaboration and guest appearances with others: (1982 - present)

References

External links

Official website

2009 Interview with Fraser, her first in a decade. The Guardian 26 November 2009

Cocteau Twins, Official website of Cocteau Twins

Official Cocteau Twins Fan website (cocteautwins.org)

Official Cocteau Twins Forums (cocteautwinsforums.com)

Official Cocteau Twins Festival (cocteaufest.com)

Category:1963 births Category:1980s singers Category:1990s singers Category:2000s singers Category:2010s singers Category:Living people Category:Female rock singers Category:Scottish singers Category:People from Grangemouth Category:4AD Category:Scottish female singers Category:Scottish sopranos