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| Name | Steve Martin |
|---|---|
| Caption | at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival |
| Birth name | Stephen Glenn Martin |
| Birth date | August 14, 1945 |
| Birth place | Waco, Texas, United States |
| Medium | Stand-up, television, film, music, publishing |
| Nationality | American |
| Active | 1967–present |
| Genre | Improvisational, sketch, slapstick |
| Influences | British television, Red Skelton, Jerry Lewis, Jack Benny, Laurel and Hardy, Wally Boag |
| Influenced | Eddie Izzard, Chris Rock, Judd Apatow, Patton Oswalt, Dane Cook, Brian Posehn, Bo Burnham, Will Forte, David Walliams, Sarah Silverman, Will Arnett, Jon Stewart, Harry Hill, Vic Reeves, Stephen Colbert, Louis C.K., Tina Fey, Russell Peters, Howie Mandel, Andy Samberg, Bill Hader, Artie Lange |
| Spouse | Victoria Tennant (November 20, 1986–1994) Martin was raised in Inglewood, California, and then later in Garden Grove, California, in a Baptist family. One of his earliest memories is of seeing his father, as an extra, serving drinks onstage at the Call Board Theatre on Melrose Place. During World War II, in England, Martin's father had appeared in a production of Our Town with Raymond Massey. Years later, he would write to Massey for help in Steve's fledgling career, but would receive no reply. Expressing his affection through gifts of cars, bikes, etc., Martin's father was stern, not emotionally open to his son. Martin's first job was at Disneyland, selling guidebooks on weekends and full-time during the summer school break. That lasted for three years (1955–1958). During his free time he frequented the Main Street Magic shop, where tricks were demonstrated to potential customers. In his authorized biography, close friend Morris Walker suggests that Martin could "be described most accurately as an agnostic [...] he rarely went to church and was never involved in organized religion of his own volition". |
| |rowspan | 2| Cameo |
| Colspan | "5" style="font-size:90%"|"—" denotes a title that did not chart. |
| Name | Martin, Steve |
| Alternative names | Martin, Stephen Glen |
| Short description | Comedian, writer, and entertainer |
| Date of birth | August 14, 1945 |
| Place of birth | Waco, Texas, United States |
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 | Earl Scruggs | |
|---|---|
| Landscape | | |
| Background | solo_singer | |
| Birth name | Earl Eugene Scruggs | |
| Alias | | |
| Born | January 06, 1924 | |
| Died | | |
| Origin | Shelby, North Carolina, USA | |
| Instrument | 5-string banjo, guitar | |
| Genre | Bluegrass, country, gospel |
| Occupation | Bluegrass artist |
| Years active | 1945–present | |
| Label | MCA Nashville Records |
| Associated acts | Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys, Flatt and Scruggs, Earl Scruggs Revue |
| Url | www.earlscruggs.com | |
| Notable instruments | A 1933/34 Gibson Granada previously owned by Don Reno and Snuffy Jenkins, and "Nellie," a 1935/36 Gibson RB-3/RB-75 flathead |
Earl Eugene Scruggs (born January 6, 1924) is a musician noted for perfecting and popularizing a 3-finger style (now called Scruggs style) on the 5-string banjo that is a defining characteristic of bluegrass music. Although other musicians had played in 3-finger style before him, Scruggs shot to prominence when he was hired by Bill Monroe to fill the banjo slot in the "Blue Grass Boys". Scruggs built on earlier styles to develop a truly new and readily identifiable style, involving: unprecedented smoothness, syncopation, and uninterrupted flow; a large vocabulary of unique and original licks; blues and jazz phrases, evident in backup and in solos such as "Foggy Mountain Special;" and an overall coherency and polish that other stylists lacked, which inspired imitation by newer generations of banjo pickers.
On September 24, 1962 singer Jerry Scoggins, Flatt, and Scruggs recorded "The Ballad of Jed Clampett" for the TV show The Beverly Hillbillies which was released October 12, 1962. The theme song became an immediate country music hit and was played at the beginning and end of each episode. Flatt and Scruggs appeared in several episodes as family friends of the Clampetts in the following years. In their first appearance, season 1 episode 20, they portray themselves in the show and perform both the theme song and "Pearl Pearl Pearl".
Flatt and Scruggs won a Grammy Award in 1969 for Scruggs' instrumental "Foggy Mountain Breakdown". They were inducted together into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1985. In 1989, Scruggs was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship. He was an inaugural inductee into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor in 1991. In 1992, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.
In 1994, Scruggs teamed up with Randy Scruggs and Doc Watson to contribute the song "Keep on the Sunny Side" to the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Country produced by the Red Hot Organization.
In 2002 Scruggs won a second Grammy award for the 2001 recording of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown", which featured artists such as Steve Martin on 2nd banjo solo (Martin played the banjo tune on his 1970s stand-up comic acts), Vince Gill and Albert Lee on electric guitar solos, Paul Shaffer on piano, Leon Russell on organ, and Marty Stuart on mandolin. The album, Earl Scruggs and Friends, also featured artists such as John Fogerty, Elton John, Sting, Johnny Cash, Don Henley, Travis Tritt, Steve Martin and Billy Bob Thornton. Earl Scruggs and Friends (MCA Nashville, 2001).
On February 13, 2003, Scruggs received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. That same year, he and Flatt were ranked #24 on CMT's 40 Greatest Men of Country Music.
Scruggs' wife and manager Louise Scruggs died on February 2, 2006 at the age of 78 at Nashville, Tennessee's Baptist Hospital following a lengthy illness.
On September 13, 2006, Scruggs was honored at Turner Field in Atlanta as part of the pre-game show for an Atlanta Braves home game. Organizers (Banjo.com) set a world record for the most banjo players (239) playing one tune together (Scruggs' "Foggy Mountain Breakdown").
On February 10, 2008, Scruggs was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards.
Bela Fleck names Earl Scruggs among his influences. He regards Scruggs as "certainly the best" banjo player of the three-finger style.
Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson and Ricky Skaggs
Flatt and Scruggs
Category:1924 births Category:Living people Category:American bluegrass musicians Category:International Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor inductees Category:National Heritage Fellowship winners Category:United States National Medal of Arts recipients Category:Musicians from North Carolina Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:American country banjoists Category:People from Shelby, North Carolina
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 | Tony Trischka | |
|---|---|
| Landscape | | |
| Background | non_vocal_instrumentalist| |
| Birth name | Tony Trischka | |
| Alias | | |
| Born | January 16, 1949 | |
| Origin | Syracuse, New York, USA | |
| Instruments | Banjo, steel guitar | |
| Genre | Bluegrass, Country | |
| Occupation | Bluegrass musician | |
| Years active | 1970s – present | |
| Label | Rounder Records | |
| Associated acts | | |
| Url | | |
| Current members | | |
| Past members | | |
| Notable instruments | Banjo, steel guitar | |
Tony Trischka (born January 16, 1949 in Syracuse, New York) is an American five-string banjo player.
In 1971 he made his recording debut on 15 Bluegrass Instrumentals with the Ithaca, NY based Country Cooking, (Peter Wernick, Kenny Kosek, Andy Statman, John Miller, Harry "Tersh" Gilmore) and at the same time, he was also a member of Syracuse's Country Granola (Herb Feuerstein, Johno Lanford, Greg Root, Danny Weiss, etc.). In 1973, he began a two-year stint with the New York City band, Breakfast Special (Kenny Kosek, Andy Statman, Roger Mason, Stacy Phillips, Jim Tolles). (This was Trischka's "food band" period.) Between 1974 and 1975, he recorded two solo albums, Bluegrass Light and Heartlands. After another solo album in 1976, Banjoland, he became musical leader for the Broadway show, The Robber Bridegroom. Trischka toured with the show in 1978, the year he also played with the Monroe Doctrine. Beginning in 1978, he also played with artists such as Peter Rowan, Richard Greene, and Stacy Phillips.
In the early 1980s, he began recording with his new group Skyline, which recorded its first album in 1983. Subsequent albums included Robot Plane Flies over Arkansas (solo, 1983), Stranded in the Moonlight (with Skyline, 1984) and Hill Country (solo, 1985). In 1984, he performed in his first feature film, Foxfire. Three years later, he worked on the soundtrack for Driving Miss Daisy. Trischka produced the Belgian group Gold Rush's No More Angels in 1988. The following year, Skyline recorded its final album, Fire of Grace. He also recorded the theme song for Books on the Air, a popular National Public Radio Show, and continued his affiliation with the network by appearing on Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion, Mountain Stage, From Our Front Porch, and other radio shows.
Trischka's solo recordings include 1993's World Turning, 1995's Glory Shone Around: A Christmas Collection and 1999's Bend. New Deal, a studio album that followed in 2003, was a bluesy adaptation of bluegrass standards that included a vocal cameo by Loudon Wainwright. Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular, with an appearance by comedian Steve Martin, came out four years later.
Trischka was banjo teacher to Béla Fleck, regarded, along with Trischka, as one of the world's top banjoists.
In the late 1990s, Trischka teamed up with David Grier, Darol Anger, Mike Marshall, and Todd Phillips as "Psychograss" and formed a new band, whose debut album Bend explored yet more territory uncharted by banjo.
In January 2007 Trischka released, to critical and popular acclaim, Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular, featuring new music and performances by a stellar line-up of musicians including Earl Scruggs, Béla Fleck and the multi-talented Steve Martin. On April 26, 2007, he performed live on The Late Show With David Letterman with Steve Martin and Béla Fleck.
On October 4, 2007 Trischka won three International Bluegrass Music Awards, for Album of the Year, Recorded Event of the Year, and Banjo Player of the Year.
In 2008, Trischka released an album on Smithsonian Folkways entitled Territory, which in 2009 won the 8th annual Independent Music Awards for Best Americana Album.
Trischka resides in Fair Lawn, New Jersey.
Category:American banjoists Category:American bluegrass musicians Category:1949 births Category:Living people Category:People from Syracuse, New York
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.
| Caption | Hanks in April 2009 |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Thomas Jeffrey Hanks |
| Birth date | July 09, 1956 |
| Birth place | Concord, California, U.S. |
| Years active | 1979–present |
| Occupation | Actor, producer, director, voice over artist, writer, speaker |
| Spouse | Samantha Lewes (1978–1987)Rita Wilson (1988–present) |
Amos Hanks became a single parent, working long hours and often leaving the children to fend for themselves, an exercise in self-reliance that served the siblings well. In addition to having a family history of Catholicism and Mormonism, Hanks was a "Bible-toting evangelical teenager" for several years. In school, Hanks was unpopular with students and teachers alike, later telling Rolling Stone magazine: "I was a geek, a spaz. I was horribly, painfully, terribly shy. At the same time, I was the guy who'd yell out funny captions during filmstrips. But I didn't get into trouble. I was always a real good kid and pretty responsible." In 1965, Amos Hanks married Frances Wong, a San Francisco native of Chinese descent. Frances had three children, two of whom lived with Tom during his high school years. Tom acted in school plays, including South Pacific, while attending Skyline High School in Oakland, California.
Hanks studied theater at Chabot College in Hayward, California, and after two years, transferred to California State University, Sacramento. Hanks told The New York Times: "Acting classes looked like the best place for a guy who liked to make a lot of noise and be rather flamboyant. I spent a lot of time going to plays. I wouldn't take dates with me. I'd just drive to a theater, buy myself a ticket, sit in the seat, and read the program, and then get into the play completely. I spent a lot of time like that, seeing Bertolt Brecht, Tennessee Williams, Henrik Ibsen, and all that, and now look at me, acting is my job. I wouldn't have it any other way."
During his years studying theater, Hanks met Vincent Dowling, head of the Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland, Ohio. At Dowling's suggestion, Hanks became an intern at the Festival. His internship stretched into a three-year experience that covered most aspects of theater production, including lighting, set design, and stage management, all of which caused Hanks to drop out of college. During the same time, Hanks won the Cleveland Critics Circle Award for Best Actor for his 1978 performance as Proteus in Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona, one of the few times he played a villain.
Bosom Buddies and a guest appearance on a 1982 episode of Happy Days ("A Case of Revenge," where he played a disgruntled former classmate of The Fonz) prompted director Ron Howard to contact Hanks. Howard was working on Splash (1984), a romantic comedy fantasy about a mermaid who falls in love with a human. At first, Howard considered Hanks for the role of the main character's wisecracking brother, a role that eventually went to John Candy. Instead, Hanks got the lead role and a career boost from Splash, which went on to become a box office hit, grossing more than US$69 million. He also had a sizable hit with the sex comedy Bachelor Party, also in 1984.
In 1983–84, Hanks made three guest appearances on Family Ties as Elyse Keaton's alcoholic brother, Ned Donnelly.
After a few more flops and a moderate success with Dragnet, Hanks succeeded with the film Big (1988), both at the box office and within the industry. The film established Hanks as a major Hollywood talent. It was followed later that year by Punchline, in which he and Sally Field co-star as struggling stand-up comedians. Hanks's character, Steven Gold, a failing medical student trying to break into stand-up, was somewhat edgy and complex. Hanks' portrayal of Gold offered a glimpse of the far more dramatic roles Hanks would master in films to come. Hanks then suffered a pile of box-office failures: The 'Burbs (1989), Joe Versus the Volcano (1990), and The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), as a greedy Wall Street type who gets enmeshed in a hit-and-run accident. Only the 1989 movie Turner & Hooch brought success for Hanks during this time. In a 1993 issue of Disney Adventures, Hanks said, "I saw Turner & Hooch the other day in the SAC store and couldn't help but be reminiscent. I cried like a baby." He did admit to making a couple of "bum tickers," however, and blamed his "...deductive reasoning and decision making skills."
In Philadelphia, he played a gay lawyer with AIDS who sues his firm for discrimination. Hanks lost thirty-five pounds and thinned his hair in order to appear sickly for the role. In a review for People, Leah Rozen stated "Above all, credit for Philadelphia's success belongs to Hanks, who makes sure that he plays a character, not a saint. He is flat-out terrific, giving a deeply felt, carefully nuanced performance that deserves an Oscar." Hanks won the 1993 Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Philadelphia. During his acceptance speech he revealed that his high school drama teacher Rawley Farnsworth and former classmate John Gilkerson, two people with whom he was close, were gay. The revelation inspired the 1997 film In & Out, starring Kevin Kline as an English Literature teacher who is outed by a former student in a similar way.
in 1994]] Hanks followed Philadelphia with the 1994 summer hit Forrest Gump. Of the film, Hanks has remarked: "When I read the script for Gump, I saw it as one of those kind of grand, hopeful movies that the audience can go to and feel ... some hope for their lot and their position in life... I got that from the movies a hundred million times when I was a kid. I still do." Hanks won his second Best Actor Academy Award for his role in Forrest Gump, becoming only the second actor to have accomplished the feat of winning consecutive Best Actor Oscars. (Spencer Tracy was the first, winning in 1937–38. Hanks and Tracy were the same age at the time they received their Academy Awards: 37 for the first and 38 for the second.)
Hanks' next role--astronaut and commander Jim Lovell, in the 1995 movie Apollo 13--reunited him with Ron Howard. Critics generally applauded the film and the performances of the entire cast, which included actors Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, Ed Harris, and Kathleen Quinlan. The movie also earned nine Academy Award nominations, winning two. The same year, Hanks starred in the animated blockbuster Toy Story as the voice of the toy Sheriff Woody.
Hanks executive produced, co-wrote, and co-directed the HBO docudrama From the Earth to the Moon. The twelve-part series chronicles the space program from its inception, through the familiar flights of Neil Armstrong and Jim Lovell, to the personal feelings surrounding the reality of moon landings. The Emmy Award-winning project was, at US$68 million, one of the most expensive ventures taken for television.
Hanks's next project was no less expensive. For Saving Private Ryan he teamed up with Steven Spielberg to make a film about a search through war-torn France after D-Day to bring back a soldier who has a ticket home. It earned the praise and respect of the film community, critics, and the general public. It was labeled one of the finest war films ever made and earned Spielberg his second Academy Award for direction, and Hanks another Best Actor nomination. Later in 1998, Hanks re-teamed with his Sleepless in Seattle co-star Meg Ryan for You've Got Mail, a remake of 1940's The Shop Around the Corner.
In 1999, Hanks starred in an adaptation of the Stephen King novel The Green Mile. He also returned as the voice of Woody in Toy Story 2. The following year he won a Golden Globe for Best Actor and an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of a marooned FedEx systems analyst in Robert Zemeckis's Cast Away. In 2001, Hanks helped direct and produce the acclaimed HBO mini-series Band of Brothers. He also appeared in the September 11 television special and the documentary Rescued From the Closet.
Next he teamed up with American Beauty director Sam Mendes for the adaptation of Max Allan Collins's and Richard Piers Rayner's graphic novel Road to Perdition, in which he played an anti-hero role as a hitman on the run with his son. That same year, Hanks collaborated with director Spielberg again, starring opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in the hit crime comedy Catch Me if You Can, based on the true story of Frank Abagnale, Jr. The same year, Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson produced the hit movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding. In August 2007, he along with co-producers Rita Wilson and Gary Goetzman, and writer and star Nia Vardalos, initiated a legal action against the production company Gold Circle Films for their share of profits from the movie. At the age of 45, he became the youngest ever recipient of the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award on June 12, 2002.
In 2004, he appeared in three films: The Coen Brothers' The Ladykillers, another Spielberg film, The Terminal, and The Polar Express, a family film from Robert Zemeckis. In a USA Weekend interview, Hanks talked about how he chooses projects: "[Since] A League of Their Own, it can't be just another movie for me. It has to get me going somehow.... There has to be some all-encompassing desire or feeling about wanting to do that particular movie. I'd like to assume that I'm willing to go down any avenue in order to do it right". In August 2005, Hanks was voted in as vice president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Hanks next starred in the highly anticipated film The Da Vinci Code, based on the bestselling novel by Dan Brown. The film was released May 19, 2006 in the US and grossed over US$750 million worldwide. He followed the film with Ken Burns's 2007 documentary The War. For the documentary, Hanks did voice work, reading excerpts from World War II-era columns by Al McIntosh. In 2006, Hanks topped a 1,500-strong list of 'most trusted celebrities' compiled by Forbes magazine. Hanks next appeared in a cameo role as himself in The Simpsons Movie, in which he appeared in an advertisement claiming that the US government has lost its credibility and is hence buying some of his. He also made an appearance in the credits, expressing a desire to be left alone when he is out in public. Later in 2006, Hanks produced the British film Starter for Ten, a comedy based on working class students attempting to win University Challenge.
In 2007, Hanks starred in Mike Nichols's film Charlie Wilson's War (written by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin) in which he plays Democratic Texas Congressman Charles Wilson. The film opened on December 21, 2007 and Hanks received a Golden Globe nomination.
In 2008's The Great Buck Howard, Hanks played the on-screen father of a young man (Hanks' real-life son, Colin Hanks) who chooses to follow in the footsteps of a fading magician (John Malkovich). Tom Hanks's character was less than thrilled about his son's career decision.
Hanks's next endeavor, released on May 15, 2009, was a film adaptation of Angels & Demons, based on the novel of the same name by Dan Brown. Its April 11, 2007 announcement revealed that Hanks would reprise his role as Robert Langdon, and that he would reportedly receive the highest salary ever for an actor. The following day he made his 10th appearance on NBC's Saturday Night Live, impersonating himself for the Celebrity Jeopardy'' sketch.
Hanks is producer of the Spike Jonze film Where The Wild Things Are, based on the children's book by Maurice Sendak.
In 2010, Hanks reprised his role as Sheriff Woody in the third film in the Toy Story franchise, Toy Story 3, after he, Tim Allen, and John Ratzenberger were invited to a movie theater to see a complete story reel of the movie.
Regarding his religious views, Hanks has said, "I must say that when I go to church – and I do go to church – I ponder the mystery. I meditate on the 'why?' of 'Why people are as they are' and 'Why bad things happen to good people,' and 'Why good things happen to bad people'… The mystery is what I think it is, almost, the grand unifying theory of mankind."
A proponent of environmentalism, Hanks is an investor in electric vehicles and owns both a Toyota RAV4 EV and the first production AC Propulsion eBox. Hanks was a lessee of an EV1 before it was recalled, as chronicled in the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? He is on the waiting list for an Aptera 2 Series.
Hanks was extremely outspoken about his opposition to Proposition 8, an amendment to the California constitution that defined marriage as a union only between a man and a woman. Hanks and others who were in opposition to the proposition raised over USD$44 million in contrast to the supporters' $39 million, but Proposition 8 passed with 52% of the vote.
While premiering a TV series in January of 2009, Hanks called supporters of Proposition 8 "un-American" and attacked the LDS (Mormon) church members, who were major proponents of the bill, for their views on marriage and their role in supporting the bill. About a week later, Hanks apologized for the remark, saying that nothing is more American than voting one's conscience.
In 2006, the Space Foundation awarded Hanks the Douglas S. Morrow Public Outreach Award. The award is given annually to an individual or organization that has made significant contributions to public awareness of space programs.
In June 2006 Hanks was inducted as an honorary member of the United States Army Rangers Hall of Fame for his accurate portrayal of a Captain in the movie Saving Private Ryan; Hanks, who was unable to attend the induction ceremony, was the first actor to receive such an honor. In addition to his role in Saving Private Ryan, Hanks was cited for serving as the national spokesperson for the World War II Memorial Campaign, for being the honorary chairperson of the D-Day Museum Capital Campaign, and for his role in writing and helping to produce the Emmy Award-winning miniseries, Band of Brothers.
Hanks is one of several celebrities who frequently participates in planned comedy bits on Conan O'Brien's talk shows, including Late Night, The Tonight Show, and Conan while a guest. On one visit, Hanks asked Conan to join his run for president on the "Bad Haircut Party" ticket, with confetti and balloons and a hand held sign with the slogan "You'd be stupid to vote for us". On another episode, O'Brien, noting that Hanks was missing Christmas on his promotional tour, brought the season to him, including a gift (the skeleton of Hooch), and a mass of snow burying them both. On yet another episode, Conan gave Hanks a painting he had commissioned reflecting two of his interests: Astronauts landing on the beach at Normandy. On March 10, 2008, Hanks was on hand at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame to induct sixties sensation The Dave Clark Five. He praised the group for both the joy of their music and for never signing away their publishing rights.
Hanks is a known fan of English Premier League Football club Aston Villa and was presented with a shirt on a TV show with the print 'Hanks 1' on the back. Hanks confirmed his affiliation with the club in an interview with Jonathan Ross in May 2009, citing his public like for the name as the reason why the media portray him as an Aston Villa fan.
Category:Living people Category:1956 births Category:Actors from California Category:American film actors Category:American film directors Category:American people of Portuguese descent Category:American television actors Category:American voice actors Category:Best Actor Academy Award winners Category:Best Drama Actor Golden Globe (film) winners Category:Best Musical or Comedy Actor Golden Globe (film) winners Category:California Democrats Category:California State University, Sacramento alumni Category:Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture Screen Actors Guild Award winners Category:People from Concord, California Category:People from Contra Costa County, California Category:People from Oakland, California Category:Space advocacy
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 | Paul Simon |
|---|---|
| Background | solo_singer |
| Origin | Newark, New Jersey, United States |
| Birth name | Paul Frederic Simon |
| Born | October 13, 1941 |
| Genre | Folk rock, folk-pop, rock, world |
| Occupation | Singer-songwriter, musician, record producer |
| Years active | 1957–present |
| Instrument | Vocals, guitar, bass guitar, piano, percussion |
| First album | The Velvet Underground and Nico |
| Latest album | Surprise (album) |
| Label | Columbia (1964-1977, 2010-present [catalog])Warner Bros. (1978-2009)Hear Music (2010-present [new releases]) |
| Associated acts | Simon & Garfunkel |
| Notable instruments | Martin OM42PS (Paul Simon) and PS2 |
| Url | www.paulsimon.com |
Simon is best known for his success, beginning in 1965, as part of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, with musical partner Art Garfunkel. Simon wrote most of the pair's songs, including three that reached number one on the US singles charts, "The Sound of Silence", "Mrs. Robinson", and "Bridge Over Troubled Water". In 1970, at the height of their popularity, the duo split, and Simon began a successful solo career, recording three highly-acclaimed albums over the next five years. In 1986, he released Graceland, an album inspired by South African township music that helped fuel the anti-apartheid movement. Besides music, Simon wrote and starred in the film One Trick Pony in 1980 and co-wrote the Broadway musical The Capeman in 1998.
Through his solo and collaborative work, Simon has earned 13 Grammys, including the Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2001, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and in 2006 was selected as one of the "100 People Who Shaped the World" by Time magazine. Among many other honors, Simon was named the first recipient of the Library of Congress's Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in 2007.
Simon's musical career began at Forest Hills High School after meeting Art Garfunkel when they were both 11. They performed in a production of Alice in Wonderland for their sixth grade graduation, and began singing together when they were 13, occasionally performing at school dances. Their idols were the Everly Brothers, whom they imitated in their use of close two-part harmony. Simon also developed an interest in jazz, folk and blues, especially musical legends Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly.
In 1957, while in their mid-teens, Simon and Garfunkel recorded the song "Hey, Schoolgirl" under the name Tom and Jerry, given to them by their label Big Records. The single reached number forty-nine on the pop charts.
After graduating from high school, Simon attended Queens College, while Garfunkel studied at Columbia University in Manhattan. Simon was a brother in the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. Simon earned a degree in English literature and briefly attended Brooklyn Law School, but his real passion was rock and roll.
Between 1957 and 1964, Simon wrote, recorded, and released more than thirty songs, occasionally reuniting with Garfunkel as Tom & Jerry for some singles, including "Our Song" and "That's My Story". Most of the songs Simon recorded in the six years after 1957 were performed alone or with musicians other than Garfunkel. They were released on several minor record labels, such as Amy, Big, Hunt, King, Tribute, and Madison. He used several different pseudonyms for these recordings, including Jerry Landis, Paul Kane (from Orson Welles's film Citizen Kane) and True Taylor. Simon enjoyed some moderate success in recording a few singles as part of a group called Tico and the Triumphs, including a song called "Motorcycle" which reached No. 97 on the Billboard charts in 1962. Tico and the Triumphs released four 45s. Marty Cooper, known as Tico, sang lead on several of these releases. Bobby Susser, children's songwriter and record producer, and childhood friend of Simon's, co-produced the Tico 45s with Simon. That year, Simon reached No. 99 on the pop charts as Jerry Landis with the hit "The Lone Teen Ranger." Both chart singles were released on Amy Records.
In 1965 Simon moved to England and started touring folk clubs and coffee houses. At the first club he played, the Railway Inn Folk Club in Brentwood, Essex, he met Kathy Chitty who became his girlfriend and inspiration for "Kathy's Song", "America" and others. He performed at Les Cousins in London and toured provincial folk clubs where he was exposed to a wide range of musical influences. In 1965 he recorded his solo LP The Paul Simon Songbook in England. During his time in the UK Simon co-wrote several songs with Bruce Woodley of the Australian pop group The Seekers including "I Wish You Could Be Here," "Cloudy", and "Red Rubber Ball"; Woodley's co-author credit was omitted from "Cloudy" on the Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme album. The American group The Cyrkle recorded a cover of "Red Rubber Ball", which reached number two in the US. Simon also contributed to The Seekers catalogue with "Someday One Day," which was released in March 1966, charting at around the same time as Simon and Garfunkel's Homeward Bound.
Simon and Garfunkel's first LP, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. was released on October 19, 1964 and comprised twelve songs in the folk vein, five of them written by Simon. The album initially flopped, but East Coast radio stations began receiving requests for one of the tracks, Simon's "The Sounds of Silence". Their producer, Tom Wilson, overdubbed the track with electric guitar, bass, and drums, releasing it as a single that eventually went to number one on the pop charts in the USA.
Simon had gone to England in 1965 after the initial failure of Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., pursuing a solo career. But he returned to the US to reunite with Garfunkel after "The Sounds of Silence" had started to enjoy commercial success. Together they recorded four more influential albums, Sounds of Silence; Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme; Bookends; and the hugely successful Bridge over Troubled Water. Simon and Garfunkel also contributed extensively to the soundtrack of the 1967 Mike Nichols film The Graduate (starring Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft). While writing "Mrs. Robinson", Simon originally toyed with the title "Mrs. Roosevelt." When Garfunkel reported this indecision over the song's name to the director, Nichols replied, "Don't be ridiculous! We're making a movie here! It's Mrs. Robinson!" Simon and Garfunkel returned to England in the Fall of 1968 and did a church concert appearance at Kraft Hall which was broadcast on the BBC, and also featured Paul's brother Ed sitting in on a performance of the instrumental "Anji".
Simon pursued solo projects after the duo released their popular album Bridge over Troubled Water. Occasionally, he and Garfunkel did reunite, such as in 1975 for their Top Ten single "My Little Town", which Simon originally wrote for Garfunkel, claiming Garfunkel's solo output was lacking "bite." The song was included on their respective solo albums; Paul Simon's Still Crazy After All These Years, and Garfunkel's Breakaway. Contrary to popular belief, the song is not at all autobiographical of Simon's early life in New York City. In 1981, they got together again for the famous concert in Central Park, followed by a world tour and an aborted reunion album Think Too Much, which was eventually released (without Garfunkel) as Hearts and Bones. Together, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.
In 2003, the two reunited again when they received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. This reunion led to a U.S. tour—the acclaimed "Old Friends" concert series—followed by a 2004 international encore, which culminated in a free concert at the Colosseum in Rome. That final concert drew 600,000 people. In 2005, the pair sang "Bridge Over Troubled Water" with Aaron Neville in a benefit for Hurricane Katrina victims. In 2010, the pair reunited in New Orleans for their first concert in six years, at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
Simon's next project was the pop-folk masterpiece, There Goes Rhymin' Simon, released in May 1973. It contained some of his most popular and polished recordings - the lead single, "Kodachrome", was a No. 2 hit in America, and the follow-up, the gospel-flavored "Loves Me Like a Rock" was even bigger, topping the Cashbox charts. Other songs, like the weary "American Tune" or the melancholic "Something So Right" – a tribute to Simon's first wife, Peggy – became standards in the musician's catalogue. Critical and commercial reception for this second album were even stronger than for his debut. At the time, it was remarked how the songs were very fresh and unworried on the surface while they were exploring socially and politically conscious themes on a deeper level. The album reached No. 1 on the Cashbox album charts. As a souvenir for the tour that came next, in 1974 it was released as a live album, Live Rhymin', which was moderately successful and displayed some changes in Simon's music style, adopting world and religious music.
Highly anticipated, Still Crazy After All These Years was his next album. Released in October 1975 and produced by Simon and Phil Ramone, it marked another departure. The mood of the album was darker, as he wrote and recorded it in the wake of his divorce. Preceded by the feel-good duet with Phoebe Snow, "Gone at Last" (a Top 25 hit) and the Simon & Garfunkel reunion track "My Little Town" (a No. 9 on Billboard), the album managed to be his only No. 1 on the Billboard charts to date. The 18th Grammy Awards named it the Album of the Year and Simon's performance the year's Best Male Pop Vocal. With Simon in the forefront of popular music, the third single from the album, "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" reached the top spot of the Billboard charts, his only single to reach No. 1 on this list. Also, on May 3, 1976, Simon put together a benefit show at Madison Square Garden to raise money for the New York Public Library. Phoebe Snow, Jimmy Cliff and the Brecker Brothers also performed. The concert produced over $30,000 for the Library.
In 1980 he released One Trick Pony, his debut album with Warner Bros. Records and his first in almost five years. It was paired with the motion picture of the same name, which Simon wrote and starred in. Although it produced his last Top 10 hit with the upbeat "Late in the Evening" (also a No. 1 hit on the Radio & Records American charts), the album did not sell well, in a music market dominated by disco music. Simon recorded Hearts and Bones, a polished and confessional album that was eventually viewed as one of his best works, but that marked a lull in his commercial popularity; both the album and the lead single, "Allergies", missed the American Top 40. Hearts and Bones included "The Late Great Johnny Ace", a song partly about Johnny Ace, an American R&B; singer, and partly about slain Beatle John Lennon. A successful US solo tour featured Simon and his guitar, with a recording of the rhythm track and horns for "Late In The Evening." In January 1985, Simon lent his talent to USA for Africa and performed on the relief fundraising single "We Are the World".
At age 45, Simon found himself back at the forefront of popular music. He received the Grammy Awards for Album of the Year in 1987 and also Grammy Award for Record of the Year for the title track one year later. He also embarked on the very successful Graceland Tour, which was documented on music video. Simon found himself embracing new sounds, a fact that some critics viewed negatively – however, Simon reportedly felt it as a very natural artistic experiment, considering that "world music" was already present on much of his early work, including such Simon & Garfunkel hits as "El Condor Pasa" and his early solo recording "Mother and Child Reunion", which was recorded in Kingston, Jamaica. One way or another, Warner Bros. Records (who by this time now controlled and reissued all his previous Columbia albums) re-established Simon as one of his most successful artists and, in an attempt of capitalize on his renewed success, release the album Negotiations and Love Songs in November 1988, a mixture of greatest hits and personal favorites that covered Simon's entire career and became an enduring seller in his catalog.
After Graceland, Simon decided to extend his roots with the Brazilian music-flavored The Rhythm of the Saints. Sessions for the album began in December 1989, and took place in Rio de Janeiro and New York, featuring guitarist J. J. Cale and many Brazilian and African musicians. The tone of the album was more introspective and relatively low-key compared to the mostly upbeat numbers of Graceland. Released on October 1990, the album received excellent critical reviews and achieved very respectable sales, peaking at #4 in the U.S. and No. 1 in the UK. The lead single, "The Obvious Child", featuring the Grupo Cultural Olodum, was a Top 20 hit in the UK and appeared near the bottom of the Billboard Hot 100. Although not as successful as Graceland, The Rhythm of the Saints was received as a competent successor and consistent complement on Simon's attempts to explore (and popularize) world music, and also received a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year. Here are also more songs about past loves; his ex-wife Carrie Fisher says in her autobiography Wishful Drinking that the song "She Moves On" is about her. It's one of several she claims, followed by the line, "If you can get Paul Simon to write a song about you, do it. Because he is so brilliant at it."
The importance of both albums allowed Simon to stage another New York concert, and on August 15, 1991, almost a decade after his concert with Garfunkel, Simon staged another concert in Central Park with both African and South American bands. The success of the concert surpassed all expectations, and reportedly over 750,000 people attended, becoming one of the largest concert audiences in history. He later remembered the concert as the "most memorable moment in my career". The success of the show led to both a live album and an Emmy-winning TV special. In the middle, Simon embarked on the successful Born at the Right Time Tour and promoted the album with further singles, including "Proof" – accompanied with a humorous video featuring, again, Chevy Chase. On March 4, 1992 he appeared on his own MTV Unplugged, offering renditions of many of his most famous compositions. Broadcast in June, the show was a success, though it did not receive an album release.
Since the early stages of the nineties, Simon was fully involved on The Capeman, a musical that finally opened on January 29, 1998. Simon worked enthusiastically on the project for many years and described it as "a New York Puerto Rican story based on events that happened in 1959—events that I remembered." The musical tells the story of real-life Puerto Rican youth Salvador Agron, who wore a cape while committing two murders in 1959 New York, and who went on to become a writer in prison. Featuring Marc Anthony as the young Agron and Ruben Blades as the older Agron, the play received terrible reviews and very poor box office receipts from the very beginning, and ended up closing on March 28 after just 68 performances, becoming a failure from which Simon reportedly lost 11 million dollars. Simon recorded an album of songs from the show, which was released in November 1997. It was received with very mixed reviews, though many critics praised the combination of doo-wop, rockabilly and Caribbean music that the album reflected. In commercial terms, Songs from The Capeman was a failure—it found Simon missing the Top 40 of the Billboard charts for the first time in his career. The cast album was never released on CD but eventually became available online.
In an attempt to return successfully to the music market, Simon wrote and recorded a new album very quickly, with You're the One arriving in October 2000. The album consisted mostly of folk-pop writing combined with foreign musical sounds, particularly grooves from North Africa. While not reaching the commercial heights of previous albums, it managed at least to reach both the British and American Top 20. It received favorable reviews and received a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year. He toured extensively for the album, and one performance in Paris was released to home video.
On September 21, 2001, Simon sang Bridge Over Troubled Water on "", a multinetwork broadcast to benefit the September 11 Telethon Fund. In 2002, he wrote and recorded "Father and Daughter", the theme song for the animated children's movie The Wild Thornberrys Movie, The track was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song. In 2003, he participed on another Simon & Garfunkel reunion. One year later, Simon's studio albums were re-released both individually and together in a limited-edition nine-CD boxed set, Paul Simon: The Studio Recordings 1972-2000.
At the time, Simon was already working on a new album with Brian Eno called Surprise, which was released in May 2006. Most of the album was inspired by the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Iraq invasion and the war that followed. In personal terms, Simon was also inspired by the fact of being over sixty years old, an age that he turned in 2001 and that he humorously referred already on his single "Old", from the You're the One album. Simon showed specially care about the musical venture he traveled since 1986's Graceland. As he put it, "Once you go away for a bit, you wonder who people think you are. If they don't know what you're up to, they just go by your history. I'm so often described as this person that went to other cultures, which is true, but I never thought of it that way. I suspect people are thinking, 'What culture did you go to?' But this record is straight-ahead American." Surprise was a commercial hit, reaching #14 in the Billboard 200 and #4 in the UK. Most critics also praised the album, and many of them called it a real "comeback" for the artist. Stephen Thomas Erlewine from Allmusic paid attention to the attempts of Simon in embracing his classic folk sound with Eno's electronic textures, and wrote that "Simon doesn't achieve his comeback by reconnecting with the sound and spirit of his classic work; he has achieved it by being as restless and ambitious as he was at his popular and creative peak, which makes Surprise all the more remarkable." The album was supported with the successful Surprise Tour.
On March 1, 2007, Simon made headlines again when he was announced as the first recipient of the recently-created Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. The Prize, created by the Library of Congress, was awarded to Simon during a Concert Gala featuring his music at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C., on the evening of May 23. The event was nationally broadcast on PBS on the evening of June 27, 2007. Performers at the concert included Shawn Colvin, Philip Glass, Alison Krauss, Jerry Douglas, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Lyle Lovett, James Taylor, and Stevie Wonder as well as Simon's former collaborator Art Garfunkel. On June 26, Warner Bros. released the definitive Paul Simon greatest-hits collection. The Essential Paul Simon consisted of two discs that reviewed 36 songs from his ten studio albums, and was also released on a special edition featuring a DVD of music videos and memorable live performances. The album was a commercial hit, reaching #12 in the UK.
All of Simon's solo recordings, even the ones originally issued by Columbia Records, are currently distributed by Sony Records' Legacy Recordings unit. His recordings were issued by Warner Music until mid-2010. His Cole Porter-esque compositional abilities with his combination of jazz-tinged chords and seamless, romantic, poetic lyrics ranged throughout all his different songwriting styles.
In February 2009, Simon performed back-to-back shows in his native New York City at the Beacon Theatre, which had recently been renovated. Simon was reunited with Art Garfunkel at the first show as well as with the cast of The Capeman; also playing in the band was Graceland bassist Bakithi Kumalo.
In May 2009, Simon toured with Art Garfunkel in Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
In October 2009, Simon appeared alongside Art Garfunkel at the 25th Anniversary of The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The pair performed four of their most popular songs, "The Sounds of Silence", "The Boxer", "Cecilia", and "Bridge Over Troubled Water".
On April 21, 2010 it was announced that Paul Simon would be an honorary degree recipient at the Brandeis University Commencement ceremony to be held on May 23, 2010. Due to student interest expressed through Facebook, Simon performed "The Boxer" at the 59th Commencement Exercises at the University.
In mid-2010, Simon moved his catalogue of solo work from Warner Bros. Records to Sony/Columbia Records due for release on the Concord Music Group label on April 12, 2011. The album will have bluegrass influence. It was reported that Paul Simon was attempting to have Bob Dylan guest on the album. In reference to the new album, Simon claims, "It's the best work I've done in 20 years." and will be on the forthcoming SBOSW album. The song samples a 1941 sermon by the Rev. J.M. Gates, also entitled "Getting Ready for Christmas Day". Simon performed the song live on The Colbert Report on December 16, 2010. The song is available for free download or viewing with 2 videos at www.paulsimon.com. The first video features J.M. Gates' giving the sermon and his Church in 2010 with its display board showing many of Simon's lyrics; the second video illustrates the song with cartoon images.
In the premiere show of the final season of the Oprah Winfrey Show, on September 10, 2010, Simon surprised Oprah and the audience with a song dedicated to Oprah and her show lasting 25 years (an update of a song he did for her show's 10th anniversary).
Simon has also appeared on Saturday Night Live (SNL) either as host or musical guest for a total of 12 times. On one appearance in the late 1980s, he worked with his political namesake, Illinois Senator Paul Simon.
His most recent SNL appearance was the May 13, 2006 episode hosted by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. He performed two new songs from his Surprise album, "How Can You Live in the Northeast?" and "Outrageous". In one SNL skit from 1986 (when he was promoting Graceland), Simon plays himself, waiting in line with a friend to get into a movie. He amazes his friend by remembering intricate details about prior meetings with passers-by, but draws a complete blank when approached by Art Garfunkel, despite the latter's numerous memory prompts.
Simon also appeared alongside George Harrison as musical guest on the Thanksgiving Day episode of SNL (November 20, 1976). The two performed "Here Comes the Sun" and "Homeward Bound" together, while Simon performed "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" solo earlier in the show. On that episode, Simon opened the show singing "Still Crazy After All These Years" in a turkey outfit, since Thanksgiving was the following week. About halfway through the song, Simon tells the band to stop playing because of his embarrassment. After giving a frustrating speech to the audience, he leaves the stage, backed by applause. Lorne Michaels positively greets him backstage, but Simon is still upset, yelling at him because of the humiliating turkey outfit. This is one of SNL's most played sketches.
On September 29, 2001, Simon made a special appearance on the first SNL to air after the September 11, 2001 attacks. On that show, he performed "The Boxer" to the audience and the NYC firefighters and police officers. He is also friends with former SNL star Chevy Chase, who appeared in his video for "You Can Call Me Al" lip synching the song while Simon looks disgruntled and mimes backing vocals and the playing of various instruments beside him. He is a close friend of SNL producer Lorne Michaels, who produced the 1977 TV show The Paul Simon Special, as well as the Simon and Garfunkel concert in Central Park four years later. Simon and Lorne Michaels were the subjects of a 2006 episode of the Sundance channel documentary series, Iconoclasts.
He has been the subject of two films by Jeremy Marre, the first on Graceland, the second on The Capeman.
On November 18, 2008, Simon was a guest on The Colbert Report promoting his book Lyrics 1964-2008. He did an interview with Stephen Colbert and then performed "American Tune".
Simon performed a Stevie Wonder song at the White House in 2009, at an event honoring Wonder's musical career and contributions, hosted by President Barack Obama.
In May 2009, The Library of Congress: Paul Simon and Friends Live Concert was released on DVD, via Shout! Factory. The PBS concert was recorded in 2007.
In 2001 Paul Simon was honored as MusiCares Person Of The Year.
Paul Simon is a two-time inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — as a solo artist in 2001, and in 1990 as half of Simon & Garfunkel.
In 2002, Paul Simon was one of the five annual recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors, the nation's highest tribute to performing and cultural artists.
In 2005, he was saluted as a BMI Icon at the 53rd Annual BMI Pop Awards. Simon's songwriting catalog has earned 39 BMI Awards including multiple citations for "Bridge Over Troubled Water," "Mrs. Robinson," "Scarborough Fair" and "The Sound of Silence". As of 2005, he has amassed nearly 75 million broadcast airplays, according to BMI surveys.
In 2006, Paul Simon was selected by Time Magazine as one of the "100 People Who Shaped the World."
Paul Simon received the first annual Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in 2007. Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney were to follow in 2009 and 2010. Named in honor of the legendary George and Ira Gershwin, this newly created award recognizes the profound and positive effect of popular music on the world’s culture. Upon being notified of receiving this honor, Simon said, “I am grateful to be the recipient of the Gershwin Prize and doubly honored to be the first. I look forward to spending an evening in the company of artists I admire at the award ceremony in May. I can think of a few who have expressed my words and music far better than I. I’m excited at the prospect of that happening again. It’s a songwriter’s dream come true." Among the performers who paid tribute to Simon were Stevie Wonder, Alison Krauss, Jerry Douglas, Lyle Lovett, James Taylor, Dianne Reeves, Marc Anthony, Yolanda Adams, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo. The event is professionally filmed, broadcasted and now available as Paul Simon and Friends.
In 2010, Paul Simon received an honorary degree from Brandeis University, where he also performed "The Boxer" at the main commencement ceremony.
His second marriage, from 1983 to 1984, was to actress and author Carrie Fisher to whom he proposed after a New York Yankees game. (The song "Hearts and Bones" was written about this relationship. The song "Graceland" is also thought to be about seeking solace from the end of this relationship by taking a road trip).
He married folk singer Edie Brickell on May 30, 1992. They have three children together.
Though Simon is left-handed, he plays the guitar right-handed.
In 2003, Simon signed on as an official supporter of Little Kids Rock, a nonprofit organization that provides free musical instruments and free lessons to children in public schools throughout the U.S. He sits on the organization's board of directors as an honorary member. Paul Simon is also a major benefactor and one of the co-founders, with Dr. Irwin Redlener, of the Children's Health Project and The Children's Health Fund which started by creating specially equipped "buses" to take medical care to children in medically underserved areas, urban and rural. Their first bus was in the impoverished South Bronx of New York City but they now operate in 12 states, including the Gulf Coast. It has expanded greatly, partnering with major hospitals, local public schools and medical schools and advocating policy for children's health and medical care.
Number-one albums
Category:1941 births Category:1950s singers Category:1960s singers Category:1970s singers Category:1980s singers Category:1990s singers Category:2000s singers Category:2010s singers Category:American buskers Category:American composers Category:American folk guitarists Category:American acoustic guitarists Category:American pop guitarists Category:Folk rock musicians Category:American people of Hungarian-Jewish descent Category:American male singers Category:American pop singers Category:American singer-songwriters Category:World music musicians Category:BRIT Award winners Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Jewish actors Category:Jewish American musicians Category:Jewish singers Category:Kennedy Center honorees Category:Living people Category:Musicians from New Jersey Category:People from Fairfield County, Connecticut Category:People from Newark, New Jersey Category:People from Queens Category:Queens College, City University of New York alumni Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Category:Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees Category:Jewish American composers and songwriters
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.
Samba resigned his commission in 1902 and entered private business in Ebolowa. His admiration for the Germans eventually turned to hatred, and he began to plot an uprising against them. He secretly contacted British and French forces to secure arms, but one such letter was intercepted. German forces arrested him and charged him with high treason. Samba was executed on 8 August 1914. Today, many Cameroonian historians view Samba as one of Cameroon's earliest heroes and nationalists.
The young m'Ebobo became a favourite of the German colonials who lived in Kribi. He entered the service of German explorer Kurt von Morgan, whom he accompanied on expeditions beginning in 1889. Two years later, von Morgan paid to have m'Ebobo educated in Germany.
M'Ebobo entered the German Military Academy, where he was given the name Samba. That November, he was baptised as Martin-Paul. Samba graduated in 1894 with the rank of captain.
Samba returned to Kamerun that same year. For the next seven years, he accompanied German expeditions under the command of Hans Dominik to explore the Kamerun hinterland and subjugate native resistance. In 1902, he resigned his commission to become a businessman in Ebolowa.
A Bulu informant alerted the Germans of Samba's plans. By July 1914, the colonial forces were suspicious enough to search his home, where they found numerous receipts for arms purchases from British and French suppliers. At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Samba sent a letter to the French forces at Brazzaville stating his intent to rebel and requesting aid against the Germans. Colonial forces intercepted the correspondence. Samba was arrested on 1 August 1914 and charged with high treason. His collaborators, Madola, Edande Mbita, and others, were also arrested when stockpiles of arms were found in their homes. The men were tried by military tribunal. All were found guilty. On 8 August 1914, Samba and his collaborators were executed by firing squad.
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 | Mark Twain |
|---|---|
| Caption | Mark Twain, detail of photo by Mathew Brady, February 7, 1871 |
| Birthname | Samuel Langhorne Clemens |
| Pseudonym | Mark Twain |
| Birthdate | November 30, 1835 |
| Birthplace | Florida, Missouri, U.S. |
| Deathdate | April 21, 1910 |
| Deathplace | Redding, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Occupation | Writer, lecturer |
| Nationality | American |
| Genre | Fiction, historical fiction, children's literature, non-fiction, travel literature, satire, essay, philosophical literature, social commentary, literary criticism |
| Signature | Mark Twain Signatures-2.svg |
| Notableworks | Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer |
| Spouse | |
| Children | Langdon, Susy, Clara, Jean |
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He is noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), called "the Great American Novel", and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876).
Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which would later provide the setting for Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. He apprenticed with a printer. He also worked as a typesetter and contributed articles to his older brother Orion's newspaper. After toiling as a printer in various cities, he became a master riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River, before heading west to join Orion. He was a failure at gold mining, so he next turned to journalism. While a reporter, he wrote a humorous story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, which proved to be very popular and brought him nationwide attention. His travelogues were also well-received. Twain had found his calling.
He achieved great success as a writer and public speaker. His wit and satire earned praise from critics and peers, and he was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.
However, he lacked financial acumen. Though he made a great deal of money from his writings and lectures, he squandered it on various ventures, in particular the Paige Compositor, and was forced to declare bankruptcy. With the help of Henry Huttleston Rogers, however, he eventually overcame his financial troubles. Twain worked hard to ensure that all of his creditors were paid in full, even though his bankruptcy had relieved him of the legal responsibility.
Born during a visit by Halley's Comet, he died on its return. He was lauded as the "greatest American humorist of his age", and William Faulkner called Twain "the father of American literature".
Twain was the sixth of seven children. Only three of his siblings survived childhood: his brother Orion (July 17, 1825 – December 11, 1897); Henry, who died in a riverboat explosion (July 13, 1838 – June 21, 1858); and Pamela (September 19, 1827 – August 31, 1904). His sister Margaret (May 31, 1830 – August 17, 1839) died when Twain was three, and his brother Benjamin (June 8, 1832 – May 12, 1842) died three years later. Another brother, Pleasant (1828–1829), died at six months. Twain was born two weeks after the closest approach to Earth of Halley's Comet. On December 4, 1985, the United States Postal Service issued a stamped envelope for "Mark Twain and Halley's Comet."
When Twain was four, his family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, a port town on the Mississippi River that inspired the fictional town of St. Petersburg in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Missouri was a slave state and young Twain became familiar with the institution of slavery, a theme he would later explore in his writing.
Twain’s father was an attorney and a local judge. The Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad was organized in his office in 1846. The railroad connected the second and third largest cities in the state and was the westernmost United States railroad until the Transcontinental Railroad. It delivered mail to and from the Pony Express.
In March 1847, when Twain was 11, his father died of pneumonia. The next year, he became a printer's apprentice. In 1851, he began working as a typesetter and contributor of articles and humorous sketches for the Hannibal Journal, a newspaper owned by his brother Orion. When he was 18, he left Hannibal and worked as a printer in New York City, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. He joined the union and educated himself in public libraries in the evenings, finding wider information than at a conventional school. At 22, Twain returned to Missouri.
On a voyage to New Orleans down the Mississippi, steamboat pilot Horace E. Bixby inspired Twain to be a steamboat pilot. As Twain observed in Life on the Mississippi, the pilot surpassed a steamboat's captain in prestige and authority; it was a rewarding occupation with wages set at $250 per month, roughly equivalent to $}} a year today. A steamboat pilot needed to know the ever-changing river to be able to stop at the hundreds of ports and wood-lots. Twain studied 2,000 miles (3,200 km) of the Mississippi for more than two years before he received his steamboat pilot license in 1859.
While training, Samuel convinced his younger brother Henry to work with him. Henry was killed on June 21, 1858, when the steamboat on which he was working, the Pennsylvania, exploded. Twain had foreseen this death in a dream a month earlier, which inspired his interest in parapsychology; he was an early member of the Society for Psychical Research. Twain was guilt-stricken and held himself responsible for the rest of his life. He continued to work on the river and was a river pilot until the American Civil War broke out in 1861 and traffic along the Mississippi was curtailed.
Missouri was considered by many to be part of the South, and was represented in both the Confederate and Federal governments during the Civil War. Twain wrote a sketch, "The Private History of a Campaign That Failed", which claimed he and his friends had been Confederate volunteers for two weeks before disbanding their company.
Twain moved to San Francisco, California in 1864, still as a journalist. He met writers such as Bret Harte, Artemus Ward, and Dan DeQuille. The young poet Ina Coolbrith may have romanced him.
His first success as a writer came when his humorous tall tale, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", was published in a New York weekly, The Saturday Press, on November 18, 1865. It brought him national attention. A year later, he traveled to the Sandwich Islands (present-day Hawaii) as a reporter for the Sacramento Union. His travelogues were popular and became the basis for his first lectures.
In 1867, a local newspaper funded a trip to the Mediterranean. During his tour of Europe and the Middle East, he wrote a popular collection of travel letters, which were later compiled as The Innocents Abroad in 1869. It was on this trip that he met his future brother-in-law.
The couple lived in Buffalo, New York from 1869 to 1871. Twain owned a stake in the Buffalo Express newspaper, and worked as an editor and writer. Their son Langdon died of diphtheria at 19 months.
In 1871, Twain moved his family to Hartford, Connecticut, where starting in 1873, he arranged the building of a home (local admirers saved it from demolition in 1927 and eventually turned it into a museum focused on him). While living there, Olivia gave birth to three daughters: Susy (1872–1896), Clara (1874–1962) and Jean (1880–1909). The couple's marriage lasted 34 years, until Olivia's death in 1904.
During his seventeen years in Hartford (1874–1891), Twain wrote many of his best-known works: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), The Prince and the Pauper (1881), Life on the Mississippi (1883), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889).
Twain made a second tour of Europe, described in the 1880 book A Tramp Abroad. His tour included a stay in Heidelberg from May 6 until July 23, 1878, and a visit to London.
Twain patented three inventions, including an "Improvement in Adjustable and Detachable Straps for Garments" (to replace suspenders) and a history trivia game. Most commercially successful was a self-pasting scrapbook; a dried adhesive on the pages only needed to be moistened before use.
His book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court features a time traveler from contemporary America, using his knowledge of science to introduce modern technology to Arthurian England. This type of storyline would later become a common feature of the science fiction sub-genre, Alternate history.
In 1909, Thomas Edison visited Twain at his home in Redding, Connecticut and filmed him. Part of the footage was used in The Prince and the Pauper (1909), a two-reel short film.
Twain embarked on an around-the-world lecture tour in 1894 to pay off his creditors in full, although he was no longer under any legal obligation to do so. In mid-1900, he was the guest of newspaper proprietor Hugh Gilzean-Reid at Dollis Hill House. Twain wrote of Dollis Hill that he had "never seen any place that was so satisfactorily situated, with its noble trees and stretch of country, and everything that went to make life delightful, and all within a biscuit's throw of the metropolis of the world". He then returned to America in 1900, having earned enough to pay off his debts.
In 1906, Twain began his autobiography in the North American Review. In April, Twain heard that his friend Ina Coolbrith had lost nearly all she owned in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and he volunteered a few autographed portrait photographs to be sold for her benefit. To further aid Coolbrith, George Wharton James visited Twain in New York and arranged for a new portrait session. Initially resistant, Twain admitted that four of the resulting images were the finest ones ever taken of him.
Twain formed a club in 1906 for girls he viewed as surrogate granddaughters, the Angel Fish and Aquarium Club. The dozen or so members ranged in age from 10 to 16. Twain exchanged letters with his "Angel Fish" girls and invited them to concerts and the theatre and to play games. Twain wrote in 1908 that the club was his "life's chief delight."
Oxford University awarded Twain an honorary doctorate in letters (D.Litt.) in 1907.
In 1909, Twain is quoted as saying:
His prediction was accurate – Twain died of a heart attack on April 21, 1910, in Redding, Connecticut, one day after the comet's closest approach to Earth.
Upon hearing of Twain's death, President William Howard Taft said:
"Mark Twain gave pleasure – real intellectual enjoyment – to millions, and his works will continue to give such pleasure to millions yet to come... His humor was American, but he was nearly as much appreciated by Englishmen and people of other countries as by his own countrymen. He has made an enduring part of American literature."
.]] Twain's funeral was at the "Old Brick" Presbyterian Church in New York. He is buried in his wife's family plot at Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira, New York. His grave is marked by a 12-foot (i.e., two fathoms, or "mark twain") monument, placed there by his surviving daughter, Clara. There is also a smaller headstone.
A complete bibliography of his works is nearly impossible to compile because of the vast number of pieces written by Twain (often in obscure newspapers) and his use of several different pen names. Additionally, a large portion of his speeches and lectures have been lost or were not written down; thus, the collection of Twain's works is an ongoing process. Researchers rediscovered published material by Twain as recently as 1995.
After this burst of popularity, Twain was commissioned by the Sacramento Union to write letters about his travel experiences for publication in the newspaper, his first of which was to ride the steamer Ajax in its maiden voyage to Hawaii, referred to at the time as the Sandwich Islands. These humorous letters proved the genesis to his work with the San Francisco Alta California newspaper, which designated him a traveling correspondent for a trip from San Francisco to New York City via the Panama isthmus. All the while, Twain was writing letters meant for publishing back and forth, chronicling his experiences with his burlesque humor. On June 8, 1867, Twain set sail on the pleasure cruiser Quaker City for five months. This trip resulted in The Innocents Abroad or The New Pilgrims' Progress.
In 1872, Twain published a second piece of travel literature, Roughing It, as a semi-sequel to Innocents. Roughing It is a semi-autobiographical account of Twain's journey to Nevada and his subsequent life in the American West. The book lampoons American and Western society in the same way that Innocents critiqued the various countries of Europe and the Middle East. Twain's next work kept Roughing It's focus on American society but focused more on the events of the day. Entitled , it was not a travel piece, as his previous two books had been, and it was his first attempt at writing a novel. The book is also notable because it is Twain's only collaboration; it was written with his neighbor Charles Dudley Warner.
Twain's next two works drew on his experiences on the Mississippi River. Old Times on the Mississippi, a series of sketches published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1875, featured Twain’s disillusionment with Romanticism. Old Times eventually became the starting point for Life on the Mississippi.
The Prince and the Pauper, despite a storyline that is omnipresent in film and literature today, was not as well received. Telling the story of two boys born on the same day who are physically identical, the book acts as a social commentary as the prince and pauper switch places. Pauper was Twain's first attempt at fiction, and blame for its shortcomings is usually put on Twain for having not been experienced enough in English society, and also on the fact that it was produced after a massive hit. In between the writing of Pauper, Twain had started Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (which he consistently had problems completing) and started and completed another travel book, A Tramp Abroad, which follows Twain as he traveled through central and southern Europe.
Twain's next major published work, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, solidified him as a noteworthy American writer. Some have called it the first Great American Novel, and the book has become required reading in many schools throughout the United States. Huckleberry Finn was an offshoot from Tom Sawyer and had a more serious tone than its predecessor. The main premise behind Huckleberry Finn is the young boy's belief in the right thing to do though most believed that it was wrong. Four hundred manuscript pages of Huckleberry Finn were written in mid-1876, right after the publication of Tom Sawyer. Some accounts have Twain taking seven years off after his first burst of creativity, eventually finishing the book in 1883. Other accounts have Twain working on Huckleberry Finn in tandem with The Prince and the Pauper and other works in 1880 and other years. The last fifth of Huckleberry Finn is subject to much controversy. Some say that Twain experienced, as critic Leo Marx puts it, a "failure of nerve". Ernest Hemingway once said of Huckleberry Finn:
If you read it, you must stop where the Nigger Jim is stolen from the boys. That is the real end. The rest is just cheating.
Hemingway also wrote in the same essay:
All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Near the completion of Huckleberry Finn, Twain wrote Life on the Mississippi, which is said to have heavily influenced the former book.
Twain next focused on A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, which featured him making his first big pronouncement of disappointment with politics. Written with the same "historical fiction" style of The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee showed the absurdities of political and social norms by setting them in the court of King Arthur. The book was started in December 1885, then shelved a few months later until the summer of 1887, and eventually finished in the spring of 1889.
Twain had begun to furiously write articles and commentary with diminishing returns to pay the bills and keep his business projects afloat, but it was not enough. He filed for bankruptcy in 1894.
His next large-scale work, Pudd'nhead Wilson, was written rapidly, as Twain was desperately trying to stave off the bankruptcy. From November 12 to December 14, 1893, Twain wrote 60,000 words for the novel.
Other authors to fall under Twain's attack during this time period (beginning around 1890 until his death) were George Eliot, Jane Austen, and Robert Louis Stevenson. In addition to providing a source for the "tooth and claw" style of literary criticism, Twain outlines in several letters and essays what he considers to be "quality writing". He places emphasis on concision, utility of word choice, and realism (he complains that Cooper's Deerslayer purports to be realistic but has several shortcomings). Ironically, several of his works were later criticized for lack of continuity (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) and organization (Pudd'nhead Wilson).
Twain's wife died in 1904 while the couple were staying at the Villa di Quarto in Florence, and after an appropriate time Twain allowed himself to publish some works that his wife, a de facto editor and censor throughout his life, had looked down upon. Of these works, The Mysterious Stranger, depicting various visits of Satan to the Earth, is perhaps the best known. This particular work was not published in Twain's lifetime. There were three versions found in his manuscripts made between 1897 and 1905: the Hannibal, Eseldorf, and Print Shop versions. Confusion between the versions led to an extensive publication of a jumbled version, and only recently have the original versions as Twain wrote them become available.
Twain's last work was his autobiography, which he dictated and thought would be most entertaining if he went off on whims and tangents in non-chronological order. Some archivists and compilers have rearranged the biography into more conventional forms, thereby eliminating some of Twain's humor and the flow of the book. The first volume of autobiography, over 736 pages, was published by the University of California in November 2010, 100 years after his death as Twain wished. It soon became an unexpected best selling book, making Twain one of very few authors publishing new best-selling volumes in all 3 of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.
in 1908]]
The two men introduced each other to their acquaintances. Twain was an admirer of the remarkable deafblind girl Helen Keller. He first met Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan at a party in the home of Laurence Hutton in New York City in the winter of 1894. Twain introduced them to Rogers, who, with his wife, paid for Keller's education at Radcliffe College. Twain is credited with labeling Sullivan, Keller's governess and companion, a "miracle worker". His choice of words later became inspiration for the title of William Gibson's play and film adaptation, The Miracle Worker. Twain also introduced Rogers to journalist Ida M. Tarbell, who interviewed the robber baron for a muckraking expose that led indirectly to the breakup of the Standard Oil Trust. On cruises aboard the Kanawha, Twain and Rogers were joined at frequent intervals by Booker T. Washington, the famed former slave who had become a leading educator.
While the two famous old men were widely regarded as drinking and poker buddies, they also exchanged letters when apart, and this was often since each traveled a great deal. Unlike Rogers' personal files, which have never become public, these insightful letters were published. The written exchanges between the two men demonstrate Twain's well-known sense of humor and, more surprisingly, Rogers' sense of fun, providing a rare insight into the private side of the robber baron.
In April 1907, Twain and Rogers cruised to the opening of the Jamestown Exposition in Virginia. Twain's public popularity was such that many fans took boats out to the Kanawha at anchor in hopes of getting a glimpse of him. As the gathering of boats around the yacht became a safety hazard, he finally obliged by coming on deck and waving to the crowds.
Because of poor weather conditions, the steam yacht was delayed for several days from venturing into the Atlantic Ocean. Rogers and some of the others in his party returned to New York by rail; Twain disliked train travel and so elected to wait and return on the Kanawha. However, reporters lost track of his whereabouts; when he failed to return to New York City as scheduled, The New York Times speculated that he might have been "lost at sea". Upon arriving safely in New York and learning of this, the humorist wrote a satirical article about the episode, offering to "...make an exhaustive investigation of this report that I have been lost at sea. If there is any foundation for the report, I will at once apprise the anxious public". This bore similarities to an earlier event in 1897 when he made his famous remark "The report of my death was an exaggeration", after a reporter was sent to investigate whether he had died. In fact, it was his cousin who was seriously ill.
Later that year, Twain and Rogers's son, Henry Jr., returned to the Jamestown Exposition aboard the Kanawha. The humorist helped host Robert Fulton Day on September 23, 1907, celebrating the centennial of Fulton's invention of the steamboat. Twain, filling in for ailing former U.S. President Grover Cleveland, introduced Rear Admiral Purnell Harrington. Twain was met with a five-minute standing ovation; members of the audience cheered and waved their hats and umbrellas. Deeply touched, Twain said, "When you appeal to my head, I don't feel it; but when you appeal to my heart, I do feel it".
In April 1909, the two old friends returned to Norfolk, Virginia for the banquet in honor of Rogers and his newly completed Virginian Railway. Twain was the keynote speaker in one of his last public appearances, and was widely quoted in newspapers across the country.
A month later, Twain was en route from Connecticut to visit his friend in New York City when Rogers died suddenly on May 20, 1909. Twain arrived at Grand Central Station to be met by his daughter with the news. Stricken with grief, he uncustomarily avoided news reporters who had gathered, saying only "This is terrible...I cannot talk about it". Two days later, he served as an honorary pallbearer at the funeral in New York City. However, he declined to join the funeral party on the train ride for the interment at Fairhaven. He said "I cannot bear to travel with my friend and not converse".
Before 1899 Twain was an ardent imperialist. In the late 1860s and early 1870s he spoke out strongly in favor of American interests in the Hawaiian Islands. In the mid 1890s he explained later, he was "a red-hot imperialist. I wanted the American eagle to go screaming over the Pacific." He said the war with Spain in 1898 was "the worthiest" war ever fought. In 1899 he reversed course, and from 1901, soon after his return from Europe, until his death in 1910, Twain was vice-president of the American Anti-Imperialist League, which opposed the annexation of the Philippines by the United States and had "tens of thousands of members". He summed up his views of revolutions in the following statement:
Mark Twain was a staunch supporter of women's rights and an active campaigner for women's suffrage. His "Votes for Women" speech, in which he pressed for the granting of voting rights to women, is considered one of the most famous in history.
Helen Keller benefited from Twain's support, as she pursued her college education and publishing, despite her disabilities and financial limitations.
Twain's liberal views on race were not shown in his early sketches of Native Americans. Of them, Twain wrote in 1870:
As counterpoint, Twain's essay on "The Literary Offenses of Fenimore Cooper" offers a much kinder view of Indians. In his later travelogue Following the Equator (1897), Twain observes that in colonized lands all over the world, "savages" have always been wronged by "whites" in the most merciless ways, such as "robbery, humiliation, and slow, slow murder, through poverty and the white man's whiskey"; his conclusion is that "there are many humorous things in this world; among them the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages".
I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't. ... The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further.
In 1901 Twain criticized the actions of missionary Dr. William Scott Ament (1851–1909) because Ament and other missionaries had collected indemnities from Chinese subjects in the aftermath of the Boxer Uprising of 1900. Twain's response to hearing of Ament's methods was published in the North American Review in February 1901: To the Person Sitting in Darkness, and deals with examples of imperialism in China, South Africa, and with the U.S. occupation of the Philippines. A subsequent article, "To My Missionary Critics" published in The North American Review in April 1901, unapologetically continues his attack, but with the focus shifted from Ament to his missionary superiors, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.
After his death, Twain's family suppressed some of his work which was especially irreverent toward conventional religion, notably Letters from the Earth, which was not published until his daughter Clara reversed her position in 1962 in response to Soviet propaganda about the withholding. The anti-religious The Mysterious Stranger was published in 1916. Little Bessie, a story ridiculing Christianity, was first published in the 1972 collection Mark Twain's Fables of Man.
Despite these views, he raised money to build a Presbyterian Church in Nevada in 1864, although it has been argued that it was only by his association with his Presbyterian brother that he did that.
Twain created a reverent portrayal of Joan of Arc, a subject over which he had obsessed for forty years, studied for a dozen years and spent two years writing. In 1900 and again in 1908, he stated, "I like Joan of Arc best of all my books, it is the best."
Those who knew Twain well late in life recount that he dwelt on the subject of the afterlife, his daughter Clara saying: "Sometimes he believed death ended everything, but most of the time he felt sure of a life beyond."
Mark Twain's frankest views on religion appeared in his final Autobiography which was published 100 years after his death, in November 2010. In it, he said,
Twain was a Freemason. He belonged to Polar Star Lodge No. 79 A.F.&A.M.;, based in St. Louis. He was initiated an Entered Apprentice on May 22, 1861, passed to the degree of Fellow Craft on June 12, and raised to the degree of Master Mason on July 10.
in the Braeswood Place neighborhood of Houston, Texas]]
Public Library in Garden City, Kansas]]
Twain's legacy lives on today as his namesakes continue to multiply. Several schools are named after him, including Mark Twain Elementary School in Houston, Texas, which has a statue of Twain sitting on a bench, and Mark Twain Intermediate School in New York. There are several schools named Mark Twain Middle School in different states, as well as Samuel Clemens High School in Schertz, near San Antonio, Texas. There are also other structures, such as the Mark Twain Memorial Bridge.
Mark Twain Village is a United States Army installation located in the Südstadt district of Heidelberg, Germany. It is one of two American bases in the United States Army Garrison Heidelberg that house American soldiers and their families (the other being Patrick Henry Village).
Awards in his name proliferate. In 1998, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts created the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, awarded annually. The Mark Twain Award is an award given annually to a book for children in grades four through eight by the Missouri Association of School Librarians. Stetson University in DeLand, Florida sponsors the Mark Twain Young Authors' Workshop each summer in collaboration with the Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum in Hannibal. The program is open to young authors in grades five through eight. The museum sponsors the Mark Twain Creative Teaching Award.
in Sydney, Australia]]
Buildings associated with Twain, including some of his many homes, have been preserved as museums. His birthplace is preserved in Florida, Missouri. The Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum in Hannibal, Missouri preserves the setting for some of the author's best known work. The home of childhood friend Laura Hawkins, said to be the inspiration for his fictional character Becky Thatcher, is preserved as the "Thatcher House".In May 2007, a painstaking reconstruction of the home of Tom Blankenship, the inspiration for Huckleberry Finn, was opened to the public. The family home he had built in Hartford, Connecticut, where he and his wife raised their three daughters, is preserved and open to visitors as the Mark Twain House.
Actor Hal Holbrook created a one-man show called Mark Twain Tonight, which he has performed regularly for about years. The broadcast by CBS in 1967 won him an Emmy Award. Of the three runs on Broadway (1966, 1977, and 2005), the first won him a Tony Award.
Additionally, like many influential individuals, Twain was honored by having an asteroid, 2362 Mark Twain, named after him.
Often, Twain is depicted in pop culture as wearing a white suit. While there is evidence that suggests that, after Livy's death in 1904, Twain began wearing white suits on the lecture circuit, modern representations suggesting that he wore them throughout his life are unfounded. There is no evidence of him wearing a white suit before 1904; however, it did eventually become his trademark, as illustrated in anecdotes about this eccentricity (such as the time he wore a white summer suit to a Congressional hearing during the winter). In 2011, the US Postal Service plans to release another stamp in his honor.
He maintained that his primary pen name came from his years working on Mississippi riverboats, where two fathoms, a depth indicating safe water for passage of boat, was measured on the sounding line. A fathom is a maritime unit of depth, equivalent to two yards (1.8 m); twain is an archaic term for "two". The riverboatman's cry was mark twain or, more fully, by the mark twain, meaning "according to the mark [on the line], [the depth is] two [fathoms]", that is, "The water is deep and it is safe to pass".
Twain claimed that his famous pen name was not entirely his invention. In Life on the Mississippi, he wrote:
Captain Isaiah Sellers was not of literary turn or capacity, but he used to jot down brief paragraphs of plain practical information about the river, and sign them "MARK TWAIN", and give them to the New Orleans Picayune. They related to the stage and condition of the river, and were accurate and valuable; ... At the time that the telegraph brought the news of his death, I was on the Pacific coast. I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre; so I confiscated the ancient mariner's discarded one, and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands – a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how I have succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say.
Twain's version of the story about his nom de plume has been questioned by biographer George Williams III, the Territorial Enterprise newspaper, and Purdue University's Paul Fatout. which claim that mark twain refers to a running bar tab that Twain would regularly incur while drinking at John Piper's saloon in Virginia City, Nevada.
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Category:1835 births Category:1910 deaths Category:American agnostics Category:American humorists Category:American memoirists Category:American novelists Category:American satirists Category:American short story writers Category:American travel writers Category:Alternate history writers Category:American autobiographers Category:Writers from Connecticut Category:Writers from Missouri Category:Writers from Nevada Category:Literary collaborators Category:Holy Land travellers Category:People of the Philippine–American War Category:People of the California Gold Rush Category:People from Elmira, New York Category:People from Hannibal, Missouri Category:People from St. Louis, Missouri Category:People from Monroe County, Missouri Category:Lecturers Category:Critics of Christian Science
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| Name | Tutankhamun |
|---|---|
| Caption | Mask of Tutankhamun's mummy, the popular icon for ancient Egypt at The Egyptian Museum. |
| Reign | 1333–1324 BC |
| Dynasty | 18th Dynasty |
| Predecessor | Smenkhkare? or Neferneferuaten? |
| Successor | Ay |
| Spouse | Ankhesenamen |
| Notes | See Tutankhamun#Names |
| Children | two daughters |
| Father | Akhenaten |
| Mother | unidentified mummy, "The Younger Lady" |
| Born | 1341 BC |
| Died | 1323 BC (aged c.18) |
| Burial | KV62 |
| Alt | Tutankhamen, Tutankhaten, Tutankhamon possibly Nibhurrereya (as referenced in the Amarna letters) |
The 1922 discovery by Howard Carter of Tutankhamun's nearly intact tomb received worldwide press coverage. It sparked a renewed public interest in ancient Egypt, for which Tutankhamun's burial mask remains the popular symbol. Exhibits of artifacts from his tomb have toured the world. In February 2010, the results of DNA tests confirmed that Tutankhamun was the son of Akhenaten (mummy KV55) and his sister/wife (mummy KV35YL), whose name is unknown but whose remains are positively identified as "The Younger Lady" mummy found in KV35.
When he became king, he married his half sister, Ankhesenepatan, who later changed her name to Ankhesenamun. They had two daughters, both stillborn.
As part of his restoration, the king initiated building projects, in particular at Thebes and Karnak, where he dedicated a temple to Amun. Many monuments were erected, and an inscription on his tomb door declares the king had "spent his life in fashioning the images of the gods". The traditional festivals were now celebrated again, including those related to the Apis Bull, Horemakhet and Opet. His restoration stela says:
The temples of the gods and goddesses ... were in ruins. Their shrines were deserted and overgrown. Their sanctuaries were as non-existent and their courts were used as roads ... the gods turned their backs upon this land ... If anyone made a prayer to a god for advice he would never respond – and the same applied to a goddess.
Although there is some speculation that Tutankhamun was assassinated, the general consensus is that his death was accidental. CT scan taken in 2005 shows that he had badly broken his leg shortly before his death, and that the leg had become infected. DNA analysis conducted in 2010 showed the presence of malaria in his system. It is believed that these two conditions combined led to his death.
Research conducted by archaeologists, radiologists, and geneticists who started performing CT scans on Tutankhamun five years ago found that he was not killed by a blow to the head, as previously thought. That same team began doing DNA research on Tutankhamun's mummy, as well as the mummified remains of other members of his family, in 2008. DNA tests finally put to rest questions about Tutankhamun's lineage, proving that his father was Akhenaten, but that his mother was not one of Akhenaten’s known wives. His mother was one of Akhenaten’s five sisters, although it is not known which one. New CT images discovered congenital flaws, which are more common among the children of incest. Siblings are more likely to pass on twin copies of harmful genes, which is why children of incest more commonly manifest genetic defects. It is suspected he also had a partially cleft palate, another congenital defect.
The team was able to establish with a probability of better than 99.99 percent that Amenhotep III was the father of the individual in KV55, who was in turn the father of Tutankhamun. The DNA of the so-called Younger Lady (KV35YL), found lying beside Queen Tiye in the alcove of KV35, matched that of the boy king. Her DNA proved that, like Akhenaten, she was the daughter of Amenhotep III and Tiye; thus, Tut's parents were brother and sister. Queen Tiye held much political influence at court and acted as an adviser to her son after the death of her husband. There has been speculation that her eldest son Prince Tuthmose was in fact Moses who led the Israelites into the Promised Land. One of them, KV21A, may well be the infants' mother and thus, Tutankhamun's wife, Ankhesenamun. It is known from history that she was the daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, and thus likely her husband's half sister. Another consequence of inbreeding can be children whose genetic defects do not allow them to be brought to term.
The research team consisted of Egyptian scientists Yehia Gad and Somaia Ismail from the National Research Center in Cairo. The CT scans were conducted under the direction of Ashraf Selim and Sahar Saleem of the Faculty of Medicine at Cairo University. Three international experts served as consultants: Carsten Pusch of the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Germany; Albert Zink of the EURAC-Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Italy; and Paul Gostner of the Central Hospital Bolzano.
As stated above, the team discovered DNA from several strains of a parasite proving he was infected with the most severe strain of malaria several times in his short life. Malaria can trigger circulatory shock or cause a fatal immune response in the body, either of which can lead to death. And while Tut did suffer from a bone disease which was crippling, it would not have been fatal. “Perhaps he struggled against others [congenital flaws] until a severe bout of malaria or a leg broken in an accident added one strain too many to a body that could no longer carry the load,” wrote Zahi Hawass, archeologist and head of Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquity involved in the research.
King Tutankhamun's mummy still rests in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings. November 4, 2007, 85 years to the day after Carter's discovery, the 19-year-old pharaoh went on display in his underground tomb at Luxor, when the linen-wrapped mummy was removed from its golden sarcophagus to a climate-controlled glass box. The case was designed to prevent the heightened rate of decomposition caused by the humidity and warmth from tourists visiting the tomb.
In 2004, the tour of Tutankhamun funerary objects entitled "Tutankhamen: The Golden Hereafter" made up of fifty artifacts from Tutenkhamun’s tomb and seventy funerary goods from other 18th Dynasty tombs began in Basle, Switzerland, went to Bonn Germany, the second leg of the tour, and from there toured the United States. The exhibition returned to Europe and to London. The European tour was organised by the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), and the Egyptian Museum in cooperation with the Antikenmuseum Basel and Sammlung Ludwig. Deutsche Telekom sponsored the Bonn exhibition.
In 2005, Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, in partnership with Arts and Exhibitions International and the National Geographic Society, launched the U.S. tour of the Tutenkahamun treasures and other 18th Dynasty funerary objects this time called "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs". It was expected to draw more than three million people.
The exhibition started in Los Angeles, California, then moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Chicago and Philadelphia. The exhibition then moved to London before finally returning to Egypt in August 2008. Subsequent events have propelled an encore of the exhibition in the United States, beginning with the Dallas Museum of Art in October 2008 which hosted the exhibition until May 2009. The tour will continue to other U.S. cities. After Dallas the exhibition moved to the de Young Museum in San Francisco, to be followed the Discovery Times Square Exposition in New York City.
The exhibition includes 80 exhibits from the reigns of Tutankhamun's immediate predecessors in the Eighteenth dynasty, such as Hatshepsut, whose trade policies greatly increased the wealth of that dynasty and enabled the lavish wealth of Tutankhamun's burial artifacts, as well as 50 from Tutankhamun's tomb. The exhibition does not include the gold mask that was a feature of the 1972-1979 tour, as the Egyptian government has determined that the mask is too fragile to withstand travel and will never again leave the country.
A separate exhibition called "Tutankhamun and the World of the Pharaohs" began at the Ethnological Museum in Vienna from March 9 to September 28, 2008 showing a further 140 treasures from the tomb. This exhibition continued to Atlanta and the Indianapolis Children's Museum.
Tutankhamun was one of the few kings worshiped as a god and honored with a cult-like following in his own lifetime. A stela discovered at Karnak and dedicated to Amun-Re and Tutankhamun indicates that the king could be appealed to in his deified state for forgiveness and to free the petitioner from an ailment caused by wrongdoing. Temples of his cult were built as far away as in Kawa and Faras in Nubia. The title of the sister of the Viceroy of Kush included a reference to the deified king, indicative of the universality of his cult.
At the reintroduction of traditional religious practice, his name changed. It is transliterated as twt-ˤnḫ-ỉmn ḥq3-ỉwnw-šmˤ, and often realized as Tutankhamun Hekaiunushema, meaning "Living image of Amun, ruler of Upper Heliopolis". On his ascension to the throne, Tutankhamun took a praenomen. This is translated as nb-ḫprw-rˤ, and realized as Nebkheperure, meaning "Lord of the forms of Re". The name Nibhurrereya in the Amarna letters may be a variation of this praenomen.
Category:Pharaohs of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt Category:Amarna Period Category:Atenism Category:Curses Category:Historical deletion in ancient Egypt Category:Ancient child rulers Category:Ancient Egyptian mummies Category:1340s BC births Category:1320s BC deaths
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 | David Letterman |
|---|---|
| Caption | Speaking at the opening of the Ronald O. Perelman Heart Institute (September 2009) |
| Pseudonym | Earl Hofert |
| Birth name | David Michael Letterman |
| Birth date | April 12, 1947 |
| Birth place | Indianapolis, Indiana |
| Notable work | Host of Late Night with David Letterman (NBC)Host of Late Show with David Letterman (CBS) |
| Signature | David Letterman Autograph.svg |
Letterman lived on the north side of Indianapolis (Broad Ripple area), not far from Speedway, IN, and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and he enjoyed collecting model cars, including racers. In 2000, he told an interviewer for Esquire that, while growing up, he admired his father's ability to tell jokes and be the life of the party. Harry Joseph Letterman survived a heart attack at age 36, when David was a young boy. The fear of losing his father was constantly with Letterman as he grew up. The elder Letterman died of a second heart attack at age 57.
Letterman attended his hometown's Broad Ripple High School at the same time as Marilyn Tucker Quayle (wife of the former Vice President) who lived nearby, and worked as a stock boy at the local Atlas supermarket. According to the Ball State Daily News, he originally had wanted to attend Indiana University, but his grades weren't good enough, so he decided to attend Ball State University, in Muncie, Indiana. He is a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity, and he graduated from what was then the Department of Radio and Television, in 1969. A self-described average student, Letterman endowed a scholarship for what he called "C students" at Ball State.
Though he registered for the draft and passed his physical after graduating from College, he avoided military service in Vietnam due to receiving a draft lottery number of 352 (out of 365).
Letterman began his broadcasting career as an announcer and newscaster at the college's student-run radio station—WBST—a 10-watt campus station which now is part of Indiana public radio. He was fired for treating classical music with irreverence.
Letterman credits Paul Dixon—host of the Paul Dixon Show, a Cincinnati-based talk show also shown in Indianapolis while Letterman was growing up—for inspiring his choice of career: :"I was just out of college [in 1969], and I really didn't know what I wanted to do. And then all the sudden I saw him doing it [on TV]. And I thought: That's really what I want to do!"
In 1971, Letterman appeared as a pit road reporter for ABC Sports' tape-delayed coverage of the Indianapolis 500.
Letterman appeared in the summer of 1977 on the short-lived Starland Vocal Band Show. He has since joked about how fortunate he was that nobody would ever see his performance on the program (due to its low ratings).
Letterman had a stint as a cast member on Mary Tyler Moore's variety show, Mary; a guest appearance on Mork & Mindy (as a parody of EST leader Werner Erhard); and appearances on game shows such as The $20,000 Pyramid, The Gong Show, Password Plus and Liar's Club. He also hosted a 1977 pilot for a game show entitled The Riddlers that was never picked up. His dry, sarcastic humor caught the attention of scouts for The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and Letterman was soon a regular guest on the show. Letterman became a favorite of Carson's and was a regular guest host for the show beginning in 1978. Letterman personally credits Carson as the person who influenced his career the most.
Letterman's shows have garnered both critical and industry praise, receiving 67 Emmy Award nominations, winning twelve times in his first 20 years in late night television. From 1993–2009, Letterman ranked higher than Leno in the annual Harris Poll of Nation's Favorite TV Personality twelve times. Leno was higher than Letterman on that poll three times during the same period, in 1998, 2007, and 2008.
Letterman recycled the apparent debacle into a long-running gag. On his first show after the Oscars, he joked, "Looking back, I had no idea that thing was being televised." He lampooned his stint in the following year, during Billy Crystal's opening Oscar skit, which also parodied the plane-crashing scenes from that year's chief nominated film, The English Patient.
For years afterward, Letterman recounted his horrible hosting at the Oscars, although the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences still holds Letterman in high regard and it has been rumored they have asked him to host the Oscars again. On September 7, 2010, he made an appearance on the premier of the 14th season of The View, and confirmed the rumors.
During the initial weeks of his recovery, reruns of the Late Show were shown and introduced by friends of Letterman including Drew Barrymore, including Dr. O. Wayne Isom and physician Louis Aronne, who frequently appears on the show. In a show of emotion, Letterman was nearly in tears as he thanked the health care team with the words "These are the people who saved my life!" The episode earned an Emmy nomination. For a number of episodes, Letterman continued to crack jokes about his bypass, including saying, "Bypass surgery: it's when doctors surgically create new blood flow to your heart. A bypass is what happened to me when I didn't get The Tonight Show! It's a whole different thing." In a later running gag he lobbied his home state of Indiana to rename the freeway circling Indianapolis (I-465) "The David Letterman Bypass." He also featured a montage of faux news coverage of his bypass surgery, which included a clip of Dave's heart for sale on the Home Shopping Network. Letterman became friends with his doctors and nurses. In 2008, a Rolling Stone interview stated "he hosted a doctor and nurse who'd helped perform the emergency quintuple-bypass heart surgery that saved his life in 2000. 'These are people who were complete strangers when they opened my chest,' he says. 'And now, eight years later, they're among my best friends.' "
Additionally, Letterman invited the band Foo Fighters to play "Everlong", introducing them as "my favorite band, playing my favorite song." During a later Foo Fighters appearance, Letterman said that Foo Fighters had been in the middle of a South American tour which they canceled to come play on his comeback episode.
Letterman again handed over the reins of the show to several guest hosts (including Bill Cosby, Brad Garrett, Elvis Costello, John McEnroe, Vince Vaughn, Will Ferrell, Bonnie Hunt, Luke Wilson and bandleader Paul Shaffer) in February 2003, when he was diagnosed with a severe case of shingles. Later that year, Letterman made regular use of guest hosts—including Tom Arnold and Kelsey Grammer—for new shows broadcast on Fridays. In March 2007, Adam Sandler—who had been scheduled to be the lead guest—served as a guest host while Letterman was ill with a stomach virus.
On December 4, 2006, CBS revealed that David Letterman signed a new contract to host The Late Show with David Letterman through the fall of 2010. "I'm thrilled to be continuing on at CBS," said Letterman. "At my age you really don't want to have to learn a new commute." Letterman further joked about the subject by pulling up his right pants leg, revealing a tattoo, presumably temporary, of the ABC logo.
"Thirteen years ago, David Letterman put CBS late night on the map and in the process became one of the defining icons of our network," said Leslie Moonves, president and CEO of CBS Corporation. "His presence on our air is an ongoing source of pride, and the creativity and imagination that the Late Show puts forth every night is an ongoing display of the highest quality entertainment. We are truly honored that one of the most revered and talented entertainers of our time will continue to call CBS 'home.'"
According to a 2007 article in Forbes magazine, Letterman earned $40 million a year. A 2009 article in The New York Times, however, said his salary was estimated at $32 million per year.
In June 2009, Letterman and CBS reached agreement to extend his contract to host The Late Show until August 2012. His previous contract had been set to expire in 2010. thus allowing his show to come back on air on January 2, 2008. On his first episode since being off air, he surprised the viewing audience with his newly grown beard, which signified solidarity with the strike. His beard was shaved off during the show on January 7, 2008.
Carson later made a few cameo appearances as a guest on Letterman's show. Carson's final television appearance came May 13, 1994 on a Late Show episode taped in Los Angeles, when he made a surprise appearance during a 'Top 10 list' segment. The audience went wild as Letterman stood up and proudly invited Carson to sit at his desk. The applause was so protracted that Carson was unable to say anything, and he finally returned backstage as the applause continued (it was later explained that Carson had laryngitis, though Carson can be heard talking to Letterman during his appearance).
In early 2005, it was revealed that Carson still kept up with current events and late-night TV right up to his death that year, and that he occasionally sent jokes to Letterman, who used these jokes in his monologue; according to CBS senior vice president Peter Lassally (a onetime producer for both men), Carson got "a big kick out of it." Letterman would do a characteristic Johnny Carson golf swing after delivering one of Carson's jokes. In a tribute to Carson, all of the opening monologue jokes during the first show following Carson's death were written by Carson.
Lassally also claimed that Carson had always believed Letterman, not Leno, to be his "rightful successor." Letterman also frequently employs some of Carson's trademark bits on his show, including "Carnac the Magnificent" (with Paul Shaffer as Carnac), "Stump the Band" and the "Week in Review."
Winfrey and Letterman also appeared together in a Late Show promo that aired during CBS's coverage of Super Bowl XLI in February 2007, with the two sitting next to each other on the couch watching the game. Since the game was played between the Indianapolis Colts and Chicago Bears, the Indianapolis-born Letterman wears a Peyton Manning jersey, while Winfrey—who tapes her show in Chicago—is in a Brian Urlacher jersey. Three years later, during CBS's coverage of Super Bowl XLIV, the two appeared again, this time with Winfrey sitting on a couch between Letterman and Jay Leno. The appearance was Letterman's idea: Leno flew to New York City in an NBC corporate jet, sneaking into the Ed Sullivan Theater during the Late Show's February 4 taping wearing a disguise, meeting Winfrey and Letterman at a living room set created in the theater's balcony where they taped their promo.
In 2005, Worldwide Pants produced its first feature film, Strangers with Candy, which was a prequel to the Comedy Central TV series of the same title. In 2007, Worldwide Pants produced the ABC comedy series, Knights of Prosperity.
Worldwide Pants made significant news in December 2007 when it was announced that Letterman's company had independently negotiated its own contract with the Writers Guild of America, East, thus allowing Letterman, Craig Ferguson, and their writers to return to work, while the union continued its strike against production companies, networks and studios who had not reached an agreement.
Letterman received the honor for his dedication to the university throughout his career as a comedian. Letterman finished with, "If reasonable people can put my name on a $21 million building, anything is possible."
Letterman also received a Sagamore of the Wabash from Governor Mitch Daniels.
Letterman provided vocals for the Warren Zevon song "Hit Somebody" from My Ride's Here, and provided the voice for Butt-head's father in the 1996 animated film, Beavis and Butt-head Do America. He also had a cameo in the feature film Cabin Boy, with Chris Elliott, who worked as a writer on Letterman's show. In this and other appearances, Letterman is listed in the credits as "Earl Hofert", the name of Letterman's maternal grandfather. He also appeared as himself in the Howard Stern biopic Private Parts as well as the 1999 Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon, in a few episodes of Garry Shandling's 1990s TV series The Larry Sanders Show and in "The Abstinence", a 1996 episode of the sitcom Seinfeld. Letterman also appeared in the pilot episode of the short-lived 1986 series "Coach Toast".
Letterman has a son, Harry Joseph Letterman (born in 2003), with Regina Lasko. Harry is named after Letterman's father. In 2005, police discovered a plot to kidnap Harry Letterman and ransom him for $5 million. Kelly Frank, a house painter who had worked for Letterman, was charged in the conspiracy.
Letterman and Lasko, who had been together since 1986, wed during a quiet courthouse civil ceremony in Choteau, Montana, on March 19, 2009. Letterman announced the marriage during the taping of his March 23 show, shortly after congratulating Bruce Willis for getting married the previous week. Letterman told the audience he nearly missed the ceremony because his truck became stuck in mud two miles from their house. The family resides in North Salem, New York, on a estate.
Letterman stated that three weeks earlier (on September 9, 2009) someone had left a package in his car with material he said he would write into a screenplay and a book if Letterman did not pay him $2 million. Letterman said that he contacted the Manhattan District Attorney's office, ultimately cooperating with them to conduct a sting operation involving giving the man a phony check. The extortionist, Robert J. "Joe" Halderman, a producer of the CBS true crime journalism series 48 Hours, was subsequently arrested after trying to deposit the check. He was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury and pleaded not guilty to a charge of attempted grand larceny on October 2, 2009. Birkitt had until recently lived with Halderman, who is alleged to have copied Birkitt's personal diary and to have used it, along with private emails, in the blackmail package.
On October 3, 2009, a former CBS employee, Holly Hester, announced that she and Letterman had engaged in a year-long "secret" affair in the early 1990s while she was his intern and a student at New York University.
In the days following the initial announcement of the affairs and the arrest, several prominent women, including Kathie Lee Gifford, co-host of NBC's Today Show, and NBC news anchor Ann Curry questioned whether Letterman's affairs with subordinates created an unfair working environment. A spokesman for Worldwide Pants said that the company's sexual harassment policy did not prohibit sexual relationships between managers and employees. According to business news reporter Eve Tahmincioglu, "CBS suppliers are supposed to follow the company's business conduct policies" and the CBS 2008 Business Conduct Statement states that "If a consenting romantic or sexual relationship between a supervisor and a direct or indirect subordinate should develop, CBS requires the supervisor to disclose this information to his or her Company's Human Resources Department..."
On October 5, 2009, Letterman devoted a segment of his show to a public apology to his wife and staff. Three days later, Worldwide Pants announced that Birkitt had been placed on a "paid leave of absence" from the Late Show. On October 15, CBS News announced that the company's Chief Investigative Correspondent, Armen Keteyian, had been assigned to conduct an "in-depth investigation" into Halderman's blackmail of Letterman.
On March 9, 2010, Halderman pleaded guilty to attempted grand larceny and served a 6-month jail sentence, followed by probation and community service.
Category:1947 births Category:Living people Category:American people of German descent Category:American television talk show hosts Category:Ball State University alumni Category:Daytime Emmy Award winners Category:Emmy Award winners Category:Indianapolis, Indiana television anchors Category:Indy Racing League owners Category:People from Indianapolis, Indiana Category:Weather presenters
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| Name | Béla Fleck |
|---|---|
| Background | non_vocal_instrumentalist |
| Birth name | Béla Anton Leoš Fleck |
| Born | July 10, 1958New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Origin | Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Instrument | Banjo, guitar, dobro |
| Genre | Jazz, jazz fusion, Bluegrass, folk, classical, World music |
| Occupation | Musician, songwriter, composer, |
| Years active | 1976–present |
| Associated acts | Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, Trio!, Chick Corea, Strength in Numbers, New Grass Revival, Sparrow Quartet |
| Url | www.BelaFleck.com |
| Notable instruments | Deering Crossfire electric banjo with custom pickups and synthesizer pickup |
Béla Anton Leoš Fleck (born July 10, 1958) is an American banjo player. Widely acknowledged as one of the world's most innovative and technically proficient banjo players, he is best known for his work with the bands New Grass Revival and Béla Fleck and the Flecktones.
Almost immediately after high school, Fleck traveled to Boston to play with Jack Tottle, Pat Enright, and Mark Schatz in Tasty Licks. During this period, Fleck released his first solo album (1979): Crossing the Tracks and made his first foray into progressive bluegrass composition.
Fleck played on the streets of Boston with bassist Mark Schatz; and the two, along with guitarist/vocalist Glen Lawson and mandolin great Jimmy Gaudreau, formed Spectrum: the Band in 1981. Fleck toured with Spectrum during 1981. That same year, Sam Bush asked Fleck to join New Grass Revival. Fleck performed with New Grass Revival for nine years. During this time, Fleck recorded another solo album, Drive. It was nominated for a Grammy Award in the then first-time category of "Best Bluegrass Album" (1988).
During the 1980s Fleck and Bush also performed live occasionally with Doc Watson and Merle Watson in various bluegrass festivals, most notably the annual Telluride Bluegrass Festival.
With the Flecktones, Fleck has been nominated for and won several Grammy awards. (Cf. Grammy sections below.)
As a follow-up to the Fleck/Meyer double concerto mentioned above, the two were commissioned for a trio concerto, for which they teamed up with Indian tabla player Zakir Hussain. It debuted in Nashville in 2006 and was later recorded for a CD, The Melody of Rhythm. The trio subsequently toured together in 2009 and 2010.
In July 2007 at the Winnipeg Folk Festival, he appeared and jammed with Toumani Diabaté, a kora player from Mali. He is also scheduled to play the 2009 Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival with Toumani Diabaté.
Fleck has also played with Malian ngoni (ancestor of the banjo) player Cheick Hamala Diabate.
In December 2007, he performed charity concerts in Germany to help promote AIDS awareness. His largest concert was held in Grosse Halle Bern on December 1, 2007.
On June 13, 2008, he performed as part of The Bluegrass Allstars, composed of bluegrass heavyweights Sam Bush, Luke Bulla, Edgar Meyer, Bryan Sutton, and Jerry Douglas at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee.
The next day Fleck performed with Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet at the same festival.
In 2009, an independent film documentary of Fleck's visit to Uganda, Tanzania, The Gambia, and Mali, was released to limited run engagements in US cities. "Throw Down Your Heart" was directed by Sascha Paladino, Fleck's half brother. It was filmed during Fleck's year off from touring with the Flecktones.
Category:1958 births Category:American bluegrass musicians Category:American buskers Category:American country banjoists Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Jazz banjoists Category:Latin Grammy Award winners Category:Living people Category:Musicians from New York City Category:New Grass Revival members
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.
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