__NOTOC__ Year 1958 (MCMLVIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar.

Events

January

January 1 – European Economic Community (EEC) founded.

January 4 – Sputnik 1 (launched on October 4, 1957) falls to Earth from its orbit and is burned up.

January 8 – 14-year-old Bobby Fischer wins the United States Chess Championship.

January 18 – Armed Lumbee Indians confront a handful of Klansmen in Maxton, North Carolina.

January 20 – Anne de Vries releases the fourth and final volume of Journey Through the Night

January 28 – Hall of Fame baseball player Roy Campanella is involved in an automobile accident that ends his career and leaves him paralyzed.

January 31 – The first successful American satellite, Explorer 1, is launched into orbit.

February

February 1 – Egypt and Syria unite to form the United Arab Republic.

February 2 – The word ''Aerospace'' is coined, from the words Aircraft (aero) and Spacecraft (space), taking into consideration that the Earth's atmosphere and outerspace is to be one, or a single realm.

February 5

* Gamel Abdel Nasser is nominated as the first president of the United Arab Republic.

* The Tybee Bomb, a 7,600 pound (3,500 kg) Mark 15 hydrogen bomb, is lost in the waters off Savannah, Georgia.

February 6 – Seven Manchester United footballers are among the 21 people killed in the Munich air disaster in West Germany on the return flight from a European Cup game in Yugoslavia. 23 people survive, but four of them, including manager Matt Busby and players Johnny Berry and Duncan Edwards, are in a serious condition.

February 11

* Marshal Chen Yi succeeds Zhou Enlai as Chinese Minister of Foreign affairs.

* Ruth Carol Taylor is the first African American woman hired as a flight attendant. Hired by Mohawk Airlines, her career lasts only six months, due to another discriminatory barrier—the airline's ban on married flight attendants.

February 14 – The Hashemite Kingdoms of Iraq and Jordan unite in the Arab Federation of Iraq and Jordan with Iraqi King Faisal II as head of state.

February 17 – Pope Pius XII declares Saint Clare the patron saint of television.

February 20 – A test rocket explodes at Cape Canaveral.

February 21 – A peace symbol is designed and completed by Gerald Holtom, commissioned by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, in protest against the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment.

February 23

* Cuban rebels kidnap 5-time world driving champion Juan Manuel Fangio, releasing him 28 hours later.

* Arturo Frondizi is elected president of Argentina.

February 24 – In Cuba, Fidel Castro's ''Radio Rebelde'' begins broadcasting from Sierra Maestra.

February 25 – Bertrand Russell launches the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

February 28 – One of the worst school bus accidents in U.S. history occurs at Prestonsburg, Kentucky; 29 are killed.

March

March 1 – The Turkish passenger ship ''Uskudar'' capsizes and sinks at Izmit Bay, Kocaeli, Turkey; at least 300 die.

March 2 – A British team led by Sir Vivian Fuchs completes the first crossing of the Antarctic in Snow-cat caterpillar tractors and dogsled teams in 99 days.

March 8 – The USS ''Wisconsin'' is decommissioned, leaving the United States Navy without an active battleship for the first time since 1896 (it is recommissioned October 22, 1988).

March 11 – A U.S. B-47 bomber accidentally drops an atom bomb on Mars Bluff, South Carolina. Its conventional explosives destroy a house and injure several people, but no nuclear fission occurs.

March 17 – Convention on the Inter-Governmental Maritime Consultative Organization (IMCO) enters into force, founding the IMCO as a specialized agency of the United Nations.

March 17 – The United States launches the Vanguard 1 satellite.

March 19 – Monarch Underwear Company fire in New York.

March 24 – The U.S. Army inducts Elvis Presley, transforming The King Of Rock & Roll into U.S. private #53310761.

March 25 – Canada's Avro Arrow makes its debut flight.

March 26

* The United States Army launches Explorer 3.

* The 30th Academy Awards ceremony took place; The Bridge on the River Kwai wins 7 Academy Awards, including Academy Award for Best Picture.

March 27 – Nikita Khrushchev becomes Premier of the Soviet Union.

April

April – Unemployment in Detroit reaches 20%, marking the height of the Recession of 1958 in the United States.

April 1 – The BBC Radiophonic Workshop is established.

April 3 – Castro's revolutionary army begins its attacks on Havana.

April 4 – April 7 – In the first protest march for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament from Hyde Park, London to Aldermaston, Berkshire, demonstrators demand the banning of nuclear weapons.

April 4 – Cheryl Crane, daughter of actress Lana Turner, fatally stabs her mother's gangster lover Johnny Stompanato (the stabbing is eventually ruled as self-defense).

April 6 – Soraya Esfandiary Bakhtiari divorces the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi after she is unable to produce any children.

April 14

* The satellite Sputnik 2 disintegrates in space after several orbits.

* Van Cliburn wins the Tchaikovsky International Competition for pianists in Moscow, breaking Cold War tensions.

April 15 – The San Francisco Giants beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 8–0 at San Francisco's Seals Stadium, in the first Major League Baseball regular season game ever played in California.

April 17 – King Baudouin of Belgium officially opens the World Fair in Brussels, also known as Expo '58.

April 21 - United Airlines Flight 736 is involved in a mid-air collision with a U.S. Air Force F-100F-5-NA Super Sabre jet fighter near Las Vegas, Nevada. All 49 persons in both aircraft are killed.

May

May 1

* Arturo Frondizi becomes President of Argentina.

* The Nordic Passport Union comes into force.

May 9 – Actor-singer Paul Robeson, whose passport has been reinstated, sings in a sold-out one-man recital at Carnegie Hall. The recital is such a success that Robeson gives another one at Carnegie Hall a few days later. But after these two concerts, Robeson is seldom seen in public in the United States again. His Carnegie Hall concerts are later released on records and on CD.

May 10 – Interviewed in the Chave d'Ouro café, when asked about his rival António de Oliveira Salazar, Humberto Delgado utters one of the most famous comments in Portuguese political history: "Obviamente, demito-o! (Obviously, I'll sack him!)".

May 12 – A formal North American Aerospace Defense Command agreement is signed between the United States and Canada.

May 13

* French Algerian protesters seize government offices in Algiers, leading to a military coup.

* During a visit to Caracas, Venezuela, Vice President Richard M. Nixon's car is attacked by anti-American demonstrators.

May 15 – The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 3.

May 18 – An F-104 Starfighter sets a world speed record of .

May 20 – Fulgencio Batista's government launches a counteroffensive against Castro's rebels.

May 21 – United Kingdom Postmaster General Ernest Marples announces that from December, Subscriber Trunk Dialling will be introduced in the Bristol area.

May 23 – Explorer 1 ceases transmission.

May 30 – The bodies of unidentified soldiers killed in action during World War II and the Korean War are buried at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery.

June

June 1

* Charles de Gaulle is brought out of retirement to lead France by decree for 6 months.

* Iceland extends its fishing limits to 12 miles (22.2 km).

June 2 – In San Simeon, California, Hearst Castle opens to the public for guided tours.

June 4 – French President Charles De Gaulle visits Algeria.

June 8 – The SS ''Edmund Fitzgerald'' is launched; she will be the largest Lake freighter for more than a dozen years.

June 16 – Imre Nagy is hanged for treason in Hungary.

June 20 – The iron barque ''Omega'' of Callao, Peru (built in Scotland, 1887), sinks on passage carrying guano from the Pachacamac Islands for Huacho, the world’s last full rigged ship trading under sail alone.

June 27 – The Peronist Party becomes legal again in Argentina.

June 29 – Brazil beats Sweden 5–2 to win the football World Cup.

July

July 5 – Gasherbrum I, the 11th highest mountain in the world, is first ascended.

July 7

* President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the Alaska Statehood Act into United States law.

* The first International House of Pancakes (IHOP) opens in Toluca Lake, Calif.

July 9 – A 7.5 Richter scale earthquake in Lituya Bay, Alaska, causes a landslide that produces a huge 520-meter high wave

July 10 – The first parking meters are installed in Britain.

July 11 – count Michael Rhedey von Kis-Rhede – direct decedent of King Samuel Aba of Hungary, at the age of 60, pistol-whipped and murdered over few hectares of land by the Czechoslovakian Communists during the collectivization process at his residence in Olcsvar, now Kosicke Olsany, Republic of Slovakia.

July 15 – In Lebanon, 5,000 United States Marines land in the capital Beirut in order to protect the pro-Western government there.

July 17 – British paratroopers arrive in Jordan; King Hussein has asked help against pressure from Iraq.

July 19 - The Beatles, then The Quarrymen, pay 17 shillings and 6 pence to have their first recording session where recorded That'll Be The Day by Buddy Holly and In Spite Of All The Danger by McCartney and Harrison.

July 20 – Various rebel groups in Cuba join forces but the communists do not join them.

July 24 – The first life peerage created under the Life Peerages Act 1958 is created in the United Kingdom.

July 26

* Explorer program: Explorer 4 is launched.

* Elizabeth II gives her son and heir apparent The Prince Charles the customary title of Prince of Wales.

July 29 – The U.S. Congress formally creates the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

July 31 – Chinese – Tibet Uprising

August

August 1 – The last Tom and Jerry episode ("Tot Watchers") made by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera is released. Tom and Jerry will not be released to theatres again until 1961.

August 3 – The nuclear powered submarine USS ''Nautilus'' becomes the first vessel to cross the North Pole under water.

August 6 – Australian athlete Herb Elliott clips almost three seconds off the world record for the mile run at Santry Stadium, Dublin, recording a time of 3 minutes 54.5 seconds.

August 14 – A 4-engine Super Constellation aircraft belonging to KLM crashes into the sea with 99 people on board.

August 17 – The first Thor-Able rocket is launched, carrying Pioneer 0, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 17. The launch fails due to a first stage malfunction.

August 18

*Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel ''Lolita'' is published in the United States.

*Brojen Das from Bangladesh swims across the English Channel in a competition, as the first Bangali as well as the first Asian to ever do it. He became first among 39 competitors.

August 23

* Chinese Civil War: The Second Taiwan Strait crisis begins with the People's Liberation Army's bombardment of Quemoy.

* President Dwight D. Eisenhower of the USA signs the Federal Aviation Act, transferring all authority over aviation in the USA to the newly created Federal Aviation Agency (FAA, later renamed Federal Aviation Administration).

August 27 – Operation Argus: The United States begins nuclear tests over the South Atlantic.

August 29 – Michael Jackson: King Of Pop entertainment legend is born in Gary, Indiana.

August 30 – September 1 – Riots between blacks and whites occur in Notting Hill, London.

September

September 1 – The first Cod War begins between UK and Iceland.

September 6 – Paul Robeson performs in concert at the Soviet Young Pioneer camp Artek.

September 12 – Jack St. Clair Kilby invents the first integrated circuit.

September 14 – Two rockets designed by German engineer Ernst Mohr (the first German post-war rockets) reach the upper atmosphere.

September 27 – Typhoon Ida kills at least 1,269 in Honshū, Japan.

September 28 – In France, a majority of 79% says yes to the constitution of the Fifth Republic.

September 30 – The U.S.S.R. performs a nuclear test at Novaya Zemlya.

October

October 1

* Tunisia and Morocco join the Arab League.

* NASA starts operations and replaces the NACA.

October 2 – Guinea declares itself independent from France.

October 4 – BOAC uses the new De Havilland Comet jets, to become the first airline to fly jet passenger services across the Atlantic.

October 9 – Pope Pius XII dies.

October 11 – Pioneer 1, the second and most successful of the 3 project Able space probes, becomes the first spacecraft launched by the newly formed NASA.

October 16 – UK TV series Blue Peter started.

October 21 – The Life Peerages Act entitles women to sit in the House of Lords for the first time. Baroness Swanbourough, Lady Reading and Baroness Barbara Wooton are the first to take their seats.

October 28 – Pope John XXIII succeeds Pope Pius XII as the 261st pope.

November

November 3 – The new UNESCO building is inaugurated in Paris.

November 10 – The Bossa nova is born in Rio de Janeiro, with Joao Gilberto's recording of "Chega de Saudade".

November 22 – The Menzies government in Australia is re-elected for a 5th term.

November 23 – ''Have Gun, Will Travel'' debuts on American radio.

November 25 – French Sudan gains autonomy as a self-governing member of the French Community.

November 28 – Chad, the Republic of the Congo, and Gabon become autonomous republics within the French Community.

November 29 - Ted Kennedy marries Joan Bennett at St. Joseph's Church in Bronxville, New York

November 30 – Gaullists win parliamentary elections in France.

December

December 1

* Adolfo López Mateos takes office as President of Mexico.

* At least 90 students and 3 nuns are killed in a fire at Our Lady of the Angels School in Chicago.

December 5

* Subscriber trunk dialling (STD) is inaugurated in the UK by the Queen, when she dials a call from Bristol to Edinburgh and speaks to the Lord Provost.

* The Preston bypass, the United Kingdom's first motorway, opens to traffic for the first time. This stretch is now part of the M6 and M55 motorways.

December 6 – The 3rd launch of a Thor-Able rocket, carrying Pioneer 2, is unsuccessful due to a 3rd stage ignition failure.

December 9 – The right-wing John Birch Society is founded in the USA by Robert Welch, a retired candy manufacturer.

December 14 – The ''3rd Soviet Antarctic Expedition'' becomes the first ever to reach the Southern Pole of Inaccessibility.

December 15 – Arthur L. Schawlow and Charles H. Townes of Bell Laboratories publish a paper in ''Physical Review Letters'' setting out the principles of the optical laser.

December 16 - A fire breaks out in the Vida Department Store in Bogota, Colombia and kills 84 persons.

December 19 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower broadcasts a message from a Project SCORE satellite.

December 21 – General Charles de Gaulle is elected president of France with 78.5% of the votes.

December 24 – A BOAC Bristol Britannia (312 G-AOVD) crashes near Winkton, England during a test flight.

December 25 – Tchaikovsky's ballet ''The Nutcracker'' (the George Balanchine version) is shown on prime-time television in color for the first time, as an episode of the CBS anthology series ''Playhouse 90''.

December 28 – The Baltimore Colts beat The New York Giants 23–17 in overtime to win The NFL Championship.

December 29 – Rebel troops under Che Guevara begin to invade Santa Clara, Cuba. Fulgencio Batista resigns two days later, on the night of the 31st.

December 31

* As the year draws to a close, tallies reveal that, for the first time, total passengers carried by air exceeds total passengers carried by sea in transatlantic service.

Date unknown

During the International Geophysical Year, Earth's magnetosphere is discovered.

The Amirkabir University of Technology is founded.

Based on birth rates (per 1,000 population), the post-war baby boom ends in the United States as an 11-year decline in the birth rate begins (the longest on record in that country).

The last legal female genital cutting occurs in the United States.

Denatonium, the bitterest substance known, is discovered. It is used as an aversive agent in products such as bleach to reduce the risk of children drinking them.

The Jim Henson Company is founded.

The Japanese 10 yen coin ceases having serrated edges after a 5-year period beginning in 1953. All 10 yen coins since have smooth edges.

The largest solar maximum in the recorded history of solar maxima occurs.

Instant noodles go on sale for the first time.

The British Rally Championship begins its first year.

Illinois observes the centennial of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates.

Nikita Khrushchev orders Western allies to evacuate West Berlin within 6 months but backs down in the face of the allies' unity.

USA, USSR and Great Britain agree to stop testing atomic bombs for 3 years.

Welsh cultural critic Raymond Williams publishes ''Culture and Society''.

The University of New Orleans Established

Births

January

January 1 – Grandmaster Flash, African-American hip-hop/rap DJ

January 2 – Vladimir Ovchinnikov, Russian pianist

January 3 – James J. Greco, American businessman

January 4 – Matt Frewer, Canadian/American actor (''Max Headroom'')

January 9 – Mehmet Ali Ağca, Turkish militant, would-be assassin of Pope John Paul II

January 11 – Vicki Peterson, American rock musician

January 13 – Ricardo Acuña, Chilean tennis player

January 15 – Boris Tadić, Serbian president

January 20 – Lorenzo Lamas, American actor, martial artist and reality show participant

January 21 – Hussein Saeed Mohammed, Iraqi football player

January 24 – Jools Holland, British musician

January 25 – Dinah Manoff, American Tony-winning actress

January 26 – Ellen DeGeneres, American actress and comedian

January 27 – Kadri Mälk, Estonian artist and jewelry designer

February

February 1 – Ryo Horikawa, Japanese voice actor

February 4 – Tomasz Pacyński, Polish writer (d. 2005)

February 8 – Sherri Martel, American professional wrestler (d. 2007)

February 11

* Michael Jackson, British broadcasting executive

* Regina Maršíková, Czechoslovakian tennis player

February 13 – Pernilla August, Swedish actress

February 14

* Grant Thomas, Australian rules footballer

* Francisco Javier Lopez Pena, Basque separatist

February 16 – Ice-T, African-American rapper, songwriter, and actor

February 19 – Steve Nieve, English musician

February 21

* Jake Burns, Irish punk singer

* Mary Chapin Carpenter, American singer

February 25 – Kurt Rambis, American basketball player

February 26 – Susan Helms, American astronaut

February 28 – Natalya Estemirova, Russian activist (d. 2009)

March

March 1 – Nik Kershaw, English singer

March 3 – Miranda Richardson, English actress

March 5 – Andy Gibb, English-born singer (d. 1988)

March 7

* Rik Mayall, English comedian and actor

* Donna Murphy, American actress and singer

March 8 – Gary Numan, British singer

March 9 – Linda Fiorentino, American actress

March 10

* Steve Howe, American baseball player (d. 2006)

* Sharon Stone, American actress and producer

March 13 – Linda Robson, English actress

March 14 – Albert II, Prince of Monaco

March 18

* Kayo Hatta, American film director (d. 2005)

* John Elefante, American singer and producer (''Kansas'')

March 20 – Holly Hunter, American actress

March 21 – Gary Oldman, English actor and filmmaker

March 25 – James McDaniel, American actor

March 26 – Todd Joseph Miles Holden, American-born social scientist, author, basketball coach

March 27 – Jessica Soho, Philippine television celebrity and reporter

March 28

* Bart Conner, American gymnast

* Edesio Alejandro, Cuban music composer

* Mr. Perfect, American professional wrestler (d. 2003)

April

April 3 – Alec Baldwin, American actor (''30 Rock'')

April 4 – Cazuza, Brazilian poet, singer and composer (d. 1990)

April 10

* Yefim Bronfman, Russian-born pianist

* Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds, African-American musician and record producer

April 11 – Luc Luycx, Belgian coin designer

April 12 – Ginka Zagorcheva, Bulgarian athlete

April 15

* Keith Acton, Canadian ice hockey player and coach

* Benjamin Zephaniah, British writer and musician

April 21 – Andie MacDowell, American actress

April 24 – Brian Paddick, British former deputy assistant commissioner and most senior openly gay police officer

April 25 – Fish, Scottish singer

April 28 – Hal Sutton, American golfer

April 29 – Michelle Pfeiffer, American actress

May

May 4 – Keith Haring, American artist

May 10 – Rick Santorum, former U.S. Senator

May 11 – Christian Brando, American actor and eldest child of Marlon Brando (d. 2008)

May 12

* Dries Van Noten, Belgian designer

* Eric Singer, American rock drummer

May 15 – Ron Simmons, American professional wrestler

May 18 – Toyah Willcox, English actress & singer

May 20 – Ron Reagan, political pundit and son of U.S. president Ronald Reagan

May 21 – Tom Feeney, American Republican politician from the state of Florida

May 23

* Mitch Albom, American author

* Drew Carey, American comedian and actor

* Lea DeLaria, American comedian and actress

May 25

* Paul Weller, English singer-songwriter

* Carrie Newcomer, American Singer-Songwriter & Musician

May 26 – Margaret Colin, American actress

May 27 – Neil Finn, New Zealand singer and songwriter

May 29

* Annette Bening, American actress

* Juliano Mer-Khamis, Israeli actor, director, filmmaker and political activist (d. 2011)

May 30 – Marie Fredriksson, Swedish singer-songwriter

June

June 2 – Lex Luger, American professional wrestler

June 3 – Margot Käßmann, Lutheran theologian, German bishop

June 7 – Prince, American musician

June 8

* Cyril O'Reilly, American actor

* Keenen Ivory Wayans, African-American comedian, actor, and director

June 12 – Rebecca Holden, American actress, singer, and entertainer

June 14

* Masami Yoshida, Japanese athlete (d. 2000)

* Eric Heiden, American speed skater

June 15 – Wade Boggs, American baseball player

June 17 – Jello Biafra, American punk musician and activist (Dead Kennedys)

June 20 – Chuck Wagner, American actor

June 22 – Bruce Campbell, American actor, producer, writer and director

June 24 – Curt Fraser, American ice hockey coach

June 27 – Magnus Lindberg, Finnish composer

June 28 – Félix Gray, French singer and songwriter

June 29

* Jeff Coopwood, American actor, broadcaster and singer

* Rosa Mota, Portuguese long-distance runner

June 30 – Esa-Pekka Salonen, Finnish conductor and composer

July

July 2 – Thomas Bickerton, American Methodist bishop

July 3 – Didier Mouron, Swiss artist.

July 5 – William Watterson, American cartoonist (Calvin and Hobbes)

July 6 – Jennifer Saunders, British comedienne and actress

July 7 – Michala Petri, Danish recorder player

July 8

* Kevin Bacon, American actor

* Pauline Quirke, British actress

July 15

* Mac Thornberry, American politician

* Austin Hayes, Irish footballer (d. 1986)

July 16 – Michael Flatley, Irish-born dancer

July 20 – Billy Mays, American infomercial salesperson (d. 2009)

July 22 – Tatsunori Hara, Japanese professional-baseball coach and player

July 28 – Terry Fox, Canadian athlete and cancer activist (d. 1981)

July 30 – Kate Bush, British singer and songwriter

July 31 – Mark Cuban, American entrepreneur and basketball team owner

August

August 1 – Adrian Dunbar, Irish actor and director

August 7

* Bruce Dickinson, English singer, airline pilot, fencer, broadcaster, author, director, musician, screenwriter, actor, marketing director, entrepreneur and songwriter

* Russell Baze, champion jockey

August 10 – Don Swayze, American actor

August 15 – Victor Shenderovich, Russian writer

August 16

* Madonna, American-born singer, songwriter, and actress

* Angela Bassett, African-American actress

August 17 – Belinda Carlisle, American singer

August 19 – Anthony Muñoz, American football player

August 20 – Nicholas Bell, English actor based in Australia

August 22 – Colm Feore, American-born actor

August 24 – Steve Guttenberg, American actor

August 25 – Tim Burton, American film director

August 27 – Normand Brathwaite, African-Canadian comedian and television and radio host

August 29

* Lenny Henry, British comedian

* Michael Jackson, American singer, songwriter and dancer (d. June 2009)

September

September 6

* Jeff Foxworthy, American comedian, actor, author

* Sione Vailahi, professional wrestler ("The Barbarian")

September 8

* Mitsuru Miyamoto, Japanese voice actor

* Reiko Terashima, Japanese manga artist and illustrator

September 10

* Chris Columbus (filmmaker), American film director/writer/producer

* Siobhan Fahey, Irish singer

September 11 – Julia Nickson-Soul, Singapore actress

September 13 – Pawel Przytocki, Polish conductor

September 14

* Michael Bollner, German actor

* Jeff Crowe, New Zealand cricketer

September 16

* Orel Hershiser, American baseball player

* Jennifer Tilly, Canadian/American actress

September 19

* Lita Ford, British musician

* Azumah Nelson, Ghanaian boxer

September 21 – Bruno Fitoussi, French poker player

September 22

* Andrea Bocelli, Italian tenor

* Joan Jett, American musician

September 23 – Marvin Lewis, American football coach

September 24 – Kevin Sorbo, American actor

September 25

* Michael Madsen, American actor

* Eamonn Healy, Irish chemist

September 27 – Irvine Welsh, Scottish writer

September 30 – Marty Stuart, American singer

October

October 14 – Thomas Dolby, English rock musician

October 16 – Tim Robbins, American actor

October 17 – Alan Jackson, American country singer and songwriter

October 20

* Viggo Mortensen, American actor

* Mark King, British musician

* Scott Hall, American professional wrestler

October 25

* Phil Daniels, English actor

* Kornelia Ender, German swimmer

October 27 – Simon Le Bon, English rock singer

October 29 – Blazej Balaz, Slovak painter

November

November 2 – Willie McGee, African-American baseball player

November 8 – Jeff Speakman, American actor and martial artst

November 10 – Vicky Rosti, Finnish singer, former Eurovision contestant

November 12 – Megan Mullally, American actress, singer and media personality

November 16

* Marg Helgenberger, American actress

* Boris Krivokapić, Serbian academic

November 17 – Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, American actress and singer

November 18 – Laura Miller, Mayor of Dallas, Texas

November 19 – Michael Wilbon, American sportswriter

November 21 – David Reivers, Jamaican actor

November 22

*Jamie Lee Curtis, American actress

*Bruce Payne, English actor and producer

November 27 – Tetsuya Komuro, Japanese music producer and song writer

November 28 – Dave Righetti, American baseball player

November 30 – Juliette Bergmann, Dutch bodybuilder

December

December 1

* Charlene Tilton, American actress

* Javier Aguirre, Mexican football player and manager

December 5 – Dynamite Kid, English professional wrestler

December 6 – Nick Park, English filmmaker and animator

December 10 – Cornelia Funke, German author

December 11 – Nikki Sixx, American rock musician

December 12

* Monica Attard, Australian journalist

* Lucie Guay, Canadian canoer

* Dag Ingebrigtsen, Norwegian musician

* Sheree J. Wilson, American actress

December 13 – Lynn-Holly Johnson, American ice skater and actress

December 14

* Mike Scott, Scottish singer-songwriter (The Waterboys)

* Spider Stacy, English musician (The Pogues)

* François Zocchetto, French politician

December 21 – Kevin Blackwell, English football manager

December 25

* Hanford Dixon, American football player

* Rickey Henderson, African-American baseball player

December 28 – Twila Paris, American Christian musician

December 29 – Lakhdar Belloumi, Algerian football player

December 31 – Bebe Neuwirth, American actress

Deaths

January–June

January 1

* Edward Weston, American photographer (b. 1886)

* Archibald Alphonso Alexander, American designer/governor (b. 1888)

January 7 – Margaret Anglin, stage actress (b. 1876)

January 8 – Paul Pilgrim, American athlete (b. 1883)

January 11 – Edna Purviance, American actress (b. 1895)

January 13 – Jesse L. Lasky, American film produer (b. 1880)

January 16 – Aubrey Mather, English actor (b. 1885)

January 19 – Cândido Rondon, Brazilian military officer (b. 1865)

January 30 – Jean Crotti, Swiss artist (b. 1878)

February 1 – Clinton Davisson, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1888)

February 2 – Walter Kingsford, English actor (b. 1881)

February 4

* Monta Bell, American actor (b. 1891)

* Henry Kuttner, American author (b. 1915)

February 6

* Geoff Bent (b. 1932)

* Roger Byrne (b. 1929)

* Eddie Colman (b. 1936)

* Mark Jones (b. 1933)

* David Pegg (b. 1935)

* Tommy Taylor (b. 1932)

* Liam "Billy" Whelan (b. 1935), all footballers that perished in the Munich air disaster

February 10 – Aleksander Klumberg, Estonian decathlete (b. 1899)

February 13

* Christabel Pankhurst, English suffragette (b. 1880)

* Georges Rouault, French painter (b. 1871)

* Helen Twelvetrees, American actress (b. 1908)

February 17 – Marguerite Snow, American actress (b. 1889)

February 20 – Thurston Hall, American actor (b. 1882)

February 21 – Duncan Edwards English footballer (b. 1936), injury in the Munich air disaster

February 27 – Harry Cohn, American film producer (b. 1891)

March 11 – Princess Ingeborg of Denmark (b. 1878)

March 20 – Adegoke Adelabu, Nigerian politician (b. 1915) (car crash)

March 21 – Cyril M. Kornbluth, American writer (b. 1923)

March 22 (in plane crash)

* Mike Todd, American film producer (b. 1909)

* Art Cohn, American screenwriter (b. 1909)

March 24 – Herbert Fields, American librettist and screenwriter (b. 1897)

March 25 – Tom Brown, American musician (b. 1888)

March 26 – Phil Mead, English cricketer (b. 1887)

March 28 – W. C. Handy, African-American blues composer (b. 1873)

April 2 – Willie Maley, Scottish football player and manager (b. 1868)

April 8 – George Jean Nathan, American drama critic (b. 1882)

April 15 – Estelle Taylor, American actress (b. 1894)

April 16 – Rosalind Franklin, British crystallographer (b. 1920)

April 19 – Billy Meredith, Welsh footballer (b. 1874)

May 2 – Henry Cornelius, South African-born director (b. 1913)

May 3 – Frank Foster, English cricketer (b. 1889)

May 7 – Mihkel Lüdig, Estonian composer, organist and choir conductor (b. 1880)

May 18 – Jacob Fichman, Israeli poet and essayist (b. 1881)

May 19 – Ronald Colman, English actor (b. 1891)

May 26 – Constantin Cantacuzino, Romanian aviator (b. 1905)

May 29 – Juan Ramón Jiménez, Spanish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1881)

June 6

* Lloyd Hughes, American actor (b. 1897)

* Virginia Pearson, American actress (b. 1886)

June 9 – Robert Donat, English actor (b. 1905)

June 13 – Edwin Keppel Bennett, British writer (b. 1887)

June 16

* Aleksandr Chervyakov, Prime Minister of the Byelorussian SSR (suicide) (b. 1892)

* Imre Nagy, Prime Minister of Hungary (executed) (b. 1896)

June 20 – Kurt Alder, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1902)

June 21 – Herbert Brenon, American film director (b. 1880)

June 26 – George Orton, Canadian athlete (b. 1876)

June 28 – Alfred Noyes, English poet (b. 1880)

July–December

July 2 – Martha Boswell, American singer (b. 1905)

July 14 (killed during ''coup d'état''):

* King Faisal II of Iraq (b. 1935)

* 'Abd al-Ilah, former regent of Iraq (b. 1913)

July 15 – Julia Lennon, English mother of John Lennon (b. 1914)

July 18 – Henry Farman, pioneer French aviator and aircraft company founder (b. 1874)

July 20 – Franklin Pangborn, American actor (b. 1889)

July 24 – Mabel Ballin, American actress (b. 1887)

July 27

* Claire Chennault, American leader of the Flying Tigers (b. 1893)

* Harry Warner, American studio executive (b. 1881)

August 3 – Peter Collins, Formula 1 driver (b. 1931)

August 8 – Barbara Bennett, American actress (b. 1906)

August 14

* Frédéric Joliot, French physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (b. 1900)

* Gladys Presley, American, mother of Elvis Presley (b. 1912)

August 16 – Paul Panzer, German actor (b. 1872)

August 18 – Bonar Colleano, American actor (b. 1924)

August 22 – Roger Martin du Gard, French writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1881)

August 24 – Paul Henry, Northern Irish artist (b. 1876)

August 26 – Ralph Vaughan Williams, English composer (b. 1872)

August 27 – Ernest Lawrence, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1901)

September 11

* Hans Grundig, German artist (b. 1901)

* Robert W. Service, Scottish-born Canadian poet (b. 1874)

September 16 – Alma Bennett, American actress (b. 1904)

September 23 – Alfred Piccaver, British-American operatic tenor (b. 1884)

October 9 – Pope Pius XII (b. 1876)

October 17

* Charlie Townsend, English cricketer (b. 1876)

* Paul Outerbridge American photographer (b. 1896)

October 15 – Jack Norton, American actor (b. 1882)

October 24 – G. E. Moore, British philosopher of (''Principia Ethica'') (b.

1873)

October 27 – Marshall Neilan, American actor and director (b. 1891)

October 29 – Zoë Akins, American playwright, poet, and author (b. 1886)

November 15

* Samuel Hopkins Adams, American writer (b. 1871)

* Tyrone Power, American actor (b. 1914)

November 19 – Vittorio Ambrosio, Italian general (b. 1879)

November 21 – Mel Ott, American baseball player (b. 1909)

November 24

* Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, English politician and diplomat, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1864)

* Harry Parke, American comedian (b. 1904)

November 27 – Artur Rodziński, Polish conductor (b. 1892)

December 1 – Boots Mallory, American actress (b. 1913)

December 8 – Tris Speaker, American baseball player (b. 1888)

December 12 – Albert Walsh, Lieutenant Governor of Newfoundland (b. 1900)

December 13 – Tim Moore, American comedian (b. 1887)

December 15 – Wolfgang Ernst Pauli, Austrian-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1900)

December 21 – H.B. Warner, English actor (b. 1875)

December 29 – Doris Humphrey, American dancer and choreographer (b. 1895)

Nobel Prizes

Physics – Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov, Ilya Mikhailovich Frank, Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm

Chemistry – Frederick Sanger

Physiology or Medicine – George Wells Beadle, Edward Lawrie Tatum, Joshua Lederberg

Literature – Boris Leonidovich Pasternak

Peace – Georges Pire

References

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name	Miles Dewey Davis III
background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
birth name	Miles Dewey Davis III
birth date	May 26, 1926
birth place	Alton, Illinois, United States
death date	September 28, 1991
death place	Santa Monica, California, US
instrument	Trumpet, flugelhorn, piano, organ, vocals
genre	Jazz, hard bop, bebop, cool jazz, modal, fusion, third stream, jazz-funk, jazz rap
occupation	Bandleader, composer, trumpeter, artist
years active	1944–1975, 1980–1991
associated acts	Billy Eckstine, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis Quintet, Gil Evans
website	}}

Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991) was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer.

Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, modal jazz, and jazz fusion. Many well-known musicians rose to prominence as members of Davis' ensembles, including saxophonists Gerry Mulligan, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, George Coleman, Wayne Shorter, Dave Liebman, Branford Marsalis and Kenny Garrett; trombonist J. J. Johnson; pianists Horace Silver, Red Garland, Wynton Kelly, Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Joe Zawinul, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett and Kei Akagi; guitarists John McLaughlin, Pete Cosey, John Scofield and Mike Stern; bassists Paul Chambers, Ron Carter, Dave Holland, Marcus Miller and Darryl Jones; and drummers Elvin Jones, Philly Joe Jones, Jimmy Cobb, Tony Williams, Billy Cobham, Jack DeJohnette, and Al Foster.

On October 7, 2008, his 1959 album ''Kind of Blue'' received its fourth platinum certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), for shipments of at least four million copies in the United States. Miles Davis was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006. Davis was noted as "one of the key figures in the history of jazz".

On November 5, 2009, Rep. John Conyers of Michigan sponsored a measure in the US House of Representatives to recognize and commemorate the album ''Kind of Blue'' on its 50th anniversary. The measure also affirms jazz as a national treasure and "encourages the United States government to preserve and advance the art form of jazz music." It passed, unanimously, with a vote of 409–0 on December 15, 2009.

Biography

Early life (1926–44)

Miles Dewie Davis was born on May 26, 1926, to an affluent African American family in Alton, Illinois. His father, Dr. Miles Henry Davis, was a dentist. In 1927 the family moved to East St. Louis, Illinois. They also owned a substantial ranch in northern Arkansas, where Davis learned to ride horses as a boy. Davis' mother, Cleota Mae (Henry) Davis, wanted her son to learn the piano; she was a capable blues pianist but kept this fact hidden from her son. His musical studies began at 13, when his father gave him a trumpet and arranged lessons with local musician Elwood Buchanan. Davis later suggested that his father's instrument choice was made largely to irk his wife, who disliked the trumpet's sound. Against the fashion of the time, Buchanan stressed the importance of playing without vibrato; he was reported to have slapped Davis' knuckles every time he started using heavy vibrato. Davis would carry his clear signature tone throughout his career. He once remarked on its importance to him, saying, "I prefer a round sound with no attitude in it, like a round voice with not too much tremolo and not too much bass. Just right in the middle. If I can’t get that sound I can’t play anything." Clark Terry was another important early influence.

By age 16, Davis was a member of the music society and playing professionally when not at school. At 17, he spent a year playing in Eddie Randle's band, the Blue Devils. During this time, Sonny Stitt tried to persuade him to join the Tiny Bradshaw band, then passing through town, but Davis' mother insisted that he finish his final year of high school.

In 1944, the Billy Eckstine band visited East St. Louis. Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker were members of the band, and Davis was brought in on third trumpet for a couple of weeks because the regular player, Buddy Anderson, was out sick. Even after this experience, once Eckstine's band left town, Davis' parents were still keen for him to continue formal academic studies.

New York and the bebop years begin (1944–48)

In the fall of 1944, following graduation from high school, Davis moved to New York City to study at the Juilliard School of Music.

Upon arriving in New York, he spent most of his first weeks in town trying to get in contact with Charlie Parker, despite being advised against doing so by several people he met during his quest, including saxophonist Coleman Hawkins.

Finally locating his idol, Davis became one of the cadre of musicians who held nightly jam sessions at two of Harlem's nightclubs, Minton's Playhouse and Monroe's. The group included many of the future leaders of the bebop revolution: young players such as Fats Navarro, Freddie Webster, and J. J. Johnson. Established musicians including Thelonious Monk and Kenny Clarke were also regular participants.

Davis dropped out of Juilliard, after asking permission from his father. In his autobiography, Davis criticized the Juilliard classes for centering too much on the classical European and "white" repertoire. However, he also acknowledged that Juilliard helped give him a grounding in music theory that would prove valuable in later years.

Davis began playing professionally, performing in several 52nd Street clubs with Coleman Hawkins and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis. In 1945, he entered a recording studio for the first time, as a member of Herbie Fields's group. This was the first of many recordings to which Davis contributed in this period, mostly as a sideman. He finally got the chance to record as a leader in 1946, with an occasional group called the Miles Davis Sextet plus Earl Coleman and Ann Hathaway—one of the rare occasions when Davis, by then a member of the groundbreaking Charlie Parker Quintet, can be heard accompanying singers. In these early years, recording sessions where Davis was the leader were the exception rather than the rule; his next date as leader would not come until 1947.

Around 1945, Dizzy Gillespie parted ways with Parker, and Davis was hired as Gillespie's replacement in his quintet, which also featured Max Roach on drums, Al Haig (replaced later by Sir Charles Thompson and Duke Jordan) on piano, and Curley Russell (later replaced by Tommy Potter and Leonard Gaskin) on bass.

With Parker's quintet, Davis went into the studio several times, already showing hints of the style for which he would become known. On an oft-quoted take of Parker's signature song, "Now's the Time", Davis takes a melodic solo, whose unbop-like quality anticipates the "cool jazz" period that would follow. The Parker quintet also toured widely. During a stop in Los Angeles, Parker had a nervous breakdown that landed him in the Camarillo State Mental Hospital for several months, and Davis found himself stranded. He roomed and collaborated for some time with bassist Charles Mingus, before getting a job on Billy Eckstine's California tour, which eventually brought him back to New York. In 1948, Parker returned to New York, and Davis rejoined his group.

The relationships within the quintet, however, were growing tense. Parker's erratic behavior (attributable to his well-known drug addiction) and artistic choices (both Davis and Roach objected to having Duke Jordan as a pianist and would have preferred Bud Powell) became sources of friction. In December 1948, disputes over money (Davis claims he was not being paid) began to strain their relationship even further. Davis finally left the group following a confrontation with Parker at the Royal Roost.

For Davis, his departure from Parker's group marked the beginning of a period in which he worked mainly as a freelancer and as a sideman in some of the most important combos on the New York jazz scene.

Birth of the Cool (1948–49)

In 1948 Davis grew close to the Canadian composer and arranger Gil Evans. Evans' basement apartment had become the meeting place for several young musicians and composers (including Davis, Roach, pianist John Lewis, and baritone sax player Gerry Mulligan) unhappy with the increasingly virtuoso instrumental techniques that dominated the bebop scene of the time. Evans had been the arranger for the Claude Thornhill orchestra, and it was the sound of this group, as well as Duke Ellington's example, that suggested the creation of an unusual line-up: a nonet including a French horn and a tuba (this accounts for the "tuba band" moniker that was to be associated with the combo).

Davis took an active role in the project, so much so that it soon became "his project". The objective was to achieve a sound similar to the human voice, through carefully arranged compositions and by emphasizing a relaxed, melodic approach to the improvisations.

The nonet debuted in the summer of 1948, with a two-week engagement at the Royal Roost. The sign announcing the performance gave a surprising prominence to the role of the arrangers: "Miles Davis Nonet. Arrangements by Gil Evans, John Lewis and Gerry Mulligan". It was, in fact, so unusual that Davis had to persuade the Roost's manager, Ralph Watkins, to allow the sign to be worded in this way; he prevailed only with the help of Monte Kay, the club's artistic director.

The nonet was active until the end of 1949, along the way undergoing several changes in personnel: Roach and Davis were constantly featured, along with Mulligan, tuba player Bill Barber, and alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, who had been preferred to Sonny Stitt (whose playing was considered too bop-oriented). Over the months, John Lewis alternated with Al Haig on piano, Mike Zwerin with Kai Winding on trombone (Johnson was touring at the time), Junior Collins with Sandy Siegelstein and Gunther Schuller on French horn, and Al McKibbon with Joe Shulman on bass. Singer Kenny Hagood was added for one track during the recording

The presence of white musicians in the group angered some black jazz players, many of whom were unemployed at the time, but Davis rebuffed their criticisms.

A contract with Capitol Records granted the nonet several recording sessions between January 1949 and April 1950. The material they recorded was released in 1956 on an album whose title, ''Birth of the Cool,'' gave its name to the "cool jazz" movement that developed at the same time and partly shared the musical direction begun by Davis' group.

For his part, Davis was fully aware of the importance of the project, which he pursued to the point of turning down a job with Duke Ellington's orchestra.

The importance of the nonet experience would become clear to critics and the larger public only in later years, but, at least commercially, the nonet was not a success. The liner notes of the first recordings of the Davis Quintet for Columbia Records call it one of the most spectacular failures of the jazz club scene. This was bitterly noted by Davis, who claimed the invention of the cool style and resented the success that was later enjoyed—in large part because of the media's attention—by white "cool jazz" musicians (Mulligan and Dave Brubeck in particular).

This experience also marked the beginning of the lifelong friendship between Davis and Gil Evans, an alliance that would bear important results in the years to follow.

Hard bop and the "Blue Period" (1950–54)

The first half of the 1950s was, for Davis, a period of great personal difficulty. At the end of 1949, he went on tour in Paris with a group including Tadd Dameron, Kenny Clarke (who remained in Europe after the tour), and James Moody. Davis was fascinated by Paris and its cultural environment, where black jazz musicians, and African Americans in general, often felt better respected than they did in their homeland. While in Paris, Davis began a relationship with French actress and singer Juliette Gréco.

Many of his new and old friends (Davis, in his autobiography, mentions Clarke) tried to persuade him to stay in France, but Davis decided to return to New York. Back in the States, he began to feel deeply depressed. The depression was due in part to his separation from Gréco, in part to his feeling underappreciated by the critics (who were hailing Davis' former collaborators as leaders of the cool jazz movement), and in part to the unraveling of his liaison with a former St. Louis schoolmate who was living with him in New York and with whom he had two children.

These are the factors to which Davis traces a heroin habit that deeply affected him for the next four years. Though Davis denies it in his autobiography, it is also likely that the environment in which he was living played a role. Most of Davis' associates at the time, some of them perhaps in imitation of Charlie Parker, had drug addictions of their own (among them, sax players Sonny Rollins and Dexter Gordon, trumpeters Fats Navarro and Freddie Webster, and drummer Art Blakey). For the next four years, Davis supported his habit partly with his music and partly by living the life of a hustler. By 1953, his drug addiction was beginning to impair his ability to perform. Heroin had killed some of his friends (Navarro and Freddie Webster). He himself had been arrested for drug possession while on tour in Los Angeles, and his drug habit had been made public in a devastating interview that Cab Calloway gave to ''Down Beat''.

Realizing his precarious condition, Davis tried several times to end his drug addiction, finally succeeding in 1954 after returning to his father's home in St. Louis for several months and literally locking himself in a room until he had gone through a painful withdrawal. During this period he avoided New York and played mostly in Detroit and other midwestern towns, where drugs were then harder to come by. A widely-related story, attributed to Richard (Prophet) Jennings was that Davis, while in Detroit playing at the Blue Bird club as a guest soloist in Billy Mitchell's house band along with Tommy Flanagan, Elvin Jones, Betty Carter, Yusef Lateef, Barry Harris, Thad Jones, Curtis Fuller and Donald Byrd stumbled into Baker's Keyboard Lounge out of the rain, soaking wet and carrying his trumpet in a paper bag under his coat, walked to the bandstand and interrupted Max Roach and Clifford Brown in the midst of performing Sweet Georgia Brown by beginning to play My Funny Valentine, and then, after finishing the song, stumbled back into the rainy night. Davis was supposedly embarrassed into getting clean by this incident. In his autobiography, Davis disputed this account, stating that Roach had requested that Davis play with him that night, and that the details of the incident, such as carrying his horn in a paper bag and interrupting Roach and Brown, were fictional and that his decision to quit heroin was unrelated to the incident.

Despite all the personal turmoil, the 1950–54 period was actually quite fruitful for Davis artistically. He made quite a number of recordings and had several collaborations with other important musicians. He got to know the music of Chicago pianist Ahmad Jamal, whose elegant approach and use of space influenced him deeply. He also definitively severed his stylistic ties with bebop.

In 1951, Davis met Bob Weinstock, the owner of Prestige Records, and signed a contract with the label. Between 1951 and 1954, he released many records on Prestige, with several different combos. While the personnel of the recordings varied, the lineup often featured Sonny Rollins and Art Blakey. Davis was particularly fond of Rollins and tried several times, in the years that preceded his meeting with John Coltrane, to recruit him for a regular group. He never succeeded, however, mostly because Rollins was prone to make himself unavailable for months at a time. In spite of the casual occasions that generated these recordings, their quality is almost always quite high, and they document the evolution of Davis' style and sound. During this time he began using the Harmon mute, held close to the microphone, in a way that grew to be his signature, and his phrasing, especially in ballads, became spacious, melodic, and relaxed. This sound was to become so characteristic that the use of the Harmon mute by any jazz trumpet player since immediately conjures up Miles Davis.

The most important Prestige recordings of this period (''Dig'', ''Blue Haze'', ''Bags' Groove'', ''Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants'', and ''Walkin''') originated mostly from recording sessions in 1951 and 1954, after Davis' recovery from his addiction. Also of importance are his five Blue Note recordings, collected in the ''Miles Davis Volume 1'' album.

With these recordings, Davis assumed a central position in what is known as hard bop. In contrast with bebop, hard bop used slower tempos and a less radical approach to harmony and melody, often adopting popular tunes and standards from the American songbook as starting points for improvisation. Hard bop also distanced itself from cool jazz by virtue of a harder beat and by its constant reference to the blues, both in its traditional form and in the form made popular by rhythm and blues. A few critics go as far as to call ''Walkin''' the album that created hard bop, but the point is debatable, given the number of musicians who were working along similar lines at the same time (and of course many of them recorded or played with Davis).

Also in this period Davis gained a reputation for being distant, cold, and withdrawn and for having a quick temper. Among the several factors that contributed to this reputation were his contempt for the critics and specialized press and some well-publicized confrontations with the public and with fellow musicians. (One occasion, in which he had a near fight with Thelonious Monk during the recording of ''Bags' Groove'', received wide exposure in the specialized press.)

The "nocturnal" quality of Davis' playing and his somber reputation, along with his whispering voice, earned him the lasting moniker of "prince of darkness", adding a patina of mystery to his public persona.

First great quintet and sextet (1955–58)

Back in New York and in better health, in 1955 Davis attended the Newport Jazz Festival, where his performance (and especially his solo on "'Round Midnight") was greatly admired and prompted the critics to hail the "return of Miles Davis". At the same time, Davis recruited the players for a formation that became known as his "first great quintet": John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Philly Joe Jones on drums.

None of these musicians, with the exception of Davis, had received a great deal of exposure before that time; Chambers, in particular, was very young (19 at the time), a Detroit player who had been on the New York scene for only about a year, working with the bands of Bennie Green, Paul Quinichette, George Wallington, J. J. Johnson, and Kai Winding. Coltrane was little known at the time, in spite of earlier collaborations with Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Bostic, and Johnny Hodges. Davis hired Coltrane as a replacement for Sonny Rollins, after unsuccessfully trying to recruit alto saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderley.

The repertoire included many bebop mainstays, standards from the Great American Songbook and the pre-bop era, and some traditional tunes. The prevailing style of the group was a development of the Davis experience in the previous years—Davis playing long, legato, and essentially melodic lines, while Coltrane, who during these years emerged as a leading figure on the musical scene, contrasted by playing high-energy solos.

With the new formation also came a new recording contract. In Newport, Davis had met Columbia Records producer George Avakian, who persuaded him to sign with his label. The quintet made its debut on record with the extremely well received 'Round About Midnight. Before leaving Prestige, however, Davis had to fulfill his obligations during two days of recording sessions in 1956. Prestige released these recordings in the following years as four albums: ''Relaxin' with the Miles Davis Quintet,'' ''Steamin' with the Miles Davis Quintet,'' ''Workin' with the Miles Davis Quintet,'' and ''Cookin' with the Miles Davis Quintet''. While the recording took place in a studio, each record of this series has the structure and feel of a live performance, with several first takes on each album. The records became almost instant classics and were instrumental in establishing Davis' quintet as one of the best on the jazz scene.

The quintet was disbanded for the first time in 1957, following a series of personal problems that Davis blames on the drug addiction of the other musicians. Davis played some gigs at the ''Cafe Bohemia'' with a short-lived formation that included Sonny Rollins and drummer Art Taylor, and then traveled to France, where he recorded the score to Louis Malle's film ''Ascenseur pour l'échafaud''. With the aid of French session musicians Barney Wilen, Pierre Michelot, and René Urtreger, and American drummer Kenny Clarke, he recorded the entire soundtrack with an innovative procedure, without relying on written material: starting from sparse indication of the harmony and a general feel of a given piece, the group played by watching the movie on a screen in front of them and improvising.

Returning to New York in 1958, Davis successfully recruited Cannonball Adderley for his standing group. Coltrane, who in the meantime had freed himself from his drug habits, was available after a highly fruitful experience with Thelonious Monk and was hired back, as was Philly Joe Jones. With the quintet re-formed as a sextet, Davis recorded ''Milestones'', an album anticipating the new directions he was preparing to give to his music.

Almost immediately after the recording of ''Milestones,'' Davis fired Garland and, shortly afterward, Jones, again for behavioral problems; he replaced them with Bill Evans——a young white pianist with a strong classical background——and drummer Jimmy Cobb. With this revamped formation, Davis began a year during which the sextet performed and toured extensively and produced a record (''1958 Miles'', also known as ''58 Sessions''). Evans had a unique, impressionistic approach to the piano, and his musical ideas had a strong influence on Davis. But after only eight months on the road with the group, he was burned out and left. He was soon replaced by Wynton Kelly, a player who brought to the sextet a swinging, bluesy approach that contrasted with Evans' more delicate playing.

Recordings with Gil Evans (1957–63)

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Davis recorded a series of albums with Gil Evans, often playing flugelhorn as well as trumpet. The first, ''Miles Ahead'' (1957), showcased his playing with a jazz big band and a horn section arranged by Evans. Songs included Dave Brubeck's "The Duke," as well as Léo Delibes's "The Maids of Cadiz," the first piece of European classical music Davis had recorded. Another distinctive feature of the album was the orchestral passages that Evans had devised as transitions between the different tracks, which were joined together with the innovative use of editing in the post-production phase, turning each side of the album into a seamless piece of music.

In 1958, Davis and Evans were back in the studio to record ''Porgy and Bess,'' an arrangement of pieces from George Gershwin's opera of the same name. The lineup included three members of the sextet: Paul Chambers, Philly Joe Jones, and Julian "Cannonball" Adderley. Davis called the album one of his favorites.

''Sketches of Spain'' (1959–1960) featured songs by contemporary Spanish composer Joaquin Rodrigo and also Manuel de Falla, as well as Gil Evans originals with a Spanish flavor. ''Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall'' (1961) includes Rodrigo's ''Concierto de Aranjuez,'' along with other compositions recorded in concert with an orchestra under Evans' direction.

Sessions with Davis and Evans in 1962 resulted in the album ''Quiet Nights,'' a short collection of bossa novas that was released against the wishes of both artists: Evans stated it was only half an album, and blamed the record company; Davis blamed producer Teo Macero, whom he didn't speak to for more than two years. This was the last time Evans and Davis made a full album together; despite the professional separation, however, Davis noted later that "my best friend is Gil Evans."

Kind of Blue (1959–64)

In March and April 1959, Davis re-entered the studio with his working sextet to record what is widely considered his ''magnum opus'', ''Kind of Blue.'' He called back Bill Evans, months away from forming what would become his own seminal trio, for the album sessions, as the music had been planned around Evans' piano style. Both Davis and Evans were personally acquainted with the ideas of pianist George Russell regarding modal jazz, Davis from discussions with Russell and others before the ''Birth of the Cool'' sessions, and Evans from study with Russell in 1956. Davis, however, had neglected to inform current pianist Kelly of Evans' role in the recordings; Kelly subsequently played only on the track "Freddie Freeloader" and was not present at the April dates for the album. "So What" and "All Blues" had been played by the sextet at performances prior to the recording sessions, but for the other three compositions, Davis and Evans prepared skeletal harmonic frameworks that the other musicians saw for the first time on the day of recording, to allow a fresher approach to their improvisations. The resulting album has proven to be both highly popular and enormously influential. According to the RIAA, ''Kind of Blue'' is the best-selling jazz album of all time, having been certified as quadruple platinum (4 million copies sold). In December 2009, the US House of Representatives voted 409–0 to pass a resolution honoring the album as a national treasure.

The trumpet Davis used on the recording is currently displayed in the music building on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. It was donated to the school by Arthur "Buddy" Gist, who met Davis in 1949 and became a close friend. The gift was the reason why the jazz program at UNCG is named the "Miles Davis Jazz Studies Program."

In 1959, the Miles Davis Quintet was appearing at the famous Birdland nightclub in New York City. After finishing a 27 minute recording for the armed services, Davis took a break outside the club. As he was escorting an attractive blonde woman across the sidewalk to a taxi, Davis was told by Patrolman Gerald Kilduff to "move on." Davis explained that he worked at the nightclub and refused to move. The officer said that he would arrest Davis and grabbed him as Davis protected himself. Witnesses said that Kilduff punched Davis in the stomach with his nightstick without provocation. Two nearby detectives held the crowd back as a third detective, Don Rolker, approached Davis from behind and beat him about the head. Davis was then arrested and taken to jail where he was charged with feloniously assaulting an officer. He was then taken to St. Clary Hospital where he received five stitches for a wound on his head. Davis attempted to pursue the case in the courts, before eventually dropping the proceedings in a plea bargain in order to recover his suspended Cabaret Card, enabling him to return to work in New York clubs.

Davis persuaded Coltrane to play with the group on one final European tour in the spring of 1960. Coltrane then departed to form his classic quartet, although he returned for some of the tracks on Davis' 1961 album ''Someday My Prince Will Come.'' After Coltrane, Davis tried various saxophonists, including Jimmy Heath, Sonny Stitt, and Hank Mobley. The quintet with Hank Mobley was recorded in the studio and on several live engagements at Carnegie Hall and the Black Hawk jazz club in San Francisco. Stitt's playing with the group is found on a recording made in Olympia, Paris (where Davis and Coltrane had played a few months before) and the ''Live in Stockholm'' album.

In 1963, Davis' longtime rhythm section of Kelly, Chambers, and Cobb departed. He quickly got to work putting together a new group, including tenor saxophonist George Coleman and bassist Ron Carter. Davis, Coleman, Carter and a few other musicians recorded half the tracks for an album in the spring of 1963. A few weeks later, seventeen-year-old drummer Tony Williams and pianist Herbie Hancock joined the group, and soon afterward Davis, Coleman, and the new rhythm section recorded the rest of ''Seven Steps to Heaven.''

The rhythm players melded together quickly as a section and with the horns. The group's rapid evolution can be traced through the ''Seven Steps to Heaven'' album, ''In Europe'' (July 1963), ''My Funny Valentine'' (February 1964), and ''Four and More'' (also February 1964). The quintet played essentially the same repertoire of bebop tunes and standards that earlier Davis bands had played, but they tackled them with increasing structural and rhythmic freedom and, in the case of the up-tempo material, breakneck speed.

Coleman left in the spring of 1964, to be replaced by avant-garde saxophonist Sam Rivers, on the suggestion of Tony Williams. Rivers remained in the group only briefly, but was recorded live with the quintet in Japan; this configuration can be heard on ''Miles in Tokyo!'' (July 1964).

By the end of the summer, Davis had persuaded Wayne Shorter to leave Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and join the quintet. Shorter became the group's principal composer, and some of his compositions of this era (including "Footprints" and "Nefertiti") have become standards. While on tour in Europe, the group quickly made their first official recording, ''Miles in Berlin'' (September 1964). On returning to the United States later that year, ever the musical entrepreneur, Davis (at Jackie DeShannon's urging) was instrumental in getting The Byrds signed to Columbia Records.

Second great quintet (1964–68)

By the time of ''E.S.P.'' (1965), Davis' lineup consisted of Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock (piano), Ron Carter (bass), and Tony Williams (drums). The last of his acoustic bands, this group is often referred to as "the second great quintet."

A two-night Chicago performance in late 1965 is captured on ''The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 1965,'' released in 1995. Unlike their studio albums, the live engagement shows the group still playing primarily standards and bebop tunes. It is reasonable to point out though, that whilst some of the titles remain the same as the tunes employed by the 1950s quintet, the speed and distance of departure from the framework of the standards bears no comparison. It could even be said that the listening experience to these standards as live performances is as much of a radical take on the jazz of the time as the new compositions of the studio albums listed below.

The recording of ''Live at the Plugged Nickel'' was not issued anywhere in the 1960s, first appearing as a Japan-only partial issue in the late 1970s, then as a double-LP in the USA and Europe in 1982. It was followed by a series of studio recordings: ''Miles Smiles'' (1966), ''Sorcerer'' (1967), ''Nefertiti'' (1967), ''Miles in the Sky'' (1968), and ''Filles de Kilimanjaro'' (1968). The quintet's approach to improvisation came to be known as "time no changes" or "freebop," because they abandoned the more conventional chord-change-based approach of bebop for a modal approach. Through ''Nefertiti,'' the studio recordings consisted primarily of originals composed by Shorter, with occasional compositions by the other sidemen. In 1967, the group began to play their live concerts in continuous sets, each tune flowing into the next, with only the melody indicating any sort of demarcation. Davis's bands would continue to perform in this way until his retirement in 1975.

''Miles in the Sky'' and ''Filles de Kilimanjaro,'' on which electric bass, electric piano, and electric guitar were tentatively introduced on some tracks, pointed the way to the subsequent fusion phase of Davis' career. Davis also began experimenting with more rock-oriented rhythms on these records. By the time the second half of ''Filles de Kilimanjaro'' had been recorded, bassist Dave Holland and pianist Chick Corea had replaced Carter and Hancock in the working band, though both Carter and Hancock would occasionally contribute to future recording sessions. Davis soon began to take over the compositional duties of his sidemen.

Electric Miles (1968–75)

Davis' influences included 1960s acid rock and funk artists such as Sly and the Family Stone, James Brown, and Jimi Hendrix, many of whom he met through Betty Mabry (later Betty Davis), a young model and songwriter Davis married in September 1968 and divorced a year later. The musical transition required that Davis and his band adapt to electric instruments in both live performances and the studio. By the time ''In a Silent Way'' had been recorded in February 1969, Davis had augmented his quintet with additional players. At various times Hancock or Joe Zawinul was brought in to join Corea on electric keyboards, and guitarist John McLaughlin made the first of his many appearances with Davis. By this point, Shorter was also doubling on soprano saxophone. After recording this album, Williams left to form his group Lifetime and was replaced by Jack DeJohnette.

Six months later an even larger group of musicians, including Jack DeJohnette, Airto Moreira, and Bennie Maupin, recorded the double LP ''Bitches Brew,'' which became a huge seller, reaching gold status by 1976. This album and ''In a Silent Way'' were among the first fusions of jazz and rock that were commercially successful, building on the groundwork laid by Charles Lloyd, Larry Coryell, and others who pioneered a genre that would become known as jazz-rock fusion. During this period, Davis toured with Shorter, Corea, Holland, and DeJohnette. The group's repertoire included material from ''Bitches Brew'', ''In a Silent Way'', and the 1960s quintet albums, along with an occasional standard.

In 1972, Davis was introduced to the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen by Paul Buckmaster, leading to a period of new creative exploration. Biographer J. K. Chambers wrote that "the effect of Davis' study of Stockhausen could not be repressed for long... Davis' own 'space music' shows Stockhausen's influence compositionally." His recordings and performances during this period were described as "space music" by fans, by music critic Leonard Feather, and by Buckmaster, who described it as "a lot of mood changes—heavy, dark, intense—definitely space music." Both ''Bitches Brew'' and ''In a Silent Way'' feature "extended" (more than 20 minutes each) compositions that were never actually "played straight through" by the musicians in the studio. Instead, Davis and producer Teo Macero selected musical motifs of various lengths from recorded extended improvisations and edited them together into a musical whole that exists only in the recorded version. ''Bitches Brew'' made use of such electronic effects as multi-tracking, tape loops, and other editing techniques. Both records, especially ''Bitches Brew'', proved to be big sellers. Starting with ''Bitches Brew'', Davis' albums began to often feature cover art much more in line with psychedelic art or black power movements than that of his earlier albums. He took significant cuts in his usual performing fees in order to open for rock groups like the Steve Miller Band, the Grateful Dead, Neil Young, and Santana. Several live albums were recorded during the early 1970s at these performances: ''Live at the Fillmore East, March 7, 1970: It's About That Time'' (March 1970),'' Black Beauty'' (April 1970), and ''Miles Davis at Fillmore: Live at the Fillmore East'' (June 1970).

By the time of ''Live-Evil'' in December 1970, Davis' ensemble had transformed into a much more funk-oriented group. Davis began experimenting with wah-wah effects on his horn. The ensemble with Gary Bartz, Keith Jarrett, and Michael Henderson, often referred to as the "Cellar Door band" (the live portions of ''Live-Evil'' were recorded at a Washington, DC, club by that name), never recorded in the studio, but is documented in the six-CD box set ''The Cellar Door Sessions,'' which was recorded over four nights in December 1970. In 1970, Davis contributed extensively to the soundtrack of a documentary about the African-American boxer heavyweight champion Jack Johnson. Himself a devotee of boxing, Davis drew parallels between Johnson, whose career had been defined by the fruitless search for a Great White Hope to dethrone him, and Davis' own career, in which he felt the musical establishment of the time had prevented him from receiving the acclaim and rewards that were due him. The resulting album, 1971's ''A Tribute to Jack Johnson'', contained two long pieces that featured musicians (some of whom were not credited on the record) including guitarists John McLaughlin and Sonny Sharrock, Herbie Hancock on a Farfisa organ, and drummer Billy Cobham. McLaughlin and Cobham went on to become founding members of the Mahavishnu Orchestra in 1971.

As Davis stated in his autobiography, he wanted to make music for the young African-American audience. ''On the Corner'' (1972) blended funk elements with the traditional jazz styles he had played his entire career. The album was highlighted by the appearance of saxophonist Carlos Garnett. Critics were not kind to the album; in his autobiography, Davis stated that critics could not figure out how to categorize it, and he complained that the album was not promoted by the "traditional" jazz radio stations. After recording ''On the Corner'', Davis put together a new group, with only Michael Henderson, Carlos Garnett, and percussionist Mtume returning from the previous band. It included guitarist Reggie Lucas, tabla player Badal Roy, sitarist Khalil Balakrishna, and drummer Al Foster. It was unusual in that none of the sidemen were major jazz instrumentalists; as a result, the music emphasized rhythmic density and shifting textures instead of individual solos. This group, which recorded in the Philharmonic Hall for the album ''In Concert'' (1972), was unsatisfactory to Davis. Through the first half of 1973, he dropped the tabla and sitar, took over keyboard duties, and added guitarist Pete Cosey. The Davis/Cosey/Lucas/Henderson/Mtume/Foster ensemble would remain virtually intact over the next two years. Initially, Dave Liebman played saxophones and flute with the band; in 1974, he was replaced by Sonny Fortune.

''Big Fun'' (1974) was a double album containing four long improvisations, recorded between 1969 and 1972. Similarly, ''Get Up With It'' (1974) collected recordings from the previous five years. ''Get Up With It'' included "He Loved Him Madly", a tribute to Duke Ellington, as well as one of Davis' most lauded pieces from this era, "Calypso Frelimo". It was his last studio album of the 1970s. In 1974 and 1975, Columbia recorded three double-LP live Davis albums: ''Dark Magus'', ''Agharta'', and ''Pangaea''. ''Dark Magus'' captures a 1974 New York concert; the latter two are recordings of consecutive concerts from the same February 1975 day in Osaka. At the time, only ''Agharta'' was available in the US; ''Pangaea'' and ''Dark Magus'' were initially released only by CBS/Sony Japan. All three feature at least two electric guitarists (Reggie Lucas and Pete Cosey, deploying an array of Hendrix-inspired electronic distortion devices; Dominique Gaumont is a third guitarist on ''Dark Magus''), electric bass, drums, reeds, and Davis on electric trumpet and organ. These albums were the last he was to record for five years. Davis was troubled by osteoarthritis (which led to a hip replacement operation in 1976, the first of several), sickle-cell anemia, depression, bursitis, ulcers, and a renewed dependence on alcohol and drugs (primarily cocaine), and his performances were routinely panned by critics throughout late 1974 and early 1975. By the time the group reached Japan in February 1975, Davis was nearing a physical breakdown and required copious amounts of alcohol and narcotics to make it through his engagements. Nonetheless, as noted by Richard Cook and Brian Morton, during these concerts his trumpet playing "is of the highest and most adventurous order."

After a Newport Jazz Festival performance at Avery Fisher Hall in New York on July 1, 1975, Davis withdrew almost completely from the public eye for six years. As Gil Evans said, "His organism is tired. And after all the music he's contributed for 35 years, he needs a rest." In his memoirs, Davis is characteristically candid about his wayward mental state during this period, describing himself as hermit, his house as a wreck, and detailing his drug and sex addictions. In 1976, ''Rolling Stone'' reported rumors of his imminent demise. Although he stopped practicing trumpet on a regular basis, Davis continued to compose intermittently and made three attempts at recording during his exile from performing; these sessions (one with the assistance of Paul Buckmaster and Gil Evans, who left after not receiving promised compensation) bore little fruit and remain unreleased. In 1979, he placed in the yearly top-ten trumpeter poll of ''Down Beat''. Columbia continued to issue compilation albums and records of unreleased vault material to fulfill contractual obligations. During his period of inactivity, Davis saw the fusion music that he had spearheaded over the past decade enter into the mainstream. When he emerged from retirement, Davis' musical descendants would be in the realm of New Wave rock, and in particular the styling of Prince.

Last decade (1981–91)

By 1979, Davis had rekindled his relationship with actress Cicely Tyson. With Tyson, Davis would overcome his cocaine addiction and regain his enthusiasm for music. As he had not played trumpet for the better part of three years, regaining his famed embouchure proved to be particularly arduous. While recording ''The Man with the Horn'' (sessions were spread sporadically over 1979–1981), Davis played mostly wahwah with a younger, larger band.

The initial large band was eventually abandoned in favor of a smaller combo featuring saxophonist Bill Evans and bass player Marcus Miller, both of whom would be among Davis' most regular collaborators throughout the decade. He married Tyson in 1981; they would divorce in 1988. ''The Man with the Horn'' was finally released in 1981 and received a poor critical reception despite selling fairly well. In May, the new band played two dates as part of the Newport Jazz Festival. The concerts, as well as the live recording ''We Want Miles'' from the ensuing tour, received positive reviews.

By late 1982, Davis' band included French percussionist Mino Cinelu and guitarist John Scofield, with whom he worked closely on the album ''Star People.'' In mid-1983, while working on the tracks for ''Decoy'', an album mixing soul music and electronica that was released in 1984, Davis brought in producer, composer and keyboardist Robert Irving III, who had earlier collaborated with him on ''The Man with the Horn.'' With a seven-piece band, including Scofield, Evans, keyboardist and music director Irving, drummer Al Foster and bassist Darryl Jones (later of The Rolling Stones), Davis played a series of European gigs to positive receptions. While in Europe, he took part in the recording of ''Aura,'' an orchestral tribute to Davis composed by Danish trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg.

''You're Under Arrest,'' Davis' next album, was released in 1985 and included another brief stylistic detour. Included on the album were his interpretations of Cyndi Lauper's ballad "Time After Time", and "Human Nature" from Michael Jackson. Davis considered releasing an entire album of pop songs and recorded dozens of them, but the idea was scrapped. Davis noted that many of today's accepted jazz standards were in fact pop songs from Broadway theater, and that he was simply updating the "standards" repertoire with new material. 1985 also saw Davis guest-star on the TV show ''Miami Vice'' as pimp and minor criminal Ivory Jones in the episode titled "Junk Love" (first aired November 8, 1985).

''You're Under Arrest'' also proved to be Davis' final album for Columbia. Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis publicly dismissed Davis' more recent fusion recordings as not being "'true' jazz", comments Davis initially shrugged off, calling Marsalis "a nice young man, only confused". This changed after Marsalis appeared, unannounced, onstage in the midst of a Davis performance. Marsalis whispered into Davis' ear that "someone" had told him to do so; Davis responded by ordering him off the stage.

Davis grew irritated at Columbia's delay releasing ''Aura''. The breaking point in the label-artist relationship appears to have come when a Columbia jazz producer requested Davis place a goodwill birthday call to Marsalis. Davis signed with Warner Brothers shortly thereafter.

Davis collaborated with a number of figures from the British new wave movement during this period, including Scritti Politti. At the invitation of producer Bill Laswell, Davis recorded some trumpet parts during sessions for Public Image Ltd.'s ''Album'', according to Public Image's John Lydon in the liner notes of their ''Plastic Box'' box set. In Lydon's words, however, "strangely enough, we didn't use (his contributions)." (Also according to Lydon in the ''Plastic Box'' notes, Davis favorably compared Lydon's singing voice to his trumpet sound.)

Having first taken part in the Artists United Against Apartheid recording, Davis signed with Warner Brothers records and reunited with Marcus Miller. The resulting record, ''Tutu'' (1986), would be his first to use modern studio tools—programmed synthesizers, samples and drum loops—to create an entirely new setting for Davis' playing. Ecstatically reviewed on its release, the album would frequently be described as the modern counterpart of ''Sketches of Spain'' and won a Grammy in 1987.

thumb|left|The grave of Miles Davis in Woodlawn CemeteryHe followed ''Tutu'' with ''Amandla,'' another collaboration with Miller and George Duke, plus the soundtracks to four movies: ''Street Smart,'' ''Siesta,'' ''The Hot Spot,'' and ''Dingo.'' He continued to tour with a band of constantly rotating personnel and a critical stock at a level higher than it had been for 15 years. His last recordings, both released posthumously, were the hip hop-influenced studio album ''Doo-Bop'' and ''Miles & Quincy Live at Montreux,'' a collaboration with Quincy Jones for the 1991 Montreux Jazz Festival in which Davis performed the repertoire from his 1940s and 1950s recordings for the first time in decades.

In 1988 he had a small part as a street musician in the film ''Scrooged'', starring Bill Murray. He received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1990. In 1989, Miles was interviewed on 60 Minutes by Harry Reasoner.

In early 1991, he appeared in the Rolf de Heer film ''Dingo'' as a jazz musician. In the film's opening sequence, Davis and his band unexpectedly land on a remote airstrip in the Australian outback and proceed to perform for the stunned locals. The performance was one of Davis' last on film.

Miles Davis died on September 28, 1991 from the combined effects of a stroke, pneumonia and respiratory failure in Santa Monica, California at the age of 65. He is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx.

Legacy and influence

Miles Davis is regarded as one of the most innovative, influential and respected figures in the history of music. He has been described as “one of the great innovators in jazz”. ''The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll'' noted "Miles Davis played a crucial and inevitably controversial role in every major development in jazz since the mid-'40s, and no other jazz musician has had so profound an effect on rock. Miles Davis was the most widely recognized jazz musician of his era, an outspoken social critic and an arbiter of style—in attitude and fashion—as well as music". His album ''Kind of Blue'' is the best-selling album in the history of jazz music and was praised by the United States House of Representatives to "pass a symbolic resolution honoring the masterpiece and reaffirming jazz as a national treasure."

As an innovative bandleader and composer, Miles Davis has influenced many notable musicians and bands from diverse genres. These include Wayne Shorter, Cannonball Adderley, Herbie Hancock, Cassandra Wilson, Lalo Schifrin, Tangerine Dream, Brand X, Mtume, Benny Bailey, Joe Bonner, Don Cherry, Urszula Dudziak, Sugizo, Bill Evans, Bill Hardman, The Lounge Lizards, Hugh Masekela, John McLaughlin, King Crimson, Steely Dan, Frank Zappa, Duane Allman, Radiohead, The Flaming Lips, Lydia Lunch, Talk Talk, Michael Franks, Sting, Lonnie Liston Smith, Jiří Stivín, Tim Hagans, Julie Christensen, Jerry Garcia, David Grisman, Vassar Clements, Snooky Young, Prince, and Christian Scott.

Miles' influence on the people who played with him has been described by music writer and author Christopher Smith as follows:

Miles Davis' artistic interest was in the creation and manipulation of ritual space, in which gestures could be endowed with symbolic power sufficient to form a functional communicative, and hence musical, vocabulary. [...] Miles' performance tradition emphasized orality and the transmission of information and artistic insight from individual to individual. His position in that tradition, and his personality, talents, and artistic interests, impelled him to pursue a uniquely individual solution to the problems and the experiential possibilities of improvised performance.

His approach, owing largely to the African American performance tradition that focused on individual expression, emphatic interaction, and creative response to shifting contents, had a profound impact on generations of jazz musicians.

In 1986, the New England Conservatory awarded Miles Davis an Honorary Doctorate for his extraordinary contributions to music. Since 1960 the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) has honored him with eight Grammy Awards, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and three Grammy Hall of Fame Awards.

Awards

Winner; Down Beat Reader's Poll Best Trumpet Player 1955

Winner; Down Beat Reader's Poll Best Trumpet Player 1957

Winner; Down Beat Reader's Poll Best Trumpet Player 1961

Grammy Award for Best Jazz Composition Of More Than Five Minutes Duration for ''Sketches of Spain'' (1960)

Grammy Award for Best Jazz Performance, Large Group Or Soloist With Large Group for ''Bitches Brew'' (1970)

Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Soloist for ''We Want Miles'' (1982)

Sonning Award for Lifetime Achievement In Music (1984; Copenhagen, Denmark)

Doctor of Music, ''honoris causa'' (1986; New England Conservatory)

Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Soloist for ''Tutu'' (1986)

Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Soloist for ''Aura'' (1989)

Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band for ''Aura'' (1989)

Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (1990)

Australian Film Institute Award for Best Original Music Score for ''Dingo'', shared with Michel Legrand (1991)

Knighted into the Legion of Honor (July 16, 1991; Paris)

Grammy Award for Best R&B; Instrumental Performance for ''Doo-Bop'' (1992)

Grammy Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Performance for ''Miles & Quincy Live at Montreux'' (1993)

Hollywood Walk of Fame Star (February 19, 1998)

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction (March 13, 2006)

Hollywood's Rockwalk Induction (September 28, 2006)

RIAA Quadruple Platinum for ''Kind of Blue''

St. Louis Walk of Fame

Discography

Sidemen

; Rhythm section

1950: pianist John Lewis, bassist Al McKibbon, drummer Max Roach

1951: pianist Walter Bishop, Jr., bassist Tommy Potter, drummer Art Blakey

1956: pianist Tommy Flanagan, bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Art Taylor

1955–58: pianist Red Garland, bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Philly Joe Jones

1959–63: pianist Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Jimmy Cobb

1963–68: pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter, drummer Tony Williams

1968–70: pianist Chick Corea, bassist Dave Holland, drummer Tony Williams

1971: pianist Keith Jarrett, bassist Michael Henderson, drummer Jack DeJohnette, percussionist Airto Moreira

1969–72: pianists Joe Zawinul, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Herbie Hancock, Larry Young, Harold Williams, Hermeto Pascoal, Lonnie Liston Smith, Cedric Lawson

1970s: guitarists John McLaughlin, Reggie Lucas, Pete Cosey, David Creamer, Dominique Gaumont, Cornell Dupree

Notes

References

Carr, Ian. ''Miles Davis''. ISBN 0-00-653026-5.

Chambers, Jack. ''Milestones: The Music and Times of Miles Davis''. ISBN 0-306-80849-8.

Cole, George. ''The Last Miles: The Music of Miles Davis 1980–1991''. ISBN 1-904768-18-0.

Cook, Richard (2007). ''"It's About That Time: Miles Davis On and Off Record"''. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195322668

Cook, Richard, and Brian Morton. Entry "Miles Davis" in ''Penguin Guide to Jazz'', Penguin, ISBN 0-14-017949-6.

Davis, Miles & Troupe, Quincy. ''Miles: The Autobiography''. ISBN 0-671-63504-2.

Davis, Gregory. ''Dark Magus: The Jekyll & Hyde Life of Miles Davis''. ISBN 978-0-87930-875-9.

Early, Gerald. ''Miles Davis and American Culture''. ISBN 1-883982-37-5 cloth, ISBN 1-883982-38-3, paper.

Szwed, John. ''So What: The Life of Miles Davis''. ISBN 0-434-00759-5.

Tingen, Paul. ''Miles Beyond: The Electric Explorations of Miles Davis, 1967–1991''. ISBN 0-8230-8360-8.

Mandel, Howard (2007). "Miles, Ornette, Cecil: Jazz Beyond Jazz". Routledge. ISBN 0415967147.

External links

Web sites dedicated to Miles Davis:

Miles Davis – official website.

Miles Davis – official Sony Music website.

Miles From India review

Category:African American musicians Category:American jazz bandleaders Category:American jazz composers Category:American jazz trumpeters Category:Songwriters from Illinois Category:Bebop trumpeters Category:Cool jazz trumpeters Category:Deaths from stroke Category:Deaths from respiratory failure Category:People with sickle-cell disease Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Columbia Records artists Category:Capitol Records artists Category:Prestige Records artists Category:Savoy Records artists Category:Hard bop trumpeters Category:Musicians from Illinois Category:Juilliard School alumni Category:Modal jazz trumpeters Category:People from Madison County, Illinois Category:People from St. Clair County, Illinois Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Category:Music of St. Louis, Missouri Category:Third Stream trumpeters Category:Deaths from pneumonia Category:Burials at Woodlawn Cemetery (The Bronx) Category:Infectious disease deaths in California Category:1926 births Category:1991 deaths Category:Avant-garde jazz trumpeters Category:Performing arts pages with videographic documentation

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name	Chuck Berry
birth name	Charles Edward Anderson Berry
background	solo_singer
born	October 18, 1926St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.
instrument	Guitar, vocals
genre	Rock and roll, blues,
occupation	Musician, songwriter
years active	1955–present
label	Chess, Mercury, Atco
website	www.chuckberry.com
notable instruments	Gibson ES-355 }}

Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry (born October 18, 1926) is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957) and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958), Chuck Berry refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, with lyrics focusing on teen life and consumerism and utilizing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music.

Born into a middle class family in St. Louis, Missouri, Berry had an interest in music from an early age and gave his first public performance at Sumner High School. While still a high school student he served a prison sentence for armed robbery between 1944 and 1947. On his release, Berry settled into married life and worked at an automobile assembly plant. By early 1953, influenced by the guitar riffs and showmanship techniques of blues player T-Bone Walker, he was performing in the evenings with the Johnnie Johnson Trio. His break came when he traveled to Chicago in May 1955, and met Muddy Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess of Chess Records. With Chess he recorded "Maybellene"—Berry's adaptation of the country song "Ida Red"—which sold over a million copies, reaching #1 on Billboard's Rhythm and Blues chart. By the end of the 1950s, Berry was an established star with several hit records and film appearances to his name as well as a lucrative touring career. He had also established his own St. Louis-based nightclub, called Berry's Club Bandstand. But in January 1962, Berry was sentenced to three years in prison for offenses under the Mann Act—he had transported a 14-year-old girl across state lines.

After his release in 1963, Berry had several more hits, including "No Particular Place To Go", "You Never Can Tell", and "Nadine", but these did not achieve the same success, or lasting impact, of his 1950s songs, and by the 1970s he was more in demand as a nostalgic live performer, playing his past hits with local backup bands of variable quality. His insistence on being paid cash led to a jail sentence in 1979—four months and community service for tax evasion.

Berry was among the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on its opening in 1986, with the comment that he "laid the groundwork for not only a rock and roll sound but a rock and roll stance." Berry is included in several ''Rolling Stone'' "Greatest of All Time" lists, including being ranked fifth on their 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll included three of Chuck Berry's songs: "Johnny B. Goode", "Maybellene", and "Rock and Roll Music". Today – at the age of – Berry continues to play live.

Early life and apprenticeship with Johnnie Johnson (1926–54)

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Berry was the fourth child in a family of six. He grew up in the north St. Louis neighborhood known as "The Ville," an area where many middle class St. Louis people lived at the time. His father, Henry, was a contractor and deacon of a nearby Baptist church, his mother Martha a certified public school principal. His middle class upbringing allowed him to pursue his interest in music from an early age and he gave his first public performance in 1941 while still at Sumner High School. Just three years later, in 1944, while still at Sumner High School, he was arrested and convicted of armed robbery after robbing three shops in Kansas City and then stealing a car at gunpoint with some friends. Berry's own account in his autobiography is that his car broke down and he then flagged down a passing car and stole it at gunpoint with a non-functional pistol. Berry was sent to the Intermediate Reformatory for Young Men at Algoa, near Jefferson City, Missouri, where he formed a singing quartet and did some boxing.

After his release from prison on his 21st birthday in 1947, Berry married Themetta "Toddy" Suggs on 28 October 1948, who gave birth to Darlin Ingrid Berry on 3 October 1950. Berry supported his family doing a number of jobs in St. Louis: working briefly as a factory worker at two automobile assembly plants, as well as being janitor for the apartment building where he and his wife lived. Afterwards he trained as a beautician at the Poro College of Cosmetology, founded by Annie Turnbo Malone. He was doing well enough by 1950 to buy a "small three room brick cottage with a bath" in Whittier Street, which is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

By the early 1950s, Berry was working with local bands in the clubs of St. Louis as an extra source of income. He had been playing the blues since his teens, and he borrowed both guitar riffs and showmanship techniques from blues player T-Bone Walker, as well as taking guitar lessons from his friend Ira Harris that laid the foundation for his guitar style. By early 1953 Berry was performing with Johnnie Johnson's trio, starting a long-time collaboration with the pianist. Although the band played mostly blues and ballads, the most popular music among whites in the area was country. Berry wrote, "Curiosity provoked me to lay a lot of our country stuff on our predominantly black audience and some of our black audience began whispering 'who is that black hillbilly at the Cosmo?' After they laughed at me a few times they began requesting the hillbilly stuff and enjoyed dancing to it."

Berry's calculated showmanship, along with mixing country tunes with R&B; tunes, and singing in the style of Nat "King" Cole to the music of Muddy Waters, brought in a wider audience, particularly affluent white people.

Signing with Chess: "Maybellene" to "Come On" (1955–62)

In May 1955, Berry traveled to Chicago where he met Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess of Chess Records. Berry thought his blues material would be of most interest to Chess, but to his surprise it was an old country and western recording by Bob Wills, entitled "Ida Red" that got Chess's attention. Chess had seen the rhythm and blues market shrink and was looking to move beyond it, and he thought Berry might be the artist for that purpose. So on May 21, 1955 Berry recorded an adaptation of "Ida Red"—"Maybellene"—which featured Johnnie Johnson on piano, Jerome Green (from Bo Diddley's band) on the maracas, Jasper Thomas on the drums and Willie Dixon on the bass. "Maybellene" sold over a million copies, reaching #1 on Billboard's Rhythm and Blues chart and #5 on the 10 September 1955 Billboard Best Sellers in Stores chart.

At the end of June 1956, his song "Roll Over Beethoven" reached #29 on the ''Billboard Top 100'' chart, and Berry toured as one of the "Top Acts of '56". He and Carl Perkins became friends. Perkins said that "I knew when I first heard Chuck that he'd been affected by country music. I respected his writing; his records were very, very great." As they toured, Perkins discovered that Berry not only liked country music, but knew about as many songs as he did. Jimmie Rodgers was one of his favorites. "Chuck knew every Blue Yodel and most of Bill Monroe's songs as well," Perkins remembered. "He told me about how he was raised very poor, very tough. He had a hard life. He was a good guy. I really liked him."

In late 1957, Berry took part in Alan Freed's "Biggest Show of Stars for 1957" United States tour with the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, and others. He also guest starred on ABC's ''The Guy Mitchell Show'', having sung his hit song "Rock 'n' Roll Music". The hits continued from 1957 to 1959, with Berry scoring over a dozen chart singles during this period, including the top 10 US hits "School Days", "Rock and Roll Music", "Sweet Little Sixteen", and "Johnny B. Goode". He appeared in two early rock and roll movies. The first was ''Rock Rock Rock,'' released in 1956. He is shown singing "You Can't Catch Me." He had a speaking role as himself in the 1959 film ''Go, Johnny, Go!'' along with Alan Freed, and was also shown performing his songs "Johnny B. Goode," "Memphis, Tennessee," and "Little Queenie." His performance of "Sweet Little Sixteen" at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958 is captured in the motion picture ''Jazz on a Summer's Day''.

By the end of the 1950s, Berry was an established star with several hit records and film appearances to his name, as well as a lucrative touring career. He had established a racially integrated St. Louis-based nightclub, called Berry's Club Bandstand, and was investing in real estate. But in December 1959, Berry was arrested under the Mann Act after an allegation that he had sex with a 14-year-old Apache waitress whom he had transported over state lines to work as a hat check girl at his club. After an initial two-week trial in March 1960, Berry was convicted, fined $5,000, and sentenced to five years in prison. Berry's appeal that the judge's comments and attitude were racist and prejudiced the jury against him was upheld, and a second trial was heard in May and June 1961, which resulted in Berry being given a three-year prison sentence. After another appeal failed, Berry served one and one half years in prison from February 1962 to October 1963. Berry had continued recording and performing during the trials, though his output had slowed down as his popularity declined; his final single released before being imprisoned was "Come On".

"Nadine" and move to Mercury (1963–69)

When Berry was released from prison in 1963, he was able to return to recording and performing due to the British invasion acts of the 1960s—most notably The Beatles and The Rolling Stones—having kept up an interest in his music by releasing cover versions of his songs; along with other bands reworking his songs, such as the Beach Boys basing their 1963 hit "Surfin' USA" on Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen". In 1964–65 Berry released eight singles, including three, "No Particular Place to Go" (a reworking of "School Day"), "You Never Can Tell", and "Nadine," which achieved commercial success, reaching the top 20 of the Billboard 100. Between 1966 and 1969 Berry released five albums on the Mercury label, including his first live album ''Live at Fillmore Auditorium'' in which he was backed by the Steve Miller Band.

While this was not a successful period for studio work, Berry was still a top concert draw. In May 1964, he did a successful tour of the UK, though when he returned in January 1965 his behavior was erratic and moody, and his touring style of using unrehearsed local backing bands and a strict non-negotiable contract was earning him a reputation as a difficult yet unexciting performer. He also played at large events in North America, such as the Schaefer Music Festival in New York City's Central Park in July 1969, and the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival in October.

Back to Chess: "My Ding-a-Ling" to White House concert (1970–79)

}} Berry returned to Chess from 1970 to 1973. There were no hit singles from the 1970 album ''Back Home'', then in 1972 Chess released a live recording of "My Ding-a-Ling", a novelty song which Berry had recorded in a different version on his 1968 LP ''From St. Louie to Frisco'' as "My Tambourine". The track became Berry's only No. 1 single. A live recording of "Reelin' And Rockin'" was also issued as a follow-up single that same year and would prove to be Berry's final top-40 hit in both the US and the UK. Both singles were featured on the part-live/part-studio album ''The London Chuck Berry Sessions'' which was one of a series of London Sessions albums which included other Chess mainstay artists Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. Berry's second tenure with Chess ended with the 1975 album ''Chuck Berry'', after which he did not make a studio record until 1979's ''Rock It'' for Atco Records, his last studio album to date.

In the 1970s Berry toured on the basis of his earlier successes. He was on the road for many years, carrying only his Gibson guitar, confident that he could hire a band that already knew his music no matter where he went. Allmusic has said that in this period his "live performances became increasingly erratic, [...] working with terrible backup bands and turning in sloppy, out-of-tune performances" which "tarnished his reputation with younger fans and oldtimers" alike. Among the many bandleaders performing a backup role with Chuck Berry were Bruce Springsteen and Steve Miller when each was just starting his career. Springsteen related in the video ''Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll'' that Berry did not even give the band a set list and just expected the musicians to follow his lead after each guitar intro. Berry neither spoke to nor thanked the band after the show. Nevertheless, Springsteen backed Berry again when he appeared at the concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. At the request of Jimmy Carter, Chuck Berry performed at the White House on June 1, 1979.

Berry's type of touring style, traveling the "oldies" circuit in the 1970s (where he was often paid in cash by local promoters) added ammunition to the Internal Revenue Service's accusations that Berry was a chronic income tax evader. Facing criminal sanction for the third time, Berry pleaded guilty to tax evasion and was sentenced to four months in prison and 1,000 hours of community service—doing benefit concerts—in 1979.

Still on the road (1980–present)

Berry continued to play 70 to 100 one-nighters per year in the 1980s, still traveling solo and requiring a local band to back him at each stop. In 1986, Taylor Hackford made a documentary film, ''Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll'', of a celebration concert for Berry's sixtieth birthday, organised by Keith Richards, in which Berry reveals his bitterness at the fame and financial success that Richards achieved on the back of Berry's songs. Eric Clapton, Etta James, Julian Lennon, Robert Cray and Linda Ronstadt, among others, appeared with Berry on stage and film. During the concert, Berry played a Gibson ES-355, the luxury version of the ES-335 that he favored on his 1970s tours. Richards played a black Fender Telecaster Custom, Cray a Fender Stratocaster and Clapton a Gibson ES 350T, the same guitar Berry used on his early recordings.

In the late 1980s, Berry bought a restaurant in Wentzville, Missouri, called The Southern Air, and in 1990 he was sued by several women who claimed that he had installed a video camera in the ladies' bathroom. Berry claimed that he had the camera installed to catch red-handed a worker who was suspected of stealing from the restaurant. Though his guilt was never proven in court, Berry opted for a class action settlement with 59 women. Berry's biographer, Bruce Pegg, estimated that it cost Berry over $1.2 million plus legal fees. It was during this time that he began using Wayne T. Schoeneberg as his legal counsel. Reportedly, a police raid on his house did find videotapes of women using the restroom, and one of the women was a minor. Also found in the raid were 62 grams of marijuana. Felony drug and child-abuse charges were filed. In order to avoid the child-abuse charges, Berry agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor possession of marijuana. He was given a six-month suspended jail sentence, two years' unsupervised probation, and ordered to donate $5,000 to a local hospital.

In November 2000, Berry again faced legal charges when he was sued by his former pianist Johnnie Johnson, who claimed that he co-wrote over 50 songs, including "No Particular Place to Go", "Sweet Little Sixteen" and "Roll Over Beethoven", that credit Berry alone. The case was dismissed when the judge ruled that too much time had passed since the songs were written.

Currently, Berry usually performs one Wednesday each month at Blueberry Hill, a restaurant and bar located in the Delmar Loop neighborhood in St. Louis. In 2008, Berry toured Europe, with stops in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Ireland, Switzerland, Poland, and Spain. In mid-2008, he played at Virgin Festival in Baltimore, MD. He presently lives in Ladue, Missouri, approximately 10 miles west of St. Louis. During a New Year's Day 2011 concert in Chicago, Berry, suffering from exhaustion, passed out and had to be helped off stage.

Legacy

}}

A pioneer of rock music, Berry was a significant influence on the development of both the music and the attitude associated with the rock music lifestyle. With songs such as "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957) and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958), Chuck Berry refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, with lyrics successfully aimed to appeal to the early teenage market by using graphic and humorous descriptions of teen dances, fast cars, high-school life, and consumer culture, and utilizing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music. His records are a rich storehouse of the essential lyrical, showmanship and musical components of rock and roll; and, in addition to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, a large number of significant popular-music performers have recorded Berry's songs. Though not technically accomplished, his guitar style is distinctive – he incorporated electronic effects to mimic the sound of bottleneck blues guitarists, and drew on the influence of guitar players such as Charlie Christian, and T-Bone Walker, to produce a clear and exciting sound that many later guitar musicians would acknowledge as a major influence in their own style. In the film ''Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll!'' Eric Clapton states 'If you wanna play rock and roll - or any upbeat number - and you wanted to take a guitar ride you would end up playing like Chuck...because there is very little other choice. There's not a lot of other ways to play rock and roll other than the way Chuck plays it; he's really laid the law down..." In 1992 Keith Richards told ''Best of Guitar Player'' "Chuck was my man. He was the one who made me say 'I want to play guitar, Jesus Christ!'...Suddenly I knew what I wanted to do." Berry's showmanship has been influential on other rock guitar players, particularly his one-legged hop routine, and the "duck walk", which he first used as a child when he walked "stooping with full-bended knees, but with my back and head vertical" under a table to retrieve a ball and his family found it entertaining; he used it when "performing in New York for the first time and some journalist branded it the duck walk."

The rock critic Robert Christgau considers him "the greatest of the rock and rollers," while John Lennon said that "if you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry'." Ted Nugent said "If you don't know every Chuck Berry lick, you can't play rock guitar." Among the honors he has received, have been the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1984, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2000, and being named seventh on ''Time'' magazine's 2009 list of the 10 best electric guitar players of all-time. On May 14, 2002, Chuck Berry was honored as one of the first BMI Icons at the 50th annual BMI Pop Awards. He was presented the award along with BMI affiliates Bo Diddley and Little Richard.

Berry is included in several ''Rolling Stone'' "Greatest of All Time" lists. In September 2003, the magazine named him number 6 in their list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". This was followed in November of the same year by his compilation album ''The Great Twenty-Eight'' being ranked 21st in the Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The following year, in March 2004, Berry was ranked fifth out of "The Immortals – The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time". In December 2004, six of his songs were included in the "Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time", namely "Johnny B. Goode" (# 7), "Maybellene" (# 18), "Roll Over Beethoven" (# 97), "Rock and Roll Music" (#128), "Sweet Little Sixteen" (# 272) and "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" (# 374). In June 2008, his song "Johnny B. Goode" ranked first place in the "100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time".

A statue tall of Berry, funded by donations, has been erected along the St. Louis Walk of Fame. The dedication ceremony attended by Berry was held on July 29, 2011.

Discography

References

External links

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Official website

* Category:1926 births Category:Living people Category:African American guitarists Category:African American singer-songwriters Category:African American rock singers Category:American rock guitarists Category:American blues guitarists Category:American rhythm and blues guitarists Category:American male singers Category:American robbers Category:American rock singer-songwriters Category:American people convicted of tax crimes Category:Baptists from the United States Category:Blues Hall of Fame inductees Category:Chess Records artists Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Kennedy Center honorees Category:Lead guitarists Category:Musicians from St. Louis, Missouri Category:People convicted of robbery Category:People convicted of violating the Mann Act Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Category:Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees Category:St. Louis blues musicians

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name	Aldous Huxley
alt	Blurry monochrome head-and-shoulders portrait of Aldous Huxley, facing viewer's right, chin a couple of inches above hand
birth name	Aldous Leonard Huxley
birth date	July 26, 1894
birth place	Godalming, Surrey,England
death date	November 22, 1963
death place	Los Angeles, California,United States
resting place	Compton, Surrey,England
occupation	Writer (fiction & non-fiction)
notableworks	''Brave New World'', ''Island'', ''Point Counter Point'', ''The Doors of Perception''
influences	Swami Prabhavananda, J. Krishnamurti, F. Matthias Alexander, Yevgeny Zamyatin, William Blake, Charles Dickens, H. G. Wells, Thomas Traherne
influenced	Christopher Isherwood, Michel Houellebecq, Jim Morrison, George Orwell, Huston Smith, Kurt Vonnegut
signature	Aldous Huxley signature.svg }}

Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including ''Brave New World'' and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine ''Oxford Poetry'', and published short stories, poetry, travel writing, and film stories and scripts. Huxley spent the later part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death.

Aldous Huxley was a humanist and pacifist, and he was latterly interested in spiritual subjects such as parapsychology and philosophical mysticism. He is also well known for advocating and taking psychedelics.

By the end of his life Huxley was considered, in some academic circles, a leader of modern thought and an intellectual of the highest rank, and highly regarded as one of the most prominent explorers of visual communication and sight-related theories as well.

Early life

Aldous Huxley was born in Godalming, Surrey, UK, in 1894. He was the third son of the writer and schoolmaster Leonard Huxley and his first wife, Julia Arnold, who founded Prior's Field School. Julia was the niece of poet and critic Matthew Arnold and the sister of Mrs. Humphrey Ward. Aldous was the grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, the zoologist, agnostic and controversialist ("Darwin's Bulldog"). His brother Julian Huxley and half-brother Andrew Huxley also became outstanding biologists. Aldous had another brother, Noel Trevelyan (1891–1914), who committed suicide after a period of clinical depression.

Huxley began his learning in his father's well-equipped botanical laboratory, then continued in a school named Hillside. His teacher was his mother who supervised him for several years until she became terminally ill. After Hillside, he was educated at Eton College. Huxley's mother died in 1908 when he was 14. In 1911, he suffered an illness (keratitis punctata) which "left [him] practically blind for two to three years". Aldous's near-blindness disqualified him from service in the First World War. Once his eyesight recovered sufficiently, he was able to study English literature at Balliol College, Oxford. In 1916 he edited ''Oxford Poetry'' and later graduated with first class honours. His brother Julian wrote,

I believe his blindness was a blessing in disguise. For one thing, it put paid to his idea of taking up medicine as a career... His uniqueness lay in his universalism. He was able to take all knowledge for his province.

Following his education at Balliol, Huxley was financially indebted to his father and had to earn a living. He taught French for a year at Eton, where Eric Blair (later to become George Orwell) and Stephen Runciman were among his pupils, but was remembered as an incompetent and hopeless teacher who couldn’t keep discipline. Nevertheless, Blair and others were impressed by his use of words. For a short while in 1918, he was employed acquiring provisions at the Air Ministry.

Significantly, Huxley also worked for a time in the 1920s at the technologically-advanced Brunner and Mond chemical plant in Billingham, Teesside, and the most recent introduction to his famous science fiction novel ''Brave New World'' (1932) states that this experience of "an ordered universe in a world of planless incoherence" was one source for the novel.

Career

Huxley completed his first (unpublished) novel at the age of 17 and began writing seriously in his early 20s. His first published novels were social satires, beginning with ''Crome Yellow'' (1921).

Bloomsbury set

During the First World War, Huxley spent much of his time at Garsington Manor, home of Lady Ottoline Morrell, working as a farm labourer. Here he met several Bloomsbury figures including Bertrand Russell and Clive Bell. Later, in ''Crome Yellow'' (1921) he caricatured the Garsington lifestyle. In 1919 he married Maria Nys, a Belgian woman he met at Garsington; they had one son. The family lived in Italy part of the time in the 1920s, where Huxley would visit his friend D. H. Lawrence. Following Lawrence's death in 1930, Huxley edited Lawrence's letters (1933).

Works of this period included important novels on the dehumanising aspects of scientific progress, most famously ''Brave New World'', and on pacifist themes (for example, ''Eyeless in Gaza''). In ''Brave New World'' Huxley portrays a society operating on the principles of mass production and Pavlovian conditioning. Huxley was strongly influenced by F. Matthias Alexander and included him as a character in ''Eyeless in Gaza''.

Starting from this period, Huxley began to write and edit non-fiction works on pacifist issues, including ''Ends and Means'', ''An Encyclopedia of Pacifism'', and ''Pacifism and Philosophy'', and was an active member of the Peace Pledge Union.

The U.S.

In 1937, Huxley moved to Hollywood, with his wife Maria, son Matthew, and friend Gerald Heard. He lived in the U.S., mainly in southern California, until his death, but also for a time in Taos, New Mexico, where he wrote ''Ends and Means'' (published in 1937). In this work he examines the fact that although most people in modern civilisation agree that they want a world of "liberty, peace, justice, and brotherly love", they have not been able to agree on how to achieve it.

Heard introduced Huxley to Vedanta (Veda-Centric Hinduism), meditation, and vegetarianism through the principle of ahimsa. In 1938 Huxley befriended J. Krishnamurti, whose teachings he greatly admired. He also became a Vedantist in the circle of Hindu Swami Prabhavananda, and introduced Christopher Isherwood to this circle. Not long after, Huxley wrote his book on widely held spiritual values and ideas, ''The Perennial Philosophy'', which discussed the teachings of renowned mystics of the world. Huxley's book affirmed a sensibility that insists there are realities beyond the generally accepted "five senses" and that there is genuine meaning for humans beyond both sensual satisfactions and sentimentalities.

Huxley became a close friend of Remsen Bird, president of Occidental College. He spent much time at the college, which is in the Eagle Rock neighbourhood of Los Angeles. The college appears as "Tarzana College" in his satirical novel ''After Many a Summer'' (1939). The novel won Huxley that year's James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Huxley also incorporated Bird into the novel.

During this period Huxley earned some Hollywood income as a writer. In March 1938, his friend Anita Loos, a novelist and screenwriter, put him in touch with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer who hired Huxley for ''Madame Curie'' which was originally to star Greta Garbo and be directed by George Cukor. (The film was eventually filmed by MGM in 1943 with a different director and stars.) Huxley received screen credit for ''Pride and Prejudice'' (1940) and was paid for his work on a number of other films, including ''Jane Eyre'' (1944).

However, his experience in Hollywood was not a success. When he wrote a synopsis of ''Alice in Wonderland'', Walt Disney rejected it on the grounds that "he could only understand every third word". Huxley's leisurely development of ideas, it seemed, was not suitable for the movie moguls, who demanded fast, dynamic dialogue above all else. For Dick Huemer, during the 1940s, Huxley went to the first of a five meetings' session to elaborate the script of ''Alice in Wonderland'' but never came again. For author John Grant, although the movie's character the Caterpillar displays some characteristics familiar from Huxley's discussion of his experiments with hallucinogens, Huxley's contribution to the movie is nonexistent.

On 21 October 1949, Huxley wrote to George Orwell, author of ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', congratulating him on "how fine and how profoundly important the book is". In his letter to Orwell, he predicted:

Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience.

Post World War II

After the Second World War, Huxley applied for United States citizenship. His application was continuously deferred on the grounds that he would not say he would take up arms to defend the U.S. He claimed a philosophical, rather than a religious objection, and therefore was not exempt under the McCarran Act. So, he withdrew his application. Nevertheless, he remained in the country, and in 1959 he turned down an offer of a Knight Bachelor by the Macmillan government. During the 1950s Huxley's interest in the field of psychical research grew keener, and his later works are strongly influenced by both mysticism and his experiences with psychedelic drugs.

In October 1930, the English occultist Aleister Crowley dined with Huxley in Berlin, and to this day rumours persist that Crowley introduced Huxley to peyote on that occasion. He was introduced to mescaline (considered to be the key active ingredient of peyote) by the psychiatrist Humphry Osmond in 1953. Through Dr. Osmond, Huxley met millionaire Alfred Matthew Hubbard who would deal with LSD on a wholesale basis. On 24 December 1955, Huxley took his first dose of LSD. Indeed, Huxley was a pioneer of self-directed psychedelic drug use "in a search for enlightenment", famously taking 100 micrograms of LSD as he lay dying. His psychedelic drug experiences are described in the essays ''The Doors of Perception'' (the title deriving from some lines in the book ''The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'' by William Blake), and ''Heaven and Hell''. Some of his writings on psychedelics became frequent reading among early hippies. While living in Los Angeles, Huxley was a friend of Ray Bradbury. According to Sam Weller's biography of Bradbury, the latter was dissatisfied with Huxley, especially after Huxley encouraged Bradbury to take psychedelic drugs.

Association with Vedanta

Beginning in 1939 and continuing until his death in 1963, Huxley had an extensive association with the Vedanta Society of Southern California, founded and headed by Swami Prabhavananda. Together with Gerald Heard, Christopher Isherwood, and other followers he was initiated by the Swami and was taught meditation and spiritual practices.

In 1944 Huxley wrote the introduction to the "Bhagavad Gita: The Song of God", translated by Swami Prabhavanada and Christopher Isherwood, which was published by The Vedanta Society of Southern California.

From 1941 through 1960 Huxley contributed 48 articles to ''Vedanta and the West'', published by the Society. He also served on the editorial board with Isherwood, Heard, and playwright John van Druten from 1951 through 1962.

Huxley also occasionally lectured at the Hollywood and Santa Barbara Vedanta temples. Two of those lectures have been released on CD: ''Knowledge and Understanding'' and ''Who Are We'' from 1955.

After the publication of ''The Doors of Perception'', Huxley and the Swami disagreed about the meaning and importance of the LSD drug experience, which may have caused the relationship to cool, but Huxley continued to write articles for the Society's journal, lecture at the temple, and attend social functions.

Eyesight

With respect to details about the true quality of Huxley's eyesight at specific points in his life, there are differing accounts. Around 1939, Huxley encountered the Bates Method for better eyesight, and a teacher, Margaret Corbett, who was able to teach him in the method. In 1940, Huxley relocated from Hollywood to a ''ranchito'' in the high desert hamlet of Llano, California, in northernmost Los Angeles County. Huxley then said that his sight improved dramatically with the Bates Method and the extreme and pure natural lighting of the southwestern American desert. He reported that for the first time in over 25 years, he was able to read without glasses and without strain. He even tried driving a car along the dirt road beside the ranch. He wrote a book about his successes with the Bates Method, ''The Art of Seeing'', which was published in 1942 (US), 1943 (UK). It was from this period, with the publication of the generally disputed theories contained in the latter book, that a growing degree of popular controversy arose over the subject of Huxley’s eyesight.

It was, and to a noticeable extent still is, widely held that, for most of his life, since the illness in his teens which left Huxley nearly blind, that his eyesight was exceedingly poor (despite the partial recovery which had enabled him to study at Oxford). For instance, some ten years after publication of ''The Art of Seeing'', in 1952, Bennett Cerf was present when Huxley spoke at a Hollywood banquet, wearing no glasses and apparently reading his paper from the lectern without difficulty: "Then suddenly he faltered—and the disturbing truth became obvious. He wasn't reading his address at all. He had learned it by heart. To refresh his memory he brought the paper closer and closer to his eyes. When it was only an inch or so away he still couldn't read it, and had to fish for a magnifying glass in his pocket to make the typing visible to him. It was an agonising moment."

On the other hand, Huxley's second wife, Laura Archera Huxley, would later emphasise in her biographical account, ''This Timeless Moment'': "One of the great achievements of his life: that of having regained his sight." Here, she portrays the accomplishment as both metaphorical and considerably physiological in nature, attributing that which she cites J. Krishnamurti as naming the spirit of "freedom from the known", which she suggests that Huxley applied, non-exhaustively, in writing ''The Art of Seeing'' and utilising the Bates Method. After revealing a letter she wrote to the ''Los Angeles Times'' disclaiming the label of Huxley as a "poor fellow who can hardly see" by Walter C. Alvarez, she tempers this: "Although I feel it was an injustice to treat Aldous as though he were blind, it is true there were many indications of his impaired vision. For instance, although Aldous did not wear glasses, he would quite often use a magnifying lens." Laura Huxley proceeds to elaborate a few nuances of inconsistency peculiar to Huxley's vision. Her account, in this respect, is discernibly congruent with the following sample of Huxley's own words from ''The Art of Seeing''. "The most characteristic fact about the functioning of the total organism, or any part of the organism, is that it is not constant, but highly variable." Nevertheless, the topic of Huxley’s eyesight continues to endure similar, significant controversy, regardless of how trivial a subject matter it might initially appear.

Personal life

He married Maria Nys (10 September 1899 – 12 February 1955), a Belgian he met at Garsington, in 1919. They had one child, Matthew Huxley (19 April 1920 – 10 February 2005), who had a career as an author, anthropologist, and prominent epidemiologist. In 1955, Maria died of breast cancer.

In 1956 he married Laura Archera (1911–2007), also an author. She wrote ''This Timeless Moment'', a biography of Huxley. In 1960 Huxley himself was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer, and in the years that followed, with his health deteriorating, he wrote the Utopian novel ''Island'', and gave lectures on "Human Potentialities" at the Esalen institute, which were fundamental to the forming of the Human Potential Movement.

Death

On his deathbed, unable to speak, Huxley made a written request to his wife Laura for "LSD, 100 µg, intramuscular". According to her account of his death in ''This Timeless Moment'', she obliged with an injection at 11:45 am and another a couple of hours later. He died, aged 69, at 5:20 pm on 22 November 1963, several hours after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Huxley's ashes were interred in the family grave at the Watts Cemetery, home of the Watts Mortuary Chapel in Compton, a village near Guildford, Surrey, England.

Media coverage of Huxley's passing was overshadowed by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, on the same day, and the death of the British author C. S. Lewis, who also died on 22 November. This coincidence was the inspiration for Peter Kreeft's book ''Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis, & Aldous Huxley''. Huxley's literary legacy continues to be represented by the literary agency headed by Georges Borchardt.

Awards

1939 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for ''After Many a Summer Dies the Swan''.

1959 Aldous Huxley American Academy of Arts and Letters Award of Merit for ''Brave New World''.

1962 the Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature.

Film adaptations of Huxley's work

1968 ''Point Counter Point'' BBC mini-series by Simon Raven.

1971 ''The Devils'' (Ken Russell) adapted Huxley's ''The Devils of Loudun''.

1998 US TV adaptation of ''Brave New World''

Selected works

Novels

''Crome Yellow'' (1921)

''Antic Hay'' (1923)

''Those Barren Leaves'' (1925)

''Point Counter Point'' (1928)

''Brave New World'' (1932)

''Eyeless in Gaza'' (1936)

''After Many a Summer'' (1939)

''Time Must Have a Stop'' (1944)

''Ape and Essence'' (1948)

''The Genius and the Goddess'' (1955)

''Island'' (1962)

Short story collections

''Limbo'' (1920)

''Mortal Coils'' (1922)

''Little Mexican'' (U.S. title: ''Young Archimedes'') (1924)

''Two or Three Graces'' (1926)

''Brief Candles'' (1930)

''Jacob's Hands: A Fable'' (discovered 1997) co-written with Christopher Isherwood

''Collected Short Stories'' (1944)

Poetry collections

''Oxford Poetry'' (magazine editor) (1916)

''The Burning Wheel'' (1916)

''Jonah'' (1917)

''The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems'' (1918)

''Leda'' (1920)

''Selected Poems'' (1925)

''Arabia Infelix and Other Poems'' (1929)

''The Cicadas and Other Poems'' (1931)

''Collected Poems'' (1971, posthumous)

Essay collections

''On the Margin'' (1923)

''Along the Road'' (1925)

''Essays New and Old'' (1926)

''Proper Studies'' (1927)

''Do What You Will'' (1929)

''Vulgarity in Literature'' (1930)

''Music at Night'' (1931)

''Texts and Pretexts'' (1932)

''The Olive Tree and other essays'' (1936)

''Ends and Means'' (1937)

''Words and their Meanings'' (1940)

''The Art of Seeing'' (1942)

''The Perennial Philosophy'' (1945)

''Science, Liberty and Peace'' (1946)

''Themes and Variations'' (1950)

''The Doors of Perception'' (1954)

''Heaven and Hell'' (1956)

''Adonis and the Alphabet'' (U.S. title: ''Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow'') (1956)

''Collected Essays'' (1958)

''Brave New World Revisited'' (1958)

''Literature and Science'' (1963)

''Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience 1931–63'' (1977)

''The Human Situation: Lectures at Santa Barbara, 1959'' (1977)

Screenplays

''Brave New World''

''Ape and Essence''

''Pride and Prejudice'' (Collaboration. 1940)

''Madame Curie'' (Collaboration. 1943)

''Jane Eyre'' (Collaboration with John Houseman. 1944)

''A Woman's Vengeance'' 1947

Original screenplay for Disney's animated ''Alice in Wonderland'' 1951 (rejected) ''Eyeless in Gaza'' BBC Mini-series (Collaboration with Robin Chapman. Aired 1971)

Travel books

''Along The Road: Notes and essays of a tourist'' (1925)

''Jesting Pilate: The Diary of a Journey'' (1926)

''Beyond the Mexique Bay: A Traveller's Journey'' (1934)

Children's fiction

''The Crows of Pearblossom'' (1967)

''The Travails and Tribulations of Geoffrey Peacock'' (1967)

Drama

''The Discovery'' (adapted from Francis Sheridan, 1924)

''The World of Light'' (1931)

''Mortal Coils – A Play.'' (Stage version of ''The Gioconda Smile'', 1948)

''The Genius and the Goddess'' (stage version, co-written with Betty Wendel, 1958)

''The Ambassador of Captripedia'' (1967)

''Now More Than Ever'' (Huxley's lost play discovered in 2000 in the University of Münster, Germany's Department of English Literature)

Articles written for ''Vedanta and the West''

Distractions (1941)

Distractions II (1941)

Action and Contemplation (1941)

An Appreciation (1941)

The Yellow Mustard (1941)

Lines (1941)

Some Reflections of the Lord's Prayer (1941)

Reflections of the Lord's Prayer (1942)

Reflections of the Lord's Prayer II (1942)

Words and Reality (1942)

Readings in Mysticism (1942)

Man and Reality (1942)

The Magical and the Spiritual (1942)

Religion and Time (1943)

Idolatry (1943)

Religion and Temperament (1943)

A Note on the Bhagavatam (1943)

Seven Meditations (1943)

On a Sentence From Shakespeare (1944)

The Minimum Working Hypothesis (1944)

From a Notebook (1944)

The Philosophy of the Saints (1944)

That Art Thou (1945)

That Art Thou II (1945)

The Nature of the Ground (1945)

The Nature of the Ground II (1945)

God In the World (1945)

Origins and Consequences of Some Contemporary Thought-Patterns (1946)

The Sixth Patriarch (1946)

Some Reflections on Time (1946)

Reflections on Progress (1947)

Further Reflections on Progress (1947)

William Law (1947)

Notes on Zen (1947)

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread (1948)

A Note on Gandhi (1948)

Art and Religion (1949)

Foreword to an Essay on the Indian Philosophy of Peace (1950)

A Note on Enlightenment (1952)

Substitutes for Liberation (1952)

The Desert (1954)

A Note on Patanjali (1954)

Who Are We? (1955)

Foreword to the Supreme Doctrine (1956)

Knowledge and Understanding (1956)

The "Inanimate" is Alive (1957)

Symbol and Immediate Experience (1960)

Other

''Pacifism and Philosophy'' (1936)

''An Encyclopedia of Pacifism'' (editor, 1937)

''Grey Eminence'' (1941)

''The Devils of Loudun'' (1953)

''The Politics of Ecology'' (1962) (text)

''Selected Letters'' (2007)

Bibliography

Charles J. Rolo (ed.),''The World of Aldous Huxley'', Grosset Universal Library, 1947.

John Atkins, ''Aldous Huxley: A Literary Study'', J. Calder, 1956

Nicholas Murray, ''Aldous Huxley'', Macmillan, 2003, ISBN 0312302375

Laura Archera Huxley, ''This Timeless Moment'', Celestial Arts, 2001, ISBN 0890879689

Sybille Bedford, ''Aldous Huxley: A Biography'', Harper and Row, 1974, rev. ed., Ivan R. Dee, 2002 ISBN 1566634547

James Sexton (ed.), ''Aldous Huxley: Selected Letters'', Ivan R. Dee, 2007, ISBN 1566636292

David King Dunaway, ''Huxley in Hollywood'', HarperCollins 1990, ISBN 0385415915

Aldous Huxley, ''The Human Situation: Aldous Huxley Lectures at Santa Barbara 1959'', Flamingo Modern Classic, 1994, ISBN 0006547327

Conrad Watt (ed.), ''Aldous Huxley'', Routledge, 1997, ISBN 0415159159

Dana Sawyer, ''Aldous Huxley'', Crossroad Publishing Co., 2002, ISBN 0824519872

Jerome Meckier, ''Aldous Huxley: modern satirical novelist of ideas'', Firchow and Nugel editors, LIT Verlag Berlin-Hamburg-Münster, 2006, ISBN 3825896683

References

External links

Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery

BBC discussion programme ''In our time'': "Brave New World". Huxley and the novel. 9 April 2009. (Audio, 45 mins)

BBC ''In their own words'' series. 12 October 1958. (Video, 12 mins).

UC Berkeley, 20 March 1962)">"The Ultimate Revolution" (talk at UC Berkeley, 20 March 1962)

Huxley interviewed on ''The Mike Wallace interview'' 18 May 1958. (Video)

Centre for Huxley Research

Category:19th-century English people Category:Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford Category:British people of Cornish descent Category:Cancer deaths in California Category:Consciousness researchers and theorists Category:Deaths from laryngeal cancer Category:Duke University faculty Category:English essayists Category:English expatriates in the United States Category:English humanists Category:English novelists Category:English pacifists Category:English poets Category:English satirists Category:English science fiction writers Category:English short story writers Category:English travel writers Category:English vegetarians Category:Huxley family Category:People associated with the Human Potential Movement Category:People from Godalming Category:People from Los Angeles, California Category:Psychedelic drug advocates Category:Western mystics Category:Writers from Los Angeles Category:1894 births Category:1963 deaths

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name	Sheb Woolley
background	solo_singer
birth name	Shelby F. Wooley
alias	Ben Colder, Guy Drake
born	April 10, 1921
origin	Erick, Oklahoma
died	September 16, 2003
genre	Country, pop
occupation	Actor, singer-songwriter
years active	1955–1971
yearsactive	–
spouse	Linda Wooley (?-2003) (his death
label	MGM
website	}}

Shelby F. "Sheb" Wooley (April 10, 1921 – September 16, 2003) was a character actor and singer, best known for his 1958 novelty song "Purple People Eater". He played Ben Miller, brother of Frank Miller in the film ''High Noon'', and also had a co-starring role as scout Pete Nolan in the television program ''Rawhide''.

Biography

Wooley was born in Erick, Oklahoma, and was raised on a farm. He learned to ride horses at an early age, and was a working cowboy and rodeo rider. He also played in a country-western band. Wooley tried to enlist during World War II, but was turned down for military service because of his rodeo injuries. Instead, he worked in the oil industry and as a welder. In 1946, he moved to Fort Worth, Texas, and became a country and western musician. He moved to Hollywood in 1949.

Wooley appeared in dozens of western films from the 1950s through 1970s, most notably ''High Noon''. In 1954, he played outlaw Jim Younger in the syndicated western series ''Stories of the Century''. Wooley appeared five times as Carl in the syndicated western series ''The Adventures of Kit Carson'' (1951–1955). He appeared in ''The Cisco Kid'' in the role of Bill Bronson. Wooley guest starred as Harry Runyon in the episode "The Unmasking" of the CBS western ''My Friend Flicka''.

Wooley co-starred as Pete Nolan in the CBS western ''Rawhide'' (1959–1966) with Eric Fleming, Clint Eastwood, and Paul Brinegar. He also acted in the films ''The Outlaw Josey Wales'' and ''Giant''.

In the 1940s Wooley took an interest in his wife's young cousin, Roger Miller (who also grew up in Erick, Oklahoma), teaching him to play guitar chords, and purchasing him a fiddle.

In the late 1950s, Wooley embarked on a recording career, with the song that made him famous, the "Purple People Eater". He followed this with a series of lesser novelty hits. Wooley wrote the theme song for the long-running television show ''Hee Haw''.

Wooley also had a string of country hits, his "That's My Pa" reaching No. 1 of Billboard magazine's Hot C&W; Sides chart in March 1962. He was a regular on ''Hee Haw'' and ''The Muppet Show'' as the drunken country songwriter Ben Colder. He released music and performed as Ben Colder as well as under the stage name Guy Drake in the song "Welfare Cadillac" featured on the Porter Wagoner show in 1970 with the album "Welfare Cadillac" released soon there after and Wooley also performed using his own name as well. Wooley had intended to record the song "Don't Go Near The Indians", but he was delayed by an acting job. Meanwhile, Rex Allen recorded the song and it was a hit. Wooley said he did not mind - he would do the sequel. His version was "Don't Go Near the Eskimos", about a boy in Alaska named Ben Colder (had never "been colder"). His song was so successful he continued using the name for forty years, one of his last recordings being "Shaky Breaky Car" (which parodied the song "Achy Breaky Heart").

Wooley is credited as the voice actor for the Wilhelm scream, having appeared on a memo as a voice extra for ''Distant Drums'' and later confirmed by his widow. This particular scream recording has been used by sound effects teams in over 149 films.

Wooley continued occasional television and film appearances through the 1990s, including an appearance as Cletus Summers, principal of Hickory High School in the 1986 film ''Hoosiers''.

In 1996 he was diagnosed with leukemia. He died at the Skyline Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee in 2003 and was buried in Hendersonville Memory Gardens in Hendersonville, Tennessee.

Discography

Albums

! Year	! Album	Top Country Albums>US Country	! Label
1956	''Sheb Wooley''
1960	''Songs from the Days of Rawhide''
1962	''That's My Pa and That's My Ma''
	''Tales of How the West Was Won''
''Spoofing the Big Ones'' (as Ben Colder)
''Ben Colder'' (as Ben Colder)
	''The Very Best''
''It's a Big Land''
1966	''Big Ben Strikes Again'' (as Ben Colder)
1967	''Wine Women & Song'' (as Ben Colder)
	''The Best of Ben Colder'' (as Ben Colder)
''Harper Valley P.T.A. (Later The Same Day)'' (as Ben Colder)
	''Warm and Wooley''
''Have One On'' (as Ben Colder)
1970	''Big Ben Colder Wild Again'' (as Ben Colder)
1970	''Welfare Cadillac'' (as Guy Drake)
1971	''Live and Loaded'' (as Ben Colder)
1972	''Warming Up to Colder'' (as Ben Colder)
1973	''The Wacky World'' (as Ben Colder)

Singles

Year	Single	Chart Positions				Album
		! width="45"	! width="45"	CAN Country	! width="45"
1955	"Are You Satisfied"
1958	"Purple People Eater"
1959	"Sweet Chile"
	"That's My Pa"					''That's My Pa and That's My Ma''
"Don't Go Near the Eskimos" (as Ben Colder)					''Spoofing the Big Ones''
	"Hello Wall No. 2" (as Ben Colder)					''Ben Colder''
"Detroit City No. 2" (as Ben Colder)					''Spoofing the Big Ones''
1964	"Blue Guitar"					''The Very Best''
	"I'll Leave the Singin' to the Bluebirds"					single only
"Almost Persuaded No. 2" (as Ben Colder)					''Big Ben Strikes Again''
"Tonight's the Night My Angel's Halo Fell"					single only
	"Tie a Tiger Down"					''Warm and Wooley''
"Harper Valley P.T.A. (Later That Same Day)" (as Ben Colder)
	"Little Green Apples No. 2" (as Ben Colder)
"I Remember Loving You"					''Warm and Wooley''
"The One Man Band"					single only
1970	"Big Sweet John" (as Ben Colder)					''Have One On''
1970	"Welfare Cadillac" (as Guy Drake)					''Welfare Cadillac''
1971	"Fifteen Beers Ago" (as Ben Colder)					''Live and Loaded''

References

External links

Official website

[ Allmusic Entry]

Category:1921 births Category:2003 deaths Category:People from Beckham County, Oklahoma Category:People from Fort Worth, Texas Category:American film actors Category:American television actors Category:American country musicians Category:American country singers Category:American novelty song performers Category:Musicians from Oklahoma Category:MGM Records artists Category:Deaths from leukemia Category:Cancer deaths in Tennessee Category:Parody musicians

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