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Todd Park Mohr (born 19 October 1965) is the singer and guitarist for the American rock band Big Head Todd & the Monsters, as well as being the band's namesake and primary lyricist. A founding member of the band, he also occasionally provides keyboards and saxophone in addition to his duties as frontman.

Todd was born in Colorado and is of Korean and German descent. He attended Columbine High School,^[1] then Colorado State University in Fort Collins and later transferred to University of Colorado Boulder along with the other members of the band, which achieved some mainstream success in the early to mid-nineties.

Todd helped to form the band Big Head Todd & the Monsters with his friends from high school, while touring the night scene in Denver, Fort Collins, and Boulder. Influenced by jazz music from an early age, he has incorporated several elements of it into his music, developing his own unique sound. Todd primarily plays old Fender Stratocasters and Telecasters and is known for his raw, powerful solos and use of sweep picking.

References[link]

• http://www.bigheadtodd.com/news/timeline/

Look up todd in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Todd may refer to:

• Todd (surname)
• Todd (given name)
• Todd (album), a 1974 album by Todd Rundgren
• Todd (elm cultivar)
• Todd, California
• Todd, North Carolina
• Todd County, Kentucky
• Todd County, Minnesota
• Todd County, South Dakota
• Todd Township, Minnesota
• Todd Township, Fulton County, Pennsylvania
• Todd Township, Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania
• Todd (Cars), a character in Cars
• The Todd (Scrubs), a character on Scrubs
• Todd class, a characteristic class in algebraic topology
• Todd (Stargate), a Wraith from the series Stargate Atlantis
• Todd-AO, a company in film post-production

See also[link]

• TOD (disambiguation)

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

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The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (December 2010)

Central Park, New York, the most visited city park in the United States

Yoyogi Park, Tokyo, Japan

The Summer Garden, St. Petersburg, Russia.

The Queen Elizabeth Park, Vancouver, Canada

Englischer Garten, Munich, Germany

Parade Gardens, a park in Bath, England

Public park, Tours, France.

Laleh Park's southwestern entrance with a statue of Biruni, a medieval Persian astronomer. Tehran, Iran.

A park is a protected area, in its natural or semi-natural state, or planted, and set aside for human recreation and enjoyment, or for the protection of wildlife or natural habitats. It may consist of rocks, soil, water, flora and fauna and grass areas. Many parks are legally protected by law.

Wilderness parks are intact and undeveloped areas used mainly by wild species. Protected wilderness zones are required for some wild species to survive. Some protected parks focus mainly on the survival of a few threatened species, such as gorillas or chimpanzees.

History[link]

The first parks were deer parks, land set aside for hunting by royalty and the aristocracy in medieval times. They had walls or thick hedges around them to keep game in and people out.

These game preserves evolved into landscaped parks set around mansions and country houses from the sixteenth century onwards. These may have served as hunting grounds but they also proclaimed the owner's wealth and status. An aesthetic of landscape design began in these stately home parks where the natural landscape was enhanced by landscape architects such as Capability Brown. As cities became crowded, the private hunting grounds became places for the public.

With the Industrial revolution parks took on a new meaning as areas set aside to preserve a sense of nature in the cities and towns. Sporting activity came to be a major use for these urban parks. Areas of outstanding natural beauty were also set aside as national parks to prevent their being spoilt by uncontrolled development.

Government-owned or -operated parks[link]

National parks[link]

A national park is a reserve of land, usually, but not always declared and owned by a national government, protected from most human development and pollution. Although this may be so, it is not likely that the government of a specific area owns it, rather the community itself. National parks are a protected area of IUCN category II. The largest national park in the world is the Northeast Greenland National Park, which was established in 1974.

In the United States the concept of preserving landscapes for the pleasure of the people was established on June 30, 1864, when President Abraham Lincoln signed the bill creating the Yosemite Grant. A policy of preservation, rather than co-usage as in the National Forests, where grazing, farming and logging are licensed, was implemented four decades later during the presidential administration of Teddy Roosevelt, and Yosemite became a national park. Tourism and, later, recreation were the intended purposes of the lands Roosevelt set aside in the system. John Muir was instrumental in this effort.

These parks were termed national parks and today are looked after by the U.S. National Park Service. There are also national parks in many other countries.

Sub-national parks[link]

In Federal systems, many parks are managed by the local levels of government, rather than by the central government. In the United States these include state parks and in Canada provincial or territorial parks, except in Quebec where they are known as National Parks (see Quebec nationalism).

Urban parks[link]

A park is an area of open space provided for recreational use, usually owned and maintained by a local government. Parks commonly resemble savannas or open woodlands, the types of landscape that human beings find most relaxing.^{[citation needed]} Grass is typically kept short to discourage insect pests and to allow for the enjoyment of picnics and sporting activities. Trees are chosen for their beauty and to provide shade.

The world's first public park is claimed to be la Alameda de Hércules, in Seville. It is a promenaded public mall, urban garden and park built in 1574, within the historic center of Seville. It is located between the river Guadalquivir and the Macarena neighborhood. Other early parks include the City Park, in Budapest, Hungary, which was property of the Batthyány family. In 1808 an Imperial law converted it to the English style. Some years later the Count Batthyány ordered that it should be established as a public park. The earliest purpose built public park, although financed privately, was Princes Park in the Liverpool suburb of Toxteth. This was laid out to the designs of Joseph Paxton from 1842 and opened in 1843. The land on which the park was built was purchased by Richard Vaughan Yates, an iron merchant and philanthropist, in 1841 for £50,000. The creation of Princes Park showed great foresight and introduced a number of highly influential ideas. First and foremost was the provision of open space for the benefit of townspeople and local residents within an area that was being rapidly built up. Secondly it took the concept of the designed landscape as a setting for the suburban domicile, an idea pioneered by John Nash at Regent’s Park, and re-fashioned it for the provincial town in a most original way. Nash’s remodelling of St James’s Park from 1827 and the sequence of processional routes he created to link The Mall with Regent’s Park completely transformed the appearance of London’s West End. With the establishment of Princes Park in 1842, Joseph Paxton did something similar for the benefit of a provincial town, albeit one of international stature by virtue of its flourishing mercantile contingent. Liverpool had a burgeoning presence on the scene of global maritime trade before 1800 and during the Victorian era its wealth rivalled that of London itself.

The form and layout of Paxton’s ornamental grounds, structured about an informal lake within the confines of a serpentine carriageway, put in place the essential elements of his much imitated design for Birkenhead Park. The latter was commenced in 1843 with the help of public finance and deployed the ideas he pioneered at Princes Park on a more expansive scale. Frederick Law Olmstead visited Birkenhead Park in 1850 and praised its qualities. Indeed Paxton is widely credited as having been one of the principal influences on Olmstead and Calvert’s design for New York’s Central Park of 1857.

Another early public park is the Peel Park, Salford, England opened on 22 August 1846.^[1][2][3] Another possible claimant for status as the world's first public park is Boston Common (Boston, Massachusetts, USA), set aside in 1634, whose first recreational promenade, Tremont Mall, dates from 1728. True park status for the entire common seems to have emerged no later than 1830, when the grazing of cows was ended and renaming the Common as Washington Park was proposed (renaming the bordering Sentry Street to Park Street in 1808 already acknowledged the reality).

Parks can be divided into active and passive recreation areas. Active recreation is that which has an urban character and requires intensive development. It often involves cooperative or team activity, including playgrounds, ball fields, swimming pools, gymnasiums, and skateparks. Active recreation such as team sports, due to the need to provide substantial space to congregate, typically involves intensive management, maintenance, and high costs. Passive recreation, also called "low intensity recreation" is that which emphasizes the open-space aspect of a park and allows for the preservation of natural habitat. It usually involves a low level of development, such as rustic picnic areas, benches and trails. Passive recreation typically requires little management and can be provided at very low costs. Some open space managers provide nothing other than trails for physical activity in the form of walking, running, horse riding, mountain biking, snow shoeing, or cross-country skiing; or sedentary activity such as observing nature, bird watching, painting, photography, or picnicking. Limiting park or open space use to passive recreation over all or a portion of the park's area eliminates or reduces the burden of managing active recreation facilities and developed infrastructure. Many ski resorts combine active recreation facilities (ski lifts, gondolas, terrain parks, downhill runs, and lodges) with passive recreation facilities (cross-country ski trails).^{[citation needed]}

Many smaller neighborhood parks are receiving increased attention and valuation as significant community assets and places of refuge in heavily populated urban areas. Neighborhood groups around the world are joining together to support local parks that have suffered from urban decay and government neglect.

A linear park is a park that has a much greater length than width. A typical example of a linear park is a section of a former railway that has been converted into a park called a rail trail or greenway (i.e. the tracks removed, vegetation allowed to grow back). Parks are sometimes made out of oddly shaped areas of land, much like the vacant lots that often become city neighborhood parks. Linked parks may form a greenbelt.

Country parks[link]

In some countries, especially the United Kingdom, country parks are areas designated for recreation, and managed by local authorities. They are often located near urban populations, but they provide recreational facilities typical of the countryside rather than the town.

Private parks[link]

Private parks are owned by individuals or businesses and are used at the discretion of the owner. There are a few types of private parks, and some which once were privately maintained and used have now been made open to the public.

Hunting parks were originally areas maintained as open space where residences, industry and farming were not allowed, often originally so that nobility might have a place to hunt — see medieval deer park. These were known for instance, as deer parks (deer being originally a term meaning any wild animal). Many country houses in Great Britain and Ireland still have parks of this sort, which since the 18th century have often been landscaped for aesthetic effect. They are usually a mixture of open grassland with scattered trees and sections of woodland, and are often enclosed by a high wall. The area immediately around the house is the garden. In some cases this will also feature sweeping lawns and scattered trees; the basic difference between a country house's park and its garden is that the park is grazed by animals, but they are excluded from the garden.

Other uses[link]

The term park is also used in reference to industrial areas, often termed industrial parks. Some technology research areas are also called research parks. Small environmental areas, often part of urban renewal plans, are called pocket parks. The word park may also be used in community names, such as Oak Park or College Park. Sometimes the active recreational aspect may be expressed in the extreme of naming an amusement park, usually privately owned. A car park is an area of land or a building in which cars are parked.

An amusement park, or theme park is a generic term for a collection of rides and other entertainment attractions assembled for the purpose of entertainment.

See also[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Parks

• Conservation area
• Landscape architecture
• List of national parks
• Protected area
• Public Open Space
• Royal forest

References[link]

External links[link]

Look up park in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Essay on public parks
•  Frederick Law Olmsted (1879). "Park". The American Cyclopædia. 

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2011)

Hubert Sumlin
Background information
Birth name	Hubert Sumlin
Born	(1931-11-16)November 16, 1931 Greenwood, Mississippi, United States
Died	December 4, 2011(2011-12-04) (aged 80) Wayne, New Jersey, United States
Genres	Chicago blues, electric blues[1]
Occupations	Singer, guitarist
Instruments	Guitar, vocals
Years active	1954–2011
Associated acts	Howlin' Wolf Muddy Waters
Website	Official website
Notable instruments
Gibson Les Paul Goldtop

Hubert Sumlin (November 16, 1931 – December 4, 2011) was an American Chicago blues and electric blues guitarist and singer.^[1] He was best known for his celebrated work, from 1955, as guitarist in Howlin' Wolf's band. His singular playing was characterized by "wrenched, shattering bursts of notes, sudden cliff-hanger silences and daring rhythmic suspensions".^[2] Sumlin was listed as number 43 in the Rolling Stone 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.^[3]

Sumlin favored a 1955 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop guitar and a Louis Electric Model HS M12 amplifier.^{[citation needed]}

Biography[link]

Born in Greenwood, Mississippi, United States, Sumlin was raised in Hughes, Arkansas. He got his first guitar when he was eight years old.^[4] As a boy, Sumlin first met Howlin' Wolf by sneaking into a performance. When Wolf relocated from Memphis to Chicago in 1953, his long-time guitarist Willie Johnson chose not to join him. Upon his arrival in Chicago, Wolf first hired Chicago guitarist Jody Williams, and in 1954 Wolf invited Sumlin to relocate to Chicago to play second guitar in his Chicago-based band. Williams left the band in 1955, leaving Sumlin as the primary guitarist, a position he held almost continuously (except for a brief spell playing with Muddy Waters around 1956) for the remainder of Wolf's career. According to Sumlin, Howlin' Wolf sent Sumlin to a classical guitar instructor at the Chicago Conservatory of Music for awhile to learn the keyboards and scales.^[5] Sumlin played on the album Howlin' Wolf, also called The Rockin' Chair Album, which was named the third greatest guitar album of all time by Mojo magazine in 2004.^[6][7]

Upon Wolf's death in 1976, Sumlin continued on with several other members of the late Howlin' Wolf's band under the name "The Wolf Pack" until about 1980. Sumlin has also recorded under his own name, beginning with a session recorded while touring Europe with Wolf in 1964. His final solo effort was About Them Shoes, released in 2004 by Tone-Cool Records. He underwent lung removal surgery the same year, yet Sumlin continued performing until just before his death.

Sumlin was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 2008.^[8] He was nominated for four Grammy Awards; in 1999 for the album Tribute to Howlin' Wolf with Henry Gray, Calvin Jones, Sam Lay, and Colin Linden, in 2000 for Legends with Pinetop Perkins, in 2006 for his solo project About Them Shoes (which featured performances by Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Levon Helm, David Johansen and James Cotton) and in 2010 for his participation on Kenny Wayne Shepherd's Live! in Chicago. He won multiple Blues Music Awards, and was a judge for the fifth annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists' careers.^[9]

He died on December 4, 2011, in a hospital in Wayne, New Jersey, of heart failure at the age of 80.^[10] Mick Jagger and Keith Richards paid Sumlin's funeral costs.^[11]

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

^[12]

Videos[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Hubert Sumlin at Allmusic
• Hubert Sumlin biography at About.com
• BBC review of About Them Shoes
• Hubert Sumlin video from Seventh Hour Blues magazine
• Hubert Sumlin 1931-2011

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (April 2008)

James Cotton
James Cotton 2007
Background information
Born	(1935-07-01) July 1, 1935 (age 76) Tunica, Mississippi, United States
Genres	Blues
Occupations	Musician
Instruments	Vocals, harmonica, drums
Years active	1953–present
Labels	Buddah Records Alligator Records Telarc International
Associated acts	Muddy Waters Howlin' Wolf Matt Murphy
Website	Official website

In Delray Beach, Florida

James Cotton (born July 1, 1935, Tunica, Mississippi, United States)^[1] is an American blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter, who has performed and recorded with many of the great blues artists of his time as well as with his own band.

Career[link]

Cotton became interested in music when he first heard Sonny Boy Williamson II on the radio. He left home with his uncle and moved to West Helena, Arkansas, finding Williamson there. For many years Cotton claimed that he told Williamson that he was an orphan, and that Williamson took him in and raised him; a story he admitted in recent years is not true. Williamson did however mentor Cotton during his early years.^[2] When Williamson left the south to live with his estranged wife in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he left his band in Cotton's hands. Cotton was quoted as saying, "He just gave it to me. But I couldn't hold it together 'cause I was too young and crazy in those days an' everybody in the band was grown men, so much older than me."

Cotton performing in 2008

Although he played drums early in his career, Cotton is famous for his work on the harmonica.

Cotton began his professional career playing the blues harp in Howlin' Wolf's band in the early 1950s.^[2] He made his first recordings as a solo artist for the Sun Records label in Memphis, Tennessee in 1953. Cotton began to work with the Muddy Waters Band around 1955.^[2] He performed songs such as "Got My Mojo Working" and "She's Nineteen Years Old", although he did not appear on the original recordings; long-time Muddy Waters harmonica player Little Walter was utilized on most of Muddy's recording sessions in the 1950s. Cotton's first recording session with Waters took place in June 1957, and he would alternate with Little Walter on Muddy's recording sessions until the end of the decade, and thereafter until he left to form his own band. In 1965 he formed the Jimmy Cotton Blues Quartet, utilizing Otis Spann on piano to record between gigs with Muddy Waters' band. Their performances were captured by producer Samuel Charters on volume two of the Vanguard recording Chicago/The Blues/Today!. After leaving Muddy's band in 1966, Cotton toured with Janis Joplin while pursuing a solo career.^[2] He formed the James Cotton Blues Band in 1967. They mainly performed their own arrangements of popular blues and R&B material from the 1950s and 1960s. Two albums were recorded live in Montreal that year.

James Cotton at Jeff Healey's blues nightclub in Toronto

In the 1960s, Cotton formed a blues band in the tradition of Bobby Bland. Four tracks that featured the big band horn sound and traditional songs were captured on the album Two Sides of the Blue.

In the 1970s, Cotton recorded several albums with Buddah Records. Cotton played harmonica on Muddy Waters' Grammy Award winning 1977 album Hard Again, produced by Johnny Winter. The James Cotton Blues Band received a Grammy nomination in 1984 for Live From Chicago: Mr. Superharp Himself!, and a second for his 1987 release, Take Me Back. He finally was awarded a Grammy for Deep in the Blues in 1996 for Best Traditional Blues Album.^[3]

Cotton appeared on the cover of Living Blues magazine in 1987 in the July/August issue (#76).^[4] He was featured in the same publication's 40th anniversary issue, released in 2010 in August/September.

Cotton battled throat cancer in the mid-1990s, and his last recorded vocal performance was on 2000's Fire Down Under the Hill, but he continued to tour, utilizing singers or his backing band members as vocalists. Cotton's latest studio album, Giant, is scheduled for release on Alligator Records in late September 2010.^[5]

On March 10, 2008, Cotton and Ben Harper inducted Little Walter into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They performed "Juke" and "My Babe" together at the induction ceremony which was broadcast nationwide on VH1 Classic. On August 30, 2010, Cotton was the special guest on Larry Monroe's farewell broadcast of Blue Monday which he hosted on KUT in Austin, Texas for nearly 30 years.^[6]

Musical company[link]

Cotton has worked with artists including:-

Selected discography[link]

• Chicago/The Blues/Today! vol. 2
• 1966 Cut You Loose! (Vanguard)
• 1967 Cotton in Your Ears (Verve)
• 1970 Taking Care of Business (Capitol)
• 1974 100% Cotton (Buddah; w/ Mat "Guitar" Murphy)
• 1976 Live & On the Move (Buddah)
• 1978 High Energy (Buddah)
• 1984 High Compression (Alligator)
• 1986 Live from Chicago Mr. Superharp Himself (Alligator)
• 1987 Take Me Back (Blind Pig; reissued on vinyl 2009)
• 1988 Live at Antone's (Antone's)
• 1990 Harp Attack! (Alligator; w/ Carey Bell, Junior Wells, and Billy Branch)
• 1991 Mighty Long Time (Antone's)
• 1994 3 Harp Boogie (Tomato)
• 1994 Living the Blues (Verve)
• 1995 Two Sides of the Blues
• 1996 Deep in the Blues (Verve)
• 1998 Seems Like Yesterday (Justin Time)
• 1998 Late Night Blues: Live at the Penelope Café 1967 (Justin Time)
• 1999 Best of the Vanguard Years (Vanguard)
• 1999 Superharps (Telarc; w/ Charlie Musselwhite, Sugar Ray Norcia, and Billy Branch)
• 2000 Fire Down Under the Hill (Telarc)
• 2002 35th Anniversary Jam (Telarc)
• 2004 Baby, Don't You Tear My Clothes (Telarc)
• 2007 Breakin' it Up, Breakin' it Down (Legacy; with Muddy Waters and Johnny Winter)
• 2010 Giant (Alligator)

See also[link]

• Chicago Blues Festival

References[link]

External links[link]

• Allmusic
• James Cotton discography from Music City
• His official website
• Review of Breakin' It Up Breakin' It Down CD on Allmusic.com
• Hondarribia blues festival
• PBS American Roots Music Oral History