As a person's temperature increases, there is, in general, a feeling of cold despite an increasing body temperature. Once the new temperature is reached, there is a feeling of warmth. A fever can be caused by many different conditions ranging from benign to potentially serious. There are arguments for and against the usefulness of fever, and the issue is controversial. Fever is generally agreed to be present if the elevated temperature is caused by a raised set point and: Temperature in the anus (rectum/rectal) is at or over Temperature under the arm (axillary) or in the ear (otic) is at or over
In healthy adult men and women, the range of normal, healthy temperatures for oral temperature is , for rectal it is , for tympanic membrane it is , and for axillary it is .
Normal body temperatures vary depending on many factors, including age, sex, time of day, ambient temperature, activity level, and more. A raised temperature is not always a fever. For example, the temperature of a healthy person rises when he or she exercises, but this is not considered a fever, as the set-point is normal. On the other hand, a "normal" temperature may be a fever, if it is unusually high for that person. For example, medically frail elderly people have a decreased ability to generate body heat, so a "normal" temperature of may represent a clinically significant fever.
Continuous fever: Temperature remains above normal throughout the day and does not fluctuate more than in 24 hours, e.g. lobar pneumonia, typhoid, urinary tract infection, brucellosis, or typhus. Typhoid fever may show a specific fever pattern, with a slow stepwise increase and a high plateau. (Drops due to fever-reducing drugs are excluded.) Intermittent fever: The temperature elevation is present only for a certain period, later cycling back to normal, e.g. malaria, kala-azar, pyaemia, or septicemia.
A neutropenic fever, also called febrile neutropenia, is a fever in the absence of normal immune system function. Because of the lack of infection-fighting neutrophils, a bacterial infection can spread rapidly; this fever is, therefore, usually considered to require urgent medical attention. This kind of fever is more commonly seen in people receiving immune-suppressing chemotherapy than in apparently healthy people.
Febricula is an old term for a low-grade fever, especially if the cause is unknown, no other symptoms are present, and the patient recovers fully in less than a week.
Persistent fever that cannot be explained after repeated routine clinical inquiries is called fever of unknown origin.
Temperature is ultimately regulated in the hypothalamus. A trigger of the fever, called a pyrogen, causes a release of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2). PGE2 then in turn acts on the hypothalamus, which generates a systemic response back to the rest of the body, causing heat-creating effects to match a new temperature level.
In many respects, the hypothalamus works like a thermostat. When the set point is raised, the body increases its temperature through both active generation of heat and retaining heat. Vasoconstriction both reduces heat loss through the skin and causes the person to feel cold. If these measures are insufficient to make the blood temperature in the brain match the new setting in the hypothalamus, then shivering begins in order to use muscle movements to produce more heat. When the fever stops, and the hypothalamic setting is set lower; the reverse of these processes (vasodilation, end of shivering and nonshivering heat production) and sweating are used to cool the body to the new, lower setting.
This contrasts with hyperthermia, in which the normal setting remains, and the body overheats through undesirable retention of excess heat or over-production of heat. interleukin 6 (IL-6) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha. Minor endogenous pyrogens include interleukin-8, tumor necrosis factor-α, tumor necrosis factor-β, macrophage inflammatory protein-α and macrophage inflammatory protein-β as well as interferon-α, interferon-β, and interferon-γ. There are studies using warm-blooded vertebrates and humans in vivo, with some suggesting that they recover more rapidly from infections or critical illness due to fever. A Finnish study suggested reduced mortality in bacterial infections when fever was present.
In theory, fever can aid in host defense. Fevers may be useful to some extent since they allow the body to reach high temperatures, causing an unbearable environment for some pathogens. White blood cells also rapidly proliferate due to the suitable environment and can also help fight off the harmful pathogens and microbes that invaded the body.
Research has demonstrated that fever has several important functions in the healing process:
As a result of these misconceptions, parents are anxious, give the child fever-reducing medicine when the temperature is technically normal or only slightly elevated, and interfere with the child's sleep to give the child more medicine.
In species that allow the body to have a wide range of "normal" temperatures, such as camels, it is sometimes difficult to determine a febrile stage.
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Name | Peggy Lee |
|---|---|
| Caption | in the film Stage Door Canteen (1943) |
| Background | solo_singer |
| Birth name | Norma Deloris Egstrom |
| Birth date | May 26, 1920 |
| Birth place | Jamestown, North Dakota |
| Death date | January 21, 2002 |
| Death place | Bel Air, Los Angeles, California |
| Genre | Traditional pop, jazz |
| Occupation | Singer, actress, songwriter |
| Years active | 1941–2000 |
| Label | Decca Records Capitol Records |
She returned to North Dakota for a tonsillectomy and later made her way to Chicago for a gig at The Buttery Room, a nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel East, where she was noticed by bandleader Benny Goodman. According to Lee, "Benny's then-fiancée, Lady Alice Duckworth, came into The Buttery, and she was very impressed. So the next evening she brought Benny in, because they were looking for a replacement for Helen Forrest. And although I didn't know, I was it. He was looking at me strangely, I thought, but it was just his preoccupied way of looking. I thought that he didn't like me at first, but it just was that he was preoccupied with what he was hearing." She joined his band in 1941 and stayed for two years.
In March 1943 Lee married Dave Barbour, a guitarist in Goodman's band. Peggy said, "David joined Benny's band and there was a ruling that no one should fraternize with the girl singer. But I fell in love with David the first time I heard him play, and so I married him. Benny then fired David, so I quit, too. Benny and I made up, although David didn't play with him anymore. Benny stuck to his rule. I think that's not too bad a rule, but you can't help falling in love with somebody."
When Lee and Barbour left the band, the idea was that he would work in the studios and she would keep house and raise their daughter, Nicki. But she drifted back to songwriting and occasional recording sessions for the fledgling Capitol Records in 1947, for whom she produced a long string of hits, many of them with lyrics and music by Lee and Barbour, including "I Don't Know Enough About You" and "It's a Good Day" (1948). With the release of the #1-selling record of 1947, "Mañana", her "retirement" was over.
In 1948 Lee joined Perry Como and Jo Stafford as a rotating host of the NBC Radio musical program Chesterfield Supper Club. She was also a regular on NBC's Jimmy Durante Show.
She left Capitol for a few years in the early 1950s, but returned in 1953. She is most famous for her cover version of the Little Willie John hit "Fever", to which she added her own, uncopyrighted lyrics ("Romeo loved Juliet," "Captain Smith and Pocahontas") and her rendition of Leiber and Stoller's "Is That All There Is?". Her relationship with the Capitol label spanned almost three decades, aside from her brief but artistically rich detour (1952–1956) at Decca Records, where in 1956 she recorded one of her most acclaimed albums, Black Coffee. While recording for Decca, Lee had hit singles with the songs Lover and Mister Wonderful.
Lee is today internationally recognized for her signature song "Fever". She had a string of successful albums and top 10 hits in three consecutive decades. She is regarded as one of the most influential jazz vocalists of all time, being cited as a mentor to diverse artists such as Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Paul McCartney, Bette Midler, Madonna, and Dusty Springfield. Lee was also an accomplished actress,.
In her 60-year-long career, Peggy was the recipient of three Grammy Awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award, an Academy Award nomination, The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) Award; the President's Award, the Ella Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Living Legacy Award from the Women's International Center. In 1999 Lee was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
She wrote the lyrics for:
Her first published song was in 1941, "Little Fool". "What More Can a Woman Do?" was recorded by Sarah Vaughan with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. "Mañana (Is Soon Enough for Me)" was no.1 for 9 weeks on the Billboard singles chart in 1948, from the week of 13 March to 8 May.
Lee was a mainstay of Capitol Records when rock'n'roll came onto the American music scene. She was among the first of the "old guard" to recognize this new genre, as seen by her recording music from the Beatles, Randy Newman, Carole King, James Taylor and other up-and-coming songwriters. From 1957 until her final disc for the company in 1972, she produced a steady stream of two or three albums per year which usually included standards (often arranged quite different from the original), her own compositions, and material from young artists.
In 1952 Lee played opposite Danny Thomas in a remake of the early Al Jolson film, The Jazz Singer. In 1955 she played an alcoholic blues singer in Pete Kelly's Blues, for which she received an Academy Awards nomination. After years of poor health, Lee died of complications from diabetes and a heart attack at age 81. Her body was buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles' Westwood, Los Angeles, California neighborhood. On her marker in a garden setting is inscribed, "Music is my life's breath."
Lee is a recipient of North Dakota's Roughrider Award; the Pied Piper Award from The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP); the Presidents Award, from the Songwriters Guild of America; the Ella Award for Lifetime Achievement, from the Society of Singers; and the Living Legacy Award, from the Women's International Center. In 1999 she was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
;Biography
;Album liner notes
;Television
Category:1920 births Category:2002 deaths Category:American actors Category:American contraltos Category:American female singers Category:American jazz singers Category:Songwriters from North Dakota Category:Burials at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery Category:Capitol Records artists Category:Deaths from diabetes Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:Decca Records artists Category:Disease-related deaths in California Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Musicians from North Dakota Category:American people of Norwegian descent Category:American musicians of Norwegian descent Category:People from Stutsman County, North Dakota Category:Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees Category:American people of Swedish descent Category:American musicians of Swedish descent Category:Torch singers Category:Traditional pop music singers Category:Women in jazz
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Name | Adam Lambert |
|---|---|
| Background | solo_singer |
| Birth name | Adam Mitchel Lambert |
| Birth date | January 29, 1982 |
| Birth place | Indianapolis, Indiana |
| Origin | San Diego, California, United States |
| Genre | Pop rock, pop The Times identified Lambert as one of the few openly gay mainstream pop artists to launch a career on a major label in the United States. |
| Name | Lambert, Adam |
| Alternative names | Glambert |
| Short description | Singer |
| Date of birth | January 29, 1982 |
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Name | Nina Hagen |
|---|---|
| Background | solo_singer |
| Birth name | Catharina Hagen |
| Born | March 11, 1955 |
| Origin | East Berlin, German Democratic Republic |
| Genre | Punk rockPost-punkNew wave Gothic rockGlam rockNeue Deutsche Welle |
| Occupation | Singer |
| Years active | 1971–present |
| Associated acts | Automobil The Nina Hagen Band Apocalyptica |
| Label | Columbia Records Mercury Records |
| Url | nina-hagen.com}} |
Nina Hagen (born 11 March 1955) is a German singer and actress.
When Hagen was 11, her mother married Wolf Biermann, an anti-establishment singer-songwriter. Biermann's political views later influenced young Hagen.
Hagen left school at age sixteen, and went to Poland, where she began her career. After that, she returned to Germany and joined the cover band Fritzens Dampferband (Fritzen's Steamboat Band, together with Achim Mentzel and others). She added songs by Janis Joplin and Tina Turner to the "allowable" set lists during shows.
From 1972–73, Hagen enrolled in the crash-course performance program at The Central Studio for Light Music in East Berlin. Upon graduation, she formed the band Automobil.
The circumstances surrounding the family's emigration were exceptional: Biermann was granted permission to perform a televised concert in Cologne, but denied permission to re-cross the border to his home country. Hagen submitted an application to leave the country. In it, she claimed to be Biermann's biological daughter, and threatened to become the next Wolf Biermann if not allowed to rejoin her father. Just four days later her request was granted, and she settled in Hamburg, where she was signed to a CBS-affiliated record label. Her label advised her to acclimate herself to Western culture through travel, and she arrived in London during the height of the punk rock movement. Hagen was quickly taken up by a circle that included The Slits and the Sex Pistols; Johnny Rotten was a particular admirer.
Back in Germany by mid-1977, Hagen formed the Nina Hagen Band in West Berlin's Kreuzberg district. In 1978 they released their self-titled debut album, which included the single "TV-Glotzer" (a cover of "White Punks on Dope" by The Tubes, though with entirely different German lyrics), and Auf'm Bahnhof Zoo, about West Berlin's then-notorious Berlin Zoologischer Garten station. The album also included a version of "Rangehn" ("Go For It"), a song she had previously recorded in East Germany, but with different music.
According to reviewer Fritz Rumler:
… she thrusts herself into the music, aggressively, directly, furiously, roars in the most beautiful opera alto, then, through shrieks and squeals, precipitates into luminous soprano heights, she parodies, satirises, and howls on stage like a dervish.
The album gained significant attention throughout Germany and abroad, both for its hard rock sound and for Hagen's theatrical vocals, far different from the straightforward singing of her East German recordings. However, relations between Hagen and the other band members deteriorated over the course of the subsequent European tour, and Hagen decided to leave the band in 1979, though she was still under contract to produce a second album. This LP, Unbehagen (which in German also means discomfort or unease), was eventually produced with the band recording their tracks in Berlin and Hagen recording the vocals in Los Angeles, California. It included the single "African Reggae" and a cover of Lene Lovich's "Lucky Number". The other band members sans Hagen, soon developed a successful independent musical career as Spliff.
Meanwhile, Hagen's public persona was steadily creating media uproar. She became infamous for an appearance on an Austrian evening talk show called Club 2, on 9 August 1979, on the topic of youth culture, when she demonstrated (while clothed, but explicitly) various female masturbation positions and became embroiled in a heated argument with another panelist. The talk show host had to step down following this controversy.
She also acted with Dutch rocker Herman Brood and singer Lene Lovich in the 1979 film Cha Cha.
In late 1980, Hagen discovered she was pregnant, broke up with the father-to-be Ferdinand Karmelk, and moved to Los Angeles. Her daughter, Cosma Shiva Hagen, was born in Santa Monica on 17 May 1981. In 1982, Hagen released her first English-language album: NunSexMonkRock, a dissonant mix of punk, funk, reggae, and opera. She then went on a world tour with the No Problem Orchestra.
In 1983, she released the album Angstlos and a minor European tour. By this time, Hagen's public appearances were becoming stranger and frequently included discussions of God, UFOs, her social and political beliefs, animal rights and vivisection, and claims of alien sightings. The English version of Angstlos, Fearless, generated two major club hits in America, "Zarah" (a cover of the Zarah Leander (#45 USA) song "Ich weiss, es wird einmal ein Wunder geschehen") and the disco/punk/opera song, "New York New York" (#9 USA).
Her 1985 album Nina Hagen In Ekstasy fared less well, but did generate club hits with "Universal Radio" (#39 USA) and a cover of "Spirit In The Sky" and also featured a 1979 recording of her hardcore punk take on Frank Sinatra's My Way, which had been one of her signature live tunes in previous years. She performed songs from this album during the 1985 version of Rock in Rio. Her contract with CBS over, she released the Punk Wedding EP independently in 1987, a celebration of her marriage to a 17-year-old-punk nicknamed 'Iroquois'. It followed an independent 1986 one-off single with Lene Lovich, the anthemic Don't Kill The Animals. In 1989, Hagen released the album Nina Hagen which was backed up by another German tour.
In 1989 she had a relationship with Frank Chevallier from France, with whom she has a son, Otis Chevallier-Hagen.
In 1998, Hagen became the host of a weekly science fiction show on the British Sci-Fi Channel, in addition to embarking on another tour of Germany. In 1999, she released the devotional album Om Namah Shivay, which was distributed exclusively online and included an unadulterated musical version of the Hare Krishna mantra. She also provided vocals to "Witness" and "Bereit" on KMFDM's Adios.
Also in 1998 she recorded the official club anthem (Eisern Union !) for FC Union Berlin and four versions were issued on a CD single by G.I.B Music and Distribution GmbH.
In 1999, she played the role of Celia Peachum in The Threepenny Opera by Kurt Weill and Berthold Brecht, alongside Max Raabe.
Hagen dubbed the voice of Sally in the German release of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, and she has also done voice work on the movie Hot Dogs by Michael Schoemann. Hagen has been featured on songs by other bands, for instance on Oomph!'s song "Fieber". She did a cover of Rammstein's "Seemann" with Apocalyptica. Later albums include Big Band Explosion, in which she sang numerous swing covers with her then husband, Danish singer and performer, Lucas Alexander. This was followed by Heiß, a greatest hits album. Her most recent album, Journey to The Snow Queen, is more of an audio book—she reads the Snow Queen fairy tale with Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker in the background. In 2005 Nina Hagen headlined the Drop Dead Festival in New York City. Hagen has been an active protester against the war in Iraq. In 2006 she was a part of the Popstars team. She is a vegetarian. In August 2009 she was baptized in the Protestant Reformed church of Schüttorf. On October 21 after seven years passed she visited Moscow again. Her latest album, Personal Jesus was released July 16, 2010, after a four year lapse.
Category:1955 births Category:Living people Category:People from East Berlin Category:1980s singers Category:1990s singers Category:2000s singers Category:2010s singers Category:Converts to Christianity Category:Female punk rock singers Category:Female New Wave singers Category:Female rock singers Category:German-language singers Category:German Calvinists Category:German vegetarians Category:German autobiographers Category:German female singers Category:German punk rock musicians Category:People of Jewish descent
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Name | Michael Bublé |
|---|---|
| Background | solo_singer |
| Birth name | Michael Steven Bublé |
| Born | September 09, 1975Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada |
| Instrument | Vocals |
| Voice type | Baritone |
| Genre | Big band, traditional pop, jazz |
| Occupation | Singer, songwriter, actor |
| Years active | 1996–present |
| Label | 143/Reprise |
| Influences | Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Bobby Darin |
| Associated acts | Naturally 7, Jann Arden, Laura Pausini, Boyz II Men, Chris Botti, Leon Jackson |
| Url | |
| Domesticpartner | luisana lopilato (engaged) |
Michael Steven Bublé (; born 9 September 1975) is a Canadian singer. He has won several awards, including two Grammy Awards
Bublé had a strong passion for ice hockey and wanted to become a professional ice hockey player for the Vancouver Canucks growing up, but believed he was not good at it, stating: "I wanted so bad to be a hockey player... If I was any good at hockey, I probably wouldn't be singing right now." Bublé often played hockey in his youth, watched Vancouver Canucks games with his father, and said that he "went to every single home game as a kid. . . I remember I wanted to be Gary Lupul, I wanted to be Patrik Sundstrom and Ivan Hlinka. I used to think that being named Michael Bublé was pretty cool because I was close to being called Jiri Bubla." Bublé also shared his hockey interest with his grandfather.
From age 14, Bublé spent his summers working for six years as a commercial fisherman with his father and crewmates. Bublé described his work experience as "The most deadly physical work I’ll ever know in my lifetime. We’d be gone for two, sometimes three months at a time and the experience of living and working among guys over twice my age taught me a lot about responsibility and what it means to be a man." Bublé never stopped believing that he would become a star but admitted he was probably the only one who believed in his dream, stating that even his maternal grandfather thought Bublé was going to be "an opening act for somebody in Las Vegas". Bublé's maternal grandmother Iolanda Moscone was also Italian, from Carrufo, Bublé has stated he never learned to read and write music, using only emotion to drive his songwriting ability.
At the age of 18, Bublé entered a local talent contest and won. But after winning, he was disqualified by organizer Bev Delich because he was underage. After that, Delich entered Bublé in the Canadian Youth Talent Search, which he won. Following that win, Bublé asked Delich to be his manager. Delich signed on and represented Bublé for the next seven not-so-fruitful years. According to Delich, Bublé would do every gig imaginable, including talent shows, conventions, cruise ships, malls, hotel lounges, bars, clubs, corporate gigs, musical revues, singing telegrams, and even the occasional singing Santa Claus gig.
In 1996, Bublé appeared in TV's "Death Game" (aka Mortal Challenge) as a Drome Groupie. Also in 1996, he appeared (uncredited) in 2 episodes of The X-Files as a Submarine Sailor.
Bublé's first national TV performance was on a 1997 award-winning Bravo! documentary titled Big Band Boom!, directed by Mark Glover Masterson.
Beginning in 1997, Bublé also became a frequent guest on Vicki Gabereau's national talk show on the CTV network. During its first season the Vancouver-based program aired live, which ultimately worked in Bublé's favor. When a scheduled guest was forced to cancel, the show's music producer (Mark Fuller) often asked Bublé to fill in at the last minute. On one occasion Bublé shared guest duties with fellow British Columbian Diana Krall, who was already a Grammy-nominated jazz musician. According to Fuller, Krall was suitably impressed with Bublé's performance. The Gabereau appearances provided Bublé with great exposure, but they also helped the singer hone his television skills as a performer and as an interview guest. In a mutual show of gratitude, Bublé appeared on the final Gabereau show in 2005, along with Jann Arden and Elvis Costello.
Bublé received two Genie Award-nominations in 2000 for two songs he wrote for the film Here's to Life! ("I've Never Been in Love Before", "Dumb ol' Heart"). He recorded three independent albums (First Dance, 1996; Babalu, 2001; Dream, 2002). But by 25 years of age Bublé moved from British Columbia to Toronto, Ontario and was ready to give up the dream of professional musicianship to move back to Vancouver, British Columbia to pursue a career in journalism when his lucky break came in 2000.
Initially, Foster was reluctant to sign Bublé to his 143 Records label because he “didn’t know how to market this kind of music.” Bublé moved to Los Angeles for a brief period, with his agent, to convince Foster to sign him. Eventually, Foster agreed to produce an album for him if he raised $500,000 to cover the costs of the production, which Bublé did. Foster ended up covering the costs of production in the end under his label, with no assurances of support from Warner Brothers, and after Bublé received the personal stamp of approval and support of Foster's friend Paul Anka. After David Foster agreed to produce Bublé’s debut album, Bruce Allen, whom Bublé had pursued for years to be his manager, also signed Bublé.
Bublé did some acting in this period; in 2000, as a karaoke singer in Duets opposite Gwyneth Paltrow and Huey Lewis, and in 2001, as Van Martin (a club owner), in Totally Blonde, produced by Andrew Van Slee. It achieved marginal success in the United States reaching the top 50 on the Billboard 200. Three tracks from the album (Kissing a Fool, How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?, Sway) reached the top 30 on the Billboard Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks chart.
on 8 August 2007.]] Bublé appeared nationally on NBC television in the United States on the Today program on 14 February 2003. A campaign featuring "Fever" was launched before Valentine's Day with a quirky marketing campaign that simply stated "You pronounce it Boo-blay." The album went Gold there. Then he began to travel all over the world to promote the album. The tour included Singapore, South Africa, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, Canada, South America, and eventually the United States.
In November 2003, Bublé released a Christmas EP Let It Snow, containing 5 previously unreleased tracks, that peaked at 56 on the Billboard 200. The title track reached the top 40 of the Australia singles chart. A live DVD/CD called Come Fly with Me was released in early 2004. The Come Fly with Me CD was #99 on the Aria Top 100 Albums of 2004. In November 2004 the Christmas edition of his debut album was released as a 2-disc set that included both the Michael Bublé and the Let It Snow EP.
Bublé won the "New Artist of the Year" award at the 2004 Juno Awards and his album was nominated for "Album of the Year", but lost out to Sam Roberts.
Bublé appeared in the 2003 movie The Snow Walker. Also in 2003 he portrayed a lounge performer on an episode of Days of Our Lives. The soundtrack also included a previously unreleased duet with Holly Palmer of the movie's title theme. The Junkie XL remix of the theme for the 60s TV cartoon version of Spider-Man from Bublé's Babalu album was played during the closing credits of Spider-Man 2 (2004), and this version was also released as a single. A CD was released in 2003 of the 7 songs that Bublé sang for Totally Blonde, calling it Totally Bublé. After the success of Michael Bublé's self-titled debut, DRG Records belatedly released the jazzy soundtrack from the 2001 film Totally Blonde in which Bublé had a co-starring role as a nightclub singer/club owner. Capitalizing on Bublé's newfound stardom, DRG Records basically ignored the music's connection to the film by altering the title and putting a shot of Bublé on the cover making it appear as if this was a proper Michael Bublé release. The slight misrepresentation was not lost on Bublé who has stated on his website that he did not want these songs released, but that it was out of his control. His version of "Come Fly with Me" is used in .
Bublé’s second studio album, It's Time, was released 15 February 2005, again by 143/Reprise Records. The album included standards from a variety of eras including "You Don’t Know Me", "Feeling Good", "Can't Buy Me Love", "Save the Last Dance for Me", "Song for You", and "Quando, Quando, Quando" (a duet with Canadian pop singer Nelly Furtado). It also included an original track, "Home", co-written by Bublé, his musical director Alan Chang, and Amy Foster-Gilles (David Foster’s daughter).
The album reached # 1 in Canada, Italy, Japan, and the Billboard Top Jazz chart, #2 in Australia, and #7 on the Billboard 200. Additionally it reached the top 10 in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, Austria, and Sweden. The album spent 104 weeks on the Billboard Top Jazz Charts, including a record-breaking 78 weeks in the #1 spot. It’s Time was Billboard’s Top Jazz Album in both 2005 and 2006 The first single, "Feeling Good", was met with little commercial success. However, the second single from the album, "Home" reached #1 on Billboard Adult Contemporary Tracks chart and #72 on the Billboard Hot 100. The third single “Save the Last Dance for Me” reached the #5 of the Billboard AC Track Chart and #99 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Bublé won four Juno Awards in 2006 for Pop Album of the Year – It’s Time, Single of the Year – "Home", Album of the Year – It’s Time, Artist of the Year, and was additionally nominated for the Juno Fan Choice Award, but lost out to the Canadian pop band Simple Plan. Bublé was nominated twice for a Grammy in the category Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album in 2006 (It's Time) and 2007 (Caught in the Act) but lost, in both cases, to Tony Bennett. In 2007, Bublé received one Juno nomination, for Fan Choice, but lost to Nelly Furtado.
The first single off the album was "Everything". It carried a more adult-contemporary sound than his usual big band style and was released in May 2007. The song became one of Bublé's biggest hits ever, reaching #46 on the Billboard Hot 100, #1 in the Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks, and #10 in Canada. "Me and Mrs. Jones" was set to be released as the second single off the album but was cancelled despite a music video being made. The next single, released in November 2007, was "Lost", a #97 hit on the Hot 100 and #19 in the UK. "It Had Better Be Tonight (Meglio Stasera)" was released mainly as a remix single, with many mixes by Eddie Amador. The song reached position #89 in Canada. The final single from the album, "Comin' Home Baby", was released in April 2008.
The standard CD contains 10 live tracks and has an orange cover. The Online Edition contains two additional tracks (Sway and That's Life) and has a blue alternative cover. In America, the blue edition can only be purchased through his online store—however, everywhere else the special edition is available for purchase anywhere.
In 2009, Bublé was featured in the CTV television film My Musical Brain with neuroscientist and writer Daniel Levitin, based on Levitin's bestselling book This Is Your Brain On Music.
Bublé's fourth studio album, Crazy Love, was due from 143/Reprise Records on 13 October 2009. However, an early release in the United States occurred on 9 October 2009, in which Bublé appeared on Oprah that same day and performed the album's first single "Haven't Met You Yet". The album was also promoted in an interview with George Stroumboulopoulos at The Hour on 17 October 2009, and on 22 December episode of The Glenn Beck Program.
The album contains 12 tracks (and 1 bonus track), including two original songs co-written by Bublé, "Haven't Met You Yet" and "Hold On". Its first single, "Haven't Met You Yet" was released 31 August 2009, where it was No. 1 on Billboard's Canada Adult Contemporary chart. Most of the tracks off the album were recorded live because Bublé did not want his album to sound overproduced and slick. Bublé also wrote the opening part for his cover on the single "Cry Me a River" in Bond-like theme because he wanted the song to sound very cinematic and bombastic.
Crazy Love debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart and was his fourth No. 1 album on the Billboard's Top Jazz Album charts. It also debuted at No. 1 in Australia and Canada, where it sold as his fastest selling album.
Bublé was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live on 30 January 2010. He sang "Haven't Met You Yet", "Baby (You've Got What It Takes)" with Sharon Jones, and did a sketch with Jon Hamm for "Hamm & Bublé Restaurant".
on the Today Show]] {{ external media | style="text-align:right;"| width = 295px | video1 = Video of Michael Bublé singing "Maple Leaf Forever" at the 2010 Winter Olympics closing ceremony.}} Bublé also took part in 2010 Winter Olympics torch relay in Vancouver before the opening ceremony. He performed on NBC Today on 12 February, the day of the opening ceremony and during the broadcast on Grouse Mountain. His opening to Cry Me A River was selected as the theme tune for the BBC's coverage of the games.
Bublé appeared in a TV special Michael Bublé's Canada which aired on Australian cable television in January, ahead of the 2010 Winter Games, with co-host Sophie Faulkiner.
Bublé performed alongside other huge Canadian names (including Michael J. Fox) at the closing ceremony singing a version of the song "Maple Leaf Forever", originally appearing as a 'Mountie', but subsequently having the uniform torn off to reveal a white tuxedo underneath.
He also appeared on the American comedy news show Colbert Report for Colbert's 2010 Vancouver Winter Games coverage.
On 18 April 2010, Bublé took home 4 Juno Awards for Juno Fan Choice Award, Single of the Year – "Haven't Met You Yet", Album of the Year – Crazy Love, and Pop Album of the Year – Crazy Love,
Warner Records has announced that Bublé is re-releasing Crazy Love on 25 October 2010 in the U.S., with an earlier release date of 15 October 2010 for Europe. This special edition will be called "Crazy Love Hollywood Edition". It will contain several bonus tracks including Bublé's newest single, titled "Hollywood", which was co-written with Toronto songwriter/pianist Robert G. Scott. On 7 September 2010 "Hollywood" was released worldwide on radio and as a digital single on iTunes. He recently played to 100,000 people at the Aviva stadium Dublin his biggest concert to date and rumours sparked that there will be a DVD release of the concert.
During an appearance at Australian television's Logie Awards in 2005, he met British actress Emily Blunt and again a few months later at his concert backstage in Los Angeles, eventually having a relationship. He thought she was a BBC television producer. She also provided background vocals on the cover of "Me and Mrs. Jones" on the album Call Me Irresponsible. The hit original song "Everything" was penned by Bublé for Blunt. Bublé's publicist confirmed on 11 July 2008 that he had broken up with Blunt.
Bublé became engaged in Argentina Bublé co-wrote the hit single "Haven't Met You Yet" for Lopilato, and she appeared in the song's music video.
Since 2005, Bublé has had dual Italian-Canadian citizenship.
A big hockey fan since childhood, Bublé requires "one local team hockey puck" in his dressing room as part of his rider contract to concert promoters in every city. Since December 2008 he has been co-owner of the Vancouver Giants.
On 12 February 2009 Bublé pledged a donation of to the victims of the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, Australia.
Category:1975 births Category:Living people Category:People from Burnaby Category:Musicians from Vancouver Category:Canadian jazz singers Category:Canadian male singers Category:Canadian pop singers Category:Canadian television actors Category:Juno Award winners Category:Grammy Award winners Category:World Music Awards winners Category:Canadian people of Italian descent Category:Jazz-pop singers Category:English-language singers Category:Smooth jazz singers Category:Warner Music Group artists Category:1990s singers Category:2000s singers Category:2010s singers Category:People from Purley, London Category:Canadian people of English descent Category:People of English descent
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Name | Lady Gaga |
|---|---|
| Img alt | Portrait of a young, pale-skinned Caucasian female with blond hair |
| Background | solo_singer |
| Birth name | Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta |
| Born | March 28, 1986 |
| Birth place | New York City, United States |
| Instrument | Vocals, piano, synthesizer, keytar |
| Genre | Pop, dance |
| Occupation | Singer-songwriter, performance artist, record producer, dancer, businesswoman, activist after the arrival of its eponymous lead single "Born This Way", which achieved the number-one spot in countries worldwide and was the fastest-selling single in iTunes history, selling one million copies in five days. |
Gaga has a vocal range of a contralto. Her vocals have drawn frequent comparison to those of Madonna and Gwen Stefani, while the structure of her music is said to echo classic 1980s pop and 1990s Europop. While reviewing her debut album The Fame, The Sunday Times asserted "in combining music, fashion, art and technology, [Gaga] evokes Madonna, Gwen Stefani circa 'Hollaback Girl', Kylie Minogue 2001 or Grace Jones right now." Similarly, The Boston Globe critic Sarah Rodman commented that she draws "obvious inspirations from Madonna to Gwen Stefani... in [her] girlish but sturdy pipes and bubbly beats." Though her lyrics are said to lack intellectual stimulation, "[she] does manage to get you moving and grooving at an almost effortless pace." Music critic Simon Reynolds wrote that "Everything about Gaga came from electroclash, except the music, which wasn't particularly 1980s, just ruthlessly catchy naughties pop glazed with Auto-Tune and undergirded with R&B;-ish beats.
Gaga has identified fashion as a major influence. Her love of fashion came from her mother, who she stated was "always very well kept and beautiful." Entertainment Weekly put her outfits on its end of the decade "best-of" list, saying, "Whether it's a dress made of Muppets or strategically placed bubbles, Gaga's outré ensembles brought performance art into the mainstream."
Contrary to her outré style, the New York Post described her early look as like "a refugee from Jersey Shore" with "big black hair, heavy eye makeup and tight, revealing clothes." She has another six known tattoos, among them a peace symbol, which was inspired by John Lennon, who she stated was her hero, Towards the end of 2008, comparisons were made between the fashions of Gaga and fellow recording artist Christina Aguilera that noted similarities in their styling, hair, and make-up. Comparisons continued into 2010 when Aguilera released the music video of her single "Not Myself Tonight". Critics noted similarities between the song and its accompanying music video with Gaga's video for "Bad Romance". There have also been similar comparisons made between Gaga's style and that of fashion icon Dale Bozzio from the band Missing Persons. Some have considered their respective images to be strikingly parallel although fans of Missing Persons note that Bozzio had pioneered the look more than thirty years earlier.
During an interview with Harper's Bazaar magazine published in May 2011, Gaga discussed the recent appearance of horn-like ridges on her cheekbones, temples, and shoulders. When asked about the necessary makeup to attach the prosthetics, she responded, "They're not prosthetics, they're my bones." She also clarified that they were not the result of plastic surgery, believing such surgery to only be the modern byproduct of fame-induced insecurity to which she does not subscribe. Further probing by the interviewer only got her to state that they are an artistic representation of her inner inspirational light, part of the "performance piece" that is her musical persona, an inevitability of her becoming who she now is.
In view of Lady Gaga's influence on modern culture and her rise to global fame, sociologist Mathieu Deflem of the University of South Carolina since the Spring of 2011 organizes a course titled "Lady Gaga and the Sociology of the Fame" with the objective of unravelling "sociologically relevant dimensions of the fame of Lady Gaga with respect to her music, videos, fashion, and other artistic endeavors".
Gaga also contributes in the fight against HIV and AIDS with the focus upon educating young women about the risks of the disease. In collaboration with Cyndi Lauper, Gaga joined forces with MAC Cosmetics to launch a line of lipstick under their supplementary cosmetic line, Viva Glam. Titled Viva Glam Gaga and Viva Glam Cyndi for each contributor respectively, all net proceeds of the lipstick line were donated to the cosmetic company's campaign to prevent HIV and AIDS worldwide. In a press release, Gaga declared, "I don't want Viva Glam to be just a lipstick you buy to help a cause. I want it to be a reminder when you go out at night to put a condom in your purse right next to your lipstick."
With the performance of a new bilingual song called "Americano" on her upcoming album, Gaga jumped into the debate surrounding SB 1070, Arizona's immigration law. She premiered the tune for the first time on the Guadalajara, Mexico stop of her Monster Ball tour telling the local press that she could not “stand by many of the unjust immigration laws" in the United States.
After The Fame was released, she revealed that the song "Poker Face" was about her bisexuality. In an interview with Rolling Stone, she spoke about how her boyfriends tended to react to her bisexuality, saying "The fact that I'm into women, they're all intimidated by it. It makes them uncomfortable. They're like, 'I don't need to have a threesome. I'm happy with just you'." She proclaimed that the October 11, 2009, National Equality March rally on the national mall was "the single most important event of her career." As she exited, she left with an exultant "Bless God and bless the gays," At the Human Rights Campaign Dinner, held the same weekend as the rally, she performed a cover of John Lennon's "Imagine" declaring that "I'm not going to [play] one of my songs tonight because tonight is not about me, it's about you." She changed the original lyrics of the song to reflect the death of Matthew Shepard, a college student murdered because of his sexuality.
's "Don't ask, don't tell" rally in 2010]] Gaga attended the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards accompanied by four service members of the United States Armed Forces (Mike Almy; David Hall; Katie Miller and Stacy Vasquez) all of whom, under the U.S. military's "Don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) policy, had been prohibited from serving openly because of their sexuality. In addition, Gaga wore a dress fabricated from the flesh of a dead animal to the awards ceremony.
Category:1986 births Category:2000s singers Category:2010s singers Category:American contraltos Category:American Roman Catholics Category:American dance musicians Category:American electronic musicians Category:American female pop singers Category:American musicians of Italian descent Category:American singer-songwriters Category:Bisexual musicians Category:BRIT Award winners Category:English-language singers Category:Feminist musicians Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Interscope Records artists Category:Keytarists Category:LGBT Christians Category:LGBT musicians from the United States Category:LGBT rights activists from the United States Category:Living people Category:People from Manhattan Category:Pseudonyms Category:Singers from New York Category:Sony/ATV Music Publishing artists Category:Tisch School of the Arts alumni Category:Wonky Pop acts
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
George Frideric Handel, (1749)]]George Frideric Handel (German: Georg Friedrich Händel; ) (23 February 1685 – 14 April 1759) was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, and concertos. Handel was born in Germany in the same year as Johann Sebastian Bach and Domenico Scarlatti. He received critical musical training in Italy before settling in London and becoming a naturalised British subject. His works include Messiah, Water Music, and Music for the Royal Fireworks. He was strongly influenced by the great composers of the Italian Baroque and the middle-German polyphonic choral tradition. Handel's music was well-known to such later composers as Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.
Handel was born in Halle to Georg and Dorothea (née Taust) Händel in 1685,. His father, Georg Händel, 63 when his son was born, was an eminent barber-surgeon who served as surgeon to the court of Saxe-Weissenfels and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. According to Handel's first biographer, John Mainwaring, he "had discovered such a strong propensity to Music, that his father who always intended him for the study of the Civil Law, had reason to be alarmed. He strictly forbade him to meddle with any musical instrument but Handel found means to get a little clavichord privately convey'd to a room at the top of the house. To this room he constantly stole when the family was asleep". At an early age Handel became a skillful performer on the harpsichord and pipe organ.
Handel and his father traveled to Weissenfels to visit either Handel's half-brother, Carl, or nephew, Georg Christian, who was serving as valet to Duke Johann Adolf I. According to legend, the young Handel's playing on the church organ attracted the Duke's attention. Handel convinced his father to allow lessons in musical composition and keyboard technique from Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow, the organist of the Lutheran Marienkirche. Handel learned about harmony and contemporary styles, analysed sheet music scores, learned to work fugue subjects, and to copy music. Sometimes he replaced his teacher as organist. In 1698 Handel played for Frederick I of Prussia and met Giovanni Battista Bononcini in Berlin. In 1701 Georg Philipp Telemann went to Halle to listen to the important young man.
According to Mainwaring, in 1706 Handel traveled to Italy at the invitation of Ferdinando de' Medici, but Mainwaring must have been confused. It was Gian Gastone de' Medici, whom Handel had met in 1703/1704 in Hamburg. Ferdinando had made Florence Italy's musical capital, attracting the leading talents of his day. He had a keen interest in opera. In Italy Handel met librettist Antonio Salvi, with whom he later collaborated. He had a rumored love affair with Vittoria Tarquini, a singer. Handel left for Rome and, since opera was (temporarily) banned in the Papal States, composed sacred music for the Roman clergy. His famous Dixit Dominus (1707) is from this era. He also composed cantatas in pastoral style for musical gatherings in the Palace of Cardinals Pietro Ottoboni, Benedetto Pamphili and Carlo Colonna. Two oratorios, La Resurrezione and Il Trionfo del Tempo, were produced in a private setting for Ruspoli and Ottoboni in 1709 and 1710, respectively. Rodrigo, his first all-Italian opera, was produced in the Cocomero theatre in Florence in 1707. Agrippina was first produced in 1709 at Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo, the prettiest theatre at Venice, owned by the Grimanis. The opera, with a libretto by cardinal Vincenzo Grimani, ran for an unprecedented 27 performances. It showed remarkable maturity and established Handel's reputation as a composer of opera. The audience, thunderstruck with the grandeur and sublimity of his style, applauded for Il caro Sassone.
on the River Thames, 17 July 1717, by Edouard Jean Conrad Hamman (1819–88).]]
One of his most important patrons was the young and wealthy Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington. For him Handel wrote Amadigi di Gaula, a magical opera, about a Damsel in distress, based on the tragedy by Antoine Houdar de la Motte. Amadigi, employs many machines and spectacles and no voices lower than alto. It ends in a minor key.
The conception of an opera as a coherent structure was slow to capture Handel's imagination and he renounced it for five years. In July 1717 Handel's Water Music was performed more than three times on the Thames for the King and his guests, such as Anne Vaughan, the Duchess of Bolton, Countess Godolphin, Countess of Darlington and the Earl of Orkney. The barges, heading for Chelsea or Lambeth and leaving the party after midnight, used the tides of the river. The compositions spurred reconciliation between the King and Handel.
Handel invested in South Sea stock in 1716, when prices were low and sold before 1720, when the South Sea credit bubble burst in one of history's greatest financial cataclysms.
, Mayfair, London]]
In May 1719 Lord Chamberlain Thomas Holles, the Duke of Newcastle ordered Handel to look for new singers. Handel travelled to Dresden to attend the newly–built opera. He saw Teofane by Antonio Lotti, and engaged the cast for the Royal Academy of Music, founded by a group of aristocrats to assure themselves a constant supply of baroque opera or opera seria. Handel may have invited John Smith, his fellow student in Halle, and his son Johann Christoph Schmidt, to become his secretary and amanuensis. By 1723 he had moved into a Georgian house at 25 Brook Street, which he rented for the rest of his life. This house, where he rehearsed, copied music and sold tickets, is now the Handel House Museum. During twelve months between 1724 and 1725, Handel wrote three outstanding and successful operas, Giulio Cesare, Tamerlano and Rodelinda. Winton Dean acclaimed this an achievement without parallel. Handel's opera's are filled with da capo arias, such as Svegliatevi nel core. After composing Silete venti, he concentrated on opera and stopped writing cantatas. Scipio, from which we have the regimental slow march of the British Grenadier Guards was performed as a stopgap, waiting for the arrival of Faustina Bordoni.
In 1727 Handel was commissioned to write four anthems for the coronation ceremony of King George II. One of these, Zadok the Priest, has been played at every British coronation ceremony since. In 1728 John Gay's The Beggar's Opera premiered at Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre and ran for 62 consecutive performances, the longest run in theatre history up to that time. After nine years Handel's contract was ended but he soon started a new company.
The Queen's Theatre in Haymarket (now Her Majesty's Theatre), established in 1705 by architect and playwright John Vanbrugh, quickly became an opera house. Between 1711 and 1739, more than 25 of Handel's operas premièred there. In 1729 Handel became joint manager of the Theatre with John James Heidegger.
and his sisters by Philip Mercier, dated 1733, using Kew Palace as its plein-air backdrop]]
Handel travelled to Italy to engage seven new singers. He composed seven more operas, but the public came to hear the singers rather than the music. After two commercially successful English oratorios Esther and Deborah, he was able to invest again in the South Sea Company. Handel reworked his Acis and Galathea which then became his most successful work ever. Handel failed to compete with the Opera of the Nobility, who engaged musicians such as Johann Adolf Hasse, Nicolo Porpora and the famous castrato Farinelli. The strong support by Frederick, Prince of Wales caused conflicts in the royal family. In March 1734 Handel directed a wedding anthem This is the day which the Lord hath made, and a serenata Parnasso in Festa for Anne of Hanover.
In 1733 the Earl of Essex received a letter with the following sentence: "Handel became so arbitrary a prince, that the Town murmurs". The board of chief investors expected Handel to retire when his contract ended, but Handel immediately looked for another theatre. In cooperation with John Rich he started his third company at Covent Garden Theatre. Rich was renowned for his spectacular productions: he suggested Handel use his small chorus and introduce the dancing of Marie Sallé, for whom Handel composed Terpsichore. In 1735 he introduced organ concertos between the acts. For the first time Handel allowed Gioacchino Conti, who had no time to learn his part, to substitute arias. Financially, Ariodante was a failure, although he introduced ballet suites at the end of each act. Alcina, his last opera with a magic content, and Alexander's Feast or the Power of Music based on John Dryden's Alexander's Feast starred Anna Maria Strada del Pò and John Beard (tenor).
In April 1737, at age 52, Handel apparently suffered a stroke which left his right arm temporarily paralysed, preventing him from performing. In summer the disorder seemed at times to affect his understanding. Nobody expected that Handel would ever be able to perform again. But whether the affliction was rheumatism, a stroke or a nervous breakdown, he recovered remarkably quickly. To aid his recovery, Handel had travelled to Aachen, a spa in Germany. During six weeks he took long hot baths, and ending up playing the organ for a surprised audience.
Deidamia his last, and only baroque opera without an accompagnato, was performed three times. Having lost a fortune in operatic management, Handel gave up the business in 1741. In the meantime John Walsh published six organ concertos and Twelve Grand Concertos. Handel enjoyed success with his English oratorios.
Handel's first attempt at oratorio was made in Italy in 1707-1708 with the Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, an allegory, and La Resurrezione which uses material from the Bible. His next attempt was Haman and Mordecai performed at Cannons, in which the anthem character is very clear. Unfortunately the circumstances of Esther and its first performance are obscure. Another twelve years had passed when an act of piracy caused him to take up Esther once again. Three earlier performances aroused such interest that they naturally prompted the idea of introducing it to a larger public. Next came Deborah, also strongly coloured by the anthem and Athaliah, in which Handel laid the foundation for the traditional use of the chorus which marks his later oratorios. Obviously Handel became sure of himself, broader in his presentation, and more diverse in his composition.
It is evident how much he learnt from Arcangelo Corelli about writing for instruments, and from Alessandro Scarlatti about writing for the solo voice; but there is no single composer who taught him how to write for chorus. Handel tended more and more to replace Italian soloists by English ones. The weightiest reason for this change was the dwindling financial returns from his operas. Thus a tradition was created for oratorios which was to govern their future performance. The performances were given without costumes and action; the performers appeared in a black suit.
of Handel by Joseph Goupy (1754)]]
In 1736 Handel came with Alexander's Feast. John Beard appeared for the first time as one of Handel's principal singers and became Handel's permanent tenor soloist for the rest of his life. The piece was a great success and it encouraged Handel to make the transition from writing Italian operas to English choral works. In Saul, Handel was collaborating with Charles Jennens and experimenting with three trombones, a carillon and extra-large military kettledrums (from the Tower of London), to be sure "...it will be most excessive noisy". Saul and Israel in Egypt both from 1739 head the list of great, mature oratorios, in which the da capo and dal segno aria became the exception and not the rule. Israel in Egypt consists of little else but choruses, borrowing from the Funeral Anthem for Queen Caroline. In his next works Handel changed his course. In these works he laid greater stress on the effects of orchestra and soloists; the chorus retired into the background. L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato has a rather diverting character; the work is light and fresh.
During the summer of 1741, the 3rd Duke of Devonshire invited Handel to Dublin to give concerts for the benefit of local hospitals. His Messiah was first performed at the New Music Hall in Fishamble Street, on 13 April 1742, with 26 boys and five men from the combined choirs of St Patrick's and Christ Church cathedrals participating. Handel secured a balance between soloists and chorus which he never surpassed.
The use of English soloists reached its height at the first performance of Samson. The work is highly theatrical. Jephtha was first performed on 26 February 1752; even though it was his last oratorio, it was no less a masterpiece than his earlier works.
In August 1750, on a journey back from Germany to London, Handel was seriously injured in a carriage accident between The Hague and Haarlem in the Netherlands. In 1751 one eye started to fail. The cause was a cataract which was operated on by the great charlatan Chevalier Taylor. This led to uveitis and subsequent loss of vision. He died eight years later in 1759 at home in Brook Street, at age 74. The last performance he attended performed Messiah. Handel was buried in Westminster Abbey. More than three thousand mourners attended his funeral, which was given full state honours.
Handel never married, and kept his personal life private. His initial will bequeathed the bulk of his estate to his niece Johanna, however four codicils distributed much of his estate to other relations, servants, friends and charities.
Handel owned an art collection that was auctioned posthumously in 1760. The auction catalogue listed approximately seventy paintings and ten prints (other paintings were bequeathed).
Handel's works have been catalogued in the Händel-Werke-Verzeichnis and are commonly referred to by an HWV number. For example, Messiah is catalogued as HWV 56.
Since the 1960s, with the revival of interest in baroque music, original instrument playing styles, and the prevalence of countertenors who could more accurately replicate castrato roles, interest has revived in Handel's Italian operas, and many have been recorded and performed. Since the Early Music Revival the fifty operas he wrote have been performed in opera houses and concert halls.
Recent decades have revived his secular cantatas and what one might call 'secular oratorios' or 'concert operas'. Of the former, Ode for St. Cecilia's Day (1739) (set to texts by John Dryden) and Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne (1713) are noteworthy. For his secular oratorios, Handel turned to classical mythology for subjects, producing such works as Acis and Galatea (1719), Hercules (1745) and Semele (1744). These works have a close kinship with the sacred oratorios, particularly in the vocal writing for the English-language texts. They also share the lyrical and dramatic qualities of Handel's Italian operas. As such, they are sometimes performed onstage by small chamber ensembles. With the rediscovery of his theatrical works, Handel, in addition to his renown as instrumentalist, orchestral writer, and melodist, is now perceived as being one of opera's great musical dramatists.
in 1738 by Louis-François Roubiliac, and now preserved in the Victoria & Albert Museum.]]
Handel's works were edited by Samuel Arnold (40 vols., London, 1787–1797), and by Friedrich Chrysander, for the German Händel-Gesellschaft (100 vols., Leipzig, 1858–1902).
Handel adopted the spelling "George Frideric Handel" on his naturalisation as a British subject, and this spelling is generally used in English-speaking countries. The original form of his name, Georg Friedrich Händel, is generally used in Germany and elsewhere, but he is known as "Haendel" in France. Another composer with a similar name, Handl, was a Slovene and is more commonly known as Jacobus Gallus.
Category:1685 births Category:1759 deaths Category:People from Halle, Saxony-Anhalt Category:Opera composers Category:Baroque composers Category:English classical organists Category:English composers Category:English people of German descent Category:German composers Category:German immigrants to the United Kingdom Category:German classical organists Category:Organ improvisers Category:Composers for pipe organ Category:Members of the Royal Society of Musicians Category:Glee composers Category:People from the Duchy of Magdeburg Category:People celebrated in the Lutheran liturgical calendar Category:18th-century German people Category:Walhalla enshrinees Category:Burials at Westminster Abbey Category:Anglican saints Category:Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Name | Eva Marie Cassidy |
|---|---|
| Background | solo_singer |
| Birth name | Eva Marie Cassidy |
| Born | February 02, 1963Washington, D.C. |
| Died | November 02, 1996Bowie, Maryland |
| Origin | Maryland, United States |
| Instrument | Vocals, Guitar, Keyboard |
| Genre | Jazz, Blues, Folk, Gospel and Pop |
| Years active | 1981–1996 |
| Label | Liaison (U.S.)Blix Street (U.S.)Hot (Europe) |
| Associated acts | Chuck Brown, Katie Melua |
| Url | www.evacassidy.org |
Eva Marie Cassidy (February 2, 1963 – November 2, 1996) was an American vocalist known for her interpretations of jazz, blues, folk, gospel, country and pop classics. In 1992 she released her first album, The Other Side, a set of duets with go-go musician Chuck Brown, followed by a live solo album, Live at Blues Alley in 1996. Although she had been honored by the Washington Area Music Association, she was virtually unknown outside her native Washington, D.C. when she died of melanoma in 1996.
Four years later, Cassidy's music was brought to the attention of British audiences when her version of "Over the Rainbow" was played by Terry Wogan on BBC Radio 2. Following the overwhelming response, a camcorder recording of "Over the Rainbow", taken at the Blues Alley, was shown on BBC Two's Top of the Pops 2. Shortly afterwards, the compilation album Songbird climbed to the top of the UK Albums Charts, almost three years after its initial release. The chart success in the United Kingdom and Ireland led to increased recognition worldwide; her posthumously released recordings, including three UK #1s, have sold more than ten million copies. Her music has also charted top 10 positions in Australia, Germany, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland. Cassidy grew up in Oxon Hill and later Bowie, Maryland, suburbs of Washington, D.C.. She was the third of four children born to Hugh and Barbara Cassidy. Her father, a retired teacher, sculptor, musician, and former army medic, is of Scottish and Irish descent, while her German-born mother was a horticulturist. From an early age, Cassidy displayed interest in art and music. When she was nine, her father taught her to play the guitar and she began to play and sing at family gatherings. This band performed in a variety of styles at weddings, corporate parties and pubs. Due to her shyness, she struggled with performing in front of strangers. While a student at Bowie High School, she sang with a local band called Stonehenge.
Throughout the 1980s, Cassidy worked with several other bands, including the techno-pop band Characters Without Names. During this period, Cassidy also worked as a propagator at a plant nursery and as a furniture painter. In her free time, she explored other artistic expressions including painting, sculpting and jewelry design.
In May 2001, ABC's Nightline in the United States broadcast a well-received short documentary about Cassidy. Over the weekend, all five of Cassidy's albums occupied Amazon.com's best sellers list top spots. The Nightline episode has since been rebroadcast three times due to popular demand. Producer Leroy Sievers has said that it is "probably the most popular Nightline ever". In December, a nine-minute segment on NPR resulted in a similar sales surge, with five of the top seven spots going to Cassidy.
Since Songbird, several other CDs with original material have been released: Time After Time (2000), Imagine (2002) and American Tune (2003). 2008 saw the release of another new album titled Somewhere. Unlike previous albums, which consisted solely of cover songs, this release contains two original songs co-written by Cassidy. An acoustic album titled Simply Eva was released in January 2011.
Together with word of mouth and internet fansites, online commerce has played a big role in Cassidy's success. This point was further affirmed when in 2005, Amazon.com released a list of its top 25 best-selling musicians, which placed Cassidy in 5th position, behind The Beatles, U2, Norah Jones and Diana Krall, and far ahead of Elvis Presley and several other well-known stars.
In 2004, during the gala opening of the Bowie Center for the Performing Arts, the Bowie Regional Arts Vision Association, Inc. (BRAVA) dedicated the Star's Dressing Room to Eva. Following a moving tribute to Eva, Chuck Brown took the stage and performed his duet "with" Eva as her photos and video appeared in the background.
A collection of previously unreleased studio recordings from 1987 to 1991, was released in 2000 as No Boundaries. This release was not endorsed by the Cassidy family In 2002, the self titled 1988 album by the band Method Actor, which featured Cassidy, was re-released by the band's guitarist and producer David Lourim with Cassidy's name displayed prominently on the cover. The Cassidy family and Blix Street Records filed a lawsuit against Lourim, claiming that Cassidy's name was used in a misleading fashion and that Blix Street has exclusive rights to her recordings. Lourim had Cassidy's written permission to release the album and eventually the cover was changed to look like the original LP album while already released copies were affixed with a sticker indicating that they are not solo Eva Cassidy albums.
A bootleg recording which has been in circulation is called Live at Pearl's. It was recorded at Pearl's Restaurant in Annapolis, Maryland in 1994. Copies of the recording were circulated among friends and families after her death. Some of the songs on the recording are also on Imagine and American Tune. Another recording, featuring Mick Fleetwood on drums and recorded at his restaurant in Alexandria, Virginia called Fleetwood's in the early 1990s, was in the possession of Niki Lee - the former wife of pianist Lenny Williams - who discovered it in her garage and attempted to sell it on eBay in 2008.
At the 2002 Winter Olympics gala, and later on tour, figure skater Michelle Kwan brought Cassidy's music to a new audience when she skated to a recording of "Fields of Gold". Kwan's part in exposing the music of Cassidy to the international and American public led Cassidy's label to present her a gold record from the certification of Songbird. Subsequently, other figure skaters such as Kristi Yamaguchi, Sarah Hughes and Kimmie Meissner have used Cassidy's music in their routines.
Anglo-Georgian singer Katie Melua is a keen fan of Cassidy. Her debut album "Call off the Search" contained the song "Faraway Voice", written in Cassidy's memory. One year later, Cassidy's "What A Wonderful World" was spliced together with new vocals by Melua and released as a single exclusively at the British retail chain Tesco. It debuted at #1 on the UK Singles chart on December 16. All profits from the single went to the British Red Cross. Irish singer Chris de Burgh has stated that his song "Songbird" from his album The Road to Freedom was written in honour of Cassidy. Singer Mary Chapin Carpenter made reference to Cassidy in the song "My Heaven" on the album Between Here and Gone: "More memories than my heart can hold, when Eva's singing 'Fields of Gold'."
In 2008, Cassidy's recording of "Autumn Leaves" was used by the Canadian National Professional Latin Champions, Andre and Natalie Paramonov, when they competed in America's Ballroom Challenge as finalists in the International Latin Competition.
The first film to feature an Eva Cassidy recording was Flight of Fancy starring Dean Cain. Since then her music has appeared in various film and TV series including the comedy Judging Amy, Joe Somebody, Love Actually, Maid in Manhattan, The Man From Elysian Fields, Alpha Dog and Smallville. Cassidy's arrangement of "Over the Rainbow" is a popular cover choice by singing competition contestants, with American Idol season 5 runner-up Katharine McPhee and The X Factor season 3 winner Leona Lewis among the singers. Her interpretation of "Imagine" has been performed by American Idol season 7 runner-up David Archuleta.
Category:1963 births Category:1996 deaths Category:American blues singers Category:American folk singers Category:American gospel singers Category:American jazz singers Category:American female guitarists Category:Cancer deaths in Maryland Category:Deaths from skin cancer Category:Musicians from Maryland Category:Musicians from Washington, D.C. Category:People from Bowie, Maryland Category:Women in jazz Category:American musicians of Scottish descent Category:American musicians of Irish descent Category:American musicians of German descent
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Name | Elvis Presley |
|---|---|
| Img alt | A young man dancing, swiveling his hips. He has dark hair, short and slicked up a bit. He wears an unbuttoned band-collared jacket over a shirt with bold black-and-white horizontal stripes. Behind him, on either side, are a pair of barred frames, like prison doors. |
| Background | solo_singer |
| Birth name | Elvis Aaron Presley |
| Born | January 08, 1935 |
| Died | August 16, 1977 |
| Genre | Rock and roll, pop, rockabilly, country, blues, gospel, R&B; |
| Associated acts | The Blue Moon Boys, The Jordanaires, The Imperials |
| Occupation | Musician, actor |
| Instrument | Vocals, guitar, piano |
| Years active | 1954–77 |
| Label | Sun, RCA Victor |
| Url |
Born in Tupelo, Mississippi, Presley moved to Memphis, Tennessee, with his family at the age of 13. He began his career there in 1954 when Sun Records owner Sam Phillips, eager to bring the sound of African American music to a wider audience, saw in Presley the means to realize his ambition. Accompanied by guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, Presley was one of the originators of rockabilly, an uptempo, backbeat-driven fusion of country and rhythm and blues. RCA Victor acquired his contract in a deal arranged by Colonel Tom Parker, who would manage the singer for over two decades. Presley's first RCA single, "Heartbreak Hotel", released in January 1956, was a number one hit. He became the leading figure of the newly popular sound of rock and roll with a series of network television appearances and chart-topping records. His energized interpretations of songs, many from African American sources, and his uninhibited performance style made him enormously popular—and controversial. In November 1956, he made his film debut in Love Me Tender.
Conscripted into military service in 1958, Presley relaunched his recording career two years later with some of his most commercially successful work. He staged few concerts, however, and, guided by Parker, proceeded to devote much of the 1960s to making Hollywood movies and soundtrack albums, most of them critically derided. In 1968, after seven years away from the stage, he returned to live performance in a celebrated comeback television special that led to an extended Las Vegas concert residency and a string of profitable tours. In 1973, Presley staged the first concert broadcast globally via satellite, Aloha from Hawaii, seen by approximately 1.5 billion viewers. Prescription drug abuse severely compromised his health, and he died suddenly in 1977 at the age of 42.
Presley is regarded as one of the most important figures of 20th-century popular culture. He had a versatile voice and unusually wide success encompassing many genres, including country, pop ballads, gospel, and blues. He is the best-selling solo artist in the history of popular music. Nominated for 14 competitive Grammys, he won three, and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award at age 36. He has been inducted into four music halls of fame.
Presley's ancestry was primarily a Western European mix: On his mother's side, he was Scots-Irish, with some French Norman; one of Gladys's great-great-grandmothers was Cherokee. His father's forebears were of Scottish or German origin. Gladys was regarded by relatives and friends as the dominant member of the small family. Vernon moved from one odd job to the next, evidencing little ambition. The family often relied on help from neighbors and government food assistance. In 1938, they lost their home after Vernon was found guilty of altering a check written by the landowner. He was jailed for eight months, and Gladys and Elvis moved in with relatives.
In September 1941, Presley entered first grade at East Tupelo Consolidated, where his instructors regarded him as "average". He was encouraged to enter a singing contest after impressing his schoolteacher with a rendition of Red Foley's country song "Old Shep" during morning prayers. The contest, held at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show on October 3, 1945, saw his first public performance: dressed as a cowboy, the ten-year-old Presley stood on a chair to reach the microphone and sang "Old Shep". He recalled placing fifth. A few months later, Presley received for his birthday his first guitar. He had hoped for something else—by different accounts, either a bicycle or a rifle. Over the following year, he received basic guitar lessons from two of his uncles and the new pastor at the family's church. Presley recalled, "I took the guitar, and I watched people, and I learned to play a little bit. But I would never sing in public. I was very shy about it."
Entering a new school, Milam, for sixth grade in September 1946, Presley was regarded as a loner. The following year, he began bringing his guitar in on a daily basis. He would play and sing during lunchtime, and was often teased as a "trashy" kid who played hillbilly music. The family was by then living in a largely African American neighborhood. A devotee of Mississippi Slim's show on the Tupelo radio station WELO, Presley was described as "crazy about music" by Slim's younger brother, a classmate of Presley's, who often took him in to the station. Slim supplemented Presley's guitar tuition by demonstrating chord techniques. When his protégé was 12 years old, Slim scheduled him for two on-air performances. Presley was overcome by stage fright the first time, but succeeded in performing the following week.
During his junior year, Presley began to stand out more among his classmates, largely because of his appearance: he grew out his sideburns and styled his hair with rose oil and Vaseline. On his own time, he would head down to Beale Street, the heart of Memphis's thriving blues scene, and gaze longingly at the wild, flashy clothes in the windows of Lansky Brothers. By his senior year, he was wearing them. Overcoming his reticence about performing outside the Courts, he competed in Humes's Annual "Minstrel" show in April 1953. Singing and playing guitar, he opened with "Till I Waltz Again With You", a recent hit for Teresa Brewer. Presley recalled that the performance did much for his reputation: "I wasn't popular in school ... I failed music—only thing I ever failed. And then they entered me in this talent show ... when I came onstage I heard people kind of rumbling and whispering and so forth, 'cause nobody knew I even sang. It was amazing how popular I became after that."
Presley, who never received formal music training or learned to read music, studied and played by ear. He frequented record stores with jukeboxes and listening booths. He knew all of Hank Snow's songs and he loved records by other country singers such as Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, Ted Daffan, Jimmie Rodgers, Jimmie Davis, and Bob Wills. The Southern Gospel singer Jake Hess, one of his favorite performers, was a significant influence on his ballad-singing style. He was a regular audience member at the monthly All-Night Singings downtown, where many of the white gospel groups that performed reflected the influence of African American spiritual music. He adored the music of black gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Like some of his peers, he may have attended blues venues—of necessity, in the segregated South, only on nights designated for exclusively white audiences. He certainly listened to the regional radio stations that played "race records": spirituals, blues, and the modern, backbeat-heavy sound of rhythm and blues. Many of his future recordings were inspired by local African American musicians such as Arthur Crudup and Rufus Thomas. B.B. King recalled that he knew Presley before he was popular when they both used to frequent Beale Street. By the time he graduated high school in June 1953, Presley had already singled out music as his future.
Not long after, he failed an audition for a local vocal quartet, the Songfellows. He explained to his father, "They told me I couldn't sing." Songfellow Jim Hamill later claimed that he was turned down because he did not demonstrate an ear for harmony at the time. In April, Presley began working for the Crown Electric company as a truck driver. His friend Ronnie Smith, after playing a few local gigs with him, suggested he contact Eddie Bond, leader of Smith's professional band, which had an opening for a vocalist. Bond rejected him after a tryout, advising Presley to stick to truck driving "because you're never going to make it as a singer."
Phillips, meanwhile, was always on the lookout for someone who could bring the sound of the black musicians on whom Sun focused to a broader audience. As Keisker reported, "Over and over I remember Sam saying, 'If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.'" In June, he acquired a demo recording of a ballad, "Without You", that he thought might suit the teenaged singer. Presley came by the studio, but was unable to do it justice. Despite this, Phillips asked Presley to sing as many numbers as he knew. He was sufficiently affected by what he heard to invite two local musicians, guitarist Winfield "Scotty" Moore and upright bass player Bill Black, to work something up with Presley for a recording session. }} The session, held the evening of July 5, proved entirely unfruitful until late in the night. As they were about to give up and go home, Presley took his guitar and launched into a 1946 blues number, Arthur Crudup's "That's All Right". Moore recalled, "All of a sudden, Elvis just started singing this song, jumping around and acting the fool, and then Bill picked up his bass, and he started acting the fool, too, and I started playing with them. Sam, I think, had the door to the control booth open ... he stuck his head out and said, 'What are you doing?' And we said, 'We don't know.' 'Well, back up,' he said, 'try to find a place to start, and do it again.'" Phillips quickly began taping; this was the sound he had been looking for. Three days later, popular Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips played "That's All Right" on his Red, Hot, and Blue show. Listeners began phoning in, eager to find out who the singer was. The interest was such that Phillips played the record repeatedly during the last two hours of his show. Interviewing Presley on-air, Phillips asked him what high school he attended in order to clarify his color for the many callers who had assumed he was black. During the next few days the trio recorded a bluegrass number, Bill Monroe's "Blue Moon of Kentucky", again in a distinctive style and employing a jury-rigged echo effect that Sam Phillips dubbed "slapback". A single was pressed with "That's All Right" on the A side and "Blue Moon of Kentucky" on the reverse.
By early 1955, Presley's regular Hayride appearances, constant touring, and well-received record releases had made him a substantial regional star, from Tennessee to West Texas. In January, Neal signed a formal management contract with Presley and brought the singer to the attention of Colonel Tom Parker, whom he considered the best promoter in the music business. Parker—Dutch-born, though he claimed to be from West Virginia—had acquired an honorary colonel's commission from country singer turned Louisiana governor Jimmie Davis. Having successfully managed top country star Eddy Arnold, he was now working with the new number one country singer, Hank Snow. Parker booked Presley on Snow's February tour. When the tour reached Odessa, Texas, a 19-year-old Roy Orbison saw Presley for the first time: "His energy was incredible, his instinct was just amazing. ... I just didn't know what to make of it. There was just no reference point in the culture to compare it." Presley made his television debut on March 3 on the KSLA-TV broadcast of Louisiana Hayride. Soon after, he failed an audition for Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts on the CBS television network. By August, Sun had released ten sides credited to "Elvis Presley, Scotty and Bill"; on the latest recordings, the trio were joined by a drummer. Some of the songs, like "That's All Right", were in what one Memphis journalist described as the "R&B; idiom of negro field jazz"; others, like "Blue Moon of Kentucky", were "more in the country field", "but there was a curious blending of the two different musics in both". This blend of styles made it difficult for Presley's music to find radio airplay. According to Neal, many country music disc jockeys would not play it because he sounded too much like a black artist and none of the rhythm and blues stations would touch him because "he sounded too much like a hillbilly." The blend came to be known as rockabilly. At the time, Presley was variously billed as "The King of Western Bop", "The Hillbilly Cat", and "The Memphis Flash".
Presley renewed Neal's management contract in August 1955, simultaneously appointing Parker as his special adviser. The group maintained an extensive touring schedule throughout the second half of the year. Neal recalled, "It was almost frightening, the reaction that came to Elvis from the teenaged boys. So many of them, through some sort of jealousy, would practically hate him. There were occasions in some towns in Texas when we'd have to be sure to have a police guard because somebody'd always try to take a crack at him. They'd get a gang and try to waylay him or something." The trio became a quartet when Hayride drummer Fontana joined as a full member. In mid-October, they played a few shows in support of Bill Haley, whose "Rock Around the Clock" had been a number one hit the previous year. Haley observed that Presley had a natural feel for rhythm, and advised him to sing fewer ballads.
At the Country Disc Jockey Convention in early November, Presley was voted the year's most promising male artist. Several record companies had by now shown interest in signing him. After three major labels made offers of up to $25,000, Parker and Phillips struck a deal with RCA Victor on November 21 to acquire Presley's Sun contract for an unprecedented $40,000. Presley, at 20, was still a minor, so his father signed the contract. Parker arranged with the owners of Hill and Range Publishing, Jean and Julian Aberbach, to create two entities, Elvis Presley Music and Gladys Music, to handle all of the new material recorded by Presley. Songwriters were obliged to forego one third of their customary royalties in exchange for having him perform their compositions. By December, RCA had begun to heavily promote its new singer, and before month's end had reissued many of his Sun recordings.
The second Milton Berle Show appearance came on June 5 at NBC's Hollywood studio, amid another hectic tour. Berle persuaded the singer to leave his guitar backstage, advising, "Let 'em see you, son." During the performance, Presley abruptly halted an uptempo rendition of "Hound Dog" with a wave of his arm and launched into a slow, grinding version accentuated with energetic, exaggerated body movements. Presley's gyrations created a storm of controversy. Television critics were outraged: Jack Gould of The New York Times wrote, "Mr. Presley has no discernible singing ability. ... His phrasing, if it can be called that, consists of the stereotyped variations that go with a beginner's aria in a bathtub. ... His one specialty is an accented movement of the body ... primarily identified with the repertoire of the blond bombshells of the burlesque runway." Ben Gross of the New York Daily News opined that popular music "has reached its lowest depths in the 'grunt and groin' antics of one Elvis Presley. ... Elvis, who rotates his pelvis ... gave an exhibition that was suggestive and vulgar, tinged with the kind of animalism that should be confined to dives and bordellos". Ed Sullivan, whose own variety show was the nation's most popular, declared him "unfit for family viewing". To Presley's displeasure, he soon found himself being referred to as "Elvis the Pelvis", which he called "one of the most childish expressions I ever heard, comin' from an adult."
The next day, Presley recorded "Hound Dog", along with "Any Way You Want Me" and "Don't Be Cruel". The Jordanaires sang harmony, as they had on The Steve Allen Show; they would work with Presley through the 1960s. A few days later, the singer made an outdoor concert appearance in Memphis at which he announced, "You know, those people in New York are not gonna change me none. I'm gonna show you what the real Elvis is like tonight." In August, a judge in Jacksonville, Florida, ordered Presley to tame his act. Throughout the following performance, he largely kept still, except for wiggling his little finger suggestively in mockery of the order. The single pairing "Don't Be Cruel" with "Hound Dog" ruled the top of the charts for 11 weeks—a mark that would not be surpassed for 36 years. Recording sessions for Presley's second album took place in Hollywood during the first week of September. Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, the writers of "Hound Dog", contributed "Love Me".
Allen's show with Presley had, for the first time, beaten CBS's Ed Sullivan Show in the ratings. Sullivan, despite his June pronouncement, booked the singer for three appearances for an unprecedented $50,000. The first, on September 9, 1956, was seen by approximately 60 million viewers—a record 82.6 percent of the television audience. Actor Charles Laughton hosted the show, filling in while Sullivan recuperated from a car accident. Presley appeared in two segments that night from CBS Television City in Hollywood. According to Elvis legend, Presley was shot only from the waist up. Watching clips of the Allen and Berle shows with his producer, Sullivan had opined that Presley "got some kind of device hanging down below the crotch of his pants–so when he moves his legs back and forth you can see the outline of his cock. ... I think it's a Coke bottle. ... We just can't have this on a Sunday night. This is a family show!" Sullivan publicly told TV Guide, "As for his gyrations, the whole thing can be controlled with camera shots." In fact, Presley was shown head-to-toe in the first and second shows. Though the camerawork was relatively discreet during his debut, with leg-concealing closeups when he danced, the studio audience reacted in customary style: screaming. Presley's performance of his forthcoming single, the ballad "Love Me Tender", prompted a record-shattering million advance orders. More than any other single event, it was this first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show that made Presley a national celebrity of barely precedented proportions.
Accompanying Presley's rise to fame, a cultural shift was taking place that he both helped inspire and came to symbolize. Igniting the "biggest pop craze since Glenn Miller and Frank Sinatra ... Presley brought rock'n'roll into the mainstream of popular culture", writes historian Marty Jezer. "As Presley set the artistic pace, other artists followed. ... Presley, more than anyone else, gave the young a belief in themselves as a distinct and somehow unified generation—the first in America ever to feel the power of an integrated youth culture."
Presley returned to the Sullivan show, hosted this time by its namesake, on October 28. After the performance, crowds in Nashville and St. Louis burned him in effigy. His first motion picture, Love Me Tender, was released on November 21. Though he was not top billed, the film's original title—The Reno Brothers—was changed to capitalize on his latest number one record: "Love Me Tender" had hit the top of the charts earlier that month. To further take advantage of Presley's popularity, four musical numbers were added to what was originally a straight acting role. The movie was panned by the critics but did very well at the box office. Presley would receive top billing on every subsequent film he made.
On December 4, Presley dropped into Sun Records where Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis were recording and jammed with them. Though Phillips no longer had the right to release any Presley material, he made sure the session was captured on tape. The results became legendary as the "Million Dollar Quartet" recordings—Johnny Cash was long thought to have played as well, but he was present only briefly at Phillips' instigation for a photo opportunity. The year ended with a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal reporting that Presley merchandise had brought in $22 million on top of his record sales, and Billboards declaration that he had placed more songs in the top 100 than any other artist since records were first charted. In his first full year on RCA, one of the music industry's largest companies, Presley had accounted for over 50 percent of the label's singles sales.
Presley undertook three brief tours during the year, continuing to generate a crazed audience response. A Detroit newspaper suggested that "the trouble with going to see Elvis Presley is that you're liable to get killed." Villanova students pelted him with eggs in Philadelphia, and in Vancouver, the crowd rioted after the end of the show, destroying the stage. Frank Sinatra, who had famously inspired the swooning of teenaged girls in the 1940s, condemned the new musical phenomenon. In a magazine article, he decried rock and roll as "brutal, ugly, degenerate, vicious. ... It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people. It smells phoney and false. It is sung, played and written, for the most part, by cretinous goons. ... This rancid-smelling aphrodisiac I deplore." Asked for a response, Presley said, "I admire the man. He has a right to say what he wants to say. He is a great success and a fine actor, but I think he shouldn't have said it. ... This is a trend, just the same as he faced when he started years ago."
Leiber and Stoller were again in the studio for the recording of Elvis' Christmas Album. Toward the end of the session, they wrote a song on the spot at Presley's request: "Santa Claus Is Back In Town", an innuendo-laden blues. The holiday release stretched Presley's string of number one albums to four and would eventually become the best selling Christmas album of all time. After the session, Moore and Black—drawing only modest weekly salaries, sharing in none of Presley's massive financial success—resigned. Though they were brought back on a per diem basis a few weeks later, it was clear that they had not been part of Presley's inner circle for some time. On December 20, Presley received his draft notice. He was granted a deferment to finish the forthcoming King Creole, in which $350,000 had already been invested by Paramount and producer Hal Wallis. A couple of weeks into the new year, "Don't", another Leiber and Stoller tune, became Presley's tenth number one seller. It had been only 21 months since "Heartbreak Hotel" had brought him to the top for the first time. Recording sessions for the King Creole soundtrack were held in Hollywood mid-January. Leiber and Stoller provided three songs and were again on hand, but it would be the last time they worked closely with Presley. A studio session on February 1 marked another ending: it was the final occasion on which Black was to perform with Presley. He died in 1965.
Soon after Presley had commenced basic training at Fort Hood, he received a visit from Eddie Fadal, a businessman he had met when on tour in Texas. Fadal reported that Presley had become convinced his career was finished—"He firmly believed that." During a two-week leave in early June, Presley cut five sides in Nashville. He returned to training, but in early August his mother was diagnosed with hepatitis and her condition worsened. Presley was granted emergency leave to visit her, arriving in Memphis on August 12. Two days later, she died of heart failure, aged 46. Presley was devastated; their relationship had remained extremely close—even into his adulthood, they would use baby talk with each other and Presley would address her with pet names.
en route to Germany, September 29, 1958]]
After training at Fort Hood, Presley joined the 3rd Armored Division in Friedberg, Germany, on October 1. Introduced to amphetamines by a sergeant while on maneuvers, he became "practically evangelical about their benefits"—not only for energy, but for "strength" and weight loss, as well—and many of his friends in the outfit joined him in indulging. The Army also introduced Presley to karate, which he studied seriously, later including it in his live performances. Fellow soldiers have attested to Presley's wish to be seen as an able, ordinary soldier, despite his fame, and to his generosity while in the service. He donated his Army pay to charity, purchased TV sets for the base, and bought an extra set of fatigues for everyone in his outfit.
While in Friedberg, Presley met 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu. They would eventually marry after a seven-and-a-half-year courtship. In her autobiography, Priscilla says that despite his worries that it would ruin his career, Parker convinced Presley that to gain popular respect, he should serve his country as a regular soldier rather than in Special Services, where he would have been able to give some musical performances and remain in touch with the public. Media reports echoed Presley's concerns about his career, but RCA producer Steve Sholes and Freddy Bienstock of Hill and Range had carefully prepared for his two-year hiatus. Armed with a substantial amount of unreleased material, they kept up a regular stream of successful releases. Between his induction and discharge, Presley had ten top 40 hits, including "Wear My Ring Around Your Neck", the best-selling "Hard Headed Woman", and "One Night" in 1958, and "(Now and Then There's) A Fool Such as I" and the number one "A Big Hunk o' Love" in 1959. RCA also managed to generate four albums compiling old material during this period, most successfully Elvis' Golden Records (1958), which hit number three on the LP chart.
Presley returned to television on May 12 as a guest on —ironic for both stars, given Sinatra's not-so-distant excoriation of rock and roll. Also known as Welcome Home Elvis, the show had been taped in late March, the only time all year Presley performed in front of an audience. Parker secured an unheard-of $125,000 fee for eight minutes of singing. The broadcast drew an enormous viewership.
G.I. Blues, the soundtrack to Presley's first film since his return, was a number one album in October. His first LP of sacred material, His Hand in Mine, followed two months later. It reached number 13 on the U.S. pop chart and number 3 in Great Britain, remarkable figures for a gospel album. In February 1961, Presley performed two shows for a benefit event in Memphis, on behalf of 24 local charities. During a luncheon preceding the event, RCA presented him with a plaque certifying worldwide sales of over 75 million records. A 12-hour Nashville session in mid-March yielded nearly all of Presley's next studio album, Something for Everybody. As described by John Robertson, it exemplifies the Nashville sound, the restrained, cosmopolitan style that would define country music in the 1960s. Presaging much of what was to come from Presley himself over the next half-decade, the album is largely "a pleasant, unthreatening pastiche of the music that had once been Elvis's birthright." It would be his sixth number one LP. Another benefit concert, raising money for a Pearl Harbor memorial, was staged on March 25, in Hawaii. It was to be Presley's last public performance for seven years.
Of Presley's films in the 1960s, 15 were accompanied by soundtrack albums and another 5 by soundtrack EPs. The movies' rapid production and release schedules—he frequently starred in three a year—affected his music. According to Jerry Leiber, the soundtrack formula was already evident before Presley left for the Army: "three ballads, one medium-tempo [number], one up-tempo, and one break blues boogie". As the decade wore on, the quality of the soundtrack songs grew "progressively worse". Julie Parrish, who appeared in Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966), says that he hated many of the songs chosen for his films. The Jordanaires' Gordon Stoker describes how Presley would retreat from the studio microphone: "The material was so bad that he felt like he couldn't sing it." Most of the movie albums featured a song or two from respected writers such as the team of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. But by and large, according to biographer Jerry Hopkins, the numbers seemed to be "written on order by men who never really understood Elvis or rock and roll." Regardless of the songs' quality, it has been argued that Presley generally sang them well, with commitment. Critic Dave Marsh heard the opposite: "Presley isn't trying, probably the wisest course in the face of material like 'No Room to Rumba in a Sports Car' and 'Rock-a-Hula Baby.'"
In the first half of the decade, three of Presley's soundtrack albums hit number one on the pop charts, and a few of his most popular songs came from his films, such as "Can't Help Falling in Love" (1961) and "Return to Sender" (1962). ("Viva Las Vegas", the title track to the 1964 film, was a minor hit as a B-side, and became truly popular only later.) But, as with artistic merit, the commercial returns steadily diminished. During a five-year span—1964 through 1968—Presley had only one top ten hit: "Crying in the Chapel" (1965), a gospel number recorded back in 1960. As for non-movie albums, between the June 1962 release of Pot Luck and the November 1968 release of the soundtrack to the television special that signaled his comeback, only one LP of new material by Presley was issued: the gospel album How Great Thou Art (1967). It won him his first Grammy Award, for Best Sacred Performance. As Marsh described, Presley was "arguably the greatest white gospel singer of his time [and] really the last rock & roll artist to make gospel as vital a component of his musical personality as his secular songs."
Shortly before Christmas 1966, more than seven years since they first met, Presley proposed to Priscilla Beaulieu. They were married on May 1, 1967, in a brief ceremony in their suite at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas. The flow of formulaic movies and assembly-line soundtracks rolled on. It was not until October 1967, when the Clambake soundtrack LP registered record low sales for a new Presley album, that RCA executives recognized a problem. "By then, of course, the damage had been done", as historians Connie Kirchberg and Marc Hendrickx put it. "Elvis was viewed as a joke by serious music lovers and a has-been to all but his most loyal fans."
Recorded in late June, the special, called simply Elvis, aired on December 3, 1968. Later known as the '68 Comeback Special, the show featured lavishly staged studio productions as well as songs performed with a band in front of a small audience—Presley's first live performances since 1961. The live segments saw Presley clad in tight black leather, singing and playing guitar in an uninhibited style reminiscent of his early rock and roll days. Director and coproducer Steve Binder had worked hard to reassure the nervous singer and to produce a show that was far from the hour of Christmas songs Parker had originally planned. The show, NBC's highest rated that season, captured 42 percent of the total viewing audience. Jon Landau of Eye magazine remarked, "There is something magical about watching a man who has lost himself find his way back home. He sang with the kind of power people no longer expect of rock 'n' roll singers. He moved his body with a lack of pretension and effort that must have made Jim Morrison green with envy." Dave Marsh calls the performance one of "emotional grandeur and historical resonance."
By January 1969, the single "If I Can Dream", written for the special, reached number 12. The soundtrack album broke into the top ten. According to friend Jerry Schilling, the special reminded Presley of what "he had not been able to do for years, being able to choose the people; being able to choose what songs and not being told what had to be on the soundtrack. ... He was out of prison, man." Binder said of Presley's reaction, "I played Elvis the 60-minute show, and he told me in the screening room, 'Steve, it's the greatest thing I've ever done in my life. I give you my word I will never sing a song I don't believe in.'"
Presley was keen to resume regular live performing. Following the success of the Comeback Special, offers came in from around the world. The London Palladium offered Parker $28,000 for a one-week engagement. He responded, "That's fine for me, now how much can you get for Elvis?" In May, the brand new International Hotel in Las Vegas, boasting the largest showroom in the city, announced that it had booked Presley. He was scheduled to perform 57 shows over four weeks beginning July 31. Moore, Fontana, and the Jordanaires declined to participate, afraid of losing the lucrative session work they had in Nashville. Presley assembled new, top-notch accompaniment, led by guitarist James Burton and including two gospel groups, The Imperials and Sweet Inspirations. Nonetheless, he was nervous: his only previous Las Vegas engagement, in 1956, had been dismal. Parker, who intended to make Presley's return the show business event of the year, oversaw a major promotional push. For his part, hotel owner Kirk Kerkorian arranged to send his own plane to New York to fly in rock journalists for the debut performance.
Presley took to the stage without introduction. The audience of 2,200, including many celebrities, gave him a standing ovation before he sang a note and another after his performance. A third followed his encore, "Can't Help Falling in Love" (a song that would be his closing number for much of the 1970s). At a press conference after the show, when a journalist referred to him as "The King", Presley gestured toward Fats Domino, who was taking in the scene. "No," Presley said, "that's the real king of rock and roll." The next day, Parker's negotiations with the hotel resulted in a five-year contract for Presley to play each February and August, at an annual salary of $1 million. Newsweek commented, "There are several unbelievable things about Elvis, but the most incredible is his staying power in a world where meteoric careers fade like shooting stars." Rolling Stone called Presley "supernatural, his own resurrection." In November, Presley's final non-concert movie, Change of Habit, opened. The double album From Memphis To Vegas/From Vegas To Memphis came out the same month; the first LP consisted of live performances from the International, the second of more cuts from the American Sound sessions. "Suspicious Minds" reached the top of the charts—Presley's first U.S. pop number one in over seven years, and his last.
Cassandra Peterson, later television's Elvira, met Presley during this period in Las Vegas, where she was working as showgirl. She recalls of their encounter, "He was so anti-drug when I met him. I mentioned to him that I smoked marijuana, and he was just appalled. He said, 'Don't ever do that again.'" Presley was not only deeply opposed to recreational drugs, he also rarely drank. Several of his family members had been alcoholics, a fate he intended to avoid.
The album That's the Way It Is, produced to accompany the documentary and featuring both studio and live recordings, marked a stylistic shift. As music historian John Robertson notes, "The authority of Presley's singing helped disguise the fact that the album stepped decisively away from the American-roots inspiration of the Memphis sessions towards a more middle-of-the-road sound. With country put on the back burner, and soul and R&B; left in Memphis, what was left was very classy, very clean white pop—perfect for the Las Vegas crowd, but a definite retrograde step for Elvis." After the end of his International engagement on September 7, Presley embarked on a week-long concert tour, largely of the South, his first since 1958. Another week-long tour, of the West Coast, followed in November.
in the White House Oval Office, December 21, 1970]] On December 21, 1970, Presley engineered a bizarre meeting with President Richard Nixon at the White House, where he expressed his patriotism and his contempt for the hippie drug culture. He asked Nixon for a Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs badge, to add to similar items he had begun collecting and to signify official sanction of his patriotic efforts. Nixon, who apparently found the encounter awkward, expressed a belief that Presley could send a positive message to young people and that it was therefore important he "retain his credibility". Presley told Nixon that The Beatles, whose songs he regularly performed in concert during the era, exemplified what he saw as a trend of anti-Americanism and drug abuse in popular culture. (Presley and his friends had had a four-hour get-together with The Beatles five years earlier.) On hearing reports of the meeting, Paul McCartney later said that he "felt a bit betrayed. ... The great joke was that we were taking [illegal] drugs, and look what happened to him", a reference to Presley's death, hastened by prescription drug abuse.
The U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce named Presley one of its annual Ten Most Outstanding Young Men of the Nation on January 16, 1971. Not long after, the City of Memphis named the stretch of Highway 51 South on which Graceland is located "Elvis Presley Boulevard". The same year, Presley became the first rock and roll singer to be awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award (then known as the Bing Crosby Award) by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the Grammy Award organization. Three new, non-movie Presley studio albums were released in 1971, as many as had come out over the previous eight years. Best received by critics was Elvis Country, a concept record that focused on genre standards. The biggest seller was Elvis Sings the Wonderful World of Christmas, "the truest statement of all", according to Greil Marcus. "In the midst of ten painfully genteel Christmas songs, every one sung with appalling sincerity and humility, one could find Elvis tom-catting his way through six blazing minutes of 'Merry Christmas, Baby,' a raunchy old Charles Brown blues. ... If [Presley's] sin was his lifelessness, it was his sinfulness that brought him to life".
Presley and his wife, meanwhile, had become increasingly distant, barely cohabiting. In 1971, an affair he had with Joyce Bova resulted—unbeknownst to him—in her pregnancy and an abortion. He often raised the possibility of her moving in to Graceland, saying that he was likely to leave Priscilla. The Presleys separated on February 23, 1972, after Priscilla disclosed her relationship with Mike Stone, a karate instructor Presley had recommended to her. Priscilla relates that when she told him, Presley "grabbed ... and forcefully made love to" her, declaring, "This is how a real man makes love to his woman." Five months later, Presley's new girlfriend, Linda Thompson, a songwriter and one-time Memphis beauty queen, moved in with him. Presley and his wife filed for divorce on August 18.
In January 1973, Presley performed two benefit concerts for the Kui Lee Cancer Fund in connection with a groundbreaking TV special, Aloha from Hawaii. The first show served as a practice run and backup should technical problems affect the live broadcast two days later. Aired as scheduled on January 14, Aloha from Hawaii was the first global concert satellite broadcast, reaching approximately 1.5 billion viewers live and on tape delay. Presley's costume became the most recognized example of the elaborate concert garb with which his latter-day persona became closely associated. As described by Bobbie Ann Mason, "At the end of the show, when he spreads out his American Eagle cape, with the full stretched wings of the eagle studded on the back, he becomes a god figure." The , released in February, went to number one and eventually sold over 5 million copies in the United States. It proved to be Presley's last U.S. number one pop album during his lifetime.
At a midnight show the same month, four men rushed onto the stage in an apparent attack. Security men leapt to Presley's defense, and the singer's karate instinct took over as he ejected one invader from the stage himself. Following the show, he became obsessed with the idea that the men had been sent by Stone to kill him. Though they were shown to have been only overexuberant fans, he raged, "There's too much pain in me ... Stone [must] die." His outbursts continued with such intensity that a physician was unable to calm him, despite administering large doses of medication. After another two full days of raging, Red West, his friend and bodyguard, felt compelled to get a price for a contract killing and was relieved when Presley decided, "Aw hell, let's just leave it for now. Maybe it's a bit heavy."
Presley's condition declined precipitously in September. Keyboardist Tony Brown remembers the singer's arrival at a University of Maryland concert: "He fell out of the limousine, to his knees. People jumped to help, and he pushed them away like, 'Don't help me.' He walked on stage and held onto the mike for the first thirty minutes like it was a post. Everybody's looking at each other like, Is the tour gonna happen?" Guitarist John Wilkinson recalled, "He was all gut. He was slurring. He was so fucked up. ... It was obvious he was drugged. It was obvious there was something terribly wrong with his body. It was so bad the words to the songs were barely intelligible. ... I remember crying. He could barely get through the introductions". Wilkinson recounted that a few nights later in Detroit, "I watched him in his dressing room, just draped over a chair, unable to move. So often I thought, 'Boss, why don't you just cancel this tour and take a year off...?' I mentioned something once in a guarded moment. He patted me on the back and said, 'It'll be all right. Don't you worry about it.'" Presley continued to play to sellout crowds. As cultural critic Marjorie Garber describes, he was now widely seen as a garish pop crooner: "in effect he had become Liberace. Even his fans were now middle-aged matrons and blue-haired grandmothers."
On July 13, 1976, Vernon Presley—who had become deeply involved in his son's financial affairs—fired "Memphis Mafia" bodyguards Red West (Presley's friend since the 1950s), Sonny West, and David Hebler, citing the need to "cut back on expenses". Presley was in Palm Springs at the time, and some suggest the singer was too cowardly to face the three himself. Another associate of Presley's, John O'Grady, argued that the bodyguards were dropped because their rough treatment of fans had prompted too many lawsuits. However, Presley's stepbrother David Stanley has claimed that the bodyguards were fired because they were becoming more outspoken about Presley's drug dependency. Presley and Linda Thompson split in November, and he took up with a new girlfriend, Ginger Alden. He proposed to Alden and gave her an engagement ring two months later, though several of his friends later claimed that he had no serious intention of marrying again.
RCA, which had enjoyed a steady stream of product from Presley for over a decade, grew anxious as his interest in spending time in the studio waned. After a December 1973 session that produced 18 songs, enough for almost two albums, he did not enter the studio in 1974. Parker sold RCA on another concert record, . Recorded on March 20, it included a version of "How Great Thou Art" that would win Presley his third and final competitive Grammy Award. (All three of his competitive Grammy wins—out of 14 total nominations—were for gospel recordings.) Presley returned to the studio in Hollywood in March 1975, but Parker's attempts to arrange another session toward the end of the year were unsuccessful. In 1976, RCA sent a mobile studio to Graceland that made possible two full-scale recording sessions at Presley's home. Even in that comfortable context, the recording process was now a struggle for him.
}} For all the concerns of his label and manager, in studio sessions between July 1973 and October 1976, Presley recorded virtually the entire contents of six albums. Though he was no longer a major presence on the pop charts, five of those albums entered the top five of the country chart, and three went to number one: Promised Land (1975), From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee (1976), and Moody Blue (1977). The story was similar with his singles—there were no major pop hits, but Presley was a significant force in not just the country market, but on adult contemporary radio as well. Eight studio singles from this period released during his lifetime were top ten hits on one or both charts, four in 1974 alone. "My Boy" was a number one AC hit in 1975, and "Moody Blue" topped the country chart and reached the second spot on the AC in 1976. Perhaps his most critically acclaimed recording of the era came that year, with what Greil Marcus described as his "apocalyptic attack" on the soul classic "Hurt". "If he felt the way he sounded", Dave Marsh wrote of Presley's performance, "the wonder isn't that he had only a year left to live but that he managed to survive that long."
The book Elvis: What Happened?, cowritten by the three bodyguards fired the previous year, was published on August 1. It was the first exposé to detail Presley's years of drug misuse. He was devastated by the book and tried unsuccessfully to halt its release by offering money to the publishers. By this point, he suffered from multiple ailments—glaucoma, high blood pressure, liver damage, and an enlarged colon, each aggravated, and possibly caused, by drug abuse.
Presley was scheduled to fly out of Memphis on the evening of August 16, 1977, to begin another tour. That afternoon, Alden discovered him unresponsive on his bathroom floor. Attempts to revive him failed, and death was officially pronounced at 3:30 pm at Baptist Memorial Hospital.
President Jimmy Carter issued a statement that credited Presley with having "permanently changed the face of American popular culture". Thousands of people gathered outside Graceland to view the open casket. One of Presley's cousins, Billy Mann, accepted $18,000 to secretly photograph the corpse; the picture appeared on the cover of the National Enquirers biggest-selling issue ever. Alden struck a $105,000 deal with the Enquirer for her story, but settled for less when she broke her exclusivity agreement. Presley left her nothing in his will.
Presley's funeral was held at Graceland, on Thursday, August 18. Outside the gates, a car plowed into a group of fans, killing two women and critically injuring a third. Approximately 80,000 people lined the processional route to Forest Hill Cemetery, where Presley was buried next to his mother. Within a few days, "Way Down" topped the country and UK pop charts. Following an attempt to steal the singer's body in late August, the remains of both Elvis Presley and his mother were reburied in Graceland's Meditation Garden on October 2.
Presley has been inducted into four music halls of fame: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1986), the Country Music Hall of Fame (1998), the Gospel Music Hall of Fame (2001), and the Rockabilly Hall of Fame (2007). In 1984, he received the W. C. Handy Award from the Blues Foundation and the Academy of Country Music's first Golden Hat Award. In 1987, he received the American Music Awards' Award of Merit.
A Junkie XL remix of Presley's "A Little Less Conversation" (credited as "Elvis Vs JXL") was used in a Nike advertising campaign during the 2002 FIFA World Cup. It topped the charts in over 20 countries, and was included in a compilation of Presley's number one hits, ELV1S, that was also an international success. In 2003, a remix of "Rubberneckin'", a 1969 recording of Presley's, topped the U.S. sales chart, as did a 50th-anniversary re-release of "That's All Right" the following year. The latter was an outright hit in Great Britain, reaching number three on the pop chart.
In 2005, another three reissued singles, "Jailhouse Rock", "One Night"/"I Got Stung", and "It's Now or Never", went to number one in Great Britain. A total of 17 Presley singles were reissued during the year—all made the British top five. For the fifth straight year, Forbes named Presley the top-earning deceased celebrity, with a gross income of $45 million. In 2009, he was ranked fourth. The following year, Viva Elvis: The Album was released, setting his voice to newly recorded instrumental tracks.
Presley holds the records for most songs charting in Billboards top 40 and top 100: chart statistician Joel Whitburn calculates the respective totals as 104 and 151; Presley historian Adam Victor gives 114 and 138. Presley's rankings for top ten and number one hits vary depending on how the double-sided "Hound Dog/Don't Be Cruel" and "Don't/I Beg of You" singles, which precede the inception of Billboards unified Hot 100 chart, are analyzed. According to Whitburn, Presley holds the record for most top ten hits with 38; per Billboards current assessment, he ranks second with 36 behind Madonna's 37. Whitburn and Billboard concur that The Beatles hold the record for most number one hits with 20 and that Mariah Carey is second with 18. Whitburn has Presley also with 18 and thus tied for second; Billboard has him third with 17. Presley retains the record for cumulative weeks at number one: alone at 80, according to Whitburn and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; tied with Carey at 79, according to Billboard. He holds the records for most British number one hits, with 21, and top ten hits, with 76.
At RCA, Presley's rock and roll sound grew distinct from rockabilly with group chorus vocals, more heavily amplified electric guitars and a tougher, more intense manner. While he was known for taking songs from various sources and giving them a rockabilly/rock and roll treatment, he also recorded songs in other genres from early in his career, from the pop standard "Blue Moon" at Sun to the country ballad "How's the World Treating You?" on his second LP to the blues of "Santa Claus Is Back In Town". In 1957, his first gospel record was released, the four-song EP Peace in the Valley. Certified as a million seller, it became the top-selling gospel EP in recording history. Presley would record gospel periodically for the rest of his life. }} After his return from military service in 1960, Presley continued to perform rock and roll, but the characteristic style was substantially toned down. His first post-Army single, the number one hit "Stuck on You", is typical of this shift. RCA publicity materials referred to its "mild rock beat"; discographer Ernst Jorgensen calls it "upbeat pop". The modern blues/R&B; sound captured so successfully on Elvis Is Back! was essentially abandoned for six years until such 1966–67 recordings as "Down in the Alley" and "Hi-Heel Sneakers". The singer's output during most of the 1960s emphasized pop music, often in the form of ballads such as "Are You Lonesome Tonight?", a number one in 1960. While that was a dramatic number, most of what Presley recorded for his movie soundtracks was in a much lighter vein.
While Presley performed several of his classic ballads for the '68 Comeback Special, the sound of the show was dominated by aggressive rock and roll. He would record few new straight-ahead rock and roll songs thereafter; as he explained, they were "hard to find". A significant exception was "Burning Love", his last major hit on the pop charts. Like his work of the 1950s, Presley's subsequent recordings reworked pop and country songs, but in markedly different permutations. His stylistic range now began to embrace a more contemporary rock sound as well as soul and funk. Much of Elvis In Memphis, as well as "Suspicious Minds", cut at the same sessions, reflected his new rock and soul fusion. In the mid-1970s, many of his singles found a home on country radio, the field where he first became a star.
The competence and ethics of two of the centrally involved medical professionals were seriously questioned. Before the autopsy was complete and toxicology results known, Medical Examiner Dr. Jerry Francisco declared the cause of death as cardiac arrhythmia, a condition that can be determined only in someone who is still alive. Allegations of a cover-up were widespread. While Presley's main physician, Dr. Nichopoulos, was exonerated of criminal liability for the singer's death, the facts were startling: "In the first eight months of 1977 alone, he had [prescribed] more than 10,000 doses of sedatives, amphetamines and narcotics: all in Elvis's name." His license was suspended for three months. It was permanently revoked in the 1990s after the Tennessee Medical Board brought new charges of over-prescription.
In 1994, the Presley autopsy was reopened. Coroner Dr. Joseph Davis declared, "There is nothing in any of the data that supports a death from drugs. In fact, everything points to a sudden, violent heart attack." Whether or not combined drug intoxication was in fact the cause, there is little doubt that polypharmacy contributed significantly to Presley's premature death.
Despite the largely positive view of Presley held by African Americans, a rumor spread in mid-1957 that he had at some point announced, "The only thing Negroes can do for me is buy my records and shine my shoes." A journalist with the national African American weekly Jet, Louie Robinson, pursued the story. On the set of Jailhouse Rock, Presley granted him an interview, though he was no longer dealing with the mainstream press. He denied making such a statement or holding in any way to its racist view. Robinson found no evidence that the remark had ever been made, and on the contrary elicited testimony from many individuals indicating that Presley was anything but racist. Blues singer Ivory Joe Hunter, who had heard the rumor before he visited Graceland one evening, reported of Presley, "He showed me every courtesy, and I think he's one of the greatest." Though the rumored remark was wholly discredited at the time, it was still being used against Presley decades later. The identification of Presley with racism—either personally or symbolically—was expressed most famously in the lyrics of the 1989 rap hit "Fight the Power", by Public Enemy: "Elvis was a hero to most / But he never meant shit to me / Straight-up racist that sucker was / Simple and plain".
The persistence of such attitudes was fueled by resentment over the fact that Presley, whose musical and visual performance idiom owed much to African American sources, achieved the cultural acknowledgment and commercial success largely denied his black peers. Into the 21st century, the notion that Presley had "stolen" black music still found adherents. Notable among African American entertainers expressly rejecting this view was Jackie Wilson, who argued, "A lot of people have accused Elvis of stealing the black man's music, when in fact, almost every black solo entertainer copied his stage mannerisms from Elvis." And throughout his career, Presley plainly acknowledged his debt. Addressing his '68 Comeback Special audience, he said, "Rock 'n' roll music is basically gospel or rhythm and blues, or it sprang from that. People have been adding to it, adding instruments to it, experimenting with it, but it all boils down to [that]." Nine years earlier, he had said, "Rock 'n' roll has been around for many years. It used to be called rhythm and blues."
By 1967, Parker had contracts with Presley that gave him 50 percent of most of the singer's earnings on recordings, films, and merchandise. Beginning in February 1972, he took a third of the profit from live appearances; a January 1976 agreement entitled him to half of that as well. Priscilla Presley noted that "Elvis detested the business side of his career. He would sign a contract without even reading it." Presley's friend Marty Lacker regarded Parker as a "hustler and a con artist. He was only interested in 'now money'—get the buck and get gone."
Lacker was instrumental in convincing Presley to record with Memphis producer Chips Moman and his handpicked musicians at American Sound Studio in early 1969. The American Sound sessions represented a significant departure from the control customarily exerted by Hill and Range. Moman still had to deal with the publisher's staff on site, whose song suggestions he regarded as unacceptable. He was on the verge of quitting, until Presley ordered the Hill and Range personnel out of the studio. Although RCA executive Joan Deary was later full of praise for the producer's song choices and the quality of the recordings, Moman, to his fury, received neither credit on the records nor royalties for his work.
Throughout his entire career, Presley performed in only three venues outside the United States—all of them in Canada, during brief tours there in 1957. Rumors that he would play overseas for the first time were fueled in 1974 by a million-dollar bid for an Australian tour. Parker was uncharacteristically reluctant, prompting those close to Presley to speculate about the manager's past and the reasons for his apparent unwillingness to apply for a passport. Parker ultimately squelched any notions Presley had of working abroad, claiming that foreign security was poor and venues unsuitable for a star of his magnitude.
Parker arguably exercised tightest control over Presley's movie career. In 1957, Robert Mitchum asked Presley to costar with him in Thunder Road, on which Mitchum was both writer and producer. According to George Klein, one of his oldest friends, Presley was offered starring roles in West Side Story and Midnight Cowboy. In 1974, Barbra Streisand approached Presley to star with her in the remake of A Star is Born. In each case, any ambitions the singer may have had to play such parts were thwarted by his manager's negotiating demands or flat refusals. In Lacker's description, "The only thing that kept Elvis going after the early years was a new challenge. But Parker kept running everything into the ground." The operative attitude may have been summed up best by the response Leiber and Stoller received when they brought a serious film project for Presley to Parker and the Hill and Range owners for their consideration. In Leiber's telling, Jean Aberbach warned them to never again "try to interfere with the business or artistic workings of the process known as Elvis Presley".
Larry Geller became Presley's hairdresser in 1964. Unlike others in the Memphis Mafia, he was interested in spiritual questions and recalls how, from their first conversation, Presley revealed his secret thoughts and anxieties: "I mean there has to be a purpose...there's got to be a reason...why I was chosen to be Elvis Presley. ... I swear to God, no one knows how lonely I get. And how empty I really feel." Thereafter, Geller supplied him with books on religion and mysticism, which the singer read voraciously. Presley would be preoccupied by such matters for much of his life, taking trunkloads of books with him on tour.
While Presley was marketed as an icon of heterosexuality, some cultural critics have argued that his image was ambiguous. In 1959, Sight and Sounds Peter John Dyer described his onscreen persona as "aggressively bisexual in appeal". Brett Farmer places the "orgasmic gyrations" of the title dance sequence in Jailhouse Rock within a lineage of cinematic musical numbers that offer a "spectacular eroticization, if not homoeroticization, of the male image". In the analysis of Yvonne Tasker, "Elvis was an ambivalent figure who articulated a peculiar feminised, objectifying version of white working-class masculinity as aggressive sexual display."
Reinforcing Presley's image as a sex symbol were the reports of his dalliances with various Hollywood stars and starlets, from Natalie Wood in the 1950s to Connie Stevens and Ann-Margret in the 1960s to Candice Bergen and Cybill Shepherd in the 1970s. June Juanico of Memphis, one of Presley's early girlfriends, later blamed Parker for encouraging him to choose his dating partners with publicity in mind. Presley, however, never grew comfortable with the Hollywood scene, and most of these relationships were insubstantial.
Presley's rise to national attention in 1956 transformed the field of popular music and had a huge effect on the broader scope of popular culture. As the catalyst for the cultural revolution that was rock and roll, he was central not only to defining it as a musical genre but in making it a touchstone of youth culture and rebellious attitude. With its racially mixed origins—repeatedly affirmed by Presley—rock and roll's occupation of a central position in mainstream American culture facilitated a new acceptance and appreciation of black culture. In this regard, Little Richard said of Presley, "He was an integrator. Elvis was a blessing. They wouldn't let black music through. He opened the door for black music." Al Green agreed: "He broke the ice for all of us." Presley also heralded the vastly expanded reach of celebrity in the era of mass communication: at the age of 21, within a year of his first appearance on American network television, he was one of the most famous people in the world. in 1988]]
Presley's name, image, and voice are instantly recognizable around the globe. He has inspired a legion of impersonators. In polls and surveys, he is recognized as one of the most important popular music artists and influential Americans. "Elvis Presley is the greatest cultural force in the twentieth century", said composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein. "He introduced the beat to everything and he changed everything—music, language, clothes. It's a whole new social revolution—the sixties came from it." Bob Dylan described the sensation of first hearing Presley as "like busting out of jail".
A New York Times editorial on the 25th anniversary of Presley's death observed, "All the talentless impersonators and appalling black velvet paintings on display can make him seem little more than a perverse and distant memory. But before Elvis was camp, he was its opposite: a genuine cultural force. ... Elvis's breakthroughs are underappreciated because in this rock-and-roll age, his hard-rocking music and sultry style have triumphed so completely." Not only Presley's achievements, but his failings as well, are seen by some cultural observers as adding to the power of his legacy, as in this description by Greil Marcus:
Elvis Presley is a supreme figure in American life, one whose presence, no matter how banal or predictable, brooks no real comparisons. ... The cultural range of his music has expanded to the point where it includes not only the hits of the day, but also patriotic recitals, pure country gospel, and really dirty blues. ... Elvis has emerged as a great artist, a great rocker, a great purveyor of schlock, a great heart throb, a great bore, a great symbol of potency, a great ham, a great nice person, and, yes, a great American.
A vast number of recordings have been issued under Presley's name. The total number of his original master recordings has been variously calculated as 665 and 711. His career began and he was most successful during an era when singles were the primary commercial medium for pop music. In the case of his albums, the distinction between "official" studio records and other forms is often blurred. In addition, for most of the 1960s, his recording career focused on soundtrack albums. In the 1970s, his most heavily promoted and best-selling LP releases tended to be concert albums. This summary discography lists only the albums and singles that reached the top of one or more of the following charts: the main U.S. Billboard pop chart; the Billboard country chart, the genre chart with which he was most identified (there was no country album chart before 1964); and the official British pop chart. In the United States, Presley also had five or six number one R&B; singles and seven number one adult contemporary singles; in 1964, his "Blue Christmas" topped the Christmas singles chart during a period when Billboard did not rank holiday singles in its primary pop chart. He had number one hits in many countries beside the United States and United Kingdom, as well.
Category:1935 births Category:1977 deaths Category:People from Tupelo, Mississippi Category:1950s singers Category:1960s singers Category:1970s singers Category:20th-century actors Category:Actors from Mississippi Category:Actors from Tennessee Category:American baritones Category:American country singers Category:American crooners Category:American expatriates in West Germany Category:American film actors Category:American gospel singers Category:American karateka Category:American male singers Category:American musicians of French descent Category:American musicians of German descent Category:American musicians of Scottish descent Category:American Pentecostals Category:American people of Cherokee descent Category:American people of Scotch-Irish descent Category:American performers of Christian music Category:American rock singers Category:Blues musicians from Mississippi Category:Burials in Tennessee Category:Country Music Hall of Fame inductees Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:English-language singers Category:Gospel Music Hall of Fame inductees Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Identical twins Category:Las Vegas musicians Category:Mississippi Blues Trail Category:Musicians from Mississippi Category:Musicians from Nevada Category:Musicians from Tennessee Category:People from the Las Vegas metropolitan area Category:People from Memphis, Tennessee Category:RCA Victor artists Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Category:Rockabilly Hall of Fame inductees Category:Rockabilly musicians Category:Southern gospel performers Category:Sun Records artists Category:Traditional pop music singers Category:Twin people from the United States Category:United States Army soldiers
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Name | Bernadette Peters |
|---|---|
| Caption | At a Broadway Barks book signing(San Francisco, 2008) |
| Birth name | Bernadette Lazzara |
| Birth date | February 28, 1948 |
| Birth place | Ozone Park, Queens, New York, United States |
| Spouse | Michael Wittenberg (1996-2005) (his death) |
| Occupation | Actress/Singer |
| Years active | 1958–present |
| Website | http://www.bernadettepeters.com |
Bernadette Peters (born Bernadette Lazzara on February 28, 1948) is an American actress, singer and children's book author from Ozone Park, Queens, New York . Over the course of a career that has spanned five decades, she has starred in musical theatre, films and television, as well as performing in solo concerts and recordings. She is one of the most critically acclaimed Broadway performers, having received nominations for seven Tony Awards, winning two, and eight Drama Desk Awards, winning three. Four of the Broadway cast albums on which she has starred have won Grammy Awards.
Peters first performed on the stage as a child and then a teenage actor in the 1960s, and in film and television in the 1970s. She was praised for this early work and for appearances on The Muppet Show, The Carol Burnett Show and in other television work, and for her roles in films like Silent Movie, The Jerk, Pennies from Heaven and Annie. In the 1980s, she returned to the theatre, where she became one of the best-known Broadway stars over the next three decades. She also has recorded six solo albums and several singles, as well as many cast albums, and performs regularly in her own solo concert act. Peters also continues to act in films and on television, where she has been nominated for three Emmy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards, winning once.
Peters is particularly noted for her starring roles in stage musicals, including Song and Dance, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, Annie Get Your Gun, Gypsy, and A Little Night Music, becoming closely associated with composer Stephen Sondheim. She had a four-year romantic relationship with comedian Steve Martin and was married to investment adviser Michael Wittenberg for over nine years until he was killed in a helicopter crash on September 26, 2005. Peters is known for her charitable work, including as a founder of the Broadway Barks animal charity.
in Mack and Mabel (1974). Normand shown c. 1920]] At age 13, Peters appeared as one of the "Hollywood Blondes" and was an understudy for "Dainty June" in the second national tour of . During this tour, Peters first met her long-time accompanist, conductor and arranger Marvin Laird, who was the assistant conductor for the tour. Laird recalled, "I heard her sing an odd phrase or two and thought, 'God that's a big voice out of that little girl,'" The next summer, she played Dainty June in summer stock, and in 1962 she recorded her first single. In 1964, she played Leisl in The Sound of Music and Jenny in Riverwind in summer stock at the Mt. Gretna Playhouse (Pennsylvania), and Riverwind again at the Bucks County Playhouse in 1966. Upon graduation from high school, she started working steadily, appearing Off-Broadway in the musicals The Penny Friend (1966) and Curley McDimple (1967) Peters had starring roles in her next Broadway vehicles—Gelsomina in La Strada (1969) and Hildy in On the Town (1971), for which she received her first Tony Award nomination. She played Mabel Normand in Mack and Mabel (1974), receiving another Tony nomination. Clive Barnes wrote: "With the splashy Mack & Mabel ... diminutive and contralto Bernadette Peters found herself as a major Broadway star." Although these had short runs, Peters was singled out for praise by the critics, By 1981, her popularity had led to Peters appearing on the cover and in a spread in the December issue of Playboy Magazine, in which she posed in lingerie designed by Bob Mackie.
Peters appeared with three generations of the Kirk Douglas family in the 2003 film It Runs in the Family, in which she played the wife of Michael Douglas's character. In May 2006, she appeared in the movie Come le formiche (Wine and Kisses) with F. Murray Abraham, filmed in Italy, playing a rich American who becomes involved with an Italian family that owns a vineyard. The DVD was released in 2007 in Italy. She starred in a film titled Coming Up Roses, playing a former musical-comedy actress with two daughters. The movie, produced by Bullet Pictures, Inc. and directed by Lisa Albright was filmed in March 2010.
, a role for which Peters received a Tony nomination and an ACE Award]] She then created the role of the Witch in Sondheim-Lapine's Into the Woods (1987). Peters is "considered by many to be the premier interpreter of [Sondheim's] work," according to writer Alex Witchel. Raymond Knapp wrote that Peters "achieved her definitive stardom" in Sunday in the Park With George and Into the Woods. Sondheim has said of Peters, "Like very few others, she sings and acts at the same time," he says. "Most performers act and then sing, act and then sing ... Bernadette is flawless as far as I'm concerned. I can't think of anything negative." Peters continued her association with Sondheim with a 1995 benefit concert of Anyone Can Whistle. Additionally, she appeared in several concerts featuring Sondheim's work, and performed for him at his 1993 Kennedy Center Honors ceremony.
She next starred in the musical adaptation of Neil Simon's The Goodbye Girl with music by Marvin Hamlisch (1993). Peters won her second Tony for her performance as Annie Oakley in the 1999 revival of Annie Get Your Gun opposite Tom Wopat. Among many glowing notices for this role, critic Lloyd Rose of the Washington Post commented: "[Peters] banishes all thoughts of Ethel Merman about two bars into her first number, 'Doin' What Comes Natur'lly.' Partly this is because Merman's Annie was a hearty, boisterous gal, while Peters plays an adorable, slightly goofy gamine... For anyone who cares about the American musical theater, the chance to see Peters in this role is reason enough to see the show." Playbill went even further: "Arguably the most talented comedienne in the musical theatre today, Peters manages to extract a laugh from most every line she delivers."
In 2003, Peters took on the role of Mama Rose in the Broadway revival of , earning another Tony nomination. Ben Brantley in his New York Times review wrote, "Working against type and expectation under the direction of Sam Mendes, Ms. Peters has created the most complex and compelling portrait of her long career, and she has done this in ways that deviate radically from the Merman blueprint." Arthur Laurents said: "But in 2003 there was a new Rose on Broadway: Bernadette Peters! Brilliant, original, totally unlike any of the others." In February 2006, she participated in a reading of the Sondheim-Weidman musical Bounce. On September 24, 2007, Peters participated in a one-time only charity reading of the play Love Letters with her former Gypsy co-star, John Dossett.
After an absence from the Broadway stage of six years (Gypsy closed in 2004), she starred in the Broadway revival of Sondheim's A Little Night Music, as Desiree Armfeldt from July 13, 2010 to January 9, 2011. She replaced Catherine Zeta-Jones in the role. The New York Times reviewer wrote of her performance, "for theater lovers there can be no greater current pleasure than to witness Bernadette Peters perform the show’s signature number, "Send In the Clowns," with an emotional transparency and musical delicacy that turns this celebrated song into an occasion of transporting artistry. I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced with such palpable force – or such prominent goose bumps – the sense of being present at an indelible moment in the history of musical theater."
Peters has been cast in the role of Sally Durant Plummer in the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts production of another Sondheim musical, Follies, which is scheduled to run at the Eisenhower Theatre from May 7 through June 19, 2011. In discussing this casting, The Washington Post theatre critic noted that "The hiring of Peters, a two-time Tony winner and one of Sondheim's favorite actors ... raises expectations that the show will proceed to Broadway.
She has appeared in many variety shows with stars such as Sonny and Cher and George Burns. She has both performed and presented on the Academy Awards broadcasts in 1994, 1987, 1983, 1981 and 1976. Peters has been a presenter at the annual Tony Awards ceremony and co-hosted the ceremony with Gregory Hines in June 2002. She also hosted Saturday Night Live in November 1981. She made 12 guest appearances on The Carol Burnett Show as well as appearing with Burnett in the made-for-television version of Once Upon a Mattress and the 1982 film Annie. She also performed at the Kennedy Center Honors ceremony for Burnett in 2003. Peters often appeared on the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and on the day-time talk show Live with Regis and Kelly, both as a co-host and a guest. Peters voiced Rita the stray cat in the "Rita and Runt" segments of the animated series Animaniacs. Peters, as Rita, sang both original songs written for the show and parodies of Broadway musical numbers. She appeared on Inside the Actor's Studio in November 2000, discussing her career and craft.
Peters has co-starred in a number of television movies, including The Last Best Year (1990) with Mary Tyler Moore, Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella (1997) with Brandy (receiving a nomination for the "Golden Satellite Award" for her role), and Prince Charming (2003) with Martin Short. She co-starred in her own television series, All's Fair, with Richard Crenna in 1976–77, for which Peters was nominated for a Golden Globe award as Best TV Actress — Musical/Comedy. In March 2005, she made a pilot for an ABC situation comedy series titled Adopted, co-starring with Christine Baranski, but it was not picked up. Peters appeared in the Lifetime television movie Living Proof, which was first broadcast on October 18, 2008. She played the role of Barbara, an art teacher with breast cancer, who is initially reluctant to participate in the study for the cancer drug Herceptin. Andrew Gans of Playbill wrote, "Peters is able to choose from an expansive emotional palette to color the character, and her performance... is moving, humorous and ultimately spirit-raising".
Peters' television work in recent years also includes guest appearances on several television series. She appeared as the sharp-tongued sister of Karen Walker (Megan Mullally) on the penultimate episode of the NBC series Will & Grace, "Whatever Happened to Baby Gin?" (May 2006); as a defense attorney on the NBC series, (November 2006); as a judge on the ABC series Boston Legal (May 2007); and as an accident victim in Grey's Anatomy (September 2008). Of her role in Grey's Anatomy, TV Guide wrote: "Peters is especially fine as she confronts a life spinning out of control. I'd make her an early contender for a guest-actor Emmy nomination." In January, February and May 2009, she appeared in the ABC series Ugly Betty in five episodes as Jodie Papadakis, a magazine mogul running the YETI (Young Editors Training Initiative) program that Betty and Marc are in.
Peters' appearance at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival in June 2009 was filmed and broadcast in Australia later that month.
, 1980)]] Peters' debut album in 1980 (an LP), entitled Bernadette Peters contained 10 songs, including "If You Were The Only Boy", "Gee Whiz", "Heartquake", "Should've Never Let Him Go", "Chico's Girl", "Pearl's a Singer" (originally a U.K. hit for singer Elkie Brooks from her 1977 album "Two Days Away" produced by Lieber & Stoller), "Other Lady", "Only Wounded" and "I Never Thought I'd Break and You'll Never Know". The original cover painting by Alberto Vargas was one of his last works, created at the age of 84. According to The New York Daily News, Peters "persuaded him to do one last 'Vargas Girls' portrait.... She just went to his California retreat, asked him to do one more, he looked at her and said, 'You ARE a Vargas girl!'" She kept the original painting. The original title planned for the album was Decades. It was re-released on CD in 1992 as Bernadette with the same cover art (pictured at left), together with some tracks from her 1981 album, Now Playing. Rolling Stone wrote of her debut album,
Her next solo album, Now Playing (1981), featured songs by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Carole Bayer Sager and Marvin Hamlisch, and Stephen Sondheim (for example, "Broadway Baby"). Bernadette Peters was re-released on CD in 1992 as Bernadette, with the 1980 Vargas cover art, and included some of the songs from Now Playing. In 1996, she was nominated for a Grammy Award for her best-selling album, I'll Be Your Baby Tonight, which includes popular songs by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Lyle Lovett, Hank Williams, Sam Cooke, and Billy Joel, as well as Broadway classics by Leonard Bernstein and Rodgers and Hammerstein. This album, which reached position 14 in the "Top Internet Charts", was her third album in a row nominated for a Grammy. It formed the basis of her Radio City Music Hall solo concert debut in June 2002. Her last solo album, titled Sondheim Etc., Etc. Live At Carnegie Hall: The Rest of It, was released in 2005. It consists of all of the songs (and patter) from her 1996 Carnegie Hall concert that were not included in the earlier recording.
Additionally, Peters has recorded songs on other albums, such as "Dublin Lady" on John Whelan's Flirting with the Edge (Narada, 1998). On the Mandy Patinkin Dress Casual 1990 album, Patinkin and Peters recorded the songs from Stephen Sondheim's 1966 television play, Evening Primrose. On the tribute album Peters sings "Trust Your Heart".
In a review of her 2002 Radio City Music Hall concert, Stephen Holden of The New York Times described Peters as "the peaches-and-cream embodiment of an ageless storybook princess... inside a giant soap bubble floating toward heaven. A belief in the power of the dreams behind Rodgers and Hammerstein's songs, if not in their reality, was possible." Peters made her solo concert debut at Lincoln Center in New York City on May 1, 2006. Holden, reviewing this concert, noted, "Even while swiveling across the stage of Avery Fisher Hall like a voluptuous Botticelli Venus in Bob Mackie spangles... she radiated a preternatural innocence.... For the eternal child in all of us, she evokes a surrogate childhood playmate". In June 2009, Peters was the headliner at the 2009 Adelaide Cabaret Festival in Adelaide, Australia.
Peters' concert performances often benefit arts organizations or help them to mark special occasions, such as her performance on an overnight cruise on the Seabourn Odyssey in a benefit for the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami in November 2009. She was one of the performers to help celebrate the Center's grand opening, in October 2006. She headlined The Alliance of The Arts Black Tie Anniversary Gala at Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza in Thousand Oaks, California, on November 21, 2009. She had helped to celebrate the opening of the Arts Plaza with concerts fifteen years earlier.
Her second children's book is the story of a pit bull, Stella, named after Peters' pit bull. The character would rather be a pig ballerina, but she learns to accept herself. Titled Stella is a Star, the book includes a CD with an original song written and performed by Peters and was released in April 2010 by Blue Apple Books. According to Publisher's Weekly, "Turning the pages to Peters' spirited narration, which is provided in an accompanying CD, makes for a more rewarding reading experience. The story and disc end with a sneakily affecting self-esteem anthem, which, like the familiar tale itself, is buoyed by the author's lovely vocals." Peters introduced the book at a reading and signing where she also sang part of the song, at the L.A. Times Festival of Books, Los Angeles, California, on April 24, 2010.
Peters sings four songs on the CD accompanying the 2005 children's picture book Dewey Doo-it Helps Owlie Fly Again, the proceeds of which benefit the Christopher Reeve Foundation. Her co-star from Sunday in the Park With George, Mandy Patinkin, also sings on the CD.
;Other Peters serves on the Board of Trustees of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and participates in the organization's events, such as the annual Broadway Flea Market and Grand Auction, and the "Gypsy of the Year" competition. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of Standing Tall, a non-profit educational program offering an innovative program for children with multiple disabilities, based in New York City. Her late husband was the Director and Treasurer of Standing Tall. Peters' 1995 Anyone Can Whistle concert and her "Carnegie Hall" 1996 concert were benefits for the Gay Men's Health Crisis. She also has supported the Christopher Reeve Foundation. In 2008, she was one of the participants in a fund-raiser for the Westport Country Playhouse, and in the opening ceremony and dedication of the renovated TKTS discount ticket booth in Times Square. That year, she also presented Mayor Michael Bloomberg with the Humanitarian Award at the Breast Cancer Research Foundation awards. On March 8, 2009, she helped celebrate the last birthday of Senator Ted Kennedy (singing "There Is Nothin' Like a Dame") in a private concert and ceremony held at the Kennedy Center, hosted by Bill Cosby, with many Senators, Representatives, and President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama in attendance. On November 19, 2009, she helped to celebrate the opening of The David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center.
On February 8, 2010, Peters was one of the many to honor Angela Lansbury at the annual Drama League of New York benefit, singing "Not While I'm Around". In March 2010, Peters helped Stephen Sondheim celebrate his 80th birthday in the Roundabout Theatre Company "Sondheim 80" benefit. She was one of the Honorary Chairs. She had been part of the Roundabout Theatre's Sondheim gala for his 75th birthday.
Peters has two dogs, a mixed-breed dog named Kramer and an American pit bull terrier named Stella, both adopted from shelters. Peters' goddaughter Isabelle and Kramer were the inspirations for the characters in her first children's book, Broadway Barks, and Stella inspired the title character of her second children's book, Stella is a Star. She was named the Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year in 1987. Other honors include the Sarah Siddons Award for outstanding performance in a Chicago theatrical production (1994); the American Theatre Hall of Fame at the Gershwin Theatre in New York City (1996), becoming the youngest person so honored; The Actors' Fund Artistic Achievement Medal (1999); an Honorary Doctorate from Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York (May 19, 2002); the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame in June 2002 and the National Dance Institute 2009 Artistic Honoree in April 2009. She was the recipient of the Stephen Sondheim Award, presented by the Signature Theatre on April 11, 2011.
;Other notable concerts
;Cast recordings
;Other recordings Dress Casual – Evening Primrose suite with Mandy Patinkin – CBS Records (1990)
Category:American female singers Category:American film actors Category:American musical theatre actors Category:American people of Italian descent Category:American stage actors Category:American television actors Category:American voice actors Category:Actors from New York City Category:Best Musical or Comedy Actress Golden Globe (film) winners Category:Drama Desk Award winners Category:People from New York City Category:People from Queens Category:Tony Award winners Category:1948 births Category:Living people
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
