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• 
  

• 
  Canada
  Canada ( /ˈkænədə/) is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean. Spanning over 9,900,000 km² (3,800,000 sq mi), Canada is the world's second-largest country by total area, and its common border with the United States is the longest land border in the world.
  The land that is now Canada has been inhabited for millennia by various Aboriginal peoples. Beginning in the late 15th century, British and French colonial expeditions explored, and later settled, along the region's Atlantic coast. France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763 after the Seven Years' War. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces. This began an accretion of provinces and territories and a process of increasing autonomy; the Canada Act 1982 severed the vestiges of legal dependence on Britain.
  
  wn.com/Canada
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  Chicago
  Chicago (ⁱ/ʃɪˈkɑːɡoʊ/ or /ʃɪˈkɔːɡoʊ/) is the largest city in the US state of Illinois and the third most populous city in the United States after New York City and Los Angeles. The city has around 2.7 million residents. Its metropolitan area, sometimes called "Chicagoland", is the third largest in the United States, with an estimated 9.8 million people. Chicago is the county seat of Cook County, though a small portion also extends into DuPage County.
  Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837, near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed. Today, Chicago is listed as an alpha+ global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, and ranks seventh in the world on the 2012 Global Cities Index. The city retains its status as an international hub for finance, industry, telecommunications and infrastructure, with O'Hare International Airport being the second busiest airport in the world in terms of traffic movements. In 2008^[update], the city hosted 45.6 million domestic and overseas visitors. Among metropolitan areas, Chicago has the 4th largest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the world, ranking just behind Tokyo, New York City, and Los Angeles. Chicago is one of the most important Worldwide Centers of Commerce and trade.
  
  wn.com/Chicago
• 
  Florida
  Florida (ⁱ/ˈflɒrɪdə/) is a state in the southeastern United States, bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. Florida is the 22nd most extensive, the 4th most populous, and the 8th most densely populated of the 50 United States. The state capital is Tallahassee, its largest city is Jacksonville, and the South Florida metropolitan area is the largest metropolitan area in the southeastern U.S.
  Much of Florida is situated on a peninsula between the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Straits of Florida. Its geography is marked by a coastline, by the omnipresence of water and the threat of hurricanes. Florida has the longest coastline in the contiguous United States, encompassing approximately 1,350 miles (2,170 km), and is the only state to border both the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. Much of the state is at or near sea level and its terrain is characterized by sedimentary soils. The climate varies from subtropical in the north to tropical in the south. Its symbolic animals like the American alligator, Florida panther and the manatee, can be found in the Everglades, one of the most famous national parks in the world.
  
  wn.com/Florida
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  France
  France (English ⁱ/ˈfræns/ FRANSS or /ˈfrɑːns/ FRAHNSS; French: [fʁɑ̃s] ( listen)), officially the French Republic (French: République française [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. It is often referred to as l’Hexagone ("The Hexagon") because of the geometric shape of its territory. It is the largest western European country and it possesses the second-largest exclusive economic zone in the world, covering 11,035,000 km² (4,260,000 sq mi), just behind that of the United States (11,351,000 km² / 4,383,000 sq mi).
  Over the past 500 years, France has been a major power with strong cultural, economic, military and political influence in Europe and around the world. During the 17th and 18th centuries, France colonised great parts of North America and Southeast Asia; during the 19th and early 20th centuries, France built the second largest colonial empire of the time, including large portions of North, West and Central Africa, Southeast Asia, and many Caribbean and Pacific Islands.
  
  wn.com/France
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  Germany
  Germany (ⁱ/ˈdʒɜrməni/), officially the Federal Republic of Germany (German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland, pronounced [ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant] ( listen)), is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km² and has a largely temperate seasonal climate. With 81.8 million inhabitants, it is the most populous member state and the largest economy in the European Union. It is one of the major political powers of the European continent and a technological leader in many fields.
  A region named Germania, inhabited by several Germanic peoples, was documented before AD 100. During the Migration Period, the Germanic tribes expanded southward, and established successor kingdoms throughout much of Europe. Beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation while southern and western parts remained dominated by Roman Catholic denominations, with the two factions clashing in the Thirty Years' War, marking the beginning of the Catholic–Protestant divide that has characterized German society ever since. Occupied during the Napoleonic Wars, the rise of Pan-Germanism inside the German Confederation resulted in the unification of most of the German states into the German Empire in 1871 which was Prussian dominated. After the German Revolution of 1918–1919 and the subsequent military surrender in World War I, the Empire was replaced by the Weimar Republic in 1918, and partitioned in the Treaty of Versailles. Amidst the Great Depression, the Third Reich was proclaimed in 1933. The latter period was marked by Fascism and World War II. After 1945, Germany was divided by allied occupation, and evolved into two states, East Germany and West Germany. In 1990 Germany was reunified.
  
  wn.com/Germany
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  Harlem
  Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands. Harlem was annexed to New York City in 1873.
  Harlem has been defined by a series of boom-and-bust cycles, with significant ethnic shifts accompanying each cycle. Black residents began to arrive en masse in 1904, with numbers fed by the Great Migration. In the 1920s and 1930s, the neighborhood was the focus of the "Harlem Renaissance", an outpouring of artistic and professional works without precedent in the American black community. However, with job losses in the time of the Great Depression and the deindustrialization of New York City after World War II, rates of crime and poverty increased significantly.
  New York's revival in the late 20th century has led to renewal in Harlem as well. By 1995, Harlem was experiencing social and economic gentrification. Though the percentage of residents who are black peaked in 1950, the area remains predominantly black.
  
  wn.com/Harlem
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  Hollywood
  Hollywood is a district in Los Angeles, California, United States situated west-northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Due to its fame and cultural identity as the historical center of movie studios and movie stars, the word Hollywood is often used as a metonym of American cinema. Today, much of the movie industry has dispersed into surrounding areas such as the Westside neighborhood, and the San Fernando and Santa Clarita Valleys, but significant auxiliary industries, such as editing, effects, props, post-production, and lighting companies remain in Hollywood, as does the backlot of Paramount Pictures.
  On February 16, 2005, California Assembly Members Jackie Goldberg and Paul Koretz introduced a bill to require California to keep specific records on Hollywood as if it were independent, although it is not the typical practice of the City of Los Angeles to establish specific boundaries for districts or neighborhoods. For this to be done, the boundaries were defined. The bill was unanimously supported by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and the Los Angeles City Council. Assembly Bill 588 was approved by the Governor of California on August 28, 2006, and now the district of Hollywood has official borders. The border can be loosely described as the area east of West Hollywood, south of Mulholland Drive, Laurel Canyon, Cahuenga Boulevard, and Barham Boulevard, and the cities of Burbank and Glendale, north of Melrose Avenue and west of the Golden State Freeway and Hyperion Avenue. This includes all of Griffith Park and Los Feliz^{[citation needed]} – two areas that were hitherto considered separate from Hollywood by most Angelenos. The population of the district, including Los Feliz, as of the 2000 census was 123,436 and the median household income was $33,409 in 1999.
  
  wn.com/Hollywood
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  Jersey Shore
  The Jersey Shore is a term used to refer to both the Atlantic coast of the U.S. state of New Jersey and the adjacent resort and residential communities. The New Jersey State Department of Tourism considers the Shore Region, Greater Atlantic City, and the Southern Shore to be distinct, each having a different character. The other three tourism marketing areas are the Gateway, the Delaware Valley, and the Skylands.
  Geographically, the term encompasses about 217 miles of the New Jersey coastal area from Sandy Hook in the north to Cape May in the south. The Jersey Shore area includes the easternmost portions of Monmouth, Atlantic, Cape May and Ocean counties. While there is no defined border between North Jersey and South Jersey, the Manasquan River or Interstate 195 are often mentioned as the border.
  The coast is lined with over 40 communities, including Long Branch, Asbury Park, Ocean Grove, Belmar, Spring Lake, Manasquan, Point Pleasant Beach, Seaside Heights, Long Beach Island, Brigantine, Atlantic City, Ocean City, Sea Isle City, Wildwood, Wildwood Crest, Chadwick Beach Island, Cape May, and Stone Harbor. Long Branch and Cape May both claim to be the country's original seashore resort; Ocean Grove and Cape May are world-renowned for their collections of Victorian residential architecture.
  
  wn.com/Jersey_Shore
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  Las Vegas Valley
  The Las Vegas Valley is a metropolitan area in the southern part of the US state of Nevada, and is the heart of the Las Vegas–Paradise, NV MSA also known as the Las Vegas–Paradise–Henderson MSA which includes all of Clark County, Nevada. The Valley is defined by the Las Vegas Valley landform, a 600 sq mi (1,600 km²) basin area that contains the largest concentration of people in the state. The history of the Valley significantly intertwines with the history of the city of Las Vegas and one of the two primary cities (as used by the census bureau) in the MSA, with the other being Paradise. The valley is home to the three largest incorporated cities in Nevada: Las Vegas, Henderson and North Las Vegas.
  The names Las Vegas and Vegas are used to indicate the valley, the strip, the city and are used as a brand by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and used to denominate the entire region. The metropolitan area's population was at 741,459 in 1990. The population was approximately 2 million in 2010 (estimated). The valley is an area generally defined by the Spring Mountains on the west, Sheep Mountains to the north, Muddy Mountains and Lake Mead to the east, and the Black Mountains to the south.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Las_Vegas_Valley
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  Library of Congress
  The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States of America, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in four buildings in Washington, D.C., as well as the Packard Campus in Culpeper, Virginia, it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and number of books. The head of the Library is the Librarian of Congress, currently James H. Billington.
  The Library of Congress was instituted for Congress in 1800, and was housed in the United States Capitol for most of the 19th century. After much of the original collection had been destroyed during the War of 1812, Thomas Jefferson sold 6,487 books, his entire personal collection, to the library in 1815. After a period of decline during the mid-19th century the Library of Congress began to grow rapidly in both size and importance after the American Civil War, culminating in the construction of a separate library building and the transference of all copyright deposit holdings to the Library. During the rapid expansion of the 20th century the Library of Congress assumed a preeminent public role, becoming a "library of last resort" and expanding its mission for the benefit of scholars and the American people.
  
  wn.com/Library_of_Congress
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  London
  London ⁱ/ˈlʌndən/ is the capital city of England and the United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its founding by the Romans, who named it Londinium. London's ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its square-mile mediaeval boundaries. Since at least the 19th century, the name London has also referred to the metropolis developed around this core. The bulk of this conurbation forms the London region and the Greater London administrative area, governed by the elected Mayor of London and the London Assembly.
  London is a leading global city, with strengths in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism and transport all contributing to its prominence. It is the world's leading financial centre alongside New York City and has the fifth-largest city GDP in the world (and the largest in Europe). London has been described as a world cultural capital. It was the world's most visited city during 2011 and London Heathrow is the world's busiest airport by number of international passengers. London's 43 universities form the largest concentration of higher education in Europe. In 2012 London will become the first city to host the modern Summer Olympic Games three times.
  
  wn.com/London
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  Netherlands
  The Netherlands (ⁱ/ˈnɛðərləndz/; Dutch: Nederland [ˈneːdə(r)lɑnt] or [ˈneɪ̯də(r)lɑnt] ( listen); West Frisian: Nederlân; Papiamento: Hulanda) is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with some islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders with Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom. It is a parliamentary democracy organised as a unitary state. The country capital is Amsterdam and the seat of government is The Hague. The Netherlands in its entirety is often referred to as Holland, although North and South Holland are actually only two of its twelve provinces (a case of pars pro toto; see terminology of "the Netherlands").
  
  wn.com/Netherlands
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  New Jersey
  New Jersey (ⁱ/nuː ˈdʒɜrzi/) is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the U.S. state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania, and on the southwest by Delaware. New Jersey is the 4th least extensive, but the 11th most populous and the most densely populated of the 50 United States. New Jersey lies mostly within the sprawling metropolitan areas of New York City and Philadelphia. It is also the third wealthiest by 2009–2010 median household income.
  The area was inhabited by Native Americans for more than 2,800 years, with historical tribes such as the Lenape along the coast. In the early 17th century, the Dutch and the Swedes made the first European settlements. The British later seized control of the region, naming it the Province of New Jersey. It was granted as a colony to Sir George Carteret and John Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley of Stratton. At this time, it was named after the largest of the British Channel Islands, Jersey, Carteret's birthplace. New Jersey was the site of several decisive battles during the American Revolutionary War.
  
  wn.com/New_Jersey
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  New Orleans
  New Orleans ( /nuː ˈɔrliənz/ or /ˈnuː ɔrˈliːnz/, locally /nuː ˈɔrlənz/ or /ˈnɔrlənz/; French: La Nouvelle-Orléans [la nuvɛlɔʁleɑ̃] ( listen)) is a major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana. The population of the city proper was 343,829 as of the 2010 U.S. Census. The New Orleans metropolitan area (New Orleans–Metairie–Kenner Metropolitan Statistical Area) had a population of 1,167,764 in 2010 and was the 46th largest in the United States. The New Orleans–Metairie–Bogalusa Combined Statistical Area, a larger trading area, had a 2010 population of 1,214,932.
  The city is named after Philippe d'Orléans, Duke of Orléans, Regent of France, and is well known for its distinct French Creole architecture, as well as its cross-cultural and multilingual heritage. New Orleans is also famous for its cuisine, music (particularly as the birthplace of jazz), and its annual celebrations and festivals, most notably Mardi Gras. The city is often referred to as the "most unique" in America.
  
  wn.com/New_Orleans
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  Oklahoma
  Oklahoma (ⁱ/ˌoʊkləˈhoʊmə/) (Pawnee: Uukuhuúwa , Cayuga: Gahnawiyoˀgeh ) is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. Oklahoma is the 20th most extensive and the 28th most populous of the 50 United States. The state's name is derived from the Choctaw words okla and humma, meaning "red people", and it is known informally by its nickname, The Sooner State. Formed by the combination of Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory on November 16, 1907, Oklahoma was the 46th state to enter the union. Its residents are known as Oklahomans or, informally "Okies", and its capital and largest city is Oklahoma City.
  A major producer of natural gas, oil, and agriculture, Oklahoma relies on an economic base of aviation, energy, telecommunications, and biotechnology. It has one of the fastest growing economies in the nation, ranking among the top states in per capita income growth and gross domestic product growth. Oklahoma City and Tulsa serve as Oklahoma's primary economic anchors, with nearly 60 percent of Oklahomans living in their metropolitan statistical areas.
  
  wn.com/Oklahoma
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  Roseland Ballroom
  Coordinates: 40°45′49″N 73°59′03″W / 40.763627°N 73.984122°W / 40.763627; -73.984122
  The Roseland Ballroom (also referred to as Roseland Dance City) is a multi-purpose hall, in a converted ice skating rink, with a colorful ballroom dancing pedigree, in New York City's theatre district, on West 52nd Street.
  The venue, according to its website, can accommodate 3,200 standing (with an additional 300 upstairs), 2,500 for a dance party, between 1,500 and 1,800 in theatre style, and 800-1,000 for a sit-down dinner.
  The quirky venue has hosted everything, from a Hillary Clinton birthday party, to annual gay circuit parties, to movie premieres, to musical performances from all genres.
  The rear of the venue faces West 53rd Street and the Ed Sullivan Theater. It is seen virtually every time that comedian David Letterman has outside antics during taping of the Late Show with David Letterman beside his theater (prompting various attempts to paint the industrial-looking wall to make it look better on national television).
  
  wn.com/Roseland_Ballroom
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  Royal Festival Hall
  The Royal Festival Hall is a 2,900-seat concert, dance and talks venue within Southbank Centre in London. It is situated on the South Bank of the River Thames, not far from Hungerford Bridge. It is a Grade I listed building - the first post-war building to become so protected (in 1981) . The London Philharmonic Orchestra and Philharmonia Orchestras perform the majority of their London concerts in the hall.
  The hall was built as part of the Festival of Britain by Holland, Hannen & Cubitts for London County Council, and was officially opened on 3 May 1951. When the Greater London Council (LCC's successor) was abolished in 1986, the Hall was taken over by the Arts Council. Since the late 1980s the hall has operated an 'open foyers' policy, opening up the substantial foyer spaces to the public throughout the day, even if there are no performances. This has proved very popular and the foyers are now one of the most used public spaces in London.
  Each year Southbank Centre puts on a festival known as "Meltdown". In 2010 the festival was curated by Richard Thompson and featured events across the Royal Festival Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall.
  
  wn.com/Royal_Festival_Hall
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  San Francisco
  San Francisco (/ˌsæn frənˈsɪskoʊ/), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.6 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland. The only consolidated city-county in California, it encompasses a land area of about 46.9 square miles (121 km²) on the northern end of the San Francisco Peninsula, giving it a density of about 17,179 people per square mile (6,632 people per km²). It is the most densely settled large city (population greater than 200,000) in the state of California and the second-most densely populated large city in the United States after New York City. San Francisco is the fourth most populous city in California and the 13th most populous city in the United States, with a population of 805,235 as of the 2010 Census. The San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont metropolitan area has a population of 4,335,391.
  In 1776, colonists from Spain established a fort at the Golden Gate and a mission named for Francis of Assisi a few miles away. The California Gold Rush of 1849 propelled the city into a period of rapid growth, increasing the population in one year from 1,000 to 25,000, and thus transforming it into the largest city on the West Coast at the time. After three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. During World War II, San Francisco was the port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. After the war, the confluence of returning servicemen, massive immigration, liberalizing attitudes, and other factors led to the Summer of Love and the gay rights movement, cementing San Francisco as a center of liberal activism in the United States.
  
  wn.com/San_Francisco
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  Texas
  Texas (ⁱ/ˈtɛksəs/) (Alibamu: Teksi ) is the second most populous and the second most extensive of the 50 United States, and the most extensive state of the 48 contiguous United States. The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in East Texas. Located in the South Central United States, Texas shares an international border with the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the south, and borders the US states of New Mexico to the west, Oklahoma to the north, Arkansas to the northeast, and Louisiana to the east. Texas has an area of 268,820 square miles (696,200 km²), and a growing population of 25.7 million residents.
  During the Spanish colonial rule, the area was officially known as the Nuevo Reino de Filipinas: La Provincia de Texas. Antonio Margil de Jesús was known to be the first person to use the name in a letter to the Viceroy of Mexico in July 20, 1716. The name was not popularly used in daily speech but often appeared in legal documents until the end of the 1800s.
  
  wn.com/Texas
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  United States
  The United States of America (commonly abbreviated to the United States, the U.S., the USA, America, and the States) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west, across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Pacific and Caribbean.
  At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km²) and with over 312 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest by both land area and population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The U.S. economy is the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2011 GDP of $15.1 trillion (22% of nominal global GDP and over 19% of global GDP at purchasing-power parity). Per capita income is the world's sixth-highest.
  
  wn.com/United_States

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  Agnes de Mille
  Agnes George de Mille (September 18, 1905 – October 7, 1993) was an American dancer and choreographer.
  Agnes de Mille was born in New York City into a well-connected family of theater professionals. Her father William C. deMille and her uncle Cecil B. DeMille were both Hollywood directors. She was the granddaughter of economist Henry George.
  She had a love for acting and originally wanted to be an actress, but was told that she was 'not pretty enough', so she turned her attention to dance. As a child, she had longed to dance, but dance at this time was considered more of an activity, rather than a viable career option, so her parents refused to allow her to dance. When de Mille's younger sister was prescribed ballet classes to cure her flat feet, de Mille joined her. De Mille lacked flexibility and technique, though, and did not have a dancer's body. Classical ballet was the most widely known dance form at this time, and de Mille's apparent lack of ability limited her opportunities. She taught herself from watching film stars on the set with her father in Hollywood; these were more interesting for her to watch than perfectly turned out legs, and she developed strong character work and compelling performances. One of de Mille’s earliest jobs, thanks to her father’s connections, was choreographing the film Cleopatra in 1934, though the dances were later cut from the film. She appeared in The Ragamuffin in 1916, which was her first job.
  
  wn.com/Agnes_de_Mille
• Al Killian
  Albert H. (Al) Killian (15 Oct 1916 Alabama – 5 September 1950 Los Angeles) was an American jazz trumpet player and occasional bandleader during the big band era, also known for playing jump blues and East Coast blues. He was born in Birmingham, Alabama, United States.The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Second edition, Three volumes, edited by Barry Kernfeld, Macmillan Publishers, London (2002)</ref> Killian got his start playing with Charlie Turner's Arcadians (mid-1930s) and went on to play with big bands led by Baron Lee, Teddy Hill, Don Redman, Claude Hopkins, Count Basie (1940–1942), Charlie Barnet (off and on from 1943 through 1946) and Lionel Hampton (1945). In 1946 Killian started his own big band, but soon quit bandleading to tour with Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic concert series, where he played alongside such musicians as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Lester Young. Following this he briefly toured with bands led by Billy Eckstine, Earl Spencer, and Boyd Raeburn, before landing a spot in Duke Ellington's band, where he toured and recorded for the last three years of his life. During this time he also led his own record session in Stockholm, and took part in one led by Lester Young, as well as participating in several jam sessions which were also recorded.
  
  wn.com/Al_Killian
• Alan Jay Lerner
  Alan Jay Lerner (August 31, 1918 – June 14, 1986) was an American lyricist and librettist. In collaboration with Frederick Loewe, he created some of the world's most popular and enduring works of musical theatre for both the stage and on film. He won three Tony Awards and three Academy Awards, among other honors.
  Born in New York City, he was the son of Edith Adelson Lerner and Joseph Jay Lerner, whose brother, Samuel Alexander Lerner, was founder and owner of the Lerner Stores, a chain of dress shops. One of Lerner's cousins was the radio comedian/television game show panelist Henry Morgan. Alan Jay Lerner was educated at Bedales School in England, The Choate School (now Choate Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut, (where he wrote "The Choate Marching Song") and Harvard. He attended both Camp Androscoggin and Camp Greylock. At both Choate and Harvard, Lerner was a classmate of John F. Kennedy; at Choate they had worked together on the yearbook staff. Like Cole Porter at Yale and Richard Rodgers at Columbia, his career in musical theater began with his collegiate contributions, in Lerner's case to the annual Harvard Hasty Pudding musicals. During the summers of 1936 and 1937, Lerner studied at Juilliard. While attending Harvard, he lost his sight in his left eye due to an accident in the boxing ring. In 1957, Lerner and Leonard Bernstein, another of Lerner's college classmates, collaborated on "Lonely Men of Harvard," a tongue-in-cheek salute to their alma mater.
  
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  Alexander Schneider
  Alexander Schneider (21 October 1908 – 2 February 1993) was a violinist, conductor, and educator. Born to a Lithuanian Jewish family in Vilnius, Lithuania, he later moved to the United States as a member of the Budapest String Quartet. He died in Manhattan, New York City, at the age of 84.
  Alexander (Sasha) was born Abram Sznejder. At 13 he almost died of tetanus after cutting his knee in an accident. The tetanus distorted his joints and recovery was long and painful. Sasha left Vilnius in 1924 and joined his brother Mischa Schneider in Frankfurt, after securing a scholarship to study violin with Adolf Rebner, the principal violin tutor at the Hoch Conservatory.
  In 1927, Alexander became leader (concertmaster) of an orchestra in Saarbrücken. It was at this point that he changed his name. The orchestra director wanted him as leader but wanted a German-sounding name. Abram took Schneider as a surname because his brother Mischa had already selected it. Alexander appealed to him as a first name. In 1929 he was appointed leader of the Norddeutscher Rundfunk Orchestra in Hamburg. In 1932, he lost this job as a result of the ongoing Nazi campaign against Jews - soon the time would come to leave Germany.
  
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  Alexandra Danilova
  Aleksandra Dionisyevna Danilova (Russian: Александра Дионисьевна Данилова) (November 20, 1903–July 13, 1997) was a Russian-born prima ballerina who became an American citizen.
  Born in Peterhof, Russia, she trained at the Russian Imperial Ballet School in Leningrad (formerly and currently St. Petersburg). She was best known for being one of the few Russian-trained ballerinas to tour outside Russia. Her first professional post was as a member of the St. Petersburg's Imperial Ballet.
  In 1924, she and George Balanchine left Russia. They were soon picked up by Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes; Danilova as a dancer, Balanchine as a choreographer. Danilova also toured for years with the Ballets Russes under Sergei Diaghilev, then with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo after Diaghilev's death. She was one of her generation's biggest stars, but Danilova was never good at handling her finances. Her last ballet performance was in 1957, but she made her Broadway musical comedy debut in 1958 in Oh, Captain!. She appeared in a single scene, a dance with the show's star, Tony Randall, which stole the show. Many have said it was the finest dance number in a post-war musical. Unfortunately, the show was a commercial failure and quickly closed. She was desperate when she again met Balanchine on the street in 1964. When he heard of her plight he instantly hired her to teach at the School of American Ballet. One of the most valued members of the faculty, she remained there until her retirement in 1989.
  
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  Alvin Ailey
  Alvin Ailey (January 5, 1931 - December 1, 1989) was an American choreographer and activist who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York. Ailey is credited with popularizing modern dance and revolutionizing African-American participation in 20th century concert dance. His company gained the nickname "Cultural Ambassador to the World" because of its extensive international touring. Ailey's choreographic masterpiece Revelations is believed to be the best known and most often seen modern dance performance. Ailey received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1988, just one year before his death.
  Ailey was born to his 17-year-old mother, Lula Elizabeth Ailey, in Rogers, Texas. His father abandoned the family when Alvin was only six months old. Like many African Americans living in Texas during the Great Depression, Ailey and his mother moved very often and she had a hard time finding work. Ailey grew up during a time of racial segregation, violence and lynchings against African-Americans. When Ailey was five, his 22-year-old mother was raped by a group of white men, leaving him afraid of whites. Early experiences in the Southern Baptist church and jook joints instilled in him a fierce sense of black pride that would later figure prominently in Ailey's signature works.'
  
  wn.com/Alvin_Ailey
• Alwin Nikolais
  Alwin Nikolais (November 25, 1910 in Southington, Connecticut – May 8, 1993) was an American choreographer.
  Nikolais studied piano at an early age and began his performing career as an organist accompanying silent films. As a young artist, he gained skills in scenic design, acting, puppetry and music composition. It was after attending a performance by the German dancer Mary Wigman that he was inspired to study dance. He received his early dance training at Bennington College from the great figures of the modern dance world: Hanya Holm, Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, Louis Horst, and others.
  In 1940, in collaboration with Truda Kaschmann, his first modern dance teacher, Nikolais received a commission to create Eight Column Line, his first ballet. The work was presented at one of the events of Hartford social season that counted Salvador Dalí and Léonide Massine as honorary patrons and was well received.
  
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  Ann Miller
  Johnnie Lucille Collier, better known as Ann Miller (April 12, 1923 – January 22, 2004) was an American dancer, singer and actress. She is remembered for her work in Hollywood musical films of the 1940s and '50s.
  Miller was born in Chireno, Texas to Clara Emma (née Birdwell) and John Alfred Collier, a criminal lawyer who represented the Barrow Gang, Machine Gun Kelly, and Baby Face Nelson, among others. Miller's maternal grandmother was Cherokee. Miller's father insisted on the name Johnnie because he had wanted a boy, but she was often called Annie. She took up dancing to exercise her legs to help her rickets. She was considered a child dance prodigy. In an interview featured in a "behind the scenes" documentary on the making of the compilation film That's Entertainment III, she said that Eleanor Powell was an early inspiration.
  At the age of 13 Miller had been hired as a dancer in the "Black Cat Club" in San Francisco (she reportedly told them she was 18). It was there she was discovered by Lucille Ball and talent scout/comic Benny Rubin. This led Miller to be given a contract with RKO in 1936 at the age of 13 (she had also told them she was 18) and she remained there until 1940. The following year, Miller was offered a contract at Columbia Pictures. She finally hit her mark in MGM musicals such as Easter Parade (1948), On the Town (1949) and Kiss Me Kate (1953).
  
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  Antony Tudor
  Antony Tudor (4 April 1908 – 19 April 1987) was an English ballet choreographer, teacher and dancer.
  Tudor, born William Cook, discovered dance accidentally. He began dancing professionally with Marie Rambert in 1928, becoming general assistant for her Ballet Club the next year. A precocious choreographer, at age twenty-three he created for her dancers Cross Garter'd, then Lysistrata, The Planets and other works at the little Mercury Theatre, Notting Hill Gate, and his two most revolutionary, Jardin Aux Lilas (Lilac Garden) and Dark Elegies, before the age of thirty, himself dancing the main roles.
  In 1938, he founded the London Ballet with Rambert members, including his future life partner, Hugh Laing, Andreé Howard, Agnes de Mille, Peggy van Praagh, Maude Lloyd and Walter Gore, but with the onset of World War II, in 1940 was invited with them to New York, joining Richard Pleasant's and Lucia Chase's reorganized Ballet Theater. Chase's company was later to become the American Ballet Theatre, with which Tudor was closely associated for the rest of his life.
  
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  Arthur Miller
  Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), and A View from the Bridge (one-act, 1955; revised two-act, 1956).
  Miller was often in the public eye, particularly during the late 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s, a period during which he testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Prince of Asturias Award, and was married to Marilyn Monroe.
  Arthur Asher Miller was born on October 17, 1915, in Harlem, New York City, the second of three children of Isidore and Augusta Miller, Polish-Jewish immigrants. His father owned a women's clothing manufacturing business employing some 400 people. He became a wealthy and respected man in the community. (BBC TV Interview; Miller and Yentob; 'Finishing the Picture,' 2004) The family, including his younger sister Joan, lived on East 110th Street in Manhattan and owned a summer house in Far Rockaway, Queens. They employed a chauffeur. In the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the family lost almost everything and moved to Gravesend, Brooklyn. As a teenager, Miller delivered bread every morning before school to help the family. After graduating in 1932 from Abraham Lincoln High School, he worked at several menial jobs to pay for his college tuition.
  
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  Artie Shaw
  Arthur Jacob Arshawsky (May 23, 1910 – December 30, 2004), better known as Artie Shaw, was an American clarinetist, composer, and bandleader. He was also the author of both fiction and non-fiction writings.
  Widely regarded as "one of jazz's finest clarinetists", Shaw led one of America's most popular big bands of the late 1930s and early '40s. Their signature song, a 1938 version of Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine", was a wildly successful single and one of the era's defining recordings. Musically restless, Shaw was also an early proponent of Third Stream, which blended classical and jazz, and recorded some small-group sessions that flirted with be-bop before retiring from music in 1954.
  Born Arthur Jacob Arshawsky in New York City, Shaw grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, where, according to his autobiography his natural introversion was deepened by local antisemitism. Shaw began learning the saxophone when he was 13 years old, and by the age of 16, he switched to the clarinet and left home to tour with a band. Returning to New York, he became a session musician through the early 1930s. From 1925 until 1936, Shaw performed with many bands and orchestras, including those of Johnny Caverello and Austin Wylie. In 1929 and 1930 he played with Irving Aaronson's Commanders, where he was exposed to symphonic music, which he would later incorporate in his arrangements.
  
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  Ben Webster
  Benjamin Francis Webster (March 27, 1909 – September 20, 1973), a.k.a. "The Brute" or "Frog," was an influential American jazz tenor saxophonist. Webster, born in Kansas City, Missouri, was considered one of the three most important "swing tenors" along with Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young. Known affectionately as "The Brute", he had a tough, raspy, and brutal tone on stomps (with his own distinctive growls), yet on ballads he played with warmth and sentiment. Stylistically he was indebted to alto star Johnny Hodges, who, he said, taught him to play his instrument.
  Webster learned to play piano and violin at an early age, before learning to play the saxophone, although he did return to the piano from time to time, even recording on the instrument occasionally. Once Budd Johnson showed him some basics on the saxophone, Webster began to play that instrument in the Young Family Band (which at the time included Lester Young). Kansas City at this point was a melting pot from which emerged some of the biggest names in 1930s jazz, and Webster joined Bennie Moten's legendary 1932 band that included Count Basie, Oran Page and Walter Page. This era has been recreated in Robert Altman's film Kansas City.
  
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  Bennie Moten
  Bennie Moten (November 13, 1894 – April 2, 1935) was a noted American jazz pianist and band leader born in Kansas City, Missouri.
  He led the Kansas City Orchestra, the most important of the itinerant, blues-based orchestras active in the Midwest in the 1920s, and helped to develop the riffing style that would come to define many of the 1930s Big Bands.
  His first recordings were made (for OKeh Records) in 1923, and were rather typical interpretations of the New Orleans style of King Oliver and others. They also showed the influence of the Ragtime that was still popular in the area. These OKeh sides (recorded 1923-1925) are some of the more valuable acoustic jazz 78's of the era and continue to be treasured records in many serious jazz collections.
  They next recorded in 1926 for Victor Records in New Jersey, and were influenced by the more sophisticated style of Fletcher Henderson, but more often than not featured a hard stomp beat that was extremely popular in Kansas City. Moten remained one of Victor's most popular orchestras through 1930.
  
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  Benny Carter
  Bennett Lester Carter (August 8, 1907 – July 12, 2003) was an American jazz alto saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. He was a major figure in jazz from the 1930s to the 1990s, and was recognized as such by other jazz musicians who called him King. In 1958, he performed with Billie Holiday at the legendary Monterey Jazz Festival.
  The National Endowment for the Arts honored Benny Carter with its highest honor in jazz, the NEA Jazz Masters Award for 1986. He was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987, winner of the Grammy Award in 1994 for his solo "Prelude to a Kiss", and also the same year, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2000 awarded the National Endowment for the Arts, National Medal of Arts, presented by President Bill Clinton.
  Born in New York in 1907, the youngest of three children and the only boy, received his first music lessons on piano from his mother. Largely self-taught, by age fifteen, Carter was already sitting in at Harlem night spots. From 1924 to 1928, Carter gained valuable professional experience as a sideman in some of New York's top bands. As a youth, Carter lived in Harlem around the corner from Bubber Miley who was Duke Ellington's star trumpeter, Carter was inspired by Miley and bought a trumpet, but when he found he couldn't play like Miley he traded the trumpet in for a saxophone. For the next two years he played with such jazz greats as cornetist Rex Stewart, clarinetist-soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet, pianists Earl Hines, Willie "The Lion" Smith, pianist Fats Waller, pianist James P. Johnson, pianist Duke Ellington and their various groups.
  
  wn.com/Benny_Carter
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  Benny Goodman
  Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman (May 30, 1909 – June 13, 1986) was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".
  In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America. His January 16, 1938 concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City is described by critic Bruce Eder as "the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history: jazz's 'coming out' party to the world of 'respectable' music."
  Goodman's bands launched the careers of many major names in jazz, and during an era of segregation, he also led one of the first well-known racially-integrated jazz groups. Goodman continued to perform to nearly the end of his life, including exploring his interest in classical music.
  Goodman was born in Chicago, the ninth of twelve children of poor Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire, who lived in the Maxwell Street neighborhood. His father was David Goodman, a tailor from Warsaw; his mother was Dora Grisinsky (from Kaunas, Lithuania). His parents met in Baltimore, Maryland, and moved to Chicago before Benny was born.
  
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  Benny Morton
  Benny Morton (January 31, 1907 – December 28, 1985), born in New York City, was a jazz trombonist most associated with the swing genre. He was praised by fellow trombonist Bill Watrous among others. One of his first jobs was working with Clarence Holiday, and he appeared with Clarence's daughter Billie Holiday towards the end of her life on The Sound of Jazz. In the 1960s he was part of the Jazz Giants band: "Wild" Bill Davison (cornet), Herb Hall (clarinet and alto), Claude Hopkins (piano), Arvell Shaw (bass) and Buzzy Drootin (drums). They toured the U.S. and frequently in Canada where they did some recording for Sackville Records. Towards the end of the 60's he played with an offshoot of the Jazz Giants under the leadership of Drootin, called Buzzy's Jazz Family, with Herman Autrey replacing Davison, Buzzy's nephew Sonny Drootin replacing Hopkins, and Eddie Gibbs replacing Shaw. That stated he is probably best known for his work with Count Basie and Fletcher Henderson.
  On February 23, 1934, Morton led a single, outstanding session of 4 songs that were issued under his own name (Benny Morton & His Orchestra). Made up mostly of member of Fletcher Henderson's and Don Redman's band, they included:
  
  wn.com/Benny_Morton
• Benny Powell
  Benny Powell (March 1, 1930 – June 26, 2010) was an African American jazz trombonist. He played both standard (tenor) trombone and bass trombone.
  Born Benjamin Gordon Powell Jr in New Orleans, Louisiana, he first played professionally at age 14, and at 18 began playing with Lionel Hampton. In 1951 he left Hampton's band and began playing with Count Basie, in whose orchestra he would remain until 1963. Powell takes the trombone solo in the bridge of Basie's 1955 recording of "April in Paris".
  After leaving Basie, he freelanced in New York City. From 1966 to 1970 he was a member of the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra, playing on Monday nights at the Village Vanguard. Among other engagements, he played in the house band of the Merv Griffin Show, and when the show moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1970 Powell also relocated there. He did extensive work as a session musician, including with Abdullah Ibrahim, John Carter, and Randy Weston. Later in his career he worked as an educator, including as part of the Jazzmobile project. Having moved back to New York in the 1980s, he began teaching at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in 1994.
  
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  Bette Davis
  Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis (April 5, 1908 – October 6, 1989) was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional comedies, although her greatest successes were her roles in romantic dramas.
  After appearing in Broadway plays, Davis moved to Hollywood in 1930, but her early films for Universal Studios were unsuccessful. She joined Warner Bros. in 1932 and established her career with several critically acclaimed performances. In 1937, she attempted to free herself from her contract and although she lost a well-publicized legal case, it marked the beginning of the most successful period of her career. Until the late 1940s, she was one of American cinema's most celebrated leading ladies, known for her forceful and intense style. Davis gained a reputation as a perfectionist who could be highly combative, and confrontations with studio executives, film directors and costars were often reported. Her forthright manner, clipped vocal style and ubiquitous cigarette contributed to a public persona which has often been imitated and satirized.
  
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  Beverly Sills
  Beverly Sills (May 25, 1929 – July 2, 2007) was an American operatic soprano whose peak career was between the 1950s and 1970s. In her prime she was the only real rival to Joan Sutherland as the leading bel canto stylist.
  Although she sang a repertoire from Handel and Mozart to Puccini, Massenet and Verdi, she was known for her performances in coloratura soprano roles in live opera and recordings. Sills was largely associated with the operas of Donizetti, of which she performed and recorded many roles. Her signature roles include the title role in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, the title role in Massenet's Manon, Marie in Donizetti's La fille du régiment, the three heroines in Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann, Rosina in Rossini's The Barber of Seville, Violetta in Verdi's La traviata, and most notably Elisabetta in Roberto Devereux.
  After retiring from singing in 1980, she became the general manager of the New York City Opera. In 1994, she became the Chairman of Lincoln Center and then, in 2002, of the Metropolitan Opera, stepping down in 2005. Sills lent her celebrity to further her charity work for the prevention and treatment of birth defects.
  
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  Big Joe Turner
  Big Joe Turner (born Joseph Vernon Turner Jr., May 18, 1911 – November 24, 1985) was an American blues shouter from Kansas City, Missouri. According to the songwriter Doc Pomus, "Rock and roll would have never happened without him." Although he came to his greatest fame in the 1950s with his pioneering rock and roll recordings, particularly "Shake, Rattle and Roll", Turner's career as a performer stretched from the 1920s into the 1980s. Turner was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.
  Known variously as The Boss of the Blues, and Big Joe Turner (due to his 6'2", 300+ lbs stature), Turner was born in Kansas City and first discovered his love of music through involvement in the church. Turner's father was killed in a train accident when Joe was only four years old. He began singing on street corners for money, leaving school at age fourteen to begin working in Kansas City's nightclub scene, first as a cook, and later as a singing bartender. He eventually became known as The Singing Barman, and worked in such venues as The Kingfish Club and The Sunset, where he and his piano playing partner Pete Johnson became resident performers. The Sunset was managed by Piney Brown. It featured "separate but equal" facilities for white patrons. Turner wrote "Piney Brown Blues" in his honor and sang it throughout his entire career.
  
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  Billie Holiday
  Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Harris April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo.
  Critic John Bush wrote that Holiday "changed the art of American pop vocals forever." She co-wrote only a few songs, but several of them have become jazz standards, notably "God Bless the Child", "Don't Explain", "Fine and Mellow", and "Lady Sings the Blues". She also became famous for singing "Easy Living", "Good Morning Heartache", and "Strange Fruit", a protest song which became one of her standards and was made famous with her 1939 recording.
  Billie Holiday was born Eleanora Fagan on April 7, 1915, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Sarah Julia "Sadie" Fagan (née Harris). Her father, Clarence Halliday (Holiday), a musician, did not marry or live with her mother. Her mother had moved to Philadelphia when thirteen, after being ejected from her parents' home in Sandtown-Winchester, Baltimore for becoming pregnant. With no support from her own parents, Holiday's mother arranged for the young Holiday to stay with her older married half sister, Eva Miller, who lived in Baltimore.
  
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  Billy Eckstine
  William Clarence Eckstine (July 8, 1914 – March 8, 1993) was an American singer of ballads and a bandleader of the swing era. Eckstine's smooth baritone and distinctive vibrato broke down barriers throughout the 1940s, first as leader of the original bop big-band, then as the first romantic black male in popular music. Eckstine's recording of "I Apologize," MGM Pop Single, (1948) was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1999.
  Eckstine's grandparents were William F. Eckstein and Nannie Eckstein, a mixed-race, lawfully married couple who lived in Washington D.C.; both were born in the year 1863. William F. was born in Prussia and Nannie in Virginia. His parents were William Eckstein, a chauffeur and Charlotte Eckstein. He was born in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania a State Historical Marker is placed at 5913 Bryant St, Highland Park, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania to mark the house where he grew up. Later moving to Washington, D.C., Eckstine began singing at the age of seven and entered many amateur talent shows. He attended Armstrong High School, St. Paul Normal and Industrial School, and Howard University. He left Howard in 1933, after winning first place in an amateur talent contest. He married his first wife, June, in 1942; she too was a vocalist. After their divorce he married actress and model Carolle Drake in 1953, and remained married until his death. He was the father of five children and two step children, including Ed Eckstine, who was a president of Mercury Records, Guy Eckstine, who was a Columbia and Verve Records A&R executive and record producer, and singer Gina Eckstine.
  
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  Bing Crosby
  Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby (May 3, 1903 – October 14, 1977) was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artistes of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation.
  A multimedia star, from 1934 to 1954 Bing Crosby was a leader in record sales, radio ratings and motion picture grosses. His early career coincided with technical recording innovations; this allowed him to develop a laid-back, intimate singing style that influenced many of the popular male singers who followed him, including Perry Como,Frank Sinatra, and Dean Martin. Yank magazine recognized Crosby as the person who had done the most for American G.I. morale during World War II and, during his peak years, around 1948, polls declared him the "most admired man alive," ahead of Jackie Robinson and Pope Pius XII. Also in 1948, the Music Digest estimated that Crosby recordings filled more than half of the 80,000 weekly hours allocated to recorded radio music.
  
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  Bob Hope
  Bob Hope, KBE, KCSG, KSS (born Leslie Townes Hope; May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003) was an English-born American comedian and actor who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in radio, television and movies. He was also noted for his work with the US Armed Forces and his numerous USO shows entertaining American military personnel. Throughout his long career, he was honored for his humanitarian work. In 1996, the U.S. Congress honored Bob Hope by declaring him the "first and only honorary veteran of the U.S. armed forces." Bob Hope appeared in or hosted 199 known USO shows.
  Hope was born in Eltham, London, England, the fifth of seven sons. His English father, William Henry Hope, was a stonemason from Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, and his Welsh mother, Avis Townes, was a light opera singer from Barry who later worked as a cleaning woman. She married William Hope in April 1891 and the couple set up home at 12 Greenwood Street in the town, then moved to Whitehall and St George in Bristol, before eventually moving to Cleveland, Ohio in 1908. The family emigrated to the United States aboard the SS Philadelphia, and passed inspection at Ellis Island on March 30, 1908. Hope became a U.S. citizen in 1920 at the age of 17. In a 1942 legal document, Hope's legal name is given as Lester Townes Hope. His name on the Social Security Index is also listed as Lester T. Hope. His name as registered at birth was Leslie Towns [sic] Hope.
  
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  Brenda Fricker
  Brenda Fricker (born February 17, 1945) is an Irish actress of theatre, film and television. She has appeared in more than 30 films and television roles. In 1989, she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for My Left Foot.
  Fricker was born in Dublin. Her mother, "Bina" (née Murphy), was a teacher at Stratford College, and her father, Desmond Frederick Fricker, was an officer in the Department of Agriculture and a journalist for The Irish Times. In her teens, she aspired to follow her parent's footsteps into journalism. Fricker has an older sister, Nora Ann Grania Fricker.^{[citation needed]}
  Before becoming an actress, Fricker was assistant to the art editor of the Irish Times, with hopes to become a reporter. At age 19, she became an actress "by chance", her feature film career began with a small uncredited part in the 1964 film Of Human Bondage, based on the 1915 novel by W. Somerset Maugham. She also appeared in Tolka Row, Ireland's first ever soap opera.
  Fricker first came to wider public attention in the United Kingdom for her role as Megan Roach in the BBC One television drama series Casualty. Fricker bowed out as Megan in December 1990, after playing the character in 65 episodes, because she believed her character had "started off with a wonderful sense of humour, [but] lost it all and all she ever seemed to do was push a trolley around and offer tea and sympathy". In February 1998 she appeared in two episodes, with Megan attending the wedding of her former colleagues Charlie Fairhead and Barbara 'Baz' Samuels. In 2007, she returned for a single episode for Red Nose Day. The episode was written by Richard Curtis. Fricker's final appearance as Megan was in August 2010, when the character took a lethal cocktail of drugs to end her life.
  
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  Buck Clayton
  Buck Clayton (born Wilbur Dorsey Clayton; Parsons, Kansas, November 12, 1911 – New York City, December 8, 1991) was an American jazz trumpet player who was a leading member of Count Basie’s "Old Testament" orchestra and a leader of mainstream-oriented jam session recordings in the 1950s. His principal influence was Louis Armstrong. The Penguin Guide to Jazz says that he “synthesi[zed] much of the history of jazz trumpet up to his own time, with a bright brassy tone and an apparently limitless facility for melodic improvisation”. Clayton worked closely with Li Jinhui, father of Chinese popular music in Shanghai. His contributions helped change musical history in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
  Clayton played piano when he was six years old and switched to trumpet when he was a teenager. After high school, he moved to Los Angeles. He later formed a band named “14 Gentlemen from Harlem” in which he was the leader of the 14-member orchestra.
  From there, there are multiple sources claiming different ways in which Clayton ended up in Shanghai. Some claimed that Clayton was picked by Teddy Weatherford for a job at the Canidrome ballroom in the French Concession in Shanghai. Others claimed he escaped the US temporarily to avoid racism.
  
  wn.com/Buck_Clayton
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  Buddy Rich
  Bernard "Buddy" Rich (September 30, 1917 – April 2, 1987) was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. Rich was billed as "the world's greatest drummer" and was known for his virtuosic technique, power, groove, and speed.
  Rich was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Jewish vaudevillians Robert and Bess Rich. His talent for rhythm was first noted by his father, who saw that Buddy could keep a steady beat with spoons at the age of one. He began playing drums in vaudeville when he was 18 months old, billed as "Traps the Drum Wonder." At the peak of Rich's childhood career, he was reportedly the second-highest paid child entertainer in the world (after Jackie Coogan). At 11 he was performing as a bandleader. He received no formal drum instruction, and went so far as to claim that instruction would only degrade his musical talent. He also never admitted to practicing, claiming to play the drums only during performances^{[citation needed]} and was not known to read music. He expressed great admiration for, and was influenced by, the playing of Chick Webb, Gene Krupa, Dave Tough, and Jo Jones, among others.^{[citation needed]}.
  
  wn.com/Buddy_Rich
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  Carmen Miranda
  Carmen Miranda, GCIH (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈkaɾmẽȷ̃ miˈɾɐ̃dɐ], 9 February 1909 – 5 August 1955) was a Portuguese-born Braziliansamba singer, Broadway actress and Hollywood film star popular in the 1940s and 1950s. She was, by some accounts, the highest-earning woman in the United States and noted for her signature fruit hat outfit she wore in the 1943 movie The Gang's All Here. Though hailed as a talented performer, her movie roles in the United States soon became cartoonish and she grew to resent them. She is considered the precursor of Brazil's Tropicalismo.
  Carmen Miranda was born Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha in Várzea da Ovelha e Aliviada, a village in the northern Portuguese municipality of Marco de Canaveses. She was the second daughter of José Maria Pinto da Cunha (17 February 1887 – 21 June 1938) and Maria Emília Miranda (10 March 1886 – Rio de Janeiro, 9 November 1971). In 1909 when she was 10-months old, her father emigrated alone to Brazil and settled in Rio de Janeiro, where he opened a barber shop. Her mother followed in 1910 with their daughters Olinda and Maria do Carmo. Maria do Carmo, later Carmen, never returned to Portugal, but retained her Portuguese nationality. In Brazil, her parents had four more children: Amaro (1911), Cecília (1913), Aurora (1915–2005) and Óscar (1916).
  
  wn.com/Carmen_Miranda
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  Cary Grant
  Archibald Alexander Leach (January 18, 1904 – November 29, 1986), better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English-American actor. Known for his transatlantic accent, debonair demeanor and "dashing good looks", Grant is considered one of classic Hollywood's definitive leading men.
  Grant was named the second Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute. Noted particularly for his work in comedy but also for drama, Grant's best-known films include The Awful Truth (1937), Bringing Up Baby (1938), Gunga Din (1939), The Philadelphia Story (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), Notorious (1946), To Catch A Thief (1955), An Affair to Remember (1957), North by Northwest (1959) and Charade (1963).
  Nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Actor, for Penny Serenade (1941) and None But the Lonely Heart (1944), and five times for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor, Grant was continually passed over, and in 1970 was given an Honorary Oscar at the 42nd Academy Awards. Frank Sinatra presented Grant with the award, "for his unique mastery of the art of screen acting with the respect and affection of his colleagues".
  
  wn.com/Cary_Grant
• Caughey Roberts
  Caughey Roberts (August 25, 1912 – December 1990) was an American jazz alto sax player, best known for his time in the Count Basie Orchestra in the 1930s.
  He was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, later moving to Los Angeles. He played both baritone and alto sax, and clarinet. In the mid 1930s, he replaced Buster Smith in the Count Basie Orchestra, leaving in 1937 when he was replaced by Earle Warren. He later played in Buck Clayton's band and worked as a music teacher at Jefferson High School in Los Angeles. He also played in Roy Milton's band. In later years he played in the traditional jazz band at Disneyland's New Orleans Square with Teddy Buckner and others.
  He died in Los Angeles in 1990 at the age of 78.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Caughey_Roberts
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  Charlie Parker
  Charles Parker, Jr. (August 29, 1920 – March 12, 1955), also known as Yardbird and Bird, was an American jazz saxophonist and composer.
  Parker acquired the nickname "Yardbird" early in his career and the shortened form, "Bird", which continued to be used for the rest of his life, inspiring the titles of a number of Parker compositions, such as "Yardbird Suite", "Ornithology", "Bird Gets the Worm", and "Bird of Paradise."
  Parker was a highly influential jazz soloist and a leading figure in the development of bebop, a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuosic technique, and improvisation. Parker introduced revolutionary harmonic ideas, including rapidly passing chords, new variants of altered chords, and chord substitutions. His tone ranged from clean and penetrating to sweet and somber. Many Parker recordings demonstrate virtuosic technique and complex melodic lines, combining jazz with other musical genres, including blues, Latin, and classical.
  Parker was an icon for the hipster subculture and later the Beat Generation, personifying the jazz musician as an uncompromising artist and intellectual, rather than an entertainer.
  
  wn.com/Charlie_Parker
• Chick Webb
  William Henry Webb, usually known as Chick Webb (February 10, 1905 – June 16, 1939) was an American jazz and swing music drummer as well as a band leader.
  Webb was born in Baltimore, Maryland to William H. and Marie Johnson Webb. From childhood, he suffered from tuberculosis of the spine, leaving him with short stature and a badly deformed spine. He supported himself as a newspaper boy to save enough money to buy drums, and first played professionally at age 11.
  At the age of 17 he moved to New York City and by 1926, he was leading his own band in Harlem. Jazz drummer Tommy Benford said he gave Webb drum lessons when he first reached New York.
  He alternated between band tours and residencies at New York City clubs through the late 1920s. In 1931, his band became the house band at the Savoy Ballroom. He became one of the best-regarded bandleaders and drummers of the new "Swing" style. Drumming legend Buddy Rich cited Webb's powerful technique and virtuoso performances as heavily influential on his own drumming, and even referred to Webb as "the daddy of them all". The Savoy often featured "Battle of the Bands" where Webb's band would compete with other top bands (such as the Benny Goodman Orchestra or the Count Basie Orchestra) from opposing bandstands. By the end of the night's battles the dancers seemed always to have voted Chick's band as the best. As a result Webb was deemed the most worthy recipient to be crowned the first "King of Swing." Notably, Webb lost to Duke Ellington in 1937. Although a judge declared Webb's band the official winner in 1938 over Count Basie's, and Basie himself said he was just relieved to come away from the contest without embarrassing himself, surviving musicians continued to dispute the ruling for decades to follow.{}
  
  wn.com/Chick_Webb
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  Clark Gable
  William Clark Gable (February 1, 1901 – November 16, 1960), known as Clark Gable, was an American film actor most famous for his role as Rhett Butler in the 1939 Civil War epic film Gone with the Wind, in which he starred with Vivien Leigh. His performance earned him his third nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor; he won for It Happened One Night (1934) and was also nominated for Mutiny on the Bounty (1935). Later movies included Run Silent, Run Deep, a submarine war film, and his final film, The Misfits (1961), which paired Gable with Marilyn Monroe, also in her last screen appearance. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Gable seventh among the greatest male stars of all time. He was nicknamed 'The King of Hollywood.'
  Gable appeared opposite some of the most popular actresses of the time. Joan Crawford, who was his favorite actress to work with, was partnered with Gable in eight films, Myrna Loy worked with him seven times, and he was paired with Jean Harlow in six productions. He also starred with Lana Turner in four features, and with Norma Shearer and Ava Gardner in three each. In the mid-1930s, Gable was often named the top male movie star, and second only to the top box-office draw of all, Shirley Temple.
  
  wn.com/Clark_Gable
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  Claudette Colbert
  Claudette Colbert (/koʊlˈbɛər/; 13 September 1903 – 30 July 1996) was an American actress of stage and film.
  Born in Paris, France, and raised in New York City, Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the 1920s, progressing to film with the advent of talking pictures. She established a successful film career with Paramount Pictures, and was recognized as one of the leading female exponents of screwball comedy. Colbert was the highest paid actress in American cinema during late 1930s, and later became a freelance performer. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her comedic performance in It Happened One Night (1934), and also received Academy Award nominations for her dramatic roles in Private Worlds (1935) and Since You Went Away (1944).
  Colbert's film career declined in the 1950s, and finished in 1961. Later in life, she returned to theater, except brief appearances in television. Her intermittent career lasted more than six decades. She moved in later life to Barbados, where she died at the age of 92, following a series of strokes.
  
  wn.com/Claudette_Colbert
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  Count Basie
  William "Count" Basie (August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. His mother first taught him piano and he started performing in his teens. Dropping out of school, he learned to operate lights for vaudeville and improvised to accompany silent films at a local theater in his town of Red Bank, New Jersey. By 16, he increasingly played jazz piano at parties, resorts and other venues. In 1924, he went to Harlem, where his performing career expanded; he toured with groups to the major jazz cities of Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City. In 1929 he joined Bennie Moten's band in Kansas City, and played with them for years, until Moten's death in 1935.
  That year Basie formed his own jazz orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and their first recording. He led the group for almost 50 years, creating innovations like the use of two "split" tenor saxophones, emphasizing the rhythm section, riffing with a big band, using arrangers to broaden their sound, and others. Many notable musicians came to prominence under his direction, including the tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans, the guitarist Freddie Green, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry "Sweets" Edison and singers Jimmy Rushing and Joe Williams. Basie's theme songs were "One O'Clock Jump," developed in 1935 in the early days of his band, and "April In Paris".
  
  wn.com/Count_Basie
• Dan Minor
  Dan "Slamfoot" Minor (August 10, 1909 – April 11, 1982) was an American jazz trombonist who featured in the bands of Count Basie, Cab Calloway and many others from the 1920s to the 1940s.
  He was born in Dallas, Texas, and played for a local church orchestra in his teens before joining local band the Blue Moon Chasers and then, in 1927, his first major professional engagement as a member of Walter Page's Blue Devils. In 1929 he joined another band, the Blues Syncopaters led by Ben Smith, and also worked around the same time in bands led by Earl Dykes, Gene Coy, Lloyd Hunter and Alphonse Trent. In 1931, he joined the Bennie Moten band.
  He remained with the band after Moten's death in 1935, when its leadership was taken over by Count Basie, and stayed with the Basie orchestra until 1941. During that period he performed at the From Spirituals to Swing concerts in New York City in 1938 and 1939. However, Minor tended to be overshadowed by other trombonists such as Benny Morton and Vic Dickenson, and rarely took solos. He joined the Buddy Johnson band in 1942, and also played around that time with Cab Calloway. He worked with Mercer Ellington in 1945, and also recorded and played with Lucky Millinder and Willie Bryant.
  
  wn.com/Dan_Minor
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  Danny Kaye
  Danny Kaye (born David Daniel Kaminski; January 18, 1913 – March 3, 1987) was a celebrated American actor, singer, dancer, and comedian. His best known performances featured physical comedy, idiosyncratic pantomimes, and rapid-fire nonsense songs.
  Kaye starred in 17 movies, notably The Kid from Brooklyn (1946), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), The Inspector General (1949), Hans Christian Andersen (1952), and — perhaps his most accomplished performance — The Court Jester (1956). His films were extremely popular, especially his bravura performances of patter songs and children's favorites such as The Inch Worm and The Ugly Duckling. He was the first ambassador-at-large of UNICEF in 1954 and received the French Legion of Honor in 1986 for his many years of work with the organization.
  David Daniel Kaminski was born to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn. Jacob and Clara Nemerovsky Kaminski and their two sons, Larry and Mac, left Ekaterinoslav two years before his birth; he was the only one of their sons born in the United States. He spent his early youth attending Public School 149 in East New York, Brooklyn, where he began entertaining his young classmates with songs and jokes, before moving to Thomas Jefferson High School, but he never graduated. His mother died when he was in his early teens. Clara enjoyed the impressions and humor of her youngest son and always had words of encouragement for them; her death was a great loss for young Danny.
  
  wn.com/Danny_Kaye
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  Dicky Wells
  William Wells, (June 10, 1907? - November 12, 1985), more famous under the name of Dicky Wells (sometimes Dickie Wells), was an American jazz trombonist.
  Dickie Wells was born in Centerville, Tennessee. He moved to New York City in 1926, and became a member of the Lloyd Scott band.
  He played with Count Basie between 1938–1945 and 1947-1950. He also played with Cecil Scott, Spike Hughes, Fletcher Henderson, Benny Carter, Teddy Hill, Jimmy Rushing, Buck Clayton and Ray Charles.
  In his later years, Wells suffered a severe beating that affected his memory, but he recovered and continued to perform. He played frequently at the West End jazz club at 116th and Broadway, most often with a band called The Countsmen, led by alto saxophonist Earle Warren, his colleague from Count Basie days. A trademark was Wells's "pepper pot" mute which he made himself.
  He died on November 12, 1985, in New York City. Shortly after his death, Wells's family donated his trombone to Rutgers University.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Dicky_Wells
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  Dinah Shore
  Dinah Shore (born Frances Rose Shore; February 29, 1916 – February 24, 1994) was an American singer, actress, and television personality. She reached the height of her popularity as a recording artist during the Big Band era of the 1940s and 1950s, but achieved even greater success a decade later, in television, mainly as hostess of a series of variety programs for Chevrolet.
  After failing singing auditions for the bands of Benny Goodman and both Jimmy Dorsey and his brother Tommy Dorsey, Shore struck out on her own to become the first singer of her era to achieve huge solo success. She had a string of 80 charted popular hits, lasting from 1940 into the late '50s, and after appearing in a handful of films went on to a four-decade career in American television, starring in her own music and variety shows in the '50s and '60s and hosting two talk shows in the '70s. TV Guide magazine ranked her at #16 on their list of the top fifty television stars of all time. Stylistically, Dinah Shore was compared to two singers who followed her in the mid-to-late '40s and early '50s, Doris Day and Patti Page.
  
  wn.com/Dinah_Shore
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  Dizzy Gillespie
  John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie ( /ɡɨˈlɛspi/; October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer and, occasionally, singer.
  Allmusic's Scott Yanow wrote, "Dizzy Gillespie's contributions to jazz were huge. One of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time (some would say the best), Gillespie was such a complex player that his contemporaries ended up copying Miles Davis and Fats Navarro instead, and it was not until Jon Faddis's emergence in the 1970s that Dizzy's style was successfully recreated . . . Arguably Gillespie is remembered, by both critics and fans alike, as one of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time."
  Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic complexity previously unknown in jazz. His beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, his scat singing, his bent horn, pouched cheeks and his light-hearted personality were essential in popularizing bebop.
  In the 1940s Gillespie, together with Charlie Parker, became a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz. He taught and influenced many other musicians, including trumpeters Miles Davis, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Arturo Sandoval, Lee Morgan, Jon Faddis and Chuck Mangione.
  
  wn.com/Dizzy_Gillespie
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  Duke Ellington
  Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American composer, pianist, and big-band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions. In the opinion of Bob Blumenthal of The Boston Globe "In the century since his birth, there has been no greater composer, American or otherwise, than Edward Kennedy Ellington." A major figure in the history of jazz, Ellington's music stretched into various other genres, including blues, gospel, film scores, popular, and classical. His career spanned more than 50 years and included leading his orchestra, composing an inexhaustible songbook, scoring for movies, composing stage musicals, and world tours. Several of his instrumental works were adapted into songs that became standards. Due to his inventive use of the orchestra, or big band, and thanks to his eloquence and extraordinary charisma, he is generally considered to have elevated the perception of jazz to an art form on a par with other traditional genres of music. His reputation increased after his death and the Pulitzer Prize Board bestowed on him a special posthumous honor in 1999.
  
  wn.com/Duke_Ellington
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  Earl Hines
  Earl Kenneth Hines, universally known as Earl "Fatha" Hines, (December 28, 1903 – April 22, 1983) was an American jazz pianist. Hines was one of the most influential figures in the development of modern jazz piano and, according to one major source, is "one of a small number of pianists whose playing shaped the history of jazz".
  Earl Hines was born in Duquesne, Pennsylvania 12 miles from Pittsburgh city center. His father played cornet and was leader of Pittsburgh's Eureka Brass Band, his stepmother a church organist. Hines intended to follow his father on cornet but "blowing" hurt him behind the ears - while the piano didn't. The young Hines took classical piano lessons - at eleven he was playing organ in his local Baptist church - but he also had a "good ear and a good memory" and could re-play songs and numbers he heard in theaters and park 'concerts': "I'd be playing songs from these shows months before the song copies came out. That astonished a lot of people and they'd ask where I heard these numbers and I'd tell them at the theatre where my parents had taken me." Later Hines was to say that he was playing piano around Pittsburgh "before the word 'jazz' was even invented".
  
  wn.com/Earl_Hines
• Earle Warren
  Earle Warren (July 1, 1914 – June 4, 1994) was an alto saxophonist and occasional singer with Count Basie.
  He was born in Springfield, Ohio.
  He was the primary alto saxophonist in the Basie orchestra in its formative years and its heyday, from 1937 to the end of the 1940s. After the break-up of Basie's 1940s band, in 1949, he worked with former Basie trumpeter, Buck Clayton.
  Earle Warren also played some rock´n roll, working for Alan Freed in Alan Freed's Christmas Jubilee, December 1959, which was the very last big Alan Freed show before the payola scandal put an end to the legendary Freed's career. He also appeared in the 1970s jazz film of Count Basie and his band, Born to Swing.
  In his later years, Warren performed often at the West End jazz club at 116th and Broadway in New York City, helming a band called The Countsmen, which also featured fellow former Basie-ite Dicky Wells on trombone and Peck Morrison on bass. He lived part of the time in Switzerland where he fathered a child in a May/September romance.
  
  wn.com/Earle_Warren
• Eddie Durham
  Eddie Durham (19 August 1906 – 6 March 1987) was an American jazz guitarist, trombonist, composer and musical arranger of the swing music medium born in San Marcos, Texas, probably best known for his work with musicians like Cab Calloway, Willie Bryant, Andy Kirk, Glenn Miller, Jimmie Lunceford and Count Basie, among others. He is the co-composer of the tune "Topsy", recorded by the Count Basie Orchestra and later by many others. He also was the arranger for Glenn Miller's "In the Mood". He is also credited for creating the world's first electric guitar solo with a Gibson ES-150 guitar in 1938.
  
  wn.com/Eddie_Durham
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  Elia Kazan
  Elia Kazan (IPA: [eˈlia kaˈzan]; September 7, 1909 – September 28, 2003) was an American director, producer, writer and actor, described by The New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history". He was born in Istanbul, Ottoman Empire, to Greek parents. After studying acting at Yale, he acted professionally for eight years, later joining the Group Theater in 1932, and co-founded the Actors Studio in 1947. With Lee Strasberg, he introduced Method acting to the American stage and cinema as a new form of self-expression and psychological "realism". Kazan acted in only a few films, including City for Conquest (1940).
  Kazan introduced a new generation of unknown young actors to the movie audiences, including Marlon Brando and James Dean. Noted for drawing out the best dramatic performances from his actors, he directed 21 actors to Oscar nominations, resulting in nine wins. He became "one of the consummate filmmakers of the 20th century" after directing a string of successful films, including, A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), On the Waterfront (1954), and East of Eden (1955). During his career, he won two Oscars as Best Director and received an Honorary Oscar, won three Tony Awards, and four Golden Globes. Among the other actors he introduced to movie audences were Warren Beatty, Carroll Baker, Julie Harris, Andy Griffith, Lee Remick, Rip Torn, Eli Wallach, Eva Marie Saint, Martin Balsam, Fred Gwynne, and Pat Hingle.
  
  wn.com/Elia_Kazan
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  Ella Fitzgerald
  Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996), also known as the "First Lady of Song", "Queen of Jazz", and "Lady Ella", was an American jazz and song vocalist. With a vocal range spanning three octaves (D♭3 to D♭6), she was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing and intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.
  Fitzgerald was a notable interpreter of the Great American Songbook. Over the course of her 59-year recording career, she was the winner of 13 Grammy Awards and was awarded the National Medal of Arts by Ronald Reagan and the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George H. W. Bush.
  Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia, the child of a common-law marriage between William and Temperance "Tempie" Fitzgerald. The pair separated soon after her birth and she and her mother went to Yonkers, New York, where they eventually moved in with Tempie's longtime boyfriend, Joseph Da Silva. Fitzgerald's half-sister, Frances Da Silva, was born in 1923. She and her family were Methodists and were active in the Bethany African Methodist Episcopal Church and she regularly attended worship services, Bible study, and Sunday School.
  
  wn.com/Ella_Fitzgerald
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  Ernie Wilkins
  Ernest Brooks Wilkins Jr. (July 20, 1919 – June 5, 1999) was a jazz arranger and writer who also played tenor saxophone. He might be best known for his work with Count Basie. He also wrote for Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, and Dizzy Gillespie. In addition to that he was musical director for albums by Cannonball Adderley, Dinah Washington, Oscar Peterson, and Buddy Rich.
  Wilkins was born in St. Louis, Missouri. In his early career he played in a military band, before joining Earl Hines's last big band. In 1951 he began working with Basie. After 1955 he went free-lance as a jazz arranger and writer of songs as he was much in demand at that time. His success declined in the 1960s, but revived after work with Clark Terry. This led to his touring Europe.
  Eventually Wilkins settled in Copenhagen, Denmark, where he would live for the rest of his life. There he formed the Almost Big Band so he could write for a band of his own formation. The idea was partly inspired by his wife Jenny. Copenhagen had a thriving jazz scene several promising jazz musicians as well as well as a well-established community of expatriate American jazz musicians which had formed in the 1950s and now included representatives like Kenny Drew and Ed Thigpen who joined the band along with Danish saxophonist Jesper Thilo. The band released four albums, but after 1991 he became too ill to do much with it. He died in Copenhagen.
  
  wn.com/Ernie_Wilkins
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  Erroll Garner
  Erroll Louis Garner (June 15, 1923 – January 2, 1977) was an American jazz pianist and composer known for his swing playing and ballads. His best-known composition, the ballad "Misty", has become a jazz standard. Scott Yanow at Allmusic.com calls him "one of the most distinctive of all pianists" and a "brilliant virtuoso".
  Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to an African American family in 1923, Erroll began playing piano at the age of three. He attended George Westinghouse High School, as did fellow pianists Billy Strayhorn and Ahmad Jamal. Garner was self-taught and remained an "ear player" all his life – he never learned to read music. At the age of seven, Garner began appearing on the radio station KDKA in Pittsburgh with a group called the Candy Kids. By the age of 11, he was playing on the Allegheny riverboats. At 14 in 1937, he joined local saxophonist Leroy Brown.
  He played locally in the shadow of his older pianist brother Linton Garner and moved to New York in 1944. He briefly worked with the bassist Slam Stewart, and though not a bebop musician per se, in 1947 played with Charlie Parker on the famous "Cool Blues" session. Although his admission to the Pittsburgh music union was initially refused because of his inability to read music, they eventually relented in 1956 and made him an honorary member. Garner is credited with having a superb memory of music. After attending a concert by the Russian classical pianist Emil Gilels, Garner returned to his apartment and was able to play a large portion of the performed music by recall.
  
  wn.com/Erroll_Garner
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  Ethel Waters
  Ethel Waters (October 31, 1896 – September 1, 1977) was an American blues, jazz and gospel vocalist and actress. She frequently performed jazz, big band, and pop music, on the Broadway stage and in concerts, although she began her career in the 1920s singing blues.
  Her best-known recordings includes, "Dinah", "Stormy Weather", "Taking a Chance on Love", "Heat Wave", "Supper Time", "Am I Blue?", and "Cabin in the Sky", as well as her version of the spiritual "His Eye Is on the Sparrow". Waters was the second African American, after Hattie McDaniel, to be nominated for an Academy Award.
  Ethel Waters was born in Chester, Pennsylvania on October 31, 1896, as a result of the rape of her teenaged mother, Louise Anderson (believed to have been thirteen years old at the time, although some sources indicate she may have been slightly older) by John Waters, a pianist and family acquaintance from a mixed-race middle-class background, who played no role in raising Ethel. Ethel Waters was raised in poverty and never lived in the same place for more than 15 months. She said of her difficult childhood, "I never was a child. I never was cuddled, or liked, or understood by my family."^{[citation needed]} Waters grew tall, standing 5'9½" in her teens. According to women-in-jazz historian and archivist Rosetta Reitz, Waters' birth in the North and her peripatetic life exposed her to many cultures.
  
  wn.com/Ethel_Waters
• Eugene Ormandy
  Eugene Ormandy (November 18, 1899 – March 12, 1985) was a Hungarian-born conductor and violinist.
  Born Jenő Blau in Budapest, Hungary, Ormandy began studying violin at the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music (now the Franz Liszt Academy of Music) at the age of five. He gave his first concerts as a violinist at age seven and, studying with Jenő Hubay, graduated at 14 with a master's degree. In 1920, he obtained a university degree in philosophy. In 1921, he moved to the United States of America. Around this time Blau changed his name to "Eugene Ormandy," "Eugene" being the equivalent of the Hungarian "Jenő." Accounts differ on the origin of "Ormandy"; it may have either been Blau's own middle name at birth, or his mother's. He was first engaged by conductor Erno Rapee, a former Budapest friend and fellow Academy graduate, as a violinist in the orchestra of the Capitol Theatre in New York City, a 77-player ensemble which accompanied silent movies. He became the concertmaster within five days of joining and soon became one of the conductors of this group. Ormandy also made 16 recordings as a violinist between 1923 and 1929, half of them using the acoustic process.
  
  wn.com/Eugene_Ormandy
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  Fats Waller
  Fats Waller (May 21, 1904 – December 15, 1943), born Thomas Wright Waller, was a jazz pianist, organist, composer, singer, and comedic entertainer.
  Thomas Wright Waller was the youngest of four children born to Adaline Locket Waller and the Reverend Edward Martin Waller. He started playing the piano when he was six and graduated to the organ of his father's church four years later. At the age of fourteen he was playing the organ at Harlem's Lincoln Theater and within twelve months he had composed his first rag. Waller's first piano solos ("Muscle Shoals Blues" and "Birmingham Blues") were recorded in October 1922 when he was 18 years old.
  He was the prize pupil, and later friend and colleague, of stride pianist James P. Johnson. Fats Waller was the son of a preacher and learned to play the organ in church with his mother. Overcoming opposition from his clergyman father, Waller became a professional pianist at 15, working in cabarets and theaters. In 1918 he won a talent contest playing Johnson's "Carolina Shout", a song he learned from watching a player piano play it.
  
  wn.com/Fats_Waller
• Fletcher Henderson
  James Fletcher Hamilton Henderson, Jr. (December 18, 1897 – December 29, 1952) was an American pianist, bandleader, arranger and composer, important in the development of big band jazz and swing music. His was one of the most prolific black orchestras and his influence was vast. He was often known as "Smack" Henderson (apparently named due to his college baseball hitting skills).
  Fletcher Henderson was born in Cuthbert, Georgia. He attended Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia and graduated in 1920. After graduation, he moved to New York City to attend Columbia University for a master's degree in chemistry. However, he found his job prospects in chemistry to be very restricted due to his race, and turned to music for a living.
  He was recording director for the fledgling Black Swan label from 1921-1923. Throughout the early and mid 1920s, Henderson provided solo piano accompanyment for many blues singers. In 1922 he formed his own band, which was resident first at the Club Alabam then at the Roseland Ballroom, and quickly became known as the best African-American band in New York. Even though he did not do band arrangements in the 1920's, for a time his ideas of arrangement were heavily influenced by those of Paul Whiteman, but when Louis Armstrong joined his orchestra in 1924 Henderson realized there could be a much richer potential for jazz band orchestration. Henderson's band also boasted the formidable arranging talents of Don Redman (from 1922 to 1927). During the 1920s and very early 1930s, Henderson actually wrote few, if any, arrangements; most of his recordings were arranged by Redman (c. 1923-1927) or Benny Carter (after 1927-c. 1931). As an arranger, Henderson came into his own in the mid-1930s.
  
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  Frank Sinatra
  Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra,  /sɨˈnɑːtrə/, (December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and film actor.
  Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the "bobby soxers", he released his first album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra in 1946. His professional career had stalled by the 1950s, but it was reborn in 1953 after he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in From Here to Eternity.
  He signed with Capitol Records in 1953 and released several critically lauded albums (such as In the Wee Small Hours, Songs for Swingin' Lovers, Come Fly with Me, Only the Lonely and Nice 'n' Easy). Sinatra left Capitol to found his own record label, Reprise Records in 1961 (finding success with albums such as Ring-a-Ding-Ding!, Sinatra at the Sands and Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim), toured internationally, was a founding member of the Rat Pack and fraternized with celebrities and statesmen, including John F. Kennedy. Sinatra turned 50 in 1965, recorded the retrospective September of My Years, starred in the Emmy-winning television special Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music, and scored hits with "Strangers in the Night" and "My Way".
  
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  Fred Astaire
  Fred Astaire (born Frederick Austerlitz; May 10, 1899 – June 22, 1987) was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute. He is particularly associated with Ginger Rogers, with whom he made ten films.
  Gene Kelly, another major innovator in filmed dance, said that "the history of dance on film begins with Astaire". Beyond film and television, many classical dancers and choreographers, Rudolf Nureyev, Sammy Davis, Jr., Michael Jackson, Gregory Hines, Mikhail Baryshnikov, George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins among them, also acknowledged his importance and influence.
  Astaire was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of Johanna "Ann" (née Geilus) and Frederic "Fritz" Austerlitz (born September 8, 1868, as Friedrich Emanuel Austerlitz). Astaire's mother was born in the United States to Lutheran German immigrants from East Prussia and Alsace, while Astaire's father was born in Linz, Austria, to Jewish parents who had converted to Catholicism.
  
  wn.com/Fred_Astaire
• Freddie Green
  Frederick William "Freddie" Green (March 31, 1911 – March 1, 1987) was an American swing jazz guitarist. He was especially noted for his sophisticated rhythm guitar in big band settings, particularly for the Count Basie orchestra, where he was part of the "All-American Rhythm Section" with Basie on piano, Jo Jones on drums, and Walter Page on bass.
  He was born in Charleston, South Carolina on March 31, 1911. He was exposed to music from an early age, and learned the banjo before picking up the guitar in his early teenage years. A friend of his father by the name of Sam Walker taught a young Freddie to read music, and keenly encouraged him to keep up his guitar playing. Walker gave Freddie what was perhaps his first gig, playing with a local community group with whom Walker was an organizer. Interestingly, another member of the group was a young William "Cat" Anderson, who went on to become an established trumpeter, working with notable figures such as Duke Ellington.^{[citation needed]}
  It was around this time that Green's parents died, and he moved to New York to live with his aunt and continue his education. The move opened up a new musical world to Freddie. While still in his teens, he began to play around the clubs of the city, earning money and a reputation. In one of these gigs, he was noticed by the legendary talent scout John H. Hammond, who realized the potential of Green and introduced him to Basie.
  
  wn.com/Freddie_Green
• Frederick Loewe
  Frederick Loewe (/ˈloʊ/, originally German Friedrich (Fritz) Löwe [ˈløːvə]; June 10, 1901 – February 14, 1988), was an Austrian-American composer. He collaborated with lyricist Alan Jay Lerner on the long running Broadway musicals My Fair Lady and Camelot, with book and lyrics by Lerner, both of which were made into films.
  Loewe was born in Berlin, Germany, to Viennese parents Edmond and Rosa Loewe. His father was a noted Jewish operetta star who performed throughout Europe and in North and South America; he starred as Count Danilo in the original production of The Merry Widow.
  Frederick Loewe grew up in Berlin and attended a Prussian cadet school from the age of five until he was thirteen. At an early age Loewe learned to play piano by ear and helped his father rehearse, and he began composing songs at age seven. He eventually attended a music conservatory in Berlin, one year behind virtuoso Claudio Arrau, and studied with Ferruccio Busoni and Eugene d'Albert. He won the coveted Hollander Medal awarded by the school and gave performances as a concert pianist while still in Germany. At 13, he was the youngest piano soloist ever to appear with the Berlin Philharmonic.
  
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  Gene Kelly
  Eugene Curran "Gene" Kelly (August 23, 1912 - February 2, 1996) was an American dancer, actor, singer, film director and producer, and choreographer. Kelly was known for his energetic and athletic dancing style, his good looks and the likeable characters that he played on screen.
  Although he is known today for his performances in Singin' in the Rain and An American in Paris, he was a dominant force in Hollywood musical films from the mid 1940s until this art form fell out of fashion in the late 1950s. His many innovations transformed the Hollywood musical film, and he is credited with almost single-handedly making the ballet form commercially acceptable to film audiences.
  Kelly was the recipient of an Academy Honorary Award in 1952 for his career achievements. He later received lifetime achievement awards in the Kennedy Center Honors, and from the Screen Actors Guild and American Film Institute; in 1999, the American Film Institute also numbered him 15th in their Greatest Male Stars of All Time list.
  
  wn.com/Gene_Kelly
• George Abbott
  George Francis Abbott (June 25, 1887 – January 31, 1995) was an American theater producer and director, playwright, screenwriter, and film director and producer whose career spanned more than nine decades.
  Abbott was born in Forestville, New York, and later moved to the town of Salamanca, which twice elected his father mayor. In 1898, his family moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming, where he attended Kearney Military Academy. Within a few years, his family returned to New York, and he graduated from Hamburg High School in 1907. Four years later, he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Rochester, where he wrote his first play, Perfectly Harmless, for the University Dramatic Club.
  Abbott then went to Harvard University, where he studied playwriting under George Pierce Baker. Under his tutelage, he wrote The Head of the Family, which was performed at the Harvard Dramatic Club in 1912. He then worked for a year as assistant stage manager at the Bijou Theatre in Boston, where his play The Man in the Manhole won a contest.
  
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  George Burns
  George Burns (January 20, 1896 – March 9, 1996), born Naftaly Birnbaum, was an American comedian, actor, and writer.
  He was one of the few entertainers whose career successfully spanned vaudeville, film, radio, and television. His arched eyebrow and cigar smoke punctuation became familiar trademarks for over three quarters of a century. Beginning at the age of 79, Burns' career was resurrected as an amiable, beloved and unusually active old comedian, continuing to work until shortly before his death, in 1996, at the age of 100.
  Naftaly (late called Nathan) Birnbaum was the ninth of 12 children born to Louis and Dorah (nèe Bluth) Birnbaum, Jewish immigrants who had come to the United States from Romania. Burns was an active member of the First Roumanian-American congregation. His father was a substitute cantor at the local synagogue but usually worked as a coat presser. During the influenza epidemic of 1903, Lippe Birnbaum contracted the flu and died at the age of 47. Nattie (as he was then called) went to work to help support the family, shining shoes, running errands, and selling newspapers.
  
  wn.com/George_Burns
• George Shearing
  Sir George Shearing, OBE (August 13, 1919 – February 14, 2011) was an Anglo-American jazz pianist who for many years led a popular jazz group that recorded for Discovery Records, MGM Records and Capitol Records. The composer of over 300 titles, he had multiple albums on the Billboard charts during the 1950s, 1960s, 1980s and 1990s. He died of heart failure on February 14, 2011 in New York City, at the age of 91.
  Born in Battersea, London, Shearing was the youngest of nine children. He was born blind to working class parents: his father delivered coal and his mother cleaned trains in the evening. He started to learn piano at the age of three and began formal training at Linden Lodge School for the Blind, where he spent four years.
  Though offered several scholarships, Shearing opted to perform at a local pub, the Mason's Arms in Lambeth, for "25 bob a week" playing piano and accordion. He even joined an all-blind band during that time and was influenced by the records of Teddy Wilson and Fats Waller. He made his first BBC radio appearance during this time after befriending Leonard Feather, with whom he started recording in 1937. In 1940, Shearing joined Harry Parry's popular band and contributed to the comeback of Stéphane Grappelli. Shearing won seven consecutive Melody Maker polls during this time. Around that time he was also a member of George Evans's Saxes 'n' Sevens band.
  
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  Gian Carlo Menotti
  Gian Carlo Menotti (pronounced [dʒan ˈkarlo meˈnɔtːi]) (July 7, 1911 – February 1, 2007) was an Italian-American composer and librettist. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. He wrote the classic Christmas opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, among about two dozen other operas intended to appeal to popular taste. He won the Pulitzer Prize for two of them: The Consul (1950) and The Saint of Bleecker Street (1955). He founded the noted Festival dei Due Mondi (Festival of the Two Worlds) in 1958 and its American counterpart, Spoleto Festival USA, in 1977. In 1986 he commenced a Melbourne Spoleto Festival in Australia, but he withdrew after three years.
  Born in Cadegliano-Viconago, Italy, near Lake Maggiore and the Swiss border, Menotti was the sixth of eight children of Alfonso and Ines Menotti, his father being a coffee merchant. Menotti began writing songs when he was seven years old, and at eleven wrote both the libretto and music for his first opera, The Death of Pierrot. He began his formal musical training at the Milan Conservatory in 1923.
  
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  Glenn Miller
  Alton Glenn Miller (March 1, 1904 – missing in action December 15, 1944) was an American jazz musician (trombone), arranger, composer, and bandleader in the swing era. He was one of the best-selling recording artists from 1939 to 1943, leading one of the best known Big Bands. Miller's notable recordings include "In the Mood", "Moonlight Serenade", "Pennsylvania 6-5000", "Chattanooga Choo Choo", "A String of Pearls", "At Last", "(I've Got a Gal In) Kalamazoo", "American Patrol", "Tuxedo Junction", and "Little Brown Jug". While he was traveling to entertain U.S. troops in France during World War II, Glenn Miller disappeared in bad weather over the English Channel. The Glenn Miller Orchestra was re-formed after the war and continues to record and perform to this day.
  Miller was born on a farm in Clarinda, Iowa, to Lewis Elmer Miller and Mattie Lou (née Cavender). He went to grade school in North Platte in western Nebraska. In 1915, Miller's family moved to Grant City, Missouri. Around this time, Miller had finally made enough money from milking cows to buy his first trombone and played in the town orchestra. In 1918, the Miller family moved again, this time to Fort Morgan, Colorado, where Miller went to high school. During his senior year, Miller became very interested in a new style of music called "dance band music." He was so taken with it that he formed his own band with some classmates. By the time Miller graduated from high school in 1921, he had decided he wanted to become a professional musician.
  
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  Harry Belafonte
  Harold George "Harry" Belafonte, Jr. (born March 1, 1927) is an American singer, songwriter, actor and social activist. He was dubbed the "King of Calypso" for popularizing the Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s. Belafonte is perhaps best known for singing "The Banana Boat Song", with its signature lyric "Day-O". Throughout his career he has been an advocate for civil rights and humanitarian causes and was a vocal critic of the policies of the George W. Bush Administration.
  Born Harold George Bellanfanti, Jr., at Lying-in Hospital, Harlem, New York, Belafonte was the son of Melvine (née Love) – a housekeeper of Jamaican descent – and Harold George Bellanfanti, Sr., a Martiniquan who worked as a chef in the National Guard. From 1932 to 1940, he lived with his grandmother in her native country of Jamaica. When he returned to New York City, he attended George Washington High School after which he joined the Navy and served during World War II. In the 1940s, he was working as a janitor's assistant in NYC when a tenant gave him, as a gratuity, two tickets to see the American Negro Theater. He fell in love with the art form and also met Sidney Poitier. The financially struggling pair regularly purchased a single seat to local plays, trading places in between acts, after informing the other about the progression of the play. At the end of the 1940s, he took classes in acting at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York with the influential German director Erwin Piscator alongside Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis, Walter Matthau, Bea Arthur and Sidney Poitier, while performing with the American Negro Theatre. He subsequently received a Tony Award for his participation in the Broadway revue John Murray Anderson's Almanac.
  
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  Helen Hayes
  Helen Hayes Brown (October 10, 1900 – March 17, 1993) was an American actress whose career spanned almost 70 years. She eventually garnered the nickname "First Lady of the American Theatre" and was one of twelve people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award. Hayes also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor, from President Ronald Reagan in 1986. In 1988, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. The annual Helen Hayes Awards, which have recognized excellence in professional theatre in the greater Washington, D.C. area since 1984, are her namesake. In 1955 the former Fulton Theatre on 46th Street in New York City's Broadway theater district was renamed the Helen Hayes Theatre. When that venue was torn down in 1982, the nearby Little Theatre was renamed in her honor.
  Helen Hayes was born in Washington D.C. on October 10, 1900. Her mother, Catherine Estelle (née Hayes), or Essie, was an aspiring actress who worked in touring companies. Her father, Francis van Arnum Brown, worked at a number of jobs, including as a clerk at the Washington Patent Office and as a manager and salesman for a wholesale butcher. Hayes' Irish Catholic maternal grandparents immigrated from Ireland during the Irish Potato Famine; her mother was a great-niece of Irish singer Catherine Hayes.
  
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  Helen Humes
  Helen Humes (June 23, 1913 – September 9, 1981) was an American jazz and blues singer.
  Humes was successively a teenage blues singer, band vocalist with Count Basie, saucy R&B diva and a mature interpreter of the classy popular song.
  Humes was born in Louisville, Kentucky, United States, was spotted by the guitarist Sylvester Weaver and made her first recordings in 1927, her true young voice consorting oddly with bizarre material like "Garlic Blues".
  She moved to New York City in 1937 and became a recording vocalist with Harry James' big band. Her swing recordings with James included "Jubilee", "I Can Dream Can't I", Jimmy Dorsey's composition "It's The Dreamer In Me", and "Song of the Wanderer".
  Humes became one of the vocalists with the Count Basie Orchestra in 1938, replacing Billie Holiday as lead female vocalist. Her vocals with Basie's band included "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" and "Moonlight Serenade".
  During the 1940s and 1950s, Humes became a solo performer and worked with different bands and other vocalists including Nat King Cole. She sounded very sprightly on the jump blues Be-Baba-Leba (Philo, 1945) and Million Dollar Secret (Modern, 1950).
  
  wn.com/Helen_Humes
• Herschel Evans
  Herschel "Tex" Evans (March 9, 1909 – February 9, 1939), was an American tenor saxophonist who worked in the Count Basie Orchestra. He had also worked with Lionel Hampton and Buck Clayton. He is also known for starting his cousin Joe McQueen's interest in the saxophone.
  Evans was born in Denton, Texas, United States, but spent some of his childhood in Kansas City, Kansas, where his cousin Eddie Durham was a trombonist and guitarist. Durham persuaded him to switch from alto to tenor saxophone, the instrument that ultimately established Evans's reputation. After perfecting his craft in the jam sessions held in the jazz district between Twelfth and Eighteenth streets in Kansas City, Evans returned to Texas in the 1920s and joined the Troy Floyd orchestra in San Antonio in 1929. He stayed with the band until it dispersed in 1932. Evans performed for a time with Lionel Hampton and Buck Clayton in Los Angeles, and in the mid-1930s returned to Kansas City to become a featured soloist in Count Basie's big band.
  
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  Hume Cronyn
  Hume Blake Cronyn, OC (July 18, 1911 – June 15, 2003) was a Canadian actor of stage and screen, who enjoyed a long career, often appearing professionally alongside his second wife, Jessica Tandy.
  Hume Cronyn, one of five children, was born in London, Ontario, Canada, the son of Hume Blake Cronyn, Sr., a businessman and a Member of Parliament for London (after whom the Hume Cronyn Memorial Observatory and asteroid (12050) Humecronyn are named) and Frances Amelia (née Labatt), an heiress of the brewing company of the same name. His paternal grandfather, Verschoyle Cronyn, was the son of the Right Reverend Benjamin Cronyn, an Anglican cleric of the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendancy, who served as first bishop of the Anglican diocese of Huron, and founder of Huron College, from which grew the University of Western Ontario. His great-uncle, Benjamin, Jr., was both a prominent citizen and early mayor of London, Ontario, but was later indicted for fraud and fled to Vermont; during his tenure in London he built a mansion called Oakwood, which currently serves as the head office of the Info-Tech Research Group. Cronyn was also a cousin of Canadian-born theater producer, Robert Whitehead, and a first cousin of the Canadian-British artist Hugh Verschoyle Cronyn GM (1905–1996).
  
  wn.com/Hume_Cronyn
• Idrees Sulieman
  Idrees Sulieman (August 7, 1923, in St. Petersburg, Florida – July 23, 2002 in St. Petersburg, FL) was a bop and hard bop trumpeter. He studied at Boston Conservatory, and gained early experience playing with the Carolina Cotton Pickers and the wartime Earl Hines Orchestra (1943–1944). Sulieman was closely associated with Mary Lou Williams for a time and had stints with Cab Calloway, John Coltrane, Count Basie, and Lionel Hampton. Sulieman recorded with Coleman Hawkins (1957) and gigged with Randy Weston (1958–1959), in addition to popping up in many other situations. He went to Europe in 1961 to tour with Oscar Dennard, and then settled in Stockholm, moving to Copenhagen in 1964. A major soloist with The Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band from the mid-'60s through 1973, Sulieman frequently worked with radio orchestras. His recordings as a leader were for Swedish Columbia (1964) and SteepleChase (1976 and 1985). In 1985, he played in the big band in Miles Davis' album "Aura," which was released in 1989. Sulieman's career slowed down considerably in the '90s as he aged. He died of bladder cancer on July 23, 2002 at St. Anthony's Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida.
  
  wn.com/Idrees_Sulieman
• Irene Dunne
  Irene Dunne (December 20, 1898 – September 4, 1990) was an American film actress and singer of the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s. Dunne was nominated five times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, for her performances in Cimarron (1931), Theodora Goes Wild (1936), The Awful Truth (1937), Love Affair (1939) and I Remember Mama (1948). She was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1958.
  Born Irene Marie Dunn in Louisville, Kentucky, to Joseph Dunn, a steamboat inspector for the United States government, and Adelaide Henry, a concert pianist/music teacher from Newport, Kentucky, Irene Dunn would later write "No triumph of either my stage or screen career has ever rivalled the excitement of trips down the Mississippi on the river boats with my father." She was only eleven when her father died in 1909. She saved all of his letters and often remembered and lived by what he told her the night before he died: "Happiness is never an accident. It is the prize we get when we choose wisely from life's great stores."
  
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  Isaac Stern
  Isaac Stern (Ukrainian: Исаак Стерн, Russian: Айзек Стерн; July 21, 1920 – September 22, 2001) was a Ukrainian-born violinist and conductor. He was renowned for his recordings and for discovering new musical talent.
  Isaac Stern was born into a Jewish family in Kremenets, Ukraine. He was fourteen months old when his family moved to San Francisco. He received his first music lessons from his mother, then in 1928 enrolled at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he studied until 1931 before going on to study privately with Louis Persinger. He returned to the San Francisco Conservatory to study for five years with Naoum Blinder, to whom he said he owed the most. At his public début on February 18, 1936, aged 15, he played Saint-Saëns' Violin Concerto No. 3 in B minor with the San Francisco Symphony under the direction of Pierre Monteux. Reflecting on his background, Stern once memorably quipped that cultural exchanges between the US and Soviet Russia were simple affairs: "They send us their Jews from Odessa, and we send them our Jews from Odessa."
  
  wn.com/Isaac_Stern
• Jack Washington
  Ronald "Jack" Washington (July 17, 1910 – November 28, 1964) was an American jazz saxophonist, who was best known for his time in the Count Basie orchestra in the 1930s and 1940s.
  Born in Kansas City, Kansas, he started playing soprano sax in his teens before switching to baritone. He joined Bennie Moten's Orchestra in the late 1920s, after leaving high school, and remained with Moten while also performing with Paul Banks and with Jesse Stone's Blues Serenaders. After Moten's death in 1935, he joined Count Basie's band, and remained with Basie until 1950 except for a short period in the US Army. He performed with the Basie band at the From Spirituals to Swing concerts in New York City in 1938 and 1939. Although rarely featured as a soloist, Washington has been described at Allmusic.com as "one of the finest baritonists of his generation" and as the "unsung hero of the baritone-sax".
  He later moved to Oklahoma City, where he worked at the city airport. He continued to perform on an occasional basis, and took part in a reunion of the Basie orchestra in 1958. He died in Oklahoma City in 1964 at the age of 54.
  
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  James Cagney
  James Francis Cagney, Jr. (July 17, 1899 – March 30, 1986) was an American actor, first on stage, then in film, where he had his greatest impact. Although he won acclaim and major awards for a wide variety of performances, he is best remembered for playing tough guys. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him eighth among its 50 Greatest American Screen Legends.
  In his first professional acting performance, he danced dressed as a woman in the chorus line of the 1919 revue Every Sailor. He spent several years in vaudeville as a hoofer and comedian, until he got his first major acting part in 1925. He secured several other roles, receiving good notices, before landing the lead in the 1929 play Penny Arcade. After rave reviews, Warner Bros. signed him for an initial $500-a-week, three-week contract to reprise his role; this was quickly extended to a seven-year contract.
  
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  James Stewart
  James Maitland "Jimmy" Stewart (May 20, 1908 – July 2, 1997) was an American film and stage actor, known for his distinctive voice and persona. Over the course of his career, he starred in many films widely considered classics and was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning one in competition and receiving one Lifetime Achievement award. He was a major MGM contract star. He also had a noted military career and was a World War II and Vietnam War veteran, who rose to the rank of Brigadier General in the United States Air Force Reserve.
  James Maitland Stewart was born on May 20, 1908, in Indiana, Pennsylvania, the son of Elizabeth Ruth (née Jackson) and Alexander Maitland Stewart, who owned a hardware store. Stewart's parents were of Scottish descent and Presbyterians. His maternal ancestors served in the American Revolution, the War of 1812 and the American Civil War. The eldest of three children (he had two younger sisters, Virginia and Mary), he was expected to continue his father's business, which had been in the family for three generations. His mother was an excellent pianist but his father discouraged Stewart's request for lessons. But when his father accepted a gift of an accordion from a guest, young Stewart quickly learned to play the instrument, which became a fixture off-stage during his acting career. As the family grew, music continued to be an important part of family life.
  
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  Jerome Robbins
  Jerome Robbins (October 11, 1918 – July 29, 1998) was an American theater producer, director, and choreographer known primarily for Broadway Theater and Ballet/Dance, but who also occasionally directed films and directed/produced for television. His work has included everything from classical ballet to contemporary musical theater. Among the numerous stage productions he worked on were On the Town, Peter Pan, High Button Shoes, The King And I, The Pajama Game, Bells Are Ringing, West Side Story, Gypsy: A Musical Fable, and Fiddler on the Roof. Robbins is a five time Tony Award winner and a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors. He also received two Academy Awards, including the 1961 Academy Award for Best Director with Robert Wise for West Side Story. A documentary about his life and work, Something to Dance About, featuring excerpts from his journals, archival performance and rehearsal footage and interviews with Robbins and his colleagues, premiered on PBS in 2009.
  Robbins was born Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz, exactly one month before the end of World War I, in the Jewish Maternity Hospital in the heart of Manhattan’s Lower East Side – a neighborhood populated by many immigrants. The Rabinowitz family lived in a large apartment house at 51 East 97th at the northeast corner of Madison Avenue. Known as "Jerry" to those close to him, Robbins was given a middle name that reflected his parents' patriotic enthusiasm for the then-president. Rabinowitz, however, translates to “son of a rabbi”, a name Robbins never liked, since it marked him as the son of an immigrant. So he took the name "Robbins".
  
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  Jerry Lewis
  Jerry Lewis (born March 16, 1926) is an American comedian, actor, singer, film producer, screenwriter and film director. He is best known for his slapstick humor in film, television, stage and radio. He was originally paired up with Dean Martin in 1946, forming the famed comedy team of Martin and Lewis.
  In addition to the duo's popular nightclub work, they starred in a successful series of comedy films for Paramount Pictures. Lewis is also known for his charity fund-raising telethons and position as national chairman for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA).
  Lewis has won several awards for lifetime achievements from The American Comedy Awards, The Golden Camera, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and The Venice Film Festival, and he has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
  In 2005, he received the Governors Award of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Board of Governors, which is the highest Emmy Award presented. On February 22, 2009, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Lewis the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
  
  wn.com/Jerry_Lewis
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  Jessica Tandy
  Jessie Alice "Jessica" Tandy (June 7, 1909 - September 11, 1994) was an English-American stage and film actress.
  She first appeared on the London stage in 1926 at the age of 16, playing, among other roles, Katherine opposite Laurence Olivier's Henry V, and Cordelia opposite John Gielgud's King Lear. She also worked in British films. Following the end of her marriage to the British actor Jack Hawkins, she moved to New York, where she met Canadian actor Hume Cronyn. He became her second husband and frequent partner on stage and screen.
  She won the Tony Award for her performance as Blanche Dubois in the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948, sharing the prize with Katherine Cornell (who won for the female lead in Antony and Cleopatra) and Judith Anderson (for the latter's portrayal of Medea). Over the following three decades, her career continued sporadically and included a supporting role in Alfred Hitchcock's horror film, The Birds (1963), and a Tony Award-winning performance in The Gin Game (1977, playing in the two-hander play opposite Hume Cronyn). Along with Cronyn, she was a member of the original acting company of the Guthrie Theater.
  
  wn.com/Jessica_Tandy
• Jimmy Mundy
  Jimmy Mundy (28 June 1907–24 April 1983) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist, arranger, and composer, best known for his arrangements for Benny Goodman, Count Basie and Earl Hines.
  Born James Mundy in Cincinnati, Ohio, and gained his arranging skills in the 1920s while playing with local bands led by Erskine Tate, Tommy Miles, and Carroll Dickerson. In 1932 he joined Earl Hines for four years, originally as a saxophonist, but swiftly developing a reputation as an arranger. After selling one of his arrangements to Benny Goodman in 1935, Goodman hired him away from Hines, and Mundy became Goodman's staff arranger. (Mundy also did a couple of arrangements for Claude Hopkins in 1932.)
  Mundy was also a significant supplier of arrangements to Count Basie (from about 1940 to 1947), as well as writing for Gene Krupa, Paul Whiteman, Dizzy Gillespie (in 1949), Charlie Spivak, Harry James, and many others. He briefly led his own band in 1939, but after World War II he returned to arranging for Basie, James, and others. He wrote the score to the 1955 musical The Vamp which starred Carol Channing. The 1957 musical Livin' The Life and the 2010 dance revue Come Fly Away also had some of his music.
  
  wn.com/Jimmy_Mundy
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  Jimmy Rushing
  James Andrew Rushing (August 26, 1901 – June 8, 1972), known as Jimmy Rushing, was an American blues shouter and swing jazz singer from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, best known as the featured vocalist of Count Basie's Orchestra from 1935 to 1948.
  Rushing was known as "Mr. Five by Five" and was the subject of an eponymous 1942 popular song that was a hit for Harry James and others -- the lyrics describing Rushing's rotund build: "he's five feet tall and he's five feet wide". He joined Walter Page's Blue Devils in 1927, then joined Bennie Moten's band in 1929. He stayed with the successor Count Basie band when Moten died in 1935.
  Rushing was a powerful singer who had a range from baritone to tenor. He could project his voice so that it soared over the horn and reed sections in a big-band setting. Basie claimed that Rushing "never had an equal" as a blues vocalist.George Frazier, author of Harvard Blues, called Rushing's distinctive voice "a magnificent gargle". His best known recordings are probably "Going to Chicago" with Basie, and "Harvard Blues", with a famous saxophone solo by Don Byas.
  
  wn.com/Jimmy_Rushing
• Jo Jones
  Jo Jones (October 7, 1911 – September 3, 1985) was an American jazz drummer.
  Known as Papa Jo Jones in his later years, he was sometimes confused with another influential jazz drummer, Philly Joe Jones. The two died only a few days apart.
  Born as "Jonathan David Samuel Jones" in Chicago, Illinois, he moved to Alabama where he learned to play several instruments, including saxophone, piano, and drums. He worked as a drummer and tap-dancer at carnival shows until joining Walter Page's band, the Blue Devils in Oklahoma City in the late 1920s. He recorded with trumpeter Lloyd Hunter's Serenaders in 1931, and later joined pianist Count Basie's band in 1934. Jones, Basie, guitarist Freddie Green and bassist Walter Page were sometimes billed as an 'all-American Rhythm section'. Jones took a brief break for two years when he was in the military, but he remained with Basie until 1948. He participated in the Jazz at the Philharmonic concert series.
  He was one of the first drummers to promote the use of brushes on drums and shifting the role of timekeeping from the bass drum to the hi-hat cymbal. Jones had a major influence on later drummers such as Buddy Rich, Kenny Clarke, Roy Haynes, Max Roach, and Louie Bellson. He also starred in several films, most notably the musical short Jammin' the Blues (1944).
  
  wn.com/Jo_Jones
• Joe Keyes
  Joe Keyes (c. 1907 – November 1950) was an American jazz trumpeter who played in several leading bands in the 1930s and 1940s, including those of Bennie Moten, Count Basie, and Oran "Hot Lips" Page.
  He was born in Houston, Texas, and was playing in local bands such as Johnson's Joymakers by 1928. He then played in bands led by Gene Coy, Jap Allen, and Blanche Calloway, before joining Bennie Moten's band in 1932. Following Moten's death in 1935, and together with several other members of the band, he joined the Count Basie Orchestra, but left in 1937. He then worked in the band led by "Hot Lips" Page, and recorded with guitarist Eddie Durham and saxophonist Buster Smith. Around 1941, he played briefly with both Fletcher Henderson and Fats Waller, and in 1943 with Claude Hopkins.
  However, by 1943 Keyes had become unreliable as a result of alcoholism, and performed rarely. After Keyes had pawned his trumpet, Cab Calloway offered him the opportunity to join his band if he could clean up his act, but Keyes was unable to do so. His body was found floating in the Harlem River in New York City on November 6, 1950. He had apparently drowned, but unsubstantiated rumours circulated that he had been murdered.
  
  wn.com/Joe_Keyes
• Johnny Letman
  Johnny Letman (September 6, 1917 - July 17, 1992) was an American jazz trumpeter.
  Letman played early in his career in various Midwest bands, including those of Gerald Valentine, Scat Man Crothers, and Jimmy Raschelle. Moving to Chicago in the middle of the 1930s, he worked with Delbert Bright, Bob Tinsley, Johnny Lang, Nat King Cole (1938), Horace Henderson (1941-42), and Red Saunders (1942). He spent a year or so in Detroit, playing with Teddy Buckner and John Kirby, then moved to New York City in 1944. His credits there include Phil Moore, Lucky Millinder (1945), Cab Calloway (1947-49), Milt Buckner, and Count Basie (1951).
  Letman did extensive work as a studio musician and in Broadway shows throughout the 1950s and 1960s. He worked both in and outside of jazz music, and his associations in these decades include Joe Thomas, Stuff Smith, Chubby Jackson, Panama Francis, Dick Wellstood, Hal Singer, Sam Taylor, Eddie Condon, Wilbur De Paris, and Claude Hopkins. In 1968 he played with Milt Buckner and Tiny Grimes in Paris. In the 1970s, he played with Lionel Hampton, Cozy Cole, and Earl Hines. In 1985-86 he led the New Orleans Blues Serenaders, including on a tour of Europe.
  
  wn.com/Johnny_Letman
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  Judy Garland
  Judy Garland (June 10, 1922 – June 22, 1969) was an American actress, singer and vaudevillian. Renowned for her contralto voice, she attained international stardom through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage. Respected for her versatility, she received a Juvenile Academy Award and won a Golden Globe Award, as well as Grammy Awards and a Special Tony Award. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the remake of A Star is Born and for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the 1961 film, Judgment at Nuremberg. At 39 years of age, she remains the youngest recipient of the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in the motion picture industry.
  After appearing in vaudeville with her two older sisters, Garland was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a teenager. There she made more than two dozen films, including nine with Mickey Rooney and the 1939 film with which she would be most identified, The Wizard of Oz. After 15 years, she was released from the studio but gained renewed success through record-breaking concert appearances, including a return to acting beginning with critically acclaimed performances.
  
  wn.com/Judy_Garland
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  Katherine Dunham
  Katherine Dunham (June 22, 1909 – May 21, 2006) was an American dancer, choreographer, and company director as well as an author, educator, and social activist. Dunham had one of the most successful dance careers in American and European theater of the 20th century and has been called the "matriarch and queen mother of black dance."
  During her heyday in the 1940s and 1950s, Dunham was renowned throughout Europe and Latin America and was widely popular in the United States, where the Washington Post called her "dance's Katherine the Great." For almost thirty years she maintained the Katherine Dunham Dance Company, the only self-supported American black dance troupe at that time, and over her long career she choreographed more than ninety individual dances. Dunham was an innovator in African-American modern dance as well as a leader in the field of dance anthropology, or ethnochoreology.
  Katherine Mary Dunham was born in June 1909 in a Chicago hospital and taken as an infant to her parents' home in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a village about fifteen miles west of Chicago. Her father, Albert Millard Dunham, was a descendant of slaves from West Africa and Madagascar. Her mother, Fanny June Dunham (née Taylor), who was of mixed French-Canadian and Native American heritage, died when Katherine was four years old. After her father's remarriage a few years later, the family moved to a predominately white neighborhood in Joliet, Illinois, where Mr. Dunham ran a dry cleaning business.
  
  wn.com/Katherine_Dunham
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  Lena Horne
  Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010) was an American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer.
  Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the films Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather. Due to the Red Scare and her left-leaning political views, Horne found herself blacklisted and unable to get work in Hollywood.
  Returning to her roots as a nightclub performer, Horne took part in the March on Washington in August 1963, and continued to work as a performer, both in nightclubs and on television, while releasing well-received record albums. She announced her retirement in March 1980, but the next year starred in a one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, which ran for more than three hundred performances on Broadway and earned her numerous awards and accolades. She continued recording and performing sporadically into the 1990s, disappearing from the public eye in 2000.
  
  wn.com/Lena_Horne
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  Leonard Bernstein
  Leonard Bernstein ( /ˈbɜrnstaɪn/ US dict: bûrn′·stīn; August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim. According to The New York Times, he was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history."
  His fame derived from his long tenure as the music director of the New York Philharmonic, from his conducting of concerts with most of the world's leading orchestras, and from his music for West Side Story, as well as Candide, Wonderful Town, On the Town and his own Mass.
  Bernstein was also the first conductor to give numerous television lectures on classical music, starting in 1954 and continuing until his death. In addition, he was a skilled pianist, often conducting piano concertos from the keyboard.
  As a composer he wrote in many styles encompassing symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film and theatre music, choral works, opera, chamber music and pieces for the piano. Many of his works are regularly performed around the world, although none has matched the tremendous popular and commercial success of West Side Story.
  
  wn.com/Leonard_Bernstein
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  Leontyne Price
  Mary Violet Leontyne Price (born February 10, 1927) is an American soprano. Born and raised in the Deep South, she rose to international acclaim in the 1950s and 1960s, and was one of the first African Americans to become a leading artist at the Metropolitan Opera.
  One critic characterized Price's voice as "vibrant", "soaring" and "a Price beyond pearls", as well as "genuinely buttery, carefully produced but firmly under control", with phrases that "took on a seductive sinuousness." Time magazine called her voice "Rich, supple and shining, it was in its prime capable of effortlessly soaring from a smoky mezzo to the pure soprano gold of a perfectly spun high C."
  A lirico spinto (Italian for "pushed lyric") soprano, she was considered especially well suited to the roles of Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini, as well as several in operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Her voice ranged from A-flat below middle C to the E above high C. (She said she reached F "in the shower.")
  After her retirement from the opera stage in 1985, she continued to appear in recitals and orchestral concerts for another 12 years.
  
  wn.com/Leontyne_Price
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  Lester Young
  Lester Willis Young (August 27, 1909 – March 15, 1959), nicknamed "Pres" or "Prez", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and clarinetist. He also played trumpet, violin, and drums.
  Coming to prominence while a member of Count Basie's orchestra, Young was one of the most influential players on his instrument, playing with a cool tone and using sophisticated harmonies. He invented or popularized much of the hipster ethos which came to be associated with the music.
  Lester Young was born in Woodville, Mississippi and grew up in a musical family. Young's father, Willis Handy Young, was a respected teacher, his brother Lee Young was a drummer, and several other relatives played music professionally. His family moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, when Lester was an infant and later to Minneapolis, Minnesota. Although at a very young age Young did not initially know his father, he learned that his father was a musician. Later Willis taught his son to play the trumpet, violin, and drums in addition to the saxophone.
  
  wn.com/Lester_Young
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  Lillian Gish
  Lillian Diana Gish (October 14, 1893 – February 27, 1993) was an American stage, screen and television actress whose film acting career spanned 75 years, from 1912 to 1987. She was called "The First Lady of American Cinema".
  She was a prominent film star of the 1910s and 1920s, particularly associated with the films of director D.W. Griffith, including her leading role in Griffith's seminal Birth of a Nation (1915). Her sound-era film appearances were sporadic, but included memorable roles in the controversial western Duel in the Sun (1946) and the offbeat thriller Night of the Hunter (1955). She did considerable television work from the early 1950s into the 1980s, and closed her career playing, for the first time, opposite Bette Davis in the 1987 film The Whales of August.
  The American Film Institute (AFI) named Gish 17th among the greatest female stars of all time. She was awarded an Honorary Academy Award in 1971, and in 1984 she received an AFI Life Achievement Award.
  
  wn.com/Lillian_Gish
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  Louis Armstrong
  Louis Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana.
  Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an "inventive" cornet and trumpet player, Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the music's focus from collective improvisation to solo performance. With his instantly recognizable deep and distinctive gravelly voice, Armstrong was also an influential singer, demonstrating great dexterity as an improviser, bending the lyrics and melody of a song for expressive purposes. He was also greatly skilled at scat singing (vocalizing using sounds and syllables instead of actual lyrics).
  Renowned for his charismatic stage presence and voice almost as much as for his trumpet-playing, Armstrong's influence extends well beyond jazz music, and by the end of his career in the 1960s, he was widely regarded as a profound influence on popular music in general. Armstrong was one of the first truly popular African-American entertainers to "cross over," whose skin-color was secondary to his music in an America that was severely racially divided. It allowed him socially acceptable access to the upper echelons of American society that were highly restricted for a black man. While he rarely publicly politicized his race, often to the dismay of fellow African-Americans, he was privately a strong supporter of the Civil Rights movement in America.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Louis_Armstrong
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  Lucille Ball
  Lucille Désirée Ball (August 6, 1911 - April 26, 1989) was an American comedienne, film, television, stage and radio actress, model, film and television executive, and star of the sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy and Life With Lucy. One of the most popular and influential stars in the United States during her lifetime, with one of Hollywood's longest careers, especially on television, Ball began acting in the 1930s, becoming both a radio actress and B-movie star in the 1940s, and then a television star during the 1950s. She was still making films in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1962, Ball became the first woman to run a major television studio, Desilu, which produced many successful and popular television series.
  Ball was nominated for an Emmy Award thirteen times, and won four times. In 1977 Ball was among the first recipients of the Women in Film Crystal Award. She was the recipient of the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1979, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kennedy Center Honors in 1986 and the Governors Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in 1989.
  
  wn.com/Lucille_Ball
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  Lynn Fontanne
  Lynn Fontanne (/fɒnˈtæn/; 6 December 1887 — 30 July 1983) was a British actress and major stage star in the United States for over 40 years. She teamed with her husband Alfred Lunt.
  She lived in the United States for more than 60 years but never relinquished her British citizenship. Lunt and Fontanne shared a special Tony Award in 1970. They both won Emmy Awards in 1965, and Fontanne was a Kennedy Center honoree in 1980.
  Born Lillie Louise Fontanne in Woodford, London, Fontanne first drew popular acclaim in 1921 playing the cliché-spouting title role in the George S. Kaufman-Marc Connelly's farce, Dulcy. Dorothy Parker memorialized her performance in verse:
  Dulcy, take our gratitude, / All your words are golden ones. / Mistress of the platitude, / Queen of all the old ones. / You, at last, are something new / ’Neath the theatre's dome. I'd / Mention to the cosmos, you / Swing a wicked bromide. ...
  She soon became celebrated for her skill as an actress in high comedy, excelling in witty roles written for her by Noël Coward, S. N. Behrman and Robert Sherwood. However, she enjoyed one of the greatest critical successes of her career as Nina Leeds, the desperate heroine of Eugene O'Neill's controversial nine-act drama, Strange Interlude.
  
  wn.com/Lynn_Fontanne
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  Mario Lanza
  Mario Lanza (January 31, 1921 – October 7, 1959) was an American tenor and Hollywood movie star of the late 1940s and the 1950s. The son of Italian emigrants, he began studying to be a professional singer at the age of 16. He was born Alfred Arnold Cocozza. He changed his name when he signed with MGM. His mother's maiden name was Maria Lanza.
  After appearing at the Hollywood Bowl in 1947, Lanza signed a seven-year contract with MGM's head, Louis B. Mayer, who saw his performance and was impressed by his singing. Prior to this, the adult Lanza had sung only two performances of an opera. The following year (1948), however, he would sing the role of Pinkerton in Puccini's Madama Butterfly in New Orleans.^{[citation needed]}
  His movie debut was in That Midnight Kiss (1949) with Kathryn Grayson and Ethel Barrymore. The following year, in The Toast of New Orleans, his featured popular song "Be My Love" became his first million-selling hit. In 1951, he played the role of Enrico Caruso (1873–1921), his tenor idol, in the biopic, The Great Caruso, which produced another million-seller with "The Loveliest Night of the Year" (a song which used the melody of Sobre las Olas). The Great Caruso was the top-grossing film that year.
  
  wn.com/Mario_Lanza
• Marshall Royal
  Marshall Royal (or Marshal Royal, 12 May 1912 – 5 May 1995) was an American clarinettist and alto saxophonist best known for his work with Count Basie, with whose band he played for nearly twenty years.
  Royal was born in Oklahoma, the elder brother of trumpeter Ernie Royal, and learned to play violin, guitar, as well as clarinet and sax while still a child. He first performed in public at the age of thirteen, starting his professional career with an eight-year stint with Les Hite's band (1931–1939), during which time he also recorded with Art Tatum. He spent 1940 to 1942 with Lionel Hampton, until the war interrupted his career. After his military service (during which he played in a Navy band), Royal played with Eddie Heywood, then went on to work in studios in Los Angeles, California.
  In 1951 Royal replaced Buddy DeFranco as clarinettist with Count Basie's septet, which Basie had formed after circumstances forced him to dissolve his big band. When the Basie band was reformed the following year, Royal stayed on as lead alto saxophonist and as music director — not to leave until 1970. Though he was admired as an occasional soloist, his main rôle was as an important part of the reeds section, and as a leader who helped to give Basie's sound its distinctively precise yet swinging character.
  
  wn.com/Marshall_Royal
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  Mary Martin
  Mary Virginia Martin (December 1, 1913 – November 3, 1990) was an American actress and singer. She originated many roles over her career including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria in The Sound of Music. She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989. She was also the mother of actor Larry Hagman.
  Mary Martin's life as a child, as she describes it in her autobiography My Heart Belongs, was secure and happy. She had close relationships with both her mother and father, as well as her siblings. Her autobiography details how the young actress had an instinctive ear for recreating musical sounds.
  Martin's father, Preston Martin, was a lawyer and her mother, Juanita Presley, was a violin teacher. Although the doctors told Juanita that she would risk her life if she attempted to have another baby, she was determined to have a boy. Instead, she had Mary, who became quite a tomboy. Her birth was an event as all of the neighbors gathered around Juanita's bedroom window, waiting for the raising of a curtain to signal the baby’s arrival.
  
  wn.com/Mary_Martin
• Matthew Gee
  Matthew Gee (November 25, 1925, Houston, Texas – July 18, 1979, New York City) was an American bebop trombonist and part time actor.
  Gee played trumpet and baritone as a child, and took up the trombone at age 11. After studying at Alabama State University, he played with Coleman Hawkins before doing a stint in the Army. Following this, he played with Dizzy Gillespie (1946–1949), Joe Morris, Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt (1950), Count Basie (1951), Illinois Jacquet (1952–1954), Lou Donaldson (1954), Sarah Vaughan (1956), and Gillespie again in 1957. In 1956 he released his only record as a bandleader on Riverside Records. From 1959 to 1963 he played on and off with the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Later in the 1960s, he played in small groups with Paul Quinichette and Brooks Kerr, as well as in big bands with Sonny Stitt and Johnny Griffin.
  
  wn.com/Matthew_Gee
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  Mel Brooks
  Mel Brooks (born Melvin Kaminsky; June 28, 1926) is an American film director, screenwriter, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor and producer. He is best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies. He began his career as a stand-up comic and as a writer for the early TV variety show Your Show of Shows. He became well known as part of the comedy duo with Carl Reiner, The 2000 Year Old Man. In middle age he became one of the most successful film directors of the 1970s, with many of his films being among the top ten money makers of the year that they were released. His most well known films include The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, History of the World, Part I and Spaceballs. More recently he has had a smash hit on Broadway with the musical adaptation of his first film, The Producers. He was married to the actress Anne Bancroft from 1964 until her death in 2005.
  Brooks is a member of the short list of entertainers with the distinction of having won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony award. Three of his films ranked in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 comedy films of all-time: Blazing Saddles at number 6, The Producers at number 11, and Young Frankenstein at number 13.
  
  wn.com/Mel_Brooks
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  Merce Cunningham
  Mercier "Merce" Philip Cunningham (April 16, 1919 – July 26, 2009) was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of the American avant-garde for more than 50 years. Throughout much of his life, Cunningham was considered one of the greatest creative forces in American dance. He is also notable for his frequent collaborations with artists of other disciplines, including musicians John Cage and David Tudor, artists Robert Rauschenberg and Bruce Nauman, designer Romeo Gigli, and architect Benedetta Tagliabue. Works that he produced with these artists had a profound impact on avant-garde art beyond the world of dance.
  As a choreographer, teacher and leader of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Cunningham had a profound influence on modern dance. Many dancers who trained with Cunningham formed their own companies, and they include Paul Taylor, Remy Charlip, Viola Farber, Charles Moulton, Karole Armitage, Robert Kovich, Foofwa d’Imobilité, Kimberly Bartosik, Floanne Ankah and Jonah Bokaer.
  
  wn.com/Merce_Cunningham
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  Miles Davis
  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.
  Miles Dewey 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.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Miles_Davis
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  Myrna Loy
  Myrna Loy (August 2, 1905 – December 14, 1993) was an American actress. Trained as a dancer, she devoted herself fully to an acting career following a few minor roles in silent films. She was originally typecast in exotic roles, often as a vamp or a woman of Asian descent, but her career prospects improved following her portrayal of Nora Charles in The Thin Man (1934). Her successful pairing with William Powell resulted in 14 films together, including five subsequent Thin Man films. In 1937, she was crowned the "Queen of Hollywood" by a nationwide poll.
  Loy was born Myrna Adele Williams in Helena, Montana, to Adelle Mae (née Johnson) and rancher David Franklin Williams, in nearby Radersburg. Her paternal grandparents were natives of Wales, and her maternal grandparents were Swedish and Scottish. Her first name came from a train station whose name her father liked. Her father was also a banker and real estate developer and the youngest man ever elected to the Montana state legislature. Her mother studied music at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago.
  
  wn.com/Myrna_Loy
• Nathan Milstein
  Nathan Mironovich Milstein (January 13, 1904 [O.S. December 31, 1903] – December 21, 1992) was a Russian-born American virtuoso violinist.
  Widely considered one of the finest violinists of the 20th century, Milstein was known for his interpretations of Bach's solo violin works and for works from the Romantic period. He was also known for his long career: he performed at a high level into his mid 80s, retiring only after suffering a broken hand.
  He was born in Odessa, then part of the Russian Empire (now in Ukraine), the fourth child of seven, to a middle-class Jewish family with virtually no musical background. It was a concert by the 11-year-old Jascha Heifetz that inspired his parents to make a violinist out of Milstein. As a child of seven, he started violin studies (as suggested by his parents, to keep him out of mischief) with the eminent violin pedagogue Pyotr Stolyarsky, also the teacher of renowned violinist David Oistrakh.
  When Milstein was 11, Leopold Auer invited him to become one of his students at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Milstein reminisced:
  
  wn.com/Nathan_Milstein
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  Neal Hefti
  Neal Hefti (October 29, 1922 – October 11, 2008) was an American jazz trumpeter, composer, tune writer, and arranger. He was perhaps best known for composing the theme music for the Batman television series of the 1960s, and for scoring the 1968 film The Odd Couple and the subsequent TV series of the same name.
  He began arranging professionally in his teens, when he wrote charts for Nat Towles. He became a prominent composer and arranger while playing trumpet for Woody Herman; while working for Herman he provided new arrangements for "Woodchopper's Ball" and "Blowin' Up a Storm," and composed "The Good Earth" and "Wild Root." After leaving Herman's band in 1946, Hefti concentrated on arranging and composing, although he occasionally led his own bands. He is especially known for his charts for Count Basie such as "Li'l Darlin'" and "Cute".
  Neal Paul Hefti was born October 29, 1922 to an impoverished family in Hastings, Nebraska. As a young child, he remembers his family relying on charity during the holidays. He started playing the trumpet in school at the age of eleven, and by high school was spending his summer vacations playing in local territory bands to help his family make ends meet.
  
  wn.com/Neal_Hefti
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  Neil Peart
  Neil Ellwood Peart ( /ˈpɪərt/; born September 12, 1952), OC, is a Canadian musician and author. He is the drummer and lyricist for the rock band Rush. Peart has received numerous awards for his musical performances, and is known for his technical proficiency and stamina.
  Peart grew up in Port Dalhousie, Ontario (now part of St. Catharines). During adolescence, he floated from regional band to regional band in pursuit of a career as a full-time drummer. After a discouraging stint in England to concentrate on his music, Peart returned home, where he joined a local Toronto band, Rush, in the summer of 1974.
  Early in his career, Peart's performance style was deeply rooted in hard rock. He drew most of his inspiration from drummers such as Keith Moon and John Bonham, players who were at the forefront of the British hard rock scene. As time passed, however, he began to emulate jazz and big band musicians Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich. In 1994, Peart became a friend and pupil of jazz instructor Freddie Gruber. It was during this time that Peart decided to revamp his playing style by incorporating jazz and swing components. Gruber was also responsible for introducing him to the products of Drum Workshop, the company whose products Peart currently endorses.
  
  wn.com/Neil_Peart
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  Norman Granz
  Norman Granz (August 6, 1918, Los Angeles, USA – November 22, 2001, Geneva, Switzerland) was an American jazz music impresario and producer.
  Granz was a fundamental figure in American jazz, especially from about 1947 to 1960. He was the founder of five record labels: Clef, Norgran, Down Home, Verve and Pablo.
  Born in Los Angeles, the son of Jewish immigrants from Tiraspol, he first emerged into the public view when he organised desegregated jam sessions at the Trouville Club in Los Angeles, which he later expanded when he staged a memorable concert at the Philharmonic Auditorium in Los Angeles on Sunday, July 2, 1944, under the heading of "Jazz at the Philharmonic".
  The title of the concert, "A Jazz Concert at the Philharmonic Auditorium", had been shortened by the printer of the advertising supplements to "Jazz at the Philharmonic". Only one copy of the very first concert program is known to exist. Norman Granz had organised the first Jazz at the Philharmonic concert with about $300 of borrowed money.
  
  wn.com/Norman_Granz
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  Oscar Peterson
  Oscar Emmanuel Peterson CC CQ OOnt (August 15, 1925 – December 23, 2007) was a Canadian jazz pianist and composer. He was called the "Maharaja of the keyboard" by Duke Ellington, "O.P." by his friends. He released over 200 recordings, won eight Grammy Awards, and received other numerous awards and honours over the course of his career. He is considered to have been one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time, having played thousands of live concerts to audiences worldwide in a career lasting more than 60 years.
  Peterson was born to immigrants from the West Indies; his father worked as a porter for Canadian Pacific Railway. Peterson grew up in the neighbourhood of Little Burgundy in Montreal, Quebec. It was in this predominantly black neighbourhood that he found himself surrounded by the jazz culture that flourished in the early 20th century. At the age of five, Peterson began honing his skills with the trumpet and piano. However, a bout of tuberculosis at age seven prevented him from playing the trumpet again, and so he directed all his attention to the piano. His father, Daniel Peterson, an amateur trumpeter and pianist, was one of his first music teachers, and his sister Daisy taught young Oscar classical piano. Young Oscar was persistent at practising scales and classical etudes daily, and thanks to such arduous practice he developed his astonishing virtuosity.
  
  wn.com/Oscar_Peterson
• Paul Quinichette
  Paul Quinichette (17 May 1916 – 25 May 1983) was a jazz tenor saxophone musician. He was known as the Vice President or Vice Prez for his uncanny emulation of the breathy style of Lester Young, known as Prez. Young, who affectionately called everyone "Lady ****" (he called Billie Holiday "Lady Day"), called him "Lady Q". He was also capable of a gruffer style on his own.
  He played with Jay McShann, Louis Jordan, and Henry Red Allen before being hired by Count Basie specifically to replace Young in his band. He recorded many small combo dates, including sessions with Young, Charlie Rouse and later with John Coltrane.
  Quinichette was born in Denver, Colorado and died in New York City.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Paul_Quinichette
• 
  Perry Como
  Pierino Ronald "Perry" Como (May 18, 1912 – May 12, 2001) was an American singer and television personality. During a career spanning more than half a century he recorded exclusively for the RCA Victor label after signing with them in 1943. "Mr. C.", as he was nicknamed, sold millions of records for Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and pioneered a weekly musical variety television show, which set the standards for the genre and proved to be one of the most successful in television history. Como was seen weekly on television from 1949 to 1963, then continued hosting the Kraft Music Hall variety program on a monthly basis until 1967. His television shows and seasonal specials were broadcast throughout the world. Also a popular recording artist, Perry Como produced numerous hit records with record sales so high the label literally stopped counting at Como's behest. His combined success on television and popular recordings was not matched by any other artist of the time. Como's appeal spanned generations and he was widely respected for both his professional standards and the conduct in his personal life. In the official RCA Records Billboard magazine memorial, his life was summed up in these few words: "50 years of music and a life well lived. An example to all." Composer Ervin Drake said of him, "... [o]ccasionally someone like Perry comes along and won't 'go with the flow' and still prevails in spite of all the bankrupt others who surround him and importune him to yield to their values. Only occasionally."
  
  wn.com/Perry_Como
• 
  Quincy Jones
  Quincy Delight Jones, Jr. (born March 14, 1933) is an American record producer, conductor, arranger, film composer, television producer, and trumpeter. His career spans five decades in the entertainment industry and a record 79 Grammy Award nominations, 27 Grammys, including a Grammy Legend Award in 1991. He is particularly recognized as the producer of the album Thriller, by pop icon Michael Jackson, which has sold more than 110 million copies worldwide, and as the producer and conductor of the charity song “We Are the World”.
  In 1968, Jones and his songwriting partner Bob Russell became the first African Americans to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song "The Eyes of Love" from the Universal Pictures film Banning. That same year, he became the first African American to be nominated twice within the same year when he was nominated for Best Original Score for his work on the music of the 1967 film In Cold Blood. In 1971, Jones would receive the honor of becoming the first African American to be named musical director/conductor of the Academy Awards ceremony. He was the first African American to win the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, in 1995. He is tied with sound designer Willie D. Burton as the most Oscar-nominated African American, each of them having seven nominations. At the 2008 BET Awards, Quincy Jones was presented with the Humanitarian Award. He was played by Larenz Tate in the 2004 biopic about Ray Charles, Ray.
  
  wn.com/Quincy_Jones
• 
  Ray Charles
  Ray Charles Robinson (September 23, 1930 – June 10, 2004), known by his shortened stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. He was a pioneer in the genre of soul music during the 1950s by fusing rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings with Atlantic Records. He also helped racially integrate country and pop music during the 1960s with his crossover success on ABC Records, most notably with his Modern Sounds albums. While with ABC, Charles became one of the first African-American musicians to be given artistic control by a mainstream record company.Frank Sinatra called Charles “the only true genius in show business.”
  The influences upon his music were mainly jazz, blues, rhythm and blues and country artists of the day such as Art Tatum, Nat King Cole, Louis Jordan, Charles Brown, Louis Armstrong. His playing reflected influences from country blues and barrelhouse, and stride piano styles.
  Rolling Stone ranked Charles number ten on their list of "100 Greatest Artists of All Time" in 2004, and number two on their November 2008 list of "100 Greatest Singers of All Time". In honoring Charles, Billy Joel noted: "This may sound like sacrilege, but I think Ray Charles was more important than Elvis Presley. I don't know if Ray was the architect of rock & roll, but he was certainly the first guy to do a lot of things . . . Who the hell ever put so many styles together and made it work?"
  
  wn.com/Ray_Charles
• 
  Ronald Reagan
  Ronald Wilson Reagan ( /ˈrɒnəld ˈwɪlsən ˈreɪɡən/; February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was the 40th President of the United States, serving from 1981 to 1989. Prior to that, he was the 33rd Governor of California from 1967 to 1975 and a radio, film and television actor.
  Born in Tampico, Illinois and raised in Dixon, Reagan was educated at Eureka College, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and sociology. After his graduation, Reagan moved first to Iowa to work as a radio broadcaster and then in to Los Angeles in 1937 where he began a career as an actor, first in films and later television. Some of his most notable films include Knute Rockne, All American, Kings Row, and Bedtime for Bonzo. Reagan served as president of the Screen Actors Guild, and later as a spokesman for General Electric (GE); his start in politics occurred during his work for GE. Originally a member of the Democratic Party, his positions began shifting rightward in the late 1950s, and he switched to the Republican Party in 1962. After delivering a rousing speech in support of Barry Goldwater's presidential candidacy in 1964, he was persuaded to seek the California governorship, winning two years later and again in 1970. He was defeated in his run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968 as well as 1976, but won both the nomination and general election in 1980, defeating incumbent Jimmy Carter.
  
  wn.com/Ronald_Reagan
• 
  Roy Eldridge
  David Roy Eldridge (January 30, 1911 – February 26, 1989), nicknamed "Little Jazz" was an American jazz trumpet player. His sophisticated use of harmony, including the use of tritone substitutions, his virtuosic solos exhibiting a departure from the smooth and lyrical style of earlier jazz trumpet innovator Louis Armstrong, and his strong impact on Dizzy Gillespie mark him as one of the most influential musicians of the swing era and a precursor of bebop.
  Eldridge was born on the North Side of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on January 30, 1911 to parents Alexander, a carpenter, and Blanche, a gifted pianist with a talent for reproducing music by ear, a trait that Eldridge claims to have inherited from her. Eldridge began playing the piano at age five; he claims to have been able to play coherent blues licks at even this young age. The young Eldridge looked up to his older brother, Joe, particularly because of Joe's diverse musical talents on the violin, alto saxophone, and clarinet. Roy took up the drums at the age of six, taking lessons and playing locally. Joe recognized his brother's natural talent on the bugle, which Roy played in a local church band, and tried to convince Roy to play the valved trumpet When Roy began to play drums in his brother's band, Joe soon convinced him to pick up the trumpet, but Roy made little effort to gain proficiency on the instrument at first. It wasn't until the death of their mother, when Roy was eleven, and his father's subsequent remarriage that Roy began practicing more rigorously, locking himself in his room for hours, and particularly honing the instrument's upper register. From an early age, Roy lacked proficiency at sight-reading, a gap in his musical education that would affect him for much of his early career, but he could replicate melodies by ear very effectively.
  
  wn.com/Roy_Eldridge
• Rudolf Serkin
  Rudolf Serkin (March 28, 1903 – May 8, 1991), was a Bohemian-born pianist.
  Serkin was born in Eger, Bohemia, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Cheb, Czech Republic) to a Russian-Jewish family.
  Hailed as a child prodigy, he was sent to Vienna at the age of 9, where he studied piano with Richard Robert and, later, composition with Joseph Marx, making his public debut with the Vienna Philharmonic at 12. From 1918 to 1920 he studied composition with Arnold Schoenberg and participated actively in Schoenberg's Society for the Private Performance of Music. He began a regular concert career in 1920, living in Berlin with the German violinist Adolf Busch and his family, which included a then 3-year-old daughter Irene, whom Serkin would marry 15 years later. In the 1920s and early 1930s, Serkin performed throughout Europe both as soloist and with Busch and the Busch Quartet. With the rise of Hitler in Germany in 1933, Serkin and the Busches (who were not Jewish but who vehemently opposed the Nazi regime) left Berlin for Basel, Switzerland.
  
  wn.com/Rudolf_Serkin
• 
  Sammy Nestico
  Samuel "Sammy" Louis Nestico (born February 6, 1924 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is a prolific and well known composer and arranger of big band music. Nestico is most known for his arrangements for the Count Basie orchestra.
  Sammy Nestico received a Bachelors degree in music education from Duquesne University in 1950, and has since then received an honorary Doctor of Music degree there, as well as numerous awards.
  He has been a professional music arranger since 1941, when he became a staff arranger for ABC radio station WCAE in Pittsburgh at age 17. During his career, he arranged music for the Count Basie Orchestra (1967–1984), the US Air Force Band (15 yrs) and the US Marine Band (5 years) both in Washington, DC. In addition, he played the trombone in the big bands of Tommy Dorsey, Woody Herman, Gene Krupa, and Charlie Barnet.
  In 1998-1999 Nestico was a professor at the University of Georgia, teaching commercial orchestration and conducting the Studio Orchestra, but was unable to find the necessary administrative support to remain there. He also directed music programs at Los Angeles Pierce College, Los Angeles, CA, Westinghouse Memorial High School, and Wilmerding, PA.
  
  wn.com/Sammy_Nestico
• 
  Sarah Vaughan
  Sarah Lois Vaughan (March 27, 1924 – April 3, 1990) was an American jazz singer, described by Scott Yanow as having "one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century."
  Nicknamed "Sailor" (for her salty speech), "Sassy" and "The Divine One", Sarah Vaughan was a Grammy Award winner. The National Endowment for the Arts bestowed upon her its "highest honor in jazz", the NEA Jazz Masters Award, in 1989.
  Biographies of Vaughan frequently stated that she was immediately thrust into stardom after a winning Amateur Night performance at Harlem's Zeus Theater. In fact, the story that biographer Renee relates seems to be a bit more complex. Vaughan was frequently accompanied by a friend, Doris Robinson, on her trips into New York City. Sometime in the fall of 1942 (when Sarah was 18 years old), Vaughan suggested that Robinson enter the Apollo Theater Amateur Night contest. Vaughan played piano accompaniment for Robinson, who won second prize. Vaughan later decided to go back and compete herself as a singer. Vaughan sang "Body and Soul" and won, although the exact date of her victorious Apollo performance is uncertain. The prize, as Vaughan recalled later to Marian McPartland, was US$10 and the promise of a week's engagement at the Apollo. After a considerable delay, Vaughan was contacted by the Apollo in the spring of 1943 to open for Ella Fitzgerald.
  
  wn.com/Sarah_Vaughan
• Shad Collins
  Lester Rallingston "Shad" Collins (June 27, 1910 – June 6, 1978) was an American jazz trumpet player, composer and arranger, who played in several leading bands between the 1930s and 1950s, including those led by Chick Webb, Benny Carter, Count Basie, Lester Young, Cab Calloway and Sam "The Man" Taylor.
  Born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, the son of a clergyman, he acquired the nickname of "Shad" in his teens, and by the late 1920s had joined Charlie Dixon's band. He also performed with pianist Eddie White, before joining Chick Webb's band in 1931. In the mid 1930s he played in Teddy Hill's band, with whom he toured in Britain and Europe, before joining the Count Basie Orchestra. He performed in Basie's band at the From Spirituals to Swing concerts in New York City in 1938 and 1939. He also worked in the late 1930s in bands led by Benny Carter, Lester Young and Don Redman, among others.
  In 1941, he replaced Dizzy Gillespie in Cab Calloway's band, and remained with Calloway until 1943 and again between 1944 and 1946. He also worked and recorded in the 1940s with Oran "Hot Lips" Page. In the 1950s, he played in Jimmy Rushing's band, and with Sam "The Man" Taylor, when he developed a style more suited to the rhythm and blues music then popular. He worked more on a part-time basis during the 1960s.
  
  wn.com/Shad_Collins
• Snooky Young
  Eugene Edward "Snooky" Young (February 3, 1919 – May 11, 2011) was an American jazz trumpeter. He was known for his mastery of the plunger mute, with which he was able to create a wide range of sounds.
  Young was lead trumpeter of the Jimmie Lunceford band from 1939 to 1942. He played with Count Basie (three stints totalling eight years), Gerald Wilson and Lionel Hampton, among others, and was an original member of the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band.
  His longest engagement was with NBC, where, as a studio trumpeter, he joined the Tonight Show Band in 1967 and stayed with them until 1992, when the band was replaced by a new, smaller group.
  He was also part of the touring ensemble that traveled with Doc Severinsen, performing live concert dates, corporate events, and headling shows in the main rooms of Las Vegas. The one nighters usually occurred on Fridays, Saturdays, or Sundays, as Severinsen was committed to the Tonight Show on weeknights.
  For the Las Vegas gigs, the nucleus of Severinsen's touring band (Young, Conductor Steve Thoma, and drummer Paul Line) would commute to Vegas nightly, leaving Van Nuys airport around 6:00pm via Lear Jet, arriving in Las Vegas by 7:00. A limousine would transport the musicians directly backstage, where they would dress & prepare for an 8:00 pm & midnight show. Then back to the airport for the ride back to Los Angeles, where Severinsen and Young had their NBC gig, and Steve Thomas and Paul Line were undertaking studio sessions daily.
  
  wn.com/Snooky_Young
• 
  Sonny Greer
  Sonny Greer (13 December 1895 – 23 March 1982) was an American jazz drummer, best known for his work with Duke Ellington.
  Greer was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and played with Elmer Snowden's band and the Howard Theatre's orchestra in Washington, D.C. before joining Duke Ellington, whom he met in 1919. He was Ellington's first drummer, playing with his quintet, the Washingtonians, and moving with Ellington into the Cotton Club. As a result of his job as a designer with the Leedy Drum Company of Indiana, Greer was able to build up a huge drum kit worth over $3,000, as well as chimes, a gong, timpani, and vibes.
  Greer was a heavy drinker, as well as a pool-hall hustler (when he needed to retrieve his drums from the pawnbroker), and in 1950 Ellington responded to his drinking and occasional unreliability by taking a second drummer, Butch Ballard, with them on a tour of Scandinavia. This enraged Greer, and the consequent argument led to their permanent estrangement.
  Greer continued to play, mainly as a free-lance drummer, working with musicians such as Johnny Hodges, Red Allen, J. C. Higginbotham, Tyree Glenn, and Brooks Kerr, as well as appearing in films, and briefly leading his own band. He was part of a tribute to Ellington in 1974, which achieved great success throughout the United States.
  
  wn.com/Sonny_Greer
• 
  Stan Getz
  Stanley Getz (February 2, 1927 – June 6, 1991) was an American jazz saxophone player. Getz was known as "The Sound" because of his warm, lyrical tone, his prime influence being the wispy, mellow timbre of his idol, Lester Young. Coming to prominence in the late 1940s with Woody Herman's big band, Getz is described by critic Scott Yanow as "one of the all-time great tenor saxophonists". Getz went on to perform in bebop, cool jazz and third stream, but is perhaps best known for popularizing bossa nova, as in the worldwide hit single "The Girl from Ipanema" (1964).
  Getz was born on February 2, 1927, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His parents were Ukrainian Jews who emigrated from the Kiev area in 1903. The family later moved to New York City for better employment opportunities. Getz worked hard in school, receiving straight As, and finished sixth grade close to the top of his class. Getz's major interest was in musical instruments, and he felt a need to play every instrument in sight. He played a number of them before his father bought him his first saxophone at the age of 13. Even though his father also got him a clarinet, Getz instantly fell in love with the saxophone and began practicing eight hours a day.
  
  wn.com/Stan_Getz
• Tommy Turrentine
  Thomas Walter Turrentine, Jr. (April 22, 1928 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – May 15, 1997) was a swing and hard bop trumpeter of the 1940s to 1960s, the older brother of saxophonist Stanley Turrentine.
  He played in the bands of Benny Carter, Earl Bostic, Charles Mingus, Billy Eckstine, Dizzy Gillespie, and Count Basie. He later recorded with Sonny Clark, Lou Donaldson, and his brother's bands. His working relationship with Max Roach was spawned in part when he joined the Max Roach Quintet in the late 1950s following the death of Clifford Brown.
  While his brother had a successful career and recorded a number of albums over his lifetime, Tommy only recorded one album under his name before retiring in the 1960s. In the 1970s he lived on the ground floor of a brownstone with his wife Jane on West 82nd Street in New York City, a street which during that period had a number of jazz luminaries living along its blocks between Broadway and Central Park, including Tommy Flanagan and Pharoah Sanders. In the summer of 1979 Turrentine was one of several star trumpeters (including John Faddis and others) who appeared at the Village Gate for an all-star tribute to Blue Mitchell. Turrentine was also adept on the piano at chord blockings and was a compositional exponent of Thelonious Monk's earlier chordal voicings. His bebop compositions combined a sophisticated and emotional fusion and poignant lyricism reminiscent of Benny Golson and with the passionate, spirited influence of the Brown/Roach Quintet.
  
  wn.com/Tommy_Turrentine
• 
  Tony Bennett
  Anthony Dominick Benedetto, better known as Tony Bennett (born August 3, 1926), is an American singer of popular music, standards, show tunes, and jazz. Bennett is also a serious and accomplished painter, having created works — under the name Benedetto — that are on permanent public display in several institutions. He is the founder of Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in New York City.
  Raised in New York City, Bennett began singing at an early age. He fought in the final stages of World War II as an infantryman with the U.S. Army in the European Theatre. Afterwards, he developed his singing technique, signed with Columbia Records, and had his first number one popular song with "Because of You" in 1951. Several top hits such as "Rags to Riches" followed in the early 1950s. Bennett then further refined his approach to encompass jazz singing. He reached an artistic peak in the late 1950s with albums such as The Beat of My Heart and Basie Swings, Bennett Sings. In 1962, Bennett recorded his signature song, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco". His career and his personal life then suffered an extended downturn during the height of the rock music era.
  
  wn.com/Tony_Bennett
• 
  Vera Lynn
  Dame Vera Lynn, DBE (born Vera Margaret Welch on 20 March 1917) is an English singer-songwriter and actress whose musical recordings and performances were enormously popular during World War II.
  During the war she toured Egypt, India and Burma, giving outdoor concerts for the troops. She became known, and is still referred to, as "The Forces' Sweetheart"; the songs most associated with her are "We'll Meet Again", "The White Cliffs of Dover", A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square and "There'll Always Be an England".
  She remained popular after the war, appearing on radio and television in the UK and the United States and recording such hits as "Auf Wiederseh'n Sweetheart" and "My Son, My Son".
  In 2009 she became the oldest living artist to make it to No. 1 on the British album chart, at the age of 92. She has devoted much time and energy to charity work connected with ex-servicemen, disabled children and breast cancer. She is still held in great affection by veterans of the Second World War and in 2000 was named the Briton who best exemplified the spirit of the twentieth century.
  
  wn.com/Vera_Lynn
• Vic Dickenson
  Vic (Victor) Dickenson (August 6, 1906 – November 16, 1984) was an African-American jazz trombonist. Dickenson's career started out in the 1920s and led him through musical partnerships with such legends as Count Basie (1940–41), Sidney Bechet (1941) and Earl Hines . Also a soloist of wide acclaim, Vic Dickenson was known for the distinctive sound he coaxed out of the trombone.
  He studied Organ from 1922 but changed to Trombone with local bands. Vic made his recording debut in December 1930, as a vocalist with Luis Russell's band. He later joined Blanche Calloway's Orchestra in the early 1930s. Led his own groups both in east & west coast between 1947 to mid fifties. From then he was a session man for many legendary dates, among them CBS Sound Of Jazz 1957 with many great jazz musicians including: Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, Gerry Mulligan, Billie Holiday.
  He was a favorite of many musicians, in large part because of the melodic sound he got from his horn, and for a keen sense of humor which was often evident in his playing.
  
  wn.com/Vic_Dickenson
• 
  Virgil Thomson
  Virgil Thomson (November 25, 1896 – September 30, 1989) was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music. He has been described as a modernist, a neoclassicist, a composer of "an Olympian blend of humanity and detachment" whose, "expressive voice was always carefully muted," until his late opera Lord Byron which, in contrast to all his previous work, exhibited an emotional content that rises to, "moments of real passion", and a neoromantic.
  
  wn.com/Virgil_Thomson
• 
  Walter Page
  Walter Sylvester “Big ‘Un” Page (b. February 9, 1900; d. December 20, 1957) was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist and bandleader, best known for his groundbreaking work as a double-bass player with Walter Page’s Blue Devils and the Count Basie Orchestra.
  Early Life
  Walter Sylvester Page was born in Gallatin, Missouri on February 9th, 1900 to parents Edward and Blanche Page. Page showed a love for music even as a child, perhaps due in part to the influence of his aunt Lillie, a music teacher. Page’s mother, with whom he moved to Kansas City in 1910, exposed young Walter to folksongs and spirituals, a critical foundation for developing his love of music. He gained his first musical experience as a bass drum and bass horn player in the brass bands of his neighborhood. Under the direction of Major N. Clark Smith, a retired military bandleader who provided Page his first formal training in music, Page took up the string bass in his time at Lincoln High School. In an interview in The Jazz Review, Page remembers Major Smith:
  
  wn.com/Walter_Page
• Wikipedia Persondata
  wn.com/Wikipedia_Persondata
• 
  William Morris
  William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and utopian socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement. He founded a design firm in partnership with the artist Edward Burne-Jones, and the poet and artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti which profoundly influenced the decoration of churches and houses into the early 20th century. As an author, illustrator and medievalist, he helped to establish the modern fantasy genre, and was a direct influence on postwar authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien. He was also a major contributor to reviving traditional textile arts and methods of production, and one of the founders of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, now a statutory element in the preservation of historic buildings in the UK.
  Morris wrote and published poetry, fiction, and translations of ancient and medieval texts throughout his life. His best-known works include The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems (1858), The Earthly Paradise (1868–1870), A Dream of John Ball (1888), the utopian News from Nowhere (1890), and the fantasy romance The Well at the World's End (1896). He was an important figure in the emergence of socialism in Britain, founding the Socialist League in 1884, but breaking with that organization over goals and methods by the end of the decade. He devoted much of the rest of his life to the Kelmscott Press, which he founded in 1891. Kelmscott was devoted to the publishing of limited-edition, illuminated-style print books. The 1896 Kelmscott edition of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer is considered a masterpiece of book design.
  
  wn.com/William_Morris
• William Schuman
  William Howard Schuman (August 4, 1910 – February 15, 1992) was an American composer and music administrator.
  Born in Manhattan in New York City to Samuel and Rachel Schuman, Schuman was named after the twenty-seventh U.S. president, William Howard Taft, although his family preferred to call him Bill. Schuman played the violin and banjo as a child, but his overwhelming passion was baseball. While still in high school, he formed a dance band, "Billy Schuman and his Alamo Society Orchestra", that played local weddings and bar mitzvahs in which Schuman played string bass.
  In 1928 he entered New York University's School of Commerce to pursue a business degree, at the same time working for an advertising agency. He also wrote popular songs with E. B. Marks, Jr., a friend he had met long before at summer camp. About then Schuman met lyricist Frank Loesser and wrote some forty songs with him. Loesser's first published song, "In Love with a Memory of You", credits the music to William H. Schuman.
  
  wn.com/William_Schuman
• 
  Yehudi Menuhin
  Yehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin, OM, KBE (22 April 1916 – 12 March 1999) was an American violinist and conductor who spent most of his performing career in the United Kingdom. He was born to Russian Jewish parents in the United States, but became a citizen of Switzerland in 1970, and of the United Kingdom in 1985. He is often considered to be one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century.
  Yehudi Menuhin was born in New York City, United States, to Bielorussian Jewish parents from what is now Belarus. His sisters were the concert pianist and human rights worker Hephzibah Menuhin and the pianist, painter, and poet Yaltah Menuhin. Through his father Moshe Menuhin, a former rabbinical student and anti-Zionist writer, Menuhin was descended from a distinguished rabbinical dynasty.
  Menuhin began violin instruction at age four under violinist Sigmund Anker; his parents had wanted Louis Persinger to be his teacher, but Persinger refused. Menuhin displayed extraordinary talents at an early age. His first solo violin performance was at the age of seven with the San Francisco Symphony in 1923. Persinger then agreed to take Menuhin as a student. When the Menuhins went to Paris, Persinger suggested Yehudi go to his own teacher, Eugène Ysaÿe. He did have one lesson with Ysaÿe, but did not like his method or the fact that he was very old. Instead, he went to the Romanian composer and violinist George Enescu, after which he made several recordings with his sister Hephzibah. He was also a student of Adolf Busch. In 1929 he played in Berlin, under Bruno Walter's baton, three concerti by Bach, Brahms and Beethoven. In 1932 he recorded Edward Elgar's Violin Concerto in B minor for HMV in London, with the composer himself conducting, and between 1934 and 1936 he made the first integral recording of Johann Sebastian Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin.
  
  wn.com/Yehudi_Menuhin
• 
  Zoot Sims
  John Haley "Zoot" Sims (October 29, 1925 - March 23, 1985) was an American jazz saxophonist, playing mainly tenor and soprano.
  He was born in Inglewood, California, the son of vaudeville performers Kate Haley and John Sims. Growing up in a performing family, Sims learned to play both drums and clarinet at an early age. His father was a vaudeville hoofer, and Sims prided himself on remembering many of the steps his father taught him.
  Following in the footsteps of Lester Young, Sims developed into an innovative tenor saxophonist. Throughout his career, he played with renowned bands, including Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Stan Kenton, and Buddy Rich. Sims was also one of Woody Herman's "Four Brothers", and he was known among his peers as one of the strongest swingers in the field. He frequently led his own combos and sometimes toured with his friend Gerry Mulligan's sextet, and later with Mulligan's Concert Jazz Band.
  In the 1950s and '60s, Sims had a long, successful partnership as co-leader of a quintet with Al Cohn, which recorded under the name "Al and Zoot". That group was a favorite at the New York club The Half Note. Always fond of the higher register of the tenor sax, Zoot also liked to play alto and late in his career added the soprano saxophone to his performances, while recording a series of albums for the Pablo Records label of impresario Norman Granz. Zoot also played on some of Jack Kerouac's recordings.
  
  wn.com/Zoot_Sims

• Oh, Lady Be Good
• Goin' to Chicago Blues
• Live and Love Tonight
• Love Me or Leave Me
• Rock-A-Bye Basie
• Baby, Don't Tell on Me
• If I Could Be With You One Hour Tonight
• Taxi War Dance
• Jump for Me
• Twelfth Street Rag
• Dickie's Dream
• Lester Leaps In
• The Apple Jump
• Volcano
• Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
• I Never Knew
• Gone With "What" Wind
• Super Chief
• One O'Clock Jump
• Basie Blues

• Basie Land
• Big Brother
• Count Me In
• Wanderlust
• Instant Blues
• Rabble Rouser
• Sassy
• Gymnastics
• Yuriko
• Doodle-Oodle

• Little Pony
• Basie
• Blues Backstage
• Blee Blop Blues
• Whirly-Bird (vocal version)
• One O'Clock Jump (theme)
• Good Times Blues
• Segue In C
• One O'Clock Jump
• Easin' It
• A Little Tempo, Please
• Corner Pocket
• I Needs to Be Bee'd With
• Discommotion
• Segue in C (alternate take)
• Whirly Bird
• One O'Clock Jump (theme)

• C.B. Express
• After the Rain
• Warm Breeze
• Cookie
• Flight to Nassau
• How Sweet It Is
• Satin Doll

• Stay Cool
• Rusty Dusty Blues
• Beaver Junction
• B. Flat Blues
• Farewell Blues
• Taps Miller
• Bugle Blues
• Queer Street
• Way Back Blues
• Patience And Fortitude
• St. Louis Blues
• Ride On
• Jimmy's Blues
• Lost In Blackout Blues
• Time On My Hands
• Sweet Lorraine
• It's Sand Man
• Bonus Track

• 12th Street Rag
• Shine on, Harvest Moon
• Backstage at Stuff's
• Tom Thumb
• What's Your Number
• Ready, Set, Go!
• One O'Clock Boogie
• I Never Knew
• Jivin' Joe Jackson
• Mutton Leg
• Lost the Blackout Blues
• Harvard Blues
• Sophisticated Swing
• Down, Down, Down
• You Can Count on Me
• Sweets
• Blue Skies
• The Jungle King

• New Basie Blues
• New Basie Blues (45 take)
• Sure Thing
• Why Not?
• Fawncy Meetin' You
• Jive at Five
• No Name
• No Name (78 take)
• Redhead
• Every Tub
• Jack and Jill (alternate take)
• Jack and Jill
• Bread
• Small Hotel
• Hob Nail Boogie
• Basie Talks
• Paradise Squat (take 2)
• Paradise Squat (take 3)
• U.F.O.
• Like a Ship at Sea
• Bunny
• Tippin' on the Q.T. (alternate take)
• Tippin' on the Q.T.
• Blee Blop Blues

• Shoe Shine Boy
• Evenin'
• Boogie Woogie (I May Be Wrong)
• Oh, Lady Be Good
• I Ain't Got Nobody
• Goin' to Chicago Blues
• Live and Love Tonight
• Love Me or Leave Me
• Dickie's Dream
• Lester Leaps In
• How Long Blues
• Royal Garden Blues
• Bugle Blues
• Sugar Blues
• Farewell Blues
• Cafe Society Blues
• Way Back Blues
• St. Louis Blues
• Neal's Deal
• Bluebeard Blues
• The Golden Bullet
• You're My Baby, You

• Open the Door Richard
• Avenue C
• Blame It on My Last Affair
• Blow Top
• Blue and Sentimental
• Blue Skies
• Blues in the Dark
• Clap Hands! Here Comes Charlie
• Dickie's Dream
• Doggin' Around
• Dupree Blues
• Easy Does It
• Every Tub
• Going to Chicago Blue
• Gone With "What" Wind
• High Tide
• How Long, How Long Blues
• I Left My Baby
• Jimmy's Boogie Woogie
• Jive at Five
• John's Idea

• Shoe-Shine Boy
• Evenin'
• Boogie-Woogie
• Oh! Lady Be Good
• I Ain't Got Nobody
• Going to Chicago
• Live and Love Tonight
• Love Me or Leave Me
• What Goes Up Must Come Down
• Rock-A-Bye Basie
• Baby, Don't Tell on Me
• If I Could Be With You One Hour Tonight
• Taxi War Dance
• Don't Worry About Me
• Jump for Me
• And the Angels Sing
• If I Didn't Care
• Twelfth Street Rag
• Miss Thing, Parts 1 & 2
• Lonesome Miss Pretty
• Bolero at the Savoy
• Nobody Knows
• Pound Cake
• You Can Count on Me

• Oh! Lady Be Good
• Love Me or Leave Me
• Boogie Woogie
• Evenin'
• Sugar Blues
• Hey Lawdy Mama
• Shoe Shine Boy
• The Fives
• Farewell Blues
• Way Back Blues
• When the Sun Goes Down
• Oh! Red
• Fare Thee Honey, Fare the Well
• The Dirty Dozen
• Royal Garden Blues

• Brand New Wagon
• Swingin' the Blues
• Sugar
• House Rent Boogie
• After You've Gone
• Rat Race
• St. Louis Boogie
• Basie's Basement
• Shoutin' Blues
• She's a Wine-o
• Don't You Want a Man Like Me
• Sophisticated Swing
• 7th Avenue Express
• Bye Bye Baby
• Guest in a Nest
• Robbin's Nest
• Bill's Mill
• Backstage at Stuff's
• The Jungle King
• Shine on Harvest Moon
• Walking Slow Behind You

• Jumpin' at the Woodside
• One O'Clock Jump
• Swingin' the Blues
• Topsy
• Every Tub
• Texas Shuffle
• Jive at Five
• Oh! Lady Be Good
• Twelfth Street Rag
• Clap Hands! Here Comes Charley!
• Dickie's Dream
• Lester Leaps In
• Tickle Toe
• I Never Knew
• Love Jumped Out
• Super Chief
• Red Bank Boogie
• Rhythm Man

• Take Me Back Baby
• Moon Nocturne
• Something New
• I Struck a Match in the Dark
• Platterbrains
• All of Me
• Feather Merchant
• Down for Double
• More Than You Know
• Harvard Blues
• Coming-Out Party
• One O'Clock Jump
• Blue Shadows and White Gardenias
• 'Ay Now
• For the Good of Your Country
• Basie Blues
• I'm Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town
• Time on My Hands
• How Long Blues
• Royal Garden Blues
• Bugle Blues
• Sugar Blues
• Farewell Blues
• Café Society Blues
• Way Back Blues

• In Case You Didn't Know
• These Foolish Things
• Peter Pan
• Ain't It The Truth
• Ingin' the Ooh
• Confessin'
• These Foolish Things (alt. take)
• In Case You Didn't Know (alt. take)
• One O'clock Jump (intro)
• You For Me
• Bubbles
• You're Not The Kind
• Jonesy
• Two For The Blues
• Blee Blop Blues
• Yesterdays
• Perdido

• Tootie
• How Long Blues
• Way Back Blues
• Blues (I Still Think of Her)
• Harvard Blues
• Bugle Blues
• Take Me Back Baby
• The Golden Bullet
• Nobody Knows
• Royal Garden Blues
• I'm Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town
• Bluebeard Blues

• Jumpin' At The Woodside
• Blue And Sentimental
• Sent Fot You Yesterday
• Blues In Hoss's Flat
• Who Me?
• Little Pony
• The Leyend
• Goin' To A Chichago Blues
• Lester Leaps In
• Jive At Fire
• Swingin' The Blues
• Shorty George
• Duet
• Double-O
• Splanky
• Miss Missouri
• Meetin' Time
• Stompin' And Jumpin'

• Jumpin' at the Woodside
• One O'Clock Jump
• Strormy Monday Blues
• Going to Chicago
• Swinging the Blues
• The King
• Red Bank Boogie
• Every Tub
• Blue and Sentimental
• Basie Goes West
• Lester Leaps In
• Bleep Bleep
• Basie Talk
• Bubbles
• Jazz Me Blues
• John's Idea
• Shorty - George
• Basie Boogie

• Jumpin' at the Woodside
• One O'Clock Jump
• Stormy Monday Blues
• Going to Chicago
• Swinging the Blues
• The King
• Red Bank Boogie
• Every Tub
• Lester Leaps In
• Shorty - George
• Blue & Sentimental
• Basie Goes West

• The Kid From Red Bank
• Secret Love
• Cute
• I Cried for You
• Blue and Sentimental
• Jumpin' at the Woodside
• Meet B.B.
• Teach Me Tonight
• Moten Swing (live)
• One O'Clock Jump (live)
• Whirly-Bird
• Hallelujah (I Love Her So)
• Makin' Whoopee
• Lullaby of Birdland
• If I Were a Bell
• Jackson County Jubilee
• Sunset Glow
• Tickle Toe
• Ol' Man River
• Lil' Darlin'

• One O'Clock Jump
• Listen My Children and You Shall Hear
• Good Morning Blues (take 1)
• Time Out
• Topsy
• Don't You Miss Your Baby
• Swinging the Blues
• Doggin' Around
• London Bridge Is Falling Down
• Jumpin' at the Woodside
• Boogie Woogie
• Dark Rapture
• Shorty George
• Panassie Stomp
• Oh! Red
• Red Wagon
• You Can Depened on Me
• Cherokee Part 1

• Step Right Up
• Hobo Flats
• Gypsy Queen
• Love Flower
• Afrique
• Kilimanjaro
• African Sunrise
• Japan

• The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
• I Never Knew
• Tickle Toe
• Louisiana
• Easy Does It
• Let Me See
• Blow Top
• Gone With "What" Wind
• Super Chief
• You Betcha Life
• Down, Down, Down
• Tune Town Shuffle
• I'm Tired of Waiting for You
• Basie Boogie
• Fancy Meeting You
• My Old Flame
• Tom Thumb
• Take Me Back Baby
• All of Me
• One O'Clock Jump

• One O'Clock Jump
• Jumpin' at the Woodside
• Every Tub
• Blue and Sentimental
• Doggin' Around
• Jive at Five
• Sent for You Yesterday
• You Can Depend on Me
• Texas Shuffle
• I Never Knew
• Tickle Toe
• Louisiana
• 9.20 Special
• Harvard Blues
• Lester Leaps In
• Lady Be Good
• How Long Blues
• Taps Miller
• Moten Swing
• Swingmatism

• 9:20 Special
• Moonlight Becomes You
• Shiny Stockings
• Blues For Me
• Every Tub
• Easy Does It
• Lena and Lenny
• On The Sunny Side Of The Street
• Back To The Apple
• I'll Always Be In Love With You

• Way Out Basie
• St. Louis Blues
• Beaver Junction
• Lester Leaps In
• Blues for the Barbecue
• I Don't Know Yet
• Ain't That Something
• Jumpin' at the Woodside

• Mr. Softie
• Moten Swing
• She's Funny That Way
• Right on, Right On
• Me and You
• Crip
• Bidge Work
• Easy Living

• Honeysuckle Rose
• Blue And Sentimental
• Taxi War Dance
• John's Idea
• Topsy
• Every Tub
• Swinging The Blues
• Jumpin' At The Woodside
• Boogie Woogie
• How Long Blues
• Panassi Stomp
• Jive At Five
• Lady Be Good
• Doggin' Around
• Texas Shuffle
• Dickie's Dream
• Lester Leaps In
• Tickle Toe
• Red Band Boogie
• Cherokee
• One O'Clock Jump

• Honeysuckle Rose
• Roseland Shuffle
• Boogie Woogie (I May Be Wrong)
• One O'Clock Jump
• John's Idea
• Good Morning Blues
• Topsy
• Out the Window
• Don't You Miss Your Baby?
• Blues in the Dark
• Sent for You Yesterday
• Every Tub
• Swingin' the Blues
• Blue and Sentimental
• Doggin' Around
• Texas Shuffle
• Jumpin' at the Woodside
• Shorty George
• Panassie Stomp
• Jive at Five
• Oh, Lady Be Good

• What Am I Here For?
• April in Paris
• Jive at Five
• There's a Small Hotel
• Hob Nail Boogie
• Blee Bop Blues
• Basie Talks
• Paradise Squat
• Softly, With Feeling
• Beaver Junction
• Nails
• Did You Ever See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball
• Seventh Avenue Express
• Mr Robert's Roost
• The Mad Boogie
• The King
• Mutton Leg
• Patience and Fortitude
• Wild Bill's Boogie
• Stay Cool
• High Tide (I Ain't Mad at You)
• Jimmy's Boogie Woogie
• Taps Miller

• The Kid From Red Bank
• Duet
• After Supper
• Flight of the Foo Birds
• Double-O
• Teddy The Toad
• Whirly-Bird
• Midnight Blue
• Splanky
• Fantail
• Li'l Darling
• Silks and Satins
• Sleepwalker Serenade (alternate take)
• Sleepwalker Serenade
• The Late, Late Show

• In the Mood
• King Porter Stomp
• Moonlight Serenade
• Sunrise Serenade
• Little Brown Jug
• Farewell Blues
• Indian Summer
• Stardust
• Danny Boy
• Polka Dots and Moonbeams
• Blueberry Hill
• Pennsylvania 6-5000

• Bye Bye Blues
• Moten Swing
• I Surrender, Dear
• Song of the Islands

• The Comeback
• Basie
• Corner Pocket
• Lady In Lace
• Blues for Joe Turner
• Good Time Blues
• Li'l Darlin'
• Big Stuff
• Blue And Sentimental
• Corner Pocket

• The Kid From Red Bank
• The Late Late Show
• Flight of the Foo Birds
• Jive at Five
• Blue and Sentimental
• Lullabye of Birdland
• Cute
• Seque in C
• Topsy
• Jumpin' at the Woodside
• Broadway
• Tickle Toe
• Scoot
• For Lena and Lennie
• Whirly Bird
• Down for Double
• Easy Money
• Turnabout
• Taps Miller
• Old Man River (from Showboat)

• Every Tub
• Swingin' the Blues
• Blue and Sentimental
• Doggin' Around
• Texas Shuffle
• Shorty George
• Jumpin' at the Woodside
• Basie's Bag
• Harward Blues
• One O'Clock Jump
• Bubbles
• Jive at Five
• Nails
• Two Franks
• Freckle Face
• Orange Sherbet
• Basie
• Hittin' Twelve

• Night Rider
• Memories of You
• 9:20 Special
• Sweet Lorraine
• It's a Wonderful World
• Blues for Pamela

• One O'Clock Jump
• Harvard Blues
• Dickie's Dream
• Lester Leaps In
• I Left My Baby
• Taxi War Dance
• Red Bank Boogie
• Nobody Knows
• Miss Thing
• Tickle Toe
• Don't Worry 'Bout Me
• Moten Swing

• For Lena and Lennie
• Rat Race
• Quince
• Meet B B
• The Big Walk
• A Square at the Roundtable
• I Needs to Be Bee'd With
• Jessica's Day
• The Midnite Sun Never Sets
• Muttnik

• In a Mellow Tone
• Loose Walk
• Makin' Whoopee
• If I Had You
• I Surrender Dear
• 5400 North

• In A Mellotone
• The Midgets
• Whirly Bird
• Basie Boogie
• The Deacon
• Cute
• Old Man River
• The Kid From Red Bank
• Spring Is Here
• Why Not
• Corner Pocket
• Little Pony
• Blee Bop Blues

• Opus Six
• Vegas Drag
• Scooter
• Wee Baby
• N.H.O.P.
• Blues for little Jazz
• St. Louis Blues
• Walking The Blues

• Uptight (Everything's Alright)
• Respect
• Ode to Billie Joe
• My Girl
• In the Midnight Hour
• I Was Made to Love Her
• I Never Loved a Woman
• Funky Broadway
• For Your Precious Love
• Even When You Cry
• Chain Gang

• Buns Blues
• These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You)
• R.B.
• Burning
• Exactly Like You
• Jumpin' at the Woodside
• Louie B.
• Lester Leaps In
• Big Stockings
• S & J Blues

• A Little Tempo Please
• Corner Pocket
• I Needs to Be Be'd With
• Segue in C
• Back to the Apple
• The Deacon
• Easin' It
• No Moon at All
• Every Day I Have the Blues
• Whirly-Bird
• One O'Clock Jump

• Shiny Stockings
• H.R.H. (Her Royal Highness)
• A Little Tempo Please
• Vine Street Rumble
• Makin' Whoopee
• Who Me
• Bag-A-Bones
• In a Mellow Tone
• Li'l Darlin'
• Blues in Hoss' Flat
• Fancy Meeting You
• You're Too Beautiful
• I Needs to Bee'd With
• Counter Block
• Splanky
• Segue in C
• Five O'Clock in the Morning
• Baby Won't You Please Come Home
• Just a Dream (On My Mind)
• It's a Wonderful World
• In the Evenin' (When the Sun Goes Down)

• Basie Power
• Big Stuff
• Funtime
• Meeting
• The Python
• Yellow Days
• From This Moment On
• It Could Happen to You
• The Spirit Is Willing
• Cherry Point
• Lover
• I Need to Be Bee'd With
• Meditation
• Whirly Bird
• Cleanhead Blues
• Cherry Red
• Person to Person
• Hold It Right There

• One O'Clock Jump
• Every Tub
• Jeepers Creepers
• Dance of the Gremlins
• John's Idea
• The King
• 9:20 Special
• Jazz Me Blues
• Everyday I Have the Blues
• Red Bank Boogie
• Bleep Bleep
• Anything Goes
• Basie Goes West
• In a Mellowtone

• Hey Pretty Baby
• Seventh Avenue Express
• Walking Slow Behind You
• Mister Roberts' Roost
• Don't You Want a Man Like Me
• South
• You Call Yourself the Jungle King (I Found Out You Ain't a Doggone Thing)
• Sophisticated Swing
• House Rent Boogie
• Basie's Basement
• Brand New Wagon

• One O'Clock Jump
• Dance of the Gremlins
• Basie Talk
• Blee Blop Blues
• Bubbles
• You for Me
• Basie Goes Wess
• Straight Line
• Let's Jump
• Ska-Di-De-Dee-Doo
• Slow but Sure
• Two for the Blues
• Jazz Me Blues

Born: 1904-08-21

Died: 1984-04-26